Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 2/7/24: Hamas Offers New Ceasefire Deal, Israel Strikes Aid Truck As Famine Looms, Court Rejects Trump Immunity, Dem Gambit Tanks GOP Border Impeachment, Jen Psaki Freaks Over Tucker Putin Interview, Pakistan Rigs Election Arresting Opposition, And Lee Fang Confronts Gov On Censorship

Episode Date: February 7, 2024

Ryan and Emily discuss Hamas offering a new ceasefire deal, Israel strikes aid truck as famine looms, court rejects Trump immunity, Dem wheelchair ploy tanks GOP border impeachment, Jen Psaki freaks over Tucker Putin interview, Pakistan rigs election arresting opposition, and Lee Fang confronts Congress on big tech censorship.   To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show AD FREE, uncut and 1 hour early visit: https://breakingpoints.supercast.com/   Merch Store: https://shop.breakingpoints.com/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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I was never mad. I was disappointed because I had high hopes. To hear this and more on disappointment and protecting your peace, listen to Checking In with Michelle Williams from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey guys, Ready or Not 2024 is here and we here at Breaking Points are already thinking of ways we can up our game for this critical election. We rely on our premium subs to expand coverage, upgrade the studio, add staff,

give you guys the best independent coverage that is possible. If you like what we're all about, it just means the absolute world to have your support. But enough with that. Let's get to the show. Good morning and welcome to CounterPoints, Emily, on yesterday's show. As you may or may not have seen, Crystal and Sagar solved the immigration policy debate with an hour-long kind of fistfight. Today, maybe we can figure out Israel-Palestine. It just might take a little bit longer than an hour. We might have to give this one 90 minutes. All right, we'll let that one stretch.

But I think that should do. But so at the end of the show, we're actually, he's not listed here, but we're going to have Representative Greg Kassar in the studio this morning. He couldn't get in early enough. That's one of the things about taping in a compacted schedule with members of Congress and other newsmakers. You know, they can get here when they can get here. So after his interview airs, we'll have it up on YouTube and elsewhere, but it's not gonna be in the full show that goes out to premium subscribers, which you can become one at breakingpoints.com, though I'm not really selling it since it won't have our interview with him.

It will have our interview with my former colleague at The Intercept, Lee Fang, who testified at Congress yesterday. Yes. Just kind of interesting and cool. Yeah. Life experience. Testified. If you don't have to be there under subpoena, it's probably fun.

Oh, that's the best way to do it. Really the only way to do it. But yeah, Lee testified about his own reporting on censorship. And so I think we're really eager to ask him some questions about his experience in front of Congress, some of the questions that he got, and some of his own reporting. Ren, the other thing that we'd be remiss not to mention that happened just last night, because there's a lot of breaking news, Republican leadership got rolled on two big votes in the House last night. We're going to dive into that in just a bit. But also, while that was happening, per the New York Times, quote, Nikki Haley was outvoted in Nevada's Republican presidential primary by, quote, none of these candidates. So Nikki Haley lost to the none of

the above option on the ballot just last night. The New York Times calls it, quote, an embarrassment in a contest in which she faced no direct competition. Now, the primary doesn't award any delegates. Nevada has a weird system going. So Trump is actually, he said he wasn't going to take part in it. He's doing the party caucuses tomorrow in Nevada where he's very popular. But we had to mention that Nikki Haley lost to none of the above. To that point, there's a big push in the Michigan Democratic primary, which is coming up in a couple of weeks for people to vote uncommitted. So we'll see how, I think Biden's most serious opponent in Michigan will be uncommitted.

So yes, the none of the above movement, which is from Brewster's Millions, for people who remember that movie from the 80s, a guy burned millions of dollars getting behind none of the above in the New York mayoral race. And it became a populist sensation because it really is a way for people to express their actual frustration with the system. Yeah, people were joking about Nikki Haley losing to none of the above yesterday. It was like, she's going to win the primary, obviously. But actually what happened was none of the above prevailed in a nail biter. Yeah, hate when that happens. It's just the worst. All right, so we have news out of the Middle East. So early this morning, Reuters broke the response from Hamas to the earlier deal that had been proposed by Israel through Qatar. Initial reports had come out that Hamas had rejected the Israeli proposal for whatever you want to call it, ceasefire, humanitarian pause.

In fact, they came back with this proposal, which we can lay out in detail here and talk about this. So they propose three 45-day ceasefires rolling in phases. So the first phase would see all Israeli women hostages, men and boys under 19, the elderly and the sick would be exchanged for Palestinian women and children held in Israeli jails. During that time, Israeli troops would withdraw from Gaza and the reconstruction of hospitals and some refugee camps would begin. So then the second 45-day phase would see the remaining Israeli hostages exchanged for some amount of Palestinian prisoners. We don't know how many at this point that Hamas is demanding. There have been some maximal demands from some in Hamas saying every single person in Israeli captivity at this point, Israeli detention, that is something that obviously Israel is going to push back on.

Non-starter. And can make an offer of fewer people. They were keeping these folks. You can have these folks back. The third and final 45-day phase would see the exchange of the remains of those who have died on both sides. And it would then end with a permanent ceasefire. This is the deal. And actually, we'll roll.

When President Biden addressed the nation yesterday afternoon, he had already gone over this proposal, though it had not leaked to the press. Here's how Biden responded to it. There is some movement, and I don't want to, I don't want to choose my words. There's some movement. There's been a response from the opposition. But yes, I'm sorry, from Hamas. But it seems to be a little over the top. We're not sure where it is. There's continuing negotiation right now. He's the person that is allegedly negotiating the Steele-Ryan, and he cannot get through a sentence in under, what, 30 seconds.

An easy sentence. He needs somebody in the audience. I don't know if people caught that. If they were just listening to yell out Hamas when he was looking for the word Hamas because he was bumbling and stumbling around to find it. Nobody would mistake me for like the most fluid speaker. But come on, man. Well, it's a little different. I'm also not. I'm also not president of the United States. He did seem to forget the name of Hamas.

Am I am I am I over reading that there? No, it's it's genuinely painful to watch. And then, you know, it's painful on his behalf. I mean, I think that's the human reaction when you hear that or watch that. It's painful on his behalf. But then you have to remind yourself, oh, this is the President of the United States who is the person at the negotiating table, the commander in chief of the military, if I'm a member of the military and I'm watching that, it's terrifying to me. If I'm a member

of the military's family, that's terrifying to me. It's just painful all around. Imagine how terrifying it must be for him, too. He's up at the podium and he's about to describe the counteroffer from Hamas and he can't find the word Hamas.

Yeah. No, that's a good point. I would imagine his brain is just like going bananas at that point. Yeah, that's a good point. And he's like, the opposition. And then somebody's like, Hamas. He's like, yeah, yeah, Hamas. So before we get to KGP's response to this,

the underlying kind of inability of the two sides to get to a deal so far is pretty fundamental. So yesterday, the Jerusalem Post had a sentence in one of its articles that I wanted to read, because I think it really gets at the divide here. They wrote, at issue between Hamas and Israel is the terror group's insistence that a deal must include an end to the Gaza war, while Israel has stood on its principled position that it must be allowed to complete its military campaign to oust Hamas from the enclave. So on the one hand, you have one party that wants to end the war. You have the other party that wants to end the other party. You can imagine how that's going to be difficult to get to a place at the end where you reach

a deal. Like where's the common ground between those two positions? Right. And I mean, it's interesting. The phrasing of the sentence is interesting, as you're pointing out. And also, I mean, it's tough because from the perspective of people who might be reading the Jerusalem Post, they would look back and say, well, there were people who were calling for a ceasefire on October 8th, October 9th, October 10th, or, you know, immediately

saying, preemptively, in fact, saying like October 8th, ceasefire, this is going to be bloody and devastating. And so before it even starts, ceasefire. And so I understand that position that, you know, there had to be some type of response, but it's getting harder and harder, to your point, to persuade the public that the ongoing response is within the realm of proportionality or is within the realm of reasonableness when you have so many people dead and you have Hamas going back into northern Gaza. You have the military mission of, quote, eradicating Hamas looking less and less likely every single day. And when you still have 136 hostages, a report yesterday from the Israeli government is that they had notified more than 30 family members of the remaining 136 hostages that their loved one passed away. They said most of those were likely on October 7th. It's hard to say, but this is making it very difficult. To your point,

it makes Israel's position increasingly untenable. Yeah. And from the Hamas side, you've had senior Hamas officials who've given interviews saying, we're only recognizing the state of Israel as a ruse, as a temporary ruse, and ultimately we think the entire land is occupied and we'd like to take it back. So in that sense, both parties in the negotiation want the elimination of the other party. What they actually want matters less than what they can actually do. And Hamas doesn't really have the capacity to eliminate a nuclear power. Right. They're both on the one-party state train. But to your point, yes, yeah.

And elements of them both pretend that they support a two-state solution, but not necessarily the leading elements at this point. But it does put Hamas in this weird position of being the one for a ceasefire and Israel being the one for continuing the war. And it puts the United States in the awkward position of saying, no, we want the war to continue. And so here's how Karine Jean-Pierre at the White House yesterday kind of squared that circle.

On a separate topic, on the hostage negotiations, our team who's been covering this all in the Middle East says that Hamas is still insisting on a permanent ceasefire. Is it still this administration's position that it opposes a permanent ceasefire? What we have been working towards, and you've heard us say over and over again, we want to see a humanitarian pause. We want to make sure that we get these American hostages home, and also hostages more broadly, obviously, home to their families. And we want to make sure that we get that critical aid, the critical aid that Palestinians need into Gaza. It is important to get that aid, whether it's medical, whether it's food.

We have to get that in. And so we believe a humanitarian pause gets us there. You know, there is, as I stated at the top, Hamas has responded to the framework of a hostage deal. And so we're going to review it. And I'm going to be really, really careful. I'm not going to dive into or telegraph information about their response from here.

But we've been very clear that we believe that we need to get to another humanitarian pause because that humanitarian aid needs to get in. And also we need... get to another humanitarian pause because that humanitarian aid needs to get in. And also, it is the administration's position that a permanent ceasefire. We have been very clear. We've been very clear on where we stand on the ceasefire. That has not changed. So the U.S. is doing a kind of dangerous dance here where I don't know if you've seen some of this reporting, but effectively what the U.S. has been telegraphing is that through Qatar, Qatar then over to Hamas saying, okay, this is what we're saying publicly that we want these humanitarian pauses. Our official position is that we're not for a

permanent ceasefire. But if you can get to an extended humanitarian pause, 90 days, 135 days, as in this Hamas proposal, then the U.S. will not allow Israel to relaunch the war. In other words, cool it down, and it will stay cooled down. Hamas has kind of pushed back with, how can we trust that? Like, nothing that you've said, nothing that the U.S. has said to Israel so far has led to changes in Israeli behavior. So why would this? What do you make of that kind of this yawning gap between the public and private positions of the Biden administration? I mean, I think it's for one of the difficult things in negotiating here is that it's immensely difficult for either side to trust that the other side will execute on what they're promising to execute on, especially with the volatile context of the entire Middle East right now where something can change in an instant. I mean, it's very easy to imagine another situation like what happened just a couple

of weeks ago to the United States in Jordan, where three reservists were killed, completely changing the dynamics of what was negotiated and agreed on. I don't know. What do you make of the idea that if there is an extended pause, that there will be an ability to sort of prevent the war from relaunching? It's interesting. It's plausible. And it's plausible in a sense that you could imagine that once the momentum goes towards reconstruction and aid coming back in, that you could imagine how that can take hold and last. On the other hand, the context here is that Netanyahu is extraordinarily unpopular. He knows that if he faces a snap election, he's probably going to get ousted. And he's facing corruption charges, which means that if he gets ousted, those charges slap back in and he might wind up actually getting convicted of something.

