Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 1/8/24: 100 IDF Troops Wounded, Israel Hezbollah War Looms, CNN Caught Using IDF Censor, Defense Sec Hides Hospitalization, Obama Panics Over Biden Campaign, Bill Ackman Freaks Over Wife Plagiarism, Boeing Plane Rips Apart, Biden Donor Sounds Off On Gaza Handling

Episode Date: January 8, 2024

Krystal and Saagar discuss 100 IDF soldiers wounded, US freaks over Israel Hezbollah escalation, CNN caught using IDF censor, defense sec hides hospitalization, Obama panics over Biden campaign, Bill Ackman loses it after wife caught plagiarizing, Boeing plane rips apart, Biden donor sounds off on handling of Gaza.   To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show uncut and 1 hour early visit: https://breakingpoints.supercast.com/ Merch Store: https://shop.breakingpoints.com/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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I'm Clayton English. I'm Greg Lott. And this is Season 2 of the War on Drugs podcast. Yes, sir. Last year, a lot of the problems of the drug war. This year, a lot of the biggest names in music and sports. This kind of starts that a little bit, man. We met them at their homes.

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The podcast where I sit down with the boldest innovators shaping what's next. In this episode, I'm joined by Anjali Sood, CEO of 2B. We dive into the competitive world of streaming. What others dismiss as niche, we embrace as core. There are so many stories out there. And if you can find a way to curate and help the right person discover the right content, the term that we always hear from our audience is that they feel seen. Listen to Good Company on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Hey guys, Ready or Not 2024 is here and we here at Breaking Points are already thinking of ways we can up our game for this critical election. We rely on our premium subs to expand coverage, upgrade the studio, add staff, give you guys the best independent coverage that is possible. If you like what we're all about, it just means the absolute world to have your support. But enough with that. Let's get to the show. Good morning, everybody. Happy Monday. It's been a long time since I said that.

We have an amazing show. What do we have, Crystal? Indeed we do. It's amazing, first and foremost, because Sagar is back. Thank you. Nice to have you here, my friend. Indeed. I hope you enjoyed your time.

I did. Much deserved. I certainly did. All right. Lots to get to this morning. So actually, just breaking, I just saw this. Hezbollah says that one of their commanders was killed in a strike. This comes as the U.S. defense establishment seems to be kind of freaking out

about the chances of a broader war. So we'll break all of that down for you. Also, this was really something. The Secretary of Defense, Lloyd Austin, was secretly hospitalized and in the ICU, did not tell the White House. The president. Didn't tell the president,

didn't tell the person who took over for him, had no idea that she was like first in command. Crazy story. And apparently he's still hospitalized. So we'll break that down for you. We've got Obama freaking out about Biden's reelection prospects and trying to intervene. We've got a billionaire freaking out about plagiarism accusations against his wife. Lots to say about that one. We'll talk about that. Sagar is taking a look at that horrifying situation on an airplane where the whole door blew out. Thank God everybody was safe, but it has grounded again a number of planes.

And excited to talk today to Ahmed Khan. He is a former Biden donor who has done and had it over Biden's unconditional support of Israel. So we'll speak with him about his thinking. Yes, that's right. But before we get to any of that, it is the new year and election season is officially on. It's 2024. So if you can go ahead and sign up to help us out, we would greatly appreciate it. Just to show you that we're very serious and we're already hitting the ground this week on Thursday in the state of Michigan, we will be conducting a focus group with RFK junior supporters. So this is, I believe, the first time that a media organization has done a focus group. We're going to spend, just as we did previously with Trump and with Democrats, voters talking to them about why they support RFK Jr.,

what independent views that they have, which particular ones, whether they just hate Trump or Biden. We're going to get really down into the specifics. I mean, we're going to treat him as I think that he should be treated, like the Ross Perot, really, of this election. And I'm honestly most excited and going to be fascinated by their responses. More so, I think, even than the Trump and the Biden people, just to be like, what do you think? Why do you support RFK Jr.? It was interesting, of course, talking to the Republicans and the Democrats. But to be honest with you, they get focus grouped and pulled all the time. Exactly. So we had a little bit more of a sense of who they are, how they're thinking about things, etc. And so it was very edifying to see that confirmed with our focus group. But, you know, I really have a lot of interest in who

are the people who are saying, I'm with RFK, how strong is their support? Do they consider themselves former Democrats, Republicans? Where are they on the political spectrum? A lot to get into. So super excited about that. So if you're able to support us on that front, it would be fantastic. And like Sagar said, the Iowa caucuses are freaking next week. Next week. We're already planning. We've got our New Hampshire plans. We're ready to go. Wild. So it is all upon us. All right. So speaking of things that are upon us, let's go ahead and put this first element up on the screen. As I just mentioned, Hezbollah is saying one of their top commanders was killed in a strike in southern Lebanon. And

this comes as the U.S. defense establishment is leaking furiously to the press about their concerns that what is happening right now in the Middle East with our unconditional support could spark a broader war that draws us into it. This was a really quite bombshell report from the Washington Post. Israel's talk of expanding war to Lebanon alarms the U.S. Let me read you a little bit of this report. U.S. officials are concerned that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu may see an expanded fight in Lebanon as key to his political survival amid domestic criticism of his government's failure to prevent Hamas's October 7th attack. This is something we've been warning about from

day one, that the fact that Netanyahu is on the rocks pushes him to continue the war, to continue to escalate. And it seems like our concerns are very well-founded. I'll read you a little bit more here. They say, in private conversations, the administration has warned Israel against a significant escalation in Lebanon. If it were to do so, a new secret assessment from the Defense Intelligence Agency found it will be difficult for IDF to succeed because its military assets and resources would be spread too thin given the conflict in Gaza. Since Hamas's October assault, Israeli officials have discussed launching a preemptive attack on Hezbollah. U.S. officials said that prospect has sustained U.S. opposition due to the likelihood it would draw Iran,

which supports both groups, and other proxy forces into the conflict and eventuality that could compel the U.S. to respond militarily on Israel's behalf. And, you know, this is something we have been tracking, Sagar, from the beginning, the incredible danger, the incredible risks of escalation here. You know, the one time when there was a little bit of a lull in tensions during the ceasefire, you saw the attacks on our troops in Iraq stopped. The Houthis dramatically scaled back their attacks. And yet it's remarkable, the Biden administration is trying to figure out, okay, how do we avoid this escalation without ever floating the one obvious thing, which is to push for a ceasefire, which would immediately dramatically lessen tensions and avoid this potential disaster. Well, it's obvious that that's not going to happen at this point.

We'll talk a little bit about the diplomatic front. But on the war front, I mean, they should be terrified about this. And one of the ways that I really began to understand that this was real is when some of the most pro-Israel voices in the U.S. began warning about it. So let's go and put this up there on the screen. This is Jonathan Schanzer. I'm going to contextualize him a little bit for it, which is Schanzer works at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, which is basically one of the largest pro-Israel anti-Iran think tanks here in the United States and in Washington. They quite literally are funded by the Israeli government. So when they start warning, we should definitely take listen. Let's keep this up here so I can read it. He says, in the aftermath of the IDF strike that killed Hamas leader Saleh al-Aruri in Lebanon and the subsequent increase in the

intensity of Hezbollah attacks, the risk of a full war between Israel and Hezbollah is now the most serious since the war began on October 7. Let's go to the next one here, please. He says that the Israeli media is now openly speaking about a two-front war. Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, has now told Shia residents of southern Lebanon, vacate to the north. Netanyahu has now hinted that Nasrallah could be next. The U.S. wants to prevent such a war. This was a reason that we dispatched a carrier group to the Mediterranean. Officials are now leaking that Israel cannot afford such a war. Israel is not standing down, nor is Hezbollah, as evidenced now by continued strikes. I will say this, a war between Israel and Hezbollah is inevitable. These are his words. He says, Israel's northern residents will not return until the security situation has changed

and what change will not likely come through clever diplomacy by the US or France and not the UN. Go to the next one. This is to me the most important. He says, it now becomes a question of when, not if, my sense is that Israel notches a few high value kills of Hamas leaders in Gaza. He says, Iranians could escalate too. This would be a regional war. Very difficult decisions lie ahead. Mistakes can be easily made. All eyes on Israel's northern front. So when a pro-Israel voice, I mean, this entire group exists specifically to defend Israel and to advocate for war with Iran. We actually have interviewed people from FDD in the past over on Rising. I think it was after the Soleimani strike, and he was one of the people who was defending it. So the context in all of this to be seen here is that the battle space, quote unquote, in the internet and in the war of opinion is now playing out. The Biden administration doesn't want this to happen, but it's pretty

clear to me that the Israelis do. I mean, that quote from the Washington Post article of the Israeli defense minister, he says, we prefer the path that agreed upon diplomatic settlement, but we are getting close to the point where the hourglass will turn over. This is not Gaza. Hamas basically is mounting an insurgency campaign. I think there'll be a low-grade military insurgency there for many years to come. But I'm not going to say it's manageable because it's going to be horrible, but it's a different military situation. Hezbollah, with their military capabilities, they've been preparing for this since 2006. And don't forget, 2006 was one of the worst wars that Israel has ever engaged in. And it caused significant strife in the country. And the IDF right now, they're sending

reservists back. It's pretty clear the Israeli economy is suffering pretty badly from the overall effects of the war. The Houthi blockade is disrupting global shipping. That is nothing compared to what happens if this goes hot with Hezbollah. The Houthi attacksade is disrupting global shipping. That is nothing compared to what happens if this goes hot with Hezbollah. The Houthi attacks, the Iranian attacks, the attacks on American soldiers and the likelihood. I actually am pretty willing to state that if Hezbollah enters this war, and especially if Iranian proxy attacks continue, there's simply no way the US will stay out of it. I'm not saying we shouldn't stay. I believe that we should. But there's just, I mean, given the current environment, given the political situation, the U.S. will stay out of it. I'm not saying we shouldn't stay. I believe that we should. But there's just, I mean, given the current environment, given the political situation,

the Biden administration, and our number of thousands of troops in the Middle East, if you attack us, then what is it? I mean, there's no other choice that I think a lot of us face. So this is a very, very dangerous moment, two months now into the war. Absolutely. I don't think it's ever been more fraught and dangerous and more clear the escalatory track that we're already on than it is right now at this moment. There was another report. Huffington Post has actually done some good reporting on Israel's assault on Gaza. Let's put this up on the screen. Marco Marcetic was tweeting about this. All US war games, this is from the Huffington Post report, show an Israeli-Lebanon war, quote,

escalating into something terrible. But the Biden White House still not considering putting conditions on arms transfers to Israel. One U.S. official says the problem is no one can rein in Biden. And Bronco says this is alarming and damning, which I would have to agree with. So you have the, you know, various defense officials leaking to the Huffington Post, leaking to the Washington Post, leaking to the Wall Street Journal, leaking to all of these papers and media outlets. And maybe or maybe not, behind the scenes, Biden and co. are saying, hey, please don't start a war with Hezbollah. We really don't want you to. But there is zero indication that they're actually willing

to do anything to use U.S. leverage to try to prevent an outcome which they know would be completely disastrous. And so it's just yet another emblem of the completely pathetic and impotent direction of U.S. policy. And to be honest with you, does Biden, what is his actual view of the risks here? Does he really understand the actual risks here? I have no idea. But at this point, given the months we've had of US actions being unconditional support, we're going to bypass Congress, we're going to bypass our normal State Department procedures to ship weapons into the region. We're going to tell them absolutely red lines. And then we're going to have these little comments about how we're concerned about civilians, etc. I mean, at this point, we have to say all of that is nonsense.

