Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 2/19/24: Ukraine Retreats From Stronghold, Russia Claims Navalny Sudden Death Syndrome, Fani Willis Humiliated On Witness Stand, CIA Cooked Russiagate Intel, Elon Attacks Matt Taibbi, Israel Splits Gaza Ahead Of Rafah Invasion, Lula Compares Bibi To Hitler, Tlaib Says No Biden Vote In Primary

Episode Date: February 19, 2024

Ryan and Saagar discuss Ukraine retreating from a stronghold as Hillary copes, Russia claims sudden death syndrome for Navalny, Trump prosecutor humiliated on witness stand, CIA cooked Russiagate intel, Elon tells Taibbi 'you are dead to me', Israel splits Gaza in half ahead of Rafah invasion, Brazilian President Lula compares Bibi to Hitler, MSNBC freaks after Rashida Tlaib says don't vote Biden in Michigan primary.   To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show AD FREE, uncut and 1 hour early visit: https://breakingpoints.supercast.com/   Merch Store: https://shop.breakingpoints.com/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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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. We have an amazing show for everybody today. Extra amazing, Ryan. It's a bro show, The Pound. It's there. That's all people are here for. Cannot wait for this one. That's right. All right. We've got a lot of stuff to cover today. Man, I don't know how Crystal does this. All right. Ukraine, let's start with that. We're going to talk a little bit about a very strategic defeat for the Ukrainians in this war, as there's been major developments at the Munich Security Conference.

Then our friend Yegor Kotkin will join us live from Moscow to discuss the death of Russian dissident Alexei Navalny, who was found dead in a prison above the Arctic Circle in, let's say, mysterious circumstances. What does this mean for Putin's control of Russia? Why did he decide to kill him now if that is, in fact, the result of his death. Fannie Willis has some stunning testimony that will have major impacts on that case against Trump in the state of Georgia, basically confirming a relationship previously with the prosecutor who she hired to go after Trump

and including some possible corruption allegations that she might've gotten herself in some very hot water on the stand. Matt Taibbi out with a new report with Michael Schellenberger about the CIA spying on the Trump campaign. We're gonna break with a new report with Michael Schellenberger about the CIA spying on the Trump campaign. We're going to break some of that down, as well as a bit of a fracas that he's found himself in with Elon Musk over at Twitter. Ryan, you're going to be breaking down for us major developments out of the state of Israel. We're going to be talking about Benjamin

Netanyahu's declaration saying there will be no two-state solution, a doctor who you actually personally know who's gone missing, some humanitarian developments. And then we're going to discuss Rashida Tlaib, who is a squad member, representative, Democrat from Michigan, who is urging people not to vote for Joe Biden in that primary. Uncommitted. Uncommitted and coming under major attack by the MSNBC liberals. So we've got a big, big show for everybody today. Before we get to that, though, I just want to say thank you all to everybody who signed up for the focus group to be able to help us out. We have major more and developments and plans and all these other things that are coming very, very soon. So you can help us out, breakingpoints.com. We've got some big stuff that we're ready to debut for all of you, which I'm very, very excited to show. All right, let's

go ahead and start with Ukraine. So there's been some major, major developments out of Ukraine. I did a monologue on Thursday discussing some of the major reasons why I personally oppose aid. And in that, I previewed the battle of Advika, a very strategic town that has been at the basics of the front lines since 2014 and a target of Russian forces coming under even more attack in the last couple of years of the war. Let's go and put this up there on the screen. Advika, as of yesterday, officially confirmed by the Ukrainians, has fallen to Russian forces. They say, quote, with Ukrainian forces at the risk of encirclement, the top military commander, Sersky, named the butcher by his own troops, by the way,

not by his enemy, says in startlingly candid accounts, soldier described disarray and despair. Effectively what they describe, Ryan, is that this city, as I said, which was previously home to some 30,000 people, it's a very strategic strong point for the Ukrainian forces because they have some major bases and other behind the lines, a couple 30 miles or so behind them. It's one of the reasons that they felt very strongly that they needed to defend the city. The fall of the city is kind of becoming a flashpoint for the argument for aid to Ukraine. President Zelensky and Ukrainian advocates of aid are saying that the city fell because of lack of ammunition, specifically artillery ammunition. Opponents of aid pointing out that this is a city where even with strong

reinforcements, even supposedly, let's say if artillery ammunition was the sole reason, that it highlights and spotlights the massive manpower and morale problems that they had in this battle where they were billeted together. People were very fearful that troops were going to be running away. And some of the on the ground accounts of many of the soldiers there showing absolute despair, big morale problems in there, as well as Russians with, it appears, have been able to replenish their ranks with volunteers, not with conscripts. And while yes, they certainly took losses, taking the city that this could be the beginning of a new advance, not just there, but all along the 600 mile front line. What does it mean for the front line? And what does it mean for the Russian advance that this particular strategic point? Well, again, not the general, but military analysts

that I've seen say that the territory and the terrain behind it is actually much easier for maneuver, that the Ukrainians will find it difficult to be able to pull back and to be able to hold there. If they, as they claim artillery is the main reason there, then obviously that's a static thing and that's not going to change. This was the spot to hold and that's why they'd been holding it for 10 years. Well, yeah. So it was a spot to hold for several reasons. You know, it became a political point. It also was kind of a strategic crossroads, as I said, kind of that gateway to the place that we're talking about, the terrain and specifically some of the strategic assets that were placed behind there. Really the reason why I think the

battle at this point is important is it just is, this is the spotlight and this is kind of why we decided to leave the show with. This is now the nexus on which all of the arguments around aid to Ukraine are being argued. So President Biden seizing upon the failures on the Ukrainian frontier to blame Republicans saying it's their fault that this loss happened. Here's what he had to say. The idea that now running out of ammunition, we walk away, I find it absurd. I find it unethical. I find it just contrary to everything we are as a country. So as you can see, Ryan, President Biden, kind of the ongoing line now from Biden, from many of the Democrats, Fox News reporters, supposedly supposed to be neutral or like, this is unconscionable. This demonstrates

why the Ukrainians are losing. I really wanted to focus in on this point because it really is the crux of everything, which is this has now become evidence for why more military aid needs to keep flowing to Ukraine. You also saw this at the Munich Security Conference where former Secretary Hillary Clinton made her case for aid. Here's what she had to say. He's absolutely right. I mean, he knows the military situation. I know the political situation.

If we actually voted to reflect the majority in Congress, the majority in the United States, we would be sending more help to Ukraine right now. I think in order to fill the gap between now and when we can try to force a vote on the floor of the House, which I think is what's going to have to happen, other countries need to look at their weapons stocks. If they were thinking of sending or selling something to someone else, halt that sale, send it to Ukraine. We've got to keep Ukraine going. And they are running out of ammunition. I was just speaking with some Ukrainian representatives.

And, you know, their frontline soldiers who have been so brave are literally getting, you know, a couple of shells. That's all they're getting. And they need more help. This was somewhere I really want to spend time. Yeah, go couple of shells. That's all they're getting and they need more help. This was somewhere I really wanted to spend time. Yeah, go ahead, Ryan. It's just worth pointing out that earlier after the counter offensive showed such success for the Ukrainians, that was used as the rationale

for why, you know, another $100 billion. You're speaking about the counter offensive a year and a half ago. A year and a half ago. So that meant things are going really well. So we need to send more weapons. Now they're saying things are going really badly, so therefore we need to send more weapons. Interesting circular logic, isn't it?

And you can imagine if it's stalemated, well, obviously you have to send more weapons because the stalemate will be broken. You're exactly right. Because we just want to send more weapons. Yeah, they just want to send more weapons. And one of the things that really bothers me about this is that they're not dealing with reality. The presumption there appears to be that there are secret artillery stocks, which are just laying, you know, unused in the West that maybe, you know, we may need for ourselves should we ever get into a conflict. But in production, that secretly we can just turn things on. They refuse to deal with reality. I actually went through and read a new

report by the Estonian intelligence services. Now, keep in mind, this is complete propaganda pro-Ukraine, but they accidentally did admit a very basic truth, which all of us need to grapple with. Let's put this up there on the screen. I've highlighted the relevant portion, which also includes a graphic. It says, therefore, it is almost certain Western ammunition deliveries to Ukraine in 2024 will not be able to keep pace with supplies available for Russian armed forces. Now, that is a very mild way of saying it. And as you guys can actually see, there was a graph that was right below it, which is a very important one and demonstrates the real futility of the US and Western economies right now. So in 2021, Ryan, Russia produced 400,000 shells.

In 2022, in the midst of the war, they were able to increase that to 1 million. 2023, in the span of just a year, they were able to produce 3.5 million shells. They are projected by the Estonians to be able to produce 4.5 million. Now, Ryan, the European Union has had seven months to promise one million shells. So one out of what? Do the math there. What is that? Twenty five percent or so of the shells that the Russians are going to be able to produce.

How many do you think they are actually able to produce despite having six to seven months to be able to run production? If I had to guess, does this count ones that they're like secretly buying from Pakistan? No, no, no, no. The ones they're actually able to produce in-house that they were able to give them. A couple thousand. Yeah, half a million. So half of the promised amount despite having seven months to be able to ramp up production. And so basically, it is an industrial reality. But they are the Mercedes-Benz of shells. Sure. But here's the other problem, as you just alluded to. Now they're like, well, maybe we need to buy them from somebody else. How do you know they're going to sell them to you? You don't. And you flip the government. Also, why should they? Yeah, exactly. The South Koreans, they have a policy in their government. They're like, we don't really want to get involved in this. We'll put a new government in there as a

new policy. As we saw previously, we actually bamboozled the South Koreans previously to, in some sort of backdoor deal to send weapons to Ukraine. But this is just a basic facet of industrial production. We cannot come anywhere even close to the Russian industrial production. By the way, that was not supposed to happen if we go back and read what some of the previous sanctions were saying. It demonstrates to us very clearly that Russia, and I got this wrong too, because all of us underestimated the resilience of fundamentally what Russia and China have as an advantage over us. They have closed systems. They have vertically integrated production. And if they don't have vertically

integrated production, they are still able to buy enough from the great powers to do not agree with us on the Ukraine consensus. It demonstrates pretty clearly that you can have the entire West try and flatten your economy with sanctions. But if you have enough production, if you have the will, you can easily get it done. Now, I don't want people to get me wrong. If we converted our economy to total war, yeah, maybe we could, you know. Sure. We can easily do that. Do you want to do that? You know, do you want me to rush in the coffee in my cup, you know, to make sure that Ukrainians can maybe hold the line in Advika? And I think that's really what it gets to is that we are at a point now where the reality is that we have exhausted our coffers basically to zero.

