Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 2/19/25: Trump-Musk-Hannity Lovefest, Hamas Open To Stepping Down, Bannon Attacks Musk & MORE!

Episode Date: February 19, 2025

Ryan and Emily discuss Trump and Musk with Hannity, Hamas open to stepping down in Gaza, Jewish man shoots Israeli tourists he thought were Palestinian, Bannon calls Musk 'parasitic", Trump border czar demands AOC prosecution, Trump FTC sides with Lina Khan, Chappelle says SNL censured Gaza monologue.   James Billot: https://x.com/james_billot/highlights Doha Mekki: https://www.justice.gov/archives/atr/staff-profile/doha-mekki-acting-assistant-attorney-general    To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show AD FREE, uncut and 1 hour early visit: www.breakingpoints.com   Merch Store: https://shop.breakingpoints.com/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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I've seen a lot of stuff over 30 years, you know, some very despicable crime and things that are kind of tough to wrap your head around. And this ranks right up there in the pantheon of Rhode Island fraudsters. I've always been told I'm a really good listener, right? And I maximized that while I was lying. Listen to Deep Cover, The Truth About Sarah on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, guys. Ready or Not 2024 is here, and we here at Breaking Points are already thinking of ways we can up our game for this critical election. We rely on our premium subs to expand coverage, upgrade the studio,

add staff, give you guys the best independent coverage that is possible. If you like what we're all about, it just means the absolute world to have your support. But enough with that, let's get to the show. Good morning and welcome to CounterPoints. Emily, I don't know if you caught the bro show on Monday, but one of the segments was woke or based. We're going to have the subject of that segment on the show today. Doha Meki, looking forward to that. This is a great new game show.

I'm all for it. We should be pitching this to NBC. We really should. Thursday night's the, woke or based, hosted by Ryan Grim and Sagar and Chetty. You'll never know who's woke and who's based. Until the end of the program. That's right.

Well, huge news continues to come in. We're going to start with the very splashy, at least it was billed as being splashy, interview between Sean Hannity, Elon Musk, and Donald Trump that happened in primetime last night. We're going to go through what it all means, what they said. We have lots of good clips. Ryan, we're then pivoting to Israel. Yes. So the hostage exchange went off over the weekend, despite the best efforts of Trump and Netanyahu to keep it from happening. And now

they are talking about finishing phase one faster than they had before. We're going to talk about what's next there. There were also an indictment of five Israeli soldiers for their role in raping a detainee. If you remember, there were those infamous right to rape protests in Israel after the allegations were first made. So we'll talk about the indictment that was just handed down. We will not get a chance to talk about big news last night, but you guys just go read the story on this. Jair Bolsonaro, former president of Brazil, has been charged along with more than 30 of his alleged co-conspirators in trying to do a coup in 2022 to stay in power.

Some pretty incredible details coming out of there, including the alleged attempted assassination of a Supreme Court justice, who, if I recall correctly, became a Supreme Court justice in a corrupt bargain with Bolsonaro to get him into the presidency in the first place. And an alleged attempted poisoning of Lula da Silva, the actual president. So according to the allegations, Bolsonaro was aware of and approved of a plan to kill Lula and a Supreme Court justice in the process of retaining power. He failed to do so. He came at the king and missed.

He's now polling even with Lula for the next round. And so we'll see. Did they take too long to do this? Do they really have the goods? I don't know. They're going to send Cash Patel to Brazil. I'm calling it right now. Well, Patel actually will be up for, basically they got to cloture yesterday, so he'll be up for a vote tomorrow on Thursday. The labor-friendly Republican is up in a hearing today too. That's right. Lori Chavez de Riemer is sitting before the Senate Help Committee, so Labor Committee, and that'll be really, really interesting because she's sort of, I had one source tell me recently, quote,

she's a leftist in moderate's clothing, which is quite interesting because she's also seen as somebody who could potentially pick up the votes of, on the committee at least, Bernie Sanders, of someone like Tammy Baldwin. But Dozier's becoming kind of a cultural litmus test for Democrats. So we'll pay attention to that, but you'll see the hearing over the course of the day. That is for sure. My colleague James Billow from UnHerd interviewed Steve Bannon and ended up in New York Times headlines. It was sort of everywhere yesterday. So James is going to be on the show to walk through his experience with Steve Bannon.

Bannon told him that Elon Musk is a parasitic illegal immigrant. So I guess it makes sense that it ended up in headlines. But James is going to join the show to walk through what that means. And we are then going to dig into the wild Eric Adams saga. Not over yet. Not over yet. And I think maybe more interesting than some people are giving it credit for being. I mean, obviously, the entire indictment is fascinating from top to bottom, has been since it dropped.

But the question of how the Trump DOJ came to try walking it all back is pretty interesting as well. Then, Lena Kahn got a win from Donald Trump's FTC yesterday. That's right. Yesterday, the FTC announced that it would be adopting Lena Kahn's framework for evaluating mergers going forward. Lina Khan has taken a much broader approach to antitrust, saying that the way that corporate power broadly is impacted, the way that workers are affected, the way the economy is affected, needs to be taken into account, not just the assertions of corporations about what the effect on prices and quote unquote consumer welfare would be. The Wall Street Journal has argued that Lena Kahn's approach to this means basically the end of the free world as we know it. And here you have the Trump FTC chair coming in

and ratifying it, saying they're going to use the exact same standard. It's the new bipartisan consensus. And so to talk about that, we're going to have Biden's former antitrust chair at the Department of Justice, Doha Mechie. She was the deputy antitrust chair for most of Biden's term underneath Jonathan Cantor. When he stepped down towards the end, she became acting chief for the last couple of months of the Biden administration. She's a close ally of Lena Kahn, so she'll be on the program to talk about how it is that MAGA and the left antitrust movement are now actually making serious progress in Washington. That's such a great guest. Let's get to the A block, which was Donald Trump and

Elon Musk's much hyped interview with Sean Hannity on primetime Fox News Tuesday evening. Now, there are a lot of good clips that we're going to roll through, so bear with us. It was about an hour long. My top line takeaway from it was that, you know, Hannity didn't get much out of them, which we should start by saying is interesting given that some of Trump's most revelatory exchanges with the media have come in Hannity interviews. He's comfy. He just lets it go. And I'm curious what the audience thinks about this as we roll through the clips. My sense is that they're both a little bit more guarded in this interview. Hannity keeps trying it go. And I'm curious what the audience thinks about this as we roll through the clips. My sense is that they're both a little bit more guarded in this interview. Hannity keeps trying to get Elon Musk to talk about his personal life and to talk about

his background, his career, and sort of flex and show people like there's context for Elon Musk coming into Doge and reforming the federal government and all that. So let's roll A1 from the interview. The president will make these executive orders, which let's roll a one from the interview. The president will make these executive orders, which are very sensible and good for the country. But then they don't get implemented. You know, so if you take the, for example, the full of funding for the migrant hotels, the president issued an executive order. Hey, we need to stop taking taxpayer money and and paying for luxury hotels for illegal immigrants, which makes no sense.

Obviously, people do not want their tax dollars going to fund high-end hotels for illegals. And yet they were still doing that, even as late as last week. And so, you know, we went in there and we're like, this is a violation of the presidential executive order. It needs to stop. So, what we're doing here is one of the biggest functions of the Doge team is just making sure that the presidential executive orders are actually carried out. And that's obviously the, let's say, central argument for Doge, which is that the federal bureaucracy has become so unaccountable that unless it's radically reformed, and by radically reformed, they mean sweeping immediate rapid trauma, as Russ Boat would say to bureaucrats,

you never actually will bring them to heel because the agencies are so sprawling. It has to be what they did to USAID, rinse and repeat over and over again at these departments. Otherwise, you never actually, you still end up having, let's say, a president who wants to crack down on illegal immigration being the head of an executive branch that is not doing that, or a president who does not want to crack down on illegal immigration overseeing an executive branch that does that. Yeah, it is true that a president probably should be able to govern within some reasonable limits, but should be able to govern, which is not exactly always our system.

But we have a lot of clips to go through, so I'll try to refrain from popping off until we get through a bunch more of these. Here's one more. Well, Trump, he did a big press conference yesterday as well, so that's our next clip. Here's one more from the Hannity interview, where Hannity kind of gets into conflicts of interest. I'll let everyone judge. Let's take a look. You're tasked now, and I pray to God this is successful. I really do.

I wish you Godspeed. Godspeed, John Glenn. It's going to be, by the way. I really believe it. But there are legitimate areas. Well, beside this, this is cutting. We're only talking about cutting. We're also going to make a lot of money. We're taking

in so much money. What about his business? What if there is a contract he would otherwise get? He's got a conflict. I mean, look, he's in certain areas. I mean, I see this morning I didn't know, but I said, do the right thing. Were they cutting way back on the electric vehicle subsidies?

Yes. They're cutting back. You lose. Not only cutting back. It hurts you. Correct. Yeah. Now, I won't tell you.

Well, he's probably not that happy with it, but that would have been one thing he would have come to me and said, listen, you got to do me a favor. This is crazy. But this was in the tax bill. They're cutting back on the subsidies. I didn't I wasn't involved in it. I said, do what's right. And you get and they're coming up with a tax, but it's just preliminary. But I mean, if he were involved, wouldn't you think he'd probably do that?

Now, maybe he does better if you cut back on the subsidies. Who knows? Because he figures he does think differently. He thinks he has a better product. And as long as he has a level playing field, he doesn't care what you do, which is very he's told me that. Yeah. I mean, I haven't asked the president for anything ever.

And if it comes up, how will you handle it? Well, you won't be involved. Yeah, I'll recuse myself if it is. If there's a conflict, you won't be involved. I mean, I wouldn't want that. And he won't want it. Right. And also, I'm getting a sort of a daily proctology exam here. You know, it's not like I'll be getting away from something in the dead of night.

Welcome to D.C. If you want a friend, get a dog. I mean, if you are the most powerful man in the world who's suddenly working in government, you definitely deserve that daily exam. There's no question about it. And actually, on that note, what Trump just said about the subsidies is a great example because Elon Musk, as early as last July, he posted on X, take all the subsidies away. It will help Tesla. So he's against that. Right. He's now against Tesla.

He's probably right that they would help Tesla to take those subsidies away. Right. And so on that note, just to, the reason we say that is to point out that people in Congress right now who are coming up with the tax bill and looking at what decisions to make already know that Elon Musk doesn't care about those subsidies. He is, well, if anything, he encourages removing the subsidies because he said as much. So it's not really a- And what he needs is tariffs on China to keep the better, cheaper Chinese EVs out of the U.S. Well, that's even complicated with his relationship with China.

