Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 3/11/25: Worst Presidential Market Crash Since 09', Trump War On Massie Over Spending, Israel Freaks As US Says Not A Client State, Judge Blocks Gaza Protester Deportation

Episode Date: March 11, 2025

Krystal and Saagar discuss the worst Presidential market crash since 09', Trump declares war on Thomas Massie, Israel freaks as US says not a client state, judge blocks Pro-Palestine protester deportation.   To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show AD FREE, uncut and 1 hour early visit: www.breakingpoints.com   Merch Store: https://shop.breakingpoints.com/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Happy Tuesday. Have an amazing show for everybody today. What do we have, Crystal? Indeed we do. As per usual, many, many things are happening. Yesterday was the worst day of the year in the stock markets. We will get into what is going on there

to the best of our ability and what the fallout could be. Republicans are scrambling to get a spending bill passed to avoid a shutdown. And Trump is threatening a key holdout with a primary challenge. That would be Thomas Massey. So interesting drama there. Also, some drama with our great ally Israel over U.S. negotiations directly with Hamas. We've also got a bunch of updates for you on that pro-Palestine activist green card holder that the Trump administration arrested and starting with deportation.

We've got a court update there and lots of news. So we'll break all of that down for you. We also have Elon and Bannon actually told by Trump to make up. So what's going on there in that key relationship? That's an interesting one. And Twitter was down for most of yesterday. Elon is claiming potentially Ukrainians were attacking it. We'll see. We'll explore. Who knows? I wouldn't put it past them. Also would like to see some evidence. I don't trust anyone involved in that particular

dispute. So we'll look at what we know there. I'm taking a look at Tesla. Actually, I had to update my monologue because I woke up to the news that Trump is saying he's going to buy a Tesla to support the great and wonderful Elon Musk. So that's kind of funny. And we had an interview that we recorded yesterday with Brian Tyler Cohen. His channel is just absolutely blowing up as liberals are fleeing MSNBC and CNN. So we really wanted to talk to him about who he thinks his audience is, what they're interested in, and to what he attributes his success and the sort of failure of liberal outlets. So really interesting conversation. Yeah, I really enjoyed talking to him. I think that Brian Midas-Tuch and a few others are really at the vanguard of where the Democratic Party is right now. And just observing, you know, here in Washington, everybody

writes profiles about each other, but they're ignoring the actual stars on YouTube right now on the left who are not only exploding, but like leading a lot of the liberal energy that's not on MSNBC, it's not on CNN. So I really wanted to talk to Brian just about like what he thinks about the current moment, what he thinks the Democratic Party should do, his analysis of where things wrong. And he's an interesting guy and I think people will get a lot out of the conversation. Well, and he's also a guy with access. I mean, this is he interviewed. Yeah, that's right. I mean, this guy was on the Capitol Hill, like, literally last week. He interviewed AOC. They're paying attention in an interesting way, where he could be,

if he wanted to be, one of the biggest, you know, most important young people, so-called, in the Democratic Party. So it's important to get to know who are these people? What do they want, policy-wise, politics-wise? How do they think the last election went? Who are the new stars and all of that will be? So anyway, breaking points for trying to be here at the vanguard, literally, of where politics is.

I'm fascinated by it. I really am. Yeah, absolutely. All right, Midas Touch guys. Ben, what's that guy's name? I can never say his last name. Whatever. Anybody. Ben, you should come on too. I'll treat you fairly. We'll invite him. I promise. I would love to talk to him. I really would. It's purely analytical. I'm just like, who are you? What do you guys want? You and a couple of brothers, you've got the top podcast in the entire country. What's up with that? What do you

attribute your success to? Why does he to? Absolutely fascinated. All right, let's start with the markets. As you said, it's been an absolutely dizzying 24, 72 week hours in the markets. Absolutely, you know, terrible start right now. It's the worst stock market performance for an American president in their opening days since 2009. And the White House is not exactly offering up quite a bit of confidence. Here is Kevin Hassett. He is the White House economic advisor, previously served in the Trump administration, downplaying the stock market drop, saying it's just a blip.

Let's take a listen. If you're thinking about what's going to happen to capital formation in the U.S., if you take our cost of capital measures, it goes up 10%, 11% over the next year. There are a lot of reasons to be extremely bullish about the economy going forward. But for sure, this quarter, there are some blips of the data, including the negative GDP Dow, which are related both to the Biden inheritance and to some timing effects that are happening ahead of tariffs. You don't think Trump owns any of that? I think, you know, even someone that was right in the middle, right in the middle would not immediately attribute the soft. I'm seeing it on Twitter constantly. You know, how's this guy doing now? How's that feel? How's winning feel with the economy?

And they're not tying it to Biden, Kevin. They're tying it to to some of the uncertainty from from the Trump administration. Well, let's be clear, though, Joe, that last year the Biden numbers, we kept getting these great jobs numbers. And then by the end of the year, we see that they're revised down by a whole million. And so a lot of the numbers that looked kind of good at the advance release weren't good in retrospect. Well, they were still pretty good.

And that was a technical thing. No, even then. So it's just a blip, just a blip. Don't worry about it. I'm not so sure that's the way that I would read it, especially when you take a look at the indices. Let's go and put this up there on the screen. So we've got the Dow Jones industrial average dropped some six points in the last month and a couple, I think two or 3% of that, or sorry, 6% just in the last month and a couple of percent

just yesterday. Let's go to the next one, please. And let's take a look at that. Oh, there's the NASDAQ down 11% on the month, down full 4% yesterday. NASDAQ is a very tech-heavy index. So that's another reason why you should pay attention. Let's go to the next one, the S&P 500. And what do we see there? That's right. It's down 7.5% there in the last month. Keep in mind, things obviously could change by the time that we post this. But futures are not looking that great right now. I mean, basically a 0.5% increase there in the S&P 500, if not years, which is just the way that these indices are so heavily reliant on these so-called magnificent seven stocks. And today is a very inauspicious day. If you're a

technology investor, let's go and put this up there on the screen. Today is exactly 25 years to the day from when the dot-com bubble burst. And if you read this, it's really interesting. What the dot-com bust can tell us about today's AI boom is, quote, today some investors are worried the same cycle is playing out when it comes to artificial intelligence. Even if that's the case, there is an important lesser for investors. Ultimately, the early internet hype did prove correct, but it took years for that to materialize. The economy was effectively in a recession. I went back and was reading some chapters from John Cassidy. He's a New Yorker reporter

book, and he wrote a book in 03 called Dot Con. Highly recommend it. And that book just nails the very similar way that we think about NVIDIA, about Google, about Meta, about not only the amount of capital that they were burning as much at the time, but in, even a modest correction of, let's say, 30%, 40% for NVIDIA would still leave it massively valuable. That's a huge percentage of the S&P 500. Same for the NASDAQ, for the Dow Jones, for the total market, and it affects everything going forward just as the dot-com bubble did as well. Interest rates, how Americans are thinking about their retirement, consumer spending. Don't forget how many of these dollars are flowing through the economy that are keeping up employment statistics, housing. I mean, there's so many different downstream effects of what the dot-com recession, which we effectively

were in a recession for almost two years after that period. It was not a good time. Remember, we also had 9-11. And even with that, there was a huge public bailout, but the markets did not recover for quite some time. So I am very worried about this situation. No, it's not about the fact that rich people have lost a bunch of money. It's that, especially today, America has a social contract. Our social contract is we don't have any social welfare beyond Social Security. We have the number, and the number has got to go up because if it doesn't go up, then none of us can retire. And with that, Americans are very, very tuned in right now, just as they were back in 2008. It not only causes a lot of fear at the retirement level, it obviously restricts consumer spending,

which is a disaster in an economy with 70%. On top of that, we've got tariff threats, some that are literally supposed to go into effect today. And April 2nd is the big one, Donald Trump's words, reciprocal tariffs. That's right. So all of that right now, markets are spooked. Really the takeaway that I've seen on Wall Street is he's not kidding around and this is bad for us. It could be good in the long run. Could be. You need to sell it to us, though. You know, I remember the Biden administration saying, oh, actually, what you're seeing and hearing is in all that is actually OK.