One of the reasons why President Biden sent cluster munitions to Ukraine was not just because they wanted them. It's because we didn't have any more artillery to send them. And one of the alleged benefits of the new package is they're like, well, it's all going to flow to US factories and all that. But here's what they don't tell you guys. It would take 18 months for those shells to be able to roll off in significant enough numbers. So at the entire point, we're not dealing with reality. And all of this, all of this, even if we were to supply all of this ammunition, et cetera, it would only be able to get Ukraine to not even parity in terms of the number of shells. And in that situation, you actually need more than the enemy

if you want to try and do shape. This is, again, from military tacticians and analysts that I've followed. People were actually relatively nonpartisan. They would actually need an advantage to conduct shaping operations and all of that. At best, what you would be arguing for maybe is for them to, quote, hold the line. But this belies what? Morale problems, the fact that they're kidnapping old and disabled people off the street. They're basically there to help hold the front line. The situation is hopeless for them. I mean, it's really one of their, they would be lucky if they have the same amount of territory today, even if we were to ship them millions of shells. And then, you know, how many tens of thousands of people would be dead in the meantime of their own citizenry. And fundamentally what

we're talking about is kind of restructuring the entire West's economy to produce munitions so that this war can just go on forever. Forever, yes. Who does that make sense to? Thank you. This is two countries that are fighting over territory between them. Work something out here. This is beyond the capacity of our international rules-based order to sort out? Are you kidding me?

Of course not. All it would take is literally a phone call from President Biden. You can ask Viktor Orban of Hungary. He said that. He goes, look, you guys are the ones who can figure it out. You guys. Yeah. He said this will not be negotiated between Ukraine and Russia. This is going to be between Washington and Moscow. President Putin made that clear in his Tucker interview. Let's find out if he's lying. We don't know. We have no idea. Of course, it was rejected completely out of hand. The reason, again, I'm spending time here, is you need to know the reality. There's no secret artillery. There's no secret weapons that are just hanging out there. And if there were, why would we send them to

Ukraine? You want to drain us to the zero to send them so they at Vika? Then when we attack the cartels, the cartels invade us and they just conquer us. Exactly. I mean, it's not a joke. It's true. It's not even just cartels. I mean, who knows? There's so many different flashpoints across the globe. I would be remiss if I didn't say if you're a pro-Israel person, the Israelis, guess what?

Artillery. Ammunition they want. The same ones as the Ukrainians. Because they want to go to war with Lebanon. And it was funny to see Hillary Clinton say, if you were thinking about selling your weapons to somebody else, like, is she a BDS opponent all of a sudden? She's like, maybe you're right. She's like, and Israel watching that being like, hmm. Look, this is reality. I mean, it's sad. It is sad because if you think about it, back in the day in 1991, after the Cold War, we actually produced 800,000 shells,

I believe, that year. And last year, I think it was something like 40, maybe 60,000, which is pathetic. And it demonstrates the hollowing out and all of that of the economy. All this has really done is demonstrated to me how weak and unprepared we are for the fact that we can't even supply to full strength a third world backwater military as opposed to- Although it is taking on a pretty big country. Oh, yeah. I mean, certainly, but- Which we seem to forget. It's like the Ukraine is not fighting Poland here. Yeah. No, you're right. I mean, and that's one of those two where it's clear that they've

significantly underestimated the strength. I mean, you have, as I said, they've got 4.5 million shells. Even, again, you can ask the Estonians. They're the ones who read the report. In their own report, they say that Russia has largely been able to fill all of its losses with volunteers by just paying them money in the poorest regions of Russia. And a lot of people, including the people who've been killed, the widows and all of that, are like, hey, listen, I miss my husband, but I'm getting paid more than I ever did before, which sounds bleak, but you've never been in poverty. Are they really saying that? No, I swear.

I actually highlighted the same report here. They went and they did some interviews, and it was in like Dagestan or, you know, some of the really backwater regions of Russia. And it was like many widows find themselves much richer today as a result of the war because they're making far more in pensions than they ever did in their economy. They never liked that guy anyway. Maybe they didn't like him anyway. His children probably miss him. The wife maybe not so much. Yeah, you're right. Exactly.

Let's put this up there on the screen as well because you're going to hear this a lot. You know, continuing from Zelensky, from all of his advocates here in Washington, they say that we are running an artificial deficit of weapons after the Ukrainian withdrawal from Advika. They're trying, again, to make this purely a matter of ammunition. But the truth is, is that even if they had parity, the best they could do is hold. We can't even get them to parity with current Western industrial production. And that presumes that it would be worth draining our coffers to zero, spinning up all of our economies to total war just to keep the war going and they could hold on the front line for what? Nobody ever answers that question. You would think that after the second counteroffensive, that where we poured

as much money as we could find into it and 50 billion dollars, as many weapons as we could find into it the Ukrainians threw Thousands of men into it and it and it failed. Yes it you would think that after that you're like, okay, we tried that That's not going to work now We sit down and we negotiate what the end of this looks like but that's not the answer Right instead of like more which is do more Yeah, more and more and more if you fewer people, you're running out of people. And older people. Yegor, who we're going to have on next, he said it really well. Either they run out of money and ammunition now, or they run out of men in like two years. Yeah, it's actually, it may even be sooner than that.

650,000 conscript age Ukrainian men have fled the country, have bribed their way out. They're basically, at this point, if you're like 50 or so, you're up for grabs, you know, to be able to go. The average age of the military is somewhere around 45 to 50 years old. That means that there's a 70 year old in there. If the average is 50, that means there's a 70 year old in there. Like if we think about what a normal distribution looks like. So let's just consider, you know, where really things are going. And, you know, even if you gave them, like you said, then it's just going to be a country of boys and old men. And even then, you know, can they really be able to hold on?

And this presumes so much more of Western support, which still belies the question of now what? So a very, very difficult situation. That's two years. What about four? Yeah, five, ten. There's no reason that Russia is going to stop unless we come to a negotiated solution to this. Right. Well, that's what reality is like. It's no reason that Russia is going to stop unless we come to a negotiated solution to

this. Right. Well, that's what reality is like. It's not pretty, but it is what it is. And it's one of those where a lot of people in the news are just not being honest. They're displaying it purely as some sort of magic artillery problem when there are manifold issues as to the Ukrainians. And in the meantime, they are likely to only lose more territory. The Russians appear to be preparing for a major offensive sometime in March all along the front line, and it will just continue and continue and continue. Will they have major breakthroughs like they did in the early days of the war? No, they don't care, though. They are totally willing to sacrifice as many men as possible. And as we're just about to talk about with Yegor, Putin is actually stronger domestically than ever.

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Get your tickets today. AXS.com. Get your tickets today. AXS.com. At the same time here domestically, as we've discussed a lot here, Fannie Willis, actually I believe it was with you, Ryan, last time we did a little bit of an update on this story, who's the prosecutor in the state of Georgia, is in major hot water there after it was revealed that she was having an affair with the top prosecutor who she had hired in the Trump case. He was paid some $700,000 nearly by the state. The major reason she's in hot water is not because of the affair that's come to light through his divorce proceedings, but because it appears that they took many lavish vacations together and there's no evidence, Ryan, that she reimbursed him as she is required to do

by state law. So in the middle of the hearing, there was a dramatic moment where Fannie Willis originally was defying or saying that she would not comply with a subpoena to come and testify, rushed to the courtroom to try and tell the truth, and quickly fell apart on the stand with her story. The story that the two of them have decided to concoct is that while yes, they did attend many lavish vacations and take a lot of cool trips together, hotel rooms, et cetera, that she did pay him back, but she did it in untraceable amounts of cash. Here's what she had to say. Let's talk about both of those. I know he initially paid for it. Did you pay him back? For the cruise and for Aruba. Yeah, I gave him his money before we ever went on that trip.

You gave him cash before you ever went on the trip? Mm-hmm. Okay. And so when you got cash to pay him back on these trips, would you go to the ATM? No, lady. You would not go to the ATM? No. In my worst days has probably only been $500 or $1,000. At my best days, I probably had $15,000 in my house of cash. At all times, there's going to be cash in my house or wherever I'm laying my head.

The money that you paid Mr. Wade, the cash in October of 2022, you do not know where that money came from. I do know where it came from. It came from my sweat and tears. It came from her sweat and tears, Ryan. However, when she was asked if she could produce withdrawal and deposit slips from the ATM and she could prove from her bank account the withdrawal of said cash, she said, well, it's just accumulated over the years. Who

knows where it came from? It's a very interesting defense, one that actually spawned a discussion here in our studio. I was told I'm out of touch generationally because I don't have sympathy for people who just keep vast amounts of cash around. And listen, at a level of the Great Depression and not trusting the banking system, listen, I'm totally with you. There's just a little bit of a problem. It turns out that Ms. Willis pays her rent with the Cash app, and that whenever it's convenient for other expenses that she does use, you know, credit cards, the bank, the official banking system, traceable bank system. It's only in this instance where she's being asked to provide evidence that

she did, in fact, not flout Georgia corruption law and did pay back her lover for the lavish vacations that she does claim that she had these vast amounts of cash that was available to her and that in every single instance, unlike previously when she was using legitimate banking tools or traceable ones, that she was no, she did not default to that in every instance. Very reasonable and very obviously not a cover story, isn't it? It certainly does stink not a cover story, isn't it? It certainly does stink like a cover story. I always root for people to get away with cover stories. Yes. And I hate the way that the

state can trace every little dime. Yeah, I hate it too. Don't get me wrong. So the way that this kind of cover story usually unravels is that somebody will get text messages between the two of them where they will say, let's tell the prosecutors that we paid each other in cash. And then somebody thumbs up the message and then that goes in front of the jury and you're like, oh, wow. Yes. I'm so busted here. Her real problem ethically

was once she was in a romantic relationship, well, his problem, pro tip, if you're getting divorced, don't take it to court. Because ask Bill Gates. Mr. Wade, pay the lady. Ask Bill Gates. Pay her with all the cash.

