Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 4/17/24: Congress Pushes Billions For Israel And Ukraine, Israel Blocks Oct 7 UN Investigation, USC Cancels Pro-Palestine Valedictorian Speech, Tom Cotton Calls For Violence On Protesters, SCOTUS To Rescue Trump On Jan 6 Charges, Biden To Sue Ticketmaster, Bill Maher Flames CNN'

Episode Date: April 17, 2024

Krystal and Saagar discuss Congress prepping billions for Israel and Ukraine, Israel blocks UN October 7 investigation, USC cancels valedictorian speech over 'safety concerns', Tom Cotton calls for violence against protesters, SCOTUS likely to rescue Trump on Jan 6 charges, Biden to sue Ticketmaster, Bill Maher flames CNN for Trump bias.   To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show AD FREE, uncut and 1 hour early visit: https://breakingpoints.supercast.com/   Merch Store: https://shop.breakingpoints.com/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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absolute world to have your support. But enough with that. Let's get to the show. Good morning and welcome to CounterPoints. Ryan is on spring break, so we are very lucky to have Crystal joining us. And Crystal actually also has a little bit of an announcement about something that's going to be on the channel tonight. Crystal, how are you doing and what have you got for us? I'm doing good. Always a pleasure to be joining you on a Wednesday, Emily. Although it does deeply confuse me in terms of what day of the week it actually is. Your rhythm is so off. Really throw me off, but I am very happy to be here.

Yeah, so thank you for reminding me. Sagar is actually moderating a debate tonight. It's via Zero Hedge, but it's going to be live streamed on our channel as well. The topic is Israel. Always, you know, a light, easy breezy. No major disagreements there. And on one side, you're going to have Cenk Uygur and Dave Smith.

On the other side, you're going to have Batya Angersargan and Dennis Prager. So I'm personally looking forward to tuning into that and seeing how it goes. But that'll be on our channel

tonight at 7 p.m. So make sure you don't miss that. We got a lot, though, in the show to get to this morning. We've got major speaker drama. We've got new sanctions being announced against morning. We've got major speaker drama. We've got new sanctions being announced against Iran. We've got a whole bunch of free speech issues we want to get to. Some very consequential SCOTUS oral arguments that happened yesterday that could be very

significant for a lot of J6 defendants and also for Donald Trump himself. Looks like the DOJ is going to sue Live Nation. And Bill Maher making some interesting comments and also comes in the context of this whole NPR, liberal, whatever's going on at NPR. You can help me understand that as well, Emily. And Katie Couric is back talking to Bill Maher. Just so much going on. Yeah, Katie Couric.

You know, that'd be a fun one for us to interview. We should try to get her on. I have some questions for her. That's a great idea. The only other thing I want to say before we dive in is that the debate that Sagar's moderating tonight sounds like a Stefan joke on Saturday Night Live. It'll have everything.

Dennis Prager, Sagar and Jetty. He did conversations about Israel. Genocide. Yes. Yeah. All right and Jetty. Israel. He did conversations about Israel. Yeah. All right, 7 p.m. I was saying to you, it's such a weird world we inhabit. But this is what counts for, you know, a good time in my book is tuning into this and seeing how it goes. But I know Sagar will do a fantastic job playing the, you know, even-handed moderator there. So interesting to see the sparks fly.

Yeah, absolutely. Make sure to tune in 7 p.m. right here. Let's start, though, also just on the street with Congress here in Washington, D.C., where your weekly dose of Groundhog Day, yes, Mike Johnson might be ousted. Now Thomas Massey has joined Marjorie Taylor Greene's motion to vacate. They still need to do the parliamentary procedure of privileging the motion to vacate. If you want to get really nerdy, to actually force a vote on the motion to vacate the Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, over his foreign aid package this time. Thomas Massey actually called on him to resign. We're going to break down all the details, but let's start with a clip of Mike Johnson talking to reporters yesterday in the Capitol. Here's what he had to say about the possibility of him resigning.

What is your response to Republicans who say this move should cost you your job and that if you don't resign, they will try to oust you? I am not resigning, and it is, in my view, an absurd notion that someone would bring a vacate motion when we are simply here trying to do our jobs. It is not helpful to the cause. It is not helpful to the country. It does not help the House Republicans advance our agenda, which is in the best interest of the American people here, a secure border, sound governance. And it's not helpful to the unity that we have in the body. All right. So again, that was Speaker Mike Johnson responding to push for him to actually just resign. And this came really from Thomas Massey. We can put Thomas Massey's tweet up on the screen. This is 8-2. He said, I just told Mike Johnson in conference that I'm co-sponsoring the motion

to vacate that was introduced by Marjorie Taylor Greene. He should pre-announce his resignation, as Boehner did, so we can pick a new speaker without ever being without a GOP speaker. Chris, you might remember that reference to what John Boehner did as the writing kind of ended up on the wall with Mark Meadows and Jim Jordan all the way back in like 2015. That's what Thomas Massey is referencing there. And this all over a bill, the text of which actually has not yet been released, but Mike Johnson has signaled will include hefty aid to Ukraine, to Israel, to Taiwan with none of the border security measures that his fellow Republicans, especially the sort of Freedom Caucus and Freedom Caucus adjacent people like Thomas Massey and like Marjorie Taylor Greene, who was ousted sort of Freedom Caucus and Freedom Caucus adjacent people like Thomas Massie and like Marjorie Taylor Greene, who was ousted from the Freedom Caucus, but

we don't need to get into all of that, have demanded it be paired with border security or some other offsets. And they are furious with Mike Johnson for essentially working with Democrats, who, as Politico has reported, seem to be open to potentially saving Mike Johnson from this motion to vacate in order to get their aid to Ukraine, their aid to Israel. This is A3, a tweet from Jake Sherman over at Punchbowl. He broke some of this down. He said, House Republicans plan to try to pass four bills this week to send aid to Israel, Ukraine, and Taiwan, according to four sources familiar with the plan. Maybe he had like one source per bill. The fourth bill will include a ban on TikTok, a bill to sell of seized Russian assets, a lend-lease act for military aid, convertible loans for humanitarian

relief, and other provisions. The GOP leadership will try to move this plan under one rule, the sources said. So four bills under one rule. And those are some of the details of what those bills might actually look like. And Crystal, I'll toss it to you. But let's first take this tweet from Matt Stoller, which is aimed actually at Democrats. He said, this move, he's responding to Jake Sherman, will require Democratic support and is a move to create a de facto war party caucus that is beyond partisan reach, I hope Dems vote no. Mike Johnson has a one vote margin in the House of Representatives right now. So Stoller is absolutely correct that it will completely, no question about it, involve Democrats saving Mike

Johnson to pass that bill. Stoller seems to me to be dead on, Crystal. Yeah, I completely stand with Matt Stoller in his stance there. I hate basically, I mean, I do hate all four of these bills. I don't want any of them to pass. I could rank them in terms of which ones I hate the most, but the unconditional support for Israel probably reaches the top of the list. Although, you know, the banning TikTok stuff, I also am opposed to. But just to explain the legislative machinations here and why someone like Thomas Massey, who I have plenty of disagreements with, but I consider to be a genuinely principled

and actually courageous actor in the United States Congress, why I think he's correct to be very upset about this maneuver. So they've long been trying to push through more Ukraine aid, more Israel aid, more Taiwan aid. And we'll put the border security piece from the Republicans to the side for a moment. And it's been difficult because you've got Republicans, some number of whom are opposed to Ukraine aid. You've got Democrats, some number of whom are now opposed to the Israel aid. And so the thing that passed through the Senate, which pushed all these things together, was unlikely to pass through the House. So what Mike Johnson is doing is basically a sort of legislative trick, where he's saying, okay, well, let's break these pieces apart.

We have enough pro-war bipartisan consensus on Ukraine to pass just Ukraine through the House. We have enough pro-war bipartisan consensus on Israel to just pass Israel through the House. So if we do those two things and these other pieces separately, and then after the fact, combine them together so that it resembles basically what got through the Senate, then there you go. We get our uniparty, bipartisan, pro-war consensus funded all across the board. And so what Thomas Massey is saying is basically this is the polar opposite of what was promised to us when you were elected Speaker of the House.

To be honest with you, Emily, some of the previous speaker machinations back when it was Kevin McCarthy and Matt Gaetz and whatever didn't really make a lot of sense to me and seemed to be more performative on the part of Matt Gaetz. Here, my understanding at least, was one of the key reasons that McCarthy was ousted in favor of Mike Johnson was Mike Johnson's supposed opposition to Ukraine aid. You also had the specter of him completely folding and reversing with regard to FISA and, you know, the deep state and surveilling Americans. So I actually, you know, to me, Thomas Massey's stand here makes sense, is entirely principled, and I'm certainly cheering for the whole thing to fail. I'm not all that hopeful that it's going to fail, but to Stoller's point, what he's referring to here is for these bills to even get to the floor, they have to pass

the rules through committee. Typically, Democrats don't vote for Republican rules through those committees. That's sort of like the traditional way, but it would require Democrats in order to accomplish that. So that's why if Democrats decided they wanted to block this, they could. It doesn't seem to me entirely likely that that is going to happen, though, at this point. It seems like, once again, we're on track, very likely, for the pro-war consensus to get their money as they seem to always be able to accomplish. And to that point, actually, the House Intelligence Committee put out a statement yesterday, a joint statement from Chairman Mike Turner. Obviously, it was a huge sort of, it was just on his victory lap over the FISA win that the Uniparty had last week. But they put out a joint statement, Mike Turner and the ranking member Jim Himes, a Democrat, and said we must pass Ukraine aid now.

Today in a classified briefing, where have you heard that before? Our committee was informed of the critical need to provide Ukraine military aid this week. No specifics, of course. That's just how they like to frame these things. The U.S. must stand against Putin's war of aggression now as Ukraine's situation on the ground is critical. So Mike Johnson actually is allowing the Uniparty to attach Ukraine aid to Israel aid, knowing that a lot of Republicans who are opposed to Ukraine aid at this point support Israel aid,

that was a red line for many of these people that said this is the ultimate betrayal. You know, we don't know exactly what we expected from you, Mike Johnson, but we heard you say many, many times that you opposed tying Ukraine aid to Israel aid, that you oppose continuing to fund the war in Ukraine without funding American border security. So it just feels like a big stab in the back to those members. And on top of that now, there is this real, I think, principled backlash from people like Thomas Massey. I couldn't agree more with you, Crystal, that he is courageous and genuinely is committed to the principles on this question to prevent from happening exactly

what Stoller is predicting. And I feel like, Crystal, that is a it's a it's something that if I had to bet, I would probably say won't happen because the politics of it for Democrats are so difficult right now. But then again, the margin here is so small that it wouldn't take that many Democrats to break away if you have Jim Himes already putting out a statement like that. Yeah, no, I mean, it's unfortunately been my view from the beginning that some way, somehow they were going to push through their Ukraine money. They were going to push through their Israel money because they always do. So whether it's through this particular legislative maneuver or

the next one, you know, it seems like somehow they always find some way to get this type of money through. And it's almost a cliche at this point. Like there isn't all this legislative maneuvering and pressure and repeated attempts to get the minimum wage lifted or to get health care to more Americans or to get affordable childcare or any other number of things that would benefit us. But when it comes to making sure that their donors, plenty of whom come from the defense industry, are gonna get paid

or their future jobs in the defense industry are gonna be locked up or that APAC is satisfied with their return you know, with their return on investment for their donations, when it comes to those things, they figure out some way. And even people who, like Mike Johnson, who claimed to be opposed to some of these things, suddenly when the pressure's on, he flips on a dime and he's right there standing alongside,

you know, Mitch McConnell and Chuck Schumer and Joe Biden and all of the worst war hawks in the entire country. So, you know, I'm I so you actually think, though, that there's a chance that these things will fail because of the consternation on the Republican and the Democratic side this time? Yeah, I wonder, because we haven't totally seen the pressure campaign ratchet up on Democrats yet. Does it look for Democrats, especially on the House side where a lot of them are up for senses as to where they're pushing people as this continues on. But there is reporting that they've talked about being open to doing it. That's even that was even, you know, rumored back when it was McCarthy on the chopping block. So who knows how real it is if it's just a tool to keep having these conversations. But to put a fine point on what you just said, Crystal, about Mike Johnson, it's like he said he went into the skiff where, you know, you get those

confidential briefings and of classified information. And on Section 702 FISA reform last week said, you know, he wanted to prevent another 9-11 from what he heard in the skiff. That's what he was really worried about. And it was actually a joke in some sort of like freedom caucusy circles before that, that Mike Johnson would go to the skiff and completely flip flop on FISA. And that's exactly what happened. And it's funny because that's the language that Mike Turner and Jim Himes used in that joint statement that we got a classified briefing today about the urgency for passing Ukraine aid this week. I mean, it is always the same thing. And that FISA reform is now looking to be an even worse bill that within, you know, just a couple of days between when everyone saw it, when it was

passed, that it already looked like. So you're right. I mean, they always, always, for the most part, get what they want. And the rest of us just have to sit back and take it. Well, and that tactic is so incredibly typical. Like, oh, well, there's something really scary that we can't tell you about, but I promise you it justifies completely trampling on your constitutional rights. Yet again, just trust us. Why should we trust you? And remember when we were originally getting to talk about this FISA reform, remember they leaked to the press about these Russian space nukes? Yeah, like that was the, you know, oh, we've got to find the scariest thing we can possibly

sell to the American people about why we are, you know, taking away their right to privacy here and going to continue surveilling them without a warrant. So yeah, it's a classic tactic to use fear. Frankly, it works all too often. But at this point, you know, there is at least some bipartisan skepticism of the, you know, surveillance state. And so there's a little bit more of a roadblock to just, you know, rolling everybody with their Russian space nuke fear-mongering or whatever else they're going to roll out. But yeah, it's a classic tactic and it has worked plenty of times. And ultimately, you know, they do all kinds of things that don't really have the backing of the American people. They find a way. And I think this latest gambit, which weaponizes the fact that

there's so much support for, you know, just constantly unconditional support for Israel. You know, sufficient amounts amongst both the parties. And sufficient amounts to continue the Ukraine war indefinitely in spite of the fact that there's no real plan at this point. I genuinely don't know what the plan is at this point to help secure victory for the Ukrainians. It seems like we're just going to kick the can down the road. Brian made a comment that I thought was really important, which is we've covered the fact that the Ukrainians are struggling to find people to fight this war, are pulling men off the street, including men who are disabled physically and mentally disabled to send to the front lines.