I can't even believe we have to talk about that in the context of a, quote, special government employee. But here we are. Chinese agent, as Bannon calls him. Yeah. So let's go to Donald Trump's press conference. We're going to come back to the interview. But on this point, he was asked by Jonathan Swan of the New York Times to talk about Doge and SpaceX yesterday.

Trump put together a press conference yesterday late in the afternoon. I don't know if he was like intentionally trying to tease the interview. He kind of did the Fox interview. But let's let's roll this one. Mr. President, given your concerns about corruption, you said that if there were any conflicts of interest with Elon Musk, you wouldn't let him anywhere near it. That's right. Doge and SpaceX employees are now working directly at the Federal Aviation Administration and the Defense Department, agencies that have billions

of dollars in contracts with Musk's companies or that directly regulate his companies. How is that not a conflict of interest? Well, I mean, I'm just hearing about it. And if there is, and he told me before I told him, but obviously I will not let there be any conflict of interest. He's done an amazing job. They've revealed, in fact, he's going to be on tonight, a big show called Sean Hannity at nine o'clock and he's on and I'm on. And we talk about a lot of different things and any conflicts, I told Elon, any conflicts, you can't have anything to do with that. So anything to do with possibly even space, we won't let Elon partake in that. So to the extent they talked about it, it was Hannity saying, what about conflicts of interest? And then Trump saying, we won't let him do it.

I like John Swan saying, given your concern about corruption, wait a minute. Going to need some evidence. Going to need some receipts for this alleged concern about corruption. Wait a minute. Gonna need some evidence. Gonna need some receipts for this alleged concern about corruption. I wish he would have said it was 9, 8 central. That would have been even funnier. Oh, yeah, I know that would have been funny. But he, I mean, obviously he talks a lot about corruption, which is why Bannon and others, we'll talk about this later in the show, are so irked by his relationship with Elon Musk. I almost just said Donald Musk. But let's pivot back to the Hannity interview. That was a great interlude with the Jonathan Swan question just hours earlier.

But here's what they talked about in relation to inflation with Hannity. Yeah, and inflation is back. I'm only here for two and a half weeks. Inflation, they're back. Don't think of it. Inflation's back. And they said, oh, Trump, I had nothing, think of it. Inflation's back. And they said, oh, Trump and I had nothing to do with it.

These people have run the country. They spent money like nobody's ever spent. If you were listening to this and not just watching it, you missed the great USAID ticker. It looked like a you know, when you're watching TV at three in the morning and they're selling CDs for Elvis's greatest hits, they were just scrolling through, crazy USAID spending while they talked about inflation there. Now, we have another clip from the press conference, getting to exactly the point Ryan just raised about corruption, Trump's take on corruption.

Let's roll this from the press conference. Again, This was just hours before the Fox interview. We have a very corrupt country, very corrupt country, and it's a sad thing to say, but we're figuring it out. Now, the good thing about Social Security and what I read is if you take all of those numbers off, because they're obviously fraudulent or incompetent but if you take all of those millions of people off Social Security all of a sudden we have a very powerful Social Security with people that are 80 and 70 and 90 but not

200 years old you know so it's a very positive thing so finally finally, oh God. Yeah, no, I wish that was true. And hey, if this lets Republicans get away with not cutting it, okay, go ahead and lie to yourself that there's like huge savings to be made from dead people getting social security. Just not true, but okay. In the Fox News interview, he said, that's a red line. He said, Elon's not going to be touching Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid. And actually, Franco Marchetti has a good essay out in Jacobin that, as somebody on the right, I think captures the dynamics of Doge and the right better than anything I've read in a long time. I recommend it for everyone because he goes through Russ Vogt's arc. Oh, yes. And talks about how austerity used to be seen by many on the right as their

flavor of populism in the Obama era. And yes, there's been some substantive shifts by some people away from that American compass, those people. So on the one hand, there's really been sincere movement by a lot of people to put like policy meat on the bones of Trump's anti-elite sentiments and pro-worker sentiments. On the other hand, they're still lurking very much an appetite among the people who are around Trump. Elon Musk's libertarian, you know, I guess urges will certainly egg them on. And votes in the key position to implement this revolution. Right. And obviously, Donald Trump is more powerful than Russ Vogt. He's more powerful than anyone in the cabinet. And if he doesn't want them to touch Social Security, Medicare,

Medicaid, which he clearly doesn't, he knows that that would be legacy tarnishing, then he'll probably get his way on that. But if there's a crack in the foundation, you could see significant changes. So let's roll this last clip of Stephen Miller going on CNN yesterday afternoon and getting some questions about a White House filing that actually clarified Elon Musk is not the administrator of Doge. They said he is an employee of the White House office. And everyone's sort of looking around being like, what does that mean? We've talked a little bit about his special government employee designation. It's basically impossible for him to be in compliance with that. It's up to the DOJ to enforce. Well, that's fortunate for him.

Yeah. So all that is to say, though, he goes on and gets, Stephen Miller goes on, Brian Akeeler's show on CNN, and this is how he answers questions about what, basically, if Elon Musk is not the head of Doge, who is leading Doge? Let's roll this. So who is in charge of Doge? The president of the United States. He's the administrator of Doge? No, the Doge is what was formerly U.S. Digital Services. It's an agency of the federal government that reports into the executive office of the president, which reports to the president of the United States.

Okay. The way that Article 2 works is a president wins an election, and then he appoints staff, including myself, including Mike Waltz, including Susie Wiles, including Elon Musk, and those staff report to him. Okay, well aware. So Elon Musk, a week ago, answered a question about transparency at Doge. This is how he spoke about Doge. Well, we actually are trying to be as transparent as possible. In fact, our actions, we post our actions to the Doge handle on X and to the Doge website. So all of our actions are maximally transparent. You hear him there. We post our actions. All of our actions are maximally transparent. Does Elon Musk know he's not in charge of Doge?

Again, the president runs the government. Then the president appoints advisors, including Elon, including myself, including all the other staff here at the White House. And then those staff, in turn, execute the president's commands and directions to all the agencies of the federal government. This is how democracy works, something that we treasure in America. The whole American people go to the ballot box, they elect the president, the president appoints staff, the staff that administer his orders and directives across the whole U.S. government.

Stephen Miller's CNN interviews are actually always pretty entertaining. They're always funny. He's talking about this is how we've always done it. People should realize, though, the reason we have a civil service is from a specific problem that our government had, which was it was too efficient. You would elect a president and you'd elect a Congress, and then they would very efficiently give themselves all the money. For instance, if they wanted to build a transcontinental railroad, the railroads would give free stock to the members of Congress and to the White House. And then instead of going through an administrative process where they had to bid competitively, and there would be oversight and

IGs and inspections. They would just bribe members of Congress and the administration, and they would get the railroad contract. And then there would basically be, you know, meme coins that would bubble up and then pop and sent the country into multiple depressions in the 19th century. And at that point, the people were like, you know what? We don't trust you politicians and you oligarchs to do this efficiently because you're just scratching each other's back and ripping us off. So we want a civil service that is transparent and is accountable. And so they built one. And it is annoying sometimes to have to bid for contracts and to have people ask for paperwork to prove that you actually laid down railroad tracks. And so now we're going back to the efficient process. And we'll see how that works out. Well, the efficient

process, the post-efficient process was still sort of a victory for the oligarchs too, because they ended up being able to game the system pretty well. It's not that they didn't lose. They obviously did lose. If you look at the oligarchs in the late 19th century versus from the progressive era through the 70s, 1970s, the oligarchs' heyday is now and way back then. 20th century, they were on their heels. They were able to carve out, all I'm saying is the system still, they were able to carve it up because they have just more resources and that's what happened. It's not an argument against the system. They didn't become poor. Yeah, yeah. Not an argument against the system existing at all.

Although that is where Elon Musk and some folks in Trump's orbit will say this has been, actually they made this argument about DEI in particular, like this has been a boon to these different like equity consultants. And there's probably some truth to that. No, for sure. A little industry built up around that. Yeah. It's not going to be enough probably to mollify every voter who's- Your Doge dividend isn't going to be very big off the backs of gutting DEI. No, not. But Elon Musk actually yesterday tweeted that he would think about the Doge dividend, which is quite interesting. But that exchange is also noteworthy because

Doge is the USDS, as Stephen Miller noted. That was not something people expected. They took over an existing agency. It wasn't just this outside advisory group. Created Doge and is now, appears to be a series of employees spread across different agencies as opposed to sort of a central Doge hub. Sort of like Doge vibes.

Right? Like you're just hiring people of like Doge vibes. Right? Like you're just hiring people who have Doge vibes. Yeah. Yes. It's a little, it's a sell. Yes. Yes. It is infiltrating all over the place.

Well, both Trump and Elon Musk are quite good at selling, so it makes sense that we know the brand Doge more than we know the organization. This five months, we are not just celebrating. We're fighting back. I'm George M. Johnson, and my book, All Boys Aren't Blue, was just named the most banned book in America. If the culture wars have taught me anything, it's that pride is protest. And on my podcast, Fighting Words,

we talk to people who use their voices to resist, disrupt, and make our community stronger. This year, we are showing up

and showing out. You need people being like, no, you're not going to tell us what to do. This regime is coming down on us. And I don't want to just survive. I want to thrive.

You'll hear from trailblazers like Bob the Drag Queen. To freedom! Angelica Ross. We ready to fight? I'm ready to fight. And Gabrielle Yoon. Hi, George. And storytellers with wisdom to spare. Listen on iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I know a lot of cops, and they get asked all the time,

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We can put this Axios element up on the screen, Hamas proposed to Israel, and it appears that Israel is close to accepting an agreement by which all of the remaining living prisoners held by Hamas who are scheduled to be released in phase one will be released all at once this coming weekend rather than stretching it out over the next two weeks, which means there would be six released. You put this second element up on the screen. As we move to phase two of the negotiations, Hamas is signaling, and we can talk about this more quite strongly, that they are willing to do what Israel has demanding that they do, lay down their arms and surrender, basically, and hand over governance either to the Palestinian Authority or to some other national unity project. Now, whether Hamas would agree to the

Palestinian Authority is an open question. What exactly that would look like is an open question. But if you notice there, the key stumbling block there isn't actually Hamas, it's Israel, which has said absolutely under no circumstances would it allow the Palestinian Authority to oversee Gaza in a post-war scenario, which is very, I think, confusing to people who are following this from afar because they're like, wait a minute, isn't the Palestinian Authority the legally recognized representatives of the Palestinian people and effectively a subcontractor of Israel carrying out the occupation in the West Bank and literally doing battle with resistance fighters in the West Bank, and even they are not good enough for Netanyahu. Now, what Netanyahu has been saying is that Trump has opened the door to

possibilities that Israel did not even consider previously, which is the complete ethnic cleansing and depopulation of Gaza. Netanyahu is now saying this will be done voluntarily. They will create mechanisms for the people of Gaza to leave voluntarily and that they will all leave. It's a fantasy. Yeah. But it appears that Netanyahu is unwilling to move forward as long as there's at least a possibility that this could happen. It's leverage, I guess. Who knows what it is? Part of this agreement, there are supposed to be thousands of mobile homes and new aid that Israel is allowing in.

