Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 4/21/25: SCOTUS Blocks El Salvador Deportations, Japan Rebukes Trump On Trade, Full Blown Pentagon Meltdown

Episode Date: April 21, 2025

Ryan and Saagar discuss SCOTUS blocks El Salvador deportations in midnight order, Japan stands up to Trump on tariffs, full blown meltdown at the Pentagon.   To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show AD FREE, uncut and 1 hour early visit: www.breakingpoints.com   Merch Store: https://shop.breakingpoints.com/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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early and totally ad-free on iHeart True Crime Plus. So don't wait. Head to Apple Podcasts and subscribe today. and seeker of male validation. I'm also the girl behind Boy Sober, the movement that exploded in 2024. You might hear that term and think it's about celibacy, but to me, Boy Sober is about understanding yourself outside of sex and relationships. It's flexible, it's customizable, and it's a personal process.

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Happy Monday. We have an amazing show for everybody today. Bro show, people live for the pound. Ryan Grimm is here in the house, and we have a packed show. All right, let's see what we've got here. Toughest part of the job. El Salvador, we're gonna be having Pisco on from, he's previously joined us. He's a lawyer. He's got a lot of expertise

on immigration. He did a very good job of explaining and breaking stuff down. There's been so many legal developments just over the last 48 hours. The Supreme Court has gotten involved, basically blocked the entire Trump administration using the Alien Enemies Act. He's going to explain what that means, what the justification is, and what the future looks like. We are going to talk about tariffs. There's been some major hangups in the Trump administration's plan to negotiate bilateral trade agreements. The country of Japan has indicated it is not going to cede to U.S. demands. There's a lot of watch on Japan because it's the first major ally to actually negotiate with the Trump administration here, and there's some

troubling signs, as well as some peek behind the curtain of how we got our little 90-day pause. It's not exactly the best and the brightest. We're going to talk about Pete Hegseth. And Pete Hegseth, it seems there's just insanity going on right now at the Pentagon. There's a full-scale purge, a literal purge, of top officials, many of whom are very against war with Iran, were loyal to Pete Hegsat. They all appear to have been fired. And at the very same time, Hegsat now embroiled in a scandal where he allegedly sent those same Yemen war plans to a group chat, which included his wife and his brother. We are going to talk about a little story here that Ryan and I worked on together. I believe, Ryan, it's my first byline in six years, so it's good to be back. It's good

to be back at Dropside. And for people who aren't in journalism, when two people write a story together, they call it a co-byline. That's right. So we got to go with co-bro-line. Yeah, co-bro-line. I like it a lot. I like it. It's good to be back. Ryan and I worked on this story together, an exclusive report that our subscribers will hear first. So if you want to get that, go ahead, breakingpoints.com. Not going to give it away just yet. Israel, we're going to talk about some updates there. Of course, just Israel admitting that they killed those medics. They call it a mistake. They fired the brigade. They said this is what accountability means. They removed one guy from his job. That's it. And beyond that, Ryan, you're going to get into how the TikTok of how they even got to an admission of guilt. A lot of it was because of you guys. A

lot of it was because of journalists that were there on the ground reporting from behind the scenes. And it was specifically not because of the legacy media that forced this. We're going to as well give some updates on the potential Iran deal. There is a full-scale war, and this relates very much to the story that Ryan and I are doing, a full-scale war, and this relates very much to the story that Ryan and I are doing, a full-scale war inside the Trump administration itself over the feasibility of these continued negotiations with Iran. Negotiations do continue, and they're very positive signals. Of course, it could fall apart at any time. And the neocon war on the individuals who are involved, people like Steve Witkoff, Adam Boehler, and others, continues. The Israel lobby is throwing

everything they possibly can to kill these. We're going to give everybody an update. And then finally, finally, some interesting moments there on the Joe Rogan experience with Tim Dillon. Rogan openly mocked Douglas Murray, and Douglas Murray and Bill Maher teaming up to openly go after Joe Rogan. Interesting. All former guests and friends, apparently, together, so there's a lot going on there. He makes it too easy. Yeah. Have you been there? Have you been? I mean, it's too good. Listen, Douglas, you did it to yourself, brother. You make yourself look like an idiot. People are going to take a notice. All right, so before we get to that, just thank

you to everybody who's been subscribing to BreakingPoints.com. Ryan and Emily did a fantastic job on the Friday show, which, of course, we have extra premium content that they did for us on Friday, available only to our premium subscribers. Tomorrow, Kristen and I will be doing our live Ask Me Anything and their continued expansions here. So if you can support us, BreakingPoints.com. Again, if you cannot, it's totally fine. Just make sure that you like and subscribe either to this video or any of the other videos that you're watching. And, guys, if you are listening, just go ahead, take this podcast episode, and send it to a friend. Leave a five-star review. It's the best possible thing that you could do for the show.

But if you can do it now, you should do it now because thanks to Trump, you might not be able to do it soon because it might be laid off soon. So spend it while you've got it. Yes, yes. Support something that you care about so that it can survive the coming tide. There you go. All right. Well, thank've got it. Yes, yes. Support something that you care about so that it can survive the coming tide. There you go. All right. Well, thank you very much. Yes, of course. And I do, I would never advocate for anybody going to credit card debt. So if that's true, just like and subscribe to the video and send it to a friend. All right. No hard feelings. Also, we had some very sad news that broke overnight. Pope Francis officially died. He's

88 years old. Just met literally yesterday with the Vice President of the United States. He wasn't looking so good in that. But of course, there will be kickoff, the major conclave and all of the traditions surrounding the selection of the new Pope. So it is an end of an era, certainly. Condolences to all the Catholics out there. And we'll talk about this later in the program. And I promise I will not make fun of J.D. Vance for killing him. Okay. I mean, you can. I mean, it's objectively funny. But I mean, you know, it's not a funny moment, of course, for, what is it, a billion Catholics, something like that? He lived a good life. Around the world. Yeah. He had a very interesting life.

So we'll talk a little bit about his legacy. We'll talk about it there at the end. But with that, let's go ahead and get to Pisco. He's waiting for us. Joining us now is Pisco. He is the host of Pisco's Hour for Our Purposes. He's actually an attorney, and he's got a lot of specialization in immigration. He's been doing a decent job. He joined us before. He did a great job breaking down those legal developments, and we have even more legal developments here, specifically involving the Supreme Court. So guys, let's go ahead and put this up there on the screen. This came over the weekend, where it was an extraordinary order from the United States Supreme Court, the Supreme Court blocking the Trump administration from deporting foreign nationals under the Alien Enemies Act. So, Pisco, go ahead and describe this order, how many justices were for, how many were against, the timing of which it came out because there was a lot of legal analysis going over the entire breadth of the decision.

Go ahead. Yeah, sure. So this is an extraordinary order. The ACLU went to the district court, went to the appellate court, the Fifth Circuit, and then also to the Supreme Court almost concurrently, within hours of each other, because there was news that the Trump administration was moving quickly to deport tons of alleged alien enemies. If you remember the last time we spoke, there was that ruling and holding that even alleged alien enemies are entitled to due process and to have habeas petitions. Well, as I predicted, and as we talked about, they were going to interpret what reasonable notice meant.

