Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 4/11/24: Top Dem Inflation Gaslighting Shut Down Live, Trump Panics After Arizona Abortion Ban, Lead Found In Lunchables, Hamas Chief Family Assassinated, Tucker Defends Palestinian Christians, Media Smears Protesters As Authoritarian

Episode Date: April 11, 2024

Krystal and Emily discuss Clyburn's inflation gaslighting being interrupted by new inflation data, Wall Street fed insider info by government agency, Trump panics after Arizona abortion ban, lead found in Lunchables, Gideon Levy unloads on Bibi, Hamas chief family assassinated, rightwing meltdown after Tucker defends Palestinian Christians, media smears Gaza protesters as authoritarian.   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.

This is an iHeart Podcast. I went through while I was down in prison for two years. Through that process, learn, learn from. Check out this exclusive episode with Ja Rule on Rock Solid. Open your free iHeartRadio app, search Rock Solid, and listen now. 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, and digging into the culture that shaped the soundtrack of our lives. Hey guys, Ready or Not 2024 is here 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. All right. Good morning. Welcome to Breaking Point. Sagar's out today. I'm here. Crystal, how are you doing? Doing well so far. How about you, Emily? Always great to have you here. Doing just about as well as John Bolton on CNN last night, who was proudly announcing that he is going to vote for Dick Cheney in 2024. He did it in 2020. That's made with principles. It's a little too on the nose, honestly. To be voting for Dick Cheney in 2024 is really wild. At least vote for Liz Cheney, if you're going to do it. Maybe a more contemporary figure. The upgraded resistance model of warmongering. Yes. Anyway, important things to get to. in addition to John Bolton's voting preferences.

We have some inflation numbers that just came in yesterday, hotter than expected. We'll talk about what that means for you and obviously what it may mean for the political landscape as well. There's also another really fascinating story with regard to inflation data. A government agency was caught feeding secret inflation information to, you guessed it, Wall Street, who can benefit to the tunes of hundreds of millions of dollars from such inside information. We'll break that down for you as well. We've got some new abortion comments from Trump trying to contain the fallout over that new Arizona decision. And we also have some question marks about what exactly is going on in his campaign. In his mind. Yes, there's a sort of

tale of two campaigns going on here. So we'll break that down for you. Also, it turns out Lunchables are even worse for your kids than you may have imagined, which is a problem for me personally, because yes, I do feed my kids Lunchables, though probably not anymore. So we'll break that down for you. Very excited to be joined, honestly honored to be joined by Israeli journalist Gideon Levy today with Haaretz. He's going to break down the very latest that is going on in Gaza, including an Israeli airstrike that killed the sons and grandchildren of Hamas's political leader.

Tucker kicked a hornet's nest over Palestinian Christians. We'll bring you those comments and the fallout. Emily and I, of course, will react. Jon Stewart with a great monologue calling out Biden's hypocrisy on Israel versus Russia and human rights. And I'm taking a look at Jonathan Chait's latest piece, which may be his worst yet, which is really saying something. So breaking down this piece where he's, you know, he's going after protesters saying that they're illiberal and authoritarian. It's just there's a lot to say about that one. So lots to get to this morning. Oh, my gosh. Absolutely. Yes. All right. So let's start with that inflation data. Let's put the numbers up on the screen so you guys can see

coming in higher than expected. This is per Heather Long from The Washington Post. She's got some charts there on the screen you can see as well. So she says inflation in March came in at 0.4% for the month. That is an annual rate of 3.5% in the past year. The forecast was for 0.3% and 3.4% respectively. So you can see higher on both of those metrics. She goes on to say that gas and rent accounted for over half of the March increase. Higher gas price and high rent are keeping inflation above 3%. She had another tweet where she broke down the specific increases in a variety of categories that were really noteworthy. And some of these are just extraordinary.

So car insurance up 22% in the past year. I really have no idea what the hell is going on there. Car repair up 12%. Baby formula up 10 percent. Veterinarian bills up 10 percent. Rent up 5.9 percent. Obviously, that really hurts. Electricity up 5 percent. Restaurants up 4.2 percent. Gas up 1.3 percent. And home health care for the elderly soared 14.2 percent in the past year, the largest increase that we have ever seen in that category. So you clearly have a number of areas in particular, some that are most near

and dear to Americans in terms of their pocketbooks that continue to spike. Emily, there's, you know, a lot of fallout from this. Obviously, the political fallout, we'll get to that in a minute. But it also raises a lot of questions about what the Fed is going to do next. There was, yeah, the Fed has stopped increasing interest rates. There was a thought, oh, maybe next time they meet, they may actually cut interest rates. That's something that people who especially are looking to buy homes are really hoping for because the mortgage interest rates make home buying even more unaffordable than it would otherwise be. But that is effectively off the table now with this hotter than expected inflation report. Yeah, that is a really good point. And I think

another thing to look at here is that as the Biden administration, I know we're going to get to Biden's comments in just a second. They say inflation is coming down. The juxtaposition of these numbers with that, the important metric to look at is in some of those numbers that Crystal just pointed out, it's not even that the rate of inflation is slowing. And that's what we saw in the top line numbers, too. And that's what the Biden administration has pointed to in some respects, saying the rate of inflation has slowed year over year, month over month. And that's what's really been able to they've been able to use it as somewhat of a tool. That's not what we're looking at here. And that's basically's really been able to they've been able to use it as somewhat of a tool. That's not what we're looking at here. And that's basically all they have.

Whenever they get a number like that, it's basically all they have. But when you're looking at 14 percent increases in rent or 5.9 percent increases in rent. 5.9 percent. Yeah. I mean, that is devastating. It is. Devastating. And people feel it.

And there's no way you can talk around it. Yeah. And we know at this point, you know, at the beginning of the inflationary cycle, the idea that corporate profits and basically profiteering was contributing to this was really dismissed as this fringe idea. The further we got along and that wasn't the only thing that was going on, but that was actually a significant chunk of it was corporations seeing and they would admit this on earnings call. Hey, we can get away with raising our prices. So, of course, we're going to raise our prices because we want a higher profit margin. That trend has continued. There have been increased reports about how that is at this point contributing actually a majority of the inflation across a variety of categories. And we've also covered here specifically with regard to rent that there is a nationwide epidemic of basically rent collusion where they're using these algorithmic programs to squeeze every penny that they possibly can out of renters and colluding amongst a lot of large landlords in order to do so.

There's actually legal action being taken against this in both federal and state courts. So, you know, there are supply chain issues. Each of these categories has their own specific story. But corporate profiteering is a big part of this, which was basically put off the table to talk about for a long time. Joe Biden has started to talk a little bit about the corporate part of this, but has done basically nothing about it. As you mentioned, he was asked yesterday about these inflation numbers. Let's take a listen to his response. Thank you, Mr. President. Last month, you predicted the Federal Reserve would cut interest rates thanks to falling inflation.

But today, data showed that inflation rose more than expected for the third straight month. So how concerned are you about the fight against inflation stalling? And do you stand by your prediction for a rate cut? Well, I do stand by my prediction that before the year is out to be a rate cut. This may delay it a month or so. I'm not sure that we don't know what the Fed is going to do for certain. But look, we have dramatically reduced inflation from 9% down to close to 3%. We're in a situation where we're better situated than we were when we took office, where inflation was skyrocketing. And we have a plan to deal with it, whereas the opposition, my opposition, talks about two things. They just want to cut taxes for

the wealthy and raise taxes on other people. And so I think they have no plan. Our plan is one I think is still sustainable. I mean, this is obviously one of the biggest political risks for the Biden campaign. He's got a number of political problems ahead of him, don't get me wrong. His age being one of them, his unconditional support for Israel being another one of them. But consistently, voters say say the economy, inflation, even as consumer sentiment has improved a little bit and people's sense of the economy has improved a little bit. And we did get a really good jobs report last week and unemployment is low. I mean,

there are some things that they can point to, but this is just a major sore spot. I saw numbers last week, Emily, the same groceries for the same basket of groceries this year over last year, you have to spend $445 more a month. I mean, that's astronomical. The amount of money that represents for ordinary people is huge. That is huge. It's huge. And I continue to think the strategy of acting as though, you know, your eyes are lying to you, your bank account is lying to you. I think that is a really, really big error for the Biden campaign. And it doesn't mean that like from a political strategy perspective where you're spinning and, you know, you're doing the usual BS. I'm not saying Biden should walk out and take credit for it, though I would give him a lot of

the blame. But I'm not saying that's what he has to do. He should, though, empathize with people because people are really hurting and it has happened. It has transpired under his watch. And there's a whole lot more to this than people just not remembering how good they have it under Joe Biden or not understanding. Yes. That continues to be the line from the White House. Why aren't you reading Paul Krugman? Why aren't you accepting what Paul Krugman says about the economy? It's like, actually, why aren't you accepting what's happening to normal says about the economy? It's like, actually, why aren't you accepting what's happening to normal people when they go to get their groceries? Yeah, that's

exactly right. And that was really underscored by a noteworthy moment from a top Biden surrogate, an ally, Jim Clyburn. He was on MSNBC. And his whole argument was very similar to what you're saying. It's like, people just don't understand how great things are. And he's going on and on. We brought inflation down. And MSNBC literally has to break into his comments with a CNBC reporter to with these numbers on inflation being hotter than expected. Just coming across at that moment. So let's take a look at that awkward exchange. Is that inflation today is about 40% of what it was when Joe Biden took office.

And so the inflation rates are down and people's incomes are up. Not what they may hear on social media. One of the focus group people talked about social media and the misrepresentation, disinformation, all of those things are out there. And that's the battle that we have to fight. And we've got to do a better job of fighting it more effectively. So I'll validate that. I think the disinformation out there is distorting the entire process. I think social media doesn't help. But there's also a lack of validation that these voters feel. And I'm going to bring in Andrew Ross Sorkin right now because we just got breaking news.

The consumer price index increased at a faster than expected pace last month, a signal that inflation remains stubbornly high. And this has been their line, blaming disinformation for what people are able to experience in their own lives. I mean, $445 more per month for your groceries. We had now we have actually in some, wages surpassing the inflation rate. But you may have already been behind from previous inflation in the past that your wages didn't catch up to. Not to mention, the course of the Biden administration, we've seen the social safety net that was erected during the COVID era, all of that being stripped away. So the previous supports you had, not only in terms of direct checks, also in terms of of child tax credit and other programs, that's gone. Inflation remains high. And they're blaming disinformation

for people not understanding what they're experiencing in their own lives. And this seems to be the strategy that they're sticking with. I mean, we're like a couple of months into the strategy now. And it's, I mean, you can see it in real time fail for Jim Clyburn on Morning Joe, on Morning Joe of all places where inflation to them basically means nothing. It means like maybe their intern gets them a medium coffee instead of a large coffee, but not even that. Yeah. You know, when they go run out to get their coffee. So, I mean, it's just ridiculous. And the problem is going to be also, they continue to deflect to like different Trump culture wars things. Not, I don't mean culture war in terms of abortion,

but like these questions of like, Donald Trump is just, you guys forget how bad he is. Like the Trump amnesia line, they try to build into this inflation thing. You don't remember how bad the economy was under Donald Trump, et cetera, et cetera. You don't remember how bad it was with COVID. The View was talking a couple of weeks ago about how Ana Navarro just, she felt like she couldn't even play words with friends. She was constantly so stressed out during the Trump administration. She really said that. She's back to playing words with friends now. So that's good news. But they keep deflecting that stuff. Ana Navarro can play words with friends.

But it's like, it's their crutch. It's their, Anna Navarro can play words with words. But it's like it's their crutch. It's their crutch. It's like Donald Trump was horrible, so they don't have to talk in substantive terms about the economy. They don't understand that it's actually probably less risky for them to empathize with people who are struggling right now. That's right. And there's a way you could approach this. I don't know that Joe Biden is personally capable of this, but there is plenty of evidence out there, like I said, that a significant chunk of this pain and this inflation is directly because of price gouging and corporate profiteering. So when you get a report like this, don't try to dismiss it.