And we're using our tax dollars to put guns in the hands of people who have no desire to fight. I mean, it's frankly unconscionable and immoral at this point, especially with no plan of what's going to happen. So in any case, it's a disgusting consensus that exists in Washington. And I figured at some point they would come up with the legislative mechanism to get their way and to fulfill the fondest wishes of all the consensus is building against the Uniparty. And we saw that in Mike Johnson himself, someone who was friendly with Republican leadership. You know, he wasn't in the Freedom Caucus. He wasn't sort of on the fringes. He was against the FISA reform at first. He was against tying, he was against Ukraine without border spending and changed on that. And that's where I think it is really like room for there's plenty of room for pessimism, because if even somebody like him,

who, you know, was sort of against all of these like obvious uniparty priorities, gets into office, there's no question he's in a really difficult spot. I mean, I think big picture, it's clear that ousting Kevin McCarthy, while I have no tears for Kevin McCarthy, was tactically an error. You know, we don't have to roll the clip, but Kevin McCarthy basically said recently that he's not in he's not speaker right now because of Matt Gaetz. And McCarthy was way more sympathetic in style to that sort of wing of his party that he needs to get these bills across than Mike Johnson is. And Mike Johnson is friends with those guys. So it just feels to them like a slap in the face. And I think they're right to have that feeling because he's someone who understood them, who spent time with them, who said the right things to them. And again, he's in a difficult spot. He's got a one vote margin. He doesn't have George Santos anymore.

That's a real tragedy for him. But it's the math is tough. And their perspective on that is, well, the math is tough. So don't cave to the unit party. You don't have to. So and I think that argument is obviously correct. But we'll see what happens. We actually don't even have the text of this bill yet again. So that'll drop at some point this week.

It could really happen at any time. But I don't know that they'll even try to bring these bills to the floor as they plan to now until later this week and maybe in early next week. But we could be looking at billions, billions more to Israel, Ukraine, Taiwan. We could also be looking at even if after they passed that, they could oust Mike Johnson. So it could be some really big changes to foreign policy and Congress in the days ahead, Crystal. Yeah, and the last two things I'll say about this is I just want to note once again the way that Trump has also completely flipped in the way he's talking

about Ukraine is, you know, now embrace this idea, oh, we're going to give them a loan. It's not really just a blank check. It's actually a loan. Of course, we would never. It's the same thing, right? We would never see that money against preposterous notion. And he can't be stupid enough to think otherwise. So there's that. The other thing, just with regard to the philosophy of Mike Johnson, and this was why I was always skeptical of him in this position, you know, apart from other major ideological differences I have. But of course, I'm going to have those with any Republican at this point. He is a true believer when it comes to Zionism and when it comes to Israel. And it comes from this religious evangelical place. So I can't even say it's like the money or the corruption. Like I think he is a

fervent believer in we got to support Israel no matter what they do, no matter what the cost, no matter how many people are killed. And so the minute you have that on someone, then it's basically, all right, well, if you want so badly to ship that aid to Israel, what are you going to be able to do for us on these other pieces in terms of Ukraine? And so I think that for him is a big part of the reason why he flipped so quickly on some of these items. Yeah. I mean, after October 7th, the cause for Ukraine with voters became, you know, maybe even, it may have actually hurt

how voters feel towards Ukraine because of exactly the dynamics you just outlined, Crystal. 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 Catherine Townsend. I've received hundreds of messages from people across the country begging for help with unsolved murders. 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.

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Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Here's the deal. We got to set ourselves up. See, retirement is the long game. We got to make moves and make them early. Set up goals. Don't worry about a setback. Just save up and stack up to reach them.

Let's put ourselves in the right position. Pre-game to greater things. Start building your retirement plan at thisispreetirement.org, brought to you by AARP and the Ad Council. She was a decorated veteran, a Marine who saved her comrades, a hero. She was stoic, modest, tough, someone who inspired people.

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

or wherever you get your podcasts. We're getting more of a look at how the U.S. is going to respond to, you know, first Israel's attack on the Iranian embassy in Damascus and then the Iranian response. So no sanctions or accountability for Israel. However, we are going to levy even more sanctions on Iran, apparently. Let's put this up on the screen. This is initially reported by Barack Ravid. Treasury to greenlight new Iran sanctions after Israel attack.

If you read his report, he says Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen preparing fresh sanctions for Iran, vowing that the U.S. will not hesitate to inflict economic punishment in response to the Islamic Republic's unprecedented attack on Israel. He goes on to say why it matters. President Biden is urging Bibi to exercise military restraint, but in the economic sphere, the administration is demonstrating a willingness to retaliate against Iran. You know, one of the things, obviously, that has absolutely enraged me

in the discussion of this, you know, Iran-Israel incredibly dangerous escalation is the attacks on Israel were described by many as quote-unquote unprovoked, when of course they were not unprovoked. They were very directly, and by the way, very intentionally provoked by Netanyahu with that attack on the Iranian consular building in Damascus. So the U.S. to avoid having to condemn Israel over that attack on the embassy, which, you know, is very clear-cut violation of the Vienna Conventions, violation of international law, just complete thwarting of all

sorts of international norms. And by the way, makes our own embassy officials and consular employees less safe because it opens up this door to any state actor around the world. So to avoid condemning them, but also to avoid signing on to the notion that embassies are just like open season and fair game at this point. The administration has been playing this game of pretending like they don't really know whether or not this was actually an Iranian consular building. Matthew Miller was pressed on this by the incomparable Matt Lee. Let's take a listen to how that went down. Have you guys decided yet or made a determination about whether what Israel hit in Damascus was a diplomatic facility or not? We have not. We have not. So how long is this going to take?

MR. I can't answer that question. We're continuing to look into it. I don't have a time-tale, but it's something that we're – THE PRESIDENT What more do you need to – MR. We need to gather enough information that will allow us to make an actual determination. THE PRESIDENT And how?

You have no one on the ground in Syria, at least overtly. MR. We have a range – as I said to you the last time you engaged with me on this question, we have a range of abilities, a range of ways to gather information. They're partner countries of ours who are on the ground. We have intelligence capabilities obviously, and we're continuing to gather information, but we've not yet been able to determine. I get it, but you were pretty quick into condemning the invasion of the Mexican embassy in Ecuador. That was a very clear, well-established embassy.

And this is not very clear? This is something that is taking a little bit more time to determine. No one died in that incident. That's not the question. The question was, was it an embassy or a consulate or not? And it was very clear. How hard is it to figure that out? In the case of the Mexican embassy, it's something that we're gathering information on.

It's been like two weeks. And we continue to gather information. We don't have a determination yet. How hard is it to figure that out. In the case of the Mexicans, it's something that we're gathering information on. It's been like two weeks. And we continue to gather information. We don't have a determination. How hard is it to figure that out? I mean, the truth of the matter is, of course, they know the answer. Because if it wasn't a consulate building or some sort of a diplomatic building, they would instantly have said so. But the fact that they're dragging their feet, oh, we're doing an investigation, we promise we'll get back to you, tells you everything that you need to know. And as yet another instance of how they completely ignore or dispatch with any sort of the previous norms that they claim to care about when it comes to Israel. So no sanctions forthcoming on Israel or their incredible provocation here that any country would be,

you know, rightly outraged by. But they are going to apparently retaliate against Iran for responding to that provocation. Yeah, this is the one thing that drives me absolutely crazy in the diplomatic conversations about these conflicts. It's that the sanctity of international law is obviously, and this is not new, but it is used as just a blunt force object and tossed around like a football, but it's not serious. And we know it's not serious. Matthew Miller knows it's not serious. Republican administrations and democratic administrations know it's not serious. It's publicly very sanctimonious, but they know that they're using international law, that sort of shield of international law,

as a tool, as a political weapon when it suits them, and then they drop it when it's inconvenient. And there are serious geopolitical implications for doing that, which is why they do it, in fact, actually. But I don't think that they've, you know, even after all of these decades, reckoned with how seriously it hurts the credibility of the United States. And again, you can go back years, you can go back to the Cold War and have conversations about how we talk about international law in such, you know, rarefied terms when it suits us and then drop it when it doesn't. And this is a pretty clear-cut example, as Matt Lee was getting at, just there, Crystal, of us doing that. Yeah, and it once again

raises the question of how is any of this in our interests? Because, yeah, now our people who are at embassies around the world are less safe because we have allowed this door to be completely opened. And of course, the storming of the Mexican embassy immediately after that is not an accident. And yes, we had something to say about that, but it was not nearly the condemnation that likely would have come without Israel's actions because they know that they look like absolute hypocrites. And same thing with the language that was previously used about Ukraine, the humanitarian language,

language about international law, about atrocities, about genocide. Even suddenly we don't hear anything about that because they know how hypocritical they sound and how when it comes to Israel, oh, was it a war crime? Well, we don't know. We need to get a lawyer.

I'm not a lawyer. Who can really say? When it was Russia, they could say right away and they knew right away what was going on. The other thing I wanted to mention about that Matt Miller interaction is that is such a classic tactic of, oh, we're doing an investigation,

but you never hear the results of these investigations, right? They never come. So, you know,'re doing an investigation. But you never hear the results of these investigations, right? They never come. So, you know, there was an investigation into the murder of the young girl, Hind, who was assassinated. By the way, Washington Post has a new report on this. While she was in a car waiting for medics to come rescue her,

also her would-be medic rescuers were also targeted and assassinated, even though they were coordinating directly with IDF, you know, de-conflicted, giving them their coordinates, telling them, waited hours to respond, telling them where they moved. These investigations are apparently, you know, launched by the State Department and never come to any sort of conclusion. Something else that, by the way, Matt Lee has pressed Matthew Miller on, all these variety of, you know, massacres and alleged atrocities that supposedly

they're looking into that, oh, we never get the results of those. We never hear anything more about it. And we just move on to the next outrage. Speaking of investigations into atrocities, the UN has been attempting to conduct an investigation into atrocities committed against Israelis on October 7th. And somewhat shockingly, I mean, I guess I shouldn't be completely surprised, but Israel has actually blocked and obstructed them, according to that UN panel, in their attempt to investigate the acts that occurred on October 7th. Let's put this up on the screen. So this is from the Jerusalem Post.

They say UN commission accuses Israel of obstructing an October 7th. Let's put this up on the screen. So this is from the Jerusalem Post. They say, UN Commission accuses Israel of obstructing an October 7th probe. One of the members of the commission said they saw active obstruction by Israel of our efforts to receive evidence from Israeli witnesses and victims. And I'll read you the quote from this individual, Chris Sadati. He says, so far as the government of Israel is concerned, we've not only seen a lack of cooperation, but active obstruction of our efforts to receive evidence from Israeli witnesses and victims, the events that occurred in southern Israel. And he said, we have contact with many, but we would like to have contact with more. The Israelis claim, they say, oh, well, victims would never get any justice or the dignified treatment they deserve from the

Commission of Inquiry and its members, which they describe as having a track record of anti-Semitic and anti-Israel statements. Obviously, the go-to anytime you want to smear someone and you don't like what they had to say about you in the past, just throw that basically they've instructed witnesses and survivors inside of Israel not to cooperate with this investigation, not into Israel's actions now in the Gaza Strip, but into the atrocities that were committed by Hamas and other Islamic militant groups on October 7th. And Israel apparently doesn't want the details of that day to come out. I think there's a lot of logical conclusions as to why or speculation that you could get into. One is that the Israeli IDF response was pathetic. You had many people who were desperately waiting for hours and hours for anyone to come and help them

and that help was not forthcoming. So that's a very unflattering light. And then we do have some of these instances, which have been documented by the New York Times and Haaretz and other outlets at this point, where some of the victims, not a majority, not all, I'm not trying to downplay the atrocities of Hamas on that day, but some of the victims did come from quote-unquote friendly fire from the Israelis on that day, and I'm sure they don't want a light shown on that either. And you know, this is one of the, I agree with both of those points, and one of the complicated things of the UN in this region

is that, and I was talking to Ryan about this last week, it's absolutely true that in such a concentrated and densely populated area like Gaza, it's really like for the UN to operate for aid, for humanitarian aid, for geopolitical diplomacy, for all of that to happen, you're going to have crossover between the population that is supportive of Hamas, maybe even some active supporters of Hamas and the UN and things like UNRWA because Hamas is the de facto government. And so for that, from Israel's perspective, UNRWA does have some real problems where if you're Israel and you look at, you know, for example, the much publicized textbooks, you're going to be like, oh my gosh, why would I want to hand over all of this information, etc., etc.?