Hamas is in order to, I think, get 300 mobile homes brought into Gaza. That's another thing that's re-upping this hostage exchange. Now, two of these hostages, I don't know if you followed this story, are deeply mentally ill people who stumbled into Gaza in 2014 and 2015. Do you follow this? So these folks have nothing to do with October 7th. And to Hamas's discredit, they should have released these men years and years and years ago. So what happened in 2014, and a Jewish Ethiopian guy who's from Ethiopia, he came to Israel, he's deeply mentally ill. He had wandered, I think, into the West Bank many times.

He was a known figure there. One day, he just wanders into Gaza, and he gets captured immediately. And Hamas is like, what on earth is going on here? And they realize in pretty short order that it's a crazy person. And they had just done the Gilad Shalit deal, which they exchanged a soldier for thousands of Palestinians. So there's still thousands of Palestinians held. So you can see it from Hamas' perspective. They're like, oh, well, now we have an Israeli hostage. Let's exchange him for thousands more. And so they tried that for several years. And then another, a Bedouin man, who was also deeply mentally, wanders into Gaza in 2015, and they capture him too. But it very quickly became clear that Israel's like, this Ethiopian guy and this Bedouin,

we're not trading you anything for them. And so you could say that's, you can say that's to Israel's discredit that they were not treating those citizens with equal dignity. But at that point, if you're Hamas, it's like, let the guys go. You're not getting anything for them. Sure. So they've held these poor guys for 10 years at this point. So now they're finally getting let out. Now, the big controversy over the last couple of weeks has been over the Bibas family. This one you followed, right? Yes, of course. So, and we have some news on this from Dropsite, from Jeremy Scahill. So this is Shiri Ariel Kifir Bibas, a mother and her two children. So there was some false hope in Israel that they would be released last week as part of

this exchange. However, as Jeremy reports here and notes, back in November of 2023, Hamas announced that they had all been killed in an Israeli airstrike. The Mujahideen brigades put out their own statement, and they said it was one of their factions that, because October 7th wasn't just Hamas. Once the fence was broken, a bunch of other groups disconnected from Hamas broke through. There were a lot of rumors that it was the Mujahideen Brigades that had taken the Bibas family. We now can confirm that that is what happened. They are an offshoot of Fatah, which is the kind of rival of Hamas. So there's some collaboration between all factions, but they're essentially a rival group. And so their spokesperson says,

within the framework of the first phase of the prisoner exchange agreement with the resistance, the bodies of the Biba's family who were captured by a group of armed Mujahideen will be handed over tomorrow, Thursday. They were preserved and treated well according to the teachings of the true Islam before they were bombed by the Zionist occupation missiles and were killed along with the captor group. The brigades preserved the family's bodies throughout the stages of the war until the date of handover, unquote. So if you remember in November, there was this week-long ceasefire where all children and many women were exchanged. They were supposed to be part of that, but they were killed before that exchange. We talked last week about this 972 report. I don't

know if you saw this. Of course you saw it. You were here. That talked about how Israel had discovered that if they used these bunker buster bombs, they sucked all of the oxygen out of tunnels as well. So even if they didn't know precisely where somebody they were targeting was, as long as they got it within several hundred meters, they could suffocate anybody in that area. And after October 7th, there was a high value placed on revenge against anybody that they believed was involved with October 7th. That's understandable. However, if you were a militant involved in October 7th, the chance that you are now with a hostage is pretty high. Yeah. Israel has since changed its rules of engagement over

how they try to assess whether or not there is a risk of killing a hostage in a strike. According to the New York Times. According to the New York Times. In October and November, there was effectively no concern for that. If there was a high-value target and you didn't have affirmative evidence that there were definitely hostages around this high-value target, you were able to green light the attack. It is in that context that we know that Israel killed these three hostages, and also all the people who were their captors around them. You've seen from some commentators the killing of these children and their mother to be evidence of Hamas's depravity. And so I just think it's important people have all of the context here. They kidnapped them.

Well, Hamas didn't. It was a Mujahideen brigade. I see what you're saying. But also, there is no excuse to take children, period. So even if Israel killed them, there is absolutely no excuse under any circumstances. No, that's barbarism and depravity in and of itself. And Hamas should have found some way to pressure the Mujahideen brigades to release them before Israel was able to kill them. But it happened within weeks. And then the Hamas distinction, to the point you just made, is important because political negotiations, Hamas is saying,

October 7th, our operation, this was not us. Right. And when Jeremy references media reports about the Israeli strike and the mom and children, is that to say, like, this has been, like, Israeli media has said we have definitive evidence that this was bunker busting, like, that it was. So they don't, Israeli media doesn't know because Israel at the time was carpet bombing, you know, major parts of the area. Fairly indiscriminate. And, you know, it seems like they had identified probably through some type of signals intelligence, like following people's phones, the captors. I see.

Say like, okay, we followed these phones. Because you can, you know, look, you can just go on your phone. Apple now can follow your location. So they could follow, okay, this crew, these Mujahideen brigades, they went into Israel on October 7th. They are now here in this area. That is the most likely scenario, that they identified these are some terrorists who went into Israel on October 7th. And then they bombed them without thinking like, okay, we saw they went to a kibbutz, we saw they went back, did they take Israeli hostages back with them? And if so, let's actually not bomb them.

As much as we would love, as satisfying as it would be to us to kill them. The high likelihood that you're going to kill hostages with them. And so that, it is known for certain that a significant number of hostages were killed under those circumstances. And that has been deeply damaging to Netanyahu and to the entire Israeli society. But it took a very long time for them to reassess that policy. And then the other thing is, I don't have an answer, but it seems that I remember a little bit that Fatah reportedly coordinated a bit on October 7th with Hamas. And Hamas has said, basically, it became a frenzy, that there was like a precise operation planned, but then it kind of

started snowballing into something different. But there is reporting that Fatah was coordinating with Hamas. Yeah, there's some indication that they knew that something was going to happen. But they weren't formally part of it. Right, because the Qassam Brigades, which led the operation, for obvious reasons, wanted utmost secrecy. Oh, yeah. And they don't trust Fatah. Because Fatah's, well, not only are they their rivals, they got links to the PA, PA's got links to Israel.

To Israel. Yeah. So you don't know who, like, so there was, but they wanted backup. So they wanted it known that there's going to be something happening. But they didn't want to let them know precisely what did happen. An even more stunning intelligence failure on Israel's behalf. But yeah, the last thing I want to say is I think Jeremy's tweet to the House Foreign Affairs Committee is just important. That's right. Which one was that?

It was one of the early, yeah, there it is. They're saying Hamas executed a mother and her two children in cold blood in reference to this specific family. And it's a good... And actually that next line is really important. So if you're just listening along the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Republicans say, quote, this is barbarism. And then this is the key point. Israel has every right to finish the job and eradicate these terrorists from the face of the earth. So it is known at this point. Israel has every right to finish the job and eradicate these terrorists from the face of the earth. So it is known at this point, this was yesterday, it is known at this point that Hamas did not execute a mother and her two children cold blood, this particular family.

Yet the House Republicans here are using that claim to say, now we need to eradicate. And that's being done in the context of Trump's push to ethnically cleanse the entire area. So, and the reason I just think what Jeremy said is an important distinction, even though to some people they may say, well, October 7th was barbarism and depravity. Well, it was, and that's sort of the point. Yeah, and Hamas took civilians. Oh, gosh. Which is inexcusable. Absolutely.

And killed hundreds. Absolutely. And that's sort of the point here, is that the House Foreign Affairs Republicans, maybe some social media staffer posted this, but you don't have to go along with misinformation here. You don't have to. And I think there's so much. I mean, we've talked at length about how the Shireen Abu Akleh case personally just was an interesting, I guess, gateway to a lot of different things on my end. But you don't have to rely on misinformation. You don't have to build so much of this on the house of cards that is misinformation. You don't have to build your case

on that. And repeatedly it is built on misinformation. That's just sort of, I don't want to use the phrase too good to check, but too convenient. I know what you mean. It's too convenient for the narrative to check. Yeah. And there's no price to pay It domestically in the US like there's no There's going to be no consequence for the house foreign affairs Republicans or any other they didn't even delete it. No, they're gonna leave that up. Yeah does that because anybody who Come fact checks it like we're doing, then gets accused of being apologists for kidnapping them in the first place. It's incredibly sensitive to do it

without looking callous. Because otherwise you just look like a fact check bro. Like you're swooping in to say, well, but actually... It's brutal, but they didn't do that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So yes, I mean, but that's how the cycle perpetuates itself.

Speaking of barbarism, quickly before we move to this incredible story out of Miami, you can put up this last Jeremy post. In Israel, five Israeli military reservists have been indicted for the torture of a Palestinian who had been held at stay time in prison. This was a case that made international headlines because there was video of it and because it then was debated in the Knesset with people in the Knesset arguing that there should not be any prosecution for this, that it is within the Israeli reservists' right to do whatever it is that they believe they want to do

to Palestinian detainees. And the counter argument in the Knesset, and by the way, this led to those infamous right to rape protests. The counter argument in the Knesset was not, this is wrong and it should be prosecuted because it's wrong. The counter argument was, according to the International Criminal Court, they only have jurisdiction if there is no accountability mechanism within the state itself. And that's Congo, Kenya, Israel, doesn't matter. The ICC does not have jurisdiction if there are prosecutors on the case in a particular state. And so there were people in the Knesset that said, we have to prosecute some people for something or we're all going down. So let's prosecute these guys. They're caught raping a detainee on video.

Let's just, you know, basically just throw them under the bus so that we can show the ICC that we're doing something. And then our lawyers, the ICC, can show them this indictment. Say, look, you don't have jurisdiction here because when people commit crimes here, we prosecute them. But the indictment, which people can find online, is just extraordinary. Quote, for 15 minutes, the accused kicked the detainee, stomped on him, stood on his body, hit him, and pushed him all over his body, including with clubs, dragged his body along the ground, and used a taser gun on him, including on his head. During the assault, the blindfold came off the detainee, and moments later, one of the soldiers stabbed the detainee in his buttock with a sharp object, which caused an internal tear in his rectal wall.

They then used a t-shirt to try to cover up the bleeding, but after a while, the bleeding became so intense that he suffering according to the indictment, which based on medical records includes seven broken ribs, a punctured lung, tear in his rectum, and injuries all over his body. So they have been indicted. So that is good. Incredible. It would be better if he was indicted because they believed that this was wrong. And some absolutely do. But the most persuasive argument being made for why they should be indicted is so that other people don't get dragged before the ICC. I mean, I guess that's the idea behind the post-World War II reforms to have some of these international bodies is to create incentives for better behavior.

