Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 2/3/25: DNC Doubles Down On Identity Politics, Tucker Carlson Calls Out Shapiro, Trump Visits DC

Episode Date: February 3, 2025

Krystal and Saagar discuss another plane crash as FAA issues revealed, DNC doubles down on identity politics, Tucker Carlson calls out Ben Shapiro on Israel, Bibi visits DC to kill Gaza deal.  Amir Tibon: https://www.haaretz.com/ty-WRITER/0000017f-da25-d42c-afff-dff77f020000  Jeff Stein: https://www.washingtonpost.com/people/jeff-stein/  To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show AD FREE, uncut and 1 hour early visit: www.breakingpoints.com   Merch Store: https://shop.breakingpoints.com/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. Camp Shane, one of America's longest-running weight loss camps for kids, promised extraordinary results. But there were some dark truths behind Camp Shane's facade of happy, transformed children. Nothing about that camp was right. It was really actually like a horror movie. Enter Camp Shame, an eight-part series examining the rise and fall of Camp Shane and the culture that fueled its decades-long success. You can listen to all episodes of Camp Shame one week early and totally ad-free on iHeart True Crime Plus. So don't wait. Head to Apple Podcasts and subscribe today. Have you ever thought about going voiceover? I'm Hope Woodard, a comedian, creator,

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Let me hear it. Listen to voiceover on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. A lot of times, big economic forces show up in our lives in small ways. Four days a week, I would buy two cups of banana pudding, but the price has gone up, so now I only buy one. Small but important ways. From tech billionaires to the bond market to, yeah, banana pudding. If it's happening in business, our new podcast is on it. I'm Max Chastain.

And I'm Stacey Vanek-Smith. So listen to Everybody's Business on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey guys, Sagar and Crystal here. Independent media just played a truly massive role in this election, and we are so excited about what that means for the future of this show. This is the only place where you can find honest perspectives from the left and the right that simply does not exist anywhere else. So if that is something that's important to you, please go to BreakingPoints.com, become a member today, and you'll get access to our full shows, unedited, ad-free, and all put together for you every morning in your inbox. We need your help to build the future of independent news media, and we hope to see you at BreakingPoints.com. There was actually a crazy crash that happened in Philadelphia.

Let's go ahead and put some of the video up there on the screen as I talk over it. So you can see there were these insane ring camera videos that were coming out that are just showing a major fireball that erupted literally as this plane, small plane, carrying six passengers actually literally crashed there in the middle of the road. So you can see the emergency lights, the fires that were all happening. This is a particularly insane one because he's standing outside and it literally happens right outside of his front door. You can see the fireball that was right behind him. Absolutely terrifying. What we know about the crash so far is it's a little weird, some of the details. So I'm just going to go ahead and read them to some of you.

So they've named the crew and there was actually a patient. It was an air ambulance in the northeastern Philadelphia area. So it was a medical jet, and it was including a girl from Mexico who had received treatment for a life-threatening illness, but it plummeted to the ground in northeast Philly, causing obviously a massive explosion, killing everybody on board, and at least one person who was on the ground. We don't know anything else. What we basically know is that they left northeast Philadelphia airport. It was headed for Springfield Branson National Airport, stopping in Missouri before know anything else. What we basically know is that they left Northeast Philadelphia Airport. It was headed for Springfield Branson National Airport, stopping in Missouri before eventually traveling to its final destination of Tijuana, Mexico. The girl was returning to Mexico after

receiving treatment in the United States. And the victims of the crash are the captain, as well as several other Mexican nationals. So definitely a tragedy and still some open questions as to what the hell was happening, you know, with all of this. Can we put the next one, please, up on the screen? Just read some of the details out that I was talking about. It's called a quote-unquote angel flight en route to Mexico. All of the occupants were Mexican nationals. Plane was headed to Tijuana. So still some major stuff there.

And a number of injuries in the area, too, just because of it being in this major urban area, which is, you know, between that and then the fact that it had just come on the heels of this horrific crash in D.C. is why it drew a lot of attention. Yeah, that's why everyone's paying attention. I mean, rightfully, right? Yeah.

People are on edge. People are afraid to fly. And Donald Trump addressed some of the crash on Thursday, blaming DEI. I'm sure we'll talk about it afterwards. Let's take a listen to what he had to say. You can't have regular people doing that job. They won't be able to do it. But we'll restore faith in American air travel. I'll have more to say about that. I do want to point out that various articles that appeared prior to my entering office, and here's one. The FAA's diversity push includes focus on hiring people with severe intellectual and psychiatric disabilities.

That is amazing. And then it says FAA says people with severe disabilities are most underrepresented segment of the workforce and they want them in and they want them, they can be air traffic controllers. I don't think so. This was in January 14th, so that was a week before I entered office. They put a big push to put diversity into the FAA's program. On DEI and the claims that you've made, are you saying this crash was somehow caused and the result of diversity hiring? And what evidence have you seen to support these claims?

It just could have been. We have a high standard. We've had a much higher standard than anybody else. And there are things where you have to go by brain power, you have to go by psychological quality. And psychological quality is a very important element of it. These are various very powerful tests that we put to use, and they were terminated by Biden. And Biden went by a standard that's the exact opposite. So there we go from Trump. I was watching it live. I was telling Crystal what it was.

And I was like, oh, he's really gonna do it really going to do it, isn't he? And immediately starts pulling out DEI articles. My personal favorite was a response to that question whenever he's like, so do you have any indication that it was DEI? And he's like, not at this time. We don't. So, okay. All right. There we go. That's Trump. Let's put some of the details up here on the screen about the crash, because this is what's actually important, where we are learning a couple of things. Number one is that the helicopter, it seems, was not flying at the correct height.

