Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 4/16/24: US Greenlights Israel Iran Response, Politicians Make Millions Off Israel War, Judge Threatens Trump Arrest, Trump Stock Investors Screwed, Israeli Settlers Rampage In West Bank, RFK Says He Turned Down Trump VP, FBI Raids Baltimore Bridge Collapse Ship, NYT Says No Using 'Palestine' Or 'Occupied' '

Episode Date: April 16, 2024

Krystal and Saagar discuss the US greenlighting Israel's Iran response, politicians making millions off Israel war, judge threatens to arrest Trump if he misses trial, Trump stock investors screwed, Israeli settlers rampage through West Bank, RFK says he turned down Trump VP, FBI raids Baltimore bridge collapse ship, NYT memo says not to use the word 'Palestine'.   To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show AD FREE, uncut and 1 hour early visit: https://breakingpoints.supercast.com/   Merch Store: https://shop.breakingpoints.com/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. Taser Incorporated. I get right back there and it's bad. Listen to Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get 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. I was calling about the murder of my husband. The murderer is

still out there. Each week, I investigate a new case. If there is a case we should hear about, call 678-744-6145. Listen to Hell and Gone Murder Line on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. 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 gonna gush about the random stuff we can't stop thinking about.

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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 Tuesday. We have an amazing show for everybody today. Extra amazing. Crystal is back. What do we have today? Always nice to be back in the chair, although I watched you and Ryan's show yesterday. Fantastic, as always. So, a lot to get to this morning. So, we've got the very latest on Israel's likely response to those Iranian strikes

and whether or not we are going to be dragged into a much larger regional war. We also have a little update for you on which politicians stand to make the most money off of said war. Trump was in court yesterday. It's the first day of his hush money trial, his first criminal case. So we'll break that down for you. Some interesting notes from him. Apparently a little drowsy in that courtroom. Long day, you know, older guy. We'll talk about that.

At the same time, truth social stock prices continue to plummet. There's an interesting report of some of the significant small holders of that stock and how they are feeling about their investment at this point. We've got some major updates in Israel as settlers went on a violent rampage in the occupied West Banks. We'll update you on that. We also have a number of Gazans who are trying to return north under Israeli fire. RFK Jr. saying that he was asked to be Trump's VP and also saying that he is no longer seeking the Libertarian Party nomination. That could be actually quite consequential. We have a criminal investigation now opened into the circumstances surrounding the bridge collapse in Baltimore. Very important updates there. And we've got a little Ryan Grim scoop for you. He was able to

get his hands along with Jeremy Scahill on the New York Times internal memo, giving their writers guidance on how they should be talking about Israel's war in Gaza. And it is quite something. It is actually pretty shocking, even given, you know, my very low expectations for the New York Times. But before we get to any of that, Sagar, a know, my very low expectations for The New York Times. But before we get to any of that, Sagar, a little personal news here. Yes, that's right. You may be able to see something right over here. Slow reveal.

There it is. The gold plaque. It only took, what, 10 months to get it? Not really sure. Apparently, there was a shortage in the factory. Allegedly. Oh, is that what happened? Who knows?

Okay. Took a lot of emails, took some tweets, took some badgering, but the YouTube plaque is here. It feels somewhat anticlimactic since we qualified for it, like I said, about eight to 10 months ago. About 250,000 subscribers ago. Roughly around 1.25 million subscribers currently, a quarter of our way to the next 1 million. But hey, we'll take it. We're glad it's here. We just wanted to say thank you to everybody who is out there who helped million subscribers currently, quarter of our way to the next 1 million. But hey, we'll take it. We're glad it's here. We just wanted to say thank you to everybody who is out there who helped build. We've helped build two channels now to 1 million, which not many people can say that they've done, which is really all entirely because of all of you. So thank you to those of us who have been with us from the very beginning or who have just joined. You guys are the ones who make this

possible. And if you can help us out, breakingpoints.com. Who knew supply chain snafus would even hit the gold plaque industry? Well, okay. That's what they said was happening. I'm still a little bit- I'm a little skeptical myself. I'm a little dubious. Kyle got his weeks later. I know people who have hit 1 million and they get it like two days later. And when I was rolling around in India, I even saw guys there who had their plaques that they had gotten within a couple of days. So somehow Google logistics are better in India than in America. But hey, whatever. It's here now. And that's what counts. That's right. We'll take it. And it's not a permanent fixture of the set. So thank you,

YouTube, for finally getting it to us. All right. Why don't we go ahead and start with Iran, as Crystal said, kind of a hard turn in terms of what is currently on the horizon. So yesterday we brought everybody the news that the Israeli government had vowed to retaliate against the Iranians. There was some question as to whether President Biden and his pressure on the Israelis not to militarily retaliate. He said, take the win. You've got the win. Don't widen this into a broader war there does now though seem to be and a change the US government Now saying that any response is up to the Israelis This was John Kirby the White House spokesperson talking about this from the podium yesterday. Let's take a listen Is the administration presenting alternatives to it? Yeah, this is a these this is an Israeli decision to make

whether and how they'll respond to what Iran did on Saturday, and we're going to leave it squarely with them. Their decision to make, but are you making suggestions? We are not involved in their decision-making process about a potential response. So it's up to the Israeli government for what some sort of potential response is. The U.S. government now has completely changed its tune. First, it was take the win, don't do anything. The Israeli war cabinet, immediately there were some deliberations. Both two members, Benny Gantz and Yoav Galant, the defense minister, both immediately advocated for a retaliatory strike.

Apparently Netanyahu said we got to hold off until I talk to President Biden. President Biden tells him not to do it. However, in the interim 12 to 24 hours, there's now been a change from the Israelis where all is being telegraphed from the IDF to the U.S. government. And now in the change of rhetoric where we're like expecting some sort of military retaliation. Yesterday, they had said at a time and place of their choosing, it is now expected not necessarily imminently, but somewhere within, you know, a shorter period, maybe less than a week, they said up to a month. But we shouldn't forget, Crystal, it did take the Iranians about a week to retaliate on the embassy. We need to dispel this notion that an, quote unquote, immediate retaliation is just going to happen in the

moment. That's not really how these things work. It can be a slower burn, but it is still accelerated on a timeline. Yeah, I just want to pause since this is my first chance to react to this and reflect on the fact that we are truly on the brink right now. There's no denying it. We'll go through, we're getting some contradictory reports out of Israel about what a response might look like, what the scale might be. But Joe Biden is to blame with his policy for the fact that we have come to this place of potential broader escalation, potentially pulling us directly into a hot, wider regional war. And let's be clear. I mean, we've been saying this for months. The Biden administration's goal of keeping this contained to Gaza, I mean, that has long been over. You can see what's happened

in Syria. You can see what's happened in Iraq. You can see what's happened with the Houthis in Yemen and now, obviously, this direct conflict with Iran. It is because Joe Biden has given Netanyahu no limits whatsoever and allowed him to have carte blanche and consistently said, OK, while I might hand-wring a little bit, at the end of the day, you can do whatever you want. And so once again, that's the message that we hear coming from John Kirby. Hey guys, it's up to you. Do whatever you want. As if we aren't directly implicated, as if we aren't the ones who were involved in shooting down these missiles and drones that were coming at Israel, as if we don't have service members who are stationed in the Middle East. It's complete insanity. And for what? So that Bibi can continue his genocide, can

continue his ethnic cleansing, can hold on to power when, you know, you've got a Democratic president who supposedly is opposed to a lot of what Bibi Netanyahu stands for. It is so utterly insane at every step. I mean, even think about some of the things we talked about before, Sagar, like this policy of, okay, we're going to directly combat the Houthis and what they're doing in Yemen. Pretending like we don't understand that if this war just, and if we actually had a ceasefire, all of that would stop with an acknowledgement. We know that the policy is not going to work and yet we pursue it anyways. I think that's perfectly emblematic of how absurd, dangerous, and insane this policy has been all the way along. So I don't want to lose sight of that, even as we get into the specifics of what the likely response is, etc.,

etc. There was no reason that we would all have to be sitting here today with bated breath, waiting to see whether the world is about to blow up. Yeah, well, thank you for reiterating that. It's absolutely true. Let's go and put this up there on the screen. The Israelis are reporting from their own domestic media that the war cabinet, quote, has decided to hit back forcefully at Iran for the Saturday missile attack. In this unsourced report, they say that the war cabinet has made the decision clearly and forcefully. The response will be designed to send the message that Israel, quote, will not allow an attack of that magnitude against it to pass without a reaction. The response will then be designed to make plain that Israel will not allow the Iranians to establish

the equation that they have sought to assert in recent days. Now, this is basically about who is establishing mutual deterrence because the Israelis, let's not forget, began this entire episode whenever they struck the Iranian embassy in Damascus. They claimed that it was an IRGC military outpost. It doesn't necessarily change the fact that it was still an embassy in Damascus. And the subsequent fallout from that then a week later was an Iranian response directly on Israel, the first in Iranian and Israeli history in terms of that attack. So then the question is now what are the Israelis going to do? The Iranians said, we consider this matter closed. We have established our deterrence. We have showed the world that we can, if we want to,

launch strikes from our territory directly onto Israel. The Israelis say, well, we've had a 99% shoot down rate. We'll get to that in a little bit in terms of how much the US military actually did. But now the response appears to be that the Israelis want to establish a scenario where they are allowed to carry out this activity and bear no attack upon the Iranians to establish a deterrence from their end. So here is the chief of staff of the IDF actually speaking at a military base in Israel, in English, keep in mind, which is directly calibrated for all of us, about what their response is going to look like. Let's take a listen. We are closely assessing the situation. We remain at our highest level of readiness. Iran will face the consequences for its actions.

