Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 2/13/26: Epstein Goldman Sachs Lawyer OUT, "Zohran" of North Carolina Primaries Democrat

Episode Date: February 13, 2026

Ryan, Emily and Griffin break down Jeffrey Epstein's Goldman Sachs Lawyer being ousted and Rubio stoking the humanitarian crisis in Cuba. Then we're joined by Bernie backed NC Congressional candidate Nida Allam who we talk to about ICE, AI Data Centers, and her detractors calling her the Zohran Mamdani of North Carolina. Then we take a look at James Fishback's campaign for the Florida governor race where he refers to cafeteria food as 'goy slop', and James Talarico in Texas adopting the anti oligarchy banner while previously taking donations from Miriam Adelson's casino gambling group. NC Candidate Nida Allam: https://nidaallam.com/   To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show AD FREE, uncut and 1 hour early visit: www.breakingpoints.comMerch Store: https://shop.breakingpoints.com/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed Human. 1969, Malcolm and Martin are gone. America is in crisis. At a Morehouse college, the students make their move. These students, including a young Samuel L. Jackson, locked up the members of the Board of Trustees, including Martin Luther King's Senior.

It's the true story of protests and rebellion in black American history that you'll never forget. I'm Hans Charles. I'm Manilic Lamouba. Listen to the A building on the I-Hearton. Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can scroll the headlines all day and still feel empty. I'm Ben Higgins and if you can hear me is where culture meets the soul. Honest conversations about identity, loss, purpose, peace, faith, and everything in between.

Celebrities, thinkers, everyday people, some have answers. Most are still figuring it out. And if you've ever felt like there has to be more to the story, this show is for you. Listen to if you can hear me on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Over the last couple years, didn't we learn that the folding chair was invented by black people because of what happened in Alabama? This Black History Month, the podcast, Selective Ignorance with Mandy B, unpacked black history and culture with comedy, clarity, and conversations that shake the status quo. The Crown Act in New York was signed in July of 2019, and that is a bill that was passed to prohibit discrimination based on hairstyles, associated with race. To hear this and more, listen to Selective Ignorance with Mandy B

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

please go to breakingpoints.com, become a member today, and you'll get access to our full shows, unedited, ad-free, and all put together for you every morning in your inbox. We need your help to build the future of independent news media, and we hope to see you at breaking points.com. Good morning, everyone. Happy Friday, Ryan and Emily. We have an amazing show, don't we?

Indeed, we do. Indeed, we do. I just stepped on that. I'm so sorry. That was a great, enthusiastic, robust. Indeed, we do. This is why we're the B team, you know. We're working on it.

So we've got more Epstein news, more of our, you know, associates going down today. We've also got U.S. strangling Cuba, Mexico sending Navy ships. We also have some more ICE news with Tom Homan ending the Minneapolis incursion. What are they calling it? What was it? The raid. Operation Metro Surge. Operation Metro Surd has completed its mission and is returning home.

The insurgents have been Victoria. That's right. Yes. The battle has been won. We've got a little mea koppel for me on some James Fishback stuff going down in Florida

that I'd love to talk to Emily about. And we also have Don't laugh. And we also have a congressional candidate, Ryan, at 10. Who do we got? We got Nita Alam

who in 2022 I covered this race. It was her against Valerie Foucher. Actually, I think it's Fushi. We'll ask, we'll ask Nita. And A-PAC threw something like $7 plus million into this race. She was a county commissioner.

And it seemed like basically because she was Muslim, there was some criticism of Israel, but it seemed like pretty heavily coded. Like, let's make sure we don't get any more Muslims into the capital. And she lost by something like 4,000 votes. after that Fushi, Valerie Fushi was critical of Israel, like gently a couple of times. And so the district has been redrawn. It's actually a little bit more favorable to Nita, who was more progressive.

And if the election unfolded exactly as it did in 2022, Alam actually probably wins this time. But this time, it seems like there's no APEC support coming for Valerie Fushi because of this very gentle criticism. that she had offered, you know, when the political tide started turning very heavily against Israel for what it was doing in Gaza. Last night, a super PAC came in support of Nita Alam, apparently dropping $500,000 worth of ads supporting her. We don't know who's funding that. Alam, you know, probably doesn't either.

If she does, maybe she'll tell us. but it's an interesting kind of turn of events because now APEC might end up losing this seat that they spent $7 million four years ago to win. It's beautiful. Wow. And what's this gentle criticism? Like, could you give me an example?

We actually even tried to have it on the show because, I don't know, stop killing children. You know, it was like a little nudge in the right direction. I can look it up. But it was very mild, but it was very mild, it was it was a it was eyebrow raising enough because i think she might have even cast like a vote against one of the resolutions that apak wanted everybody to support which i remember was eyebrow raising because she had taken the apac you know she'd taken all this apac money and then

she took the apac trip to israel and then voted on something that didn't change anything but you know but didn't vote with them on something it's like oh that's this is interesting what's going on here um and apparently A Pact not very forgiving. And Fushi has said she will, quote, will not accept A PAC money in 2026. So I think, you know, after taking $7 million of it through a super PAC four years ago, now she's saying she won't take it. And she might lose as a result.

Bring 2025. She said, y'all know that I took the money from A PAC, but check to see how much I've taken since that time and check my voting record to see how I have voted and what I have voted as it relates to the people of Gaza. And she, this was in response to somebody saying if she regretted taking all this money from, from A-PAC and taking this A-PAC trip.

And so A-PAC did not taking kindly to that. Well, we'll learn more about that from Nita in just a little bit. Excited to hear that. But once again, we've got a little bit more Epstein news coming down the pike this morning. in Goldman Sachs' General Counsel, Kathy Rumler,

a former top Obama administration lawyer, is out at Goldman Sachs after email showed a friendship with the sex offender, Jeffrey Epstein, spanning many years. Now, Ryan, has she shown up in your investigations at all in your Gmail searches? She's in like every email. If you search the inbox, it's like, oh,

Rumbler's on this one. Is she BCC'd on everything? She was general counsel for Obama And so she was And we've reported this She So she The Rihonda Rothschild was a client

Of one of the firms that she was with She was on the Rothschild account She then ended up becoming the kind of the middle attorney Between Epstein and the Rothschild account Leifam and Watkins That's when she was that Latham was known as the, yeah, Epstein was what was known as the gatekeeper for the Ross, for the Arianda-Roschild account and the Edmond to Rosschild Bank. She's the, she's the first Rothschild to run the banking operation who was not born a Rothschild.

She's like born in El Salvador, is it? Central, she's from Central America, married into the family. Husband, I guess, died. And then she became boss of this. And Epstein and her were very close. And so Rumbler managed that operation. he also tried to connect her with Gates, Bill Gates. That didn't pan out as a client situation, but Rumler helped to then negotiate a settlement between the Rothschild Bank and the U.S. over

some corruption and money laundering. He helped negotiate a settlement between the Ross Child Bank and Israel over tax fights because the Rothschild banking operation was like, we don't owe you anything. We literally financed the creation of the state of Israel. You'd think, how do we owe you anything? Israel's like, no, you're a nonprofit, and you are supposed to live up to your non-profit obligations to fund these education programs and other initiatives, and you're just not doing it.

And so Epstein helped negotiate a settlement around that. We have a couple other stories coming about other things that Epstein and Rumler did, which I'll hold for later. But I guess it just became too much of a distraction at Goldman. with all this, you know, the tightness of the relationship. I mean, this is, she's the CLO. She's a chief legal officer of one of the biggest and most powerful companies in the entire world. And they stood by her over and over again.

She is constantly copied on email. She's in conversations with Steve Bannon, those conversations that Michael Wolf appears to have leaked. It's Steve Bannon, Jeffrey Epstein, Michael Wolf, and Kathy Rumler strategizing about public relations, essentially. She was a participant in that. We still don't understand exactly what was happening in those conversations. She, in one email, brags to Epstein about getting a top award from the CIA by John Brennan,

which is very important because Kathy Rumler was dispatched when she was G.C. of the Obama White House to deal with the fallout from the Snowden leaks, meaning groups like, I would say, the Brennan Center and the ACLU were concerned about the contents. And Rumler was the one then dealing with it. There are calendar invites for Kathy, comma, NSA signal intelligence between Epstein and Kathy Rumler. There are mentions. Which apparently that's related to our story about biohacking rather than, like, people think of signals intelligence as intercepts of signals. He's using it in a way that I don't quite understand,

but it's a reference to bioengineering and biohacking rather than intercepting anyway. Well, yeah, no, I think that's, he's, what it sounds like is he's thinking of code breaking, and he would be asked by one person. Of the genome, yeah. Right, yeah, and someone would say, what are you talking about?

Hackers are codebreakers? And he would say, codebreakers. So anyway, we don't fully understand the, complete picture of what Kathy Rumler was doing with Jeffrey Epstein. She was getting lavish gifts from him and referring to him as Uncle Jeffrey, very disgusting, by the way, referring to him as Uncle Jeffrey when he would shower gifts on her. She did go to the island. He was giving her all kinds of fancy stuff and keeping her around very clearly. They talked about her romantic situation together. he said he wanted to see her DC one day, her version of DC one day, CIA, NSA.