Now, there's various reasons for that. It could be that the screen of the air traffic controller was incorrect. It could be an instrumentation malfunction on the helicopter itself. It could be a communication error between the two. That is currently under investigation. But the most important thing that we have learned is that FAA shortage of staffing in the tower had one person doing the job of two. And what they said is that the helicopter was flying outside of its flight path and that air traffic controller was juggling two jobs at the

same time and was unable to keep the helicopter and the plane separated. It does seem, Crystal, that this has been going on for years now at Reagan National Airport, that they have had a major shortage in air traffic control. And we have also learned of a previous close call incident between a helicopter and a plane. So unfortunately, just seems like it was a matter of time. Too crowded airport, not enough air traffic control. Again, the helicopter thing I still can't get over. I have no idea why they are constantly doing

helicopter training exercises over one of the most crowded, busiest, and difficult airports to land in in the entire United States. It's crazy. I've been landing there for my entire adult life. I moved to Washington, D.C. when I was 18. I didn't even know that was a thing. It's probably better that we didn't know. But now, you know, they suspended the flights, luckily. But it just, it's like, how much is this happening all over the country?

It's completely insane. I had no idea. Same. That this was a thing that happened. And it seems completely insane. A lot of conspiracy theorists are making a lot of the fact that the helicopter Pete Hegseth, our Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, said it was on a continuation of government training mission. But that is a little weird, right? So what is that continuity of government mission? Is it, you know, for what purpose? What were you doing flying in the middle of the night? I'm with you on that one.

I'm with you on that one. I'm with you on that one. But the factors that we know, so first of all, nationwide, there's a massive air traffic controller shortage. Some 3,000 air traffic controllers we are short on. There's an airport in the Bay Area that's about to have zero air traffic controllers, very close to San Francisco, not actual SFO, but a smaller airport nearby. This is a crisis because you can see potentially the results here. Because what happened at Reagan is that, like you said, Sagar, for years they've been operating in this shorthanded position where one person has been doing the job of two, having to both direct the passenger jets in and also manage the helicopter traffic. I mean, that seems, that's insane. But they were only doing it, not only, they shouldn't be doing it at all, okay,

but they were forced into this situation from a shortage. They were doing it after 9.30 p.m. because that's when the traffic really starts to ease up. On this particular evening, the supervisor had allowed someone to leave early so that the one-man band situation began much earlier in the evening. So the crash occurred just before 9 p.m. This should have been a time when typically they would have had two people in, you know, each doing one job. So that was unusual. Then you also had, as you mentioned, the helicopter flying above its approved path. The fact that there are helicopters flying through here is insane to begin with, but these are some of the factors that go in. The other thing is, you know, I learned a

lot about DCA. It sucks because this is actually my favorite airport in the region. It's close, it's easy. It's not that big of an airport facility. So it's very easy to get around in, et cetera. But the main runway there is actually the busiest runway in the entire country. And the reason is because there's only one real runway. It's already shorter than most major runways at major airports, but there's only really one main runway that larger jets can land on. So that primary runway is the busiest in the country. Then you couple that with the fact that you have all of these sensitive areas around here. You've got the Pentagon, you've got the White House, you've got all kinds of monuments and other facilities that are nearby. So it

effectively forces all of the air traffic into a very narrow corridor, predominantly just right over the Potomac River, which anybody, again, who's flown into that airport is kind of familiar. So it creates this really dense and very busily trafficked area. And those are some of the factors that seem to have contributed to this horrific, horrific death. But one indication we got is that the screens that the air traffic controller was monitoring and using to, you know, keep everything safe, etc., may have misread the

level that the helicopter was flying at. So the NTSB has determined the helicopter, the Black Hawk helicopter, was flying at 325 feet. It was supposed to be at 200 feet. There is some indication maybe that the technical controls for the air traffic controller were misreading the height. That could have been a factor. But, you know, to go back to like Doge and all of this sort of stuff, you know, the air traffic controllers got the same fork in the road email pushing them to retire as everybody else in the federal government did. Then there was another

like Q&A email that went out that even more aggressively pushed everyone in the federal government, including air traffic controllers. Hey, now would be the time to take this buyout and go on like the dream vacation. This shows you, right, federal government is not a business. Okay. Maybe it made sense at Twitter for Elon to just like axe however, whatever, 80% of the workers, et cetera. But I'm sure there are some areas in the federal government where you could definitely trim the staff back and where it wouldn't make that much of a difference and it wouldn't be that impactful.

This is not one of them, right? This is a place where we need to hire thousands more air traffic controllers. Instead, they're getting the same emails that are like, hey, take the buyout and go on vacation and enjoy living your life and double dipping on your federal government salary and whatever new gig you're going to take up as well. So that is where the sort of rubber hits the road

in terms of what we actually need and rely on the federal government to do. And this just let me take a hatchet to the whole thing approach that we are seeing from our new god king, Elon Musk. federal government to do. And this just let me take a hatchet to the whole thing approach that we are seeing from our new God King, Elon Musk. I have no disagreement on that. And I think that is the absolute danger that they will fall into. I'll remind people that the lowest point of approval rating actually for George W. Bush, unfortunately, was not Iraq, even though it

should have been. It was FEMA and New Orleans. That was Hurricane Katrina. When people, they feel like a disaster is not properly handled, they do not take kindly to it. And so that is, of course, the major caution for people who are supportive of Doge and others is, look, like I said, I'm not going to sit here and cry about USAID or NGOs in California or anything like that. But if you find yourself in a position where you're either tangentially or somewhat to blame for a major disaster and something else like this happens and they can trace it back to you, it can cause you some serious, serious problems. Last thing on this is that we are learning that this was just the latest, that a previous incident like this had happened. So let's go and put C8, please, on the screen. A helicopter and an FAA plane

actually almost collided in 2018 right next to DCA. The near collision was almost identical to Wednesday night's crash. The controller, in that case, working both helicopter, local traffic at the time. And the reason why, again, is the short staffing of the FAA. Yeah, and that's another thing that you raised. You know, 9 p.m. is one of the busiest times on the runway at DCA. Yeah. Tons of flights land. Yeah, I feel...