Things are good at the fundamentals or look in the future for where things are. Nobody in American politics has ever won a message with something like that. They need to have a lot of trust and a lot of faith if you're going to put them through a period of pain. Yeah, and certainly Donald Trump has a vastly greater ability to tell a story to the American public than Joe Biden did. But as of right now, there is nothing. And, I mean, I think, you know, I have long thought that his policy was sort of insane and made no sense, especially given the economic landscape that we're facing today. But to your point, Sagar, you know, for Hassett to say, like, oh, this is just a blip. Yeah, sure.

We're just we got the hangover from the Biden administration. We're dealing with that. And, you know, maybe there's a little adjustment period as the tariffs kick in, et cetera. It's hard to imagine. Maybe he's right, but it's hard to imagine that's the case when you have no end in sight of the sort of tumult and chaos. So as Sagar mentioned, you've got the imposition of the reciprocal tariffs coming into effect on April 2nd. So, you know, all of the tariffs that were rolled back with regard to Canada and Mexico, those are supposed to be put back on at that point,

along with additional tariffs, you know, levied against countries around the world. So it's going to be an even larger action than the last one that he flirted with the last time we went through the tariffs. Are they on again, off again, et cetera. And also we should keep in mind, you know, we didn't roll back all of the tariffs on Canada and Mexico. Majority of them, the goods that are subject to USMCA were rolled back, but there's still a significant portion of goods coming in from those countries that are subject to tariffs. So you already have that. You have, as we're going to talk about in this show, a potential shutdown battle. How is that going to go? It looks like there continue to be some Republican holdouts. Are they going to ultimately buckle? The Democrats say that they

are holding the line. So you've got that as well. So and you've got, you know, Doge and Elon still doing their thing out there imposing austerity at a time when, you know, it looks like the economy is in danger of pulling back and even potentially retracting, if you believe what the Atlanta Fed has to say. So there's just a lot out there. And consumers are increasingly concerned. Consumer spending is soft and is retreating. You have the reverberating effects of the federal government cuts and freezes that are ongoing. So there are quite a lot of reasons to think that this is not, in fact, just a blip. Now, it's hard to know these things in the moment. If you look at that graph of what the market did during the dot-com crash.

We have that. I can show it to you. It's not like it was straight down. You know, it would go to, oh, and then it's recovering. No, it's going back to, oh, it's recovering a little bit more. And so it can be hard to know what the ultimate trajectory is. And, you know, there's no guarantees here as well what direction the market is ultimately going to go in. But while, you know, the gains in the stock market are disproportionately

consolidated among the rich, everybody suffers when the market crashes because people lose their jobs, consumer spending drops. And there is a theory out there that that's actually kind of a plan from Trump that, you know, he's worried that the tariffs could hike inflation. And one way to deal with inflation is basically to crush regular people so they have no money to spend in the economy so that there's less demand to combat the other pressures that would cause prices to increase. So that could be what's going on here as well. Yeah, they also call that the Federal Reserve theory of politics. Let's also take a listen to Donald Trump on Air Force One being asked about a recession and how he will, quote, land the plane.

Let's take a listen. We're just about ready to land. Are you worried about a recession? Maria Martiromo asked you and you kind of hesitated. I'll tell you what. Of course you hesitate. All I know is this. We're going to take in hundreds of billions of dollars in tariffs and we we're going to become so rich, you're not

going to know where to spend all that money. I'm telling you, you just watch. We're going to have jobs. We're going to have open factories. It's going to be great. And the plane is landing. And thank you for a lot of good questions. Okay. Thank you very much, everybody. So he still won't rule out a recession, even though his commerce secretary did. And Fox News having a full-blown freak out Fox Business over at Charles Gasparino is like kind of a, what, how would you say it? He's kind of a business whisperer of the Fox Business community, but he is definitely somebody who Trump has taken seriously. I know that for sure. Let's take a listen to what he had to say. One thing that people need to do maybe is go back, and maybe Scott Besson should do this,

read his old boss's book, George Soros, The Age of Turbulence, where he talks about herd mentality. The herd is really negative right now and it's focused all on tariffs. And I think what Scott Besson needs to do, that's the treasury secretary. I saw him at the economic club and it was a very wonky speech where it was all about tariffs and trying to explain it and all this stuff. And at the end, he starts talking about all the good stuff, the candy that's coming. We're getting good stuff coming for this economy and for the markets. And I think some of this is a sales job.

They have to go out there and maybe stop talking about tariffs so much and start talking about how we're going to infuse the economy. We're going to release the animal spirits. We're going to deregulate stuff. Which he has said in the past. Yeah. No, I think those are enormously stimulative, positive messages for businesses, especially, you know, there've been a number of things in terms of depreciation on equipment, all that kind of stuff that business really, really loves. And also the enticement to, you know, to open new businesses, which is something they want. They've got a lot of

business coming in from overseas and building companies here in the United States. So all of that very positive. I think this whipsaw effect of the tariffs are in, the tariffs are out. And I see it from, you know, small business owners who are trying to figure out their supply chain. You know, do I have to pay more on this or less on that? Do I have to stockpile stuff at my factories so that I, you know, don't get overextended and out of product. Those things are tough. Yeah. And is he serious or is he using this as a negotiating tool? We don't know. So there was always going to be turbulence in the Trump economic plan. But again, you got to lead with your best shot. The best shot here is the tax cuts. I will say this, though, and here's

another thing that I'm picking up. You get the impression that the people in the White House say, well, our voters are not being affected by this. That, you know, we had a very good... What percentage of Americans have money in the stock market? Well, you know, they all have 401ks, but what percentage, how much... Still impacted, absolutely. How big are their 401ks? And I think they're making a calculus that most Americans did not do well over the past four years. They got hit with inflation. The economy was revved up by the government, by Joe Biden, and people could speculate,

rich people in the stock market to get around it. Average Americans working class couldn't do that. That theory is going to be put to the test. You know, he's actually making a good point there, which is the idea is that the stock market is only paid attention to by rich people. And I would say it's paid attention to the most by people who are rich. But that does not mean that people who don't have 401ks and or retirement are not paying attention. There's also something emotional about the stock market, as you and I know from covering politics. People feel very viscerally whenever they see it go down. I think as a measure of knowing so many times in the past how when that thing starts

to go down, that means my job is on the line. That means that spending at my company is going to start to restrict. That means X, Y, Z. There's been so many different periods where the recession, let's say from 2008, wasn't just about housing. Of course, it was devastating, but those stock market drops had a real pullback effect. And there was huge problems with consumer sentiment, with unemployment. There were issues with mass layoffs and with firing, and a lot of that was financialization. So even if you don't care, you should pay attention simply because you're going to be affected by it no matter what. Every American is.

It's like the Federal Reserve. There's just – the American financial system, this is the bedrock, really, of our entire social contract. Let's go to A7, please, because this, again, just highlights the real danger that we are walking into right now. The seven most valuable stocks on Wall Street yesterday lost $750 billion in market cap, the worst day for the NASDAQ since 2002. Now, the reason why I think that this is really interesting in a dot-com bubble way is, again, if you look back to that time, nothing really happened in March of 2001. Nothing, or in March of 2000, there was no great precipitating event. It was just a confluence of factors. It was the Federal Reserve. It was asking questions. It was

this, you know, as you said, there was a bump a little bit later on that definitely happened. So people weren't 100% in that day saying, oh, it's all a fugazi. It's just that it took time to evaluate those. And it was pushed off a cliff for a variety of reasons. It was almost like the straw that broke the camel's back. That is the problem that we have here with the tariff policy, with the chaos, and with everything, is that the pullback, the yo-yo from that gives a lack of confidence both to investors and to companies, which was restricting overall consumer sentiment. So across the board, all of the inputs and outputs of the economy are very, very uncertain right now, which means that we are going to see not only the drop there, but potential ramifications. The White House has got to project confidence and faith with

the people, which I don't think that they have done a good job at right now. There's too much uncertainty for both Main Street and Wall Street. And in both of those, you are not going to see enough confidence from them to be like, I can make a decision for one month from now, three months from now, or even people who are retiring. There's a lot of old people in this country. A lot of them decide when to retire based on their 401k, you know? So what are they going to do? I wouldn't be too happy if I was 69 years old right now, I can tell you that. Camp Shane, one of America's longest running weight loss camps for kids, promised extraordinary results.