We would know about all his Epstein stuff. Yeah, exactly. If he had just paid whatever she was asking. Whatever she was asking, you pay that. That's right. You're gonna be fine. But her problem was once they were in a romantic relationship was hiring him to begin with. That's right. Once they're dating, why am I supposed to

care who pays for dinner, who pays for the cruise? No, no, we don't care about that. Right. But it was because she hired him, now she's responsible for him making that money. And now the state has an interest in who's paying for this cruise and who's paying for the dinner. And we're not talking about 5K, 2K or something. We're talking about six, seven hundred thousand dollars, which he needs to account for. And by all accounts was an inexperienced prosecutor. If you go back and you read before the affair came to light, there were a lot of questions in Georgia. They're like, hey, why did she hire this guy? Like, you know, he kind of came out of nowhere. There are a lot of other people that she could have turned to. It's a very odd choice, but it appears that she has trust in him. She certainly did, I guess,

to trust him with that amount of cash. Mr. Wade, by the way, going with the story at court, here's what he had to say. You said in the affidavit that you roughly shared travel, correct? Yes, ma'am. Okay. So this roughly sharing travel, you're saying she reimbursed you? She did. And where did you deposit the money she reimbursed you? Oh, it's cash. She didn't give me any checks. So she paid you cash for her share of all these vacations? Mr. Schaefer, you'll step out if you do that again. Yes, ma'am. Okay. And so all of the vacations that she took, she paid you cash for? Yes, ma'am. And you purchased all of these vacations on your business credit card, correct?

Yes, ma'am. And you included those in deductions on your taxes, correct? No, ma'am. No, you did not. So you purchased all. So why is it Ms. Willis is only using cash, but he's getting his point maxing whenever he's buying stuff on his business credit card. Right. But why doesn't she want any points?

That's what I don't understand. What's happening here? It's true. Give us those points. Megyn Kelly did a great summary, really, of this. Let me put this up there on the screen just because there's so much that came out of this hearing. Number one, this actually preceded both of their testimony.

Fannie Willis's close friend testified to the court under oath that their romantic relationship began way before Fannie Willis hired him, meaning that they both lied to the court. Number two, Wade claimed that she reimbursed him for all of these very expensive trips, including wine tasting to Napa, which she made clear, just so you know, Ryan. She's like, I don't even like wine. I prefer Grey Goose, So thank you for that, Ms. Willis. She says, of course, it was on cash. And then three, he definitely caught lying on his earlier court submissions in divorce court, attempting to say that the reason he swore that he had no receipts was because he only had credit card statements reflecting the charges. I have secondhand embarrassment. I mean, it really is one where there is also other instances, for example, Ryan, where she claimed that she had large amounts of cash on hand because she had just come off of

her campaign. And you're like, wait, what? Hold on a second. It's like record scratch. What are you saying? Did you mean you're getting paid cash? Where's your Georgia Bureau of Investigations? Exactly. Can we get the Georgia Election Bureau, who you are allegedly prosecuting Trump on behalf? Oh, yeah, and a whole bunch of cash from your campaign. Well, you said this last time, and maybe you can explain it again. The problem here is the corruption law. Her tawdry affair and all that other stuff is a secondary concern. The law is clear. You have to reimburse people, especially when you're in a personal relationship, and you have to be able to account for that. I mean, I was explaining to our crew previously, like if I spend $10 on our account or whatever, and it's not immediately clear, my accountants

are up my ass the same day. They're like, hey, what is this charge for? You need to clearly explain and all this just so I can be compliant in the event that IRS or whatever. She's the Georgia prosecutor. I mean, you know, it's like she clearly has a present interest, far more present than I do of, you know, dotting my I's, crossing my T's and all that stuff just to prove in any event that someone would ever look at our books that all of our finances are 100% legit. What makes this difficult for her is she can either get caught in the affair or she can follow the law. Right. Because if you're having an affair, you're not going to be then like,

you know, $500 from Fannie Willis in the bank account. That's a good point. So you can imagine why, let's say it was cash or that she's not paying it back. Why that would happen? But fundamentally, for people to understand, it's an anti-kickback law. If you are a public figure who has your fingers on the purse strings of the public money and you have the power to give, let's say, a $100,000 contract to somebody, everywhere throughout world history, what happens is that somebody who wants that contract says, give me the 100K and I'll kick you back 10K. And so as a public official, so many of them are like, great, what do I care who gets this project or who we hire? I'm going to walk away with $10,000. So it's an anti-kickback law. You can't take more than X, you know, a very nominal amount of money from somebody who got a contract. And so he got $600,000, $700,000 contract to be the lawyer on this thing.

She can't take money back. What makes it ethically and weirdly different is that it wasn't really a kickback. Like we know what was going on here. But it is a violation. But it is. It's still a violation. But you've stumbled into a violation. Yeah. I mean, listen, I have friends who work in government because she hired him.

If I go out to dinner with them, as you know, it's a pain in the ass sometimes. Like, well, I can't accept it. You know, cause I'll be like, oh, I'll take the check. Cause I want the points. Right. And they're like, no, I can only accept up to $20 or what? And these people are low level staffers as compared to this lady. Yeah. You're going up against the former president of the United States as a state-level prosecutor. You have to have your ducks in a row. You would think. I forget what the recent case was

where somebody got caught up. They were, I forget. It was in the news just a month ago or whatever. They went down for something that they were completely guilty of, but it had nothing to do with like the initial things. But if you're taking on a power center, like they're going to come for you. Right. And then they're going to find whatever you did wrong. Oh, I was thinking of Claudine Gray and plagiarism.

Yes, there you go. That's what it was. That's right. It's like, look, if you're going to be president of Harvard, you got to have your ducks in a row. You better not be plagiarist. It's actually not complicated. Even though they were not coming after you for that, it was about Israel. Bingo. Yeah, exactly. What are you doing? Right. Why do you think I'm, why do you think we're so neurotic here about it? I know that we talk a lot of shit about a lot of people in power and it's like, you want to come? Go ahead. All right. You know, probably a little

bit too cautious over here at breaking points. The final thing here is MSNBC had to come up with the best defense of Miss Willis that they could. Here's what they had to say. The testimony on the whole was calmer than I expected it to be when she first walked in. You were worried, but also incredibly detailed. And I thought her portrayal of why it is that she pays for things in cash and has lots of cash on hand was very compelling. Basically, it was a life lesson she learned from her father and then sort of joked about the way that she was raised by that old black man, as she referred to him. Yeah. And Catherine Christian. And the defense oversold this. There was no evidence other than the woman who was a former

friend and a former employee. That's their evidence. And anyone who has an elderly black parent or elderly black people in life, no, it's about keeping cash because you never know when you're going to need it. So she's been very credible. It's very credible because there is an antiquated racial explanation that is based in stereotypes. White people too. My grandmother who lived through the depression keeps cash. And so I'm actually not doubting whether she keeps a lot of cash with her. What I am kind of doubting is whether she unrolled a whole bunch of it and handed it to her. So you really, you reimburse him for every trip, every single trip, because if you didn't, you violated the law. And it's like, well, you can't prove it. And it's like the Epstein

thing. And I'm not comparing the two. I'm just saying whenever I would read through the financial services reports around Epstein from New York and all those others, he would take out $9,999 for tips. And every single time he would write it out, I'm like, this is for tips. And it's like, really? It's like, that's obviously supposed to trigger alerts inside of the system. Hunter too, if anybody wants to know, if you go and you read his extravaganza, buck and all expenses, he was spending $600,000, $700,000 often in cash. In general, when people do shady things, they are spending large amounts of cash

specifically to try and stay out of the legitimate banking system. And specifically because she was able and often did use the legitimate banking system for other expenses, it makes her explanation even more doubtable as to how this was not untoward and to why we shouldn't really believe a lot of what she said. So what's going to happen there? I mean, there's a, there previously a judge had said that

this possibly could be grounds for dismissal. I mean, it's one of those where at the very least, I mean, I think you could put a decent amount of reasonable doubt in a jury's head for political prosecution. Did you find a new prosecutor? What do you do? Maybe. Look, I'm not the guy to ask. I don't know about Georgia double jeopardy or any of that. But from what I know, the people in the Trump people in Georgia, I've said that before. He's touched by God. And I don't even believe in God. Neither does he. Yeah, neither does he. But he's touched by him. He has been, you know, he's had his hands laid. There's an angel who's looking out. It was from that White House when they all laid their hands on him.

Yeah, maybe you're right. That was it. Maybe it worked. It worked. Maybe I should have listened to the evangelicals when I was growing up. Maybe they were right. 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 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. 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. Our iHeartRadio Music Festival, presented by Capital One, is coming back to Las Vegas.

Vegas! September 19th and 20th. On your feet! Streaming live only on Hulu. Ladies and gentlemen. Brian Adams. Ed Sheeran. Fade.

Chlorilla. Jelly Roll. Sean Fogarty. Lil Wayne. LL Cool J. Mariah Carey. Maroon 5. Sammy Hagar.

Tate McRae. The Offspring, Tim McGraw. Tickets are on sale now at AXS.com. Get your tickets today. AXS.com. All right, let's move on to the next part here. Matt Taibbi out with a new report. Taking a couple of days to digest this one, and I wanted to—, actually, you're a great person to talk about it with, Ryan. It traces back to some of the original days of Russiagate with some pretty interesting reporting. Let's put this up there on the screen. This is co-bylined Matt Taibbi, Michael Schellenberger over at Public, and Alex Gutentag, three excellent reporters.

