Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 1/6/25: Trump Dominates Speaker Vote, Alleged Cybertruck Manifesto, Elon Attacks UK PM, Marianne DNC

Episode Date: January 6, 2025

Krystal breaks down Trump's domination around the Speaker Vote with Shelby Talcott, a Cartoonist quits the Washington Post over censorship, an alleged manifesto from the Cybertruck attacked is released, Elon attacks the UK PM over 'grooming gangs', and Marianne Williamson comes on to talk about her race for the DNC leadership.   To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show AD FREE, uncut and 1 hour early visit: www.breakingpoints.com Merch Store: https://shop.breakingpoints.com/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. is still out there. Each week, I investigate a new case. If there is a case we should hear about, call 678-744-6145. Listen to Hell and Gone Murder Line on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

High key. Looking for your next obsession? Listen to High Key, a new weekly podcast hosted by Ben O'Keefe, Ryan Mitchell,

and Evie Audley. We got a lot of things to get into. We're going to gush about the random stuff we can't stop thinking about. I am high key going to lose my mind over all things Cowboy Carter. I know. Girl, the way she about to yank my bank account. Correct.

And one thing I really love about this is that she's celebrating her daughter. Oh, I know. Listen to High Key on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I think everything that might have dropped in 95 has been labeled the golden years of hip-hop. It's Black Music Month, and We Need to Talk is tapping in. I'm Nyla Simone, breaking down lyrics, amplifying voices, and digging into the culture that shaped the soundtrack of our lives. Like, that's what's really important, and that's what stands out out is that our music changes people's lives for the better. Let's talk about the music that moves us.

To hear this and more on how music and culture collide, listen to We Need to Talk from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey guys, Sagar and Crystal here. Independent media just played a truly massive role in this election, and we are so excited about what that means for the future of this show. This is the only place where you can find honest perspectives from the left and the right that simply does not exist anywhere else. So if that is something that's important to you,

please go to breakingpoints.com, become a member today, and you'll get access to our full shows, unedited, ad-free, and all put together for you every morning in your inbox. We need your help to build the future of independent news media, and we hope to for you every morning in your inbox. We need your help to build the future of independent news media, and we hope to see you at BreakingPoints.com.

Hey guys, happy Monday and happy snow day. If you are anywhere in the Midwest or greater Washington, D.C. area, I obviously am doing the show from home. Sagar will be back with me tomorrow, also probably remote because of the amount of snow that we are getting here. But we've planned, I guess I'd say, a special show. We've got a bit of a star-studded show for you this morning. A bunch of special guests going to join me to help me out.

So we've got Shelby Talcott, who's going to join from Semaphore and break down what's going on within the Trump administration. Mike Johnson was able to secure speakership kind of relatively easily. Maybe that was a surprise. I don't know. We'll get her insights into what that could mean for the Republicans moving forward. Also going to have Ryan, I think, is going to join me at some point during the show to jump in for a couple of blocks that are of particular interest to him. There was a just horrific interview from Secretary of State Tony Blinken. You know, he was actually confronted by The New York Times about his support, whether the world is going to see this as a genocide, whether the world is going to see him as someone who supported and armed a genocide.

So pretty interesting and predictably abhorrent comments from him. Love to get Ryan to join me on that one. And then we also have a bunch of crazy new details on this guy who blew himself up inside of a Cybertruck. There are some emails from his phone or some notes from his phone that law enforcement has released. There's also a purported email from him that questions have been raised about, but that he in that alleged email is claiming that he was trying to blow the whistle about drone activity with regards to China.

So I'm going to break down everything that I know as best as I know it about that one. I am sorry that Sager's not here for this particular blog, but when we get him in tomorrow, we can get us two cents on that as well. Also, Elon Musk, not content in meddling in US politics or in German politics, for that matter, is now diving headfirst into UK politics. A lot of interesting intrigue there, some strange bedfellows, etc. So break all of that down for you. Marianne Williamson is going to join. She is now running for DNC chair. And big news, she's actually secured the number of delegate signatures that she needs to be an

official candidate. So always interesting to hear from Marion, you know, a lot of what she was running on domestically. She ended up being very prescient and it really was a crime, not just to her. That's kind of the least of the problem, but to the American people and to the Democratic Party that they did not take that Democratic primary seriously. In fact, not only do they not take it seriously, they actively canceled it in a number of states. So this is my first time to really deep dive with Marianne about what happened and her thoughts and reflections and her recommendations for the

Democratic Party looking forward. So I'm really looking forward to that. We also are going to have environmental lawyer and activist Steven Donziger, who was wrongfully imprisoned in really the first nation's first corporate prosecution. He is calling for Biden to pardon him. It is much deserved. Obviously, Biden has made, you know, pretty significant use of his abilities to pardon and also to commute sentences. And Stephen Donziger is one of the most deserving people you can imagine to receive a presidential pardon. So he is going to join us to make his case. So jam-packed show in spite of the fact that it is me and I'm here at home. The snow is falling, all of that good stuff. So with all that

being said, let's go ahead and get to Shelby Talcott. All right, guys, happy to be joined this morning by Shelby Talcott, who is national political reporter for Semaphore and does a fabulous job covering the Republican side of the aisle in particular. And there's certainly almost all the action that's really on that side at this point. So, Shelby, always great to see you. Thank you so much for taking some time out. Thanks for having me. Yeah, of course. Let me go ahead and throw up on the screen your latest reporting here about Mike Johnson. This was before he actually won the speaker vote. You say Trump offers strategic endorsement of Mike Johnson.

And that apparently ended up really being determinative because, you know, I fully expected Mike Johnson was going to be the speaker because there really wasn't any alternative. But I thought there would be a little bit more of a fight. So just take our viewers through what happened, what was the timeline and what led this to being like relatively, you know, easy sledding for Mike Johnson. No pun intended there. That was really dorky. Yeah. So at the end of last year, remember, just a few weeks ago, there was a big to do about the spending bill when Donald Trump came in and essentially blew it up by saying that he wanted Republicans to address the debt ceiling before he took office. Now, notably, what ended up happening was a much smaller bill passed without Donald Trump's debt

ceiling demand. And that really frustrated Donald Trump and a lot of Republican allies to Donald Trump. And a lot of them blamed Mike Johnson. And so there was sort of this quiet drama brewing over on Capitol Hill. And one of the reasons that Donald Trump ended up endorsing Mike Johnson was simply because of today, obviously, is the election certification. And Trump knew that he needed somebody in the House leadership, the House speakership, in order to certify the election. And so the simplest, easiest option was to back Mike Johnson. He has the most support out of all the lawmakers. And Donald Trump ended up playing a really important role because he was calling lawmakers on Friday ahead of the speakership vote. And even after it

seemed that Mike Johnson did not have the votes, he called those two lawmakers up who ended up switching their votes because Donald Trump called him. And so this really was, I think, a referendum on Donald Trump's power in the Republican Party, more so than it was on how Republicans feel about Mike Johnson. I think that's a great point and the most important point probably out of this. So what have like, you know, Thomas Massey was saying he was the no. Chip Roy was making a lot of noises like he was a no. These are two that, you know, tend to be really ideologically sort of cut from that Tea Party mold, very committed to lowering the debt and the deficit and all of these sorts of things. Did they get anything out of this or did they

just decide like, well, there's no real alternative and Trump wants us to go in this direction and we got to get this election certified. So we're just going to go along to get along. Well, everybody that I've talked to said that Mike Johnson did not make any specific concessions. What he did do before he came out onto the House floor was he issued an ex-tweet, whatever you call them these days, where he basically said that he was committed to all these fiscally responsible initiatives, which was what a lot of the maybes were kind of looking for. Now, I think it is really notable that after the vote, Chip Roy, along with almost a dozen other Republicans, came out and said basically that the reason they voted for Mike Johnson was because they want Donald Trump's agenda passed. And it had nothing to do

with Mike Johnson himself. And in fact, it was despite Mike Johnson's leadership over the past year. And so that's really notable. So I think it really just came down to the fact that Donald Trump was able to convince these Republicans that Mike Johnson was the only option in order to get his agenda passed and to get the ball rolling into this administration. So it is January 6th today. We all now know very well that electoral certification is supposed to happen on January 6th. I'm out in King George County, Virginia, about an hour and a half outside of D.C. We've probably got about three or four inches on the ground right now. The snow is still falling quite steadily.

Are these lawmakers who I was saying, you know, quite seriously to you earlier, many of them are aged, many of them have trouble getting around the Capitol in the best of times. We saw Virginia Fox take a nasty fall last week. Are they going to come in and certify this election? How is that all going to work? Yeah, I mean, I'm looking outside my window right now in D.C. and it is exactly the same. It is definitely we are snowed in. But despite that, there are no plans to push things back. The election is supposed to be certified today. That is what Donald Trump wants. That is what the rules are. And so I think lawmakers are going to do their very best to get into town. Now, I know there was some concern about lawmakers who were

who had left town or were told not to leave town and might have left town. So it's going to be really interesting to see who manages to get in. But I do think that every every initiative is being made in order to make sure that lawmakers are able to enter the Capitol today. Gotcha. So the two sort of big early agenda items for the Trump administration are you mentioned the one dealing with the debt ceiling and then the extension of the tax cuts and cuts and jobs act, which was the big, you know, tax cut from Trump's first administration largely goes to the wealthy. This has been a big priority and something he really significantly campaigned on. They're also talking of wrapping in a bunch of other stuff in a large reconciliation bill. But let's start with the debt ceiling that I

would ask you what might go into that reconciliation bill and what you've learned there. What is the plan to deal with the debt ceiling? How hard of hardball do you think that Democrats are willing to play here? How do you see this all turning out? Because I think what Janine Yellen said that they would technically hit the debt ceiling in the next something like 10 days, and then they can implement these extraordinary measures, which pushes it out. So it's not like a hard deadline. But basically, once you hit that wall, the clock is really ticking to lift or extend it or suspend it or do something with it. Remember, Donald Trump wanted this addressed before he took office. It clearly seems like it's not going to happen. But what Mike Johnson and Republicans did sort of do a handshake Right. Republicans that much and vice versa. The reason the spending bill blew up was because a lot of Republicans and Donald Trump felt that there were too many concessions made to Democrats. So that

in and of itself is going to be an issue. But I also think one of the problems is going to be the fact that Donald Trump has come out and endorsed this one big, beautiful bill, as Mike Johnson said on Sunday. That's going to be difficult because it's going to, Mike Johnson wants it to include the debt ceiling. He wants it to include border. He wants going to be difficult because it's going to, Mike Johnson wants it to include the debt ceiling. He wants it to include border. He wants it to include tax cuts and passing all of that together and getting all of these lawmakers on board with so many different initiatives is going to be a challenge. Yeah. And just to remind people, reconciliation, that's a process that the Democrats also use to get a number of their priorities through. It basically short circuits the filibuster in the Senate. So you can pass

