Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 4/22/24: Speaker Says Bible Told Me To Fund Ukraine and Israel, US Vetos Palestinian Statehood, Man Self Immolates Outside Trump Trial, UAW Volkswagen Victory, Tucker Calls Out Bari Weiss, Columbia University Protests

Episode Date: April 22, 2024

Krystal and Saagar discuss Mike Johnson invoking the Bible in his decision to fund Ukraine and Israel wars, Lindsey Graham thanks Trump personally for the Ukraine deal, the US vetos Palestinian statehood while green lighting a Rafah invasion in Gaza, a man self immolates outside the Trump trial, UAW victory at Volkswagen, Tucker Carlson calls out neocon Bari Weiss on the Joe Rogan podcast, and the White House condemns student protestors at Columbia university. 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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The one thing that can't stop you or take away from you is knowledge. So whatever I went through while I was down in prison for two years, through that process, learn. Learn from me. Check out this exclusive episode with Ja Rule on Rock Solid. Open your free iHeartRadio app, search Rock Solid, and listen now. You say you'd never give in to a meltdown and never fill your feed with kid photos. You say you'd never put a pacifier in your mouth to clean it and never let them run wild through the grocery store. So when you say you'd never let them get into a car without you there, know it can happen.

One in four hot car deaths happen when a kid gets into an unlocked car and can't get out. Never happens. Before you leave the car, always stop, look, lock. Brought to you by NHTSA and the Ad Council. Hey guys, Ready or Not 2024 is here and we here at Breaking Points are already thinking of ways we can up our game for this critical election. We rely on our premium subs to expand coverage, upgrade the studio, add staff, give you guys the best independent coverage that is possible. If you like what we're all about, it just means the absolute world to have your support. But enough with that. Let's get to the show. Good morning, everybody. Happy Monday. We have an amazing show for everybody today. What do we

have, Crystal? Indeed, we do. There was a hell of a lot happening this weekend. Your tax dollars going to foreign wars. How excited are we about the bipartisan consensus that always seems to win in Washington? We've got some big news out of Israel. A couple things to look at. So the U.S. vetoing a Palestinian statehood resolution at the U.N. Security Council. We'll talk about the fallout from that. Also, Bibi apparently worried about potential arrest warrants coming from the International Criminal Court. So lots of breakdown there. I've also got some Trump news for you.

A man self-immolated outside of his trial last week, but also opening statements start today. So lots of breakdown there. Also some interesting conspiracy theories about what Trump has been up to while he's in the courtroom. Don't want to miss that one. You're going to enjoy it. Yeah. Huge victory for labor and for the United Auto Workers in particular. A resounding win at that Volkswagen plant in Tennessee.

We'll break down what happened and what it means going forward. Got a couple of highlights for you from Tucker on with Joe Rogan. Going in on a few people and floating a few interesting theories. Yeah, we'll discuss. We've got thoughts couple of highlights for you from Tucker on with Joe Rogan, going in on a few people and floating a few interesting theories. Yeah, we'll discuss. We've got thoughts on. Yes. And we've got a great guest on today, Prem Thakur, to talk about these protests happening specifically at Columbia that have become a big subject of national attention and debate. The president issuing a statement, Eric Adams issuing a statement.

So we will tell you what the hell is going on there as well. Yes, of course, that is the most important story in the country to our elites. But of course, that makes sense, especially with where we're going to begin our show today. Before we get to that, we've teased it a million times and it is coming. We've got a big announcement that's coming soon from Emily and Ryan. You'll hear it first from them. But of course, if you want to help us out, all of us, breakingpoints.com to be able to support some of that work. It's a big announcement that our premium subscribers are going to know about first, and they're also going to get exclusive access to whatever that future content may be. So just put that out there. So if you want to go

ahead and sign up, we would welcome you to do so. But as we teased everybody on Thursday, a big vote was happening in the House of Representatives after Speaker Mike Johnson stabbed his own party in the back and decided to pass aid for Ukraine and for Israel using an unprecedented parliamentary maneuver, which basically allowed Democrats to vote for the Ukraine aid, Republicans to vote for the Israel aid, package it all together and create the greatest uniparty war funding that Washington has ever seen. And they did not disappoint in their display of dual loyalty. Let's go and put this up there on the screen. As the votes passed through the House of Representatives that officially got the bill across the aisle, you see Ukraine flags that are all across, chanting Slava Ukraine. You've got a non-American flag in sight there, by the way, on the flag

of the House of Representatives. And don't worry, there are Israel flags on the other side too, so don't act like they didn't exist there. They're being passed out. Some representatives, Crystal, were actually FaceTiming Ukrainian soldiers who were on the front line just to say, you're welcome. We finally have accomplished it for you. And I guess the main takeaway that we can have from this is just the absolute level of dedication that these people have to moving heaven and earth to spend hundreds of billions for foreign nations so that they can conduct war.

They've never done it once for the rest of us. But for this, of course, we can break precedent. Screw, you know, there's no talk of filibuster or any of that other stuff whenever it comes to comes to this 60 some billion dollars from Ukraine 26 billion dollars for Israel The vast majority of that being fed entirely to the military industrial complex and to these nations with a complete blank check That's given to them which is something they weirdly are like bright Yeah, I think that's a selling point like don't worry This is a lot of this money is gonna go to the military industrial complex. Don't you feel great about that?

Now, listen, when it comes to you getting health care, you getting higher wages, when it comes to, you know, making sure seniors can live on Social Security, or people can afford child care, you've got universal access to preschool, or people can even just take paid leave if they, you know, are having a baby. None of that, we can't get that done. We don't have the money, et cetera, et cetera. It's too difficult. It's too hard. But they will move heaven and earth to make sure that we continue funding wars, whether it is, listen, with regard to Ukraine, I'm incredibly sympathetic to the Ukrainians. I think it was wrong and illegal, the Russian invasion. But we have to be real about the fact at this point that number one,

we're the ones who have dragged them to continue this war by thwarting diplomatic negotiations. Number two, there is no end in sight. There's not even a fig leaf of, hey, once we give them this money, then victory's around the corner. There's none of that. And number three, their own people at this point, the military age men of their own population do not want to fight. So we know the reports about people who are disabled, who are too old, who have mental disabilities being pulled off the street and sent to the front lines. And we're celebrating putting the guns in their hands. We're celebrating. With regard to Israel, look at what has happened here. I mean, according to Euromed Human Rights Monitor, over 40,000 Palestinians killed. There was just, we're going to cover this later,

a strike on, two strikes on Rafah killed 22 people, 18 of them children. The entire Gaza Strip is annihilated, aid workers slaughtered, and we're still shipping them weapons as if none of this has happened. It's outrageous. I mean, they're really, I'm not surprised by it. I knew at some point they would figure out how to get this done. But, you know, if you want a glimpse into why politicians like Mike Johnson, he's always been fervently Zionist. I mean, the first thing he did when he became Speaker, remember, was call Netanyahu and pass some anti-Semitism resolution. That one's not surprising. But he did a 180 on Ukraine.

