Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 4/11/25: Dollar Plunges, SCOTUS Orders Return of Deported Man, Douglas Murray Beclowned By Dave Smith

Episode Date: April 11, 2025

Saagar, Krystal, Ryan and Emily break down the Friday news. To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show AD FREE, uncut and 1 hour early visit: https://breakingpoints.locals.com/support    Merch Store: https://shop.breakingpoints.com/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Listen to Hell and Gone Murder Line on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Happy Friday, everybody. Take a look. We got everybody in the house. Nice to see you guys. Wow, nice to see Sagar. Right? Well, thank you.

No, I appreciate it. I had to move some things around, but definitely had to be here. Sagar is a busy man. No, I just have a very rigid schedule. And as you guys know, with my sleep schedule and other things, I'm very reluctant to move things around. But sometimes that's what things get called for here. Yeah, well, there's a lot of things going on, many market moves that are kind of disturbing. And China's announcing new tariffs.

And so we'll take a look at that stuff. We've got big Supreme Court, unanimous Supreme Court decision. Last Friday, we actually talked to the lawyer for Kilmar Abrego Garcia. He is the immigrant who was wrongfully, the administration even admitted, wrongfully sent to that prison in El Salvador. The question was whether or not they would have to do anything to come back. The Supreme Court, in a 9-0 decision, says you have to, and this word is key, facilitate his return. So really significant there. We're also getting a look at the government's quote-unquote case against Mahmoud Khalil, which is revealing in the many things it doesn't say and doesn't argue. So we'll take a look at that.

And then Sagar, in particular, particular very very interested in this dave smith douglas murray debate on joe rogan you want to give a little preview saga i'm i'm heated uh you know i as i said i've got my schedule uh you know i'm at the gym ready for my cardio and so i see this thing flash on my spotify as you know douglas murray can't really i don't really like the guy but uh i'll decide within the first 10 minutes. Um, I'm so I'm texting Dave. I'm furious. I'm tweeting. I'm furious. My entire workout has been screwed up and I'm enraged. I had to sit there and just work out. I did afterwards. Yeah. Afterwards. Cause my blood was so, we was so hot over this entire thing. It was every characteristic. And I've been so reluctant to

enter this so-called woke right debate because I find it so tedious and annoying. Emily, I'm sure you find it similarly, but this is the best example to me of somebody who is double standards, all of the tropes of actual wokeism, like in terms of lived experience and ad hominem attacks and expert, you know, trolling or whatever, when you yourself are not even an expert. So we'll get to it. But yeah, I'm upset about it. I guess I'm just like, I don't know how it's even a debate at this point about the quote unquote woke right. Like, how is it even a debate? I mean, they've gone way further than the craziest wokesters could have ever imagined with regard to like using the apparatus of the state to achieve their goals. Yeah, but the thing is, Crystal, is that as you understand it, the people who are pushing it like Douglas are the woke right.

The crazy thing is they're the ones who coined the term for people who are against or not even against, who want – they're the ones who coined the term for people who are like, hey, like maybe we can talk about Israel or Ukraine or immigration. I don't even understand. They are the ones who created it. They're like, and that's actually part of what makes it so maddening. And like I said, I don't generally engage with like low IQ individuals like James Lindsay, but you know, just like just the other day or just yesterday he tweeted and he was like, gosh, they're calling Douglas Murray a neoc neocon and i'm just like am i the only person who reads books or like knows anything anymore because he wrote a book called neoconservatism why we need it and it's like and you're accusing people how dare you right ryan like you know for you've been in this game this guy has a record yeah yeah what you know if someone was like hey douglas murray's in neocon you'd be like yeah we know bro you know because he told us that he told us that i read that book in high school but you're very animated this morning your mic is still like

peaking a little so see oh i'm sorry okay all right i'll turn it down on the mic he needs like a douglas murray james lind Lindsay button on his microphone for when he gets mad. He hits that. Right, and we go to the proper setting to bring back the NPR tones. Okay, all right. Well, with all that's being said, let's get to the markets. I'm just going to pull up the CNBC main page now so we can see. It's 9.15 a.m.

Markets are open in 15 minutes. We can take a look at the futures. So also this headline has been important. Jamie Dimon says he expects S&P 500 earnings estimates to fall as companies pull guidance. And apparently Jamie Dimon like basically runs the country since he's the one that Trump allegedly listened to about the potential for the potential for a recession. You can see here up at the top, though, futures basically flat at this point. But, Sagar, let me throw it to you a little bit here for what we saw yesterday. You know, originally, obviously, Trump makes his announcement, okay, we're keeping the tariffs on China.

What are they now? 145 percent. Yes. But we're rolling back other tariffs to, quote, unquote, just 10 percent, except for Canada and Mexico, which are staying with whatever they were before. Markets get really excited. There's a huge gain, one of the largest single day gains in history. And then the next day looked very different. So a lot of those gains rolled back. And then overnight, we were seeing some really troubling indications in terms of bonds, in terms of basically the world being like, you know, I don't know if the US economy is really the place where we want to put our money with any regard.

So, Sagar, why don't you go ahead and speak to a little bit of that? Yeah, sure. Is my mic okay now? I'm talking a little bit. Yeah, it's better. Okay. All right. Sorry.

I apologize, everyone. I'm still a boomer in terms of my home setup. Yeah, the dollar, there's been some major sell-off in the dollar. It's actually one of the most important things that's happening aside to the bond market. The dollar is at one of its lowest levels for international currencies, including in the European Union. This is not necessarily like de-dollarization, but it's generally like a loss of confidence in reserve currency. I don't want to overstate the case, but obviously with trade instability, that's going to be a big part of it. The bond market continues to be a big problem.

And the funny thing is, is it wouldn't be as much of a problem if the administration had not said from day one that their stated goal was to lower the yield on the 10 years specifically to try and reduce the amount of debt servicing that would require from the federal government. And so the fact that the bonds have spiked in terms of the yield, and actually even the 90-day reduction did not have any general reaction on the price, basically means that the administration's strategy is failing on all fronts. From the bond strategy, we also have this attempt to try and, what is it, the attempt attempt to try and what is it the attempt is to try and isolate China with the rest of the world. So not only do we still continue to have the 10% tariff, but we're actually starting to see some interesting deals getting cut. Right. So you can see there that you brought it back about the long term yields. But I actually think one of the more interesting stories is about this European Union side deal that's been cut with

China. So actually, the last 24 hours has been very clarifying for US markets. And that's why I don't really think it's a surprise that we saw such a significant reduction overall yesterday. And yeah, as you said, it's 915 here on the East Coast, we have a general decent idea of where things are in the S&P basically is flat to yesterday. So you know, the total bump, quote, unquote, from the 90 day pause, it's like maybe 4% to 5%. I mean, don't forget, we're still almost, what, 15%, 17% down from the all-time high on the S&P 500. Yeah, art of the deal. There's still some, yeah, art of the deal.

That's right, art of the deal. Ryan, one of the things this morning, so China announced they're lifting tariffs to, I think, 125 percent. But they also said, and I think this is part of why futures are basically flat up a little bit. They also were like, that's all we're doing. Like whatever Trump does, like we're just staying here. We're not doing this whole tit for tat thing. And so I don't know, I guess that's giving people comfort of like, well, I guess it's not going to get worse than it already is. But I also saw, I think Weisenthal was tweeting that the discount store Five and Below canceled all their orders from China. Five Below. Yeah, Five Below. Right, because you can't sell it for Five Below.