Don't try to underplay it. Don't try to convince people that their lives are different than their lives actually are. hot with rage at the corporations who are jacking up prices, who are making fat profits. Many of these companies making the biggest profit margins they've ever made before come out hot and filled with righteous anger at those individuals and at those corporations that are causing pain for American consumers. And you know what? It's not just theater, because the reality of it is the presidential bully pulpit does still mean something. When Joe Biden did a little bit of conversation about meatpacking plants and the

way that they were price gouging, it actually had an impact. You could see the way that they altered their behavior in real time because they felt that scrutiny from a presidential level. And they know, hey, this guy's got a lot of power. He could mess with us here, you know, from an antitrust perspective in other ways. It's bad publicity. Yeah. And it's bad publicity. And so and corporations are very like skittish about that sort of scrutiny. And so they actually improved what they were doing and it had an impact. But instead, you see this, you know, instinct constantly to gaslight and insist the problem is actually just the media is not explaining to you or you're too dumb to understand what the reality of the economy is.

No, the economy is, you know, it's complex for some people, sure. If you're an older person who has a home and a lot of savings, you're probably doing okay, even though, you know, for you inflation is a problem too. If you're a younger person, you're trying to get a home, that is wildly out of reach. You've got student debt hanging over your head. You've got some real problems here. And it's not imaginary. And it's not because you don't understand what's going on. Something Sagar and I've been talking about here is there's this curious inversion in at least some of the polling where older Americans who had been more consistently Republican, Joe Biden is actually doing a bit better with them. And younger Americans, he's falling off with. Now, part of that, I think, is Israel-Gaza,

no doubt. But that doesn't explain Trump picking up support there. And I do think that the difference in the experience of the economy for the young versus the older generations is a big part of that story of what's going on in some of the polling that's come out. And my best guess as to why he's not addressing the price gouging as much as he could be, just from a sheer political standpoint, is that it broaches this issue of the legislation he's passed, the super high spending. But that's what's interesting, because he did that in big ribbon-cutting ceremonies with these bills. He's very proud of these bills. It's like, this is what he wants to run on, but he's afraid to talk about them. It's a total catch 22. And it's an

unfortunate situation for him because he's afraid to talk about it, to validate that inflation is not going down. What did he say? Dramatically decreased. Yeah. He's afraid to talk about that instead of just coming out and saying, I passed necessary spending, which I don't agree with, but he could certainly agree with that and say, I passed necessary spending, which I don't agree with, but he could certainly agree with that. Say, I passed necessary spending, and then corporations jumped on the bandwagon and are trying to take advantage of us trying to repair the country. But they don't even want to talk about that because they don't want to validate that people are really still feeling inflation. Yeah, I think the fact, too, that that analysis about corporate profiteering came from the left. There's just constant like anything the left says or argues the mainstream of the Democratic Party feels the need to be against. The other way.

Yeah. I mean, really, since like the Clinton era, that is their natural instinct. That is certainly Joe Biden's natural instinct. And there's more indications. Now, there's more indications. Now there's an interview, I don't know if you saw this recently with Ron Klain, who was Biden's original chief of staff when you were getting some more progressive things out of this administration before he left. And one of the things he was saying to him is like, Jesus, Biden loves talking about these fricking bridges. But you know what? People aren't like experiencing a bridge at the grocery store. They are experiencing their grocery prices being higher than they used to be.

So we need to focus a bit more on that. And he is absolutely correct. And I don't think it's a mistake that since Klain left, not that things were perfect when he was there, but there's really no affirmative economic agenda whatsoever. It's more of just like a hope and a prayer that things are getting better and will continue to get better, which, you know, as evidenced by this report, hope is not a strategy. Let's put this next piece up on the screen from Heather Long. I mentioned this before, but I really need to do some more digging or we need to get an expert on to explain to me what is going on here, because this car insurance and car repair spike is really wild. She points out over 90 percent of U.S. households own a car. Vehicle insurance is up 22.2% in the past year. That's the largest jump since 1976. Vehicle repair is up 11.6%.

One theory I saw floated, Emily, but I don't know if this has backing or not, but it sounds kind of logical, is during COVID, people were driving a lot less. There was a kind of a bonus on car insurance came down because it was, you know, less risky. Car insurance insurers were having to put out less money because people were just driving less. Presumably, there's a similar dynamic going on with repairs because people were driving less. There were less auto repairs. So now that you have a spike in driving, a spike in auto repairs, perhaps that's what's driving this huge jump. But that is a massive expense for a lot of American households, 90% of whom, as she points out, own a car. So this really matters. Yeah, 90% of American households own a car, but it's always worth remembering,

actually, that journalists are disproportionately clustered in New York City and Washington, D.C. And listen, I didn't have a car for a really long time here because I used public transit. I walked, and that's similar to a lot of journalists. So this is a big blind spot for the media. It always has been. Gas prices. Some journalists do have cars. Many journalists do have cars. But a lot of them actually just don't even, these are not things that even register for them because they're taking the subway or they're walking. And I think that's why we're sitting here, Crystal, looking at these huge spikes and being like, wait, what? Because if there were more media attention paid to this over the course of the last couple of years, I think we would all have a better understanding of what was going on. But

it's always been a blind spot for the press. Yeah, no doubt about it. And also, you know, many of whom want to help the Biden administration and don't want to talk about this too much and are subject to this same, you know, shaming over quote unquote disinformation around the economy. So let's put this last piece up on the screen from The New York Times. Their headline, inflation was hotter than expected in March. Unwelcome news for the Fed. They dig into this prospect I mentioned earlier. There's all these indicators of like, oh, what does Wall Street think that the Fed is going to do? And Wall Street was thinking there was a decent chance you were going to get a rate cut here coming up.

That is basically off the table now. It is most likely that rates will hold steady. I saw Larry Summers out there, for what it's worth, saying we have to now expect that it's possible we could even go back to rate increases. This has a lot of political implications, although it's a dual-edged sword. So on the one hand, when you get rate cuts, you can have a hotter economy. You also have lower mortgage interest rates, which really, you know, really follow very closely what the Fed is doing. So those are good things. On the other hand, it can contribute to inflation. So that's the argument in favor of the continued, you know, trajectory or increasing the rates. So, you know, and if this comes into the fall and the Fed is

changing rates, that can have also political implications, something that Donald Trump is keenly aware of and has already been discussing. So in any case, the fact that this inflation report came in hotter than expected, probably changing the Fed's plans and definitely taking a rate cut off the table for now. And puncturing the narrative bubble of a lot of experts over the last several months, not that that will come as a surprise to anybody. Yeah, that's true, though. There was a lot of like, oh, we did it, softly hitting. And, you know, no. Mission accomplished.

There was a lot of mission accomplished going on in the mainstream discourse. And I think this is a real reality check moment for them. 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. She was a decorated veteran, a Marine who saved her comrades, a hero. She was stoic, modest, tough. Someone who inspired people. Everyone thought they knew her.

Until they didn't. I remember sitting on her couch and asking her, is this real? Is this real? Is this real? Is this real? I just couldn't wrap my head around what kind of person would do that to another person that was getting treatment that was, you know, dying. This is a story all about trust and about a woman named Sarah Kavanaugh. I've always been told I'm a really good listener, right? And I maximized that while I was lying. Listen to Deep Cover, The Truth About Sarah on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. 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, and digging into the culture that shaped the soundtrack of our lives. My favorite line on there was, my son and my daughter gonna be proud when they hear my old tapes. Now I'm curious, do they like rap along now? Yeah, because I bring him on tour with me, and he's getting older now too. So his friends are starting to understand what that type of music is. And they're starting to be like, yo, your dad's, like, really the GOAT.

Like, he's a legend. So he gets it. What does it mean to leave behind a music legacy for your family? It means a lot to me. Just having a good catalog and just being able to make people feel good. Like, that's what's really important, and that's what stands out, is that our music changes people's lives for the better. So the fact that my kids get to benefit off of that I'm really happy or my family in general let's talk about the music that moves us to hear this and more on how music and culture collide

listen to we need to talk from the black effect podcast network on the iheart radio app apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast at the time, there is an incredible scandal unfolding at the Bureau of Labor and Statistics. Before your eyes glaze over, it has to do with non-public secret information being released to a group of what they described as super users who, of course, are all on Wall Street and in a position to make millions of dollars based on this non-public information. Let's go ahead and put this up on the screen. This is per the New York Times, a lot of other outlets reporting on this as well. They say new questions on how a key agency shared inflation data. I think that's to put it pretty mildly. A government economist had regular contact with,

quote, super users in finance records show at a time when such information keenly interests investors, keenly interests them. Let me go ahead and read a little bit of this report for you. So this all started back in February. There was an email that was sent to a group of users explaining how a methodological tweet could have contributed to an unexpected jump in housing costs in the Consumer Price Index. And it was addressed to, quote, super users circulated rapidly around Wall Street. And some journalists got their hands on this and said, wait a second, what the hell is going on here? Is there some official list of super users who are being clued in on all of this information? And the BLS, no, no, no, it's just a one-off. This is not normal procedure.

Don't worry about it. Well, now we had a Freedom of Information Act request that showed that the agency, or at least that economist who sent the original email, was in regular contact with users in the finance industry. And what you can see here is one of those exchanges where a super user said, hey, would it be possible to be on the super user email list? The employer replies, yes,

I can add you to the list. A reporter's efforts to reach the employees identified, the Bureau confirmed, were unsuccessful. They described this individual as a relatively low ranking but long time official within the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Standard Statistics. I'm confusing myself. Statistics. Yeah, I'm right about that. Okay. So anyway, the fact that you have people in finance emailing this person, like, hey, can I get on that cool list, indicates this was not a one-off. And they got their hands on additional emails, some of which did, in fact, contain significant non-public information. Now, this is like some really wonky stuff about, oh, we're making this methodological change and how

we calculate the housing, inflation, et cetera. But if this is what you do and you're trading potentially hundreds of millions of dollars based on this information and what it's going to do to the markets, which, you know, by the way, when this inflation data came out yesterday, huge market crash. So if you have a heads up that that's the sort of thing that's coming, you can imagine the kind of bank that you can make off of that. It is an extraordinary scandal. And the last thing I'll say here is, you know, let me let me give you a sense of who some of the recipients on this were. Apparently, the names were redacted, but their employers were not. So you're able to get a sense of, all right, well, who are these quote unquote super users? They say that many of the

recipients appear to have been in-house economists at large investment banks like Barclays, Nomura, and BNP Paribas. Others work for private research firms, which sell their analysis to investors. Some recipients appear to have been analysts at large hedge funds, such as Millennium Capital Partners, Brevin Howard, I don't know who these people are, and Citadel, which trade directly on their research. In at least one case, emails to super users appear to have shared methodological details that were not yet public. So it's exactly who you expect. It's these in-house economists. It's people at these firms that sell their research so other rich people can benefit from this inside information. And it's firms that can directly trade on this research as well. So it's honestly, it's pretty extraordinary.

And frankly, based on the details that came out here, the agency is not really commenting at this point, but this supposedly low-level employee seems to have copied, you know, a large distribution list within the BLS. So the suggestion is he certainly didn't think he was doing anything wrong and it's very likely this was sort of, you know, accepted or even authorized and directed from higher level officials who, you know, likely knew what was going on. I seriously, I seriously doubt it was just one employee freelancing on this thing. Yeah, no. And a couple of points. One, the New York Times actually broke a lot of the story open because of FOIA. They filed FOIA requests. That's right. Got this like vast scope of what had been going on. And all you need to know, basically, is that in the Times story it says, one of the BLS employees, and this is the Times writes, the BLS had announced the change in a news release in early January, but did not publish details about it on its website until mid-February,

two weeks after the email from the employee. One of the BLS employees said, quote, it wasn't appropriate to be sharing information that wasn't public and hadn't been fully vetted. So if the BLS is saying that it wasn't, was not appropriate to be sharing that information, just internalize that for a moment because that tells you what you need to know. The BLS says this is not appropriate. There you go.