And so Netanyahu is the ultimate political survivor. And he also is no fan of Biden. So if we're talking four months from now, you know, we're in the summer. And so it is, you can also see the domestic U.S. politics where if Netanyahu restarted the war in the summer or fall, that's probably pretty damaging for Biden because he will have looked as though he failed in his diplomatic effort to get this war to an end. And then Netanyahu might think, well, now I've got Trump, and I can roll the dice with Trump coming in in a couple of months. And so that, you know, Trump is a classic live to fight another day politician.

Like just, you know, people are always looking for his long term strategy when he doesn't really usually have one. It's just like his business strategy, just trying to stay one day ahead of the creditors. And his political strategy is the same, staying one day ahead of all of his opponents. Netanyahu, the same. So that's why you can imagine a world where it solidifies, but you can also see how Netanyahu would have the kind of incentives to make sure that it didn't. And again, why there's no trust on either side of that negotiation at this point. Yeah, and Hamas has criticized Israel for releasing Israeli detainees through the previous deal, and then days later raiding their houses in the West Bank and just bringing them right back in.

Like, what? Hey, we kept up our part of the bargain. We released them. We didn't say we wouldn't pick them up, you know, three days later. So you had mentioned, if we could jump to the final element of the block that you had just mentioned, this is a report from Ken Klippenstein over at The Intercept. You had mentioned the attack on the Jordanian base. I wanted to talk about this briefly because the headline here, American base in Jordan where drone killed through three U.S. troops dogged by inadequate air defenses.

I'd encourage people to read the whole story because based on sources who've served at this base, he really lays out how vulnerable this base was to this drone attack. The military explanation was that there was some confusion, that they had a drone out there. And they thought that this drone that was coming back to the base was an American drone. It actually turned out to be an Iraqi militia drone. And three reservists end up getting killed. That is a second question I'd love to have answered, by the way. Why are reservists overseas at this base? If we're not at actual war, people who are in the reserves should be at home.

They shouldn't be called up. We should have enough troops with a trillion dollar budget that we don't need to call up reservists and send them to Jordan. But then the other point as you read through his story, you're like, we're putting all of these American troops

in harm's way and not giving them adequate protection and spending billions of dollars on protecting the Israeli government, which then antagonizes and produces the conflict that then leads to our own troops getting killed without adequate protection. And remember, Biden didn't know where. This is another thing that I'm surprised hasn't gone into play

when people are talking about what happened in Jordan, is Biden didn't know where his Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin was for how long. Right. I mean, in all seriousness. Which he finally apologized for. Lloyd Austin. And the press is like, well, wouldn't everybody else be fired for this?

He's like, yeah. I mean, you can see, again, you can see why. You have two hot wars, one of which spiraled into three American deaths. I'm sure there are plenty, I don't know the exact number of remaining hostages that are American, but you can't, I mean, it's just insane the level of incompetence every single day coming out of the Biden administration. And this, if we put A3 up on the screen, this was some news yesterday. I just mentioned this, but Israel confirmed the

deaths of 31 hostages as Hamas was responding to those proposals. That was a confidential internal Israeli review that the New York Times got its hands on. The Times adds the fate of a further 20 people is also in question amid unconfirmed intelligence that they may also have died during their captivity. So that would bring the number of hostages somewhere around 100 living hostages. And, you know, lots of questions about who died and when will remain for Netanyahu for a very, very long time, Ryan. Yes. And also, right, you're probably correct in reading the intelligence there that most of these probably died on October 7th and were still, and their remains were taken back to Gaza. Also, Gaza, as we've all seen from news reports,

has been an extraordinarily dangerous place for everybody. And the hostages who have been released have told Israeli media that the thing that they were most afraid of was the 24-7 bombing campaign and that they were nervous that they were going to die under rubble from Israeli fire. Right, they felt like the IDF didn't know where they were nervous that they were going to die under rubble from Israeli fire. Right. They felt like the idea of didn't know where they were was a quote that a couple of them gave after they were released. We're hoping they didn't know where they were, because if they knew where they were and were still bombing that area, then I think that's even harder to absorb that your government would willingly do that.

Well, and again, I think to the point you were making earlier, it's hard for Israel to maintain, especially when obviously the country is focused on the return of the hostages. It's harder for Israel to maintain its position that it must complete the military operation when hostages have died, frankly, during the military operation, when there have been hostages remaining for so long during the military operation, and when you have returned hostages saying that they didn't have, you know, that they didn't feel confident the military operation was not going to result in their deaths, that's a really difficult position. Yeah. And the war itself continues to be extraordinarily dangerous also for IDF soldiers. The IDF has not confirmed this, but according to the Hamas telegram channel, Al-Qassam Brigade's telegram channel that posted this morning, seven IDF soldiers were killed,

quote, in the vicinity of Al-Hawaz near the Hayat school west of Khan Yunus. This is a telegram channel that is kind of the official channel that broadcasts Hamas military news and often is confirmed later by either IDF or media reports. So it's fairly reliable. Whether or not this is true, we'll find out in the next hours or or maybe days but seven idf soldiers killed uh in a single confrontation would be you know one of one of the highest casualty rates in a in uh you know in a day between you know between uh you know uh hamas and and the idf and it comes uh just as you know these negotiations are getting to you know potentially a breakthrough place. And so it's just a reminder of how the world and everyone just needs this war to end.

Over the past six years of making my true crime podcast Hell and Gone, I've learned one thing. No town is too small for murder. I'm Katherine Townsend. I've received hundreds of messages from people across the country begging for help with unsolved murders. I was calling about the murder of my husband at the cold case. I've never found her and it haunts me to this day. The murderer is still out there. Every week on Hell and Gone Murder Line, I dig into a new case, bringing the skills

I've learned as a journalist and private investigator to ask the questions no one else is asking. Police really didn't care to even try. She was still somebody's mother. She was still somebody's daughter. She was still somebody's sister. There's so many questions that we've never gotten any kind of answers for. If you have a case you'd like me to look into, call the Hell and Gone Murder Line at 678-744-6145. Listen to Hell and Gone Murder Line

on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Michael Kassin, founder and CEO of 3C Ventures and your guide on good company, the podcast where I sit down with the boldest innovators shaping what's next. In this episode, I'm joined by Anjali Sood, CEO of Tubi, for a conversation that's anything but ordinary. We dive into the competitive world of streaming, how she's turning so-called niche into mainstream gold, connecting audiences with stories that truly make them feel seen. What others dismiss as niche, we embrace as core. It's this idea that there are so many stories out there. And if you can find a way to curate and help the right person discover the right content, the term that we and hear how leaders like Anjali are carving out space and shaking things up a bit in the most crowded of markets.

Listen to Good Company on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The OGs of uncensored motherhood are back and badder than ever. I'm Erica. And I'm Mila. And we're the hosts of the Good Moms Bad Choices podcast, brought to you by the Black Effect Podcast Network every Wednesday. Historically, men talk too much.

And women have quietly listened. And all that stops here. If you like witty women, then this is your tribe. With guests like Corinne Steffens. I've never seen so many women protect predatory men. And then me stops here. If you like witty women, then this is your tribe. With guests like Corinne Stephens. I've never seen so many women protect predatory men. And then me too happened. And then everybody else wanted to get pissed off because the white said it was OK.

Problem. My oldest daughter, her first day in ninth grade, and I called to ask how I was doing. She was like, oh, Dad, all they were doing was talking about your thing in class. I ruined my baby's first day of high school. And Slumflower. What turns me on is when a man sends me money.

Like, I feel the moisture between my legs when a man sends me money. I'm like, oh my God, it's go time. You actually sent it? Listen to the Good Moms, Bad Choices podcast every Wednesday on the Black Effect Podcast Network, the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you go to find your podcasts. Meantime, we can put up this second to last element here. You continue to have, and this has been going on for weeks now, but you continue to have Israeli civilians protesting the entry, and we, got this footage up here, the entry of aid into Gaza.

And so what, what, what you're looking at here, and if you're watching, if you're listening on the podcast, what we're showing here, uh, these are just regular Israeli civilians who have, um, gotten into a, a, a heavily militarized area. Like this is not, this is not somewhere that I think civilians could sneak into without some sort of at least kind of acquiescence from the Israeli military. And they're swarming aid trucks. And you've had a lot of IDF sympathetic Twitter accounts and others who've celebrated these civilian actions in reducing the number of aid trucks that have been getting into Gaza, down sometimes into the single or double digits. And if we can put up this final element, Veenam Patel earlier this week, on Monday, the State

Department spokesperson, he was talking about, and it was kind of a boast, it was what the United States has done so far in order to get relief into Gaza. He said that, on February 4th, 207 relief trucks entered Gaza in a single day. And he said, since October 21st, I have a typo in there, I said 25th, since October 21st, 10,500 trucks had made it in. So we're talking about November, December, January plus there. Aid groups have said you need about a thousand trucks a day to get in just to meet the very basic needs of the Gaza population. That would be close to 100,000 trucks. People can do the math if they want there. That only 10,000 have gotten in explains why you have the dysentery, diuretic diseases that are spreading among children, the malnutrition, and the starvation

and the famine that we're seeing. Because 10% of the minimum is going to lead to just absolutely catastrophic conditions. You know, and this is one of the toughest parts of the entire scenario in that people in Israel, if people are wondering why you have the West Bank, scenes out of the West Bank that look like that. We've all heard the complaints from Israel that the aid is sometimes hoarded by Hamas, it's sometimes misused by Hamas, and that, you know, found sacks and stuff, unrushed sacks and tunnels and all of that, which, Ren, there's obviously truth that Hamas has, you know, not been entirely honest about where all the aid is going and how. There's no doubt about that.

And so, right. And so it leads to this type of situation. And at the same time, you simply cannot allow, cannot allow tens of thousands of people, millions of people actually to live in those conditions. Right. Because we're talking, you know, Hamas is somewhere at this point between 10 and 30,000 fighters. There's 2 million people in Gaza. So the claim that 10 to 20,000 people could even hoard enough that it would lead to the starvation of 2 million people

just doesn't pass the smell test. Like that just simply wouldn't even be possible. But for Israel and the United States, and especially the Israeli government when it's dealing with the United States and then these questions about aid, to the point you're raising about the political calculations of Netanyahu, I mean, it's very difficult. I mean, he's, you know, as I think poorly as Netanyahu has handled all of this, the very least we can say he wasn't in an easy position or a good position, part of that from his own fault. But the political tightrope that anyone, Netanyahu or anyone, would have to walk here is not easy for reasons like that, for reasons related to that. It's just to execute humane strategies on either side of this in the best of circumstances. If people wanted to do that, it would not be easy. Right, because the propaganda has demonized every single Palestinian as either a terrorist or a potential terrorist. So then

you're like, well, and also we're going to give them humanitarian aid. And so the public's like, wait, I thought they were all terrorists. How can could we possibly how can you give aid? Because and that's what you'll hear it when they interview these civilians the border How can you give aid to these these terrorists and why would you give any aid that's going into the hands of enemies? It's just a it's a strange thing which you could actually flip that You know Israel saying we're not gonna release these terrorists that we've captured that are our detainees to end the war I was like wait a minute. You said all 2 million people in Gaza are terrorists. So if they're all terrorists, what are these, you know, a couple thousand matter to you? Well, and here's another, we have another image of A-trucks. This is, I think this one's A-5.