So in that case. Okay, there we go. There you go. Doesn't matter what they're doing. That's the glass half full. All case. Okay, there we go. There you go. Doesn't matter what they're doing. That's the glass half full. All right. Yeah, it doesn't matter why.

There was a report released last week about that prison, 30-page human rights report, that barely made a ripple, and you read through it, you're like, one of the things they say, that gravel that they mention there, they make people sit on the sharp gravel for 16 straight hours without being able to move. If you and I had to sit in these chairs for 16 hours. You could do it for 16 seconds. With a nice cushion. Yeah. These are comfy chairs.

But I want to move around. It would still be torturous on sharp gravel. Anyway, so this is, the things that were described in that indictment are happening as you and I speak to people right now and will be happening the rest of today and tomorrow and the day after and the day after that. we are not just celebrating. We're fighting back. I'm Georgiam Johnson, and my book, All Boys Aren't Blue, was just named the most banned book in America. If the culture wars have taught me anything, it's that pride is protest.

And on my podcast, Fighting Words, we talk to people who use their voices to resist, disrupt, and make our community stronger. This year, we are and make our community stronger. This year, we are showing up and showing out. You need people being like, no, you're not going to tell us what to do. This regime is coming down on us. And I don't want to just survive.

I want to thrive. You'll hear from trailblazers like Bob the Drag Queen. To freedom! Angelica Ross. We ready to fight? I'm ready to fight. And Gabrielle Yoon, and storytellers with wisdom to spare. Listen on the iHeartRadio app,

Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I know a lot of cops, and they get asked all the time, have you ever had to shoot your gun? Sometimes the answer is yes. But there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be no. Across the country, cops called this taser the revolution. But not everyone was convinced it was that simple.

Cops believed everything that taser told them. From Lava for Good and the team that brought you Bone Valley comes a story about what happened when a multi-billion dollar company dedicated itself to one visionary mission. This is Absolute Season 1. Taser Incorporated. I get right back there and it's bad.

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

of the War on Drugs podcast. Yes, sir. We are back. In a big way. In a very big way. Real people, real perspectives. This is kind of star-studded a little bit, man.

We got Ricky Williams, NFL player, Heisman Trophy winner. It's just a compassionate choice to allow players all reasonable means to care for themselves. Music stars Marcus King, John Osborne from Brothers Osborne.

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

What we're doing now isn't working and we need to change things. Stories matter and it brings a face to them. It makes it real. It really does. It makes it real. Listen to new episodes of the War on Drugs podcast season 2 on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

And to hear episodes one week early and ad-free with exclusive content, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts are wherever you get your podcasts. And to hear episodes one week early and ad-free with exclusive content, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. Let's move to Miami, this incredible story. This is an incredible story. Down there. So over the weekend, we can put this Guardian element up on the screen, this first one. Mordecai Brafman, 27-year-old Jewish man, is driving down the highway in Miami

and sees what he thinks are two Palestinians, gets out, stops them. For even just stopping there, that's weird. Yeah. Like, what are you doing? Keep driving. Yes. He gets out, stops them, and opens fire with a semi-automatic handgun. If this wasn't, if there wasn't some video evidence of this, plus the direct testimony of Brafman himself, I'd be like, there's no way any of this is true. Agree, agree.

So Brafman, so he fails to kill these two people who are… 17 shots. He gets off 17 shots in Miami Beach. They turn out to be Israeli tourists, Mizrahi Jews in Miami. We're going to talk about that more. So he was mistaken about their religious identity. They run, and we have a video of them trying to get into this condo to get some help. One's shot in the shoulder, the other was only grazed in the arm. So that's how they were able to live. Police come to the scene and they capture Brafman. And they arrest him.

They bring him in. They interrogate him. And he confesses. He said, I saw two Palestinian men and I killed them both. I killed two Palestinians. Yeah. That's what he tells them. Turns out, he learns later, his two mistakes he made, he didn't actually kill them, and they were not Palestinians.

This is what happens when you mow people down from a car in Miami Beach. It's interesting to say they're not Palestinian. They're from Palestine. We'll talk about that in a moment. After they are shot at, one of them posts on social media, we can put this up on the screen, they tried to murder us in the heart of Miami, but the creator of the world is with us, so he didn't go. He said, my father and I went through a murder attempt against anti-Semitic backgrounds, so he blames anti-Semitism for it.

I want to say thank you to everyone for their support. It is not taken for granted. Live Israel. Death to the Arabs. This is the guy who has a bullet in his shoulder. Because the Miami guy thought he was Palestinian, but he kind of is Arab. So this is the weird thing. That's what's so complicated about this whole question.

Complex, yes. And they are considered to be Arab by a lot of Israelis, even though they are Jewish Israelis. I mean, put up this VO here. So here, here, here are these, here, these guys are giving an interview describing, you know, what happened. And you can see, like, you can see why if you're a Miami guy who doesn't live in Israel, you were like, oh, those, these are Palestinian guys. Although I'm not sure why he didn't think, like this is Miami. Exactly. It could have been Colombian, Mexican.

100%. Like Puerto Rican, Cuban. The possibilities are endless in Miami. It's insane. How you pick them out as Palestinian. That you are just driving through Miami Beach and you see two dudes that you think might be Palestinian and start firing.

It's not unusual to see Arab men in Miami either. Insane. It's insane that none of it really makes sense. This same guy, by the way, Mordecai, local news interviewed him months ago because there was some vandalism of a Jewish flag at a coffee shop. And he did one of those man on the street interviews where he says, I wish we could all just get along. Why does there have to be so much strife and conflict? And so they replayed that interview with him. And then months later, he pulls over and just opens fire on two guys because he thinks they're Arabs. So I don't know if you guys follow alone Mizrahi.

He's an Israeli, as his last name on Twitter says, Mizrahi Jew from Israel. He has actually since left Israel recently. He now lives in the United States. He's driven so insane by what was going on in Israel. So he wrote on Twitter, a large following here, he says, what most people don't get about the incident in Miami, where a Jewish man, and alone is Jewish, where a Jewish man shot two other Israelis whom he thought were Palestinians is the inter-Jewish racism.

The shooter is an Ashkenazi, a white European Jew. His victims are Arab Jews. To him, brown Jews look like Arabs, but that's only because they are. If there ever was a more perfect demonstration of the fake and made-up idea of a Jewish ethnicity or nation, I never heard about it. His victims, by the way, would rather he shot them again than admit they're Arabs. And I think he, I think alone is almost fair in saying that because after they got shot. Yeah, they said death to Arabs. Death to the Arabs. Yeah. And his point here is that these guys are Arabs, that they have lived in Arabia forever, for thousands of years. Zionist brainwashing is the strongest propaganda material invented

by mankind, he says says and so Arab Jews would rather die than face their Arabness and white Jews would rather kill Arab Jews that acknowledge the humanity of Arabs this is from an Arab Jew so you're like you can imagine what his experience was like as an Israeli citizen that drove him to to say this and then to also leave and move to the United States? I can't wrap my head around the story being true. It's completely wild. The lack of media coverage over it is also absolutely insane. I do think it's true that had this been a case of...

If the shooter was Arab. It's crazy. It would be wall-to-wall coverage. We'd be hearing a lot more about it. But I don't know if media just is confused about what to do with this story. It seems enormously significant to me that somebody fires 17 shots at people they drove by on Miami Beach. It's just an insane story, but there's so little coverage of it. I mean, I don't know if it's just

because people are confused with how to handle it. It doesn't fit into any narrative very conveniently, but it's insane. Yeah. And, you know, people often make the argument that the Israeli occupation is obviously, you know, the primary victims of the Israeli occupation are those who are occupied. But Israelis themselves are victimized in the sense that the necessity of carrying out or the action of carrying out a brutal occupation of an other produces in your society the kind of thing that alone is describing there. A stratification, a racism, a hatred that then drives a wedge between even Jewish Israeli citizens

based on color and ethnic origin. And like he said, it's like the whole idea of Israel was to create this this national identity where all at least all all jews inside israel are equal and what he's saying is that this is another another example of how that's just not the case jews inside of israel uh in theory equal not based on skin color, but based on Jewishness. And that's incredibly complicated for a society to accomplish when there are distinctions, like literal tribal distinctions.

Yeah, and there's some color involved. A little whiter, a little less white. Right. Crazy story, crazy story. Not getting nearly enough attention. New York Times, which is somebody that live-blogged the campus protests, had like 15 different editors working on the story in, where was it? In the Netherlands.

Oh, the soccer. The hooligans were fighting each other. That was like an all-hands-on-deck moment for the New York Times. But Miami? They don't have anybody in Miami? 17 shots fired. I think New York Times might have some readers in Miami. Probably.

Well, increasingly probably less. Alright, probably. Well, increasingly, probably less. All right, let's move on to Steve Bannon. This Pride Month, we are not just celebrating. We're fighting back. I'm George M. Johnson, and my book, All Boys Aren't Blue, was just named the most banned book in America. If the culture wars have taught me anything, it's that pride is protest. And on my podcast, Fighting Words, we talk to people who use their voices

to resist, disrupt, and make our community stronger. This year, we are showing up and showing out. You need people being like, no, you're not going to tell us what to do. This is coming down on us. And I don't want to just survive.

I want to thrive. You'll hear from trailblazers like Bob the Drag Queen, Angelica Ross, and Gabrielle Yoon, and storytellers with wisdom to spare. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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

comes a story about what happened when a 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. I'm Clayton English.

I'm Greg Lott. And this is season two of the War on Drugs podcast. Yes, sir. We are back. In a big way. In a very big way. Real people, real perspectives. This is kind of star-studded a little bit, man. We got Ricky Williams, NFL player,

Heisman Trophy winner. It's just a compassionate choice to allow players all reasonable means to care for themselves. Music stars Marcus King, John Osborne from Brothers Osborne. We have this misunderstanding of what this quote-unquote drug thing is.

Benny the Butcher. Brent Smith from Shinedown. We got B-Real from Cypress Hill. NHL enforcer Riley Cote. Marine Corvette. MMA fighter Liz Karamush. What we're doing now isn't working, and we need to change things. Stories matter, and it brings a face to them.

It makes it real. It really does. It makes it real. Listen to does. It makes it real. Listen to new episodes of the War on Drugs podcast season two on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And to hear episodes one week early and ad-free with exclusive content, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. We're joined now by my colleague at UnHerd, James Billow, who had the great pleasure of interviewing Steve Bannon, actually in the War Room studio and made headlines all over the place, ended up in the New York Times, Politicoico because Steve Bannon told James that Elon Musk was, quote, a parasitic, illegal immigrant and actually much more. So, James, first of all, thank you so much for joining us today.