They actually completely support what Israel is doing with regards to Gaza. With this, do they support it? Do they not support it? I have no idea. But what I can tell you is they're not doing anything to forestall the possibility that we get dragged directly into this thing, whether we want to or not. Yeah, that's right. On Israeli media, they're already talking about some of the effect of what this war will look like. Let's take a listen to this. This was from I-24 News inside of Israel. Hezbollah has claimed to have struck a very strategic Israeli Air Force facility that is a radar facility of the Israeli Air Force on Mount Meron.

That sort of radar facility is the one that enables the Israeli Air Force to control all of its aerial activity in the north, like we saw perhaps in that strike in Beirut last week, and so many other Israeli airstrikes in the region. I can also remind you and our viewers that just prior to the October 7th attack, Hamas has struck so many of Israel's surveillance systems, the cameras and other more advanced facilities. And even on October 7th itself, was able to use drones to hit some of the very important strategic defense and radar systems on the border, what enabled

Hamas to go on with that attack. And of course, that is extremely worrying if Israel's surveillance systems in the northern part of the, next to the Lebanese border, were also severely hit. Yeah, Chris, and that came right after 40 different projectiles. Let's put this please up on the screen. Hezbollah fired dozens of rockets in the, quote, initial response to the killing of the Hamas leader. This is all across of northern Israel. We've flagged this before, but we haven't touched on it quite a long time. Don't forget, 100,000 people inside of Israel have been relocated from the northern border. It is the largest internal migration in Israeli history, actually, since 1948,

which demonstrates the really fear on their part that the civilians will get caught into it. And the Israeli government is paying billions of dollars just to house these people inside their own country. This just demonstrates to us what it will continue and may look like. And a two-front war, I think, would be genuinely catastrophic because they would have to make the same choices that we did in Iraq and Afghanistan. And we are probably the world's greatest military. And we had to call up all of our National Guard and all of our reserves, and we were stretched very thin. This is a much smaller country. The reservists, many of them have already been sent home. Many hundreds of people have been killed, IDF soldiers. This would be the beginning and the worst and the bloodiest incident in them so far. So I think we should take these warnings

very, very seriously. And diplomatically, I think I've just come down to this. I don't see a way out. You know, Netanyahu is cut. You know, he's stuck so between, what is it, Ben-Gavir and Smotrich. And these guys are openly dissing America in public, which you guys did a great job of covering, being like, hey, we're a different, you know, you guys are a friend, but you're not, Israel is not the 51st state. I'm like, yeah, I agree. We shouldn't treat you as one. Yeah, we're more like their extra state. Exactly. The way we act. It's interesting. You know, loyalty runs one way. Who's the client state in this relationship? Contemplate. It's just like Ukraine and Saudi Arabia and all these other people. It's like we're apparently just, we cut the checks and we have too much, I don't know. We don't have enough pride to actually

stand up for ourselves. Separate that though. Politically inside, Netanyahu, this is a good thing for him. His right-wing coalition is the only thing keeping him into power. They want war with Hezbollah. They're openly going out and they're saying it. So this would also stave off any more questions. The longer we get away from October 7th, it's no longer about October 7th. It's just like Iraq and it would just drag things on for longer and longer. The real question is about the Israeli public and we haven't seen polling yet though to that effect.

At a certain point though though polling doesn't matter if we see a series of you Know escalatory strikes this thing could go hot in just a matter of days It only takes one facility struck then you strike another person and that's it You know a ship goes down and then we're in a totally different situation well, here's the other thing is that the truth of the matter is as Horrific as the Israeli assault on Gaza has been for Palestinians living in Gaza. It has not been that successful in terms of getting Yahya Sinwar, who, you know, is like the big name that they were supposed to be going after. They haven't succeeded in that.

They're claiming that they've basically, you know, not eliminated Hamas in northern Gaza, but they've, you know, severely degraded their fighting capabilities. But Hamas is still taking out top Israeli military officers in northern Gaza. So is that even accurate? You know, by their own estimates of which is the rosiest possible projection of how many Hamas militants they've taken out, it's nowhere close to even half of the fighters that they have. They've had to shift their language even, you know, within Israel of, oh, you know, the goal is no longer eliminate Hamas. It's more like degrade Hamas. So they've had to shift their language. So the other piece of the incentive here with Netanyahu is he's got to bring home a victory

if he has any prayer of staying in power. And so if victory is not going to come in Gaza, well, I guess we got to start a war on another front, which is something, by the way, they've been teasing from the beginning, even though keep in mind, Hezbollah was not involved in October 7th, right? It's sort of like us going into Iraq when they had nothing to do with 9-11. It's a very similar vibes here because Hezbollah had nothing to do with October 7th. You'll recall Yoav Galant, who is the defense minister in Israel, saying they could do in Beirut what they did in Gaza. And this was very early on. So they have been teasing this for quite some time now. You also had, I believe it was Yoav Galant as well, saying we are fighting

a seven front war and we are taking actions already on six fronts. So in some ways, in some manners of speaking, this is already underway. And just to underscore that video that we showed you a moment ago, that analyst on an Israeli news channel, senior editor of I24 News, he was talking about the fact Hezbollah, they've acknowledged now, the IDF has acknowledged, Hezbollah was able to inflict severe damage on this Israeli base, this important strategic Israeli base pretty close to the Lebanon border. They were able to inflict severe damage. They have significantly more military capability than Hamas.

I mean, it's not comparable at all. So you already see the escalatory chain. You had these tit-for-tat attacks between Hezbollah and Israel. That's been going on for some time. Then you have Israel target and assassinate a top Hamas leader in the suburbs of Beirut. That was a huge escalation. Then in response, you have Hezbollah able to inflict severe damage on the Israeli airbase. And now this morning, we get the word that Israel has been able to kill a top Hezbollah commander. So you can see the way that this is already building and U.S. hand-wringing is not going to do a damn thing unless we actually are willing to back it up with some actions.

Speaking of that, speaking of our impotence in this whole conflict, our feigned impotence, I should say, pretending like, oh, there's nothing we can do and we're doing our best. Antony Blinken is back in the region. I believe that this is his fourth time traveling there since October 7th. Let's put this up on the screen. He was meeting with various leaders in the region and King Abdullah of Jordan warning Antony Blinken, Secretary of State, that there would be catastrophic ramifications if the war in Gaza does continue. This is a full readout of their meeting in Amman. Yashar Ali tweeted this out. His Majesty King Abdullah, during a meeting on Sunday with U.S. Secretary of State Antony

Blinken, warned of the catastrophic ramifications of the continued war on Gaza, stressing the need to end the tragic humanitarian crisis in the Strip. This goes on, at the meeting attended by His Royal Highness, His Majesty stressed the important role of the U.S. in pushing towards an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, protection of civilians, while guaranteeing the sustainable delivery of sufficient humanitarian and relief aid to the the king reaffirmed there will be no stability in the region without a just solution to the Palestinian issue and a just and comprehensive peace on the basis of a two-state solution. His Majesty expressed Jordan's rejection of the forced displacement of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, something that many Israeli politicians at this time have been pushing for, which constitutes a clear

violation of international law. The king also reiterated Jordan's rejection of attempts to separate Gaza and the West Bank as they are both part of the Palestinian state. And Sagar, we also had two Democratic senators. It was Chris Van Hollen and someone else, I'm blanking on who the other person was, who were just in the region as well. And they're calling out Israel for blocking aid delivery and imposing this insanely cumbersome process that makes it impossible to get anywhere close to sufficient aid into Gaza. This at a time when, you know, the UN is reporting half of Gazans are starving and 90% are regularly going full days without eating anything. So even apart from, you know, the bombs and the bullets,

the starvation, dehydration, and disease is likely to ultimately claim more lives than even we've seen from the direct assault. Yeah, direct assault, looting, all of that. There's also some breaking news I want to mention. Crystal is tying us a little bit back. That just came from Haaretz. 103 Israeli soldiers were just wounded yesterday in the war. Only 19 of those in Gaza.

So that's over 80 Israeli soldiers wounded in a single day by Hezbollah. I mean, those are stunning numbers. I mean, this just came out now. So this is like at the Lebanese border. This is at the northern front for Israel. I just wanted to mention it because, I mean, it took them weeks to lose 100 people or to even have wounded casualties in Gaza. Just to demonstrate again the military capabilities. This is what actual ballistic missiles look like, not piddly little rockets that are launched from Gaza. So all that situation together

is really, really terrifying. We have this last piece we can put up here about the escalating attacks between the US and the Houthis. They say the US seeks to contain the Iranian proxies. Its concerns about a wide Middle East war is breaking out, are increasing. And honestly, this policy has been a failure. I've been watching from afar to watch. I mean, we've watched the vast majority of traffic that was supposed to go through the Red Sea now divert around the Horn of Africa. The big problem with that is it costs a lot of money, and all of us are the ones who are going to be paying for it. So congratulations. Inflation is almost certainly going to be back. This is a devastating blow, actually, to the European

economies. This was an easier way for a lot of them to get goods. You know, the Chinese and others are going to be going around in different ways. But this level of disruption to global shipping is absolutely unprecedented. We have not seen anything like it since the Russian invasion. And before that, honestly, we had not seen anything like that in decades. You know, maybe the Suez crisis. Yeah, well, the Houthis are very clear about why they're doing this. It is in direct response to Israel's assault on Gaza and our enabling of that, by the way. And they actually

put out a statement saying, listen, we're actually upholding, you know, the genocide convention, which obligates you not only to not commit genocide, but to take actions to prevent genocide. They say, hey, that's what we're up to here. That's why we're taking these actions that we're taking. So again, you have this long CNN report, you know, defense officials leaking to them, freaking out about the risk and the possible broader war. And nowhere in it do they indicate there's a very clear direction to go in to stop and to cease these hostilities and to, you know, eliminate the risk that this blows up into some larger conflict.

And that's a ceasefire. That's to push for a ceasefire. That's to push for a ceasefire. Nowhere is that reported in the press. They don't put that context in whatsoever that, you know, we're trying to pull this coalition together. It's like a new coalition of the willing. Yes, but it fell apart completely. It did. There were countries that initially joined that backed out. We never really had significant regional participation. Bahrain, that was the only regional country that participated at all. People didn't want to be associated with it.

And so it really has been yet another humiliating failure for the U.S. here in terms of their attempt to deal with it. I want to spend just a few moments on this because I've seen a lot of people, like, let's bomb them. And I'm not about bombing. You kill an American soldier, you target a U.S. flagship, we should bomb the hell out of you. Here's the issue. The Saudis have carpet bombed Yemen to kingdom come. Right. What happened? The Houthis won. They won the war. So it's like, if bombs could solve this issue, then the Saudis would have already done it. And if you think that they're incompetent or whatever, they're using our weapons,

just so everybody knows. We were helping them pick targets and we were supplying their entire war in Yemen. It became a horrific humanitarian disaster and the Houthis still have the capabilities. Unfortunately, this is not a problem which can be solved with air power alone. To solve this and to actually put an end to the attacks, we could pursue diplomacy or we're going to have to occupy Yemen. There's just no other way around it. Actual ground soldiers would have to go in and they would have to dig them out of the fortifications that they've had now throughout the entire civil war. They have huge stockpiles of weapons. I mean, the military capability of the Houthis and of Hezbollah, I would put it on par with like a small European nation.

It's not a paramilitary force in the same way that Hamas is. So I just wanted to put that out there because people are like, well, why isn't the military doing anything? They would if they could. If it was as simple as just bombing a single ballistic missile station or whatever inside of Yemen, it would be easy. But we have learned from the Saudis that it's not that simple. And in fact, the Saudis in the middle of their war, they often had missiles raining down on their own country and they have freaking Patriot batteries and all of that. This would take billions of dollars and there would be no way of quote unquote solving this problem without American ground troops.

