Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 2/4/26: Elon Freaks Over Paris Twitter Raid, Schumer Praises Israel, Blowback Pod Report From Cuba

Episode Date: February 4, 2026

Ryan and Emily discuss Elon losing it after French police raided Twitter offices, Schumer caught on video pledging support for Israel, Blowback Podcast reports from Cuba amid draconian US sanctions.    Van Lathan: https://x.com/VanLathan?s=20  Blowback: https://blowback.show/    To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show AD FREE, uncut and 1 hour early visit: www.breakingpoints.comMerch Store: https://shop.breakingpoints.com/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Search two guys' five rings and listen now. 1969, Malcolm and Martin are gone. America is in crisis. And at Morehouse College, the students make their move. These students, including a young Samuel L. Jackson, locked up the members of the Board of Trustees, including Martin Luther King's senior. It's the true story of protests and rebellion in black American history

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We need your help to build the future of independent news media, and we hope to see you at breakingpoints.com. Let's move on to Elon Musk Ryan, because the ex-offices were raided in Paris yesterday. I'm going to go ahead and read from this AP report about what happened. A headline is, ex-offices rated in France as prosecutors investigate child abuse images and deepfakes. You might remember us covering the ex-child abuse deep-fake issue not very long ago.

AP says French prosecutors raided the offices of social media platform X on Tuesday as part of a preliminary investigation into allegations that include spreading child sexual abuse images and deepfakes. They have also summoned billionaire owner Elon Musk for questioning X and Musk's artificial intelligence company XAI, which was just, by the way, obtained by SpaceX. Mm-hmm. So, like yesterday. More financial engineering to dilute shareholders in favor of Elon Musk's wealth. Congratulations, guys. AP continues to say, XAI also face intensifying scrutiny from Britain's data privacy regulator, which opened formal investigations into how they handled personal data when they developed

and deployed Musk's artificial intelligence chatbot. Grok, GROC, which was built by XAI and is available through X-Spark's Global Outrage last month after it pumped out a torrent of sexualized, non-consensual deep-fake images in response to requests from X users. And so now X is in the crosshairs of European regulators. So it's not just in Paris. This is also in Spain, in Greece,

in places where they're considering, not even in targeting X specifically, but broadly teen social media bans. This is obviously targeting X specifically in Paris, but teen social media bans are on the table in a lot of different countries right now. And you can understand why if the average social media website had non-consensual deep fake porn being pumped out onto the internet

pretty easily accessible to children at that point. Yeah. And this is in some ways part and parcel of the kind of EU attack on American big tech. Yes. And it's much more restrictive. and in some ways, censorious in a negative way, approach to it.

But also at times, some big tech companies very much deserved to be checked by governments because, and in particular, I'm of a couple minds with Musk's, I like that he allows more speech and I like the more libertarian

kind of approach to it. At the same time, for his own commercial purposes, he does stuff that everybody just knows is wrong. Like, he was falling behind and was, you know, Grock take up. And all of the AI world knows, and this is probably where it's headed and it sucks,

that the internet runs on porn. Yeah. Like, that's the actual basis of the internet. And if you, the more of a... America runs on Duncan. The internet runs on porn. The more of the porn spigot you turn on for AI, the more you're going to get people to use it.

And so he turned on that spigot. And this flood of then disgusting child images. And that in addition, what governments are trying to ban, which is doing deep fake nudes and porn of real people, it just starts flooding in. As a public, you've got to be able to check that at some point. Yeah.

But Elon Musk is, yeah, just feels like he's uncheckable. Well, let's put Elon's response up on the screen. This is D2, and he said in response to an X statement on what happened in the Paris office, this is a political attack. I'll read a little bit more from X's. statement about the Paris raid, which calls it, quote, an abusive act of law enforcement theater designed to achieve illegitimate political objectives rather than advance legitimate law enforcement goals rooted in the fair and impartial administration of justice. And what I like

about what you just said, Ryan, is that can be true, actually, that this is political theater and it's a political attack. That's, both those things can be true at the same time as the sort of legitimate concerns about X are true. And the, deep fake, not consensual deep fake porn questions, whether it's in regard to children being able to see them or the people who become the subjects of them. These two things can be true at the same time. It's politicized and it's a legitimate problem. And it should be politicized in the sense that these are political questions, like what we want to tolerate in our society. When it comes to child nudity and stuff like and deep fake porn of real people, Like, these are political questions.

Again, from a man who purports to be saving Western civilization and is seemingly aligned against, like, globalist, atheists, whatever, and the right finds a lot of common cause with Elon Musk now. This is a man who is defending. I mean, he gladly defends pornography on the platform. It's not even, that's not even a question at this point. Like, of course he does. So it's just a good reminder of the gulf, the real gulf between Elon.