This is from Tom White. So he tweeted this morning, a food convoy waiting to move into northern Gaza was hit by Israeli naval gunfire. Thankfully, no one was injured. But if you're looking, you can see the damage that was done to the truck. If you're listening, this is obviously just an A truck with basically almost a hole halfway in the middle of it. Yeah, so it is not the first food convoy hit by Israeli gunfire. And as we started this block talking about the deal that, you know, that the counter response that Hamas has offered, which includes allowing in more humanitarian aid, it's always jarring

to see that as part of these negotiations because it is not acceptable, according to international law or basic morality or ethics, to negotiate over humanitarian aid in order to extract military concessions. It's not even supposed to be in the same conversation. Right, right. That, okay, we'll agree to this if you'll agree to reduce the level of famine. That's just not, that's like beyond what's supposed to be allowable,

but here we are anyway. Yeah, here we are anyway, heading into February, heading closer and closer to February 7th, which puts us closer and closer to another anniversary of the attacks. And all of the, anytime you hit the anniversary of the attacks,

you look back, you look at the death count, and then you look at, Crystal and I were talking about this last week, the Hamas returning to northern Gaza, and you just think, my God. I mean, this is, it's just a horror show. Over the past six years of making my true crime podcast, Hell and Gone,

I've learned one thing. No town is too small for murder. I'm Katherine Townsend. I've received hundreds of messages from people across the country begging for help with unsolved murders. I was calling about the murder of my husband at the cold case. They've never found her. And it haunts me to this day. The murderer is still out there.

Every week on Hell and Gone Murder Line, I dig into a new case, bringing the skills I've learned as a journalist and private investigator to ask the questions no one else is asking. If you have a case you'd like me to look into, call the Hell and Gone Murder Line at 678-744-6145. Listen to Hell and Gone Murder Line on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The OGs of uncensored motherhood are back and badder than ever.

I'm Erica. And I'm Mila. And we're the hosts of the Good Moms Bad Choices podcast, brought to you by the Black Effect Podcast Network every Wednesday. Historically, men talk too much. And women have quietly listened. And all that stops here. If you like witty women, then this is your tribe.

With guests like Corinne Steffens. I've never seen so many women protect predatory men. And then me too happened. And then everybody else wanted to get pissed off because the white said it was OK. Problem. My oldest daughter, her first day in ninth grade, and I called to ask how I was doing.

She was like, oh, Dad, all they was doing was talking about your thing in class. I ruined my baby's first day of high school. And Slumflower. What turns me on is when a man sends me money. Like, I feel the moisture between my legs when a man sends me money. I'm like, the moisture between my legs when a man sends me money. I'm like, oh my God, it's go time.

You actually sent it? Listen to the Good Moms Bad Choices podcast every Wednesday on the Black Effect Podcast Network, the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you go to find your podcasts. I'm Michael Kassin, founder and CEO of 3C Ventures and your guide on good company. The podcast where I sit down with the boldest innovators shaping what's next.

In this episode, I'm joined by Anjali Sood, CEO of Tubi, for a conversation that's anything but ordinary. We dive into the competitive world of streaming, how she's turning so-called niche into mainstream gold, connecting audiences with stories that truly make them feel seen. What others dismiss as niche, we embrace as core. It's this idea that there are so many stories out there. And if you can find a way to curate and help the right person discover the right content, the term that we always hear from our audience is that they feel seen. Get a front row seat to where media, marketing, technology, entertainment, and sports collide. And hear how leaders like Anjali are carving out space and shaking things up a bit in the most crowded of markets. Listen to Good Company on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Let's move on to Trump. Here in the United States, the president was determined yesterday, although he may appeal, is not immune. He did, right? He doesn't have total immunity. Yeah, I'm sure he did appeal. I think they're going to hear it tomorrow. The appeal is totally immune. He doesn't have total immunity. Yeah, I'm sure he did appeal. I think they're going to hear it tomorrow. The appeal is totally expected. In fact, we have a neat little chart showing how the appeal can affect the timing of this case. But yes, so here's the chart right here. So if Donald Trump appeals the decision yesterday, which rejects his claim that he's immune to these charges that he subverted the 2020 election, he interfered with

a 2020 election, he is going to go to trial on this criminal indictment that accuses him of trying to overturn the election results. So if you're looking at that chart, you see- You're going to have to pause this video. Yeah, you're going to have to pause the video. There are all of these different timeline scenarios. And remember, of course, that nobody needs to be reminded this is all playing out in the middle of a presidential election cycle, one in which reports this morning, one from The Guardian says that the RNC wants Nikki Haley to drop out so they can completely consolidate behind Donald Trump. So the leading candidate for one of the major parties, one of

the two major parties, is now caught up in this crazy timeline where you can end up going to the Supreme Court oral argument in the middle of March. You could just have a grant of a stay without any limits. That could happen next week. You could have a grant of a stay with a 10-day limit. That could happen next week. Or you could treat the stay as a cert petition. That could could happen next week, or you could treat this day as a cert petition that could also happen next week with oral arguments, again, happening in mid-March. So all of this is dependent on what happens within the next week, and then we can go down to the next element. As the timeline is so long, it didn't fit on one screen. That would put a SCOTUS decision somewhere in early April with the trial beginning in

July and concluding on October 5th. So all of these different scenarios, with the exception of one that ends in a petition for cert on May 12th, end in the fall. So you would have a SCOTUS decision around April, a trial beginning in July, and then the trial ending in mid-October, and then a trial beginning in June and concluding in September. So, in three of the four scenarios, you have a trial concluding based on the calendar in early to mid-October, mid to late October, literally a week before the election, possibly, if it ends on October 30th in that time range, or in early September, right around Labor

Day. So, either way, the fall of a presidential election year, Ryan. And tomorrow, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments on a related question of whether or not the 14th Amendment, which says insurrectionists can't run for president, applies to Trump. And so the Supreme Court will be hearing that. And this is before. Yeah, we can put that up on the screen because the two things, when you hear them together, are completely confusing. But they're different cases.

Yeah, and Skoda's blog calls this the biggest election case since it's ruling, the Supreme Court's election ruling in Bush v. Gore. And again, it's whether or not he can basically be taken off the ballot because of his role on January 6th. And Skoda's blog says, although the question comes to the court in a case from Colorado, the impact of the court's ruling could be much more far-reaching than they list that Maine Secretary of State ruled in December that Trump should be taken off the primary ballot there, and that challenges to Trump's eligibility are actually currently pending in 11 other states. So if we go back for a moment to the ruling in this other January 6th case, the charts of the Trump cases that some of the news outlets have done, by the way, are insane, just to the tangle of different legal scenarios and all of the different things. It's just like absolutely crazy. Mike Johnson, House Speaker Mike Johnson, who had a very bad day

yesterday, was caught by reporters walking through the Capitol complex and asked about the ruling. And here's what Mike Johnson had to say. The federal appeals court today just ruled that President Trump does not have immunity. Do you think that he deserves total immunity from anything that he's done in office? I haven't seen that development. Was that this morning? Yeah, they just ruled this morning I believe that they've been after President Trump for partisan political purposes I think that's obvious and and we call it law fair and I think there's no other way to describe That's what Mike Johnson had to say. Now the ruling itself was 57 pages long. It was unanimous. It was a three-judge ruling in the US Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.

And as The New York Times says, it was unlikely to be the final word on his claims of executive immunity. Now, the ruling itself is actually really interesting. Did you get a chance to read any of it, Ryan? Not the whole thing, no. It's so long. I was like, yes. I was like, this seems like a lot of words to say what seems pretty simple. Yes. And so the Trump response was,

if immunity is not granted to a president, every future president who leaves office will be immediately indicted by the opposing party. Without complete immunity, a president of the United States would not be able to properly function. And that's an interesting argument. It's a little, it's an interesting argument because when you're reading this 57-page ruling, it's taking very seriously all of the Trump team's claims of immunity. And that's a particularly interesting one because it speaks to the nature of the system, that the system is getting a stress test in the Trump era of kind of hyper-partisanship. So what are the limits? You know, you have Ford pardoning Nixon. Would Nixon have had to go through this? Well, we don't know because Ford pardoned Nixon and

any idea of a pardon is basically laughable in this political context, whether it was Hillary Clinton or anyone else. Well, DeSantis said he would have pardoned him, right? Well, okay. So, but from the other party, I guess Ford and Nixon is not the other party, but one of the key lines in the ruling, I thought, was, quote, For the purpose of this criminal case, former President Trump has become citizen Trump with all of the defenses of any other criminal defendant. But any executive immunity that may have protected him while he served as president no longer protects him against this prosecution. At bottom, former President Trump's stance would collapse our system of separated powers by placing the president beyond the reach of all three branches. Presidential immunity against federal indictment would mean that as to the president, the Congress

could not legislate, the executive could not prosecute, and the judiciary could not review. We cannot accept that the office of the presidency places its former occupants above the law for all time thereafter. They also addressed one of the Trump team's arguments, which was about double jeopardy. They wrote, even if we assume that an impeachment trial is criminal under the double jeopardy clause, the crimes alleged in the indictment differ from the offense for which President Trump was impeached, because they're talking about the impeachment judgment clause, which in the ruling quote, states that the party convicted shall nevertheless be subject to criminal

prosecution. The text says nothing about non-convicted officials. Former President Trump's reading rests on a logical fallacy, stating that if the president is convicted, he can be prosecuted. Does not necessarily mean that if the president is not convicted, he cannot be prosecuted. And as they're going through these 57 pages, these judges who, by the way, you had, I think it was, yeah, so Karen Henderson is an appointee of George H.W. Bush. And then you had two Biden appointees, Florence Pan and J. Michelle Childs, in this

ruling. They're going through the founders' intentions when they were writing about impeachment and whether the founders intended it to protect somebody from these different prosecutions and basically they Mounted some pretty persuasive evidence right there in the Constitution Yeah, but they didn't that the did they mention the Navy SEAL argument that the Trump team made in the in the ruling I didn't see it in the ruling but I could have skimmed over it during during oral arguments One of the justices one of the judges asked, OK, well, what would happen if a president ordered Navy SEALs to go assassinate his political opponent? Oh, they did mention that. Yes, absolutely.

And the Trump attorney was like, that would be fine. Like, that would be a crime, but you can't prosecute it because of presidential immunity. And at that point, you're like, all right, I just know as a matter of fact. That's wrong. That's wrong. That the president cannot put together a death squad that kills his political opponents and claim immunity for that. That's not a democracy. That's not a republic. That's not three different. You don't have three co-equal branches if one branch can assassinate all the nine justices and then claim immunity for having done that. Or can assassinate everyone in Congress and then claim immunity for having done that.