The Saudi campaign shows us that for sure. There's an ongoing peace negotiation with Saudi and the Houthis. I mean the Houthis control a portion of Yemen, including the capital city. The Saudi-backed forces control another part of Yemen. So there's this ongoing process to come to some sort of negotiated terms. The U.S. is also concerned about upsetting that process. The Saudis don't want that process upset. So there's those considerations as well. But from the Houthis' perspective, this has been tremendously prestige building for them. Of course, yeah.

Tremendously. Disrupting global shipping. This little force that's able to, like, disrupt the whole globe and have massive and now go in toe-to-toe with the, you know, world's great superpower. If we struck them directly, if we hit them directly, that would only further enhance their prestige. I mean, for them, this is really a win-win situation that they have figured out here because there was some discontent among their own people as the war is coming to a close. And so the Palestinian cause

is one that unites everyone in Yemen. So they're able to demonstrate that they're fully behind that. They're able to raise their profile globally. And if we were to hit them, that's how we're saying, like, they've been bombed to hell. If bombs were the answer, that would have been solved long ago. I just want to come back finally, and then we'll move on to some of the information that's come out about the way the media is reporting on all of this conflict, that there is a very simple way for this to all to end, and that's through a ceasefire.

And then, you know, the Houthis have made it clear, this is their beef. They will stop messing with the Red Sea if you have a ceasefire. The attacks in Iraq, those will stop if there's a ceasefire. The escalation with Hezbollah, if there's a ceasefire. So there is a very clear direction we should be going in if we are concerned about these things, and more bombs and more aircraft carriers and more hand-wringing to the Washington Post is not gonna solve the problem. I unfortunately think you're probably right. And I don't see a situation, but I mean, the political winds in Israel are just so far beyond that, that until something really, truly breaks here in Washington, which I think we're still a very, very long way away from, this is the more likely path. And it really is Biden. I mean,

it's very clear now that even his top defense officials seem very unhappy with the direction things are going. And this really does come down to more and more. When they're conscious enough in the ICU. We'll get to that. More on that later. 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 know a lot of cops, and they get asked all the time, have you ever had to shoot your gun? Sometimes the answer is yes. But there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be no. Across the country, cops called this taser the revolution. But not everyone was convinced it was that simple. Cops believed everything that taser told them. From Lava for Good and the team that brought you Bone Valley comes a story about what happened when a multi-billion dollar company dedicated

itself to one visionary mission. This is Absolute Season One, Taser Incorporated. I get right back there and it's bad. It's really, really, really bad. Listen to new episodes of Absolute Season One, Taser Incorporated, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Binge episodes 1, 2, and 3 on May 21st and episodes 4, 5, and 6 on June 4th. Add free at Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. I'm Clayton English. I'm Greg Lott. And this is Season 2 of the War on Drugs podcast.

Yes, sir. We are back. In a big way. In a very big way. Real people, real perspectives. This is kind of star-studded a little bit, man. We got Ricky Williams, NFL player, Heisman Trophy winner. It's just a compassionate choice to allow players all reasonable means to care for themselves.

Music stars Marcus King, John Osborne from Brothers Osborne. We have this misunderstanding of what this quote-unquote drug man. Benny the Butcher. Brent Smith from Shinedown. We got B-Real from Cypress Hill. NHL enforcer Riley Cote. Marine Corvette.

MMA fighter Liz Karamush. What we're doing now isn't working and we need to change things. Stories matter, and it brings a face to them. It makes it real. It really does. It makes it real. Listen to new episodes of the War on Drugs podcast season two on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

And to hear episodes one week early and ad-free with exclusive content, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. This was quite a report from The Intercept. Let's put this up on the screen. So Daniel Bogoslaw reported this out for them. The headline here is CNN is running Gaza coverage past their Jerusalem team operating under the shadow of the IDF sensor. So here's a little bit of context. Any foreign news outlet operating in Israel is obligated to run all their stories past the IDF sensor and with

very predictable results. Now, other news organizations have made the choice to route their Israel coverage through other bureaus outside of Israel to try to avoid this censorship. CNN has not done that. Let me read you a little bit of the report. This is sort of laying out what I just said. Like all foreign news organizations operating in Israel,

CNN's Jerusalem Bureau is subject to the rules of the IDF censor, which dictates subjects that are off limits for news organizations to cover and censors articles it deems unfit or unsafe to print. As The Intercept reported last month, the military censor recently restricted eight different subjects, including security cabinet meetings, information about hostages, reporting on weapons captured by fighters in Gaza. In order to obtain a press pass in Israel, foreign reporters must sign a document agreeing to abide by the dictates of that center. Only democracy in the Middle East, people.

Also in October, CNN hired a former IDF soldier to contribute writing and reporting to CNN's war coverage. Tamara McKaylee's first byline appears on October 17th, just 10 days after Hamas's attack. Since then, her name has appeared on dozens of stories, citing the IDF spokesperson and relaying info about the IDF's operations in the Gaza Strip.

At least one story that has her byline alone is little more than a direct statement released from the IDF. So this is who they brought in for their coverage, which they are also choosing to run by the IDF. So this is who they brought in for their coverage, which they are also choosing to run by the IDF censor. She apparently served in the IDF's spokesperson unit, a division of the Israeli military charged with carrying out positive PR, both domestically and abroad. Seems like she still works for that unit, actually. And Israel coverage is subject to

a special review process that is unique to just exclusively to Israel coverage. A CNN staff member described how the policy works in practice. Quote, war crime and genocide are taboo words. Israeli bombings in Gaza will be reported as, quote, blast attributed to nobody until the Israeli military weighs in to either accept or deny responsibility. Quotes and info provided by Israeli army and government officials tend to be approved quickly, while those from Palestinians tend to be heavily scrutinized and slowly processed. Sagar, can you imagine if a news outlet was running all of their stories by Hamas before publishing it, how people would feel about that. And yet CNN thinks that this is all fine and well and good and counts as journalism. It's just outrageous. You know, there's so many

ways in which there's media manipulation that happens behind the scenes and eventually just comes really forward at moments like this. We saw a glimpse of that earlier when you had reporters who went in there. And actually, I'll give them credit at least for this, is that they admitted it. They're like, look, the only way we could have this footage is if we gave it to the Israelis and they were able to edit it. You're in a tough situation. I think that on par, as long as you disclose that, it's okay. But here, they're not disclosing how much of the editing is happening and screening behind the scenes to a direct foreign government. And it just goes to the question, who are you working for here? Are you just supposed to be

reporting the news about what's happening? I mean, we are a small little YouTube show. We would never adhere to anything like this. And I want to give people, you know, an idea. People try this crap all the time. So when we were over at the Hill and I interviewed Trump, this is a fun story. So the, whatever, who was that woman, E. Jean Carroll had just, she had just that day, she had come out against Trump and said she sexually assaulted her. Before we went in there, Sarah Sanders looks me directly in the face. She's like, look, just don't ask about the E. Jean Carroll thing. We were like, yeah, totally. And what do you think we asked about at the end? E. Jean Carroll. You know why? Because it's like, sorry, I don't work

for you. And then and there's another one. So in that, they said, Trump had said something about how he was going to go meet Kim Jong-un at the DMZ, the famous meeting. And she was like, hey, if you guys report that, then the meeting won't happen. It's a national security risk. And we're like, okay, well, we can hold off, but we're going to put it out there the moment that the meeting happens or, you know, before security situation. So that I think was a reasonable one because, you know, if we report that and a meeting doesn't happen, it's one of those where there's a genuine security risk and all that but the eugene carroll thing We're like, oh this would look bad for us. It's like I'm sorry eat shit, honestly I mean, that's just one of those where you don't get to tell us what to do

I'm gonna I'll lie to your face just to get in the room, but you know after that, okay, don't invite me back I don't know what to tell you. Yeah, and it's one of those where that's how you're supposed to operate in the media That's that's what actual journalism is supposed to look like. That's a small thing, but it's just a demonstrative of an attitude as opposed to, and you and I, when we do this, we do not adhere to any preconditions when we do interviews. Part of the reasons many politicians are afraid to come on the show is because they will say things like, oh, he only wants to talk about taxes. It's like, okay, that's fine.

But just so you know, that's not going to happen. Right. Or we'll be like, yeah, sure, come on in, and then we'll ask you about whatever we want. That is how traditionally you're supposed to operate with anyone in power, Republican, Democrat, anyone. And yet this is just, I mean, shocking. It's truly shocking. There's a dance that goes on with these politicians where they routinely, you know, they want to know what you're going to ask about. They want to limit the conversation. And if you are worth your salt, you say no. You say no. And I think you can tell by the interviews we conduct here that we don't abide by the rules and guidelines that they're asking for.

You know, so obviously we have no transparency into what has been blocked, what has been censored, what language has been changed, what stories never got run or surfaced at all. So all you can do is look at what they're publishing and see the way that it is framed. So I kid you not, after I read the story, I went on CNN's website and this was literally one of the first stories that popped up. And the impact of the censor is plainly obvious. Like the language that they talk about here, oh, it's going to be blast, but we're not going to attribute to Israel, is manifestly clear. Put this up on the screen. This is a horrifying story. More than 10 children a day are losing one or both legs in Gaza, according to Save the Children. So their headline does not attribute the fact that these kids are losing their limbs to Israel,

which is the reason that they're losing these limbs. And then when you read the story, here's what they say. More than 10 children on average have lost one or both of their legs every day in Gaza since October 7th. Again, like the limbs just fell off. No, they lost them because they were bombed by Israel. While many of the amputations are conducted without anesthetic, again, why? Because Israel is blocking medical supplies from coming in. The charity Save the Children said in a statement Sunday referencing statistics released by the UN. And then they quote someone as saying, doctors and nurses are completely overwhelmed when children are brought in with blast wounds. Blast wounds. So again, the language is specifically cited in the intercept

report. Nowhere in here in this first part of the report do they explain why these kids are losing their limbs, 10 kids a day losing one or both legs and having to be operated on with no anesthetic, no responsibility attributed there. Now, if it was in the other direction, if it was talking about the October 7th attacks and the atrocities that Hamas were committed, no problem attributing responsibility, no problem using visceral language about those horrors. But here, when it's Israel, totally different. That's what's so stupid is that, obviously,

you should do it when you're talking about the victims of October 7th and you should just talk when you're talking about the victims of war. And again, let's be very clear. We should use it when we're talking about anyone who is a noncombatant civilian. I mean, and you can't even argue that these like small kids, at least in this instance, are not working for or not like fighting for Hamas. It's just, look, passive and the way that you use language and all of that is one of the oldest forms of media manipulation and of the way of presentation and all of that of a story. And I think the passive language, the way that you use it is always, you know, the most, is the most significant for the way that they frame something. It's like the traditional thing

when Democrats do something bad and the New York Times will be like, Republicans pounce on the fact that Democrats are doing something. And it's like, well, just say they did a bad thing, okay? We don't have to play dancing games here. And look, the right-wing media does it too, obviously. So it's just, you can present things without trying to spin them at all times. But apparently that's not what they want to do over there. Adam Johnson flagged another example where you can see the potential impact of the IDF sensor here. Put this up on the screen. His commentary says, losing my mind, UN Special Rapporteur on the Human Rights of Internally Displaced Persons correctly accuses Israel of working to expel civilian population of Gaza. CNN reports it as mere allegation without mentioning Netanyahu himself explicitly said this is his goal just

yesterday. And then he posts the report where, yeah, they're just saying, oh, well, they're accusing them of this without providing any of the context that literally the prime minister, the dude who's in control, has made it clear that this is also his goal. And this is the same game, Sagar, that the State Department and the Department of Defense has been playing as well. Like, oh, we condemn the statements from these extremists, Smotrich and Bezalel, and this is totally contradictory to the Israelis' actual policy. And it's like, what makes you think that when everyone from the president of Israel to the prime minister of Israel to numerous cabinet ministers and top Likud party members