We will choose our response accordingly. The IDF remains ready to counter any threat from Iran and its terror proxies as we continue our mission to defend the state of Israel. So everybody pay very close attention to what was behind the IDF chief of staff there. That was an F-35. And that base actually where this talk occurred is where Israel keeps its F-35s, where do you think they got them and who sold them to them? The question and the big thing that we have to look at now is what that signifies for the response. So we're not looking necessarily at the launch of what the Iranians did, which were

unmanned drones and or cruise missiles. Will this include a direct F-35 lightning strike on Iranian military facilities? We're seeing a report this morning that is a little bit all over the map. It just says that U.S. officials expect the Israeli response to Iran to be limited. But what exactly does that mean? They say that both strikes are anticipated, quote, against Iranian military forces and Iranian-backed proxies outside of Iran. So the question then is if they hit proxies outside of Iran, that's one thing. We've seen that happen many times. The IDF has been striking Hezbollah inside of Syria for probably eight years. But a direct Israeli military strike, an IDF strike on Iranian military targets inside of

Iran, that is unprecedented in the same way that the attack was and is very much in the realm of where we could see an escalation. We also see a response from the Iranians saying that they will respond immediately if such a thing were to happen in which we could see the escalation ladder begin again. Yeah, and Bibi wants this conflict. I mean, it seems sort of insane, but from his psychotic political calculus, it actually makes sense because number one, as we've talked about a million times before, wildly unpopular Bibi Netanyahu is within Israel. There is an increasing realization among the Israeli public that the assault on Gaza has not gone the way that he said that it would. They are nowhere close to accomplishing the stated objective of eradicating Hamas. That's why he also has to hold out there. Oh, we're going to go into Rafah. That's going to be the thing that's really going to take us over the top so we can claim

this victory. But there was an op-ed in Haaretz, an Israeli newspaper, saying, listen, admit it. We've lost. This has been a catastrophe for us, not only because we failed to come anywhere close to accomplishing the objectives of eradicating Hamas or bringing the hostages home. And Israel's more isolated internationally than ever before and has this pariah status. So conflict with Iran directly gives Bibi another shot at some sort of ability to claim a quote unquote victory. It keeps the war going, so it keeps his grip on power. And also, you know, while the news media is talking about this potential large regional war, what are they

not talking about? The conditions for Gazans who continue to starve to death, continue to suffer. There's a lot of indications that the Israeli promises about increasing humanitarian aid were basically false, and that hasn't come to fruition. So the intense media pressure that was beginning to be applied in the wake, especially of that World Central Kitchen, the aid workers being assassinated by Israeli forces. Suddenly, that's all gone. And the U.S. and other Middle Eastern regional allies rallied to Israel's defense. And the Gaza assault and the humanitarian crisis there sort of fades into the background. So for him, as utterly psychotic and insane as this all seems to us watching it unfold, he has every incentive to

escalate, every incentive to try to drag us into it. So the fact that there's at least one report out there from NBC News that potentially this retaliatory strike, which shouldn't happen at all, I mean, they started this whole situation to begin with, with the strike on Iran's embassy, but that it may be limited in scope is very hopeful and very good news. But, you know, we really have to wait and see what happens because I'm not convinced that's where they're headed right now. Well, this is the other problem is that what does that mean? It's all in the eye of the beholder. Ryan and I talked a lot about this yesterday, which is that you can look at the Iranian attack two ways. The Israeli right wing is like, no, it was calibrated for mass death.

It was just how happened that the defense was really good. Or you could say they telegraphed for hours ahead. It was kind of a symbolic gesture. Yeah. Both seem like in the realm of possibility and only the Iranians actually know the truth to what that is. I mean, I don't think you give 72 hours advance warning if you're trying to, you know, calculate it for mass. I don't disagree. But the right in Israel can certainly spin it how they want because they are desperate and have long been itching for this conflict. Yeah, I mean, but their response is just like, listen, you know, there's missiles and drones and all that came into our skies and that's terrifying. I'm like, I don't even disagree. But my point is

that you can look and draw from it whatever you want. What could be limited to Israel and to the U.S.? That may not be limited to the IRGC. Iran has its own major political military factions, which are all at war with each other. There's a huge contingent of the Iranian regime, which is incredibly angry that they haven't done more on the Israel situation. With response to Gaza, they already feel like they've been totally screwed by the U.S. And they want a full-on war Israel situation with response to Gaza. They already feel like they've been totally screwed by the US and they want a full-on war. Are they going to win out? I mean, it's one of those where the Ayatollah himself, how much power does he really have? We talked about this with Trita Parsi yesterday about the Iranian military council. So don't forget that they have their own internal domestic politics in a very similar way. There's

also, let's put this up there for what they've currently said in terms of their response. Yesterday, their foreign minister spoke with the British foreign minister, David Cameron, said that Iran does not want escalation of tension in the region, but stressed if that Israel seeks adventure, our next response will be, quote, immediate, stronger, and more extensive. So the immediate, the stronger, and more extensive. So the immediate, the stronger, the more extensive. So as you said, we may not get then, in this case, a change in the notification policy to the United States. There's also a big question around the Iron Dome and the amount of

interceptor missiles that they remain. How much more U.S. military force is going to have to be employed in order to do something like this? How much is it going to cost? The single defense on Saturday's attack cost $1.5 billion. What if it's bigger? Is it going to cost $10 billion, $20 billion? We simply have no idea. There's also, of course, now there's a reckoning, Crystal, as you said, as to the actual – what instigated this entire thing with the bombing of the embassy.

So there was a fascinating interview here with the former prime minister and current foreign minister, David Cameron, on Sky News in the UK, where they pressed him on what Britain would do if one of their embassies was bombed. Let's take a listen. Is it bad judgment or good judgment to hit Iranian sovereign territory in Damascus? That was something the Israelis decided to do. We haven't made a... I know. Well, I'll answer the question, which is I can completely understand the frustration

the Israelis feel when they look at the Iranian Revolutionary Guard and they look at the terrible things that they have done all over the world, including the support they give to Hamas. And of course, Hamas were responsible for October the 7th, and that is where all of this begins. So you can completely understand the frustration. Yeah, but what about Iran's frustration at part of its sovereign territory being flattened? Well, I would argue there is a massive degree of difference between what Israel did in Damascus and, as I said, 301 weapons being launched by the state of Iran at the state of Israel for the first time, a state-on-state attack. 101 ballistic missiles, 36 cruise missiles, 185 drones. That is a degree of difference

and I think a reckless and dangerous thing for Iran to have done. And I think the whole world can see all these countries that have somehow wondered, well, you know, what is the true nature of Iran? It's there in black and white. What would Britain do if a hostile nation flattened one of our consulates? Well, we would take,? Well, we would take the very strong action. And Iran would say that that's what they did? Well, what they did, as I said, was a massive attack. So they were right to respond, but they overreacted, is that what you're saying? What I'm saying is that the attack they carried out was on a very large scale, much bigger than people accepted.

They had a right to respond. Well, countries have a right to respond when they feel they've suffered an aggression. Of course they do. But look at the scale of that response. Had those weapons not been shot down, there could have been thousands of casualties, including civilian casualties.

I think that's a really important point to take into account. Well, we would have a massive response. I agree. And look, I'm not justifying any of this. I don't want missiles flying all over the place in Damascus or in Israel because I don't want to be involved in it. And it's our troops that are ones that are shooting down most of these missiles, which we'll get to in a little bit. But this is part of the problem. And we talked about this yesterday. A huge number of the American commentariat and U.S. senators were like, this is an unprovoked attack.

That is ridiculous. It is, it is like this did not happen inside of a vacuum. And this is part of the issue, the emboldening of Netanyahu and of the Israeli military, because we told them very specifically, do not hit the Iranians without clearing or telling us about it. And what do you think they did? They did it and they didn't even tell us. No heads up to the United States. We found out on social media whenever this happened. And now who do you think is responsible in paying the bill for shooting down all these damn missiles and whose troops, tens of thousands are all across the region who are sitting ducks waiting to take the shot if and when that this does expand and the US military inevitably is involved.

That's what drives me the craziest about all of this. And I loved this like attempted intellectual debate in the New York Times and other places. Is it actually a violation of the Vienna Convention and international law to hit an embassy? Of course, of course. If a US embassy was hit anywhere around the world, whether it was the embassy itself or adjacent consular building, do you think we'd be having the slightest bit of debate about that? I would say that we shouldn't. If you kill a CIA officer in US embassy,

we're going to blow the shit out of you, and we should. It's entirely predictable. And not only is it predictable, this is the response that the Israelis wanted. They were courting this response because as I just said before, Bibi wants this conflict. He, for his political ass, needs this conflict. And so of course, Iran was going to hit back. We're lucky that they showed the restraint that they did, that they provided the notice, that this appears to have been more of a domestic political show for the Iranians to say, listen, you're not going to just hit our embassy and kill one of our top military leaders with no response. We're lucky that the response was that limited.

But it just, the two things that drove me so insane watching this all unfold is number one, the Israelis immediately playing the victims. Oh, how dare you? And so much of the American political class and media class going right along with this, pretending like you said, Sagar, that it was quote unquote unprovoked. Please get out of here. Another thing that has driven me insane is, you know, you saw you now the attacks on embassies like it's open season. That's that is over because what could the U.S. ever say about it again when you didn't condemn Israel when they attacked the Iranian embassy in Syria? That's over. And then the other thing that I mentioned to you that made me completely insane

is Israel immediately. Oh, we need a we need a meeting of the UN Security Council. Well, you don't care about the UN when they're condemning you, when they're demanding a ceasefire, when a ceasefire resolution gets passed through the UN Security Council. You don't have anything to say about that. But now suddenly, we need the UN Security Council. What about a resolution against you for hitting the embassy? How about that? Would you listen to that?

Of course not. So just so much of this drove me absolutely bonkers and is so typical of the incredibly one-sided way that we view anything through the media and political class when it comes to Israel. Yeah, I mean, that's, it's just, it is so perfect. And let's put this final piece up of report from Ken Klippenstein. And it just confirms every suspicion that I had in the immediate aftermath. Because the Israelis and the IDF kept bragging about a 99% interception rate. And if people want to, you can go back and roll the tape. And I said, I would love to know how much that the U.S. shot down and the IDF did.

Because I was willing to bet that it was America and not them that shot down most of those drones and missiles. And lo and behold, the Intercept here now reporting, the U.S., not Israel, shot down most Iranian drones and missiles. American forces did most of the heavy lifting in responding to Iran's retaliation for the attack. The United States shot down more of the missiles and drones than Israel did. More than half of the weapons were destroyed by U.S. aircraft and missiles before they ever reached Israel. In fact, commanding a multinational air defense operation and scrambling American fighter jets, this was a U.S. military triumph. The extent of that military operation is currently unbeknownst to the American public. Yeah. Do you want to know why? Because CENTCOM, the U.S. military, and the Pentagon refused to release the number of missiles and drones that they shot down.