That kind of gives one of the three branches a slightly unfair hand when it comes to negotiating with the others. And it's funny because we're going to talk in the next segment about impeachment powers as it pertains to Mayorkas. But the system is really getting a stress test in these cases. And, you know, we may disagree on this. I don't think any of that takes away from the fact that this is lawfare. I mean, I agree with Mike Johnson on that point, that this is definitely just a concerted effort by a lot of like actually, you know, nonprofit kind of dark money groups on the left. It's not saying there aren't those on the right, but dark money groups on the left to make these ballot access challenges and that, you know, the DOJ and the Biden administration have supported a lot of these efforts and put

these efforts into the court. And Trump's representatives have argued that this is disenfranchising voters. I also agree with that. I think you can have this conversation at the ballot box. I don't begrudge anyone for having these debates about the constitutionality of what Donald Trump did. Again, though, I don't think that makes this any less of a lawfare. And I don't think that makes Tanya Chutkan, who's the judge that this now gets kicked back to, any less biased. I think she's completely flagrantly demonstrated her biases in this case in a way that would be inappropriate in a lot of other cases, but is going to be allowed to stand in this case in

all likelihood. So Ryan, I think we've talked about this before. The individual cases are different. Some of them, even in the Trump orbit, are viewed as more serious than others. But there's definitely an effort to disqualify him rather than deal with him at the ballot box. Yeah, that certainly does seem to be what that strategy is there. That's one way to do it. Yeah, and if, you know, anyway, yes, the whole thing's getting wild because if you look at the timeline for some of these, you're talking, you know, potential verdicts in the late summer, fall. It's going to get, it's going to be a bumpy ride.

Yeah. From here on out, that's for sure. You know, yeah, exactly. Like 2020 felt like a banana republic and there's no escaping it. 2024 will feel like a banana republic, basically no matter what at this point. Over the past six years

of making my true crime podcast, Hell and Gone, I've learned one thing. No town is too small for murder. I'm Katherine Townsend. I've received hundreds of messages from people across the country begging for help with unsolved murders. I was calling about the murder of my husband

at the cold case. They've never found her. And it haunts me to this day. The murderer is still out there. Every week on Hell and Gone Murder Line, I dig into a new case, bringing the skills I've learned as a journalist and private investigator to ask the questions no one else is asking.

Police really didn't care to even try. She was still somebody's mother. She was still somebody's daughter. She was still somebody's sister. There's so many questions that we've never gotten any kind of answers for. If you have a case you'd like me to look into, call the Hell and Gone Murder Line at 678-744-6145. Listen to Hell and Gone Murder Line on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Michael Kassin, founder and

CEO of 3C Ventures and your guide on good company. The podcast where I sit down with the boldest innovators shaping what's next. In this episode, I'm joined by Anjali Sood, CEO of Tubi, for a conversation that's anything but ordinary. We dive into the competitive world of streaming, how she's turning so-called niche into mainstream gold, connecting audiences with stories that truly make them feel seen. What others dismiss as niche, we embrace as core. It's this idea that there's so many stories out there. And if you can find a way to curate and help the right person discover the right content, the term that we always hear from our audience is that they feel seen. Get a front row seat to where media, marketing,

technology, entertainment, and sports collide. And hear how leaders like Anjali are carving out space and shaking things up a bit in the most crowded of markets. Listen to Good Company on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The OGs of uncensored motherhood are back and badder than ever. I'm Erica. And I'm Mila. And we're the hosts of the Good Moms Bad Choices podcast, brought to you by the Black Effect Podcast Network every Wednesday.

Historically, men talk too much. And women have quietly listened. And all that stops here. If you like witty women, then this is your tribe. With guests like Corinne Steffens. I've never seen so many women protect predatory men. And then me too happened.

And then everybody else wanted to get pissed off because the white said it was okay. Problem. My oldest daughter, her first day in ninth grade, and I called to ask how I was doing. She was like,

oh dad, all they was doing was talking about your thing in class. I ruined my baby's first day in ninth grade, and I called to ask how I was doing. She was like, oh, dad, all I was doing was talking about your thing in class. I ruined my baby's first day of high school. And slumflower. What turns me on is when a man sends me money. Like, I feel the moisture between my legs when a man sends me money. I'm like, oh, my God, it's go time. You actually sent it? Listen to the Good Moms, Bad Choices podcast every Wednesday

on the Black Effect Podcast Network, the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you go to find your podcast. Speaking of Banana Republics, the House of Representatives yesterday, not only did they blow up their border deal, which we're going to talk about here, they failed to impeach Mayorkas by one vote, which we're going to talk about, and they even put up their standalone $17 billion for Israel, knowing that it would fail and watched it fail. Perhaps the first vote in American history for weapons for Israel that failed to pass the House of Representatives. Yeah. Like Pelosi pulled some, at least pulled at least one, but never put one on the floor that failed. I don't know of any effort that actually went onto the floor of the House of Representatives

to send money and weapons to Israel and came back with a no. Yeah, I can't think of anything. Absolutely incredible. You don't move these votes to the floor if you're going to fail. Unless you're Mike Johnson. So walk us through the incredible day of Mike Johnson yesterday. So Mike Johnson woke up this morning feeling pretty rough. He's probably glad it wasn't yesterday. Last night, he brought two votes to the floor, the one Ryan just mentioned on Israel, and one on his big effort. I mean, House Republicans, huge effort, not just his. This started under Kevin McCarthy. Their huge centerpiece, legislative centerpiece, basically, even though it doesn't involve really passing legislation other than impeachment articles, which is to impeach

DHS Secretary, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, over his handling of the southern border. Also, Afghan refugees made it into the impeachment articles and failed. He brought both of these votes to the floor without having enough votes for them to pass because, and this is incredible, veep-worthy detail. And this is where Republican leadership is actually pointing the finger right now. They say Democrats told them Al Green would not be voting. Al Green would not be voting. Democrat Al Green, who was having emergency surgery, would not be voting. So Republicans' count on the vote was completely wrong. They thought they needed 215. Because, yeah, they thought they needed 215 because Al Green showed up, rolled in, in a hospital gown, in a wheelchair and voted against the impeachment of Mayorkas.

So think about that. Mike Johnson now looks like he took the word of Democrats credibly and Democrats absolutely outmaneuvered, outsmarted him by rolling in Al Green in a hospital gown and a wheelchair to cast a decisive vote. It looks for, for Mike Johnson, not only does it look, I mean this trickles into the way that he is respected, the way that he's treated by his entire caucus, basically. Pretty damn bad for Mike Johnson. Now, this comes amid all of the fighting in the Senate over, go ahead. Let's roll the Marjorie Taylor Greene clip while we have it. Which number is that? I believe that's C7.

We don't want to leave this block without some MTG. Yeah, I think it's C7. C7. Yeah, let's roll C7. Hid one of these votes that they had. So was it something that people would see? Is that something that Republicans? I'm glad you asked that because, well, we can basically look at this as a game, unfortunately, and their strategy. And they hid one of their members waiting to the last minute, watching to see our votes, trying to throw us off on the numbers that we had versus the numbers they had. So, yeah, that was a strategy at play tonight. It's just, again, Veep worthy drama.

And Mike Johnson looking basically like he's out of his element. And that's something that you've heard from Republican circles. You've definitely heard that from sort of Freedom Caucus circles, where people were initially favorable to the speakership of Mike Johnson. In fact, some Freedom Caucus members voted along with Matt Gaetz to oust Mike Johnson, or to oust Kevin McCarthy and bring in eventually Mike Johnson. Thomas Massey, who's sort of Freedom Caucus adjacent, tweeted this morning that it now makes it look ridiculous. The effort to get rid of McCarthy has resulted in so many different failures. Although I'm sure Matt Gates, who recently, I think just in the last like 12 hours,

endorsed Kevin McCarthy for the head of the RNC amid some reports that Ronald McDaniel is seriously thinking about stepping down. Matt Gaetz would say, well, the chaos was basically the point because, you know, there was no hope of doing anything substantive anyway. That is, again, when you spend months pitching the impeachment of Alejandro Mayorkas as a substantive victory and then lose because Mike Johnson brought the vote to the floor thinking he had the right number of votes when Democrats were just apparently ostensibly lying to his face. It doesn't really get much worse than that. One person voted procedurally to make sure they would be able, one Republican voted against the

impeachment. It was a total party line vote in order to- The three Republicans who voted no, their argument was he's a bad minister of the government. Yes, yeah. Right, but it's not illegal. It's not impeachable. Yeah. He's basically carrying out what Biden wants him to do.

Biden was elected and you can't impeach somebody for not sharing your politics. It's basically the three no votes, right? This is unconstitutional. They said, we're stretching the constitution because we're claiming he's stretching the law. So it was Ken Buck, Mike Gallagher, and this is things that- McClintock, I think. Yeah, McClintock, Tom McClintock. Jonathan Turley actually made this argument, who's really popular in sort of right of center circles because he's been a staunch offender of Donald Trump's rights, basically, amid all of the lawfare. He's sort of almost a Dershowitz type figure in that space,

a erstwhile figure of the left, or at least the center, who is constantly putting substance on these arguments that are favorable to Donald Trump. Even he came out and wrote that these impeachment articles don't quite cut the mustard for Mayorkas. I had a super fun night last night and actually went through the impeachment articles again. And honestly, the impeachment articles do a really good job showing that Mayorkas has utterly botched the border. I don't know that they don't mention a crime. I know they don't mention a crime except for violating, violating his oath of office essentially is the charge. And it's one of the reasons like Gallagher said he voted against this because as soon as you start to sort of stretch those definitions, you get into banana republic territory. You could hit any opposing party

cabinet secretary with that. And that's the argument that, and Gallagher sort of pre-butts. And Biden just named another DHS secretary. That's the other silly part of it. Exactly, yes. And well, the Senate's not voting to impeach Americans. I mean, it's just not happening. That too. Before we get to the Senate, one final point on that. Republicans would say, yeah, exactly. Democrats inflated the definition of impeachable offenses when they went after Donald Trump. And so we're giving Mayorkas intentionally, strategically a taste of his own medicine. They might not say that aloud, but that's definitely part of the reason that they're sort of,

they say they're responding to the weaponization of impeachment, not weaponizing it themselves. They started it. Responding to the weapon. Exactly. They started it is where we're going with this. Now, on the Senate side, we can put this first element up on the screen. They are probably going to kill this so-called bipartisan border deal that turned out not to be that bipartisan, because if we put the next element up on the screen and you have even John Cor Cornyn, very, very friendly with leadership, in leadership himself, the latest senior GOP conference member, as Politico says, to say he opposes advancing the legislation this week, arguing that lawmakers, quote,

need more time, but said, I'm pretty confident we can do better with a new president who actually will enforce the law. You might need a new leader of the Senate, actually. We'll get into that in just a moment. In order to do much better, even Mitch McConnell has said that it would be wrong to move on this legislation because, quote, the mood in the country has changed. I think that happened around 2006. So I'm glad he's finally catching up. I mean, the mood in the Senate chamber has changed as well. And we don't need to rehash all this because Chrystal and Sager went through it. But from my perspective, I'm like, wow, like Democrats on a silver platter handed the administration enormous amounts of power that could have been weaponized by Donald Trump to do absolutely anything. And Stephen Miller, these tools in the hands of Stephen Miller would have made

what the first Trump administration did on the border look gentle. And now, if Trump does get elected, he's gonna have to try to use the current authorities. And Stephen Miller has shown a lot of creativity and willingness to stretch those beyond what anybody could imagine before. But he's going to have to do that rather than having bill is that it basically tries to legalize things that have been caught up in the courts, different executive actions, not like technically

EAs, but actual executive authorities that have been used to do different things with asylum and tries to finally legislate so that those things don't get caught up in the court determining whether it's a fair use of executive authority. And so, yes, to your point, it does expand executive authority in some pretty critical ways. Now, speaking of McConnell, the McConnell fellows over on Ruthless are upset. Ruthless is a pretty popular conservative podcast, right? I guess. If we have to call it conservative podcast, right? I guess. If we have to call it conservative.