Musk and the civilization saving forces on the right that align with him. And so he's also getting hit in Spain. So Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez there is what will play him in a second. And the context here is the center-left coalition in Spain is facing a wipeout from the right. And it's, I think, important to understand this, in that context, that they They clearly feel like this is something that could maybe stave off that wipe out potentially. We'll play Sanchez and then Elon Musk's, which is very predictable. Predictable in general, but not in particular response. So let's roll Sanchez.

Just last week, the owner of X, a migrant himself, used his personal account to amplify this information about the sovereign decision. by my government, the regularization of 500,000 migrants that live, work, and contribute to the success of our country. The same platform that has allowed its AI growth to generate illegal sexual content. Yeah, and some of this, to be clear, in my own opinion, goes way too far. For instance, in France, it's illegal to deny the Holocaust, and at one point, Grock was doing some like dabbling in Holocaust denialism, you're going to have LLMs that screw up.

Making that kind of speech criminal is to me pushing it a little too far. But Sanchez says, first, we will change the law in Spain to hold platform executives legally accountable for many infringements. Those laws have been wildly abused. We've seen that, yes. And second, we will turn algorithmic manipulation and amplification of illegal content into a new criminal offense. Third, we will implement a hate and polarization footprint system to track, quantify, and expose

how digital platforms fuel division and amplify hate. If they turn that into a crime, that's awfully dicey. Fourth, Spain will ban access to social media for minors under the age of 16. Platforms will be required to implement effective age verification systems, not just checkboxes, but real barriers that work. Fifth, my government will work with our public prosecutor to investigate and pursue the infringement committed by GROC, TikTok, and Instagram. It's one way I would think about it is like, let's say, so upscrolled is doing tremendously, you know, a social platform that is exploding in popularity, and they're saying we want to be a free speech platform.

What I would say is... I've heard that before. Yeah, what if Spain decides... that some of the speech that you're allowing on this platform, they consider hateful. Are you going to put the upscrolled founders, like in prison over that? So I think this is not as clear cut as kind of a left-right thing as people think it is. Elon Musk swoops in with the least edifying possible response. You put up Musk here.

He says, Dirty Sanchez is a tyrant. and traitor to the people of Spain. And then he adds a little poop emoji in case anybody doesn't get the reference there. I saw that I was like, where do I know that phrase from? And I was like, oh, in college, I was telling Mac and Emily who don't remember a time before the internet. Well, Emily does. Mac not so sure. A year old, but Mac is young and spry.

In college, there was a sheet of paper that was passed around. Like, this is what viral stuff was. back before the internet was a thing. It's a piece of paper that had been touched by hundreds of people. Hundreds of people had been passed around in dorm rooms and parties. And on it, it was actually multiple pages, I think. On it was, it was like an urban dictionary. It was a dirty Sanchez.

And dirty Sanchez would then be defined. A lot of you are eating breakfast or drinking coffee, so I'm not going to define it. If you Google it, it says it surfaced in the, like, 2003 in some, like, UK reality show. No, no, no, I can tell you it was circulating on paper in college campuses in the 1990s, which is apparently where Elon Musk is stuck. So a grown man with a deep cut there to come back at the Prime Minister of Spain here. We are coping so poorly with this era of technology. We're coping so poorly with it as evidenced by the end of the end.

By the engineer, by the architect of our digital doom, you can see it in his response, his geopolitical negotiations. You can see it. He's a 13-year-old. Right there. Canadian women are looking for more. More into themselves, their businesses, their elected leaders, and the world are at them. And that's why we're thrilled to introduce the Honest Talk podcast. I'm Jennifer Stewart.

And I'm Catherine Clark. And in this podcast, we interview Canada's most inspiring women. Entrepreneurs, artists, athletes. politicians and newsmakers, all at different stages of their journey. So if you're looking to connect, then we hope you'll join us. Listen to the Honest Talk podcast on I Heart Radio or wherever you listen to your podcasts. Welcome to the A building. I'm Hans Charles.

I'm in Alec Lamoma. It's 1969. Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. have both been assassinated. And Black America was out of breaking point. Writing and protests broke out on an unprecedented scale. In Atlanta, Georgia at Martin's Alma, Morehouse College, the students had their own protest.

It featured two prominent figures in Black history, Martin Luther King Sr. and a young student, Samuel L. Jackson. To be in what we really thought was a revolution. I mean, people would die. In 1968, the murder of Dr. King, which traumatized everyone. The FBI had a role in the murder of a Black Panther leader in Chicago. This story is about protest. It echoes in today's world far more than it should, and it will blow your mind.