if you have a majority in the House, which Republicans very narrowly do, and then you have a majority in the Senate, you can pass significant things through. You know, there's a bunch of arcane like minutiae about how this process works. It's relatively lengthy in terms of, you know, how long it takes to put it together and go through this process. And then they have to submit it to the parliamentarian, the parliamentarian rules on whether or not these pieces are appropriate to go through the reconciliation process. But there's a lot you can do through there. What are some of the specific priorities that they're looking at through that reconciliation process? And then also,

do you think that some Republicans, like we mentioned Thomas Massey, Chip Roy, are some of them going to have an issue even ideologically with just putting this many things together? Because that's one of the complaints that they've had is, hey, let's pass things individually rather than having these gigantic omnibus style bills where everybody's pet project gets piled into one giant know, one giant bill. Yeah, this is kind of exactly what Donald Trump and Republicans had concerns about with the spending bill was that it was so big and had so many initiatives inside of it. And they argued that it should be simplified and cut down and that all of these individual efforts should be

passed individually. And so I think, you know, they're going to try to close the border. That was originally going to be plan A when Donald Trump took office and lawmakers were considering a two-step bill, which would have been do the border first and then get something like the tax cuts done. And the argument that these lawmakers made for that was that it would be easier to pass something like the border. We get that closed. Donald Trump wants the border closed. That's priority number one, which most Republicans are on board of. So that will be an easier thing to pass compared to the tax cuts. And so what this bill, theoretically, we don't know. The legislation hasn't been made yet. But when Mike Johnson has talked to Fox News

on Sunday and we've talked to other lawmakers and Donald Trump has voiced his opinion. They want to extend the tax cuts and implement some of Donald Trump's new initiatives like no tax on tips would be included theoretically in this legislation. Closing the border would be included in this legislation, addressing the debt ceiling. So, again, this is theoretically a massive package that Donald Trump wants passed very soon into his administration. Over the past six years of making my true crime podcast hell and gone, I've learned one thing. No town is too small for murder. I'm Katherine Townsend. I've received hundreds of messages from people across the country begging for help with unsolved murders. I was calling about the murder of my husband at the cold case. They've never found her,

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

If you have a case you'd like me to look into, call the Hell and Gone Murder Line at 678-744-6145. Listen to Hell and Gone Murder Line on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I think everything that might have dropped in 95 has been labeled the golden years of hip hop. It's Black Music Month and We Need to Talk is tapping in. I'm Nyla Simone, breaking down lyrics, amplifying voices, and digging into the culture that shaped the soundtrack of our lives. My favorite line on there was, my son and my daughter gonna be proud when they hear my old tapes.

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

like that's what's really important and that's what stands out is that our music changes people's lives for the better so the fact that my kids get to benefit off of that i'm really happy or my family in general let's talk about the music that moves us. To hear this and more on how music and culture collide, listen to We Need to Talk from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is your girl T.S. Madison, and I'm coming to you loud, live, and in color from the Outlaws podcast. Let me tell you something.

I broke the internet with a 22 inch weave my superpower i've got the voice my kryptonite don't exist get a job my podcast the one they never saw coming each week i sit down with the culture creators and scroll stoppers tina knows luna's ex will we ever see a dating show for the love of Lil Nas X? I'm just gonna show all my exes. X marks the spot. No, here it is. My next ex.

That's actually cute, though. Laverne Cox. I have a core group of girlfriends that, like, they taught me how to love. And Chapel Rome. I was dropped in 2020 working the drive-thru, and here we are now. We turn sad eye into sermons. Pain into punchline. And grief, we turn those into galaxies. Listen, make sure you tell Beyonce, I'm going right on the phone right now and call her. Listen to Outlaws with T.S. Madison on the iHeartRadio app,

Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts, honey. Let me go ahead and put this up, this reporting from Heather Long up at the Washington Post. She's asking the question, you know, assuming that Republicans are going to have pay-fors for the tax cuts and the no tax on tips and the things that they've, you know, proposed and are committed to.

Here's some of the things that, you know, might be on the list. Tariffs would be significant in order to pay for those days. Repealing clean energy programs. We know that's something that Republicans have had their sights on for a while. Unauthorized spending. This is like a Vivek Elon Doge thing. They have a theory that certain programs which haven't technically had their spending reauthorized, which, by the way, are things like, you know, VA health care for certain veterans that they could could slash some programs. They're repealing Biden's student loan forgiveness, ending the education department, cutting food stamps,

implementing Medicaid work requirements, blocking Medicare obesity treatment. I guess that would be blocking like ozempic funding and child tax credit for non-citizen parents and cut the irs funding which actually goes in the opposite direction because funding the irs helps to collect tax revenue um in any case do you how serious do you think they would be about some of these cuts that's been a big you know source of um interest from elon and vivek obviously that's kind of like the the whole heart of the Doge initiative. And is it critical to them that they do pay for the cost of the tax cuts? Last time Trump was in office, he was happy to, you know, do the tax cuts, not pay for them and just massively blow up the deficit in spite of Republican rhetoric to the contrary. Yeah, I think, you know, I think they're deadly serious, right? Donald Trump implemented DOGE, which is Vivek Ramaswamy's and Elon Musk's effort to get rid of things in the government and get cut spending. So that alone tells you that

he's serious about this initiative. And lawmakers have been meeting with Vivek and Elon Musk on Capitol Hill for the last few weeks. And a lot of Republicans believe that the U.S. government is bloated and that cuts need to be made. And now, obviously, I think the big thing with tax cuts would be these tariffs, which is something that Donald Trump has talked a lot about. He says it's going to pay for it all. But there's concerns among some Senate Republicans about using tariffs in order to pay for these tax cuts. And so that alone, I think, is going to cause pushback. And there's going to be a lot of debate in Congress over whether Donald Trump and Republicans should use tariffs. So not everyone is on board with that sort of initiative, which I think has been the main thing mentioned and would theoretically, you know, have the most cost to it.

Yeah. But a lot of lawmakers aren't yet convinced that that's the way to go. Gotcha. Last question I have for you, Shelby, is like, you know, to the best of your sense, how is Trump approaching this administration? Because there's one theory out there that like, you know, he wanted to avoid jail time and winning the presidency was the best way to do that. But he's kind of happy to, you know, outsource some of the ideological project and some of the heavy lifting to Elon or the vague or, you know, who other whatever other lieutenants may have ideological interests. How engaged is he in this particular administration? How hands on how micromanaging? What are your What's your sense of his headspace and what his top

priorities will be? You know, I've heard those theories also. And you know, it makes sense to theorize that. But I actually think from my conversations with people inside Trump's orbit, he's very hands on in this. And essentially, everything that he said during the campaign is exactly what he wants. You know, you think a lot about people say things during the campaign and it's to win the primary and then it's to win the general election and who knows if they're actually going to implement it. What Donald Trump said on the campaign trail is what we are seeing now he actually wants to implement. So I think that's really important. And he's very hands on. He has met with all of the cabinet nominees so far. But he also does have these different orbits in

his circle, right? Like Marco Rubio is very different ideologically than Tulsi Gabbard. And RFK Jr. has a different ideological background when it comes to things like abortion. And so that's where I think it's going to be interesting to see. And I don't think we know yet because Donald Trump hasn't taken office. But I think it's going to be really interesting to see. And I don't think we know yet because Donald Trump hasn't taken office, but I think it's going to be really interesting to see how those factions work and whether Donald Trump ends up addressing things directly as he has been right with Congress. He has been the one calling lawmakers directly or whether he ends up, you know, using Susie Wiles a little bit more or leaning on J.D. Vance or outsourcing some of these efforts. Yeah. Well, an interesting point you make there, too, because you said,

you know, he's going to do the things he said on the campaign, which has kind of been my assumption the whole time. It's like he's saying these things. He's running on these things. He won on these things. He's going to do them. But that includes also H-1B. I mean, people act like this shift of his, which is a genuine shift from 2020 and 2016, like it came out of nowhere. But you were covering the campaign when he went on the All In podcast and was like, yeah, staple the visa on the college degree. So he had already made that shift. He'd already, you know, there's a bunch of issues that he shifted on over the years, crypto being another one of them just off the top of my head. But that was something that he did

campaign on. Now, people may not have really listened to that because most of the rhetoric was about, you know, more immigration restrictionists. But he had already made that shift and had already sort of provided that goody to Silicon Valley many months ago. Yeah. And I think what's really what's going to also be something to keep an eye out for is some of the initiatives that Donald Trump wants passed, like the visas, are things that his own members of his own party don't like, and particularly not just members of his own party, but some of the loyalists don't like. And so I think it's going to be notable because remember, Donald Trump talks to everybody. He asks everybody's advice. He is lobbied by people constantly, and he sometimes changes his mind due to those pressure campaigns.

And so it's going to be notable because some of the initiatives that Donald Trump wants to do are things that his own allies don't like. And so where are the pressure campaigns going to come in in the next few months and early in his administration? And what is going how is he going to be able to be influenced or or talked out of things or talked into things? Yeah, well, he doesn't have to run for re-election anymore, so he doesn't have to really care that much. is he going to be able to be influenced or or talked out of things or talked into things? Yeah, well, he doesn't have to run for re-election anymore, so he doesn't have to really care that much. And also, there's not really demonstrated track record of the base actually standing up to him. They might get mad at Elon. They might get mad at Vivek, but it's never his fault, right? There's always it's always somebody who's leading him astray if they feel like he strays from their principles. And just to go back to the first thing you said after the first question, you know, the fact that he made those calls and got Mike Johnson really easily

over the finish line, I think that tells you how much power he still has within the Republican Party and, you know, how much they see their political fortunes individually as tied to how, you know, favored they are by Donald Trump. So, Shelby, thank you so much. Great to see you. Great reporting, as always. And we'll see you again soon. Thanks for having me. My pleasure. Over the past six years of making my true crime podcast hell and gone, I've learned one thing. No town is too small for murder. I'm Katherine Townsend. I've received hundreds of messages from people across the country begging for help with unsolved murders. I was calling about the murder of my husband at the cold case. They've never found her. And it haunts me to this day. The murderer is still

out there. Every week on Hell and Gone Murder Line, I dig into a new case, bringing the skills I've learned as a journalist and private investigator to ask the questions no one else is asking. Police really didn't care to even try. She was still somebody's mother. She was still somebody's daughter. She was still somebody's sister. There's so many questions that we've never gotten any kind of answers for. If you have a case you'd like me to look into, call the Hell and Gone Murder Line at 678-744-6145. Listen to Hell and Gone Murder Line on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I think everything that might have dropped in 95 has been labeled the golden years of hip hop.

