Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 4/1/25: Trump Tariff Blowback, Trump Frees Crypto Fraudsters, Bibi Confirms Trump Gaza Plan, Tim Dillon Rips Deportations, Trump University Crackdown
Episode Date: April 1, 2025Krystal and Saagar discuss China, SK and Japan teaming up amid Trump tariffs, Trump frees crypto fraudsters, Bibi confirms Trump Gaza plan, Tim Dillon rips Israel, Trump university crackdown. T...o become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show AD FREE, uncut and 1 hour early visit: www.breakingpoints.com Merch Store: https://shop.breakingpoints.com/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Good morning, everybody.
Happy Tuesday.
We have an amazing show for everybody today.
What do we have, Crystal?
Indeed we do.
We have a lot that we're going to try
to get through this morning.
So we're taking a look, of course, at those tariffs.
What are they going to be?
They'll be instituted tomorrow
on quote unquote, a liberation day.
So looking at what we know and what the fallout is likely to be. They'll be instituted tomorrow on quote unquote a liberation day. So looking at what we
know and what the fallout is likely to be. Trump just pardoned a whole rash of fraudsters. The
details are really quite stunning. So we'll get into that. Everybody from Hawk to a girl. Well,
I guess she didn't get a pardon, but her action was stupid. No charges filed, whatever.
A Hunter Biden associate. That one is particularly grotesque. So give you all the details there.
Coffeezilla is also all over that one. Bibi is now saying that their plan for Gaza is Trump's
plan, complete ethnic cleansing. So, you know, we are getting some clarity about the horrors
that will be continue to be perpetrated in the Gaza Strip. Trump is threatening to bomb Iran.
So that's cool and great and looking good. I'm taking a look
at Elon's election lines and what they could mean. Fajit Kher is going to join us to talk about the
stop oligarchy tour and where it may be headed and where the Democratic Party may be headed.
And we had to put this in, Elon, baby mama drama. Ashley St. Clair posts a video,
they're going back and forth on Twitter, Laura Loomer's involved, whatever. So we'll try to get that in on the end of the show. I've got to get my tabloid fixed in
here at the end of the show. I mean, yeah, it's just too good, right, folks? We can't look away.
It's one of those things. It speaks to the character of the man who's running the country
right now, let's say. Sure, yeah, we could say that. All right, let's go ahead. Oh, by the way,
happy April Fool's Day. Isn't this funny? You know, when you're a kid, you think April Fool's
Day is like a real thing, and then you become an adult, and you're like, oh, it's just a normal
day. So you just got to go to work. work youngest is obsessed with april that's what i mean
when you're a child she loves this mystifying for her birthday she asked for like a whole prank kit
yeah she loves pranking yeah exactly like a little harmless stuff you know yeah i don't know it's one
of those things where putting a fake snake on the bed or you become 23 you go to work and you're
like oh it's just april 1st it's like you have to do the water cooler thing and be like, have a good day today.
But make sure you are extra aware of what sort of news you're being fed today because people do love on Twitter to, like, make some wild shit up.
That is true.
See who will believe it.
So be on extra guard today for –
That's not even April Fool's.
That's just a normal day on Twitter.
That's another normal day on Elon's Twitter. Great. Great for us in the news business. Let's go ahead
and get to these tariffs. We've got some new announcements or indications there from the White
House. White House Press Secretary Caroline Leavitt speaking on the topic. Let's take a listen.
We have another big week. On Wednesday, it will be Liberation Day in America, as President Trump
has so proudly dubbed it.
We'll be announcing a tariff plan that will roll back the unfair trade practices that
have been ripping off our country for decades.
I'll let the president get into the specifics of the announcement, but he has a brilliant
team of trade advisors.
You have Secretary Besant, Secretary Lutnik, like that.
Any exemptions for farmers being considered for these tariffs?
No exemptions at this time. Liberation Day, no exemptions for farmers being considered for these tariffs? No exemptions at this time.
Liberation Day, no exemptions. The line on this has probably changed about 15 different times
from the White House. Trump has currently said he has settled on Liberation Day on the plan.
He says, I've settled it. Liberation Day means that you will find out tomorrow. That's basically what it is. We have
got several different- We'll be liberated from our suspense.
We will be liberated from our suspense. It could mean an across-the-board ring tariff,
according to them. It could mean reciprocal tariffs. It could be, according to him,
lesser tariffs. It could be every country. It could be 10 to 15 countries. Nobody really knows.
That's why the stock market and all of that is currently in haywire. And yesterday, stocks were down, then they closed up because of
some of those comments there from Donald Trump. But the point is, is that this level of suspense
and people being kept on their toes means that no matter what happens, you're going to see a
major reaction there on Wednesday. That was also the press avail in which she announced that they're
closing the case on Signal Gates.
The brightest minds were convened in, you know, Elon's Doge team got on it. They figured out the great mystery of how Jeffrey Goldberg's number got into Mike Waltz's phone and they're moving on.
I am not yet allowed to reveal some of the things that I know about Mike Waltz. One day I will be
allowed to reveal about some of the things that he has been saying behind the scenes. And you will not believe some of the things and excuses
that he has come up with. And it goes way beyond Elon's technical advisors and the White House
getting to the bottom and case closed on this. It's genuinely some of the stupidest things I've
ever heard in my life. Not yet a lot to say, but I will get to it one day.
The tease. Tease for the future. You know, this is the problem with sources. They're
like, tell you this stuff off the record, and it's so juicy. And you're like, come on, dude,
let me say something, you know? And then they're like, nah, you can't do it yet. You got to wait,
et cetera. So we'll get there. I'll hammer him, and I'll ask if I can actually reveal it.
Okay, let's go to the next part here. This is on the Fox News confronting Caroline Leavitt on the polling of this.
Let's take a listen. And our new Fox News polling shows that people perhaps are concerned with with how things are going.
This is as of March 14th. Those that say they disapprove 56 percent, more than half.
Those who approve of the president's handling of the economy is at 43 percent.
And in that same polling, we asked about the most's handling of the economy, is at 43 percent. And in that same
polling, we asked about the most important issue facing the country today. And top of the list is
inflation. And the economy is number two. And jobs. Those are first and second as it goes down
to political division and preservation of democracy. Is the president doing enough to answer the needs
and demands of the American voter when it comes to the economy and lowering prices?
The president and his economic team are working on this effort every single day. And the president
is not only trying to fix the mess created by the previous administration's incompetence and reckless spending. He is trying to fix decades of unfair trade practices that have ripped our country off,
that have sent jobs overseas, and that have forced millions of Americans out of their jobs.
So yeah, look, even Fox and all them, I mean, all the polling on this is now like pretty clear.
People are not that happy about it. Let's go and put this next up on the screen. This is just where the futures are right now. Literally, kind of as we speak,
yesterday, the S&P closed up by about 0.6. Right now it's down by about 0.6. It's like basically
flat. As I said, nobody has any idea about what's going to happen, which means that it's not, quote,
priced in. And it does mean that there's going to be a massive correct or could be a massive
correction, depending on what the policy that he announces on Wednesday.
Yeah. Well, and as we've said ad nauseum at this point, like even if you wanted to,
even if you're like a tariff person and you're in favor of some version of this,
you don't even have like a story to tell or anything to defend yet. So tomorrow, perhaps,
all will be revealed, maybe, or maybe
he'll put something on and take it off again like he did previously. Who knows? And I think it was
Joe Weisenthal that made this point on Twitter yesterday, which is an important one, which is
some of his explanations for why the tariffs are good are completely contradictory. So, for example,
he'll talk about how it's going to raise all of this revenue. Tariffs are effectively, especially when they're across the board, effectively a regressive
tax. But, oh, they're going to raise all of this revenue for, you know, the U.S. Treasury and make
our country super wealthy. But he'll also indicate that, oh, it's going to cause all of these jobs to
come back and, you know, we're going to reindustrialize America. Well, those two things
don't really fit together because if you're actually reindustrializing, then you're not getting the tariffs on the imports. So none of it really
adds up. Not that I really want to even overthink it at this point since we don't actually know
what we're truly talking about here. But, you know, with regard to the politics of this,
this is an extraordinary situation for Trump where the economy is like his weakest.
He has a number of issues in which
the American people are not too happy with what he's been up to. But this is probably the biggest
political liability for him. This is the area where he has turned what used to be a strength
into one of his greatest weaknesses. And the other point that I saw made on Twitter yesterday,
which I think is a good and important one, too, is that even just the uncertainty of are they on, are they off, what are they
doing, et cetera, has already caused a freeze in a lot of economic activity.
Businesses who are, you know, importing a bunch of goods in anticipation, who are freezing
hiring, even just the uncertainty has an economic impact and takes an economic
toll.
As we saw, you know, the estimate of GDP in the first quarter was 0.3 percent growth,
which is extremely low.
You even see it in some things like flight bookings from Canada to the U.S. have fallen
off like 70 percent.
So there's a hit to the tourism industry as well from the on-again, off-again tariffs and the sort of belligerent attitude vis-a-vis Canada and Mexico as well.