Those are usually the very last ones that come in. Honestly, I feel so bad for this person. Because they never should have been put in this air traffic controller. Maybe. They never should have been put in this situation, and now Maybe. They never should have been put in this situation, and now they have 67 lives on their conscience. Yeah, they've got it. The helicopter pilot.

I mean, look, we've got to learn. It may turn out that the guy didn't do it, or the woman, whoever the air traffic controller, didn't do anything wrong. If it's instrumentation failure on the helicopter, well, that's on the military, right? Because why are you not expecting your equipment before that happens? Or, and this is the other one, the helicopter pilot. I mean, if anybody's to blame, it's probably her.

Because if it's not instrumentation failure, then it's about communication. And also, a lot of people have been raising a lot. They're like, what, you really miss a passenger jet? I mean. The video is insane. Yeah, the video. It's like. It looks like they go right for it.

Look, I'm not a helicopter pilot. So I'm trying not to pass judgment. But to any layman who's watching that, I mean, it's basically a beeline, right? The thing that's crazy to me is you see all these helicopter pilots that are like, just imagine like it's at night and you're just looking out this little tube and you see these license like, okay, well, if it's that difficult, why are we doing this? Right? If it's like, you can't see anything and you have no idea there's a regional jet right fricking there that you're flying into, maybe we shouldn't be having these helicopters flying all around one of, you know, an incredibly busy airport at 9 o'clock at night.

Like you said, they're wearing night vision. The allegation is they may have been wearing night vision goggles. And they're like, oh, it's really hard to see. I'm like, okay, fine. Do that in Iraq. You don't need to do it over here, all right? Like, what are we training for? Exactly.

It gets to the whole continuity of government thing. What are we training for, guys? I would like to know. What was that crazy thing in the Obama administration? Jade. Yeah, down in Texas. Jade Helm? Was that it?

I think that is it. Someone's going to remember. That was a whole thing. Texas mobilized the National Guard. Actually, as a Virginia resident, we should mobilize our National Guard to protect us from the United States military, protect our airspace, keep the government off our runways. Camp Shane, one of America's longest-running weight loss camps for kids, promised extraordinary results. Campers who began the summer in heavy bodies were often unrecognizable when they left. In a society obsessed with being

thin, it seemed like a miracle solution. But behind Camp Shane's facade of happy, transformed children was a dark underworld of sinister secrets. Kids were being pushed to their physical and emotional limits as the family that owned Shane turned a blind eye. Nothing about that camp was right. It was really actually like a horror movie. In this eight-episode series, we're unpacking and investigating stories of mistreatment and reexamining the culture of fatphobia

that enabled a flawed system to continue for so long. You can listen to all episodes of Camp Shame one week early and totally ad-free on iHeart True Crime Plus. So don't wait. Head to Apple Podcasts and subscribe today. To most people, I'm the girl behind VoiceOver, the movement that exploded in 2024. VoiceOver is about understanding yourself outside of sex and relationships. It's more than personal. It's political, it's societal, and at times, it's far from what I originally intended it to be. These days, I'm interested in expanding what it means to be voiceover,

to make it customizable for anyone who feels the need to explore their relationship to relationships. I'm talking to a lot of people who will help us think about how we love each other. It's a very, very normal experience to have times where a relationship is prioritizing other parts of that relationship that aren't being naked together. How we love our family. I've spent a lifetime trying to get my mother to love me, but the price is too high. And how we love ourselves.

Singleness is not a waiting room. You are actually at the party right now. Let me hear it. Listen to Boy Sober on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The Medal of Honor is the highest military decoration in the United States. Recipients have done the improbable, showing immense bravery and sacrifice in the name of something much bigger than themselves. This medal is for the men who went down that day. It's for the families of those who didn't make it.

I'm J.R. Martinez. I'm a U.S. Army veteran myself. And I'm honored to tell you the stories of these heroes on the new season of Medal of Honor, Stories of Courage from Pushkin Industries and iHeart Podcast. From Robert Blake, the first black sailor to be awarded the medal, to Daniel Daly, one of only 19 people to have received the Medal of Honor twice. These are stories about people who have distinguished themselves by acts of valor, going above and beyond the call of duty. You'll hear

about what they did, what it meant, and what their stories tell us about the nature of courage and sacrifice. Listen to Medal of Honor on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. All right, everybody gets super excited. We got a new Democratic National Committee chair. Big deal. Ken Martin, the former Minnesota state chair, has won that contest over the weekend as a reminder of what this guy is all about. He is the one who said that, oh, we should absolutely continue as a party to take money from, quote unquote, good billionaires. We should just avoid those, quote unquote, bad billionaires in one of the DNC candidate forums. Let's take a listen to what he had to say. There are a lot of good billionaires out there that have that have been with Democrats who share our values and we will take their money, but we're not taking money from those

bad billionaires. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, and listen, obviously he his definition of a good billionaire is just someone who gives the Democratic Party money. So that just frees you up to take money from whoever, whenever. I'm sure they would be happy to welcome Mark Zuckerberg back into the fold, etc. Let's put the vote totals up on the screen. Ken Martin won with 246.5. I don't really know how the.5 works, but anyway.