Right. It's a high stakes, not, I shouldn't say error because it doesn't sound like it was an error. It sounds like it was systematic. So not appropriate and on that scale. And those are the two big takeaways, I think, from the story that I would hope continues to reverberate because there's a lot more to know about exactly who was benefiting. I'm surprised this isn't a bigger story, to be honest with you, because it also raises a lot of questions about like, OK, well, if this was just what they were doing at BLM, what other kind of non-public information is Wall Street and their wealthy clients? What are they benefiting from? You know, it contributes, obviously, to not only the sense, but the reality that there's one game being played among the wealthy and another one being played among everyone else. Just to

give you a sense of the tone of these emails, that one that I mentioned that definitely contained non-public information, they say on January 31, this employee sent an email to his super users describing coming changes to the way the agency calculates used car prices at the time a crucial issue for inflation watchers. The email included a three-page document providing detailed answers to questions about the change and a spreadsheet showing how they would affect calculations. Quote, thank you all for your very difficult, challenging, and thoughtful questions, the email said. It is your questions that help us flesh out all the potential problems. So do you really think this employee was just on his own or her own

freelancing and compiling this three-page document with the frequently asked questions and a spreadsheet showing how they affect calculations and telling these super users, hey, thank you, we're taking in your input. We really appreciate it. We really appreciate it. You really think this person was just freelancing? It's going to be interesting to see how this agency handles this situation if they just scapegoat this one employee and say, oh, he or she was just freelancing. We had nothing to do with it. Or if there are larger recriminations and we really come to understand how widespread this communication was and whether this was the only instance, you know, this particular list of super users in this type of information or if there's way more Sharing of inside information than we have an understanding of at this point. Yeah. No, absolutely And the other thing at the end of the story

That is noted is they say You know the after years of remaining low and stable, inflation started to take off in 2021. And it has remained a major news story ever since because it influences Federal Reserve policy as a major driver of market trading. Well, yeah, no kidding. And on top of that, I think you put it really well in the beginning of this segment, Crystal, where you talked about the potential scale of this. It's not just one person talking to, you know, 10 different people, sharing a document with 10 different people. It is then the decisions that those 10 different people make at all of their places. And it just can have a ripple effect throughout literally the

entire economy, as that paragraph highlights. It is a major driver of market trading. So you have this employee engaging in long back and forth, one-on-one. He says, I can't share some of this data, but that's not a benefit that everyone gets, obviously. So I agree with you. This should be a much bigger story. 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. She was a decorated veteran, a Marine who saved her comrades, a hero. She was stoic, modest, tough. Someone who inspired people. Everyone thought they knew her. Until they didn't. I remember sitting on her couch and asking her, Is this real? Is this real? Is this real? Is this real? I just couldn't wrap my head around what kind of person would do that to another person that was getting treatment, that was, you know, dying.

This is a story all about trust and about a woman named Sarah Kavanaugh. I've always been told I'm a really good listener, right? And I maximized that while I was lying. Listen to Deep Cover The Truth About Sarah on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, amplifying voices, and digging into the culture that shaped the soundtrack of our lives. My favorite line on there was, my son and my daughter gonna be proud when they hear my old tapes. Now I'm curious, do they like rap along now? Yeah,

cause I bring him on tour with me, and he's getting older now too, so his friends are starting to understand what that type of music is, and they're starting to be like, yo, your dad's like really the GOAT, like he's a legend so he gets it what does it mean to leave behind a music legacy for your family it means a lot to me just having a good catalog and just being able to make people feel good like that's what's really

important and that's what stands out is that our music changes people's lives for the better so the fact that my kids get to benefit off of that, I'm really happy. Or my family in general. Let's talk about the music that moves us. To hear this and more on how music and culture collide, listen to We Need to Talk from the Black Effect Podcast Network

on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. So the economy, a big problem for Joe Biden, but Donald Trump has some problems of his own, Emily. Donald Trump,

you will be shocked to learn, has some problems of his own. Now, Donald Trump was in Atlanta yesterday. He bought some 30 milkshakes for people at a Chick-fil-A. Did you see that? I did see that. Do we know flavors? Do we have any intel there? Not that I'm aware of, but we'll certainly update everyone if we get that information. Yeah, because cookies and cream is the obvious choice. At Chick-fil-A, yes. The obvious go-to choice at Chick-fil-A. The frosted lemonade at Chick-fil-A is incredible. I'm a fan of the diet frosted lemonade.

Oh, yes. Yes, it is good. Do people still get canceled on the left for going to Chick-fil-A, by the way? I was going to say, I think you might have just gotten canceled. Diet frosted lemonade is amazing. There you go. Cancel crystal. Hashtag, let's get it trending.

But Don Chopp was in Atlanta yesterday, and he was doing some back and forth with reporters, actually, after he had touched down in Atlanta. And so let's actually just roll this clip of Donald Trump talking about the Arizona Supreme Court abortion ruling that thrust their abortion law, basically, in the entire state of Arizona back to 1864. Ren and I covered this yesterday, but you didn't mishear me. 1864 is where the Arizona Supreme Court said the law now stands with the abortion, basically the abortion policy that when Arizona was a territory passed in 1864. Everyone's pretty familiar with this story by now, but likely that'll be overturned in November. Not overturned, I shouldn't say that sounds like a legal term, but the people of Arizona will likely overturn that in November.

There's a ballot initiative underway right now to enshrine abortion rights into the Constitution. So Trump was asked about it. Here's what he had to say. Mr. President, did Arizona go too far? Did Arizona go too far? Yeah, they did, and that'll be straightened out. And as you know, it's all about states' rights. That'll be straightened out. And I'm sure that the governor and everybody else are going to bring it back into reason, and that will be taken care of, I think, very quickly.

What do you think about Florida? Florida's- Florida's probably maybe going to change also. See, it's all about the will of the people. This is what I've been saying. It's a perfect system. So for 52 years, people have wanted to end roads, and they've been doing it for 50 years. And now, they're going to do it for 50 years.

And they're going to do it for 50 years. And they're going to do it for 50 years. And they're going to do it for 50 years. And they're going to do it for 50 years. And they're going to do it for 50 years. And they're going to do it for 50 years. And they're going to do it for 50 years. And they're going to do it for 50 years.

And they're going to do it for 50 years. And they're going to do it for 50 years. And they're going to do it for 50 years. And they're going to do it for 50 years. And they're going to do also. See, it's all about the will of the people. This is what I've been saying. It's a perfect system. So for 52 years, people have wanted to end Roe v. Wade to get it back to the states. We did that. It was an incredible thing, an incredible achievement. We did that, and now the states have it, and the states are putting out what they want.

It's the will of the people. So Florida's probably going to change. Arizona's going to definitely change. Arizona is going to definitely change. Everybody wants that to happen. And you're getting the will of the people. It's been pretty amazing. It's pretty amazing, Emily. It's pretty amazing. He said it's the perfect system, which I think some people in California would disagree with because they're basically ruled by referendum. The will of the people has some interesting effects in California, but that's his line and he's sticking with it. It's actually funny because he said on Monday, he put out a big

statement that had a huge ripple effect throughout the conservative movement, the anti-abortion movement, saying this all needs to be left to the states, essentially. After the fall of Roe, you know, Trump basically is like, I gave you guys the end of Roe, you know, Trump basically is like, I gave you guys the end of Roe, so we're just going to kick it back to the states now. And so he actually, this Arizona ruling, gave him an opportunity to try out that campaign strategy, that messaging strategy, and he's sticking with it, Crystal. Yeah, well, I mean, this was very inconvenient for him and for all Republicans, frankly, but especially for him, because like you said, he just did this whole thing of like, oh, is this beautiful democracy?

Will the people states rights? And then Arizona's like, how about in our state? We ban it completely in a way that would be acceptable to about five percent of the population who hold this position. So his whole leave it up to the states thing kind of immediately undermined by the reality of this decision in Arizona. You know, I also think, listen, he realizes abortion is a big problem. Yes. Very clearly. Absolutely. I don't think there's really anything he can do about it, though, no matter where he tries to message himself or what words he put, whatever he does.

Because the bottom line is he's responsible for Roe versus Wade being overturned. That's the bottom line. He's celebrating, even in those comments, he was celebrating that. So, you know, his latest effort here, I can put this up on the screen from CNN. He was asked, I think in that same exchange, would he sign a federal abortion ban? He said, no, we don't have any more details about, okay, well, what if it was 15 weeks? What if it was six weeks? Or is it just if it's a blanket abortion ban, would he not sign it? There's also other questions, Emily, as you know, probably better than I do. Some of the people who would potentially be involved in this administration, they're looking at the Comstack Act and enforcing that, which would be a de facto abortion ban without actually having anything

having to be signed or passed through Congress. So what about that? So it doesn't really answer a lot of questions about the sort of these sort of like nuanced details, but it does show you politically he's trying to run as far away from this as he possibly can. But again, I mean, the Biden administration has already, the Biden campaign has already put out a very powerful and emotional ad that Sagar and I played on Tuesday on this issue. Trump has continued to celebrate the fact that he was the guy that got Roe versus Wade overturned. And frankly, you know, his whole leave it up to the states thing, it really smacks of political opportunism and pandering.

Yeah. Because it's not a moral position. Like, if you actually are pro-life, and you genuinely are, and you think abortion is murder, you're not going to be like, oh, but it's cool if it happens in California. Let Californians decide. Yeah. Right, yeah, no, it doesn't make a lot of sense.

Although, so I heard Nancy Mace, I talked about this yesterday on NPR, kind of going with this strategy in these conversations with NPR and talking of going with this strategy in these conversations with NPR and talking about how most Americans find themselves at this point of agreement in the second trimester. So most Americans are not on board with the full like democratic policy prescription, which is basically like Roe allowed for states to make their own decisions about what happened in the third trimester. And Nancy Mace and a lot of Republicans have said the best way for the GOP to message the abortion issue is to talk about that and then talk

about sort of kicking it to the states after we find that point of consensus. People have tried the 15-week strategy. That was Lindsey Graham's big idea. People have tried all of these different ways of talking about it since Roe, and nothing is working. Nothing is working. So that's where Trump came out and tried to, going into the summer, neutralize the question of abortion by saying, this is my position. It's now up to the people. Interestingly enough, the Arizona Supreme Court had a similar point. They said this should be decided not by the court but by the legislature and the people of Arizona, which is why they allowed the 1864 thing to go into effect. And the people of Arizona are going to make a decision. And it's not necessarily ironic, but that being on the ballot in November, good luck to Carrie

Lake and Donald Trump in November. If that's on the ballot in Arizona, it could be on the ballot in a lot of other states too. And some of which are swing states. It's on the ballot in Arizona. It could be on the ballot in a lot of other states, too, and some of which are swing states. It's on the ballot in Florida as well. I wonder what you make of that because, listen, on the one hand, Florida's trend to the right seems pretty clear. How much does Santas win it by, like, 16 points or something? I think Trump won it by four, if memory serves, thereabouts, which is not, like, a crazy margin. It's not a massive margin, especially if you believe the polling, which I'm not sure if I do or not. But if you believe the polling that shows Joe Biden actually doing pretty well among older residents, Florida famously,

and Arizona too has a lot of older residents. I'm not saying Florida will be in play, but it's not crazy to me at this point. No, not at all. Since you have the abortion ballot initiative, you have a weed ballot initiative, you have, you know, this older population, which seems to be more friendly to Joe Biden than any other, you know, age demographic group that Florida could possibly be put back in play really kind of solely based on this one issue. It's also why I know you and Ryan did a great job covering this yesterday, but watching Republicans like Carrie Lake, who previously was like, oh, this is a great, great law that's on the books. We already got a great law in the books talking about this 1864 thing.

And then when the court actually rules the way she claimed she wanted them to rule, she's running away as far and as fast as she possibly can. And, you know, it was one thing when this was all hypothetical. Yeah, exactly. It was one thing when you could talk about fetal personhood and heartbeat bills and whatever, when you weren't having court saying, okay, well, if that's the law, then there's no IVF anymore. It was one thing when it was theoretical. Now that it's very real and public opinion has really shifted. And we covered this together that since Roe versus Wade was overturned, it wasn't like there was one shift and that was it.

