Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 4/15/24: Israel Vows Retaliation, Iran Sets New Red Line, Trump Endorses 'Genocide Joe' Chant, Shock Poll On Trump V Biden, Republicans Flip On Ukraine Aid, Cornel West VP 'Racist' To Be Taylor Swift Fan, Bill Maher Says Abortion Murder But Good, CNN Defends OJ

Episode Date: April 15, 2024

Ryan and Saagar discuss Israel vowing retaliation, Iran sets new red line, Trump endorses 'Genocide Joe' chant at rally, Americans feel country better under Trump than Biden, Republicans flip flop on Ukraine aid, Cornel West VP pick said its racist to be Taylor Swift fan, Bill Maher says abortion is murder but good, CNN defends OJ Simpson.   To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show AD FREE, uncut and 1 hour early visit: https://breakingpoints.supercast.com/   Merch Store: https://shop.breakingpoints.com/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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give you guys the best independent coverage that is possible. If you like what we're all about, it just means the absolute world to have your support. But enough with that. Let's get to the show. Good morning, everybody. Happy Monday. We have an amazing show for everybody today. Extra amazing. It's a bro show. People live for the pound. That's what we got going on today. Crystal will be back tomorrow, though, so don't worry about it. And she'll be here Wednesday. That's right. She'll be in on Wednesday. So we're swapping things around and making things a lot more fun

over here at Breaking Points, the most ambitious crossover show of all time. But we've got some great topics for everybody today. Let's go ahead and come up on me. Let's see what we got. Iran. Okay, so we're going to start, obviously obviously with the Iranian attack on Israel. Some of the fallout watching the Israeli war cabinet, what their response will be. President Biden issuing a warning to Israel saying don't widen the war, but we will remain and we will see what happens, as Trump often used to say. We will also have Dr. Trita Parsi in the show. He's gonna analyze some of the attack, the ramifications he accurately predicted last week on our show that an attack would be forthcoming and that the fallout from the embassy was much bigger than much of the media was letting on. We're going to talk about

Donald Trump, who had a very interesting moment at his Allentown, Pennsylvania rally, where he seemed to concur with Genocide Joe as the nickname. He's trying to foster some dissension in the Democratic ranks. And then we're also going to take a look at some new interesting polling, both good for Trump, bad for Trump, and some possible signals about how abortion is going to play out in the race. Ukraine, some fascinating stuff going on there. Trump's even flip-flopping endorsing some sort of Len Lee-style program for Ukraine aid, while Senator J.D. Vance, part of the MAGA contingent, speaking out against the idea of aid to Ukraine entirely. We're going to dig into that. Cornel West, one of the third-party candidates, has picked his vice president. It's a BLM

activist who's had some interesting takes in the past. And then Bill Maher, of course, making just some interesting, let's just say interesting again, comments on abortion. Ryan and I are going to break that down. And I'm doing a monologue on the O.J. Simpson trial and its lasting effects and how it manifested itself even upon his death here in the media. But Ryan, before we get to that, as you and I were just discussing, we've got some interesting plans in the works. So people need to subscribe so you can hear a little bit more about that. BreakingPoints.com. So I think people will enjoy that.

Let's go ahead and start with those attacks on Iran. Guys, let's go ahead and play this and put it up on the screen so I can talk a little bit over it. We've got some video here. This was released by Channel 14 News in Israel. It appears to be pulling from Iranian media, which actually shows the launch of some of those ballistic missiles that were launched towards Israel. They took several hours to go. What you see in front of you was also released by the Israelis. This shows some of the drones that were heading into Israeli skies. The flashes that

everybody can see are those actually being shot down by Iron Dome. In some cases, you can see that they did make contact and they were attacking largely military installations, it appears, in Israel. But still, I mean, stunning nonetheless. That image in particular, right over Jerusalem, you can see the Temple Mount and you can just see hundreds of drones that are there in the sky with the Iron Dome program that was engaging it. I mean, what did you make of this, Ryan? I did a breaking news segment, but this is the first that the audience will get to hear from you on it. So the reporting that we have from this is that the United States told Iran that if they were going to respond, they had to do it within certain parameters. And Iran is not a client state of the

US. It can do what it wants to do. However, it understands that if we draw a line and they go outside of that line, then the cost that they they're gonna pay is gonna be higher whether it's It might not necessarily be immediately kinetic but we have lots of ways that we can make life difficult for them and the assault that they eventually launched was Referred to it was compared by a friend of mine, you know, that's seen in Austin Powers where Austin Powers is driving the steamroller Ah, yes, and there's the security guard is yeah. He has like an hour to get away from the steamroller. And that's kind of what they did with these drones. Okay. What they did is they created an international spectacle. So the entire

world is watching and the domestic audience sees the entire world watching. So just by virtue of that, the Iranian regime has then satisfied kind of its domestic demand that there be some type of a response to this attack on the consulate in Damascus. But what it also does is it gives this entire armada from Jordan to Egypt, to the US, to the UK, to Israel, ours to intercept everything. And you saw a lot of kind of Israeli pundits saying how embarrassing for Iran, they sent all of these missiles and yet Tel Aviv still stands.

Look at our beach, how pristine it remains. That was probably Iran's hope, that they want to launch an attack to make it look like they're launching an attack, but not actually do the kind of thing that requires Israel to then respond. We ought to spend a lot of time on this because this is going to be a huge matter of debate. Now, currently, that was the way that the White House interpreted the attack. However, that is not the way that the Israeli right wing is interpreting the attack. The Israeli right wing is like, no, this was just a victory of Iron Dome without Iron Dome, without the U.S., the U.K. military,

the Jordanian military, the Saudi military all allowing our jets. I mean, that's another big question. How many of these things were shot down by the United States and how many were shot down by Israel? They ain't telling us that number. I can tell you that they claim 99 percent interception. I would love to know what the actual Israeli interception rate and then what the U.S. assistance rate. CENTCOM, the United States military, has not released that. We do know that all of our Western militaries were engaged actually in shooting down some of these drones. Now, the reason why I'm sticking to this is because the way that you look at the attack matters a lot. If you think that it was intended to have a mass casualty incident and was not designed, as you said, to telegraph for an hours-long approach and attack, well, then that colors one way you're going to respond.

If you think it was an intended mass casualty incident and it was designed to kill a lot of people, well, then obviously you want to hit them back ten times as hard, and it's not your fault that the defense worked. Go ahead. I would flip it around. Okay. I'd say people start from their desired response, right? So like Ben-Gavir, Emiratis Motris, like these guys, they want a massive war with Iran. And so then they're going to retcon onto the attack whatever they need to justify that response. So they were always going to say that this was before, you know, as soon as it started, you started seeing from the

Israeli right, this is a strategic victory for us. We now have the international legitimacy to launch a full-scale attack on Iran. And not to pick on them, everybody else is the same way. Like people like me that don't want to see World War III are biased in how they see it and say like, look, it's obvious why Iran didn't cause more damage because causing more damage would have led to World War III. It's a rational actor. They don't want to lead to that. So we all do have to put our biases out there.

Important to note that because this is here what we have from the War Cabinet Minister, Benny Gantz. Let's go ahead and put this on play on the screen. I'm going to read some of what he said in terms of a translation. He says, yesterday, Iran launched an attack on Israel and met the strength of the Israeli security system. Iran is a global problem. It is a regional challenge and it is also a danger to Israel. Yesterday, the world clearly stood together with Israel in the face of the danger. For Israel against Iran, the world against Iran. This is the result.

This is the strategic achievement which we must leverage for Israel's security. This incident is not over. The strategic alliance and the regional cooperation system that we built and stood is a significant test. It needs to be strengthened right now. Israel proved yesterday that it is an anchor of military and technological power and an anchor of security in the Middle East. Faced with the threat of Iran, we will build a regional coalition and collect the price from Iran in a way and at a time that suits us. So that is the line that I'm zeroing in on, in a way and in a manner at a time that we choose. This is after an Israeli war cabinet meeting occurred. Now, this war cabinet meeting

allegedly took a very interesting turn from what we know in the inside. We're going to put this up there on the screen here. President Biden allegedly told Prime Minister Netanyahu during a call immediately after the attack on Saturday, he says, listen, the United States is not going to support any Israeli counterattack against Iran. Inside of the war cabinet, allegedly, Benny Gantz and also the defense minister both supported an immediate strike, retaliatory strike on Iran. Netanyahu appears to have backed away from that, at least allegedly because Biden told him not to. And this is where I want to make big buts. At the very same time, the Wall Street Journal and others are reporting that there's still a significant contingent in the Israeli military cabinet within the Israeli right and domestic populace that is clamoring for a response to the Iranian regime. So just because Biden said, hey, you guys had your strategic victory, don't do it and we won't join you, that doesn't mean that they won't do it.

I mean, the Israelis have some of the most advanced military technology in the world. So if we're going to give Biden credit, we can say that there was a moment amid the attack and in its immediate aftermath where the Israeli right was promising, not just demanding, but they were promising that there was going to be an unprecedented response, an immediate and unprecedented response. People were saying things like, you know, April 12th or April 14th or whenever this attack was going to happen is a day that will like live on in history. And that could have happened. Like if certain people had their fingers on certain buttons, you know, those attacks could have been launched. Biden did say, look, if you do that, you're on your own. Take the win. Take the W was the line he gave to Netanyahu. And so we'll give him credit

that the world has not ended yet. Here we are. The sun has risen again. So here we are. But like you said, there is still intense pressure from the Israeli right. What we're going to find out is who is really guiding Israeli foreign policy here. Is it the far right or is it the kind of left of Netanyahu, which is a kind of hilarious concept to think about. But Ronald Bergman, the Israeli journalist, got in a pretty mind-blowing quote from this Israeli situation room where the person said something like, if these talks in the war room, war cabinet, were aired live on YouTube, there'd be four million people at Ben Gurion Airport rushing to get out of this country. Yeah, that is such an important point because that is exactly

the question is inside, they're trying to telegraph restraint. They're saying that the US won't back them and all of this. We want to believe rational actor theory. But one of the things that is honestly annoying the crap out of me is that I continue to see U.S. politicians be like, this is an unprovoked, unprecedented attack. And I'm like, OK, listen, I'm not saying that the Iranians are good people or the IRGC are our friends or our enemy, but you blew up their embassy in Damascus. And what they're like is they're saying, well, it wasn't a real embassy. It was a military outpost. You're probably right. But guess what, guys? We have CIA bases inside every embassy in the world. I mean, under this logic-

Called an embassy. Yeah, the Russians would be well within their rights under this logic to blow up the U.S. embassy in Kiev or the U.S. outpost in Lvov in Poland, which is like the major thoroughfare of all the weapons. Or the U.S. embassy in Warsaw. It's like, what do you think is happening there? These are all military outposts. It has been for all time. Didn't they let the New York Times in there to show them how they were like wargaming the entire thing? What do we call it when Hamas has a headquarter?