It's Black Music Month and we need to talk is tapping in. I'm Nyla Simone, breaking down lyrics, amplifying voices, and digging into the culture that shaped the soundtrack of our lives. My favorite line on there was, my son and my daughter gonna be proud when they hear my old tapes. Yeah. Now, I'm curious, do they, like, rap along now? Yeah, because I bring him on tour with me, and he's getting older now, too.

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

really happy or my family in general let's talk about the music that moves us. To hear this and more on how music and culture collide, listen to We Need to Talk from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is your girl T.S. Madison, and I'm coming to you loud, loud, and in

color from the Outlaws Podcast. Let me tell you something. I broke the internet with a 22-inch weave. My superpower? I've got the voice. My kryptonite? It don't exist. My podcast?

The one they never saw coming. Each week, I sit down with the culture creators and scroll stoppers. Tina knows. Lil Nas X. Will we ever see a dating us. Tina knows. Lil Nas X. Will we ever see a dating show for the love of Lil Nas X? I'm just gonna show all my exes. X marks the spot.

No, here it is. My next ex. That's actually cute, though. Laverne Cox. I have a core group of girlfriends that, like, they taught me how to love. And Chapel Rome. I was dropped in 2020 working the drive-thru, and here we are now. We turn sad eye into sermons. pain into punchline, and grief, we turn those into galaxies.

Listen, make sure you tell Beyonce, I'm going right on the phone right now, and call her. Listen to Out Trump's will. We've been tracking here a number of instances in particular of Jeff Bezos and other tech oligarchs who have decided to make nice with Trump, some of whom had been quite adversarial to him in the past. And we have a new example, perhaps, of some of the different behavior that is going on with some of those oligarchs. So a Pulitzer Prize winning cartoonist named Ann Telness, I might be butchering that name. Sorry, guys, just resigned from The Washington Post because this cartoon was killed by the editor. Let me just pull this up full screen. You could see this. This is meant to be Donald Trump,

the long tie, the protruding belly, et cetera. This is a number of tech oligarchs. And this is the guy who's the head of the LA Times. Obviously, this is Mickey Mouse. But this notably right here, that would be Jeff Bezos. And all of them bending the knee, offering up cash. The L.A. Times dude is puckering up with the lipstick here to presumably kiss

Trump's feet or his ass or something like that. And Mickey Mouse completely prostrating himself in front of Donald Trump. And so apparently this cartoon was killed. And this was sort of a final straw for this cartoonist who was longtime with The Washington Post and obviously relatively celebrated. She actually wrote a sub stack explaining why she was leaving. And I'll go ahead and pull this up on the screen and read to you a little bit of what she had to say here. She says, why I'm quitting The Washington Post. I've worked for The Washington Post since 2008 as an editorial cartoonist. I've had editorial feedback and productive conversations and some differences about cartoons I've submitted for publication. But in all that time, I've never had a cartoon killed because of who or what I chose to

aim my pen at until now. The cartoon that was killed criticizes the billionaire tech and media chief executives who've been doing their best to curry favor with incoming president-elect Trump. There have been multiple articles recently about these men with lucrative government contracts and an interest in eliminating regulations, making their way to Mar-a-Lago.

The group in the cartoon included Mark Zuckerberg, of course, of Meta, Sam Altman, that's Open AI, Patrick Soon Chong, L.A. Times publisher, Walt Disney Company slash ABC News, and Jeff Bezos, the Washington Post owner. She goes on to say it's not uncommon for editorial page editors to object to visual metaphors within a cartoon if it strikes that editor as unclear or is not correctly conveying the message intended by the cartoonist. such editorial criticism was not the case regarding this cartoon. To be clear, there have been instances where sketches have been rejected or revisions requested, but never because of the point of view inherent in the cartoon's commentary.

That is a game changer and dangerous for a free press. So let me go ahead and read to you what the paper's response was. David Shipley, who is the Post's opinion editor, said in a statement that was provided to CNN and I think other outlets as well. Not every editorial judgment is a reflection of a malign force. My decision was guided by the fact we had just published a column on the same topic as the cartoon had already scheduled. Another column, this one, a satire for publication. The only bias was against repetition. So that is their side of the story.

But of course, this comes after what sort of kicked off this whole conversation about obeying in advance and the efforts of tech billionaires to suck up to Donald Trump, all of whom have a lot at stake. I mean, Jeff Bezos in particular has massive government contracts and felt that in the first Trump administration, and I think probably rightly so, that he was punished and denied one particular very lucrative government contract. Of course, this man is one of the richest men on the planet. I think he's like number two right now to Elon Musk,

who's got he's got his position solidified within the Trump administration. But in any case, he felt that that contract was withheld. It appears he would deny this, I'm sure. But it appears that he very much wants to be on the good side of Donald Trump this time around. And so before the election, he decided to, the Washington Post decided, which he owns, of course, to spike an editorial endorsement of Kamala Harris. This became a massive, I would say, scandal. It was actually devastating to the Washington Post in terms of their business. A number of journalists resigned. Washington Post's already business was not doing

well under Jeff Bezos. They had lost a huge amount of subscribers because they had really bet the farm exclusively on sort of anti-Donald Trump resistance type editorial direction. And Democracy Dies in Darkness, all of that. And so that was the readership that they had cultivated really was this, you know, virulently anti-Trump readership. That was their business choice. And, you know, first of all, when Donald Trump loses reelection in 2020, that's going to sort of take the wind out of the sails of that type of content. And then now when you had Jeff Bezos saying, oh, we're just, we don't really do politics and we're just going to stay out of this presidential race. And it has of course,

nothing to do with my own personal business interests. They lost a flood of subscribers. Huge. I should look up the numbers, but it was, I believe it was like over a hundred thousand. I mean, it was a massive blow to their subscriber base. And so what this cartoonist is essentially alleging here is that that direction of the post, that was not an accident. It was not a one-off, that that's infected all of their coverage and all of their editorial to the extent that she experienced something she says she'd never experienced before, which is a cartoon getting killed entirely because it was unflattering, not just remember to Donald Trump, but also to Jeff Bezos, who owns the Washington Post. And this is why, you know, billionaires controlling our media is such a problem.

You might recall Bernie Sanders raising this point in the 2020 Democratic primary, and he was roundly smeared and criticized and scoffed at for suggesting that the billionaire ownership of the Washington Post might have something to do with their incredibly deceptive at times and outright wrong at times coverage of his ideas and his campaign. He was roundly mocked for that. I hope everyone can see whether it's Elon owning Twitter or Jeff Bezos owning the Washington Post or these giant media conglomerates that own so many different properties and so have so many, you know, vast business interests that this is incredibly deleterious to democracy and just to

getting fair and accurate coverage. So this is one more example of that. Another one I can throw this one in fairness, Tim Cook, CEO of Apple, who Trump famously called one time Tim Apple, which always still sticks in my head. He is apparently the latest tech oligarch to decide he's going to donate a million dollars to Trump's inauguration. Now, in fairness to Tim Apple, he has long cultivated both sides of the aisle. He went out of his way in the first Trump term to maintain somewhat of a friendly relationship with Donald Trump. But it's still grotesque to see the way that him and Sam Altman and a bunch of others have decided that they're going to specifically cough up millions of dollars to fund the Trump inauguration, which I mean, it's just basically

like, you know, it's just a sop, right? It's just a complete sop way of sucking up to the king that they're doing. This is very indicative of where we are. You read a little bit of this article because it did have some some interesting notes here. In addition to Tim Cook says between the lines, Cook, a proud Alabama native believes the inauguration is a great American tradition. Oh, yeah, I'm sure that's why you're doing it here, Tim. They say in the back story here, the Wall Street Journal shortly after the election wrote an article headline how Tim Cook cracked the code on working with Trump, noted that he had spent years building personal rapport with Trump. So time to cash in, I guess, on that personal rapport. They also note here that other Silicon Valley

inauguration donors include Amazon, Meta, Uber, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Wall Street's seven-figure donors include Goldman Sachs and Bank of America, crypto exchanges Kraken and Coinbase. Also getting in on the action, Toyota, Ford, and GM are all also donating at least a million dollars. So one of the things with these inauguration funds is that direct corporate donations into campaigns are that's illegal. curry favor and get their little meat hooks into this administration and try to angle for whatever regulatory changes that they want, killing different regulations that they find to be anathema to their bottom line, or sucking up for procurement purposes so that they can be first in line for whatever giant government contracts and subsidies that get doled out. So this is a way for them to for these corporate entities and the billionaire heads of these corporate entities to directly curry favor

and directly jockey for, you know, the the favor of the king. And, you know, with Trump, who's famously like this is, by the way, this is not particularly different from other administrations. This goes on under Democratic administrations. Sure. If you go back and look who was giving to the Joe Biden inaugural fund, you'll see a similar list of characters with similarly self-interested motives. But Donald Trump is particularly sort of like brazen and his ego drives so much of his decision making. You know, if you're on his good list, if you're saying nice things about him and he feels that you're being loyal to him, he'll shower you with favors and gifts. If you get on his wrong side, as Jeff Bezos did in the first administration and Sam Altman is another one who has given a lot of money to Democrats.

And by the way, is very much on the wrong side of Elon Musk, who is the right hand to the king right now, then you can be in for a really rough road. The last thing I'll note here, and then I have another piece that I want to share with you because I just mentioned Elon, who is the right hand to the king. And so it's not just about currying favor with Trump. It's also about currying favor with Elon Musk, who has shown himself already to be extraordinarily powerful, you know, beat the Laura Loomers and the sort of like OG MAGA base on this H-1B visa issue, immediately runs Twitter, right, and can use the algorithm to pump up whatever content he wants or to, you know, make life difficult for whoever

he wants. So currying favor with him is also really, really important. But this is going to be a significant thing to track. And the biggest business area where there is the most stake is really in this AI development. And that's where Elon comes in. That's where Sam Altman comes in. That's where everyone, Mark Zuckerberg comes in. Every one of the big tech players, they want to make sure, number one, that they're in the top pole position to be the leader in terms of AI technology. The amount of money that is flowing in that direction is absolutely extraordinarily massive. There are going to be government contracts at stake as well.