So still don't fully understand what that means. Some people have said it means that Epstein wasn't CIA or wasn't NSA, didn't have any connection with the intelligence agencies. I don't know that you can jump to that because we don't know what he told Kathy Rumler and what kind of game he was playing overall. But it's Goldman stood by Kathy Rumler for years. This has been dogging her for years, and the emails made it untenable because she was clearly so intimately, intimately connected with Jeffrey Epstein, sharing her innermost thoughts and secrets about her romance life. She was a participant in these big picture schemes, as DropSight has reported, and as Ryan has been all over. So it would be absurd to keep Kathy Rumler on. It was already absurd enough, but this took down the CLO of one of the most powerful companies in the world. So, we'll see what happens. I think the legal world, I think the legal world and Sacks in particular stuck by her, partly because everything she knows, but also lawyers are loathe to ever, and for good reason,

blame that lawyers for the client's behavior. If you do that, every defense attorney is then associated with the depravity and criminality of whatever defendant, whether they're a murderer or a pedophile or a, politician. And so they want to draw a bright line that like, look, no, no, no, no. A lawyer is giving legal advice and is not morally or ethically culpable for the behavior of the client. Otherwise.

Even though she was asking for dating advice from Jeffrey Epstein. And so these emails getting leaked and like with that, with that boundary being so heavily blurred with some of those emails, then I think that's why they finally like, okay, we got to throw her overboard. Why are so many people asking for relationship advice from like a known predator? That is a thing. That's the guy who's going to help me with my date. It does keep coming up over and over again from women and men.

Yeah, very bizarre. It's all over. I don't know if, Ryan, you've seen a lot of this, but just like going through the email, someone that's not newsworthy, but you're looking, you're like, why is this person pouring out their heart over email to Jeffrey Epstein? Larry Summer's a great example. So she's stepping down to her going back to a private life, to her whatever, five houses or whatever she's got. Is there any legal potential here to charge her with anything?

Or is this kind of like what you're saying where, hey, she has that sort of lawyerly defense? I mean, so far, like she's just, you know, it sounds like they had a friendship and a business relationship. and if she's not involved with trafficking or aware of it, there's no reason. Like, if you're at Jeffrey Epstein, you're not going to tell your, like, Goldman Sachs level lawyer about your trafficking. Like, that's, like, you've got shadier people that you're going to, I think, loop in on that. Well, in fact, like, what they were working on in those PR sessions, like these PR bull sessions was he was maintaining the, was a witch hunt and they were helping him. So maybe they genuinely believed him or maybe they just wanted the money.

But that's a question that Steve Bannon is going to get as well because he wasn't just documenting Epstein. He was actively actively participating in a strategy. And this is in their text as well and a strategy effort. Cultural context is useful to remember too. By 2018, 2019, this is the height and the crest and then the downside of Me Too. people in the Upper East Side, the powerful people in the Upper East Side at that point

were sick of me too. Like they were done with it because they saw it as this mob Democratic check on their power. Like the Upper East Side said they want to call the shots of who gets to be in and who gets to be out.

Not public anger. Not the shitty media men list. Not that media men list. they don't want anything other than themselves to dictate who gets to be in the rooms. And so by this point in time, those elites are completely fed up with this moment in time. And so they were, I think, probably willing to defend. They were like, all right, Harvey Weinstein, we threw him overboard. We sacrificed Harvey.

They were starting to circle the wagons. I'm sorry. By Aziz. Sorry. Because they look at that. like they can see where this goes. Like, wait a minute, public anger at what we're doing. Okay, right now it's what we're doing to women, but it could evolve into what we're doing to workers, you know, what we're doing to the country, what we're doing to, you know, children and

the way that they're producing anxiety and across the board. And if people get anger and that anger can translate into accountability and consequences, that's not good for us. That's not good for us. And so they started to have some class solidarity. And so I think that their defense of him has to be understood also in that growing class solidarity, which is like frankly inspiring. Like if the workers of the country had the level of class solidarity that they have, it would be over for them. Lessons to learn for the proletariat. And now speaking of this elite class solidarity, J-mail has put together this really handy graphic that I wanted to put up screen right now.

They worked with The Economist to analyze 1.4 million emails from the latest Epstein file drops, and this kind of shows the different sectors that we've seen so far from top 500 Epstein correspondence. Now, if you're just listening on the podcast, it's broken out into kind of these squares. We've got, you know, finance, media entertainment, tech, law, real estate, business, politics,

academia, and of course, girlfriends slash exes. And yeah, just looking at this on a grid is just kind of shocking. It is. There's also, and this is not shaded Gmail, it's more the economist. Because I love Gmail, we're working with them on building this product.

But good to have some countries in there, too. Sure, that might be a second graph. Russia, Africa, or you break it down, Ivory Coast. Nigeria, you know, and on, like, that would be, that would be interesting. Just to kind of have a heat map of the globe to show that the way that power and wealth are flowing around the globe. But we'll maybe I'll talk to them. We'll do that one next. That's a good drop site thing.

Yeah. Could you put that back up on the screen, actually? Absolutely. Because there's a really important number while we're talking about Kathy Rumler. If you look at that graphic, girlfriend slash exes, one of them has 41,000 emails. That's crazy. That looks to me like it's the highest number of emails on the chart. But Galane Maxwell is at 10,000.

Kathy Rumler is over 11,000. And Kathy Rumler wasn't even introduced to Epstein until later in this timeline. So, right. Like a lot of the Galane emails go back to like 2005. But it seems like they didn't meet until 2015, as far as we can tell. So the sheer volume of messages back and forth, I mean, look at Deepak Chopra, 5300. As you're going through the inbox, you do see just the patterns of his communication. And I think it's just that number when you're looking at all these other important people that he was talking to all the time.

And then you see Rumler at 11,000 emails in a matter of like four years. That should tell you something about why Goldman Sachs suddenly got very nervous. The only other thing you wanted to add about Rumler is that clearly if she's getting a behind-the-scenes CIA medal, and has implied to him in somewhere or the other that she's involved with NSA. And we know she was involved with the fallout from the Snowden leaks. So it would make sense. Also, she was White House General Counsel. She might have felt confident about some level of immunity, formal or otherwise.

Yeah, and also, yes, absolutely. And also, like, if I were going to be her, like, if I were going to do that, defend her on this. Yes, Epstein is like a world historical villain at this point, as we understand it. At Goldman Sachs and at the top law level, everyone you're defending is a world historical villain. Like, these are all bad people. So like from her perspective, she's like, wait a minute, all of a sudden, like, I can't

like work with bad people. Like, do you understand the like occupation that I'm in? Like, this is a social. where you look around and you've got, you know, Henry Kissinger over here. You got, like, you have... Yeah, in all the same room,

literally at the same parties. Like, these are all of the villains. And, oh, isn't that, isn't that like a current dictator? Oh, that's a former dictator? Like, he ran death squads financed by us. Like, so you're supposed to look around this room and be like, oh, but that guy is off limits. Like, they're all rotten.

And it's just kind of bad luck for her that this is the one that got plucked out and was like, oh, actually, it turns out you're right at the center of this global sex trafficking scheme. And so I suppose it's also possible if she was a handler or something. I don't know. It's hard to figure any of that out. I like Ryan's defense. Ryan, you have a future at Goldman. Yes, it's an opening too. there's a big opening

so his days are numbered for the Friday shows but we have more from Rokana this came from Rokana yesterday this is a new email that was redacted Rokana says

I saw this email at DOJ today this is a political figure who shouldn't have been redacted it's a direct violation of rep Thomas Massey in my Epstein files Transparency Act

and I'll read a little bit of the email here very interesting one this is a very interesting so this is to Jeffrey Epstein subject, I beat Bush. Hi, Jeffrey. I got more votes than Jeb Bush got in Iowa,

and I only had one congressional district. He had four. It's so funny, to me, totally embarrassing to him, still like Trump, and might be a delegate to the Republican convention, was in St. Thomas for a couple days, did call this island but never heard back, went scuba diving off St. Jeff,

and it was beautiful. Would be totally funny, to me at least, if you put a big fake shark or statue under the water where the divers go. Love ya, redacted. Love you. So the Internet's assessment is that this is Marco Rubio, no, I'm just joking, that it's Gwendolyn Beck, 2014 congressional candidate, and Todd Blanche is saying that they,

that Rokon is wrong and that the person counts as a victim. but this gets into a very dicey territory because they've tried to call you know they called scaramucci a victim like they they redacted scaramucci like what was tell us about the mooch's

victimization like what's going on? Is it like fraud? Is that their argument? I don't think so so what was Beck involved with? Like that's that we want to like how is she a victim? Like there's no evidence that she is a victim here

so why are you redacting her name? You can't just redact every woman's name who's in here. Tell us who she is, Ryan. What's that? Tell us who she is. She ran for Congress, and she was close with Epstein clearly. So what was her role?