And according to the ACLU, that meant 24 hours. And you got this sort of signal that you were going to file a habeas petition. And so in an extraordinary order, the Supreme Court at like one o'clock in the morning ordered, quote, the government to stop and pause any deportations under the Alien Enemies Act. It was right now there's only two noted dissents. We don't know for sure that all the other seven were in favor, but there were no other noted dissents. We don't know for sure that all the other seven were in favor, but there were no other noted dissents. So people are assuming now that there was a 7-2 holding to pause all Alien Enemy Act deportations in a certain part of Texas. Okay. So let's put up A2. Speaking of these dissents, this is Sam Alito. He writes,

in sum, literally in the middle of the night, the court issued unprecedented and legally questionable relief without giving the lower courts a chance to rule, without hearing from the opposing party, within eight hours of receiving the application, with dubious factual support for its order, and without providing any explanation for its order, refused to join the court's order, because we had no good reason to think that under the circumstances,

issuing an order at midnight was necessary or appropriate. Both the executive and the judiciary have an obligation to follow the law. Now, at the same time, you had a rather dramatic circuit court hearing with the judge there that the Trump administration kind of despises, where you had the attorneys for the migrants saying, we are hearing that people are being ordered to change clothes right now. Like, we can smell the fumes of the buses that are going to take these men to the airport. Please, sir. Please, your honor. Like, you have to act now. And he refused to step in, saying that he didn't have the jurisdiction at the time to inject himself into the controversy.

But the Supreme Court did then just hours later. So can you talk about Alito's claim here that there actually is no urgency and that they shouldn't have done that? Where were the people in question at this moment? Yeah, by all accounts, the reporting is they were on buses ready to go to the airport and they were getting ready to take off. Now, I think you're referencing a hearing with Judge Boasberg. And in that case, it's in a different jurisdiction. Boasberg is pretty much saying, you know, my hands are tied. The Supreme Court said, you know, the right venue for these habeas petitions has to be in the place where the confinement, you know, was at the time the habeas petition was filed. And so I actually don't blame Boasberg at all. He is just, you know, holding on to that ruling from the Supreme Court earlier.

Does this apply to his people as well, because it covers all class of people under the Alien Enemies Act? It covers only people in Texas, the Supreme Court's order itself. But Boasberg is saying, listen, I don't have jurisdiction here. I have to listen to the Supreme Court. So that makes sense. As for Alito's concerns, in ordinary circumstances, yeah, Alito would be right. You're supposed to go through the ordinary process of appeal. You're supposed to make sure that you're exhausting your remedies in the district court and then at the circuit court of appeals.

Here's the problem. Nobody believes the government when they say, hey, we're not going to deport these people. Oftentimes, they're not even able to make those representations in court. Oftentimes, they lie. They're already lying about the decision. They say that it was 9-0 in their favor, the previous decision for Kilmar and Gregor Garcia. And so you can tell the Supreme Court, they're a little spooked, I think, those seven justices. They don't trust the administration. And so when Alito says there's no factual basis to believe that these

people are about to be deported, he's taken the government at their word, and what the government has shown is you shouldn't. So I think that's actually the most interesting part about the late-night decision, is it was clearly the Supreme Court trying to assert its jurisdiction and its orders after watching the Trump administration and the way they have handled a lot of the Kilmar-Arbrego-Garcia case.

Speaking of which, there have been some extraordinary developments on that over the weekend as well. We had a couple of instances. Ryan and Emily did a good job on Friday of breaking down the meeting between Senator Chris Van Hollen and Abrego Garcia that took place in El Salvador. But what actually came following that announcement was interesting as well. A continued claim from the Trump administration that Abrego Garcia was a confirmed member of MS-13. We have a little bit here from Abrego Garcia's lawyer being asked specifically about tattoos

that allegedly show his MS-13 membership on his hands. And then I want to get your reaction afterwards. Let's take a listen to his lawyer. One thing that we've heard from the legal team and against this allegation from the White House is about his history. I know that you've said he doesn't have a criminal history, that he had never been arrested for anything before. People at the White House have pointed out to me, they say that doesn't mean that he wasn't a member of MS-13. There's not always criminal activity on someone's record if they are in a gang. And I want to show you something that the president posted tonight.

It's a photo of what he says is your client's left hand. You can see his knuckles there. And the president is showing these tattoos that the White House alleges. Break down what's going on there in terms of the claim. I know you've looked and actually read a lot of the docket. There's a lot of conservative influencers. There'll be like a confirmed member of MS-13. Break it all down for the audience here.

Yeah. So first of all, it's important to note that it doesn't matter even if you were an MS-13 member. Even the worst criminals in the country deserve due process, and none of the Supreme Court's holdings related to due process rely on whether or not you're a member of MS-13 or not. But to actually address the claim, they're based on a sort of police report that existed in 2019, where a cop who was later sort of suspended for behavior that's frankly, you know, I don't know if I would say corrupt, but certainly bad behavior, where he was having sex with a prostitute that he was also feeding, you know, confidential information to. And this cop, on the basis of really just hearsay, someone said

he's a member of MS-13 and he's wearing like Chicago Bulls clothing. They alleged that he was a member of MS-13. And so that claim got sort of funneled into the immigration court. And alleged hearsay, like, do we even know that this person exists? We don't know who this person's name is. We don't know who they are. Sometimes they're fabricated. Yeah. Right. So the holdings of the immigration courts were with respect to a bond hearing. We don't know who they are. or something. And the court found probable cause to hold you or just to hold you, right? Just the amount of evidence it would take for them to keep you in a cage until there is the process, right? You don't have any right to cross-examine this person. There was no availability of this officer

to be cross-examined. And so it is the height, I think, of a propagandist to suggest that these rulings related to the bond hearing, you know, are actual findings of fact that he's a member of MS-13. And all the evidence is to the contrary, in my opinion, no criminal record here, no criminal record in El Salvador. You know, those tattoos, it's like the Glenn Beck, you guys ever see the Glenn Beck board where they're just like connecting dots and they're saying that the marijuana leaf represents M, the smiley face represents S. And so they're just trying to make connections there. And also, I don't know how much you know about MS-13, but if people look up the tattoos that MS-13 gang members wear, they will

write MS-13 across their face. It's blaring it, underlining it, circling it all across their back. MS-13, they are not a shy gang. Like, they're not the kind. They're not like a 14-year-old who's, you know, trying to get, like, something past their parents or their teacher. Like, ha, ha, ha, I got a little marijuana leaf, but it actually means the M in MS-13. Like, they blare it out. You get kicked out of the gang if you're like, wait a minute, are you in MS-13 or not? Like, what is this weak stuff? Noted MS-13 expert Ryan Green. Exactly. Yeah, right. Yeah, go ahead, Pisco.

No, no, no. But you read the, like the tattoo analysis documents that they're giving to some of these ICE officers. And they're, you know, there's one tattoo I remember I said, which means, you know, Real Madrid until death. But people take that to be like a gang tattoo. It's just, you know, absurd the lengths they'll go to. And even with some of these other cases that are not seen as much coverage, I think simply because this Kilmer-Abrego-Garcia case is so preposterous and so unlawful. But there are other cases where we know, like, it's an autism tattoo, or it's a tattoo that says mom or dad. And so nobody trusts these tattoo experts. And when they actually go

to court, some of these habeas petitions have been brought in court. In at least one instance, the court has asked the government, hey, what's your evidence that this person is a gang member and an alien enemy? And they have literally put up nothing, zero, like not even just saying like the bad evidence that they have here, the doctored photo or whatever, they have put up no evidence. And so this is really disturbing. And we shouldn't trust the government's representations as to Kilmar or as to any of these alleged alien enemies. So to that— Go ahead.