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Listen to VoiceOver on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The one thing he could do is if he said definitively, we're not doing the tariffs. That's what the markets really want to hear. Or he could say, we're going to do the tariffs, and it's because we're going to do them in six months. And in that six-month period, companies have X, Y, and Z. In the tax bill that's coming up. You will have specific investment credits for taking care of this. I will make that an absolute priority of this White House. Then you actually don't need to have market correction at all. We'll

give you a tax break if you build stuff here and we won't have to have a sell off and we can have You can have everything that you want right now, just not this way. Maybe. I mean, the thing is, like, that sort of defeats the whole policy of tariffs. Because if you're like, they're ending in six months, then everyone will go, okay, then we're just waiting. Like, we're not going to change our policy. They're going to affect six months. So you have six months, you have to reshore plan. To figure it out. You have to come to this government, and you have to say, here is X, Y, and Z. And if you don't do it, you're going to be severely punished. No Fox cons, no more Fox cons. You know, it's like, but that's what real policymaking looks like.

Maybe. I mean, and that's the thing is like so much of his domestic policy has been outsourced to Elon, who's just on this like radical austerity tour. Yesterday, he said that entitlements need to be eliminated. Yeah, that's right. Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid eliminated because those are, quote unquote, the big ones. So, you know, you've got that going on, which obviously for average people is just a complete and utter disaster. You've got the government freezes going on. There's just a lot of headwinds at this point that are all directly

generated by this administration and their decisions. And I just don't think that people are going to buy this line from them that like, oh, if things are going poorly, it's all Joe Biden's fault. Because, I mean, Trump's been in charge for 50 days now, and it's quite clear he's doing a lot. We can, you know, have differing opinions about whether that a lot is good or bad. You guys know where I stand on that. But he's certainly doing a lot. And he owns what's happening in the economy now. You know, he really has taken control of it, him and Elon, and he owns whatever happens from here on out. So, you know, to go back to Gasparino, I think it was interesting hearing what he was saying because it reminded me of a few things. First of all, it reminded me of all the wish casting that the business world and Wall Street did around Trump and what his policies would be. You know, there are a lot of things that have

happened in this administration that I did not necessarily anticipate. Tariffs are not one of them. He was really clear, repeatedly, on the campaign trail. Tariffs is the most beautiful word. I love tariffs. We're doing across the board tariffs. I mean, he was consistent. And if you didn't listen to that and take that seriously, like, I don't know what to tell you. Because the man told you many, many times that that's the direction that he was heading in. So no one should be surprised when he moved forward with the plans that he himself repeatedly announced that he was going to put into place. The other thing it reminded me of is how Democrats would talk about, like, and still do, act like their only issue is, like messaging problem. Like that's what, oh, they need

to, you know, just talk about the deregulation and just don't really talk about the terrorists. Like, let's just pretend that is all not happening. No, especially when it comes to the economy, you have a reality problem. People have their own personal experience with the economy. And yes, they are subject to political narratives and they are subject to changing their mind based on which president is in power or what their leaders that are most trusted have to say about what the economic status is currently. But if you are looking at people who are in the center, who are independents, who could go either way in an election, they have their own personal experience with how things are going for them.

And I just don't think that you can spin and message your way out of real economic trouble. And it looks like we could very well be headed for real economic trouble. The last thing I would say, because we've made the dot-com comparison, and there are definitely – there feels like there are some real echoes here with this, you know, technology that has yet to fully arrive. But there's a lot of speculation around it. The one thing that is very different, though, from this bubble versus that bubble is the fact that our eggs are in many fewer baskets this time around than last time. You know, the story of the dot-com bubble was all of these startups that were getting, you know, massive investment. And part of the pullback starts when the Federal Reserve hikes rates and then their financing becomes more expensive. And lo and behold, they're not turning a profit yet. So, you know, they're not able to get funding. And then there starts to be this

gradual realization that a bunch of these things are just kind of like fake and not ever going to work and not ever going to really have a self-sustaining business model. Here, I would say we have profoundly actually more risk because we have so much concentrated in these seven giant tech effectively monopolies. And that's what makes me really, really nervous about this particular moment. You know, I think that Trump believes he can sort of control things and, you know, put the tariffs on and take them off and let the market drop just enough so that he's comfortable and maybe flirt with a recession, but not go full recession or be able to pull back from that. Like, I think he feels like his hands are on the levers

in that way. But these things are really unpredictable and can have massive cascading effects that just get totally out of hand. And if you think that ordinary people don't suffer when the stock market drops, like I would recommend you go back and look at every major stock market crash and how ordinary people fared in the wake of that, because it ends up, the pain does not just stay on Wall Street. The pain does not just stay with wealthy people or even with people who are looking towards retirement and their 401ks. It has a massive reverberating effect throughout the economy. Yep, absolutely correct.

So, last thing, I just want to make this point here. Let's put this up there on the screen. This is the changes in the S&P 500 since the inauguration day of Trump's first and second term. And you can just see that yellow line going real down in the first 50 days of the Trump administration, as opposed to the first Trump administration, where even the drop that happened, even modest drops or whatever that happened, were overcome by some pretty overwhelming growth, up to almost 20% in the first 225 days that he was in office. So keep that in mind. And that's certainly something that a lot of people who, if you think back to, especially the quote,

normal voter, like the voter who voted for Trump to restore normalcy was like, listen, you know, we had a lot of issues. Sure. It was chaotic, et cetera, but the stock market went up and deregulation and the tax bill, et cetera. Much more middle class, suburban type folks. And the big question here now is how working class voters, other populist voters who decided to back Donald Trump in a Hail Mary style for this election, how are they going to feel about much of this, especially if this continues? So we'll see. But I do think it's a significant problem for the White House. And if they don't adjust their messaging and policy soon, they could have a big, big problem on their hands.

Camp Shane, one of America's longest-running weight loss camps for kids, promised extraordinary results. Campers who began the summer in heavy bodies were often unrecognizable when they left. In a society obsessed with being thin, it seemed like a miracle solution. But behind Camp Shane's facade of happy, transformed children was a dark underworld of sinister secrets. Kids were being pushed to their physical and emotional limits as the family that owned Shane turned a blind eye. Nothing about that camp was right. It was really actually like a horror movie. In this eight-episode series, we're unpacking and investigating stories of mistreatment and re-examining the culture of fatphobia that enabled a flawed system to continue for so long.

You can listen to all episodes of Camp Shame one week early and totally ad-free on iHeart True Crime Plus. So don't wait. Head to Apple Podcasts and subscribe today. DNA test proves he is not the father. Now I'm taking the inheritance. Wait a minute, John. Who's not the father? Well, Sam, luckily it's your not the father week on the OK Storytime podcast, so we'll find out soon. This author writes, my father-in-law is trying to steal the family fortune worth millions from my son, even though it they going to do to get those millions back? That's so unfair. Well, the author writes that her husband found out the truth from a DNA test they were gifted two years ago.

Scandalous. But the kids kept their mom's secret that whole time. Oh my God. And the real kicker, the author wants to reveal this terrible secret, even if that means destroying her husband's family in the process. So do they get the millions of dollars back or does she keep the family's terrible secret? Well, to hear the explosive finale, listen to the OK Storytime podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Sober is about understanding yourself outside of sex and relationships. It's more than personal. It's political, it's societal, and at times it's far from what I originally intended it to be.