Command and Control Center? Yes. We have Command and Control Center. That's right. And we would absolutely not tolerate it. And it doesn't mean you're justifying the attack to acknowledge that it was provoked. It's okay to say that. I saw some of those posts, too, from I think maybe it was provoked. Like it's okay to say, it's okay to say that. I saw some of those posts too from, I think maybe it was Steve Daines and some others.

No, these are like US senators. Yeah, US senators. Like this unprovoked attack, just absolutely out of nowhere, except in response to the thing they've said they're going to respond to. And that's why I want to put that in contact. By the way, Lvov is in Ukraine. I apologize. It used to be part of Poland, but I do know that that's, it's right on the border with Poland. And that is where the weapons are coming across. My point is only being that, you know, we have embassy outposts and other people all across the world that are engaged in this type of activity. What do you guys, what do you, like who wants to guess what's going on in the U S embassy in Moscow? Like, what do you think is

going on in the U S embassy of Riyadh or theS. embassy in Kabul? Or I guess we don't have that one anymore. The U.S. embassy in Baghdad. These are all military outposts. And they did kill a top general and many of his staff. Right. So like, even if you say that that was completely fine and hey, they're all fair game, they still did kill them. Yes. So it's not unprovoked. Yeah, exactly. I mean, exactly right. And, you know, let's think back to the Soleimani killing whenever Trump greenlit the Soleimani killing. We got lucky. Trump actually called off an imminent attack, you know, that was in response after the Iranians shot down some U.S. Navy spy plane. I think it was unmanned at the time, but it would have killed like several hundred Iranians. And Trump found

that out. He's like, forget this. We're not doing this. But then you also have, you know, there were several U.S. soldiers who were wounded actually in retaliatory attacks in Iraq as a result of that. So we can't say that it didn't have no response. All things are going to have a response, whether you view it as legitimate or not. But it was very certainly not, quote unquote, unprovoked. It didn't happen inside of a vacuum. You could defend it, you know, if you want to. But let's just all be honest. There's also a big question here about the matter of Iron Dome and the amount of money that the defense of this one attack actually cost. Let's put this up there on the screen. The current estimate, according to the IDF, who was an economic advisor to the IDF chief of staff, says that the overnight defense against the Iranian attack costs between

four to five billion Israeli shekels, which is equivalent to one to 1.3 billion dollars. Now, what was also noted by your colleague Murtaza is that because the vast majority of this took place within the Iron Dome system, those interceptors are all manufactured and paid for by the United States, which means all of us are the ones who just paid for that missile defense. Plus, we shot a lot of missiles ourselves. I was going to say, that's another question here, which is the type of aircraft that were used to shoot down some of these ballistic missiles, to shoot down some of these ballistic missiles, that would shoot down some of these drones. The current estimate on how much these drones cost is anywhere from a couple hundred to tens of thousands of dollars, not that much money. So asymmetrically, I mean, it was a huge economic cost to the US. The Iron Dome system also has been

significantly strained ever since the war with Hamas has gone on. And, of course, we're the ones who are replenishing all of that technology and bearing the brunt and the cost of that. What I always like to highlight with these things, Ryan, is everyone's like, well, everyone said missile defense doesn't work. I'm like, well, that's not the point. The point is what does it look like in a sustained attack. One of the things that we've learned from Ukraine is that the Russians have developed the perfect strike package to get through Western defense systems. Sure, they can't use some, and they frequently will have some shot down, but they figured it out. And that's the point is, yeah, it works once. That's awesome. But how does it work on day 296 of a war? That's actually a question where not a lot of people want to know the answer in terms of working rate and the cost.

Yeah, on the cost point, this is the same thing we've seen with the Houthis, where they're sending these drones that cost hundreds or at most like thousands of dollars towards ships. And the U.S. is sending $2 million cruise missiles to knock them out or whatever they're sending is in the millions of dollars each and every time. And that's just not a calculation that you can take forever. But your point on the strategic benefit of this is interesting as well. Like you said, the Russians have learned through the practice, trial and you know how to get through this super expensive curtain of defense and Last night the Russians and the Iranians and and actually well the entire world that's curious about it got to see What it would look like? With Israel and all of its allies launching a full-fledged

Anti anti-missile defense approach. So now they know, like, okay, this is where they're coming from, from the sea. This is where they're coming from, from space. Now, they probably knew, let's say, 80% of that already, but a lot of valuable intelligence was picked up last night. You get a ton, yeah, from the Chinese, from the Russians. Everybody is looking at this. The other thing that I would note is you could see that President Biden basically knew the exact time and hour of the attack. So one of the things that we gave away

is how deeply the CIA, the NSA, and others have penetrated the highest echelons of the Iranian military. You think they're not going to respond to that? You don't think they're immediately going to change their comms? This was something that happened after the Russian invasion where we basically gave away the whole game as to how deeply we penetrated the Russian military,

higher in command, command and control. We knew everything from the time of the attack to Ukraine and all of that. My mea culpa was I didn't believe them, but clearly they are good at some things, these intel folks. And what did we give away? We know everything, we know everything about what you say, what you do, the time of your attack, the hour, et cetera. Now, maybe that's by intention, certainly possible. But, you know, if you're smart, what do you say? Okay, the enemy has total, you know, visibility into our comms, so let's change everything. So that was for an attack, not on us, on somebody else. Right. So, right, you are giving that up at the same time. Some of it was intentional. Yeah, that's right. There was a direct line line and Turkey was the go-between. And it was through

Turkey that the US actually communicated back to Iran, like, here are the parameters within which we expect if an attack is going to take place. Well, that's what's complicated. So actually, it's interesting because people are seizing upon that report saying that Biden greenlit the attack. At the same time, this is the problem with Biden. I mean, what he continues to do is just put himself in a situation where he just gets humiliated on the world stage by basically everybody, from his allies to the enemies to the aggressors. Here we have President Biden imminently before the attack, the day before the attack. Here was his message to Iran. What is your message to Iran in this moment?

Don't. Yeah. How did that work out? He said the same thing to Russia. If people want to remember back in February of 2022, he was like, my message to Putin, don't. Well, they did. So now it's like, this is where, you know, you're putting yourself in a situation where you'd be like, look, we, it'd be one of those where we will immediately respond, you know, all of this. But, you know, this is where he gets, now he's flanked from his left and his right. Because now what we have here is it's clear that people are not listening to President Biden, which is embarrassing for a global superpower. But then you've got a huge invitation right now from the Israeli and the US right wing who are attacking Biden saying that we

need more deterrence through, saying that we need more deterrence through force and that we need to employ even more force on behalf of Israel and the Iranians and employ like more military action, get more deeply enmeshed. Then at the same time, you know, you see also that the Israelis don't necessarily listen whenever they're told what to do or what not to do. That kind of brings us back to the genesis of how did this all happen? That strike on the embassy. Apparently, this is from what we know so far, Biden and the White House told the Israelis,

they're like, listen, don't hit the Iranians without telling us about it. And they said, yeah, okay, cool. And then they just didn't tell us anything about it. That strike was totally within their purview. And this they just didn't tell us anything about it. That strike was totally within their purview. And this is what bothers me about it too. I'm like, okay, you guys want to do that? Be my guest. But then you bear the cost. You bear the consequences. Whenever people, and this is what we've seen through the emboldening of the Israelis is because we've set no red line, nothing, we have no conditions on our aid. They feel perfectly in their power to do whatever the hell they want.

And that's how you get to a significant departure point of miscalculation. The ante gets upped, one thing goes wrong. I mean, just imagine one Iron Dome missile goes wrong and that Temple Mount gets it. Now what? I mean, we're in a whole new world living in that. Yeah, no, yeah, I think that's exactly right. Yeah, I mean, I forgot in a whole new world living in that. Yeah. No, yeah. I think that's exactly right.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I forgot what I was going to say. Anyway, go ahead. Really, what I think is important, just to underscore from the Iranians, the communication here with the Israelis, is that Biden has injected a tremendous amount of uncertainty into the international system. We'll defend Ukraine. Putin is a war criminal. He's got to go. What does that signal send to the Ukrainians? Fight to the last man. Now we're like, well, you know, we didn't really mean it. And it's like, well, and they're all confused. I don't think we should have said it

in the first place. I think it should have been very clear from the beginning. And the only shift from Biden, this was what I was going to say, has been to use the word ironclad over and over and over again. That's right. And so if you're Israel, what you hear from Biden is that his commitment is ironclad. Ironclad means it does not matter what Israel does. The U.S. will have their back. So if we say, hey, we would prefer a heads up before you strike, let's say, an Iranian embassy somewhere in Damascus. Like, okay, but your commitment to us is ironclad, right? Of course, guys,

ironclad commitment. Like, okay, well then we're just going to do what we're going to do and you're going to support us. Now, maybe Israel feels like it can't launch an offensive attack on Iran without the support of kind of US aircraft and USC power. And so that had something to do with their decision not to launch it yet. But they certainly feel like no matter what they do, the US is going to put its resources behind them in a way that is selfructive to its own interests in the region. Yeah, I think this is all, this is very important for people to underscore just, we are in a moment of a lot of uncertainty. U.S. military equipment was involved in shooting these down. U.S. service members, including U.S. warships, were involved in shooting some of these

down. We've had, apparently, the USS Eisenhower hasn't had a port call in months because they're just stuck in the Middle East waiting, sitting there waiting to shoot down things and to be engaged in the war. There's a high level of readiness and of anxiety in the military. And just because something didn't pop off in 48 hours doesn't mean that it won't. It took the Iranians, what, it was about a week, I think, to respond to the embassy attack. People have in their heads this idea that things, the escalation ladder and other things, move at a lightning pace. And that's sometimes the case. But very often, it's slow and then fast all at the same time.