They have only released the names and the units and the type of aircraft and the missile, guided missile destroyers that are the ones that actually engaged here. And this just gives away the whole plot, which, and this is part of the issue, some response, Crystal, that I got from saying that the U.S. military should, which by the way, was one of the biggest freak outs that I've invited in quite a long time. I said, modest proposal, the U.S. military should defend America and not foreign nations that want to drag us into a war. And people were like, you don't understand. By us defending Israel, we prevented a larger war. But here's the thing, the Israelis would not feel so emboldened to blow up the Iranian embassy if they knew that they would also have to defend their own territory. This is part of the

thing. They socialize the risk to all of us. And we are the ones, God bless us, who have the military capability to shoot down said missiles if we want to. By actually putting this blanket security onto Israel and saying, you guys can do whatever we want and we were still going to defend you, we actually embolden the situation. So if we had created a situation where they were going to bear the ultimate risk of the behavior that they carry out, they would be a lot more cautious. But they don't feel cautious because they don't have to be. And this is the exact proof that we need. You're 100% correct. If they knew they were on their own, truly on their own, there's no way they would have taken that action. And you can actually see it now in the nervousness

around a larger scale response because there were at least some indications from the Biden administration that, hey, you are on your own for this if you take this further. So I think to the extent that there's any sort of hesitation on Bibi's part, it's from a lack of confidence that the U.S. will fully be behind them if they proceed any further. But yeah, and it's not just with regard to their defense. It's obviously at every turn, whenever Bibi has crossed a line, there might be a little bit of tutting. There might be a little bit of tut-tutting. There might be a little bit of leaks to a favored reporter. But there isn't actually any sort of consequences, whether it's attacking hospitals, whether it's attacking refugee camps, whether it's

mass slaughter of civilians, 2,000-pound bombs dropped, killing aid workers. None of it is really met with any sort of actual consequence, actual policy change. We get a little rhetoric change every now and again. But in terms of actual policy change, nothing. So why would he think that this was going to be any different? He knows that Biden will just go wherever Bibi leads him along to. And so that's how you end up with this completely insane and outrageous situation, an incredibly dangerous situation. It's because Biden has allowed this scenario to unfold. And it was incredibly predictable. I mean, from how we've been talking since day one

about the possibility of this spiraling into a wider war. This was always an incredibly dangerous and fraught situation. This was always a very real possibility on the table. The Biden administration's people, by the way, knew it too. It's not like they were unaware that this was a possible outcome. They just didn't do anything in order to forestall it and in fact enabled exactly this dangerous scenario. Yeah, absolutely right. And it's a dangerous moment. I actually went back and checked. I had a tweet and we did multiple segments about wider war on October 23rd of 2023. So don't let anybody say that it is not possible to have predicted all of this. It was eminently predictable,

may not happen as quickly. People seem to think that international relations and all this just happens like day after day after day. But when you go back and read history, you can see it takes a month, sometimes two months, and all this to happen. But we can go back and see very clearly this led to this, led to this, led to this. In the moment, we have too much of a recency bias. This was inevitable. It's only been six months now that we're in this conflict, and already we're in a totally different scenario. Imagine if this keeps going, imagine we're going to be a year from now. It could be a total nightmare. 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 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. 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 call 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 multibillion-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 podcasts. Binge episodes one, two, and three

on May 21st and episodes four, five, and six on June 4th. Ad-free at Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. I'm Michael Kassin, founder and CEO of 3C Ventures and your guide on good company, the podcast where I sit down with the boldest innovators shaping what's next. In this episode, I'm joined by Anjali Sood, CEO of Tubi, for a conversation that's anything but ordinary. We dive into the competitive world of streaming, how she's turning so-called niche into mainstream gold, connecting audiences with stories that truly make them feel seen. What others dismiss as niche, we embrace as core. It's this idea that there are so many stories out there, and if you can find a way to curate and help the right person discover the right content,

the term that we always hear from our audience is that they feel seen. Get a front row seat to where media, marketing, technology, entertainment, and sports collide and hear how leaders like Anjali are carving out space and shaking things up a bit in the most crowded of markets. Listen to Good Company on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Why is there so much war fever here in Washington? Well, let's go ahead and put this up there on the screen. Something a little pretty interesting here from our friend over at Unusual Wales. Here's every US politician whose stock portfolio will benefit from a conflict in the Middle East between Iran and Israel.

I've aggregated a list of their stocks, Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, and more. Many are making millions. And as you can see, there's quite a bit of red and blue that is on there. You've got Kevin Hearn, Mark Green, Tommy Tuberville, Nancy Pelosi, Michael McCaul, Marla Salazar, Alan Lowenthal, Lois Frankel, Patrick Fallon, Diana Hershberger, Mike Kelly, Carol Miller, Dwight Evans. That's just in the top 10. So you can go through and read the entire report that he's put together. But what he gets at is that it's not only the politicians that were going to be making a ton of money based on this. It's that

the defense companies here in the US are salivating over a broader conflict. Put this up there, please, on the screen, because this is the perfect evidence that you need. Lockheed Martin stock was actually upgraded and rated as a buy by major Wall Street houses over the missile-heavy weekend in Israel. They say Lockheed Martin has climbed early Monday, receiving an upgrade from JP Morgan. Meanwhile, defense stocks are all rising after U.S., British, and Israeli defense forces on Saturday knocked down a barrage of missiles and drones launched by Iran against Israel. They upgraded the stock to overweight from neutral and hiked its price target to $518 from the current $475 price hike. On top of that,

the defense industry is currently receiving the 2024 budget where they are scheduled to get even more of an increase from the US government. Not to mention, Crystal, literally as you and I speak here in Washington, there is an effort to try and pass foreign aid and get the Israel, Ukraine, and Taiwan bill through the House of Representatives, which would be another $100 billion, the vast majority of that coming right back here to U.S. defense companies. Yep, and think of the quote-unquote choices we have in our democracy. You know, Trump or Biden, they're both for this same disgusting, depraved system. They're both for continuing to fuel this.

I mean, I think it's disgusting that people become wildly wealthy off of war. And you wonder why, why are we constantly involved in multiple wars at the same time? And you'd be hard pressed to find a better answer than this right in front of our face. There is a lot of money to be made off of these conflicts. There is a lot of money to be made off of death and destruction. And, you know, I actually, I got to interview Medea Benjamin, Code Pink, you know, legendary anti-war activists going all the way back to the Vietnam War, but really coming into prominence, founding Code Pink during the Iraq War days. And we asked her, you know, what is the thing? Like, if you

had to point to what is the root of the reason why we are constantly getting involved in and starting and stoking and escalating these wars? And she had a one word answer is money. It's money. It's really what it comes back to and why this thing continues to turn and why we continue to face these situations. So, you know, you've got the Congress members who are, this should be completely illegal, who stand to benefit from defense stocks spiking as they are right now. You've got the fact that, you know, you've got military industrial complex facilities and bases in congressional districts throughout the country. So you have a direct tie-in in all of these congressional districts across the country.

You have the donor class that makes millions of dollars every time we get involved in one of these wars. And then you wonder when you go to the ballot box, why is my choice between two candidates effectively who have basically the same views when it comes to keeping us involved in these conflicts? This is really what it all comes back to. Absolutely well said. And let's put that final thing up there from CNBC, the JP Morden upgrade, which is, it's just funny the way that they say it. They say, upgrading Lockheed Martin, say it is an under-owned defense stock and may find

a bid in this dangerous world. I know that's like, I guess, a Wall Street technical term. But what the hell does that mean? I mean, under-owned as in it's probably not enough parts of managed portfolios. I don't speak enough Wall Streetese in order to translate. But all we could say is that the people on Wall Street, their job is to make money. And they know how to make money. They're really good at it. In fact, I just saw a report from the Goldman Sachs that they were up some 27% driven entirely by

investment banking profits from just the last quarter. So don't underestimate these people's ability to sniff out a dollar. And what they see very clearly here is that the quote unquote trend of where things are going is all towards funding this conflict, the Ukraine situation. Let's not forget the main case that they make right now, the neocons, they realize none of you actually want to continue to fund Ukraine's failed war and continue to send people into the gauntlet and be killed for no reason. So their new argument is actually good for the U.S. economy because all this money is just going back to U.S. defense companies. And let's just say this. Here's the other thing, too, and part of the reason why we need to ban stock ownership, really, by members of Congress.

We just need to have confidence. It's like, if you're so crazy that you believe that ideologically, I need to know 100% that you're not being motivated by the multi-millions of dollars that you have in your portfolio to benefit from a situation like this. Because all the names that I listed there, including Michael McCaul and others, these people are worth $250 million. And that's the chairman of the Homeland Security Committee. That's right. He's one of the chief proponents of Ukraine aid. You literally have a financial stake here. Maybe you believe what you believe. In fact, it's very possible. But you have to give confidence to the American people. Yeah. And then the other question is like what you know that we don't know that you get to benefit off of when you're trading stock.

It is a truly sick and depraved system that we have. I mean, that's just the bottom line of these people who are war profiteers and the way this has become completely normalized around our society and especially here in Washington. 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. 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 One, 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. Ad-free at Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. 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. 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.

With guests like Corinne Steffens. I've never seen so many women protect predatory men. And then me too happened. And then everybody else wanted to get pissed off because the white said it was okay. Problem. My oldest daughter, her first day in ninth grade, and I called to ask how I was doing. She was like, oh, dad, all you were doing was talking about your thing in class. I ruined my baby's first day of high school.

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You know who's stock holdings are not doing so well, though, right now? Who is it? Donald Trump. Oh, that's right. We're going to talk about that in a minute. But first, let's start with he was in court yesterday. So the first of his criminal trials to actually begin is the quote unquote hush money one having to do with payments to Stormy Daniels to try to keep quiet an affair that he allegedly had with her previously. Remember the catch and kill

National Enquirer, all of this stuff from from the past. That's what this one has to do with. He was in court yesterday. After the session, he came out and had some things to say about how this all went down. Let's take a listen. Thank you very much. We had some amazing things happen today. As you know, my son has graduated from high school. And it looks like the judge will not let me go through the graduation of my son who's worked very, very hard.

He's a great student. He's very proud of the fact that he did so well. I was looking forward for years to have graduation with his mother and father there. And it looks like the judge isn't going to allow me to escape this scam. It's a scam trial. In addition, as you know, next Thursday, we're before the United States Supreme Court at a very big hearing on immunity. And this is something that we've been waiting for a long time.

And the judge, of course, is not going to allow us. He's a very conflicted judge. And he's not going to allow us to go to that. He won't allow me to leave here for a half a day, go to D.C. and go before the United States Supreme Court because he thinks he's superior, I guess, in the Supreme Court. So I just want to thank you very much. But that I can't go to my son's graduation or that I can't go to the United States Supreme Court, that I'm not in Georgia or Florida or North Carolina campaigning like I should be. It's perfect for the radical left Democrats. That's exactly what they want.