So some of this jockeying, a significant amount of this jockeying is specifically about AI and the H-1B fight even is tangential and related to that fight to have complete corporate capture and unregulated bonanza of AI development without much regard to how it's going to impact jobs, workers, safety, or anything else. So to get to the Elon part of this, More Perfect Union noted that since Trump won, lo and behold, all of these advertisers that had fled Twitter because of, you know, all of the hate content and all of the Nazis that are just like on your timeline all day long at this point on Twitter. Oh, now that they want to suck up to Elon and the Trump administration, suddenly those advertisers, blue chip advertisers are coming back. Let's take a listen to a little bit of this. Not long ago, the biggest brands in America boycotted Twitter, or what Elon Musk now has us calling X,

after he took over the platform and let hate speech run wild. Advertisers fled like rats from a sinking ship. Disney, Apple, and IBM have pulled their ads from the social media site. To which Musk had a pretty clear message. Go f*** yourself. Go f*** yourself. Go f*** yourself. But suddenly, they're scurrying back. Hate speech hasn't disappeared from Twitter. So what has changed? Elon Musk is tied to the hip with Donald Trump. And the corporate giants who once boycotted Twitter, from Disney to Comcast, want to get on their good side. Take Musk's takeover of Twitter, revenue collapsed and the

company's value has decreased by 84%. In the second quarter of 2024, X brought in only $114 million in revenue. That's down from $661 million in the same quarter of 2022, before Musk took the reins. The social media company was in trouble, but Musk anticipated a change of heart at the country's largest companies. If Trump wins, we'll see, you know, probably most of the boycott left. Like clockwork, as the election neared and predictions of a Trump win grew, companies started turning their spending spigot back on. By going back to X, big advertisers are lending the company a much-needed

lifeline. But that's not all. In an interview with the Financial Times, Lou Pascalis, a marketing expert, called advertisers' return to X a form of political leverage. It's a calculated move to appease a guy who said, there's a large graveyard filled with my enemies. And who's so close to Trump, he started calling himself the first buddy, following Trump around and grooving to the YMCA with the soon to be president whenever he gets the chance. So you get the picture there. I mean, this is the tech equivalent of you remember in the first Trump administration, the easiest way to curry favor with Trump was any time a foreign dignitary or anyone came into town had to stay at the Trump Hotel right there in D.C. Now, the Trump Hotel is not the Trump Hotel anymore. However, another way you can directly curry favor with Donald Trump is, oh, he has his own crypto coin. So you could you could purchase

that. Or if you want to get in good with a, quote unquote, first buddy and not run afoul of Elon Musk, who, as I said before, has already proven himself to be extremely powerful within this administration, well, your company probably is going to want to buy some advertisements on X. Not because you think it's directly beneficial to your brand, but because you want to make sure you're in a position to benefit from all of those government goodies. So that is the game that's being played right now. It is extraordinarily high stakes. And to state the obvious, it's example number 3,000 of how much the government is set up to serve these oligarchs and these massive corporate interests over you. Like, you don't get an audience with the king or the first buddy. You don't get to, you know,

throw millions of dollars in advertising onto their favored platform in order to get your little pet projects approved and good and good with the people who actually count. And so, yeah, I know this can become sort of like par for the course in America where money is king. But this is how you end up with a situation where the people's voices really just don't count, where when money and speech, you know, the people who have the most money, they're going to have the most speech. They're going to have the most influence. They're going to have the most say. And, you know, take a look at the way our government is run and who it's run for and take a look at how these people are behaving as the Trump administration comes into office. And, you know, there's your answer of what

this government is ultimately all about. The last thing I'll say on this one before moving on to the next topic we have here, which is a lot of extraordinary details that I would do my best to unpack about this whole cyber truck dude killing himself, blowing up the truck, etc. The last thing I'll say about this is I think it was Michael Tracy who was pointing this out. He makes a lot of good points. I feel like I cite him a lot. But, you know, Trump in 2016, part of his political power was he positioned himself as being sort of uncorruptible. He's like, I'm a rich guy. I don't need these people's money. I understand, in fact, how this game was played because I played it. I know this game better than anyone else, and I'm going to drain the swamp. OK, I'm not saying

money in politics and the corrupting influence is new under Donald Trump. That would be a lie. Both parties all in on big money. But we are seeing something that is even more brazen under Donald Trump and has been taken to even more extraordinary lengths. Musk in particular, giving a quarter of a billion dollars and possibly being directly responsible for Trump getting back in the White House and then being handled, handed this extraordinarily vast amount of power. You know, he already got what he wanted out of that whole spending deal that had been negotiated and then he blew it up. One piece that I'm sure was really important to him was it had some limits on high tech investment in China that went against his interests because he wants to do some Tesla AI thing in China. Gets that stripped down, gets his way before the Trump administration is even in office. H-1Bs, you know, however you feel about the program. Personally, I think

guest worker programs are inherently exploitative. I agree with Bernie Sanders, who wants to, you know, really take an aggressive approach of reform to the H-1B program. That is my position as well. But however you feel about the program, Trump completely flipped on a dime in order to please Elon, David Sachs, Mark Andreessen, his new tech oligarch buddies. That happened during the campaign. But obviously, the fight broke out into public just recently. And Elon won hands down unequivocally. He didn't get nothing for that quarter of a billion dollars.

He got so much. I mean, the return on it is going to be extraordinary. It already has been. So, you know, there's a new level of sort of oligarch brazenness that I don't think we should accept. And, you know, however you feel about Trump, what side of the political aisle you are on, et cetera.

This is about the principle of this is not, this is supposed to be democracy. Like people's voices are supposed to matter in this whole situation and instead you've got oligarchs just out and out brazenly running the show so that's where we are over the past six years of making my true crime podcast hell and gone i've learned one thing no town is too small for murder. I'm Katherine Townsend. I've received hundreds of messages from people across the country begging for help with unsolved murders. I was calling about the murder of my husband. It's a cold case. They've never found her and it haunts me to this day. The murderer is still out there. Every week on Hell and Gone Murder Line, I dig into a new case,

bringing the skills I've learned as a journalist and private investigator to ask the questions no one else is asking. Police really didn't care to even try. She was still somebody's mother. She was still somebody's daughter. She was still somebody's sister. There's so many questions that we've never gotten any kind of answers for. If you have a case you'd like me to look into, call the Hell and Gone Murder Line at 678-744-6145. Listen to Hell and Gone Murder Line on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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

So his friends are starting to understand what that type of music is. And they're starting to be like, yo, your dad's like really the GOAT. Like he's a legend. So he gets it. What does it mean to leave behind a music legacy for your family? It means a lot to me. Just having a good catalog

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

listen to We Need to Talk from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is your girl T.S. Madison, and I'm coming to you loud, live, and in color from the Outlaws podcast. Let me tell you something. I broke the internet with a 22-inch weave.

22 inches. My superpower? I've got the voice. My kryptonite? It don't exist. Get a job. My podcast? The one they never saw coming.

Each week, I sit down with the culture creators and scroll stoppers. Tina knows. Lil Nas X. Will we ever see a dating show for the love of Lil Nas X? Let's do a show with all my exes. X Marks and Spikes. No, here it is.

My next ex. That's actually cute, though. Laverne Cox. I have a core group of girlfriends that, like, they taught me how to love. And Chapel Rome. I was dropped in 2020, working the drive-thru, and here we are now. We turn side-eye into sermons, pain into punchline, and grief, we turn those into galaxies.

Listen, make sure you tell Beyonce, I'm going right on the phone right now, and call her. Listen to Outlaws with T.S. Madison on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts, honey. All right, so guys, you will recall on New Year's Day, we had two separate violent incidents. One, the truck attacker in New Orleans, just horrific carnage there. And the second was this guy who pulls up in a cyber truck in front of the Trump Hotel in Las Vegas and then apparently shoots himself in the head, according to law enforcement, and blows up the truck with himself inside. Thankfully, only minor injuries as far as I know as a result of that attack. Afterwards, there were images of what was in the truck bed. It was all these like gas canisters and a bunch of large fireworks

borders that apparently is what he used to detonate himself, the truck, etc. Weird thing to do, especially as we learn more details. You know, the initial image of this guy in a cyber truck outside of a Trump hotel, you're like, oh, this must be somebody who hates Donald Trump. No, turns out, according to his political background, first of all, he's a Green Beret and was had the, you know, sort of like macho, more right leaning pro Trump political ideology that you might expect from someone who's driving a cyber truck and is a green beret. So that's weird. So what was this all about?

So there have been some interesting developments. I'm just going to go through what we've learned as best we can. And you guys can draw your own conclusions or still be as confused as I am at this moment. But we've had two major developments. One is law enforcement uncovered what they said were some notes on his phone. They expressed a sort of standard right wing political ideology. I'm going to read those to you in a moment saying that D.C. needs to be purged of Democrats and, you know, we the people need to take charge. And effectively, I'm doing this to call attention to what's going on in our country,

sort of like general political rhetoric. Like I said, I'll show you those that law enforcement says was on his phone. But then there was also this email that he allegedly sent to a guy named Sam Shoemate, who is an intel officer and was, I wasn't familiar with him, but apparently, you know, he's somewhat well-known. Shoemate goes to Sean Ryan, who's a large former CIA, large podcaster, who, you know, and they had this conversation

about this alleged email, which purports to indicate that Livelsberger blew himself up in his truck to try to call attention and blow the whistle on the fact that these drones that have been sighted are Chinese made and that they are so dangerous to our national security that it's effectively, I think he calls it, quote unquote, game over. I'm going to read the whole email, alleged email to you so you know exactly what he said and that they use like gravity displacement to move in the way that they do. This is something that, you know, the sort of like UFO community that they've theorized. This is total sci-fi stuff that is being alleged here. Now, there are people who are really calling into question whether this is a real thing. So I want you to have a lot of skepticism as we go into this. But I just wanted to share what is out there so that you can make your own determinations about whether or not

you think this is legit. Let me go ahead and pull this up and we'll listen to the beginning of this and the setup. Sam Shoemate here in the plaid shirt talking to Sean Ryan. I get a, well, it started off as comments. So when you have a big Instagram account, you're going to miss a lot of messages because people message, you know, go to hidden messages and everything else. You miss a lot of stuff. Well, I kept seeing this comment on recent posts that I put in there and it was from this, this burner account said, Hey, check your DMS, check your DMS, check your DMS. So I go in there and try to find it. There's no message from this guy.

Hadn't come through or whatever. And then he messages again. Once that message was opened up, I said, Hey, your previous messages haven't come through. What, what do you want to tell me? And he said, what I'm going to send you now, these are literally his words. What I'm going to send you is going to change the course of humanity. That was his phrase, change the course of humanity. Okay. A little bit dramatic. I get these messages all the time. People have this big story they want to tell. They want to expose their command, whatever it's. I take everything with a grain of salt until I have evidence and proof. So this guy is insistent. He tells me that he is a 18 Zulu who I've spoken to before, and he really needs to get this stuff to me. And then he talks about you. He says, I need you to get me in contact with Sean Ryan. I'm like, dude, I don't know Sean Ryan.