They say, quote, it was all a lie. The Trump-Russia scandal made its formal launch on January 16th, 2017, when the office of the DNI published what was known then as the Intelligence Community Assessment. However, the report declared that Russia and Putin interfered in the 2016 presidential election to denigrate Hillary Clinton to arm her electability, thanks to her preference for President Donald Trump. It was powerful stuff and it was dead wrong. So according to them, there was an inside effort by the CIA within the DNI as well to try and to demonstrate that they cooked the intelligence to say that, quote, Russia had favored Hillary Clinton and not Trump in 2016, according to several sources that they had spoken to. Matt's been obviously working on reporting and news like this now for quite some time. I think the effective allegation within it,

and it's very detailed that you guys can go and read, is that they selectively made intelligence important that claimed that Russia would like for Donald Trump to win in 2016 to then make it a declarative conclusion that they could put in the so-called declassified intelligence assessment. And I mean, Ryan, you and I were reporting at that time, that intelligence assessment right before Trump takes office is tremendously influential for overall Russiagate because front page of the New York Times, you know, Intel, Russia wanted Trump to win right as he's taking office. This is while the Mueller investigation and all that, the very early days of that began to come forward. You have big discussions around James Comey

and his firing. This is years now in retrospect. But the reason why I think it is important is that one of the things Matt has really not ever let go and what he is truly correct about is the seismic implications of Russiagate, because it's a lot like the Iraq War and their 40th order consequences. It was a media scandal, certainly, you know, Iraq WMD level failure, but it also constrained a lot of legitimate options for the president of the United States. Trump, in many cases, tried to prove he was tougher on Russia than Obama, shipping weapons to Ukraine. Anyone want to tell me how that worked out in terms of the war? It certainly realigned the entire Democratic Party to become much more anti-Russia. If you go back

and you read President Obama's 2015 interview with Jeffrey Goldberg, he sounds like me. You know, he'll be like, he'll be like, listen, you know, Ukraine is not a major strategic interest for America. If you really want to make the argument that Americans should die for Ukraine, go ahead. I don't agree with you. What happened to that Democratic Party? It's gone as a result. That's a year after the kind of Donbass war. Exactly. Right. Yeah. And 2012, liberals, including me, cheered during the presidential debate with Obama and Romney, where Romney's. Oh, the bayonets moment. Yeah. That was great. And he's like, he's talking about Russia being our biggest geostrategic adversary. And yeah, Obama's like, what are you talking about?

Right. This is not 1912. Yes. Bayonets and the battleships. Yes. And like cavalry and like horses. Like, come on, get into the modern era. This is not.

And actually, and that is. And he was right. Obama was right. I'll say it. He was right about that. And Putin actually wanted him to be right about that. And this is something that Yegor has actually talked about that the main thing that we misunderstand both about the collapse of the Soviet Union and also Putin's psychology is that when the Soviet Union collapsed, the, the, the elites who took it over and turned themselves into

Oligarchs thought they were gonna get a Marshall Plan from the United States thought that they if they basically Surrendered the Cold War that the West would then welcome them in To this this world of nations where you get to have this nice inequality at the very top because they misunderstood the conflict between the Soviet Union and and the West as around communism and around kind of capitalism versus communism, when actually it was about the West versus another power center. It was purely about power. So Russia replacing the Soviet Union didn't actually change that from our calculus. But from Putin's perspective, and you can see this bleeding all through the Tucker interview, he just wants the

West to like him and like accept him as- Yeah, he's like, we want to be a part of NATO. We want this. They literally asked to be part of NATO. And we're like, no, NATO exists to go to war with you. So why would we let you in it? And from their perspective, they're like, well, so there's no war. We're like, yeah, that's the whole point. We need a conflict to constantly kind of keep our thing going. And they could never understand that.

And then this gave, this Russiagate situation gave the West the opportunity to kind of put Russia back in the place that it likes, which is adversarial. Well, I would say, too, it also empowered Putin. This is what people don't understand. Putin has always been the same, all right, as you said. Yes, he definitely does want the West to like him and all that, but he sees the fall of the Soviet Union as a tragedy. But the best question that Tucker asked him in the interview, he's like, look, if all this bullshit is true, why didn't you just invade Ukraine on the day that you took office? And the truth is,

is that he didn't have enough control and not enough of the oligarchic elite agreed with him. They wanted to be friendly with the West. They like it here. That's why it sucks for them that they can't leave. They want half of Manhattan and Miami. That's why they hate that they can't access their cool properties in Brooklyn and New York. And you know that, what is that stupid ass building in the middle of New York? It's probably empty right now as a result of, I forget, Time Warner Center or something like that. It's a whore. They should tear that thing down. That's a whole other conversation. The point just being that the Russian oligarchic elite, you know, it took them years to be able to put in a place where Putin could finagle all of society such that he could take an oppositional

stance towards Russia. Russiagate was a gift to him to be able to purge the elite of any Western-friendly people combined then with the Ukraine invasion and the subsequent sanctions, part of why he is much stronger today in that society than he ever was 10 years ago and prior. Russiagate was hugely influential to that. I also find it interesting that everybody seems to ignore the more recent Putin interview, not with Tucker, after Tucker, where he said, I would prefer Biden. I actually would like Biden to win the election. Here's what he had to say. I'm going to go ahead and read this. You have a Kremlin interviewer that say, who is better for us, Biden or Trump? Putin says, Biden, he's more experienced. He's more predictable. He's an old school politician.

He says, but we will work with any US leader who the American people have confidence in. And I just find that astounding. He says it outright. Imagine if it was Trump. Is he trolling? Maybe. The one question is, is he trolling a little bit? But he trolls all the time. How do you know when we take it seriously or not? And what he's saying is that predictability matters. Yes. And it's not crazy to look at Trump and be like, not exactly sure what he's going to do. Like Trump is not predictable. Hillary Clinton, he despised Hillary Clinton. He blamed Hillary Clinton for basically election interference in his, you know, he blamed her when she was secretary of state for sparking protests against him, Navalny, etc.

He sees the hand of the CIA everywhere, as frankly any foreign government ought to. I mean, he's not 100% wrong. It's not all our fault, but it's not like we weren't involved either. Let's all be real. So it's clear that he does not like Hillary Clinton, did not want her to be president, but he doesn't want anybody to be president of the United States. If there's going to be a president of the United States, you can imagine why he'd say, you know what,

let's have one that's more predictable than less predictable. And if it's going to be Trump, let's try to influence him one way or another. So you can see all of the things being true. Like the influence campaign, you could be seen as like, we don't know how Trump is going to be as president if he is president But if he is let's try to have him, you know buddies with us an interesting question Too would be let's say Trump does come into office He does fulfill his promise of ending the Ukraine war on day one. Let's say that we did freeze things

I'm not so convinced things would be all kumbaya in Russia. I mean, the Russian economy is running on war right now. What would they do if they just stopped? I mean, they would have huge inflation. Do what we do, find another war. Yeah, they would seriously be in trouble. Putin is using wartime powers and others to kill Navalny, maybe, or to eliminate political opponents, to purge the elite. He could start sending the shells to Iran, which then sends them to Hezbollah. But I'm just saying, I mean, if you look at any economy in the world that's ever transitioned from a war economy out of it, it's not so simple from 1946, in our case, post-Vietnam. We had a lot of problems coming out of those. Russia would certainly not be immune from any of that. And that just demonstrates to all of us that not everything is so black and white, especially here with the CIA report. So I just want to again commend Matt.

I think it's a very interesting report. The crux of it just comes back to that they believe the CIA, according to sources that he spoke to years now later, they say multiple that they had cooked the intelligence such that they had upgraded sources from untrustworthy or not that trustworthy to trustworthy to justify underlying claims that had a massive impact on our overall politics. I 100% believe that it's consistent with everything that's come out from the Carter Page FISA and all the other Russiagate scandals. And it was a very good reporting. So we'll have a link down in the description if you guys want to throw either of them a subscription and support their work. They're independent journalists and they do awesome jobs. 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 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. Our iHeartRadio Music Festival, presented by Capital One, is coming back to Las Vegas. Vegas! September 19th and 20th. On your feet! Streaming live only on Hulu. Ladies and gentlemen, Brian Adams, Ed Sheeran, Fade,

Chlorilla, Jelly Roll, Sean Fogarty, Lil Wayne, LL Cool J, Mariah Carey, Maroon 5, Sammy Hagar, Tate McRae, The Offspring, Tim McGraw. Tickets are on sale now at AXS.com. Get your sale now at AXS.com. Get your tickets today.

AXS.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.

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. Meanwhile, on our buddy Matt Taibbi, he's beefing with Elon Musk.

Sagar, you've been following this? Yeah, I've been following it just because Elon really is one of the most unpredictable people who is out there. So Matt, as we'll all recall, is this incredible journalist. He does the Twitter files. He's the person who Elon goes to. He was accused of being an Elon toady. Doing PR for Elon. Doing PR for the richest man in the world by reporting legitimate story and working with sources. What Matt always told us, he's like, look, I didn't agree to any preconditions. He brought it to me. The only precondition was that it had to be published. It had to be published first on twitter.com. Seems reasonable. That's yeah.

You do this stuff all the time. People, people always come to you with preconditions and all the stuff. Well, they would say, yeah. Um, actually sometimes we like, I've got a scoop. Um, but will you, will you do it in your newsletter? Will you do it at intercept? Would it be counterpoints? And like some people for different purposes want different platforms for a scoop. Nothing wrong with that. And if they want a thing and I don't feel like doing that, I'm like, well, no, I'm not going to do that. And that's fine. And they go shopping somewhere else.

Right, we have power. There's a power in this relationship. It's give and take. But you're certainly of doing PR conveniently are ignoring the fact that Taibbi has by all accounts really been punished by Elon actually for speaking out on behalf of a platform that Taibbi is very loyal to, Substack. Let's put this up there on the screen. Matt has released a bunch of text messages that he had with Elon Musk from earlier last year in April of 2023. I'll read them verbatim. He says, Elon, am I being shadow banned? Elon replies, we went on lockdown after discovering Substack

has stolen a mass amount of our data to pre-populate their Twitter ripoff. It looks like there's still a blanket search ban. It should be fixed tomorrow. Going forward, tweets with Substack will not appear in the For You page unless it is paid advertising, just like Facebook and Instagram. they will appear in following. This reply included from Matt. He says, Elon, I have repeatedly declined to criticize you. I have nothing to do with your beef with Substack. Is there a reason why I'm being put in the middle of things? This seems really crazy. Elon, you are dead to me. Please get off Twitter and stay on Substack. Matt, this is about the Substack thing? Seriously? That was it. That appears to be, you know, the texts that were released. And Matt, the reason that he replied this is because he had been tweeting previously,

quote, Elon is uncomfortable around people who are not afraid of him and wants to prove he can hurt my business instead of just talking to me even if it means suppressing access to news that he thinks is important. Somebody replied, are you actually suggesting that Elon is deliberately burying your visibility? Do you have any proof of this? To which he then posts literal proof showing that he actually was banned. For anybody who also wants to accuse me or whatever of supporting me, this is craziness because Substack is the venue, the platform through which so much independent

journalism is flourishing, number one. Number two, we just read everybody a report from public. I find it horrible that people like Schellenberger and Taibbi, who have thriving platforms over there, very often, Ryan, when they want to distribute their work, cannot tweet out links to Substack like they could to any other. Now, in terms of Substack stealing Twitter and all that, I don't know. Personally, it sounds like bullshit to me, if you ask me. Right. This stuff is publicly available.