But it gets back to what we were just talking about, that countries like the United States and Israel will use the UN when it's convenient and not use the UN when it's not. And I do, again, I think that is a real problem. So on the one hand, I totally understand, in some cases, why Israelis are like, this is the most sensitive information. This is, you know, victims. This is people's lives, people's deaths.

And we don't trust the UN right now because of, you know, some of these legitimately documented patterns at UNRWA, but, and other parts of the UN, but that's not consistent with the approach towards the UN. And I think it is, you know, in some ways more political, but it's an unfortunate situation all around because what we do want are answers on what happened, about what happened on October 7th, that might make the Israeli government look pretty bad or might make anybody, you know, look pretty bad. And we can't get that information from an investigation in a way that we can trust because nobody trusts the investigators. So we're not getting any closer to the truth. And what we really need is the truth. But we're not in a position to get it right now. The Israelis are so funny when it comes to the UN, because, you know, when it comes to the 1948

UN partition plan, well, that's that's set in stone, right? That's the UN. It was the UN and they didn't listen to the UN. How could you? Right. Yes. When it comes to this ceasefire resolution that just passed the UN Security Council. Oh, well, we're just going to pretend that didn't happen at all. We're not going to listen to that whatsoever. When it comes to the report that was issued regarding rape in the context of October 7th, well, that they were very happy to embrace. When it comes to this report, which they expect would shine an unflattering light on them in a variety of ways, well, we're not going to cooperate whatsoever. And we're going to claim that you're anti-Semitic, right? When it comes to Iran, Israel attacking the Iranian consulate, well, they don't want to

hear what the UN has to say about that. But when it comes to Iran responding, suddenly they want an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council to issue some sort of a condemnation. So it's just so incredibly naked. And then just the blanket calls of anti-Semitism at every turn are, you know, I just don't think that they're landing, by the way, the same way that they once did. Because at this point, even Joe Biden has been smeared as like pro-Hamas. It's just ridiculous the number of things that have been labeled anti-Semitic, pro-Hamas, pro-terrorist, etc. So it starts to fall on deaf ears. And that's a real loss because anti-Semitism is a real problem. It is a real scourge. this language, anti-Semitism, blood libel, about accurately describing what's happening in Gaza

or about accurate or legitimate criticism of the Israeli government, the term becomes meaningless and then it helps to fuel an actual, you know, legitimate rise in anti-Semitism as well. It makes people more skeptical of that claim being made in every instance. Speaking of some of the mythology around October 7th, that we know there were horrific atrocities. Those atrocities should be condemned by any decent person where they were committed against civilians. Yet we know there were some stories that were fabricated in order to serve as a real justification for barbarism against Palestinians in Gaza, you know, the beheaded babies, the baby baked in the oven. We've got a new example of that, although this one got shot down almost

immediately. Let's put this up on the screen. So you had a number of outlets reporting that among survivors from the Nova Music Festival, which was one of the worst scenes of carnage on October 7th, there was a claim made that there had been almost 50 suicides among those survivors. Now, this claim on its face seems fairly outrageous and outlandish, but a number of outlets, including the Daily Beast here, report this just uncritically. Well, this was so sort of out there of a claim, Emily, that it was almost immediately shot down even by the Israeli health minister. Let's put this up on the screen. Head of the Israeli health ministry was asked about this

and said directly that this was not true. He said based on an examination conducted with the Nova Community Association, as well as with other parties, it emerged such data is unknown. But he also said directly that the rumors about number of suicides and hospitalizations are not true. So another attempt to, you know, again, the atrocities on that day were enough. They were horrifying enough, but there's this constant desire to create the most horrifying, you know, visual imagery and notion of what occurred on that day in an attempt very directly to justify things that are even under the worst circumstances, not justifiable being done up against children and women and civilian infrastructure in the Gaza

Strip. This is, I mean, again, we're talking about the Jerusalem Post. It's not like this is, and this is where the health ministry pushed back on this. So it's not like this is just coming from, this pushback is just coming from the Israeli government either. I mean, this is media is actually focusing on it. I think that's worth noting, too, that there's, you know, a real, again, I think, thirst for the truth on these questions, because, you know, for Israelis, they're so sensitive and rightfully so about the truth and about what really happened and about the victims here. And so I feel like actually, Crystal, it's interesting even to see

places like the Jerusalem Post looking critically at claims like this and as they should be and as all of us should be. And this particular one, based on the health ministry, which I can't imagine, I'm trying to think of what reason they would have to sort of actively push back on this. If it were, you know, plausible, if it were true, this narrative really had holes poked in it just about right away. And, you know, to your point earlier about how there's a lot more skepticism than maybe there was in the past, I think this really goes along with that argument. This totally confirms that, I think. 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. Here's the deal. We gotta set ourselves up. See, retirement is the long game. We gotta make moves and make them early. Set up goals. Don't worry about a setback. Just save up and stack up to reach them. Let's put ourselves

in the right position. Pregame to greater things. Start building your retirement plan at thisispretirement.org. Brought to you by AARP and the Ad Council. She was a decorated veteran, a Marine who saved her comrades, a hero. She was stoic, modest, tough, someone who inspired people. Everyone thought they knew her, until they didn't. I remember sitting on her couch and asking her, is this real? Is this real? Is this real? Is this real? I just couldn't wrap my head around what kind of person would do that

to another person that was getting treatment, that was, you know, dying. This is a story all about trust and about a woman named Sarah Kavanaugh. I've always been told I'm a really good listener, right? And I maximized that while I was lying. Listen to Deep Cover, The Truth About Sarah on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I don't want to lose sight of, as we talk about, what might happen between Iran and Israel and the U.S.

and sit here on the brink of potentially terrifying further escalation, all of which is still very much on the table. I don't want to lose sight of what continues to be the reality in Gaza, where you have millions of people continuing to starve. You have northern Gaza in famine. You had people that we covered yesterday trying to return to their homes in northern Gaza who were shot at. The very latest report out of Gaza is that you had 11 children who were killed as they were playing at a playground in Rafah. Rafah, of course, being the place where there is a planned

invasion, where more than a million Palestinians have been pushed and are sheltering in abhorrent conditions at this point. So they had built this playground for the children to help take their mind off of the horrors and the trauma that they've all experienced. And they came under fire and were killed by Israelis. Let's take a listen to a little bit of this report from Al Jazeera. We're looking at a very horrific attack that just took place at a Maghazi refugee camp within the past 45 minutes or so. A drone fired the missiles on a group of people. Later on, we learned from eyewitness in the area that this were a group of children at a playground that was set up near a camp for displaced families. And those children are regularly visiting this playground.

And just as a father of three children, I understand why displaced families would send their kids just for an hour or a couple hours just to keep them entertained and release all the negative energy in them. Because right now, displaced families have the hardest time inside tents or inside other people's residential homes trying to stay protected and safe but it's as necessary as as also staying safe just to give space to those

children so 11 children have been killed in this attack and just one wonder what threat these children have posed to have the israeli military fire a missile drone on them. 11 reported killed, with more, with dozens of injuries in the area. Those who had seen the attack described horrific scenes of the children torn apart by the massive explosion caused by the missiles. Just unimaginable. And Emily, I think the fact that there was starting to be more of a focus on both the humanitarian situation and the level of devastation, and Emily, I think the fact that there was starting to be more of a focus on both the humanitarian situation and the level of devastation and annihilation that has been committed in the Gaza Strip. I think that's part of the reason for the timing of Israel's strike on the Iranian consulate was exactly to get these sorts of stories out of the news. There's starting to be, you know,

a little bit of different language being used, especially after the World Central Kitchen aid workers had been killed. That really struck to the heart of a lot of liberals who personally know Jose Andres. And, you know, now a story such as this is not going to really get airtime much of anywhere as everyone just focuses on.

And understandably, the, you know, the situation with Iran is very grave. We're obviously covering it here. But I think there was an intentional decision to try to push these stories out of the news and focus on something where Bibi felt he would be on stronger ground with the world community and also to continue his grip on power in Israel where he's deeply unpopular. Well, this brings us back to what we talked about earlier in the show in terms of U.S. funding for this war. I mean, you could even make the argument about funding for the war in Ukraine, that a lot of these decisions, by the way, I mean, this invasion of Rafah, apparently

Netanyahu said he has a date, but our government said they weren't sharing it with them. Israel was keeping that date private. They weren't sharing it with the U.S. government. Apparently they're afraid of leaks from the U.S. government, intel leaks from the U.S. government and from our intelligence community. That's what we heard. But the point is this can spiral so quickly and it can spiral on our dime without our oversight. Not that our oversight would be that much better, mind you, but that at least, you know, people making decisions in the U.S., even if they don't care about the American people as much as they should and don't prioritize the real interests of the American people as much as they should, are responsive to the American public. And we're

in a position right now, I think the attacks over the weekend really, and the attack in Damascus, really have brought that into focus. You guys have covered this, you and Saker have covered this so excellently, how prec all of the sort of recipes for a broader conflict. All of the necessary ingredients in that recipe of broader conflict are coming together. And I don't think anybody feels confident that the Biden administration or that Netanyahu are just firmly in control of mitigating any potential explosions. In fact, what happened in Damascus underlines that probably for a lot of people, Crystal. That's right. We're in such a fragile geopolitical ecosystem right now. And where Bibi knew he could take such an extraordinarily provocative and honestly

outrageous act and he could get away with it because he's gotten away with everything else. So, yeah, Joe Biden. I mean, listen, Bibi has the lion's share of the blame. I would say Joe Biden is basically equally culpable for creating this incredibly dangerous situation, which is, you know, something they claim to want to avoid from the beginning of this conflict. They claimed they wanted to avoid this broader war. Well, even without this direct Iranian escalation,

we had already seen this conflict spread beyond Gaza. They're talking about Yemen, Iraq, Syria, our own troops coming under fire and in some instances being killed. So that cat is already out of the bag. Now what we're staring down is something even more terrifying, which, you know, there was a report, I don't know if you saw this, Emily, and I don't know if this is true because it's from a news

source that I'm not particularly familiar with. But there was this report that the Biden administration got in touch with Iran after the, you after the Iranian attack on Israel and said, hey, how about you just let Israel respond, just like a little response and don't do anything. Like, can you imagine? Can you imagine another country asking us like, hey, if they directly attack your country, could you just like not really care about that?

Would that be fine with you? And according to the report, which again, I don't know if this is accurate, but it was reported by a few different news sources. The Iranians were of course like, piss off. Like, no, we're not going to listen to you and just be fine if Israel directly attacks us back after they were the ones, again, with this initial provocation, attacking our embassy and killing our people. Yeah, it's weird. It's like, not that it's surprising, but it is, you know, creepy and disturbing how reports suggest that there's this almost stage managing of the conflict and saying you're allowed to, you know, the reports are with

Iran, with Israel, you're allowed to do something, you know, at this like, that is proportional to this. And then they're allowed to do something that is proportional to this, and then they're allowed to do something that's proportional to that, as though this is going to totally mitigate the possibility of an explosion in this conflict, which, by the way, the safety of Israelis and Netanyahu's popularity in Israel, I think, speaks to this, or lack of popularity, or his difficulty with his political coalition speaks to this. Obviously, Israelis were not safer under Netanyahu because of October 7th. That's not to blame him for the actions of Hamas, but that is to say that he was in charge of the country. And there are a lot of serious questions that need to be asked about the security

of the Israeli people on October 7th, on October 6th, before October 7th, and going forward as well. Is he managing, is he prosecuting a war in a way that protects the people of Israel as much as they deserve to be protected? Are we doing that? Are we keeping American lives out of the Middle East? Are we minimizing the possibility of boots on the ground in the Middle East right now in our prosecution of this war, in our funding of this war, same thing goes for Ukraine. I don't think anybody has confidence

that the answer to that question is yes. Yeah, and the last thing I'll conclude with, and then we can move to other ways in which Congress really has their eye on the ball with all of this, and I think the free speech moment on the right being officially dead and gone. But it brings me back to that quote that was leaked to an Israeli news station where someone who was in the room said, you know, if Israelis were privy to the conversations that are going on in the war cabinet right now about how to potentially respond to Iran, there would be four million Israelis rushing to the airport trying to get out of this country. So shows you some of the insanity that is at least being contemplated from the Israelis right now,

and which obviously directly implicates all of us in a way that should leave us genuinely fearful and quite wary of where this is all headed. In part because, by the way, there's similar insanity in Iran about what they want to happen to Israel. That's why the threat is so acute and so real, because these are deep, religious, and in some ways, irrational conflicts that you can't stage manage out of existence. And that there are like actual desires among some radicals to wipe Israel off the face of the earth in the way that, you know, Israel wants a one-state solution or something

like that. There are also people like in Iran that don't want Israel to exist and, in fact, don't want Jews to exist. So, the possibility for something that jeopardizes the safety of Jews in Israel, of Jews around the world, is not nil. And, you know, obviously Netanyahu knows that. Obviously, supporters of Netanyahu know that. But whether, you know, the sort of bold, like, boisterous provocations are the best way to minimize that possibility is an open question at best. Yeah, I don't really think it is an open question, but you're right to point to the fact that al-Bibi has wanted this war with Iran for a long time and was deeply opposed to any sort of improvement in diplomatic ties with the U.S., deeply opposed to the Iranian nuclear deal, as one example,

you know, sort of made the initial split and made support for Israel more partisan by coming here under Obama. So, yeah, there's a long and complicated and tense history there, no doubt about it. 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. I'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. 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. Here's the deal. We gotta set ourselves up. See, retirement is the long game.

We got to make moves and make them early. Set up goals. Don't worry about a setback. Just save up and stack up to reach them. Let's put ourselves in the right position. Pre-game to greater things. Start building your retirement plan at thisispretirement.org.