Thank you. Pleasure to be on. Tell us about your meeting with Bannon. What is the War Room studio like? What was it like being there talking to him in the flesh after the guilty plea? I think you talked to him just a couple of days after that all happened. How were his spirits? He was in a great mood and a pretty garrulous chap. I'm sure that will come as no surprise whatsoever.

But it was two days that he pled guilty to the board of all. But more importantly, in his eyes, there was nomination or confirmation of Robert F. Kennedy, which he was in a very good mood about. I think the thing with Bannon is that although he's this red lion with the keys and the... He's very positive about the likes of Tulsi

and Robert F. Kennedy joining the movement. He's very big on the Maha stuff. In his words, he's like, I'm so glad we got the red-pilled mums and the anti-vaxxers. They're all coming to join forces. I wasn't actually really sure how big this constituency was. I asked him, how many people do you think the Tulsi's and Kennedy's world are bringing over?

And he seemed to think it was somewhere between 5 and 10 million, all thanks to the radicalisation of COVID, which is maybe possible, maybe a bit of a stretch. But as for his studio, it was a complete mess. There was memorabilia all over the place. There was religious geography, a lot of reminders and signs to fight, fight, fight. I'm sure that pretty familiar to everyone. But he's very diligent about what he does. He has markings all over these little newspapers, Wall Street Journal, FT, and then has MSNBC on the background because he put a couple of MAGA better than anyone else on the right does. So yeah, he's a very interesting chap, and it was good to speak with him and spend so long with him.

One of the things you picked up on was his ambivalent relationship with Elon Musk at this point, where on the one hand he says Elon Musk is a parasitic illegal immigrant Trump is using Musk as a blunt force instrument to go after the administrative state. Now, Bannon is not one for austerity. Now, he'll talk about how the deficit and the debt are out of control and the country needs to do something about that. But he does not want to go after Medicaid, Social Security, Medicare. He does not want tax cuts for the rich. He's fine with the tax cuts, no tax on tips, that sort of thing. But he hates the administrative state. Musk and his, Musk and Russ' vote, you know, seem much more to be driving towards real austerity, like genuine austerity. What's Bannon's relationship to vote, Trump's OMB director?

Because Bannon's anti-austerity cred is undermined if he's too close to vote. So how should we think about where Bannon is on this question? I agree because his MAGA worldview coheres in a lot of respect. There's these kind of populist measures that he is in favor of enforcing, as you mentioned, no taxes on overtime and no tax on tips and that kind of thing, while at the same time reduce spending in the defense industry of the Pentagon. The weird thing is he's actually got a very good relationship with Russ, even though he is this kind of arch-austerian, as you mentioned. In the Wall Street Journal piece that came out before mine when they're doing a tour around his studio,

he got a call from Russ Vogt basically outlining, you're the one in charge, not go and do your job. A bit further than that, he was quite keen to show off. I think you broke up a little bit there. What was the call? What was the relationship there? Oh, sorry. So he got a call from Russ Vogt basically asking for his advice. And it was the effect of Bannon's response that you're in charge here, you can decide. And I asked him a bit more about this in our meeting. And he said he has a very good relationship with Russ Vogt. He says, look, you're the one in charge now. Don't push you around. Doge is the one that has been

elected or appointed. You are the one in charge. Now, what I found strange was, as you mentioned, Russ Vought is this kind of ultra-austerian tax libertarian type. And I said, well, why have you got such a close relationship with this guy? And he's like, he's been a part of the alliance for eight plus years. I trust him. It always seems to come down to this trust. And again, with Trump, you're employing all these measures like, are you going to renew the 2017 jobs and tax cuts, even though that's going to increase the deficit.

You know, I just back Trump to do the right to make the right decision. I just back Trump to to keep muscle and the other wrangled. So there seems to be this weird paradox prediction and worldview that I can't head around. But, yeah, he's a big fan of Rusbo. He's a big fan of Project Vought. He's a big fan of Project 2025. He said he loved the document. The only thing he didn't like were the us to entitlements and stuff like that, which again, because that is a big part of what Russ Vought is about. Well, Emily, can you help us with that? Like, how do we disentangle this? Because if he,

if Bannon does trust Russ Vought, then I'm out of here. Like, come on. Like, what's going on here? Bannon's no longer the hero. Yeah, I'm off the Bannon train. Well, so Russ Vogt being trusted by Bannon is a really interesting point, James, because Bannon does sort of see things. You quote him in the story talking about how the enemy of his enemy is his friend. But also, he very much has this trench warfare bunker mentality that people who have been around the conservative movement and have been around the Trump movement, you just sort of have, like, Russ was a populist in the late aughts and early 2010s when populism on the right looked like austerity. It looked like a lot of people here in D.C. said this is the time to deal with Social Security entitlement

programs. They said the Tea Party was something to be interpreted as like a referendum on fiscal conservatism as opposed to maybe this sort of like primal cultural shout that I think we understand it to be now. And Russ was around, he was at like Republican study committee, um, around like Jeb Hensarling and Mike Pence actually at the time in those days. So Bannon sort of looks at vote and says, this man has always had populist instincts. He's always been a part of the so-called movement. Um, and if you're around the conservative movement, people really do have this instinct of trust. And it sounds like, James, that's what you picked up on. I'm also curious if you could just tell us a little bit more if, on the flip side of that,

some of this is Bannon seeing Elon Musk. He's referred to him as somebody who's a convert, so he should be sitting in the back pew before. Was it sort of like volcanic visceral when you were talking to him about Elon Musk? I know we've used the parasitic illegal immigrant quote that made headlines, but he told you some more about Musk as well. Yeah, and I just about Russ, though, I think the left is often criticized for these ideological purity tests. And it's almost like the right is far the other way. They'll basically let anyone in the movement because they want to grow and grow

even though it becomes quite difficult to paper over these quite noticeable contradictions between various groups. As for Musk, he was definitely at his most animated way about him. I don't know if you guys remember this. When what? I don't know if you remember this, but B what? I don't know if you remember this,

but Bannon did an interview with an Italian newspaper just before an ordinary day where he was asked about Elo. And that's when he is a truly evil guy and with everything in my power to run him out of office before inauguration. He obviously failed in that. And I brought this up and I said, well, what do you plan to do now?

And again, it's this weird paradox and I said, well, what do you plan to do now? And again, it's this weird paradox because he said, well, I think the last two, two weeks, two, three weeks of administration has confirmed that Musk is indeed evil. The Doge cuts being completely performative. They haven't accomplished anything. Oh, and by the way, he's an agent of Chinese influence. I was like, well, then why the hell are you staying in office? Why aren't you pushing to get him out? And he says, I just trust Trump. Trump is going to keep an eye on him. He has served a purpose.

He's, as you mentioned, Ryan, he is this armor-piercing shell taking on this administrative state. Because let's not forget, that was one of the three totems of his 2017 platform. And he still is absolutely desperate to take on this, what he calls, Praetorian Guard. And if that means absolutely desperate to take on this, what he calls Praetorian guard. And if that means wrangling the tech bros and the world's richest man, then he's absolutely going to be doing it. James Billow of UnHerd, thank you so much for

your time this morning. I know you're probably inundated with people being like, damn, tell me more about that conversation. So thank you. Thanks. This Pride Month, we are not just celebrating. We're fighting back. I'm Georgiam Johnson, and my book, All Boys Aren't Blue, was just named the most banned book in America. If the culture wars have taught me anything, it's that pride is protest. And on my podcast, Fighting Words, we talk to people

who use their voices to resist, disrupt, and make our community stronger. This year, we are showing up and showing out. You need people being like, no, you're not going to tell us what to do. This regime is coming down on us, and I don't want

to just survive. I want to thrive. You'll hear from trailblazers like Bob the Drag Queen. To freedom! Angelica Ross. We ready to fight? I'm ready to fight. And Gabrielle Yoon.

Hi, George. And storytellers with wisdom to spare. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I know a lot of cops, and they get asked all the time, have you ever had to shoot your gun? Sometimes the answer is yes. But there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be no. Across the country, cops call this taser the revolution.

But not everyone was convinced it was that simple. Cops believed everything that taser 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 one taser incorporated on the iheart radio app apple

podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts binge episodes one two and three on may 21st and episodes four five and six on june 4th and Episodes 4, 5, and 6 on June 4th. Ad-free at Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. I'm Clayton English. I'm Greg Glod. And this is Season 2 of the War on Drugs podcast. Yes, sir. We are back. In a big way.

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

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

Marine Corps vet. MMA fighter Liz Karamush. What we're doing now isn't working, and we need to change things. Stories matter, and it brings a face to them. It makes it real. It really does. It makes it real. Listen to new episodes of the War on Drugs podcast season two

on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And to hear episodes one week early and ad-free with exclusive content, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. Well, drama continues in New York over Eric Adams, the agreement Eric Adams made with the Trump administration over migrant deportations. Now, Tom Holman, who is Donald Trump's border czar, was asked about some pushback from Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Fox News and gave quite an answer. Let's roll this clip. Heard you talking about AOC over the weekend.

Do you believe she is breaking the law? I'll leave that up to DOJ. What I find disturbing is that any member of Congress wants to educate people how they evade law enforcement. You can claim you're educating those constitutional rights. Okay, you can keep that claim. But what she in fact is doing is telling people don't open your door, hide in your home, don't talk to ICE.

We're talking about people who are in the country illegally, committed a crime, they're a public safety threat, they've been convicted of serious crime, and they've been ordered to be moved by a federal judge. So it's like AOC and others don't want ICE to enforce the laws that they enacted. She's a member of Congress. Let us enforce the laws you enacted. That's what we're supposed to do. You can't go after her. Do you think others should? No, I think I've asked DOJ where is that line of impediment of Interference and not someone stands in your way prevention from arresting somebody put your hands on that's impediment. But what what line is a

Telling people to hide from mice not open the door. I want, where do you cross that line on impediments? So I simply ask the Department of Justice, give us that line. You have talked to them about this. That's what you're saying? Absolutely. And so that's not an off the cuff response. He had said that multiple times previously. And I think Fox there is seeing if he's going to clean that up

or if he's actually, if this is where he stands. So what Holman is saying is that AOC, by giving clinics in her district or by talking openly on Instagram Live or whatever and saying, look, they're called know your rights trainings. Like here are the rights that you have. Right to remain silent, blah, blah, blah. You know, the basic rights that we have in this country, which there's nothing in the Constitution that says our rights are restricted to citizens. If you are in this country, you have these rights in general. So AOC responded by going after J.D. Vance and saying, you lied to the world in Munich. If this administration believed in free speech as you claimed, its leaders wouldn't be threatening

members of Congress with criminal investigations for educating the public of their constitutional rights. And so the other element here that I think is interesting is that AOC has gotten a lot of mockery for previous suggestions that the Trump administration was going to come after her criminally. Like, don't be ridiculous. You're being hysterical. It's February. They haven't been in office a month. And a court and Homan is talking to the Department of Justice, asking them whether or not she has broken the law. He's asking for the line between helping criminals evade prosecution or deportation. That's what he said. He's trying to figure out where the line is.