People have continued to move to the pro-choice position, breaking what has been a multi-decades long, 50-50 split on the issue. And I just don't think that there is really any messaging fix for this because there's a big reality problem right now. And I know that the advice that the RNC gives and Nancy Mace was talking about and Donald Trump has tried to use as well is like, okay, we'll talk about the third trimester because

that's where Democrats are on the shakiest ground. That made a lot of sense when Roe was in place because all of the battleground over abortion legislation was about the third trimester because that was, you know, that was effectively what Roe determined. Well, that's not the battleground anymore. Now the battleground is over these near complete bans. It's over things like IVF, even stem cells, things like that being put back on the table in this real flashback to the early 2000s kind of debate. And I think the best Republicans can hope for is that this kind of, you know, fades into the background, that people aren't talking about it as much. But as long as you have these ballot initiatives and you have continued court decisions like what just happened in Arizona, good luck with that. Yeah. I mean, there's going to have to be a massive shift in public opinion and the cultural sort of position on abortion if Republicans want to push the issue forward without losing and suffering

massive losses. Biden knows this. So Biden was also asked about the Arizona ruling yesterday at the White House. Let's roll this. This is B3. On the issue of abortion, sir, respectfully, what do you say to the people of Arizona right now who are witnessing a law go in place that dates back to the Civil War? Elect me. I'm in the 20th century, 21st century, not back then. There weren't even a state. I find... Thank you all very much. So the signs you're hearing, the dulcet tones of White House reporters shouting at the top of their lungs at Joe Biden as he leaves the podium on a beautiful day. Slowly shuffles away. We may have an entry for best Bidenism questionably of all time there when he said, elect me, I'm in the 20th century.

I guess that's incredible. Better than the 19th century, which is what the Republicans are in. That is the kind of choice that we're faced with in this election. But didn't exactly stick the landing there. But obviously, I mean, the fact that it's an 1864 law. Yes. It's it's it is very it is very potent. And I'm reminded very much of the ad that was run in the Kentucky governor's race, a young woman who was raped, who was saying, listen, Daniel Cameron, the Republican, if he's governor, I'd be forced to carry my, I think it was her stepfather who raped her as baby to term. This was incredibly potent in that race, which, you know, really shifted towards Andy Beshear, the Democrat who was able to get reelected, but wasn't really even close at the end of the day. And Kentucky, much more conservative on this issue than the majority

of the country. And, you know, it was wild for me, having lived in Kentucky previously and being like a little bit obsessed with their politics, to see because Democrats have been getting killed in Kentucky for years now on abortion. You know, this used to be a solid Democratic state for years and years and years, was one of the last to sort of realign with the Southern realignment. Appalachia, West Virginia, Kentucky were like the last two states to really realign there and still at the state level elect Democrats, as you can see with Andy Beshear. But it was cultural issues that killed Democrats in that state. So to see like this, the way the script flipped, and suddenly it was Democrats who were wanting to talk about abortion. Previously, Republicans were running all their ads on abortion.

This was the thing they wanted to talk about the most. And to have that flip on a dime, so the Republicans are trying to avoid the issue as much as possible. Democrats are trying to run on the issue as much as possible. And winning on abortion in the state of Kentucky. That was wild to me. And obviously, you know, there are tons of extremely just heart-wrenching emotional stories out there that are all the result of Roe versus Wade being overturned. And you can bet, you know, Joe Biden's got a lot of other issues. This is the one area where the more this is being talked about, no matter how Republicans try to message, the stronger the Biden campaign's hand is here. I mean, I sort of feel like it's sort of the reverse of immigration is that issue for Republicans, which no matter what Joe Biden says, as much as he's like, I'm just like them.

I'm just as cruel and heartless and I want to do what Trump wants to do. It's a bad issue for them. And there's really nothing they can do about it at this point without really shifting the cultural narrative about it and the media narrative about it and all of those things in ways that I personally support. But the more you're talking about that issue, the more you're basically in quicksand for the Democratic Party at this point. It's the same for Republicans. The best they can do is just hope that it's not a big topic of conversation. Yeah, absolutely. There's really nothing they can do. I agree with that completely. And there's been a flurry of stories just in the last couple of days about both the Trump campaign and the Biden campaign, because again, we're heading into summer now. We're heading into convention season. The parties are both, I know it's insane, both very

busy planning for a summer of campaigning. And I'm actually really excited to put this next element up on the screen. This is B4. It really is hilarious, Crystal. There's two different stories here. One is an Associated Press report on the Trump campaign and the Biden campaign. And some people were looking at it and saying, these are huge takeaways. Less than five staffers in each battleground state for Trump. They can't afford to hire staff until the summer. and GOP staffers are trashing the 2024 campaign. Meanwhile, over at Vanity Fair, Gabriel Sherman tweeted his own story out where he says, for the May issue, I report on Trump's weirdly competent and savvy 2024 campaign. Inside the terrifyingly competent Trump 2024 campaign.

So it's unclear as to whether Trump is just extremely competent or so competent he's incompetent. I don't know. I just don't know what to make of it. I actually I do you have any insights into what is reality here? Because as I was reading the piece that said, OK, they only have it is kind of wild that you're this close to the conventions and everything ramping up. You only have like five staffers in battleground states. Meanwhile, they contrast the Biden administration. The Biden campaign is doing a much more traditional, okay, we've got our offices open. We've got our big staff on the ground. We're ready to do our mail-in balloting push and all that stuff. On the other hand, when they ran in 2020, the Trump campaign spent way too much money early. And then they were screwed down the stretch.

I think in Georgia, they spent a tiny amount of money on advertising because they just didn't have it. What's his name? Brad Parscale, is that his name? He was really sort of thrown under the bus for spending wildly and putting the campaign in really dire straits from a funding perspective on the way down the stretch post-Labor Day. So I'm wondering if there wasn't a lesson learned from that of like, we're going to harbor our resources, make sure that we've got everything

we can. And then there is a reality of a lot of his money has gone to legal bills. It's also hampered some of his ability to campaign because he's got all these trial dates and court appearances that he has to make as well. So strangely and surprisingly, Biden is actually out campaigning more than Donald Trump, which is certainly not something that I would have predicted. So I'm not 100% sure what to make of this.

On the one hand, I also think field programs, sorry, field people out there are overrated. They don't do all that, especially in a presidential campaign where everybody already knows who the candidates are. They've got their opinions formed, et cetera. On the other hand, I do think that the mail-in ballot initiatives and early voting initiatives that Democrats used in 2020 were so significant as compared to the non-existent Republican efforts and like anti-Republican efforts, like the fact that they were opposed to mail-in balloting. I actually think that factor alone was the game changer. So it kind of depends for me on how I look at this, whether this is actually consequential or not.

Yeah, and I misspoke. This is an NBC News story. There's another AP story we're about to talk about. But in this NBC News story, there's a source quoted saying, this is like comparing a Maserati to a Honda. 2020 had staff and the bodies in place to turn out the vote. This current iteration is starting from ground zero, and we're seven months out from the vote. This current iteration is starting from ground zero and we're seven months out from the election. Meanwhile, the Gabriel Sherman piece in Vanity Fair is talking about how Donald Trump is surrounding himself with ultra loyalists. Now, he's sort of learned the lesson of 2016 and 2020.

By the way, 2016 is a great example of your point about field operations. Ask Hillary Clinton how that sort of traditional competence went for her. I guess she won the popular vote, but that's, you know, you're one president. That's what matters. Well, you know, she's the rightful president if it weren't for Vladimir Putin. So anyway, all that is to say, this is a juxtaposition of a couple of different things. On the one hand, you have a campaign that may be struggling to erect that kind of infrastructure. On the other hand, you have a campaign that is at least getting Gabe Sherman to believe it's so competent because, shockingly competent, in fact, because Donald Trump is, it's not leaking. So like they would point to the crazies, like the, I shouldn't even say crazies so much as like the eccentric people

that were in his first campaigns. Yeah. And just said they leaked all the time and Trump would pit them against each other in ways that intentionally sowed chaos. And that in and of itself was a huge distraction. But now he's just laser focused on the job at hand. Doesn't matter, though, to your point, Crystal, if you also have to pay huge legal bills that are going to take away, no matter what, from his ability to campaign on the ground. That's why he's not doing so many rallies, because they're stupid expensive. So there are real challenges for him. Being around the country in different courtrooms is going to be a real challenge for him. So it's a couple of different things. On the one hand, I do think he learned his lesson of, you know, you really need to have, he installed loyalists at the RNC, for example, like ousted Ronna McDaniel.

Here's the AP story. This is the next element. As Biden tours the country and visits swing states, their headline says Trump is fundraising and playing golf. You know, it's still, Biden is really out there in a way that I find surprising. They're doing these really carefully, really carefully stage managed events. And it's basically what they can do at this point. But I'm sure Trump would be doing that if he could. I think they feel like they have to try to combat the, you know, Biden's too old sense. And Trump, meanwhile, I think probably feels like my people are with me, like, and I got other stuff going on and I need to be raised the money because they are significantly behind.

Even with this huge $50 million fundraising event that they just had, they're still significantly behind where the Democrats are. And as mentioned before, some of that is bled out through legal bills as well. So the problems for him are real. You know, the two dueling narratives there, both of them serve sort of like useful liberal narrative. On the one hand, the Gabe Sherman one, the terrifyingly competent, even that language, that's like the biggest Democratic or left of center or anti-Trump fear is, oh shit, last time we got lucky because he was incompetent. So the worst of what he wanted to do, like stop the steal, I mean, it is true. He wanted to steal the election and he was basically too incompetent

to actually get it done. And he wasn't surrounded by yes men. And that's right. He didn't have all his loyalists in place. So now this time around, he's got his ducks in a row. He's got all his loyalists in place. He's got a plan. It's going to be different. And the most terrifying version of Trump is going to occupy the White House. So that narrative is served by the Gabe Sherman piece. You know, the other piece of just like, haha, we'll laugh at how this is like bumbling and they don't even have staffers. They're on money like he's, you know, he's on the ropes, etc. Obviously serves a different useful liberal narrative where the truth lies. It's very hard for me to discern from the outside. But, you know, I think we have enough data points at this at this juncture to say it does look like Trump is taking on a little bit of water and that he isn't doing as well as he once was in the polls. One indication of this for what it's worth is the predicted odds now actually have Joe Biden favored over Trump. We can put this up

on the screen. So Biden is at, I'm just looking this morning, 52 cents. Trump is at 46 cents. So, you know, for again, for what it's worth, the people who are trying to bet based on the outcome of this election, now there's slightly favoring Joe Biden. We've had a number of polls that have shifted in his direction, though it's still very much is a jump ball. And part of why maybe Trump is maybe taking on a little bit of water, he can put this up on the screen is his legal troubles. You know, this is the latest headline. His former close executive, Alan Weisselberg, who really was like his right hand man in a lot of ways, was just sentenced to five months in jail for lying, basically lying on behalf of Donald Trump.

Went to Rikers this week. Right. Which is no one should go to Rikers. That's a whole other story. But but part of what he was I think he pled guilty to here and took this deal was lying about the size of Trump's condo, the penthouse, which is central to Letitia James civil fraud suit against Trump in New York. So the fact that all these stories, Trump's criminal trial on the Stormy Daniels hush money thing, I think is set to start next week. It's happening. They're still trying to delay it, et cetera, et cetera. But that looks like it's going to start imminently. All of these stories are in the headlines more and more as legal action ramps up. And maybe that's one of the reasons why possibly he is taking on a little bit of water here. Yeah. Michael Cohen claims Weisselberg has a lot of knowledge of what happened in the Hush Money case, and jury selection for that

is set to start next week. I think it's yet to be determined what effect these legal battles have on Donald Trump as we get closer and closer to the election, how voters react to it. But we were talking about this earlier in the show, Crystal. I know for sure one thing that likely won't be most effective for the Biden campaign is just leaning on the Trump is insane crutch over and over again when inflation is where it is. Maybe. Although it worked pretty well for them in the midterms. I would have said that too. True. But it did work pretty well for them in the midterms.