Brought to you by AARP and the Ad Council. She was a decorated veteran. A Marine who saved her comrades. A hero. She was stoic, modest, tough. Someone who inspired people. Everyone thought they knew her. Until they didn't.

I remember sitting on her couch and asking her, is this real? Is this real? Is this real? Is this real? I just couldn't wrap my head around what kind of person would do that to another person that was getting treatment, that was, you know, dying. This is a story all about trust and about a woman named Sarah Kavanaugh.

I've always been told I'm a really good listener, right? And I maximized that while I was lying. Listen to Deep Cover, The Truth About Sarah on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Let's go ahead and move on to some of the things that the Congress is up to. So in addition to passing yet another resolution on anti-Semitism, this one condemning the protest chant from the river to the sea as being anti-Semitic. No word on whether it's anti-Semitic when it comes from Bibi himself

or from the Likud party charter or from his son or whatever. Anyway, they also are convening yet another panel and calling forth yet another university president to speak on their actions to combat anti-Semitism on campus. The Columbia University president is set to testify to that same congressional panel that caused the whole uproar last time around, which we, of course, covered here and led

to a number of them losing their jobs. That president is out with a Wall Street Journal op-ed to try to sort of set the stage for what they're going to say. The headline here at Columbia University, President, what I plan to tell Congress tomorrow, anti-Semitism and calls for genocide have no place at a university. My priority has been the safety and security of our community, but that leaves plenty of room for robust disagreement and debate. Let me read you a little bit of this. Also, her notes were leaked

about how she plans to talk about this issue and very similar to what's laid out in the op-ed here. But the op-ed reads, while disagreement and debate are to be welcomed at a university, that should happen within specific parameters. Calling for the genocide of a people, whether they are Israelis or Palestinians, Jews, Muslims, or anyone else, has no place in a university community. Such words are outside the bounds of legitimate debate and unimaginably harmful.

Second, while there may be some easy cases, drawing the line between permissible and impermissible campus speech is enormously difficult. And then she continues, in thinking about these boundaries of permissible and impermissible campus speech is enormously difficult. And then she continues, in thinking about these boundaries of permissible speech, one idea we've adopted at Columbia is to define a designated space for protest. This approach allows for fewer limits on speech, usually a desirable value at a university, because those who don't want to hear what is being said need not listen. It also means the core functions of university teaching and learning can continue uninterrupted. There's a few things about this. There's actually a lot to say about this op-ed.

First of all, on the alleged calls for genocide, and this came up in the context of the initial congressional hearings that caused such a fuss on this. There's no specifics. There's no specific examples of students actually doing this. And so are you talking about just a call for equal rights from the river to the sea? Are you talking about the chance to globalize the intifada?

What are you referring to here specifically? Because there's been this pretense that there's some outbreak of outright genocidal language occurring on college campuses. And I'm not going to say there's not a single instance or there isn't genuine anti-Semitism out there. I think that'd be a ridiculous thing to say. But we never seem to see these instances of this supposed call for genocide against the Jews happening on college campuses. So it's left very vague. And then in addition, what you've actually seen in terms of Colombia is a real crackdown on the rights of students and in a very one-sided way. Colombia is being sued actually right now for unlawfully banning multiple pro-Palestine groups.

So the New York Civil Liberties Union and a Palestinian rights organization filed a lawsuit against Columbia University. So that you had students for justice in Palestine and Columbia Barnard Jewish Voice for Peace, both banned. And Columbia administrator previously said the groups repeatedly violated college policies like holding unauthorized events and that the gathering included threatening rhetoric and intimidation. But once again, there's no specifics given about what that rhetoric or what that intimidation is. They just sort of came in over the top and shut down these two groups. And you also have an incident, which was pretty horrifying, where a number of pro-Palestine activists were sprayed by some sort of a chemical irritant. There was a recent Al Jazeera documentary about what happened

and the investigation, which from the university side has basically gone nowhere into what's effectively a chemical attack against pro-Palestinian demonstrators. Let's watch a little bit of that. Did you arrest the people you think come split? A chemical attack on the students? Oh my gosh, it smells like someone is dying. We smelled that. That's why I was hospitalized for severe blurred vision. These students are describing the moment they suffered an alleged chemical attack during a pro-Palestine rally at one of the world's most prestigious universities. Students say the chemical smelled like skunk,

which has been used by Israeli forces against Palestinians. We're not safe in the West Bank. We're not safe in Gaza. Even in the U.S., we aren't safe. In this report, we reveal previously unpublished images and footage of suspicious activity at the protest. More than two months after the incident, no suspects have been named, while students speaking up for Palestinian rights have received death threats, been doxed, and targeted by professors. Does me being Palestinian, does that inherently mean I'm a terrorist?

That's how they're treating us. So, Emily, to me, the bottom line here of this congressional inquiry is you'll have a lot of people who talked a big game about free speech, who suddenly are dragging a university president before them to demand more censorship and more crackdowns on free speech. And I doubt, at least from the Republican side, we're going to hear much in terms of questioning about the cancellation, the banning of these activist groups and the investigation into what happened to these students. Yeah, I mean, I agree that this is a real challenge for conservatives, for elected Republicans who

have held all kinds of hearings on campuses in the last several years. And Columbia is a place where that dilemma, I think, is in sharp focus. They had, I'm reading from the very prayers of a Washington free beacon right now, but they have an interesting report. They say, during a January 5th interview with socialist podcast Revolutionary Left Radio, Islamic scholar Muhammad Abdu declared his support for Hamas and the, quote, resistance. The terror groups, quote, dedicated few, he said, admiringly worked in, quote, stealth mode on October 7th to defeat a larger enemy in Israel. Just days later, on January 16th, Columbia University's Middle East Institute extended a, quote, warm welcome to Abdu, the Ivy League school's latest visiting professor in modern Arab studies.

And it goes on later in the article to quote him four days after October 7th saying, yes, I'm with the resistance, be it Hamas and Hezbollah and Islamic jihad. And he talked about false reports accusing Arabs and Muslims of decapitating the heads of children and being rapists. And he said, I might be with Hamas and support the resistance. Absolutely. Look what the 1500 did. They were organized and they worked in stealth mode and they divested. Judith Butler, who is an academic, also has referred to Hamas and Hezbollah as the, quote, resistance for a long time. And I think that's honestly, I think that's protected speech. I think it's a challenge for conservatives and Republicans

to sort of live up to the game that they've talked. Now, whether it's protected speech is somewhat a different question as to whether that's someone worthy of being a visiting professor of Arab studies. I think it's entirely an ideological disagreement. People can talk about Hamas and Hezbollah in the context of being the resistance. I personally find that to be abhorrent, but it's something that should be debated, obviously, out in the open and not sort of relegated to these corners where it festers. I don't think that's healthy,

whether it's happening on the fringes of the outright or the sort of fringes in this situation either. If I were the head of Columbia University, I would look at that and I'd be like, well, maybe we need someone who brings like slightly more balance to this question at our school or slightly more nuance to this question than referring to Hamas and Hezbollah as potentially the resistance and admiringly talking about their stealth mode on October 7th. But this is, I actually think this is a really helpful example for Republicans that it is really difficult to stand up for free speech on campus when it's

somebody like this, as opposed to when it's your own speakers. Well, that's the point of free speech. That's the whole thing, is it only matters when it's speech that you disagree with, that you may despise, that you may find abhorrent. That's when the principle actually matters. When it's something everybody's cool with and comfortable with, well, you don't really need those protections because it's going to be fine. You know, in another instance of how quickly the language from the right on all of this has flipped. You know, all these concerns about like student safety. You see that in this instance of the Columbia University president being called to testify about protecting Jewish students, making sure they don't feel unsafe on campus.

Not because they're physically threatened, but because they might hear something at a protest that makes them feel unsafe. You also had that same safety language being used by USC. And let's put this up on the screen. I find this so disgraceful. So they announced that their valedictorian, Asna Tabassum's commencement speech has been canceled. The reason is they said, oh, it was necessary to maintain the safety of our campus and students. So Asna was selected valedictorian. She happened to minor in genocide studies. And apparently the university was very fearful that she, as someone who has expressed pro-Palestinian views, might use some of what she learned at their university about genocide and discuss that in her commencement speech.

So they just canceled the whole thing altogether. And just so you know that the whole, you know, oh, we're worried about kids' safety and safety at graduation, et cetera, is complete nonsense. When she spoke to them, they couldn't give her any specific examples of credible threats or other legitimate safety issues that they could identify,

but they came under all kinds of pressure from the right and from Jewish groups in particular, who, pro-Israel groups, I should say, because there are plenty of anti-Zionist Jewish groups at this, pro-Israel groups, I should say, because there are plenty of anti-Zionist Jewish groups at this point as well. They came under a lot of pressure from pro-Israel groups to cancel this speech on a fear for what this accomplished young lady may have to say. She wrote quite an extraordinary response. She said, I'm surprised my own university has abandoned me. She went on to say that she's a student of history and chose to minor in resistance to genocide and had learned that ordinary people

are capable of unspeakable acts of violence when they are taught hate fueled by fear. And due to widespread fear, I was hoping to use my commencement speech to inspire my classmates with a message of hope. By canceling my speech, USC is only caving to fear and rewarding hatred. Matt Taibbi had a notable response to this as well that we can put up on the screen. He says, all sorts of people are blamed for undermining confidence in institutions, but it's usually the institution itself that does the most damage as in this case. And, you know, not hearing a lot from the usual suspects who used to be all about free speech and against cancel culture, etc. at the valedictorian of the school being blocked for speaking because she might say something that they're uncomfortable with. Yeah. And, you know, my position is that ideologically the people who

have been, quote unquote, canceled on college campuses and worked with a lot of them, like I've actually had jobs working on that stuff before, should be more mainstream than someone like the Columbia professor that we were just talking about. But that doesn't matter in this context. The point is that speech is speech. And as long as it's not outright incitement, especially at public universities, but at universities in general, I mean, there's nothing new under the sun. You can go back to, you know, for example, here's a great example. You know, anybody, let's say there were professors of, I don't know, professors of history, professors of war back in the Cold War that supported the Contras. I don't know that

there were a lot of them, but I don't think conservatives would have had a problem about conservatives making this kind of ideological argument that it was necessary to fund the Contras in order to, you know, defeat the Soviet Union and win the Cold War. There's Hanoi Jane, you know, talking about people like Jane Fonda that were supportive of the other side in the Cold War. There's Hanoi Jane, you know, talking about people like Jane Fonda that were supportive of the other side in the Vietnam War that was killing American soldiers and just making this argument, intellectually building this case, that it was morally necessary to support this force of violence because in their perception they were pushing back on a bigger threat of violence, whatever it is. We act like

some of these dilemmas are new, and they're not. There have always been these arguments on campuses, and they have to be aired out on campuses. If they're going to be aired out literally anywhere, it should be on college campuses where the academics who are the kind of backbone of the media and the policy world are coming to, you know, the sort of different points on how we think about these things. So, I mean, I agree, Crystal. I think that, you know, there's way too little appetite for true, genuine freedom of expression, the exchange of ideas in the interest of the common good, in the interest of understanding each other. So I don't disagree that this is a real challenge for conservatives. I still think it's a real challenge for the left and, you know, constantly

deal with that all the time. But when the going gets tough, the tough get going. I don't see as much of that as I think we should, but that's no surprise, I guess. I, listen, not to pat myself on the back, but I really made an attempt, even with regard to the next individual about to talk about Tom Cotton, to support free speech,

even when I genuinely find it horrifying, right? I have tried my very best to be consistent because that's the whole point. And it's not hard. It was not hard for me in those instances to see, okay, well, this censorship is coming against a, you know, political adversary right now, but, you know, I'm a leftist and no one has been more censored throughout American history than the left. So you can see very clearly, like these tools may be used against them in this particular instance, but they can be used against my ideology. And by the way, that's not really the point anyway.

It's about having a commitment to this bedrock principle, whether it's about your side or their side or something in between. So it's just, it has always been clear to me because there was never any willingness to speak out. Pro-Palestinian people have been getting canceled, you know, long before October 7th. You can ask Mark Lamont Hill and any number of other folks, Norman Finkelstein, how their careers fared when they stepped out of the bipartisan consensus with regards to Israel. And there was never any sort of solidarity with those individuals from the right. So I don't know illusions here, but it's certainly never been

more clear that any purported right-wing free speech moment is, outside of some notable exceptions, yourself included, is officially over. I've got another example for you here, the aforementioned Senator Tom Cotton, who had put out a tweet regarding some of the protests that have, pro-Palestine protests that have shut down roadways, including the Golden Gate Bridge, for some five hours. He called on people to, quote, take matters into their own hands with regard to these protesters. And then when asked to clarify whether he was serious about violence directly against protesters exercising their First Amendment speech rights, he doubled down in an interview with Fox News. Let's take a listen to

what he had to say. I agree with you that you have to get to these or these criminals early. If something like this happened in Arkansas on a bridge there, let's just say I think there'd be a lot of very wet criminals that have been tossed overboard, not by law enforcement, but by the people whose road they're blocking. If they glued their hands to a car or a pavement, well, probably pretty painful to have their skin ripped off. But I think that's the way we'd handle in Arkansas. And I've encouraged most people anywhere that gets stuck behind criminals like this who are trying to block traffic to take matters in their own hands. There's only usually a few of them and there's a lot of people being inconvenienced. It's time to put an end to this nonsense. So skin ripped off, thrown off the bridge,

take matters into their own hands. Emily, your thoughts? So Tom Cotton, I think, is making a big mistake by saying that for, you know, just a pure, let's just talk about the style, the public relations superficial level right now. If something happens to one of those protesters, Tom Cotton, the finger is going to be pointed straight at him for incitement. I despise the traffic blocking protests. In fact, one of my favorite images from the last year is all of these like working class D.C. residents of all different stripes, all different backgrounds, all different ethnicities, all of that, just like pulling these protesters off one of the major roads here in D.C. But they were climate protesters because, you know, nothing violent, but just like moving them because I just think it is one of the worst possible ways to protest.