I have to say, they have some kind of cool stuff in there. Anyway. If you ever need a gift, like a white elephant gift or something, it's a great place to go. I've bought a lot of stupid shit from there before. Yeah. But anyway, Ryan, I'd love for you to talk a little bit about the China dynamics here, because I feel like there's a lot of overconfidence among the leadership of this country that we're positioned to win a trade war with China whilst also fighting trade wars, apparently, with the rest of the world. I don't know where that confidence comes from. China has basically, you know, all of the cards, as Trump likes to put it. Like, they have everything. They have

the treasuries. They have the manufacturing capacity. They have the supply chains. We buy things from them. Like, that's our entire leverage. And if they can find audiences, consumer bases for that, for that manufacturing capacity, then we're screwed. And so they're, they're already pivoting domestically. They have a billion plus people. They're trying to grow their domestic consumer base. They're, you know, there's the European Union, there's, there's Southeast and South Asia. You know, they, they have, they have, they have political problems with all of these different entities of various

ranges, but nothing like what they have with us. So it makes, it makes their differences with Southeast Asia, you know, pale in comparison to us. And just so people understand the, the, the profound implications of these, of these yield numbers going up. I remember when I was taking the Series 7 like 25 years ago or whatever, on the bond section. Why did you take the Series 7, Ryan? I was a broker. I was a broker back in early 2000s. Chairman Grimm's.

When? You've lived like eight lifetimes. How is this possible? Right out of college. What year was that? 2000. 2000, 2001. So the dot-com crash got you out of the business got it i was yeah i was there while it happened basically it was actually i

got there a little bit after i did not yeah that's wild that's my first article ever yeah my first article ever was an expose of the place where i worked um that actually that don't hire this man yeah which was a it was a mobbed up shop. And they're like, they're going to kill you for this. I was like, no, they're not going to kill me. And they didn't kill me. But on the Series 7, this is a key thing. That there's a seesaw effect with bond prices and interest rates.

When bond prices go up, interest rates go down. When bond prices go down, interest rates go down. When bond prices go down, interest rates go up. Because you need to entice people with a higher interest rate to get them in. And so it's orthodoxy. When people sell stocks, they move money into bonds because there's now more people trying to buy bonds. The price comes up and the interest rate goes down. And that was what the Trump administration was counting on, that if you tank the stock market, you drive up the price of bonds and then you reduce the interest rate. And then boom, when we roll over all of our debt, our debt payments are going to go down. But something broke. The orthodoxy is not working.

People sold out of the market and they're going somewhere else. They're also selling their bonds. Japan's selling a bunch of bonds. A lot of it is into gold, by the way. Gold prices are going up and up. So, I mean, there's a lot going on. And they're looking for equities around the world, too. That's right.

Somewhere other than the U.S. that they can stash the money. So we are screwed. Well, so, I mean, throughout the week, I have been, I have probably had a different take from you guys. And I've, like, this stuff is so hard to predict it to the point that Ryan just made. It's kind of like jury's still out. And I think Sagar just said the last 24 hours have been clarifying. That is, I mean, what we're starting to see is, maybe this isn't a surprise, but the Trump administration said, this is going to be a

bet. We're going to, as we do this 90-day pause, we're going to just jack up the China tariffs. And this is going to force countries, and Wiesenthal pointed this out, like Cambodia and Vietnam to choose finally between the United States and China. Nobody can have it both ways anymore. And so this is going to bring a rash of investment back into the U.S. and it's going to be great. Everyone's going to be happy. And I do think there's just been a lack of evidence of any of that happening. You know, it's not like that's not shocking or controversial, but they are not able to point to very many examples. And this is something we saw this in a CNN. Wasn't this a CNN panel last night where like actually pointing to examples of how this has panned out over the last week, like investments that have actually come into the United States, deals with those 75 countries that have actually been struck. Listen, I am still open to hearing great deals are coming

through with these countries because we do have the leverage over things like the EU, but they can also just decide to go to China. And if the EU decides to go to China- That's already happening. It's already happening. That's the bet. That was the bet. And think about it. But if that's the bet you're going to make, okay, then why are you running around the world like insulting everyone needlessly and you know picking fights with denmark and sending jd vance to like shake his finger at the europeans for their censorious ways which there are some legitimate critiques there but then you know you have no room to talk given what you're doing back home. Right. And so if, okay, if you wanted to do this intelligently, which Sagar was saying this yesterday, like in some ways, I hate even indulging an intelligent conversation about this because

there is no intelligence behind this. Right. If you wanted to do this intelligently and you wanted to force the world to pick between you and China, and you actually wanted to win in that, why would you tariff the entire world? Right. Why would you go around insulting all of these people, picking a fight with Canada, picking a fight with Denmark over Greenland, picking a fight with the EU? No, you would want to isolate China. You would want to try to make that deal appealing for your allies. And they've done the total opposite of that. You know, I think part of it comes from Trump's, like, he's an old man. And his formative years when he was, like, at the peak of his powers were, like, the 80s and early 90s. Okay?

The U.S. is in a very different position now. The world has moved on. Right? true economic competitor in China, who is in many ways surpassing us at this point, especially on technological development and their ability to, you know, build and deliver for their own people and have some sort of like unity and program and long-term thinking behind all of that. And I, it just seems to me like he didn't reckon with any of that because, you know, I'm not a financial genius. I did never, I never took the series seven. I'm looking at this all from like a political macro perspective. And it does not surprise me at all that as the stock market is tanking and as we are taking these insane like positions

and total chaos, they're on, they're off, they're on, they're big, they're small, they're whatever. We're doing it again in 90 days that the rest of the world is going like we already were moving in the direction of moving away from the dollar. Did we learn nothing from the fact that we threw every sanction in the book at Russia and they were like, yeah, we're still OK. Like we're actually we were able to manage that. And China is so much better position than Russia and such a wealthier place to be able to withstand what we have to throw at them. Well, I just want to say quickly, like on the so Scott Besson was making the point on Tucker last week that the mark a lot of the market dips started with deep seek, which is super interesting if you're making this bet about China. And I think what the reason that they were doing the penguin tariffs and the reason that they were

like being so chaotic. I'm not saying that there was like a method to the madness. I think people were on different pages. I think Trump allowed that to happen because he was like, the more people have no idea what my strategy is, the more that they bet with the United States. It creates this complete state of total chaos and uncertainty. And we are the steady hand. And are you kidding me? Are you kidding me? Compared to China. Shaking the world. state of total chaos and uncertainty. And we are the steady hand. And that's not- We're the steady hand. Are you kidding me? Are you kidding me?

Compared to China. Shaking the world. Compared to China. But this is what I'm saying. This is what I'm saying with the Bessent point. He's making the point that the deep seek leap is baked into the market decline at the same time as they're saying the uncertainty will cause people to bet on the United States. I think there's something if you are Canada or Mexico and you were treated a little bit differently in all of this, but still got some attacks. Although I know we have yesterday, Trump said nice things about Queen Claudia Scheinbaum in front of the show.

Everybody stands. Yeah, apparently. He's part of that 95% approval rating she has or whatever. But for some people, like for some countries, there's logic for Trump flexing his muscles and saying, you don't want to be doing this with China. Like this is the US. You're safer with us. It's not turning out that way. One thing I just want to put on quickly just to show you guys like why China is so much better positioned is this story, which I was just reading this morning. This will not really make sense to most people, but this is an example of what real estate capacity looks like. So JD.com

for people who don't know is one of the biggest companies in the fortune or in the global 500. And it is according to the Wall Street Journal here, what the Chinese government has said is that this is effectively like forcing Amazon to then pump $27 billion of money into their economy to force that company to buy exclusively Chinese products and to boost their domestic manufacturing. So I just want to show people, like, when you have a wholesome strategy, you can absorb 125% tariffs. If this was a strategy that was pushing something like this, I would be behind it. But I don't see a dollar for dollar investment credit here being pushed

in the United States. Instead, the Trump administration currently endorsed a $1 trillion cut from the United States government budget, while we're also simultaneously increasing the Pentagon budget by $150 billion. So there is actually a reduction in state capacity under the Doge project. Yeah, Doge project, cutting taxes, reducing state capacity. We're actually cutting manufacturing tax credits and extending them for corporations all while trying to levy a massive tariff. China, on the other hand, when they absorb a massive tariff, what do they do? They're like, hey, JD.com, aka Amazon or retailer or whatever. They're like, you're pumping $27 billion into the economy. And they can do that to every single company in their entire country.