There is a crime called impeding. Right. Which if you are getting in the way of immigration officials, you can be charged with that. In fact, I covered this utterly insane case that was run by a Democratic attorney general or Democratic U.S. attorney under the Obama administration, Carmen Ortiz, who for nakedly political purposes went after this bureaucrat whose cleaning lady or nanny came to her and said, I think, like, I don't have papers. Like, what should I do? And the woman said something like, well, don't leave the country because if you do, you're not going to be able to come back in, and you should apply for a green card,

and here's how you can do that, which like very standard, normal, like non-criminal behavior. She charged that person with impeding and got a conviction out of it. It became a controversial case and she was criticized for it, but she got that. That was, however, a direct conversation with one individual about a specific case. AOC talking to a community group full of people or talking on Twitter in general about your constitutional rights to me is crazy. If you want to talk about criminal behavior, we should talk about the Holman-Eric Adams deal, which is still, the saga of which is still ongoing. And let's go to A1.

We can put that up on the screen. This is a New York Times headline from Monday, which reads, Four top New York City officials, this is the first paragraph, said they would resign after the Justice Department moved to dismiss Mayor Eric Adams' corruption case in apparent exchange for his help This is the first paragraph. of Mayor Eric Adams. Now, Brian, this is actually starting to wound the administration of Governor Kathy Hochul as she faces increasing calls to get rid of Eric Adams, which is within her power.

Yes. I mean, Democrats are now increasingly calling on Kathy Hochul to get this guy out of there. She has to be careful, obviously, because Eric Adams' previous immigration policies were wildly unpopularpopular not just in the city of New York but around the entire state so she doesn't want to look like she's you know this is retribution for Eric Adams cracking down on illegal immigration and assisting the Trump administration on one of its most popular policies on the other hand he's a huge albatross. Yeah, and the argument for removing him from office is that he ran and claimed that he would be carrying out his duties in the best interests of the voters who put him in office. But instead, in order to stay out of

prison, he struck a deal with the Trump administration to be their lackey. The evidence for that claim comes from Tom Holman. And Eric Adams. And Eric Adams, who said it. On Fox and Friends. Let's put D2 up, this Fox and Friends admission. If he doesn't come through, I'll be back in New York City. And we won't be sitting on the couch. I'll be in his office up his butt saying saying where the hell is the agreement we came to so

We gonna deliver for the safety of the people of this city up his butt and then he You see Eric Adams there. He's like we're gonna deliver for this the city the people of New York City as If we didn't just see him say out loud we we have an agreement, and if you break it, yeah, I'm going to be up your butt. Yep. Which, anyway. We can put D3 on the screen. Eric Adams, this is another New York Times headline, it's now up to the judge whether to drop charges in the Adams case. So that can is kicked into, or let's say the ball, keep doing the metaphors here, goes into the court of the judge because Emile Bove, the acting deputy attorney general, made that issue last Monday.

So now it goes to the courts. Or, by the way, Kathy Hochul could get rid of Eric Adams and a lot of this. But obviously, it's still going to the Trump administration. Yeah, the Trump administration still has to still be litigated by the Trump administration or will be the backlash to the Trump administration's decision will still be litigated. Now, Eric Adams is going to be in court today. Go on. So when Donziger, and if you guys followed our program, you've seen Donziger interviewed. He's the Chevron attorney who was prosecuted as part of his successful Ecuadorian civil case against Chevron. Chevron then came after him criminally back here in the United States. The U.S. attorneys saw the evidence that Chevron had compiled and declined to go forward with prosecution.

Chevron went to the judge anyway, and the judge decided to hire a private prosecutor who had links to Chevron also and enable that prosecutor, this private one, to prosecute on behalf of the government a case that the government itself had said that they didn't want to bring. Donziger refused to turn over his documents and his phones and such, was found in contempt and did more than like a year plus or so in prison. So of course, like that's, that is a standard that is held for environmental attorneys who win victories against Chevron, not for in general mayors. But it is a precedent that exists that this judge, if they felt like it, could appoint, could go to a law firm and say, look, I think I've looked at this indictment and it's rock solid. Get a private prosecutor.

That would be funny. What would the Justice Department do then? Bove is on a firing rampage. Just yesterday asked for a prosecutor named Chang. I forget the first name. This is D6. Yeah, if we put D6 up on the screen, this is another senior U.S. prosecutor resigned, citing a demand to probe Biden-era conduct. This is Denise Chung, who supervised criminal cases at the U.S. Attorney's Office in Washington, according to Reuters, said she had been ordered to open a probe into a contract that she did not identify and that she believed the

request was not supported by evidence. This was about the EPA thing where the EPA on the way out had set up this arrangement where nonprofits were going to be executing the Inflation Reduction Act's mandates. And so they moved the money out. There was a Project Veritas video that came out where some Biden person was saying, we're throwing the gold bars off the Titanic as we're sinking. It appears that they actually really were. Yes. However- Lawfully. Lawfully. It's like Congress appropriated the money and directed it to be spent.

And their fear was that if they didn't spend it, then the next administration would block it from being spent, which would undermine Congress's lawfully executed appropriations. And so they moved them out quickly. And so Chang said, I don't think that you have enough to open a grand jury here. And then Boeve said, well, then I want your, no, it wasn't Boeve. It was Martin who said, Ed Martin, he said, I want your resignation. So she tendered it. Although it did seem like she was willing to work with the FBI to try to go to the banks to get the money back. It's not impossible to me that there was potentially misconduct and there should be stuff looked into when you have people talking like gold bars off Titanic. But

I think actually this brings us to the point that I wanted to make, which is this is in D5. Some of this, I think people on the right are correct to assume is litmus tests for loyalists. They're sort of looking to push for self-deportations in the earliest days of Trump's 2.0 DOJ. And Byron York in the Washington Examiner had a pretty good piece walking through what substantive argument there may have been for dropping the case against Eric Adams, comparing it to the overzealous prosecution of Bob McDonnell, even Chris Christie. Some of this has been bipartisan, by the way, just cases that end up going nowhere against politicians. And I think this is interesting because Jason Willick in the Washington Post wrote on the quote, underwhelming charges against Eric Adams, but said this was a hugely botched operation by the Trump administration, which was making this sort of thin case about election

interference, that you're not allowed to investigate politicians when the voters have the potential to cast ballots about this politician. Or that this was just about the illegal immigration deal. It's more valuable. This is what Emil Boebs said in a letter that was very widely circulated back and forth with Sassoon, who resigned, we covered this last week with Crystal, that it was more valuable to get Adams' cooperation on migrant deportations than it was to prosecute him for this crime. So a lot of people on the right, I think, correctly see the DOJ as a place where a lot

of career politicians are very hostile to Donald Trump. They're hostile to people who are loyalists to Donald Trump, and they want to purge the DOJ of those people. And some of these measures are going to be ways that force people to kind of self-deport, and they've no problem with that whatsoever. On the other hand, there's probably a legitimate case to be made that this is part of a decade-plus long pattern of prosecutors at the Justice Department putting politicians in the crosshair. And some of these cases end up falling apart. The Bob McDonald case is a really good example. Eric Adams is clearly corrupt. There's absolutely no question that Eric Adams is corrupt. There isn't like some Russiagate thing that's going to be unraveled here.

But so is McDonald, right? Yeah. I mean, he's taking, yes. But the cases suck. And I think that's a legitimate point that then got, I think, unfortunately, because of the Trump administration, doesn't mean the media coverage was great, but because of the Trump administration lost, because it was clearly a partisan move. It was clearly about Eric Adams supporting the partisan ends of Donald Trump. So you end up in the death spiral. Once again, if you're trying to clean up this Banana Republic death spiral in the Justice Department with partisan maneuvers, it doesn't end up working. Right. And what I think is going on here is just more gangland stuff where the Trump Justice Department is trying to figure out

who's going to be unquestionably loyal to Trump. And so they came up with a completely unethical and absurd thing for them to do, which is to drop the charges against this guy in exchange for him doing your policy bidding. Which to somebody who works at the Justice Department and has gone through all the legal brainwashing about their ethics, and brainwashing in a good way, I think. Literal washing. Like, get clean with this stuff. Like, that's, you don't do that. Daniel Sassoon's letter is well said on this, but it's obvious. Like, that's not how the Department of Justice sees itself.

So to order the Department of Justice to explicitly do that is to root out, weed out all of the people who have a conscience and to have left only the ones who are like, yeah, I'll do it. In the same way that there's a gang initiation, you have to go out and shoot an innocent civilian. I'm sure some people inside the DOJ are frustrated with these prosecutions falling apart and appeal and all of that. So maybe there are some people, maybe there's some good attorneys internally. Sassoon actually may have been one of them, someone who stuck around initially, who were sort of frustrated by these processes and are open to changing them. But yeah, like it took what I think is a pretty good opportunity

to make a case about bipartisan overzealous prosecutions. I mean, this goes back a long time, but you can look at Comey and Martha Stewart. There are just all kinds of examples of this stuff going on at the DOJ for the FBI too for a really long time. So this was a very, very poor partisan way to make the argument. And that just isn't encouraging in terms of the Trump administration's ability to clean up the DOJ in a way that makes it neutral, responsive to the

president, but like justice should be blind. This just ended up landing in a very different way, even though I think one thing that's being missed in the conversation is that there have been, and this does appear to be a somewhat overzealous prosecution, an underwhelming case on the very narrow specific legal question. The broader question, is he corrupt? Clearly he is corrupt. There's plenty of evidence in the indictment that is plain to stay on that. And in related news, the Trump administration just announced that they do not plan to follow the Rhode Island federal judge's order that they restart USAID and foreign service funding. Their argument is that, go F off. Basically, the way that they're couching it in their reply is we are going to continue to evaluate on a case-by-case basis.

So now it's kind of up to that judge who's going to say, okay, well, I made my order. How am I going to enforce it? We'll see. is protest. And on my podcast, Fighting Words, we talk to people who use their voices to resist, disrupt, and make our community stronger. This year, we are showing up and showing out. You need people being like,

no, you're not going to tell us what to do. This regime is coming down on us, and I don't want to just survive. I want to thrive. You'll hear from trailblazers like Bob the Drag Queen. To freedom! Angelica Ross.