I think it is illegal and it's not the best use of civil disobedience. All of that said, two things can be true. It can be a really bad and illegal way to protest without also being something that warrants violence and something that gives Republicans any reason to even wink and nod at potential violence. You know, wasn't it in Panama that someone shot, I think it was a climate protester just last year, who was blocking traffic, shot and killed a climate protester who was blocking traffic just last year. So, no, I don't think it's right to play fast and loose with this rhetoric.

Tom Cotton obviously served in both Iraq and Afghanistan, I think actually in combat units. And so I'm sure that this is really visceral for him in a way that it's not for myself. But it's still, I think, really, really unwise to be playing fast and loose with that physical, violent rhetoric like he did there. Even if it's a, you know, at least from the perspective of myself and a lot of conservatives and probably just a lot of people in general, a really annoying form of protest. You can object to the form of protest without calling for people to be thrown off a bridge and have their skin ripped off. You just did it. And Sagar and I had a whole debate on some of these protest tactics, which, you know, at this point, I—

Sagar's pro-traffic blocking. He loves that. No, here's my thing that bothers me, is you have a majority of Democrats and a plurality of independents who are looking at what's happening in Gaza, and they say, this is a genocide. And yet the amount of emotion about that versus some protest tactics that people disagree with coming from Tom Cotton, I mean, it's just it's nowhere near equivalent.

And the other thing is, you know, we're talking about hypocrisy. I don't remember this amount of upset about the inconveniencing of people, et cetera, et cetera. When we were talking about this convoy in Canada, what was it called? I can't remember. Freedom Convoy? What was the thing called in Canada? Yeah, the Freedom Convoy, yeah. That shut down an entire Canadian city. This was celebrated. They weren't criminals. They weren't, you know, being called for them to be thrown off a bridge and their skin ripped off and whatever. So it's only when it's protests that Tom Cotton disagrees

with, but certainly suddenly we hear this language and, you know, he is, I think he is very credibly the most authoritarian and one of certainly the most pro-war senators, which is pretty extraordinary thing to say. I think pretty consistently, you know, his instincts are incredibly authoritarian, crack down police state, call in the military to crush Black Lives Matter protesters, et cetera. But that he can say this on Fox News, which is the largest cable news network

and, you know, very mainstream in terms of conservatism with zero pushback. In some ways, I find that to be the most disturbing part of all of this, that the idea that people should, who are, people who are trying to get a ceasefire and end a genocide deserve to be thrown off a bridge because you disagree with their protest tactics. Yeah, I've got a problem with that. And I think, by the way,

that's one of the reasons that this is just totally, it's kind of a tangent, but I think that's one of the reasons why people like you and Sagar and Ryan and me and all of us can sit down and have these conversations is that we understand

that there are legitimate reasons, that people have real reasons and real arguments as to, you know, if you believe something is legitimately a genocide, then why would you not be blocking traffic? People have real reasons to do what they're doing that are rooted in principles. And we might disagree with them and we might find them, you know, abhorrent or we might, you know, disagree with the sort of ends or the way people justify those ends. But you kind of understand that people have their principles.

Just like, by the way, the warmongers had their principles of supporting the Contras in the 1980s. People have deeply held beliefs and they act on those deeply held beliefs. And the best way to come to consensus that serves everyone and to seek justice is to debate it, to debate it, and to have a country that allows for that debate to be aired out. So yeah, really unfortunate decision, I think, from Tom Cotton yesterday. And you know, Crystal, there's more, more bad news, really, for the fate of protesters around the country just coming out of the Supreme Court yesterday. Yeah, so this is maybe the most significant thing that happened.

I know we've done like a world tour of censorship attacks on the First Amendment. But honestly, this may be the most significant. Put this up on the screen. So the Supreme Court, this is a headline from Vox, effectively abolishes the right to mass protest in three U.S. states. That would be Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas. So basically, the Supreme Court decided to allow a lower court decision to stand. And that lower court decision stood with a Texas law that criminalized a Black Lives Matter protest organizer because something illegal happened at his protest that he helped to lead and organize. This is DeRay McCasin,

who's a very well-known Black Lives Matter organizer and activist leader. So the idea here isn't that DeRay himself did anything illegal or even that he incited anyone to do anything illegal. The idea is that he created, by even hosting this protest, where something illegal and violent happened, that he himself is culpable and can be found criminally liable for those acts of these random people at the protest. I mean, this is insane. And the reason that, you know, the Vox article, I think, rightly says this effectively bans protests in these three states as long as this decision holds. And like I said, it's not that the Supreme Court made a decision. They allowed this to stand. So there may be a decision down the line that overturns it. But you can imagine

if you are responsible for the actions of every single random person who happens to show up at your protest, you could also have bad actors who just want to get you legally in trouble, who show up and cause mischief, knowing that it can be pinned, the blame can be pinned on you. So who's going to want to risk that type of criminal liability when the stakes are so extraordinarily high as, you know, currently this Fifth Circuit decision is the law in much of the American South? Yeah, I mean, I think this is just, so the Supreme Court declining to hear this case is one thing. It's now being kicked back to the lower courts who could still sort of come to a question on this. And it's about sort of the

vagueness of a statute. And, you know, there might be really legitimate legal questions. Actually, clearly there are because it's ping-ponging back through the court about how to interpret something. And it might be the case that a law needs to be changed in order to prevent the legal confusion here, because there should be no legal confusion. A person who organizes a protest should not be able to be held liable for any violence that happens. And the argument is that DeRay McKesson was organizing what was, you know, from the outset by design an illegal protest, but we're talking about then civil disobedience. And that doesn't mean, you know, you can't have civil disobedience without the violation of laws, which means, you know, there are laws that you're violating. Civil disobedience is, that's the concept of it. And so if we're going to virtually make it completely impossible

by holding people liable for things that others do, that's a sad day. But I actually expect that as this ping pongs through the lower courts, someone's going to figure out that a law needs to be changed. Maybe I just have more faith in the system. But I think both sides obviously benefit from protests at this point. Everyone knows that. So I don't know. I mean, we're about to talk about a Supreme Court case involving January 6th defendants. And so I just think there's heightened sensitivity about this.

And we're going to have a better outcome eventually. The sad thing is that, you know, justice delayed is justice denied. And it might take too long to get to that point. Yeah, well, I mean, Donald Trump used a lot of language on January 6th that could be seen much more directly as incitement than anything DeRay McKesson is, you know, even alleged to have said on that day. They're not even saying, like, oh, he incited this. That's not even part of the argument. But can you imagine the reaction if Donald Trump was found liable in some ways for people who did assault police officers, not because he incited it, but just by being involved in the organization of the protests? I think the right would probably

have something negative to say about that. Yes. I mean, you know, Jenny Thomas and the sort of organization of buses for people to march in D.C. on January 6th, there was an original protest that was planned to be peaceful. I talked to tons of people that day that were there just they had no idea that there was anything that was going to spiral. They were there to see Trump's speech and they were there to like make their presence known just in D.C. and weren't planning to go into the Capitol. They didn't even know that was on the radar. But you know there were people that supplied resources to that original protest that could easily, with really problematic interpretations of this law, be, you know, if DC had similar

language, could be brought up on charges like DeRay McKesson. So hopefully this has opened up all of our eyes to the dangers of that, because, you know, conservative protests and conservative, I guess, riots like January 6th was, you know, just not something that a lot of conservatives had to think about in the past. They are now thinking pretty hard about it. So let's hope we can come to some good legal consensus on this question in those states, because there's just no, there's no way that can stand. I mean, it's wildly wrong. Over the past six years of making my true crime podcast, Hell and Gone, I've learned one thing.

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All right, let's talk a little bit about SCOTUS and what they were contemplating with regard to January 6th. Yeah, so absolutely. We can go ahead and put this first element up on the screen. This is from Megan Kelly, who was following the Supreme Court arguments yesterday on this case. Megan said, big Supreme Court argument on whether, quote, obstructing an official proceeding can form the basis for a criminal charge versus J6 defendants, including Trump. This is the heart of Smith's J6 case versus him, is not going well for the government at all. All six conservatives sound like they're on the side of the defense. If they side with the defense here, it guts Jack Smith's

DC case against Donald Trump. So let's break down a little bit about why that is. There's this tear sheet here from SCOTUS blog. They write, the Supreme Court heard that oral argument in the case of a former police officer from Pennsylvania who entered the Capitol during the January 6, 2021 They write, that he obstructed an official proceeding, arguing that the law that he was charged with violating was only intended to apply to evidence tampering. More than 300 other J6 defendants have been charged with violating the law, which, and this is very interesting, was enacted as part of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act in the wake of the Enron scandal. And I guess people can understand why, and then also understand why it's narrowly been interpreted in the past to talk specifically about that question of evidence tampering. SCOTUSblog writes, it's also at the center of two of the charges brought by Jack Smith against former President Donald Trump in Washington, D.C. That is the same case in which the justices will hear argument on, guess what, April 25th.

So coming right up, right around the corner regarding Donald Trump's claims of immunity. So Fisher had sent some text messages in which he indicated to acquaintances, SCOTUS blog writes, that members of Congress can't vote if they can't breathe, dot, dot, dot, LOL, and that he might need his police chief to post my bail. It might get violent. On January 6th, prosecutors say Fisher urged rioters to charge and hold the line. In a message on social media on January 7th, Fisher wrote that he had been pepper-balled and pepper-sprayed, but entry into the Capitol was needed to send a message that we the people hold the real power. So the reason it's important to note those quotes is because you can see

that Fisher saw, according to these messages at least, his entrance into the Capitol, his sort of violent entrance into the Capitol, as an intentional act of obstruction of the proceeding of certifying the electors. So that's the, I think, relevant context in that case. But if the statute can be interpreted as something that goes beyond evidence tampering is actually at the heart of the question. It's sort of like what we were talking about in the last block, Crystal, like two things can be true. It can be true that he clearly intended to obstruct the proceeding without this charge specifically being applicable, this post-Enron charge specifically being implacable.

I believe SCOTUS blog actually has in this article, I'll find the exact quote, that it's true this hasn't been interpreted in the past. There's not precedent for interpreting this to go beyond that narrow question of evidence tampering. And if the justices come down in June, July with a ruling here that you can't have evidence tampering, that you can't go beyond evidence tampering, that's pretty devastating to the case. Yeah, so you had one judge in the context of, you know, this case making its way up to the Supreme Court, acknowledging that outside of

the January 6th cases brought in this jurisdiction, there is no precedent for using the obstruction provision to prosecute the type of conduct at issue in this case. To be honest with you, maybe this will surprise you. I didn't think that the government had good answers to this question of, okay, well, how do you get this? Where's the limiting principle? So if you have protesters who pull a fire alarm during a congressional vote, does that count? Can you get thrown in prison for that? Now, in reality, none of the January 6th protesters who were charged with this,

it wasn't the only charge they were faced with. So in other words, if you just had someone who trespassed and wasn't hit only charge they were faced with. So in other words, if you just had someone who, you know, trespassed and wasn't hit with any other charges, there was no one who this is the only thing. It was used as a way to sort of up the ante in terms of what the government, what sort of sentences the government could obtain here.

In the language, first of all, you do have the context of this was about Enron and Sarbanes-Oxley and all of that. And the language is very vague and honestly makes me pretty uncomfortable. It says impede. One of the words is if you impede a government proceeding. So, again, what's the limiting principle there? And how do you make sure that in applying this law, you are not taking a sledgehammer to other, you know, protected speech and other sort of protest

activities that any of us could easily imagine. You even had Katonji Brown Jackson in these arguments expressing reservations about what the government was arguing here. She said the court should not lose sight of the backdrop of a real world context, which I think is what I'm speaking to here. So, and Emily, I think we have some of the clips of some of the conservative justices asking these critical questions. Yeah, let's go ahead and roll that. You can hear conservative justices, Amy Coney Barrett and Neil Gorsuchuch poking some serious holes in the government's case. What does that mean for the breadth of this statute? Would a sit-in that disrupts a trial or access to a federal courthouse qualify?

Would a heckler in today's audience qualify or at the State of the Union address? Would pulling a fire alarm before a vote qualify for 20 years in federal prison? What if on January 6th, the Capitol itself had not been breached? The protest is going on outside the Capitol. Stop the steal, stop the steal. Police are, you know, in megaphones saying disperse, disperse. They're too close to the Capitol. Their goal is to impair, impede, stop the proceeding, stop the counting of votes.

Does that violate the statute in your view under this impede language? So I think that one relevant question would be whether we could satisfy the nexus requirement and show that actually the natural and probable effect of that conduct would be to have some effect on what's going on in the Capitol and in the mine. Yes, you can. Yes. So if you're assuming that the same thing happened where Congress had to go into recess and couldn't hold the joint session after all because there was such a security risk,

I think that that probably would be chargeable if we had the intent evidence. Now, as I mentioned before, even with respect to the riot that happened, which was a much more serious breach, we don't have that evidence of intent for everyone. But if we had, for example, organizers where it was absolutely clear that they were the ringleaders who had intended to obstruct and undertook the action with that specific intent and did so knowing it was wrongful, and especially if they went, you know, I'm assuming you're saying they're in the unauthorized area right outside the Capitol, that is unlawful conduct committed with consciousness of wrongdoing if we have the proof of it. Let's say that I am having a hard time seeing, accepting your limiting construction of the verbs obstruct, influence, or impedes to have this extra element.