And put this next piece up on the screen, you wonder why. Because this is the media treatment you get. By passing Ukraine aid, Johnson became an unlikely Churchill. There is nothing but plaudits from the media for funding wars over and over and over again. Remember how Joe Biden, one good thing Joe Biden did was drawing from Afghanistan, relentlessly trashed for that, even though it was overwhelmingly what the American people wanted. Here, Johnson going against, especially on Israel, and we'll show you the polling in a little bit, what the American people wanting. Suddenly, all their vaunted concern for

democracy evaporates when it comes to sending your hard-earned tax dollars into these conflicts to slaughter your children. Yeah, I will be honest, this is the blackest pill that I've had in a really long time. After all the work that we've done here on the show, that the media and others, even they have been forced to admit the failure of the cause in Ukraine, they still decide to do $60 billion. What? So that, and this is the worst part, Crystal. This $60 billion will have a single objective. It will prolong this war for about one more year. According to the funding statistics that have come out, this will buy them approximately half of their failed counteroffensive. The net result of this is going to be probably a bunch of 50 to 70 year old Ukrainian men who are going to lose limbs. Now, after that period dries up and they continue to fail on the front line and continue to have a

five to one artillery disadvantage against the Russians and the Russians continue to have a five to one artillery disadvantage against the Russians. And the Russians continue to recoup all of the losses that they've already had in their military, revamp their military industrial complex, have their economy grow, according to the IMF, a nonpartisan source more than the entire European Union. After all of that is now clear a year from now, what do you think is going to happen? 60 billion will pale to what they are going to ask for now to rebuild Ukraine. Somebody's got to pay for all those limbs and for all those dead guys and for pensions and for whatever survives, whatever rump of the Ukrainian state does eventually make it out of here. We will then be on the hook for that.

It never ends. This has no purpose. Now, if they were using this for defensive purposes, maybe, okay? Maybe it would have some sort of justification. But Zelensky does not commit to defense. Instead, he says this will enable us for victory. How many times do we have to hear these fake cries of victory? They failed in the counteroffensive.

They have one of the most tactically inefficient and incompetent armies in the world. They have not able to use NATO tactics. Their weapons have made no difference whenever they were flushed. Their lead general, the head that they replaced their military commander with, his nickname is the butcher, not by the Russians, the people you would want to nickname the butcher, by his own people. That's what they call him, the butcher, because his entire strategy is just to throw as many people into this as possible. On Israel as well. I mean, even zoom out just from Israel's own actions. What have they done to make America more safe? Nothing. Invite more attacks on American service members. World War III. Multiple are dead now as a result of our posture in the Middle East in retaliation for Israel's actions, tens of billions of dollars

that has been spent deploying U.S. military and naval assets. The defense against the Iranian attack alone cost the United States $1.3 billion in missile interceptors and including missiles that cost some $24 million each deployed by the U.S. to shoot down Iranian ballistic missiles, only to then invite an Israeli strike on Iran with God knows what the hell is going to happen in retaliation. So now what? Where are we? Why are we all paying for this to continue whenever we clearly could put an end to it if we wanted? So in both cases, you have wars that are making America less safe, that are bad for the populations, I would say both of Israel and for the population of Gaza, which I could easily make that case. The only people who are benefiting are the war manufacturers and the religion of the dual loyalty leadership class in this country.

And I'm going to continue to use that. It's really triple loyalty, I think, in this case. What I would say is this, is that this is, you know, Trump, I went back to read about seven years ago, he gave a speech, which clearly didn't believe, but it was a good speech nonetheless. It was his first foreign policy speech. And he has a line in there, which has always stuck with me, is that we will not worship no longer at the false song of globalism. And that's when I see Ukrainian and Israeli flags being waved on the floor of the United States House of Representatives, when I see our Speaker of the House with two flags on his lapel, neither of which are the United States flag but are two nations of which he just broke parliamentary procedure to spend hundreds of billions of dollars to, I can say nothing else than these people are loyal to a foreign government and not to our own. Now, Speaker Johnson, actually loyal to even higher authority than any nation, gave a justification in particular for some of this Israel aid on Newsmax. Let's take a listen.

Israel is a critical ally of ours, and I think most people understand the necessity of this funding. They're fighting for their very existence. They're the only stable democracy in the Middle East. I mean, of course, for those of us who are believers, it's a biblical admonition to stand with Israel. We will, and they will prevail as long as they're with them. And this is an important, very important symbolic gesture and a very important replenishment of their stockpiles, for example, of the Iron Dome. The reason they shot down all those drones and missiles

in the last attack by Iran is because we assisted with that. I think the American people understand the importance of that. Did you guys hear that line? For those of us who are believers, it is a biblical admonition to stand with Israel. It's like, well, if it's in the Bible, I guess there ain't getting around that. This is literally out of his mouth. The speaker of the House of Representatives, the third in line for the American presidency, who believes that he is like, what, some hand of God. And don't, let's not let this go either. John Hagee, who was the pastor who leads the 10 million Christian group, you know, for Israel was here in Washington just two days before and met with Speaker Johnson,

probably to give him the language that he needs. And all of the reporting that we've gotten since Crystal is that the way that Johnson arrived at this is that he prayed on it. And listen, you know, I'm not going to put down people who are religious and who pray. I think that's fine. But I would just simply ask that in the United States of America, a country with a separation of church and state, that we arrive at policy decisions through reason, intellect, and possible debate rather than from biblical admonition. My simple request. Well, what this means is that it actually does not matter to Speaker Johnson what Israel does. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter whether it is truly a genocide. It doesn't matter whether there are war crimes. It doesn't matter whether it's good for