Listen to the A-building on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Seems like just yesterday that the Two Guys Five Rings podcast was in Paris for the Olympics, and now we're heading to Milan for the 26th, Milan-Cortina Olympic Winter Games. I'm Bowen-Yang. And I'm Matt Rogers, and we'll join athletes from 93 countries as Two Guys Five Rings hits the Italian Alps for the 26 Milan-Kritina Olympic Winter Games. Open your free IHard Radio app. Did we mention it's free?

Search two guys five rings and listen now. Ryan, let's move on to Chuck Schumer, this video. People absolutely have to see this video of Chuck Schumer talking about Israel. Yes. Let's do it. All right. Chuck Schumer, Ryan, where was this? This was happening, I think this was last week, right?

You can't ask me. I was in Mexico. That's right. You were at Mexico and you were very focused on Epstein. This was a fundraiser for, I forget what. It was a fundraiser last week. And I think this popped over the weekend. But here's the clip of Chuck Schumer that you've all been waiting for. It won't surprise you.

But unusually brazen given the circumstances. Let's roll it. Fight for aid to Israel, all the aid that Israel needs. I will continue to fight for it. And we delivered more security assistance to Israel, our ally, undermine leadership than ever, ever before. We will keep doing that, everybody. It is so important to give Israel what it needs

and to protect itself from the many in that difficult region who want to wipe Israel off the face of the matter. We have to do everything to do that. We have to do everything to ensure that the delicate seasies. fired secured last year, pays the way of lasting peace. Okay, so according to the forward, the breakfast quote previously held at the offices of the UJA, Federation of New York, was held this year for the first time in the events hall at Park East Synagogue, which was the site of a pro-Palestinian protest last year that featured,

according to the forward anti-Semitic slogans and posters. That's how this is described. Ryan, I said it was unusually brazen, not really unusually brazen, given the circumstances from Chuck Schumer. But tone deaf is probably a better phrase. I don't, well, I think, I think it's another indication that Schumer's not running for reelection. Great point.

I think that he is, I think he's just being honest here. I have many jobs as leader and one, and one is to fight for aid to Israel, all the aid that Israel needs. I will continue to fight for it. That's, that's his authentic, genuine view. Like, he believes that that is. That is one of the things that he is proudest of in his role as Democratic leader and in his role as a member of the House and as a senator. And certainly at this fundraiser, he's going to celebrate that.

But I do think it's another indication that he's looking back on his life and his achievements rather than thinking in a forward-looking way. Yeah. Makes sense. I don't know if AOC is the only one that could beat him. If he does run for re-election, I suspect it's possible other people could even beat him. But I think that AOC would beat him fairly easily at this point. Yeah. I'm sure he knows that.

He has thoroughly and completely lost the Normie suburban Democrats. Right. And this is what happened in the moment. And AOC has won them. Yeah. Like that that would be the political environment was. nothing that you could have expected five years ago. It's watching the view gush over Mamdani.

Right. Yeah. Right. So, Ryan, take us, meanwhile, in Gaza, take us through some developments in Gaza and also some new breaking, or breaking points, some drop site reporting on human rights watch. Eunice Tarawi, incredible Palestinian reporter, obtained another just horrifying video. It's not graphic or gruesome. It's just genocidalie horrifying.

So this is taking place in Rafa. He writes, Israeli troops blew up the Morag water station today, which, according to Gaza's water utility, it's applied water to roughly one third of Rafa's residence prior to the war. And what Eunice consistently finds is the most foul captions that come along with these videos that the Israeli soldiers post themselves and have continued to do for two plus. years now. At the very beginning, I think a lot of sensible people thought, wow, this is really awful that the IDF keeps posting evidence of their own genocide and brutality. And it's humiliating to Israel's defenders, and the IDF is going to put a stop to it. Like that, I think there were,

you might have even thought that at the beginning. Like, wow, this is some, like, recklessness on the part of these soldiers, but the commanders are going to get. on top of this and you're going to stop seeing these. Like if these images are going to get out, it's going to, Hamas is going to have to like find them on the phones of soldiers or something. They're not going to continue to make themselves look like a spectacle of evil deliberately. And yet here we are, more than two years later, they're still posting these types of videos. And so the caption they put the caption they put along with the video is we specialize in paint jobs and small renovations. Details on DM.

I genuinely appreciate the honesty of that. I guess. Right. Like it's it's so much more honest than continuing to say the most moral force that's ever existed. Yeah, we don't hear that much anymore, do we? Right. The most moral. That's interesting.