Tell me why I shouldn't be concerned about the breadth of the government's reading just relying on corruptly and the nexus requirement. Should I be concerned? Or could you just embrace it and say, yeah, there might be some as-applied First Amendment challenges or that sort of thing? I mean, can I be comfortable with the breadth if that's what I think? Yes, you can be. You certainly don't have to agree with us that a de minimis hindrance wouldn't qualify. If you thought that this was unqualified and swept broadly to any kind of hindrance whatsoever, there would still be really important limits in the statute. Crystal, can I say that Biden's solicitor general there sounds very conservative.

It actually reminds me of a lot of conservative arguments about protests and speech in the past. Because, yeah, this idea that you should curb down on any sort of public, I guess, disobedience, anything like that, you can just really easily see. It kind of reminds me of what we were talking about in the campus speech block. You can easily see how when you have interpretations like that, they can be applied wildly to just protests in general. Because in essence, every protest is trying to, quote unquote, obstruct, maybe not a technical, narrow constitutional proceeding as is in this case, but in a lot of cases they're trying to obstruct some type of proceeding. There is some type of legislative proceeding that they don't want to happen. So you can see how language like obstruct and proceeding being interpreted in this way could get really, really out of control for, you know, government censors or would-be government censors and people who want to crack down on legitimate protests.

Yeah, the language is obstruct, influence, or impede. Influence, I mean. Right, exactly. I mean, that's, it really is written in this very broad way that I think should make us uncomfortable. And obviously, we referenced that this not only impacts the, I think, hundreds of January 6th defendants who had this as one of the charges that was brought against them, but it does directly impact Donald Trump in terms of the January 6th case, as Megyn Kelly was pointing out. So he was charged. Of course, he's got a whole raft of charges that he's facing,

including the hush money situation that he's dealing with in court in Manhattan as we speak. He's got the documents case. He's got the Georgia case. But in terms of the federal January 6th case, he was charged with one count of conspiracy to defraud the United States. That's about his efforts to spread false claims about November 2020 election, knowing they weren't true, attempting to illegally discount legitimate votes, all with the goal of overturning the 2020 election, according to prosecutors.

One count of conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, that's the one we're talking about here, due to the alleged organized planning by Trump and his allies to disrupt the electoral vote certification in January, 2021. Another count of obstruction of an attempt to obstruct an official proceeding, which has to do specifically

with those election certification efforts that we've been talking about. And one count of conspiracy against rights, referring to Trump and his co-conspirators allegedly attempting to oppress, threaten, and intimidate people in their right to vote in an election. So you've got four different counts that are related to January 6th. So if the official proceeding one is out the window, then you're left with two counts, this conspiracy to fraud the U.S. and this conspiracy against rights that Jack Smith is left with in terms of the January 6th case. So it is definitely quite consequential in terms of Trump's legal jeopardy in that particular

situation that he is in legal jeopardy from. Not to quote The Bachelor, but to quote The Bachelor, whether or not you believe that the conservative justices are in this for the right reasons, by the way, I hate The Bachelor, but whether or not you think they're in it for the right reasons, I actually hope that they push back on this and they really set precedent to interpret this narrowly because you can, you know, it already feels like we're sort of lurching ever closer to banana republic territory. But, you know, you can see how when Republicans, for example, you know, just in Congress, when they started to push back on, you know, for example, Nancy Pelosi wouldn't seat the members that they wanted on the January 6th committee or, you know, Republicans or Democrats, you know, impeached Trump for his, quote, perfect phone call to Zelensky.

And then Democrats went in or Republicans went and started to seriously talk about impeachment for Joe Biden doing this kind of escalating tit for tat. You can easily see actually how Joe Biden, you know, you have a bunch of liberal activists, progressive activists protesting something like the voting rights legislation in Georgia. And Joe Biden, you know, giving the, saying something that, you know, aligns with them trying to influence the official proceeding of the vote on that. Like you can, like this can just get blown up and you never underestimate the cynical tactics of people in positions of power to wield statutes like this for immediate political ends that do not serve the sort of best interests of the country, that do not set long term standards in the best

interests of the country and do not serve, frankly, the Constitution and their oath of office. So never underestimate the cynicism of our elected officials because they will wield these things in ways that bring us closer to the brink. You want Tom Cotton to a future president Tom Cotton or future president Donald Trump or whoever, you want them to have the power to wield this to its fullest extent.

Not me, personally, not me. There was one liberal argument, though, that did land with me about Justice Thomas. I'm curious your thoughts on this. Emily, you can put this one up on the screen. So this is from Jeffrey Toobin. He says, most credible of sources here. Anyway, put that aside. In oral argument today, Justice Thomas is minimizing the severity of the January 6th insurrection at the Capitol. Perhaps that's because his wife was part of the conspiracy. What a disgrace that he's sitting on this case. I actually do think it's inappropriate for Thomas to be involved in this case. His wife, as you referenced earlier, Emily, was involved in some of the organizing for that day. There were a bunch of infamous, you know, tweets, sorry, texts between

her and then Chief of Staff Mark Meadows about the Stop the Steal conspiracy in which she was incredibly encouraging, etc. And so I do think that it's inappropriate that he's involved here, but, and it just speaks to, you know, there's any number of cases that he and other justices, by the way, should have recused themselves from if we're upholding a high standards of ethics, where even the appearance of a conflict of interest should be enough for you to recuse yourself. But the Supreme Court doesn't have an official code of ethics, which is insane. They're just left to like make their own decisions about whether or not they feel conflicted and feel like they want to recuse. And so Justice Thomas doesn't ever feel like he needs to recuse himself, even from cases that in which he has a direct financial interest.

That's also been an issue in the past. You know, yeah. So this is interesting because I agree completely that the Supreme Court needs a code of ethics and that conflicts like this are not, are far from ideal. I do think that there's a good argument for there being a conflict of interest in this case. I think that's always been an issue for Clarence Thomas. And I don't think, again, that's ideal. You know, I think it's unfortunate that Jenny Thomas wants to be a conservative activist and, you know, like she wants to do it for good reasons. Like she really believes in the cause. So I don't think it's ideal that it creates these conflicts of interest because, you know, I feel for anybody that wants to be involved and advocate on behalf of ideas that they believe in really strongly.

But, you know, that's been kind of the problem is that there is no consistent code of ethics. So Clarence Thomas is like there's this big effort on the left. And, you know, this would create this could blow up into a huge like we could spend a whole show on this. But I from my perspective, I think there's been a decades long effort to discredit Clarence Thomas specifically because he is a black sort of conservative jurist and that he's gotten a lot of racism, frankly, because of all of that. And so that lack of consistency is what has allowed for, I think, some of these conflicts of interest to fester. So I agree. I think it's sort of a problematic conflict, but I think, you know, we talk about it, not us, but I think the media talks about it specifically with Clarence Thomas more than some other justices.

But that doesn't make it right. So I ultimately kind of agree. I don't think it's an ideal situation to have the different interests at hand here. I do want to mention Megyn Kelly, another Megyn Kelly tweet, this time at Jeffrey Toobin. In response to that tweet, you just read, Crystal, and Megyn said, Hi, Toobin. FYI, you waived your right to use the term disgraced about other lawyers when you took your dick out of your pants and jerked off in front of your colleagues. Not safe for work, folks. Nice. Nice. But his point stands about Clarence Thomas. I mean, listen, I am not going to dispute

there's been plenty of racism, you know, directed towards him, especially with regards to he infamously doesn't really usually chime up during oral arguments. And this was sort of used to smear him as unintelligent. If you read about his actual philosophy, I mean, he's this weird sort of like almost like right wing black national. He's very cynical about racial politics. It's once I, you know, really learned about his ideology is actually a little different than what I thought. He is probably, he is just as cynical about the possibility of sort of racial coexistence

and reconciliation as like a Nicole Hannah-Jones. I mean, they actually share, there's a weird horseshoe there in terms of racial pessimism. We'll put that ideology aside for another day. But I think part of that cynicism from him is his willingness to accept like these large monetary gifts

and monetary assistance and the trips and the helping to pay for the RV and his mother's house and all of these things. Because, first of all, that is completely corrupt. And he is an outlier in terms of how much he appears to have accepted these types of gifts. Not that he's the only one who's done it.

But the frequency, the amounts, the unwillingness to disclose, etc., I do think is at another level with Clarence Thomas. So in that way, the additional scrutiny of him is very justified. And I think it comes from this deeply cynical place of his view of politics, which is like, yeah, rich people have their way. It's a corrupt system, and people have their way. It's a corrupt system. And I'm part of that corrupt system. He also has this sort of uniquely inspiring story that I think has been, has made him more attractive as sort of a compatriot to that donor class. You know what I mean? The sort of like billionaire donor class that has all of these massive charities that they, you know, he's used the Supreme Court to have ceremonies.

I think he's just sort of especially attractive to them because he grew up like speaking Gullah dialect and like the most rural place that you could imagine in the United States. And had this like weird, like you said, he was basically in college. He was basically like a left wing black nationalist and then had this interesting evolution. There's a good documentary called Clarence Thomas Created Equal that was done by people who are favorable to Thomas, but it's still just him kind of telling his life story. And you get a different glimpse than what the media tells you. But I think basically the bottom line, Crystal, is that we agree the Supreme Court has a big ethics problem on its hand because, you know, when you have in your family these interests or personally these interests, I think with Ruth Bader Ginsburg, it was like different things with the ACLU and different kind of like left wing groups that found her story to be, frankly to be inspiring. It does, it's impossible to see how that wouldn't weigh on their minds or be something that, you know, is present in their minds as they're thinking about these cases. Yeah, no doubt about it. All right, let's talk about some more legal action here. This

incredibly significant, put this up on the screen from Axios, Department of Justice planning to sue Ticketmaster parent Live Nation. So there was a Ticketmaster Live Nation merger acquisition back in the Obama era that made them this giant in terms of the live music and live arts industry. So the DOJ planning to sue them for antitrust violations. We don't have a lot of details about what the specifics of that case are going to be as it has not come to light yet. But just as a reminder about the history here. So back in 2010, Live Nation acquires Ticketmaster. The Obama DOJ antitrust division does very little about it, you know, even though some of the concerns which would later become manifest were already quite predictable at that point. But, you know, there were decades in which Democrats and Republicans joined together

to basically stop enforcing antitrust violations. This was Reagan. This was, you know, first Bush. This was Clinton. This was second Bush. This was Obama. All of them very similar approach. And the Biden DOJ has taken a markedly more aggressive,

and I would say a return to more true application of the law when it comes to antitrust. This article reminds that there was a 10-year consent decree when they were allowed to acquire Ticketmaster in 2010, which was meant to keep them from abusing their market dominance, like to punish artists that don't use their services, et cetera, to punish venues that don't want to partner with them for ticket sales. That consent decree has really not been enforced, which is pretty typical, which is why it's more important to block these things to begin with, because the enforcement after the fact is very, very difficult. And they go on to say artists have long spoken out about Ticketmaster's practices,

but those murmurs turned into rallying cries after Ticketmaster's site crashed for thousands of Taylor Swift fans in 2022. So we also have Ilhan Omar celebrating this action, calling for them to be broken up. We can put this up on the screen. We also have, she says, let's go. I've said it before and I'll say it again, breakup ticket master and live nation. You've got more perfect union talking a little bit more about, you know, this suit and that they're being accused of running an illegal monopoly over the ticketing industry. The corporate

monopoly charges too much for tickets, exploits venues, hurts fans and artists. So effectively, Emily, what you have is this industry giant that as someone who's put on these, you know, little live performances can attest to, they give you no other choice. They can charge whatever they want. Not only do they control the ticket sales, but then through Live Nation, they control, you know, the concert promotion. They can, in fact, you know, punish venues, punish artists who don't want to work with them. They also own the ticket resale platforms. So not only was a fee charged on the front end to Ticketmaster when the tickets initially purchased, but then if it's resold and there's indications they encourage people who are reselling to, you know, really gouge the final consumer, when it's resold,

they get another fee on top of the one that was already paid in for this ticket. So they really have control over a bunch of pieces of this ecosystem and have weaponized it against everyone who is a consumer of music or the artists, the fans, the venues, et cetera, in a way that I think is very clearly abusive. And some of this has really been hidden. I want to get your reaction. And then Matt Stoller, our great partner, who's, you know, antitrust expert, he also did a breakdown of some of the specifics of the way that they have been cooking the books to try to avoid the very clear implications of

the way that they're overcharging people. But first, your reaction to this, you know, this new action that is being reported by the DOJ. Well, first, I think it's really important to see like Ilhan Omar, More Perfect Union, they're right. They've been on top of this case for a really long time. And it's unfortunate, I think, that the right hasn't picked up on what a populist cause this is. And actually, frankly, what a free market cause this is because there is no competition. And that's one thing I wanted to toss back to you, Crystal, because you guys, when you've gone out into different cities all over the country and hosted these events, the ability to find competition to Ticketmaster, first of all, to like how Ticketmaster wields its power as a virtual monopoly is one thing. But then also, if you want to find some way to

bypass Ticketmaster, it is virtually impossible. I mean, there are some ways that some people can do it. But in your experience, I remember talking to you guys about this. It's virtually impossible. I mean, there are some ways that some people can do it. But in your experience, I remember talking to you guys about this. It's like impossible to have an event, a major event, without Ticketmaster or even with Ticketmaster. They make it so hard, too. Yeah. So basically, you have to be, in order to avoid using Ticketmaster, you have to be really big to start with and basically be able to do your own sort of like ticket sales. But that's not it.