Simultaneously, they don't have some idiot Jerome Powell, just like reading the tea leaves on a magic eight ball. They're like, the rates are getting cut now. They also, they don't have Congress. They can just pump money into their economy. They are 10x better positioned, in my opinion, right now than we are because of these cross-cutting forces. All of this is actually possible in a democratic system, but it would require a whole of government approach, manufacturing tax credits, and more. And I think that is really the most blackpilling thing about all of this. And yeah, just reading that, I'm in awe that they can just go, imagine summoning Bezos the way that they imprisoned that guy, what was it, Jack Ma. And they're like, yeah, you're putting 27 billion off the top.

It's going straight into the economy. There's no no yes or no they're just like this is what you're doing um and in that my admiration for that is that it's yes often they use their authoritarianism capriciously and to crack down whatever but like in this sense it is so obviously intelligent in knowing exactly how to make sure that the Chinese customer is not broadly affected, keeping their supply chain. They don't care if it's going to impact JD stock or JD.com stock, which ironically, it actually went up as a result of this. But I'm just saying they don't care about these short term, you know,-by-quarter basis, and that's why they're well-positioned for strength and, frankly, even more like the autarkic protectionist vision that the Trump administration wants. endorse a $1 trillion investment tax credit that would be given to all of companies that want to build in the United States, phase-ins. But you need then, you can't be cutting the EPA. A friend of mine, I'm very into nuclear energy, just sent me this. Doge is trying to ask the entire team

that would be responsible for greenlighting new nuclear reactors. So what are we doing here? That's actually about, if you know, abundance, we talk a lot about abundance. That's a key part, I think, of the abundance agenda. Meanwhile, you know, over there, everything is so vertically integrated that yes, they obviously have inefficiency, but whenever it's like hyper focused on something very important, that is, they're ready to spring into action. They've studied the US economic playbook for years. Russia is the greatest thing that ever happened to them. They got to battle test it and they got to observe exactly how it all works. I mean, I remember screaming this at the time. I said, why? Why would you blow it all here on a on a stupid conflict like Russia and Ukraine

whenever China is just sitting there and watching this entire thing. We talked about this. We talked about this. I mean, Ryan, we can't we can't beat the Houthis in Yemen. We can't like we stayed in Afghanistan for 20 plus years. And the Taliban just to me like we think we're going to be able to go toe to toe with China at this point. I'm sorry. It's delusional. It's delusional. Yeah. And we're like, we're shocked at what

China has been able to build development wise from 2000 up until 2025. And we're like, China is cheating us. You know, we are such victims. How on earth could China have done this to us? We never should have let them into WTO and PNTR was such a mistake. It's like, well, what did the U.S. spend its trillions of dollars on from 2000 until today? We spent all of our money in Iraq and Afghanistan. And during the Cold War, the U.S. actually did have the capacity to organize its foreign and corporate policy in a uniform-ish way, similar to how China can today, because the parties agreed on what US foreign policy ought to be, taking on the Soviet Union, establishing American hegemony, and the corporate CEOs were on board. They would just pick up a phone, like, all right, these are your marching orders.

And the corporations, they would, not China style, but they would they would follow the directions that they were getting from from a White House that that had the buy in from the other party. basically eradicate the Democratic Party and all of its constituent elements with universities, research, teachers' unions, federal workers. He's trying to basically destroy his domestic enemies while he is also then waging war, trade war on all of these countries around the world. And that means you don't have a unified center of power on which to take on China. Maybe he can win a 285 front war, but it's a little bit more difficult. We also have a corporate class compared to mid-century post-war period that is wildly more powerful. They're not pro-American. They're global. And they're so much more powerful. I mean, you have somebody like Mark Zuckerberg running a

company that is significantly more powerful than most right and he speaks chinese like like he's not gonna like be like all right let's let's rally around the flag he's like what flag yeah global company yeah same yeah yeah i mean the vast majority of meta users are not american that's people forget that like it's actually not i mean it's american flagship company but the absolute i think they have 3 billion users, so you do math. It's not that difficult to figure out what percentage of people do use their platform. Just broadly, I think Ryan is absolutely correct on all of this. Look, I mean, I don't want to understate the great strengths of the United States.

The one thing we have going for us is that we are the greatest consumer market in the history of the world. Probably not a good thing, but that does mean that we have a lot of leverage. Shout out to Five Below. Yeah, shout out to Five Below. And I mean, listen, that's what makes America tick. Who am I to say otherwise? TJ Maxx, HomeGoods, and all this other stuff. And a lot of that does come from China, so they're obviously going to have an effect.

I'm not going to say they won't make it. It's just like the Russians. No one will say that the Russians are materially better off than whenever they invaded Ukraine. But the idea that you can just overnight like crush them or something when they have such incredible state capacity in China and they also have their own ability to act as well as a much more unified population. I mean, I don't know if you guys saw this but that jd clip of him calling the chinese peasants yeah talking about chinese but that has gone massively viral in china massively viral on i forget what it's called webo or something like that and the state censors are

actually they're usually they crush uh clips that get circulated around. They're like, oh, let fly, let fly. And that is rocking around the entire country. Some of the state's spokespeople are sharing old clips of Mao being like, we will never give in. It's like, oh, boy. And I mean, but that's a real phenomenon. Look at what happened in Canada with the trade war. Suddenly it flipped politics on its head. The conservative dude was ready to romp. And now Carney, the liberal, has an 80 percent chance of being the next prime minister. Like there was a real there was like a spark of Canadian nationalism, maybe at like historic levels. And it's going to be the same thing in China. Like they are unified behind. We're going to win. Our country is not unified,

but our country does not want this. If you had to vote. I mean, I think a majority of probably even Republicans would be like, I don't know about this direction, but certainly a majority of the public based on all of the polling that we've seen. Trump himself, he has squandered, like his honeymoon period is over. The approval ratings now are back down to where they were in the first term, low 40s. You know, he has expended the sort of like political capital that he had accumulated with an impressive victory and Republican wins and all of that sort of stuff. That's over and gone. So even just in terms of the political positioning, they're in much better shape. The last thing, just before we move on, because the picture has changed just in the time that

we've been speaking, the markets are now open. And can see there's, you know, that they're down a bit. So, you know, this is going to be, who knows what things are going to look like today as we're moving forward. I love that chyron at the top. Wall Street wraps one of the wildest weeks ever. There you go. For no reason. I love giving everybody insight into what the e-commerce folks want me to buy. Stop seeing this ad. All right. Let's unless you guys have some final thoughts, let's go ahead and get to this Supreme Court ruling. That was pretty significant.

Anybody any last thoughts on the tariff economic piece? No, go ahead. We're good. Okay. All right. So last week on Friday, we actually got to talk to the lawyer of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, Maryland father, immigrant, deported wrongfully. Administration had admitted, like they called it an administrative error.

He was sent to this prison, this notorious torture dungeon, McKellie's Dungeons in El Salvador. And so the administration was like, yeah, we fucked up, but we're not going to do anything about it and you can't make us. District court judge said, you need to do what you can to get him back.