They did really sacrifice that. For maybe what was a year we heard that? Yeah. That's interesting. It's a good point. We don't ever hear the most moral army anymore. The situation with access to clean water in Gaza in general is brutal. And so we had tribes had reported that they blew up Gaza cities. Right as they were leaving, they burned down and blew up Gaza City's sewage treatment plant. and now they blew up this one they also blew up the unison reported for drop site that they blew up another one and also in rafa

where Rachel Corey had been killed actually back in 2002 or three we also had significant news out of human rights watch actually we put up E3. We'll get to that in a second. So Reuters broke the news that the State Department and other officials had gotten access to northern Gaza early on in the war and had put together the most damning and

extraordinary evidence you could possibly imagine laying out the utter dystopian carnage. And it was blocked by McGirk and other and other State Department officials from getting to completion saying it lacked balance. Like how do you, like one of the details they put in there like, you know, the dogs are overweight from eating so many corporations. Like how do you balance like what do you want what's the balance what's the balance to that detail Like the the the situation was not balanced so John then Whittall of former UN official pushed out of the UN by Israel by just by its destruction of UNR as has become a journalist

And he's been done a couple of incredible pieces for drop site one of them Exposes a lot of the photos that were taken on that journey. So now you don't have to take on that tour of Northern Gaza. So now you don't have to take the State Department bureaucrats word for the devastation that they witnessed. You can see the actual photos. And it was important for the State Department, the Biden State Department, to block that report because if the report went through, then there would be legal implications. You'd have to stop weapons shipments. You'd have to notify Congress. All of these different things would kick in. So they had to just stop it right there.

And then separately, top human rights watch official, Omar Shakir, resigned this week in protest of human rights watch squashing some reporting on what what Israel was doing in Gaza and whether or not allow people to return, not to return,

or broke international law. You can read the details at dropside and elsewhere. But it goes to this, this, there's this Israeli argument that all of these organizations are, you know, fundamentally biased against Israel. Human Rights Watch is right up there. You read what actually goes on inside human places like Human Rights Watch. They're absolutely bending over backwards to do everything they can to minimize what the criticism that they have to dole out. And so the criticism that we do get publicly, that is the least of it.

And so this was Omar Shakir, somebody who was pretty heavily criticized over the years for kind of whitewashing Israeli crimes. And this is his way of, I think, saying, you know, I was fighting as hard as I could. Like you were criticizing me from the outside, but I was fighting as hard as I could for the truth on the inside. And I just feel like I cannot, I can't do it anymore. I can't just, because there's always that question, like, can I do more, good on the inside of the outside. Yeah, totally. And he came to the conclusion that he could no longer justify even going along with what they're putting out. People can go read this piece on DropSite. It's a really fascinating glimpse. Great story-er-in. Thank you. So up next,

we've got the blowback boys, Noah and Brendan, who just returned from Cuba. Canadian women are looking for more. More out of themselves, their businesses, their elected leaders, and the world are out of them. And that's why we're thrilled to introduce the Honest Talk podcast. I'm Jennifer Stewart. And I'm Catherine Clark. And in this podcast, we interview Canada's most inspiring women. Entrepreneurs, artists, athletes, politicians, and newsmakers, all at different stages of their journey.

So if you're looking to connect, then we hope you'll join us. Listen to the Honest Talk podcast and IHeart Radio or wherever you listen to your podcast. Welcome to the A building. I'm Hans Charles. I'm Inelik Lamouba. It's 1969. Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr. had both been assassinated.

And Black America was out of breaking point. Writing and protests broke out on an unprecedented scale. In Atlanta, Georgia, at Martin's Almermata, Morehouse College, the students had their own protest. It featured two prominent figures in black history, Martin Luther King's senior and a young student, Samuel L. Jackson. To be in what we really thought was a revolution. I mean, people would die. 1968, the murder of Dr. King, which traumatized everyone. The FBI had a role in the murder of a

Black Panther leader in Chicago. This story is about protest. It echoes in today's world far more than it should, and it will blow your mind. Listen to the A-building on the I-Heart Radio app, Apple podcast or whatever you get your podcast. Seems like just yesterday that the Two Guys Five Rings podcast was in Paris for the Olympics. And now we're heading to Milan for the 26 Milan Cortina Olympic Winter Games. I'm Bowen-Yang. And I'm Matt Rogers and we'll join athletes from 93 countries as Two Guys Five Rings hits the Italian Alps for the 26 Milan-Crotina Olympic Winter Games.

Open your free IHart Radio app. Do we mention it's free? search two guys five rings and listen now the humanitarian situation in cuba is spiraling downwards as trump is trying to choke off energy from getting to the island to talk about this we're going to be joined by noah cool one who was a co-host of the blowback podcast as well as joining us from new york brendan james the other co-host of the blowback podcast welcome back to the program we're having you guys on because you just returned from Cuba. And so we wanted to get an update on the conditions there. While you were there, I believe it was on Thursday, President Trump put out a new executive

order downgrading Cuba further into the depths of evilness. Can you describe to us what what Trump's new executive order is and how it would do and how it was received while you you were there in Cuba. Sure. So the situation in Cuba, for those who don't know, is that Cuba exists under the gun of an American blockade and has for decades. This limits the businesses that can do business in Cuba, and it also limits the Cuban government's ability to access basics for its citizenry. We're talking about, in this case, the most important being access to energy. And so this executive order that was announced last Thursday was meant to prohibit anybody from doing business with Cuba involving the transaction involving oil transactions.