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

So Republicans planning to vote on what's called a continuing resolution to basically keep the government open. President Trump has been making the pitch like, just give me a few more months so we can then tackle this out-of-control spending and pass our budget. So that's the pitch he's been making because, of course, you've got some people in the caucus who do not want to continue spending at the current levels. They're into fiscal austerity and they're concerned about the debt and the deficit. People like Thomas Massey, who has been the most consistent Republican on this issue, true, like, dyed-in-the-wool libertarian and Tea Party type, really concerned about smaller government. You know, he's not my political ideology, but I respect the fact that the man remains quite principled at times when it's very difficult, including on things like free speech in Israel.

In any case, Trump is out now threatening Thomas Massey with a primary challenge. Let's go ahead and put this up on the screen. He posted this on True Social. He says, thank you to the House Freedom Caucus for just delivering a big blow to the radical left Democrats, their desire to raise taxes and shut our country down. They hate America and all it stands for. That's why they allowed millions of criminals to invade our nation.

Sometimes it takes great courage to do the right thing. Congressman Thomas Massey of beautiful Kentucky is an automatic no vote on just about everything. Despite the fact that he has always voted for continuing resolutions in the past, he should be primaried and I will lead the charge against him. He's just another grandstander who's too much trouble and not worth the fight. He reminds me of Liz Cheney before her historic record-breaking fall loss. The people of Kentucky won't stand for it. Just watch. Do I have any takers? Anyway, thank you again to the House Freedom Caucus for your very important vote. We need to buy some time in order to make America great again, greater than ever before. Unite and win. Sagar, you may know more about this than I do. I know Thomas Massey

has faced primary challenges before. I don't think that he's faced one that was backed so directly by President Trump or been put on blast quite to this extent by President Trump. So you have to take that seriously. I will say I think he he has his own like support base and people in his district seem to really, you know, really appreciate him for the principled stances that he's been taking. But when you've got the combination of Trump, who has his cult of personality, and Elon, who has almost limitless money to fund said primary challenges, of course, you have to ultimately take this seriously. So what did you make of this move from Trump? And does it betray sort of any nervousness

about whether or not the CR is going to pass? Because I did see there were a few other Republicans who may continue to be holding. Yeah, they should be afraid because it's not just about the House. Don't forget, they've got to pass this thing through the Senate as well. And all the Democrats are currently on the record. No, they're going to have huge problems being able to get this piece of legislation. On the Massey front, I mean, look, like you said, I remember five years ago, I hated Thomas Massey because he voted against a lot of the COVID stimulus checks and he was, you know, holding it all up. You could say what you want about the guy, but I think what it has proven out is, like you said, he's principal. He's one of the rarest people in Washington, right? There's like only four or five people like him in the entire United States Congress, including the Senate.

So I think people having people like him around, it's good. It's good for us to have wild cards. And it's not Massey's fault that the Republicans only have a two or three seat majority, right? It's like why are we backing primary challenges against him? As you said, he's been absolutely courageous on foreign aid, on Israel. He stood up to AIPAC, free speech. I mean, this got Maha. I mean, don't forget, by the way, even on the Elon thing, it would be preposterous for Thomas Massey to speak out against Elon.

Thomas Massey was one of the first people in Congress to buy a Tesla. And if you'll all recall, Massey was on that call with Elon Musk when Ron DeSantis did his disastrous campaign launch. Thomas Massey loves Elon Musk and he loves Doge. So this idea is ridiculous that he's not, you know, in the camp. It's just that he is a libertarian and he doesn't want to vote for CRs and continued spending. He even said, he's like, look, according to you, Doge, you found massive fraud in USAID. This CR continues to fully fund USAID. So aren't you guys kind of full of it from the White House asking for full funding of an agency you say is corrupt? So what's up with that?

Right. None of it makes any sense. Now, you're right. He has survived multiple primary challenges. I was just looking back here. I know APAC came after him. Oh, they came after him. And funded a primary challenge.

In 2024. I don't think they even came close. No, he didn't even break 20%. Yeah. And Massey is, again, he's one of those folks who is genuinely, he's like Bernie. He's one of those people, to me at least, where all the caricatures of him are BS. You know who he is. He's a principled guy in his votes, in the way he talks, in how,

I mean, he's made decisions which are some of the most inconvenient in all of Washington because of what he believes. And I think his constituents reward him for that. So broadly, I don't think that this will work. You know, people like him, Chip Roy is another example, who Trump is currently backing a primary challenge against. These guys are, you know, they actually believe what they say, which is one of the most rare things in the entire city. So I'm behind him 100%. And I do think it's pretty ridiculous to primary him for the problems and the challenges that are a creation of this GOP caucus, not of Thomas Massey. It's not his fault. Also, by the way, you could easily have the CR pass if you had worked with Democrats, right?

But you're not, you don't want to do that. There's a lot of different varieties. It's like, this is just where they demand fealty to the king. And I think that's just ridiculous. Not to overanalyze this, but also the comparison to Liz Chase. Yeah, right. I mean, these are ideologically wildly different people. But to me, it's the perfect emblem of how politics in the Trump era just collapses down to the central divide.

Are you with Trump or are you against him? And so if you go against him on anything, even though he's like completely, I mean, he is probably the biggest Doge supporter. You know, he's all about the project of cutting government that Elon is engaged in that Trump has fully thrown his backing for at this point. He would be the number one guy in support of that. But because he dares to buck Trump on anything, then you get thrown in the category of Liz Cheney, which, you know, for Republicans, that's like the greatest insult you can possibly be imagined to be compared to a traitor such as Liz Cheney. So I thought that was, you know, interesting and very telling as well. Let me go ahead and get into some of the details of this bill. I think Saab makes a good point about one of the levels of absurdity about this is, of course,

all the Republicans are claiming that the government is rife with all of this massive waste, fraud and abuse that some of these agencies should be destroyed and cut out entirely. Yet here you are whipping your entire caucus to vote to continue what you allege is massively fraudulent spending across the board and all of this government. So this is, you know, one of the things that a Thomas Massey would certainly be bucking. But I think, let's put this up on the screen. They say the 99-page legislation would slightly decrease spending overall from last year's funding levels, but would increase spending for the military. Don't worry. And a nod to the concerns of GOP defense hawks that stopgap measures would hamstring the Pentagon,

would not include any funds for any earmarks for projects in lawmakers, districts, or states, saving roughly $13 billion, according to congressional aides, also provides a slight funding boost for ICE. An additional $485 million gives the administration more flexibility on how the agency can spend it. It also increases funding for the federal program that provides free groceries to millions of low-income women and children known as WIC by about $500 million. The other line from Democrats is who I think are going to hang together and vote in lockstep, certainly in the House. Schumer has been a little bit cagier about the direction there, but I know Hakeem Jeffries is whipping a no vote among the Democratic House members, and I think they're likely to stick with that and all of them vote against this continuing resolution, basically be like, look, y'all have the majority. Go ahead. Do your

thing. Republicans did get a little bit of a boost because a Democratic member just died. So their majority has they now have like a four vote margin instead of a three vote margin. I think I'm correct about the numbers there. But Democrats are also saying because of the nature of a continuing resolution versus actual budgeting and specificaccountable nature of the way that they are grabbing power for the executive. That is one of the concerns that Democrats have with this as well. Yeah, I mean, the problem I just see with this is, what are we trying to do here? Are you funding USAID or not? Why would you fully fund the government if you don't agree with funding the government? The argument right now from the White House is that, well, we need full range so that we can continue to work. And then maybe in September, after all that runway, we'll be able to come back and say that we're going to. It's like, OK, I've never seen that ever happen before. Right.