So you take a week to deliberate, then you make a decision. So the Israelis right now are in that system. They could wait a month, but even if they do, we could still see things get to that point. It's been more than six months now since October 7th. And this was the nightmare scenario from the very first day is that we were going to get to a broader regional war. And every single month that the conflict has continued, we get closer and closer. Bombs on Lebanon, Houthis, now we're striking Yemen. Now we're shooting down Iranian missiles. Now we got drones flying over the sky. What comes next month? That's my big worry. What comes next year, hell, or 10 years from now? That's one of those where we can easily look back on this and say it was

a significant moment. But we have a great guest standing by. Dr. Trita Parsi is going to break this down. Let's get to it. 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

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I'm Clayton English. I'm Greg Lott. And this is season two 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 man. Benny the Butcher. Brent Smith from Shinedown. We got B-Real from Cypress Hill. NHL enforcer Riley Cote.

Marine Corvette. MMA fighter Liz Karamush. 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. 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 care to even try. She was still somebody's mother. She was still somebody's daughter. She was still somebody's sister. There's so many questions

that we've never gotten any kind of answers for. If you have a case you'd like me to look into, call the Hell and Gone Murder Line at 678-744-6145. Listen to Hell and Gone Murder Line on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Bringing in now Dr. Trita Pars, who's Executive Vice President over at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. Trita, thanks as always for joining us. Really appreciate it. Good to see you, sir. My pleasure. Wanted to talk to you about something that you flagged, which is that the head of the IRGC, Hussein Salami, came out, and we can put this element up from Trita here,

came out explicitly saying that we have decided to create a new equation with Israel. The equation is that from now on, if Israel attacks Iranian interests, basically Iran will attack Israel from Iranian soil, kind of moving beyond the status quo of deploying various proxies around the region, or not necessarily even deploying the various proxies, but sort of taking the leash off them a little bit. Because I think what people think that, and I'd be curious to get your take on this, people think that it's a relationship where Iran instructs its proxies around the region, okay, now I need you to attack. Whereas I think it's more realistic to say that those proxies are actually much more

militant and radical than the Iranian regime itself. And Iran is constantly holding a leash on saying, no, do not, do not, please do not. And when they do want an attack to happen, they let the leash out a little bit and say, OK, you know what? Actually, go ahead. You've been saying you want to hit that base. Go ahead and hit that base. Curious, A, first for your take on that, but then also for your reflection on what it means that Iran is now saying,

forget all this, we're coming straight from Iran from now on. So your description of Iran's relationship with some of these militias, I think is true for some of them, perhaps less so for others. I mean, Iran has helped build up a network of various militias throughout the Middle East that all are sharing an interest with Iran when it comes to a larger vision for the region. Some of them may not be ideologically aligned with Iran in a religious sense. But nevertheless, they shared a larger perspective, which is that many of these Arab regimes are allied with the West. They're there to serve the domination of the West, and the region needs to take its future in its own hand,

and as a result, join together to fight this, what they call the occupation. This is why they call it the Axis of Resistance. Now, some of them absolutely are more hawkish and have their own motivations to go after U.S. troops, for instance. Many of the Iraqi militias are looking for revenge for what the U.S. has done in Iraq, which is not necessarily the motivation driven by the Iranians. In regards to what the IRGC commander said, though, I think the interpretation there is Iran is actually taking this to a much higher level because it's no longer going to hide behind any of its allies, proxies, militias, whatever you

want to call them. And what we see here is a clear attempt of articulating a new doctrine for deterrence, meaning that this entire choreographed attack that was clearly designed to make sure that it inflicted next to zero damage on Israel, certainly no casualties, was not designed to start a war, was not designed to actually showcase what limited capacity Iran has, but to actually showcase that Iran actually has extensive capacity. Because remember, the reason why all of these missiles and drones could be shot down

is because the Iranians gave the US a 72-hour heads up, even told them exactly when these things are going to be shot. They wanted this to be shot down because they wanted to show that Iran is ready to attack from its own soil. It wants to establish this new deterrence, this new red line, but it doesn't want

to go towards a full-scale war. But in that message, there's also something else that is very important that I think has largely been missed. Had it not been for the 72-hour heads-up, the United States would not have had time to put itself in place to be able to help Israel, nor the Brits, nor the French. And without the help of these other countries, without the heads-up, it is quite likely that a much larger barrage of missiles from Iran actually would have penetrated Israel's air defenses and would have caused a tremendous damage. But that was not the intent with this strike. The intent was exactly as the IRGC commander said, is that establish a new red line. If the Israelis going forward kill Iranian officials, attack Iranian embassies,

it will be responded to and it will likely be responded to very quickly. And the hope of the Iranians appears to be to deter Israel from doing this in the future. Dr. Parsi, one of the things we're trying to understand here is the calibration of the Israeli response. The Israeli war cabinet seems to be all over the map. They're vowing a response. The Iranians say, look, this is it, in terms of what they put out. They're like, we will say that this matter is closed.

If we do see some sort of retaliation by the Israelis, then what sort of decision matrix does that open up from the Iranians as it relates to the United States and our own military? Well, I think Biden actually has put himself in a bind with the formulation that he used. He come out and said that he would support Israel defensively. The support is ironclad, but the United States will not support or participate in any offensive operations by Israel. Well, this distinction between offensive and defensive ends up being rather meaningless the second the war begins. Because what it has done, he has given Netanyahu a clear pathway on how to drag the U.S. into the war. Israel responds to this Iranian attack with missile strikes, et cetera, against Iran. Iran will then obviously respond back.

The United States will not participate in the first attack, but as soon as Iran is counterattacking, then the United States gets dragged in. At that point, it was completely meaningless whether the United States was involved in the previous attack or not. So previous presidents, even very hawkish ones like Trump, actually resisted pressure from Netanyahu in particular to get dragged into war with Iran because it does not serve U.S. interests. Now, Biden has actually given Netanyahu a roadmap on how to drag the United States into that war. If he instead had

focused on the main goal or prioritized the main goal, which is to avoid a regional escalation and avoid getting the U.S. into that war, it actually would have been better for Israel as well because he would not need to provide any defensive ironclad support for Israel, because there wouldn't have been an Iranian counterattack in the first place. That would have served Israel's interest better, and most importantly, it would have served U.S. interest much better, because we would not get dragged into another war in the Middle East. Trita, I've heard Ayatollah Khomeini described as risk-averse, almost to a fault. And I'm curious if you think that's an accurate description, how his approach to the conflict between Israel and Iran plays

into this, and who is really making the decisions in the Iranian government? So the decisions are ultimately made by the Supreme National Security Council in Iran, which of course reports to the Supreme Leader. And the final decision is with the Supreme Leader, but it's rarely that he overrules everyone. There has been grumblings and quite loud ones within the IRGC and other elements of the Iranian government who believe that Khamenei has been too risk-averse, that he should have done this much sooner, and the fact that he didn't have enabled the Israelis to keep on moving forward with increasingly blatant attacks against Iranian commanders and officials. And now we saw an Iranian consulate in Damascus.

And essentially the argument being that if he had reacted sooner and asserted Iran's deterrence, then the Israelis would have stopped sooner. Now, the reason why it happened this time around, I think, is because this attack against the consulate was the final straw, and it also violated a clear red line because it was an attack on Iranian soil. The Iranian response at the end of the day was also a clear violation of an Israeli red line because the Israelis had said that they had implicitly messaged that they would not have responded if the attack did not come from Iranian soil. But now it did. And not only was it using cruise missiles, it was also using ballistic missiles. So it is clearly risky. But nevertheless, within that operation,

it was designed to make sure that it didn't cause any damage. Because if the Iranians wanted to cause damage, there was no reason to give any heads up to Israel or to the United States. And not the less, you know, a 72-hour heads up. The last thing I wanted to ask you, sir, in terms of the geopolitics of the Middle East. There's a lot being made here in Washington of the Jordanian, I guess, allowance of the US and Israel to shoot down projectiles and drones over their airspace, of the Gulf Arab involvement as well. Can you break down some of the dynamics of that? Will there be lasting effects? Can we expect that to be some sort of coalition against Iran? How do we make sense of it? I don't think that's what it is pointing to. You're right to ask the question, though,

of course, because the other countries, Turkey, et cetera, did not allow the United States to use their airspace for this. Jordan doesn't have much of an option. Jordan is completely dependent on the protection of the United States. And it's clearly not a particularly popular decision amongst Jordanians either, mindful of how angry the population is with what's going on in Gaza and what they perceive to be Jordanian and broader Arab impotence towards Israel. But I think the Jordanians are trying to defend it by saying at the end of the day, they have to assert their independence and not allow Jordan's airspace or territory to become an arena for a confrontation. The question is, if the Israelis now begin attacks against Iran and fly over Jordanian airspace, will Jordan

shoot down those missiles as well? Or is it only Iranian missiles that will be shot down? I noticed from some Chinese news sources, they were arguing that the Iranian attack on Israel was only made kind of possible and necessary by the United States blocking the United Nations Security Council from condemning Israel's attack on Damascus. When I first see that analysis coming, I'm like, really, just a condemnation is all Iran needed and would have stepped away from that. But I've seen it kind of so frequently and with so much, you know, the velocity in those spaces that it does seem like the US willingness to block condemnation did actually give Iran more incentive to go ahead with a more robust response. But I'm curious for your take on the relationship between those two things.

It's not clear whether a condemnation by the Security Council would have prevented this. And we will never know, essentially, because it was blocked by the U.S., France, and the U.K. But I pointed to a previous example that is very similar in some ways, because you had a situation in 1998 in which the Taliban took Madhara Sharif in Afghanistan. They executed a very large number of people, but they also attacked the Iranian consulate. And they took 11 Iranian diplomats and executed them as well.