It's a podcast populated by former McConnell. And McConnell orbit people. Yeah, McConnell orbit people. Yeah, exactly. And people who are in the Republican consultant space right now. They seem pretty conservative to me. Yeah. Your mileage may vary.

Comfortably Smug is on it. And Smug is genuinely really funny. But they come from definitely the establishment Republican Party, like no question about it. And they had a little meltdown over how Senate conservatives reacted to the rollout of Lankford's bill, basically accused Mike Lee of protecting Hamas. Take a listen to this. And I'm being deadly serious about that. I'm talking about people like Mike Lee. Mike Lee is a perfect example of the only thing that he really wants to make sure of is that we don't kill Hamas. And he went on to basically say that Mike Lee's like only job in

the Senate. That's Josh Holmes, again, former longtime McConnell staffer who's now on the consulting side. Ran the super PAC, right? Yeah. So that's Josh Holmes, again, former longtime McConnell staffer who's now on the consulting side. Ran the Super PAC, right? Yeah. So that's Josh Holmes saying that Mike Lee, who opposes the border deal, is basically just caring about protecting Hamas. I guess it's nice to see that everyone across the political spectrum gets accused baselessly for supporting Hamas. I did. I will admit I did a little Photoshop yesterday and I did put Mike Lee on the cover of Ryan's book.

Maybe we'll add that. That was a good one. So, John McCormick, we could put this next element up on the screen. Tweets that a reporter asked Lankford of Oklahoma how it felt to be run over by a bus. Lankford replied, quote, and backed up. Just perfect. Now put the next element up on the screen. This is from my boss at the Federalist, Sean Davis, who's reacting to a statement that John Barrasso, so along with John Cornyn, these are like two of Mitch McConnell's, as Sean says, top lieutenants, top guys. Barrasso yesterday came out and said that he was a no on the bill. Sean then waded in

and said, there's a lot going on in this statement. And what's happening basically, we can just keep moving through. It was like Sean basically wrote an essay here because the dynamics are genuinely pretty interesting and actually speak to sort of the flip side and the Republican Party, what you wrote about in your book, Ryan, on the Democratic side, that a lot of people are feeling really badly for James Lankford. That McConnell, they say essentially McConnell negotiated this failed bipartisan package with the goal of securing money for Ukraine, knowing that it's dead on arrival in the House. If you don't, that the additional Ukraine funding is dead on arrival in the House.

If you don't do anything with the border, the House has insisted on passing H.R. 2. So let's have James Lankford go and negotiate this. But people really personally like James Lankford, and they don't want to, you know, take their anger out on him because they feel as though Mitch McConnell worked with Chuck Schumer on this and that James Lankford was used basically as a pawn by Mitch McConnell. Chuck Schumer himself said he'd never worked as closely on a piece of legislation with McConnell as he did on this piece of legislation. That's out in the open here. So they're sort of like Barrasso shifting the blame to Biden, saying that Biden failed James Lankford, who just worked tirelessly to secure the border at all costs. And that's

basically the spin coming from people on the right at this point. Really something, Ryan, to see these dynamics. We have video here of some of these senators reacting to the divides themselves. Is it time for Mitch McConnell to go? I think it is. Look, everyone here also supported a leadership challenge to Mitch McConnell in November. I think a Republican leader should actually lead this conference and should advance the priorities of Republicans. Senator Ted Cruz not a fan. So McConnell looks pretty— What did he say there? I couldn't catch that.

I think we can all agree—I'm not—I shouldn't do the accent. I won't. I think we can all agree that Senator Cruz is not a fan of the bill. And so Mitch McConnell seems pretty lucid there. But again, one of the other chief complaints is that he's getting rolled like Mike Johnson by Democrats, not because he is weak in the same way that a lot of people on the House side think Mike Johnson is, but because he's old. We played that clip of Biden earlier in the show, stumbling to get through a sentence about Israel and Palestine. People feel like that's happening with Mitch McConnell as well, that he's both physically frail and intellectually frail, mentally frail at this point, and is getting steamrolled,

is not responsive to constituents, et cetera, et cetera. So pretty tough for Mitch McConnell. It looks like, based on what Cruz said, all of those people there, Cruz is right, did not support. They supported leadership challenges to McConnell last time that was up for a vote. I think it was like 10 votes against McConnell, so they're going to need to bring a lot more people over to that side. If those numbers start stacking up, you could potentially see McConnell step down to a position like Pelosi is now. I don't think he would just outright leave the Senate.

But where this leaves things is, as reports are, we can put this next element up on the screen, Republican senators are now floating the option of moving a foreign aid package that is divorced from the border, which, Brian, I think that's their only option. That's where this was headed the entire time. And so, and Hagerty later clarified that he is not floating this, that people like Cornyn, Graham, Joni Ernst are. And so the idea would be you're combining money for Israel, money for Ukraine, and also money for, you know, a potential Taiwan war. And that there are more than 60 votes for that. So just give up on this whole border thing and just move it through.

That appears to be where all of this is headed. Yeah, you're right. This was predictable from the beginning. Yeah. And it's fascinating that because they couldn't move that Israel money through the House, you know, Democrats voted it down because they say it's a stunt and they want Ukraine and Taiwan money in there as well. The Freedom Caucus, though, cited fiscal austerity and populist nationalism, which is a rather extraordinary development to have a strong bloc of hard right Republicans standing up to AIPAC. Quite a development. Yeah, that is really interesting. That's a great point. And that's why this has been a long and kind of chunky bloc with all of these elements.

But again, it reminds me so much of the dynamics you write about in your book on the Democratic side. On the Republican side, there's this incredible tug of war that the media does a really bad job of covering, just sort of treating Mitch McConnell as though he's like a conservative stalwart, when in fact he is the most, according to some surveys, disliked politician in the country. Republicans hate working with Mitch McConnell at this point. Conservatives hate working with Mitch McConnell at this point. Conservatives hate working with Mitch McConnell at this point. And now, whatever goes forward, they have to contend with Mike Johnson being increasingly distrusted and disliked by a lot of conservatives. And probably a lot of moderates aren't super happy

with Mike Johnson, the Republican side right now. So that's a barrier to passing legislation. If you have that sum of a margin, lose trust in leadership, their ability to pass this money is in serious jeopardy, even if they divorce it. And McConnell has long been called this absolute genius in Washington. I've long been highly skeptical of that judgment. He's been very good at saying no to things, which is easy because all you need is 41. You can say no to things. He's been very good at, for decades, raising lots of money from very wealthy interests in order to give them deregulatory policy and tax cuts. Yes. But there's no genius underneath any of that.

Just saying no. Yeah, saying no and getting money from rich people so that you can give them even more than they gave you. Yeah. Like, that's not hard. No, it really isn't. It doesn't take a genius to do that. No, but if you're good to the media, they're good back to you. And so if you drip leaks to them and dish out those leaks

and you have Josh Holmes, you know, pulling— Those guys are good. They used to be really good. But again, it's not that hard to just be nice to the media. Over the past six years of making my true crime podcast hell and gone, I've learned one thing. No town is too small for murder. I'm Katherine Townsend. I've received hundreds of messages from people across the country begging for help with unsolved murders. I was calling about the murder of my

husband at the cold case. They've never found her and it haunts me to this day. The murderer is still out there. Every week on Hell and Gone Murder Line, I dig into a new case, bringing the skills I've learned as a journalist and private investigator to ask the questions no one else is asking. If you have a case you'd like me to look into, call the Hell and Gone Murder Line at 678-744-6145. Listen to Hell and Gone Murder Line on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Michael Kassin, founder and CEO of 3C Ventures and your guide on good company. The podcast where I sit down with the boldest innovators shaping what's next.

In this episode, I'm joined by Anjali Sood, CEO of Tubi, for a conversation that's anything but ordinary. We dive into the competitive world of streaming, how she's turning so-called niche into mainstream gold, connecting audiences with stories that truly make them feel seen. What others dismiss as niche, we embrace as core. It's this idea that there are so many stories out there, and if you can find a way to curate and help the right person discover the right content, the term that we always hear from our audience is that they feel seen. Get a front row seat to where media, marketing, technology, entertainment, and sports collide. And hear how leaders like Anjali are carving out space and shaking things up a bit in the most crowded of markets.

Listen to Good Company on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. by the Black Effect Podcast Network every Wednesday. Historically, men talk too much. And women have quietly listened. And all that stops here. If you like witty women, then this is your tribe. With guests like Corinne Steffens. I've never seen so many women protect predatory men. And then me too happened.

And then everybody else wanted to get pissed off because the white said it was okay. Problem. My oldest daughter, her first day in ninth grade, and I called to ask how I was doing. She was like, oh dad, all they was doing was talking about your thing in class. I ruined my baby's first day of high school. And slumflower.

What turns me on is when a man sends me money. Like, I feel the moisture between my legs when a man sends me money. I'm like, oh, my God, it's go time. You actually sent it? Listen to the Good Moms, Bad Choices podcast every Wednesday on the Black Effect Podcast Network, the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you go to find your podcasts. Speaking of money for the Ukraine war, Tucker Carlson announced on Twitter that he's over in Moscow. Let's roll a little bit of Tucker here.

We're in Moscow tonight. We're here to interview the president of Russia, Vladimir Putin. We'll be doing that soon. There are risks to conducting an interview like this, obviously, so we thought about it carefully over many months. Here's why we're doing it. First, because it's our job.

We're in journalism. Our duty is to inform people. Two years into a war that's reshaping the entire world, most Americans are not informed. This war has utterly reshaped the global military and trade alliances and the sanctions that followed have as well. And in total, they have upended the world economy.