America's interest or not. It doesn't matter because for him, it's a quote, biblical admonition. You can't argue. I mean, there's no debate with that. That's just like, no, my fervent, ideological, unshakable belief is that God requires me to support Israel, no matter the cost or consequence for Palestinians, no matter the cost or consequence for Americans. And this is one of the most powerful people in the country, if not the world, who is making policy decisions this way. Like, what can you even say about that? And you see how motivating this is among a certain segment of the Republican base as well. I keep talking about this, but I think it's so extraordinarily revealing. When there was polling asking by religious demographic group, how do you feel

about the Netanyahu government? Not even about Israel or, you know, what's happening in Gaza, but just the Netanyahu government. The religious group that gave him the highest approval ratings was not Jewish people. It was by a mile white evangelical Christians. So that's, you know, that's what's motivating him with regard to Israel. I think that's an important part of how he ended up flipping on a dime with regard to Ukraine as well, because he realized in order to fulfill his biblical admonition to support Israel, no matter what, he was also going to have to play ball with Democrats on the Ukraine bill. Let's not forget the way he also flipped on a dime with regard to making sure Americans can continue to be surveilled. And, you know, the other piece of this saga is that he talks about,

in addition to his religious faith, he also talks about how the Intel Committee, how the intelligence agency, how they really got to him, what they had to say to him. And we've seen this a lot of times. You saw this with Trump as well. It's so easy to roll these people. It's so easy to scare them and manipulate them. We saw the same thing with Obama too, by the way, when he was president of the United States, especially when you have someone who is inexperienced, who hasn't been around the block, who hasn't seen these tactics, which are rolled out by, yes, the deep state over and over and over again. They get rolled so easily, especially when his religious belief also leads him in the direction of wanting to pass both the Israel aid and the Ukrainian aid in order to make sure that Israel

is getting their dollars to keep bombing babies. If you guys want an inside view into this, there's a book called Obama's Wars by Bob Woodward. It was written back in 2010. It's specifically about the decision that Obama was forced into to do the surge in Afghanistan, the way that David Petraeus, Stan McChrystal, Mike Mullen, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the US intelligence community, the CIA, basically set Obama up for complete failure if he didn't then promise to a surge. And we had a chance at that time to actually pull out of the country. And instead, we escalated for that. I highly recommend people read that because that is mechanically the exact way that you, even as the president can get set up by these people.

And Tucker has some thoughts on that too, by the way, which we'll get to a little bit in the show, but we would be remiss if we didn't highlight a little bit of how, again, we came to this decision. Let's put this please up there on the screen from CNN. They confirm it quote. He was torn between having to save his job and do the right thing, Congressman Mike McCaul said. Quote, he prayed over it. A prayer, apparently, the way that Speaker Johnson arrived at this. Now, let's take a look at the poll, shall we? In the ostensible way that we live in a democracy, let's go and put this up there on the screen. Here's what we've got on Israel. This is April 12th, 2024. Should more weapons and supplies to Israel? Should we send more? Should or should not? All.

Should, 40. 60, should not. Democrats, 32% say should. 68% say should not. Independents, 38% say should. 64% say not. Republicans, No, not that much difference at all. Republicans, 55% say should. 45% say they should not. And what's also important to keep in mind for that plus 10 is that even nearly half of the Republicans are saying there of military aid that's being sent to Israel, you have some plus 64 members who actually end up voting then for the actual military aid to Israel, in no way representative of their base. And the exact same thing holds true for Ukraine. Let's go and put this up there on the screen. And what do we find? This is just from the latest poll that happened on Ukraine, where we see amongst US adults, only 27% say that we are doing too little for Ukraine. 33% say, quote, about the right amount. And that was prior to the package. And too much is now the majoritarian position at 37. Only Democrats, 44% say we're doing too little. Amongst Republicans, 14% say we're doing

too little. 29% say about right. And 55% say that we are doing too much. So as we can all see very clearly, the Republicans, where a majority of the Republicans in the House of Representatives voted against Ukraine aid, were rolled by their speaker to work with Democrats. And basically here, Democrats just are much more willing, I guess, to ignore some of their base on that question, but then work also with Republicans who overwhelmingly voted for the Israel aid. So you have two parties basically beholden to two foreign nations, you know, loyalty, try loyalty, I guess, across all of this, and work in tandem to make this push to the United States Senate, where tomorrow, on Tuesday,

it's almost certainly going to become the law of the land, and they are already salivating at the Pentagon over shipping long-range weapons to Ukraine, long-range weapons in U.S. stockpiles, long-range weapons which will be used to strike inside of Russian territory or the Crimean Bridge. And who do you think is going to bear the cost of that? It's the United States of America, if Ukraine gets itself in a bigger conflagration. So let me ask you a question,

Sagar, because I am a little conflicted about how to think about this. So as you just pointed out, the Democratic base is, first of all, they've been overwhelmingly in favor of a ceasefire. A majority of Joe Biden voters say, yes, this is a genocide. And they are overwhelmingly opposed to shipping more military aid to Israel. Certainly the numbers of Democrats in the House that voted against this Israel aid package do not reflect the sentiment of the base. So that's on the one hand. On the other hand, compared to previous aid, military aid to Israel, 37 voting, 37 Democrats specifically, voting against it is a significantly higher number than previously. I think the last time there was a question about

like replenishing Iron Dome, sending a billion dollars for that, it was like nine Democrats who voted against it. So how do you look at that? And especially when there were, you know, it wasn't just like AOC and Ilhan Omar. You had a number of longtime members who are in leadership positions who even voted against that. So how do you think about that? I think exactly what I do on Ukraine.

Doesn't matter. The majority of Republicans, the party in power in the House of Representatives, voted against A to Ukraine. Didn't matter. The majority of Republicans, the party in power in the House of Representatives voted against AT Ukraine. Didn't matter. The speaker wanted it. So do the Democrats. It doesn't like our, we could have a majority of Democrats who are going to oppose Israel and they would still find a way to make it pass. That's what you should take away from this is like party politics does not matter when the uniparty actually wants something. It only matters whenever we're talking about mortgage rates or housing assistance or basically anything that would actually help any of us. If they wanted to get it done, they will get it done. The majority of the American public thinks we're doing too much for Ukraine.