and military officials are all saying this is their goal. How can you claim that this is just some fringe opinion, not to mention when you look at public sentiment in favor of the mass displacement of Palestinians out of Gaza? So these are the sort of games that they are playing, which, listen, maybe they didn't need the IDF censor in order to frame things in this way. There are plenty of Western media outlets who are doing equally poor jobs without running things by the IDF censor. They're self-censoring. But when you have this intentional policy of rooting everything through Jerusalem, of having it operate underneath the shadow of the IDF censor, these are the results you are guaranteed to get. Absolutely. Let's move on to

the next part here. This is one of the most insane stories that we've ever seen from a public official. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin apparently has now been hospitalized for more than a week and did not inform his superiors, the president of the United States, any of his peers at the National Security Council, or his number two. Let's go ahead and put this up there on the screen because the details are genuinely shocking. So the Pentagon's number two official did not learn that her boss was hospitalized on January 1st until four days later after she had to assume some of his duties. This is according to the US military themselves. That's the Deputy Secretary of Defense, Kathy Hicks. She was actually scheduled on leave in Puerto Rico at the time

and had already assumed some of Austin's duties but did not know what had happened to them. At the same time, Crystal, we are now learning that according to these officials, the President of the United States was not informed until four days after it was known that Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin is laid up, continued to this day, in the hospital for some sort of unknown condition. So according to them, the details of this are super vague. On the evening of January 1, Austin began experiencing, quote, severe pain. He was taken to Walter Reed, where he was then admitted to a hospital's intensive care unit. Now, previously, officials had said that he had

undergone an elective procedure during his scheduled leave on December 22nd. So that's eight days prior to experiencing these pains. The officials have not described to us yet what that elective surgery procedure was. A lot of us are speculating here. I mean, at a certain point, you've got to release it. We were saying on the phone, like, what is it, like a BBL or something? Like, is it a facelift? I mean, what is it, lipos BBL or something? Like, is it a lot of facelift? I mean, what is it, liposuction?

I mean, what's happening here? I know there's a lot of different types of elective surgery. I looked into, okay, I looked into, first of all, what are the most dangerous plastic surgery that you can have done, and BBL is actually the most dangerous. Yeah, watch out for those BBLs, ladies. I don't want to laugh because his condition could be very serious. I mean, this man is still in the hospital, but he is out of ICU as far as I understand.

But I also looked into, I mean, this is ridiculous, but I also looked into what are the most common elective procedures for a man his age. And there's a lot of things like to do with your colon and hernia stuff like that which you know when you hear elective you do think something like oh you're getting a nose job or something like that but they can be things that are like needed but they still somehow get classified as elective in any case um whatever it is it must be sort of embarrassing or else there wouldn't be all of this reluctance to release the information, not only to the public, which whatever, the public's one thing, but to the people who are taking over for your job. And the irony here is, of course, by attempting to hide it, he has made

the whole world aware of what's going on. Right. And let's put this up there. They, again, by their own admission, did not inform President Biden, the White House, for days about his hospitalization. This man was in the ICU. So I have a lot of questions about this. Number one, I guess I'm just naive and assume that the president would talk to his defense secretary every day in the middle of a global international crisis. Apparently, that's not true. Apparently, the president, the national security advisor, the top team at the White House just doesn't talk to the SECDEF all that much. I'm actually very disturbed by that. They don't find out until four days later. Now, I understand everyone's on vacation. There's no vacation when you're the president.

Then you have the means here of Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin did not inform his number two until days after he was in the ICU. Now, you guys are not going to believe what his excuse for this is. Put this up there. The excuse is that the Pentagon's chief of staff was sick. Therefore, she could not notify the number two about his hospitalization for four days. Are we really supposed to believe that the Secretary of Defense only has one person who is capable of notifying the number two. I covered the Pentagon. He is surrounded at any one time by up to 15 to 20 people. There are actually, Crystal, over 100 people who work in the office of the Secretary of Defense at the Pentagon. And so that tells me that actually the number two was the only, or his chief of staff was the only person who even knew about what was going on.

So he's not only hiding things from his staff, he's hiding it from his superiors, from the secretary of state. I mean, imagine if a global conflagration had kicked off and this man is in the hospital. There is a global conflagration. No, but a real one. What if the Houthis fired on a U.S. ship? What happens? You know, I mean, if anybody has ever done this, go and read the minute by minute account by Daniel Ellsberg of the Gulf of Tonkin incident. I mean, Secretary McNamara was literally issuing minute by minute orders, be like, do not

fire until I tell you to do so. I'll speak to the president. And, you know, he was giving orders at certain points during the Cuban Missile Crisis and during the Gulf of Tonkin incident, which demonstrates, like, imagine a situation of something like that that could have happened, which is why this is never supposed to be allowed. And I would actually put it this way. Secretary Austin was a four-star general in the Army. Imagine if any – there are a lot of people who are in the U.S. military in the show, who watch this show. Imagine if you, in a superior position, a commanding officer, would disappear for four days straight and did not tell his subordinates about what was happening, leading to chaos and a leadership vacuum.

In a time of peace, even, that's it. You're fired. Or at the very least, boom. That is a career-ending move. That's genuinely psychotic, you know, to be doing something like this. So, I mean, in my opinion, I don't think he can last. I mean, he's got to be fired. You can't stay for this. We cannot stand to have somebody who's clearly hiding their medical issue. He can date with dignity and be like, I'm sick. I got to go, you know, something like this. But that's it. I mean, in my opinion,

if I was Biden, I would have fired his ass the day I found out that he was hiding. So far Biden has basically covered for him. I mean, there's a few thoughts that come to mind. First of all, the fact that, you know, you said if there is a global conflagration, it's not like there isn't a lot. It's kind of a pivotal moment. There's kind of a lot going on. There's a lot of risks that are unfolding that we just covered extensively. There's obviously our ongoing support for the horrors that are being inflicted on Gaza. There's all sorts of concerns that are unfolding before our eyes globally right now. So not a great time to take time off.

Number two, it also raises the question of like, what are you even doing on a daily basis? I know. That you thought that it would be fine to just like vanish for a few weeks and not even tell. The one that in some ways is the craziest to me is that the person who was in having to take command, who was in charge, didn't even know. Like that the number two didn't even know that they were now in charge. That to me is in some ways the craziest thing. But yeah, I'm looking. I'm like, so I guess you're just not really doing all that much. If you feel like you can just go willy-nilly and take a significant break and that you think you're going to be able to get away with not telling anyone.

That was to me maybe the most revealing part here. The saddest thing, when I was 18 years old, I came to the city to college. And I had these grand ideas about what politicians and all of them were like. And I was very lucky. I got an internship, you know, my first, literally my first day of college. I show up to Capitol Hill and I was like, oh no, this is not, you know, what I kind of, what I thought it would be. The best and the brightest are not the ones who are working here. And more than a decade now of living in the city and working in very close proximity and covering people in power, really what I've learned is that it's far more mediocre, incompetent, and awful than anyone is really led to believe. We want

to believe that the people who are in power are intelligent and they work very hard and all that. But what comes across? These people are like white collar employees all over the world. They're just checking out over Jan 1 to Jan 5. And that's fine when maybe you're a host of a show, a YouTube show, and you have a competent co-host who's capable of taking over for you. It's not fine whenever you're working in public service. And I think it just, you know, whenever we talk about the Supreme Court and all that, these people just want to have it both ways. They want to be like their peers in corporate life who are able to jet set to wherever they want to go. But you can do that when you're in charge of a corporation. You can't do it when you are in charge of the world's most powerful military.

And you would think that a former four-star general of the United States Army would know that more than anybody. So he should be fired. He should be kicked out. He should be unceremoniously dismissed, as he would if he were still a member of the U.S. Armed Forces. We should never accept this from people who are in power. You know, he also made some of the, I thought, most honest comments about Israel's assault on Gaza. He was the one that said they were facing a strategic defeat, which, you know, raised a lot

of eyebrows at the time because that was early on that he made those comments. But I think he must have gotten used to that board of directors of Raytheon life when he was in the private sector. And it's like, listen, that option is still available to you, sir. You can go and do that. I'm sure they will take you right back, no problem whatsoever. So wild situation. You can get your tummy tucks, you can do whatever you want. But you can't be doing that when you're the Secretary of Defense. And again, I just want to underscore this. Let's put this up there. As of last night, he's still in the hospital. According to the Pentagon Press Secretary, quote, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, this is the next one, guys, says he will remain hospitalized at Walter Reed

National Medical Center, but is, quote, recovering well and in good spirits. Crystal, you and I- And so they don't have a specific date for his release. So, I mean, he's still in some sort of serious condition. No, I know enough to say this. If you are in the hospital for a week straight, things are not good. Things are absolutely, that could be an infection, that could be, I mean, who knows? I mean, he's not particularly a fit guy and he's only 70 years old. So it's really, this could be a bad situation. But regardless, his secrecy, the people around him, there's just, this cannot stand. He's got to go. Terrible judgment also.

Just on the basic level, like terrible judgment to think that you were going to be able to pull this off. I totally agree. 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. all for murder. I'm Katherine Townsend. I've received hundreds of messages from people across

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I get right back there and it's bad. It's really, really, really bad. Listen to new episodes of Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Binge episodes 1, 2, and 3 on May 21st and episodes 4, 5, and 6 on June 4th. Ad-free at Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. I'm Clayton English. I'm Greg Lott.

And this is Season 2 of the War on Drugs podcast. Yes, sir. We are back. In a big way. In a very big way. Real people, real perspectives. This is kind of star-studded a little bit, man. We got Ricky Williams, NFL player, Heisman Trophy winner.

It's just a compassionate choice to allow players all reasonable means to care for themselves. Music stars Marcus King, John Osborne from Brothers Osborne. We have this misunderstanding of what this quote-unquote drug ban. Benny the Butcher. Brent Smith from Shinedown. Got B-Real from Cypress Hill. NHL enforcer Riley Cote. Marine Corvette.

MMA fighter Liz Caramouch. What we're doing now isn't working and we need to change things. Stories matter and it brings a face to them. It makes it real. It really does. It makes it real. Listen to new episodes of the War on Drugs podcast season two on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

And to hear episodes one week early and ad-free with exclusive content, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. All right, so speaking of things that aren't going well, the Biden campaign, Obama apparently raising a lot of concerns directly over the direction of the Biden campaign. This was a report from the Washington Post, which again, it's interesting not only what's said in this report, but also the fact that it is leaked to the press is in and of itself interesting and very intentional. Put this up on the screen. Former President Barack Obama has raised questions about the structure of President Biden's re-election campaign,

discussing the matter directly with Biden. Telling the president's aides and allies the campaign needs to be empowered to make decisions without clearing them with the White House, according to three people familiar. The headline is Obama worried about Trump urges Biden's circle to bolster campaign. I'll read you some of these details because they are interesting. On that first part where he's saying, like, people need to be empowered. This is something Biden is a famous micromanager. He's the worst combination of micromanaging and indecisive. So and he relies on this small circle of advisors who have been with him since the 80s. And so even when he brings in someone new to the circle, like he doesn't delegate responsibility

to them and they're completely disempowered. So they're over in Wilmington on the campaign. The people he actually trusts are in D.C. And so there's this huge disconnect, which has apparently, according to Obama in this report, completely hamstrung the campaign. And it's a very different model from what the Obama campaign did in 2012, which, listen, whatever you think of him, the man ran two very effective campaigns in 2008 and 2012. Couldn't get anybody but himself elected. Wasn't good at that. But in terms of getting himself elected president, he was very effective. All right, more from the report. Obama grew animated in discussing the 2024 election and former President Trump's potential return to power.