So, you know, there's a lot of fallout from this even before the full tariff regime goes into effect.
Well, where are they going to go?
Winnipeg?
All right, they'll be back.
I'm just sorry, Canadians.
There's a big world out there.
Where are they going to go?
They have a lot of options.
Huh? What?
A lot of options.
Okay, fly to Greenland then since it's so close.
Oh, actually, no, that's going to be ours soon.
I'm joking.
Coming back to the tariff conversation, you're exactly right.
And this is the problem with you and I run a business.
Somebody says, hey, you may or may not have X amount of money in a month.
And they're like, should we do any hiring?
No, we're not doing any hiring, right?
That's right.
This is obvious.
That's exactly right.
This is how any normal person who runs a business is going to be thinking.
This is why confidence, planning, and all of these other things, yes, even in an uncertain
environment, it's never a sure thing.
But to be able to make decisions, you want to have pretty good information about how
things are going to go.
When you have uncertainty, that causes a pullback.
That's going to cause lack of spending, perhaps firing.
And if we do see some major tariffs that go into place, there is no question that that's going to cause a major reaction. What's also
interesting is about some of the reaction overseas. Let's go and put this up there on the screen.
Lots being made of this. I'm still actually trying to wrap my head around this. So China,
Japan, and South Korea have announced, according to Chinese state media, but the Japanese and the
South Koreans have not denied it,
have said that they have agreed to respond to a U.S. tariff, agreed to respond to U.S. tariffs,
an assertion that Seoul has said is, quote, somewhat exaggerated and that Tokyo has downplayed.
However, it's one of those where they're talking out of both sides of their mouth. Now, we shouldn't
say this is like some full scale, like joint declaration
between the three countries who all hate each other, if you will recall some of the Asian
dynamics. But the issue does get to the purpose not only of trade and tariffs, but fundamentally
about what are we trying to do here. And what we're trying to do is reciprocal tariffs, which
is if they charge us this and they charge us that, that I think speaks to some basic level of market fairness.
The problem, as I keep saying, is that we have all these crazy justifications.
It's fentanyl.
It's not fentanyl.
It's cars.
It's not cars.
It's U.S. cars.
But some U.S. cars are actually made with a ton of foreign parts.
You have not got to sell America
and really the world on what is the future going to look like. When you have uncertainty, people
look in different directions. So is this some full-scale like realignment against you? No,
Japan and China are not allying anytime soon to retaliate against the United States. But,
you know, sometimes, you know, the whole enemy of my enemy is my friend thing, the Japanese,
they're ruthless in their trading partners and their own tariff regime. You can go and look at
some of the things that they do. How do you think that their government has propped up and has made
their company some of the most preeminent in the entire world and it didn't happen by accident?
So they know you have some sort of existential threat or even marginal threat to their overall
bottom line here with these tariffs. They're going to have to look in a different direction. It's going to
change their overall calculus and relationship with the United States. Now, I want to be clear,
this is often used by neoliberals to say that we should never put tariffs on our, quote, allies.
And I think that's ridiculous. That's not what I'm saying at all. But I'm saying you have to have
care and a plan and actual certainty. This goes for the consumer and for other countries as
well. And that's my biggest critique here of the entire policy. Yeah. And I mean, nations around
the world be foolish not to look at the, you know, the way that he's handled already the relationship
with Canada and Mexico in particular and all of these threats. And there are tariffs that were
put into place and, you know, it's threatening economic war against Canada in order to annex them, they would be foolish to not look around and go like,
okay, well, on our own, we don't have any prayer against the United States of America,
which is a giant economy and really important to any number of nations around the world.
On our own, we don't have a prayer. We need to figure out some sort of way to coordinate to
have a chance of, you know,
effectively pushing back against whatever it is that Trump has in store for us.
So it shouldn't be surprising when you see conversations like this and the leaders of
these three nations just had a meeting and, you know, so we don't know exactly what was said there.
But the indication is there's at least somewhat of an opening to coordinating on some level.
So that is, you know, extraordinarily noteworthy here in terms of, you know, what the world is going to look like going forward.
Yeah, I mean, I'm curious, too, to see how it shakes out in the future, because the South Koreans and the Japanese also talked a really big game the first time around.
Whenever there were tariffs that were put into place, Trump actually tried to put major tariffs on South Korea during the first term.
Actually, yours truly wrote an article against that because I was like, it's a bad idea.
We're in this whole thing with this whole North Korea situation right now.
Why would we exactly want to be, you know, having tension here with South Korea?
Also, the thing is about South Korea and Japan, as people know, I hate Europe.
But here's the thing.
The Japanese, the South Koreans, they're good allies.
They're tremendously economically important and viable to the United States.
Not the Japanese because they're literally constitutionally prohibited, are not allowed to spend on their defense.
Look at the South Korean defense budget.
I mean look also at their – like they're not ideologically against us economically.
They're good partners.
They're dramatically important to the overall U.S. economy.
And then broadly in the region, that is the most important region that's actually increasing
its overall economic activity, its population, and its importance to America. And it gets probably
one-fifteenth the amount of care that it deserves here in Washington. Probably not the people I
would antagonize. At the same time, they certainly do have an imbalance in our trading relationship
with the two. Here we're going to turn now to Donald Trump, asked here about what the small
scale tariffs and whether those were going to be into place. He's downplaying that, giving us,
again, some peek into what it might be. Let's take a listen. On the tariffs that you're planning,
so there are, you're expecting to hit something like 10 to 15 countries. Is that right?
No. All of the countries. Is it across the board? Not 10. I don't know. Who something like 10 to 15 countries, is that right? No.
All of the countries? Is it across the board?
Not 10.
Who told you 10 or 15 countries?
We heard that.
So we heard that you were going to aim for the 10%.
But you didn't hear it from me.
Okay, so how many countries will be in that initial tranche?
You'd start with all countries, so let's see what happens.
There are many countries.
I haven't heard a rumor about 15 countries, 10 or 15.
So you're starting with all countries?
Essentially, all of the countries that we're talking about.
We'll be talking about all countries and not a cutoff.
And if you look at the history and you look at what's happened to us,
you go to certain places, go to Asia,
and you take a look at every single country in Asia,
what they've done to the United States in trade,
and by the way, in military in a certain way.
You look at, you take a look at trade with Asia,
and I wouldn't say anybody is treated as fairly or nicely,
but we are going to treat them, we're going to be much more
generous to them in terms of heart. We're going to be much more generous than they were to us.
So yeah, you can take that for what you will. Let's go ahead and put this up there on the screen.
From Jeff Stein, he says, Donald Trump is described by several sources as pushing big
with tariffs. He's described as a simple
universal rate as high as 20%, described as wary of advisors trying to talk him down and weaken
his trade agenda, which he believes limited the tariff impact of his first term, thinks tariffs
are a win-win for federal revenue and bringing back manufacturing, is thinking of transforming
the U.S. economy in terms of decades or centuries, some sources said, rather than the next few months.
It's one of those where
I've said, you know, you can make this case. I think you could make a probably good case. Many
people would stick with you, although in our consumer society, it might be a little bit
difficult. But the problem I just keep coming back to is just about the communication and the chaotic
nature of the way that much of this is being put into place will significantly pose a major risk, not only to
your political chances, but let's be honest here, you know, even if you do announce some sort of
major tariff, what confidence would any of us have that that's actually going to remain into place?
And that gets to that uncertainty with the business. If I was a business, I would just sit
there and wait it out. I'd be like, okay, shut it down. Let's see what actually happens. And of
course that will have, you know, big ramifications, but it's probably
better than paying some crazy tariff or something. Especially if you know that it's going to go away
in a few weeks, or at least if you have a relative confidence. Yeah. Or even wait it out, like, okay,
this guy's going to be in office for a few years and then we're very likely to get a different
president, probably, you know, and then, you know, the regime
will completely change again. So, yeah, we can just wait it out, like put our heads down and
muddle through the next few years and then see what comes down on the other side. So I think
that's all very possible. Also, we can put Joe Weisenthal's piece up on the screen here, this
A6 and A7. He has eight different thoughts about, you know, what these tariffs
really mean. And one of the things he's pointing to here, Liberation Day isn't a binary event.
It's kind of what I was referring to before, where already all of the they're on, they're off. Here's
what we're doing. No, we're not doing that. No, we're going big. No, it's going to be just a few
countries. All of this has already created problems. Let's go to the next piece as well.
He also talks about the fact that he talks that he's making a case here that, you know, when economies become rich, then they're capable of building the most complex things. And so if
you're trying to go back to reindustrialized, like sort of simpler products, then that might
not be the direction you want to go in. I don't fully agree with that because I do think, you know, for me, I think there's a targeted tariff approach that is logical and is beneficial.
We all saw during COVID how detrimental it was to our safety, health, and security that so much of
the supply chain was overseas so that there were basic medical supplies we couldn't produce here.