The Cuban electrical grid runs on oil. Cuba is able to generate some of its oil, but it needs in order to keep the grid functional and to meet the needs of its, you know, nine million or so population, it needs to import oil. And what Trump did was he targeted specifically, I mean, he didn't do it by name, but this executive order was aimed at Mexico, which in recent years has become the primary foreign supplier of Cuba's oil. Overcame Venezuela even. Exactly. Well prior to the Maduro kidnapping earlier last month.

And so the executive order said we are going to, you know, we're going to do nuclear tariffs on anybody who, nuclear figurative language here, not literal, nuclear tariffs on anybody who tries to sell oil to Cuba. And the purpose of this, which is very explicit, is to, choke the Cuban population. It is to plunge them into darkness, to make it so that they do not have electricity, that they do not have the basic means of carrying out everyday life. And the goal of that is that it will succeed the Americans hope where the last 60 years of American policy has not succeeded. And that is to bring down the Cuban government. Wow. So Bay of Pigs did not go as planned.

Not successful. Unfortunately, it didn't work. But I want to get Brendan your reaction to this clip of Trump talking about what he thinks might happen next or what he thinks he can achieve in terms of the U.S.-Cuba relationship. Let's roll F-1 here. I want the people that came here that were horribly treated by Cuba to be taken care of, to be able to go back and do what they have to do. You know, they have their family there. They haven't been able to see him in years, many, many years.

So I think we're going to make a deal with Cuba. So he thinks he's going to squeeze Cuba into a deal. nobody else had been able to achieve before reading between the lines of what he's saying there post-venouela what do you make of it brendan well this is one of those policies that you can see right now that that sort of sums up the contradictions in trump two um because at the top of every statement or order or a fact sheet uh all of which came out with this latest um move against Mexico providing fuel to Cuba, for example, you have the declaration that this is all MAGA, this is for the national security interests of the United States, and nothing else is more important.

That's the motivating factor. Yet, after that point, you notice that it's a very neocon, I would say Rubio-inflected text or policy that stresses all of these concerns for, quote-unquote, the Cuban people. trying to stand up for the Cuban people, trying to protect the Cuban people, rescue the Cuban people, of course. And I'm not quite sure how one could possibly explain how rescuing the Cuban people has anything to do with the stated MAGA ideology of putting America first and American citizens first. And so when Trump talks about people being able to go back and do what they want to do in Cuba, of course, there's really no idea there about why that's a goal of the United States, what form of government the Trump administration wants to see there, how that form of government should come about. Certainly,

if the Cuban government is simply squeezed to collapse, there'll be a catastrophe as a result of this policy. One of the results, of course, would be a massive influx of Cuban immigrants into America, something that you can't really imagine being a selling point under the MAGA platform. I'm not sure if they really care about that contradiction or not. But it's very confusing as soon as you get past the sort of typical status quo cliches about, and I would say neocon cliches that even Trump is saying about bringing freedom to an island under communist rule, et cetera. Noah, in that clip, Trump said that they're engaging with the Cubans at the highest levels. you've spent a lot of time,

you and Brennan both spent a lot of time with Cuban officials in the last week plus. Cuban officials publicly have said there are no talks going on. Correct. What is your understanding about this explicit assertion from Trump that he's in talks with high-level Cubans or that the U.S. is in talks with high-level Cubans? It's a mystery.

It's Rubyo, his high-level Cuban is true. I was like, yeah, so they may be talking to some Cubans, but are they talking to representatives of the Cuban government? The Cuban government says no. The Cuban government has said a senior Cuban minister gave an interview to the Associated Press either yesterday or the day before, in which he emphasized, listen, we want to talk with the Americans. We are desperate to talk with the Americans.

We want to make a deal. We want to have discussions. We want to figure out a way forward. It's just that the Americans don't seem to be having those conversations, regardless of what Trump is saying. Now, is it possible that Trump is being led down a certain path by advisors who have a desired outcome of inflicting pain on Cuba and of trying to topple the government no matter what the cost? It's possible. Is it possible that Trump knows that he's lying?