This idea that you're supposed to vote for something that funds programs which you yourself are saying are bad. Now, that's on the Republican side. On the Democratic side, it's the opposite. It's, well, why would we vote to authorize funding for these programs if you guys are just going to decide what to spend money on? So then if you're going to shut it down, then no, we're not going to vote for it. So it's a very ideologically inconsistent position and genuinely could lead to a shutdown. I mean, that's one thing that I think people really should pay attention to. Put B3 back up there because it's very important to say, like, the House Democrats are whipping no on this plan. There is a razor thin margin right now in the House of Representatives. Massey is a no. How is this going to pass through the House? And even if it did, as we said, they're going to have to

have some votes that happen in the Senate and effectively play chicken. And if they do play chicken over this, I'm not sure yet that the Democrats wouldn't want to cause a government shutdown. Because I mean, can you think of anything that would send the stock markets and all of that even more over a cliff? It would be a shutdown, right? Because of how much public money and services and all that the American public is dependent on. So purely from just a cynical standpoint, you would want to cause as much chaos as possible and just

say, like, no, we're not going to bail you out. In a messaging war, I don't think you win. My general theory of shutdowns has always been that shutdowns always fall on the person who is in charge. And as much as the president and all of them always try and campaign against Congress, unless somebody like Newt Gingrich literally stands up and is like, I'm shutting down the government specifically for this and this, you're going to have a tough time

and you're going to eat it. I mean, they have a trifecta. No, I know. They're in control. So, I mean, I think most people just logically could conclude you're in charge of the government, so this is probably your fault.

And I think they know that. I mean, they're certainly trying to shift the blame to Democrats, but I don't know who could really buy that when Democrats don't control the House or the Senate or the White House. You know, in terms of the prospects in the Senate, there was some hope there on the Republican side because Schumer has said things about how Democrats don't want to be part of shutting down the government, blah, blah, blah. But more and more moderate, like sort of centrist-y type Democrats like Mark Warner, like Tim Kaine have come out and said, no, we're not. We're not helping Republicans with this. This is all on them.

So I think hope is fading in the Senate, too, that any Democrats would be likely to go along with it. Maybe you'll get a John Fetterman. You never know. You never know. You could get a John Fetterman. You never know. You never know. You could get a John Fetterman. But in any case, it's not looking great for Republicans in terms of Democrats helping them out of the jam that they have created for themselves. Just to get a sense of the Democratic messaging on this, we have a clip. Who is this from? I don't remember. Some congressman that I don't really know. McGovern. McGovern. Congressman McGovern sort of laying out his case. And, you know, I think this is pretty consistent with overall Democratic messaging on the continuing resolution. Let's take a listen. I think maybe

you guys need to take a refresher course in arithmetic. Last time I checked, you have the majority in the House and in the Senate, and you control the White House. The idea that somehow Democrats have the responsibility to pass a CR or any bill, quite frankly, where we don't have any input on, I think is ridiculous. I mean, you run around bragging about this big mandate. Well, put on your mandate pants and pass whatever you want to do. And I think you probably will have the votes because even the so-called principled conservatives who don't like CRs, I think they're suffering from a case of Victoria's Sparks syndrome, where on Monday, they're a hard no. And then on Tuesday, they're a hard yes.

They'll cave. But the idea that somehow being in charge means that you don't have to take the responsibility of running this place is absurd. So he's I think he may be correct there that at the end of the day, even the Republican holdouts, save for Massey, will probably fall in line in the House. They did last. But for this, they did last time. And I do think a lot of the Tea Party era rebellion is basically over. Of course. You know, the combination of Trump winning again and winning the popular vote and the just like unbreakable cult of personality that he has. And then Elon as the enforcer with limitless cash at his disposal. Like the party is just whatever Trump wants the party to be at this point. So I think there is very little appetite, even among people like, you know, Chip Roy or whoever else would position themselves as Freedom Caucus or Tea Party members, etc. I think there's very little willingness to buck what party leadership wants them to do at this point. So I wouldn't be surprised if he's correct that almost everybody, save for maybe Thomas Massey, does end up voting for it on the Republican side. Do I think this will go down in the House? Probably not. I still think the Senate is a huge bottleneck for them. I mean,

at the end of the day, too, let's not think so big of Democrats, right, in this moment. They're probably too afraid to shut down the government. So will that really happen? I don't think so. It's March 14th. But look, shut down politics and all that. And don't forget, this would reauthorize much of the funding that the government itself says is fraud. So it doesn't make any sense. They should have just cut it. That's actually Massey's point. He goes, you told us you uncovered fraud. So why are you funding it? He's right. Why would you fund it? If the government's position is that this is fraud and an unnecessary program, why would you reauthorize the fund? You're actually wasting money by doing so, according to your logic. So which is it? I mean, this is the problem

with Washington, just the hypocrisy of it, where we're not supposed to just notice these basic procedural things. And will anybody online who's pro-USAID being shut down and pro-primary Thomas Massey even pay attention? Probably not. But, you know, honestly, you should. Like, if you're going to try and shut these things down and then also call out the one guy who's just asking you to be ideologically consistent, the whole thing is ridiculous.

Indeed. All right. I hope Massey makes it. Camp Shane, one of America's longest-running weight loss camps for kids, promised extraordinary results. Campers who began the summer in heavy bodies were often unrecognizable when they left. In a society obsessed with being thin, it seemed like a miracle solution. But behind Camp Shane's facade of happy, transformed children was a dark underworld of sinister secrets.

Kids were being pushed to their physical and emotional limits as the family that owned Shane turned a blind eye. Nothing about that camp was right. It was really actually like a horror movie. In this eight-episode series, we're unpacking and investigating stories of mistreatment and re-examining the culture of fatphobia that enabled a flawed system to continue for so long. You can listen to all episodes of Camp Shame one week early and totally ad-free on iHeart True Crime Plus. So don't wait. Head to Apple Podcasts and subscribe today. DNA test proves he is not the father. Now I'm taking the inheritance.

Wait a minute, John. Who's not the father? Well, Sam, luckily it's your not the father week on the OK Storytime podcast. So we'll find out soon. This author writes, my father-in-law is trying to steal the family fortune worth millions from my son, even though it was promised to us. Now I find out he's trying to give it to his irresponsible son instead. But I have DNA proof that could get the money back. Hold up. So what are they going to do to get those millions back? That's so unfair. Well, the author writes that her husband found out the truth from a DNA test they were gifted two years ago. Scandalous. But the kids kept their mom's secret that whole time. Oh my God. And the real kicker, the author wants to reveal this terrible secret, even if that means destroying

her husband's family in the process. So do they get the millions of dollars back or does she keep the family's terrible secret? Well, to hear the explosive finale, listen to the OK Storytime podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Have you ever thought about going voiceover? I'm Hope Woodard, a comedian, creator, and seeker of male validation. To most people, I'm the girl behind VoiceOver, the movement that exploded in 2024. VoiceOver is about understanding yourself outside of sex and relationships. It's more than personal. It's political, it's societal, and at times, it's far from what I originally intended it to be. These days, I'm interested in expanding what it means to be voiceover,

to make it customizable for anyone who feels the need to explore their relationship to relationships. I'm talking to a lot of people who will help us think about how we love each other. It's a very, very normal experience to have times where a relationship is prioritizing other parts of that relationship that aren't being naked together. How we love our family.

I've spent a lifetime trying to get my mother to love me, but the price is too high. And how we love ourselves. Singleness is not a waiting room. You are actually at the party right now. Let me hear it. Listen to Boy Sober on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. So we continue to get recriminations from the Israelis over the U.S.'s decision to negotiate directly with Hamas. Specifically, it was U.S. President Trump's hostage envoy, Adam Boehler, who negotiated with Hamas and made some very interesting comments in a recent cable news segment. Let's take a listen to those. Understand why Netanyahu, Dermot, others might be upset.

I do understand. I spoke with Ron and I'm sympathetic. He has someone that he doesn't know well, making direct contact with Hamas. Maybe I would see them and say, look, they don't have horns growing out of their head. They're actually guys like us. They're pretty nice guys. So he doesn't know me. And there are big stakes. He lives in a country where if it sets certain precedents, then it will hurt or help a lot of other people. So I understand the consternation and the concern, and I wasn't upset. At the same time, we're the United States. We're not an agent of Israel. We have specific interests at play.