They said you need to facilitate and effectuate his return. Peel's court agreed, went to the Supreme Court. Supreme Court initially issued an administrative stay saying, OK, well, the deadline that you have to bring them back tonight, like we're putting that on hold because we're going to take a look at this. And now we have their answer. And it's pretty

remarkable because all nine justices sided with the lower courts saying you have to, in this wording again is key, facilitate Kilmar Abrego-Garcia's return from this prison in El Salvador. So again, everyone from Justice Alito and Justice Thomas to, you know, Sonia Sotomayor, they all were on board with this. It's an unsigned order. And as I mentioned, these two terms are important. Effectively, what the order here from the court said is they have to facilitate his return, but the district court needs to clarify the term effectuate to make sure that it is not overstepping its bounds with regard to the executive's prerogative to conduct foreign policy. The lower court has now amended its order to just take out the term effectuate. So I think this is

being seen rightfully so as a major victory, certainly for this individual, for his family, also an indication of the Supreme Court's willingness to stand up to this administration on some fronts. But I also don't want to celebrate here too early, Ryan, because what does it technically mean to facilitate his return? Like if the Trump administration just goes to McKellie and is like, wink, wink, nod, nod, can you send that guy back? And McKellie's like, sorry, can't do it. They can. Can they go back to the court and be like, oh, well, we tried. We did our best. And, you know, what what can be done? I guess he just has to stay there now and be, you know, tortured and sold out for slave labor for life. And it's also worth noting that the administration fired the attorney who submitted the brief that acknowledged the administrative error,

which suggests where they are on this situation. I wonder if it's simply that they do not want this guy giving interviews if he comes back and talking about the conditions of the prison that he's been living in. To prevent that, I suppose they could facilitate his return, put him in detention, and then deport him somewhere, just keep him indefinitely in detention. And while they try to either get the stay lifted on the ability to deport him to El Salvador, or try to deport him to some other country that would take him or maybe to send him to Guantanamo. There are all kinds of evil options that Stephen Miller has before him,

which to me means it's probably unlikely that they're going to do the non-evil one, which would be our apologies. Please send this guy back. And then if they want to go through a deportation process, they could do that, but do it on the up and up. One thing I wanted to flag here while you guys were talking was this. A friend of mine, Jay, I just wanted your guys' thoughts. My friend Jason Willick says this, quote, it is probably not unintentional that the SCOTUS order refers explicitly to Abrego

Garcia's release from custody rather than his return to the United States. Is that what you guys saw in this? Because it says the order properly requires the government to facilitate release from custody and to ensure his case is handled as it would have been had he not been improperly sent to El Salvador. I don't think so because the thing is he is specifically barred from being sent to El Salvador specifically. That was what the – what is it called? Like an order – withholding order or something like that. Temporary hold I think is what it's called. So it's specifically – that's where they messed up is they could have gone through the court process. He has an ongoing asylum claim, a claim to that, you know, his attorney at least

thought that he had a good shot at being at prevailing and whether or not that's the case, we don't really know. But, you know, he had they had found, OK, a credible fear. You can go through the asylum process. So he has an ongoing asylum case. But specifically, the judge said he cannot be deported to this particular country. So if you're just releasing him from custody, you are still in very clear, blatant violation of not a lawyer, but I think that doesn't follow logically to me. What to me more of the gray area is sort of similar to how the Supreme Court had ruled. You can go forward for now with this Alien Enemies Act while, you know, this is working its way through the lower courts. But you have to provide some level of due process. They have to be able to file habeas petitions and they have to be given, quote unquote, reasonable notice.

But they left it to the administration to define, well, what do we consider to be reasonable notice? So I sort of feel like this is a similar deal where it's like you're leaving it to the administration to determine what does it mean to, quote unquote, facilitate his return. And I think Ryan is 100% right. I mean, I think it's not just that they don't want him back and going on 60 Minutes and talking about the reality. I think it's also, you know, they want to maintain the image that, you know, we can just send you if you want. They want to maintain that hardline image and that there's no recourse. And they certainly don't want people really getting a sense like, you know, you're they've called him. They've alleged he's a human trafficker and like a leader in MS-13. There is just zero evidence to support any of that. And so they certainly don't want the public to get a look at this, you know, seemingly innocent man with no criminal record that they sent to be indefinitely tortured

i think it's a ladder crystal go ahead emily you can go well i was gonna say sucker is jason making the point that they could get mexico to accept him i don't know i i just would i did not understand because i was like well as an el salvadorian citizen i was like so would they just release him from custody and i was you know but if if that's how the that uh that seems plausible that they could say okay legally we can deport him to Mexico if Mexico will take him. But it also says in the order, though, if you want to put that back up on the screen, it also says the case has to be handled as if this had never happened.

So it says the language is such like you have to pretend, go back to what you would have done and, you know, handle this in the way that it would have been handled had he not been improperly sent to El Salvador. So I, you know, I certainly, he can't just be deported without, again, some sort of due process. There was no due process here. That would be in violation of the other thing that the Supreme Court said that indicates you have to give these people due process. So they have to bring them back, give them a habeas petition in Texas or Louisiana or whatever. Right. That makes sense. accepting deportations. And so I think the administration, the error here, and it is incredibly stupid, is that they didn't realize his petition specifically was barring him from

going back because of the asylum claim of credible fear. And so I think they keep trying to make the point that they can boot people to wherever they want to boot people so long as that country accepts them because they're struggling to do the, quote, mass deportations. And one of the ways that they're able to get more deportations is having Bukele, for example, just take in people who are Venezuelan. So, I mean, I wonder if they will pursue some other deportation option. I don't know the legality. I think that's what Jason was saying. I think the reason that they won't admit it is because it takes off the venue. Right now, obviously, the administration has lost a lot of credibility. I actually think,

Crystal, did you guys cover the case, the MS-13 case here in Virginia? The one where- I was going to pull it. Yeah, okay, yeah. Go ahead and pull it up. So talk while I'm actually looking for that right now. This is an important case because the administration keeps trying to do these flagship arrests where they'll be like, this guy, MS-13, literally here, not far from where I live. They arrested this guy and they're like, he's a major leader of MS-13. They charged him with all of this. The governor of Virginia was there.

The secretary of homeland security was there. The secretary of Homeland Security was there. Like this was a major event. And then in the charging documents, basically all they said in the charging documents was like, we caught him in possession of an illegal firearm. Okay. I mean, listen, fine, but that is a crime and definitely, you know, it'll get, it'll get sent to prison, not necessarily an MS-13 quote gang leader. And it seems that the administration now is going to be dropping the case and instead pursuing deportation. Now, okay, like you can pursue deportation

based on like, oh, he was charged or whatever with a possession of an illegal firearm. But that's pretty far from human trafficking, orchestrating murders, and being a gang leader. And it's pretty obvious that either a bad intelligence or B, this was literally just like made up like it was a PR stunt. And I think that is now what's happening, where if you see in the case here of Abrego Garcia, and the government has to admit in writing and then facilitate the return, everyone's going to be

because there's a lot of MAGA people who are still like, Oh, it just doesn't matter, whatever, you come here illegally, etc. They're going to be like, well, hold on. Like, if you have to bring somebody back because you screwed up, it's like, well, how many other screw ups are there in the bundle? Right? And so that is what, go ahead. I mean, it just, it makes it clear. Like, there's nothing about this, just grab someone and throw them in the prison that would preclude US citizens or anyone else from being caught up in that as well. But, I mean, to your point, Sagar, about this guy, like they did a whole thing and they – he's the East Coast leader of MS-13. Okay, well, don't you want to have that guy in prison? Because if you just deport him and he doesn't serve any time in prison, what's to stop him from coming

right back? So, um, you know, even Fox news was given Caroline Lovett a hard time about this one because they're thinking about it from that perspective of like, if this guy's such a big criminal, like, of course you want to prosecute him. Of course you want to get him behind bars. So let me just play a little, that exchange. So you guys can hear how, how that went down. Can you shed some light on this? Because it was a story that we all covered, that he was the East Coast leader of MS-13. So what was the evidence that supported that proclamation by the Department of Justice and the FBI? Here at the White House, we applaud the Attorney General Pam Bondi, our FBI Director Kash Patel, for working hand-in-hand with local law enforcement on the ground in the Commonwealth of Virginia to detain and arrest this MS-13 ringleader.

There was sufficient evidence to do so. And now the case is in the hands of the Department of Homeland Security, who will be deporting this individual from our country. These agencies are working together in a collaborative way to follow President Trump's directive to eradicate MS-13 and foreign terrorists from United States soil. So this is an individual who was detained and arrested because of the president's policies, and he will no longer be residing in the United States of America. I'm just trying to get some clarity on it, Caroline, because, you know, if indeed he is what we were told he is, the East Coast leader of MS-13, wouldn't it make sense in court here in the United States and then send him to an El Salvador prison if he is deported and found guilty on those crimes. Well, again, this administration is doing things differently, Martha, and this president has made a directive to his

agencies, particularly the Department of Homeland Security, to remove foreign terrorists from America's homeland to protect American citizens. And we have an incredible diplomatic relationship with the president of El Salvador and his government who have been detaining these MS-13 ringleaders and violent gang members in their prisons. And American taxpayers don't have to foot the bill for that cost. And so, again, the bottom line here- The Supreme Court said that the Alien Act could be used to remove people, but they had to see due process first. I'm only pressing on this because it was a huge story and we covered it. Obviously, it would feel like that person could lead to a lot of other evidence.