I'm not that big. But he's insistent that I get him diverted to media sources, says go to Fox News, wherever else. I said, all right, tell me what you got. So I give him my Proton email account, give him my signal number. And he reaches out immediately. And I'm going to read this initial message for you because this doesn't have names or anything else on it, but this was his message on Sunday. He reached out and said, like I said, Sunday, this last Sunday, he said, sending with a VPN active on wifi only. Do not message me. I will send out updates via both signal and email, but trust me, you're going to want to be involved. Well, first of all, no, I don't, I didn't want to be involved.

Anyways. And then, so I didn't, I didn't message. I responded back to his original Instagram message. And I said, hey, I got your message on ProtonMail. And he said, cool, delete this. So I deleted it. That's how I ended up getting this message on Tuesday. So the message that this, this right here, this manifesto, if you want to call it that came in on Tuesday. And when I started reading this, my initial take was, okay, this is off the deep end. It's bonkers. I can't validate or verify any of the stuff in this manifesto. And I told him that in a subsequent email, and I'll, I'll read that to you later, my response to him. And once again, my response to him elicited, hey, get me in contact with Sean Ryan, Fox News, and even said Pete Hegseth. Get me in contact with Hegseth. And I'm like, dude, I don't have the incoming Secretary of Defense's

phone number. Sorry, bro. So that was kind of the setup. And then he goes on to read the actual email. So I'll go ahead and pull this up. And it's a little bit lengthy. So I don't know if I want to read all of it, but I will read a portion of it to you. But effectively, like I said, he's raising allegations that we and the Chinese have this gravity propulsion technology that China is has submarines parked off our coasts and is sending drones up and that this is like you know a massive national security risk quote-unquote game over in terms of national security and he also raises allegations about war crimes that he was familiar with in Afghanistan one of the things that's kind of weird about the war crimes allegations that actually was like there were war crimes alleged at that time in Afghanistan, but it was publicly reported.

So it wasn't like this was, you know, super, super, super like secret knowledge. In any case, let me just read you a little bit of this. So he allegedly writes, in case I do not make it to my decision point or on to the Mexico border, I am sending this now. Please do not release this until January 1st and keep my identity private until then. Remember, the story is here that he allegedly sent this the day before his he exploded himself in the Cybertruck outside of the Trump Hotel on January 1st. First off, I am not under duress or hostile influence or control. My first car was a 2006 black Ford Mustang V6 for verification. So he's saying, like, this is how I'm proving that I am who I say I am. That was my first car.

You can go and check. OK, what we've been seeing with drones is the operational use of gravitic propulsion systems powered aircraft by most recently China in the East Coast, but throughout history, the US. Only we in China have this capability. Our OPSEN location for this activity is in the box below. By the way, people looked up where those coordinates were, and it was Area 51. He goes on to say China's been launching them from the Atlantic from submarines for years, but this activity recently has picked up as of now is just a show of force.

They're using it similar to how they used the balloon for SIGINT and ISR, which are also part of the integrated comm system. There are dozens of those balloons in the air at any given time. This the so what is because of the speed and stealth of these unmanned aircraft. They are the most dangerous threat to national security has ever existed. They basically have an unlimited payload capacity and can park it over the White House if they wanted its checkmate checkmate gate, not game over. Sorry, I misquoted that earlier. USG needs to give the history of this, how we are employing and weaponizing and how China

is employing them and what the way forward is. China is poised to attack anywhere in the East Coast. I've been followed for over a week now from likely homeland or FBI, and they are looking to move on me and are unlikely going to let me cross into Mexico, but won't because they know I am armed and I have a massive. I think they pronounce this a V-Bait. It's like a vehicle based IED that would be the cyber truck that he blew up I've been trying to maintain a very visible profile and have kept my phone and they are definitely digitally tracking me then he goes on to talk about this these airstrikes in Nimra's province Afghanistan 2019 then he concludes you

need to elevate this to the media so we avoid a world war because this is a mutually assured destruction situation so that is the alleged email okay a lot of people have raised a lot of questions about this this is a random dude I don't know who this person is on Twitter but he seemed to raise some pretty good questions and that, you know, that we're getting a lot of traction and I just want to provide you with all the information. So here is what random guy on Twitter says about this purported email. He says that it doesn't fit into any plausible explanation of the Las Vegas bombing, and he goes into a long thread. One of the things that he looks into is, you know, the the proof at the beginning where the guy's like, OK, I had this particular kind

of Mustang. That was my first car. There's no evidence that that is actually the case, that that actually was Matthew Livelsberger's first car. So that's a question mark. Also, the email itself was in, if you look closely, it wasn't in the original email form. It was in a text editor. You could tell because you could see the cursor. You could see how when you're typing in a text editor, there's words that are misspelled that are underlined. So like the things that he abbreviated and use this like technical jargon, those things have those underlines from the text editor. Now, my understanding, Sam Shoemate says, oh, well, I put in the text editor so that I could redact names that needed to be redacted. But people have asked him, OK, well, you know, this is pretty extraordinary. So can you show us like opening the email?

Can you give us some proof that you didn't just like spin this up in a text editor? And as far as I know, that proof hasn't been straight, hasn't been forthcoming. So there's that. This random dude on Twitter also says that by all accounts, Matthew Livelsberg was not in an unacknowledged special access program related to the drones that he speaks of in line. And according to members of the team, he says that really reads like something out of anti-China MSM talking points, which is true as well. So there's some questions about this email, where it is, what it came from. I mean, there's a number of possibilities here, right? The email is real. And he lost his mind and was having like a psychotic break. And this email is the product of that. It's possible the email is

fake. It's possible the email is real. And he really does have some knowledge of these things and was trying to blow the whistle. So I don't know. I don't know. That's that's what we got on that front. I mentioned before there were other notes that law enforcement reportedly recovered from his phone that had more of just like a generic right wing extremist tone to them. And, you know, then the motive for him blowing himself up in this bizarre fashion is that he wants to call attention to what's going on in D.C. and how the D.C. needs to be purged of Democrats. Let me read you those so you can get a flavor for those as well. He says two different notes, fellow service members, veterans and all Americans time to wake up. We're being led by weak and feckless leadership who only serve to enrich themselves. Military and vets move on D.C. starting now. Militias facilitate and augment this activity,

occupy every major road along fed buildings and the campus of fed buildings by the hundreds of thousands like lock the highways around down with semis right with everybody gets in hold until the purge is complete try peaceful means first but be prepared to fight to get the dems out of the federal government and military by any means necessary they all must go and a hard reset must occur for our country to avoid collapse here's another like lengthier one but the vibe is basically the same and he says consider this last sunset of 24 and my actions the end of our sickness and a new chapter of health for our people rally around the trumpKennedy and ride this wave to the

highest hegemony for all Americans. We are second to no one. So, you know, these two pieces, they don't really particularly fit together because they, you know, offer two completely different motives. One is just like, we have to take the country back and these Democrats are evil and we need to back Trump. And so let's surround D.C. And I'm doing this to like draw attention to this cause of surrounding D.C. and purging the Democrats. The other obviously is blowing the whistle about these purported drones and this Chinese technology. So that's what we know there. The other weird thing that came out is that he was part of a reality TV show, which is just kind of strange. So here's the clip that emerged with regards to that.

It's a reality show that pits teams of elite soldiers from around the world against each other. Matt and Tim from the U.S. Army Special Forces, better known as the Green Berets. Matthew Livelsberger and his partner Tim Kelly, both Green Berets, appeared on the Ultimate Soldier Challenge 12 years ago on the History Channel. They not only won, it wasn't even close. You know, for television, they always try to make it a little bit more competitive, but we swept the whole entire show. When he appeared on the show, Livelsberger used a shortened version of his name, Matt Berg. So it took Tim Kelly a while to put two and two together.

And then I saw a Matt Berg with a older photo of him, and I was like, oh no, dude, I know that guy. And then it just tore my heart out because he was a really great Green Beret. And what was he like? He was charming. He was a really great Green Beret. And what was he like? He was charming. He was talented. He was personable. He was kind. He was all the things that you would expect from a Green Beret.

At one point during the show, Livelsberger lost his cool in the 90 plus degree heat. I'm about to throw up, man. I got heat exhaustion, man. I need to take this off right now. Tim Kelly says he hadn't heard from livelsberger for a few years it just categorically does not make sense from everything that i have heard he was universally um valued by his team by his peers i don't understand it doesn't make sense and it is just horrifically heartbreaking so uh just other layers of weirdness to this one um he was in a reality show so there

you go whatever whatever that's worth um we're also learning more about his past and personal history um obviously he was was a green beret um had served overseas had struggled with uh some ptsd and depression he also i think had just gone through a breakup and was going through a divorce. So there were some some personal issues at play there as well. Reportedly, his wife leaving him because she alleged that he had had an affair and that had just occurred. So that could certainly have played into his mental state. Another couple of weird things worth mentioning here. So both of them, both Matthew Livelsberger and the guy who did the truck attack in New Orleans, both of them were had served at what formerly was known as Fort Bragg. Now it's known as Fort Liberty. There have been

other extremists who have come out of that particular military base. Of course, it's a large military base. Many thousands of people go through there. So there is that. And then the last piece that I will share with you about him is apparently when he had sought mental health care, he was deemed not a risk diagnosed with depression so again this all speaks to his mental state he had visited the military behavioral health program multiple times in recent most months was diagnosed with depression but deemed not to be a risk to harm himself or others so that is everything we know at this point um It's a weird story. I mean, very possible this dude just, you know, going through a lot after his military service. Well, I mean, he still was serving. He still was an active Green Beret. So went through a lot with that, going through some personal things, lost it and decided

to take his own life in this incredibly spectacular and horrifying fashion. But many, many questions still remain here. 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 Helling Gone Murder Line, I dig into a new case, bringing the skills I've learned as a journalist and private investigator to ask the questions no one else is asking. Police really didn't care to even try. She was still somebody's mother.

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

I think everything that might have dropped in 95 has been labeled the golden years of hip-hop. It's Black Music Month, and we need to talk. It's tapping in. I'm Nyla Simone, breaking down lyrics, amplifying voices, and digging into the culture that shaped the soundtrack of our lives. My favorite line on there was, my son and my daughter gonna be proud when they hear my old

tapes. Now I'm curious, do they like rap along now? Yeah, because I bring him on tour with me and he's getting older now too. So his friends are starting to understand what that type of music is and they're starting to be like, yo, your dad's like really the GOAT. Like he's a legend. So he gets it. What does it mean to leave behind a music legacy for your family? It means a lot to me. Just having a good catalog and just being able to make people feel good. Like that's what's really important. And that's what stands out is that our music changes people's lives for the better.