That's also possible. I think what just seems extremely clear in this moment is that there aren't talks going on. I don't think that the Cubans would have any incentive to publicly say, we're not talking with them. Or to say, like, we want to talk with them, but they're actually talking with them. It just doesn't make sense to me. And I wanted to put up, and we can add this in post, speaking of Cubans, Maria Elvira Salazar as a Cuban-American congresswoman from South Florida. I want to read what she said on Twitter recently and then get your response to it based on the conditions that you've seen. So she writes, because this is really an extraordinary statement that she put out, and you'll see why, as I read it.

She says, the hour of Cuba's freedom has arrived. Today we have a president and a secretary of state determined to cleanse our hemisphere of tight. migrants, drug traffickers, and dictators. But the exile community also bears a historic responsibility to stop giving oxygen to the dictatorship because every dollar, every trip, and every gesture of false normalcy prolongs the life of a criminal regime and condemns the Cuban people to another 60 years of misery, repression, and slavery. This is the moment to stop everything. No more tourism, no more remittances, no more mechanisms that continue to finance and sustain the dictatorship. And yes, she says, I understand.

It's devastating to think about a mother's hunger, a child who needs immediate help. No one is indifferent to that pain, but that is precisely the brutal dilemma we face as exiles, to alleviate short-term suffering or to free Cuba forever. We can no longer continue being hostages of a regime that even from exile forces us to finance our own oppression. In the regime's final hour, the exile community must choose freedom. So, Brandon, she's explicitly calling for a mother's hunger and a child who needs immediate help to be refused that help to put pressure on the government to fall. What did you see on the ground has been the effect of this strategy? Well, if the goal is to, as they used to say, destroy or burn down the village to save it, as she seems to be describing there, I would say she's getting,

that hunger, she's squeezing that life out of the island every day. When I was there in 2022, it was certainly not good times for Cuba. By then, Trump in his first term, had passed over 200 new sanctions on top of the existing blockade, which has been in effect for the better part of a century. But I honestly, I had been around Havana, I'd been around other parts of the country. I'm not going to say I was over every square inch of Cuba, but I didn't see homeless people. I didn't see beggars. I didn't really experience any blackouts, electrical blackouts, which are now quite common. Maybe some happened while I was either out and about or asleep or something. These days, and within the past week, I would say NOAA and I probably had power less often than when we didn't have power. Some of the blackouts are scheduled. Some are unscheduled. They're trying to ration out this fuel and this electricity best they can. We did see people begging. I would think some of them were homeless or near it. And just the conversations you had, you know, compared everything to what is known as the special period, which was the period in the 1990s after the Soviet Union, which had always supported Cuba quite heavily with all kinds of aid. Of course, the Soviet Union collapsed. Cuba was left to fend for itself. It survived the special period at great cost, but most people would tell you now in Cuba, this is worse. They'll have to come up with an equally sort of arresting phrase to describe the incredibly difficult and sort of apocalyptic conditions that seem to be creeping in every day the way they did for the 1990s because this is worse.

And they don't have a one Guaido in Cuba, and they don't seem to. No, unfortunately for them, they don't. Well, this is what I was going to ask is if they're, what sense you got of the Cuban right? Because we're joking about the Bay of Pigs before, but this has always been the idea that there's a sleeper cell of pro-American, pro-lowercase deeds, democratic Cubans waiting to overcome the regime that will rise up. If you squeeze Cuba enough, if you make enough mothers hungry, it'll just all fall like a house of car. at some point. So I don't know which of you wants to take that, but when you were on the ground, did you get a sense of what the state of the Cuban right is? Is it emboldened? Is it ready to go? Is it big? Is it small? What did you make about? We got a limited perspective when we were in Cuba. So I don't want to make, I don't want to get ahead

of our skis here. But I would say that, you know, we see every day on social media the American diplomat, like the most senior American diplomat who is still in Cuba. a guy named Mike Hammer, who has made it his mission to go around on advertised on social media that he is engaging with the free Cubans and he is, you know, and he is, you know, dialogueing with them and showing that people are ready and tired of this government and ready for it to come down and so forth. And I do not find the video evidence that he is putting out to be all that persuasive. And if anything, it is generating something of a backlash. I think the American strategy here is not, which is not to win hearts and

minds, but rather the opposite, which is to inflict an enormous amount of suffering in the hope that something happens. It's the kind of strategy that gets pursued when there isn't a strong right, when there isn't a group, when there isn't a horse that you can back. It's the kind of, it's before we had germ theory, I know that there were attitudes and beliefs that you could just sort of, that diseases and viruses and so forth spontaneously arose. And that seems to be the kind of theory of democracy that these people are espousing, which is that, well, if we just inflict enough pain spontaneously, there will be something that emerges, you know, a military faction or some other thing. That's what their hope is. But the evidence for it is not

there. All that is happening is that they are inflicting enormous human suffering. I mean, to give another example that is sat with me for a few days, we spent a bunch of time with different Cuban journalists, some wonderful people who are affiliated with a group called Belly of the Beast whose work you can check out online, English language stuff. It's terrific. and one member of the belly of the beach was talking about how, you know, the government gives his family, which lives in a more rural area, a fuel allotment so that they can have gas to cook with. And that that allotment last arrived, he believes, last August. And so it means that they've been cooking with and using wood for fuel.