Just real quickly, I've seen real tattoo people say the most logical explanation for it would be weed makes me happy, so Sagar would like to see him deported just for that. Weed makes me happy, you know, faith in the Lord till I die. Like, Lord till I die. Or what if it's faith in weed, which is even worse. All right, let's get to make it serious. All right, give him a second chance.

To make it serious. To make it serious. Let's turn to Tom Homan, the immigration czar. You said we're going to be serious. Ryan's still on his high from 420. That's what's going on here. All right, let's get to Tom Homan.

He's the immigration czar. And he's asked specifically about this tattoo identification process. Let's take a listen. But no one's removed just because of a tattoo. In other words, the alien entity means you can grab somebody and you can deport them without an extended hearing because you have labeled them a terrorist. Because you've said you've determined that somebody is a member of the gang. And therefore, they don't have to go through the extended process of the opportunity to

have a full hearing. That's what you're saying. And let's just be clear. I'm saying we're following the laws of this country. There's a different procedure for each one. We're doing things within the frame of the law. We're doing things legally. OK, I stand by that.

Now, again, I'm not a constitutional scholar. I'm not going to argue this in court. That's what the Department of Justice does. But I'm sitting here today thinking we've done the right thing for this nation, following the laws and the Constitution of this country. So what do you get from that about not only the defense of the Alien Enemies Act, the tattoo justification and more? What do you think?

Yeah, this guy's a depraved individual. He has no idea what the law is, and they're an open defiance of the Supreme Court. They're claiming that they only have to give 24 hours notice to people, and that constitutes reasonable notice for some of these people who don't even speak English to file habeas petitions. They know they're flouting the Supreme Court. That's one ruling, right? That's the ruling related to the Alien Ames Act that you deserve a habeas petition.

That's one ruling that they're violating. The second ruling that they're violating is they're still not facilitating the release from custody in El Salvador of Kilmar. And now apparently he's been moved around multiple times. So on the one hand, what I get from that is open defiance. And the people who's most in charge of the quote unquote border or enforcement doesn't even know the bare bones of their enforcement policy, isn't able to speak about it intelligently in a conversation. And in general, I think this entire endeavor has been characterized by unlawfulness and illegality. So his pretense that they've been doing everything to follow the law, I think, is just absurd. Camp Shane, one of America's longest-running weight loss camps for kids,

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voiceover, the movement that exploded in 2024. VoiceOver is about understanding yourself outside of sex and relationships. It's more than personal. It's political, it's societal, and at times, it's far from what I originally intended it to be. These days, I'm interested in expanding what it means to be voiceover to make it customizable for anyone who feels the need to explore their relationship to relationships. I'm talking to a lot of people who will help us think about how we love each other. It's a very, very normal experience to have times where a relationship is prioritizing other parts of that relationship that aren't being naked together.

How we love our family. I've spent a lifetime trying to get my mother to love me, but the price is too high. And how we love ourselves. Singleness is not a waiting room. You are actually at the party right now. Let me hear it. Listen to VoiceOver on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. On the moving around part, that was one where I was very confused as well. So Senator Chris

Van Hollen, who met with Garcia, broke down some of the things he learned not only about Garcia, but also about the arrangement between the United States and El Salvador. Let's take a listen to that, and I want your reaction as well. The Trump administration has promised to pay El Salvador $15 million to detain these prisoners, including the illegally abducted Tomar. Say, I want to say something about the government of El Salvador. They are making a huge mistake. You know, they want to brand themselves as a country for technology. You know, the president said, you know, Bitcoin is legal tender. But now what they're branding themselves as, as the place for these huge prisons where people who are illegally deducted, excuse me, illegally abducted, are warehoused. There may be states that decide, you know, they don't want

any of their pension funds invested in companies that invest in a place like El Salvador. So that was an interesting kind of breakdown. He talked about how there's a $9 million arrangement between the United States and El Salvador about this movement of prisons. What does that, so I mean, beyond the interest in that, in his particular circumstances, what does that mean for this legal arrangement? That's what a lot of people are trying to get their heads around, both in the facilitation, in terms of ever being able to bring him back, even if he were to be deported again. Can you break some of that down for us? Yeah, I think legally what is relevant about that is for purposes of the concern regarding the Article II encroachment of the court. So you'll remember and recall there was

this big discussion about, well, what can the Article II district court, sorry, Article III district court order the administration to actually do? Does facilitate mean I get to order the Trump administration to invade El Salvador? Surely it can't mean that. And so for purposes of that analysis, I think the fact that there is a payment relationship there makes this much more like a contracting situation. And I think everyone would agree, right? oversight over Guantanamo Bay were being outsourced to a private corporation or even like a foreign country operating in Guantanamo Bay, that the nature of the payment structure there sort of informs the court who actually has the authority, right? If he's in constructive custody of the United States, regardless of whether or not the prison guards themselves are Americans,

that's a very different situation than Brittany Griner when she's in prison by the Russian Federation. And so I think those are all things that the court is going to take into consideration there. And I think it is legally relevant. Okay. Ryan, you got anything else? No. All right. Covers it. I have a question for you, Sager. Sure. Sager, but yeah, go ahead.

Oh, my bad. Sager. My apologies. Isn't this condemnable? Didn't the Trump administration do the wrong thing here? Oh, absolutely. I mean, I think that the way this has been handled has been really a disaster. And I think, you know, the interesting thing, and I've said this to Crystal, I've said to Glenn as well, like my initial reaction, you know, to the entire case was a baseline trust in like, not even trust per se, but just in basic competence that I didn't expect that you could actually be in a world where you would be not only about Abrego Garcia being mistakenly deported, but where, you know, the United States criminal justice system validates gang members in the Bureau of Prisons literally every day. So you would think that there is some baseline assumption around how to classify people as a

gang member. Let's say you have eight to 10 million, eight to 10 million illegals who enter the country under Biden. That's a conservative estimate. And it's like, okay, it's reasonably, you know, and it's a reasonable assumption, I think, to say that a 250 or so, they say that they're the worst of the worst. I actually, you know, I approach that from a position of like, yeah, it sounds relatively reasonable. And then to see the way that these claims have all fallen apart in court and then the way that they have handled it now, yeah, I just don't think that it falls both under any legal scrutiny. But I think also one of the things I didn't take seriously at the time was not only the due process proposition for any person in the United States, but it really does validate a lot of libertarian concerns about defending the principle, even whenever it's something that you matter the most, because it's obvious here now that this is just the way that the administration conducts itself, both on an immigration level, but also really across the board, whenever it comes to tariffs,

whenever it comes to so many of the different things, signal gate, the sheer stupidity, the incompetence, and then also just asking people to defend something of which they themselves are admitting fault in a court and then breaking it so that you have to completely debase yourself. So yeah, I know, you know, I'm sure you have to completely debase yourself. So, yeah, I know, you know, I'm sure you wanted your gotcha, but, you know, you got me, right? Yeah, I appreciate that. Sagar's come around on this, and a very, very tiny part of me is mad at the Trump administration for what it did to its own supporters here, because it took the faith that its supporters had

that Trump was going to be diligent and honest about. Now, I never, he didn't betray me because I never felt like he would do that. But they really believed that, okay, he's going to go in and he's going to find 300 of the worst of the worst and he's going to get them out of here. And instead, he swept up, you know, at least it looks like more than 100 people have no gang affiliation whatsoever. They're not even claiming they have gang affiliation. The country's focused on Abreu Garcia. But, you know, we reported on what's his name, Sergio Reyes, who was a goalkeeper from Venezuela who had a Real Madrid, another Real Madrid victim, had a Real Madrid tattoo. And they lock him up for that.