You know, also in terms of supply chain fragility, like it was a disaster. So there is a tariff scheme that I would support. But, you know, the whole across the board
situation to me is insane. And then the last point that he also makes is that even if your goal is
reindustrializing, like these things are very interconnected and it's very difficult to game out what impact it's going to have.
So, for example, oil companies have reduced output because they're concerned about the
price of some of the like electrical components that they need in terms of their process.
So, you know, when you're doing this across the board thing and it's not matched with
any sort of concerted industrial policy, in fact, the government's going in the opposite direction
of rolling back some of the previous industrial policy that was put into place, it's also not
even clear that you're going to get any of the results that you, you know, are gaining for here,
whatever those are. Not that that's really been spelled out by Trump in particular. But, you know, if we if we zoom out here, I think that the big picture is, yes, there is another potential economic paradigm
that Americans could be open to that wasn't based around them being consumers of a lot of
cheap goods from overseas. But if you are going to just take away the cheap goods and hike prices and not offer any other alternative benefits, then no, it's going to be dramatically unpopular.
And you're also flirting with a stagflation situation in which growth is low or zero.
You still have high inflation.
That really makes it difficult for the Fed to do anything because, you know, if they hike interest rates, then you're lowering growth even more.
If they lower interest rates, then you are increasing inflation. So that's why that
situation is so incredibly difficult to deal with and so dangerous and, you know, is really a looming
possibility right now. Yeah. To return, just last thing on you, because I really like this
argument that he makes. What he's talking about in terms of riches is monetary riches, and that
is what we need to redefine. So Joe has a great
statistic that I learned. Quote, one of the most important facts about the world is that in the
last 15 years, China has become the global manufacturing powerhouse at the cutting edge
of multiple industries. But the Shanghai Composite Stock Index is scarcely above where it was in 2009.
So I mean, you know what? U.S. stocks are up from 2009. I literally don't know off the top of my head.
It's probably hundreds and hundreds of percent.
Are we richer, richer materially than we were in 2009?
I would say no, absolutely not.
In China, I would say, yeah, they're a lot richer in terms of they've got drone deliveries.
They've got the BYD, Xiaomi cars. Their society and their overall, like, net growth and quality of life has dramatically increased.
I mean, look, I'm just going to sit here and admit it.
Go to Shenzhen today.
Go look at any video.
Go talk to any person or look at anything in Shenzhen, in Chongqing, in any of these major cities that you wouldn't even necessarily know, like the mid-tier cities of China.
And tell me that they're not living better than we are.
Now, yes, they're
living in apartments, certainly. They don't have any crime. It's pretty safe. Train goes on time.
There's, you know, I could go on forever. These are different models of economic activity. But
I think that's the point that he's trying to make about riches. We are richer in the sense that,
yes, a flat screen television is much cheaper. Fantastic. We are richer in the sense that,
I mean, be honest. This iPhone in
my hand, is it all that materially different than the iPhone 4 that I bought in 2010? No,
it's just not. Be honest here. The camera quality is better. And also, it's still manufactured in
China, last time that I checked. That's, I think, the point that he's trying to make about
manufacturing and riches, as in the definition of riches financially is basically the one that the United States
has decided to go all in on.
He even says that.
He's like, the greatest export of the United States
is U.S. stocks and treasuries.
Okay, great.
I mean, you know, it's definitely better off for it, right?
We talk a lot about this in the chips context.
The chips are all designed here.
You know, what does that thing say
whenever you open your Apple box?
Designed in Cupertino, California.
Why does it say designed?
Because it's designed here.
It's manufactured somewhere else.
Tell me who has the power.
Who's actually materially richer?
Well, I think it's them.
Not only that, but those, you know, high end design and like pushing the tech frontier.
It's not like we're maintaining our edge there.
You know, it's, we're at best at competitive level with China. And I think increasingly they're surpassing us
in terms of like the leading edge of transformative,
future-oriented tech is increasingly coming out of China.
So, you know, the bet that we made that we could keep this high,
the sort of like high end, like I would design in Cupertino and keep the low end manufacturing
there. Well, it turns out if you are the one manufacturing the products and also if you have a
government that's been very committed to investing in research, investing in technology, trying to push their country in that direction,
then, you know, you have a huge advantage in terms of innovating for the future.
Meanwhile, our companies have grown into these, you know, giant monopolies, in many ways complacent,
in many ways much more focused on, you know, how to game the stock market and, like, give
themselves stock buybacks and do financial engineering than they have been on genuine innovation. I don't want to erase the genuine
innovation that has been going on. You know, we obviously have these LLMs that are leading edge
coming out of American companies from American investment, et cetera. But if you look across
the board, I mean, certainly in the EV realm, China's kicking the ass of every American car
company. It's not really even close.
There was a post that was going viral on Twitter. Sager tells me it's a little bit of a gimmick,
but gives you a sense of the sort of future-oriented direction that China is heading
in. They just issued a commercial license for these drone quadcopter taxis where you can, you know, as like a consumer hop in this. It's like
some Jetsons kind of shit that they're contemplating here. And meanwhile, we're, you know, like pumping
the next talk to a coin or whatever. Right. And I have the stats. So since 2009, the S&P 500 is up,
let's see, a total return on investment of 841%. The Shanghai index is up 2.28%.
But, you know, be serious. Yes, there are a lot of people out here. If you were lucky enough and
you've had your 401k and all that, I think that's fantastic. But you should take a look at what the
alternative economic model of that is and what it means to be actually rich and what that, you know,
the definition of that, to me, is not just where the S&P 500 is.
I know a lot of cops, and they get asked all the time, have you ever had to shoot your gun?
Sometimes the answer is yes. But there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be no.
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It's really, really, really bad.
Listen to new episodes of Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated
on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Binge episodes 1, 2, and 3 on May 21st and episodes 4, 5, and 6 on June 4th.
Ad-free at Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts.
I'm Clayton English.
I'm Greg Lott.
And this is Season 2 of the War on Drugs podcast.
Yes, sir.
We are back.
In a big way.
In a very big way.
Real people, real perspectives.
This is kind of star-studded a little bit, man.
We got Ricky Williams, NFL player, Heisman Trophy winner.
It's just a compassionate choice to allow players all reasonable means to care for themselves.
Music stars Marcus King, John Osborne from Brothers Osborne.
We have this misunderstanding
of what this quote-unquote
drug thing is.
Benny the Butcher. Brent Smith from Shinedown.
We got B-Real from Cypress Hill.
NHL enforcer Riley Cote.
Marine Corvette. MMA
fighter Liz Caramouch. What we're
doing now isn't working and we need to change
things. Stories matter and it brings a face to them.
It makes it real.
It really does.
It makes it real.
Listen to new episodes of the War on Drugs podcast season two
on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
And to hear episodes one week early and ad-free with exclusive content,
subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts.
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.
So Trump has gone on a pardoning spree of all sorts of white-collar criminals.
We've got here the Nikola founder that was that supposed like hydrogen powered truck company. Trevor
Milton receives a full pardon. This was a crazy one. OZ Media co-founder Carlos Watson
pardoned for his or commuted the sentence of his financial conspiracy case. Let's go on to the next
one. We had some crypto types who also are being let off the hook, hawk to a girl. You know, she's not going to face any
charges after her pump and dump. This guy, Jason Galanis, he had his sentence communed. This is
the second New York Post says ex-Hunter Biden business partner to receive clemency. I dug into
this dude's saga. What a loathsome, disgusting piece of shit this guy is.
What did he do?
He scammed a Native American tribe out of $60 million, convinced them to issue these
$60 million in bonds.
According to him, used his proximity to the vice president, or the president, Hunter Biden
is my associate, et cetera, to build up his own credibility,
and then just took the proceeds of this bond sale, which he claimed was going to be invested in some sort of annuity so that this tribe could invest in themselves and do economic development
for their tribal nation. Instead, he took it and bought like a $10 million Tribeca apartment,
spent $8.5 million on Gucci clothes and jewelry and this luxurious lifestyle and also paying back his previous legal expenses and his new business ventures and whatever.
Like, just a totally disgusting person.
However, he, from prison, testified in Republicans' Biden inquiry impeachment thing.
And so now he's getting let off the hook.
The Nikola guy, I don't know if you guys remember this story.
I'm sure you do.
I very well remember.
They put out this propaganda that supposedly showed their trucks, which are like, you know,
giant like Mack truck, tractor trailer things, supposedly showed this, you know, driving
along.
Well, it turns out they just had it rolling down a hill.
Like, it was all fake, lied to investors, total fraudster.
So he's being let off the hook.
In some ways, the Hak'tuwa girl is, like, the most sympathetic one
because you could argue she's just, like, dumb
and didn't know what she was really getting into.
I would not say that.
Compared to the guy who stole the $60 million from the tribe,
like, she is the more sympathetic case here.
And then we have put B3 up on the screen.
There were some other crypto fraudsters.
They were basically, like, running a sort of money laundering operation, knowingly, in blatant defiance of U.S. regulations and laws.