The DOJ would be pressing to see this in court so that other people could be exposed. And suddenly none of that's happening. So can you explain why the change, of course, in this particular case? She doesn't explain the change, of course, but in any case, that's, you know, in Fox News, like, OK, if this guy's such a big deal, what are we doing here? I do at least appreciate that because they got fooled, right? They sent camera crews out there like they took it seriously. They covered the arrest. They made this into a huge thing. And you're like, so what? You just drug me out there to cover a gun charge. You know how many gun charges there are in this country? It's like, be serious. Right. And OK, you want to deport

somebody for a gun charge. OK, yeah, fine. But, you know, be made going around federal cases like acting like this is some Rico mob boss, and then just saying, oh, actually, we're going to drop the case. We don't actually have to prove any of this stuff in court. There's a huge credit. I'm going to use an old school Vietnam term, which Ryan will love credibility gap. There's a credibility gap that is opening with this White House. But wait until Fox News gets a hold of Dropsite. This is me teeing it over to Ryan, because that's what should really be infuriating. I mean, it infuriates me

the way there are clearly deals being struck and these guys are being used as pawns in a bigger drug war. Yeah, Ryan, I read the story and I still don't fully get it. So can you just explain it? So basically what's going on here, and we don't know if this is exactly

what's going on with this kid yet because he's 24. And so Bukele and MS-13 struck a deal back around 2019, where Bukele would give better prison conditions to MS-13 members who were already locked up and other favors. You can see this story that Jose Olivares and I wrote for Dropsite News. And in exchange, they would stop killing and kidnapping people. And this is not an uncommon tactic among South American or Central American presidents. FMLN had tried to do the same thing, like back in 2011 or something like that. Part of the deal was that then MS-13 would support Bukele in his next election. And they did that and he won in a landslide. And then you saw this kind of breakdown of the deal. And he's become this much more

aggressive anti-gang dude. And so he has denied up and down that these negotiations ever took place, but the negotiations absolutely did take place. And so there has been this push and pull, tug of war between the US and Bukele. Bukele wants all of the MS-13 members who know about these negotiations in his dungeon. He does not want them in open court in the United States talking openly about the negotiations that they had with Bukele, which are a real lightning rod, a real political lightning rod in El Salvador. They wouldn't get attention here, but if they had testified in court up here in the United States, it would get a lot of coverage in El Salvador. And he generally has the media locked down. But if this, you know, the media would cover something that happened in a U.S.

courtroom in El Salvador. So this would be a big problem for him. So the price that Bukele demanded to take these Venezuelans was, I also want these MS-13 guys that I've been trying to get from you and that you've been keeping from me. And so that's why we these MS-13 guys that I've been trying to get from you and that you've been keeping from me. And so that's why we sent MS-13 people along with these Venezuelans. And in order to send them, they had to dismiss the charges. And they did that with a bunch of them back when they first sent them down. So that's what this looks like. We don't know the details yet.

He would have been like 18 when these negotiations were going on. So maybe he has knowledge of the negotiations subsequent. Or they just stitched up some random guy in Virginia and the thing is all now falling apart. But that's the backdrop that it could be part of this MS-13 leadership roundup that bukele wants trump to help him effectuate and facilitate interesting wow crazy stuff emily you're muted you're muted emily not working okay it's all good all right let's talk uh quickly here about mahmoud khalil because this was important too so you know the administration has made it pretty clear for a while that i mean they have never said that mahmoud khalil who of course was the columbia student legal permanent resident green card holder who was arrested by ice and shipped down to was he

louisiana i believe he was shipped down to and he was the real first big high profile case of like anyone who said anything about Israel that we didn't like, we're going to round them up if they're, you know, here on a visa or a green card holder or whatever, we're going to round them up and we're going to detain them and we're going to deport them. He was the first big high profile example of that. And the administration has never argued that he committed any crimes, even though many of their defenders have insinuated or insisted that this was because of illegal activity. They have never indicated that. And so the court has been asking them to provide their evidence of why they believe that he should be deported. And effectively,

you know, they so the government files, you know, this this submission and there is really no there there. I've got the key paragraph here. He says, pursuant to these authorities, I've determined the activities and presence of these aliens. The U.S. would have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences would compromise a compelling U.S. foreign policy interest. These determinations are based on information provided by the DHS, ICE, HSI regarding the participation and role of someone else, we don't know, and Khalil in anti-Semitic protests and disruptive activities which foster a hostile environment for Jewish students in the U.S. My determination for the other person is also based on some other citations for unlawful activity during these protests, but that's not Khalil. That's this other person.

They're claiming engagement in unlawful activities. The public actions and continued presence of these two in the U.S. undermine U.S. policy to combat anti-Semitism around the world and the U.S. in addition to efforts to protect Jewish students from harassment and violence in the United States. So literally the only thing that they cite here for Mahmoud Khalil Sager is his participation in what they describe as anti-Semitic protests and disruptive activities. Interesting, isn't it? Definitely also fits with our anti-Semitic screening that we're doing now. Ryan, I'm sure you saw that story. Oh, wait, do we have the ICE thing? I haven't gotten to react to this yet.

Oh, the stop ideas? Oh, I'll pull that up. Ryan, you talk while I pull it up. All right, let me find that. No, like, yeah, they asked, they were told they have to have come up with some evidence that he did something wrong. What's your case why is this permanent resident married to an american citizen whose wife is about to give birth in like in indefinite detention without charge and yeah they finally came back with because marco rubio can lock up anybody he wants who isn't a citizen for any reason um and the reason that he's claiming is that he's anti-Semitic, which is wild because he could bring – if they actually wanted to try that, which apparently they don't think they have to, he could bring countless, it sounds like, Jewish colleagues of his from Colombia.

That's right. They've already submitted letters. They've already submitted letters attesting to his character. And, you know, he was going to Shabbat dinners. He was fighting anti-Semitism. When there was somebody who did say something anti-Semitic, he was the first to intervene. So polar opposite of the way that he's being portrayed. Right. Which leads them just to argue, well, if you're critical of Israel, we believe that that is anti-semitism bingo exactly uh let's so as you guys can see around the screen this was a real thing that was put out by ice quote if it crosses the border illegally it's our job to stop it people money products okay okay understand OK, I understand. Ideas. Hold on a second. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Can we talk about that last one? What was that last one? Ideas? Like, what does that mean exactly? If it crosses our border illegally.

Ideas. How does an idea illegally cross the U.S. border? Oh, now we're entering some difficult, difficult territory, aren't we, Ryan? And that's where. In the trunk of the car, yeah. Yeah, in the trunk of our car, I've got some shine bomb literature. Yeah, what is it? What's like the biggest blow with that apparently? Yeah. What magic does this woman have, though, for real? I don't know. We're all referring to this. Trump in the Oval Office was like, she's a fantastic woman. She's doing a great job.

We had a wonderful time. She's very dignified. She's very elegant. Very elegant. I think he probably just has good. She probably is just a good diplomat. She probably talks to him well on the phone. I mean, honestly, I can't really think of an alternative.

But, Emily, we're talking about ICE saying that they want to stop dangerous ideas from entering the country. We just put that graphic up from yesterday. And you're just, I know it's cartoonish. It's and that's it's like, it's the most obvious point to make. But can you imagine if the Biden-Harris administration had done half of it? Like, you cannot imagine there would be such a meltdown over it. And understandably so, like it is truly un-American. It is a truly un-American thing to say and position to hold. And then the fact that you are clearly, we also just put up the Mahmoud Khalil court filing. That's like, oh, he was at a protest. That's why we're going to deport him. No allegations of

illegality. No, even I thought they'd come up with something he said that was a little edgy, you know, that they could put in the front. Nope, none of that. Just like he was in a protest and people felt unsafe. Yeah, they didn't even put like from the river to the sea. They didn't even be like the well-known anti-Semitic phrase from the river to the sea. Well, that is their definition. I mean, it said like even by their own definition, right?