The Iranians mobilized on their borders. They were ready to go to war. They didn't want to go to war, however, because it was nothing to gain from actually going into war with Afghanistan, a lesson that perhaps the U.S. should have also taken to heart. But nevertheless, they felt a strong expectation that they have to respond, given this very blatant attack on their territory through the consulates. They went to the Security Council. I worked with the Security Council at the time for the Swedish permanent mission. Sweden was the president of the council in that month. And they demanded a

very strong condemnation by the council. And that was provided. The Swedes orchestrated it and made sure that it was a very, very harsh reaction by the international community for what the Taliban had done. And that very strong reaction ended up being the exact face-saving excuse the Iranians needed not to go to war with the Taliban, which they avoided. Now, the parallels are very interesting. Once again, the Iranians are not looking for a war, but their consulate was attacked, their personnel was killed. But the difference this time was that there wasn't a strong condemnation because of the blockage by the US, the UK, and the French. Now, again, we don't know for certain if the parallel would have

worked out, but I think it's interesting in terms of the role that the U.S.'s defense of Israel and political protection plays here, because the U.S. did what essentially Biden has been doing for the last seven months, and the U.S. has done for more than 20 years, which is to constantly provide political protection in the Security Council for Israel so it is not condemned. Well, that approach appears to also incentivize other countries to take harsher measures than they otherwise may have to. And then that, a couple days later, you see Ecuador be like, oh, okay, then maybe we can just raid the Mexican embassy here in Quito. But up next, we're going to talk about Trump in Allentown hitting on a new nickname for genocide, Joe, that he seems to actually appreciate. But Trita Parsi, executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you, sir.

Thank you so much for joining us. Thank you, sir. Thank you. 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. 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, 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 Be Real from Cypress Hill. NHL enforcer Riley Cote. Marine Corvette.

MMA fighter Liz Karamush. 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 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. Donald Trump over the weekend went to Allentown, Pennsylvania, just northwest of that beautiful Lehigh Valley. And I wanted to play this absolutely just mind-blowing clip from that rally. We're going to unpack what this means for 2024. Here's Trump in Schnecksville. Here's our big problem. Janusite Joe! Janusite Joe! Janusite Joe! Janusite Joe! Janusite Joe! Janusite Joe! Janusite Joe! Trump! Trump! Trump!

They're not wrong. They're not wrong. Wow. I swear, Sagar, I have watched that clip like 20 different times trying to figure out how on earth we got there. And predicted that Trump would start to capitalize on the anger at Biden for his facilitation of what a majority of Democrats believe is a genocide. Despite the fact that a majority of Trump supporters can support what's going on. And that Trump himself, and that's at that same rally, you know, expresses, you know, continuing support for Israel. But there's so many different layers and levels on which Trump can attack this. What my read, and I'm curious as a Trump connoisseur yourself, is that, you know, Trump, for people to all know this, like take Drain the Swamp, for instance. Like when that was first rolled out to Trump, he's like, this is kind of

cliched and lame. This is dumb. He rolled it out at a rally. Boom, roar. Yeah. He's like, oh, you like, y'all like that. That's right. He's like, well, here's, here's some more of that. Build the wall was actually the exact same thing. I don't know if people know this. Build the wall was, he thought it was corny. He didn't even think it was smart. He never, never really came up with it. I think he made an offhand comment where all of a sudden he just saw it ripped through the crowd and be shouted back at him. And he said, all right, well, you know, I'll seize on that. Let's go for it. And what's the next line? And Mexico will pay for it. Who do you think he got that from? It was from the crowd. So Trump, as you said, he is a connoisseur. He's rolling focus

groups. That's how he views those rallies. I mean, listen, it's actually smart. It is. That's one of the things you learn is like what actually catches on, what doesn't. Anybody who's ever done speaking or live performance or anything knows exactly the feedback loop that you can get into with the audience. My big thing was I was like how much of this was just those two guys? Right. Because what's clear in the clip is that there were two guys who were behind him. And they, I think by chance, had access where they could hit the microphone so we could actually hear what they were saying and they were behind

him. For people who don't know, the people who are placed though behind Trump, you kind of have to be selected for that. They don't just give it to you. It's not like first come, first serve. In general, the campaign is very, you know, very weary or it's very, they take a lot of care as to who gets placed behind him. That's why it's usually diverse and women, you know, all of it. Sometimes you have the blacks for Trump guys who are behind him. So I'm curious, you know, if they asked to be able to do that, if this was something that was greenlit possibly by the campaign. But what's fascinating about it is not just that we have two guys in MAGA hats chanting Genocide Joe, which is interesting. I mean, all right, there's a libertarian right coalition, right, that certainly believes that

it was Trump's embrace of they're not wrong. And the reason why that's important is if you Google it and you look into it, we're talking about write-ups in the Washington Post. We're talking about write-ups in the Times of Israel. And even though no Republican politician was criticizing Trump for saying this and all that, you can bet your ass that this was viewed very interestingly, I think, by the Israeli population. And I mean, from my count right now, the clip has millions of views all across of social media and it was shared. I think what Trump has always been a genius at is he's always trying to spot cleavages in coalitions of his enemies.

So with Hillary, he was always doing the same thing. He was encouraging people who were anti-Hillary not to vote for Hillary. Crooked Hillary. Crooked Hillary, right. And he would very often, the same thing with black voters, what do you have to lose? Why would you continue to support them? They're not going to do that. We see some of that here. And I mean, look, he reads the news and he watches television. He knows that Joe Biden has a problem. Let's say he can get even one to two percent of people who believe that it's a genocide or to either not vote for Biden or that he may be somebody who could support something that they have. Well, you know, it will be a political victory for him. And we're going to talk about the polling later in the show and the way that nostalgia

plays a role in how people think about Trump. And then also people are so desperate, they're willing to kind of overlay onto any politician, but in particular Trump, what they want to see if they're so deeply frustrated by Biden. So it is not hard to find people who who will make the argument that Trump would actually be better for Palestinians because Biden is ideologically a Zionist and willing to take political heat back home, you know, in pursuit of that ideology that he is dug in on his position, that he really believes it. People don't think that Trump believes anything, that he's the most kind of narcissistic and nihilistic finger in the wind politician that you could ever produce, and that the second anything is causing him a problem, he's going to throw it overboard. And so there is a hope among some out there that, well, maybe if the war becomes difficult for Trump and is causing him problems, that he'll just throw Israel overboard. Yes, that is a very important thing for people to understand is that if there was a case to be made, that's what it would be. His track record is not necessarily good on the issue.

But what we can say with Trump— You're not giving people a lot of good choices. Trump doesn't believe anything. Actually, I think he believes one thing, which is America's being ripped off, which I support. I think he's right. But outside of a few foundational things that he's been talking about for, let's say, 30, 40 years, America's getting ripped off, our leaders are idiots, and a genius manipulation of the media, he doesn't believe anything. He doesn't care. Abortion, Israel, et cetera. He thinks Israel is very politically beneficial to him, basically behind the scenes.

And even in front of the camera, he's gone in front of the Republican Jewish coalition. He's been like, there's a lot of good businessmen here in this room. You know, he just openly says it. He just doesn't care. And they don't care either because they give him money and he does what they want. And he may or may not used to have had Mein Kampf next to his bed, according to his wife. Oh, really? Yeah.

Wow. Like that. He was one book he would actually read, like according to Ivana Trump. Listen, you know, there's you can study history in any way. There's some annotated versions out there that I've taken a look at before. So if that's the guy, if you're the pro-Israel lobby and that's the guy that you're putting all your chips on. Well, you saw that, too, in the Trump interview when with the Israelis, when he said, you got to wrap it up, you got that too in the Trump interview with the Israelis, when he said, you got to wrap it up. You got to wrap it up. They were shocked. They're like,

what do you mean? You got to wrap it up quickly. He's like, well, we got to bring peace and your PR, you guys are losing the war and all of that. And I mean, they were stunned. They couldn't believe it. And that's because he's not ideological in the same way. So if he senses that it becomes politically unpopular to support Israel, then he'll just turn on a dime. He will always care about himself more than anybody else. Now, the other question, though, is what are the people around him believe? Who do they support? What are they trying to do? Another interesting thing that I thought paired with this, let's put the next one on the screen, was a recent truth just the day before from Truth Social, where Trump said,

I would vote for RFK Jr. if I was a Democrat, because he is a better man than Joe Biden. So what he said actually in this video is, RFK Jr. is, as you know, the most radical left candidate in the race. He's more so than the Green Party. He's more so than even crooked Joe Biden. But he's got some nice things about him. I happen to like him, Trump said in the video. And he says, I guess that would mean that RFK Jr. is going to be taking away votes from crooked Joe Biden. And he should because he's basically better than Biden. He's much better than Biden. If I were a Democrat, I would vote for RFK Jr. every single time over Biden because he's frankly more in line with the Democrats. And he's a better man than Joe Biden, that I can tell you, saying it was great for MAGA that he was in the race.

So clearly he sees RFK Jr. as a spoiler. But this is a thing that Crystal and I continue to look at. If you look at the polling, it's pretty even who the man polls from. And if his favorability ratings are so much higher with Republicans, there's a decent chance he pulls more from Trump than he does from Biden too. You're going to have this spectacle over the next several months of Democrats calling RFK Jr. right wing and Republicans calling him left wing. Well, ironically, both are true, actually. He does have positions that fit on both. And I think a key moment, if it ever comes, would be if Trump affirmatively just uses Genocide Joe rather than Crooked Joe or Sleepy Joe.

I don't think he would. Very hard to see him kind of use it without being prompted. And I'd love to see a future rally because I think you're right. Those two dudes, those American heroes, they single-handedly or double-handedly got that chant going. And it wouldn't have been a news item if Trump had not responded in the way he did, saying they're not wrong. Yeah. If it hits another rally and becomes a thing. That's my question. That becomes a wild question. I still think that Trump believes that the pro-Israel crowd still trusts Republicans more than Democrats. They do.

Even with the difference of an ideologically Zionist committed Joe Biden as the Democratic nominee and the kind of ambivalent Trump as the Republican nominee, the apparatus around each is more likely to continue to support Israel probably from the Republican side. Yes. Look, I think that's probably the correct bet. But with Trump, you genuinely have no idea. He could scramble everything and then he could scramble right back. That's always the fun thing about covering him. 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 Lott. And this is season two 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 man. Benny the Butcher. Brent Smith from Shinedown. We got B-Real from Cypress Hill.