Yeah, I was wondering the same thing. Not important. Ben Wickler, who is the chair of the Wisconsin Democratic Party, won 44.5. Martin O'Malley, former Maryland governor, got 44. Faz Shakira, who is Bernie's chief of staff, who we interviewed here, who jumped in late, gets a whopping two votes. Jason Paul, don't even know who that is, gets one vote. And then no votes for anyone else.

So Marianne Williamson was running. No votes for her. No votes for anyone else. I mean, to me, this is just part and parcel of the Democratic Party is so lost right now. They are so lost. They have no idea how to handle this Trump 2.0 administration. They have no idea how to be able to offer some sort of an alternative vision, like, for example, actually standing against all billionaires, not just the quote-unquote bad billionaires, and taking a clear stance against oligarchy and seizure of our country by a band of robber barons. That would require them to, you know, totally remake their own party because that is how many of all of their leaders effectively have come into power as well. And so what you have seen after Trump getting reelected, Sager, is, you know, Chuck Schumer still the head of the Dems in the Senate.

You've got Hakeem Jeffries still head of the Dems in the House. No one could tell you who the actual leader of the Democratic Party is. They're going with this very standard issue guy as DNC chair. And you even had Jamie Harrison, the outgoing DNC chair, say that he actually still thinks that Biden should have maybe stayed in the race. That's the state of affairs right now. The Democrats are praying for the scenario that I laid out in our previous block to happen. They want the public to freak out about the tariffs. Then they just nominate some replacement level Democrat. And he wins as opposition to Trump.

That is the most politically convenient. And by the way, that's actually a very likely outcome. I just want people to understand that. It's extraordinarily possible that that could happen. But the reason why they should really try and do something else is if it's 1984 and Donald Trump is Ronald Reagan, who becomes massively popular even more over his second term, and then you have his vice president waiting in the wings,

what happened in 84? Mondale, who had, I mean, if you think Democrats are bad now, think about back then in terms of who are we? What do we stand for? They had zero policy position. Eventually, it consolidates very late into the new Democratic Party, the DLC and all that under Bill Clinton in 1992. But they were out of power for 12 years. So they easily could find themselves, this could just be year number four at the end of the Trump administration. You could have a two-term J.D. Vance or Trump Jr. or somebody's presidency before they can actually get their act together. So they really are banking on Trump screwing up, and that's not a strategy. That's not a movement. That's not something that you

believe in. Yeah, no, that's exactly right. And they also just like, they have no idea how to deal with the speed of news and the current media environment either. Yeah, you're definitely right. So, you know, I mean, they're like still processing things that happened on Inauguration Day and here we are like 10 crises later and they, you know, they just,

they don't have, by and large, I mean, this is where like whatever you think of AOC, she at least understands the new media environment. And the fact that, you know, one of the few people that they have on their side who actually can garner media attention and track controversy and, like, start a conversation, et cetera, they also go out of their way to, like, bury and keep from any sort of a leadership position also tells you where they are. So they have a myriad of problems. Their approval rating is like,

has never been lower effectively because I think not only do you have people who are normally opposed to Democrats opposed to them, but then you have the rest of the country and even people who may be like sympathetic to Democratic type principles, just looking at them and like, you are so pathetic in this moment.

You have no idea how to meet the moment. You have no idea how to meet the moment. You have no idea how to articulate a different vision. You're just going along and like doing the same things that you've always done, reelecting the same people, same type of people, et cetera. And it is not, it is not a terribly inspiring situation for them right now. And I think you're right, Zagar. I think they don't know what to do. They don't understand how to do it. They had Cory Booker give some like social media seminar to everyone. I don't know if we talked on the show or not. Cory? Yeah. Yeah. I don't know if we talked about this on the show or not, but they had some meeting,

I think, of the Democratic senators trying to brainstorm how to like go viral. And they're like, oh, Mark Warner made a Tudumelt. No way. I swear to God, you didn't see this? No, oh my God. Mark Warner made a, you might have been like, I think you were off during that time, made a Tudumelt during COVID that went super viral. It's like, maybe he did that, but no one remembers that.

I'm like, I literally have no idea what's going on. That's your answer to Trump 2.0 and Elon Musk taking over the government, all this stuff. It's like, maybe we should do some more online cooking. It's like, oh, Jesus Christ, they are so lost. And they've also, they're not ditching their cartoonish identity politics either. There were a lot of great clips coming out. Let's take a listen to one of them.

Rules specify that when we have a gender non-binary candidate or officer, the non-binary individual is counted as neither male nor female and the remaining six officers must be gender balanced. With the results of the previous four elections, our elected officers are currently two male and two female. In order to be gender balanced, we must we must select one male, one female, and one person of any gender. So again, this is what we have to do for this vice chair race. We have to elect one male, one female, and one person of any gender. To ensure our process accounts for male, female, and non-binary candidates, we conferred with

our RBC co-chair, our LGBT Caucus co-chair, and others to ensure that the process is inclusive and meets the gender balance requirements in our rules. Any candidate, male, female, and non-binary, can be elected on that ballot. After a candidate is elected on the first ballot, we'll have one officer of the three, so then we will know which position is filled of the one male, one female, and one vice chair of any gender. Oh my god. Who is this even for at this point? So that's where we're at. And Faz Shakir said, this is the kind of identity politics in fighting that I was urging us against. We should focus on fighting against oligarchy through solidarity. He got two votes.