Then you also have to have a venue that's willing to work with you when you are going around Ticketmaster, knowing that they can then, because they also own Live Nation, can say, okay, you want to have, you know, Crystal and Zogger? That's fine. Guess what? Next, okay, you want to have, you know, Crystal and Sagar? That's fine.

Guess what? Next time Ariana Grande's coming to town, not that we're playing the same venues as her. It's either Crystal and Sagar or Ariana Grande. You cannot have both. What's your choice, right? So, yeah, so they can put pressure. Okay, well, these other comedians, artists, whoever that's going to come through your town, they're going to go to a different venue because we're going to put them there. So that's the sort of bind that they put people in. There was a case recently in New Jersey, I referred to Stoller's explainer that he did, which was excellent. I should go check out the whole thing because I can't possibly do it justice. But there was some discovery in this case that was very interesting because effectively,

you had some sort of a festival that wanted to, you know, local New Jersey festival. They wanted to hire. They wanted to put on a music show. They hired these established concert promoters to, you know, do that work for them. And Ticketmaster just basically came in like a bully over the top and was like, no, no, no, you're going to have to deal with us. So that was number one. Number two, and this gets to the argument that Ticketmaster makes about how, no, no, we're not gouging. We're not exploiting. They claim they actually, we really don't make that much money. We don't charge that much money on the tickets. We don't make that much money. Here's our books. Look at this money that we're losing in terms of tickets. Okay. Well, you look at that. Oh, I guess it's not a monopoly if they're not

charging these monopoly fees. But what comes out in this case is that what they would do is they would contract with these different vendors with regards to this concert. And they would have these secret deals where, okay, Ticketmaster and the local concert promoter, they're going to equally share the cost. Seems even-steven, 50-50, et cetera. But they would have these secret deals with the vendors where they wanted the vendors to overcharge on the front end, but then give a secret rebate just to Ticketmaster on the back end that the artist, the venue, and the concert promoter had no idea about. And they actually went so far as to keep two sets of books, one that showed this purported loss on, oh, see, we're not even making that much money in this industry. And the other one that reflected these secret deals that they were making with vendors, which were hugely profitable, you know, throughout the entire country to the tune of hundreds of millions, potentially billions of dollars.

That's one of the things that maybe will come out in discovery. Let's listen to a little bit of how Matt Stoller described this approach. Live Nation negotiated third-party expenses like rental costs into the venues directly with vendors in exchange for exclusive financial gains not disclosed to their artists or their agents, managers, or independent co-promoters in the form of rebates. So in other words, Live Nation had secret side deals with vendors to inflate costs by overpaying those vendors and venues, which meant that any profit from the event would evaporate. It would look like a loss. Co-promoters and artists who share in profits would lose out and would be told that the show just wasn't profitable. But the thing is,

those vendors, those venues who had gotten extra money by being paid inflated costs would in turn remit that money back to Live Nation in the form of secret rebates. In other words, Juice would pay the inflated costs that would get furtively funneled back to Live Nation, along with all the profits from the show. Live Nation kept two sets of books. So in one case, they posted an entry of $90,000 rent for settlement, but only $75,000 internally for the same item. They routinely put in profit and loss statements large losses while admitting that events actually made money. So there you go, and Juice being the concert promoters who were originally hired. And so by having these secret

deals, on the front end, Juice is getting charged these exorbitant prices. And then that's just getting funneled back to Ticketmaster slash Live Nation in the form of these secret rebates. It's also funny, Emily, he talks in the piece about how we came to know this because they actually got their way of keeping these documents that were revealed through Discovery secret. The court ruled like, okay, yeah, you can keep this stuff secret. And then Live Nation accidentally posted it online themselves so that we could all know what they're up to. And again,

it will be very revealing, I think, to have more of these accounting practices and tricks that they use to wield their monopoly power revealed to the public. And, you know, again, they're also spending around a million dollars on lobbying just in the last couple of know, again, they're also spending around a million dollars on lobbying just in the last couple of years. I think they're up to 1.7 million in the current election, according to The Guardian. It's a lot of money on lobbying. It's not, you know, compared to other industries or other companies, you know, there are people who spend more, but it's an increase and there's a reason it's an increase. So to that question of competition in the marketplace, to your point, Crystal, if you are a small intended competitor, wannabe competitor to help the state of, quote, consumer welfare, to borrow the phrase from Robert

Bork and that sort of standard that people, whether it was during the Obama administration or the Bush administrations, or even right now, who defend this, if you want to bring consumers a better state of welfare, if you want to help bring prices down and you're a competitor, not only is the bar already so high because Ticketmaster, Live Nation, they're all established, but they're also then spending more than a million dollars lobbying to keep themselves that way. So the barrier to entry for a competitor is it's like almost impossible. And there is no consumer welfare here, which, as Lena Kahn said, you know, the Taylor Swift ticket master thing that you guys covered so well turned Gen Z, like tons of Gen Z people into monopolists, anti-monopolists overnight, I think is the quote from Lena Kahn at the time. And again, that's because the consumer welfare is harmed

by this particular situation. And you just hear no conservatives talking about it, even though it was something that happened under the Obama administration. And Chuck Schumer was like against it at the time, but it happened under Barack Obama, and it is harming consumers, and it is the most anti-free market conduct. Unless you are a full Ayn Rand, like let everyone just be monopolists, and monopolies are good, unless you're sort of on the libertarian fringe, this is not a competitive marketplace anymore. It's a classic case of anti-competitive behavior. And there's just so little Republican concern about it, despite the fact that it's clearly a populist cause. This is one of the areas where I have to genuinely give kudos to the

Biden administration. They have broken with the Obama neoliberal approach in this, and they also have been significantly better, not perfect, but better in terms of labor rights. Those are, to me, the two strongest areas and where they have the two sort of strongest teams of personnel acting. And it is consequential. It's also the reason why, like, the Wall Street Journal, man, they hate Lena Kahn. They hate this new antitrust enforcement. It's why you see, you know, even liberal Wall Street figures like Jamie Dimon being like, yeah, we aren't so bad with Trump. Like, maybe he was okay. Because you also have to remember a lot of sort of like rank and file Wall Streeters, their bonuses come from these big merger and acquisition deals.

So to the extent that the Biden administration, and they have significantly, has sort of like put a freeze on those deals happening. They're all waiting it out, hoping Trump comes back and there's less scrutiny over their actions. That has really put a hit on the wallets of a lot of denizens of Wall Street. And so there's a real CNBC, Wall Street Journal hatred of Lena Khan, Jonathan Cantor, and this whole direction of the Biden administration. But if you are not a Wall Street denizen, if you are an ordinary person out there

who would like to go see a concert or comedian or whatever it is that you're into and not be completely gouged at every turn, you should be very pleased with this lawsuit. But there's nobody, for the most part, representing your interests in Washington because who has the money to spend on that kind of lobbying? Well, Wall Street does.

And the people who oppose Ticketmaster really don't. So I think that's just an important point, Crystal. The Wall Street Journal has written like 100 op-eds against Lena Kahn. If you talk to people in that sort of world, the sheer hatred of Lena Kahn is so powerful. It's genuinely unhinged. It is genuinely unhinged. Unhinged. But it's because of what you said, the stakes for them are so high. There's so much on the line with these murders and acquisitions.

So, you know, we'll see if any Republicans take up the ticketmaster cause at some point, even ones that have been good, because there's this question of big tech. Ryan and I have said for the last couple of months, one of the questions in our interview with Ted Cruz, we ended up talking so much about Israel. We wanted to ask him actually about he wrote a whole book that he was here to promote about big tech and how big tech is too big. And it is anti-competitive, but he's super opposed to Lena Kahn. So it's a genuine dilemma, I think, for a lot of conservatives. Kind of like the speech questions

we were talking about earlier, Crystal. Very true. Yeah, it all is filtered through a partisan lens versus a principal lens. 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. Here's the deal. We got to set ourselves up.

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Brought to you by AARP and the Ad Council. She was a decorated veteran, a Marine who saved her comrades, a hero. She was stoic, modest, tough, someone who inspired people. Everyone thought they knew her, until they didn't. I remember sitting on her couch and asking her, Everyone thought they knew her. Until they didn't. I remember sitting on her couch and asking her, is this real? Is this real? Is this real? Is this real? I just couldn't wrap my head around what kind of person would do that to another person that was getting treatment, that was, you know, dying.

This is a story all about trust and about a woman named Sarah Kavanaugh. I've always been told I'm a really good listener, right? And I maximized that while I was lying. Listen to Deep Cover, The Truth About Sarah on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Well, speaking of new alliances in the culture war, let's move on to this Bill Maher clip. Crystal, Bill Maher had Katie Couric on Club Random this Sunday, and they got into a debate about the media. Bill Maher has sort of joined the conservative

critiques of CNN and other kind of corporate media outlets that I think both of us in a lot of cases would agree with their bias in different directions. And there are a lot of cases, selection bias, what they choose to talk about versus what they don't choose to talk about, and all of that good stuff. But it was an interesting conversation. So let's roll this clip of Bill Maher and Katie Couric on Club Random this Sunday. Okay. Remember the town hall he had on CNN about six months ago and the audience loved it. The audience loved it. I mean, you can't, you can hate this. It was stacked with Trump supporters. Well, they said Republicans and independents. That's what they said. Okay, maybe it was.

How'd they get in? If they did, that's on CNN. Yeah, I agree. I think it is on CNN, and the vetting process was— Well, then you've got to get a better audience person. Obviously. Yeah. Yeah.

That's like the person who handed the gun to Alec Baldwin. Yeah. You know, got to get good people in all these positions. I agree. Okay, so if that was about, whatever, if it was, here's what happened. Here's what people saw in America. They saw Trump killing it, killing it with the crowd. Then you come to a panel of six people who all just do nothing but dump on him and call him a liar. And America goes,

oh, didn't you just see that we like him? He's not a stand-up comedian. What? He's killing it. He's not a stand-up comedian. No, but popular, it doesn't matter. The people loved him and what he was saying. And then you cut to a panel of six know-it-alls in Washington who just do nothing but talk about the negative. And like, I'm all in on the negative. No one's been harder on Trump than me. But I get it, and I'm bored with it. And there's a different way to do this, I think.

So what is it? Not to defend Trump, but to defend the people who still vote for him. Because what they see on the other side, to them, is even more dangerous. Because it's very closer to home. My kid is coming home from school and he thinks he's a racist. He's five. What have you been telling him? You know?

My son thinks maybe he's not a boy. And maybe that's true. That happens. But, you know, those kind of things are what they say, that's why I'm voting for Trump. A backlash to the pendulum swinging so far to the left. Conservative guy once said to me, what you don't get about Trump is we don't like him either. Now, that's not true for all people. There are people who just love his dirty draws, and they are dirty. But lots of people, it's like that.

We don't like him. But he's all that stands between us and madness. That's their view. So, Crystal, I think that's really interesting because there are a few people that have reckoned with the reality that a lot of Republican voters, again, really don't like Trump. There's like 30% of the hardcore MAGA base that absolutely loves him. And there's a lot of polling that puts that number around 20 to 30% of that sort of hardcore, diehard MAGA, the people who are at rallies, versus the average Republican voter or Republican-leaning independent that sort of tolerates Trump. And they tolerate Trump,

not because they love him, they see him as a stand-up comedian, but because, you know, that Flight 93 election essay that went really viral in 2016 by Michael Anton that was very influential in conservative intellectual circles, not probably with Republican voters, but put that into words, that the threat of a Hillary Clinton presidency because of some of those culture war questions was so big that people are willing to sort of swallow the pill of Donald Trump because they think four years of Hillary Clinton or Joe Biden is worse. And people can disagree with that argument. That's fine. But at least acknowledging the argument, I kind of can't believe that we're just having this conversation in a somewhat

mainstream venue. I mean, it's Bill Maher's podcast. It's not like that conversation itself is happening on CNN all the way in 2024. I mean, that's what should have been understood in 2016. And there should have been people willing, you know, Katie Couric obviously wasn't agreeing with him, but there should have been people willing to even hear that argument out in 2016 instead of automatically shouting down Bill Maher as an enabler of racism or whatever else. But CNN will not even air a conversation like that. I think that's what he's talking about. There's nobody on the panel to represent that perspective, even though it's coming from a huge chunk of the electorate, north of what, 60 million people voting for Trump in 2020. And there's no representation of that in CNN because there's no tolerance for it because a lot of the younger staffers there see it as being an enabler of racism, that it's necessarily sort of bigotry, racism, transphobia, homophobia, etc.