NHL enforcer Riley Cote. Marine Corps vet. MMA fighter Liz Karamush. 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. We have some really interesting polling that's been coming out. Let's go and put this up there on the screen. This, I think, more than anything, really explains Trump's staying power and why I think he has such a major political advantage. So this is, and let's keep this up here, please. How respondents' views of Trump have changed from 2020 to now. In terms of his approval of handling the economy, from 2020 to now, he's seen a 10-point bump from 50% or so past 60. Two-thirds of the country are now approved

of his handling the economy when he was president. Think he left the country better off, plus nine. Approve of his handling of maintaining law and order, plus eight. Approve of his handling of unifying America, plus four. Approve of his handling of COVID, plus three. Approve of his handling of the Supreme Court, plus one. Note that one because we're going to come back to that. But this is where I think it's really important. From 2016 to now, think electing him is a safe choice, plus 11. But there has been a minus four in think he respects women, which is kind of funny. But let's go to the next one. The 4% that thought he did are now giving up on that. Let's go to the next one, guys, because this is even more important.

Do you generally remember the years that this candidate was president as mostly good or mostly bad? For Joe Biden, 25% say mostly good. Not really good or bad, 27%. Mostly bad, 46%. Don't know 1%. Trump, 42% mostly good. 23%, not really good or bad. Only 33% say mostly bad for America. To me, that is the single most important one that we could take away. And the reason why is because, and I've said this so many times, the nostalgia for pre-COVID America is so strong. And why shouldn't it be?

Gas was cheap. Inflation was not there. Interest rates were low. All the madness had not yet happened. Things were mostly fine. 2019 of January is the highest level of Republican identification that we ever had in this country in modern history. I did a whole monologue about it at the time because I remember being stunned. But what can we take away from that? People want the good times back. Throughout all pandemics in history, there's always a mass amnesia afterwards.

People are like, wow, that was terrible. Let's go back. And guess who was president? Trump. That's a huge benefit that he has. And what's incredible is that people living at the time had a chance to kind of express how they felt Trump fit into that utopia that we have now kind of retconned. And that was the 2018 midterms. And it was an absolute bloodbath for Trump. So while you did have the highest Republican identification in January 2019, you also, at the polls, had Republicans tossed out of power and voters turned things over to Democrats because his presidency was just this ongoing train wreck of a spectacle that really galvanized Democrats in a way that gave them the ability to kind of swamp Republican turnout in those midterms. But now, as people look back, that 11-point shift from

a safe choice is profound because that 11 points right there, those people who thought that he was just an unsafe person, like a lunatic in the Oval Office, you cannot trust him with power. Now he's been in power. And as people say, well, we survived. Well, lots of people did not survive, but those people are not around to vote. And it's incredible, actually, to think about how COVID and his handling of COVID is not really hurting him as an issue in this campaign. And I think that that's a reflection of our desire to just forget the whole thing. Yeah, and why shouldn't we? I mean, it's not like Biden's got his hands clean on COVID. I could go on forever. I mean, this is one of those where- Right, because then you get school closures and lockdowns and then people are like,

you know what? Vaccine mandates, all this stuff. I mean, we can go through. I think both sides, neither hand will do well. And nobody wants to talk about it. And so why should we re-litigate all of it, especially if we're going to try and do checks and balances and all that in the moment? It's very, very difficult. We'd be remiss, though, if we didn't highlight this. This is probably the single biggest confounding variable, let's put it up there on the screen, from the risk of losing suburban women on abortion. So what we have here is actually a rating of the most important issue for suburban women in swing states. So that's why this is a good poll. Abortion is 39%. Most important issue. Number two is immigration, 16. Economy, seven. Left-wing ideology, four. Inflation, four.

Anti-right-wing ideology, three. But then if you look here, a share of suburban women in swing states saying that the presidential candidacies on abortion are too restrictive. With Trump, it's 57%. Just about right is the 28%, and then not restrictive enough is negligible. But then check out Joe Biden. They say 17% is too restrictive. 49%, nearly half of the suburban women in these swing districts, say that Biden is just about right. And in general, if what we can see, if abortion is going to be that much of the most important issue, in general, if abortion is your top issue, post-Roe, you're voting for a Democrat, Ryan. Right.

And that chart right there, if Biden wins, it's going to be because of that. Right. And that 17% are, you know, they're to the left of Biden. They recognize that Biden is out there, you know, saying things like, you know, they're to the left of Biden. They recognize that Biden is out there saying things like, you know, I hate abortion. He's doing this very kind of Catholic, you know, 80s, 90s Democrat thing. And you've got 17% of Democrats who are like, that's not for me. I want more than that. But they're still going to vote for him because he's the one that's on the ballot. I think what's going on here is that A, it's a fundamental right that affects people's lives. And B, people are seeing policy change as a result of politics, very direct change. Yeah, because of the ballot initiatives.

With everything else, inflation, like wars spiraling out of control, unemployment, people do draw a connection between, oh, this is the party in power, so I either am punishing or crediting the party in power because of how things are going here. But the direct line to how the policies are kind of creating the downstream effect is not that clear. It's more based on vibes. When it comes to abortion policy, it's very clear. Yes. Like Republicans are writing laws that are banning abortion, banning IVF, going back to the 1864 pedophile author law. And Democrats are writing laws that are expanding abortion rights.

Like you don't need economists to come in and explain to you how the ARP is linked up with the Federal Reserve's interest rate policies. And so they're like, okay, well, I don't really believe that politics is worth participating in. I'm very cynical and jaded about this, but I do know that if I go out and vote for this, this particular thing will actually change. That is a fantastic point. I've not been on the show since that Arizona thing came down. I still cannot believe that it happened. It is the

greatest gift to Democrats that I could have possibly thought. And I think if, again, if Arizona goes blue again, we're going to know exactly why, especially in the context of multiple blue representatives being elected. Carrie Lake doing herself no favors, being on camera, straight up supporting the law, and now is like, no, I actually don't support the law. I'm like, yeah, good luck with that, Carrie. Let's see whether that video is blanketed on the entire state of Arizona. I think all of this explains, too, let's put another confounding variable. Biden is shrinking Trump's edge in this latest Times-Siena poll. 46 to 45 don't know is about 8%. Quote, President Biden has nearly erased Trump's early polling advantage. Signs of the Democratic base has begun to coalesce around the president, despite the lingering doubts about the direction of the country, the economy, and his age. And the Times looked at like 16 or so polls that were

taken, where a poll was taken by the same pollster before and after the State of the Union. And on average, by a little bit more than a point, the public is moving towards Biden, which is not huge. But given that significant of a data set, it does mean something. And a lot of the polls, like the Siena one, you saw more significant swings. One explanation would be he's now definitely the nominee. And so you've got some percentage of Democrats who are like, all right, you're really going to make me vote for Joe Biden, as Bo Burnham says in that song. Like, yeah, all right, you're really going to make me do this? Well, all right. I mean, if your abortion is your top issue and that's all that you care about, then yeah,

you should vote for Biden. You'd be an idiot not to, right? I mean, one of those where like, let's be real. Like when we're talking about that now, I don't vote that way. I don't have, like, a tough issue, you know, that vote on. You got to kind of think holistically, but I'm not going to blame people who do. That's fine. You know, you get to, it's your decision. You get to care what you care the most about, and that's why it will inform your decision. It's like people who supported Herschel Walker. Yeah, okay. Or Roy Moore or John Fetterman. Yeah, it's fine. You make your own choice, I guess. It's one of those where – I mean the Fetterman one is a perfect example because he's a straight-up vegetable on the day of the election, can't even speak, and wins the election by five points. Because people were like, well, would rather have him.

All he's got to do is vote blue. That's all it takes. Turned out to be a rabid, hawkish one. But, I mean, that is very informative for how people, if an issue is so overwhelming, will look well past candidate flaws and much more to go ahead and to vote for somebody. So just keep that in mind, and we will continue to pay attention because that, I still think, is the most – it's covered a lot, but it's such an unknown variable, an unknown unknown, as Donald Rumsfeld used to say. Known unknown. This would be a known unknown. Actually, I guess this would be a known unknown. Yeah, you're right. At the same time, there's some major developments here in Washington.

The Iranian attack on Israel is very likely to spur possibly some movement in terms of not only Israel aid being passed through the Congress, but Ukraine aid as well. President, former President Trump also making some news. He did a joint press conference at Mar-a-Lago with Speaker of the House Mike Johnson and appears to have now flipped and supported, actually, more aid to Ukraine, as long as it's a loan. Here's what he had to say. They're talking about it, and we're thinking about making it in the form of a loan instead of just a gift. We keep handing out gifts of billions and billions of dollars and we'll take a look at it. But much more importantly to me is the fact that Europe has to step up and they have

to give money. They have to equalize. If they don't equalize, I'm very upset about it because they're affected much more than we are. The Ukraine situation would have never happened if I was president, would have never, ever happened. And everybody says that, including Democrats, that it happened to such an outrage. People, millions of people are dead right now, both sides. Millions of people are dead. So here's what he had to say. Look, he's not wrong in terms of the European rhetoric that he had there, Ryan. But in slight exaggeration on the casualties.