So they've accepted that definition. So they haven't even used that successfully. I mean, it's just the ideas thing. If you flip it around and you see the Biden administration coming in and using this on Christians or people who are opposed like TERFs. I mean, it's just like the possibilities are endless. The mind boggles. But we do need some more TERFs. We need more TERFs. Oh, by all means. I call for more TERFs.

This is so – when I was reading through the document that they submitted in evidence, the Rubio memo, I was just like – it's so – it's not surprising, but they really do have nothing. Well, and Ryan, they had said – maybe Pam Bondi, I don't remember. One of these people said that the reason he was being deported was because he aligned with Hamas. This document doesn't even mention Hamas. Right. Good point. That was the DHS spokeswoman. Yeah.

Trisha McLaughlin who said that. Right. They can't even prove that. Do you guys want to know what's funny? You know where Trisha came from? She used to work for Vivek, Mr. Ideas, and Mr. Debate. I'm just saying. some of us remember things these are uh it's a curse to actually remember anything in this business and just be like what the fuck are you talking you imagine

she mixes it up yeah yeah it's like he went from that to uh miss idea mr uh we need to ban ideas and well can i say such a great point crystal about the Hamas thing is they didn't even mention that. They just said he was anti-Semitic. Go ahead, Emily. Well, no, but that's why this is all so frustrating because, Crystal, do you remember we interviewed Mama Dutal on the show back in? Well, his case is interesting because after he had gotten his visa, he had been tweeting things about how the U.S. empire, he hates the U.S. empire. His goal in life is bringing down the U.S. empire. And he's like the one person from all of these cases, like Ozturk, for example, and op-ed. He's the one person from

all these cases where I'm like, granted, he'd said all of that after he got the visa. But I was like, could you have sussed that out in your interviews with him? Like, did you know that he wasn't super pro-America when you said here's a student visa? Like, there are arguments that would be within the realm of like reasonable debate. And these are not them. These are like insane examples of op-eds and trying to tie him to these posters that were handed out at protests, trying to tie him to protests that got violent. He wasn't there. He didn't do it. Wasn't with Khalil, wasn't there also an allegation that he had lied on his green card application or something like that? Yes. He omitted. That's not here either. Yeah. He omitted that he'd worked for the embassy. For the UN?

No, I thought it was the UN, like UNRWA. I thought it was the UK embassy in Beirut. Because he had a joint job, like he had a UK security clearance while he was working for UNRWA. Which, like, I can't imagine why, like, working for the UK would be disqualifying for an American, like somebody applying for a visa in the United States or something. Yeah, maybe he's a spook. What if he's a spook? But he's a he's a he's a British spy. He's double oh seven. Yes, he's a. They should put that in the application for his. Do you know why he should be deported then? But that's a good reason.

It was thinner. I knew it would be thin because right. The right has been digging through everything. This man has ever said to try to come up with something to paint him. It's like, oh, he's an anti-Semitic terrorist loving monster. And they came up with nothing. So I knew it would be thin. This was thinner even than I expected. Cause I thought they'd have the thing in there.

Oh, he was lying on his application. And oh, he said from the river to the sea. And oh, here's a Hamas pamphlet. Remember Caroline Leavitt did that whole thing. I can't even bring that literature into the briefing room because it was from the river to the sea. And oh, here's a Hamas pamphlet. Remember, Caroline Leavitt did that whole thing. Yes, yes. I can't even bring that literature into the briefing room because it was so horrible. She said that to me.

Oh, that's right. She did say it to you. I forgot that. I was like, yeah, for sure. The horrible literature that we, you know, can't even, like the innocence of the American people would be ruined if we saw it. Yeah, Saga's sensibilities couldn't handle it yeah i could not handle it it's true

it's a delicate flower i actually wanted to see it i was like yeah you know it'd be great actually i was protecting you from it though show me this stuff but yeah it's all right that's that's what i need my government for uh should we move to dave smith should we talk about dave okay i got two clips so what do you guys want to start with? Do you want to start with his lived experience thing about how you have to be able to have been to Israel? Yeah, before you talk about it? Okay, let's start with that. Can we just say, though, at off the top here that what happened in this conversation is that Douglas Murray, who probably was under enormous pressure from pro-Israel folks and people who are pro-Ukraine and neoconservatives to stand up to

Joe Rogan. He starts the interview by asking Joe Rogan if he can ask him a question about why he doesn't. So I just it's sort of like the Oval Office meeting that is genuinely important context for this three hour conversation is that it started with Douglas Murray challenging Joe Rogan about why he has he had an agenda. Yeah. Yeah. He coming into this. He's mad at Joe. He's snippy. And he's or what did what did Trump say? all these guests. He's like, I've had Gad Saad. He said Barry. You've had pro-Israel folks and this one guy. I can't remember his name. And you're like, oh, so you can't even remember the name of the guy you're calling anti-Semitic?

But okay. Well, anyway, so what he does in the beginning is he first of all starts off with chastising Rogan for not having enough pro-Israel, pro-Ukraine folks on. Which is preposterous. It would piss me off so much if a guest came on our show and was like, actually, I think here's how you should produce your show. Here's how you should do your job. There is no worse way to start a conversation with anyone than that, really. Let's start with that.

And he accused Dave of hosting Ian Carroll. He had no information. And was a little bit off. I thought Joe handled it really well, and it turned into a pretty interesting discussion. Joe really held his cool. I will say that Douglas is one of the smarmiest people I've ever seen on this. Because he spends the entire thing trying to attack Smith's character. Basically implies that Dave Smith is doing this for views or for clicks. Ridiculous. Dave has been in this business for a long time. Dave's most viral moment is not even anything to? Like implying that he's doing this for career purposes.

Someone should tell me that because I don't remember my career doing all that well because of any Israel criticism. In fact, it's the opposite of Mr. Murray who went from this flitting about neoconservative has-been to little flak jacket tour vests all over Israel. And so that is the context. Right.

That's the context is the concern trolling about, quote, expertise. And we'll get to that. But the really the best part was this, where he tries to use a literal woke style argument of if you've never been to Israel, then you're not allowed to talk about it. Dave handled himself incredibly well, in my opinion, in this back and forth. So let's go ahead and take a listen to some about it. Dave handled himself incredibly well, in my opinion, in this back and forth. So let's go ahead and take a listen to some of it. There's no deficit of goods coming in. I've been plenty of times. There's no deficit?

No, there are plenty. No goods worked out? There are plenty. Have you been to the crossing points? No. When were you last there at all? I've never been. You've never been? Well,

am I not allowed to talk about it now? Have you ever been to Nazi Germany? Are you allowed to have... You can't time travel, but you can travel. Okay, but so what? So what's the point? No, I just... Lots of people have been there and agree with me, and lots of people have been there and agree with you. If you're going to spend a year and a half talking about a place,

you should at least do the courtesy of visiting it. All right. I just think this is a non-argument. You don't think? No, I think it's a non-argument. But if you're an ex- Will you have to go and touch the ground? No, I think it's a good idea to see stuff,

particularly if you spend a career talking about something. Yes. I have a journalistic rule of trying never to talk about a country, even in Parsi, unless I've at least been there. Okay. It's a sort of normal thing to do. You're talking about, hang on, you're talking about crossing points. And not only have you never been to a crossing point in either Egypt or in Israel, but you've never even been to the region. Okay. Again, I think this is a non-argument. I don't understand. It's not a non-argument. Yeah, it is. It's not a non-argument if you're insisting that you're an expert of some kind, or not claiming

you're an expert, but still talking about it, about the provisions going into Gaza or not, if you've never seen any of this going on. So you're not allowed to speak about things that you've read about. You can only speak about things that you've seen with your own eyes. You can talk about what you want as you're proving, but that is a different matter from spending an awfully long amount of time talking about an issue in a region you haven't even had the courtesy to visit whilst developing all of these views about it. I mean, now I slightly get an idea of where you're coming from. You've read about this blockade. And so you imagine that that's what it is.