So these people have also been these three BitMEX crypto exchange co-founders also let off the hook.
It's just absolutely extraordinary.
CoffeeZilla has been taking a look at some of these cases.
This was a video that he posted on his VoidZilla channels that was titled Crime is Legal Part 2.
Let's take a listen to a little bit of that.
This season of American Crime is legal is getting even crazier.
The Hawk to a girl, she had her investigation closed,
obviously because she basically did more or less what the president did.
Yes, it was a little bit worse, but kind of would look bad
if you took out somebody for a meme coin while the president did it.
But that's sort of your run of the mill stuff you see a lot.
I wouldn't even be commenting on it, but that's sort of your run of the mill stuff you see a lot. I wouldn't even be commenting on it, except that we've now moved from not just not going after people who've done
something wrong, but sort of releasing the prisoners from Arkham. I am talking about
Trevor Milton. He's one of the OG fraudsters of the 21st century. This guy faked a hydrogen truck company,
which was called out by Hindenburg Research,
where he rolled a truck down a hill and told everyone that it worked.
Okay.
He got arrested, sentenced to four years in prison,
but now he won't be finishing that
because he got an unconditional pardon from
President Trump. So where do we go from here? I think SPF is up next. And that dude, the Nicola
Trump guy, had apparently given like one point nine million dollars to the Trump campaign or
to the Trump inauguration or something of that nature. I mean, it's just very clear. Like, any Trump associate, they can get away with whatever. It doesn't matter who they scammed.
It doesn't matter how egregious. They can get away with it. And then meanwhile, you know,
they're charging people who, like, hurt a Tesla with terrorism and trying to throw them in prison
for 20 years. So it's a complete, it's the complete and total end of even the aspiration that the criminal justice system is going to be sort of like politically neutral whatsoever.
Well, and even on white-collar crime, let's be honest.
It's not exactly like they're working overtime in that department.
So, yeah, I mean the bar for getting yourself prosec prosecuted for federal like on a federal level for white collar.
It's actually very high.
People think it's low with so much.
People think that it's fair.
It's not.
You actually have to go.
If you look at the federal sentencing guidelines and stuff, you need to steal or be responsible for millions of dollars before.
I mean, think about it.
It probably costs the feds like a million bucks to even investigate somebody and take you to trial.
So it's got to be pretty high, whatever your alleged fraud or responsibility is here. So there's just no earthly reason why any
of these people should be part. The Nicola one is absolutely the most egregious one to me.
I actually do think, though, that the OZ founder, the Carlos Watson one, is even more egregious
because since we covered this story from the
very beginning and then looking into it, one of his business associates, it seems almost 100%
clear that his associates lobbied Alice Johnson and other like black MAGA influencers, lobbied,
you take that term for what you will. I don't have any other more information on it, but somebody somewhere got to some of these black MAGA influencers,
and that's how he got himself off.
I mean, he's stone cold guilty.
You can go and listen to the tapes.
We played it here on our show about the fakery of that website.
It was egregious.
It was terrible.
He was found guilty.
This is not alleged.
Literally guilty.
Did he plead or was he convicted?
I forget. I don't remember. Regardless, I mean plead or was he convicted? I forget.
I don't remember.
Regardless, I mean, he's admitted guilt here, at least at some level.
And why are we commuting?
It's like, no, he defrauded investors and basically propped up this fake media empire.
And beyond that, like, deceived major corporations like YouTube.
And they made a mockery of the entire thing.
It's funny, too. Same with these BitMEX people. I mean, it's— Yeah. received major corporations like YouTube and they made a mockery of the entire thing.
Same with these BitMEX people. I mean, it's like, look, I'll be the first here to tell you that the feds can overreach, that they can prosecute people for political purposes, or
they can manipulate things and all that. I looked into, and I definitely know the Nikola case,
you know, very well. There's no, there's no out of it.
Like there is no allegation. And that's actually why a lot of these are being announced, not from
a White House podium. They're just happening, you know, from the desk and they're only being
reported after the fact of the commutation. The Ross Ulbricht thing was very different, right?
There's a whole PR strategy that rolled out, but this Carlos, I mean, we have to learn that from
his associates and from others that this guy is getting out of prison.
You're like, what?
Hold on a second.
Well, Trump got asked about the Nikola Trump guy.
And he framed it in political terms.
He said basically like, oh, this guy's crime was supporting Donald J. Trump.
First of all, he wasn't even, until he was in trouble, he was not a known,
at least, Trump supporter. But then once he saw that, oh, my Hail Mary chance to get out of these
charges and get out of prison is to, you know, send some money to Trump. And so, you know,
Trump himself frames it in totally nakedly political terms.
To remind people about the Carlos Watson one, we did cover this extensively. Part of what's
hilarious is if you go and look at this like OZ Media fake channel that he had propped up like it
was some, you know, giant media behemoth and everyone was like, who? What? We've never heard
of this. That happens to me. It was the most like cringe identity lib type of content remember hillary spoke at their conference at oz
fest that's right i actually met a guy once and he's like oh i work at oz media and i was like
what and he was like yeah you know we're doing actually really well and i went i go i have never
heard of this thing once and then i banked it you know in my mind years later this all happens
they had all these remember we went and looked at their channel and the views would be
like, you know, fairly significant. And then on some videos, some videos had like no views. And
then occasionally you'd have a video that had like a very high view count, but then you'd go and look,
there were almost no likes. There were almost no comments. It was completely and totally fake.
Yeah. He bought them from India or some Bangladeshi click.
Is that what it was?
I think that's what it was.
And then what was the most preposterous is he he pretended to be a YouTube rep on a call with.
I don't know.
I think it was like Goldman Sachs or something like that.
His associates pretended to be a representative from YouTube with the camera off during a meeting while they were pitching, you know, basically to raise funds.
He's using some, I think, like voice modifier to try to—and the Goldman Sachs people were like, oh, this is really weird.
I mean, he just got caught red-handed.
These were not cases that were really close calls.
No.
Right?
Again, Hawk to a girl, pump and dump.
Apparently pump and dumps are just legal now. The president did one with Melania Coyne,
you know, Javier Malay, whatever. Like apparently that's just like a thing you can do now.
But not letting her off the hook. But, you know, these other ones are just not even
remotely close cases. And it's just so clear that no matter how much of a lib or a Hunter Biden
associate or whoever that you've been in the past, if you can get in Donald Trump's good graces,
then you can get away with absolutely anything. It is truly astonishing. And to your point,
Sagar, put B4 up on the screen. So this is really kind of a whole of government effort to let a lot of white collar crime and a lot of corporate crime go unpunished.
You've had the obviously the attack on the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which is like the anti-scam agency.
SEC no longer regulating the crypto market.
You know, National Labor Relations Board is once again without a quorum.
So if you're a worker trying to fight for worker rights, you have nowhere to go.
And a public citizen has been tracking this corporate clemency.
And apparently a quarter, you know, scamming
the public and truly doing whatever it is that they really want to do. Yeah. I mean, I think
it's egregious and it is just something that's been back to the first Trump administration.
He pardoned people like, or not pardoned, commuted people like Michael Milken, the most notorious.
And also, just so you guys know, if you go to the White House now, you know what's right across the street?
The Milken Institute, which is just a little bit too perfect for me.
Wow.
Anyway.
Den of Thieves, great book recommendation if you've never read it.
The movie Wall Street was based on some of the characters that were in there.
Oh, really?
Ivan Boski and Michael.
I mean, Michael Milken is one of the most notorious white-collar criminals literally of all time.
Like, he was a cut-and-dry, open insider trader.
They had him on tape.
There was no getting around it.
And he basically used his gains since then to launder his reputation in the public health space and others since then.
And eventually, Rudy Giuliani, who's one of the people who prosecuted Milken, is then the one who gets Trump to get him his – I think it's his pardon, or his commutation some years later. It was completely insane.
Well, think about, I mean, the Eric Adams situation.
Well, he hasn't gotten this yet, right?
They dropped the charges against him. Pressure from DOJ and forced them to drop the charges.
And remember, you had various people involved at that federal district court who were like, I'm out.
Like, this is blatantly immoral, unethical.
And these were people who were like one of them was like, I can't remember which of the conservative justices that she had clerked for.
And she was like, I'm out.
That's right.
This is nakedly political.
Yes.
And yeah, it was the same.
He was able to position himself like, oh, the deep stays down to get me because I want
to help Trump on immigration, whatever.
I mean, it's just it's just so obvious.
It's just so obvious.
And it makes a mockery of the our justice system is flawed in a million different ways.
There's no doubt about it.
But again, the aspiration is that it should be neutral, right?
The aspiration is that you should at least have the expectation that it's not just like if I can suck up to this person, then I can get away with it.
And that, gone out the window.
Well, I mean, I have spoken against this.
There is no – there is really no reason other than the holdover from the monarchical period when this was invented that the president should have such unilateral pardon and clemency powers. It's literally nuts. It is borrowed at that time
from the powers that the czar and that the kings had based on the European system. So
just so everyone's aware of where it all comes from. It makes absolutely no sense.