Another one had like a tattoo about autism awareness because he had an autistic brother. Then, of course, there's the makeup artist who clearly is not an MS-13 member, but maybe he had a tattoo. I forget why he wound up there. Just mistake after mistake and using people's kind of earnest support for the Trump administration to marshal the Capitol to do that. Yeah, I think Ryan's exactly right. And politically, I mean, I still think immigration is the strongest ground that the Trump administration falls on. And I think a lot of people are deluding themselves and thinking that this is going to be like dramatically unpopular. Most people don't watch the news or segments like this. And they're broadly just like, oh, he's a gang member. You know, there's still a lot of trust in the Trump administration from

the people who voted for Donald Trump. But at a serious level, I mean, I think all the concerns, not only about due process, but about the basic competence that an American can have in their government in executing a policy, which I do think was validated at a large level by the American electorate on terms of mass deportation. There was at least an assumption about some basic levels of competence. One of the major hits on the Biden administration was these are the most incompetent people who've ever run the government. Look at the state of the country. We're going to restore some sense of normalcy. And I just don't see that. You know, we've been some 90 days, 90 days now, right? In terms of the

Trump administration from the Doge cuts, which were supposed to be 2 trillion, now they're 1 trillion. It's like, it really does become an all-encompassing framework. And sure, you know, liberals can say I told you so, but, you know, it's not like there's a lot of people who trust them per se. So sometimes you do need to see things. You need to see things for yourself. And I encourage people to think for themselves and to listen to people like you and to others and other debates, et cetera.

So thank you so much for joining us, man. We appreciate it. Thanks so much for having me, man. Camp Sheen, one of America's longest-running weight loss camps for kids, promised extraordinary results. Campers who began the summer in heavy bodies were often unrecognizable when they left. In a society obsessed with being thin, it seemed like a miracle solution. But behind Camp Shane's facade of happy, transformed children

was a dark underworld of sinister secrets. Kids were being pushed to their physical and emotional limits as the family that owned Shane turned a blind eye. Nothing about that camp was right. It was really actually like a horror movie. In this eight-episode series, we're unpacking and investigating stories of mistreatment and reexamining the culture of fatphobia that enabled a flawed system to continue for so long. You can listen to all episodes of Camp Shame one week early and totally ad-free on iHeart True Crime Plus.

So don't wait. Head to Apple Podcasts and subscribe today. DNA test proves he is not the father. Now I'm taking the inheritance. Wait a minute, John. Who's not the father? Well, Sam, luckily it's your not the father week on the OK Storytime podcast. So we'll find out soon. This author writes, my father-in-law is trying to steal the family fortune worth millions from my son, even though it was promised to us. Now I find out he's trying to give it to his irresponsible son instead.

But I have DNA proof that could get the money back. Hold up. So what are they going to do to get those millions back? That's so unfair. Well, the author writes that her husband found out the truth from a DNA test they were gifted two years ago. Scandalous. But the kids kept their mom's secret that whole time.

Oh my God. And the real kicker, the author wants to reveal this terrible secret, even if that means destroying her husband's family in the process. So do they get the millions of dollars back or does she keep the family's terrible secret? Well, to hear the explosive finale, listen to the OK Storytime podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. Have you ever thought about going voiceover? I'm Hope Woodard, a comedian, creator, and seeker of male validation. To most people, I'm the girl behind voiceover, the movement that exploded in 2024. Voiceover

is about understanding yourself outside of sex and relationships. It's more than personal. It's political, it's societal, and at times it's far from what I originally intended it to be. These days, I'm interested in expanding what it means to be voiceover, to make it customizable for anyone who feels the need to explore their relationship to relationships. I'm talking to a lot of people who will help us think about how we love each other. It's a very, very normal experience to have times where a relationship is prioritizing other parts of that relationship that aren't being naked together. How we love our family.

I've spent a lifetime trying to get my mother to love me, but the price is too high. And how we love ourselves. Singleness is not a waiting room. You are actually at the party right now. Let me hear it. Listen to VoiceOver on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Let's get to the tariffs now. Man, there has been such a whirlwind around this.

Let's put this up there on the screen. Just actually very relevant. Something we should discuss about process, about incompetence. This is basically straight out of the first term. So, quote, Trump advisors took advantage of Navarro's absence to push for a tariff pause. Peter Navarro, quote, had been a fixture on the president's side after Liberation Day. So the Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and Secretary Besson, they wanted a 90-day pause on the global tariff plan. So what they did is they basically created a situation where somebody else in the White House complex invited Navarro to a meeting. Now, he invited them to a meeting which was across the street.

Now, while Navarro is conveniently across the street and cannot argue against Secretary Besson and Secretary Lutnick. Secretary Besson and Lutnick rush into the Oval Office, quote, to see Trump and propose a pause on these tariffs without Navarro there to argue or to push back. They know they had only a very tight window. It was not on Trump's public schedule. The two men convinced him of the strategy to announce the pause and stayed with Trump until he tapped out his Truth Social post, which surprised Navarro, who happened to be in a meeting. And then immediately, Secretary Besant walks out of the West Wing in front of the cameras to declare the policy, Ryan. So that is the level of care and attention that the steward of the global economy currently has over all of our fates, our business here at Breaking Points, and so much more.

The most important thing here is obviously the fate of the global economy and all the people that rely on it. But underneath it, there's this bubbling question of insider trading. This, in an interesting way, exonerates, from my perspective, the charges of insider trading because in order for you to insider trade you have to have reliable information from the inside that you can then trade off nobody including navarro new including trump well and the u.s trade representative including latin including besant none of them knew that they would successfully persuade trump like they had a plan but you can't trade off just a plan insider trading is supposed't trade off just a plan. Insider trading is supposed to be, you know for a fact, X thing is going to happen. So they go in, it's just the three of them, and then he taps it out on his phone right

there. I'll give you a counter. 3,000 points up. Here's my counter. Let's say— That this is all a lie. So one of the reports from behind the scenes is that Secretary Besson, all week long, all he's doing is taking calls from these Wall Street guys, being like, you need to stop,

you need to stop, you need to stop. Let's say that he tells them, he goes, listen, I'm walking into the Oval soon, and I'm going to try and to change his mind. It's not a guarantee. Right, it's still a bet. Yeah, but these guys make bets all the time, right? It's a tremendous amount upside. It's a stronger bet.