And, you know, they're preparing, you know, millions of people on that island are preparing for a similar reality all over in which they're going to have to essentially go back. They're going to have to live as if lives have been de-developed by a century or more to simply get through the day. I guess the question is if they have a Delcie Rodriguez. Right. Well, right. The problem probably is that the Cuban president isn't famous enough to give Trump like

Rubio the scalp to then replace him. I'll give you one other example to the question about also how people may be feeling. Brendan and I, when we were there, we witnessed and saw the March of the Torches, which is celebrating the centenary of the great Cuban patriot Jose Marti. Jose Marti. And it was, it's an honor of a march that Fidel Castro and his comrades made at the University of Havana, a night torchlit march down to the seawall, the Malicon. And when we were there, we saw, you know, at the head of this procession, the president of Cuba, Miguel Diaz Canal. Now, I'm not saying that the guy didn't have protection. I'm not saying they didn't have bodyguard

somewhere or that there wasn't the equivalent of Cuban Secret Service officers and planes clothes stationed around. But I'm telling you that this guy was surrounded without the kind of. of any of the sort of protection that even the most, you know, junior, you know, member of Congress seems to have these days. That's interesting. You know, walking in a crowd of thousands, completely unbothered, completely confident, completely protected. Very interesting.

And I think that, you know, again, I would be, I'm not interested in making any, like, you know, crazy categorical declarative statements about the attitudes of every individual Cuban and so forth. But I do believe that, you know, what I saw there is some indication that, yeah, this is not an island that is ready to eat its own leadership. Yeah. The island nature of Cuba's presenting a real dilemma for it here. So I grew up on the eastern shore of Maryland and we would go camping on this island called Daffdil Island, very small. The Cuba of the Mid-Atlantic. Cuba of the Mid-Atlantic. It's like 10th of a mile wide and a quarter

of a mile long. We'd do like three nights out there. And when we would get there, there'd be fallen, you know, wood everywhere. And after three days of campfires, you could just visibly see that the island couldn't support us much longer. Like, you're running low. It's pretty soon you'd have to start actually chopping trees down. And it was a real kind of visual and experiential, like, reckoning with the limits of resources that we don't get in the United States in general, because we go to the grocery store, we bring groceries home.

Next time we go to the grocery store, it's filled with groceries again. If you cut off oil to 9 million people, like, what is that going to do in the short, even the short term? Like, I imagine the blackouts that you're seeing now have to pretty soon become total blackouts. And then what does that do for what is supposed to be a modern society? I think anyone could ask themselves that question about, as you're talking about Ryan, just apply it to your own life. Think about every time you need to get in the car, every time you need to switch on the light, every time you need to use the internet. The question almost answers itself in that it is a true crisis of the kind that I think the Cubans have survived with great creativity

and quite a bit of grace since that special period to different degrees. that no one, by the way, in America would ever accept, I mean, the fact that we're asking this question, gee, what would happen if the entire island of Cuba and its millions of inhabitants just had to do without oil, for example? I mean, something as central as that. No American, no one of any nationality would ever accept this question being,

though you ask it with good intentions, a hypothetical that another government would be inflicting on its society. And for all of this, I mean, we were talking a little while, while ago, why this could possibly be happening. Maybe a boilerplate answer that conservatives or the exiles or President Trump would give is, you know, we need a more cooperative Cuba. It's all fine and good to talk about sovereignty. But, you know, this is an island that's just never, never been oriented toward the United States in any way. Well, I mean, if they want a partner, we've had Cuba as a

partner recently. It's good for Cuba to have fuel and electricity. When, for example, it works with the U.S. Coast Guard to prevent drug trafficking. which is a cooperation that has happened in the very recent past. And Cuba was considered and its forces were considered. One of the best examples of a non-corrupt task force in that regard. If the Trump administration and the president is so worried about as we keep hearing about narco-traffickers, this and that, all that kind of activity in our hemisphere, it's very puzzling as to why we want to shut down Cuba's electricity and to

private of fuel and not work with it, let alone blockade it and try to destroy its government. So, I mean, obviously it would be disastrous if this situation is not reversed. A lot of people there are hoping that Mexico has a, you know, the shine bomb is good with Trump, good at, you know, negotiating with Trump. And I think oftentimes getting the better of him. And they're really hoping that at the very least the status quo can be maintained rather than another lurch into this sort of backwardness, imposed backwardness by the United States. I think Petro got advice from Scheinbaum before the meeting yesterday.