This is about election interference. That's all it's about. Thank you very much. So as with many Trump statements, not entirely true, but it does contain a grain of truth. Let's put this up on the screen. So he specifically with regards to Barron's graduation, the judge said we'll see was not ruled out. However, he is supposed to be in the courtroom every day, four days a week for the duration of the criminal trial. The judge said if you don't show up, there will be an arrest. This trial, you know, slated to last somewhere around eight weeks. Obviously, campaign season is heating up. Joe Biden is surprisingly actually going out and doing

some rallies and campaigning to try to show a contrast with him. He's going to be in Pennsylvania all week. Out in Pennsylvania and speaking to voters while Trump is, you know, trapped in a courtroom litigating all of these things. You know, we're in the the phase of, this is obviously the very early phases, where you're dealing with jury selection and some sort of pre-trial decisions about what type of evidence is going to be allowed. So for example, they're going to allow in information about the Access Hollywood tape. But my understanding is they're not gonna actually be able to play the tape. So those are the sorts of things that are being decided with regard to the jurors. There are apparently dozens of them, basically half of the first jury pool that were like, I can't be impartial in this case. Like, what are you talking about here? I already have very strong feelings about this man and the things that he's

done, which, you know, who can blame them? The idea of being able to find a jury pool that doesn't have some sort of preconceived notions about Trump, very difficult. But I will say, you know, the jury of our peers has done a good job of trying to put their own biases aside and evaluate the evidence in front of them. But the details here from Axios, they said over two dozen of the jurors who said they can't be impartial in the case were white women, one Hispanic woman, four women of Asian descent, 14 were white men, one man of Asian descent, six other jurors were of unknown gender and racial descent. So anyway, that gives you a sense of some of the machinations that are going on right now. Yeah, I mean, I do think it is absolutely nuts

that he is going to be arrested if he's not allowed in the courtroom. Because that is, I mean, as a campaign blow, that is huge, gigantic. And it's just, this is the most political of all of the trials, in my opinion, just because it's such a dumb criminal charge. It's an extraordinary interpretation of the law. It's still open question of whether he'll stand if there is some sort of a conviction. In terms of the politics and all that, it is the least relevant, I think, to any of the things that people are concerned about Trump. And then it is going to keep him off of the campaign trail. You know, as I was reading, Crystal, they didn't even choose any jury people yesterday. Not one juror was selected. I don't know a lot about juries and how this all this stuff works. But given how the amount of what there's all this bickering over what can be introduced and what can't be introduced, that he has to be present for all of that. I'm not, again,

not an expert on New York criminal law. I had seen that they're often they don't necessarily have to be present for at least all of it or some of it or whatever. It's as you said, it's completely up to the judge. But I do think just politically, I think it looks absolutely terrible to keep him chained into a courtroom for four to five days a week whenever his opponent is out there actively campaigning. I mean, right now, today, he's headed to Pennsylvania. He's literally going to be there all week. He's going to be holding rallies. Trump just got off the campaign trail as well. So it is a huge blow to him. A question, too, is that's the other thing I wanted to comment on about half the jury pool said they couldn't be impartial.

The other half are just lying because how can you possibly be? I wouldn't be able to be impartial. I've met the man before. I'd be like, look, I have my own personal bias. It's different if you're coming up on somebody that you know nothing about and you could probably weigh evidence and all of that. But how can you possibly go into this and say I could be completely impartial when judging this, either pro or against? I don't think it's possible with the former president. I think your best bet would be to find jurors who hate both Biden and Trump. Yeah, that's true. That would be your- That's a good point.

That would be your best bet. I mean, listen, I think people are capable of, to some extent, putting aside their political preferences to look at just the facts of this particular case. But, you know, putting that aside and the challenges of finding an impartial jury, there was another thing that caught a lot of people's attention, given especially all the conversation about Joe Biden, his age and his senility, which I think is all very much quite merited and warranted. Apparently, Trump was having trouble staying awake during some of the proceedings yesterday. Let's take a listen to Maggie Haberman commenting on that. Maggie, I have to ask, you guys have been, at the Times, have been live blogging

this event. And 40 minutes ago, you wrote an observation that I was very surprised. Trump appears to be sleeping, his head keeps dropping down and his mouth goes slack. Tell us about that. Well, Jake, he appeared to be asleep. And, you know, repeatedly his his head would would fall down. There have been other moments in other trials like the Agent Carroll trial, which was around the corner in January, where he appeared very still and seemed as if he might be sleeping, but then he would move. This time, he didn't pay attention to a note that his lawyer, Todd Blanche, passed him. His jaw kept falling on his chest and his mouth kept going slack. Now, you know, sometimes people do fall asleep during court proceedings, but it's notable given the

intensity of this morning and a lot of what was being argued. Yeah, that's rather surprising. I mean, fell asleep. Of course, you can imagine what they would make of this if it was if it was Biden. I will say, listen, I was I don't even blame him. I probably fall asleep, too. I'd be bored. Maybe, but I don't know. I feel like if I was in a criminal trial, I'd feel pretty amped up about that. You know, I'd probably be wanting to pay pretty close attention to what was going on, even though I was notorious in like back in school days, I couldn't stay awake, especially if they like put up a projector when I was over. I can relate to it. You're done.

In one sense. On the other hand, like it was pretty extraordinary. First day of your criminal trial and you're there like dozing off, can't keep it together. So we'll probably see more of that. Apparently at other times he was very animated in terms of his facial expressions as Trump certainly can be. Maggie Haberman and some of her other colleagues at the New York Times, she of course very well sourced, had a report on the way that he hopes to spin this trial. Let's put this up on the screen. So the headline here in the 2024 race, Trump's trial is about to take center stage. The race for president will shift much of its focus to a Manhattan courtroom. This looks like no other presidential campaign in the history of the country.

One Republican pollster said that is undeniably true. And basically, he is telling his advisors that he wants as much media coverage as he can possibly get centered around his court appearances. You know, you see him speaking to the cameras afterwards. I'm sure we're going to get much more of that. He wants his supporters defending him on TV. He wants all of his the like, you know, pro-Trump media ecosystem. Many of them have actually gone to Manhattan to be part of this whole scene.

He is really counting on all of that and hoping that independents have a similar reaction to his legal trouble as his own base has. I mean, it's undeniable that his legal problems, at the very least, didn't hurt him with a Republican base. I think pretty clearly helped him with a Republican base, as we predicted, Sagar, that would help him sort of coalesce support, get everyone lockstep around him. Any idea of, hey, maybe I'm flirting with Ron DeSantis, maybe I'm flirting with Nikki Haley or whoever else, that was sort of quashed. And it was, all right, we got to be with our guy. I think it's much less likely that the rest of the electorate is going to have the same response.

And even with regard to this case, I completely understand. And we've talked about this before, that it is the least serious of the charges. A lot of polling suggests that Americans find this to be the least consequential of the charges. But it's not like it's not without its own tawdry details. And the danger for Trump is that some of this stuff has faded from memory. And you made a comment, Sagar, about how this isn't part of the core of like what people don't like about Trump. I'm not sure I agree with that because part of the negative Trump factor is like the chaos, the insanity, right? This sort of, I mean, this is the details here are gross. He had an affair with a porn star and then he tried to

hide it, not only from his wife, but from the entire country. Used these payments and manipulated, lied about what the payments were for to get the story killed before election day. It's not like that's a nothing story. In the context of all the other stuff that he did, it's a nothing story. But in the grand scheme of political scandals, it is actually pretty significant. And at the time, when voters were first learning about it, they actually found it to be quite significant. So the danger for him is that people are reminded like, oh, yeah, this actually was really gross. And this actually is one of the reasons why I don't really like this man. And I don't think he should be in the Oval Office again.

Look, it's possible. The only reason I say it is I think it's just so baked in with Trump. It's like when people were going after him, like, he didn't pay his taxes. I'm like, you're telling me a man who filed for bankruptcy and was notorious for stiffing his contractors didn't pay his taxes? Wow, I'm shocked. You're telling me the person who has created a tabloid sex star image of himself had an affair with a porn star? Who would have guessed it? It's not like he flaunted it all over television and wrote it to fame.

At a certain point, I just think it's baked into his image. I don't think people particularly care. Again, I could be wrong at this point, though. I mean, look, we do have some electoral evidence. Let's not just think about polls. Let's think about the elections. At the height of the Stormy Daniels mania, 2018, 2019, that's when Republican Party identification was sky high right before COVID. When, though, did Trump really suffer? 2018, really around the issue of healthcare. In 2020, he suffers because of COVID. And in 2022, he suffers from Stop the Steal and general chaos. So I think abortion, Stop the Steal, and 2018, we're talking health care and the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. In general, those four have an electoral track record of being pretty successful in terms of mounting an attack on Trump. This one, I don't see electoral evidence that it particularly matters.

I think that's fair. Let's put this up on the screen from the Washington Post just to give you a sense of what I was just referring to. Like when this first was breaking, you can see kind of like a little bit below halfway down this list, December 2018, hush money. They asked, okay, what do you think about this? Do you think what he did is illegal? Do you think it's not illegal, but unethical? Or do you think that there's nothing wrong with it. And actually, of all of these various Trump scandals from Russiagate to the tax issue that you just referred to, to the Ukraine perfect phone call, to the 2020 election efforts and the Mar-a-Lago docks, this was the one where the smallest percentage of people actually said there was nothing wrong here. Because in a certain sense, the facts of it

are very difficult to actually outright defend. Like with Russiagate, there was clearly a defense there. Even with the election efforts, he has spun some sort of a defense to make it kind of ambiguous. No, I'm just exercising my free speech. With the documents, he's made these claims about presidential immunity, et cetera, et cetera. So you actually have a little bit more ground to stand on. Whereas with this, people may not find it as serious as those allegations, but it's kind of hard to just defend on the merits, like paying off this gross publication and paying off this porn star to hide this affair that had happened. So that's why I'm not totally convinced. I also just think there is something to the normie reaction

of seeing someone in a courtroom on trial. We heard it from our own focus group respondents in the Republican focus group when they were asked, okay, if he is actually indicted of anything, if he's actually found guilty of any of these things that he's been indicted for, are you still with him? And they were like, I just can't. I just can't. So I don't think that this situation is without risk for him. And I certainly don't buy his analysis that he can actually turn this to his benefit. I don't, I just don't see, no, listen, I've been wrong about many things in the past and he is an extraordinary political actor and gets away with things and pulls things off and turns things to his advantage that no other politician

really could. But I think having to spend eight weeks in a Manhattan courtroom talking about coverups and porn stars and extramarital affairs and what's being, you know, billed as election interference from back in 2016, it's not a good set of facts for him. No, I don't think it's good. And I think it will, it could be, this is the thing with Trump. There could be several compounding courtrooms, all of this that stacks up and it creates an image of somebody who is, you know, against the law, the normie reaction of seeing him convicted. Very, very possible. Also, just not forget this.