It's a stronger bet. You know, it's a little bit of information. Like, let's say, if you can even- It's more than you and I know. Here's the thing. You know, I do a lot of reading about ways to beat the casino. Plot twist. It doesn't usually work.

But the thing is, is that if you can even rule out, let's say, one-fifth of the roulette board, that changes the odds for everything else, right? You're not going to win, but in the long run- In the long run, you'll win. In the long run, you will win. So, there you go. So, that's just a little bit of information about what might not happen or what might happen is enough to make more of a structured bet, which you might be able to take to the bank. And obviously it worked out for them. Fair point.

But like we said, the bigger point is we are all living and dying by this. And it does not give you much confidence in the overarching strategy here, which we can get into more because the U.S. is now dealing with the European Union. We can put this next element up on the screen here. We're seeing the U.S. put into this extraordinarily difficult position where we are going into these negotiations in a badly weakened place. The dollar's crashing, our stock market is crashing, the bond market is crashing, and you're seeing travel drop in a way that is utterly extraordinary. So it's partly it's the trade war that's going on, but I think primarily, I think, so the trade war is creating

a lot of anger, but I think people don't make a lot of their individual travel decisions based on their political thoughts about the leadership of a country. People are nervous that they're going to wind up in detention centers for some violation in their visa. I'm curious how this lands on the right. On the left, we're like, hey, we love foreign travel because it's good for the economy. And we don't do much else. Like, we are a service economy and we're a nice place. So travel, I'm not going to downplay it. I'm not going to overstate it either.

It's 9% of U.S. GDP. That's a lot. There are rough foreign tourists. I think it's only 0.3%. Oh, 9% total. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So if we look, which is massive. No, yeah, yeah. So if we look- Which is massive.

No, I'm not. So again, I'm not going to downplay it. It's also not NVIDIA, okay? It's not the S&P 500. Now, that's easy for me to say, and I'm not talking to what I'm trying to think. Orlando, if you own a hotel in Orlando, God bless you, okay? I feel bad for you. You know, you just got a massive hit.

If you own anything in upstate New York or in Seattle where a bunch of Canadians are always traveling to, apparently Canadians love Vegas. Vegas is taking an absolute beating right now. I have more ambivalence about that one. But in terms of letting them take a hit, my point is that there are a lot of people out there relying on this free income. I'm not going to downplay that at all. At the same time, we are still talking about a 17% drop in travel. And, you know, that's not bad.

But the numbers are just coming in, though. Zero. Right. But that's just what we But the numbers are just coming in zero. Right. That's that's that's just what we've been able to measure so far. Like the direction of that arrow. It's like the Hamas carrot. Look, I feel complicated about it in certain ways because, you know, this is the same GDP argument, right, that people make about foreign real estate. It's like, listen, you have to we're the world's capital destination. I'm like, yeah, but that's bad for a lot of people who are here. One of the things I think that went most wrong with America and its global cities is that our cities, when I say global, they really are global, as in they are the global playground for the world's rich in the same

way that Monaco or something is. Los Angeles is not for America, okay? It's for the richest people on earth to all gather. Same thing with New York City, Manhattan real estate. It's a joke. Like, if you're a rich Chinese or rich Russian or rich whatever, you know, from some tiny African country, you're the one billionaire from there. You're hanging out in Manhattan. Everybody who lives or is in these cities, they know that. Not only money laundering. Go to Miami. What is it, 26% or whatever of the real estate there?

I'm talking specifically about real estate. But what I'm saying is that there is a downside to being. But the real estate is money laundering. Yes. But what I'm saying is that being the global destination for the world's elite, yes, it's good for GDP purposes, but you lose a lot whenever that happens as well because you basically become this playground where we're like serving these like super rich, I don't know, Guinea Basawans like in Miami, and you're like, well, what's going on here, right?

So I'm just, I want to give the caveat for why I don't think that it's as chalked up necessarily as it usually is. Yeah, and I agree. I just wish that the U.S. had the kind of political economy and the capacity to be able to say, okay, we're going to respond to this. This Guinea-Bissau oligarch wants to park his $25 million that he stole here. Well, it's going to cost you 20%. 20? We're talking about 20.

50. Way more than that. Let's negotiate. 50, 75. Well, I would say it should be here, period. And with that, we're going to fund our school system. Sure. Instead, we don't do any of that.

We just completely sell for nothing to the oligarchs. And if that is the system that we're going to have, then people are going to burn it to the ground, and rightfully so. But then without replacing it with anything else. Yeah. Listen, not a lot of disagreement. Just giving a little bit of a counter perspective, per se. You don't really want an economy that relies entirely on foreigners coming over here and spending a bunch of money on some bullshit they don't need and that we don't need either. All those unoccupied rental properties or condominiums or whatever that are just money

laundering and people stashing money that drives up the price of rent for everybody else. There you go. So maybe it'll be cheaper in Plattsburgh or in Maine. We'll see. Everything is going to get cheaper in a lot of ways, except for the problem that your 401k is going to crash, the tariffs are going to go up, the currency is weaker. But the good thing about a deep recession is that, yes, rents are going to go down. That's true. Yeah, I remember talking about that about gas prices. I was like, well,

you know, gas prices could go down, but it will be because of demand, and that's actually really bad. Because nobody can afford it, yeah. Exactly. Now, in terms of the trade, so one relief the market is looking for is some trade deals. They're like, give us trade deals, give us trade deals, give us trade deals. Let's see some progress. Because they think that'll signal the end of the war. That means to signal the end of the trade war. It means a 90-day pause will not actually go into effect.

After 90 days, it'll mean that the China trade war is actually going well, that there's negotiations and all of that happening. So everybody has been looking towards Japan. And because Japan, top three U.S. ally, G7 economy, one of the world's developed, slapped with a 25 percent tariff. Japan negotiated a trade agreement with Trump in 2019. Trump notoriously respects them. He loves Shinzo Abe, thinks that he looked out for his country. I love Japan as well, as any watcher knows. But what's interesting is that the Japanese this time around are signaling much less optimism around any sort of trade negotiation.

There's been a massive decline in trust on the Japanese side for how these are going to go. And already, just this morning, I was looking at the futures. Let's see. They are down about 1% on the S&P 500, largely as a result of this negotiation. So what we have here is a very interesting video flagged by our friend Arnaud. This is the former Assistant Secretary of Defense Chas Freeman, who actually seems to have gotten some inside information from the Japanese trade delegation. Let's take a listen to what he had to say. The White House claims that there are direct talks going on somehow with the Chinese. I don't believe it. I think what is happening is what I described earlier. The Chinese are maintaining contact with us, routine contact. There is no

negotiation going on. The Japanese have just been in Washington, and their experience apparently was they went to talk to the American leadership on this matter, and the American leadership said, what are you offering? And the Japanese said, well, what is it that you want? And the Americans could not explain what they wanted. This is a cockamamie approach to negotiation. And I think the Chinese, having observed the United States break virtually every agreement it has agreed to in recent years, including the replacement for NAFTA with proposed tariffs on Canada and Mexico,

that was negotiated by Mr. Trump in his first term. And yet he felt free to abandon it and repudiate it. What's the incentive to negotiate with the United States when the United States has no stated objectives that make sense and no record of compliance with its own agreements? So I don't think there is. I think the Chinese have decided they will wait us out

and see how Americans like Walmart and Amazon denuded products. That was a really interesting perspective, obviously. But, you know, it pairs with some of the reporting that's coming out now, Ryan. This is extraordinary to come from a Japanese prime minister. Can we go ahead and put B5, please, up on the screen? So the Japanese prime minister actually just spoke before parliament Monday, his time, so several hours ago, and said, quote, if Japan concedes everything, we won't be able to secure our national interests, saying Japan will not keep conceding to the United States in tariff talks. And clearly, they are just deeply confused.