Like what's going on here? Just a Republican? Because it was sent the day after the Iowa. Yes, 2016, February 2016. Yeah. Okay, so she was a, she was a, Gwendolyn Beck, independent, she was an independent.

Hitting all quadrants here. Well, you know, there was... She got 5,420 votes as an independent. Incredible to beat Jeb. That's a huge accomplishment. I, too, would be bragging to all my billionaire friends. And she only ran, yeah, right, in Virginia's eighth district. It was for a second it did before all of this came to light.

It was like, okay, so try to figure out, I was asking AI which Republican candidate in 2016 has posted about scuba diving before? Obviously, it wasn't Chris Christie. It wasn't. It didn't seem to me like it would be Ted Cruz. So it was a little bit of a mystery. I felt like Agatha Christie for a while. Yeah, who left the scuba gear at the Epstein Island?

So, you know. Epstein clue? Oh, that would sell. Yeah, an Epstein clue. Yeah, that one, unfortunately. Now, Emily, you mentioned Steve Bannon earlier, and a new Steve Bannon thing came across my desk, and I don't know if you've seen this one, but I wanted you to react to it here. This person says that Steve Bannon's war room was Jeffrey Epstein's idea so that Steve could avoid registering under Fara, no, Bannon friend of the pod.

So here in this, it says, Steve Bannon says, excellent. Then the redacted name says, Yorgie Schwartz, real name of George Soros, was careful not to register under FARA. NGOs were carefully structured. My reading is that you can form a media company and make the umbrella exemption. Steve Bannon says, on it.

Then redacted says the media co has lots of advantages, source privilege, etc. So, Emily, what do you make? this? Well, first of all, this was like one of the only times I've looked at an Epstein piece of advice and been like, well, I guess people were actually getting decent guidance from him because that's quite a loophole that Epstein was steering Steve Bannon to it. Now, I don't think that necessarily means war room itself is a creation. My understanding of Steve Bannon is that he's had a lot of companies over the years and is one of those people that manages different things. Yeah, yeah, although he didn't. create Bright Barton. It wasn't like his own thing. But yeah, he had, I think he had a film company called like Victory Films. And he's had, well, I don't know if he created a separate entity where he was getting, for example, money from his sources and the kind of populist right in Europe. And I don't know the date on this. I meant to look it up last night. But maybe he was getting money. And then maybe

that's a pass-through entity to War Room. Or maybe it's just a separate entity where he's taking money from these people, and then it goes into War Room. And potentially maybe he never created this media company that Jeffrey Epstein was referring to, and War Room is like some, I don't know how it's formally incorporated. It could be different, but Bannon is, boy, does this man have a lot to answer for? Because these messages are strategies to help Epstein, to, to court. coordinate with Epstein to have Epstein help him to infiltrate the Trump circle. There's a point where they're going back and forth over whether Bannon should try to bring Jared Kushner into the kind of populist world. And Bannon and Cushner have always been at each other's throats. So Epstein is like encouraging him to get him with Cushner, which is interesting for UAE purposes. So there's just it's it's there are a million pieces of this puzzle. I actually don't even know how many pieces there are to this puzzle.

I just know that there's a million of them on the ground, and none of them look particularly good for Steve Bannon. Yeah, and it seems like Bannon is using Epstein to try to get leverage over Trump. Like he feels burned, you know the Trump world better, but feels burned by getting pushed out of the White House. He wants to kind of be the guy who is the, you know, colonel of the maximum. army on the you know on the outside um and he's there's some one very revealing message where bannon says something like trump you know keeps trump up at night you know knowing knowing that we're so close

to each other um which is not true because trump doesn't sleep so nothing keeps him up at night he's just up he's just tv keeps him up at night too self he keeps him up his own broken brain keeps him up But clearly, like, he's getting insight and information about Trump that he feels like he can use his leverage against Trump at that point to, like, solidify his position in the MAGA world. The fact that he's maintained his position in the MAGA world, despite that knowledge being out there, is kind of wild. Like, you would think you get caught doing that. A proper mob boss is like, Ben, and how could you do this to me? Like, you're gone. But no, like, which I think speaks to his significant grassroots support that remains.

He is, like, he has an independent power base at this point. He is somebody who, Ryan, you probably listen to more war room than I do. He's somebody who over the years will, if there's an issue up in the air and people, like, I don't know which way MAGA is going to come down on this. Steve Bannon has the pulse of the sort of people who are going to go to Trump rallies. or maybe people who don't even have enough money to go to Trump rallies. Like the hardcore grassroots populist MAGA, Steve Bannon just instinctively understands. And to some extent, I think he understands it better than almost anyone with the exception of Donald Trump, who has other concerns.

You know, he knows he can shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and the base is going to. So like when it comes down to economic populism, Natsack, foreign policy, all of that, Steve Bannon, because he is from Breitbart, Tea Party world. And he's like an ideological, he's ideologically aligned with that world. He's able to be the real like Maga whisperer. And so what it looks like he was trying to do is use other very powerful wealthy people to consolidate the power of the grassroots to be as powerful as, like to be a Maga general in a way where he could direct behind the scenes no matter what Trump was doing. And speaking of the financial precarity of his audience, have you noticed what kind of ads, the ban on show plays on the war room mostly? No. Gold?

Plenty of gold. Credit card debt consolidation. You have tax bills that are way overdue. You need to fight the IRS. Sulfuric acid. And then, of course, Getter, which I think to this day is still advertising. Yeah.

That you can get Charlie Kirk's thoughts. if you download the Getter app. It's like, put a new ad in there, guys. Just record another one. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think you were talking about silver solution, Griffin, not sulfuric acid.

Well, what did they ship to the island? What do they burn the body? Oh, I don't know. Sulfuric acid, yeah. Oh, they did. Oh, I thought you were talking about, like, cringe ad on. I was talking about the gallons they sent, you know, what they put in the tub and, like, breaking bad to burn the body.

There you go. There you go. Well, I just want to say, I wanted to move on to Cuba next, but I did just want to say we're going to keep on covering all the intricate details of this. And this weekend, I really came to appreciate the work that happens on this show and from DropSight because we were at a media event over the weekend with people that kind of imbibe a little bit more of the mainstream coverage of Epstein. And when I talk to people at our media table, that Epstein potentially was associated with, Assad and former PM Ahoubara. People looked at me like I was fucking insane, which goes to show you there's really two, there's kind of two narratives kind of happening, one that's very surface level in the mainstream media and one where you're going to get a lot more of the details and paint a much broader and filled in picture at places like DropSight and what we try to do here. So I was proud of the show and very embarrassed at dinner because people thought

I was crazy. I was trying to think this morning, like, if we weren't doing the work that we're doing, like what the media landscape would look like when it came to the coverage of Jeffrey Epstein, not that we are remotely the first one to go down this path. Like Whitney Webb has done terrific work on this for many years at this point. And plenty of, you know, plenty of others in the, like, independent space have done it. But among those who are kind of read and viewed with a mass audience, because if you wanted to tell your aunt or your uncle,

no, no, no, seriously, there's something to this. Go read this X News article or go watch this video that lays it out. Without breaking points or drops, I'd be like, what exactly would you send them that they would be able to read and be like, oh, okay, this is credible and I understand this. Not much. Twitter threads. Yeah.

You know, nobody wants Twitter threads. Because especially Twitter, like the way that they're putting this stuff out. Yeah, it's not good. And people screenshot it, and then it's disaggregated from the source, and then people make fake ones, and like, and now DOJ has taken down, like, most stuff. Like, they've taken down a ton of zip files just in the last, like, 24 hours. So right now you basically have to go to either J-Mail or distributed denial of secrets to get, like, the actual files.

Like, you can't even go to DOJ. for a lot of it anymore to prove that it's real. So, mess. And, and, and, and, and just like offering any of the details from these shows at your, at your dinner table, at your social function, they're almost designed to make you sound like a nut, right? Yeah. Like, the way that, if you were to talk about these details. So, uh, you know, uh, to the audience, we've been considering doing a long form, like three, four hour entire, uh, you know, capsulation of everything we've learned about the Epstein thing. And maybe that can be a resource for you to share to your friends and family so you can look

a little less like a kook. So if you think that's a good idea, let us know in the comments and we're heavily considering that. But that will bring us to our next topic, Ryan, which is Cuba. What's going on with Cuba right now? We're strangling the island and it seems like the administration is kind of panicking a little bit. I wanted to put this up on screen. several sources tell the economists the United States is considering sending small quantities of fuel to the island, gas for cooking and diesel to keep water infrastructure running.

Rubio could easily end up as the public face of an induced humanitarian crisis. It's really eerie how quickly and seamlessly the U.S. moved the Gaza policy over to Cuba. But, like, immediate, in fact, they are still withholding the humanitarian aid, life essentials from Gaza. Like, they're supposed to be letting in 600 trucks a day into Gaza as part of this, quote-unquote, ceasefire. And they're also supposed to stop killing Palestinians. They've done neither of those things. They're still restricting aid. They won't even let, like, new tents in.