It's the API, and they just scraped it. Right. And it's like, in reality, what were they really afraid of? That people were going to leave the platform. It's like, are they really going to leave the platform in critical numbers? Like, let's be honest here. You know, he's always tweeting about how X's traffic monthly users or whatever and all that went up. It was just a capricious move, clearly done from a position of weakness. And anyway, I thought it was funny because it just highlights to me that all of the people who really trashed him for doing journalism that was allegedly pro-Elon and writing PR for all of them are completely ignoring that his business has been very materially harmed. Arguably, he was better off under the old Twitter regime because at least then he was going viral. Right. You don't see him as much anymore. You don't see him as much. It's very clear that his platform is being, or his account is being throttled. Right. Yeah. Yeah. So many followers he was able to pick up. I had him in my inbox,

but if I wasn't getting his emails, I probably wouldn't see him. Exactly. I think that's really bad. I mean, it's just, look, it's not just Matt. We'll forget. Who was it? Barry Weiss. I remember. She was also involved in the Twitter files. And she criticized, this is early Elon lore. Whenever Elon banned and then unbanned that account that followed his private jet and a couple of other journalists, Barry Weiss, I believe had spoken out against it. And he replied to her being like, you're virtue signaling. She's like, I'm not virtue signaling. I just, I believe a certain set of things. I don't really care who it is that it is the person that's doing it. Also, if like you think something is a virtue and you want to signal that to people, it's actually.

Yeah, it's okay. That's actually okay. Free country. Yeah. Like if you think that is wrong to ban this account and you say that publicly, that's called free speech. Yes. Virtue signaling. Yes, you're virtue signal like yeah, and it shows that he must His his defenders who say he's ideologically committed to an independent media are lying

He's what he's committed to as a media which he controls now if you believe that he's a benign Media dictator then go ahead put your put your faith in him to control everything. If you think that it's better if voices are dispersed and people have access to different platforms, then you don't want a controlling billionaire dictator to run everything. Yeah. I mean, look, somebody please tell me why Substack is being throttled but the New York Times can trend. Like that doesn't make any sense. It truly, especially if you're committed to free speech or any of this. The problem for Taibbi there is, and you know this from premium subscribers here to Breaking Points, there's just a natural churn. Churn, yeah. Every month, either there's a billing problem or- People forget their credit cards or whatever, they lose their jobs. Or I say something that annoys them. That happens too.

And they're out of here. And that's fine. Yeah, it's not a lot of that. The churn is part of a subscription basis, but you need to then be able to get new people to replace them. And if Taibbi can't market his work, then his churn is just going one direction.

Even though he's doing fantastic work. He's doing fantastic work. That's part of the reason I wanted to support. I wanted to play some of this and to actually give credit. Not only is it a very important story, but just again to highlight this, he's being genuinely screwed over by Elon for reasons totally out of his control. For siding with the platform that backed him. At the time, Elon told him, why don't you just publish everything on Twitter?

Because we're taking the length limit away. And Matt didn't really even take that seriously. He's like, no, that's an interesting thought, but of course I'm not going to do that. I have tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of subscribers over here on Substack. This is a platform that's treated me very well. And he's also better at distributing long form content

to people's inboxes. I'm not gonna do it on Twitter. But it was his refusal to adopt a platform that doesn't work for his purposes that led to him banning him, shadow banning him. It's not right. Anyway, speaking up for Matt here in all of this, it's certainly not right. And for all those who asked for proof that he was being shadow banned, unlike 95%—no, unlike 99.9% of people who are claiming that, he actually has the receipts. From the guy. Go and support the guy if you can. We'll have a link in the description to his newsletter.

So Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu responded to international pressure over the creation of a Palestinian state alongside an Israeli one. We can put this up here. Here he is speaking to the Knesset yesterday with an official declaration saying that Israel absolutely rejects any type of dictate from the international community that they agree to a Palestinian state. Now this is, you know, Sagar, it's sort of like that tweet format where somebody says, nobody, absolutely nobody, Benjamin Netanyahu. It's like, yeah, okay, there's been international pressure. But also, he didn't have to come out with his declaration. Like, we get it.

Like, he's been against a Palestinian state since like the 1990s. It's only in the last maybe several months that that has really been absorbed by the media because, you know, people like you and I have been following this for a long time, have always been able to understand that Netanyahu is against a Palestinian state. You know, he would occasionally say it openly that he opposed the Palestinian state. We even remember when he said the reason that he helped to facilitate Hamas remaining in power was so that you could divide the Palestinian leadership between the West Bank and Gaza because a united Palestinian leadership would bring pressure to bear for a Palestinian state. And so by splitting the Palestinians,

you prevent the formation of a Palestinian state. He has made his entire argument for why his entire legacy has been prevention of a Palestinian state. And his argument for continuing in office is that he is the only one that can manipulate the United States effectively to make sure that there is no Palestinian state. That that is his entire rationale. Now here – but this reflects increasing I think global pressure to say, all right, come on. It's been a long time. Let's resolve this. I saw an analysis that this was Bibi in October 6th mode as in this is political Bibi. There's a reason he's saying this in Hebrew except he's reflecting the conditions of the war.

He's trying to get this coalition together. He's trying to get the right-wingers to support him. As you said, a major part of something he often admits in Hebrew is, I am the reason there is no Palestinian state. He forgets that we can hit translate. It's actually pretty easy to hit translate, just so something like that. But he says it very, not even quietly, openly behind the scenes. My question to you is in the context of US foreign policy and Western foreign policy, will this actually matter? Are the Palestinians correct that this is just lip service from the US? Because we keep saying there has to be a resumption of a Palestinian state, a recognition of that at the end of this process, period, end of story.

And if he is not going to be a legitimate negotiating partner, we continue to provide them aid and to tacitly support their actions. Is this not then the default position of the United States government at this point? It is. As long as we keep shipping arms and money and giving that tacit and explicit support, it doesn't matter what we say. What matters is what we do. And it also, in some ways, doesn't matter what Netanyahu says there. It doesn't matter what we say. What matters is what we do. And it also, in some ways, doesn't matter what Netanyahu says there. It matters what Netanyahu does. And that brings us to our next VO here. What Netanyahu is currently doing is building what's called Highway 749. And so if you're listening to the podcast, What we're rolling here is a documentary from Israel's Channel 14 that played on Saturday. This is a highway that is cutting across the middle

of the Gaza Strip, basically from the Negev over almost all the way to the sea, looking like it's going to become some type of Berlin Wall situation that bifurcates the two, you know, the Gaza Strip into two. In other words, if it was the largest open-air prison on October 6th, that now it would be the two largest open-air prisons just split in two. And according to this documentary that aired on Israeli TV, you wouldn't even be able to travel from one side to the other if you're a Gazan. Since the Oslo Accords came into effect in the 1990s, travel has been increasingly restricted for Palestinians, which is one reason travel, civil liberties, economic, the economy, et cetera, has been increasingly curtailed. One of the reasons that Hamas has kind of gained

in influence among Palestinians because a lot of Palestinians say, look, the parties that advocated for this Oslo Accord have only led to things getting materially worse for us. Not that it's status quo and things haven't gotten better for us, but things were actually better in the 80s and 90s than they are now. If you live in Gaza on October 6th, you basically couldn't leave. I mean, you could leave if you could get some type of permit. That

could take months or years. You'd have people with health complications who would die before they got the permits to leave. And so now you're saying that that's gonna be cut even tighter. And so, and we're gonna talk a little bit later about the West Bank in this block, but the problem in the West Bank is all of these different Bantustans and all these different settlements that- What do you mean by that?

People who aren't familiar with the town. Oh, so in South Africa, you'd have these little tiny areas that are cordoned off that you basically couldn't leave. During apartheid. During apartheid. And you just make them smaller and smaller and smaller. And that's the main thing making it so hard for Palestinians to have any sovereignty in the West Bank because there's something like 700,000 settlers dividing the West Bank up. Now, if you divide Gaza up too, it really fits into what Netanyahu is arguing here, that he's going to be

the guy that is going to change the reality on the ground to make it so there cannot be a Palestinian state. It just can't happen. So with that establishment of the highway, do you see that as establishment Israeli control over that territory? That's the goal. Settler policy? Like what is it? The goal there would be that, yeah, you'd have watchtowers and you'd have a sophisticated security apparatus with walls. You know, they've got the wall up by the West Bank.

Just like October 6th, though. It basically seems like they're doubling down on the same strategy. Yes. It's quote unquote managing the conflict, just managing it harder. Right. Yeah. And so this combines with some movement out of Egypt. I actually really am curious what you think about this because there's a variety of ways. Let's put this up there, please, on the screen, guys. We have video here of Egypt that is building a massive fence around the Rafah border. They're calling it a logistics zone. More likely, Ryan, it seems to be in response to be an anticipated Rafah offensive by the IDF

that would somehow pen in Palestinians, I'm assuming, who if they were able to breach the Rafah crossing would then be included in this zone. But, I mean, it seems strategically important because it would mean that these Palestinian civilians would be in some odd no man's land where they're technically inside of Egypt, but the Egyptians are keeping them out, not allowing them to resettle or whatever into the Sinai. Since December, the fear has been that the Rafah Crossing would be breached by a mob of people who just overwhelm security there because there'd be so much pressure brought to bear on it by the suffering of the people on the other side of it.