And that was before the $60 billion that we just shipped over there. The vast majority of Republicans say and oppose this military aid for Ukraine. It doesn't matter. You know, Trump can bamboozle them, dang a little stop the steal in front of their eyes, and they'll forget whenever it comes to election day. Aside from some young people, most people are gonna vote on abortion,

and most people are not gonna remember this whenever it comes time to the ballot box. I already saw a clip of AOC, I think, with Mette Haasen. And he was like, what do you say to somebody who is not going to vote for Biden? And she's like, well, I am on the side of democracy, you know, not only here, but across the world. I'm like, okay, all right, cool. I mean, there's just nothing that will ever happen where you're not going to vote against the Republicans. Most Republicans vote exactly the same way. On the margins, there may be some, but at the end of the day, they can stab. They don't even stab us in the back. They stab us in the front and they twist the knife and then they hold, they give the, you know, the knife over to us. And then they accuse

you of being the one who's in the wrong. And they're like, why are you committing violence when all this is happening? Yeah. Which is why you have to go and vote in order to bandage yourself up. I do think there's a bit of a warning sign here, though, for Israel, on the other hand, because, you know, there used to be this total lockstep uniformity that no one broke from. And that, you know, anyone who did knew that was going to be the end of their political career. With AIPAC, the Israel lobby, threatening to spend $100 million in primaries against anyone who even thinks of dissenting, even with that kind of firepower trained at now all 37 of these individuals who voted against this funding, they still were willing to do it and still feel like they'll be able to hold onto their seats and that it was worth paying that price or that there's enough energy on the other side to make up for the fact

that they could have that money spent against them. So I do think as disheartening and depressing as this is, there is a bit of a warning sign here for Israel in that they just don't have quite the lockstep control that they once did. I don't disagree. I think 25, 30 years from now, you're right. Again, I just point to Ukraine. You can lose the public and they'll still get I don't disagree. I think 25, 30 years from now, you're right. Again, I just point to Ukraine.

You can lose the public and they'll still get it done for you. So in the near term, folks, sign up, because if it's up to these people, we would die for foreign countries before we would ever die, you know, for any of our own interests. And that is the clearest takeaway that we have.

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Listen to Hell and Gone Murder Line on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I think everything that might have dropped in 95 has been labeled the golden years of hip-hop. It's Black Music Month, and We Need to Talk is tapping in. I'm Nyla Simone, breaking down lyrics, amplifying voices, and digging into the culture that shaped the soundtrack of our lives. My favorite line on there was, my son and my daughter gonna be proud when they hear my old tapes.

Now I'm curious, do they like rap along now? Yeah, because I bring him on tour with me and he's getting older now too. So his friends are starting to understand what that type of music is. And they're starting to be like, yo, your dad's like really the GOAT. Like he's a legend. So he gets it.

What does it mean to leave behind a music legacy for your family? It means a lot to me. Just having a good catalog and just being able to make people feel good. Like that's what's really important and that's what stands out is that our music changes people's lives for the better so the fact that my kids get to benefit off of that i'm really happy or my family in general let's talk about the music

that moves us to hear this and more on how music and culture collide listen to we need to talk from the black effect podcast network on the iheart Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. You say you'd never give in to a meltdown and never fill your feed with kid photos. You say you'd never put a pacifier in your mouth to clean it and never let them run wild through the grocery store. So when you say you'd never let them get into a car without you there, no, it can happen. One in four hot car deaths happen when a kid gets into an unlocked car and can't get out. Never happens. Before you leave the car, always stop, look, lock. Brought to you by NHTSA and the Ad Council.

I would be remiss if I didn't leave out President Donald Trump's role in making sure that this Ukraine aid actually happened. There's been a lot of papering over by the MAGA base as to how exactly Trump went from a guy who spoke for Ukrainian peace. Remember in the famous CNN moment on the town hall when he said, I'm for stopping the dying. I want to find peace. I would have peace there in a second. The Democratic liberal media is like, oh, well, he would pull money away from Ukraine on day one. Well, you know, he also was the one who shipped a lot of lethal aid to Ukraine back in 2015. But Mike Johnson and others and Lindsey Graham basically convinced Trump to endorse some BS lend lease loan program to the most corrupt and poor nation in all of Europe. And let's not forget,

Lindsey Graham here now saying that it was Trump, Trump himself, is the one responsible for getting this through the House. Let's take a listen. So with all due respect to Senator Vance, he's wrong. We were told within four days, key would fall. But is he wrong about the math? Yeah, he's definitely wrong. Is he wrong about the production? Yeah, he's wrong about the whole concept that we can't deal with multiple problems. In World War II, we fought the Germans and the Japanese. We have an industrial base that needs to be retooled. But the Ukrainian military, with our help, has killed about 50% of the combat power of the Russians.

If you pull the plug on Ukraine because you don't have enough capability, there goes Taiwan. Ukrainians are fighting like tigers. This aid package has a lone component to it. This would not have passed without Donald Trump. I want to thank the House Speaker and Akeem Jeffries working together in a bipartisan fashion to give weapons to Ukraine to fight a fight that matters to us. And President Trump has created a lone component to this package. It gives us leverage down the road. So this idea that we can't help Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan at the same time, I reject that. I want to thank President Trump for making this to go through. Now, listen,

according to MAGA Defenders Crystal, Trump has been bamboozled. Trump cannot fail. He can only be failed. And so Lindsey Graham went down. And look, Trump is an idiot. Let's be honest. On policy, he just doesn't care. He cares about basically one thing, trade and maybe immigration, depending on the day. And so when Lindsey Graham goes down there and he's like, it'd be a loan. It wouldn't be giving it to them. Trump's like, wow, a loan. Well, that's great as a businessman. And so what do they do? They write in some bullshit loan into the text and then they don't tell you that Biden is the president after he signs it. Oh, and he can just forgive the entire loan. Oh, and by the way, the loan is

interest free and it has an indefinite period on when you supposedly get paid back. And so is it a loan if there's no enforcement terms and there's no interest, or is it a gift? It's a gift. That's what's happening here. And so it's a complete fake out. And so Trump is, there's two options. Trump is either too dumb to know the difference between a fake loan and a real loan

and then allow himself to get bamboozled, or he supports shipping weapons to Ukraine. Either has the same net effect to me, so I don't care. So it's Trump's fault that this all went through. And of course, Republican voters, they're like freaking sheep, you know? They're just gonna sit there and eat the ground, be like, oh, it's so terrible

what the liberal media is saying about Mr. Trump here. It's like, no, this is on Trump. Lindsey Graham ain't the rhino. Trump is the one who decided to let it pass. So let's all just be real clear what's going to happen. If Trump gets reelected, who does he actually listen to? And is he still so dumb to be able to allow himself to be fooled? And if you are fine with that, cool. But just be real honest about what you're voting for. Yeah, they cope consistently whenever Trump

goes against what he promised the base. It's always, oh, it's not his fault. It's never his fault. It's this person. It's a deep state. It's this, it's that. Like, this is an adult man who was president of the United States. At some point, he has to be responsible for his own actions. And, you know, so Marjorie Taylor Greene, she was against all of this and she's been very, you know, outspoken, et cetera, et cetera. And on this, I'm actually, you know, on the same side of her. But she never points the finger at Donald Trump and his culpability here. That's somehow left out of her analysis when, yeah, you got Lindsey Graham there on TV saying, listen, I want to thank Mike Johnson, Hakeem Jeffries, and Donald Trump.