Like, people living in tents that are now, like, two years old and are completely destroyed from the weather. The conditions are absolutely unspeakable. there's like a there's like this fierce like respiratory illness that is like rocking through the Gaza Strip at this point and they haven't even ended that before they now replicate a version of it over in Cuba and cut off everything and then become the the power center that's going to like on that's kind of loosen the choke hold a little bit so like first first you choke them completely to the brink of death, some people to death, if you look at

the childhood cancer fatality rates in Cuba, because we're not allowing in the equipment and the supplies that you need to treat cancer, children are dying of cancer at a much higher rate than they were previously. So we're already killing people in the most torturous, kind of gruesome way. But now what they're suggesting is,

uh-oh, uh-oh, uh-oh. because somebody just posted an aerial photo, the island's like almost completely black. They're like, oh, we are going to induce, like a humanitarian crisis for these nine million people that used to be like 12 or so before Biden and Trump smashed the population down at nine. That is going to be horrific.

And we, and like, why? With the healthiest assist from the Cuban government that was beating something. Yeah, and it's like, okay, Israel was like October 7th, October 7th, October 7th. What did Cuba do? Like what on earth are you doing to Cuba for why? Like did Cuba do like 1959?

Like really? Like and it's also so crazy to be like for to just have finished and we're not even finished. But over in Israel it's like 1948, you talk about it a lot and the Israelis will say it's over, forget about it. It happened. There's no right to return. Like we're a state now.

Get over it. Like we're now the state of Israel. We have a right to defend. offend ourselves or have a right to exist. Anybody who is bringing up 1948 is insane. Now over here, like, no, 1959, 11 years later, that somehow is a reason to starve millions of people in 26. Like, can we even, can we get an ounce of consistency in our, in our, like, barbaric behavior toward people? Apparently not. So, uh, putting the U.S. in the position, of loosening the chokehold then gives them

this power over life and death in Cuba and the idea is and you had my camera as a diplomat in Cuba going around like door to door handing out supplies so like you starve everybody and you hand out a little bit of stuff that gives you control over their lives

and then the idea is then you can then replace you become the government effectively like if you're the one that's keeping people alive you are the government so it's like a it's like a regime replacement subtle regime replacement without doing the, just don't let them, don't even worry about them collapsing. Like, just completely starve them.

And then what are they at that point? And Emily, what's the conservative perspective on this? You know, is there like a threat from the Cuban government? I mean, this is 90 miles off the shore of America. Like, what is the conservative perspective on the need to do regime change in Cuba? I mean, I don't agree with the policy prescription, but one of the places where Ryan and I probably disagree is that the Cold War rationale for taking Cuba extremely seriously as a threat is that it's obviously ripe for the picking of a hostile foreign actor to, you know, launch surveillance operations, potentially nuclear weapons and other types of. weapons, like missiles, all those types of things when you're so close to the United States. And there have been incursions or there have been efforts from places like China, obviously still

Russia, maybe a little Iran, but who knows what to believe, because all of this is from, you know, propaganda. You don't totally know what's propaganda and what's not, but the potential for it to be co-opted by a hostile foreign actor is there. And obviously the Cuban government works heavily with other countries that haven't been friendly with the United States for various reasons. I'm not saying it's all just because they're, you know, they're inherently bad people. And we're just perfectly innocent. But Cuba has a government. I think it's a little bit on like Gaza in that respect that like they do have a government. They have government infrastructure. Yes, it's true. The blockade has been very problematic for them. But I think it's also that they bear some of the

blame that said, conservatives in my mind are wrong to continue this policy of just blockading, starving, trying to do what Kissinger said to Nixon about Aende and what 1973, make the economy scream. And then you'll be able to do your regime change. Has not worked in Cuba for decades. It's not currently working in Iran either. I mean, we'll see what happens. But to keep recycling that playbook when you have especially a country like Cuba that is right off of your coast and that you now have a significant amount of leverage over and could genuinely try to thaw the relationship with in a way that is better for everyone, is better for the malnourished children who if you don't want kids, like let's just say you're the most conservative person in the world and you don't want

kids starving under socialism. That's what you see happening in Cuba and you don't want that to happen anymore. There's actually a better way. There's actually a better way. There's actually a better way. Don't starve them. There's actually a better way. The United States has relationships with all kinds of different countries that have all kinds of different governments. And if you want to stop suffering in Cuba, you at some point probably can do that.

And now is a great time, actually, to do that because of the amount of leverage that exists. So to just act like this is a stand against socialism is obviously absurd. And right now there's a pathway to ending suffering or alleviating suffering that's better for both the United States and for the people of Cuba. I know a lot of conservatives disagree with that. But if Venezuela is any example, if you want to take the Trump playbook and you want to recycle that, there might be some way, whatever it looks like if you're conservative. So that's something to think about. Yeah, the Cubans have said they'll, what do you want to negotiate? Democracy, human rights.

direct foreign investment, tourism, like what? Like we put it on the table, let's talk. It is very true of what I'm going to say that the conservative argument is that Cuba is some sort of a threat. I feel like that's rooted in this like 1960s, 70s understanding of Cuba. If you look at, say, drug interdiction and migration, like the country that is the most helpful to the United States than any other country in the hemisphere is Cuba,

particularly when it comes to drug interdiction. Like now it's cut off right now. because the U.S. is trying to, you know, destroy them. But they've said any moment that you want to get back to doing drug interdiction in a normal way, like where we go up to the boat and like search it, and then if it's not carrying drugs, we let it go, rather than execute them from the sky, we're happy to do it.

They're like, we don't believe in executing people from the sky on a suspicion. But there's like any moment you want to go back to this drug interdiction and, you know, Cuba's well positioned to do this counterintuitive. to do this counter narcotics work that they've been doing with the U.S. for many years. I think people don't really understand that. But that's like, the U.S. government will say that out loud, like that nobody has been a better partner on countering drug trafficking than Cuba.

So, but you get this 1970s, 60s era, Cuban-misci crisis thing. It's like, well, all, we have to nuke them. Well, I was going to ask, actually, like, if there's anybody, so if people are wondering why this seems so mad, It's similarly with Venezuela. It's that you have people who have poured decades of their life since the Cold War into these movements and are sort of stock. They would dispute this. And they would say ID money.

Yeah, exactly. You spent a hundred million dollars a year of building an industry toward this. And it shouldn't be surprised. Yeah. You get stuck in this loop, which is that you have dedicated so much to the ideological goal of total and complete regime change that like the Bay of Pigs at some point, there are enough Cubans to rise up, and obviously didn't work then, but there are enough Cubans they'll rise up top of the regime and bring back the next Batista, and everything will be great and happy. But if ever there was somebody who could break that pattern and shock people out of the loop, it's Trump. I mean, look at what they did in Venezuela.

It was a little baby step in a better direction by, well, I don't know if it'll be better or not, but by keeping Delci Rodriguez, like a direction that was not what the hardcore hawks one of the way. wanted to have happened. So anyone could like shake people out of this loop where Cuba is still 1960. I think in principle it's still very important that you don't have China getting a foothold in Cuba. That's obviously true. But if anyone could shake people out of the idea that squeezing their economy and their people is the way to prevent China from getting a foothold in Cuba, it would be Donald Trump. So the time is ripe. And what is Rubio's end goal here? Now, the article seems to state that Rubio is getting nervous that he's going to be. be the face of a humanitarian crisis.

But this does seem to be exactly what he's wanted for a really long time. Maybe you disagree. But is the end stage goal here to strangle the island until it becomes like a U.S. colony? Or what is like the final goal here? Yeah, he said a couple weeks ago, we want to see the regime fall. Because like that's not exactly what we're doing, but like we would love to see that. He would love to see that. And he'd love to see it replaced by.

some Buckelly-like right-wing figure. Right. And now there, just like Gaza history repeating itself, there is a flotilla being planned to break the siege, much like there was a flotilla going to Gaza. Now, what are the chances that this flotilla will have a better chance at actually getting to Cuba, or will it just be like the IDF,

where America swoops in and stuff? stops them in the ocean. Like, what is that what is that going to look like? The problem is that like Gaza needed the things that the flotilla was bringing. Now, they need a lot more than the flotilla was bringing, but those were the kinds of things they needed. What Cuba needs is fuel. And so unless the flotillas can bring oil tankers,

it's good and it's nice to bring lentils and beans and, you know, the other food stuff. But if you got nothing to cook it with, yeah. Yeah, it's an island. Like, you're going to, like, people are cooking with wood. Like, you're going to completely deforest that island in a short amount of time. And deforestation is insanely difficult to overcome. And then you start getting mudslides and like, it's like if you look at Haiti from the air, you know, it's completely deforested on the Haitian side because of this.

And it's, and you look at the other side, you know, still green. So, you know, it's good to raise awareness and, like, put political pressure, but they need fuel. All right. Well, that will lead us to our congressional candidate. Last update from news side. Russia has basically said they're not going to challenge the U.S. and bring fuel. Mexico has capitulated. China is the only one that is saying they're still going to send as much fuel as they can.