And as suggested to Biden's advisors, the campaign needs more top-level decision makers at its headquarters in Wilmington, or it must empower the people already in place. Obama has not recommended specific individuals, but he has mentioned David Plouffe, who managed Obama's 2008 race as the type of senior strategist needed at the Biden campaign. So he's saying like, I'm not sure you got the right folks here. Maybe talk to some of my people. Maybe you'll do better. Very arrogant guy. But anyway, Obama's conversation with Biden on the subject took place during private lunch. Recently during the lunch, Obama noted the success of his own reelection campaign structure when some of his top aides, including Axelrod and Messina, left the White House to take charge of the reelection operation in Chicago. That's a sharp contrast from Biden's approach. He also recommended Biden seek counsel from Obama's own

former campaign aides, which Biden officials say they have done, people said. And they also quote Alyssa Slotkin here. Well, this was not a direct quote. She denies that she's concerned about the reelection campaign, but she's running for Senate in Michigan. And she has apparently expressed concern to allies she might not be able to win if Biden is at the top of the ticket. So there are a lot of Democrats who are freaking out. Even Biden, this was kind of remarkable to me, Zagarin, just shows you what kind of a quote unquote leader this man is. Even Biden's frustrated by his public standing, frequently complaining about his low public, low poll numbers and private conversations with aides. In one meeting, he demanded to know what his team and his campaign staff were doing about it.

Dude, maybe it's not their fault. Maybe it's the fact that your unconditional support for Israel has horrified key voting blocks. Maybe it's the fact that you have literally promised nothing to do in a second term and they're like literally nothing. And you have given people no reason to vote for you. Maybe you need to look a little bit at your own actions here rather than thinking that a new message or a new advisor is going to really be the thing that does the trick here. It's so far beyond that. Go to the grocery store once. Like, that's all it takes.

I see people all the time at the grocery store with coupon books. You know, I've told you this previously about how YouTube channels about grandma's cooking Great Depression recipes are more popular than ever right now. Just, you know, if you like to look at recipes or whatever, go on Instagram or any of these other places and scroll through your reels. You know what half of it is?

It's like how to feed a family of five on $100 from Costco. And look, that's always one of those like that should always be popular, but it has exploded because of inflation. It's horrifying. You know, I'm obsessed kind of recently with cat nutrition, make sure my cat is treated the best. And on the cat subreddits, you know, the number one concern about feeding your cat the healthiest wet food and all that cost. They're like, hey guys, how am I supposed to pay for this? I got X amount of mouth. I, you know, I don't want to, I love him so much. He's got kidney disease or whatever. I need to make sure he's got, you know, he or she needs enough moisture in their diet, but I just can't afford it. I mean, that is a horrible

situation to be in. And then you get to the, you know, even worst case of, oh, now you're in a situation where you have to make trade-off choices and all that, which previously you never had to do. And I think that that is a horrible, that is just the degradation of quality of life in the United States over the last three years for a variety of multifaceted factors, whether it's Biden's fault or not, It is still up to him to speak to those concerns, and he doesn't do it. He just doesn't do it on a daily basis. Their entire gamble, Crystal, is January 6th. I just don't think that's gonna, look, it's possible. Jan and 6th in abortion, I would give him at least to a 48% shot, just because electoral successes

over the last couple of years have demonstrated that. I read a really interesting piece over the break about how this could be really analogous to the 1948 election. So in 1948, Harry Truman was historically unpopular. You had the war. Yeah, you had the post-war period. He was almost certain to lose the election, according to the press, the Gallup polls and all that had it against him. But what ended up saving him was that he rallied the populace against the quote unquote do nothing Congress. He was like, it's their fault that we're not doing more about this. And even though we have historic strikes and all that, you should stick with me because I got us through World War II and I'll pull us out again. But reading it to see the way that Truman did win that extraordinary election with the famous Dewey defeats Truman headline is Truman was an energetic guy.

You know, he was only 12 or so years younger, but he relentlessly talked about the issues that really faced people at that time who were very upset about inflation. And so I just don't structurally, I don't see the same thing. You just have a different man at the top of the ticket. Yeah. He's just he's a husk. I mean, there's just no way to describe it. We got to stop being polite at a certain point.

So let me tell you what their cope is with their theory of the cases. And listen, you're right. I don't want to say he's going to lose. I think he's in a very poor position. He has the lowest approval ratings of any incumbent president seeking re-election. It doesn't look good. But people also really hate Donald Trump and really don't want that chaos back. And they were horrified by January 6th and by the ongoing legal issues. They do think that he's a criminal. And so, you know,

and then you add on top of that Roe versus Wade and, you know, you have a real contest, right? It's not a slam dunk either way. But this is what they'll tell you. This is an Axios report. Says when pressed on why Biden allies think that things are fine, put this up on the screen, guys, as a second element, they say the war, they think, will be far in voters' rearview mirror by November 5th. Okay, I think that is insane. I do not think that they understand the break that they have made with younger voters. I think they are completely in a bubble if they think that's the case. Okay, so that's number one. Number two, by then, the economy will be so good, voters can't ignore it. Voter confidence, the hope is, will catch up with the encouraging

macro signs. Also delusional. Also delusional. Because over the course of the Biden administration, what has happened? The social safety net constructed during COVID was systematically reduced and eliminated so that people have less money in their bank accounts. That happened on Biden's watch, also delusional. Abortion rights. Now, this may not, this one, they have a point. Dems will be boosted by the anti-GOP backlash following the Dobbs decision overturning Roe v. Wade. Swing voters won't want to give Trump a chance to appoint another Supreme Court justice. As second gentleman Doug Emhoff has put it privately, Dobbs and democracy. Roe v. Wade, swing voters won't want to give Trump a chance to appoint another Supreme Court justice.

As second gentleman Doug Emhoff has put it privately, Dobbs and democracy, that's the plan. Biden and allies will spend more than a billion dollars telling voters Trump is terrible. Oh, they've never tried that before. In the end, Biden's inner circle contends most independents won't look themselves in the mirror on election day, then go vote for Trump. They go on to say they worry, though, people close the White House fear there aren't enough people willing to give Biden bad news. And there's this sense of complacency that has come out, Sagar, in multiple articles, where because Biden sort of defied the odds last time, they think that all of this is just like hand-wringing and bedwetting and, oh, normal people don't care about these things and they don't really understand the landscape, and we do.

And this is a very different situation than when you had Trump actually in the White House, when you had people feeling really horrified at his handling of COVID and upset about it, when you had on a daily basis reminders of why you didn't like this man being president. And I thought this was a, I saw somebody make this point on Twitter. I thought this was a really good point. The superpower that Biden used to have is the sense that like, he's a nice guy and he's empathetic. That has been destroyed by what people see unfolding every day in Gaza. That's gone. Like the sense that this is some nice grandfatherly figure who's not going to do anything terribly evil the way that you feel

like Trump might, that's gone. You no longer have that advantage, especially with young voters. So again, I come back to, I think, especially with regard to their view of the war that they think people are just going to forget it and it's going to be in the rearview mirror. If anything, after the worst of the hostilities, after the worst of the assault on Gaza is over, that's when people will actually be able, reporters will be able to get into the Gaza Strip and actually document what has happened here and how unprecedented it is and the lives that have been ruined and the people that have been killed and the long-term impact of the hunger that they're facing right now and the disease and the fact that Gaza, though already saying the entirety of the Gaza Strip is completely uninhabitable, unlivable. This is all going to be documented over these coming months.

So I just think that they are completely detached from reality with almost all of these points. Well, I actually don't believe that the war will be over at all. I think Israel is going to have to occupy the Gaza Strip, and I think they're going to be stuck there and dealing with a very similar situation that we did with Iraq. But it doesn't stop that because that means that there will just be continuing ongoing hostilities. But I truly believe that his single biggest problem is just the general sense of malaise and chaos that has engulfed both the United States and the world. And the more that you read the news and all of that, you don't have to be a geopolitical genius to be like, well, this is a bad situation. You know, you got the Red Sea, you've got Ukraine. We had Afghanistan previously. And while I defended

him for that, he didn't exactly rouse the public as to why it was a great idea and defend his decision. He mostly just retreated and got ornery that the American people didn't believe in him. Then on the economic front and all that, and yet, as you say, with Trump, Trump is his own worst enemy and always has been. He lost one of the most easily winnable elections in 2020 just from his shown sheer idiocy, and he has refused to drop much of that since. I wouldn't count him out because I do think he's a very savvy political player. And if he returns to some of that 2016 energy and you do have the husk of Biden up there and you have the deep unpopularity, you don't need to win the popular vote. We all learned that in 2016.

You could just win the electoral college. So it's one of those where I see deep peril for Joe Biden. And I think that his arrogance from his campaign of 2020, he doesn't understand that it was not him. He got elected because of COVID. He got dragged across the finish line through circumstances that were out of his control. And this time, COVID's not gonna save you, my man. And possibly abortion will. But again, that's not something save you, my man, and possibly abortion will, but again, that's not something that you have done on anything. You should always try as if you're going to lose.

There's this great politicians, even LBJ, for example, he always believed that he was on the precipice of losing or he would always act as if he was, he would have to do absolutely everything to win because he said, you can only control what you can control. You got to ruthlessly exploit that to your advantage. He won one of the greatest electoral victories in all of our history. But he ran that race in 1964

as if it would have been, you know, within a margin of a point. That's what the great ones actually do in order to present something. But, you know, we're a long way away from that. Yes. So their plan as a first, what is he called? The second first husband? What is he called? Doug M. Dobbs. Oh, it's the second gentleman. There we go. The second gentleman. Should dress better if he wants to be a gentleman. Anyway, as he put it, Dobbs and democracy. That's the plan. Well, Joe Biden did this big, highly touted speech near the anniversary of January 6th. Partly, I mean, this was sort of like the official launch of his actual campaign. And he is leaning into this democracy message,

which I find extremely hypocritical, which I'll get into in just a moment. But let's take a listen to a little bit of what he had to say. I promise you, I will not let Donald Trump or the MAGA Republicans force us to walk away. A determined minority is doing everything in its power to try to destroy our democracy for their own agenda. The American people know it. And they're standing bravely in the breach. Remember after 2020, January 6th insurrection to undo the election in which more Americans had voted than any other in American history? America saw the threat posed to the country. They voted them out. In 2022, historic midterm election.

In state after state, election after election, the election deniers were defeated. Now in 2024, Trump is running as the denier-in-chief, the election denier-in-chief. Once again, he's saying he won't honor the results of the election if he loses. Trump says he doesn't understand. Well, he still doesn't understand the basic truth. That is, you can't love your country only when you win. Now, how are you going to claim to be the guardian of democracy when you and your party are actually right now canceling primaries, Democratic primary elections across the country?

Put this up on the screen. This is just the latest. You now have, I think, five states that have just said, no, we're not going to put your opponents on the ballot. We're just going to cancel the primary. So the DNC is blasting New Hampshire Democrats over what they call a meaningless primary. The DNC scolded New Hampshire Democrats for selecting delegates for the state's unsanctioned primary. You'll recall this all goes back to Joe Biden and the DNC's attempt to rig the primary for him. He did really badly. It was a fourth, fifth place last time in New Hampshire. Didn't even stay for the results to come in, went to South Carolina. And

so they didn't want anything to do with New Hampshire this time or Iowa for that matter. And so instead they're like, we'll put South Carolina first because of diversity. No, it's not because of diversity. It's because you were terrified of what voters in New Hampshire actually think of you. Yes. So in New Hampshire, their state constitution actually has a provision that says, no, we go first. And New Hampshire is, even though it's typically a blue state or a swing state, it's actually governed right now by Republicans. So even if New Hampshire Democrats wanted to change this provision, they can't. So they're going ahead with their primary and the DNC is trying to like

scold them and punish them and say their delegates aren't going to even mean anything. So if you're a voter in New Hampshire, they're saying you're just out. You're not going to get to vote. You're not going to get to have your say. And there's a very awkward situation that Biden has put himself in where he's not going to appear on the ballot.. And there's a very awkward situation that Biden has put himself in where he's not going to appear on the ballot. So people who want to even select him have to write his name in. But again, what a hypocrite. How are you going to pretend like you care a bit about democracy when you have completely

blocked any debates? It's not even clear he's going to debate Donald Trump, by the way, which obviously Trump should be debating the Republican primary as well. And you have actively had these states just completely even cancel their primaries. So, you know, listen, do I think the January 6th message has some potency? I do, even though it's been a while now, you know, four years later, I still think it has some potency. I do think it is a reminder of some of the worst things that people hated the most about Donald Trump. Is this sufficient at a time when voters are disgusted with you, when young people see you as enabling absolute atrocities and war crimes in the Gaza Strip? No, no, it's not sufficient,

and you are a complete hypocrite. Yeah, I mean, the democracy point is one. Actually, shout out to Joe Rogan. Maybe he's been watching us or he's seen the news where he was talking about that recently. He's like, I can't believe he's been canceling his primaries. He's like, I don't like that at all. So, hey, that's good. But then he was like, Dean, who are you, fella? And I was like, you know, kind of a good news. Fair.