It's death by a thousand cuts to a certain extent. We've got all the money that he's going to spend on his legal bills. He's got all of his attention. Now he's off of the campaign trail. You know, you can never really argue the counterfactual of what it would look like if he wasn't burdened by all of these things. And it's just the first of several. I'm not saying it won't hurt him at all. I'm saying this particular one in the bigger one, I don't think it will be as consequential nearly as, let's say, the January 6th trial.

But here's the thing. Who knows if those are ever actually coming to trial? That's the best part. Well, the other thing that I would say politically is, you know, the Biden people, which you can tell from the fact that he's not laying out an affirmative agenda for anything. They really want this to be a referendum on Trump and Trump chaos, on Trump extremism, on abortion, on what Trump, what America would look like under a second Trump term. And so the more that Trump is the center of news and in a very unflattering light and reminding people of some of the things they really didn't like about him last time around,

where, you know, since he's been kicked off of Twitter, he's been a little bit in the background. Some of those memories have faded. Some of his term is being viewed through a bit of rose-colored glasses. It definitely benefits the Biden camp to have this be the center of news and it be about, you know, Donald Trump and his various travails. So I think for them, they have to feel like, you know, this pushes the campaign in the direction that they ultimately want it to go. How much of an impact it will have when weighed against, you know, the very serious issues Joe Biden has as well in terms of the polls, I think is another question altogether. 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. questions no one else is asking. 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. 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.

Ad-free at Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. I'm Michael Kassin, founder and CEO of 3C Ventures and your guide on good company. The podcast where I sit down with the boldest innovators shaping what's next. In this episode, I'm joined by Anjali Sood, CEO of Tubi, for a conversation that's anything but ordinary. We dive into the competitive world of streaming, how she's turning so-called niche into mainstream gold, connecting audiences with stories that truly make them feel seen. What others dismiss as niche, we embrace as core. It's this idea that there are so many stories out

there, and if you can find a way to curate and help the right person discover the right content, the term that we always hear from our audience is that they feel seen. Get a front row seat to where media, marketing, technology, entertainment, and sports collide and hear how leaders like Anjali are carving out space and shaking things up a bit in the most crowded of markets. Listen to Good Company on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. All right, let's go ahead and take a look at how Trump is performing financially at this point.

We had another, put this up on the screen, huge collapse in terms of truth social. Trump Media is the official name of the company, closed down more than 18%. This has been attributed to the company apparently filed an official document. They want to issue millions of additional shares of stock. This appears to have spooked investors who worry that flooding the zone with a bunch of new stock issuances, then that is going to cause a further collapse in the price. So this has been a real problem for him. The share price has fallen more than 62 percent. It originally opened at $70.90. Now it's down to around $27. So since Trump has such a significant chunk of this company, of course, when the stock takes a beating, it is a huge problem for him and his net worth. It also makes it less likely that

this is going to be a real bailout for him in terms of being able to pay the cash that he needs to pay for that civil fraud suit that he's dealing with in Manhattan. Let's put this up on the screen. We also had a report from the Washington Post about some of the people who have really, you know, these are ordinary people who have invested much of their savings into truth social stock, which guys, please don't do that. I don't care how you feel about Donald Trump. Please don't do that. So the headline here is small time investors in Trump's true social reckon with stock collapse. Some Trump supporters who invested in a social media company have seen their share of values plunge and see it as a test of faith. So they talked to one gentleman who you can see on the screen if you're watching, Jerry Dean McLean. He has bought hundreds of shares for $25,000. He describes that as pretty much his whole nest egg.

That nest egg is now lost more than half its value, of course, at this point. He owns a tree removal service outside Oklahoma City. He says he's not worried. If anything, he says he wants to buy more, quote, I know good and well it's in Trump's hands and he's got plans. I have no doubt it's going to explode some time. And it's, you know, individuals like Mr. McClain who have boosted the stock price way beyond anything that would be, you know, rationally justified by the market. This is a company that lost tens of millions of dollars last year. And the revenue side was paltry. It was a few million dollars

that they even brought in in revenue and that was dwarfed by the losses. So, you know, it's really sad to me the way that so many of Trump's supporters have been financially hurt by their support for him and his various causes and other, you know, grifting enterprises that have popped up around the

whole Trump universe. Absolutely. And if you see what he said, he's like, well, I want to buy more because Trump has got big plans. I'm like, look, we don't give financial advice. I would just say in general, you shouldn't be putting your money in single stocks and probably not single stocks that are going to go wildly fluctuate in value, especially whenever it's your entire nest egg.

He says that Trump's true social stake has now currently shrank by 3 billion after the stock has tanked. Shares are down by 60% from the peak of trading over the last three weeks. $5.5 million in sale, $40 million in losses and operations. There are no path to profitability that is currently on the horizon, at least been released by the company. So you can make your own decisions. I don't know. It's a free country, I guess, if people want to do it. But I do because it is his bailout from a lot of the financial problems that he has right now. From what I was reading, Crystal, the company can still do stock buybacks, stock splitting. There's various different

financial techniques to get Trump to the lockup period out of that where he can prop up the share price to a certain point where he is allowed to sell. And then he can cash out at least a certain percentage of this in order to boost his overall net worth and to make himself a lot more liquid into weather the storm. And if he does do that, I mean, just imagine the optics of propping up a stock based upon your own, I mean, they even call it DJT in terms of its stock ticker. And then you think about what that means about the ordinary investors that have put their money in this and that he was basically financially taking advantage of them based upon their network. Ordinary investors bailing on a billionaire. That's what's basically happening. And let's just talk about this as like a business enterprise.

Let's just think about where it is at this point. So there was at least somewhat of a logic to it when it launched because Trump was kicked off of Twitter. Twitter was like liberal coded under Jack Dorsey in the sense was like, oh, conservatives are being censored here. So there was at least somewhat of a business case of like, okay, Trump is going to go over to this other, quote unquote, free speech platform and many conservatives may follow him there. Well, now you have Twitter owned by Elon Musk. It's now like coded right wing and conservative and there's no longer the same like anti-liberal grievance around the what's going on at Twitter. And so that has really sort of collapsed the whole business case for True

Social. And we don't have a lot of insight into their metrics, but what insight we have suggests that their user base is paltry. Plus, it's just really boring to be on a platform where everyone is just like, you know, has the exact same ideological worldview and supports Donald Trump. That's what part of what makes Twitter and other platforms that are successful so interesting is that you have this whole cocktail of a variety of wildly divergent views. And that back and forth is what makes it so addictive and why people, even when they want to quit, can't quit. So, you know, and not to mention that the big revenue driver for all of these platforms and part of why you get all the content moderation policies that you do very consistent across these platforms is advertisers.

Well, what advertisers really want to jump over to Truth Social? Very few, right? Very few who are ready to just be locked into this sort of right-wing conservative lane because they want to appeal to a much broader set of individuals. And plus, they don't have much of a user base on true social to start with. So the business case is not great. The only thing it's really had going for it is the fact that Trump has so many diehard supporters who see buying this stock as being faithful and loyal to Trump and have some sort of, you know, faith in him as this gentleman does that he's going to figure it out and he's going to make it a success one way or another. And so that's effectively all that this stock really has had going for it. So at the same time,

didn't want to lose sight of some significant developments, both in the West Bank and in Gaza. We can put this up on the screen. What you are looking at here is a violent pogrom against Palestinians in the West Bank as Israeli soldiers stand by and watch this latest violence, which you saw a car set on fire. You're seeing, you know, fires set on buildings, cars, all sorts of civilian infrastructure here in the West Bank, farms attacked attacked in the occupied West Bank as well. The source of this violence initially was a 14-year-old Israeli boy who was found dead. Settlers blamed that death on Palestinians, but they have not allowed anyone in to evaluate

what actually happened there. And so this sparked these violent attacks. You can see here, this is a home that was set on fire. Two Palestinians, according to Al Jazeera and other reporters on the ground, were killed in that rampage and many more who were injured as a result of the violence. We do have a State Department statement from Matthew Miller. Let's put this up on the screen. So they say, we condemn the killings of 14-year-old Israeli Benjamin Ikemoyer and two Palestinians, a 25-year-old Jihad Abu Aliya and 17-year-old Omar Ahmad Abdul Ghani Hamed in the West Bank in recent days. This violence must stop and civilians must be protected. So very

sort of both sides condemnation here from the State Department and very anesthetic language. Can put this next piece up on the screen, just a little bit of background on how consistently we've seen these violent attacks from settlers on Palestinians in the West Bank. This is from 972 Magazine from a while ago, back when Biden initially levied these sanctions against four settlers. And then some of those sanctions were rolled back. But in any case, they say meet the settlers targeted by Biden sanctions and their victims. Palestinians and Israelis who have experienced the settlers attacks firsthand see the move as positive, but wholly insufficient step toward accountability. And one of the things to really understand here is, number one, that this settler violence and, you know, widespread attacks on Palestinians, the West Bank, this has been on the rise for years,

that they were very much emboldened by the Netanyahu government and especially some of the coalition partners who, you know, are settlers themselves and are very encouraging and directly inciting of this violence. But if we're being honest, I mean, it has been official government policy to basically back this encroachment onto Palestinian land and violence against Palestinians for years, which is why many of these attacks, when we showed you the video where you've got Israeli soldiers just standing by while a car is being set on fire, the reason why, one of the reasons why the response on October 7th was so poor is because IDF soldiers had been restationed to be in and near the West Bank rather than near the Gaza Strip, leaving that part of Israel

completely unprotected because they wanted to be there to back up these violent settlers. So, you know, the other piece of this is there's a lot of desire to pretend like history started on October 7th. But the reality is in the months leading up to October 7th, you had an escalation in violence. You already had one of the most violent years on record when it comes to Palestinians. And since October 7th, you have had an even larger escalation in terms of the number of attacks. So armed settlers and the Israeli army have killed 460 Palestinians in the occupied West Bank since

October 7th and uprooted hundreds of people from their land. So this, the latest pogrom, which the other thing to say about the saga is even in the worst instances. So there was a horrific pogrom in Hawara. You'll recall one of the Netanyahu coalition partners said it should be wiped off the map. You had huge attacks and many injuries and killed as well. Zero accountability. No one was even, no one was indicted. No one was found guilty. Nothing happened. So they operate with impunity because they know they can not only get away with it,

but that they're actually backed by the Israeli government. Yeah, there's been hundreds of attacks, hundreds of killed, actually, that have been killed since October 7th. It's been the biggest spike in settler violence actually, basically in modern times. And part of the issue with all of this is that this is separate from what's happening in Gaza, but it underscores the settler activity and its endorsement by the government, the lawlessness. And it also is a blind spot for US policy because for years, and even now, there are currently sanctions that are on people who have been instigating part of this settler violence at the same time that it

is in opposition to official U.S. policy. And it is something that is just demonstrating, you know, very clearly whether the Israeli government is advocating for this settlement, bolstering, providing weapons, and then allowing this to occur. Even the Israeli center-left is actually condemning a lot of the settler violence and settler riots because they, I mean, this has been a longtime contentious issue about what exactly is our end state and purpose. And a huge part of this, backing these people, is a big part of Netanyahu's coalition and part of the reason he can't do anything about it. Yeah, I mean, Smotrich said of Hawara, we need to wipe it off the map. Yeah, there you go. It needs to be wiped out.