So the fact that my kids get to benefit off of that, I'm really happy. Or my family in general. Let's talk about the music that moves us. To hear this and more on how music and culture collide, listen to We Need to Talk from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,

or wherever you get your podcasts. This is your girl T.S. Madison and I'm coming to you loud, live and in color from the Outlaws Podcast. Let me tell you something. I broke the internet with a 22-inch weave.

22 inches. My superpower? I've got the voice. My kryptonite? It don't exist. Get a job. My podcast? The one they never saw coming.

Each week, I sit down with the culture creators and scroll stoppers. Tina knows. Lil Nas X. Will we ever see a dating show for the love of Lil Nas X? I'm just gonna show all my exes. X marks the spot. No, here it is. My next ex. That's actually cute though. Laverne Cox. I have a core group of girlfriends that like, they taught me how to love. And Chapel Rome. I was dropped in 2020 working the drive-thru and here we are now. We turn side eye into sermons, pain into punchline, and grief, we turn those into galaxies.

Listen, make sure you tell Beyonce, I'm going right on the phone right now, and call her. Listen to Outlaws with T.S. Madison on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts, honey. So guys, good news. Ryan Grimm was able to join me and actually made it to the studio. So, also got to check in and make sure things are looking good there. Ryan, how is it out there? Everything is here. Nothing was stolen over the break.

So, I haven't done a full inventory, but I think we're pretty good. All right. Good to know. The books are all here. The baseballs. Yeah, we're pretty good. All right. Good to know. The books are all here. The baseballs. Yeah, we're set. Excellent. Excellent.

So I wanted Ryan to join us for this story, which is really interesting. So Elon Musk, not content with effectively buying the U.S. government and getting to operate it towards his ends, not content with jumping in also to the German political system and backing the AFD and writing an op-ed and trying to really put his imprint on that government

has also now jumped massively into UK politics. And all of this also comes at an interesting time because he had gotten very much crosswise with the sort of MAGA faithful on this H1B issue. So I think that's highly relevant to his choice of, you know, jumping headfirst into UK politics. So let me just read a little bit of this Axios report and then get some of Ryan's reaction here. So says Musk rocks UK politics with attacks on the prime minister and support for the far right. So you guys might recall relatively recently,

actually, Keir Starmer, who's had a labor party he is the new prime minister um the uk disgusted with the the tories really kicked them out was not so much um uh sort of endorsement of keir starmer or labor but a rejection of their um opponents in any case keir starmer is the current prime minister elon musk hijacked british politics this week with a stream of at least 60 posts on Twitter since Tuesday, attacking Prime Minister Keir Starmer, defending an anti-Islam campaigner that would be Tommy Robinson, and endorsing the far-right Reform Party. Why it matters, they say, the right-hand man to America's next president has gone after

the leaders of several of its closest allies in recent months. But his fight with the British government is turning into the nastiest yet. While Musk's ex-microphone was enough to send Westminster into a frenzy, there's been intense speculation he'll also open his checkbook for reform. And it's Trump-aligned leader Nigel Farage. Musk told Axios' Mike Allen he had yet to donate, wasn't sure if it would be legal. Musk labeled Keir Starmer, Keir Starmtrooper, shared a meme claiming the PM was more concerned about policing social media than about rape. That was part of a barrage of tweets attacking British political and legal establishment

for failing to adequately investigate alleged child sex abuse rings, one most famously in the town of Rochdale, in which dozens of young girls were raped between 2004 to 2013. So just to sort of TLDR this, there's a few things going on here. First of all, Musk posing labor, you know, for his own ideological interests. That's one thing. The other thing is what they're really using as a cudgel against Starmer is this decades old, truly horrifying, massive scandal where there were huge numbers of what they called grooming gangs raping young girls. And for a combination of a lot of social factors, but one of them being most of the men who were involved in these grooming gangs who were raping these young girls,

most of them were of Pakistani origin. And there was the sense of like, oh, we have to be culturally sensitive, which of course the right seized on. And there was also a sense from police of like, oh, well, these girls, they're really sort of asking for it. You know, they didn't see them so much as victims, which was another piece of this. In any case, this is a decades old story. Keir Starmer was tangentially involved in the story at the time. And so that's the big thing that they're using right now as the cudgel against him. So, Ryan, your thoughts on kind of this overall story and what Musk is up to here. So you're right. There are a couple of things going on here. One is that this was a horrific scandal. It's also one that was investigated pretty seriously over the last

couple of decades. In 2014, Alexis Jay produced a report that shocked the world. It made mainstream news across the globe, including I think there were like half a dozen or a dozen stories in the New York Times about this scandal. That led to additional calls for inquiries, which Alexis Jay also led and others led. There was a national report that she put out in 2022 that laid out a bunch of recommendations in order to make it so you would have practices in place that would protect victims that wouldn't allow them to be overlooked, that wouldn't allow these cultural concerns to get in the way of breaking up these gangs. She has said what she is frustrated about is that the conservative government that was in place at the time has not implemented those fast enough.

But the other thing that's going on that I think on a kind of meta level is even more interesting is that throughout the first Trump administration, you had resistance liberals every time something kind of new came up, they thought it was a distraction from the thing that they ought to be paying attention to. Remember all that discourse during the Trump, the first Trump term? It's a distraction, a distraction. Stay focused. The elements of MAGA do the exact same thing. If you remember, over the last four years, you would even have major storms described

as psyops. This is a psyop. They don't want you focusing on the real thing, whatever it is. Hunter Biden's laptop or whatever. Hunter Biden's laptop or whatever. They want you focusing on this hurricane or on this other event. Actual news events that were occurring were being described as psyops to distract the public. This one literally is that. It is a concerted effort to manufacture a news event where there really isn't one. You know, should the recommendations of the Jay Report from 2022 be implemented by the Labor government now that the conservative government didn't implement them?

Yes, sure, they should. But the idea that all of a sudden there should be this global attention focused on this is very suspicious. Like, why all of a sudden do they want to talk about this? And your point I think is the obvious one. There was this gigantic H-1B civil war going on, which was bloodying up the MAGA coalition and not going particularly well for Musk, even though he was – he had the power to win it.

It was kind of ripping the coalition apart first you get this kind of adrian ditman uh nonsense for like a day or so and then and then it goes over to here people in south asia who are watching this are like this sounds like something that india got you know asked uh elon to kind of gin up because it's all about pakistanis and in the uk that – maybe he got the idea from them. Who knows? But somehow somebody had the idea of like, you know what we need to really talk about is these gang-raping Pakistanis in the UK to get every – get the band back together,

get everybody agreeing after we had this difficult debate over H-1B. And to me, it's an incredible example of of and here we are talking about it right like on our show because he's twitter yeah right i mean because exactly when the richest man in the world gets involved you know the uk right now is debating they have better limits on money in politics than we do but they're debating putting additional caps on contributions to deal specifically with Elon Musk and to avoid, you know, having the same fate befall them as to learn some of the lessons of what we're seeing here. You know, we must put in a quarter of a billion dollars to Trump's campaign and now has tremendous power over our federal government. And so they're seeing that

and saying, maybe we need to learn something from that. And, you know, I think your point is a really apt one, because also the choice of issue. And again, I don't want to diminish that this is horrifying story. I remember reading about it back in 2014, the number of girls affected, the fact that there were so few prosecutions. In fact, in a few instances, it was these girls, young girls. I'm talking as young as 11 who were a few of them prosecuted themselves as like sex workers or for disorderly conduct. Absolutely abhorrent and insane. restrictionists in the U.S. will use legitimate, accurate, undocumented immigrant crimes to paint a portrait of an entire migrant community as criminal, even as we know the overall statistics are that both documented and undocumented immigrants are more law abiding than U.S.

citizens. And there's actually a similar dynamic here in the U.K. You and I both looked up the statistics. You actually have white Britons who are more overrepresented in turn of turns of prosecutions for child sex abuse than Asians or South Asians so it can it's it's also an attempt to paint a deceptive story that this is the source of all child sex abuse to paint an entire community in this way. And for him to get back in good of like, see, I do actually hate immigrants. And this whole H-1B thing, like, let's just put that to the side. I also have antipathy towards brown migrants that come into countries. The interesting thing here is he's also taken the side of this dude that I don't even know

if he would object to being called an Islamophobe. Tommy Robinson, who's like this, you know uh originally like soccer hooligan criminal he's been in prison for any number of things currently he's in prison because he lied about this 15 year old Syrian migrant who a video had gone viral of this kid getting beaten up and like sort of fake waterboarded, you know, this like simulation of torture at his school. And Robinson jumps in to say, oh, well, this kid isn't so innocent and to try to link him to these sort of grooming and sexual assault allegations. Totally unfounded, completely libelous, found to be so required by the courts to stop doing it and keeping in mind

the uk does not have free speech protections in the same way that we would but i think even here this would have been potentially a legal issue he continues puts on a film reiterating the same libelous claims and the court issues an injunction he actually you know admits to um being in contempt of court that's what he gets thrown in prison for. So Musk has also taken up the cause of this guy, Tommy Robinson. Here's one of the things that he posted. Why is Tommy Robinson in solitary confinement prison? Which he is, by the way.

He's isolated for reportedly his own safety for telling the truth. He should be freed. And those who covered up this travesty should take his place in that cell. Every part of that is just basically like false and fictional but part of what's interesting here is nigel farage the head of the like right-wing reform party and musk is now backing the reform party farage has long distanced himself and condemned to Robinson. Like this is too far even for him. And so that's now created this other rift between Musk and Farage. And Musk is now coming out and saying, I don't know if Nigel Farage,

effectively, because he's not on board with Tommy Robinson, this like thug, anti-Muslim hooligan, I don't know that he's the right leader for reform. So he's jumped in with that one as well. Right. And I almost feel bad for the people who are kind of earnestly, you know, following Musk's version of this, because if that's all you're following and he keeps repeating to his audience, do not read the mainstream press. Do not read any news other than what you get on X. The only way to stay informed is to listen to what I say and listen to what I elevate

here on X. And if that's what you listen to, then you actually do think that this guy, Tommy Robinson, stood up for these rape victims and exposed this scandal of these grooming gangs and the entire establishment, which is some linkage between Epstein and QAnon, was supportive of these underground gangs. And so therefore, they locked the whistleblower truth teller Tommy Robinson up. And if that's what you think and that's what you've been told, then of course, free him. What a travesty. What an outrage.