Fair. Honestly fair. Listen, I want to give credit to Dean. Yeah, I saw. I didn't see it, but I saw that it had happened. I really didn't expect it to because the first time we had him here, it was very, you know, we had quite a debate over Israel. I sort of thought that, you know, like we'd already had it out, but it got pretty feisty again. But listen,

credit to him for coming back. At least he's willing to go out there and make the case. I agree. The point is people want choices. They deserve choices. If you really were so concerned about democracy and if you really believe your own rhetoric about Trump being a direct threat to democracy, which I think is fair at this point, then you would actually care about putting up the best possible candidate to defeat this man. And you'd have to be on another planet to think that Joseph Robinette Biden at this point in his life is the strongest possible candidate to defeat Donald Trump. You don't have to take my word for you. Look at the polls. Actually, Dean Phillips is just sort of like generic Democrat. He would beat Trump. I mean, he would probably beat Trump by like 10 points, eight points. On the converse, if you had Nikki Haley against Joe Biden, she would win by probably like 10 points, much as I like can't stand her. But somehow we ended up with these two people that everyone is just like disgusted by, tired,

you know, tired of, et cetera, because of the basic failures of democracy that enabled this rotten and corroded system. 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 know a lot of cops, and they get asked all the time, have you ever had to shoot your gun? Sometimes the answer is yes.

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

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I'm Clayton English. I'm Greg Lott. And this is season two of the War on Drugs podcast. Yes, sir. We are back. In a big way. In a very big way.

Real people, real perspectives. This is kind of star-studded a little bit, man. We got Ricky Williams, NFL player, Heisman Trophy winner. It's just a compassionate choice to allow players

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subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. Speaking of corroded systems, I don't know how to transition to this. I have watched with great, I cannot tell you, Crystal, how much self-control it took for me not to weigh in on Harvard and the shenanigans. I barely care about this story. I was so ready to roll. But Jillian looked at me and she was like, if you start going into this in vacation, we're going to have a problem. And you know what? I shut my mouth and I followed orders.

And she was right. She was certainly right. But now I'm back and I have to weigh in. So a little bit on the latest of what is going on here. Bill Ackman, the famous multi-billionaire, hedge funder, extraordinaire who lied to the American people on CNBC in 2020. He said, you know, terrible things are coming. Meanwhile, bet $2 billion after he helped crash the market on CNBC. People have forgotten a little bit about that. I certainly haven't. But he has led kind of the plagiarism campaign, cancellation campaign, I should say, against the Harvard University president, MIT president, and UPenn president.

It's very important, I think, for us to separate all the separate actors that are involved here. Ackman was not involved in this fight over any original concerns over DEI, about plagiarism, or anything. He was mad that these university presidents did not say that calling for the genocide against Jews was not a direct call in and of itself, you know, in order to have expulsion from any of these Ivy League universities. Also was one of the people who helped basically try to cancel all of these Harvard students who had signed some BLM, you know. And look, I don't say pro-Hamas, but those statements actually were insane. We talked about them at the time. If people want to go back and look at some of the justification language that they used,

we just, you know, talked about it. I personally thought it was disgusting, but that does not mean I don't believe that it falls within the realm of free speech. Can I just, on that, the part I took issue with was they attributed sole responsibility on October 7th to Israel and denied complete agency from Hamas who were directly targeting civilians. So that was my issue with it. Would I cancel them or whatever? Blacklist them. This is a man who wanted to get them permanently canceled and never get hired anywhere in America. Absurd. Yes. Ridiculous. So that began on October 8th. And then we eventually got to a point where

people like Christopher Ruffo and Aaron Sabarium, two people who I know and I know you don't like them, but I respect them both because they both were original DEI activists. They did not, you know, mount this as some sort of Israel campaign. They started reporting about plagiarism accusations against Claudine Gay, who was the Harvard University president. She eventually was forced out because of these plagiarism accusations. And it was very clear. I did a monologue, the last monologue of the year, people can go and watch it, about the clear cut examples. It's very obviously she violated the Harvard student conduct. But you cannot ignore that the original reason why all of them wanted to be expelled was because of Israel and of free speech.

Okay, so I think that's the ground. Now, we're at a point, though, where Ackman has opened kind of a Pandora's box. And in that Pandora's box, now it turns out that there is a controversy erupting over Ackman's wife, who is an Israeli-American entrepreneur, former professor at MIT. Let's put this up there on the screen. So now it turns out that Neri Ackman, Bill Ackman's wife, is now apologizing for plagiarism in her 2010 dissertation. Now, currently, Ackman is caught up in a war of words on Twitter and or known as X, in which he is defending his wife with great aplomb, saying, no, it's not plagiarism because she incorrectly did not cite basically direct copy paste from Wikipedia and several other instances. I think it is worth noting that Neri Oxman herself

has apologized for the incident. If you don't want to call it plagiarism, I don't know. I mean, I remember being in college and they were like, you can't copy and paste from Wikipedia. Is it technically plagiarism? I don't, you know, what? You can't just copy and paste from Wikipedia. Why don't we put this academic integrity? Shall we just call it that? Do we have to call it plagiarism? Now, according to Ackman, in this instance, let's put this up there, please, on the screen. He says, it does not strike me as plagiarism. Oh, really? Nor do I think it takes anything away from her work.

I am not sure who would even complain that they were not cited properly. I also wish I knew how to reach a human being at Wikipedia, as my Wikipedia biography needs correcting and would be meaningfully improved if there was someone that I could speak to. He truly is one of the most, he's just one of the most clownish, entitled figures that I've ever seen operate in politics. And I just want to note this. When the original plagiarism accusation came against Claudine Gay, here's what he said. The day that it dropped, he said, new whistleblower complaints alleged 40 instances of plagiarism accusation came against Claudine Gay. Here's what he said. The day that it dropped, he said, new whistleblower complaints alleged 40 instances of plagiarism. They raised serious issues about the initial investigation into work was conducted. The whistleblower levels

have credible accusations against Harvard. Now, whenever it's wife, he says, a few questions. How can one defend oneself against an accusation of plagiarizing Wikipedia for a dissertation written 15 years ago in 2009? Isn't the whole point of Wikipedia? It's a dynamic source of information that changes minute by minute based on edits and contributions. It's like, dude, come on. I know. You know, it's such a clear thing.

His new tack is like, it's disgraceful that they are attacking my wife. I'm like, well, dude, here's the thing. Normally, I would have a lot of sympathy because, you know, he's involved and she didn't necessarily enter the fray. But Neri Oxman is a public figure in the same way that I'm a public figure and you are as well, Crystal. She's appeared on the Lex Friedman podcast. And I think more importantly, I think

for our purposes is some of the past work that she engaged in with a man named Jeffrey Epstein. And just by the way, to underscore Ackman'sanic ego, let's put this up there, please, on the screen. He is literally bragging and reposting a meme that shows him as a Roman emperor talking about, quote, this guy literally beat out Brad Pitt competing for his wife. And he's not hiding it. He continues to kind of flaunt that, which if I was his wife, I'm not sure I would be too happy about that, but whatever. There's a lot of questions that are happening here. Just again, to underscore, Ms. Oxman, let's put this please up on the screen. Neri Oxman was deeply involved in a gift to Jeffrey Epstein, a bizarre giant glass marble, after helping solicit a donation from him. This goes back to 2019. And I actually did

a couple of things about this at the time, because one of the ways that Epstein kind of whitewashed his reputation is that he would constantly, he would solicit like meetings with MIT scientists and others so he could give them money. And he would then be seen appearing with all these prestigious scientists. Some say he may have been working for a foreign intelligence agency. But at the very least, what they do show is that her lab received a $125,000 gift directly tied to Jeffrey Epstein. And she then presented a gift to Jeffrey Epstein of this weird glass marble. Now, I personally find that to be the most objectionable thing

that involves his wife. Bill Ackman has said now that, you know, he says there will be more to say on the Epstein accusation. He's like, but to be clear, I never knew him. And he's now saying that it's very unfair because there has been no due process

because his wife was only given 90 minutes to respond. Here's my, like, once again, did you give clogging gay due process? And due process is a legal term. We're talking about journalism. Now, Business Insider, they only gave her 90 minutes to respond to a 6,000 word article. I personally think they should have given her a day to respond. I don't think that that was the right thing to do. If I had written this article, I would not have done that because I do understand that there should have been some

back and forth. So I'm not going to defend that. But I will defend the idea that Bill Ackman himself basically made it so that anybody is up for grabs, you know, who was involved in this situation. His wife has appeared publicly, has engaged in public discourse. His wife previously was connected to Jeffrey Epstein in a very weird and bizarre incident that she has now apologized for and all of that. And so I think that it's fair enough in this situation. Yeah. And while I do believe the Business Insider should have given him and her more time to

respond to the allegations, she did apologize. So she did admit that many of the facts in the story have not been disputed. But that gets us, Crystal, to the media company of the owns Business Insider, who it now appears may be censoring their own reporters for having the temerity to report about Bill Ackman's wife. That's a whole other situation. Yeah. So let me get to that one in a minute. First of all, number one, you live by the sword. Yeah, I agree. This is the standard you set. And he has some nerve to now, you know, it was, oh, this is plagiarism and she must go. He was mad that she only got pushed out as president and did not also lose her teaching job. He complained about that. He said that she should be fired completely due to, quote, serious plagiarism

issues. So not his real concern of, you know, quote, unquote, anti-Semitism. No, he decided to take what was available to him, this plagiarism, quote, unquote, scandal, and to use that to great effect. And he was mad that she was not fired completely because of these serious plagiarism issues. Now, when it's his wife, he is posting these lengthy diatribes on Twitter. I'm talking like freaking 5,000 words that it's like, what even is plagiarism really? And it's, you know, 5,000 words of nuance trolling about, well, who's to say? And the world has changed. And I don't know, is Wikipedia is just like lifting passages from Wikipedia? Can we even say that's plagiarism? Who's to judge? And it's a whole new world now

with AI, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So now that it's his wife, it's like, what even is plagiarism, really? But when it was Claudine Gay, it was bring out the ax. She needs to be gone. She needs to be gone forever, not even hold on to her teaching job, etc. So the double standard here is amazing. This is also a person who has complete double standard with regard to, quote unquote, free speech. Claims to be some free speech warrior until it's an issue that he cares deeply about. And suddenly he wants censorship. This is classic. This is what the overwhelming majority of elites, Democrats and Republicans, have actually pushed in terms of a quote unquote free speech agenda.