I know a lot of cops and they get asked all the time, have you ever had
to shoot your gun? Sometimes the answer is yes, but there's a company dedicated to a future where
the answer will always be no. Across the country, cops called this taser the revolution. But not
everyone was convinced it was that simple. Cops believed everything
that Taser told them.
From Lava for Good and the team that brought you Bone Valley
comes a story about what happened
when a multi-billion dollar company
dedicated itself to one
visionary mission.
This is Absolute Season 1.
Taser Incorporated.
I get
right back there and it's bad.
It's really, really, really bad.
Listen to new episodes of Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated,
on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Binge episodes 1, 2, and 3 on May 21st and episodes 4, 5, and 6 on June 4th.
Add free at Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts.
I'm Clayton English.
I'm Greg Glod.
And this is season two of the War on Drugs podcast.
We are back.
In a big way.
In a very big way.
Real people, real perspectives.
This is kind of star-studded a little bit, man.
We got Ricky Williams, NFL player,
Heisman Trophy winner.
It's just a compassionate choice
to allow players
all reasonable means
to care for themselves.
Music stars
Marcus King,
John Osborne
from Brothers Osborne.
We have this misunderstanding
of what this
quote-unquote
drug ban.
Benny the Butcher.
Brent Smith from Shinedown.
We got B-Real from Cypress Hill.
NHL enforcer Riley Cote.
Marine Corvette.
MMA fighter Liz Caramouch.
What we're doing now isn't working, and we need to change things.
Stories matter, and it brings a face to them.
It makes it real.
It really does.
It makes it real.
Listen to new episodes of the War on Drugs podcast season two
on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
And to hear episodes one week early and ad-free with exclusive content, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts.
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.
So we are now getting confirmation from Bibi Netanyahu
that the official plan for the Gaza Strip,
you know, we've been talking about,
oh, what's the plan for the day after from the beginning?
Some of us have been saying, you know,
the plan is probably full ethnic cleansing
and removal of Palestinians from the Gaza Strip
and complete reoccupation.
Bibi Netanyahu now confirming that that is in fact the case.
He says, if your Hebrew
is a little rusty or Arabic is a little rusty as mine is here, he says, we are ready to discuss
the final phase of the war. Hamas will lay down its arms. Its leaders will be allowed to leave.
We will take care of security in Gaza and implement Trump's voluntary migration plan.
This is our plan. We're not hiding it. And we're ready to talk about it at any time.
This, of course, comes amid a renewed bombing campaign and ground invasion and complete siege
of the Gaza Strip. Gaza Strip has already been reduced effectively to rubble, according to
Trump's envoy there, Steve Witkoff, who went and visited Gaza
and said there's basically nothing left. We continue to get horror stories of the atrocities
that are being committed there. We also have this. We could put this next piece up on the screen.
More details about the systematic use of Palestinians as human shields. Every accusation is a confession. This is
published in Haaretz. This is an Israeli newspaper. It says, in Gaza, almost every IDF platoon keeps
a human shield, a sub-army of Palestinian slaves. Let me go ahead and read this to you. This person
writes, I served in Gaza for nine months. First came across these procedures called mosquito
protocol in December 2023. It was only two months into the ground offensive, long before there was a
shortage of dogs from the IDF's canine unit who were used for this purpose. This became the insane,
unofficial excuse for this insane, unofficial procedure. I didn't realize then how ubiquitous
using human shields, who we refer to as Shawish, would become. Today, almost every platoon keeps a shawish.
No infantry force enters a house before a shawish clears it.
This means there are four shawishes in a company, 12 in a battalion, and at least 36 in a brigade.
We operate a sub-army of slaves.
So this coming directly from someone who served in the Gaza Strip in the IDF for nine months.
Sagar, we'd received reports of this before, but this speaks to the widespread, systematic use of
Palestinians for this purpose. But I wanted to get your reaction to what Bibi is announcing there,
saying like, oh, Trump's plan to take over Gaza. Yeah, that's our plan. We're not hiding it.
That's what we're going for. And we know that they had actually spoken to some African nations about like, hey, will you take these people?
And if you think that this is going to be, quote unquote, voluntary migration, I mean,
this is part of what the current starvation campaign is designed to compel, to force them
to have no other choice if they want to live, but to leave the Gaza Strip. And that's also the issue with the overall U.S. policy right now, is we explicitly quasi-endorsed
this from the beginning. And so now we own it. And in that way, we are now responsible,
both obviously not only in terms of providing weapons, but most importantly, in terms of how
this is going to reshape things in the region in the future.
Because if you think about our relationship with Jordan, with Saudi Arabia, I mean, if we have some grand goal in the Middle East, what it is.
For me, it's get the hell out.
But, you know, I guess if we're going to stay, is to what?
Is to secure peace in this region, which is very important, petrochemicals to the United States. Well, how exactly are we supposed to be doing any of this
whenever we are explicitly backing and then responsible and endorsing this mass expulsion?
That's why no U.S. government ever, even some of the most pro-Israel presidents of all time,
have always moved against the Israelis and trying to move them away from what their obvious goal in this case was.
It's only Trump was just taking the mask off. I mean, even Biden tacitly somewhat endorsed it,
right? But rhetorically would not go all the way there. Trump was just thinking he's smart,
being like, oh, we're going to own the Gaza Strip. And then also backing effectively the
mass expulsion. And so when you have that endorsement, they will take that and run with it
as far as they can possibly go.
And yeah, the ramifications for us is disastrous.
That human shields thing too, like you said,
this is also part of what drives me crazy,
is there is a thing in the West
where we're not really allowed to even say these things
until the Israeli press admits them.
And then even then, you know, we-
You wouldn't see that article in the New York Times.
No, you would never see it.
Exactly. That is what drives me. You know, this recently happened. We haven't had time
to put in this New York Times report. I'm not sure if you saw it, which it's multiple pages long.
And it's about the role of the Pentagon and the CIA in running the war in Ukraine.
Yeah.
And I mean, I've been screaming here for three years about all this
stuff, but it's like, you're not allowed to admit it until it becomes verified by the New York
Times. I feel that way in this case as well. And yeah, in the Western press and in all of our
discussion here of the conflict, we just look, we don't even pay any attention and they're writing
it in English for all of us to see. It's not difficult. And this doesn't even mean you have to be some keffiyeh-wearing pal.
You just have to be like, yeah, I don't know.
Why are we paying for this?
What exactly are we getting out of this?
You can even be callous if you want to look at it that way.
And yet the media environment here is just so propagandized and shaped that, yeah, even the quasi-liberal institutions are not able.
You know, we're about to talk about this Medics thing.
Yeah.
I just saw this from Ryan.
Ryan flagged that in the New York Times, they're like, we can't independently verify these
claims.
And Ryan's like, you guys want a Pulitzer Prize and you don't know how to get someone
in Gaza on the phone?
You don't know how to.
What are you doing?
Yeah.
And he says specifically, because this is about Red Crescent, which is their equivalent
of the Red Cross.
Red Crescent, which is their equivalent of the Red Cross. Red Crescent medics, he's like, you can't get the Red Crescent on the phone to verify this.
I've never even met them.
I guarantee you I could do it.
You know, to your point, Shia Ben-Ephraim, who we crackdown on dissent and all of this stuff is the fact that and he was someone who was critical of the protesters.
Like this was not a kafir wearing guy. Right. He was like the protesters were right.
Israel has behaved in exactly as monstrous a way. I'm paraphrasing.
These aren't exactly his words. were the most accurate about what the goals were and what this would ultimately look like. You could listen to them or you could listen to the settlers, the like most fanatic zealots,
about their goals. And that would have given you a much better understanding of what the goals were
and what was likely to unfold than listening either to the propagandists in Israel or certainly
the propagandists here in the U.S., either from a political class or from our media class.
But to speak to the incident that you're talking about here, there were 15 Palestinian medics,
including one U.N. employee, who were executed in Gaza. And you're talking about 15 people who were killed one by one, so intentionally killed one after another,
and then buried in a mass grave. So at the State Department briefing, whoever this person is,
the equivalent of Matthew Miller of this administration, gets asked about this and
whether there's going to be any sort of accountability for this naked
atrocity and slaughter intentionally of paramedics. Let's take a listen to what she had to say.
The UN's humanitarian affairs office has said that 15 paramedics, civil defense,
and a UN worker were killed, in their words, one by one by the IDF. They have dug bodies up they said in the shallow grave
that have been gathered up and also vehicles in the sand. Have you got any assessment of what
might have happened and given the potential use of American weapons is there any assessment of
whether or not this complied with international law? Well I can tell you that for too long, Hamas has abused civilian infrastructure, cynically using it to shield themselves.
Hamas's actions have caused humanitarians to be caught in the crossfire.
The use of civilians or civilian objects to shield or impede military operations is itself a violation of international humanitarian law.