They don't know what we want. My personal favorite is the demand from the Trump administration of why don't you buy more American rice? We're trying to tell the Japanese to buy our rice? Whoa, whoa, whoa. That's like telling the Chinese to buy tea from like North. They're like, Oh, hold on a second here.

We, we got it. We, we solved that problem about 2000 years ago. And he, the other one he talked about was, you know, Trump is very fixated on the lack of American cars on the roads in Japan.

And as, as he talked about, and you could, you were there recently and tell us about your on the lack of American cars on the roads in Japan. And as he talked about, and you were there recently and tell us about your on-the-ground reporting, the Prime Minister's like, look, man, the cars have the steering wheel on the wrong side. Like, we drive on the left side over here. That's true. So go ahead, try to sell your cars.

But, you know, I don't think a lot of people are going to buy them because they're not designed now. Well, they do manufacture them with a different steering wheel for England, but they don't have as big of a production run on those cars. But, I mean, look, this is a secondary thing because they're bad cars. Like, let's just all admit it, okay? And we're lobbying them to reduce their safety standards so that our cars can compete. It's like, how about we make better cars? No. And also consumer choice matters.

By driving the entire world economy into a recession in a tantrum style like Trump is doing, to try to pressure people to buy our products is going to backfire even if you, let's say Japan is like, fine, we will even subsidize your Fords to come into Japan. No, they shouldn't. Japanese people still have to make the decision to buy a Ford. Americans don't even want to be seen in a Tesla right now. You think a Japanese consumer is going to want to be seen in a Chevy? Dude, first of all, what is it? I think 10% of Tokyo residents even own a car.

Right. Over 90%. Where are you going to park that thing? So then secondary, like they're obviously better run. They're literally designed for them. People buy Toyotas in America, okay? So why would you in Japan want to buy a Ford or a Ford F-150? Or let's say even a smaller truck run from any of the U.S. manufacturers,

you would be an idiot to buy that over a Toyota Hilux. You literally would be an idiot, a complete moron. And that's if you're an American. So now compare it to you're in Japan, you get subsidized rate and it's domestically produced, and oh, it's for your own market. By the way, I just looked it up. Japan produces 98% of their own rice domestically. What are we doing here? They only spend $700 million on rice. 50% of that is already from the United States. Why?

Who cares? They're basically self-sufficient on rice. It's been a solved problem. Yeah, they're also an island. If you're an island, and also the current prime minister's base is these farmers, so he's not going to sell his farmers out. But if you're telling an island country they need to, like, reduce the amount of food that they produce for themselves, what self-respecting island nation would do that? Right.

Yeah, well. Didn't make it. I can tell you. I can talk about this all day. It's just one of the dumbest things about the demand for the Japanese. Like, listen, if we want to talk about reciprocal tariffs, fine. We want to talk about trade imbalance deficit, fine. Actually, by the way, the Japanese are the best ally to work with on this. Toyota manufactures half those cars here in the United States of America. A bunch of Hondas are made here.

So many of them are made. They have acceded to many of these demands, and they still get slapped with a 25% tariff. Now, if we want more tax credits and or threats of tariffs, I have no problem with that. If we go over there and we say, hey, listen, X percentage parts are still being manufactured in Japan. You guys are keeping a lot of the gold for yourself, like in terms of the high value chain, which we don't blame you, but we want to bring some of that over to make it more self-sufficient. Absolutely nothing wrong with that and some carrot and stick approach with the tax credit. But from the Japanese, they both are feeling

threatened, which is at the worst time, right? We're in an alleged trade war with China. So what would we want? We want all the Asia Pacific to stand with us. Well, the South Koreans and the Japanese are like, I'm not so sure about this, right? They release a joint statement. The Japanese prime minister openly trying to declare independence from the United States here on a trade war in his parliament. That's the worst possible outcome. Again, for a G7 nation, one of our closest allies, a manufacturingl Sefcovich, met with Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, Bloomberg, and others. A reporter on this also met with United States Trade Representative Jameson Greer. And the reporting is this. It's just an incredible line.

Sefcovich left the meeting with little clarity on the U.S. stance and struggling to determine the American side's aims. So they did the same thing as the Japanese. All right, Americans are like, cool, what are you going to give us? And then the Europeans are like, okay, what do you want? They're like, because what Trump wants, U.S. manufacturing capacity to increase. What does Japan and European Union have anything to do with that? It's like, all right, go ahead. Increase your manufacturing capacity.

Go for it. We're not going to stop you. Do it. The entire thing is preposterous, not only in its demands, in its execution, in the way tariffs and all this stuff in principle and also look at the way that this is being implemented and say this is a total disaster. I am for decoupling with China. That we would all recognize is going to have a lot of pain. So how do you offset pain?

With government subsidy, tax credits, a plan, confidence. That's what the Chinese are doing. And allies. And allies. And this is exactly—so what does Xi Jinping do whenever he faces a trade war? He pumps billions of dollars in the economy. He lowers the interest rate. He makes sure that Amazon e-commerce sites are supporting their Chinese manufacturing base to make sure that nobody in the supply chain gets wiped out from the small all the way to the big manufacturers. You continue to supply and make sure that you have

an autonomous electric vehicle industry that stands completely alone from the United States and the Western markets. And then you go across the Asia Pacific and you cultivate allies like Vietnam. That's everything he has done. Look then at the United States. We have small e-commerce companies. You know, Ryan Peterson, my friend who works at Flexport, we had him here on the show. People will remember. He predicts in 90 days, mass bankruptcy at a small e-commerce level. They're dead, dead at 145%. They're never coming back from this. In fact, he even flagged that there are already two companies who he knows, they just gave up. They sold to China because they were reliant on the factories there to produce their goods.

They said, listen, guys, we can't do business anymore. Your government is propping you up. We'll just sell you our business, our leads and everything. You can take over. They're happy. They've got the cash and the balance sheet. Our people have nothing. So that's the disastrous part of this. The big guys, Walmart, they'll be fine. Okay. Ish. Yeah. Yeah. Ish. Sure. They'll take a 20% haircut on their stock. All of us will go work for Walmart as a greeter or whatever. They will survive. I think that's the one thing we could say with assurance. But many of the smaller products that go into a Walmart, you know, many of the people who are e-commerce, you know, folks or whatever, people who built big businesses, they have no runway now. They have no product. I talked previously as a new expectant parent, how watching these stroller

prices, it hurts, man. Because you know what? okay, yeah, I bought mine before all these tariff things, but if you go on Facebook Marketplace, the secondhand market and all that, the price there is already gonna skyrocket. And people, you know, people feel a tremendous amount of anxiety about buying the proper car seat, the proper stroller. Of course, who doesn't wanna protect their child?