There was one civilian who was killed there and 100 other Palestinians who were injured, four critically, and as I said, zero accountability. You have the Biden administration coming out, oh, we're going to sanction four settlers, which is, you know, pathetic in the context of, number one, how widespread this, you know, this violence is these one-off bad apples. When you've got IDF soldiers standing by, you have a system of impunity and zero accountability for this violence, for the theft, for the assaults, for the fires that are set, and no criminal punishment for that whatsoever. So it's clearly a government policy, and there's zero acknowledgement of that from the Biden administration. But to your point, it is really of a piece with what is happening in Gaza. And the other part of this, let's put this up on the screen, to the point of the official government policy. We covered this previously. Remember,

Israel just announced the largest West Bank land grab since Oslo. And it happened while our own Secretary of State, Tony Blinken, was there in the region. So, you know, the policy of pushing Palestinians off of their land, it's been sort of a slow motion ethnic cleansing for years and years and years. And basically, October 7th gave this Israeli government an excuse to accelerate it. So that's why these things are connected. Remember, the West Bank, I mean, they had nothing to do with October 7th. And yet you've seen huge escalation in violence, hundreds of Palestinians who have been killed and, you know, in these attacks from settlers and also in attacks directly from the IDF. So we didn't want to lose sight of that. Another major development here is apparently there were some rumors in Gaza that Palestinians could return to the north. Remember,

Gaza City, of course, was previously the densest city in the entire Gaza Strip. So you had over a million people were displaced from northern Gaza. Many of them are now in Rafah after being, you know, also chased out of Khan Yunus. And so there were rumors that, oh, we may be able to get back north, especially with the IDF withdrawing some of their forces. Let's take a listen to a news report from Al Jazeera's Hind al-Qadri about Palestinians trying to return to the north. A couple of meters away from Wadi Ghazza, the area that separates the north of Gaza with the south of Gaza. Earlier today in the morning, a couple of families had the opportunity to go back to the

north. It was very surprising. People started coming from all parts of the southern areas to this area where they're saying that they want to go back to the north. As you see, people are holding their bags, are holding all of what they own and have, and they are walking to that checkpoint hoping they could cross back to the north. But on the other hand, people know that in the north, there is starvation, there's famine, they won't find food. They know that the situation in the northern Gaza Strip is very dire and it's unlivable, but they still want to go back to their houses. They want to check up on their beloved ones. Most of these families have their beloved ones

still trapped under the rubble. They want to go and see their families, see their houses if they're still standing or not. We have been talking to more than one family and they said that they do not have anything to lose. And all they want right now is to go back to their houses. We don't want to stay in Rafah. We want to go back to our home. There is nothing to do in Rafah. We're looking for peace. Enough. Enough of this situation.

Look, people are running to go back. We will only get sick here if we stay. The ability for Palestinians to return to northern Gaza has also been a key demand of Hamas in the ongoing ceasefire negotiations. And, of course, people very fearful that they may never be able to – allowed to return home. And, of course, we know there isn't a lot to return to at this point in northern Gaza given the level of destruction. But people are still desperate to try to make it back north and see what remains of their life and of their possessions. Unfortunately, however, as these individuals were seeking to return to their homes, we can put this up on the screen, they were fired upon by Israeli forces. You can see this video. This is from Middle East Monitor and people are fleeing. You can see people, you know,

ducking and covering. You can hear some of the audio, the gunfire and people running here along the beach. We can go ahead and go to the next element, guys. We've got a New York Times report indicating that, you know, according to an emergency worker and two people who were attempting to make the journey, Israeli troops shot into this crowd. 23 were wounded by Israeli gunfire and five people were killed. So as these individuals were trying to return home, fired on by the IDF and a number of them killed and dozens of them injured, you they say in this report nearly two million Gazans have been displaced by the war between Hamas and Israel. Now in its sixth month, one of their biggest concerns is when and if they'll be allowed to return to their homes or whether they will be permanently displaced as previous generations

were. The IDF has since announced on social media that they are officially not allowing the return of residents, quote, for your safety. Do not approach the forces operating there. Yeah, this is really, really stunning because what we learn throughout all of this is that a lot of the things that they have said and that they have promised really just not materialized in terms of aid, in terms of what future governance in there all looks like, the chaos vacuum inside of it. And actually, before the Iranian attack, this was getting quite a bit of attention,

both inside Israel and throughout the international community. I even saw that Israeli journalist, Barak Rabi, talking about the West Bank pogroms and about how devastating that was for the international situation. The Iranian question has kind of moved on past this, but part of the reason we're spending time here, obviously, is because it's very significant to what the overall picture is going to look like, both in terms of whatever future that there is in Gaza and also how the Israeli government is going to manage both of the Palestinian territories. Yeah, and this is, you know, another thing that the U.S. has claimed to care about, people being able to return to their homes.

According to the IDF, operations have ended in northern Gaza. Yeah, what's happening? What's the holdup? What's next? And don't you want people to look? You said you're going to invade Rafah, so don't you want people to get out of Rafah? Which one is it?

Exactly right. We will learn the answers to some of those questions very soon. 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. It's a cold case.

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connecting audiences with stories that truly make them feel seen. What others dismiss as niche, we embrace as core. It's this idea that there's so many stories out there. And if you can find a way to curate and help the right person discover the right content, the term that we always hear from our audience is that they feel seen. Get a front row seat to where media, marketing, technology, entertainment, and sports collide, and hear how leaders like Anjali are carving out space and shaking things up a bit in the most crowded of markets. Listen to Good Company on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I brought everybody yesterday some quotes from Trump's attack on RFK Jr., but we were able to track down the video and we just had to play some of it for you as there's now a spat that's been opened.

RFK Jr. responding. First, let's take a listen to what Trump had to say. 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. Unfortunately, he is about the green news scam because he believes in that. And a lot of people don't. They want to see our country become rich and wealthy and strong and powerful and lots of other things and not waste money doing something that nobody wants and everybody knows doesn't work. 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 actually better than Biden.

He's much better than Biden. If I were a Democrat, I'd vote for RFK Jr. every single time over Biden, because he's frankly more in line with Democrats. RFK Jr.'s running mate, Nicole Shanahan, is also a very liberal person, but that's okay. She's got plenty of money from her ex-husband. Kennedy is a radical left Democrat and always will be, but he's a better man than Joe Biden, that I can tell you. So, yeah, there was a lot going on there. Nicole Chanahan got a lot of money from her ex-husband. He's been trying to sow dissension. Ryan and I were talking about this yesterday in terms of Trump endorsing the genocide, Joe Chan. He's like, they're not wrong. They're not wrong.

Everything for him is about calibration, trying to exploit some of this chaos inside the Democratic coalition. Go ahead. I don't really think this approach is that intelligent, though, because because transparent, not because it's transparent. But if he actually wanted Democrats to vote for RFK Jr., he wouldn't say anything nice about him. Like the fact that Trump says something nice about you is not a point in your favor if you are at all on like, you know, left of center or somewhere in the potential Biden voter universe. So if Trump was, I think his smartest move would be to just aggressively attack him as, you know, liberal and loves Nancy Pelosi and voted for Hillary Clinton, whatever, that would probably be the smarter move. Because, you know, so much of our politics is just vibes. It's like,

which team are you on? And Trump is the central figure. And it's all about just how do you feel about Donald Trump and how does Donald Trump feel about you? So if you're an enemy of Trump, regardless of where you may have positioned yourself and things that you might have said that Republicans may have at some point agreed with, you're on the wrong side of Donald Trump. That's all that matters. And conversely, for the quote unquote anti-Trump coalition, you know, it's exactly the opposite. If Trump hates you, then we like you. So I'm not sure that it's his smartest play, frankly. Absolutely. No, I don't disagree necessarily. I just, look, I don't know if any of this is going to have an impact. It's more just, it's interesting and it's funny to just see how he

is trying to calibrate with respect to RFK, whether it's serious or not. Maybe it's just, you know, unfiltered what he actually thinks. But here's what Kennedy had to say and actually a pretty explosive claim. Let's go and put this up there on the screen. He says, President Trump calls me an ultra left radical. I'm so liberal that his emissaries asked me to be his VP. I respectfully declined the offer. I'm so liberal that his emissaries asked me to be his VP. I respectfully declined the offer.

I am against President Trump and President Biden can't win. Judging by his new website, it looks like President Trump knows who can actually beat him. So that is kind of interesting. His new website. Yeah, I was like, I'm looking into this. Let's see Donald Trump. Let's go to actually the Donald Trump campaign and see exactly what he's talking about. In terms of what I have, though, in front of me, it's just a donation button.

I don't see anything about. I'll never stop fighting for you. And if you're able to click out of that, it just says they're not after me. They're after you. I'm just the one who's standing in the way. So I'm not exactly sure what he's referring to. Maybe he's talking about the video. Well, to oblique reference there, RFK Jr. Regardless, he says here that he turned down the VP, at least from his emissary.