And, of course, we expect all parties on the ground to comply with international humanitarian law. And of course, we expect all parties on the ground
to comply with international humanitarian law. But there's specifically a question on any,
it's a question about accounting and accountability given that may have been
the use of US weapons. So it's a question about the State Department rather than Hamas.
Is there any action? Well, every single thing that is happening in Gaza is happening
because of Hamas. Every single dynamic. Every single thing that is happening in Gaza is
happening because of Hamas. I mean, it's just like I mean, it's you know, the Biden administration,
it's not really any different. It's just more naked, more brazen.
Israel literally has zero agency or zero responsibility for any of their actions,
which we know has decimated the entire Gaza Strip, killed, we don't even have a clue,
tens of thousands at the least, women and children, elderly, paramedics, journalists, schools are
leveled, mosques are leveled. I mean, it's just on and on and on. And the official stance of the
State Department is they bear zero responsibility. So they could literally nuke the Gaza Strip and
it's all Hamas's fault. They have no agency for their actions at all. But if Russia nukes Ukraine,
then all of us have to get involved. You see how this all falls apart and it's all preposterous.
Let's go to the next part here because honestly, this is pretty grim.
Quote, only 3% of Jewish Israelis are, quote, morally opposed to the Trump-Netanyahu plan to depopulate Gaza.
Some 14% consider it a distraction.
More than 80% say they support the forced removal from Gaza.
There you go.
That's pretty important.
You know, this is the other thing that we may underestimate.
As much as the Israeli press is actually far more honest about their coverage and airing of dissent,
we should also be real about where the majority of the population is.
And we should not make the critical mistake that Westerners always make,
which is pointing to dissident media inside of the country and saying,
see, this is what they're being exposed to. That would be like an outsider pointing to
Jacobin or something. See, this is available in America. It's like, yeah, it's available,
but that's not what people are reading every day. It's probably more Americans that read Harad.
Yeah, you're right. I've spent a lot of time in Israel.
You know what they watch?
They watch the same bullshit that we do, which is their stupid cable news.
Like their equivalent of Fox News. Their equivalent of Fox News.
Yeah, their equivalent of Fox News, very different than Haaretz, which we've played some of the clips here.
But you have to translate from Hebrew, so it's more difficult for us to understand.
But you ever go there, I can guarantee you they love TV.
Israelis actually love the news in the same way that I guess we do, you know, in terms of our addiction to cable television.
And I can tell you the cable TV over there, very different than what you're reading in Haaretz or Times of Israel.
I know a lot of cops and they get asked all the time.
Have you ever had to shoot your gun?
Sometimes the answer is yes. But there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer
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Let's go ahead and move on to this next piece with Sagar.
I know you have taken great interest in.
Well, it's just a little too perfect.
It's too on the nose.
Republicans have, of course, been very upset and opposed to DEI and critical race theory
and Ibram X. Kendi's whole ideological archetype of you can't just be not racist.
You have to be anti-anti-racist. It is not enough to
be just not racist. You have to be anti-racist. Yes, there we go. So some of this language,
though, when it's about Israel suddenly is being received with open arms from the what Dave Smith
has called the woke right. Let's go ahead and take a listen to this rabbi
who was brought by Republicans to testify
about the scourge of anti-Semitism across the country.
Let's take a listen to this.
Anti-Semitism is not just an age-old prejudice.
It is a contemporary crisis manifesting on campuses
across the nation.
It is not enough for individuals or institutions
to merely claim they are
not anti-Semitic. As my father once taught me, it is not enough for people, especially public
figures, to be neutral or not be anti-Semitic. One must be anti-anti-Semitic. We must demand the
same of our universities and government institutions. This hearing, in my opinion,
is an attempt to be just that anti-antisemitic we need
anti-antisemitism i mean it's beyond parody also i went and i checked the tape that were that
witness was introduced specifically by senator bill cassidy republican of louisiana took me about
two minutes to find tweets of his railing against critical race theory.
So anyway, there you go.
And it's a little bit too on the nose, isn't it?
Because what this shows us is that the DEI, the I, now stands for Israel.
We have left inclusion off and we've put Israel in from affirmative action in the state of Florida to the fact that we are literally deporting people who are here legally and have done nothing else other than pen an opinion and tell them to leave because of their
opinion on a foreign country. We're open, we're spending. I was thinking about that too. And I,
yes, I understand that it's not just about money, but you do need to think that if the government
is discrete resources, why are there five or six agents? Do you know how much it costs,
you know, just to even
employ all of them and to go and then to arrest this lady and then put her on a plane to Louisiana?
Like that's what you do for like actual criminals. Here we're doing it for somebody who wrote an op-ed
against funding Israel. That's right. What are we doing here? And to your point, like for people who
are on board with the mass deportation plan, I would expect you wouldn't want to prioritize actual criminals.
We know there's a limited—
How about people who are illegally?
How about that?
We know there's a limited amount of resources.
And instead, you've got, you know, five, six, a whole mob of these plainclothes mass officers waiting for someone to like, you know, step out to break their fast with their friends because she committed a thought crime.
And it's not just our, you know, it's hundreds of students at this point who have been flagged
for deportation, some of which have gotten the same like, you know, mass response flown
down to Louisiana or transferred to Texas, et cetera.
And as we've said before, it doesn't stop with the students either.
It does not, I mean, with the immigrants either or even with the students.
You know, they are talking about pro-Palestine protests as being in favor of terrorism.
That has implications in terms of criminalizing anyone who participates in those protests.
They're using this as a cudgel in order to enforce compliance and conformity at universities.
They've threatened 60 different universities with repercussions if they don't do whatever the administration wants them to do.
And basically, they are using this framework as a cudgel to go against institutions and people that they consider to be their political adversaries.
I mean, I think pro-Palestine just basically stands in for like the left, you know, universities
who they think fostered anti-Semitism or didn't do enough or whatever.
Like these are their ideological adversaries.
And so they're using this framework that was sort of laying around.
That's what I talked about in my monologue yesterday, in order to, this is way beyond any of the worst of the like cancel culture
epidemic on the left because of the way that the state is aggressively enforcing these speech codes
to actually punish and deport people. Yeah, to bring it back to anti-racism,
for anybody who suffered through Ibrahim Kendi's books, what he proposes is actually a department of anti-racism, which would
effectively do stuff like this, but on behalf of critical race theory. So it's worse because they've
actually not only replaced the I in DEI for Israel, but then they're actually using the government
for those purposes. And you know, you were talking about some of that action. So I'm not sure if you saw just yesterday,
Princeton University or last night, Princeton University and Harvard University have had their
funding put on pause over the anti-Semitism initiative. Now, look, if we were doing that
to actually like blow these people up and, you know, make it so that these elite institutions
not only are not only like bilking people for literally hundreds of thousands of
dollars ripping off the American taxpayer. I wouldn't be fine with it because I still wouldn't
want to use anti-Semites as a pretext, but I'd say whatever. But look at what they actually
extracted from Columbia University is what the ability to expel like students for protesting
on behalf of Palestine and then replace the Middle Eastern Studies Department. To what benefit is that to me as the American taxpayer or to the student?
That's not the point.
That's not why people hate higher education.
You know, there are many, many reasons.
Actually, I was just looking yesterday.
Harvard admitted less people in its class of 2023 than it did in the class of like 1982,
even though the United States has grown by about 100 million people or so.
Do you know why they do that?
Exclusivity, to be able to charge more.
And that's a crime, in my opinion, to really artificially restrict your class size, to
try and bilk as many people as possible, and also use your reputation to basically steal
money from people who are applying to you, even though the odds and all that have dropped.
We could talk about that in a much more equitable way.
Why are we doing it on behalf of, quote, antisemitism,
which is one of the fakest panics
that has struck the United States here now
in the last decade?
This is probably akin similarly to the, I would say,
like you said, the woke cancel culture stuff,
Me Too, et cetera, that happened in the mid-2000s,
except this one now has the arm of the state behind it,
which obviously makes it worse.
It's just preposterous.
And then same thing.
Look, yes, it's great to see Matt Walsh be like, oh, this is bad, and a few other right-wing influencers.
It's like, yeah, that's nice.
But where's the members of Congress?
Where's the people in power?
Why are people not pointing to this?
This was a witness who was invited by the Republicans to testify.
And nobody sees the contradiction.
And the fact that this person even gets to be able to, in the opening statement, which is obviously submitted for the record and cleared with all these staffers, that it didn't even enter their mind shows you the level of hypocrisy that we've now reached.
Very true.
Very true.
It's bad.
I mean, it's not just bad, it's horrific because they really are. My only hope is, and I think I said this in your monologue,
is now our eyes are open. I think the world's eyes are open. The polling data indicates this
on behalf of Israel and of U.S. attitudes towards them. And there are a lot of people who can no
longer be silenced for
quote noticing. And Tim Dillon, one of those people. So why don't we take a listen to that?
Is this being done from America or for Israel? I mean, this is a fair question.
Is the United States government now just taking edicts and orders from Israel?
Is this the is this what people voted for when they elected Trump
is to have a country taking orders from Israel?