True, true. And, you know, the- But with the whole country, I mean, in a presidential. Maybe. I don't know. I genuinely, I really don't know. You know, I think abortion is way more potent than I expected it to be. People didn't vote on the economy in the way that I expected them to in the midterms, where Democrats really outperformed. We've had all of these special elections that have gone to Democrats. And it could be the case that when you have a general election and you have a much wider electorate, that some of those trends are

less significant. But I genuinely don't know at this point, which is why oftentimes I feel like when we cover politics in the show, we'll do one block that's like inflation is really bad for Biden. And the next one's like an abortion and really bad for Trump. So I don't know. That's where I am. I just genuinely don't know. One thing I do know, though, is I am not going to be sending Lunchables in my kids' lunchboxes anymore. 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. She was a decorated veteran, a Marine who saved her comrades, a hero. She was stoic, modest, tough. Someone who inspired people. Everyone thought they knew her. Until they didn't. I remember sitting on her couch and asking her, is this real? Is this real? Is this real? Is this real?

I just couldn't wrap my head around what kind of person would do that to another person that was getting treatment, that was, you know, dying? This is a story all about trust and about a woman named Sarah Kavanaugh. I've always been told I'm a really good listener, right? And I maximized that while I was lying. Listen to Deep Cover The Truth About Sarah on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. 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, and digging into the culture that shaped the soundtrack of our lives. My favorite line on there was, my son and my daughter gonna be proud when they hear my old tapes. Now I'm curious, do they like rap along now? Yeah, because I bring him on tour with me and he's getting older now too. So his friends are starting to understand what that type of music is. And they're starting to be like, yo, your dad's like really the GOAT. Like he's a legend.

So he gets it. What does it mean to leave behind a music legacy for your family? It means a lot to me. Just having a good catalog and just being able to make people feel good. Like that's what's really important and that's what stands out

is that our music changes people's lives for the better. So the fact that my kids get to benefit off of that, I'm really happy. or my family in general. Let's talk about the music that moves us. To hear this and more on how music and culture collide, listen to We Need to Talk from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

So Consumer Reports out with some new information about Lunchables, the popular item packed in many school lunchboxes, including plenty of times in my kids' school lunchboxes. Now I feel like a terrible mother. But also, and this is very notable, was recently approved to be included in cafeteria lunches. So kids are also, you know, getting these as school lunch and their schools and many schools across the nation. Let's put this up on the screen with the details. So the headline here is, should you pack Lunchables for your kids' school lunch? The answer effectively is a resounding no. CR's tests found the lunch kits and some similar ones from Armour, Oscar Mayer, and others contained lead and other

contaminants and were high in sodium. Let me read you a little bit of this report. So here are the findings. They say there's a lot to be concerned about in these kits, says Amy Keating, a registered dietitian at Consumer Reports. They're highly processed and regularly eating processed meat, a main ingredient in many of these products, has been linked to increased risk of some cancers. We also found that some kids had potentially concerning heavy metal and how do you say this? Phthalate levels? Yeah. Saga would know. They're too high in sodium, especially for kids. Do you think the school lunch versions might be better? Sorry, they have even more sodium than the store-bought versions. Bottom line, we don't think anybody should

regularly eat these products and they definitely shouldn't be considered a healthy school lunch, says Eric Boring, PhD, a Consumer Reports chemist who led CR's testing. Let me just read you a little bit more here about the lead and cadmium piece, which to me was in some ways the most concerning. They say our experts found lead cadmium or both in all of the kits that they tested, even in small amounts. Obviously, these heavy metals can cause developmental problems in children. None of the kits we looked at exceeded any legal or regulatory limits. Still, five of the 12 tested products would expose someone to 50% or more of California's maximum allowable dose level for lead or cadmium. Our experts use those values because there are no federal limits for heavy metals in most foods. That is a relatively high dose of heavy metals given the small serving

sizes of the products, which range from just two to four ounces, their analyst says. For example, the kids provide only about 15% of the 1,600 daily calories that a typical eight-year-old requires, but that small amount of food puts them fairly close to the daily maximum limit for lead. Even if one meal kit doesn't push a kid over the limit, it puts them in the danger zone because there will likely be exposure from other sources. So if a child gets more than half of the daily limit for lead from so few calories, there is little room for potential exposure from other foods, drinking water, or the environment. Emily, it's really I mean, I shouldn't say it's a shocking report, but it's shocking in the respect that we our food safety standards are so completely distorted. And one of the reasons for that is just actually even in the company that oversees Lunchables in their name, which is Kraft Heinz, Kraft Heinz. These are very powerful companies

in Washington, D.C. Obviously, Heinz is the family that John Kerry married into and Hunter Biden. The Bidens actually used to at least have relationships with people in that family. And it's not just that specific. I mean, it's just years and years of completely turning the regulations into Swiss cheese based on who has access. And that's how you end up getting things like this approved for school lunches. And that makes more money for the company because that means it's more sales around the country. So it's just a special interest carving out or carving away at, chipping away at what should be obvious standards that we

understand. But we can't trust the regulatory agencies to do that on a consistent and principled basis. So way back in 2010, I out of nowhere decided to run for Congress. I was a new mom. And maybe this sounds silly or maybe it sounds, I don't know how it sounds. But one of the things that really drove me to take such what at that point in my life was a really drastic step was I was shopping for baby bottles for my infant and realized I had to be really educated to make sure there weren't toxins in the baby bottles. And you just start to think you're like, this is insane. How could we expose these little vulnerable beings to, you know, such a perilous system. And when you really start to pull on that thread,

it connects to everything. Because like you just said, there's a reason why lunchables are allowed in school lunches. There's a reason why lunchables are allowed to have potentially dangerous amounts of lead. And it is all about money and politics and corrupt capture of these regulatory agencies and the assault on these regulatory agencies in the neoliberal era where the budgets are cut and their staffing stripped and they are undermined to the extent that even if they had the standards, they don't have the capability to enforce the standards. I did a piece back in the rising days about similar things being found in baby formula. And you just ask, like, as someone who's trying to do their best for their kids, how do you even know what that is?

Because, listen, I was under no illusions Lunchables were, like, the greatest options for my kids. But I didn't think they were the worst. You're like, it's cheese and crackers and some ham. No big deal. Right? If they have these occasionally, that's fine, right? No. Apparently, it's not.

And specifically, we can put this up on the screen. Washington Post did a report a while back about how Lunchables ended up on school lunch trays. And the subhead here, weak rules and industry power have allowed ultra-processed products onto the menu. And there's a lot of things going on here. So, first of all, you've got school funding being undermined, which means both that you have fewer cafeteria workers. Well, guess what? Lunchables are super easy. You just stack them up. Kids can grab them for themselves and they are familiar with them and they're likely to eat them. Number two, the group that

makes these recommendations has a ton of, receives industry money and has industry ties. So of course, if you're Kraft Heinz, they say this is a $25 billion growth opportunity in the school lunch market. And in order to meet these little bit of standards that we have for, quote, unquote, healthy school lunches, which are utterly pathetic. Ketchup is still considered a vegetable, by the way. You know, they could tweak it a little bit. And actually, in those tweaks to up, for example, the protein content, they just pump it full of even more sodium. So they're actually in certain ways worse for your kids. The quote unquote healthy school lunch is actually worse for your kids. And it gets to not only this corruption, but also it gets to like, what are our values in this country? What are our values?

Like we're feeding kids poison at schools. We're a wealthy country. We can't afford to have at least some decent, nutritious stuff that our kids are eating when they're trying to learn and their brains are developing and they're in this country, some of which is due to the fact we don't have universal health care. And a lot of it is due to the fact of the influence of big food and how cheap and easy this stuff is and how much we pump kids full of it from a very early age. Yeah, a lot of this happened really quickly. And we were like the frogs in the boiling pot and didn't realize that we were guinea pigs in this mass experiment that had some really damaging consequences. One of the interesting things, we can put the next element up on the screen, about Lunchables in particular. This was a San Francisco Gates story. There's actually some good books that have been written or that touch on this topic of

actually Lunchables in particular. The subheading of the story is, a cigarette giant turned the middling product into a lunchtime juggernaut. Well, what that means is actually as cigarette sales started to plummet, Philip Morris, Philip Morris made Lunchables. They popularized Lunchables, essentially. They bought Lunchables and found a way to market them with great success, market them to parents and found a way to make them super, super tasty for kids. Here's a great quote

from the San Francisco Gate piece. They say, if your impression is that the lack of nutrition in Lunchables is a byproduct of cost-saving measures, Lunchables history belies that. Perhaps the strangest thing about Lunchables legacy is that its manufacturers repeatedly try to pivot toward healthier ingredients, only to fail every time. They discontinued the Lunchables with Fruitline. People actually might even remember that. It's just their business. This is their business. And it's really, I think, perfect that Philip Morris is who popularized the Lunchable. It just speaks to exactly how backwards our approach to food, food safety is. And I think we're starting to catch up and starting to understand the way that these foods are intentionally designed to maximize their

addictive qualities, to maximize their non-perishability or their slow perishability and all of that. It's really sad, but we've all been experiments in this for decades. My mom's rule was I only got Lunchables on field trips. And that was like the best because I love pizza Lunchables. They're really good. They're really good. Kyle loves pizza Lunchables. That is not surprising at all. So disgusting because they're not even heated up. It's just like this cold bread. Yes, it's great. And it's like gross tomato sauce. But you get to make it? Yeah. But that was the thing. So apparently the origin story is Oscar Mayer had like bologna was not really popular anymore. And they had all this extra bologna.

And they're like, what are we going to do with all this bologna? And so this is what they came up with was, aha, we'll market it to these kids and be like, oh, you're in control. You're empowered in your lunch because you, you know, put the cracker and the cheese and the meat together. So you're in control of the Lunchable. You the kid. You the kid. Yeah. And to, and obviously, listen, as a parent, you know, I can relate to this. I don't know why I hate making school lunches. Like I hate making lunches. There's something about that that's like the bane of my parental existence. And so if you've got this thing, you can just pull off the shelf and stick in the lunchbox. That's pretty nice, right? So it appealed to the kids, appealed to the parents, and they started selling like hotcakes. But the problem was, to begin with, it actually wasn't

profitable because the trays cost too much money. And so that was the Philip Morris when they bought, I guess they bought Kraft. Yeah. Yeah. So it was Oscar Mayer, and then they merged with Kraft, and Morris buys Kraft anyway, whatever. There's a monopoly story here too, by the way. They're like, well, no, if you're selling them, we're going to figure out how to make them profitable. And so they crack the code of how to make them profitable. And then the rest of it is history. But, you know, I also think it's the fact that the fruit ones and the more healthy ones failed also says something too, because it's not like, obviously, if you just get the Lunchables out of the food system, then it's all going to be fixed. It's that you have a whole systemic problem. And so, yeah, kids are like, oh, I'm used to

eating crap all the time. So no, I don't want this healthier version. I want the crap. That's what I'm used to, right? That's what my body is raised on and expects. And we obviously see disastrous health consequences down the line. So anyway. The reason we're so attracted to these foods, at least in the moment, short term, is because these are combinations

that are not found in nature. And it's made to be as palatable as possible. Think about Skittles. Tastes great immediately. And then you're about, like, Skittles. Like, tastes great immediately, and then you're like, oh, I just ate plastic. Right. I feel like prop now. I just ate, like, wax. Yeah, but it's, that's, again, these are, it's preying on, I think, a real problem of moms needing convenient, like, moms are overworked. Moms are doing so much, and parents in general are doing so much, and this is just like preying on the need for

something really easy. Yeah. There's kind of a two income trap story here. Yes. As well, you know, as you need two income earners in the household time to, you know, carefully prepare a healthy and nutritious lunch is less available. And I don't know the story about Lunchables in particular, but a lot of these foods have been given the rubber stamp of healthy because they have corporate capture at the regulatory agencies that allow you to put that you're healthy on the box of cereal, that you're a good source of whatever on the box of cereal. And it's just, it's not really true in the big picture. So it's really sad what we've allowed to happen to the thing. And just very briefly, from a conservative perspective, when there's criticism of regulation, you know, I think

there's some reasonable criticism of regulation in some sectors. But in other sectors, when we're talking about literally the thing that is the building block of a healthy family, how can you have a healthy, happy family if what we are eating, we are told is healthy and it's actually terrible for you? That's not the pathway to fulfillment, success as a human being, just prospering as families.