So you can't even have that conversation. You can't even hear it out. And I just kind of monologued there. But I do find it frustrating that he's having this conversation while smoking a joint in a shadowy sort of podcast venue when that's the conversation that should be had by the so-called mainstream press, but everyone's too afraid to even talk about it. There's a lot to say here. So first of all, with regard to Bill Maher himself, he's been on this very noteworthy, like rightward shift journey for years at this point. You know, he started out in 2016. He was Bernie Sanders guy. Then in 2020, suddenly he was with Amy Klobuchar. now he's most of his noteworthy comments are directed at you know the left and the excesses the woke excesses of the left he's very much consistently on that beat so in that vein this

commentary is not like surprising to me at all that seems to be where Bill Maher is at this point that's number one uh number two with regard to the comments about trying to put yourself in the shoes and give the most charitable reading of ordinary Americans and their motivations, obviously that's something I have advocated for very strongly for a long time, very consistently. I will just say, Bill Maher does not show that charity when it comes to many other groups, specifically young people who he has nothing but unbridled contempt for,

and the left, which he also has nothing but unbridled contempt for. So where is this supposed empathy for differing perspectives when it comes to, you know, the young people who are overwhelmingly protesting the atrocities in Gaza or who just have a different view of the world than he does. He has no problem very consistently smearing any and all young people as stupid and foolish and

lazy and ill-informed and whatever else. So if it was a consistent principle, like I like to hear people out and I like to try to understand their perspective, think about where they're coming from, et cetera, these comments might land a little differently with me than coming from Bill Maher, who, as I said, is happy to smear people who he at this point sees

as his biggest ideological opponents, which is those on the left. You know, he feels very comfortable doing that on a very, very regular basis. He probably did it in this same interview with Katie Couric, if I had to guess. The other thing, and this ties into the, we're about to talk about like some updates with NPR and the ties into this conversation. As a leftist, I find it offensive when people assume that I'm being represented somehow in CNN or the New York Times or NPR. There is no ideological group that is more shut out of any sort of mainstream news outlet than actual class first leftists. Like, it's like we don't exist and we're supposed to pretend like Jake Tapper is our

ideological ally or somehow our worldview is at all reflected in these corporate neoliberal spaces. And there's never any crying about where's that diversity of viewpoint. You know, this is why occasionally when like a Nina Turner will sneak on for one segment or something, we're all like, oh my God, it's like we exist. But otherwise, we understand what the game is because our ideology is threatening to capital. It doesn't sit comfortably with the advertisers

or like the donor class that at this point backs NPR. And so we're just invisibilized and, you know, casually smeared, dismissed, etc. And I never see any concern about that. At least conservatives have Fox News and it's bigger than CNN. The other the last thing I'll say, and this really does transition us to that NPR conversation is like. Let's just be serious about where we are in the media ecosystem at this point. These places are not trying to play to a general audience. They're corporate. They need advertiser money. They have a specific audience that they're super serving. It's a business model. It's not news. That's what it is. So we shouldn't be surprised when CNN doesn't platform

my ideology or your ideology because we aren't for the audience that they have and that they want to keep and that they're trying to super serve. We aren't for the advertisers that they want to keep buying ads. So the more that we're clear about what's actually happening here, and I think drop the pretense that this is some neutral journalistic endeavor, I think the more easily we'll understand what's actually unfolding before our eyes at all of these various outlets.

Yeah, I agree completely that the number one thing the media could do to improve instantly would to be quite literally just drop the pretense for the New York Times to say, our editorial slant on the opinion side also guides our news side. It just dropped the idea that this is the paper of record for the country as a whole. That would do so much, whether it's CNN, NPR, Washington Post, that would go so far to restoring trust in media and allow some of the genuinely brave and excellent reporting those outlets do overseas, you know, in actual war zones to actually build credibility back with

readers that rightfully have no trust. And I'm not saying all that reporting deserves credibility, but just that, you know, there are people that are doing some good work that the critics of media aren't doing mostly because they don't have the funding or the institutional infrastructure to do it. But that's the number one thing that should start happening. CNN says, we don't have people on that make that perspective of Republican voters or that will give that perspective, that amplify that perspective, and give it anywhere near proportionality because we disagree with both sides-ism because we're mostly cultural progressives. And that Chomsky argument that has been around for decades is important. And it was about class. It was about foreign policy and war.

And now there are a lot of class-first conservatives who are also finding themselves just as ostracized as class-first leftists have been for a long time in corporate media spaces, because this is deemed out of bounds. It's just it is beyond the bounds of what is acceptable, of what is allowed to be speech in this country. So I think it's really interesting. And let's move on to this NPR thing, because it's been a fascinating sort of turn of events. Let's put F2 up on the screen. Speaking of class, I mean, it's just so interesting here. This is Steve Guest. He posted these old Twitter posts from the new CEO of NPR, who I think got the job back in January. She's pretty new on the job. She was saying the best part of Arizona get out the vote is my Biden grandpa hat.

So she's in a Biden for president hat back on November 1st, 2020. She said in 2016, I do wish Hillary wouldn't use the language of quote, boy and girl. It's a racing language for non-binary people. I'm an unalloyed progressive and supporting Hillary this time around, she tweeted in July of 2016. Yes, it is girl boss, like insufferable girl boss sanctimony. Matt Taibbi did a hilarious piece running down all of the time. Catherine Marr, the new CEO of NPR, was just like destroying all of the fun in holidays by just doing this like virtue signaling political correctness. It was a really wonderful sort of journey through her political arc. But she used to be at Wikimedia. I think she's like had some like fellowships with World Economic Forum and those places. And Wikimedia is,

Wikipedia is a place that a lot of people see as being sort of unbiased and neutral. It is not. We've done some reporting on the Federalist at like the horrifying levels of powerful influence over Wikipedia, Wikimedia. I think she had positions at other sort of big corporate friendly places before landing there. But this all has bubbled to the surface because a guy named Uri Berliner wrote an essay for the Free Press, which is Barry Weiss's outlet last week. And we can go ahead and put F3 up on the screen, making some pretty clear accusations of just bias that was culture-based, class-based at NPR that he's worked there for 25 years. He just saw it escalate in recent years. For example, calling the lab leak a conspiracy theory and discrediting it immediately. Now, he was suspended yesterday. And so this happened

as all of these posts from Catherine Marr were circulating. And it is pretty funny because the New York Times and Taibbi wrote another great piece about this. The New York Times totally dismissed and like downplayed all of the serious concerns about this woman's bias. But she is overseeing journalism at NPR, which has the added kind of credibility benefit built into it of being national public radio, a place that, you know, Ryan and I talked last week used to be. People have a lot of nostalgia for different eras of NPR, even if it used to be kind of slanted left. People liked NPR. And now I don't know, Crystal, how often you listen to it. I listen to it a lot. And I listen to it mostly to get like the cultural progressive. I mean, they're like anti-free speech now, even though they have a show called 1A. Like, it's just amazing. The turn of events at NPR, like pro-censorship

on social media and all of that. So, you know, I actually think there's probably a good reason to suspend a guy who publicly airs your dirty laundry. If you're a media outlet, you're sure that's against some type of contract agreement. So I kind of get that. But I do find it somewhat interesting that you have this breathless sort of defense of Marr or protection over Marr or whatever in the media. And then this like, well, this Berliner guy, like he's getting suspended while the media is sort of defending her, rushing to her defense.

It's just like, come on, guys. Like both sides can be wrong here. It's pretty clear that NPR has gone in one direction over the other. I mean, I think this dude was pretty much asking to be fired, right? Like, if you work for an outlet and you go on a different outlet and you're like, I hate this outlet I work in, here's all the problems. Like, you're kind of asking to be fired. I don't have a whole lot of sympathy for that.

I think he probably knew that was the likely outcome of his actions and he was ready to move on for some of the reasons that he laid out. That's fine. In terms of this CEO, I don't know. To me, she seems like a perfect fit for what NPR is today. And if you consider those, the views that you put up there, you know, like I'm on here canvassing for Biden and I love Hillary and, you know, the like language, PC language obsession stuff. How safe is that for rich people, corporate donors, et cetera?

I mean, that is, again, to talk about the business model. This is their business model. They are not actually really public radio at this point. They receive very little funding from the federal government. Most of their budget comes from rich donors and advertisements. So guess what? You get this neoliberal ideology that is really safe for rich white people. That's their constituency. That's who they're playing to. And in that context, the CEO is an absolutely perfect fit. So I know, ironically, a lot of the response to the right of NPR's, you know, intense identitarian liberal turn is, well, we should defund them.

The defunding is actually part of the problem, because the fact that the business model now is reliant on these like rich donors and advertisers is a big part of the story of how they've become what they are. You know, the original concept, if you go back to the 70s, it was this very like populist public access. We're going to talk to Fred from Mississippi about what's going on with his soybean crop or whatever we're going to hear

from regular Americans all around the country. I think that's very valuable. I appreciate that. Like, you know, public access. I think about, remember Bernie, those like TV shows he used to do from the local mall or whatever? Yes. Like that's kind of the vibe,

but it's not super profitable. So if you have to actually like make money on this thing and you can't be reliant on federal government just backing you to do this thing that you can't be reliant on federal government just backing you to do this thing that's genuinely like an educational or public service, then you're going to end up acting like the rest of corporate media. And we really see this, you know, we really see this turnaround Trump where he's this very divisive figure and some media outlets go in the direction of we're going to be the Trump people and others go in the direction of we're going to be the

anti-Trump people. George Floyd is another fissure in American society. And so no one should be surprised, since NPR really is basically like a corporate media outlet at this point, that they follow the same trajectory of every other corporate media outlet. Yeah, no, it's actually so interesting. And the last thing I'll say on this, because that the sort of Chomsky argument has been papered over by the culture war in recent years to the point where, you know, you use the sort of necessary shorthand about liberal media or left-wing media. Um, and honestly, I do that all the time because there's really, I mean, you can launch into a tangential, uh,

two minute thing about what you mean when you say that. But, you know, it's really what you mean is cultural sort of progressivism along the lines of what Catherine Marr is just displaying so clearly when she says stop using the language of quote boys and girls and posts that to her Twitter page. Yeah, I mean, it's hard to even have these conversations now because the terms have been scrambled because of that culture war embrace just in the last decade or so that, by the way, stems from real class biases in ways that have been uniting to both the left and the right. And that's not to say the left and the right have found common cause on like Medicare for all. So much as it is to say,

when you pull working class people on some of these cultural issues, like using the word Latinx, for example, you find a very different position from what the corporate media has. And I think that's one of the openings in the marketplace that you and Sagar, it's not like you were trying to fill that gap. You just naturally do. And that's what people initially responded to. And hopefully

that's what people respond to on the show is that like you need media that is responsive to what people actually want to hear. And in so many cases, that is absolutely class based. And you just don't get that anywhere, even fromportedly left-wing media at all yeah this lady does not represent me yes she does crystal yes she does i think you guys go hillary in 2016 should be proof of that you guys you guys just need to have a glass of rose that and hash brown. We could be friends. That's fine. We could be friends. You know, I've got friends who were on Team Hillary in 2016 and were, you know, very aggressively and still are pro-Biden. That's fine. But, you know, she does not reflect my political ideology. And very few people in mainstream press actually do, if any, to be honest with you.

Absolutely. No, it's just the whole NPR saga has been fun to watch. And I think partially it is because, I mean, I don't like the concept of state media at all, honestly, but I do like the nostalgia. I like hearing people's nostalgia for the different era of NPR because I think it does harken back to a time when there was just generally more consensus. And some of that consensus was bad, but some of it actually was good. There was this touchstone culturally in NPR that a lot of people listened to and could talk about in a water cooler, the proverbial water cooler. And that was important, I think, to just a lot of our shared values. Yeah. I mean, I think there is a way public funded media can be done well. And obviously, we need different models of media than what we've collapsed to, which

is this, you know, corporate funded model. And then, you know, in independent media, there are good parts about it, but it's also subject to its own risks and perils of audience capture and trying to play to, you know, narrow of an audience and in a bubble, etc. So definitely need a whole media rethink because I don't think these outlets are serving the American people well. Well, speaking of platforming genuine debate that represents the actual American public, stay tuned to this channel, right, Crystal, because Sagar is moderating one such debate tonight here on the channel at 7 p.m.

on Israel. That's right. It is going to be Sagar as moderator. We've got on one side, Batia Angar Sargon and Dennis Prager as the pro-Israel side. And we've got Dave Smith and Cenk Uygur on the pro-Palestinian or anti, however you want to phrase that side, pro-ceasefire, we'll say, side of the equation. So I'm excited to watch it. It should be really interesting. I always learn a lot from these things, too, on a more serious note about, you know, the way

everybody's thinking about it, new historical facts, the new things for me to personally grapple with, too, in terms of how I'm viewing the conflict. Absolutely. And Ryan's on spring break, but he'll be back here next week for another edition of CounterPoints. And the wait is almost over. I think we can start teasing this a little bit more heavily, Crystal. There will be some new CounterPoints content coming down the pike. So make sure that you subscribe. You get the full version of CounterPoints when you subscribe right to your inbox. You know, not just the couple of clips that we post on Wednesdays from the show, but the whole thing right to your inbox. And you get all kinds of different benefits

of your premium subscription for Breaking Points as well. So that's BreakingPoints.com. And I would highly recommend everybody stay tuned for next week. Yes. Speaking of giving the people what they want, we had many, many requests, seriously, for more Ryan and Emily, and we were trying to make that happen for you good people. So thank you for your support in helping to enable that. And Emily, thank you for having me. I'll be back here again with Sagar tomorrow.

So hope you guys aren't sick of me yet. I was going to say, I don't know if you saw this, Crystal, but now Ryan and Emily, there's competition in the Ryan and Emily department because Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt are in a new movie together and they just covered Taylor Swift's All Too Well on Saturday Night Live and Taylor referred to it as Ryan and Emily's version. And we had some great viewer response to that. They're like, this is not the Ryan and Emily that I've come to know and love. Of course, Ryan Grimm and Emily Dyshynski are much more famous and iconic duo. Of course. Name a more iconic Ryan and Emily than Ryan Grimm and Emily Dyshynski.

Doesn't exist. Well, stay tuned for more of that. And Sagar will be back with Crystal tomorrow. Thanks so much for tuning in, everyone. 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.

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