Here is the problem. A lot of dead people. Well, yeah, probably, probably not correct in terms of the millions. But it's a lot. But it is hundreds of thousands on both sides. That's no question. The issue is that this is now some Trojan horse idea, which appears to have gotten to his head from none other than Lindsey Graham, who figured it out from Trump. He's like, well, if we con him into saying it's a loan, then Trump will be like, oh, well, then we're not actually spending. If you think you're getting a dime of that money back from

Ukraine, you are an idiot, okay? These people can't even pay their own government bills. Who do you think's running it right now? America is paying for their bills. But also the money, most of the money is not going to leave Northern Virginia anyway. Yeah, no, that's another good point. And that's actually, this is the irony. And let's explain this, is the hawks are like, well, the reason why this money is good is because we're just reinvesting it into our defense supply chain. So if you presume that it is a loan, then you're basically asking Ukraine to have money that they don't have to then send over here to buy weapons and then to send it back to them. And then miraculously in the future, when Ukraine formerly, when it was intact,

one of the most corrupt and frankly, like poor nations in all of Europe is somehow just going to be able to pay back hundreds of billions of dollars of weapons loans. Like let's live in reality. It's never going to happen. It's way outside of their GDP potential. Exactly. It's just mathematically impossible. And if you believed that 100% of the money that we're spending on weapons for Ukraine is for the benefit of Ukraine, then you could make an argument that, okay, Ukraine should pay that back and a little interest on the top there for our trouble. But the money that we're spending is for the benefit of the United States. And when I say the United States, I mean, you know, Northern Virginia, the military industrial complex,

the kind of, the heads of the empire, so to speak. That's what's going on here. And so to try to say that you're going to make the Ukrainians pay for that when they are just rapidly fleeing to get away from the draft. If this was a fight where there were hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians who were demanding ammo and weapons to go to the front lines to defend the integrity of their nation, and that all they need is the world to support their effort, then that's one thing. Now, you could still— By the way, we already passed that, and guess what? They're all dead, or they've lost their lives.

Yes, exactly. That's not the situation. The situation is the government, which is indefinitely postponing elections, is running around trying to round up anybody like under 65, 70 years of old. Kidnapping people, including people with Down syndrome. There's a video. Training them for a couple of weeks and then throwing them into the front lines to fight against refreshed and trained Russian reserve troops. Russians were so kind of propagandized here in the U.S. that everybody seems to believe that the Russians are the ones that are collapsing and the Russians are the ones that had to do this enforced conscription.

The front lines don't have any conscripted Russian soldiers. They do have conscripted Russian soldiers, but those are in the back end doing the basic kind of grunt work that needs to happen to make sure that an army can continue to function. It's the Ukrainians who have had to conscript endlessly, forcing people to front lines. And I just don't see how it's a moral use of my tax dollars to put a gun in somebody's hand who doesn't want to fight. Like if they themselves don't want to fight, who are we to force them to?

I totally agree. And here's, let me read this to you from Senator Mitt Romney. Here's his argument for more aid to Ukraine. Providing weapons to Ukraine may not change the course of the war, but not providing it to Ukraine sure would. So in other words, just keep using them as cannon fodder. Right. They could sit there and we can plug them full of artillery and bullets and we'll just get more Ukrainian guys that are in there and more Ukrainian 60-year-olds, more mentally retarded people. And all of them will just kill them off as much as the government, you know, is at its whim when they've already lowered the draft age to 25. This is the other irony. And they're going around Europe trying to get the other European countries to send back Ukraine. It sounds nuts that they've only lowered the draft age to 25. This is the other irony. And they're going around Europe trying to get the other European countries to send back Ukraine. It sounds nuts that they've only lowered the draft age to 25. You know why? Because they

already have a population problem where they don't have that many young men. And the young men don't want to serve. It's tremendously unpopular. Their families don't want them to do. So why are we even providing them with the weapons to be able to continue this madness? Yet Speaker Mike Johnson appears to be going in the hawk direction and very likely to possibly include here Ukraine aid on top of some sort of Israel rider. He gave an interview to Fox News Sunday, and here's what he had to say. How does this change your plans this week in terms of voting on an aid package for Israel? Well, we've understood the urgency of this from the very beginning. I mean, a few days after I became speaker, way back in October, we passed our Israel

support package. It's been sitting on Chuck Schumer's desk ever since because we included a pay-for, as you remember. What a concept we took from the IRS expansion slush fund to pay for the Israel priority. We tried it again just about a month and a half ago, a clean Israel that many Democrats, 166 as I remember in the House, voted against. Why? Because President Joe Biden said that he would veto that. So the House Republicans and the Republican Party

understand the necessity of standing with Israel. We are going to try again this week. And the details of that package are being put together right now. We're looking at the options and all these supplemental issues. Well, the former president, President Trump, has talked about the possibility of turning aid for Ukraine into a loan. Is that what you're considering? Yes. You know, I had a great visit with him at Mar-a-Lago on Friday, and he and I are 100 percent united on these big agenda items. And when you talk about aid to Ukraine, he's introduced the loan lease concept, which is a really important one that I think has a lot of consensus,

as well as these other ideas, the Repo Act, which we've discussed, which is seizing the assets of corrupt Russian oligarchs to help pay for this resistance. I think these are ideas that I think can get consensus, and that's what we've been working through. There you go. From the horse's mouth, now it's live.

And if you think the neocons aren't going to use this to their best advantage, well, just watch and see what happens this week. Same thing. Mitch McConnell, let's put this up there on the screen. He says that the consequences of failure are now clear and devastating and avoidable. And that is why they immediately need to have passage of Ukraine and Israel aid through the House of Representatives. So this Iranian attack in some ways has been like the biggest boon to Ukraine aid that has happened in some time. The House of Representatives has already said all week this is our number one priority is sending aid to Israel. Now, the question is, is would Senator Schumer and them back down if they sent aid to Israel, which is not tied with Ukraine aid? But I increasingly

see it unlikely, Ryan, that anything gets through the House, which doesn't have some sort of Ukraine rider. What do you think? That's right, because Democrats have been unable to get a majority for Israel-only aid because Pramila Jayapal, AOC, a bunch of folks on the left have said, no, not amid this genocide are we going to send money for Israel. That means that you need to get Republicans and Democrats to come together. And the Republicans need to be able to move forward without the Freedom Caucus kind of America first wing and the Democrats Can have to go forward without the squad and the progressive and a decent chunk of the Progressive Caucus And so like you said this Iranian attack

What was probably a gift to the McConnell's of the world and to the people who are pushing for? Ukrainian aid because it it ramps up the pressure on getting aid to Israel. And coming at the same time that you've got Mike Johnson and Donald Trump saying, okay, you know what? We don't want to give aid to Ukraine, but as long as the Europeans are paying their fair share and we turn it into a lease, which will be a completely forgivable loan and never coming back. Yes. Except in terms of kind of a more American power. Except in an accounting thing where we just technically have a debt on our books for the next 200 years from Ukraine. Yes. So that does seem to be the most likely path that they'll put both of these through together.

Yeah, and this is ironic too because all it would do is stop the Europeans from actually trying to get their act together and send more weapons. And also stop the eventual end to this war. Exactly. There has to be at some point, you would think, an end to this war. At best, they hold what they currently have, which is way worse than the peace deal that was on the table in the first hundred years of the war. That's if we send all the weapons. Listen to Mitt Romney. It may not make a difference. Okay. So it's one of those where, yeah, $60 billion or whatever

that would be sent to Ukraine. Why exactly is that worth money? So that for the integrity of the Eastern Donbass region, how does that affect my life? Oh, wait, it doesn't actually. Senator J.D. Vance gave an interview with CNN's Jake Tapper, where he argued strenuously against any aid to Ukraine. Here's what he had to say. Let me ask you about Ukraine, because you wrote an op-ed in The New York Times saying that you don't think it makes sense, the Biden pitch for aid to Ukraine. You've been accused of appeasement. You've been accused of surrender. Even the National Review had a column about that. And again, I'm going to get to Iran and Israel, which I know is a

big pressing story. But I do want you to address that because the National Review is basically saying that your solution to the problem of Russia invading a sovereign nation, Ukraine, is to just surrender. Are they wrong? No, look, my solution to the problem is to rebuild our own country. The reason that we're in this position, Jake, is because we're stretched way too thin. We're stretched way too thin. And the number of weapons systems that we need, the Ukraine needs, the Taiwan needs, that Israel needs, and we can't do all of these things at once. So when you're stretched too thin, you've got to focus and you've got to rebuild your own country. Let's take just one of those weapons systems that we're talking about, 155 millimeter artillery shells. The Russians currently have a five to one advantage

over the Ukrainians. The Israelis will need this stuff. The Taiwanese need this stuff. And of course, America needs this stuff. Can we possibly fight all of those conflicts at once? No, the math just doesn't make sense. So what we should be doing is with Ukraine, encouraging them to take a defensive posture, not these disastrous counteroffensive the Biden administration has been promoting. The counteroffensive is within Ukraine, though. The counteroffensive is within Ukraine. They're not seeking land from Russia.

In fact, just today. I'm not passing judgment on the morality of what they're doing. Of course, it's their territory, Jake. But you have to acknowledge military reality on the ground. Yeah, I mean, it's sensible. And it's obviously true. Even like we just talked about in our Israel block, we just spent $1.3 billion in defense on a single attack from Iran. How do you think it's going to look like we're in a full-on war? That's exactly how, when we were in Afghanistan, the toll at some point was some $200 million a day that we were

spending in the war, in Iraq as well. That's's how that six trillion number got as high as it was. People really have no idea. Like once the ball is rolling and just the amount of money that gets printed and spent on this stuff is astounding. The Republicans, though, do have a genius plan, by the way, to pay for aid to Israel. Let's go and put this up there on the screen. Johnson apparently has a proposal which will condition aid to Israel on domestic spending cuts. It's not just from the IRS. It's from other programs that we have here. So let's just all just ruminate a little bit on that. We could argue about this endlessly, but the quote unquote cuts to the IRS actually add to the deficit because if you defund the IRS,

you get less tax money coming in. And by the way, just one fun detail, the 155 millimeter shells, those are the ones that Pakistan has been making for the US since we overthrew Imran Khan. That's basically why we overthrew Imran Khan. And whether there's a result of overthrowing Imran Khan is that it pushed Pakistan in our direction.