I imagine you've read all the people who say that Gaza was a concentration camp. All right, we can call it there. this is the dumbest form of argumentation. And there's there's a layer to this, too. I actually texted this, Dave. And I was like, I kind of wish you'd said this. Hey, Douglas. Yeah, I just want to be like, hey, Douglas, why do you think you got to go to the crossing points my guy is it because you're on an israeli bb sponsored tour to go and to see this so that you go on the biggest platform in the world and say everything is fine why don't we call ryan why don't you enlighten me and call as you have

some of the people who live there and tell me what they have to say who are not members of go ahead ryan tell me what the people who are on the other side of that crossing point have to say. They say they can't find food. Oh, OK. Got it. And they have phone numbers. Has he spoken to them? Has he texted with them?

Have you ever been to Gaza, Douglas? Have you ever been to Gaza? No. He shouldn't say anything about it. Oh, great point. Yeah. They blocked on March 2nd. They said we're not letting any aid in.

They said it publicly. OK. Got it. Why does Dave Smith need to go fact check the claims by the Israeli government? And the Palestinians on the other side confirmed it. We have both sides saying we're not letting aid in. But if Dave doesn't. Weird. Go ahead, Crystal. that marginalized group, you can't speak on issues related to that marginalized group.

And I'm not going to say that there's nothing to like hearing someone's quote unquote lived experience. But that is a common tactic to just say, you're not allowed to have a say at all. Don't care what you've read. Don't care what your opinion is, what your moral compass is. Don't care. If you don't have these particular characteristics, you don't get to weigh in. I've always objected to that, whether it was on the woke side and it's the exact same thing here. It's also very like, you know,

I, I don't know if he's all, if he's always debated this way, but it's a very Pierce Borgen panel debate tactic to just, they spend so much time just like attacking each other's character. You're a racist, you're an anti-Semite, you haven't even been there and you know it's the type of thing that can play well in that format when you just have like 15 minutes of yelling to filibuster and try to like

out alpha the people on the panel but when you actually have to sit there and explain yourself for hours on end and everyone gets a chance to see Dave be like, this is a non-argument. What are you talking about? It doesn't quite hit the same way as when you're just on some like Piers Morgan yell fest. Well, that's really interesting because they actually started the entire podcast by Joe saying the reason we wanted to do this is because so many of these debates are held on shows like Piers morgan and basically that's it's so theatrical um and it's it's actually somewhat so it's expert it's just this deification of expertise which is very disappointing from douglas murray by the way who on wokeness on media corruption all of that of that, he actually was with Taibbi side by side

in an Intelligence Squared debate against Malcolm Gladwell and Ryan columnist in the New York Times, Michelle Goldberg, and wiped the floor with Malcolm Gladwell and Michelle Goldberg. And Douglas Murray did some heavy lifting in absolutely excoriating the corporate media and its corruption. And here he's flipping around and saying that because Dave lacks expertise, my favorite moment of this entire conversation is when Dave goes, I'm a free American. I can say whatever I want. And I just was like felt like wrapped in the American flag was going to like shotgun a Miller Lite when he said that. It was glorious. Because that's his point. His point is that the audience is smart enough to make up their own minds if they are listening to a comedian who's really interested in history or a, you know, ex-military guy who's really interested in history do 30 hours of a podcast. The audience is smart enough to make up their minds to do additional research. They don't need to be protected by expert gatekeepers in every situation.

And it's just, I found it very unfortunate to see that flipped again. It's also very selective because it's not enough. So he's decided Dave Smith's not an expert, but he's also decided that it's not sufficient for Dave Smith to read experts. Yes, exactly. Have studied this, been to the region, etc. So it's, you know, it's all very selective and very convenient when you get to be the expert, what the when the expert opinion matters and can factor in and when it doesn't, in his view. Yes, this is the expertise part of which which drive drove me crazy. And so there is a specific part of this. Let's take a listen to that. Do also think that one of the bigger kind of the bigger picture dynamics to all of this is that we have, at least since 9-11, been in a state

of perpetual war. And all of these wars have been disasters. They have been so many lies involved in selling all of them. I mean, the whole Iraq war, the whole war in Afghanistan, just lying the whole way through. I mean, I remember literally having conversations with Green Berets in the middle of the war in Afghanistan. And they're like, George W. Bush is telling you that the army we're building up there is really successful. This thing is going to fall in a week without us. And then all through the Obama administration, it's just like lie after lie after lie with disastrous wars. And so this does create a fertile ground for people to say, I wonder if they were lying about all these wars. Again, I'm not really trying to argue

about World War II. I'd rather argue about these wars today. It's fertile ground. I think the interesting question is whether you're busy watering it. Well, should you not talk about mistakes that were made overall? Absolutely. Okay, you should. Absolutely. I have all four going back and looking at mistakes. So what is your argument then it's a very weird thing to go back zone in on a man say this one thing is a mistake and should characterize him and you ignore everything you're taking him out of context when you're talking about daryl

who's done what was it 30 plus hours so what 30 plus hours but you take you do that in a week i mean yeah it's a very it's a very different thing. He's not doing a podcast like talking to people. Okay, nor is he doing scholarly work, nor is he working in the archives. Come on. I mean, he is not the historian of our era. He's not complaining to me. Then read the historian.

This is like punching jelly. No, but you don't consume his work i'm saying because i don't need to consume endless versions of a revisionist history i understand but it's not revisionist history okay so that was about the daryl cooper thing but that pop part i found very illuminating is this he produced 30 hours of pot he goes so what you do that in a way it's like douglas is acting as if he is like one of the professors at oxford that he got his undergraduate degree in english from you are not bro you have written books about multiple different subjects you are the definition of like a journalist little dilettante yeah yeah you're literally a influencer yeah you are an influencer

dilettante you are a literal dilettante who flits about the world writes neoconservatism and why we need it and now madness of crowds and the strange death of your it's like are you a fucking expert on immigration are you an expert on western civilization because you've never been to martyr made yeah have you been to the uh martyr made podcast have you listened he said he didn't listen he said he didn't listen right it's comical sheer arrogance and you know ryan that was another thing that i really found about these zyobots like uh murray is that this guy is pushing like completely debunked stuff about october 7th like it was fact like he he talked about mass rape on October 7th.

He was this close to talking about the babies thing, right? And it was so obvious to me that he has not engaged with any even surface level, Haaretz level criticism of Israel and that- He said he doesn't have to. His expertise- Right. His expertise- He said it. And that he said he doesn't have his expertise. Right. His expertise is that he's been there. It's just the purest form of woke ism of like concern trolling about expertise when you yourself have absolutely none. And I will say, like outside of Twitter, like Zionist Twitter, if you go look at the YouTube comments or the general reaction or anything,. Murray's getting cooked. People can see this level of sneering and concern trolling. People are like, oh, I wasn't in the studio with Douglas,

so I can't have an opinion about how much of a dickhead he was. That's the level of argumentation that he brings us down to. It's ridiculous. And it is comical in one breath to say that, you know, Dave can't comment on Israel because he hasn't been there, but he can comment on a podcast that he's never listened to. Because I actually disagree with the other point. Like you actually probably should listen to a podcast if you're going to have an opinion on the podcast. Right. Because the whole thing of having an opinion on the podcast is like

the content of the podcast the content of the podcast that's kind of the whole thing if you want to and nobody has done like listen i disagree with daryl on churchill i disagree with him on a lot um but if you listen to the podcast absolutely nobody is doing what he is doing the level and joe pointed this out his uh fear and loathing in New Jerusalem starts from the emotional, visceral perspective of Jews who are fleeing pogroms. It's just absurd to act as though that is being put in the box of Pat Buchanan. It's not Pat Buchanan.