It's just obviously deregulating the industries that are our physical health. When our physical health is on the line is probably not the way to go. Yeah, there's a real conservative core value of putting actual like family values and protection of children above even like corporate profit margins. Absolutely. So I think that's an important note. All right, guys. For the latest on Israel, you guys are very fortunate to be joined by a fantastic guest this morning.

So let's go ahead and get to that. For the latest on developments on Israel and Gaza, we are very fortunate this morning to be joined by an extraordinary journalist, an Israeli journalist, Gideon Levy. He's also a columnist for Haaretz and an author. Welcome, sir. So great to have you. Thank you very much for having me. Let's go ahead and put Gideon's latest column here up on the screen. The headline here is, No Victory Awaits Israel in Rafah, Only More Death and Destruction. We just read you a little bit of this for the audience. On the eve of the possible conquest of Rafah, one camp demands Rafah and

another camp demands the release of the hostages. No one says no to the conquest of Rafah. No reservist threatens to refuse to serve in Rafah if Israel invades the city. In the face of the lust for blood and revenge, there is no opposing camp only against Benjamin Netanyahu, the primary culprit. But not the only one is there a determined camp. What do you think is the significance of the Israeli plans to invade Rafah? I know their way of thinking, namely that without Rafah, we will never break Hamas. But they say it's also in Hanunis. They say it's also in Gaza City.

It's always like the horizon. The next stop will be the final one, and you never reach it. Because meanwhile, in the north part of Gaza, you see this Hamas is big. We have to know a few things about Rafah. Rafah is the southern town in the Gaza Strip, mainly populated by refugees from 1948. A very poor place. I've been there many times. But in this war, in the last half year, 1.2 million uprooted people, replaced people,

were told by Israel to find rescue and refuge without any kind of infrastructure, no water, no food, no place to stay, living in kind of tents. And now Israel wants to invade this biggest refuse place in the world, maybe. Biggest refugee place, sorry. And I asked myself, where will those people go? And who will guarantee their lives?

Those are people who went through hell in the last half a year. Those people lost everything in their lives. Part of them lost their relatives, their parents, their sons, their children. Part of them lost their homes. Most of them lost their homes. What do we want from them now? So therefore, my really appeal is, please, give it up. Give it up, because nothing will come out of it. Yeah, and I want to stay on that point of what could come out of it, even sort of taking

the Netanyahu argument at face value about how this is essential to the destruction of Hamas. From your perspective, if this operation goes ahead, what even is the best case scenario for the Netanyahu administration? Because one thing we know for sure is that it's not going to destroy Hamas. An operation in Rafah is just, that does not assure the destruction of Hamas. So what could the outcome be, even the best case scenario for the Netanyahu administration? No, there is no best case scenario. There's nothing good in this scenario.

The best case scenario from their point of view was really to destroy Hamas. But we both agree that this is not achievable because Hamas is powerful being destroyed. And there is such an organization. There is a way to harm their military capabilities, and this Israel had done enough in the last half a year. There is no best-case scenario. For Netanyahu, I'm afraid there are also different calculations. As long as the war is going on, his government is in power,

there are no elections, and his career is guaranteed. Is it the only consideration? I'm sure not. Is it one of his considerations? Yes. Is it a legitimate one? Gideon, you write in your column, there is no opposition to war in Israel. And I wonder why you think that is. I mean, at this point, we even have the U.S. government acknowledging there's a famine, at least in northern Gaza. We are seeing children who are starving to death, babies who are starving to death. We have somewhere around 40,000 Palestinians who have been killed, many of them, the majority

of whom are women and children. Why is there no significant opposition to this war in Israel? Because something very dramatic happened on the 7th of October when Israel and Israelis saw those atrocities in the south, the killing, the kidnapping, and other crimes that were conducted there. They decided that they are not interested anymore at all in any kind of empathy toward the at all in any kind of empathy toward the Palestinians, in any kind of dialogue with the Palestinians,

in anything with the Palestinians. It's a very emotional, primitive reaction, which I cannot criticize, but that's not the policy. And above all, the Israelis and Israel go to the conclusion that after those crimes, Israel has the right to do whatever it wants. And this is almost illegal, not almost illegal. Israel has things like any country in the world, and it cannot do whatever it wants. To this, you have to add the fact that the Israeli media, free and commercial, private owned, had decided voluntarily

that they are not going to bother the Israelis with scenes from Gaza. You will not see the suffer, you will not see the starvation, you will not see the destruction because we know you Israelis, you don't want to see it and we will do this service for you

and we will not show it to you. And that's fatal, because most of the Israelis are not exposed to nothing from what is going on in Gaza, and this shames their mind. They really believe that Israel is killing only terrorists who deserve to be killed, and Israelis live in peace with it and are quite happy about this war.

They are very unhappy with the fact that the hostages are still missing. They are very unhappy with the killings of Israeli soldiers. They are very apathetic about the unbelievable human tragedy on the other side. Well, and just on that point about the hostages, and while we're talking about RAFA, because that is front of mind for so many people, and as you were just explaining, is really public opinion, what's the potential outcome for the remaining hostages if there is a ground operation in RAFA going forward? What's the potential outcome? Is it possible that the kind of best case scenario of recovering hostages safely and getting families some closure or at least some certainty is an outcome ahead? Or what do you make of that, Gideon?

You know, I don't know. I don't know because nobody knows where are the hostages. But I know one thing. Israel is trying now for six months to release them through military pressure, very massive military pressure, killings and destruction. It didn't work. Why would it work now? We have to realize that the hostages will and can be released only in one way,

through a deal. And a deal means Israel paying for their release, paying not in money, but in terms of releasing a Palestinian prisoner in big quantities and other conditions. If Israel is so eager to see the hostages free, it should have gone for a deal a long time ago. I wanted to get your reaction, Gideon, if we can put, guys, D1 up on the screen. Yesterday, there was an Israeli military strike that killed three children of the Hamas political leader, Ismail Haniyeh, in Gaza, along with a number, something like three of his young grandchildren as well. There was a lot of theorizing that this could be connected to the ceasefire talks that are ongoing. I don't know how likely successful those ceasefire talks are going to be.

But do you see these two things as connected? Because the theory was that Netanyahu doesn't really want a ceasefire at this moment, as you pointed out, and many others have pointed out as well. He needs this war to continue in order to keep his hold on power. Do you think that there's a connection there? And what do you make of these strikes? The Israelis claim, the authorities claim, that this operation was not approved by high levels. Is it true or not? I can't tell. But that's their claim. It was local commanders who approved this operation. If so, then something is very wrong in the decision-making process of the Israeli army, because such sensitive operation, killing six members of the family of Israel and Nia, in such a sensitive time, which does go to high ranks and politicians and government shows that we are facing

anarchy in the Israeli army. It cannot be accepted that such an operation will not be approved by the highest ranks until the prime minister. So either there is an anarchy or they are lying. And both are very bad possibilities.

I cannot tell you where is the truth. I don't know. I think it's now long been clear that the military operation in Gaza has not been some surgical hunt for Hamas. Obviously, Netanyahu has his own political considerations of just trying to hold on to power as long as possible. But from your perspective, Gideon, what is the true goal? What are the true motivating reasons for the all-out destruction and annihilation that we've seen and starvation used as a weapon of war that we've seen in Gaza? I truly believe that the main motivation is to punish, to take revenge, to show the people of Israel that we are doing something, that we are teaching the Palestinians and Hamas a lesson. Every serious person knows that much more will not come out of this war. Nothing of the goals will be achieved and nothing was achieved

in half a year. It's not that I'm speculating now. In half a year, one of the goals will be achieved, and nothing was achieved in half a year. It's not that I'm speculating now. In half a year, one of the longest wars between Israel and Palestine, Israel achieved nothing. Why to believe that another half a year will be any better? But by the end of the day, it's really to punish and to take revenge. Is it legitimate? I doubt it. Is it justified? I don't know. Is it clever? I know that very much. What level of pressure do you feel personally? Because I

have to say, I really admire your courage being an Israeli journalist writing an Israeli newspaper and expressing opinions that, as you yourself will readily admit, are basically unheard of throughout most of Israeli society. What sort of personal pressure have you come under, especially post-October 7th? I must be frank with you and tell you that from certain points of view, I went through worse, worse from my perspective in terms of being exposed to pressure, to threats. In 2014, I even had the bodyguards because there was no other choice. The main loneliness, the main really challenge

is the fact that many of my friends changed their mind in this war and didn't turn back. So part of what was called the peace camp really changed its mind dramatically, and I'm more lonely than ever. It's not very pleasant, but it's much less pleasant to be in our refugee in Rafa. This I can ensure.

Yeah. Well, we really admire your courage and your principles. I've been, you know, reading you closely for quite a while now. So it's an honor to get to speak with you. And I'm so grateful for you taking some time with us this morning. Thank you very much for having me. Yeah, it's our pleasure. Stay safe. 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 got 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. She was a decorated veteran, a Marine who saved her comrades, a hero.

She was stoic, modest, tough, someone who inspired people. Everyone thought they knew her until they didn't. I remember sitting on her couch and asking her, is this real? Is this real? Is this real? Is this real? I just couldn't wrap my head around what kind of person would do that to another person that was getting treatment that was, you know, dying. This is a story all about trust and about a woman named Sarah Kavanaugh. I've always been told I'm a really good listener, right? And I maximized that while I was lying. Listen to Deep Cover, The Truth About Sarah on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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, and digging into the culture that shaped the soundtrack of our lives. My favorite line on there was, my son and my daughter gonna be proud when they hear my old tapes. Now I'm curious, do they like rap along now?

Yeah, because I bring him on tour with me, and he's getting older now too. So his friends are starting to understand what that type of music is, and they starting to be like yo your dad's like really the goat like he's a legend so he gets it what does it mean to leave behind a music legacy for your family it means a lot to me just having a good catalog and just being able to make people feel good like that's what's really important and that's what stands out is that our music changes people's lives for the better. So the fact that my kids get to benefit off of that, I'm really happy or my family in general. Let's talk about the music that moves us to hear this and more on how music and culture collide. Listen to We Need to Talk from the Black Effect Podcast Network did an interview with a pastor in the West Bank,

a Palestinian pastor in the West Bank that made huge waves sort of across the online right this week. I would just want to start with a clip from the interview and then we can get into why exactly people are so upset about it. So here's Tucker Carlson with Isaac Munther, a Lutheran pastor, again, in the West Bank. If you wake up in the morning and decide that your Christian faith requires you to support a foreign government blowing up churches and killing Christians, I think you've lost the thread. Just to end on this, if you had a message for Christian leaders in the United States, whether in government or in churches or just citizens who care about the religion and their

fellow Christians, what would it be? It would be to remind them that when the state of Israel was created, it was not created on an empty land. It was created on a land that had millions of indigenous Palestinians there, including Palestinian Christians. And that state they support, that state they celebrated as a fulfillment of prophecy and a sign of God's faith to the Jewish people, for it to become a state, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, including Palestinian Christians, were forced to leave and have never returned. There is a very, very brutal war taking place in Gaza, a war that I've described using the word genocide, because it's a war that has used even starvation as a mean. And fellow Christians are suffering because of that war. Father, thank you for your thoroughly decent and sensible analysis,

and I hope it's heard by Christians throughout the West. Okay, so again, the key Tucker Carlson quote there, if you wake up in the morning and decide your Christian faith requires you to support a foreign government blowing up churches and killing Christians, I think you've lost the thread. That could also obviously be applied to the United States in the Cold War era. We talk about El Salvador and all of that, but just sticking here for now, it's worth noting, there's so much to kind of break down from this, but it's worth noting that, so I grew up Missouri Synod Lutheran, it's in the United States, a more conservative

denomination of Lutheranism than Evangelical Lutheranism, ALCA, the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America. This denomination of Lutheranism in the Holy Land is, it's worth again saying, more liberal. This particular, so the person that Tucker Carlson interviewed actually was sort of championing the ordination of women, like kind of a progressive denomination, progressive version of Lutheranism, which is an interesting kind of crossover with Tucker Carlson finding common cause on that question of Christian persecution. There are about 3,000 of his denomination, Lutherans in Gaza.