Egypt, for just as long, has been reinforcing it, putting tanks there, sending out declarations saying that this absolutely cannot happen. You know, from Egypt's perspective, they see a million refugees, you know, pouring into the Sinai Desert as massively destabilizing what is basically a dictatorship that they have over there. So this is, you know, unless Sisi wants to, you know, head to Florida and retire, this is an existential question for the Egyptian government. And they're being extremely clear that they're not going to allow what seems to be the only thing that makes any sense from Israel. Like, what,

like, what are, what are they doing here? And the only thing that makes sense is that they're driving into Rafah with such ferocity with the hope that they will then force them into the Sinai Desert. So if you build these cement barriers, that relieves some pressure on the border because a lot of the people see, okay, let's say we could overwhelm the border and bust through there. Then all we've done is get into this desert area and are staring at these cement walls. Right. And that's where the big question is, are the Egyptians going to revoke the Camp David Peace Accords? They've threatened to. Yeah, they've threatened to do that. This would appear to indicate that, and this is the other big question, are they coordinating with the Israelis?

Are they like, hey, you've got to wait for us to put up some barriers and all that because we can't be having a mass expulsion. But at the same time, that appears to be what some of the goals of the Israeli government are in this case. And if they do go into this so-called no man's land, I mean, what are the odds that they ever actually are able to leave? Probably low in terms of what the actions currently anticipate for them. That's exactly right. If there was some trust, like let's say that the population turned on Hamas and actually wanted Israel to like kind of round up and root out all of the Hamas fighters. And there was some faith from the Palestinian people that Israel would, of course, just allow them to return and help

with the reconstruction of their homes. Then sure, you set up a refugee camp in the Sinai and the battle unfolds and then people come back. none of that is the case though. Not like not a single piece of that is true. The Palestinians do not trust Israel to allow them back into Gaza if, if they ever left, even though currently like on an individual level, most Palestinians, it seems like, like if they could get out of this horrifying hell on earth situation that they're in temporarily would, would get out. Right. But there's, now, if Israel was actually serious about this,

they have, and lots of people have actually suggested this, but they have not taken them up on it, which shows what their plan is. Open up the Israeli Negev desert, like to create a, you wouldn't need a whole lot of territory to create a refugee camp wouldn't need a whole lot of territory to create a refugee camp. And you could say, you know, men over 60, I think they've said boys under 15. No military age males, women and children. And women and children, that put a million people there.

But that is Israeli territory. And so that would kind of guarantee the right of return to Gaza. And that seems to be the problem with that plan. That's an interesting point. I hadn't considered that really at all. 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 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. Add free at Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. Our iHeartRadio Music Festival, presented by Capital One, is coming back to Las Vegas. We'll be right back. Wayne, LL Cool J, Mariah Carey, Maroon 5, Sammy Hagar, Tate McRae, The Offspring, Tim McGraw. Tickets are on sale now at AXS.com. Get your tickets today. AXS.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. 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. Why don't we move to the next part there, Ryan? And so on Thursday, the Algerians are going to bring to—or we're talking about bringing to the United Nations another ceasefire resolution. We can put up this element from Joe Biden. The administration came out and announced that they would veto.

They said it will not be adopted. They will veto a ceasefire resolution. So on the one hand, Biden is privately and semi-publicly urging Netanyahu not to launch an invasion of Rafah. Separately, he is facilitating the transfer of more weapons, which would assist with this invasion of Rafah. And on top of that, is promising to veto any international accountability for this invasion. So in order to try to find some gap between what the United States is doing and what Israel is doing, you have to squint insanely hard. Like we are 100% complicit in what we have described as a disaster. Like the State Department and Kirby from the White House have both said, used the word disaster to describe what would

happen if there was an invasion of RAFA. Right. And yet that appears to be like, that's what's happening. And we're going to veto an effort to stop it, and we're going to arm it. I understand why it is making people so crazy watching it unfold. Like, wait a minute, we think this is a disaster? We don't want this to happen? But we're going to use our capital internationally to block the UN, and we're going to arm it. This makes Biden actually more pro-Israel even than Obama. Absolutely. Yeah, because he would, I don't know if you remember, in 2016, they allowed a couple of resolutions and all that to go through the UN specifically to try and depress you. Oh yeah, that was a blood feud for the ages, which is interesting. I helped Amir Tabon, this great Israeli reporter, who he became kind of a journalistic celebrity October 7th and

8th because he wrote this like incredible piece about being stuck in a safe room in one of the kibbutzim and being saved by his grandfather who came all the way from Tel Aviv to rescue his family. He's working on a book now about the relationship About the last like 50 years or so, but I helped him with a profile of the relationship between Netanyahu And an Obama back in like 2015 2016. We should go back and read that they These two teams did not like each other as John Madden Like to say speaking people that don't like each other So let's let's move to the international response to this coming Rafah invasion. We can put up Lula da Silva here, president of Brazil.

He's saying what is happening in the Gaza Strip hasn't happened in history before. It does not exist at any other historical context. And then Lula adds, in fact, it existed when Hitler decided to kill the Jews. So the president of Brazil analogizing, you know, what Israel is doing to the Palestinians, what happened during the Holocaust. Uh, moving back to Europe, the criticism is serious, but not quite on the level of Lula rhetoric. But let's put up here EU Foreign Minister Joseph Borrell at the Munich conference, because this is a really fascinating point. He made a couple of other points before this. This one, though, I think is really worth considering.

So let's roll E6 here. Let's take a listen. And the global south, the third one, they have its own dynamic. But no doubt, the war in Ukraine and in Gaza has increased tremendously the political space of the Global South vis-à-vis to us. And we have to avoid the beginning of the war in Gaza. And they are really taking good advantage of our mistakes. The blame about double standards is something that we need to address, and not only with nice words. It's clear that the wind is blowing against the West. It's blowing against us.

And we have to win the battle of narrative. And so right before this, he had said, look, when it comes to Ukraine, with the exception of maybe one country, I assume he means Hungary, we've been united on this situation. He said, but when it comes to Gaza and when it comes to Israel, all the member states want to play games, play their own little game. He said the result of that is that it is becoming the West against the rest. And he's trying to let the European elite there there the European leadership into the fact that

This has been a godsend for everyone outside of the West that the double standard Is so apparent across the global global south that when you hear somebody like Lula Make such make make a comparison as extreme as that What he's saying is that that's resonating with billions of people around the world, and you need to understand where that's going. So are you surprised at the geopolitical chaos that the West seems to be willing to accept for this war? Well, I was surprised on Ukraine. I mean, I watched us realign our relationships with Brazil and India, which are, I'm going to say, a hundred times more important to us

than freaking Ukraine. Like basically, I mean, think about this. We think that the territory of the Eastern Donbass region, the territorial integrity of that, is so important that we should sacrifice- Oblast that Nikki Haley can't name. Oblast that nobody in this country can name, including the people who want to ship them weapons. We think that is more important, that integrity, than our relationship with the Indian government or with the Brazilian government or with the South African government. And then you combine this situation with Israel, where all of the rhetoric that we were using to the Indians, to the Brazilians, and to others as to why we should support them around civilians and about rules-based order and all of that. They're like, are you a

joke? They're like, no, we don't believe you. They already thought that we were empty, hollow people working great power politics and shrouding it in rhetoric. Now this just confirms it to them in an exact one-to-one situation. So yeah, I mean, it doesn't shock me at all that what has happened with our geopolitical situation. I do think it's been a disaster for us because it both undermines any rhetoric that we have on human rights. And look, I'm on record. I don't really believe foreign policy should be conducted that way, but if you're going to, at least be consistent. And we're not doing anything that is in our direct strategic interest. So we're in this odd, you know, third bubble where we selectively apply both, which makes us weak on all fronts.

And to the point about human rights, and we can go back to that Channel 14 documentary that we talked about at the very top, we can roll this one little clip from there, which is just an absolutely shocking thing that was published, that was aired on Israeli TV. This is an Israeli interrogator who said human animals, most of them, of course, at the beginning, deny any connection to the events of October 7th. And through certain tools and means, we managed to get the first confessions out of them. So essentially, this is an Israeli interrogator on Israeli TV saying that they use certain tools and means to move Palestinian detainees from denying involvement in October 7th to confessing, quote unquote, confessing to involvement in October 7th. Sagar, how long would it take you under certain tools and means until you told your captors whatever? I don't know. I don't even know if they would have to do it. I think if they pulled the drill

out, I'd be like, all right, what do you want me to sign? I've read enough Vietnam POW books. By the way, I could go on a whole tangent because I went down a real rabbit hole on Vietnam POWs to know that number one, everybody breaks. And number two, that there's virtually like nothing that you can tell yourself that will prepare you for being in a situation that is even remotely like this. And that you very likely, you know, like you said, will likely be able to tell your captors whatever you want, whatever they want to hear, or at least, you know, try and placate them in certain instances just to be able to stop that. And that was obviously a very extreme case. I don't know necessarily what these gentlemen went through.