So that's the decision. There was a land acknowledgment, too, at the DNC. So, you know, good luck. Good luck, folks. I want to give Faz credit, even though, you know, whatever. I don't think he ever had a shot, even if he got in early, et cetera, because this isn't like, you know, whatever. I don't think he ever had a shot, even if he had gotten in early, et cetera, because this isn't like, you know, a Democratic base elect. This is literally just DNC members.

These are, I mean, they're not like, some of them are insider insiders. Some of them are just like local county chairs. But these are just, you know, these are Democratic Party operatives, whatever. But he got asked at one of the forums, you know, do you think we should have a, I can't remember what identity group caucus it was.

Yeah, I know what you're talking about. Maybe a Muslim caucus. I think it was a Muslim caucus. And he was like, no, I think we need to stop doing this, like, division by identity. I think we need to focus on, like, class solidarity and delivering for all people. And he gets two votes. We have a DNC vice chair who was elected as well. We can put D4 up on the screen. David Hogg, who is a gun safety activist. And one thing I will say here to defend

David a little bit is at least David understands new media. Like at least he knows how to communicate on social media platforms. By tweeting? Yes. That's not a... Of course it is. That's how J.D. Vance got to be Vice President of the United States. Yeah, that's right. He also became a senator,

so I haven't seen David win anything. The Democrats need more posters on their side, and at least he understands the social media landscape. Yeah, okay. Mr. David, I can show you. David is... He has had more fight in him Mr. David, I can show you. David is- He has had more fight in him than like 99% of Democrats.

Having fight? Okay, having the fight in you is not a skill. Having the fight in you in the right direction is an appropriate skill. He has some of the right direction. Oh, come on.

He's been some. No, for real. He has, I agree. The bar is on the frickin' floor. But at least he has been forceful, aggressive. Some of his post-election analysis has been correct. He does understand at least the new media landscape.

So, yeah, it could be worse. Okay. Could be worse. I think they should hire Parker, Parker Short, the kid who's been on our show. Oh, I love him. That would be good. Yeah, see, he's the type of person. Hey, David, if you're listening, you should hire Parker Short.

That is an immediate endorsement as far as that's going to carry from me. Camp Shane, one of America's longest-running weight loss camps for kids, promised extraordinary results. Campers who began the summer in heavy bodies were often unrecognizable when they left. In a society obsessed with being thin, it seemed like a miracle solution. But behind Camp Shane's facade of happy, transformed children was a dark underworld of sinister secrets. Kids were being pushed to their physical and emotional limits as the family that owned Shane turned a blind eye. Nothing about that camp was right. It was really actually like a horror movie. In this

eight-episode series, we're unpacking and investigating stories of mistreatment and re-examining the culture of fatphobia that enabled a flawed system to continue for so long. You can listen to all episodes of Camp Shame one week early and totally ad-free on

iHeart True Crime Plus. So don't wait. Head to Apple Podcasts and subscribe today. Have you ever thought about going voiceover? I'm Hope Woodard, a comedian, creator, and seeker of male validation. To most people, I'm the girl behind VoiceOver, the movement that exploded in 2024. VoiceOver is about understanding yourself outside of sex and relationships. It's more than personal. It's political, it's societal, and at times, it's far from what I originally intended it to be. These days, I'm interested in expanding what it means to be

voiceover to make it customizable for anyone who feels the need to explore their relationship to relationships. I'm talking to a lot of people who will help us think about how we love each other. It's a very, very normal experience to have times where a relationship is prioritizing other parts of that relationship that aren't being naked together. How we love our family. I've spent a lifetime trying to get my mother to love me, but the price is too high. And how we love ourselves. Singleness is not a waiting room. You are actually at the party right now. Let me hear it. Yeah. Listen to Voice Over on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

The Medal of Honor is the highest military decoration in the United States. Recipients have done the improbable, showing immense bravery and sacrifice in the name of something much bigger than themselves. This medal is for the men who went down that day. It's for the families of those who didn't make it. I'm J.R. Martinez. I'm a U.S. Army veteran myself. And I'm honored to tell you the stories of these heroes on the new season of Medal of Honor, Stories of Courage from Pushkin Industries and iHeart Podcast.

From Robert Blake, the first black sailor to be awarded the medal, to Daniel Daly, one of only 19 people to have received the Medal of Honor twice. These are stories about people who have distinguished themselves by acts of valor, going above and beyond the call of duty. You'll hear about what they did, what it meant, and what their stories tell us about the nature of courage and sacrifice. Listen to Medal of Honor on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. All right, let's get to Tucker Carlson. He had an interesting exchange with Piers Morgan, where the topic of Gaza and Israel came up. Calling out Ben Shapiro on the topic of war. Let's take a listen.

If you're intentionally killing civilians, you probably shouldn't beat your chest and brag about it. You know, maybe you can make the case. I agree with that. Maybe you make the case that we had to do it or whatever, but you should- I agree. You should weep.

And that's evil. And you should just say it's evil. And I know it's really threatening to- Is it evil? Ben Shapiro to say that or whatever. Is it evil? To kill civilians on purpose? Yeah, it is. I think it is. Really? Kids and children. Well that or whatever. Is it evil? To kill civilians on purpose? Yeah, it is.

I think it is. Really? Kids and children. Well, how is it not, actually? In a war? Well, you can call it whatever you want. How is it right to kill women and children? I didn't say, well, because I think there's a moral right behind you if you are literally.

To kill women and children? If there's a world war that threatens the entire world? Yes. Some people killed your kids like your eight-year-old? How is that morally justifiable? Well, because actually you have to... Well, by your criteria... That's disgusting.