They don't want free speech. They want to be able to control what can be said and what cannot be said. That is very clear here. This is a man who thinks because he is extremely wealthy and because he has given certain large gifts to these various institutions, he thinks he should be able to run the show. He should be able to dictate who can stay, who can go, who can say what, on what campus, when, where, etc. He thinks he should be able to set the standards. And since he's setting the standards, he's got a little carve out exception for his wife. So that's what's going on with Bill Ackman. So, Sagar, to your point.

Yes. About the media reporting here. And by the way, this story, I have barely like I don't really care who the Harvard University president is. But it does say something important about these powerful elites, which do have a lot of power and influence. And this comes out too in terms of this media reaction. So Business Insider does this report. It's obviously tremendously important, impactful, gets a lot of traction, etc. Maybe they should have given her more time to respond. But it's not like she's rebutting the allegations. They didn't get anything wrong. She said it was true. They did not get anything wrong.

So what is the reaction now of Axel Springer, which owns Business Insider? Well, they're concerned about this. This may have been anti-Semitic, actually, this journalism that unfolded here. Put this up on the screen from them. This is incredible. This is reported out by Semaphore. They say, BI's report on Nary Oxman has caused division within the top ranks of its owner, Axel Springer. Some Axel leaders question whether the article was newsworthy and are concerned the report could

be seen as anti-Semitic and anti-Zionist. What? How in the world is pointing out accurate instances of plagiarism, anti-Semitic or anti-Zionist? Complete insanity. And by the way, par for the course for Axel Springer, which actually requires their employees, their big media conglomerate, they own Politico. They own Politico, I was going to say. And Business Insider and a number of other media outlets. They actually require their employees, this is crazy to me, to sign a pro-Israel pledge. It's on their website that one of their second founding principles is a commitment to Israel and the right of Israel to exist. So this is sort of par for the course for them.

But it's complete insanity. And it just shows you, again, the way that the billionaire class has so much control over what gets reported, how it gets reported, who gets apologized to, who can keep their job, who can't keep their job. Total, total insanity. And the last thing I'll say, Sagar, is there have been allegations that the attacks on Claudine Gay were racist. She's a black woman. I didn't see, because they went after everybody who didn't toe their line on canceling people who are advocating for Palestinian rights. So I didn't see that as having to do with her race. But if you're gonna say this

is anti-Semitic, then I think it's totally fair game to say, okay, well, then it's racist that you went after a black woman. I'm glad that you point that out because you're right, is that it was both not anti-Semitism and it was both not racism. And that's really why I wanted to weigh in because I was getting so annoyed, is that many of the liberals who were trying to defend Claudine Gay were like, this is an attack on a black woman. It's like, well, not always an attack on a black woman is about race, okay? Maybe sometimes. In this case, it actually is all about Israel and about our free speech. And there's a genuine conversation, I think, to be had about DEI and all of that. But the real tell to me about this is that Ackman does not seem to be annoyed that the

person who has succeeded Claudine Gay is a pro-Israel, pro-DEI Jew. And now all of a sudden, he has nothing to say. Oh, yeah. Because he claims that his concern is about DEI. But the moment that you have somebody who's in charge now, who has given you your little Israel carve-out on DEI, now we're good to go. And that's what I've been trying to say here from day one, folks. If you want to make common cause with Bill Ackman and all that, you are signing up just for an Israel exception, for a Jewish exception on DEI. And guess what? I think the whole regime is bad. And so if you legitimately are concerned about all these things, which I

deeply am, about race quotas and all this other crap going on in American society, this is not somebody you want to be. And also, it's just so obvious, too. This is about him. He doesn't care. Now it's just an ego project. He has no principles. Yeah, he just wants control. He just wants control. And so that's why, you know, Christopher Ruffo is out there, like, gloating, oh, I got a scalp, et cetera. It's like, congratulations, you got someone who's just going to censor more. It's just going to censor on more topics.

I would give Ruffo this. He would actually continue to wage war against the new Harvard president, whereas I don't believe that Bill Ackman will. The whole reason he did this was because she wasn't censorious enough. That's where this is so insane to me. It's like she actually gave the right answer in the congressional hearing. Maybe we could say she could word it better or whatever, but I had zero issue with what she said. And by the way, I just always have to remind people, it's not like there is a single documented instance of college kids running around saying genocide the Jews. What they're talking about are protest chants from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free. That's what they're talking about. And so for

you to come in over the top and cancel this person and get her fired effectively for not censoring, for actually having a free speech position. I just don't know what we're doing here. I don't know what we're doing here. I don't disagree with any of the substance of what you said. The only reason I'm going to defend Chris is Chris and Aaron have an accelerationist view of this where any scalp in higher education is a good scalp. They will continue to go after him. They've been doing it on Yale Law School and all these other places. Aaron, I'm not so sure, but Chris 100% is working and has always been to go after DEI. For him, he wants to purge and destroy the whole institution. How is this going after DEI? What

you're doing is you're saying we need another protected class. Well, no, he doesn't believe that. But that's what you're enforcing. That is what he's enforcing. He's willing to make common cause with Bill, which I think is the wrong decision. Again, I'll say that 100%. But he's not going to stop his war. Whether Bill stays with him or not, he's going to try and get the next guy fired. He'll continue to try and get DEI and all of that dismantled. This is not his goal. He was willing to work with him now in this one instance. I just think it's important to separate actual actors here. Ackman and the pro Israel crowd are temporary allies. But there are genuine people here who've been working on this for a long time. Now, do I think that this was the right decision? I don't think it was the right decision. I think

that they could have gone about it and should have done it in a very different way. I would not have made this a whole. I mean, the plagiarism story, the thing is, is that it is genuine on his face. It's just that the people were pushing it. We're doing it for one reason. And I think that for motivational, actually, you know what? We need to save this because there's a lot more to be said. We can't be hashing this out in a single instance. Yes. I mean, listen, I don't deny that she plagiarized. Obviously. If you're going to have that standard, have it across the board.

Totally. I agree. Including with Neri Oxman. There you go. Let's leave it at that. Maybe I'll do a monologue or something about this later. I have too much to say. 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. 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 know a lot of cops, and they get asked all the time, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Across the country, cops called this taser the revolution. But not everyone was convinced it was that simple. Cops believed everything that taser told them. From Lava for Good and the team that brought you Bone Valley comes a story about what happened when a multi-billion dollar company dedicated itself to one visionary mission. This is Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated.

I get right back there and it's bad. It's really, really, really bad. Listen to new episodes of Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Binge episodes 1, 2, and 3 on May 21st and episodes 4, 5, and 6 on June 4th. Add free at Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. Binge episodes 1, 2, and 3 on May 21st and episodes 4, 5, and 6 on June 4th. Add free at Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. I'm Clayton English. I'm Greg Glod. And this is season two of the War on Drugs Podcast.

We are back. In a big way. In a very big way. Real people, real perspectives. This is kind of star-studded a little bit, man. We got Ricky Williams, NFL player, Heisman Trophy winner. It's just a compassionate choice to allow players all reasonable means to care for themselves. Music stars Marcus King, John Osborne from Brothers

Osborne. We have this misunderstanding of what this quote-unquote drug thing is. Benny the Butcher. Brent Smith from Shinedown. We got B-Real from Cypress Hill. NHL enforcer Riley Cote. Marine Corvette.

MMA fighter Liz Karamush. What we're doing now isn't working, and we need to change things. Stories matter, and it brings a face to them. It makes it real. It really does. It makes it real. Listen to new episodes of the War on Drugs podcast season two on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

And to hear episodes one week early and ad-free with exclusive content, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. All right, what are you looking about today on this one? If you want a single example of why America is declining the way that it is today and how everything went wrong, you would be hard-pressed to find a better example than to simply trace the history of the Boeing Company, the iconic American aerospace company that pumped out nearly 100,000 planes for the use in Second World War and was a poster child for the might, the ingenuity, and the dominance of the United States in the post-war era. Boeing was America. It employed tens of thousands of people, provided middle-class wages. It was a pathway to upward mobility, helped us go to the moon, pioneered stunning new aircraft to propel

the U.S. military, kept innovating and designing new planes which propelled the vast majority of the nearly 100 million Americans today who set foot on a plane at least once a year. But underneath the Goliath, there has been a lot of rot, and rot now for quite some time. We got a reminder of this rot on January 5th, when stunning videos began to surface of the middle section of a brand new Boeing 737 MAX 9 that fell off in the middle of a flight that had just taken off from Portland, Oregon. Let's watch that if you haven't seen it yet. This wasn't even the emergency door. We're at the end of the plane, so the emergency door's right there. It was just a piece of the plane. Okay, so there was no one seated there. There was thankfully no one seated near the window.

For those who are just listening, the video shows a section of the plane missing mid-flight, blew out completely. How the hell does this happen? Naturally, people might think, oh, it's an old airplane or it's a maintenance issue. But it is stunning to consider this aircraft was only delivered to Alaska Airlines on October 31st, 2023, not even two months into its history

and a piece is falling out in the sky. The troubling part is that this is the latest brand new Boeing aircraft to have a safety issue that is endangering passengers in just the last five years. Recall, the span of just five months in late 2018 and 2019, two brand new Boeing 737 MAX 8 aircrafts crashed, killing a total of 346 people and forcing the entire fleet to be grounded,

launching a massive global investigation. The results of that investigation were stunning. They show how we got to this moment. Boeing was forced to pay $2.5 billion to the U.S. government to stave off criminal charges against the company and its top pilot, who they allege had conspired to hide software updates to its piloting system from the FAA and other authorities. That update was later found to be culpable for two of the crashes, and the secrecy was all part of a major corporate plan to rush the product to market to beat out competitors

and indicated that the company was hard-pressed to deliver big profits to its shareholders. Shareholder pressure has ruled Boeing now for decades. In fact, in the period between 2014 and 2019, Boeing bought back $60, $60 billion of its own stock, money that could and should have been used for research and development and product innovation and safety. Even after the crash, Boeing has still pumped tens of billions of dollars back into stock buybacks to stop the bleeding and to this day has not fundamentally altered their business MO. In fact, stock buybacks themselves were the cause of the company to have very little cash on hand when the coronavirus pandemic hit in 2020, which meant Washington had to bail out Boeing to the tune of billions of dollars.

So if you were tracking so far, it goes like this, the same arc for the whole country. Prior to the financialization era of the 1980s, Boeing built brand NS aircrafts that symbolized the might and progress of America. They traded, though, off the reputation of that brand, to prop up their share price, and it became the only thing that mattered to the executives. And when your top job is to pump out airplanes as a means of propping up your stock price instead of building great airplanes and hoping that the stock price follows, the 737 MAX 8 and 9 is what happens. The absolute most insane thing is that they were supposed to have their comeuppance already. If you read that 2021 Department of Justice agreement with

Boeing, it castigates the company for conspiring to hide important safety information from US regulators and says practices were put into place to ensure that something like this never happens again. Two years later, a brand new plane, the very latest iteration of that same aircraft, has a piece of side that blows off in the middle of the sky. A piddly $2.5 billion fine is not going to fix this, nor even is some fake statement of contrition or some fake investigation from the government. The entire system is responsible for creating this problem over decades, and thus the only solution is to burn down the system itself. I am not naive.

I know this is not gonna happen, which is why the future, in my opinion, is very grim. People too often have a recency bias in their thinking about America. Yeah, things are bad, but if you look at our history, we always come out fine in the end. What they don't tell you is that in an interim period, millions of people die, billions of dollars are lost.

The lessons that we eventually learn were usually eminently predictable and fixable in the moment. It was greed and corruption that usually stood in the way. The likely outcome is this. America is going to find itself in a genuine crisis. We will need planes, and we will find out we barely even know how to build them anymore. We will lose either a battle, lives, or a war. And people will ask, how the hell could this happen? And in that moment, we're going to rewind the clock, and we're going to look back at the Boeing company. And you're going to see how clearly you could predict our future. I told you so's are not going to matter so much to the people who suffer as a result of the folly that could be fixed right now. So look, Crystal, we don't know yet the cause.