We ready to fight? I'm ready to fight. And Gabrielle Yoon. Hi, George. And storytellers with wisdom to spare. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I know a lot of cops, and they get asked all the time,

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

dedicated itself to one visionary mission. This is Absolute Season 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 one, Taser Incorporated on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Binge episodes one, two, and three on May 21st

and episodes four, five, and 6 on June 4th. Add free at Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. I'm Clayton English. I'm Greg Lott. And this is season two of the War on Drugs podcast. Yes, sir. We are back. In a big way. In a very big way.

Real people, real perspectives. This is kind of star-studded a little bit, man. We got Ricky Williams, NFL player, Heisman Trophy winner. It's just a compassionate choice to allow players all reasonable means to care for themselves. Music stars Marcus King, John Osborne from Brothers Osborne. We have this misunderstanding of what this quote-unquote drug thing is. Benny the Butcher. Brent Smith from Shinedown.

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

It makes it real. Listen to new episodes of the War on Drugs podcast season two on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And to hear episodes one week early and ad-free with exclusive content, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. Let's move on to Lena Kahn and other news about justice and Trump 2.0. We have a great guest and we're excited to talk about the big win for Lena Kahn yesterday. All right. Stick around for that. Yesterday, Trump's FTC chair put out a major new announcement that he was going to keep in place the merger guidelines that had controversially been put into place originally by Biden's FTC staff that the 23 merger guidelines are in effect and will serve as the framework for our agency's merger review analysis. These guidelines build on previous guidelines and many decades of case law. That stability is important for enforcement

agencies and the business community. Can roll the rest of that so people can read it, pause it and read it if they're watching. But I wanted to get reaction from Doha Meki, who served as the Biden administration's chief in the antitrust division towards the end, and as the deputy chief in the antitrust division through, I guess, most of his tenure. Yeah. And you've been working with Lena Kahn for a long time. Towards this day, towards this idea that there would be a new bipartisan consensus around antitrust and how the government ought to approach mergers. So first of all, were you surprised that Ferguson said, okay, you know what, we're sticking with what Lena Kahn outlined. And then

tell us why it matters. Sure. So this was not hugely surprising for those of us who have worked in and around the antitrust agencies for a long time. Because once Ferguson became chair, it was a signal that... I think it was a great... So let me just back up and say, I worked in the antitrust division of the DOJ under Barack Obama as a career public servant. And I actually worked for Donald Trump's first head of the antitrust division, a guy named Makan Delrahim, and then had a great honor to serve as principal deputy to Jonathan Cantor and then ultimately lead the antitrust division myself at the end of the Biden administration. And so I have seen for a very long time this bipartisan role towards an antitrust consensus that really prizes going back to first principles. And I think that Donald Trump has made a really important down payment in designating Andrew Ferguson chair of the FTC and nominating a woman

named Gail Slater to lead the antitrust division of the DOJ. And what I know of both of them is that they are fiercely conservative. They have a deep fidelity to law. And that means going back to statutes, right? The text of statutes, going back to Supreme Court and appellate precedent. And that's good news for the American people. When we drafted the merger guidelines, which is a process that started in 2022, we undertook a deep review of all of the Supreme Court and appellate cases that had ever been decided on merger antitrust challenges and attempted to write out a document that gave transparency to the business community about how it was that we were going to undertake merger analysis. And for the first time ever, ever, since 1968, those guidelines actually cited case law.

And so on that telling, it's not surprising. What did they cite before? Just like— Vibes. Just vibes, basically, from the University of Chicago or something? There was no citation to case law, even though other guidance documents, such as the now-withdrawn 2000 Competitor Collaboration Guidelines cited law, the merger guidelines never did. And so this is a deeply conservative principle that there's no antitrust exception to statutory interpretation or, you know, judicial precedent in antitrust. And so, again, this is not hugely surprising. And I won't necessarily agree with every decision

that the new administration makes, but I think this is a really important one and a good one. Well, even the Federalist Society, people associated with Federalist Society, just this week were looking at the con merger guidelines and saying, these are pretty reasonable. So maybe if you could tell us just a little bit about some context. What were these merger guidelines? What did they do? And the second tag-along part of that question I have is, does this send a real chill to the consumer welfare standard people on the right? I mean, I'm sure you're friends with many of the people in legal circles who have for years been using consumer welfare standard. It's fallen out of fashion in the last decade-ish. But now when you have a Republican president's FTC starting to look at things this

way, it seems like a pretty big shift. Well, let me give you some history about merger guidelines. So the first merger guidelines were promulgated in 1968. A guy named Don Turner, who led the antitrust division, then under LBJ, gave a guidance document that attempted to distill how it was that the antitrust agencies review mergers. You know, for your listeners, there's a certain number of mergers, the biggest mergers, highest dollar value, that have to be notified to the antitrust agencies every year. And so there's a long tradition of providing transparency to the public about how it is that the agencies decide the legality of mergers. And they've been updated continually. Nearly every president has updated the merger guidelines at least at one point in their

administration. And that was true of the Reagan administration, the Clinton administration. Even the first Trump administration updated something called vertical merger guidelines that have since been superseded. Yes. And that meant, yeah, lay out for people what that meant, because it is important. Yeah, it's very, very important. So, you know, making clear that when a merger combines two companies and reduces the number of available options for consumers or employers, for workers, or any number of ways that mergers can really threaten competition, the guidance documents help the public and the business community in particular, kind of gauge for

themselves how it is that the agencies are likely to look at that merger. And so insofar as the business community was using guidance documents as a sort of, you know, litmus test for what kinds of mergers would be permissible, I think this is likely a very important development for the business community. I remember in 2023 when they were released, there were the sort of usuals who heavily criticized the document and attempted to frame them as radical,

which is unusual considering that it was very clear what kind of case law the agencies were relying on. How did they change? So like for decades, it seems like the merger guideline was, including from Obama, was cool, do it. We don't care. I'm sure those folks would dispute that. You were there though. I mean, what was it like to try to flag a merger back then? You know, there are ways in which there has been a creep and an increased permissiveness about the kinds of mergers bound up by something called consent decrees, settlements, that ultimately offered no real protection to the public. So we'll allow this merger if you agree to do this thing. Correct.

And then they wouldn't do the thing. Correct. And facially, you would have illegal mergers being notified to the agencies. And it raised real questions about why these mergers were being proposed in the first place. But in these merger guidelines, we tried our best to be very clear, again, always summoning the law and going back to first principles about when a merger might harm workers. When a merger- And that was new to care about workers rather than consumers. They were contemplated in the prior version of the merger guidelines, but these made it very, very clear.

There was no ambiguity about the 2023 merger guidelines. There are also problems in digital markets, right? Big tech mergers, something called killer acquisitions, you know, platform mergers. Killer acquisitions, that's when a tech company or something goes out and buys a competitor and just kills it. And then shelves it or mothballs it or folds it into their existing offerings and kills maybe something that they had in development. So there's all kinds of ways that you can have problematic mergers in digital markets. And there was really no framework for thinking about those kinds, or no clear framework, rather, for thinking about how those kinds of mergers can harm real people, can harm innovators.

Especially with something like Facebook. It's not exactly the same thing as a monopoly with a hard product. Exactly. And that, I think, was the absurdity of these really old paradigms that haven't existed for a long time. If you're thinking about every merger as a widget manufacturer acquiring something or merging with another widget manufacturer, it's ridiculous to think that every merger is horizontal or vertical, which are these, again, technocratic terms that just don't mean anything in the modern economy. And so I think that these guidelines, again, rooted in law,

which should make everybody happy, really attempted to take on market realities in the modern market, right? The way ordinary people participate in our market economy was really reflected in these merger guidelines. And so when you were chief of the antitrust division, you put out a number of orders and blocked some mergers that pissed off a lot of powerful people. And one of the reactions to that, we talked about this on Monday, we can put this next element up the screen, want to get your take on it, was this really wild Breitbart article. Biden antitrust holdover at Doha Meki continued woke agenda instead of taking on big tech. You know, people can go back and look at our Monday piece where we dissect the evidence laid out in this Breitbart piece. So without getting too much into it, to go over it again, I'm curious, where do you think this came from?

Like, what's going on here? You know, it's hard to speculate where these kinds of things come from. But I'll say that, you know, when I was at the antitrust division, we took that sometimes it can get vitriolic, that sometimes companies can take it personally. And so I'll leave others to speculate about the exact origins. I'll just say that this sort of thing is not surprising, right? Because big, entrenched, powerful interests often say things that aren't true, attack you personally. because we were insulating a career staff, prosecutors, economists, statisticians, paralegals, who were doing the really difficult work of holding lawbreakers accountable. Well, and what's interesting about this Breitbart, well, there are many things interesting about this Breitbart article, but what I find interesting is the point I think Ryan was alluding to.

It sounds like some comm shop for a really powerful business interest pitched this to Breitbart because you dissect the story. As a journalist, you're looking at this, you're like, this is very thin. It's not a well-substantiated story. It says at one point, quote, none of Mackey's actions have anything to do with countering big tech. And it singles one decision that you made, a lawsuit just before Trump took office. But it looks like a really thin piece of oppo that was pitched to Breitbart, which sort of a lot of conservative media outlets, speaking of somebody who's been in conservative media for a long time, have that sort of reflex to publish that oppo from

certain comp shops that represent business interests. And I guess I'm curious if you think that this wedge, the business community continues to try and drive between like an Andrew Ferguson camp and your camp, is it getting more powerful now that Elon Musk and other massive CEOs have so much sway in the Trump administration and the Republican Party more broadly? Or is what Ferguson did just yesterday, just this week, early signs about antitrust from the Trump administration, is that a really positive indication, actually, that this new ideological commitment to rethinking prior standards is real and here to stay on the right? You know, I think there's, I've heard sometimes that there's a realignment of a kind happening

in antitrust. And I feel like I've really had a front row seat to some of that because, again, I was counsel to Donald Trump's first head of the antitrust division and principal deputy to Biden's head of the antitrust division before leading the institution myself. And this is not at all surprising, but it's hugely interesting. I think both parties have a sort of factionalism that is playing out. And so many people have observed, myself included, that when Donald Trump ran for president in 2016, there was an element of populism that was real, right? It was very interesting. Did you see it evolving in the first Trump administration?