It draws from Pat Buchanan, but it's not Pat Buchanan. And you don't know that unless you listen to it. That's another thing. I'm not even gonna go into the, by the way, I love Daryl. Daryl's one of my brothers. Yes, I i disagree with him i actually text him often and be like dude you're totally wrong about all this he he's you know the guy who will send me books obscure books about that he has on the battle of singapore and so that you know it's beyond the character assassination beautiful

friendship it is a beautiful friendship uh just like shineinbaum and Trump. But like beyond even the the like surface level criticism, fine if people want to have it. For me, is that arrogance of Murray and a lot of these pro-Israel folks who resort to the most ad hominem and emotional attacks, concern trolling about expertise. And then someone like you, Ryan, who actually has reporting expertise, like knowledge and all of that of the region is dismissed completely out of hand. And if someone like Dave, who is a consumer of your work or of Haaretz or any of that is laughed out of the room, you know, the idea is, you know, and I generally would say this is that the mean critic of Israel and of Israeli policy, and I mean this in the commentariat space, in my opinion, is 10 times more informed on the conflict than anybody who is just mindlessly sucking up their propaganda about October 7th or the war in Gaza or the ends. I mean, the other thing that I found preposterous, Ryan, is that throughout the podcast, he's like, Qatar is pumping money into our university system. Ryan, does he even know that Netanyahu is literally facing an allegation?

Probably not. That's my point. He doesn't even know anything about the place that he spent so much time. Right. And that's a huge it's like the number one story in Israel right now. But structurally, if you are on the Dave Smith side, you must constantly engage with the pro-Israel side because it is the water that we're swimming in. That's right. If you are on Murray's side, you can actually just not read Drop Sight. You cannot watch this program.

You can seal yourself off and just never encounter that and so that's how you wind up with people repeating things that everyone already knows has been actually debunked by like even say like the bbc or somebody but like not done it in a high profile enough way that it penetrated the pro-israel bubble. So he can live that life. And they just want to lie. Or they don't care, they're just repeating it. And they just lie and don't expect to get called on it because it's emotionally uncomfortable to be like, well, actually there wasn't a mass rape on October 7th.

And then you look like you're, you know, being a Hamas apologist or whatever. Like there's some of that going on too. Let's not deny that many of these people are happy to just lie or just believe a reality, even though it's been debunked, you know, because it fits with their view of what's going on here.

And I just want to drill down on this point a little bit more. I mean, two things. Number one, it seems to me, I didn't watch the whole podcast. I just watched the clips that you showed. So I don't want to opine on a podcast that I haven't listened to. By the way, Crystal, don't subject yourself to it. It's just never been. It's three hours.

I don't plan to. You will get, Crystal, don't subject yourself to it. It's just never been. It's three hours. I don't plan to. You will get everything you need for the first 10 minutes. But, you know, with the invoking of Ian Carroll, the invoking of Daryl, it also feels like rather than dealing with the arguments of the person who's right in front of you, you want to construct a straw man of, you know, I mean, Ian Carroll, there are some things. Daryl Cooper, there are definitely some things. Okay. They're not there.

Dave Smith is there. What is his argument? Deal with his arguments rather than these other superfluous people who have been in the Joe Rogan podcast universe, okay? That's number one. Number two, I want to say this view, and this is the same thing I said when the arguments about you can't have an opinion on certain things if you're not part of that marginalized group, whatever. It is fundamentally anti-democratic, small d democratic. Our government is sending our money to bomb these babies. We're not allowed to have an opinion because we haven't fucking been there. Are you kidding me? Seriously? We're all about to pay taxes. Taxes are due in, what, four days. Yeah, that's right. We can't have an opinion on that. Be for real. We are obligated, obligated to have an opinion on what our government is doing in our name with our money to a trapped, starved, bombed population we like if you are a citizen who cares about the direction of the country in the world yes you should have an opinion about that and it doesn't require you going to the region going to israel going on bb's press tour going to the crossings auditing what goods are no you get to have an opinion because this is a fucking allegedly democracy.

So that is why that thing pisses me off so much. And especially this is the way also, by the way, that like liberal Zionists shut people down to. Oh, it's complicated. You just don't understand. This is what they do on, you know, monetary policy. This is complicated. Just let the experts handle it. You just don't. I got this all of the time on gender stuff, like from the left, all of the time, in all seriousness.

There's too many genders for you to understand. Well, no, it's very similar. So you are not, are you a neuroscientist? Are you a biologist? Yeah. Are you a psychiatrist? No, it's a thing. That's a thing.

It's just like this blocking with the expertise. Look, I think that we experts are important. I think it is really important to have people who have deeply studied fields, medicine, science, history. I think it is important to take in that information. But they can't tell you what your values are, right? They can't, like, chew up your democratic food and spit it in your mouth and eat it for you. Like you have to engage with that content and think about the world for yourself. And yes, you are allowed to do that.

That is like the base. That is like the foundation upon which this country is allegedly built. And we fall short in many, many ways. But when you just when you try to dumb down the population, don't worry your pretty little head. The experts over here, they get it. You don't. It's too complicated. You don't get to have an opinion that is fundamentally anti-democratic. It is anti-populist. It is like the you know, I am just repulsed by that whole direction. And by the way, think of when Dave Smith is talking about these experts that got us into the Iraq war.

Right. How did that go? These experts who, you know, kept us in Afghanistan for decades. How did that go? These experts that were part of, you know, deregulating financial industry. He didn't make these arguments. I'm making these arguments and crash the entire global economy. How did that go? How has deferring to experts and not worrying your pretty little head about these overly complicated topics, how has that worked out? Yeah, COVID. We can go on forever. Douglas talked about COVID in that Taibbi debate, if I'm remembering correctly. And the last thing I want to say is that I'm sympathetic to a point that Douglas makes about losing the forest for

the trees. I think that's sometimes what we get into when we're debating Gallipoli campaign and Churchill and all of that. I get it. Oh, keep Gallipoli out of your mouth. Yeah. But you know what I'm saying? You're not an expert, Emily. I wasn't there. But I think that we do sometimes lose the forest for the trees because some of these trees have not been well evaluated over the course of the last century. And so in revisiting them and saying, oh, the experts lied, we sometimes assume that when we're looking at a tree, we're looking at the whole forest or we get lost. Man, this is a tortured metaphor.

So I'm sympathetic to that point. But the problem is the experts are the ones that continue to just completely lose trust because they're wrong about certain things. And then so to defer to experts to say the experts got COVID wrong, then to defer to them on Ukraine and Israel and act like anybody who is challenging those official narratives is siding with anti-Semites or with Putin. It is so unfortunate and it's very telling, I think. That's a great place to leave it, I think. Great show, everybody. Thanks for having me. Well, it was good to have you here.

It was nice having the whole crew. Any last, anything last, Ryan, in particular, are you looking at anything, working on any reporting you want to highlight? Oh, no, I should send this to Phil, Emily, but a very cool story in DropSite that we published yesterday afternoon, an interview with a top Houthi leader who basically responded to Trump and Hegseth

who said, hey, if the Houthis stop bombing American ships, we'll stop bombing the Houthis. And they told DropSite, we will stop bombing American ships then if you will stop bombing us. They said we will continue to bomb Israeli then, if you will stop bombing us. They said, we will continue to bomb Israeli ships. They're not welcome through, but American ships, fine. We have no problem with America. So now the question will be, did Trump and Hegseth mean

Israeli ships under the definition of our ships? We all know the answer to that. We know the answer. But it's good to have it clarified indeed um all right guys thank you so much thanks to everybody out there um appreciate you guys we're gonna have some announcements next week i'm just gonna tease that some big announcements all around so stay tuned for that and have a great weekend we will see you back here monday dna test proves he is not the father now i'm taking the inheritance wait a minute john who's not the father. Now I'm taking the inheritance. Wait a minute, John. Who's not the father? Well, Sam, luckily, it's your not the father week on the OK Storytime podcast, so we'll find out soon.

This author writes, My father-in-law is trying to steal the family fortune worth millions from my son, even though it was promised to us. He's trying to give it to his irresponsible son, but I have DNA proof that could get the money back. Hold up. They could lose their family and millions of dollars? Yep.

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