And what Pakistan does is makes lots of those shells. And so we got those factories humming for Ukraine's benefit as a result. And just even with all of that, it doesn't really matter because the best estimate by fiscal 2028 is 85,000 shells a month. That's according to the US Army

and the Russians are currently at like 175,000. So just so people understand just how far behind. And we're dropping those all over the breadbasket of the world. Yeah. How's that working? Yeah, that's right. Okay. Well, we'll see. Thank you, Trump. Len Lee's program. Genius, absolutely genius scam by the neocons here. But as usual for him, he's like, well, that sounds good. We'll make it a loan. Great, great idea. 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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Cornel West, the independent candidate, has chosen Black Lives Matter activist Melina Abdullah as his vice president. The independent candidate says he needs a VP pick to gain access to the ballot. This actually explains also why RFK Jr. announced his VP pick so early. There's some contestation right now whether he actually qualified for the Arizona ballot or not because he didn't have his VP listed whenever he made his petition. So that's why the two of them are announcing their VP candidates much earlier than everybody else. But what's your immediate reaction to Cornel West choosing a BLM activist here? Cornel West said he wants to run with somebody who brings him joy and then he feels proud. Obviously, this is not a, he's not placating any kind of, he's not triangulating. He's leaning completely in. As he said it, he's running for genius.

Molina is running for Allah. So you're kind of a Christian social justice warrior and a Muslim social justice warrior on the ticket together. Molina was basically an original founder of BLM. So it began with kind of a hashtag on Facebook that really took off. And then the organizers captured that energy, got together in a room, and decided how they were going to take that energy and move it forward. And Melina was among those people. And she's kind of been an elder in that space, as a lot of the original BLM founders were, teens, 20s, 30s. She's a more kind of accomplished professor. Like any radical leftist in this country who hasn't scrubbed her Twitter feed, you're going to find all sorts of stuff.

Let's take a trip down memory lane, shall we? Let's go ahead and put some of these up there on the screen from Miss Abdullah. We have, why do I feel like it's slightly racist to be a Taylor Swift fan? This one got some traction in real time. Yeah. That actually was literally only two months ago. This isn't some old tweet that we're looking at here. Let's continue to play some of the greatest hits. The American flag symbolizes the genocide of indigenous people, the theft of their land, the enslavement of dehumanization, exploitation of black people, and settler colonialism. Critique around Beyonce's artistic choice is important and healthy, not hate.

Hashtag Cowboy Carter. As Ben Jacobs, the political reporter, notes, is this our first anti-American flag candidate? Let's go to the next one here as well. It says, these are some older ones, but none is older than July of 2019. On Pete Buttigieg apparently saying the word Niger, she says, nobody white should ever refer to the nation of Niger, period, misspelled period. Does anybody else resent that COVID-19 has made it acceptable for old white men to hijack black culture and give each other a dap and fist bump? Wait, Ryan, that's us. We fist bump each other. I guess we're hijacking

black culture with the dap. No self-respecting black person should be singing the white national anthem, hashtag Dem Debate, and not digging the white children referred to as Mamala didn't she just get married that's a dig at Kamala Harris for having the temerity To embrace her stepchildren so all very popular positions each one actually less popular than the next Here's another one July 2019 I was compelled to step off the sidewalk three times during my 30-minute walk so that white folks and their dogs could pass. Got me feeling like hashtag gentrification is hashtag Jim Crow revisited. I'm going to say that the next time

that I'm forced off by a pit bull. So these are all, let's just say, interesting choice here by Cornel West. I mean, what is he thinking? Let's be honest. There are obvious racial dimensions to gentrification. Let's not even try. Let's not even try and rescue Ms. Abdullah here. I don't know about how the dog walking is representative.

Come on. What are you talking about? But I think, look, I guess if you want to defend it, you can. This is just pure gobbledygook looking at this woman's background, Pan-African studies, University of California, totally poisoned with activist type rhetoric. And that's my thing here with Cornell. I'm like, what are you trying to do? You know, it's interesting too, because look, I get that BLM, social justice and all of that is foundational to some of his like political identity. Fine. OK. But don't you have some political reason as to

why you are running beyond trying to capture this kind of activist base and vote, which let's be honest, these people are going to vote for Biden anyway. In terms of the practical realities, I see no political calculus other than becoming a laughingstock by picking somebody like this. Yeah, Cornell has always had kind of a broader lens when it comes to his radical love and his radical politics. One that, you know, he endorsed Obama, for instance. I know. Yeah, I remember. campaign for Obama and has always tried to unite people and make the argument that racism is dividing us so that the 1% can walk away with all of the spoils, which is probably an argument that Melina would agree with, but she doesn't lead with it. Whereas Cornel West does lead with that. Yeah. And that's why I found it

confounding is this is very much the opposite, at least from what I've watched and listened to him. He's generally, I mean, I wouldn't call him like a race first person. He definitely indulges in a lot of racial rhetoric, but has always at least tried to adopt that this is something that is downstream of classism. But, you know, from a pure political lens, it's like, why would you give this gift to not only for media? I mean, we wouldn't be covering it otherwise. You know, otherwise, it's like, who barely even cares? Is he even going to be on the ballot? But for this, I mean, just to me, seems like a profound political misjudgment. Maybe it's just what he believes. I mean, that's fine, too, if you want to do that. Cornel West has almost seemed, and I hope we can get him on the program.

By the way, we have tried. His campaign has been a pain in the ass. So if anybody who's listening who is out there, Dr. West, we've invited you on the show more than a dozen times, and I have yet to receive a proper response. Yeah. It feels like he has regretted the decision to run since he launched it and has been, like my conspiracy theory, if I were to get it in his mind, is that he has been consistently trying to undermine his own campaign so as not to undermine Biden. Interesting. Oh, wow. First, he launched with the People's Party, clearly without doing any research.

Abandon that immediately. Yeah, as soon as he realized what he'd gotten into, he's like, whoa, whoa, whoa, what is this mess? Then he goes over to the Green Party. Apparently, he hadn't done much work with the Green Party because I could have told you that thing is a complete and total mess. And so he was like, whoa, the Green Party is extremely difficult to deal with. They're not going to just coronate me. He didn't want to fight for the nomination. Why should they coronate him? They shouldn't coronate anybody.

Sure, because they're a self-respecting party. Yes, they're actually, by the way, on the ballot, you know? But then I think he started to worry, oh, wait, now I might be, if I win this, I will be on ballots, and then I might throw the election to Trump. So then he's like, I'm going to run as an independent. And running as an independent, I think he's only on like three ballots at this point. Running as an independent, it's very difficult to get on the ballot. He's raised less than a million dollars. Right.

And he doesn't seem to have the energy to kind of get on the ballot in 50 states. And is that deliberate? Like, is that an expression of his, oh, wait a minute. Because he is very clear that he believes that Trump is a more dangerous form of fascism than Biden's form of fascism. And he has ticked off an enormous number of people on the left with that position. But that is his position. And if that is your position, then what's going on? And I think what he's doing here is not running.

Well, I like the psychoanalysis. Maybe that's why he won't come on the show. He doesn't have a big enough program. All right. All right. Let's see. All right. Let's move on to Bill Maher.

Ryan and I had to break this one down. Bill just injecting himself into the abortion debate in the single most Bill way possible. Let's take a listen. Not if you believe it's murder. You know, that's why I don't understand the 15 week thing. Or the Trump's plan is, let's leave it to the states. You mean, so killing babies is okay in some states? I can respect the absolutist position. I really can. I scold the left on when they say,

oh, you know what? They just hate women, people who aren't pro-life, pro-choice. They don't hate women. They just made that up. They think it's murder. And it kind of is. I'm just okay with that. I am. I mean, there's 8 billion people in the world. I'm sorry, we won't miss you. That's my position on it. That's quite harsh, Bill. Yeah, exactly. Is that not your position if you're pro-choice? Isn't that mainly because you don't like children?

I mean... No, no. I mean, but if you are, you said you're pro-choice. That's your position, too. So, yeah. There's a lot going on there.

So, Bill, I mean, I guess we should note, he is 68 years old and unmarried. So, I don't think peers is off by saying, you know, do you just not like kids? Like, what exactly is going on here? The problem for Bill is that he is basically embracing the OG pro-abortion argument by Margaret Sanger and other eugenicists, which is like, hey, we need abortion so that black people in particular will stop having a bunch of kids. This is why a lot of white supremacists, eugenicists and others were original supporters of abortion. You'll actually hear this from a lot of pro-life people in general.

They took Martin Sanger's name off the Planned Parenthood building. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, as a result of that. But Ryan, give us the pro-choice critique of what Bill has to say. I mean, he's pro-murder. Yeah. And, you know, most reasonable people are anti-murder. Yeah. The argument that it's okay to murder people because there are too many people on the planet is evil. Yeah. Like, it's just deeply evil. That's straight up depopulation, man. Yeah. That's crazy. So at what age? So, okay, how about 68-year-olds? Yeah, well. Like you said, Bill Maher's 68.

Right. He thinks there's too many people. He hasn't contributed to the population. Should he be killed? Yeah. Like taking that logic seriously, it is impressive to be able to make the absolute least, the absolute worst argument on either side in this debate that, okay, he says, I say that life begins at conception, but it is good to murder children because there are too many. Because there are too many people. Yeah, I mean, this is where, this is the issue. And look,

I mean, I'm not even gonna, as people know, I don't believe in God, okay? So for me, this is a, it's a difficult issue, as everybody always says. The general societal consensus, for some reason, is that we seem to accept it in the first trimester and all of that. Even with medical advances and all of that, it actually becomes more complicated at what exactly fetal viability is, etc. Go ahead. He is right that there's a contradiction between believing as the pro-life crowd does. And Emily will talk about this, that if you believe life begins at conception, but you're okay with 15 weeks, then— Yeah, what is that?