So we'll see what kind of conflict. brings China is also bringing solar panels and they've tried to accelerate the installation of these solar panels. I think they're now up to 20% of energy from renewables and solar and solar. So, wind and solar. So it's nowhere near enough and you can't do it fast enough. You need fuel to power this through the transition. So that's the, that's the state of play. China is like the only one saying they're going to help. We'll see what they actually end up doing. I read that the Mexican Navy sent two boats with some supplies. I'm not sure if there was any oil.

Lentals, beans, like, not oil. They don't want to be, yeah. I mean, this is Mexico, Ryan, Kirkmey from where Mexico is the largest supplier of fuel to Cuba. And so that's a really, really significant consequence of the American Empire, honestly. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Ryan, who do we got coming up next?

Well, I got Nita Alam, a candidate for a house in North Carolina running against Valerie Fushi. Is she here? I shall be here in just a moment. We'll just wait for her at this point. And, Ryan, maybe you can, while we wait, tee it up. I know we talked about this at the beginning of the episode, but give us some of the back story in case people are just tuning in for this part about why we're talking to Nita today. Yeah, so Nita Lom is from Durham County. She was a Durham County commissioner.

the way she got into politics, though, that some of her friends were the victims of very high-profile hate crimes in Durham, Durham County. And that inspired her to say, I want to get in a public office. And she became this Durham County commissioner. And then in 2022, ran for Congress, was very popular locally and was expected to win that race. and instead, A-PAC came in through their super PAC, spending more than $2 million to try to tear her down and lift up a rival candidate, Valerie Fushi. Fushi ended up winning by something like 4,000 votes,

and so has been a member of Congress now for a couple terms. Fushi, though, so this is 2022, you know, so it's January of 2023 is when Fushi is sworn in, The combination of anger from her constituents at having gotten in on the back of all this APAC money, combined with what Israel did after October 7, 2023, led her to be a little bit more, a little bit critical of Israel. And probably more critical, and she also took like an APAC funded trip, Matt Netanyahu, like the whole, did the whole thing.

So she was probably more critical of Israel than anybody. else elected with $2 million, at least $2 million of APAC money. So it's not as if she was out there joining the squad or joining others and like denouncing in a really, you know, confident way what Israel was doing, but raising real questions about what they were up to. And then in 2025, spring, she said at a town hall, she's like, I'm not taking APAC money. And that, and implied that she had like, she was asked if she had regrets about it. She said, yes, I took APEC money at the time, but I'm not going to take it again. So I want you to trust me on that score.

And so now, Alam is running against her again. And so it looks like she's not going to have the APEC support and may end up losing her seat, which, you know, it creates complicated politics around it because you do want people, right, when they get in office to break with APAC so that they can, you know, present their own vision. Like, whatever they think they should do and whatever their voters want them to do, like that's what they should be doing, not like what a special interest is telling them to do. That's better for democracy than doing what a super PAC tells you to do. And we've got it right here, Ryan, by the way.

Yeah. On the other hand, she came in with two plus million dollars of APAC money and NIDALAM is, a much more progressive candidate in the race, not just when it comes to Israel, Palestine. And she's about to get on stage in just a few minutes to a rally with Bernie Sanders, and she so graciously offered to join right before that rally.

Let's welcome her to the show. Hi. How are you? Welcome to Breaking Points. Yes, I'm good. Thanks so much for having me. So where's the Bernie rally? Is it going to be live-streamed?

people watch it? Yes. So it's going to be on the Bernie's live stream. I think we're also going to be cross-posting it. But we're having it at the convention center in downtown Durham. Yeah. So I don't know if you were able to hear the intro as you're waiting. But it looks like Valerie Fushi is probably not going to get at least APAC outside support.

We don't know. We'll see. When does voting start and when is the election? Election? Early voting started yesterday, actually, and it's running through the 28th, and then Election Day is March 3rd. So we are in the thick of it right now. Right. Did she get crypto money in 2022? Was it? Because there was a lot of this APAC crypto overlap. Do you remember? Was she one of those? She had Sam Bakeman Fried. She was one of the protect our future. Sam Bankman Fried. Got like one point three-point four. Congresswoman, BUSHie. So he's not coming to the rescue. What are you seeing as the contest plays out? Because like you said, we're just weeks away from the election at this point.

Yeah, I mean, we've been the only campaign that's been out knocking on doors, talking to voters, where they're at, and also doing relational community organizing. Because what we're seeing right now is that people across this country, they're feeling let down by our political systems. They're feeling like there's no reason for them to vote. What's the purpose? The systems have just failed them in so many ways. So the way that we're doing things differently this race is we're obviously doing the traditional like radio, mail, TV program, but also we have our aunties and uncles in their WhatsApp chats talking to each other, reminding each other to vote because Ramadan is going to overlap with the election. We're

organizing the mosques to have ifhthars to the polls. Holy is really. right after election day, but we're celebrating a little early and going to do like a do do doll to the polls, have some music and Hannah and like bringing our community together into this like way that it shows that we're all accepted and we're all fighting for the same like equality and dignity for everyone. And last one for me before. And then Emily Griff might have question. So last night it was reported that there's a super PAC getting in to support you with almost a $500,000 ad buy, it's one of these pop-up super PACs

where it won't have to disclose kind of who's funding it until after the election. I think you've been backed by Justice Democrats, is that right? Yes. You have their endorse. My first guess, I was like,

maybe Justice Democrats to organize this. Have you heard any rumors about who, because you're not supposed to coordinate, you're not allowed to coordinate, I should say, with super PACs? Have you heard any rumors? rumors about where this money is coming from and were you surprised by it or had you heard, oh, there might be this cavalry coming in?

No, I mean, I'm proud to have the endorsements of so many national progressive organizations and we're actually the first campaign of this cycle to have this coalition of progressive groups all endorse one race of Sunrise, Working Families Party, Justice Democrats, so many more. And then also Senator Bernie Sanders himself. And, I mean, for me, I'm looking at it, I'm like, I highly, highly doubt there's any sort of right-wing billionaire or corporation behind this because I'm not going to be any benefit to them. Yeah. Yeah, I wonder. I'll see if I can do some digging and figure it out.

I would suspect that it is the coalition of, because that coalition, Justice Democrats, working families party, it's like they've done independent expenditures in the past. usually they put their name on it because they're not embarrassed like it's not it's not kind of harmful to be supported by them so I don't so I don't know there's also this kind of pro-Palestine super PAC that launched maybe they're trying to copy A-PAC I don't know

I think there's we're seeing a lot of progressive energy and excitement especially like post-Soran's victory folks have felt like we were able to overcome 10 million over, yeah, over $10 million of corporate spending in that race. And then now even more excited from Annalia Mejia's election.

And I'm proud that like with our campaign, we've been running a grassroots race or like our average contribution is like $50 or something. And it's coming from working class folks in this district and across this country who understand that I'm running for the fourth congressional district, but I'm going to be a champion for everyone across this country who wants to be. live with dignity, which is everyone. You know, that's interesting because one of the things that divides the populist left and right when there's a lot of overlap.

So I remember when we were talking to Zoran when he was really early, like right, this was before the election had really taken off. He had just been out talking to Trump voters. And one of the things they were agreeing on was sort of obvious, like paying your bills, health care costs, all of that. But one of the things that does divide populace left and right is immigration. And I'm curious because to me it feels like what Obamacare did for the Tea Party movement, those of us on the right, ICE is doing to the progressive movement right now, that it's become this real, like the fuel that is just driving people to organize and get active. So I'm curious how you're thinking about all of that right now.

Yeah. And I think, I mean, even in North Carolina, we are seeing like obviously there's going to be. folks who are just deeply xenophobic who don't want immigrants and don't want people who look like me to be in this country. But if you look at, there's a lot of people also in this district, this state, this country that consider themselves Republicans, but are also deeply disturbed by the actions of ICE and CBP because they're not just going out and actually enforcing immigration of what their agency's title is. They're going out and terrorizing our neighbors and they're targeting. everyone. The folks that they've been killing in January have been U.S. citizens. They've been innocent civilians who are protesting or documenting and have been murdered. And that's using our taxpayer dollars. And I think folks across party lines should be and are enraged by that.