There are 47,000 Christians, at least that was as of 2017. I'm sure that number has gone down. So he also went viral last year, which some people may remember. Crystal, I think you remember this. He had this viral sermon, Christmas sermon. Where he said, if Jesus were to be born today, he would be born under the rubble in Gaza. He gave a

sort of homily around Christmas where he said, Christ and the rubble, a liturgy of lament. That was the title of the service. Here's another quote from him. People keep leaving because of the political reality. Life under a very harsh Israeli military occupation is difficult to bear. And as a result, many young Palestinian Christians continue to leave. For example, Bethlehem, that's where one of his churches is, one of the churches he leaves, choosing to find a better and easier life elsewhere. Now, I'm trying to put the best faith approach to Tucker's critics here. And I don't think this, I think this is probably a strange interview, probably not the best interview for Tucker. But his critics of him just having this conversation with this Lutheran pastor, you know, they said this particular pastor

was championing Hamas because they pulled this clip of him in an address on October 9th saying, you know, one of the scenes that left an impression on my mind yesterday, and there are many scenes, is the scene of Israeli youth who were celebrating a concert in the open air just outside the borders of Gaza and how they escaped. What a great contradiction between the besieged poor on the one hand and the wealthy people celebrating as if there was nothing behind the wall. What is happening is an embodiment of the injustice that has befallen us as Palestinians since the Nakba until now. He also said in that address, We do not justify or support the killing of civilians or the abuse of corpses or prisoners.

War is always ugly, but the hypocrisy of the world is something truly harmful. Today we are called first to pray. Pray for the war to stop. Pray for protection for the innocent. Every human being who dies is a human being created in the image of God. God does not rejoice in death, and we do not rejoice in death. But because he says things like Israeli occupation, I think he referred to the siege at one point. It's obvious that he's coming from what we in the United States would categorize as a leftist position on this particular

question. It's obvious. But to say that Tucker Carlson should not interview and should not have expressed any sympathies for someone coming from that perspective who lives it every day in Bethlehem, which is a very contested territory, to say that his perspective is not worth hearing out in the United States and there's no reason for somebody to express sympathy with that position, I think is actually really unfortunate and speaks to the way that we have just, even on the right, created these blocks and these bubbles that it's just you cannot even ask questions without being categorized by

some people. There's some really good faith disagreement on this, and I would disagree with some of what Tucker Carlson said in that interview myself. We have to be able to talk about some of these things, though, because there are more than 40,000 Christians in Gaza. Yeah, and that is a very uncomfortable fact, I think, for people who are just lockstep. Anything Israel does is fine. There's also obviously a religious view. I mean, the religious group that has the most favorable view of the Netanyahu government is not Jewish Americans. It's white evangelical Christians. So Michael Tracy actually tweeted this out, and I thought this was well said. He said, Palestinian Christians are the most

cognitive dissonance-inducing demographic for the pro-Israel GOP consensus. Many GOP voters literally do not even know that they exist. That's why the pro-war cheerleaders are reacting so angrily to Tucker simply interviewing one of them. With regard to this pastor you write, I was familiar with, I saw his Christmas sermon, which was beautiful and went viral and I think spoke to humanity. I wouldn't say it was left-wing. I would say it was pro-humanity. In fact, some of the messaging in it was rather conservative, talking about the commercialization of Christmas and how Christmas is not about Santa and a tree and gifts. It's about the message of Jesus. I saw another sermon of his that went viral as well. So he's

been a very powerful voice. He lives in Bethlehem under Israeli occupation, surrounded by settlements and having to deal with all that that entails. And the Christian population of Bethlehem, and this is one of the things that was really, I think, contested in some of the reaction, has significantly diminished. And the reason is quite clear. There's a lot of polling on this. 78% of Christian residents of Bethlehem cited Israel's occupation as the main reason why they moved away. Only 3% blamed the rise of Islamic movements like Hamas, because this was some of the pushback. It's like, oh, well, Bethlehem used to be predominantly Christian and it's not anymore. And it's because of these Muslim fundamentalists.

Well, according to the Christians who moved out of Bethlehem. This is E3, by the way. That's not the case. They moved away because they were living under occupation and all of the indignities and inhumanities that that entails. This was written up by Electronic Intifada, but it was a, you know, a nonpartisan organization that did the polling here. It was like Zogby. Yeah. Yeah. Bethlehem surveys show support for town of Christ's birth and confusion over its location. They also interviewed Americans who were pretty confused

over what exactly was going on in Bethlehem. But that key data, about 78% saying it was Israel's occupation, is the reason that they left. And in addition, you know, obviously you have had churches under assault in the Gaza Strip. In fact, you had two Christian women, a mother and daughter, who were sniped and killed in the early days of this conflict. We covered it here. I don't know if you all recall that or not. The IDF disputes it, which also became an issue in this whole viral conflict. Shireen Abu Akhla, by the way, Christian.

I personally believe the eyewitnesses who were on the ground versus the IDF who lies all the time. And one of the oldest churches, maybe the oldest church, actually, in Gaza was bombed. And lots of Christians died there earlier in the war. Shireen Abu Akh was Christian, was Christian. Al Jazeera journalist, obviously, the IDF story changed on her. Well, they admitted they killed her, though. Yes, ultimately they admitted, and again, she was a Christian, a Palestinian Christian, and she's American, too. They attacked mourners at her funeral, as well, if people recall. And so, if we can't even talk about this, that's a little ridiculous.

Yeah. And even the pushback, oh, this pastor, he said X or Y or Z. Listen, I don't know every word that this man has uttered and whether I co-sign them or not. But that doesn't really rebut what he's saying, what Tucker's arguing here. And the comments I saw that he made about October 7th, you know, I tried to gingerly and very carefully make some similar remarks about the festival goers. This is not in any way to sanction their murder, which was horrifying, which was an outrageous, indefensible atrocity. I'm not denying that. I would never deny that. But there was something that was worth commenting on

about the fact that so close to the Gaza Strip, this open-air prison, you had people who were going about their lives as if that was completely invisible. And that was the overall reality of Israeli society prior to October 7th, was this idea that we can just keep these people out of sight, out of mind. We can go ahead with normalization, with Saudi Arabia, with other Gulf Arab states.

We can just pretend they don't exist. And Netanyahu would say things like, you know, I can control the height of the flame. They would go in for these mowing of the lawn operations every now and again. But for your average Israeli, they never really had to come into contact with Palestinians. So that seemed to me more what he was commenting on. But again, even if he said something about October 7th that I genuinely objected to, that does not undercut the argument that's being made now. Now, the other thing I would say is that, you know, with regard to Tucker and choosing this particular issue to push on and focusing only on Christians, as opposed to the many, many more tens of thousands of Muslims

who've been slaughtered in Gaza, you know, the most charitable interpretation is kind of the Michael Tracy one of like, he knows this is the one that's the most difficult for the right to deal with. But, you know, the uncharitable interpretation is like, well, you only care about the Christians. You don't care about all of humanity that is suffering in Gaza right now. The little, you know, Muslim babies who were being starved to death, etc. But I'll give it to Tucker. He sure knows how to stir the pot. And that's for sure.

Speaking of which, yeah, we can just quickly give everyone a flavor of the backlash. Put E2 up on the screen. One critic of Tucker who said, quote, there is no one in American life who thinks less of Christians than Tucker. He doesn't like Jews, but he at least doesn't think we're stupid. Even Trump's Bible selling is transparently transactional. Tucker's entire shtick relies on this belief that Christians are gullible saps. That's from a senior editor over at Commentary Magazine. By the way, I mean, Tucker has very openly in the last couple of years talked about going much deeper into his own faith personally, which I've heard him do it at events. It's a very compelling story, and it's actually a very honest story. So I sort of take issue with that point that there's no one in American life that thinks less of Christians than Tucker Carlson. Here's a tweet from David M. Friedman. This is

the next element we can put up on the screen. This was Trump's ambassador to Israel, so particularly noteworthy that he made this commentary. Yes. He said, Tucker, my friend, before the Palestinians took over Bethlehem, pursuant to the Oslo Accords of the mid-1990s, Bethlehem was under Israeli control and its population was 80% Christian. It was one of the centers of the Christian world. Since Oslo and the resulting Palestinian rule,

Bethlehem became 80% Muslim and Christians are afraid, but they don't speak out against Palestinian authority because you just can't survive. You know, this is an interesting point because you talk about the Yazidis, you could talk about, I mean, you could go into a lot from that point, but it's also just this idea that because Tucker interviewed this pastor, he doesn't believe that there are also Muslim persecutions of Christians. Like, that happens too. Like, he's not saying it doesn't.

That's true. And so it's just this, this is what I meant earlier about the boxes and the bubbles that like, if he asks questions, he's immediately categorized with this full suite of opinions that he may or may not hold. But in this case, it's very likely that he would never dispute that. In a million years, he would never dispute that because he talks about it frequently. You know, the sort of like what's happened in Paris and different places in Europe. So I just it's very frustrating. But that's also, I guess, the nature of Twitter. We can put this next tweet up on the screen from Dan Crenshaw, Sager's best friend, Dan Crenshaw.

He took the opportunity to say, this is who Tucker is, a click chaser. Tucker's M.O. is simple,end America's enemies and attack America's allies. Again, just immediately prescribing to him this full suite of opinions because and Crenshaw then mocks the idea that you're just asking questions. I would really prefer that people did just ask questions as opposed to people just swallowing the line that Dan Crenshaw feeds them. Look, I don't have a high opinion of Tucker Carlson, but you have to deal with like what he's actually laying out here and not just below. He's just chasing clicks. Yeah, I mean, that's just cheap and easy. To go back to the Friedman comments about, oh, Bethlehem was under Israeli control. Its population is 80% Christian. He says that resulting Palestinian rule is why Bethlehem became 80% Muslim and Christians are afraid.

This goes back to the polling that I had before. That's just not true. If you ask the people that left, that's not the Muslim rule was, what did I say? 3% said that the rise of Islamic movements like Hamas were the reason that they left. 78% said it's because of Israeli occupation. And even if you put the West Bank aside, you look at what's happening in Gaza, like Christians are being killed, their churches are being attacked. These things are undeniable. So, you know, a lot of, and you hear this not just with regard to Christians, but you hear this with regards to other minority groups within Israel outside of

the occupied territories. Oh, well, you know, if you're a Muslim in Israel, you'd rather be a Muslim. You have more rights there than in many other countries in the Middle East. But they never want to talk about people who are living under occupation, under this apartheid system. Yes, if you are a small minority group that does not threaten the demographic majority, you'd be okay. But then if you say, okay, we'll just extend those rights to the Palestinians who are living in the West Bank and in Gaza, can't do that. And, you know, to your point, Emily, about more universalist values, like I have no interest in and am opposed to Muslim fundamentalist governments. And I am opposed to Jewish fundamentalist governments

and Christian fundamentalist governments. And, you know, that's, I believe in the pluralism and secularism that we have at our best here in America. And that is across the board and not subject to, you know, my feeling about one religion or another religion. By the way, a lot of the Chinese nationals coming over the border right now say they're Christians who are seeking asylum here because of religious persecution in China. And so I think it's just another great illustration of how sometimes our reflexive categorization and you know, we have different opinions on what's happening at the border, but we so many like human stories get lost in that categorization that's fueled by

places like Twitter. It's sad. 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. She was a decorated veteran, a Marine who saved her comrades, a hero.

She was stoic, modest, tough, someone who inspired people. Everyone thought they knew her, until they didn't. I remember sitting on her couch and asking her, is this real? Is this real? Is this real? Is this real? I just couldn't wrap my head around what kind of person would do that to another person that was getting treatment, that was, you know, dying. This is a story all about trust and about a woman named Sarah Kavanaugh.