Exactly. He is correct. No, that he is right. If it is murder, how do you leave it? How do you go back to the state? But the pro-choice crowd just does not believe that having an abortion is murder. And also, Maher is just wrong to completely dismiss the misogynistic angle here. That doesn't mean that every pro-life supporter, quote unquote,

hates women, like he said, but it is a fundamental part of upholding the patriarchy. And I think even most pro-life supporters would acknowledge that and say that, yeah, it is related to our resentment of and opposition to this sexual revolution and everything that has unfolded since then. And we would like to go back to pre-1960s version. I think that's fair. And that's where I agree that it's wrong because it's one of those where hates women. Okay. Yeah. I mean, that's, it's a little bit hyperbole. However, when we look at polling and we see that the number one issue for suburban women or even

for a lot of women is abortion, something is going on there. And in general, the vast majority of them are pro-choice. In general, especially here in America, what we individually select for is our right to self-actualization. Now, this is where the pro-life community and the religious community gets upset because at the end of the day, individualism is the enemy of collectivism and specifically collectivism whenever it's related to religion and organized religion. So what they are trying to go against is exactly as you said, the ideas and the genesis of the sexual revolution, which was enabled by birth control, is the idea that the sex act itself can be disaggregated from procreation. That is literally the enemy of the

Christian conception of procreation and of why the existence of sin and all that is here in the first place, as it's been explained to me. So my point, though, is that this is an enemy. These are two competing ideologies. One very clearly is trending in a different direction when it comes to an increasingly secular America. One of the most underreported stories of our lifetime is, I mean, I grew up, and so did you, Ryan, in a Christian country. I grew up in 1990s Texas, where some 90% of the people around me were straight up evangelical believers. If I go back now today, even today in a very Christian place, you don't feel it just quite as much. You don't see that influence. And we see declining church attendance,

declining religiosity, declining religious identification. The secularization has been such a mass change in American religious identity. We haven't seen anything like it since the Great Awakening in the 1800s when we saw mass Christian adoption, or I guess church attendance. And that revolution in our lifetime is a huge part of this debate. It's funny because I noted all these people who were attacking Trump for saying, leave it to the states. And I was like, hey, the entire time I was growing up, the pro-lifers always just said, leave it to the states. But somebody was like, no, no, no, dude, but you don't understand. If they realized leaving it to the states would mean pro-choice

referendums would pass in red states, they never would have said that. They didn't believe it in the first place. And I do think that is 100% true. And the other fascinating part about the great unawakening that we're living through is that some of it is connected to the spread of evangelical Christianity in the sense that those types of folks are not actually going to church much. Yeah, that's right. They consider themselves evangelical, but they don't even, they don't really believe. They're diehard, you know, evangelicals, but yeah, not going to church because they believe that they have their own relationship with Jesus and, you know, they don't, they don't need the institution to get in the way of it. Or you've got the mega churches, which are a very, it's a very tenuous kind of connection to a church. That's not a, that's not a neighborhood that is organized around this, this particular thing. It's just a fun thing that people do on a Sunday.

Right. Yeah, it is very interesting. I would just say, though, part of the problem, and this is one of the things I think that some of the religiosity folks are correct about, is that it does lead to the normalization of some straight up ghoulish rhetoric, like what Bill Maher just said, which is depopulation. When you remove yourself from morals and you start to think purely in these terms, then you can arrive at eugenicism and just think like, hey, why doesn't this stuff make sense? He seemed surprised by the reaction. He was shocked, I know. He thought he was going to get some guffaws at his pro-murder stance. Right.

Yeah, even Piers. Well, I guess Piers is from Britain. Yeah, in Britain, I mean, they haven't been religious for like 50 years. There was some collar tugging going on. And the crowd that comes to a Bill Maher show has to be ready to hear some pretty impolitic stuff. And even they were like, ooh. Yeah, because look, that's the whole point in terms of the messy issue and the way that the consensus and all of that has been arrived is, as you said, is that a lot of people just don't believe that life does begin at conception. And it's much more at fetal viability. And so thus, they're like, I don't believe in murder. In a way, Bill is like accepting like the Christian framing saying it is kind of murder, but I'm okay with that because we have 8 billion people on the planet.

I will expect actually to see more of these types of discussions in America. What I'm really interested in is the fact that even though as Americans become much more secular, is we do still seem to have a moral code carried over through many civilizations which are non-religious, where we still are like, yeah, murder is bad. Eugenicism is bad. You know, it's like, these are all lessons that even in a non-Christian nation that we're arriving at our own kind of social individualistic consensus, which is interesting nonetheless. 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

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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. There's certainly a lot else going on that is important in this world, but something I couldn't just let go by without at least a word is media assessment of the death of O.J. Simpson. The O.J. case is one I never really cared about. I was only one year old at the time of the murders. I have no memory of the verdict or any of the media environment at the time. My interest came many decades later, after the release of the FX series, The People

vs. O.J. Simpson. It inspired me to actually do a deep dive on the case and read several books about it. What I came away with is a disg dive on the case and read several books about it. What I came away with is a disgust that I can barely describe, reading in exquisite detail how OJ's defense team and the tabloid media transformed a narcissistic, abusive murderer into a Black Panther police justice icon, one of the most insane things that happened throughout the 1990s. I will not relitigate every detail here, but suffice it to say that the media and Johnny Cochran got what they wanted. They split this country completely apart by race. You can see it clearly in the famous

reaction shots to the verdict. Black audiences cheering the O.J. not guilty verdict, many others repulsed by it. Let's take a listen. Go find the killer! OJ is innocent! I think it's great. He deserves to go free. They had no evidence on him. So much evidence to deliberate for as short as they did and come back with a not guilty verdict. I think it shows the jury was pretty irresponsible. And I just don't think justice was served. I don't think the jury did their job. I think they knew what they were going to do from the gate.

I think it was racist-based, and it was racist from the black point of view. This is terrible that he's going to get away with this, you know, because I do believe that he did it, and it's just not fair. He's guilty. He's got to live with this, you know, because I do believe that he did it. And it's just not fair. He's guilty. He's got to live with himself, man. He knows he did it. DNA is not racial. It doesn't see black and white. It sees that he was there and he did it. He's got to live with himself. That's all. I thought we'd at least left all that behind in the 90s where it belonged,

but I couldn't help but find that rage build back inside of me when I started to see media reactions to the announcement of OJ's death, the same race huckster collapse trap in 2024. Let's take a listen from CNN. It's not like OJ Simpson was the leader of the civil rights movement of his era. You know, he wasn't a social justice leader, but he represented something for the Black community in that moment community in that moment, in that trial, particularly because there were two white people who had been killed. And the history around how Black people have been persecuted during slavery, there were just so many layers.

And I guess I would just close with this, is that there was racial tension then, there is racial tension now. It might not be the backdrop of the Trump campaign, but until this country is ready to actually have an honest conversation about the racial dynamics from our origin story till today, we will always have moments like OJ Simpson that manifest and our country will always be divided if we don't actually deal with the issue of race. So let's break that down. This woman, Ashley Allison, former Obama staffer, says that OJ Simpson represented something to the black community because he murdered two white people and then somehow connects OJ's not guilty verdict to slavery. I cannot tell you how angry that makes me because it is the exact strain of thought and exploitation that Johnny Cochran, Al Sharpton, and Jesse Jackson used in the 1990s to transform his case into something it was not. What's insane is that it wasn't even the first case of OJ apologia on CNN in the aftermath of his death. The very first was this live reaction. Take a listen.

It's also just worth noting how much was impacted by this trial, Jake. So many things happened. We saw policing changing here in the city. And it's also worth noting, because of that unrest, that racial unrest in the 90s, that is why so many people who may not have been invested in O.J. Simpson were just happy to see that someone who was rich and famous and Black could get away with what other people did in the system as well, too. What was that? So many people who was rich and famous and Black could get away with what other people did in the system as well too. What was that? So many people who was rich and famous and black could get away with what other people

did in the system too? What strikes me about the OJ case was how much it parallels the fights that we've had ever since the 1980s. Take race out of it and instead you see a different picture. A multi-millionaire, world-famous athlete who routinely beat and abused his wife, paid off or used his influence to quash police investigations, then bought his way out of a double murder homicide by throwing money at the most extensive attorneys in Los Angeles. His victims were a waiter who was trying to be nice, returning Nicole Brown Simpson's

glasses and Nicole Brown Simpson herself, who OJ married when she was an 18-year-old girl and was routinely and financially, emotionally, and physically abused by Simpson up until the day she died at his hand. You instead have a tale here of the rich and powerful able to get away with literal murder while people with less resources and fame lie dead with no recourse. Look no further, and then the New York Times, to see the media legacy of the OJ trial, their obituary of him. The Times wrote, quote, he ran to football fame on the field, made fortunes in the movies, but his world was ruined after he was charged with killing his former wife and her friend. His world was ruined. Poor guy. Can't believe it ever happened to him.

Even after all this, today, the trial effect lingers. The race politics that were pioneered by Cochran and Jackson and Sharpton and the media that went into overdrive in the interim decades. That's what poured gasoline on the fire of DEI initiatives, affirmative action, and the division that we have today. The parallel track, the path of the rich and the famous and the powerful, they were able to get away with whatever they want.

It's only accelerated in the last 30 years. Using race politics like they did as their shield. That is the true and the lasting effect of the O.J. Simpson true and the lasting effect of the O.J. Simpson trial. It is one of the most shameful periods in modern American times and one whose true lesson should be how much damage that it wrought over that time. That was what I couldn't get away with, Ryan. And if you want to hear my reaction to Sager's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at BreakingPoints.com.

Chris will be back tomorrow. CounterPoints, she will be in for you on CounterPoints.com. Crystal will be back tomorrow. CounterPoints, she will be in for you on CounterPoints. So I guess you'll have three days of Crystal in a row. So enjoy that and we will see you all tomorrow.

The OGs of Uncensored Motherhood are back and badder than ever. I'm Erica. And I'm Mila. And we're the hosts of the Good Moms Bad Choices podcast, brought to you by the Black Effect Podcast Network every Wednesday. Yeah, we're moms, but not your mommy. Historically, men talk too much.

And women have quietly listened. And all that stops here. If you like witty women, then this is your tribe. Listen to the Good Moms, Bad Choices podcast every Wednesday on the Black Effect Podcast Network, the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you go to find your podcasts. 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. Each week, I investigate a new case. If there is a case we should hear about, call 678-744-6145. Listen to Hell and Gone Murder Line on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. High key.

Looking for your next obsession? Listen to High Key, a new weekly podcast hosted by Ben O'Keefe, Ryan Mitchell, and Evie Oddly. We got a lot of things to get into. We're going to gush about the random stuff we can't stop thinking about. I am high key going to lose my mind over all things Cowboy Carter.

I know. Girl, the way she about to yank my bank account. Correct. And one thing I really love about this is that she's celebrating her daughter. Oh, I know. Girl, the way she about to yank my bank account. Correct. And one thing I really love about this is that she's celebrating her daughter. Oh, I know. Listen to High Key on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an iHeart Podcast.