I don't think so.
So, you know, I respect him.
And you know what I like about that is we can sit here
and talk about this stuff all day long.
But that being in the bro sphere, that's a good thing.
That's a net positive.
And that's what I mean.
People are going to notice.
And yes, a lot of the bad is being done, and I'm not downplaying any of that. But I do think that
things are going to shake out very differently than the pro-Israel lobby thinks right now.
I don't know, Sagar. We'll see. We'll see. But to the point.
I mean, what? The country will survive, no? Like, we're going to continue 10 years,
15 years from now. People who grow up in this era are going to be like me growing up during
the war in Iraq. And you're going to come to me and tell me smoking gun is going to be a mushroom cloud.
I'm going to laugh in your face.
Yeah.
That's what's going to happen.
Yeah.
I mean, it's just it's part of a it's part of a broader project.
Right.
And it's part of a broader project specifically with regard to education and universities in particular.
I mean, this is like, you know, Trump's executive order on, quoteunquote patriotic education, they want to have leverage
over these universities to control the type of education that the students who Harvard and Yale
and all these institutions are very powerful. Those are the people who end up in power.
That's right.
They want to use this cudgel in order to enforce compliance across, you know, this is sort of the tip of the
spear. And then it's the same thing with the, you know, the war on CRT and DEI, and I have my own
issues with those ideologies, et cetera. But there's a concerted effort to teach a sanitized
version of history. And this is part of the cudgel that is being used to effectuate
that broader outcome because they do see these universities as an alternative power center.
And so this is something in a sort of ideological architecture that has been supported both by
liberals like Joe Biden and most of the
elected Democratic political leaders and much of the media, New York Times, et cetera. And so it's
the easiest way for them to really push that project. But I don't think that it stands alone.
It's part of a broader project. Yeah, it definitely is. I guess. So the difference
then between you and me is, yeah, I have no problem withholding funding from Harvard or from any of these other people for propping up
DEI or teaching for critical race theory, because that concerns our country. I do have a big problem
with weaponizing. But the idea of intellectual freedom is like, you know, you can disagree with
DEI, but like if you, you know, want to teach. Oh, yeah, you're welcome to. You have a $50 billion
endowment that you can draw down every day.
Me as the American taxpayer and others, we can vote to withhold our funding from said institutions.
And I think that's a pretty fair rebuttal.
I think there's – that's actually fair in that the universities – I mean Harvard and certainly Yale and these other Ivy League institutions.
They have the endowments where we talked about with Columbia.
Like they don't actually need the $400 million.
They could fill in that gap.
It wouldn't be a problem.
These endowments have become so massive
and they're like a business in and of themselves.
But many universities do not fall into that category, right?
And they're actually the ones that are most vulnerable,
which is why it's so disheartening to see the Harvards and the Columbias and the Ivy League
institutions, which are in a position to actually stand up for intellectual freedom, you know, and
their own integrity, completely capitulating in the face of this assault.
I don't know. See, the thing is, is public education by default, if it's going to be funded by the public, then of course we get to say. The idea that you should
have intellectual freedom at a, quote, public university is preposterous. What? Because public
education is for the purpose of, quote, educating the public based on the taxpayer, right? Right.
So don't we want a public that's educated, like about, you know, the search of racism and slavery
and Jim Crow.
Educated to what end? The purpose of public education is to benefit the American taxpayer
by having people who are skilled. Who are educated. And literally curious or whatever.
I mean, I. And to become a better citizen. Correct, yeah. But there's also like an
economic benefit to this. So. So you don't think that public universities, there should be
like intellectual freedom at public universities? Okay, I mean, if the state. Harvard is also not
a public university. But under that argument, yeah the state- Harvard is also not a public university.
But under that argument, yeah, I agree with you.
And that's what I'm trying to say though,
is that at a state level,
like if the state of Massachusetts,
if they had a literal white power curriculum, do you think that that would be acceptable?
I would say absolutely not.
The state of Massachusetts,
at the University of Massachusetts,
if those taxpayers voted to say that that's not in line
with what we wanna teach our schools,
be my guest, it's your university.
You guys are the ones who fund it.
And so you think that teaching about, you know,
the scourge of slavery and let's say our, you know, genocide against Native Americans
is equivalent to a white power seminar? Well, I think that if you're going to teach it in such a
way like the 1619 Project did, which was also funded and then used at some of these elite
universities to say America is irrevocably racist, then what are we all doing here? I mean, there's no point,
you know, to this entire thing. So this is the problem is you think one is justifiable or not.
I'm making a point about academic freedom, which is genuinely value neutral. So if the taxpayer
and the public broadly, mostly agrees with me about critical race theory and DEI,
then yes, they should be able to influence and say those
universities should not be allowed to do this with our dollars. You know, that's actually not
even true, though, that the taxpayer in the country agrees with you about DEI. But I think
we can all recognize that there are some intellectual inquiries that are worthy of
debate, you know, to take it out of race, like some intellectual inquiries that are worthy of debate, to take it out of race,
like some intellectual inquiries that are worthy of debate and some which are only add confusion
to the debate. So for example, it wouldn't be worthy of academic freedom to have some flat
earther there trying to make their case, et cetera. But to have people who, you know, see race as a central component of our nation's
history and, you know, teach courses on that, teach courses on, you know, gender studies has
been a big target. I would say that understanding the dynamics of our genders and our differences
has perhaps never been more important. There's a lot that we could learn from there. I think that
that is completely within the bounds of what should be taught at a school
and certainly represents the sort of academic freedom that the right, you know, really like
obsessed over during when, you know, during the Biden administration and previously. So I, you
know, to enforce this sort of conformity and like you have to learn quote unquote patriotic history
that doesn't ever cast the America in a negative light.
I mean, that's what they're going for here.
And they're using anti-Semitism as a cudgel in order to help bring these universities to heel so that they're only teaching the versions of American history that are approved by this particular government.
Look, if you want to put your kid into some Howard Zinn University, that's your right.
You know, you can go to some private university.
But if public funded universities by the taxpayer obviously have a right not only in the say
on the curriculum, but in to be paying for and to propping up said departments, which
are genuinely 100 percent funded by them and not some major endowment.
I genuinely couldn't disagree more.
I mean, so I don't really understand then your opposition to what they're doing with
anti-Semitism because we're doing it on behalf of this is what they would say is that this is
our foreign policy. This is our this is the argument Marco Rubio and others make. This is
our national security. This is our foreign policy. We want our tax dollars to go to further our national interest as American citizens.
And part of our interest is in combating anti-Semitism and bolstering our ally Israel in the Middle East.
So what's your issue with what they're doing?
No, that's my point is that I completely disagree with that.
But I'm saying, I mean, do you really do you really believe in a principle where the taxpayer has no say on the academic input or the academic environment that they're going to fund.
That's ridiculous.
I believe that we should have academic freedom and intellectual exploration.
Okay, then.
And that people should learn.
And so you would be okay with a white power classroom at the University of Virginia?
No, I already explained that there are certain things that do not add to the academic or intellectual atmosphere.
So who gets to decide?
Who's setting the standard?
The democracy. Society does. Yes, that's right. Exactly's setting the standard? The democracy.
Society does.
Yes, that's right.
Exactly.
And society thinks it's important.
And we can have elections and we can have inputs.
Society thinks it's important.
They don't agree with you on DEI.
By the way, they don't even agree with me on DEI.
Society is in favor of knowing the facts about our history,
even the ugly facts about our history.
And I think it's incredibly important that we be able to learn. And you're a history guy. Yes, that's right. You know more about this
stuff than I do, Sagar. But that's my point. And it was important for your own intellectual
development to know the truth about those past horrors, whether it's Jim Crow or whether it's
slavery or whether it was what was done to Native American people on these lands. That's not to say like, oh, you have to live with that shame and guilt.
This is what the right always says.
But yeah, you want to learn from the past.
You want to learn from the mistakes so we don't repeat them again in the future.
And that's what's under assault here with this onslaught against universities.
They want to bring them to heel so that only the quote unquote,
the sanitized quote unquote, patriotic version of history that is not honest about the warts
and the truth of, you know, things that our country has been involved in.
I would need to see curriculum for which you're describing that as, because I think.
Go look at what PragerU is putting out. Go look at the curriculum they put into Florida. That's not a real university.
No, but they used that for curriculums in places like Florida as part of this patriotic education push.
This is the broader project.
And so if you don't see the way that this anti-Semitism thing is being used as a cudgel to enforce a broader bringing to heel of these universities,
like that is just one plank of the plan here. used as a cudgel to enforce a broader bringing to heel of these universities.
Like, that is just one plank of the plan here.
That is the tip of the spear. But the broader plan is to completely bring these universities to heel and make them comply
with whatever sanitized history that this particular administration finds to be useful.