The post-World War II economic order, the system that guaranteed prosperity in the West for more than 80 years, is coming apart very fast. and along with it, the dominance of the U.S. dollar. These are not small changes. They are history-altering developments. They will define the lives of our grandchildren. Most of the world understands this perfectly well. They can see it. Ask anyone in Asia or the Middle East what the future looks like. And yet the populations of the English-speaking countries seem mostly unaware. They think that nothing has really changed. And they think that because no one has told them the truth. Their media outlets are

corrupt. They lie to their readers and viewers. And they do that mostly by omission. For example, since the day the war in Ukraine began, American media outlets have spoken to scores of people from Ukraine, and they have done scores of interviews with Ukrainian President Zelensky. We ourselves have put in a request for an interview with Zelensky, and we hope he accepts. But the interviews he's already done in the United States are not traditional interviews. They are fawning pep sessions specifically designed to amplify Zelensky's demand that the US enter more deeply

into a war in Eastern Europe and pay for it. That is not journalism. It is government propaganda, propaganda of the ugliest kind. We are not encouraging you to agree with what Putin may say in this interview, but we are urging you to watch it. You should know

as much as you can. And then, like a free citizen and not a slave, you can decide for yourself. So the news that Tucker was in Moscow was greeted with, let's say, what's the right word for this? Rage in some corners of the media. Scoffing. In some corners of the media. Not entirely surprising. It should be noted that NBC News, as recently as a few years ago, had done an interview with Vladimir Putin. Here's a flavor of what some folks in the media had to say about Tucker's trip to Russia. Carlson is now just another far-right conspiracy peddler with a show on the internet. He's no longer on Fox, as we all know. And he's apparently been spending the last few days in Moscow for some reason. Who knows? We don't know why. He has to stay relevant somehow. So I guess we'll learn in the coming days, maybe.

Yeah, well, when I first heard that he was there, I just assumed he was there to get an award because there probably isn't an American who has done more for Vladimir Putin in the last couple of years than Tucker Carlson. He's been he sided with Russia on the invasion. He was consistently berating Vladimir Zelensky and and and lifting up Putin. So that's how he got the interview. And I think Putin's expecting a friendly interview. order the Kremlin did, state TV, to cover Tucker and to carry some of Tucker's comments because they viewed them as so helpful to Putin in this war effort. So I'm sure they'll have a warm session, whether it's an award or a, I guess the interview would be his award. The meeting of the Mutual Admiration Society over in Moscow. Indeed. That was a little smug. Erin Burnett also criticized Tucker for basically being, or she highlighted, let's say, the state TV coverage of Tucker's visit to Moscow and previous coverage of Tucker and his comments on the Ukraine war as a sort of criticism of him going over to interview Putin.

Here's Christiane Amanpour. We can put this element up on the screen. Does Tucker really think we journalists haven't been trying to interview President Putin every day since his full-scale invasion of Ukraine? It's absurd. We'll continue to ask for an interview, just as we have for years now, because in that video, it's about five minutes long. We just played a clip of it. Tucker explains that one of the reasons he went over there is because he one of the reasons he went over there is because he doesn't feel as though Putin has gotten any, he's given any access to Western journalists because his contention is that Western journalists have basically not tried

to interview Putin. They've made up their mind about Putin. What do you make of that, Ryan? I mean, I think Christiane Amanpour is one of the few that can credibly push back on that claim. She would absolutely be happy to interview Putin. And I think anybody out there who is critical of the concept of Tucker Carlson interviewing Putin should consider those Amanpour comments. Amanpour would be eager to interview him. I think the question becomes, how does he do the interview? And he's under a lot of pressure to do a serious, hard-hitting interview. And I hope that he does, because that's the kind of interview the world needs to see. I think there's a chance he will do that because he treated this one differently than he has treated previous ones. In other words, so he previously interviewed Andrew Tate and that was a softball interview. I defended the concept

of interviewing Andrew Tate, but giving him a softball interview, that I don't defend. He did not explain ahead of time or defend the decision to interview Andrew Tate like he just did. He just put this preemptive self-defense of his decision to interview Vladimir Putin. And so he understands the pressure he's under there. So if he understands the pressure he's under and he still gives a softball interview, I think that'll be an interesting call on his part to make. So the question should never be, do you interview a public figure? It's how you do the interview. CNN's Peter Bergen famously made his career by getting an interview with Osama bin Laden in a cave. It was a phenomenon at the time when he did it. This was 1997, so it was before September 11th.

But people in the know still understood Osama bin Laden to be like the world's leading terrorist. But of course, if you have the opportunity to interview even Osama bin Laden, you take that interview. But you challenge him. So we'll see how the interview rolls out. And I think that will determine whether, you know, what we can say about the decision. And Tucker said in that video he secured an agreement from Elon Musk and X to air the video in full, the interview in full, which, of course, we still don't have the interview. We're waiting for it to be released. But that's interesting, too, because Musk has actually cooperated with Starlink in Ukraine in the past. And if Tucker airs, which is, again, this is,

we've talked about this many times, it's crazy that Elon Musk is in this position of like immense geopolitical military power as essentially an unelected member of the business community. If Tucker airs an interview that's overly flattering to Putin, a lot of people were mentioning that he cut those comments of Kanye West going into like anti-Semitic conspiratorial territory from the interview he did with Kanye, asking if Kanye sounded crazy and then then rolling, you know, cutting, ostensibly cutting what made Kanye sound absolutely crazy. If he does something similar with Putin, perhaps that can add friction to his relationship with Elon Musk if Elon Musk is forced to basically allow an interview that, you know, he thinks is uncomfortable or needs a community note or something like that. I don't

know if they have any agreements about that, but Tucker's business does really rely on X. It's called Tucker on X. The show is called Tucker on X. So there are legitimate business interests for Tucker to balance in doing a good job with this interview. I agree that the pressure is so high that to be overly flat, to be fair, the media is going to say that this interview is overly flattering no matter what. Tucker could do a great job. Tucker could be Christiane Amanpour and handle the interview the exact same way as she would from even sort of a blobby foreign policy establishment type way. And the media would pull out any different clips and say that this was reckless

and Tucker was sucking up to Putin, et cetera, et cetera. So even if the interview like veers into territory that it shouldn't a couple of times, it was going to happen no matter what. Tucker knows it's going to happen no matter what. Tucker says most Americans don't understand why Putin invaded Ukraine. Ryan, I think that's true in the effort to expose that, though. He does have to be careful. Right. not gonna get an answer to why Russia invaded Ukraine. We're gonna get Putin's explanation. Yeah and propaganda for why he invaded Ukraine Which is fine

Like we want to hear what propaganda all different sides are putting out and sort through it like right and there is a it is true That the media has basically given no airtime to Putin's propaganda so that what Tucker is saying in that video is basically Americans don't even understand what, you know, the their billions of dollars are fighting or fighting from Putin's perspective. Like what it's you know, and I actually think that's perfectly reasonable because, you know, that's it's war. It's, again, billions of dollars. And, you know, there's there's It's, again, billions of dollars. And, you know, there's so little coverage of that in the media. People are smart enough to decide for themselves. They don't need the government to protect them from lies from foreign leaders. Foreign leaders lie all the time.

People can figure it out themselves. And, Ryan, actually, this is a good transition to the next block on Pakistan because you've interviewed controversial foreign leaders, including Imran Khan. You interviewed on this show, on this channel, and people can go watch it, Imran Khan. And that had to have been in and of itself a high pressure and tricky task. That was a fascinating interview. And I tried to press him on, you know, some of his own. So Imran Khan is a former prime minister of, of Pakistan who was ousted by, in a, in a no confidence vote in 2022 through pressure from the U.S. State Department,

as well as the, the Pakistani military. But yeah, when I interviewed him, I, I pushed him on the question of, you know, how does it feel to have kind of had some of the same tactics turned on you that you were using against some of your own opponents? Because he was criticized heavily during his term for cracking down on civil society, cracking down on dissent, censoring the media. Now, because he was ousted before his term was over, Pakistan was supposed to have a new election almost a year ago. Instead, it'll happen tonight, U.S. time, tomorrow, Pakistan time, February 8th. Pakistani voters are going to go to the polls, have a new story up over at The Intercept, which looks at the incredible ways that the military-backed government is

undermining the election over there. They're utterly kind of almost fantastical and unbelievable. Kind of the lowest level thing that the Pakistani government is doing to undermine democracy in Pakistan would practically be the most serious thing that anybody could have found in the 2020 presidential election. Like you want to complain about censorship. They are just absolutely just completely censoring everything in Pakistan. You want to complain about, you know, kind of Silicon Valley folks being nudged by DHS, they're threatening to close the entire, shut down the entire internet for the election on Thursday. So just to give people a flavor of what the Pakistani government is doing, we're going to run through some of these. But first,

on Monday, the State Department was pressed yet again on its kind of shrugging off of a lot of the concerns that have been raised about democracy after the State Department was pressed yet again on its kind of shrugging off of a lot of the concerns that have been raised about democracy after the State Department pushed Imran Khan out of power. And they made their kind of most forceful comment to date. But all of that is relative, and you'll see how forceful this sounds. Here's Veenant Patel at the U.S. State Department on Monday. Continuing to monitor Pakistan's electoral process quite closely. And as we have said, we want to see that process take place in a way that facilitates broad participation with respect for freedom of expression, assembly and associations. We have concerns of the all incidents of violence and restrictions on media freedom, freedom of expression, including

internet freedom, and peaceful assembly and association. We're concerned by some of the infringements that we've seen in that space. Pakistanis deserve to exercise their fundamental right to choose their future leaders through free and fair elections without fear, violence, or intimidation. And it is ultimately for the people of Pakistan to decide their political future. In the past, the State Department had just said, you know, we hope that there will be free and fair elections, and we urge there to be free and fair elections. This one gets a little bit, goes a little bit beyond that. And it comes as you're seeing intense pressure from members of Congress. We're going to talk to Greg Kassar later in the show. He's one of those that's

been putting pressure on the Pakistan military to respect democracy. But let's run through just a couple of these things that they're doing, because maybe it's a taste of what we'll get here one day. But so first of all, you can put up this element from Dawn, a major paper in Pakistan that writes, alarm over, quote, snatching of PTI nomination papers. And so PTI is Imran Khan's party. So basically, rank and file candidates are taking their nomination papers, going to the office where they file those papers, and just having them snatched and basically thrown away. So they just can't run. Separately, instead, they're just being arrested at the office

for filing papers. And then they'll emerge, they'll hobble out of detention several days later, clearly having been tortured, and will announce that they're actually withdrawing. They don't intend to run after all. Or if they do manage to get their papers in and get home, their homes and the homes of their relatives are raided over the next couple of days. And then they announced that they're not running anymore. So basically trying to make sure that there are kind of no candidates for anybody to vote for.

One of the wilder things that we've seen is you saw a low-level official blew the whistle on what's called the election management system, saying that it's having all sorts of funky issues that suggest that it's been hacked and been controlled from the outside. This is where they do the vote counting. The Pakistan military had put a—this is supposed to be a civilian operation. They put a general. They put an acting general to oversee the thing. It does not necessarily inspire too much confidence.