But this was often, you don't have to ask me, you can ask former POW John McCain. You won't ever hear me cite him favorably often. But he made this case a lot during the Bush administration when he was very against enhanced interrogation against al-Qaeda detainees, certain tools and means specifically, because he was like, look, I, he's like, I don't have a moral care for these people. He's like, it just doesn't work. Um, and you know, propagandistically when you put stuff out there, people know they're not dumb. They're like, okay, well, it seems like you were questioned under duress. Then they're not going to do, you know, they're going to discount a lot

of what you were saying. So no, I'm not surprised by it. In this documentary, they're picking up, uh, detainee after detainee. Every male that seems to be anywhere between teenage and not elderly, they've got the cameras there and making a little documentary. Where were you on October 7th? I was in my factory. I was in a bakery. And they're like, we don't believe you over here. there are two there were at the start of this 2.3 million people in gaza there were several thousand that participated in uh october in the attack on october 7th and then several hundred civilians that also broke through the fence like if you pick up every single male that you see in Gaza, you know, 999 out of a thousand of those

are going to be innocent. Right. And you're going to use this torture on them to extract a confession that doesn't make what they tell you true. Ryan, you have a case of a doctor. Do you want to highlight that to people? Because you have a personal connection to this. Well, yeah. So we can put up Dr. Khaled Al-Sir here from Nasser Hospital. So on Friday, a colleague of his was sending me WhatsApp video and audio messages and photos from Nasser Hospital, hoping that, and that's right there, is something that Dr. Al-Sir posted on Instagram himself. What's so poignant about this on Friday for me was there was this intense belief from Dr. Al-Sir and his friends and those who are reaching out to me and others in the press that if only we could get this to the White House. And I did. I said, I could get this to the White House. And I did. I said, I will send this to the White House. And I said, can I get comment on what's going on at

Al Nasser Hospital? I want to let you know that Dr. Colette Al-Sir is saying this. He was one of the ones who worked in the ICU. He sent videos of the ICU going dark, literally pulling the plug on it, which ended up killing patients. Because if you need oxygen and you pull the plug, you are at risk of dying. And multiple people in that ICU did die. So I reached out to the White House, said, people are dying in Al Nasser's ICU. This is what the doctor is telling us. Do you have any response? Because I don't want to get myself in a position where I'm kind of advocating for the U.S. to like do anything in particular, but I'm going to let them know. Like right now, as we're speaking, people's lives are at risk. And if you decide to do something to save their lives, then you decide to do that. I'm making

you aware of it. But what was so interesting to me, and this has been happening throughout the entire conflict, so many Palestinians will reach out hoping that I can get word to the White House to stop X, Y, or Z atrocity that is underway, but not even finished yet. Like there's still a chance to save people, whether it's like the hindered job situation is a great example. And like I said, I'll reach out for comment, but the whole time I'm thinking your faith in the United States is touching and poignant, but misplaced. They know what Israel is doing. They are arming Israel to do that thing. They are using their international capital to block the world from intervening to stop this

from happening. But I feel it deeply, this belief that there has to be somebody you can call to stop this. They just, it looks and feels so wrong. And with, with the right kind of phone call, it could be stopped, but they're not, but they're not, they're not going to do it. You can call 911, but that 911 is arming the people who are burglarizing your house at the moment. Well, the case that you're making is very poignant and it's exactly one that Rashida Tlaib is making. Oh, and so he, by the way, just to finish on Dr. Al-Sir, they raided the hospital and as far as anybody can tell,

he was picked up along with all the other doctors and is held incommunicado in Israeli captivity right now, Israel just racking up more and more hostages. And so his colleagues and his friends put out a statement like begging basically Israel to release this doctor and the other doctors that they picked up, so far to no avail. That was Friday night, Friday night US time, Saturday morning their time. Now here we are Monday morning, still no word on his fate, if he's even alive, or whether he's getting the certain tools and means to try to force him to confess that he wasn't actually a doctor,

despite all of the evidence that he is. And instead he's actually a Palestinian Islamic Jihad operative or whatever. But yes, so this brings us to Rashida Tlaib. And instead, he's actually Palestinian Islamic Jihad operative or whatever. But yes, so this brings us to Rashida Tlaib. There is a movement in Michigan, which is having its primary next week. And actually, early voting is happening now. So people, if you're in Michigan, you can go out and early vote right now. Rather than getting behind Marianne Williamson or Dean Phillips or writing in Cenk Uygur, who wasn't able to get on the ballot because of the issues around natural born citizens versus non-natural born citizens.

What a group in Michigan is urging people to do is vote uncommitted. They got an extremely powerful supporter now in Representative Rashida Tlaib. We can play her clip here. It is important, as you all know, to not only march against the genocide, not only make sure that we're calling our members of Congress and local electeds and passing city resolutions all throughout our country. It is also important to create a voting bloc, something that is a bullhorn to say enough is enough. We don't want a country

that supports wars and bombs and destruction. We want to support life. We want to stand up for every single life killed in Gaza. Don't make us even more invisible. Right now, we feel completely neglected and just unseen by our government. If you want us to be louder, then come here and vote uncommitted. So the Democratic media ecosystem has decided in their infinite wisdom that they're going to Streisand effect this. Okay. That they're going to have, they're going to have a temper tantrum of such epic proportions that her social media video will reach exponentially more people because they can't handle even the tiniest of challenges, not even voting against him. NBC News is like Rashida Tlaib says vote against Biden. No, she didn't say that.

She said vote uncommitted. That's right. Which is like we'll still support you in the general election if you just do the things that we're asking you to do. So let's go to MSNBC real quickly for some sober analysis. Let's talk about how the realities of politics works in Washington, D.C. I got a lot of friends and family in Detroit. I care a lot about that proud black community. What up, though, to all the folks in Detroit?

When Jalen Rose Leadership Academy and Wayne State and Cass Tech don't get the proper appropriations from the Democratic administration, the Democratic president, remember it's because your Democratic congresswoman told them to not vote for the Democratic president in the primary. And she won't have the excuse that, well, I was saying primary, not general. You don't slap the president in the face and then expect to be treated as a member of the caucus in good standing. And so Rashida Tlaib is not there to represent the squad. She's not there to represent Palestine while there's merit and all those things. You're there to represent your hometown constituency in the city of Detroit. And I will tell all my friends and family in Detroit that your congresswoman has failed you and frankly embarrassed you. And there could potentially

be ramifications. I don't like to be a sourpuss, but if you want to see Donald Trump beat Joe Biden, then you have voices of Charlemagne and Rashida Tlaib questioning Joe Biden's leadership, suggesting he's not fit for reelection. That's how you do it. Democrats beating themselves. I mean, right now, Democrats have been given a historic opportunity with an alliance of independents and disaffected Republicans that showed up with the Democratic coalition in 18 and 20 and 22. And you're telling me going into 2024 that a sitting Democratic congresswoman and a leading voice on the left are going to say, man, we don't know about our guy. Maybe we shouldn't support him. That's a bunch of hot garbage, Alex. And if those voices don't fall in line.

All in line. Yeah, that's Don Calloway. We used to have in rising days for people who haven't forgotten. He's certainly still dropping some spicy takes. I mean, just for fun, let's put up. Yeah, let's put up Don's LinkedIn here, by the way, what he's up to nowadays. Do we have the next element here? I don't want to insult the guy. If you want to, you can. All right. What does he got? Impact investor, venture capital, private equity, management consultant, corporate affairs. I always liked him for the record. I like Don. Sure. Sure. But he's threatening. Basically, he's saying that Detroit is not going to get federal money because Rashida Tlaib is standing up for this. Not one second of debate on MSNBC about the issue itself, what she is standing up for.

Right. And instead, she needs to just get in line. Like, wasn't that his, didn't that the phrase the guy used? Yeah, he basically was like, you can't slap the president in the face. He's like, I understand it's primary and I'm general. I'm like, I don't know. I mean, it seems pretty relevant to me. It's not actually, yeah. I was telling you, so I was at a Hasan Minhaj show, which, you know, pretty liberal and also predominantly a big Muslim audience. This happened on Saturday. And I like to just pay attention and be like, OK, what's the,

you know, what's the tune out there? And just preview, I'm not going to spoil the set, but he did a good job. And actually, I was even interested for the amount of jokes at Biden's expense. And it was hitting. It was hitting with a liberal audience. And there were a couple moments where, in particular, I saw some of the attendees, you know, many of whom had hijab or something like that on. Clearly were Muslim Americans who were definitely cheering at Biden's expense. They were loving that. And I was just like, huh, that's interesting. You know, it's one of those where I, you know, you very, very rarely know whether something you read on a poll or something that, you know, you see on social media isn't real. Can it manifest itself in real life? But there were a lot of people there, from

what I can tell, again, people who I would definitely code as uber libs, people who were definitely Biden voters or likely to be in that category in 2020, who were not happy, I think, with the president. Now, will they vote for him in the end, in 2024? Maybe. But, you know, a lot of them may sit it out too. I mean, from the people that I talk to in, say, Illinois and Michigan and the Muslim American community, unless all of the people there are lying or overstating it, it seems like the revulsion at Biden for what he's doing is almost universal, like beyond what anybody has seen before. And you hear it from so many people who will tell you, I have always been somebody who argued against third parties, who said you're never – because these are Muslims in America, first of all. Like you're never getting everything that they think they ought to from the American two party system.

So they are, they more than anybody else understand, you know, compromising in order to get the lesser of two evils. So these are people who have been making the lesser. These are state representatives. You know, these are, these are Michigan party leaders, majority leader. Well, do you remember the mayor of Dearborn? I was going to say, do you remember the guy that we interviewed in New Hampshire? The guy? Yes.

Yeah. For people who don't know, you should actually go watch it because it's hilarious. This is the most like ultra Biden bro voter that they're at the end of the interview. I don't know if you remember. He's like, by the way, I just want to say thank you to our Capitol police. And I literally started laughing. Like for what? For January 6th. I was Capitol Police. And I literally started laughing. Like for what? Not for January 6th.

I was like, yes. I burst out laughing because it would not even occur to me that somebody who is like the most ultra normie live MSNBC voter, like you said, who is abhorred to third party, Cornel West or any of that. Even he is like, don't vote Biden. And he was the one, yeah, he was the one who organized right in ceasefire in New Hampshire, which ended up getting, they were expecting two or 300 votes and ended up getting about 1,600. Wow, okay. Which in a, I mean, not a lot. But it's not many people in New Hampshire either.

But it's probably going to be a lot more potent in Michigan. If Uncommitted beats Joe Biden in Michigan, it still necessarily doesn't change anything, but at least people will feel like they had a chance to say on a national stage how enraged they are. And people keep thinking, well, this is the Muslim Americans. Yes, it is, but it's also young people. It's like people under 30, 35, which was, and Joaquin Castro, to his great credit, has been pretty outspoken on this. CNN had him on to talk and they tried to do a horse race thing with him. And he brought it back to the actual policy saying like what Biden is doing is damaging to the US, damaging to Israel, and it is turning off young people and Muslim

Americans. So the question is, though, why is it just Rashida Tlaib? I haven't seen AOC say, I think she said Biden was the best president of her lifetime or something like that. Why is it not all these other squad members? It's a good question. It's a good question. Um, because if you had the entire squad, say rallying in Michigan for uncommitted, then I think that has a bigger impact. Sure. Yeah, you have seen a split there. The rest of the squad has supported Rashida Tlaib.