Wouldn't have happened without Trump. And somehow that gets left out of the critique here from those on the Republican side who are making a critique. It's genius. And again, we have the evidence that Trump endorsed it because he literally went to, Mike Johnson went down to Mar-a-Lago, did a joint press conference with Donald Trump where Trump endorses on tape the so-called loan idea. Let's take a listen.

They're talking about it, and we're thinking about making it in the form of a loan instead of just a gift. We keep handing out gifts of billions and billions of dollars, and we'll take a look at it. But much more importantly to me is the fact that Europe has to step up and they have to give money. They have to equalize. If they don't equalize, I'm very upset about it because they're affected much more than we are. The Ukraine situation would have never happened if I was president, would have never, ever happened. And everybody says that, including Democrats, that it happened is such an outrage. People, millions of people are dead right now. Both sides, millions of people are dead. People keep pointing to that as if it's some evidence for why he's changed his position.

No. OK, I agree with him on Europe. It doesn't matter. That's not what you said. Okay, I agree with him on Europe. It doesn't matter. That's not what you said. What matters is that you endorsed the loan. Now, for example, Matt Gaetz and others were trying to claim that what we're about to show you was a Trump saying he was against the bill. Let's put this up there on the screen. He says, why isn't Europe giving more money to help Ukraine? Why is it the United States is over $100 billion into the war, and we have an ocean between us and a separation. Why can't Europe equalize?

Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. As everyone agrees, Ukrainian survival and strength should be much more important to Europe than us, but it is also important to us. Oh, it is also important to us. Now, the only thing that he's even slightly critical of is when he says, I am the only one who speaks for me,

and while it's a total mess caused by crooked Joe Biden, blah, blah, blah, if I were president, this war would have never started. That was because Mike Johnson was going all over Washington saying, hey, if you don't support this bill, then you're against President Trump. But he didn't come out against the bill. So look, let's be very clear. Trump came out very, very, very clearly against the border aid, the border deal previously, and he killed it, right? So he also came out against FISA and he killed that whenever he killed the vote. He had the full capacity to kill this bill if he wanted to, and he didn't, which means he's responsible for letting this pass. He endorsed

it and now he should bear the consequences just like Joe Biden does whenever. And whenever he's president too, we should not expect anything else from him. Yeah. And please spare me the whole, like, Donald Trump is the anti-war candidate bullshit. There is no anti-war candidate in terms of Biden and Trump or in terms of RFK Jr. You can look at Jill Stein and Cornel West. But, you know, likelihood is that they're going to have a relatively minimal impact. You know, with regards to the comments about Europe also, Michael Tracy, who, shout out to him, he always does a great job actually reading through these bills

and pulling out the important pieces and outlining some of these key bipartisan dynamics. But calling for Europe to spend more on NATO or calling for Europe to spend more on Ukraine isn't a position in favor of, you know, stepping away from NATO or stepping away from Ukraine and trying to bring that war to a close. It's a position in favor of more funding. So he's not saying we shouldn't fund it. We should move forward. He's saying we obviously we're going to continue funding it. We just want the Europeans

to also fund it additional amounts. So, you know, being hard on Europe is actually not consistent with a position in favor of we need to be looking for an offer. We need to be looking for some sort of a diplomatic conclusion to this. And, you know, I will with regard to Ukraine, I'll just I'll never be over the fact that we undercut those original diplomatic negotiations because now it is in nowheresville. You know, now the deal that they would get would be far inferior. You know, now there is no real negotiating leverage for Putin and the Russia. At that point, they were on the back foot. Things hadn't gone the way that they planned. It didn't look good. So it would have been a much stronger negotiating position.

Now it's just an endless mess. And that's the approach they're taking to it is let's just continue to fund this. We don't need a plan to conclude it. We're just going to continue sending an entire, you know, multiple generations of Ukrainian men to the slaughter. And then obviously, you know, with regard to Israel, it's just a horror. It's just a horror. It's an indefensible horror. The last thing I want to make sure to mention, which it's incredible this isn't even really in the show today, but, you know, this whole escalation with Iran, which I think was very intentionally timed as well, is part of how

the Israel aid was able to sail through as well. Because guess what? Suddenly, because Israel starts this provocation by assassinating top Iranian commanders at their consulate building, which is a dramatic contravention of the Vienna Convention, international law, et cetera, they do that. Iran responds. Israel is responding. Nothing gets the bipartisan consensus going more quickly than one of the official bad guy nations, you know, going after our big ally in the Middle East. So when we're talking about that, we're not talking about the suffering in Gaza. We're not talking about the World Central Kitchen aid workers who were just massacred. We're not

talking about the apparently imminent ground invasion of Rafa, which we'll get to in just a bit. And so that's also part of the cover that was provided that allows this aid to sail through as well. Yes, very well said. Over the past six years of making my true crime podcast hell and gone, I've learned one thing. No town is too small for murder. I'm Katherine Townsend. I've received hundreds of messages from people across the country begging for help with unsolved murders. I was calling about the murder of my husband at the cold case. They've never found her.

And it haunts me to this day. The murderer is still out there. Every week on Hell and Gone Murder Line, I dig into a new case, bringing the skills I've learned as a journalist and private investigator to ask the questions no one else is asking. Police really didn't care to even try. She was still somebody's mother. She was still somebody's daughter. She was still somebody's sister. There's so many questions that we've never gotten any kind of answers for. If you have a case you'd like me to look into, call the Hell and Gone Murder Line at 678-744-6145.

Listen to Hell and Gone Murder Line on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I think everything that might have dropped in 95 has been labeled the golden years of hip hop. It's Black Music Month and We Need to Talk is tapping in. I'm Nyla Simone, breaking down lyrics, amplifying voices and digging into the culture that shaped the soundtrack of our lives my favorite line on there was my son and my daughter gonna be proud when they hear my old tapes yeah now i'm curious do they like rap along now yeah because i bring him on tour with me and he's getting older now too so his friends are

starting to understand what that type of music is and they're starting to be like yo your dad's like really the goat like he's a legend. So he gets it. What does it mean to leave behind a music legacy for your family? It means a lot to me. Just having a good catalog and just being able to make people feel good.

Like that's what's really important. And that's what stands out is that our music changes people's lives for the better. So the fact that my kids get to benefit off of that, I'm really happy. Or my family in general. Let's talk about the better. So the fact that my kids get to benefit off of that, I'm really happy or my family in general. Let's talk about the music that moves us to hear this and more on how music and culture collide. Listen to,

we need to talk from the black effect podcast network on the I heart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. You say you never give it to a meltdown and never fill your feed with kid photos. You say you'd never put a pacifier in your mouth to clean it and never let them run wild through the grocery store.