Never a good sign. Never a good sign. We already talked about how they're threatening to, you know, and their real fear is that they're going to shut down the entire government from, like, February 7th to 9th. So, like, during the election. Imran Khan has been banned from running for office. Like he's not allowed. He's in prison right now. Pretty fundamental problem for a political party. The PTIs, every party has a symbol. You know, here in the U.S., I guess the Democrats have a donkey because a substantial portion of the Pakistani electorate can't read,

they'll vote on the symbol. The PTI's symbol is a cricket bat, because Imran Khan is a famous cricketer. Supreme Court there ruled on some bizarre technicality that didn't apply to any other party. They can't use their bat anymore. And so what they're forcing all of PTI's candidates to do is run as independents without any symbol. And so people are just going to have to kind of guess which candidate is the one that they're supporting. What that also means is that even if, despite all of these obstacles, the Pakistani voters do choose PTI candidates to have a majority in the parliament, they're now all independents and they're not subject to these anti-horse trading laws. And so the military can go to them and put the same kind of pressures that they did on candidates not to run to switch parties. And so then they might hobble out of detention after getting abducted and announce,

you know, I'm actually joining with this party instead. Not going to be with PTI anymore. And so that means even if they win, like the military has a backup plan. Meanwhile, there have been PTI candidates who've been killed lately. There was an explosion at a PTI rally where I think 10 people were killed. The ISKR claimed responsibility for that, which is kind of an ISIS affiliate. But nobody can explain why an ISIS affiliate would be targeting a bunch of PTI rallies. And people have pointed out that there are links and there have been known links in the past between the ISI and these terror groups. And also the fact that it's reported that they claim responsibility for a bombing doesn't necessarily mean that they actually did a bombing.

So you've got just random terrorist bombings of these PTI rallies when there's actually no kind of direct political rationale that ISIS would have to like target PTI. You've also had police raids of candidates all over the place. And you've even had reports, very credible reports coming out of kind of PTI strongholds, that police are pulling over people and grabbing them and giving them just tickets by the boatload. And if you get a ticket in Pakistan, police can confiscate your ID, which you don't get back until you pay the ticket. So that could mean like thousands and thousands of people could be without their IDs and then can't show up to vote. Just the most petty, pathetic little stuff. Ticky-tacky. Ticky-tacky stuff. Add show up to vote. Just the most petty, you know, like pathetic little stuff. Ticky tacky.

Ticky tacky stuff. Adds up to a lot. Just doing like, as somebody described it to me, they're like, if you can think of something that you could do to reduce the vote share for PTI, they're doing it. It's just wildly across the board. But it's, but you are, so Abigail Spanberger just put out a – sent a letter today to Secretary of State Anthony Blinken warning about all this stuff. CIA Abigail. Which that's going to resonate because of her close links to the intelligence agency. The House Foreign Affairs, the chairman, Michael McCaul, he's been vocal on this. Greg Meeks, the Democrat, who's the ranking member on House Foreign Affairs, the chairman, Michael McCaul, he's been vocal on this.

Greg Meeks, the Democrat, who's the ranking member on House Foreign Affairs, has also been vocal on this. So you're finally starting to see some congressional pressure. Right. Right, which is a big Pakistani population. Right. That's right. And a significant one in Virginia as well. And Spanberger's running for governor.

That's right. In Virginia. So another headache for the Biden administration in the Middle East with an ally that is not going to be fun for them to continue to navigate as the clip that you played from the briefing shows. Yeah. And it's like we should get results tomorrow. But it's hard to take seriously the idea that we should wait and like even take, you know, give any stock. Right. To what they're going to report the results are.

After all the manipulation. And the real tragedy is there was a lot of pressure on PTI to boycott the election. Like, look, this is such a travesty of democracy. You can't even participate in this. But Pakistani people have fought so hard the last 15 years or so with their democracy movement to push back on the military's power in that country. And it's just tremendously sad to see all of the people who are investing their hopes and dreams in this system and putting their faith into this system, which is just telling them over and over again that faith is misplaced and that their votes aren't going to count and that it doesn't matter what you want. But, you know, the politics of Pakistan are volatile. The U.S. is interested in Pakistan sometimes,

ignores it a lot of the other times. So we'll see. Like the willingness of so many people to put their names on the ballot, knowing that there's a good chance that they're going to get raided and tortured just for doing that, the willingness of so many people to turn out to vote is inspiring at the same time. And without drawing a direct comparison, it's interesting you started this block by saying, for a taste of what could happen here at some point, that's actually a good transition to what we're going to be talking with Lee Fong about, which is some sort of censorship here in the United States that has happened. It's happening in full public view. He has some excellent reporting on it. He testified before Congress just yesterday.

So we're going to get some snap reaction from Lee Fong on his experience in front of Congress yesterday, right after this. Over the past six years of making my true crime podcast, Hell and Gone, I've learned one thing. No town is too small for murder. I'm Katherine Townsend. I've received hundreds of messages from people across the country begging for help with unsolved murders. I was calling about the murder of my husband at the cold case. They've never found her, and it haunts me to this day. The murderer is still out there. Every week on Hell and Gone Murder Line, I dig into a new case, bringing the skills I've learned as a journalist and private investigator to ask the questions no one else is asking.

Police really didn't care to even try. She was still somebody's mother. She was still somebody's daughter. She was still somebody's sister. There's so many questions that we've never gotten any kind of answers for. If you have a case you'd like me to look into, call the Hell and Gone Murder Line at 678-744-6145. Listen to Hell and Gone Murder Line on the iHeartRadio app,

Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Michael Kassin, founder and CEO of 3C Ventures, and your guide on good company. The podcast where I sit down with the boldest innovators shaping what's next. In this episode, I'm joined by Anjali Sood, CEO of Tubi, for a conversation that's anything but ordinary. We dive into the competitive world of streaming,

how she's turning so-called niche into mainstream gold, connecting audiences with stories that truly make them feel seen. What others dismiss as niche, we embrace as core. It's this idea that there are so many stories out there, and if you can find a way to curate and help the right person discover the right content, the term that we always hear from our audience is that they feel seen. Get a front row seat to where media, marketing, technology, entertainment, and sports collide.

And hear how leaders like Anjali are carving out space and shaking things up a bit in the most crowded of markets. Listen to Good Company on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The OGs of uncensored motherhood are back and badder than ever. I'm Erica. And I'm Mila. And we're the hosts of the Good Moms Bad Choices podcast, brought to you by

the Black Effect Podcast Network every Wednesday. Historically, men talk too much. And women have quietly listened. And all that stops here. If you like witty women, then this is your tribe. With guests like Corinne Stephens. I've never seen so many women protect predatory men.

And then me too happened. And then everybody else wanted to get pissed off because the white said it was okay. Problem. My oldest daughter, her first day in ninth grade, and I called to ask how I was doing. She was like, oh dad, all they was doing was talking about your thing in class.

I ruined my baby's first day of high school. And slumflower. What turns me on is when a man sends me money. Like, I feel the moisture

between my legs when a man sends me money. I'm like, oh my god, it's go time. You actually sent it? Listen to the Good Moms Bad Choices

podcast every Wednesday on the Black Effect podcast network, the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you go Bad Choices podcast. Every Wednesday. On the Black Effect podcast network. The iHeartRadio app. Apple podcast. Or wherever you go to find your podcast. We're joined now by independent journalist Lee Fong, who testified just yesterday before the House Select Committee on Weaponization about some of his excellent reporting, which you can and should read and follow at LeeFong.com. That's the link to Lee's sub stack.

Lee, thanks for joining us. Hey, thanks for having me. Of course. So we have a clip of you testifying that I want to get your thoughts on quickly. Let's roll Lee's testimony. This part of Lee's testimony in front of the house yesterday. More recently, in collaboration with UnHerd and Real Clear Investigations and with my co-author Jack Paulson, I reported that Moderna relaunched these efforts to influence vaccine discourse last summer, again working with public good projects. Moderna employed the services of the artificial intelligence firm Talkwalker to

monitor vaccine-related conversations across 150 million websites, including social media and gaming platforms like Steam. There are many other examples in my reporting beyond the Twitter files and Moderna documents that show overreach by government and corporate interests to stifle free speech. Last month, I revealed documents on the activities of Logically, a British artificial intelligence firm that is poised to shape the 2024 election. It is important to underscore why the American public should be aware of this firm. Logically previously had contracts in the United Kingdom to combat misinformation during the pandemic, but like many other firms of this nature, they instead surveilled legitimate forms of speech, including thoughtful concerns about pandemic lockdowns.

Logically boasted of a special partnership with Facebook to automatically suppress and label any content they deemed as misinformation, giving the company immense influence over content moderation decisions. In my official written remarks, my testimony, I go into much greater detail about my record on these issues, writing on censorship and surveillance of animal rights activists and labor union activists. I've profiled the various private contractors that began by spying on behalf of the FBI during the war on terror that now utilize artificial intelligence to spy on conservative anti-vaccine mandate activists. More recently, I've reported on organized suppression

of peaceful speech by pro-Palestinian activists. So like Matt Taibbi, Michael Schellenberger, Emma Jo Morris, and others before you, Lee, you were peppered by questions, as is custom, by members of the committee. Tell us a little bit about that experience, what it was like sort of having your reporting be front and center at a hearing

when some people on one side of the aisle have different motivations than people on the other side of the aisle. What was it like yesterday? Well, sure. You know, these committee hearings are a little bit substantive, a little bit political theater. I used it just as an opportunity to showcase my reporting, to talk about a principle that I hold dear, which is free speech. It was a good opportunity. Having that additional platform to engage with the members was a good experience. And it's not every day that you get to talk to a large number of Republican lawmakers about Palestinian free speech, about free speech on the internet, to criticize the Department of Homeland Security in the halls of Congress.

I really enjoyed it. Five years ago, you probably would not have expected that Jim Jordan and Republicans would have called you to testify in front of Congress. No, I mean, this term is a little bit cliche sometimes, but it is a real realignment on these issues. And we did get into an interesting back and forth about that as the Democrats were kind of ignoring the substance of the hearing. Every time a Democrat member had the microphone,

they would just talk about Trump and how Trump would be a dictator and how dangerous Trump is and we need to talk about Trump in the election, not talk about free speech and social media censorship. And I just kind of detected a little bit of cognitive dissonance there because if you're concerned about an authoritarian president,

no matter the party, wouldn't you want to dismantle a government and law enforcement apparatus that allows the government to control what we can read on social media and in the news? Before we get into your most recent piece that is, I think, fascinating on this whole question of censorship, how did they respond to your pushback about Palestinian censorship? Because it has been the most kind of blatant contradiction in their kind of censorship and cancel culture values to say, well, actually, except for this case.

Well, look, I think there are probably some fair weather supporters of free speech. You know, it's easy to support free speech when your side is being censored. It's hard to stand up for your enemies or your political opponents, but that's where the real principle lies. But I do see a number of the Republican lawmakers kind of alarm bells going off in their head when I was talking about the issue. I talked about it privately, including about just this general principle of, hey, we need free speech for everyone. We're an open society, a free society. We don't have the answers. We don't have the answers. We don't think the government should have all the answers either. We need to debate and discuss these issues. Yeah, and I think because of Trump, Republicans, not everyone,

again, there are obviously some fair-weather people, but they're getting a taste of how the imperial presidency can be used against them. I mean, obviously, the military and war and all that is a different question because that's been going on for years, but like this new post 9-11 security state, which is you're reporting on DHS, you're reporting on CIS, you're reporting on all of these things that are under the umbrella of the security state, essentially being weaponized in elections, which is fascinating. Look, it wasn't that long ago when Democrats were leading the charge against the Department of Homeland Security and the expansion of the security state saying that, you know, the Bush administration will exploit this new agency created after 9-11 to, you know, sway elections and suppress our civil liberties. Now the biggest

cheerleaders for the expansion of the DHS are the Democrats. I mean, that's just kind of, unfortunately, how polarization works here in Washington. And so let's get into this new reporting, kind of a new Twitter files report that you put up earlier this week. It's such a funny isn't the word, but it's also kind of funny. It's kind of funny. So New York Times reporter Reed Epstein, so we can set the stage here. So it's early in the morning of the election in 2020, and we're all waiting for Wisconsin's votes to come in. And he tweets out that, do I have the exact tweet here?