So there were two comments there that caught a lot of attention. One, him saying what should be just an obvious statement of fact, which is we are the United States and not an agent of Israel. Not sure that that also always plays out in practice, as we'll cover in our next segment about what's going on with deportations. we are the United States and not an agent of Israel. Not sure that that also always plays out in practice, as we'll cover in our next segment about what's going on with deportations. But the other one is he said that they're worried, Ron Dermer, who is one of his top aides, is worried that he may realize in meeting with Hamas that,

quote, they don't have horns growing out of their heads. They're actually pretty nice guys, guys like us. So yeah, this caused a lot of concern. Dermer was upset. Bowler sort of walked back the comments about maybe we'll find out that they're pretty nice guys. We also have some insight that apparently during a security cabinet meeting on Sunday, Dermer said that he was assured the meetings with Hamas did not represent the Trump administration's position. He also told ministers they received assurances from the Trump administration that it, quote,

won't happen again and that Witkoff will be the only channel for the negotiations over the hostages. Also, some indications that, I mean, certainly they weren't able to strike a direct deal. But, you know, I mean, I think in principle, you should be negotiating with the parties who are involved in the negotiations. That seems like it makes sense to me. But, you know, Trump administration, after getting a slap on the wrist here from Israel, seems to be pulling back from that a bit. Yeah, exactly.

And let's put the Wall Street Journal piece up on the screen because this is actually kind of amazing. You know, as you said, inside of Israel. He actually went, Adam Moeller, on Israeli television to say his main goal was just the release of the last American hostage. But the Israeli public broadcasters were then basically furious with him because he had told them that they had offered

a five to 10 year truce under which they would release all of the hostages. And he called it, quote, not a bad first offer, which is where people really started to lose it. Now, it's still unclear how much Bowler speaks for the administration. Donald Trump backed him up yesterday. Secretary of State Marco Rubio kind of has downplayed him a little bit. Let's put C3 guys, can we, up on the screen. He said that the U.S. hostage direct meeting with Hamas was, quote, a one-off. They're affirming that Steve Witkoff is the sole major representative of the U.S. government in their talks with Hamas. But

Bowler still is receiving backup from the administration. One of the reasons why, as I looked into his background, he previously worked on the Abraham Accords, and it does appear as if he's got a lot of trust, at least in some of the closer circles. I think he also worked with Jared Kushner. So basically, with all of that together, what we're seeing is there's a split between actual Israeli foreign policy goals and, at least rhetorically, in where the Trump administration is. I did see Zedd say and suggest it's possible that one reason Trump is ramping up this deportation of these Palestinian students is specifically because he is behind the scenes pursuing a lot of policy where even

the Zionist people will admit this. Like, if Biden had direct talks with Hamas, they would lose it. Like, you would find Tom Cotton and all those people screaming from the rooftops. Here they're saying nothing because they can't really, right? Yeah. So I do think it's fascinating to watch this all play out. And listen, I'm cheering for this more than anybody else. Like to have a guy like a United States representative to finally just say we're not an agent of Israel. We have sometimes divergent interests. Just saying that, I mean, you know,

the Zionist people online were just absolutely furious with him for stating a basic fact of national interest on behalf of the United States government or that negotiating with terrorists. It's like, oh my God, again, they're the people who are in control. What are we supposed to do? They're holding our people. Of course we would talk to them. We'd be idiots not to, unless you don't care about the hostages. Oh, okay. All right. It's

very interesting, isn't it? So there's a lot going on behind the scenes. A lot of, you know, what are you thinking? I mean, I don't know. There's also a lot of vibes here too, of sort of like the Biden administration. Oh, Netanyahu's really upset with us. You know, like the leaked conversations. Oh, they're really upset with us this time. Like Biden's really pushing Bibi and he's really, you know, standing up for American interests. So it does have a little bit of those vibes redux for me as well. Rubio ultimately said the full quote was that was a-off situation in which our special envoy for hostages, whose job it is to get people released, had an opportunity to talk directly to someone who has control over these people and was given permission and courage to do so. He did so.

So, you know, again, emphasize, oh, it's a one-off. It didn't bear fruit. We won't do it again. It's just going to be Witkoff who you deal with going forward, et cetera. I don't know. It feels like they're more or less walking back this approach that they were taking. And the reason it made the Israelis so nervous, and Smotrich actually made some comments to this effect, he said that Bowler sought to conduct

negotiations to free American hostages on his own accord and called it an utter mistake. The issue there is they're concerned that Trump and Bowler and Witkoff and whoever are just going to go be like, OK, we'll make a deal with you for our American hostages and then good luck with y'all with the rest of this whole thing. Do I think that's likely what happens? No, but that's their concern. And the other thing is that Bibi has positioned himself like, oh, my first paramount concern is the return of the hostages. That has obviously never been the case.

But if the Trump administration actually followed through with a policy where the primary goal actually was the return of the hostages, well, that would move us forward significantly in terms of continuing to know, continuing to phase two of this agreement, trying to actually wrap down this war, et cetera, because right now, Bibi is, you know, doing exactly what he promised to do, not moving forward with negotiations and threatening to restart the war. We also know, you know, the other piece to add into this is that the Trump administration is backing the new siege on Gaza where humanitarian aid is being blocked and now electricity is being cut off, which is incredibly significant, not just for, you know, electricity being important in general and hospitals needing electricity, et cetera, but you also need electricity to be able to, you know, purify water and it would cut off some 70% of access to water in the Gaza Strip. So the Trump administration is backing them in that particular policy, which is obviously

collective punishment, a war crime, and abhorrent, and counter to the direction of wanting to resolve this issue and move forward. So I don't know. I continue to be not terribly hopeful. Yeah. I mean, I'm not hopeful in the sense of my ideal. I am somewhat hopeful for having a envoy who says we're not your client state. And while, yes, they may support this, if they were able to get some sort of five to 10 year truce, which clearly the Israelis are freaking out about because they're wondering if that's even a remote possibility. We went from basically zero chance, I think, under Biden to, I don't know, what, 15 percent? That's high enough. Yeah. Phase two right now is still up in the air. I wouldn't bet on it per se, but Wyckoff is still dedicated to it. Trump has not yet mentioned we're going to take over Gaza in, what, the last like

10, 15 days or so. I'm hopeful, though. He didn't say anything in the State of the Union. All right. Ever since that stupid video of bearded women in a woke, Gaza gone woke, haven't heard anything from the guy. So maybe, you know, there's something there. Right now, actually, Secretary of Rubio is in Saudi Arabia meeting with the Ukrainians. But importantly, the readout from his meeting with MBS

was that they discussed the reconstruction of Gaza. Don't forget that the dream of the Trump administration is a Saudi-Israeli normalization deal, of which the Saudis say they will not sign unless there is a free, or at least a different Gaza under either the Palestinian Authority or some sort of separate political entity. So they have a lot of different, you know, things that are pressing against them from the UAE emir, who is also very close with the Trump administration. And the Saudis, of course, have a ton of money that they very easily can deploy, not only in our politics, but they can affect the Ukraine situation as well. Part of the reason that these talks are happening in Riyadh,

literally as we speak. Yeah. I'm not discounting all that just yet. You know, just to go back to Bowler's comments about like, oh, they're worried that we're going to realize there are good guys. They don't have horns coming out of their heads or whatever. I actually think that comment is really revealing. And I think it does speak exactly to why there is such a prohibition on, they were very upset when Witkoff went to Gaza, obviously very upset about the direct talks with Hamas because, you know, Netanyahu has built his political career on making Hamas the ultimate boogeyman that you can never talk to, you can never negotiate as long as they're there. There's no partner for peace. They're just like the epitome of absolute evil. And I'm not here to like whitewash or sanitize Hamas and what they're

all about and the things that they've done or whatever. But, you know, when you're actually sitting face to face with members of that group and you're talking to them and they're explaining their reasoning and they're staking out positions and negotiating with you like they are human beings because they are, it makes it much more difficult to maintain that caricature and have it stick. And it's such an important part both of Bibi's power and of, you know, overall Hasbara propaganda campaigns that I think that really does speak to why there's such a freakout at the mere idea of any American representative meeting face-to-face with Hamas.