So when you say you'd never let them get into a car without you there, no, it can happen. One in four hot car deaths happen when a kid gets into an unlocked car and can't get out. Never happens. Before you leave the car, always stop, Look. Lock. Brought to you by NHTSA and the Ad Council. So let's move on to some updates out of Israel. So the U.S. has claimed, especially under Joe Biden, that we support a two-state solution, ultimately, to the Israel-Palestine conflict. So you might think that they would be in favor

of a U.N. Security Council vote for Palestinian statehood. You would be wrong. The U.S. vetoed Palestinian statehood recognition in the Security Council. Let's take a listen to how the State Department spins these two very contradictory, apparently, positions. How are you guys going to vote? So, Matt, since October 7th, we have been pretty clear that sustainable peace in the region can only be achieved through a two-state solution, with Israel's security guaranteed. And it remains our view that the most expeditious path towards statehood for the Palestinian people is through direct negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority with the support of the United States and other partners who share this goal.

We believe this approach can tangibly advance Palestinian goals in a meaningful and enduring way. We also have been very clear consistently that premature actions in New York, even with the best intentions, will not achieve statehood for the Palestinian people. Additionally, as reflected in the report of the admission committee, there was not unanimity among the committee members as to whether the applicant met the criteria of membership set forth in Article 4 of the UN Charter. Specifically, there are unresolved questions as to whether the applicant met the criteria of membership set forth in Article 4 of the UN Charter. Specifically, there are unresolved questions as to whether the applicant can meet criteria to be considered as a state.

And Matt, as you also know, we've long called on the Palestinian Authority to undertake necessary reforms to establish the attributes of readiness for statehood. And note that Hamas, which is, as you all know, a terrorist organization, is currently exerting power and influence in Gaza, which would be an integral part of the envisioned state in this resolution. And for that reason, the United States is voting no on this proposed Security Council resolution. As an expert of the UN, I will also just so note that due to statutory requirements, such an admission of statehood would also require the United States to cease its funding to the United Nations.

So you got to love that moment. He says, I just Googled expeditious. How many years since Oslo? I mean, it's just such a farce at this point. And the way this went down, so we vetoed this resolution. There were 12 who voted in favor. The U.S. was opposed alone, by the way. And there were two abstentions, the U.K. and Switzerland, notably U.S. allies, France, Japan, and South Korea all supported the resolution. Ken Klippenstein and Daniel Bogoslaw over at The Intercept had some good reporting about some of the diplomatic pressure that was being applied in advance of this vote. I can put this up on the screen. By the way, though, it doesn't appear that this diplomatic pressure was very successful since there were no other

votes against, only two abstentions and a number of U.S. allies that actually voted in favor of Palestinian statehood. The headline here, leaked cables show White House opposes Palestinian statehood despite Biden's pledges. Supported two-state solution, cables argue that Palestine should not be granted U.N. member status. They put pressure in particular on Ecuador, which is the rotating member on the UN Security Council. And they said in language very similar to what you heard there from the State Department ghoul, it remains the U.S. view that the most expeditious path toward a political horizon for the Palestinian people is in the context of a normalization agreement between Israel and its neighbors. We believe this approach can tangibly advance Palestinian goals in

a meaningful and enduring way. So expeditious approach in spite of the fact that this quote-unquote expeditious approach has been attempted for decades at this point with no conclusion. So there you go. Okay. All right. Very interesting. And this is part of why the entire thing is ridiculous and why Matt Lee really just underscored it where what is our policy for this war and for this government? We keep saying that the end result of this war has to be a two-state solution. And it's like, well, okay, which one? West Bank is going to have a solution? Like the Palestinian Authority, which barely has any authority, they're going to be the ones who have representation in the United Nations.

These people, if we were to give them a nation or to recognize a nation, to recognize a false nation with a false government that has no actual public support, in my opinion, would be 10 times worse. If we're going to do this, then we actually have to do it. And it's obviously going to have to include Gaza as well. And we will have to ensure actual security conditions and some sort of public expression. Otherwise, this entire thing is completely meaningless and it will fall apart. And we will have some, what, Juan Guaido situation

in Venezuela with nonsense at the United Nations. Always puts the burden and the problems on the Palestinian side. When you have Bibi out there on the regular, like, I will make sure that we thwart ever having a two-state solution, that somehow never gets mentioned

in any of this as the obstacles to peace in the situation. We got some more news out of the State Department. Let's put this up on the screen. The U.S. is going to sanction one specific IDF unit

for human rights violations in the West Bank. This is pursuant to that. We covered this last week, this ProPublica report that Tony Blinken had been sitting with a report from the State Department panel that is meant to look into human rights abuses that found a number of IDF units and Israeli police units that had engaged in horrific human rights violations, torture, rape, other abuses. And so I guess under pressure, they've decided to do this sort of really truly symbolic sanctioning of this one unit. I'll read this to you. It says U.S. Secretary of State Tony Blinken expected to within days announce sanctions against the IDF's Netza Yehuda Battalion for human rights violations in the occupied West Bank. Why it matters, it'd be the first time the U.S. imposed sanctions on an Israeli military unit. They will ban the battalion's members from

receiving any kind of U.S. military assistance or training. And this particular battalion, they say, was formed as a special unit for ultra-Orthodox soldiers. All of its members are men. And it's kind of known for having a lot of radicals involved. You've had a lot of the quote-unquote hilltop youth. These are these young radical right-wing, often violent settlers who weren't accepted into any other combat unit in the IDF there in this battalion. One specific incident that's been documented was the death of an 80-year-old Palestinian-American, Omar Assad, in January 2022. He was arrested by Netza Yehuda soldiers at a checkpoint in his village in the

West Bank late at night. He refused to be checked. So soldiers handcuffed and gagged him, an 80-year-old, and left him on the ground in the cold. And predictably, he died. So, you know, my read is that these sanctions are totally meaningless. It's similar to the, you know, my read is that these sanctions are totally meaningless. It's similar to the, you know, four Israeli settlers who were sanctioned previously by the Biden administration's attempt to sort of like pretend like they're serious about violence against Palestinians. But what kind of checks are in place is we're shipping billions of dollars to Israel to make sure this battalion doesn't benefit from any of it. Nevertheless, there's an all-of-government freakout on the Israeli side about this tiniest of sanctions for documented human rights abuses.

Let's put this up on the screen from Bibi. He says, and this is the Google Translate version, by the way, so if there's any, like, slight mistranslations, that's why. Sanctions must not be imposed on the IDF. In recent weeks, I've been working against the imposition of sanctions on Israeli citizens, including in my conversations with senior American government officials. At a time when our soldiers are fighting the monsters of terror, the intention to impose a sanction on a unit in the IDF is the height of absurdity and a moral low.