Yeah, but my point is that your, quote, unquote, sanitized history, the other, quote, true
history is one where we just sit there and we're supposed to be like, oh, and these are all the most horrible
things about America. You know, my education in Texas was terrible. And it wasn't because
it was woke. It was genuinely just not actual. It had one inch depth of which 99% of the U.S.
population will ever actually read below. The vast majority of what I've learned has been
reading on myself. And what I have learned is what? Is that there is deep complexity
to the issue. And that with Jim Crow and with the slavery and the South and the debates at the U.S.
Constitutional Convention during the Civil War and more, we're not often all pure and heroic in
the way that we like to learn. Or all that evil is that there was a deep amount of gray area in that time,
and that actually the story of how we were able to emerge today to a much more equal society,
not yet of where we are, is remarkable and is one in which we should absolutely study,
and I think we should celebrate. Now, I think critical race theory, what it does is invert
that on its head and to say, no, actually where we are today is an immense failure,
and we didn't get there. And this so-called true history or whatever is just like leftist claptrap, to be honest.
Like it's not one which genuinely grapples with any of the good of the U.S. has done because like I referenced with Howard Zinn and more, it views it as this evil empire morally corrupted its founding as the 1619 Project does.
And what that instills in people and or the citizen is one, this idea that we can never
get better instead of looking at both equally. I'm familiar. This is my issue with critical
theory. I'm familiar with your opinion. Yeah. However, the question is, do you think that
learning about those things should be effectively banned by the state? I mean, but that's the goal.
That is the goal is to enforce conformity
on these universities
and to push a sanitized narrative
so that, you know, I just think that,
listen, you can agree or disagree
with how central races
and the way that this infected,
you know, affected our nation's development. I mean, I would say that it's been a pretty
important part of many of the most critical battles in terms of, you know, how we've gotten
to where we are today and important to learn about and see the legacy of, et cetera. But like,
I just, to, I believe you've previously spoken on behalf of academic freedom, and to think that that's out of bounds or that the state should use its power to bully universities out of teaching that sort of, you know, sort of history is, I think, pretty wild.
Here's, I want to be clear here.
I'm talking specifically about public education.
I think we can all agree curriculum is propaganda in some form, yes or no. Now, in that propaganda, we all
democratically get to decide in that public education for what should be and should be not
taught in our classrooms. This is ultimately a parental decision. In fact, I think that what
you're laying out is a ridiculous idea where the taxpayer is supposed to give you unlimited or
whatever amount of funds, and you're able to just be able to do whatever you want and
preach that to children and or create curriculum for students. We cannot live in a society like
that and have never lived in a society like that. We're talking specifically about universities,
number one. But these are publicly funded. Every time I look at my property tax bill,
I'm pretty sure I know where a lot of it's going. And we're predominantly talking about, I mean,
this just gets to, I think, a fundamental difference about
what the university system is even for. Because in my opinion, the university system is not,
including the public university system, is all about academic and intellectual exploration.
That's how even, you know, even thinking through things that might be out of bounds, right, politically, that are outside of
certainly the consensus of the public. That's how you push research and intellectual activity
forward. And so, yes, I think that's important to support at both the public university level and
certainly private universities should be able to do what they want. They're not doing a good job
of standing up for themselves in the face of this onslaught.
But, yes, of course, I think having academic curiosity and risk taking within the university system, I see that as a as a core value of the university system. I don't see it as a place where we're just supposed to like stamp out these conformist ideas and, you know, based on what the current regime approves that you're allowed to
learn about. Like that is just, that is completely foreign to my notion of what the public, what the
university system is supposed to be all about. You're also converting an issue here, which is,
what did I say? That I didn't actually learn all that much in school. I've mostly learned about it
myself. So if you're curious, you curious, all the information you need is out
there. And I've got about 1% of what I need, and I'll be looking for the rest of the 5% of what
I'm able to consume over the course of my life. But last thing here is you made a good point
about what is education. The course of public education, why did we create it? Was to create
a more skilled populace for economic benefit., for economic benefit, that's the truth.
It's all namby-pamby nice to say,
oh, intellectual curiosity, et cetera.
The problem that we have today
is that way too many people go to college
to pursue degrees which are not economically viable
and which saddle them up with a lot of debt.
The solution to that is not to offer, quote, free college
so that everybody can go get little box checks.
It's to make sure that people pursue
higher educational vocational training or wherever,
or perhaps a four-year college degree
for the purpose of being able to pursue the American dream,
which you individually get to define for yourself.
So that's my last thing.
It's just like this idea that you're gonna be conformist
because you go to college.
I went to a college with a bunch of woke people.
In fact, being around them
made me a lot more intellectually curious
about what I wasn't
learning in school, and you could pursue it for yourself. But that's an inversion of this idea
that everything you're ever going to learn about the world is going to be at a four-year college
degree. No, we're supposed to lay a foundation for which you yourself can go from there in spring.
Some of that is risk-taking, et cetera. But, and like I said, the purpose of public education,
and why we fund it itself, is not to have people sitting around reading Proust or whatever.
It's so that you can go out and you can get a job, which is going to benefit yourself and ultimately benefit the entire country.
I think that treating human beings and their education as solely being about becoming effective cogs in the American capitalist machine. Yeah, I disagree with that end goal,
that being the only goal of our education and especially our university system.
Yeah, but I'm saying even in a communist system, why did they send people to public university?
It wasn't, again, to be sitting around and reading and debating Marxist-Leninism.
I just think that this is so funny.
It was to send them to a factory.
I just think this is so funny to come from you because you're so intellectually curious. Absolutely. And you're so well read. And not everything that you consume is about like, how can I generate more profit? How can I like make more money? Yeah, because I do it for my own edification. Because you value, and it has made you part of who you are, that you have that intellectual curiosity and that you have that intellectual development.
And I'm not saying that all of that comes within a traditional school system.
Of course it doesn't.
But I think an important part, especially for young adults within that system, when
you have a fantastic professor who opens your eyes up to something, who helps you to understand
something you didn't understand before, to help you explore the world, to help you learn about history and see the lessons of the past and be able to apply
them to the present and, you know, understand better the trajectory that you're on. So yeah,
of course, I think that that's an important part of the university system and that it's not all
just about like, I mean, why should anyone go to university at all if you're just like training to for your end goal as a human being of your career?
No, a lot of people actually shouldn't go. And I've said that before. I think the way amount
of people go is way too high. It probably should be 20, 30% less. Because I think last I checked,
it was like 45%. But I mean, that's what I'm saying is the flip is I'm not going to sit here
and tell you or even believe in a system where the public
education system is supposed to be the be all, end all of on it. As I said, I was much more inspired
to read and to be individually more curious from what I didn't learn in school and asking questions
about that. So it just comes down to the fact that I believe that the reason public education exists
literally at all, and you can go and look for why we decided for this grand experiment in the first place was
genuinely not nice to say it, but the truth is, is so we could all be more beneficial to each other.
Part of that is intellectual exercise and more, but a lot of what public education has become
has become an economic saddle on the American taxpayer and on the individual who is participating
in the system, who is hobbling their life forever. I believe in individual pursuit
of whatever it is that you want to do. I like to read for my own edification. I'm very lucky I've
been able to pursue a career in something like that. But even if I didn't do this, I would still
be doing it whenever I was doing something else. That's what I like to do. But that's my point,
is it wasn't necessarily something inspired by the great public universe or private university,
I guess, where I went for something. It basically comes back to this idea of why is the public participating in this
in the future? I just believe, of course, the public has a right and has a responsibility,
to be honest, of being involved in this and not some blank tabula rasa slate where these professors
are allowed to take our dollars and then do whatever they want. That has never existed
for literally all of human history or conception of public education.
It has always been any curricula in which the state is paying for is itself a debate and is propaganda in some form.
It's about a war of what is supposed to be in that propaganda to shape a better citizenry, and then that's the debate that you and I are having now. I think universities should be about intellectual exploration.
And I don't think that they will benefit from having a heavy hand of the state coming in to enforce what is acceptable thought.
And I think we see that very clearly with the efforts that are being taken here with regard to, quote unquote, anti-Semitism.
So we can leave it there.
Over the years of making my true crime podcast, Hell and Gone, I've learned no town is too small for murder.
I'm Katherine Townsend.
I've heard from hundreds of people across the country with an unsolved murder in their community. I was calling
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The murderer is still out there.
Each week, I investigate a new case.
If there is a case we should hear about,
call 678-744-6145.
Listen to
Hell and Gone Murder Line on the iHeartRadio app,
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you get your podcasts.
I know a lot of cops.
They get asked all the time,
have you ever had to shoot your gun?
Sometimes the answer is yes.
But there's a company dedicated to a future
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This is Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated.
I get right back there and it's bad.
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i'm clayton english i'm greg glad and this is season two of the war on drugs podcast
last year a lot of the problems of the drug war. This year, a lot of the biggest names in music and sports.
This kind of starts that a little bit, man.
We met them at their homes.
We met them at their recording studios.
Stories matter, and it brings a face to them.
It makes it real.
It really does.
It makes it real.
Listen to new episodes of the War on Drugs podcast season two
on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
This is an iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an iHeart Podcast.