Yeah. So we'll see. I'm definitely enjoying some of the freakout that's going on over there. And if Trump wants to go more in this direction, be my guest. The problem, as you know, is that there is a major political force here in this town where even the mere suggestion of this, the light up, you know, the phone, Marco Rubio, can you imagine, you know, all of the people calling, people like Miriam Adelson and others and their pressure points over there. So there is a massive pressure campaign in Washington, outside of Washington, trying to basically derail any of this. Their dream is basically just blank check to Israel and then basically an abandonment

of a lot of this hostage negotiation period, right? And so for them, watching them go from their wildest dream of America's going to take over Gaza to, no, we're talking about Hamas and a five, 10-year truce, it must be dizzying. And they're trying everything they possibly can to push back against it. Camp Shane, one of America's longest-running weight-loss camps for kids, promised extraordinary results. Campers who began the summer in heavy bodies were often unrecognizable when they left. In a society obsessed with being thin, it seemed like a miracle solution. But behind Camp Shane's facade of happy, transformed children was a dark underworld of sinister secrets.

Kids were being pushed to their physical and emotional limits as the family that owned Shane turned a blind eye. Nothing about that camp was right. It was really actually like a horror movie. In this eight-episode series, we're unpacking and investigating stories of mistreatment and re-examining the culture of fatphobia that enabled a flawed system to continue for so long. You can listen to all episodes of Camp Shame one week early and totally ad-free on iHeart True Crime Plus. So don't wait.

Head to Apple Podcasts and subscribe today. DNA test proves he is not the father. Now I'm taking the inheritance. Wait a minute, John. Who's not the father? Well, Sam, luckily it's your not the father week on the OK Storytime podcast, so we'll find out soon. This author writes, my father-in-law is trying to steal the family fortune worth millions from my son, even though it was promised to us. Now I find out he's trying to give it to his irresponsible son instead, but I have DNA proof that could get the money back.

Hold up. So what are they going to do to get those millions back? That's so unfair. Well, the author writes that her husband found out the truth from a DNA test they were gifted two years ago. Scandalous. But the kids kept their mom's secret that whole time. Oh my God.

And the real kicker, the author wants to reveal this terrible secret, even if that means destroying her husband's family in the process. So do they get the millions of dollars back, or does she keep the family's terrible secret? Well, to hear the explosive finale, listen to the OK Storytime podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Have you ever thought about going voiceover? I'm Hope Woodard, a comedian, creator, and seeker of male validation. To most people, I'm the girl behind VoiceOver, the movement that exploded in 2024. VoiceOver is about understanding yourself outside of sex and relationships. It's more than personal. It's political, it's societal, and at times, it's far from what I originally intended it to be. These days, I'm interested in expanding what it means to be voiceover to make it customizable for anyone who feels the need to explore their relationship to relationships. I'm talking to a lot of people who will help us think about how we love each other.

It's a very, very normal experience to have times where a relationship is prioritizing other parts of that relationship that aren't being naked together. How we love our family. I've spent a lifetime trying to get my mother to love me, but the price is too high. And how we love ourselves. Singleness is not a waiting room.

You are actually at the party right now. Let me hear it. Listen to VoiceOver on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The next segment cuts against the idea that we aren't an agent of Israel, since we are apparently crushing people's free speech rights in service of making sure they can never criticize a foreign government. Yesterday, we covered the story of Mahmoud Khalil. He's a Columbia University graduate student who is a green card holder, so a permanent resident of the United States,

who was a leader in the pro-Palestine protests on Columbia's campus. He was arrested reportedly without a warrant and put into a DHS facility and slated for deportation based on his protest activities. Now, we actually haven't gotten really any specifics from the administration about exactly why they targeted this guy, although we'll get to that in a minute of why he ended up probably being at the top of their list. But we did get some what I consider to be encouraging news here, which is that yesterday a judge weighed in on this case. I was concerned that we weren't even going to get to like an immigration judge or going through normal due process, which, you know, if you are a green card holder, you have most of the rights of a U.S. citizen, including certainly

rights to due process. So we can put this important update on the screen here. Ryan has been following this closely. So he says a federal judge has temporarily blocked the deportation of Mahmoud Khalil, the Columbia protester detained by the Trump administration. And they also ordered that counsel for all parties appear for a conference with the court on March 12th at 1130 a.m. in New York. And they said counsel must confirm in advance of the conference to submit a joint letter no later than today, March 11th. So, you know, they are intervening here swiftly. They also said they needed to preserve the court's jurisdiction pending a ruling on the petition. The petitioner

shall not be removed from the United States unless and until the court orders otherwise. So there seems to have been some concern here, Sagar, that the administration was just going to deport him before the justice system, the immigration courts, had a chance to weigh in on whether or not this was a lawful revocation of his green card holder status. Trump administration, though, certainly doubling down, tripling down, quadrupling down, whatever. We've got a couple of messages here from both Trump directly and from the White House account as well. I can put this up on the screen. Trump posted this on Truth.

Following my previously signed executive orders, I proudly apprehended and detained Mahmoud Khalil, a radical foreign pro-Hamas student on the campus of Columbia University. By the way, it was also revealed that the DHS agent who arrested him was one of the guests, special guests that Trump honored at the State of the Union. So you've got that as well. He goes on to say, this is the first arrest of many to come. We know there are more students at Columbia and other universities across the country who have engaged in pro-terrorist, anti-Semitic, anti-American activity. The Trump administration will not tolerate it.

Many are not students. They are paid agitators. We will find apprehended to deport these terrorist sympathizers from our country, never to return again. If you support terrorism, including the slaughtering of innocent men, women, and children, your presence is contrary to our national and foreign policy interests. You are not welcome here. We expect every one of America's colleges and universities to comply. Thank you. And then put the next one up on the screen specifically targeting Mahmoud. The White House account put out this image of him that says

Shalom Mahmoud and then has a quote from Trump that says, we will find, apprehend, and deport these terrorist sympathizers from our country never to return again, President Donald J. Trump. So the White House of the United States using a Hebrew term? Interesting. Okay. All right. Got it. But we're not agents of Israel. Don't worry. This whole thing is preposterous. And just looking, you know, why don't we play his words? I think that's important because everybody's talking about him,

characterizing, et cetera. Here, this was from an Oppo account. I want to make everybody clear on that. This was posted by somebody who was making the case for why he should be deported. Yeah, so this isn't cherry-picked us being like, oh, see how reasonable. No, this is the people who want to deport him.

Right. Compiling online dossiers of what they consider to be the worst things that they could find. So let's find it. That he did. So this is C-10, guys. Let's go ahead and play it. Are you guys going to listen to the university and leave the encampment here? Of course not.