That, I don't know. I mean, the Trump campaign hasn't responded. They haven't denied that it happened. So if it weren't true, you would assume that they would come out and say it. I predicted at the time that they were at least going to try just because I knew how much Trump would relish having the Kennedy name. And of course, it would have a lot of it would garner a lot of media attention and possibly could unite two of these kind of more disparate groups of voters and bring them together. But the issue was always Trump has got other institutional people he's got to worry

about. That's why we were talking previously. Who was it that they said would Trump would pick as his VP? And we were like, there's there's no way. Oh, Tulsi Gabbard. That's what it was. I was like, there's no way he's going to pick her because he's got like actual party people and donors and all these folks to please. He's got to pick somebody who's already an elected GOP person. Anybody more outside of the box is too risky. And it's just, it would endanger some of the machinery. What I've been reading right now is Trump needs tons of money. He does not want to input any of his own personal money. A lot of it's already going to legal bills and all these other issues. He's relying on big, big dollar donors. And one of the things he's looking for in a VP right now is somebody who can raise tons of money

from bundlers and others. That's not somebody, that's not a reason to pick RFK Jr., Tulsi Gabbard, and any of those other folks. The other thing I saw with this VP pick is that he is souring on any of the, like, governors from states that have extreme abortion policies. Yeah, well, he should. So, like, Kristi Noem, you know, getting the Republican VP nod understandably because then, you know, that becomes a center of focus of conversation. Trump understands how bad that issue is for him. So they've kind of slid down the list. With regard to this Kennedy tweet, OK, I'm probably parsing this too much, but there were a couple of things that I found noteworthy. First of all, with regard to how he phrases the VP offer, saying that his emissaries asked me. I find that credible.

That's a little bit different than like, all right, the man himself was like, I've made my decision and it's you. Will you join me? That's more of like a trial balloon. I can imagine Trump falling in love with the idea of having a Kennedy on it. You know, Trump Kennedy, like, you know, he's that he's got that old man sensibility and like love of the Kennedys as this political royalty and whatever. So I can definitely imagine him toying with the idea of having RFK Jr. on the ticket and what that would mean for him and how that would raise his esteem. And so much of Trump's modus operandi

comes out of his own personal grievance about not being treated in the dignified way and fitting in with the fancy people and whatever. And so if he's got a Kennedy on the ticket, how can you deny how legit he is and his claim to political prowess? So I can definitely imagine them floating the idea, testing the waters with RFK to see if he was receptive. So that's number one.

The other thing I noticed about this tweet is he says, I am against President Trump and President Biden can't win. So it's not I'm against Biden. It's he can't win, which was interesting. That's almost like the Dean Phillips. Yes. Yeah, absolutely. Right. Of like, well, actually, I love I love Joe Biden is great, but I just don't think he can win or like, you know, and that's the way like Cenk Uygur talked about it a lot. Not he didn't do that. I love President Biden, but he was like, we have to win. President Biden can't win. So I'm the guy. So I did find that

notable that that's the way that he chose to phrase that tweet when he certainly hasn't held his fire in terms of being directly critical of Biden. But it made me feel like because he softened that language, perhaps he does see his best lane in terms of accumulating the most votes as being a little bit friendly towards the Biden people and like trying to pick up more of the disaffected Biden voters. But I also could be reading way too much. No, no, no. I think there is something to it. He says, you know, President Biden can't win. That's kind of like whenever he was running in the Democratic primary. Let's go and put this up there on the screen.

This is important for ballot access news from RFK Jr. He is ruling out a libertarian run. Kennedy says currently facing obstacles to get on the ballot in all 50 states, getting on the libertarian ballot would have been an easy way to circuit this. But he says we are not going to have problems getting on the ballot ourselves, so we are not going to be running as libertarian. This is something he confirmed to ABC News on Saturday when he was asked specifically about this. So currently, we know that he has qualified right now for the ballot in Utah officially. There are other states

where he has enough signatures, but they're currently being contested. but this was a move of confidence on the campaign part where they are saying definitively, we are going to be on the ballot in all 50 states. Now, I remain skeptical of that, and it's not a denigration of his campaign. It's just that I know how rigged the process is and how difficult it will be to get on all 50. But clearly, maybe with Nicole Shanahan's money, they believe that they do actually have a very good shot at being on the ballot in the vast majority of states. That's the only reason that you would deny the Libertarian Party. Or the Libertarians didn't want him. There was some consternation.

I'm not saying he wouldn't have won. Actually, I think he might have won. I'm not sure. I don't know either. But I'm just saying that's the other alternative explanation is it became clear that at least it wouldn't be a clear cut path to a Libertarian nomination. They weren't going to just anoint him. So it ends up being sort of too messy and distracting from the rest of his campaign goals. I think that's entirely possible as well. Listen, I continue to be skeptical about how many ballots he's going to be able to get on because even in the places where he appears to have met the criteria, there remain question marks.

I mean, Nevada, he appears to have met the criteria, yet there's some question about, did he have a VP on his ticket at that point? So does that one count? He just announced that they qualified for Iowa ballot access. They had to hold some kind of a convention in the state. So they're saying, okay, well, we did that. We checked that box, but it's still got to be certified by Iowa's Secretary of State. Are they going to find some kind of a little loophole of, oh, well, you didn't check X, Y, and Z on the form 2017. And by the way, we just changed the rules anyway. So sorry, it doesn't count. There's so many tricks that they use, and lawfare that they use also, to try to block candidates from the ballot.

It's not a slam dunk thing. It's not a slam dunk thing to get on in even a majority of states, let alone all 50 states. So they certainly have their work cut out for them. And I think this is one of the most important, in terms of the horse race, I think this is one of the most important, in terms of the horse race, I think this is one of the most important things to watch because we know that there's oftentimes double digit support for Bobby Kennedy. So does he make it on the ballot? Who is he pulling more from? Who are the more disaffected voters who are migrating to him? I think these things could all be actually determinative in terms of who the next president is. And by the way, I continue to be a little agnostic about what the answer is as to which side he pulls more from, because he still does

have a much higher favorability with Republicans. And so I'm just looking at that and I can't help but think that must mean something because it's not even close. Like a majority of Republicans like him and an overwhelmed like 75% of Democrats hate him. So that has to mean something at the end of the day is my guess. But the polling so far has been a little bit mixed as to what the impact is. Absolutely. No, very true. All right, let's move on to the next part. We wanted to continue to stay on top of this story. Just a quick update here with some pretty extraordinary news. Let's put it up there on the screen. There is now a federal FBI investigation into the Key Bridge crash from Baltimore. So what they are looking at is whether the crew left the port knowing that their vessel had

serious system problems. This is after an initial review of the case. Quote, authorities are reviewing the events leading up to the moment when the Singaporean flagship lost power, leaving the port of Baltimore, slamming into one of the bridge's support pillars, collapsing the entire bridge. Just after dawn on Monday, actually, dozens of FBI officials dressed in all black all began storming the the ship where the crew has actually remained since the crash. Quote, pulling up to the ship's bow in numerous boats, climbing aboard using a ladder, the FBI now confirming that the agents are on board and authorities are conducting a quote, court approved search. The criminal investigation, which is important here,

is being handled by currently a US attorney office in Maryland. Same day that, quote, multiple private law firms have separately announced they have been retained to represent the mayor's office and some of the men who were working construction on the bridge when it collapsed. The signal, an effort to seek accountability and determine what caused the crash that left six of the eight men who were on the bridge that were dead. Now, what's important also is that this came immediately after a report surfaced around the condition of the ship immediately after it left. Let's put it up there, please, on the screen. It says that the bridge collapse,

the ship apparently had electrical issues while it was still docked. Hours before leaving the port, the container ship experienced electrical problems, according to those who are officials who were involved in the process. That came out the same time that the FBI actually boarded the ship. Now, what they say is that when the Dolly, the ship, departed Baltimore early in the morning with all of its cargo and slammed into the bridge, it almost immediately experienced a similar electrical issue. So the criminal investigation that will take place here is, did they know that the ship was experiencing electrical problems? Were they aware that, or did they cover up either that it happened? Did they put some sort of shoddy fix that ended up shorting the entire ship that eventually led to the collapse and to the crash. So there's going to be a lot of investigation,

not just into the crew, but possibly the higher-ups that were involved in telling them, hey, you need to get out of there. We got to fix this as soon as possible. That's what I would really like to hear. Because that was the big question I had too, is, okay, if that all happened and they're hearing these alarms on the refrigerator unit saying, okay, you've got this intermittent power supply, there's something wrong here, what sort of pressure may the crew have been under to proceed even under those very risky circumstances? Because obviously, I mean, the people that it posed a great risk to as well was themselves being aboard a ship that may not have been seaworthy. And that apparently is

the legal standard that they have to meet. So according to the law, you, the Dali was, you have to indicate whether or not it was reasonably fit for the intended voyage. You may not send a vessel to sea in a known unseaworthy condition. So that'll be the question. I'm sure that'll be debated likely in court over whether or not it was in a known unseaworthy condition. And then potential accountability flows from there. Something else that our friends over at Lever News have been reporting on is the fact that the owner of this ship has been in court trying to limit their liability using this 1851 maritime law. It allows them to seek to limit that liability to the value of the vessel's remains after a casualty. So that would mean that their liability

would be limited to something like $43.6 million, which, I mean, considering the damage that was caused and the lives that were lost, this is really peanuts. And that's one of the things that the victims' lawyers, the lawyers for the families and the one individual who actually survived amazingly, incredibly, the fall off this bridge, that they're really taking issue with, that one of the lawyers said, imagine telling that to grieving families, that while they're planning a funeral, the owner of the boat is in court trying to stop the city, state, and victims from being able to file claims. There was also a detail in this, because I've been wondering,

how did that one man survive? Oh, yeah. Unbelievable. Apparently, he escaped drowning, but he was inside of his work truck, and he was able to roll down his vehicle's window and fight through the frigid water. I mean, it was cold that day. I don't know if the water is even colder. Despite being unable to swim, and then he was able to cling to debris until he was rescued. So survived this huge fall inside of his work truck, is able to swim out through the window in spite of the fact that he can't swim and survive these, you know, ice cold waters. It's really unbelievable miracle that he was able to

survive. Yeah, it's an amazing story. And it's one of those where, again, remember this is one of the worst industrial accidents here in a long time in the United States. And a criminal investigation, really what it will reveal is what I had seen previously. I remember during the whole Captain Phillips thing, we were reading about why exactly that this kept happening. And part of the reason is because the shipping companies didn't want to spend money on the extra fuel that would have cost to go outside of pirate areas. So they're like,

it's cheaper to just pay the ransom and to risk it. And you're like, wait, what? And apparently that's the thing. You know, you, if you're a part of like, I think if you're a ship captain, you're held within a set amount of fuel that you're allowed to use, you need to call up and you need to get permission from authorities to burn extra fuel because it just costs a ton of money. A certain point, business-wise, I do get it. I can understand to a certain extent. But sometimes these types of pressures, to save money or to make deadline and all that, it's going to run up against safety and it's going to lead to a catastrophic incident like this. We see this all the time, like in the mining industry, for example. Mine operators, especially the shadier ones, just skimping on safety, cutting corners every step of the way.