If you actually look at what happened, like you said, he made a very specific allegation against a very specific person. Child, by the way. The child. The court found that to be false, ordered him to stop saying that false thing, at which point he could have just moved on and said other false things about other people. But he insisted on continuing to defame and libel this child and destroying this kid's life and committing contempt of court. And so then he winds up. Now, then you could debate how a society ought to handle something like that. Is an 18-month prison sentence too long?

Okay, we could have that discussion. Right. And in the U.S., it would probably mostly just be monetary penalties, although at some point, if there's continuous contempt of court and its rulings, like even in civil cases, you do then – we're going to talk to Steven Donziger who spent a significant amount of time because of these contempt – specifically because of contempt of court. So – but it's just – so I'm increasingly curious to see where this goes because if Musk is really going to treat Twitter X – I'm now willing to call it X because it is really radically different than it used to be – as a weapon in his culture war, which is a political war, which is a war for his own commercial interests. regime change around the world, how are other governments going to respond? Because there are rules about foreign interference in domestic politics.

Georgia, for instance, just banned foreign interference in its politics. And the US freaked out because they said, oh, all of our NGOs are going to be illegal now. We have our far-re-registration rules. Other countries have that. You're hearing now in Europe calls that they just need to shut Twitter down, which would be unfortunate because that would be – what it was was a place where people could express themselves and it's still a way to reach an international audience. But if he is just going to use it as this weapon, I think governments aren't really going to tolerate that. But maybe they don't have enough power to stop it as this weapon, I think governments aren't really going to tolerate that. But maybe they don't have enough power to stop it. Well, I think we do have one example, which is in Brazil,

there was a sort of, you know, game of chicken or clashing of titans between the Brazilian government, the Brazilian court system and Musk and Twitter. And ultimately, you know, the Brazilian court system sort of held strong and Musk ultimately backed down and did what they wanted him to do. So you do without getting into all the specifics, because I don't even remember all the specifics of what that particular example was about. But you do have this one example of a country saying like, no, we have our laws, you have to abide by them or you don't get to play in the sandbox. And Brazil has a very large, I mean, it's a very large country and has a large number of users on that platform so that was specific the last piece that um i think is interesting here too is owen jones had shared this and i actually wasn't really aware of

this but elon musk at least according to the polling is really unpopular in um with the british public um i mean we're talking about 64 unfavorable only 18 favorable so you know here in the us we just have this instinct to like venerate billionaires and now he you know made these great companies and whatever we just like have this knee-jerk reaction that he people have to kind of be pulled back from um but in um you know, with the British public, they have a lot of antipathy towards him already, which is part of why I think Nigel Farage felt comfortable, even though he would love to get Elon Musk's money and Elon Musk support, etc. Why he felt comfortable immediately coming out and saying, No, I don't support Tommy Robinson. I've long distanced myself from him. And I'm not going to change that that principle on behalf of, on behalf of Elon Musk or anyone else.

One thing I would add also, for whatever it's worth, solitary confinement is torture. And I don't think anybody who's in prison, including Tommy Robinson, should be subjected to solitary confinement. But you're right. It'll be interesting to see, you know, how much, how much, if he has as much pull here as he does elsewhere. You know, Europe is in general a pretty weak place right now. Yeah. They rely on him for Starlink, for the Ukrainians. Like, so that, like he's got that leverage over them. You know, Starlink more broadly gives him leverage.

His relationship with Trump gives him leverage. So whether they'll actually pull the trigger. But you have seen a number of politicians throughout Europe saying, we need to nip this in the bud and we need to just ban Twitter. But then you can have VPNs and get around it. Sure. But that does limit the reach. He could also just not use it as a weapon for his own political ends.

What if he just kept it as a free speech? The other thing you took note of immediately is he tweeted out this thing of like, we're going to change the algorithm to focus on happy stuff. And it's like, oh. Like grooming gangs. Right, like grooming gangs.

But also, oh, now that you're guys in the White House, suddenly you're going to focus on, oh, everything's actually great and the U.S. is a wonderful place. Isn't that convenient, that timing? It's so dystopian, yes. Now we're coming into office. Enough of all this complaining. Let's think and share happy thoughts.

Let's be positive, guys. Yeah, guys. Yeah, absolutely. Except for my campaigns that I'm going to launch around whatever I decide is interesting at the moment. Correct. Yeah. And this is why, listen, he's such an important figure to follow whether you want to or not because of the amount of power that he wields through a combination of his wealth, his proximity to power, his official position in the Trump administration, and then his willingness to use X as this weapon. So we'll continue to follow where this goes next because it could be very interesting. Over the past six years of making my true crime podcast hell and gone, I've learned one thing. No town is too small for murder.

I'm Katherine Townsend. I've received hundreds of messages from people across the country begging for help with unsolved murders. I was calling about the murder of my husband at the cold case. They've never found her and it haunts me to this day. The murderer is still out there. Every week on Hell and Gone Murder Line, I dig into a new case, bringing the skills I've learned as a journalist and private investigator to ask the questions no one else is asking.

If you have a case you'd like me to look into, call the Hell and Gone Murder Line at 678-744-6145. Listen to Hell and Gone Murder Line on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I think everything that might have dropped in

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

So his friends are starting to understand what that type of music is. And they're starting to be like, yo, your dad's like really the GOAT. Like he's a legend. So he gets it. What does it mean to leave behind a music legacy for your family? It means a lot to me. Just having a good catalog and just being able to make people feel good. Like that's what's really important. And that's what stands out is that our music changes people's lives for the better. So the fact that my kids get to benefit off of that, I'm really happy or my family in general. Let's talk about the music that moves us. To hear this and more on how music and culture collide, listen to We Need to Talk from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is your girl T.S. Madison, and I'm coming to you loud, live,

and in color from the Outlaws podcast. Let me tell you something. I broke the internet with a 22-inch weave. 22 inches. My superpower? I've got the voice. My kryptonite? It don't exist.

Get a job. My podcast The one they never saw coming Each week I Sit down with the culture creators And scroll stoppers Tina knows Lil Nas X

Will we ever see a dating show For the love of Lil Nas X I'm just gonna show all my exes X marks the spot No here it is My next ex That's actually cute though Laverne Cox.

I have a core group of girlfriends that, like, they taught me how to love. And Chapel Rome. I was dropped in 2020 working the drive-thru, and here we are now. We turn side-eye into sermons, pain into punchline, and grief, we turn those into galaxies. Listen, make sure you tell Beyonce, I'm going right on the phone right now and call her. Listen to Outlaws with T.S. Madison on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts, honey. All right, guys. So I am thrilled to be joined this morning by Marianne Williamson, who is not only a former presidential candidate who was right about many things.

And maybe the party would be in the country would be in a much better shape if they had listened to her, but also is a bestselling author and just all around a fantastic person and thinker who I always enjoy picking their brain. Great to see you, Marianne. Oh, it's always good to see you. Thank you, Crystal. All right. So you are doing something. It's bold. Let's just say it's bold. You decided to run for dnc chair and um i'll just put this new york times uh reporting on the dnc chair race up which of course scarcely mentions you in it and describes you as a quote perennial presidential candidate which is very dismissive they outline a race between ken martin and ben wler, who are two state party chairs. Just give us a little bit of a sense, because this is as in the weeds as it gets, these very insular races for

party chair. Give us a sense of the contours of that race and why you specifically decided to jump into it. Well, of course, after my own experience, I was curious how the DNC actually runs. You can't get more into the weeds of the effects of the behavior of the DNC than running for president. I saw the corruption. I saw the way a apparently small group of people felt they had the right to decide, for instance, to cancel a primary, which is so ludicrous and has delivered us to where we are now and what we are about to experience for the next four years. So of course, I was curious. And I was curious if the DNC would be looking in the mirror. I was curious about where they would go from here. I was just observing. Now, Ken Martin in my team's, my campaign's interactions was always

a gentleman. He was ethical. He was honorable, have only the greatest things to say. But I also saw other behavior, such as we're going to win by kicking people off the ballots, et cetera. The more I observed in terms of the conversation going on in the race, just through a cursory look at the media, et cetera, I realized nobody's suggesting a fundamental change here. Nobody is addressing the deeper levels of malfunction. That's the thing. When it comes to the DNC, we're not talking about dysfunctional. When you're losing Pennsylvania, you're losing Michigan, you're losing Wisconsin, you're losing Ohio, all these red states, this is beyond dysfunction. This is into malfunction. That's when I decided to jump in. Go ahead, Mary, and finish your thought.

That was just the beginning. What's really been amazing is what I have discovered since. Because in order to get up to those 40 signatures, in order to be a qualified candidate, you have to get on the phone and you're calling members of the DNC. There's one group, the one that has invisibilized and mocked and character assassinated me from the beginning, who clearly took this idea, do not answer her calls, do not return her texts, et cetera. But the people I would get on the phone, what I learned is how this organization operates. The vast majority of the members of the DNC are deeply disempowered. The DNC itself runs, its governance model is everything we say we

don't want this country to be. It's a small group of elite, very opaque, by the way. You might have heard Zogby talk about the fact he's on the budget committee and he doesn't know the numbers. A small group of elite who take the same view within the organization that I felt as a candidate. Look, we got this. We're the grownups here. We know how this is done. We don't need your input.

Really, let me repeat. You lost Michigan. You lost Pennsylvania. You lost Wisconsin. You're losing the country. And Donald Trump is about to be inaugurated on January 20th. Meanwhile, there are incredible people who are members of the DNC. There is so much talent there. There's so much passion for everything you and I believe in. So much of a real devotion to progressive governance. So the first thing you have to do is return the DNC itself, if it ever was. I think, I don't know. But we put it now into alignment with the principles that we say. Right now, basically what this is about is a consultancy class, whether it is SD,

okay, Knickerbocker or precision strategies or whatever. This is about they're having money. This is about their multimillion dollar contracts, which are the governing principle. Their profits are the governing principle of the DNC. It is a failed business model. It is a failed messaging model. It is a failed organizing model. And you need a head of the DNC who's going to go in there, know what's really happening, which I believe the majority of DNC members do know. But a leader of the – chairman of the DNC who goes in and sets those things straight to the greatest possible extent. It's truly a racket. Yeah, it is.

I know that you've actually obtained a significant milestone. You were able to get the, what, 40 signatures required to be a quote unquote official candidate, which means what you participate, get to participate in all the forums, get to officially make your case. Is that what that effectively means? Yeah, we had 42 by the time we said we got it. We got it. So yes, later this afternoon, I'll be on the labor forum. Tomorrow, I'll be on the forum having to do with the state parties.