The university is the one who should listen to us. They should listen to their student body who are demanding to end their investment in the war that's happening in Palestine. Our demands are clear. Our demands are regarding divestment from the Israeli occupation, the companies that are profiting and contributing to the genocide of our people. Again, the university, once again, they are so stubborn in listening to their students. They are treating this matter as a disciplinary matter. They are not treating this as an anti-war movement, an anti-war movement that actually gathered thousands of students here, that actually sparked thousands of students across the United

States. How far are you all willing to go here on campus? We're going to go as far as we need to, to pressure the university to divest from the occupation. This is up to the group, to the leadership of the group to decide how far they will go. But now it's clear that the students will remain here. They will stay here until they achieve their demands. Okay. I didn't hear anything that bad there. I mean, you can disagree with the guy. That's okay. You could deport him if he committed a crime. I'd be okay

with that. Fine, too. But he didn't commit a crime. He actually has not violated both New York State law, New York City law, and or U.S. government. Now, according to them, what they're saying is that they can make a case for deportation based on any alien present in the United States who poses a direct threat to our foreign policy. Now, that's a very interesting justification because what threat would it make to our foreign policy. Now, that's a very interesting justification, because what threat would it make to our foreign policy? So are we saying that his presence in the United States would be detrimental to the U.S. relationship with Israel? Because if we're saying that, we're basically acknowledging that these campus protests are now a leverage point for the Israeli government in its relations with us. Now, they're not even supposed to have opinions about protests on our soil. I should, you know, look, if the U.S. government

was openly supporting or not those protests happening in Tel Aviv, it was like, shut up, all right, let them deal with it. But even that's a little different since we do pay for most of the stuff that's going on in their country. I just think the whole thing is the most preposterous overreach I've ever seen. And that's another thing I want to speak directly to a lot of these forces that are cheering this on. You have no idea what's coming your way when you break the seal, something like this. You want to openly set the standard that people who protest on a foreign government are going to be violated of their due process rights and revoked permanent residency in the United States of America, that is like an anti-Semitic caricature

of how people are saying, but it's reality now. And so when you then simultaneously speak out against the Ian Carrolls of the world on Joe Rogan or Candace Owens or any of these other folks who are noticing things, even if oftentimes they may say things that are incorrect or whatever, good luck to you trying to police the opinion. Because I think that Americans have very, very open eyes. And especially if you're somebody like me who wants to see a lot less immigration here in the United States, it's absolutely insane that the United States government has actually paused military deportation flights because of the cost. They got dozed. So the cost of apprehending people who are present here illegally in the United States is something that we can't bear.

The deportation numbers are basically where they were with Biden, not particularly all that great. And the full force of the White House of the United States of America is focused on some campus protester. Give me a break if you think that's anywhere even close to America first. So for all those people out there, for all the people who are supporting, cheering all of us on,

good luck to you in the future. You have the can of worms, the Pandora's box that you're opening. You bear a total responsibility for it. I mean, this truly is a new Red Scare. I mean, it truly is. It justifies the term McCarthyist because they're saying openly, there's nothing special about this particular guy. We have a whole list.

There are going to be many more to come. They sent letters to 60 different universities accusing them and saying that there's going to be enforcement actions for them not upholding the civil rights of Jewish students. And if you read what they put out, it would be impossible for anyone to really prove that they complied with what they want. You know, to your point, Sagar, we were all chuckling yesterday. Ann Coulter put out a tweet that said, there's almost no one I don't want to deport, but unless they've committed a crime, isn't this a violation of the First Amendment? So even Ann Coulter is like, yeah, this particular deportation, I'm not really sure that I'm on board with this one. And so, you know, it is preposterous. It is naked.

And yes, it is dangerous. I mean, it is a dangerous assault. The intent is a witch hunt to create an example so that people shut up about an issue that the administration does not want to hear about, that they find to be politically inconvenient, that, you know, some significant of their allies and donors find to be politically inconvenient and disagree with. And everyone, I don't care where you stand on this issue, like you should, you, in fact, if you disagree with these protesters, it's even more important for you to stand up for these First Amendment rights, because that's when it counts, when it is difficult, when it is potentially unpopular. Although I have to say, you know, the other thing that has been really noteworthy is how has this

whole approach gone for you guys in terms of maintaining support for Israel? I can tell you, if you look at numbers across the board in terms of when they ask, who do you sympathize more with, Israelis or Palestinians? Those numbers have shifted dramatically towards Palestinians. In the Democratic Party specifically, it's completely switched, completely switched. So now many more Democrats say they are more sympathetic to Palestinians than Israelis. I cannot tell you what a sea change that is in terms of American public opinion. And so for a country that is so dependent on the United States of America to provide a diplomatic shield and funding and military resources and all sorts of other things besides to be gambling with public opinion like this, you are one president away from someone who actually represents those

shifts in the country from things being completely and totally different. Not to mention, you know, when you have the whole United States government cracking down on college student protesters for protesting Israel, foreign government, and you are, you, the Zionists, conflate all the time Jews with Israel, something that the left is very careful and people who object to these policies are very careful to not conflate those two and say these are two very separate things. But the Zionist supporters frequently conflate Israel and non-Jewish people. Yeah, do you think you're going to cause an increase in anti-Semitism?

Do you think that you're going to cause an increased spread in these sorts of tropes, when it does seem like the US government is more interested in policing speech of Americans on behalf of this foreign country? Of course, like of course that's gonna happen. And it is happening. So, you know, this is an insane violation of First Amendment rights.

These sorts of things never stay with, you know, people who are over there who you don't really care about or issues that you aren't really particularly keen on. This is an aggressive crushing of dissent. And every American who cares about their own rights needs to care about what is happening with Mahmoud Ghaliou. Yeah, well, there you go. All right. Oh, why don't we play, put C-11 up there from FIRE. We got to show them some some love. Yeah, got to give them some love. They're a great organization. FIRE has written now to the Department of Homeland Security, the Justice Department, requesting answers.

This is America. The administration must not use immigration enforcement to punish and filter out ideas disfavored by the government or deny due process to anyone facing arrest and detention. They ask a series of questions. What is the specific legal and factual basis for Khalil's arrest, for his detention, for which you are seeking revocation of the green card, for which he'd be afforded due process protections required by U.S. law? And is it your intention to seek the revocation of lawful immigration status on the basis of speech protected by the First Amendment? So we'll find out some answers to that question. Yeah, certainly will. One last thing I wanted to note on this is, you know, they were passing all these, like, definitions of anti-Semitism.

And we were covering it here. And some of the pushback was like, ah, this is just kind of meaningless. Like, it's no big deal. They're just doing their— Did people say that? Yeah. Oh. Yes.

People were, like, downplaying that this mattered. Well, Rubio is asserting that Mahmoud Khalil is damaging our foreign policy on the basis that part of our foreign policy is to combat anti-Semitism around the world. And so those definitions that were passed come directly into play as far as I can tell. And as we covered here and as you guys likely know, they very clearly conflate criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism. So that's why it mattered that these official definitions were being adopted by the White House and passed through Congress, et cetera, because now you have a situation where they can say,

oh, well, he said, he criticized Israel. He said there should be a one-state solution. He said from the river to the sea, Palestine should be free. So this is a problem for our foreign policy of combating anti-Semitism as defined by these, you know, this resolution that we adopted. So that's why these things ultimately end up really mattering a lot. And, you know, we'll see what happens. One other thing that I read is that a lot of times administrations will go like judge shopping for the immigration, particular immigration judge that they want. We know we can put C9 up on the screen. We know now that Mahmoud has been moved all the way to Louisiana. And so the suspicion is that they are going to attempt to, um, to judge shop and get a Louisiana judge that they think will be more favorable to their arguments versus the judge that immediately jumped in here to, you know, say, you can't deport this guy.

We're going to have a hearing, et cetera. That's a New York judge. So we'll see how all this plays out in the legal system. Yep, absolutely. Uh, they're going to be very, very curious. that's a New York judge. So we'll see how all this plays out in the legal system. Yep, absolutely. They're going to be very, very curious. DNA test proves he is not the father. Now I'm taking the inheritance.

Wait a minute, John. Who's not the father? Well, Sam, luckily it's your not the father week on the OK Storytime podcast, so we'll find out soon. This author writes, My father-in-law is trying to steal the family fortune worth millions from my son, even though it was promised to us. He's trying to give it to his irresponsible son, but I have DNA proof that could get the money back. Hold up. They could lose their family and millions of dollars?

Yep. Find out how it ends by listening to the OK Storytime podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Camp Shane, one of America's longest running weight loss camps for kids, promised extraordinary results. But there were some dark truths behind Camp Shane's facade of happy, transformed children. Nothing about that camp was right. It was really Podcasts and subscribe today. the movement that exploded in 2024. You might hear that term and think it's about celibacy, but to me, voiceover is about understanding yourself outside of sex and relationships. It's flexible, it's customizable, and it's a personal process.

Singleness is not a waiting room. You are actually at the party right now. Let me hear it. Listen to voiceover on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an iHeart Podcast.