I've always been told I'm a really good listener, right? And I maximized that while I was lying. Listen to Deep Cover, The Truth About Sarah on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. 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, and digging into the culture that shaped the soundtrack of our lives. My favorite line on there was, my son and my daughter gonna be proud when they hear my old tapes. Now I'm curious, do they like rap along now? Yeah, because I bring him on tour with me and he's getting older now too.

So his friends are starting to understand what that type of music is and they're starting to be like, yo, your dad's like really the GOAT. Like he's a legend. So he gets it. What does it mean to leave behind a music legacy for your family? It means a lot to me. Just having a good catalog and just being able to make people feel good. Like that's what's really important. And that's what stands out is that our music changes people's lives for the better. So the fact that my kids get to benefit off of that, I'm really happy.

Or my family in general. Let's talk about the music that moves us. To hear this and more on how music and culture collide, listen to We Need to Talk from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Well, Crystal, I got a preview of your monologue a little bit earlier, and there's some real deep cuts in it. So I'm excited to hear it.

What have you got for us? There are countless Washington figures who've made an entire career out of being perpetually wrong, but in all the right ways. It's amazing how you can excel in this town simply by adopting all of the DC-approved wrong takes, some, by the way, with utterly disastrous consequences. One of the individuals who has successfully charted such a career path is New York Magazine's Jonathan Chait. And now he has added another doozy to his list of extraordinarily bad takes. Ready for this one? At a time when our country is blocking aid to people who are starving by defunding UNRWA and shipping 2,000-pound bombs to be dropped on babies in refugee camps, Jonathan Chait has identified the real villain in the situation, the activists who

disrupt Democratic elite political events, calling for a ceasefire and an end to genocide. Here is that piece. The headline is, The Left-Wing Authoritarians Shutting Down the Democratic Party. In it, Chait invites us to imagine a world in which Trump-aligned protesters are able to disrupt and drown out a Jamie Raskin speech on democracy, The horror. He then posits that it would be obvious that such a tactic was unacceptable in principle. But since it's pro-Palestine protesters using this method, criticism has been muted on a fear that to aggressively disagree with such protesters would risk permanently alienating them from the Biden coalition. Chait writes, quote, This pattern of behavior is illiberal and dangerous, drowning out speakers and disrupting

exercises in politics regardless of its cause or the target is wrong on principle. Now, before I engage with the details of his willfully bankrupt arguments, let's start with the most obvious and, frankly, most important point. Jonathan Chait is a well-paid, well-connected columnist for New York Magazine who can, apparently, write and publish pretty much whatever the hell he wants. And his choice right now is to tone police the protesters desperately trying to feed starving babies, block an ethnic cleansing, and stop a genocide. Imagine tut-tutting the abolitionists for their unseemly tactics. You know, harboring fugitive slaves is wrong on principle, you can imagine a 19th century Chait opining.

Or imagine scolding civil rights activists for disrupting ordinary Americans' lunch counter experience. Sure, I may have some quibbles with Jim Crow, but these lefty Marxists are out of control. Or had he lived in Germany during World War II, excoriating those secretly plotting Hitler's overthrow? These are illiberal tactics, Chait may have declared. Now, not a single reasonable person would look back upon such a person making these arguments and see righteousness, justice, or liberalism. Instead, it is atrocity apologia. Or more to the point, if disrupting a Joe Biden speech is illiberal, how shall we describe secretly expediting over a hundred shipments of weapons to massacre children who we are

simultaneously helping to starve to death? But Jonathan Chait is a man determined to place himself on the wrong side of history at every chance he possibly can. During the Iraq war, you could find him in the pages of the Washington Post castigating liberals not to go along with those crazy lefties who were doubting the ironclad evidence of Saddam's WMDs. He wrote, and I quote, the notion that Bush made up the whole thing about weapons of mass destruction has taken root on the left and is creeping ever closer to the liberal mainstream. My fellow liberals who have taken up this line are once again making a disastrous misjudgment. He argued in 2016 that liberals should, quote, earnestly and patriotically support a Trump nomination because Chait was so confident that Trump would lose to Hillary.

Now, after getting his Trump nomination wish, he then wrote this column, which aged like sour milk, headlined, Trump won't win Michigan. In general, Chait's beat is to serve as an anti-left reactionary, where we find the left staking out some position on an issue, whether it is opposing the Iraq war, correctly, criticizing Obama, correctly, supporting Bernie over Hillary, correctly, or opposing genocide, correctly. You'll find Jonathan Chait working feverishly on a column explaining why these positions are an affront to decency and not the stuff of serious fellows such as himself. And so it is with this particular column. Let's go ahead and dive in, shall we? First, Chait claims in his initial setup that these activists, the pro-Palestine activists, have been handled with kid gloves by those who should be trashing them, writing, quote, because Democrats perceive some of the protesters as

potential Biden voters, they have soft-peddled their criticism of their tactics. Oh, really? Tell that to Nancy Pelosi, who just reiterated her suggestion that ceasefire protesters were effectively traitors doing the bidding of Vladimir Putin. On the contrary, pro-Palestine activists have been relentlessly smeared, doxed, and subjected to abuse since the outset of this conflict and before, by the way. You may recall an entire multi-day news cycle around the activities of protesters on college campuses. This smear campaign was then supercharged by billionaire Bill Ackman, who sought to blacklist pro-Palestine activists from ever getting hired by anyone. You might recall Rashida Tlaib being officially censured by Congress, backed by the votes of dozens of

Democrats, for retweeting a protest call for equal rights for all from the river to the sea. Similar censures for those Republicans calling for Gaza to be nuked or for all Palestinians to be slaughtered have not been forthcoming. You might also recall Karine Jean-Pierre standing at the White House podium and saying that ceasefire calls were, quote, repugnant. And it's not even remarkable at this point when protesters are branded anti-Semitic for criticizing a genocide and the ideology that lies behind it. But if these relentless attacks were not enough for you, don't worry. Jonathan Shade is on the case.

Now, he argues his qualm is not with all protesters, just with those who use what he deems to be illiberal tactics. Quote, I'm not referring to tactics like holding protest marches, speeches, social media posts, organizing uncommitted votes in the Democratic primary, or other exercises of First Amendment rights. I'm specifically referring to a campaign to shut down speakers who oppose, or even in many cases simply decline to endorse the movement's agenda. He argues that he is simply looking to protect the speech of those like the president, who is just doing his earnest best to participate in this glorious democracy of ours. First of all, with regard to

the president specifically, if Joe Biden would like to avail himself of more opportunities to speak to the American people, I know I, for one, would really welcome that. Perhaps he could sit for more news interviews since he has done vastly fewer than any other president in modern history. Perhaps he could agree to debate his opponents, as he refused to do in the Democratic primary and has as of yet not committed to do in the general election. Speaking, though, more broadly of the speech rights of Democratic Party congresspeople, let's compare, shall we, the amount of speech permitted by the pro-Zionist side

versus the anti-genocide side. Last week, I interviewed Motaz Salim. He's a Palestinian-American activist. He's seen more thanAmerican activist. He's seen more than 100 of his family members killed in Gaza. I cannot even begin to comprehend this level of loss or what it might do to me or what actions it might lead me to take, frankly. But Motaz has channeled his grief and rage righteously. He spends his days stalking the halls of Congress, confronting members wherever he can find them, hoping that some way, somehow, their humanity and shame will catch up with them as they realize

what they have done. Hoping that perhaps if they can see him as a real full human being, they might also see those children starving to death or those parents slaughtered seeking aid, his own family members. Maybe they will see them as real full beings, too. Yesterday, Motaz was part of a group in which some members were arrested for shutting down the Senate cafeteria. In other words, he is engaging in the sort of confrontational tactics that Chait deems, quote-unquote, illiberal. Now, Motaz is doing everything he can to non-violently make his speech heard. But in American politics, all of the odds are stacked up against him, because not only is speech speech, money is also speech. And one of the best are stacked up against him because not only is speech speech, money is also speech.

And one of the best-funded political organizations in the entire country is dedicated to making sure that Motaz's speech is never heard. That would be AIPAC, of course, which has pledged to spend $100 million to block any candidate with even the potential to criticize the Israeli government and to punish those who already have. The longstanding bipartisan commitment to unconditional Israeli government support is a testament to the strength of AIPAC's extremely well-funded speech. What's more, Biden and the Democrats will have literally billions of dollars in this election cycle to back up their de facto pro-genocide speech. So while Motaz and his fellow activists, God bless them, are undoubtedly a constant source of irritation for Joe Biden and Karine Jean-Pierre and Tony Blinken and many others, it's not because it seriously impacts those people's free speech. It's an insult to all of our intelligence to

pretend that is actually the case. How can the speech of Motaz compete against the billions of dollars and presidential bully pulpit arrayed against it. It's an irritation because these powerful people must be confronted on a daily basis with what frauds they really are, how they use the language of humanitarian values and international law right up to the moment that it became uncomfortable for them. And now they have greenlit, armed, and assisted one of the worst atrocities in recent history. Adding insult to injurious stupidity, Chait has a suggestion for how these protesters should properly go about making their views heard in our great democracy. He writes, the pro-Palestinian movement is barely even attempting

democratic participation. The movement could have run an anti-Israel candidate against Biden, but never bothered, no doubt anticipating they would lose. Okay, first of all, both Cornel West and Jill Stein do exist and are running, and in case you were wondering about Chait's enthusiasm for allowing such candidates to participate in our Democratic process, he's also the type that will definitely smear third-party candidates as being secret Trump lovers. But I also wonder if Jonathan Chait is aware, Joe Biden had primary opponents and they were completely shut out by the Democratic Party and the corporate press. How's that for illiberal? And I am not talking about figuratively speaking here.

The DNC ordered the primary states to best benefit Joe Biden. They refused to host any debates. And as if that wasn't enough, key state Democratic parties just blocked Biden opponents from being placed on the ballot and canceled their primaries altogether. There literally was not an electoral process to participate in. The party effectively canceled it. As David Sirota pointed out, quote, when a political party makes it impossible to express dissent inside a normal process, it should probably expect that people will then try to express dissent outside the normal process. If you want activists to use more polite tactics, maybe get outraged about these genuinely illiberal and authoritarian tactics that have left so many feeling like their democratic free speech rights

are effectively meaningless. Or if you're looking to be outraged, maybe, just maybe, get outraged at the powerful politicians who are responsible for this annihilation, providing diplomatic cover, shipping weapons that make such destruction possible and inevitable. Those who are responsible for starving these children through their inaction and through actively defunding the primary aid organization that could serve them. I might suggest this could be a more worthy use of your time and of ours, by the way. Jonathan Chait closes out his piece with this line, quote, if your movement's goal is to prevent those who disagree from expressing

themselves and you delight in meeting out abuse and humiliation to your targets, you're showing the world you cannot be trusted with power. Yes, let's allow the serious people to hold power, the ones who are serious about supporting the slaughter of more than 15,000 children as the world watches in horror. These are the types in whom Jonathan Shate places his trust. And if you don't like it, then you can send a strongly worded letter so long as it is in the proper cordial tone and doesn't have a prayer of changing a goddamn thing. And Emily, I also think this column... And if you want to hear my reaction to Crystal's monologue,

become a premium subscriber today at BreakingPoints.com. All right, guys, thank you so much for watching today. Emily, thank you so much for sitting with Sagar, for Sagar. Thanks for having me. Sagar in spirit, I guess. Sagar was here in spirit, not in the chair, but he was here in spirit. But Sagar will be back next week

and we'll be back with our regular scheduled programming. So guys, enjoy the weekend. We'll see you soon. What up, y'all? This your main man, Memphis Bleak, right here. Host of Rock Solid Podcast.

June is Black Music Month, so what better way to celebrate than listening to my exclusive conversation with my bro, Ja Rule. The one thing that can't stop you or take away from you is knowledge. So whatever I went through while I was down in prison for two years, through that process, learn. Learn from me. Check out this exclusive episode with jaru on rock solid open your free iheart radio app search rock solid and listen now 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 and digging into the culture that shaped the soundtrack of our lives. Like, that's what's really important and that's what stands out is that our music changes people's lives for the better. Let's talk about the music that moves us. To hear this and more on how music and culture collide, listen to We Need to Talk from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your

podcasts. This is an iHeart Podcast.