Okay, so no war is morally justified? I mean, I think it's pretty hard to justify. I mean, yeah, I'm sure... Any war? You know, a pure defensive action, sure. But all I'm saying... Look, it's all ugly. It's all hard to stomach.

I've actually seen some of it up close. It's super ugly. You can say you hate it. Let me just say, to intentionally kill noncombatants, women and children, I think we can say that's wrong. In fact, I thought that was the thing we were fighting against. Very interesting. This is, of course, invited now some serious pushback from The Daily Wire. Let's put this up there on the screen.

CEO Jeremy Boring. Anyone still blind to what Tucker is doing is willfully so. He isn't hiding it. When a man has worse things to say about Winston Churchill and Ben Shapiro, notice the Churchill and Ben Shapiro in the same sentence. Those are equivalent figures. They're very good. Then Vladimir Putin and Nazi apologists.

He's making his position pretty clear. Somebody followed up and replied to him saying, Tucker is actually spot on. Any life lost in war is a tragedy.

That's what he's trying to express. Jeremy says that is not what he's trying to express. Tucker is one of the most gifted communicators of his generation. He isn't just misunderstood.

And anyway, yeah, this is just the latest in this break between the two. But I thought it was fascinating to see peers there. I guess it actually fits with his British heritage. They are the people who really were the original pushers of area bombing, otherwise known as strategic, sorry, the counter to strategic bombing, which is bombing a bunch of people in World War II in the middle of the night. They stuck by that position, Bomber Harris and their admirals and others. It's something – sorry, their generals and others. They're very proud of that legacy.

And it seems that that's trickled here into some of these debates. But I think it's fascinating to watch for peers and others whenever they get pushed on that position, especially with that last thing that he said. He goes, I thought that's what we were fighting against. And you're like, oh, hold on a second. It's like, well, actually, you can be, quote, pro-Israel or whatever, and also just be like, hey, some of the way that this war has been conducted is totally outside of the norms of the way that any modern Western power fights. But that situation, like if, you know, you and I have experienced this. If you talk about that, you're really smeared as an anti-Semite.

Yeah. It's great. The whole thing is crazy. Well, Pierce has really tried to hold on to this sort of like both sides, middle ground. Yes. In the, you know,

post-October 7th world. And you can see pretty clearly there how that just falls apart. Like at this point, really, all of Gaza is destroyed. We have no idea how many people were killed. The majority of them were women, children, and the elderly. Like, it's just undeniable at this point.

I mean, he says this thing that's so preposterous that, like, the entire world was threatened. Like, give me a break. What happened on October 7th is the absolute maximal amount that Hamas would be able to ever pull off. They were, by a lot of reports, like stunned at what they were able to, you know, the damage they were able to inflict on that day. So the position is just preposterous. I guess what I'll say is it's good Tucker is very influential on the right. It's good that you have a very influential voice on the right who is expressing concern about women and children in Gaza. If, I think this is a big if, I think it's unlikely,

but we'll see, and we're about to talk to an Israeli journalist from Haaretz talking about the ceasefire deal and what Trump is likely to do, et cetera, et cetera. If he were to further buck the like pro-Israel hardliners, many of whom are in his own government now by his choice, by the way, and, you know, push Bibi to continue with this ceasefire deal, it's good that there will be people like Tucker that are there to back him up. I just, you know, it's always irritating to me.

It's easy to go after Ben Shapiro for his pro-Israel position. Like, Trump has already rolled back the restrictions on the use of 2,000-pound bombs, rolled back the restrictions on the, you know, the sanctions on the violent settlers, said we're going to clean that whole thing out, referencing, like, ethnic cleansing of all of Gaza. And you never hear any criticism of him. So, you know, Ben Shapiro is ultimately powerless, really, in this situation. He's not in government. He's not the president. He's not Elon Musk. So, you know, I will have a lot more respect if there is actually some criticism that's leveled at the guy who actually has the power in the situation. What I am worried about, here's the thing right now.

And Tucker did this, luckily, with my friend Kurt Mills. He did a video. Remember we were talking about the Mike D'Amino thing and the attack on him and Steve Witkoff? They did a whole podcast actually defending the two of them. Witkoff is the key. I am the most worried about him. The amount of fire that the pro-Israel lobby in Washington has on him right now is insane. They are trying to smear him as a Qatari agent. They're literally calling, which again, we're

talking about the pro-Israel lobby is accusing somebody else of being a foreign agent. Carrying water for a foreign government. Do we all want to settle on that? You guys want to talk about foreign influence? Should we start talking about and go through your 1099s and your NGOs and who's donating to all of you? If you guys want to play that game, we can play that game. But that's that. And then Mike Domino. Mark Levin literally called him a creep.

I think he called an anti-Semite creep Mike Domino for saying that we should not want to go to war with Iran. That's what it is as currently the state of things. Where things fall, I have no idea. My hope, hope, is that because Witkoff and Trump are such old buddies, Trump will hopefully not let Netanyahu and his government sway him to fire Witkoff. But let's all be honest about Miriam Adelson is there. She didn't give you $100 million for free. There's a lot of people who are in this government right now who have the ear of the Marco Rubio. I mean, look at all the stuff that the guy said previously about Israel. Mike Waltz, the stuff that he said previously about the war. Hegseth. Hegseth, exactly. Stephanie, I mean,

her position is not that important, but the whole reason she got the position is because of her crazy, like McCarthyite smears of pro-Palestine demonstrators. Oh, Stefanik. Yeah, Stefanik. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And Mike Huckabee is the ambassador to Israel. I mean, you could not find a more psycho-like end times Israel, no matter what kind of a guy. So there's a lot there. Yeah. I don't know.