He had a very friendly meeting with Trump yesterday. No, can I get you to walk us through this slideshow? This is going to be F2, some pictures here, and feel free to tell the controller when you want to move from one picture to the other. But, yeah, walk us through this. So we, Brendan and I were greatly honored. We were invited to give a talk at the Casadilla Samarikas, which is a major influence in Latin American literature and thought. That's actually, that photo is, we went to a memorial,

and that's Brennan outside of it, it's called Memorial de la Danuncia, which is a museum dedicated to showcasing, that's the torchlight mart, but the Memorial de Launcia showcases the American aggression, all the acts of terrorism committed against Cuba, supported by the American government. And that floor, I thought, was particularly moving. For anybody in the U.S. who's been to a Holocaust museum, a common motif is to play shoes and clothes out the floor to illustrate and give a sense of the scope of suffering there and to then see also like just the sheer number of munitions that Americans have thrown at Cuba over many, many years and it hasn't been successful with something else.

Presumably a government museum? Oh yes. Yeah. Yeah. It was very much a government museum. But the, it was also, I mean, and these other photos are some, again, more images from the march that I was discussing earlier. You guys are good photographers.

Well, Brendan is. Look at that one. Isn't that a good one? How was the cigar? That shot took hours to set. And those are some of the photos that we took. I mean, there's a, it's, and we answered Q&A from different folks in the crowd there. Learned that there were even listeners to blowback podcasts in Cuba, which was quite fun. Yeah, I mean, we met with a lot of different kinds of people there.

We went on a few different tours, but, you know, we met with different journalists. had conversations, you know, struck up random conversations with people on the street. We did not have somebody, you know, trailing our movements all 24, you know, this is the image. That you knew. Yeah, well, that would fair. But I really think that they probably had better things to do than to follow us around. But they really, again, this is the, there is an image that is conveyed in American culture of Cuba, not just as an authoritarian state, not just as a one-party state, not just It's a communist state, but as a totalitarian state that seeks to control and program down to the most minute level the lives of all the people who live there.

And what we saw in the encounters that we had there just suggested that's just not true. Not that that kind of thing is really possible in almost any country, to be fair, but it certainly was not the case in Cuba. Well, where can people find blowback? Blowback, wherever you get your podcasts. We have a new season currently airing. It's actually partly the story of Cuba, but it is also the story of Angolan independence and the fight against apartheid,

primarily in the 70s and 80s. And it is releasing weekly new episodes every Monday. We got two more episodes left in this season. And you can get it, like I said, wherever you get your podcasts. And we also have, for those who become paying subscribers at blowback.com. We have a season coming up,

or a mini-series, rather, coming out this spring about the history of the U.S.-Israel relationship in addition to another full season somewhere else in Latin America, later this year. And Emily, you made Phil listen to the Angola one. What did he think? Well, we'll have to have Phil on sometime to, uh, he had some notes. I'm hooked, though. I'm hooked, uh, one of the many things Ryan Grimm has got me hooked on. Not drugs. Don't do drugs. Just say no. Thanks, guys. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. That does it for us today. Thank you, everybody. Thank you,

Emily. See again soon. Thank you, Ryan. Yeah. So your gratitude is confecting. It is. It's just contagious. I'm very grateful. day. Likewise, we're grateful for all of you. Thank you so much for tuning in. We'll see you back here soon with more. It seems like just yesterday that the Two Guys Five Rings podcast was in Paris for the Olympics. And now we're heading to Milan for the 26 Milan-Cortina Olympic Winter Games. I'm Bowen-Yang. And I'm Matt Rogers and we'll join athletes from 93 countries as Two Guys Five Rings hits the Italian Alps for the 26 Milan-Cortina Olympic Winter Games. Open your free iHeart Radio app. Do we mention it's free? Search two guys five rings and listen now.

Black history lives in our stories, our culture, and the conversations we still having today. This Black History Month, the podcast, I didn't know. Maybe you didn't either. Diggs into the moments, perspectives, and experiences that don't always make the textbook. Let me tell you about Garrett Morgan. Brough had to pretend he didn't even exist just to sell his own invention. until I didn't know. Maybe you didn't either. From the Black Effect Podcast Network on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or simply wherever you get your podcast. 1969, Malcolm and Martin are gone. America is in crisis. At a Morehouse college, the students make their move. These students, including a young Samuel L. Jackson, locked up the members of the board of trustees, including Martin Luther King's senior. It's the true story of protests and rebellion in black American history that you'll never forget.

I'm Hans Charles. I'm Mnallick Lamumba. Listen to the A building on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an IHeart podcast. Guaranteed human.