And if you want to hear my reaction to Sager's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at BreakingPoints.com. 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. I've never found her. And it haunts me to this day. begging for help with unsolved murders. Every week on Hell and Gone Murder Line, I dig into a new case,

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

I know a lot of cops, and they get asked all the time, have you ever had to shoot your gun? Sometimes the answer is yes. But there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be no. Across the country, cops call this taser the revolution. But not everyone was convinced it was that simple. Cops believed everything that taser told them. From Lava for Good and the team that brought you Bone Valley comes a story about what happened when a multibillion-dollar company

dedicated itself to one visionary mission. This is Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated. I get right back there and it's bad. It's really, really, really bad. Listen to new episodes of Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated, on the

iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Binge episodes 1, 2, and 3 on May 21st and episodes 4, 5, and 6 on June 4th. Ad-free at Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. I'm Clayton English. I'm Greg Glod. And this is season two of the War on Drugs podcast. Yes, sir. We are back.

In a big way. In a very big way. Real people, real perspectives. This kind of starts that a little bit, man. We got Ricky Williams, NFL player, Heisman Trophy winner. It's just a compassionate choice to allow players all reasonable means

to care for themselves. Music stars Marcus King, John Osborne from Brothers Osborne. We have this misunderstanding of what this quote-unquote drug man. Benny the Butcher. Brent Smith from Shinedown. We got B-Real from Cypress Hill.

NHL enforcer Riley Cote. Marine Corvette. MMA fighter Liz Karamush. What we're doing now isn't working, and we need to change things. Stories matter, and it brings a face to them. It makes it real. It really does. It makes it real. It really does. It makes

it real. Listen to new episodes of the War on Drugs podcast season two on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And to hear episodes one week early and ad-free with exclusive content, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. So guys, earlier we covered some of the political fallout that has stemmed in large part from Joe Biden's unconditional support for Israel in their assault on Gaza. And that has extended even to some major party donors. Put this report up on the screen. This is from Politico. They say a Biden donor calls it quits. This is with regards to Ahmed Khan. And they say, as Khan views it, the Biden administration has dropped the ball. It's failed to meaningfully push Israel to minimize civilian casualties and has stood behind Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, even as his government

has engaged in what Khan describes as ethnic cleansing on the way to genocide. Quote, this is bullshit. You make moral compromises being involved in politics and ethical shortcuts, but this is just a bridge too far. And Ahmed Khan, a philanthropist and political activist, joins us now. Great to have you, sir. Good to see you, sir. Thanks. Thanks for having me on. Yeah, of course. So what brought you to the place where you are making this break and pushed you to make those comments?

Well, I mean, my background is I deliver humanitarian aid in war zones. This is what I do. I've done it in just about every war zone of our time. I started in my early 20s in Rwanda. I've worked in Sudan, Somalia, Congo, Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Yemen, you name it. So it's the thing that's most important to me. I spent most of the last two years in Ukraine. And what I've seen in Gaza,

in touch with maybe 500 families, maybe more so, thousands of people. And I've been to the other side of the border, the Rafah border, multiple times. I've never seen anything like this. So this is the ultimate in human suffering. There are no words to describe what's happening there. What puts it on a scale that's different than, you know, even what you've seen in places like Rwanda and places like Ukraine and Yemen. Well, in all the other places, there were safe spaces.

In Gaza, there is no place that's safe. There is no one that's safe. So you were talking about the entire population of 2.2 million people that have absolutely no place to go. You can't rent an apartment. You can't go into any building because no building is safe. When you go to a safe zone that's a camp, let's say you have $300 and you buy a tent, you go to that camp and that camp is bombed. So that level of desperation, not knowing if you're going to survive through the day, that is something that's unprecedented in our times and probably ever. The Israelis control all the borders, and I suppose that's because that's the way the U.S. administration wants it to be.

So in other war zones, you can deliver aid. Now, for example, in Ukraine, one of the hospitals said, our CT machine was blown up. We need a new one. I purchased one with a friend and we delivered it. That's impossible in Gaza. And purchased one with a friend and we delivered it. That's impossible in Gaza. And you've seen what's happened to the hospitals and you're probably seeing what's happening today in Al-Aqsa Hospital in central Gaza. So Ahmed, how has the Biden team responded to this? Or have they even? Have they reached out to you and you've spoken, you've been involved now in politics for quite some time. How many people share your beliefs but are not willing to come out as publicly to say that this is going to be a political problem for the president?

Well, I've had some people reach out to me off the record and say, you know, I admire what you're doing without going to say that they agree with me. But I'm sure plenty of people agree with me. But, you know, politics isn't really my thing. I'm involved just sort of like as a shared values type thing, as a citizen. Like everybody should be involved in politics. But for me, the level of humanitarian suffering that they are responsible for, you know, it's just something that is inexplicable. Ahmed, what's your response to people who would say, okay, yeah, what Biden is doing here with his support is horrible. It's indefensible.

But what, you're going to help elect Trump? Is he going to be any better? He also did whatever Israel wanted when he was president of the United States. So what's your response to that? Well, I'm not, you know, that's really not my concern. My concern are the 11,000 dead children, probably another 20,000 children who have catastrophic injuries that they'll never recover from, lost legs, lost arms. Maybe 500,000 children who are on the brink, if not on starvation, they're getting no food groups. Maybe the children under two are maybe getting some bread every day. You know, those are my concerns. So as a humanitarian, my greatest concerns are

these people who have no voice. You know, I will leave it to the rest of the 350 million Americans or how many ever are there are voting age to decide who's the next president. But I think I, as a humanitarian, should hold the people I've supported responsible. And, you know, it's my small effort. I'm not some gigantic mega donor. I mean, most of my philanthropy is doing stuff like this. So, Amit, you've mentioned you've been doing a lot of work in Ukraine. Obviously, you've been traveling the world trying to as well get aid and you said to deliver it. Do you think that this has

undermined the U.S. position in Ukraine? If you were just recently in Ukraine, how do they respond to what's going on there? How do they reconcile some of the ways that we've talked about Russian actions on Ukraine with what's going on in Israel? Yeah, I was in Ukraine two weeks ago. I've been there for the majority of the last two years, mostly along the front lines, actually delivering aid to frontline villages and alongside the Ukrainian army. Well, you know, what can they say? Because ultimately the U.S. is their major sponsor. But of course, the deliveries on all accounts with regards to civilians and the military

have come down. So of course, they're very frustrated, but they don't really have the ability to complain because who do you complain to? Right. What have you made of the comments from U.S. officials that have been unequivocal in support? We occasionally get these little pearl clutching,

oh, they need to reduce civilian casualties. But there was a recent response from John Kirby. He was asked about South Africa's application to the ICJ charging Israel with genocide. And this is how he responded. Take a listen. South Africa's filed this 84 page lawsuit against Israel, accusing them of genocide. Israel says that this is blood libel. Does Washington agree? And where does this put Washington and Pretoria? We find this submission meritless, counterproductive, and completely without any basis in fact whatsoever. What do you make of responses like that? It's nuts. I mean, they're sourced, right? They're footnotes. There're sources, there's evidence there and time will tell, right? And unfortunately, they will be vindicated

and everyone that supports them will be vindicated in the future, which is always the case when a sort of action like this is happening. But it really matters, what are we doing today? I have no doubt that this will all come out, like every single one of these innocent civilians that's been murdered for no reason. It will all come out, and hopefully we will all hold them accountable, but that doesn't really help people get through

today. In terms of the lift service, about minimizing civilian casualties and increasing aid, that's just more nonsense. It's complete nonsense. So either they, I don't even know if they believe what they say they're saying, you know, like it's, it's actually really crazy. The deliveries of aid is, is meaningless. The numbers are incredibly low. And the civilian casualties have not been reduced. So if you're saying you're doing that, then either you're failing or you're lying. I don't know which one it is. Part of Israel's defense that they're floating to the ICJ is that, oh, there have been hundreds of aid trucks that have been allowed in. We've been trying to, you know, enable the provision of additional aid. You know, as someone who has been directly

involved in these efforts, just give us a sense of what has led to this catastrophic breakdown and how their words are so disconnected from the reality that the people you're speaking to in Gaza are actually facing. Well, I mean, there's a series of security checks. And so when you drive to the Rafa border crossing, you will pass hundreds and hundreds of trucks. Some of them have been there for three weeks, four weeks. Actually, I don't even know how the drivers remain like normal, just sitting in their trucks. And it's just a matter of each truck has to go through a number of security checks. And often goods are rejected. So actually the most high-value goods that are the most required are rejected, medical items, stuff for the hospitals.

You're not allowed to bring in anything with power, even solar you can't bring in, even tents. I mean, there are literally warehouses full of stuff that's been rejected, and they're just sitting there, donated items. And it's just very clear that it's, you know, I'd love to hear what the answer to that is, but as far as I can tell from everyone I've spoken to in being there, it's the level of the security checks. And then even inside Gaza, the World Health Organization and UNOCHA will try to move stuff from south to central Gaza and they'll be rejected.

I think there were four rejections yesterday alone. Wow. Finally, how do you think history will judge this president? I just don't know how he disentangles himself from what the Israelis are doing in Gaza. I mean, you know, it was very obvious to me on October 8th that the plan was to ethnically cleanse Gaza. There's just no other way you look at it. I've worked with the U.S. Army. I've worked alongside the Ukrainian Army. I've worked alongside the Kurdish Peshmerga.

I've never seen this lack of interest in protecting civilians. And, you know, there's nobody who can tell me what a responsible army is because I've literally been with every army on the front line. So, you know, nobody at their, you know, spin class at Equinox is going to tell me what a responsible army is. And, you know, there's no, I just don't know.

It was clear from the beginning, right? It was very clear what the purpose was. And they tell us what the purpose is. They tell us what they're doing. No shortage of Knesset members, no shortage of members of the prime minister's cabinet have said this is what they want to do. And so for the U.S. administration to then turn around and tell us, oh, you know, that's irresponsible. We wish we didn't talk like that. It's sort of like the U.S. is kind of like, we don't really want them speaking out loud on what they're doing on the ground.

And that's, I mean, I don't even know what the word for that is. It's not infuriating. It's some other word, but I don't know what it is. Ahmed, thank you for your time today. And more importantly, thank you so much for the work that you do. I really deeply, deeply admire and respect you for it.

So thank you. Thanks, Ahmed. Thanks to the two of you. I appreciate it. deeply admire and respect you for it. So thank you. Thanks, Amin. Thanks to the two of you. I appreciate it. Absolutely. It's our pleasure. Okay. It's been great to be back and we will see you all tomorrow. This Pride Month, we are not just celebrating. We're fighting back. I'm George M. Johnson, author of the most banned book in America. On my podcast, Fighting Words, I sit down with voices that spark resistance and inspire change. This year, we are showing up and showing out. You need people being like, no, you're not what you tell us what to do.

This regime is coming down on us, and I don't want to just survive. I want to thrive. Fighting Words is where courage meets conversation. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Clayton English. I'm Greg Lott.

And this is Season 2 of the War on Drugs podcast. Sure. Last year, season two of the War on Drugs podcast. Last year, a lot of the problems of the drug war. This year, a lot of the biggest names in music and sports. This kind of starts that a little bit, man. We met them at their homes. We met them at their recording studios. Stories matter and it brings a face to them. It makes it real.

It really does. It makes it real. Listen to new episodes of the War on Drugs podcast season 2 on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. The OGs of uncensored motherhood are back and badder than ever. I'm Erica. And I'm Mila.

And we're the hosts of the Good Moms Bad Choices podcast, brought to you by the Black Effect Podcast Network every Wednesday. Yeah, we're moms, but not your mommy. Historically, men talk too much. And women have quietly listened. And all that stops here. This is an iHeart Podcast.