What is the issue that you're finding resonate the most? What is kind of what are you leaning leading into? I mean, I think one of the overarching issues that we're seeing in this district and across the country is the issue of affordability. And immigration is really deep and top of mind for everyone also right now in this moment, and it's personal to me as a naturalized citizen, myself, the daughter of immigrants from India and Pakistan. And when it comes down to the affordability issue, though, that's something to, Emily,

what you were saying, like being able to talk to Republican voters, unaffiliated, Democratic voters. Like, I'm a county commissioner in the bluest district, bluest county in North Carolina, but I've built relationships with Republican county commissioners across our state because when we talk about building our budgets at the county level and the challenges we face of the state not doing their jobs to fund public education and how that creates a greater load on our counties and how we have to balance picking up that load, but also taking care of our residents and

making sure that they're able to have, you know, their SNAP benefits, their social welfare programs, all of those things actually reaching them. And so I've built relationships with Republicans by taking away the labels because so much of the policy that I'm supporting and folks across this country working class folks want is common sense that I'll say with the Republican commission. I was actually appointed to the North Carolina Association of County Commissioners, which is our board of all 100 counties across the state, I was appointed by a Republican commissioner to the board of directors because I talked to him about, like,

he's in western North Carolina, and we found common ground that I want my residents to be able to put food on the table, you want your residents to be able to put food on their tables. You want your residents to keep a roof over their heads? I want that for my residents. And if we talk about these issues at that, human level of taking care of one another. The national noise that we hear, it's clouding those conversations and that's what's hurting our families. And we're able to build relationships

and actually lobby for change at the state level together at the federal level when we're advocating for the dignity of working class folks. So how is the, go for a row. Yeah, real quick. How's the AI and the advent of AI impacting politics and in North Carolina because you've got the research triangle, so I imagine it's like, you know, really shaking things up on that front. But what, and what about the kind of production of the, you know, the power behind it?

Like are the data centers becoming a political issue? Yeah, they absolutely are. We actually have an AI data center that's being considered at the local level in Apex, which is in this district. And residents have been coming out strongly against it because it's going to be built basically like right outside their neighborhoods. And Duke Energy, which essentially has a monopoly on our electricity grid here in North Carolina, they are already negotiating, renegotiating their energy rates with the town of Apex. And basically increasing the rates for residents to take account for the fact that they're going to need an increased load for these AI data centers and infrastructure needs. And so we're already seeing the bill being passed on to our families and neighbors.

And that's why I'm actually the only candidate. And this came up in a town hall meeting. And I'm the only candidate that's called to support Senator Sanders National Moratorium on AI data centers. And it's not about hindering AI. AI is going to exist in our world. It's not going to go away. But how do we make sure there are proper regulations in place that things like what we're seeing right now with the energy, electricity costs being passed on down to the residents, millions of gallons of water being consumed.

And folks across the country, just to run a data center for one day, and folks across the country are starting to see their taps run dry. And we can't have that happen in our district because, again, who is going to pay for those infrastructure costs? Where are we going to get alternate resources of water? The town of Apex gets their water from Jordan Lake, which is not indefinite bottomless. Lake of water. It's a lake. Yeah. Yeah.

Got to be nerve-wracking. Go ahead, Griffin. Sorry. I had one more ice-related question for you. Now, I did some research on some of your haters online that are calling you the Zoron Mamdani of North Carolina, which I don't know if that's a great attack. Seems like that guy. But they were specifically saying because you have helped citizens in North Carolina with Ice Watch, alerting people to ICE presence and things like that.

And there's currently this funding battle in Congress over the DHS, over how they're going to fund it. If you were in Congress, what are like the clear demands that you would make to say, we're not funding DHS until these things happen? Look, ICE as an agency was created in the Bush era in 2003 in a post-9-11 world to target my community, the Muslim community. It was an agency that was created to dehumanize us, to target us, to surveil us, and now we're seeing it pushed to another level of extreme under Trump's administration to murder innocent civilians in broad daylight. And I'm seeing even in our incumbent in this seat is saying that she's calling for reform of ICE

as an agency that body cameras and unasking them will somehow keep them in check. They're already being live streamed, murdering, innocent people in broad daylight, a body camera is not going to save our neighbors. And so I am clear in my stance that ICE needs to be abolished. It's not an agency that's actually making our community safer, that the way that we tackle and address the issue of immigration is through investment in safe and clear legal passageways for immigration. Opening up our visa programs and green cards, I'm a naturalized citizen myself. Most people who come to this country are either refugees who are seeking refuge from honestly most of the times disasters that we, the United States government has funded

and created, or they're coming here like my parents did to achieve the American dream, to raise me and my sisters to be able to seek opportunity and to have, to dream big. Last last one for me, I've started to see a lot of Democrats when it comes to the question of immigration say, you know what? We actually, we made a mistake by letting ourselves be labeled as open border Democrats that we don't care. Everybody can come in.

It led to Trump getting elected, and it led to then this joconian kind of reaction to it. We need to focus on beating back ice, abolishing ice, rolling back, CBPs abuses and focusing on the way that immigration enforcement is done internally, but we have to kind of concede some ground on the border. Are you seeing that and where do you fall down on that compromise, I guess you would call it, that Democrats seem to be making? Or is it like, no, no, no, actually Biden's border policy is something that should be supported?

I honestly don't think that immigration has been the issue that has cost us elections. I do sincerely believe that it is issues around affordability. And it's not just the issue of affordability in this district, it's across the country, is that working class folks want to hear what their elected officials are going to do for them. Most people in this country are unaffiliated voters. And so they just want to see how are you going to fight for them? How are you going to lower their cost of living? And I think that as Democrats, we haven't done a good job of talking to every

demographic and talking to every voter because even in states like North Carolina where we're labeled red, but we're truly purple. We're a pretty 50-50 state. You know, Trump may have won the presidential year, but we've elected a Democratic governor in the past three elections. And so what we need to be doing is going into these areas and these congressional districts that we take for granted and say that they're red and talking to the everyday folks and having conversations with them at that huge. level of like, we know that you're struggling to make ends meet, that your wages have stayed stagnant. North Carolina's minimum wage has not changed. In over 20 years, it's been stuck at $7.25. The cost of living here is $24 an hour. And this is how we as Democrats, or just we as your

elected leaders are going to fight for you to raise the minimum wage so that you can, that you'll only have to work one job to take care of your family. This is how, passing Medicare for all is going to guarantee health care for you so that you don't have to worry about going to the doctor or paying your rent. And having those conversations with folks face to face through community town halls, through relational organizing, that's what we've struggled and failed with. I believe as a Democratic Party is that we've taken these votes for granted that they're red, they're going to vote red. There's no point in us reaching out. But these aren't, we can't label our counties and our districts as red or blue when it's all working class folks.

Awesome. Well, we got anything else before we let her go on to her very busy day with that rally. Big day. Big day. Yes. We'll be watching. We'll be tuning in. We'll include a link to your website in the description.

Any final words before we send you off? No. Just thank you, Ryan, Griffin, Emily, so much for this opportunity. I think this election, you know, it's the first primary alongside Texas, and we have the opportunity to show that not only can progressives win, they can win in the South. And we're going to be able to prove that come March 3rd. All right.

Thanks so much for, yeah. Thank you so much. Thanks. Talk to you soon. All right, that'll do it for the first half of the show. And we'll see you back here in just a moment. All right, we are back in the second half of the show. here. We're going to release the full show altogether publicly for everyone today. And, you know,

we just talked about a race. It's a little tease to see what you get with the premium subscription. Sometimes we act as as business people and we have business strategies. Oh, that's so adorable. Wow. So we were looking at a certain race in the South and North Carolina, but I had to turn our attention momentarily to another race in the South. I'm talking of course. course about the Florida governor race with one James Fishback. Have you all been keeping track of the the fishback news? The guy got suspended from Twitter? Is that what happened? He got suspended from Twitter. He got suspended from Twitter. What do you have to do to get suspended from Twitter? My God. Well, even worse, he got suspended from Tinder, which is even more challenging. That's far,

far more challenging. Let me tell you. Didn't he say he was harvesting votes on Tinder? I guess that could be a term service violation, right? He was reaching out to women. Yeah, he was reaching. out to female voters on Tinder is what he said. Doesn't he have a girlfriend that he brings around with him? Well, he wasn't trying to just try and get their votes.

That's all. I have seen people on dating apps like now post that they're like plumbers and stuff. People are just posting jobs like on them now being like, hey, I can fix your sink or whatever, literally. Oh, they're combining like TaskRabbit with Tinder. Yeah, it's so yeah.

So look, if you're looking for love, well, you have a plumber. So in Florida, and I didn't want to offer a mea culpa because a few episodes ago, I said that James Fishback had no motion and I was wrong. And I'm admitting it here on the show. There is some type of motion happening. And now I'm not sure if this adds up to a successful political campaign, but I did want to play a few clips here where James Fishback seems to be generating some level of an organic movement of young men down in Florida. And I specifically wanted to highlight this clip where he referred to cafeteria food as goyslop. So let's let's take a listen to that.

My view is our high school cafeterias should be run by great local businesses, small business restaurants that have local labor that use Florida cattle, Florida produce, Florida fruit, and yes, Florida orange juice. They should take over our cafeterias. what's with the Pop-Tarts in the Broward County Public Schools in the cafeteria? I'm not saying that the test scores are a result of the Pop-Tarts, but if you wanted kids to fail, if you wanted to set up our kids for failure, you would feed them the absolute goy slop in our cafeterias. And for those just listening, he put his hand over his heart at the end of that there,

emotional. As an old person, like, what on earth does he mean by goy's sense? It also implies the existence of Michelin Stargoy, like a high-class goy food as well. You know, it means it's like, I mean, isn't, isn't you never heard you, this is not part of your vernacular, Ryan? I'm not, I need a little bit of education on this. Okay, Reddit. Confused about goy slop. I'm going to read a thread while you guys discuss.