I am not optimistic that any of this will happen. We're about to talk with this Israeli journalist about the PSYOP and all those. But in general, it is good at least that somebody is calling some of this stuff out. I really, truly hope so, because if not, we all know what the path of that looks like. Basically, the Biden path with even more just open and pro support, which I don't think is good for any of us. Let's get to the Israeli journalist who's going to talk to us about Netanyahu in Gaza. Camp Shane, one of America's longest-running weight loss camps for kids,

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Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The Medal of Honor is the highest military decoration in the United States. Recipients have done the improbable, showing immense bravery and sacrifice in the name of something much bigger than themselves. This medal is for the men who went down that day. It's for the families of those who didn't make it. I'm J.R. Martinez. I'm a U.S. Army veteran myself, and I'm honored to tell you the stories of these heroes on the new season of Medal of Honor Stories of Courage from Pushkin Industries and iHeart Podcast. From Robert Blake, the first black sailor to be awarded the medal, to Daniel Daly, one of only 19 people to have received the Medal of Honor twice. These are stories about people who have

distinguished themselves by acts of valor going above and beyond the call of duty. You'll hear about what they did, what it meant, and what their stories tell us about the nature of courage and sacrifice. Listen to Medal of Honor on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. We are very fortunate to be joined this morning by a journalist for Haaretz, the Israeli newspaper. He's reporting, by the way, we have relied on quite a bit throughout the coverage post-October 7th. Amir Tibon, he is also the author of a book called The Gates of Gaza. Great to see you, Amir.

Good to see you. Hi, thanks for having me. Yeah, it's our pleasure. Let's go ahead and put your reporting here up on the screen. Prime Minister Netanyahu is traveling to the U.S. He will be the first foreign leader to visit Trump in his new term. And your headline here is Netanyahu comes to Washington to kill Trump's Gaza deal. Will the president let him? So what have you been able to learn about the dynamics between Trump and Bibi in advance of this meeting? Well, it's clear that President Trump takes great pride in getting the Gaza ceasefire that the previous president failed to achieve

for more than a year. And President Trump secured a ceasefire and hostage release deal even before entering the White House. He and his special envoy, Steve Witkoff, who has earned a lot of respect here in Israel, did a lot of hard work to get this deal. But this deal is built in a very, very sophisticated, perhaps too sophisticated of a way. And a month from today, it is supposed to move from the first phase of the deal, during which Hamas is supposed to release

33 of our hostages. They've already released more than 10. We are waiting for more and more of the hostages to arrive. But then we're supposed to move into phase two, during which all the remaining living hostages, more than 20 of them, including two personal friends of mine, are supposed to be released, and Israel is supposed to complete its withdrawal from Gaza. And this phase of the deal threatens

the survival of Netanyahu's governing coalition, which relies on several extremist fanatic parties that are threatening to blow up the governing coalition and basically end Netanyahu's hold on power if he goes through. So he's caught in a situation where on the one hand, there's the survival of his coalition. On the other hand, the survival of the hostages. And smack in the middle is President Trump, who wants this deal to continue and wants it to be the basis for a broader Middle East agenda centered around Israeli-Saudi peace that, first of all, requires an end to the war in Gaza.

So, Amir, can you pair this with some comments you've reported on there, that Trump had floated, for example, he's like, oh, well, maybe the Palestinians can temporarily go to Jordan or Egypt. And I believe since that comment, the governments of all of those countries have come forward and said that's an absolute non-starter. So in terms of the fork in the road, I guess, if you will, for the actual decisions that the Trump administration has to make, they have to decide whether Steve Witkoff and others will continue negotiations and push for a phase two or to support a continuation of the war in Gaza. Are there

any other options on the table, realistically? I think that Trump floated that some of the Palestinians in Gaza will, from my understanding, temporarily seek residence in a neighboring country until all the destruction in Gaza can be removed and new housing can be built. And the reconstruction in Gaza from this war is going to take years. This is a very difficult situation. That's obviously a suggestion that none of the neighboring Arab countries like Egypt and Jordan are willing to hear about right now. But if it is presented as part of a package

that ends the war, that moves us toward Palestinian statehood, that includes guarantees that all of these people will be able to return to Gaza, no Israeli settlements built in Gaza, complete Israeli withdrawal, maybe then it will sound different. Obviously, when he just says it on the plane, and you know,

with some reporters who don't really know the nuance of this issue, and to be frank, I'm not sure he knows all the nuance at this point either. But he says, oh, we want them to move to Egypt. So of course, everybody's rising up and saying, no way we're going to accept that. The Egyptians, the Jordanians, the Palestinians. We saw over the weekend the Saudis and the Qataris, you know, very important countries in this whole process also coming out against it. So I think if Trump has a real idea here that he wants to sell to the relevant Arab countries, it needs to be part of a broader package. And it needs to be explained as part of a move to end the war, reconstruct Gaza, and put us on a path to Palestinian statehood, which is supposed to be part of this grand Israeli-Saudi deal that he's trying to get.

So there's a lot of diplomatic ideas floating around right now. And I think we should read every statement we hear with a bit of caution at this moment. Yeah, we can put F2 up on the screen, which underscores what you all were saying, that there was a widespread rejection from Saudi Arabia, UAE, Qatar, Egypt, Jordan, the Palestinian Authority and the Arab League all said in a joint statement, they oppose President Trump's plan to move Palestinians from Gaza under any excuse. The language, of course, that he used saying we need to, quote, clean that whole thing out.