And now they're getting charged for their privilege. And that just is unconscionable to me. And the other thing that Xi Jinping is doing is targeted supports for people who are getting hit by the policy changes. So if you are a small business or a medium-sized business that was reliant on exports to the United States, he is helping you find, like he's doing all the things you said, helping you find a domestic audience. His diplomats are working to find you consumers in Europe or Africa or Japan or wherever else. And in the meantime, he's offering financial support to you so you survive this difficult time. The United States is not doing that.

All of these companies that are facing the short-term pain, as Trump supporters call it, are not getting any support. And so when the long-term gain that's supposed to come rises, those people won't be around to reap that. It'll be the Chinese companies and others who, Chinese companies and the oligarchs who are able to come in and, you know, and buy for peanuts and buy for scraps what's left of those companies. And then if there is any long-term gain, it'll go to those. You're right. It's just one of the dumbest possible things that we have seen this all play out. If they don't back down soon, the damage is going to be immense. The price increases are already here. You can see it as the inventory starts to bleed. And the next time you want to go buy consumer electronics, iPhone and all that stuff, remember, Trump did give a pause.

But he said that there is a separate 232 section, 232 style tariff coming on tariffs specifically for consumer electronic goods. NVIDIA just got slapped with that export control. And by the way, you know, even on this front, just last tangent, the CEO of NVIDIA, the moment that we announced our export license on his chips to China, guess where he was? China. He flew to China to assure them that we will always do business in China. He said, quote, we have done business in China for 30 years and we have no plans to stop. Okay. That's, that's a problem because we can see here, he has no confidence that first of all, he doesn't know whether these tariffs are going to last or not because he has no idea. But second, he can see where his butter is, you know, where,

what is his bread is buttered? Uh, 50% or some of revenue is over there. And, uh, he's not getting any help from the United States of America. I can guarantee you they probably threw everything in the book at Jensen and Wong. And look, I mean, I think that's deeply unpatriotic and all that, but I'm a realist. It's a capitalist. I mean, what are you going to do? Our companies are called multinational corporations for a reason. They are not American corporations, and we should stop believing that they are. Camp Shane, one of America's longest running weight loss camps for kids, promised extraordinary results. Campers who began the summer in heavy bodies were often unrecognizable when they left. In a society obsessed with being thin, it seemed like a

miracle solution. But behind Camp Shane's facade of happy, transformed children was a dark underworld of sinister secrets. Kids were being pushed to their physical and emotional limits as the family that owned Shane turned a blind eye. Nothing about that camp was right. It was really actually like a horror movie. In this eight-episode series, we're unpacking and investigating stories of mistreatment and re-examining the culture of fat phobia that enabled a flawed system to continue for so long. You can listen to all episodes of Camp Shame one week early and totally ad-free on iHeart True Crime Plus. So don't wait. Head to Apple Podcasts and subscribe today. trying to give it to his irresponsible son instead, but I have DNA proof that could get the money back. Hold up. So what are they going to do to get those millions back?

That's so unfair. Well, the author writes that her husband found out the truth from a DNA test they were gifted two years ago. Scandalous. But the kids kept their mom's secret that whole time. Oh my God. And the real kicker, the author wants to reveal this terrible secret,

even if that means destroying her husband's family in the process. So do they get the millions of dollars back or does she keep the family's terrible secret? Well, to hear the explosive finale, listen to the okay. Storytime podcast on the I heart ready web, Apple podcast,

or wherever you get your podcasts. Have you ever thought about going voiceover? I'm hope Woodard, a comedian, creator, and seeker of male validation. To most people, I'm the girl behind VoiceOver, the movement that exploded in 2024. VoiceOver is about understanding yourself outside of sex and relationships.

It's more than personal. It's political, it's societal, and at times, it's far from what I originally intended it to be. These days, I'm interested in expanding what it means to be voiceover, to make it customizable for anyone who feels the need to explore their relationship to relationships. I'm talking to a lot of people who will help us think about how we love each other. It's a very, very normal experience to have times where a relationship is prioritizing other parts of that relationship that aren't being naked together. How we love our family. I've spent a lifetime trying to get my mother to love me, but the price is too high.

And how we love ourselves. Singleness is not a waiting room. You are actually at the party right now. Let me hear it. Listen to VoiceOver on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Let's turn now to Pete Hegseth. Man, there is a full-scale meltdown happening at the Pentagon. It is just unbelievable. Let's go ahead and put C1 up there on the screen. This is just the latest, quote, Hegseth to have shared attack details in a second signal chat. The defense secretary sent sensitive information about strikes in Yemen to an encrypted group chat that included his wife and brother. His brother, to be fair, actually works for the Pentagon, but his wife, yeah, not so much. It appears to have been a scheduling area, so it's not exactly clear why in the scheduling group chat that he was also sharing attack details. But beyond the signal thing, because we've all covered that at this point, beyond the signal thing-

One extra piece on this. This was his personal phone, which we already knew. Apparently, the other one was on his work phone. Wait, what? I thought it was his personal phone. Yeah, which we already knew. Apparently the other one was on his work phone. Wait, what? I thought it was his personal phone. This one is on his personal phone. Okay. I thought maybe it's confirmed this time this is the personal phone. His wife probably does not have her phone in lockdown mode either.

Right, yeah. There you go. That's a good point. His wife's phone must be hacked. Well, you'd be an idiot not to. Right, because she's known to go to all these events and travel with him so if you're any spy agency with pegasus which is like all the big ones now like you've hacked her phone you were in there yeah that's very well all right so they possibly had access to that uh you know but beyond this is the reason it's coming out

right now by the way according to pentagon own admission, they're like former disgruntled employees. The reason why all these leaks are happening is because of the insane purge that is happening right now over at the Pentagon. So not only are Pete Hegseth here back in the spotlight, he's gonna have to answer for this before Congress, investigations, et cetera, but already the Trump administration has set the standard

that no, there was no classified information sent here. Bullshit, obviously. And number two, we're not going to hold anybody accountable for it, including Mike Waltz, the guy who literally is responsible for much of this and for any op sec concerns or whatever. But at the same time, they're firing a bunch of people who clearly knew about some of this stuff and are now out for revenge. They're out for blood. And we can see some of that right now. And there's deep policy implications. Let's put C2, please, up on the screen. This is a statement from three former Pentagon officials who were fired and unceremoniously marched out of the building. One of them, former senior advisor Dan Caldwell. we've covered him on the

show before. He's an America First appointee, very against war with Iran. Loyal ally of Hegseth. Loyal ally, former employee of Hegseth for over a decade. You've got his former deputy chief of staff, Darren Selnick, and Colin Carroll, who was the deputy defense secretary's former chief of staff as well, all said in a joint statement that they had, quote, not been told what exactly we were investigated for if there is still an ongoing investigation or if there was even a real investigation of leaks to begin with. You know, remember, in the original leaks around this, we were told that this was a result of a leak investigation that involved polygraphs. And I was like, oh man, that's like very serious. Well, actually it turns out none of them have been polygraphed. It was a

complete like fake investigation from the first place. Where Pete Hegstead stands in all this is totally unclear. It's like, are you running your own department? These are guys not only loyal to you, but are much more, at least from what I know, are very against war with Iran, some of the more bad elements of the Trump administration's foreign policy. And for them to be fired, meanwhile, they're protecting Mike Waltz and many of these other people who obviously are very pro-war. It's very troubling, Ryan. So he's got former disgruntled staff on his hands. They're blaming the leaks on them. I don't know if it's true or not. It's possible. But I think more important is that when these people are not in the building with Hegseth around him, look, he's a sponge, let's be honest, right?