No, no, no, please. Please, elucidate the entire audience. I want the Webster definition. Let's see. Well, it's like dog food. The food made for a dog. Goy slop. Slop for a Goy.

For the Goya. Us. And okay. So this, I see. So it's like playing into anti-Semitic tropes that like they're saying that the Jewish people only feed non-Jewish people dog food. Is that what the essentially? Essentially. Yes, essentially. And that's what got the pop from these young Republican kids here. Now, listen, I mean, outside of the vernacular usage, it is hard to debate the fact that we do feed absolute dog food garbage to our children. And we do not invest in the future of kids. And when Michelle Obama tried to change that, she was like presented as like this was like, this was like,

like Mao Zay Dung coming back from the grave. Right. So forgive me if like I don't have the most amount of patience for this argument coming from the right. Like why, what was wrong with Michelle saying it? Except did Michelle needed more anti-Semitism in her presentation in order for it to be acceptable to universalist and non-bigoted? Potentially.

Okay. So we can get good food for the kids, but only if we like late. it with bigotry. Yes. Right now it's laced with preservatives and additives, but it could use a little bit more of the anti-Semitism. And, you know, you've got to raise taxes. Like, property taxes are going to have to go up.

You have to have income tax in Florida, and I don't think he's suggested that. Right. It's more expensive to have a local business make the food than it is to have Cisco come in and feed them slop. Like that's just a fact. I think that that would be a good thing. I'm for it. But I'd like to hear how Fishback is going to pay for that.

I guess he'd say he's going to use the Israeli bonds. Yeah, potentially. And, you know, it seems... It's kind of illiterate, but whatever. Outside of the specifics of the cafeteria food, which, you know, Ryan, I know you have kids. I'm not sure what the food's like at their schools. But just overall... They like Pizza Day.

Pizza Day, sure. Chocolate Milk Day. But, you know, outside of... Which is kind of disturbing. Okay. All right. So the chili's not goyslop, but everything else is. But, you know, outside of the specific vernacular, the larger picture here seems to be that James Fischbach is a new type of young Republican that is activating young Republican voters by becoming the far right meme come to life.

I've got more footage here. Like being straight up anti-Semitic. yes but but he's meme it in all sorts of ways you know it's not just the anti-semitism stuff he claimed that someone tried to burn down his uh home so he came out with an ar-15 gun if you threaten our campaign if you lay hands on a single one of our volunteers if you come back to this home and our staff our volunteers are working hard we're not waiting for the police we're going to shoot you with an AR-15, site-on-scene, 556. Yeah.

That's what we're... So he does that, and he also got into a very heated debate over Don Lemon recently with Tara Palmary that I just wanted to share a quick moment of as well to give you a full flavor of this guy. If I had to go into a cave to interview the Taliban, am I co-conspirator? to interview them? If there's a fire inside of a church and I'm in there covering it, am I a co-conspirator? Am I the arsonist because I'm in there? Tara, if the 9-11 hijackers gave you a heads up and you boarded a plane to cover the 9-11

hijacking, and yes, you and anyone else involved should be publicly executed. Oh my gosh. Why would I get into a plane that's about to set that type? So, listen, it's not just anti-Semitism. It's a little bit. everything, Ryan. Her point is a fair one that she's got bigger problems if she gets onto the onto the plane. On to the 9-11 plane. Yeah, I think sort those charges out later. You know, he's polling in the double digits now. He was at like 2%. Yeah, and I saw a poll that's had him at like 20% with his opponent Byron at like 35 or what have you. So the latest, latest poll is Donald's up 15. I don't think it's a very reputable poll, but previous

polls, there's a Mason Dixon poll which is more credible that has Donald's at 37 and fishback at three and that's a January poll. So I like, that's much more credible than this Patriot polling that people are circulating. It's like a... And Brian, I've also heard rumors and I haven't been able to confirm this yet,

but there are rumors that he's not even eligible to run in Florida because he's not lived in a Florida residence for seven years. There are apparently, allegedly, some records that show that he had a DC-based home up to 2025, which wouldn't even make him eligible technically. Yeah, but I'm not going to these other, these are Byron Donald's internal polls, but still, like, they have him, you know, Donald's 47 fishback five. I think ultimately what I am seeing from this fishback thing, whether this is a real race or not, is, I guess the question, the larger question for me, me is, is this a lens into the future of activating young Republican voters to pull the memes

and become the memes in real life? So far, it's not translating on the ground into votes. But it is translated into these viral videos, these crowd clips or what have you. Which I think Republicans should pay close attention to. Like, this isn't doing it for you. unless you're just trying to grow an audience on the internet, which a lot of people are. But if you're trying to win elections, went over the electorate, it's not happening. Yeah.

Well, that was my James Fishback update. Just wanted to keep everyone ahead of what's going on over there. There is another race that we've been looking at for a little bit. Mr. James Talariko versus Jasmine Crockett. Ryan, what is going on with this Tala Rico Crockett race? We've talked a little bit behind the scenes about it, but what do you make of this? And who would you say has the better chance here between the two if you were voting in Texas? You want to pull some polling up?

Let's see we got in the polling. I'll play this video while we look for some polling here because Tala Rico, you know, does seem to be imbibing some. of the new democratic energy around the oligarchy. He's been talking a lot about class warfare and the such. Let's take a listen. And how is that not just like pushing for class warfare? We already have class warfare in this country.

It's the billionaires waging war against the rest of us. And right now the billionaires are winning. They've been winning for 50 years. trickle-down economics is not a theory, it is theft. For 50 years, for 50 years, the billionaires have been stealing from the American people, stealing the wealth that we created. It's why everyone is so angry right now. It's why, no matter how hard you work, you can't seem to get ahead. The American people are not asking for a lot.

a job we don't hate, a house big enough to rape a family in, and a little left over so we can go on vacation every once in a while. That is a lot harder than it should be, harder than it should be in America. So I'm not fighting for class warfare. I'm fighting for the American dream. So that is Talariko fighting for the American dream. And that does seem to be like what he has been kind of pushing over and over again. Whereas, the Jasmine Crockett side seems to be solely around, I'm going to fight Donald Trump. I triggered Donald Trump,

and I'm the one that triggers Donald Trump the most. Yeah, that was the first clip of his I saw circulating where I'm like, okay, this guy's like, I'm listening now. Okay, let's hear what else you got. I still think he's got the problem that he kind of looks like he's 17, not to be shallow, but like, you know, vote, that matters to voters. So I'm looking here at the time summary.

There's been three polls that are not internal polls in January. Two of them have Crockett up. University of Houston, the School of Public Policy there has Crockett up eight, slingshots strategies poll, Texas Public Opinion Research, that has Crockett up one. And then Emerson College is a good pollster, sponsored by Nextstar, which is the News Nation and local. news conglomerate has Tala RICO up nine over Crockett. So it's, it feels like the polling is

basically tilting Crockett's way a little bit, but not in a way that you would say that this race is anywhere near over. And this is after there was, you know, two weeks ago, and we cover on the show here, what was supposed to be sort of like an identity politics kill shot on Tala Rico, where they said, oh, he called Colin Allred a mediocre black man or whatever, you know, which potentially maybe back in 2018, that might have been it. But it doesn't really seem to have fully put the, you know, the holes in his tires. I think he also denied, you know, he denied it. And then Allred and Crocket, you know, came in for some significant criticism from National Democrats for kind of going in on it. So.

Yeah, that is a different state of affairs than would have existed a couple years ago. And, you know, Tala Rico seems to be, you know, he's catching the wave of the anti-Oligarchy. People are mad at the billionaires or what have you. And he says the billionaires are what's wrong. But I just did a little bit of research and I had to flag this political article. Dem Darling, Tala RICO showered with Miriam Adelson linked money. A group funded by Adelson was the biggest donor to James Tala Rico's campaign last year. His, his like state legislative campaign.

And so his defense of this has been, it's kind of a funny defense. It's like this was not about Israel. This was about gambling. Perfect. He was for this casino that the Adelson Empire, you know, wanted to build in Texas. So it's like, okay. all right well it's the best we can do I guess

one's got to go Israel or gambling it's your pick Ryan you can't have but you can't have both well I mean one of them is committing a genocide the other is you know utterly cutting like entire like finances of

country I would get rid of the one doing the genocide when I get rid of of, but like, have them end their genocide. Okay. So that's us. We're pro gambling now as long as we can end the genocide. I feel really good about that.

He could also just say, I'm not taking any super PAC money or any Adelson money, no matter what the cause is. I do think it's a sign that there are, obviously she's not giving them money for a Senate campaign either. Right. But this is kind of a sign that there's going to be a lot more centristems that are like, I get it, yo. like whatever Bernie's saying, anti-oligarchy, sure, whatever.