He says, Green Bay's absentee ballot results are being delayed because one of the vote counting machines ran out of ink and an elections official had to return to City Hall to get more. Then an election official responds, that's not true, they don't use ink. And then the main election official account retweets that. And then you have a whole kind of pile on against Reeds of all of these people saying this is misinformation,

which is, it's Twitter, it's fine. Let them hash it out. But then you have the kind of government hall monitors flag it for Twitter itself. So pick up the story from, something that he had seen firsthand. And rather than it just being a benign tweet, it set off alarm bells in Washington almost as soon as these local Wisconsin election officials disputed the accuracy of this tweet. Yeah, like three in the morning, right?

Three in the morning, four in the morning, something like that. It gets forwarded along to the Department of Homeland Security, top countering foreign influence official at the agency, forwards it along to Twitter in San Francisco and starts pressuring the tech company to take action. Now, of course, the DHS says, you know, we never force these tech companies to do anything. We don't censor speech.

We don't police speech. But they say, take action. And then Twitter says, we're escalating. DHS responds, thank you. So it's clear that they wanted a certain type of action. And what action did they take? They censored the tweet. The tweet was going viral and it was receiving, it had about 3,000 retweets. Initially, once Twitter took action, escalated the tweet, those retweets disappeared. Anyone who quote tweeted it, that tweet, poof, it's gone, vanished. It still carries a warning label now today. If you try to read it, it says warning, misinformation.

It still has a warning label? It still has a warning label. You still can't quote tweet it. You can't interact with it. You can't comment on it. It's still shadow banned, I think is the right term for this, because it didn't get deleted, but it's all the sharing function, all the different type of tags that get attached to it to block its visibility are there.

And here's the rub. The tweet looks accurate. Yeah. Tell us about this. This is the crazy part because that whole process is wrong, period, even if Reid was wrong. Right. To me, then, okay, DHS and the election officials reach out to Reid and say, you're wrong. Right. Correct it. Like I've said incorrect

things before and I hear from the people who I reported on and they're like, that's wrong. I'm like, and they prove it's wrong and I correct it. Like that, and that's fine. Like that's how it goes. That's how it should go. But it turns out, go ahead. It actually, he was not wrong necessarily. Right. The local election clerk who disputed the tweet was acting under the assumption that Green Bay was only using the DS-200 machine. Right. Which does not use ink.

So she said, it's impossible. And that's normally the case. But because it was 2020 and Wisconsin was expecting higher than usual turnout, they leased an additional vote counting machine that does require ink, that is attached to an external printer. And there were some ink issues that night. So not only was the allegation based on a false assumption or misunderstanding, you know, they didn't verify it. They didn't do any of the kind of basics when you're engaging in any kind of media work like this, especially sensitive media work. And I think this issue

reflects the larger problem of this censorship regime. You do have the case of, and I've documented many cases of this on my sub stack and so have others, from the Twitter files that there are politically motivated censors out there, people who have a partisan or ideological bias. But there's also just the, hey, if you're hastily censoring people without doing any of your own fact checking, you're just taking the whatever kind of data is given to you by a government official and you assume that that's the truth handed down from God, you're going to get it wrong. You're going to end up censoring truthful information. And I think the other big kind of impact of this is that Wisconsin, a lot of people did not trust the integrity of the ballot there. And so when you have the government censoring true information

about the vote count, that doesn't increase trust in our elections. That really contributes to the erosion of trust. Because who do you trust here? If the government's saying, hey, we've got to protect the integrity of this vote. We've got to make sure there's no misinformation that lies to people. And then they're contributing to the lies. Who do you trust here? Exactly. And that's why you have the free press in this ecosystem is so that there can be some modicum of trust. There can be some checks and balances. And you reported on this with Moderna too. Can you get into, and a lot of actually other cases, can you get into that distinction

between outright censorship and suppression, which is something that the government and tech lean heavily on? They say this is not, you can still find the information. You could still read the New York Post's Hunter Biden laptop story. It was just algorithmically suppressed or

whatever. Can you talk a little bit about how they rely on that distinction and weaponize really that distinction to defend themselves? And before you answer, I just want to flag, maybe we can put this up in post, but yeah, the tweet today reads, some or all of the content shared in this post is disputed and might be misleading about an election or other civic process. You can click to learn more, or if you're a rebel, you can click view. Whoa. And there's the tweet after you click view. It's like an NSFW tag, but just for an election report from the New York Times reporter. And it says it has five reposts. Yeah, it's like the parental advisory content on like a Tupac album. Yeah, exactly. Watch out, kids. But yeah, you know,

just talking about this kind of broader issue of censorship, you know, my reporting differs a little bit from some of the other Twitter files, journalists. You know, I also took a focus on private sector influence. And you know, that opens up some different legal questions. Perhaps it's totally legal for one oil company or pharmaceutical company to collaborate with a private platform to tell you what you can read and not read about their products or about the policies that affect them. But we live in a free society, or I hope we live in a free society, and we need to have debates around this topic.

And a lot of the censorship did not just come from the government. It came from companies like Moderna, Pfizer, funding lobbyists who worked with NGOs who were helping craft the content moderation policies at Twitter, giving them actual lists of accounts to amplify and de-amplify. In some cases, those accounts that they were targeting to be de-amplified ended up getting banned. A few of these accounts did promote messages about vaccines that were not true, messages about microchips. But some of them promoted messages that are legitimate areas for public policy debate. People criticizing the idea around vaccine passports, you know, this idea that the only way you could engage in commerce, go to a restaurant, have a business, was to show your vaccinated status. They took tweets like that and from groups that were funded by big pharma targeted those messages.

So that's just another form of censorship. Again, the legal area is different because it's not the government. But still, it has the same impact. And they're funded so heavily by the government that it's hard to divorce them from the government. Sure, that's true. I mean, Moderna taking their basic science from NIH

and big funding from Operation Warp Speed. What is the distinction between government and corporation here? Right. While I've got you here, I'm curious. How's the Substack life? How are things going? People should, I'm a subscriber to Substack.

Everybody should sign up. LeeFong.com, LeeFong.substack.com. We'll get you there. Lee microchipped Ryan. There you go. But how are you liking it compared to, you know, because the rest of your career has been in newsrooms, like various newsrooms, including The Intercept, for a long time. Yeah. What's it like being out as an independent reporter?

I'm still figuring out my path. You know, I launched the sub-sack last April. And, you know, just personally, it's been a journey. You know, I kind of started out at a more partisan left-leaning site. Think Progress. Think Progress, sponsored by the Center for American Progress. And that didn't work out because I kept clashing with the editors and the people of the think tank

because I wanted to criticize the Democratic Party. I wanted to criticize and report on corporate interests that were funding the Center for American Progress. Yeah, no, that's not what we're here for. Yeah, that didn't work out. And I joined a number of more progressive left magazines and outlets. And they have their own kind of editorial freedom issues. Because of the polarization in Washington, a lot of right-leaning outlets, you've got to be a good foot soldier in those ideological trenches.

Same on the left. And I just have to be my own man and be my own journalist. And I want to be able to call out wrongdoing, whether it's on the left, the right, or the center. It's difficult to report on groups like Antifa, where the extreme elements of the abolish the police movement, if you're on the progressive left. And serving the public interest, I have to call attention to those issues as well. So I like Substack for the editorial freedom. I do miss working in a team, though. I like working with editors and other journalists.

I brought in some friends to help me with some stories. I worked with my friend Jack Paulson on a big story on efforts to suppress and cancel people trying to talk about Palestinian human rights. So, yeah, it's a mix. But, you know but really enjoying it. And if your viewers have an opportunity to subscribe, I would welcome their subscription. How have the readers responded to the Palestinian coverage? Because Glenn Greenwald, another of our former colleagues,

has talked publicly about how a lot of people who liked his criticism of kind of cancel culture and censorship previous to October 7th all of a sudden found him to be problematic and were leaving. Yeah. No, I did lose a few subscribers writing about Palestinian human rights and free expression. I've lost readers pretty much with every story. You gain some and lose some. And actually, to the credit of my subscribers and to my readers, a few people who said, I'm quitting, I'm not subscribing to you anymore

because you kind of wrote this story. A lot of them came back and said, I love your journalism. And nevermind, I changed my mind and I've communicated with them. Substack's a great platform because it really connects you more with the reader and I enjoy the back and forth. I don't know if I, I'm not I've communicated with them. You know, Substack's a great platform because it really connects you more with the reader. And I enjoy the back and forth. I don't know if I, you know, I'm not the arbiter of truth.

You know, I'm trying to do my best to find the facts and put it in context and do the reporting and deliver it to the reader. But you never know. Everyone has blind spots. And I enjoy communicating with the reader, communicating with people from different viewpoints. And, yeah, it's been a really good experience. On a scale of one to ten, rank Ryan as an editor. I'm kidding. One last question, Lee, for you is, are you still picking apart Twitter file stuff?

Are you still going through those documents? Yeah, I've got a few others that I'd like to release later this year. And I'm combining them with other documents. One thing that I found interesting is that recently I've been looking at some of these firms in Europe, and there's new scrutiny there because in Europe and the UK, there are stronger data laws, kind of like our Freedom of Information Act requests, but you can request your own data. So for people across the ideological spectrum, mostly on the right,

they've been making requests to their government and to private sector firms to find out if they've been censored, they've been canceled. And so they're doing their own kind of citizen journalism based on these data laws that we don't have so much in the US. California has a mini version of this. And I've been getting into that a little bit and it's been super interesting. That sounds great. Well, all the more reason to subscribe at LeeFong.com. Lee, thank you so much for joining us. Thanks for having me. Of course. We're going to wrap the show for now. We're going to interview Congressman Greg Kassar about the border bill, about Pakistan elections, about whatever else we want to get into.

But that will come after the show. We'll post it on YouTube and wherever else we post stuff. But otherwise, thank you, Lee, for joining us. And yeah, we'll see you next week. I've learned no town is too small for murder. I'm Katherine Townsend. I've heard from hundreds of people across the country with an unsolved murder in their community. I was calling about the murder of my husband. The murderer is still out there. Each week, I investigate a new case. If there is a case we should hear about, call 678-744-6145.

Listen to Hell and Gone Murder Line on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. to stereotypes that are holding back over 70 million stars. Workers skill through alternative routes rather than a bachelor's degree. It's time for skills to speak for themselves. Find resources for breaking through barriers at taylorpaperceiling.org. Brought to you by Opportunity at Work and the Ad Council. I think everything that might have dropped in 95 has been labeled the golden years of hip-hop. It's Black Music Month, and We Need to Talk is tapping in. I'm Nyla Simone, breaking down lyrics, amplifying voices,

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