Like, he's whatever is around him. Well, if the only people that are left are the pro-war with Iran goons, not so good. He was one of the only three people in the Oval to speak out against an attack on Iran that the Israelis wanted us to do. And you see a lot of kind of Trump-supporting bots responding to this by saying, hey, Hegseth is getting rid of the deep state. Right. Say, bro, Hegseth brought these people in. These are not people who have been there before Hegseth and now he's cleaning house. Yes. He built the house and then burned it down immediately. Put up this next element on the screen, speaking of people he brought in. This is John Oliot, who was the top spokesperson for Pete Hegseth.

Yesterday published an op-ed in Politico, absolutely ripping the Pentagon to shreds, saying that the thing is in complete meltdown. One of the things he goes after the new kind of spokesperson department for was Hegseth's first response to the signal chat. Oliot says, the thing you do is you get all the bad news out first. Instead, they tried to play semantic games with whether or not these were war plans or attack plans, which then prompted Jeffrey Goldberg to release all the attack plans and say, okay, call them whatever you want. Here they are.

From Uliath's perspective, it's like, dude, what are you doing? Like, 101 PR is to be like, shame Mike Waltz did that. We won't let it happen again. Instead, he turned it into a multi-week story that then focused on him rather than Mike Waltz. Uliot, interestingly, in this piece, says outright that he doesn't think that these guys that were fired for leaking were actually leaking, and that some of them were told, according to Uliot, that the investigation was about to wrap up and was going to exonerate them. And yet they were marched out anyway. Now, we also know that Joe Casper, who is Pete Hegseth's chief of staff,

is the one who was assigned to lead the leak investigation. Now, he claims that he delegated this to other people. That's fine. That's what chiefs of staff do. They delegate those. But he himself has now been moved out of his job, according to Politico. There's some dispute about that, which is insane. Like, okay, wait a minute. Are you the chief of staff or are you not the chief of staff? The whole thing is preposterous. And we are watching these people now squabble in

public. John Oliot, as you said, the former spokesperson, they're like, oh, he was invited to be fired or whatever. It's like, well, he was employed there for at least a year. You hired him. And not only did you hire him, you've actually been working for the Trump administration or the campaign now for like some seven years. So you can't exactly say that this is not somebody. This is a true believer. Never knew the guy. Never seen the guy. Yeah, exactly. And yeah, I mean. And he says, I'm still a Hexeth friend. Like, I love the guy. What's crazy within all of this,

let's put the next one up on the screen, is you can see here how the entire, like, inner circle around Pete Hexeth is now at war with one another. And then all of the people who, it seems, were most loyal to him somehow have been fired. Now, I have a very difficult time seeing how you can be fired,

marched out of the building, all the people who are allegedly so loyal to you, without you having some say over it. I mean, can you really be fired of the Department of Defense without the say-so of the Secretary of Defense, the person who's running the building? He must be read in on this. Yeah. So either you're read in or you're not read in. That's even scarier. That means that the building is running without you. How does that work? Is this some deep state operation? That's what some people seem to be claiming. I just have no clue. I just know this is a cluster and this is not how you run the largest office building in the entire world,

right? And literally the world's preeminent superpowers, military. It's not even just about competence. Like I said, the policy implications of this are crazy important because the people around him had views. They had strong views. They'd been around him. They had trust. And in their trust, they were able to advocate for a view which is never held at the highest levels of the American government. It was one of the hopes I had for this administration, for this government. So then to watch them get unceremoniously forced out, and then similarly to see them get unceremoniously forced out, and then similarly to see Mike Walz and the idiots around him, not only to be elevated,

but to be entrenched in power at a critical decision time about war with Iran, very scary, Ron. Very scary. And what's unfortunate for the quote-unquote America first side of the foreign policy argument is that Hegseth claimed to be and was kind of sold as somebody who had been on the kind of war hawk side of foreign policy, supported the Iraq war, etc. But, you know, through his lived experience, as the left would call it, and, you know, through his, you know, camaraderie with veterans and seeing the absolute failure of American foreign policy to achieve the outcomes that the young men and women were sent to achieve, many of them dying to achieve. And then seeing it just all turn to ash in their mouth that he turned into an America first guy. If that's true, he has not stood up to that.

There's so much pressure kind of in the Pentagon and in the war machine to become, to push back to that Warhawk side. He doesn't seem like he's been able to withstand that pressure and instead has pushed aside all of the people that would help him stand up to that. One person I talked to who knows all of these people, including Hegseth, said that it's a question of character, that Hegseth has betrayed everybody who's ever been close to him in his life. And you can run through his life. Ask his mother, actually. Well, I'm not going to go there. But now it matters because this matters to the policy. And so now he has betrayed all of those people who are professionally and personally close to him that he served with, that he worked in Concerned Veterans of America with, and is sycophantically siding with the more bloodthirsty generals and others who are pushing him to stop saying no.

Don't get in the way of this. Let's bomb these people and just see what happens. And the other knock on him, besides the personal stuff, was that you've never run a large organization before. And now you're being asked to run the largest organization in the history of the world. Are you going to be up for that? We now have the answer. No, you're not up for it. Now, on the one hand, as somebody who doesn't want the Defense Department

to accomplish its objectives, I support it being a complete chaos and meltdown, but I don't want it to be a flailing. I was going to say, because what happens is there's a limit to that. There comes a power vacuum. The building will just do whatever the White House or them tell them to do.

A weak Pentagon is actually very bad for America. Because it means that the White House is not only totally in control, but also that they, like you need war planners, you need advisors, you need people to game all of this stuff out. And if you have a vacuum there at the top, first of all, you're

just going to leave it to the career staff who we should trust the least. But then also, you're going to leave it to the vacuum of the neocons who are running the National Security Council. And it often is throughout history, the men and women who've been through war and are now at the top echelons of the military, both in the United States and other militaries, who paradoxically are the ones in the room who are saying, this might not be a good idea. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. What Sherman said, nobody who, what do you say, nobody who's been to war, you know, could

think it's anything other than hell. It was something like that. War is hell. And anybody who, you know, who says otherwise hasn't been involved in it. And they have the credibility to then put the brakes on the chicken hawk neocons who are just ready to just launch tomahawks for whatever reason they can think of. The best time to attack Iran is yesterday. Second best would be today. If not that, let's plan for tomorrow. And so without a Pentagon, without any steady leadership, you could create a vacuum for people like that to creep in. DNA test proves he is not the father. Now I'm taking the inheritance.

Wait a minute, John. Who's not the father? Well, Sam, luckily, it's your not the father week on the OK Storytime podcast, so we'll find out soon. This author writes, my father-in-law is trying to steal the family fortune worth millions from my son, even though it was promised to us. He's trying to give it to his irresponsible son, but I have DNA proof that could get the money back. Hold up. They could lose their family and millions of dollars? Yep.

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