It's very exciting. There's one in Detroit. There are two online. There's another one in Washington, D.C. So I'm the candidate for those who know that incremental change is not going to do it. More bells and whistles is not going to do it. You've got to recognize the corruption that's in the bones of this thing. And that's the truth we're telling here. You know, my fear is right after election day, you know, there seemed to be some genuine shock, possible soul searching going on, even among Democratic elites. And that seems to have really faded. You have people like Jim Clyburn saying, like, everyone just needs to chill.

It's fine. Hakeem Jeffries put back in with no dissent as leader in the House. Even the contours of this DNC chair race. I mean, I know you know the odds you're up against, right? You've got The New York Times effectively, to their credit, writing, like, not a lot of soul searching that we're seeing from Democratic elites, at least vis-a-vis this DNC party chair race. And you have comments being made like these from Chuck Schumer that effectively indicate like, well, Democrats don't have a reality problem.

They're just we need to tweak the messaging a little bit because people aren't really understanding just how absolutely incredible we are. Let's just go ahead and take a listen to a little bit from Senator Chuck Schumer. And then I just love to hear from you where you think Democrats went astray and what you're hearing in terms of the level of soul searching or lack thereof. All too often, Kristen, we talked about the mechanics of the legislation and the details of the legislation. And we really didn't show the kind of empathy and concern to average or show enough of it to average working families who didn't realize how much we had done and how much we care for them. So what we're going to do

is spend a lot of time talking to working families, showing them how much we care about them. So, you know, again, this frames this as purely a messaging issue. And look, I do think Democrats have a messaging issue, too. They had a president of the United States. They have a president of the United States who is really unable to articulate much of anything about much of anything. But to purely look at this as, oh, we just need to, you know, fine tune the messaging and really tell working class people just how amazing we've been for them, I think is incredibly condescending and just utterly misses the point. Of course, lets all of the people that you're talking about, the consultant class and the elites that led us

down this disastrous path as a country and certainly for the Democratic Party, lets them completely off the hook. Well, there's a lot here, including the fact that what would consulting firms on K Street in Washington, D.C. know about how to talk to people in Kansas, even if they wanted to, or know how to talk to people in Nebraska or know how to talk to people in North Dakota. Meanwhile, once again, going back to the membership of the DNC, you have members who do know who have been working in those states for sometimes decades, and their voices are nullified. They are given very little in terms of money. They're just always begging for some help from the DNC. Now, the greatest deviation is not on the matter of messaging. It's on the matter of

values and principles. And what does progressive governance mean? What are the values of the Democratic Party? But he's not entirely wrong because the Republicans are very good about tending to their base. They talk to people all year in a non-condescending way, and they keep people informed. Now, unfortunately, for people like us, yeah, they keep them informed, but always through the lens of the Republican playbook. We, what the Democrats have done, and I think to some extent that's what Senator Schumer was referring to, basically just show up every two or four years, always with a gimme attitude. Give us your attitude. Give us

your votes, give us your money. Then you're supposed to just assume that we're going off into our wood paneled rooms and we're doing what's best for you, right? And then we'll be back in two years to talk to you. I do feel to some extent the Republicans don't walk their talk, but the Democrats haven't talked their walk. One of the reasons I want to be chair is that if the Democrats have the White House, you have the largest megaphone in the world. If you have the Speaker of the House, you have a large megaphone if you're in control of the Senate. We're not going to have any of those things over the next session. So the DNC has to be the megaphone. That's why it's not enough. Even the best of them who are talking about traditional political activism, we've got to become a prophetic voice, which is what traditionally

the Democratic Party was. Someone who is out there and creating an entire communications network and infrastructure to be talking to people. And a lot of that has to do with unleashing the power of those in these states who know how to talk to people in their a lot of that has to do with unleashing the power of those in these states who know how to talk to people in their states, including the fact if you're going to have a consulting firm working in Kansas, it should be a consulting firm in Kansas. It is the money. When you were saying it's a racket, it's the money that's kept right here. Earlier, you were talking about O'Malley talking about how and David Plouffe saying we need more money. Yeah. Well, let me actually, I have that clip. Let me just play that clip so

people know what we're talking about here. And then I'll explain what that really means, right? Yeah, because it is extraordinary. So David Plouffe, we covered on this show, I'm sure you watched the big Pod Save interview with the Kamala Harris senior staff. We're like, we were perfect. We did everything right. People just don't understand. And one of the the only critique effectively, I don't want to you know, I don't want to overly generalize, but basically the only critique was David Plouffe saying, like, we should have been a little more corrupt the way the Republicans were like, that's your takeaway. In any case,

that's what we need to discuss. O'Malley gets asked this question about, hey, do you agree with David Plouffe on this from Jen Psaki over on MSNBC? Let's go ahead and take a listen to a bit of that exchange. Let me ask you about something that David Plouffe said on Pod Save America, someone you and I both know. He said, quote, We have to stop playing a different game as it relates to super PACs and Republicans. They coordinate more than we do. I'm just sick and tired of it. And he was talking about kind of legal advisors saying to the DNC and others, you can't coordinate at all with super PACs while Republicans are doing that. What do you make of that? I think there's that observation.

And that's what I've heard as well, talking to people, both lawyers and also people within the DNC. We need to make greater use of the flexibilities, not to do things illegally, but we need to be making greater use of the flexibilities in the law, especially for moving money around, spending dollars appropriately on things so that, say, Hakeem Jeffries and his congressional candidates don't have to spend that money on if we can do it as a party. So we need to make better use of all of the flexibilities that are in the law, because Lord knows we're getting pounded because of some of them. We need to make sure that we are playing by this new and ever developing set of rules without compromising our principles. We're not above the law. We believe in a republic where no one's above the law, but we do have greater flexibilities than we're currently using. Use more flexibility in the law, Marianne. What do you think of that?

What these people are doing, including a pluff, are trying to deflect from what really happened here. Remember, Hillary Clinton had a lot more money than Donald Trump did. And we all know the stories about the absurd expenditures of the Harris campaign. The real story here is not that they need more money. The real story is about what they spend their money on. The real story is about these consultant firms. It's a consultancy class about their money, about their contracts that they get, by the way, whether the Democrats are in power or not. Meanwhile, I had a meeting with some people from the state parties, and they had sent me a document about the money that the DNC was going to be giving to the state parties. And I looked at it, Crystal, and I thought, maybe I'm reading the wrong numbers. And then I read it

again. And then I picked up my phone and I used a calculator. And then I read it again. Maybe my calculator is broken. It was like the budget of a small nonprofit. We're talking about having to save our democracy here. And this is a consultancy class. It's talking about getting more money. They want to get more money. They want to do more with super PACs, by the way, in order to feed themselves because they're not feeding the states. And not only that, they're not even feeding themselves in a way, once again, I'm going to say it again, these people lost Michigan. These people lost Pennsylvania. These people lost Wisconsin. These people lost Ohio.

The entire template, the entire paradigm of how things work and the governance of the DNC needs to change. That is what I believe a lot of the members of the DNC do realize. These are some very good people and some very smart people. Nobody's dumb here. Everybody gets what's happened. Now the issue is, are we willing to demand the changes? And this is the first time, this race is the first time in a long time that the membership of the DNC does have the opportunity to say, you know what, we're going in another direction. Yours is a failed template. And if we continue with that, without addressing the deeper problems, there won't be any real change. If we want a different government in the House. If we want a different government

in the House, if we want a different government in the White House in four years, we're going to have to be a different Democratic Party. You know, Trump is a political sorcerer. We have to meet the level of his frequency psychologically and emotionally with the American people. And you're certainly not going to do that with people with fake tattoos on TikTok and languaging. When people were telling me some of the ways that the people in their state were offended by the verbiage. So that when Senator Schumer says we didn't talk to them enough, even when you talk to them, you talk to them in ways that have nothing to do with that single mother who works at Walton. She's got two kids, Walmart, she's got two kids. This whole thing

needs to change. And we have the membership. I'm absolutely sure of it. You have so much energy and talent to be unleashed within the membership of the DNC. But that elite establishment, which doesn't even report the numbers of where that money is going, but purports to be the ones who know and the ones who know how to do this, that entire template of governance needs to change and I would change it. Well, in a sane world, many people within the party, party elites would be looking to you and saying, you know, in terms of the domestic message that you were running on, you were absolutely right. Some of them are even admitting now, you know, you know, that Bernie Sanders, that class based analysis in the party, maybe they were on to something.

They'd be admitting that they'd be admitting how wrong they were to block you and others and really, you know, just completely cancel the primary process in certain instances. And they'd be saying, you know, these are the type of voices that we need in the party elevated so that we can dramatically turn this ship. Unfortunately, we aren't seeing that reckoning within the elites. But you know, I pray that you're correct in your analysis, and that there's that desire for change among some of the rank and file in the DNC. Marianne, tell people where they can follow you and Substack, your podcast, and then some of the things you're up to. Thank you. Yeah, of course. Thank you. Thank you. Well, people can certainly look at my Substack at mariannwilliamson.substack.com. And the website for the race, now that we've got those signatures, the website will be up today or tomorrow.

But people can certainly follow me on social media. I'm out there. And at this point, I think we have the critical mass of people who understand what the problem is. Now we need a critical mass of people who have the spine and the courage to say we're going to change this because the assault on our democracy is simply too great to tolerate. Very well said. Marianne, great to see you. Thank you so much. My pleasure. Over the years of making my true crime podcast, Hell and Gone, I've learned no town is too small for murder. I'm Katherine Townsend. I've heard from hundreds of people

across the country with an unsolved murder in their community. I was calling about the murder of my husband. The murderer is still out there. Each week, I investigate a new case. If there is a case we should hear about, call 678-744-6145. Listen to Hell and Gone Murder Line on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. High key. Looking for your next obsession? Listen to High Key, a new weekly podcast hosted by Ben O'Keefe, Ryan Mitchell, and Evie Audley. We got a lot of things to get into.

We're going to gush about the random stuff we can't stop thinking about. I am high key going to lose my mind over all things Cowboy Carter. I know. Girl, the way she about to yank my bank account. Correct. And one thing I really love about this is that she's celebrating her daughter. Oh, I know. Listen to High Key on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

What up, y'all? This your main man Memphis Bleak right here. Host of Rock Solid Podcast. June is Black Music Month. So what better way to celebrate than listening to my exclusive conversation with my bro, Ja Rule. The one thing that can't stop you or take away from you is knowledge. So whatever I went through while I was down in prison for two years, through that process, learn.

Learn from me. Check out this exclusive episode with Ja Rule on Rock Solid. Open your free iHeartRadio Ja Rule on Rock Solid open your free iHeartRadio app search Rock Solid and listen now this is an iHeart Podcast