They voted against censuring her. They've said supportive things about her, but they are letting her kind of take these bullets for them. So they're not really operating as a squad in this. All right. Well, we will, we'll see how it works out. I'm very curious. Ceasefire, as you said, didn't exactly get a lot of votes, but I could see it actually become something. And especially here, here's the thing, in this particular case, you have an actual elected representative. Crystal's been telling me that Rashida Tlaib has been breaking in money. Millions. Millions of dollars.

So clearly, there's enough people. Imagine if she actually spends like four uncommitted. Right. That'd be interesting. And also in New Hampshire, it was a two-week organic campaign. This has financing behind it. And like you said, Rashida has actual money. If she decides to pull the trigger, then she can even go up on air.

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

comes a story about what happened when a multi-billion dollar company dedicated itself to one visionary mission. This is Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated. I get right back there and it's bad. It's really, really, really bad. Listen to new episodes of Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Binge episodes 1, 2, and 3 on May 21st and episodes 4, 5, and 6 on June 4th.

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The Offspring. Tim McGraw. Tickets are on sale now at AXS.com. Get your tickets today. AXS.com. All right. Here in the United States, when it comes to foreign figures, we deal in cartoons only and caricatures. And so that was the case when it comes to Alexei Navalny. He, on the one hand, was the hero of the Russian resistance and the leading light of that nation. If you hear from other people, he was a racist, an Islamophobe, a CIA stooge who deserved what he got. So to try to actually move it from cartoon character into kind of real life, we're going to be joined by socialist commentator Yegor Kotkin,

joining us from Moscow. Yegor, you've talked a little bit about Navalny online recently, if we can put up this element from Yegor here. This is one of the things you said, the living Navalny was important not because of his politics, but as a political trailblazer. Dead Navalny is important as a symbol of resistance to the oligarchic regime. And the same people who killed him as a human now are trying to kill him as a symbol. Don't be a part of it. And Yeager, what I, what I found interesting about your analysis, which people can find on your Twitter account and is much deeper than that, is that if you were here in the United States, you'd probably be in the camp of people who were saying, actually, this guy's a CIA stooge and deserves what he got. But there's so much more to the Navalny story. So let me start with

this question. What's been your kind of relationship to Navalnyism over your own political evolution? Well, I have to say I knew Navalny as a figure, political figure, and followed in his career for almost 15 years. And most of this time I was Navalny skeptic because of, I mean, it's not a secret that he started basically as a fascist. I mean, his video from 2007 when he referred to immigrants as cockroaches has been resurfaced again with his name back in the news. And there was a lot. Then he moved to the left. He constantly, in my view, he constantly moved to the left

over this 15-year public career, reaching first a liberal center, then moving even slightly to the left, almost borderline social democratic policies, but still staying firmly in the liberal center. And I think the history of Navalny will resonate with your audience specifically because this is a history of a populist who was following his whole life path, was finding a way to communicate with the most Russian people as possible. And as many populists go in for the most people, he started from the lowest possible denominator. So he started from the right and started from xenophobia. So did he ever recant the xenophobia?

Did he recant that? Or what was his evolution like? Well, he entered, very soon he moved on to anti-corruption investigations and he entered the liberal center, liberal media, who became his main base of support and network of support. And he moved on

from the Russian marches and Russian nationalism to being basically liberal centrist, like closer to 2013, 2015. But he still was looking for, he still was staying in the populist lane.

When he found that being populist right put you in certain fringe fringe area very limited area of a fringe right he moved on to the center but he started experiment with the leftist populist policies and in some in some of them he actually went to the left of the his main by base of support and network of support, liberal people. When, for example, in 2018, coming presidential election in Russia, where he tried to compete with Putin, he suggested increase in minimum wage two and a half times, five times from 10,000 rubles to 25,000 rubles. It is a very substantial increase.

It is a very necessary increase for Russia. It's an even harder situation than in America in terms of living wage here. And he was heavily criticized by his own base and network of support, by the liberal center, to the extent that even now, six years later, when he already dead, this topic of debate about this minimum wage increase, he's stressed it again, was reiterated in the day of his death by his supporters. So this debate never died.

And he- So, Yegor, just one of the things I'm trying to get to, I think for our audience, they're hearing about him a lot in our news. What I hear from you is he was a complicated figure. We understand him only as a Putin critic. From what I can tell, he was a Russian nationalist, but he was an anti-corruption activist. But he wasn't necessarily the dream of European politicians. Like, how did people inside of Russia think of Navalny,

and why did Putin consider him a threat, enough to throw him in prison? I think you can't tell how people in Russia think about Navalny because it's heavily skewed by the propaganda from Putin media on the one hand and the liberal propaganda from independent media on the other hand. So his view in any Russian group will be heavily skewed by ideological bias. And I think Putin recognized him as the biggest threat to his rule because Navalny always targeted him his as his main enemy and his populist search search for whatever give him the most base of support he also experimented with

support of unions at some point being one of the first politicians who tried to restore restore unions as a political force in Russia since the USSR fall. So, again, it was kind of leftist of him to try to do this. He always tried to maximize his base of support to defeat Putin. So his target always was Putin, and that made him, he obviously had some ideology, but his main goal in life was to defeat Putin. He was ready to utilize any means necessary to do that in terms of political.

He never crossed the line of political violence, actually. But in terms of political engagement, he was looking everywhere for a way to defeat Putin. That's why he was dangerous for Putin. That's why Putin kind of singled out him as his enemy. And that's why I, when I wrote this tweet on his death, he was mainly a trailblazer. My politics is not Navalny politics. I evolved myself from like liberal center to basically a socialist right now. So I always

was to the left of him. We never saw eye to eye, but I saw in what he's doing the best possibility for opening for leftist electoral politics in Russia, which right now doesn't exist. So I thought, and his experiments with the left initiatives like raising minimum wage,

reanimating unions, and helicopter money during the COVID lockdowns and social democratic initiatives like that, they were very, very useful. And his electoral initiatives like that, they were very useful. And his electoral initiatives, like smart voting, actually helped to elect some leftist deputies in Moscow city Duma from the young leftist ilk, not all the Red Guards, who basically go with Putin 100% of times. But from the young opposition leftists, they for the first time got in some high places of power in Russia, being elected.

Right now, they are all already removed from there. But for the first time since 1991, new leftist ilk got in places of power, in part with help of Navalny. Interesting. So one of the things you'll hear here in the United States about him is that actually, kind of, American elites overblow how much power he had,

how much support he had among Russian people. What's your sense of what kind of base of social support he had there? I think it's true. I think they projected a lot of their own expectations on Navalny and his real base of support. I don't think it ever would. In perfectly free elections with strong leftist parties, strong social democratic presence, not only Putin versus Navalny, I don't think the liberal center that Navalny represents

would ever break 15% threshold, as it was in the 90s. Because when there was a kind of free election in the 90s in Russia, the liberal center always was kind of marginal. That's why they lost. Did you say 15 or 50? 15. No, I don't think it would be much more than that.

So tiny. Yeah, actually, yes. Well, significant, noticeable, but not like the leading party because either nationalist right, pro-Putin right, or old school pro-Soviet left still has a much bigger base of support in Russia for natural reasons. But, Yegor, even within that, from your realistic assessment, he still was thrown in prison, sent above the Arctic Circle. And we can put this up there on the screen. Apparently, they're telling his family that he suffered from some, like, quote, sudden death syndrome, which we have here. I mean, it's just laughable for many of us to look at. I know you've told me many times that people in Russia, they probably don't even hear stuff like this,

or if they do, they believe it. But, you know, it seems to us a position of weakness to kill somebody, you know, in this manner whenever, as you describe, it's not even a realistic threat. What can that tell us about Putin himself, you know, at this moment in time? The reason of this being death is actually kind of funny, yes. Well, what can I say? It all comes back to his main goal, being able to defeat Putin. And his ability to utilize, I mean, overall, in a normal electoral situation, calm and democratic, I don't think his brand of liberalism would have more than 15% of support.

But in terms of political repression that Putin created, he was able to mobilize this 15% disproportionately. It was young people, people living in big cities, people living in Moscow. His highest rating in Moscow elections was almost 30%. Ten years ago, it was a very high result for a liberal politician. So he was able to utilize this young passionate part of the Russian people who would go on the streets on the protests, on the biggest street protests,

were either with Navalny presence 10 years ago when Putin announced that he's going back as a president for the third term, or 10 years later, when Navalny was returned to Russia three years ago and was imprisoned, again, the biggest protest in the last 10 years broke up on the streets, again, in connection with Navalny's name. So his ability to be visible and mobilize youth and mobilize street politics in the way that any other political force in Russia can't or wouldn't do. I think that's what put him on the map and that's why Putin was, in some fashion,

maybe if Putin was more democratic, irrationally afraid. Because I don't think that, like, we can see how politics can change leaders' names, parties, and still remain the same on the example of America. So there is a lot of ways to continue the status quo, especially if your status quo is the power of 100 or 1000 richest people in the country, without political repression or even without political killings or even without rigging the elections. You can do it through different means like America does. Makes sense. Rieger, we always appreciate your analysis live from Moscow. As a reminder, this man is literally risking a lot to be able to just come to us live.

You can follow him on Twitter. We'll have a link to that in the description. And we always appreciate your time, sir. Thank you. Thank you very much. See you later. Thank you for hosting with me, my friend. You are going to be back. Always a pleasure. No, no, you're not doing counterpoints. Crystal will be filling in for you on counterpoints. Going to Mexico. Going to Mexico. Nice. Watch some fish concerts. I'll be thinking of you down there. I'm going to get you down there. I'm going to get you down there one year. You're going to love it. Yeah, but I won't be at a fish concert.

I can tell you that. I'll be somewhere very, very far away from civilization eating tacos or something like that from a guy on the street. Anyway, thank you guys so much for watching. We really appreciate you. Sign up at BreakingPoints.com

if you're able to support our work. Otherwise, Chris will be back and I will see you all tomorrow. I know a lot of cops. 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.

This is Absolute Season One, Taser Incorporated. I get right back there and it's bad. Listen to Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated 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 mom's 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 if you like witty women then this is your tribe listen to the good mom's, Bad Choices podcast every Wednesday

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