The government headed by me will act by all means against these moves. There was also a statement from Benny Gantz, lest you think that they're not on the same page on many things, they mostly are. So what do you make of all that, Sagar? Yeah, I mean, I just think the entire thing is ridiculous because we're trying to single out some unit in the IDF based on, in the West Bank, which is probably, this is the other problem, is that we try and split apart, and this just gets to what I was talking about, West Bank from Gaza, as if it's not the same military that's involved in all this and it's not all part of the same policy. So what is the question?

What are we going to do? And at the same time, I would almost rather not do something like this because then it just heightens the contradiction of sending billions of dollars to the IDF and to the Israeli military, if they're going to only continue to fund said IDF unit and there's no enforcement mechanism, then what is the point of this entire thing? It just makes it even more impotent than previously. If you give somebody money when you acknowledge that they're a criminal, it's almost worse than just lying to everybody. Well, it's a perfect way to pretend like the problem isn't a whole of government policy, that it's a few bad apples. It's a few violent settlers. It's this one particular battalion that has a lot of hilltop youth.

Rather than, I mean, we saw the, first of all, you see the utter annihilation in Gaza. You see the where's daddy software programming looking to target families, children, women waiting for militants to go home before you target them. We see the AI algorithmic generation overall. We see the announcement of a complete siege, starving a population of millions, in some cases to death. OK, and then we pretend like, oh, it's these few bad apples and we're very concerned about it and we're gonna sanction them. So it serves the Biden administration's interest. Frankly, I think it also serves Bibi's interest.

I just, we didn't, this didn't make it in the poll because there's so much other stuff to cover. But apparently Bibi's political standing in Israel in the context of post-October 7th has never been stronger. His poll numbers are coming up. You know, He's basically neck and neck now with his primary opponent. Previously, he was losing in a landslide.

And I think that these little pretend fights between him, just theatrical fights between him and Biden, where he gets to stand tough and effectively humiliate Joe Biden, by the way, over and over and over again. I think those have served his domestic political standing. So congratulations, everyone. Your little kabuki theater here is working out perfectly for the Netanyahu government. I think that Bibi and Zelensky are similar. Their only authority to the eyes of the public is their ability to bilk the United States for billions. So as long as they are able to continue to have the U.S US security establishment fund your war, then your position as like the grifter in charge is cemented.

Now if he genuinely was failing in that regard, then yeah, you know, people would be able to come against him. But he's able very masterfully to play against America and also keep the hand out and take the dollars. That's a very difficult balancing act, one which he is on tape admitting he's very good at saying what America is very easy. I know how to, who can deny it. He says it. Who could deny it? Yeah, no, that's right. He can, on the one hand, you know, act all outraged on Twitter about this, like totally meaningless sanction reportedly being issued by the state department. On the other hand, do whatever the hell he wants.

Bomb American, an American aid worker. Bomb Iran when we begged him, reportedly, not to. Hospitals, whatever. He can do whatever he wants. And there's still, you know, a whole of government effort here to make sure that he gets his billions and whatever he wants moving forward. Yes. So, yeah, he's playing his hand masterfully. And the Biden policy bear of bear hugging Bibi Netanyahu has been such an abject failure. It is hard to wrap your head around on every level. Every time they set out like, well, we don't want Israel to do this. Israel does it.

And then there's no accountability and American lives are put more at risk and more Palestinians in Gaza are completely slaughtered. So just an utter and complete failure from the Biden administration. It all just plays right into Bibi's hands. There was an interesting report, though, that I wanted to share with you guys, make of it what you will. So put this up on the screen. This is a report from Times of Israel that the prime minister's office, PMO, had held an emergency debate amid fears that the ICC, that's the International Criminal Court at the Hague, could issue arrest warrants for the prime minister and others over alleged crimes in Gaza. This is based on a report on Israeli Channel 12. So it says they're increasingly

worried about this. Three ministers and several government legal experts heard this emergency discussion on how they could potentially fend off the feared imminent issuing of such arrest warrants. They are pointing to some of the countries that have been very critical of Israeli atrocities in Gaza Strip are sort of leading the push here. Jerusalem is also trying to apply pressure, whatever diplomatic pressure they can, under the radar to try to avoid this eventuality. And not only did they, and this was noteworthy to me, again, according to this Israeli TV report, make of it what you will, apparently he also raised this concern in his meetings last week with Britain's Foreign Secretary David Cameron and Germany's Foreign Minister

Annalena Baerbock. Is that how you say that? We'll go with it. Let's go with it. Yeah, we'll go with that. So it was a significant enough concern reportedly reportedly, that he's raising it with them. Now, what does this mean? Listen, it's not like the ICC can come to Israel and arrest him, throw him and, you know, and be in a dock in the Hague. But, you know, it's another step on the global pariah status. It could be very influential in terms of global opinion, makes it more difficult for, you know, the U.S. enablers to support the things that he's doing. And also, it really constrains your freedom because now you can't go to one of the countries in the world where they, you know, do support the ICC actions because you could actually get arrested if you set foot in one of those countries. Yeah, I mean,

no, that's actually the biggest, I mean, there's a couple of ways we can look at this is one is like, do I think he's actually going to get arrested? No. But does it at least put pressure on the government? Yes. The other option is that we will just see the ICC signatory fall apart because he would travel to a party nation and they won't comply with it. We'll see exactly how that all plays out. But regardless, again, this is just a core theme of all of our discussion, is that in the interim, things are going in Israel's way.

But in the long term, 20, 30 years from now, they certainly are not. And this is another example. Don't even take my word for it. Yuval Noah Harari, who I've got some issues with, but he wrote the famous book, Sapiens. He's the Israeli—not really a scientist. Whatever. It's a separate conversation. He wrote an excellent piece.

I recommend everybody go and read in Haaretz where he makes this exact same point because he himself is kind of a chief arch globalist. And he's like, we have a real problem. We have delegitimized ourselves in the eyes of the entire world. And for decades now, we will have problems both diplomatically

for our citizens as they continue and think about living abroad. And any idea of legitimacy in the eyes of the world has significantly gone down. And that's just not something that you really move away from. And I think this is just like tip of the iceberg on that broader problem. Regardless of whether it's enforcement or not,

it almost doesn't matter, you know, for the future of what future free trade agreements look like, reciprocal tourism, willingness to do business, willingness to receive a prime minister and popularly. Those things honestly matter even more to a certain extent for the future of Israel and for the nation. Look at the way young generations of Americans view this. Yes, that's right.