Absolutely. Absolutely. As somebody who was working in the, yeah. Absolutely. The Google suit. Exactly. How did your wokeness slip past that? I saw really bold actions that really Time Warner merger challenge, the filing of the Google Search lawsuit, which was the most significant, you know, Section 2 monopolization tech lawsuit

since Microsoft in 1998. And so, you know, even in the Democratic Party, there are these forces where you, you know, it's not really like center left, you know, liberal progressive. I mean, there are interests that really prize big, powerful corporations and folks who really want to return power to the people. And I see elements of that on the right as well. I was listening to a podcast, Ross Daupat and Steve Bannon on his podcast recently. Neo-Brandeisian, Steve Bannon. You know, certainly that was not on my bingo card. He called himself that. He called himself a Neo-Brandeician. But I mean, really, I think even that doesn't do enough to really surface how interesting his commentary was about the techno feudalists. And again, I sort of I see this

potential factionalism in their own party. I see it in conservative organizations. I see it in the conservative legal movement. And so I think that, I think it remains to be seen how that will play out. But I know that there are certain good appointments and decisions that we are likely to see, even if they are in contradiction with other decisions that the new administration makes. And Lena K Khan herself commented on this also. She said the 2023 merger guidelines emphasize fidelity to law, reflect modern market realities,

and are increasingly being adopted by courts. Good to see bipartisan commitment to rigorous analysis for policing mergers. And bipartisan commitment, I think, is a key term there. When we talked about this on Monday with Sagar, one of the points he made is like, look, if you think that the right is going to credit the left here, then you're being naive here. It's not going to happen. On the other hand, you do have people like Hawley, Ted Cruz,

even to some extent, J.D. Vance saying nice things about Lena Kahn. So I'm curious, and how much you can tell us about this, how much bipartisan work is being done to forge a coalition? Because for 40 years or so, there was a bipartisan consensus whereby no matter which party won, whether it was Reagan or Clinton or whoever, Bush, Obama, the approach to antitrust and labor to some degree was going to be roughly the same. You'd have three Democrats on the panel and two Republicans. They'd switch. You'd have three Republicans and two Democrats. But the decisions that would come through the various commissions, FTC and others, would be basically the same.

And I know that there's been some effort to make that the case, but in reverse. That there would be a bipartisan consensus that actually, no, the populist approach is the one we're going to do. Whether it's Hawley or Warren or Sanders or whoever. So how much actual coordination is there? Are you guys, do you agree and you kind of are moving in your separate lanes forward? Or are you guys talking? You know, when I was at the antitrust division, I made it a point to go into explicitly conservative spaces. To talk about why antitrust matters for people of all stripes.

And I always felt like I had a warm welcome in those places. Whether folks on the right will ultimately credit Democrats, liberals, others for intellectual contributions to that movement, I just think that misses the point, right? It's not really about credit, right? The American people are suffering. I saw that firsthand. And when I went out and talked to farmers, right, or invited in ranchers from South Dakota, I wasn't thinking about, oh, well, this is a red state. I was thinking about these are my fellow Americans, and they're being screwed over by powerful corporate interests, by, you know, the oligarchs of whatever industry, right, including agriculture. And so that really means something to people. And I think that's the important thing, right, working towards a new consensus. Again, I think it remains to be seen

whether we ultimately get there, but I think we're seeing movement and progress, and this is a really exciting thing to watch. Well, Doha, thanks for joining us. Seriously, thank you. You do an impressive job covering up your woke agenda. Yes, I couldn't even tell. You can't even see it, but it's in there somewhere. Breitbart said that you quoted Dubois, and this is your woke agendas. You were approvingly quoting one of the preeminent black intellectuals. Yeah. They described him as black. Yeah. Black Marxist thinker, I think, is what they said.

It's all very absurd. Very absurd. Well, we appreciate your time. Thank you. All right. Up next, speaking of wokeness, we've got a little Dave Chappelle segment. Stick around for that. Well, Dave Chappelle is putting Saturday Night Live on

blast. Actually, during the big 50th anniversary celebration week of all times, we can go ahead and put this element up on the screen. He alleged in a recent comedy set, according to a journalist who was there, that SNL producers told him he could not talk about Gaza and he could not talk about transgenderism when he hosted the show, I think it was last fall, somewhere around the election. And Dave Chappelle, this is described in the Deadline article that's up on the screen as sort of a, quote, shocking instance of potential censorship. I believe he ended up, and I think Deadline notes this, talking about Palestine in that show and went fairly viral for it. But the idea is that he wasn't supposed to like wade into those controversial topics.

It is a pretty interesting allegation against Saturday Night Live. Ryan Chappelle has obviously become really popular on the right. I mean, he's always been popular with actually everyone, probably more popular with the left than the right in the past, but he's always been popular. Everyone likes him. He's the man. But he's gotten a lot of traction on the right because he's been willing over the last half decade plus to, from a position of the left, say some things about like trans ideology, whether it's like locker rooms, bathrooms that the right really approves of. So now he's saying SNL didn't want him to talk about Gaza from the left or trans issues from the right. It's sort of interesting. It's funny. You remember we used to have a deal that if I made you talk about an Israel bloc, then you would make me talk about a trans bloc

because that was several years ago when we launched this program. Like those were the two, like, most difficult issues for each of us to talk about. To navigate, right. To navigate in a way that is sensitive. Yeah, so he talks about, he's speaking directly to Trump. And he's like, look, you know, you need to take this seriously. You know, The whole world's counting on you, even the people that hate you are counting on you. And he said, whether it's

the people in the Palisades or the people in Palestine, you've got to treat them with dignity. And also clearly making a reference to Trump's musing about ethnically cleansing the entire region. Saying, come on, man. Like, what are you doing? Like, ridiculous. Well, when he said that, wasn't it, it was before Trump rolled out the Gaza plan. I thought it was, what was it? I thought it was back around the fall.

Oh, that's right. That's right. Yeah, that's right. Either way, that's something that's sort of always been on the table. But yes. So, did you catch, by the way, any of Saturday Night Live's 50th anniversary? Not much. Did you watch? I did watch.

Some of it was pretty good. They did a great, shockingly good in memoriam for all of their politically incorrect sketches over the years. Oh. They had to blur out. One of the jokes was they had to blur out every time someone in SNL did a version of Blackface. It rolled the clip. Was that pretty often?

Jimmy Fallon on there? Or was his somewhere else? I thought Jimmy Kimmel. Oh, was it Jimmy Kimmel? Jimmy Kimmel is the... I don't want to libel anybody. I don't want to slander anybody. What you just did was offensive to the Irish,

even though you are Irish. That's right. I can say it to libel anybody. I don't want to slander anybody. What you just did was offensive to the Irish, even though you are Irish. Yeah, that's right. I can say it. I'm Irish. But anyway, I think, I guess, from Saturday Night Live's perspective, if I'm Saturday Night Live and I bring Dave Chappelle on the show, the benefit of Dave Chappelle is just letting Dave Chappelle do Dave Chappelle. Yeah.

If you invite Dave Chappelle, just let him rip. Literally don't edit anything. Just give him a microphone on the stage. He's not going to listen to you anyway. Say your prayers just let him rip. Literally don't edit anything. Just give him a microphone on the stage. He's not going to listen to you anyway. Say your prayers and let it go. Yeah, and he's going to narc you out anyway. Which appears to be exactly what happened. So, I mean, listen, it's interesting that, to me it's interesting that Chappelle's SNL appearance,

I think at this point it was a couple of months ago, because to me it just seems like the culture has shifted so much in the last couple of months, like the last month in particular, that vibe shift that people sensed when Trump, I think especially after Donald Trump was almost assassinated, and you started to see different figures in pop culture come out and say they were pro-Trump, and you started to see his campaign doing really well, it looked like there was something under the surface where culture was about to just kind of accept Trump. And a lot of people were going to be just more open to him. Joe Rogan comes out and endorses him.

Dana White starts campaigning with him and all of that. It's just interesting to see how SNL was thinking of it, even just not that long ago. Because I'm not sure, I don't know how different that would be if he were to come back and host next week. But yeah, you're right. That was a previous bit that I was thinking of. It's a good bit.

It is a very good bit. Yeah, this must have been January. Yeah. Because it was yeah, I think he hosted right in the new year. And he was yes, because he's from Ohio you know and hangs out around there he's always seemed to have his finger on the pulse a little bit more mm-hmm then you know probably a lot of the other people over

at Saturday live yeah this is he was referring to his when he hosted the show in January so yeah he he really said, this is how he ended the San Francisco set, by the way. He said, give the Jews a break, free Palestine, before literally dropping the mic, according to the reporter at San Francisco Gate, who was actually there. And this is where he said to Trump in the monologue back in January, quote, please do better next time. Do not forget your humanity and please have empathy for displaced people, whether they're in Palisades or in Palestine. He also said, I'm tired of being controversial. I'm trying to turn over a new leaf. It is way too soon to try to joke about a catastrophe like that. This one hits close to

home. So it was a, I mean, it was a really good monologue, but he's now accusing SNL of censoring it, literally censoring it. Although it's live, he could do whatever he wants. What are they going to do? He probably wants to get paid. Do you get paid for that? I'm sure. What do you think? I thought it was one of those things you just do because it's like an honor. It's promotion, yeah. Who knows? Like the Super Bowl. Do you get paid for the Super Bowl halftime show? No idea. I'm sure you get something. Other than publicity. You got to pay your dancers at least.

Yeah. We should be entertainment lawyers. Next career. Anyway, interesting tidbit from Dave Chappelle that, you know, we talked earlier about how little coverage there was of this wild Miami Beach shooting. It's just, I'm just wondering, Ryan, with the democratization of media, like Dropsite, for example. Dropsite's doing so well. How much longer media gets away

with sort of being able to own the narrative on these topics? Because Dave Chappelle's gonna put you on blast. He feels comfortable. He feels like there's a permission structure culturally now where— He lived. Yeah. He's okay.

He made it. Yes. He should have a t-shirt. Yeah. Well, anyway, on that note, thank you so much for tuning in to today's edition of CounterPoints. As a reminder, go to BreakingPoints.com to subscribe for a premium membership of the show. You get the whole thing right to your inbox every day without any commercial breaks, ad breaks on YouTube or podcast platforms. So we appreciate everybody for tuning in.

Appreciate you for subscribing. Thanks for tuning in. All right. See you guys soon. See you soon. I'm Jeff Perlman. And I'm Rick Jervis. We're journalists and hosts of the podcast Finding Sexy Sweat.

At an internship in 1993, we roomed with Reggie Payne, aspiring reporter and rapper who went by Sexy Sweat. A couple years ago, we set out to find him. But in 2020, Reggie fell into a coma after police pinned him down, and he never woke up. But then I see my son's not moving. So we started digging and uncovered city officials bent on protecting their own. Listen to Finding Sexy

Sweat coming June 19th on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Looking for your next obsession? Listen to High Key, a new weekly podcast hosted by Ben O'Keefe, Ryan Mitchell, and Evie Audley. We got a lot of things to get into.

We're gonna gush about the random stuff we can't stop thinking about. I am high key going to lose my mind over all things Cowboy Carter. I know. Girl, the way she about to yank my bank account. Correct.

And one thing I really love about this is that she's celebrating her daughter. Oh, I know. Listen to High Key on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I've seen a lot of stuff over 30 years, you know, some very despicable crime and things that are kind of tough to wrap your head around.

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