Something along those lines. That's like real estate language. That's not diplomatic language. Right. Well, I mean, it's ethnic cleansing language is effectively what it is. And how could anybody, given that you have within, you know, the Netanyahu coalition, Netanyahu himself, these extremists who are quite open about we want to push out the Palestinians, we want to completely settle and take over not just Gaza, but also the West Bank. How could you ever have any assurance that this wasn't just, you know, an attempt at a final, complete ethnic cleansing of both Gaza and the West Bank? I think one of the things President Trump is going to learn as he navigates this issue is that the current coalition in Israel is not going to make his life easier in any way, because that's just the example you gave now, where an idea that could be presented with the right language, with the

right assurances, with the right funding, as a temporary solution that allows to rebuild Gaza and then prepare bigger housing for all the people who lost their homes in this war. And we're talking about hundreds of thousands, potentially more than a million people who lost their homes. That kind of plan will immediately run into a wall of suspicion because it is being associated with people like Bitzalel Smotrich, the far-right finance minister of the current Netanyahu government, who is openly celebrating the idea of emptying Gaza from its residents. And once he makes that kind of statement, then automatically you're going to see all of the relevant Arab countries coming and saying,

we want nothing to do with it. And Smotrich is right now pressuring Netanyahu. As we're speaking, he put out a statement that if Netanyahu agrees to end the war so that we can go into phase two of the hostage negotiations and save the remaining hostages, he's blowing up the government. And it's important to understand that for the hostage families in Israel, and I know many of them personally, and I'm talking here about friends of mine and their families, they see President Trump and Stephen Wyckoff as their

last source of hope, literally, literally the light at the end of the tunnel. Because we know some of these hostages are being held in inhumane conditions in tunnels underground, being starved, being tortured. And then comes President Trump and Stephen Witkoff and they put together this deal that says within three phases, all the hostages are released,

the war ends, Israel withdraws from Gaza, and this is over. And instead of saying, well, okay, this is the way to do it, now we're seeing politicians from within our government pressuring Netanyahu to say no. And not only that, to try to convince Trump himself to disregard the deal that he was so proud of just two weeks ago when he entered office. So, Amir, this is my big question then. Does Trump have the political ability, Steve Witkoff and others,

who, by the way, I'm not sure if you're aware, are under major attack in our country, also people who are aligned with the Israeli far right. Well, do they have the ability to force any of that? Because, as you said, if the government falls, there's no guarantee what comes next. What does that scenario look like? Or is there some thread-the-needle scenario where Trump does force Netanyahu to take this deal, continue the Steve Woodcoff and other negotiations that does not lead to the falling of the government? Or is that just simply inevitable? So I think President Trump is surrounded by

a lot of people who are blind admirers of Netanyahu and are perhaps not giving the president the best advice possible. For example, Netanyahu and his right-hand man, Ron Dermer, will probably tell President Trump that we can't follow through with the ceasefire because the government will fall apart and that this is bad for Trump because it will cause a stalemate in the Middle East. But if you actually check very simple press statements being made out in the open in Israel, you will see that the leaders of the important opposition parties today, today, not a month ago, came out and said that if Netanyahu loses his majority because of the hostage deal, because of the ceasefire, they will give him temporary support for at least several months so that he doesn't lose power and the hostage and ceasefire deal collapses. Wow. Which

means that any other claim is a lie. Now, Netany prefers the far-right coalition that is against the hostage deal because that gives him the potential to hold power for another two years. That's why he prefers it. But from President Trump's point of view, he should know that if Netanyahu comes and says, I can't do this deal for political reasons, that's not true. He will get a few months of support from the opposition to complete the hostage release and ceasefire deal. Because for the vast majority of Israelis, the release of the hostages is today the number one priority. This is something that unites a huge percentage of the population. We want to see them come back home and end this night. Now, I don't know if there will be enough people around President Trump who are strong enough and knowledgeable enough about our internal politics to present the facts to him in a way that overcomes the spin and the excuses that he will see the deal come through. There will be ceasefire. The hostages

will return. And Netanyahu will find a way to manage it politically with the opposition parties here in Israel. He seems to always find a way to survive one way or another. Amir, thank you so much for your analysis today. Thank you, Amir. Very helpful. Thanks for having me. It's our pleasure. Thank you guys so much for watching. We'll have a great show for everybody tomorrow, and we'll see you all then. Camp Shane, one of America's longest-running weight loss camps for kids, promised extraordinary results. But there were some dark truths behind Camp Shane's facade of happy, transformed children. Nothing about that camp was

right. It was really actually like a horror movie. Enter Camp Shame, an eight-part series examining the rise and fall of Camp Shane and the culture that fueled its decades-long success. You can listen to all episodes of Camp Shame one week early and totally ad-free on iHeart True Crime Plus. So don't wait. Head to Apple Podcasts and subscribe today. Have you ever thought about going voiceover?

I'm Hope Woodard, a comedian, creator, and seeker of male validation. I'm also the girl behind VoiceOver, the movement that exploded in 2024. You might hear that term and think it's about celibacy, but to me, VoiceOver is about understanding yourself outside of sex and relationships. It's flexible, it's customizable, and it's a personal process. Singleness is not a waiting room. You are actually at the party right now. Let me hear it.

Listen to VoiceOver on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. A lot of times, big economic forces show up in our lives in small ways. Four days a week, I would buy two cups of banana pudding, but the price has gone up, so now I only buy one. Small but important ways. From tech billionaires to the bond market to, yeah, banana pudding. If it's happening in business, our new podcast is on it. I'm Max Chastin.

And I'm Stacey Vanek-Smith. So listen to Everybody's Business on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an iHeart Podcast.