Just don't look into like any of my past and like we're good. So we'll see how that strategy works. And if the Dem base is cognizant enough or shrewd enough to pick apart the, I don't know, the conflict or the hypocrisies laden within some of these candidates. I think that leads us nicely to the end, but we'll answer just a few of your AMA questions from the audience. And Emily did not, I just want to tell, Emily left. She didn't leave because she was,

but she didn't leave because she was scared of the fishback conversation, she tells me, she says her power went out. Coincidence, huh? I was hoping for a virulent defense of fishback from Emily. I guess we'll never know. Don't think we're going to get that. Yeah. I guess we'll never know what she would have said there.

But let's get to some of these AMA questions. First off, someone asked, what was your experience on the Pierce Morgan show yesterday, Ryan? How did that go? Well, it was usually when Pierce Morgan's reaching out, you're like, oh, God. So, like, it's going to be some shout fest, whoever can shout earliest and loudest. But they were like, no, no, no. like we just want you to come on and like talk about your reporting when it comes to

Epstein and also Netanyahu's visit to D.C. We didn't end up having time for the Netanyahu visit to D.C. And then I left. I did my, did my piece. And then Dershowitz and Basim Yousef just kind of go at each other for half, however long they went out of each other. So that's actually kind of a nice ideal situation to be in. I like sharing the reporting. And then the other folks can hash it out. I was in the trailer listing to Dershowitz as I'm leaving and I'm like, oh, I kind of wish I was on for some of these

some of this nonsense. But I also don't want to be there for that either. Like it's, I'm very much torn in both directions. Yeah, they got to institute some sort of mute button or something. But they like the cross talks. I'm not sure. Listen, I'm not going to tell the, I'm not

going to tell the professionals what to do over They seem to have a good thing going. This next one is from Jack Veedbeck. He says, would you guys bring on Michael Tracy to debate Epstein stuff? I always liked him and thought he was a good faith actor, even when I disagree with him. But his takes on Epstein have been absolutely bad shit. And I would like to, before Ryan, respond, say, we did do this already about four months ago before this new tranche of emails came out between Sager and Tracy. So we've already had one struggle session over this.

this, but is it time for a Michael Tracy return? Definitely not. We also had him on didn't we have him on a Friday show? Probably. He was arguing with... No, maybe it was a counterpoints, like, debate show

back in the day. Yeah, counterpoints Friday, we had him on arguing with something now. Yeah. Last night, he was also defending Jean-Luc Brunel, like a notorious sex trafficker who was getting accused of RAPE going all the way back to 1980s. Like a documentary about it, 1988.

And then he continued abusing women for decades. And now you're also defending him, this associate of Epstein's. Like, no. So. Yeah, I don't know. It's a lot to unpack with that gentleman. I'll say that as well. Someone here asks SWZ says,

can we get a good news by Griffin Weekly Roundup? I think it would be a great addition to the Friday show, and he's the one silly enough to deliver the endorphin boost amidst his bleak weekly gestures at everything. It is kind of tough. Like, there was that show that John Krasinski did during COVID that was like some good news. And I don't, it, those always came off as like a little,

a little, I don't know, unnecessary, I'm not sure. Like, should we fit in a nugget of optimism? I mean, we try to. I mean,

sometimes it's candidates that come on here, they give a little bit of optimism like we had one on today. I mean, but, I mean, what do you make,

Ryan? Should we be doing more good news on the show? If you want to do it, you go for it. I think we're covering the news. If it's good, we'll cover it.

Unfortunately, there's much of it. Ryan, what do you make of the El Paso shooting? There's multiple people asking here about that. The El Paso air shut down and what is now the official story that CBP has laser beams and shot down a birthday balloon. I know Sagar is pretty suspicious of that and his UFO radar is going off. The idea that DHS would be given a laser gun and immediately deploy it, in a deeply irresponsible way.

It sounds like that. It's something I find very credible. And maybe they're like exploiting CBP and DHS's like, low brand among the public that like the whole public right now is like, oh, these idiots were acting recklessly. Yeah, that track. So maybe we're like the victims of a, of a PSOP because they know that we have the lowest possible opinion of the goons at CBP and ICE. So we'll believe anything. Oh, I like that

theory. Kind of like, oh, blame it all on them. But I also just totally believe it. Yeah. Yeah. And it is, I mean, I believe it too, that that there was a misuse of a weapon by CBP is the daily story. But I think what is scarier about that to me is guys that could not get a job being the mall security cop. have laser beams. Yeah, that's not ideal. Not ideal at all. Powerful enough to panic the FAA and to shutting down the airspace

for 10 freaking days. Yeah, and honestly, I was talking to Crystal about this. Like, the people from the FFA, they probably just had to scramble. Like, what the hell is going on over here? And, okay, screw it. We're shutting down the airspace for 10 days. So I believe they were the adults in the room

on this one, actually. But yeah, so look forward to more laser-related incidents in the future, I guess, with these laser beams. Now, what's a laser beam weapon? Is this like, do you, have you ever heard of this before? Yeah, they exist. Yeah. It's just like Star Wars, or is this something a little bit more? Yeah. Cool.

You can find, you can find demonstration videos of them. like on YouTube or something from different companies that are trying to sell them. So I can get a laser gun as a assist my second amendment, right? I think you would need a serious license. A license for that?

Yeah. Israel is talking about, you know, moving to these laser defenses because the current like missile defense system costs them, you know, or sorry, costs us, you know, billions.

And so every time they get into a conflict with Iran, they have to spend billions launching these missiles to knock down the Iranian missiles. And so they're trying to develop and claim that they have made serious strides in developing a laser system that costs very little for each shot.

Incredible, incredible things happening over there. All right. Well, now I want to shoot a later. If the CBP guys are getting to do it, I want to do it. Our final question is from lay MVP. They ask breaking points. Kyle Kalinsky is the dark, woke commander.

Hassan Piker, the Ayatollah of woke. What are the titles of Crystal Ball and Ryan Grimm in the reawokening? I'm still asleep. Crystal's, what kind of woke is she? I don't know. I don't know. What do you think? Well, I think you're professor woke, perhaps.

And for her, I mean, something maybe queen chancellor we'd have to come up with it I've had it ladies are obviously their own chairwoman woke dark woke as well so yeah

I mean people really liked when Kyle went on the Pierce Morgan show and was very rude to one daily wire correspondent and people seem to get a lot out of that and sunglasses on right he did have sunglasses on which is

more conservative coated I think using some of their visual language and aesthetic, taking that back from them, which I like. But do you think that dark woke is the future to be rude and crude on the side of woke? Is that an effective measure? Maybe for a little while.

I don't know. I think things are changing rapidly. Nothing is stable. So anything that works out might not work later. I do already sense it in the entertainment industry and beyond. There are podcasters and others who are starting to put their fingers into the wind and feel things changing.

So it seems like woke was dead for about eight months. And now we've got Pierce Morgan debating Megan Kelly about the bad bunny thing. And Pierce Morgan is taking the bad bunny side. So it does seem like they had a very, very quick run on the woke is dead thing. And woke may be returning very soon. So is that some good news? I don't know. Sure, there you go.

Previous questioner. There's your good news. Woke returns. There wasn't as much latent bigotry as the MAGA world, that wing of the MAGA world expected there would be. Because they got that. We now have permission to be bigoted. Everyone's going to be bigoted. And they look around like, oh, a lot of people are just not.

Don't want to do that. And I think that Elon buying Twitter was actually like a poison pill for the sort of reality distortion of the cultural conservatism because conservatives went on to X now and they see, oh, everyone agrees with me. Everyone thinks it's hilarious when the DHSGov posts an ASMR of an immigrant in chains. And that's something that everyone likes that. I love it. So this is, this is really going to resonate with the public. And they're at the top of the feed and they're getting tons of quote unquote engagement and views. So surely this must be the feeling of the nation.

And so we're going to stack our White House communications with that energy. And most people have found that kind of revolting, including many of my young MAGA friends. You know, I've talked to many of my young MAGA friends that voted for Trump. And they go, man, like, I didn't think I was voting for like, you know, ripping a mom out of her car. Like, I don't know what they thought they were voting for, but it wasn't that. Right. Yeah.

No, I think that's right. So that's something. All right. And that's another good news story. We'll do them all in the AMAs. That's going to do it for us this week. Again, thank you so much, everyone, for supporting us at breaking points.com with a membership. Just to peek a little bit behind the curtains here, these have been some of the biggest

weeks on the show with our very intensive breakdowns of episode. sting news. And you'll see our clips are getting way bigger views than normal, but I'll also let you know, many of them are getting demonetized. So we are not able to survive off of doing

the news off of YouTube ad revenue. The only way that we are able to get these stories out on drop site, and for Ryan to come on here, for Saga to come on here and have the time to break all of that down, that's because of our supporters at breaking points.com and the membership.

And we really can't thank you enough. As we said earlier, if you were to just watch the mainstream media on these issues, you would be getting such a fractional surface view at what's going on here. And the reason that we can do more is because of you guys. So thank you so much. And if you can afford a membership, we've got monthly memberships at breaking points.com. And on that note, that'll do it for us here Friday. We all hope you have a great weekend.

And we'll see you back in the studio on Monday. See you. This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed human.