And, you know, games that the regulators play to give them a heads up when they're coming to inspect the mine. And we've had a number of deadly mine accidents because this unscrupulous owner wanted to save money at the risk of their workers' lives. And so we'll see what the details are here, what was going on with the crew, what they knew, and what sort of pressure they may have been under from the higher-ups. But we'll certainly continue to pay attention to this story because it is so significant in terms of the collapse of this infrastructure and what it means for the entire sort of Eastern Seaboard going forward. Absolutely. 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. 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-illion-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. Ad-free at Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. 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. 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. With guests like Corinne Steffens.

I've never seen so many women protect predatory men. And then me too happened. And then everybody else wanted to get pissed off because the white said it was okay. Problem. My oldest daughter, her first day in ninth grade, and I called to ask how I was doing. She was like, oh, Dad, all they was doing

was talking about your thing in class. I ruined my baby's first day of high school. And Slumflower. What turns me on is when a man sends me money. Like, I feel the moisture between my legs when a man sends me money. I'm like, oh my God, it's go time. You actually sent it? 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. All right, guys. At the same time, we have an incredible Ryan Grimm and Jeremy Scahill scoop. We can put this up on the screen. They were able to get their hands on a leaked memo from the New York Times that instructed journalists covering Israel's war on Gaza to restrict the use of the terms genocide, ethnic cleansing, and to avoid using the phrases occupied territory when describing Palestinian land, according to a copy of an internal memo obtained by The Intercept. By the way, Sagar, The New York Times apparently just

wrapped up their previous investigation into previous leaks to The Intercept. Yes, I know. Right as they wrap that up, the intercept gets this new, very revelatory leak. The memo also instructs reporters not to use the word Palestine, except in very rare cases, that's a specific language from this memo, to steer clear of the term refugee camps, to describe areas of Gaza historically settled by internally displaced Palestinians who fled from other parts of Palestine during previous wars. The areas, of course, are recognized by the UN as refugee camps and house hundreds of thousands of registered refugees. You know, that one is really significant because this is just such

Israeli framing, you know, that this is part of why Israel hates UNRWA so much is because it gives them the designation of refugees. And, you know, Israel really hates that because they see this as continuing a justified Palestinian claim to the land. So really sort of buying into the Israeli framing here. The Time memo goes on to outline guidance on a range of phrases and terms. They say the nature of the conflict has led to inflammatory language and incendiary accusations on all sides. We should be very cautious about using such language, even in quotations. And they specifically talk about words like slaughter, massacre, and carnage, which they say often convey more emotion than information. Think hard before using them in our own voice,

which is funny because The Intercept had previously published an analysis showing that they exclusively use that type of language when it comes to attacks on Israelis. So they found, The Intercept analysis, which we covered here, I think I did a monologue on it actually, showed that major newspapers reserve terms like slaughter, massacre, and horrific almost exclusively for Israeli civilians. New

York Times had described Israeli deaths as a massacre on 53 occasions and those of Palestinians just once. The ratio for the use of slaughter was 22 to 1, even as the documented number of Palestinians at that time was around 15,000. They also go on to talk about the use of the word terrorism. So they don't characterize Israel's repeated attacks on Palestinian civilians as terrorism, but go on at great length to explain how it is appropriate to call Hamas militants on October 7th terrorists, but the same similar attacks on civilians from the Israelis, not terrorism. It's just very illustrative of the double standards that are applied throughout the news media. And to see it all written out like this is pretty extraordinary. Right. And here's the thing. If you don't ever want to use the claim genocide, fine, don't use it. But when I Google Russia, genocide, Ukraine, NYT, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10 stories just in the last year that have been published by the New York Times.

That pop right up on your first Google search results. Very first thing, right? And if I read about terrorism and Russia, what's the same thing? This is, again, like if you want to say, well, it's terrorism because it's a non-state actor, okay, cool. But whenever here we have an actual nation state, Russia, they're accusing them, quote, of terrorism inside of Ukraine. Now it's all subjective and it's editorial and it's based upon the foreign policy views of the owners of the New York Times or the people who work at the New York Times. And that is why it's egregious and why it is stupid.

Now, if you are a political person and you are trying to make these points, that's one thing. But if you're supposedly a newspaper record and a credible news organization that is actually trying to present some sort of picture of the truth, that's a totally different one. And it is very clear here that for some reason, they have decided to commit themselves entirely to presenting a view of the conflict. And at a certain point, I think it's okay. But then they need to just be honest about where they are and not pretend that they don't have a massive bias, especially consider how this entire intercept thing went down. They were revealed that their October 7th rape story was complete bullshit, like absolutely did not rise to the editorial standards, something we would publish here,

let alone over at the New York Times. Well, they then launched an investigation into who leaked all of the background of their terrible reporting. And as Ryan has talked about here, part of the reason he believes that they won't retract it is because they want to win a Pulitzer Prize for the story. They fully believe that they will do. And how insane would that be? I think they're also just they're like afraid of the fallout from it. They just, I mean, even though, remember, and we've covered this pretty extensively, but their own reporters at the New York Times had to write a story about how one of the central claims

of their own Hamas rape story was not true. And yet they have not retracted the story. They put in a little bit of a parenthetical after that part of the story, but they didn't even take that part of the story out. I mean, it's just, it's what, and that's just the tip of the iceberg with the problems of that story. But yeah, this gives you some real insight. And I'm not surprised that they said, don't use genocide. I'm not surprised that they say don't use ethnic cleansing, but banning, you can't say refugee camps. You can't say Palestine. You can't say occupied territories. Like this is flying in the face of really standard,

acknowledged reality around the world. And they're censoring their own journalists to try to craft a view of the world that is the most friendly possible to the Israeli position. Like that comes across very, this could have been written by one of, you know, Bibi's spokespeople ghouls that we see across media. This is exactly how they would want this to be framed. And so it was fine back in the immediate aftermath of October 7th for New York Times reporters to be talking about a massacre or a slaughter, et cetera, et cetera. But suddenly when the slaughter was all on the other side, it's, well, this language, this is too emotional.

Why are we using these words? Well, why'd you use them back then? If you're going to not use the word massacre at all, or slaughter at all, why was it fine when it was Israelis being slaughtered, but now that it's Palestinians being slaughtered, suddenly those words are too emotional and we should really think twice before we use them. Look, the Buka massacre, all right? And I'm not trying to minimize what happened there.

That's 458 people who were killed. I mean, the death toll in Gaza is what? Minimum 30K? What are we doing here? The Buka is supposed to be one of those massive turning points of the world. That is what? A day of fighting in Gaza? And I mean, let's flip it around. Buka massacre, October 7th. That's about a third of the death toll on October 7th. It's like, well, which one is a massacre and what's not? What's the cut off? Is it indiscriminate killing? Is it not? It's just ludicrous the way that, and again, think about the way that Buka, Buka is literally the justification that they say for, quote unquote,

committing genocide and why America should back the Ukrainians to the hilt. It shows what savages the Russians are and all this. It's just nothing compared to the scale of world events. I'm not minimizing what happened there. I'm just saying you have to put it in a context of broader conflict and about what the barriers and what for US policy should be in response to certain events. And it's just some things are granted massacre status. Some are not. Sometimes embassies are embassies, sometimes are not. That's the problem that we run into. Sometimes it's a genocide, sometimes, oh. And let's be clear, the case that this is a genocide is much further advanced and much

more grounded than the case against Russia in terms of the ICJ finding it plausible, UN Special Rapporteur saying reasonable grounds, even in terms of the ICJ finding it plausible, UN Special Rapporteur saying reasonable grounds, even in terms of public sentiment within the US. You have large and increasing majorities, almost a super majority at this point of Democrats who say, yes, it's a genocide. You have a plurality of independents, and you even have some number of Republicans, especially judging by the ones who were chanting at Trump's rally the other day, who say it's a genocide. So yeah, you're right, Sarah, if you don't like

that word and you just don't want to use it anywhere, okay, but that hasn't been the standard of your coverage at any point anywhere else that we can really point to. There was a really good point that was made by a staffer who spoke to The Intercept about this memo about banning the use of the term occupied territories. And the staffer was particularly upset about that because they said this obscures the reality of the conflict, feeding into the U.S. and Israeli insistence that the conflict began on October 7th and nothing prior to that context mattered whatsoever. Here's the quote. You are basically taking the occupation out of the coverage, which is the actual core of the conflict. It's like, oh, let's not say occupation because it

might make it look like we're justifying a terrorist attack. So they're so fearful of giving any credence to legitimate Palestinian grievances prior to October 7th, that they just obscure the reality of what this conflict is actually about at its core. And that means that they are failing as a news organization if you are not able to make your readers understand what is actually happening here, why this is all unfolding, that this didn't just come out of nowhere. It didn't fall on, what did Kamala say, it didn't fall out of a coconut tree. This exists in the context of all that came before. If you aren't able to talk to your readers honestly about that, like what are you even doing as a news organization?

The whole thing is silly. Either treat it fairly or don't. Or, you know, declare your bias up front and just tell people. But trying to shape it and behind the scenes. Just put all your Israel coverage under the opinion section. How about that? Or publish a memo. Publish your guidance. Seriously. That's a real justice. Be like, listen, this is the way that we refer to stuff on the conflict period and the story. And you can read all of our stories in another editorial. But it has to leak to somebody else about the way

that they cover it. That's actually what I find the most objectionable about the entire thing. They have so disgraced themselves in their coverage. I mean, it really is like WMD caliphate level of failures from the New York Times. It really is where, you know, they have a narrative that they want, and then they fill in the facts to match that narrative. That's what we've seen, you know, not 100% of the time, but pretty consistently, especially when you see the analysis of the different language that was used. And this memo that provides the guidance of how reporters have to talk about this conflict, it just is all about hiding the ball. All right. Thank you guys so much for watching.

We appreciate you. Thanks for helping us with the gold plaque. It was very, very kind of you guys to help us get to 1 million, even though it was quite a long time ago. Crystal will be in on CounterPoints tomorrow, and I will see you guys on Thursday. I know a lot of cops. They get asked all the time, have you ever had to shoot your gun? Sometimes the answer is yes. But there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be no. This is Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated. I get right back there and it's bad.

Listen to Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get 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. I was calling about the murder of my husband. The murderer is still out there. Each week, I investigate a new case. If there is a case we should hear about, call 678-744-6145.

Listen to Hell and Gone Murder Line on the iHeartRadio app, 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. Listen to High Key on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an iHeart Podcast.