It changed everything. It's not going back, right? Millennials, Gen Z, they're not going to view this the same way that boomers and silent gen did. It's done. I mean, we're covering the freakout over these Columbia protests and what the hell's going on there. The real story on those protests is just how overwhelming the sentiment

among young people is against arming Israel, against their view and mine, and the ICJ finds it plausible that they're committing genocide with our tax dollars, by the way, helping to fund the weapons that are 2,000-pound bombs being dropped on refugee camps, etc. People don't forget this is a formative political experience for really millions of young Americans.

So in terms of future generations, I don't think there's any putting that toothpaste back in the tube. But unfortunately, that takes a long time to come to fruition. And in the meantime, you can see from the numbers in the house how slowly things actually change. Over the past six years of making my true crime podcast, Hell and Gone, I've learned one thing. No town is too small for murder. I'm Katherine Townsend. I've received hundreds of messages from people across the country begging for help with unsolved murders. I was calling about the murder of my husband at the cold case.

They've never found her. And it haunts me to this day. The murderer is still out there. Every week on Hell and Gone Murder Line, I dig into a new case, bringing the skills I've learned as a journalist and private investigator to ask the questions no one else is asking. Police really didn't care to even try. She was still somebody's mother. She was still somebody's daughter.

She was still somebody's sister. There's so many questions that we've never gotten any kind of answers for. If you have a case you'd like me to look into, call the Hell and Gone Murder Line at 678-744-6145. Listen to Hell and Gone Murder Line on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I think everything that might have dropped in 95 has been labeled the golden years of hip-hop.

It's Black Music Month, and we need to talk. It's tapping in. I'm Nyla Simone, breaking down lyrics, amplifying voices, and digging into the culture that shaped the soundtrack of our lives. My favorite line on there was, my son and my daughter gonna be proud when they hear my old tapes. Yeah. Now I'm curious, do they like rap along now? Yeah, because I bring him on tour with me and he's getting older now too. So his friends are starting to understand what that type of music is and they're starting

to be like, yo, your dad's like really the GOAT. Like he's a legend. So he gets it. What does it mean to leave behind a music legacy for your family it means a lot to me just having a good catalog and just being able to make people feel good like that's what's really important and that's what stands out is that our music changes people's lives for the better so the fact that my kids get to benefit off of that i'm really happy or my family in general let's talk about the music that moves us to hear this and more on how music and culture collide.

Listen to We Need to Talk from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. You say you never give in to a meltdown and never fill your feed with kid photos. You say you'd never put a pacifier in your mouth to clean it and never let them run wild through the grocery store. So when you say you'd never let them get into a car without you there, no, it can happen. One in four hot car deaths happen when a kid gets into an unlocked car and can't get out. Never happens. Before you leave the car, always stop, look, lock. Brought to you by NHTSA and the Ad Council. At the same time, we really have our eyes on Rafah, the threatened ground invasion there.

It seems like there are some indications this may be more imminent, including multiple strikes there. Let's put this up on the screen. That happened just a day or so ago. Israeli strikes on southern Gaza city of Rafah killed 22, mostly children. As they add, U.S. advances aid package. I think that's noteworthy that they include that in the headline and important they include that in the headline. So out of these 22 people who were killed by the IDF in Rafah, 18 children, three women, one man. 18 children, three women, and one man.

One of the women who was killed was pregnant. She was killed. They were able to open her up and save the baby. Thank God, who's now orphaned at birth. Horrifying situation. And Bibi has been sort of promising that this Rafah invasion is imminent. He said cryptically, quote, in the coming days, we will increase the political and military pressure on Hamas because this is the only way to bring back our hostages and achieve

victory. Of course, the only way they've actually brought back hostages was through a ceasefire agreement, but never you mind that. He goes on to say we will land more and painful blows on Hamas soon, but did not give further details about what that meant. And that's noteworthy, of course, Sahroub, because he's been saying, oh, in order to finish the job with Hamas, they're all down in Rafah now. So we have to do this ground invasion of Rafah where you have over a million Palestinians sheltering right now, including obviously many women and children, because that's where Hamas is. So when he says we will land more in painful blows on Hamas soon, it seems to be a reference to an imminent ground invasion in Rafi. It's very possible. And something that you brought up, but I want to spend a lot of time on here,

is this corrupt bargain being reported by the Israeli press. Let's go and put this up there on the screen, please, where the Times of Israel reports very out in the open that the U.S. has agreed to Israel's plan for Rafah in return for not carrying out a large Iran strike. So what they basically have bargained with us is, hey, we won't have a huge retaliatory strike on Iran, which would draw you in, if you greenlight, at least tacitly, our Israeli invasion of Rasa. Now, the way that we know this is from Egyptian officials who are telling news outlets that, quote, the U.S. has accepted that plan for an operation in southern Gaza in return for not carrying out that larger strike. Now, the reason why this is so important is we are watching the weaponization

here, again, of the U.S. political system and its rapid desire to go to war for Israel, where they are like, hey, we won't drag us into a broader war over here if you let us do whatever we want over here. And I don't think that these airstrikes are an accident. And it actually very elegantly solves a problem for Bibi to be able to get around that. But think again about what the blackmail is, is that what they have on their side is always at any moment, at any time of our choosing, we can blow up an embassy wherever we want and ratchet things up over here, which will require you to defend us as long as we continue to get to do whatever we want over here in Gaza.

And that belies the fact that whatever happens here in Gaza has bleed-on effects over here as we have already watched the resumption of Iranian proxy strikes on U.S. military bases that have happened now after that. So again, American troops are the ones who pay the cost as well as, of course, Palestinian civilians. Yeah, that's right. I mean, this was Palestinian civilians being held hostage and being sacrificed in the end to reportedly keep Israel from doing a larger strike on Iran. And again, according to reports, the Biden people begged Bibi not to do

any response to Iran. They were saying, listen, take the win. We shut down all their stuff. Nothing really happened with regard to their retaliatory attacks here. So just take that win and let's move on. So they weren't able to succeed with that. They're obviously not willing to use actual leverage to change Israeli behavior. So according to this report, they've decided to sacrifice the Palestinians in Rafah in spite of the fact that this has been a long time. you know, Biden even used at one point the word red line with regard to RAFA, but doesn't seem to be a red line any longer. And I don't think any of us should be surprised if we see this attack move forward relatively swiftly. Just to give you another sense of how untenable the U.S. position here is and all of the Biden administration's supposed concerns

for human rights. Pretty remarkable exchange here where a State Department spokesperson really doesn't want to answer a question about whether the Geneva Conventions apply to Israel. Does his darndest to try to avoid giving a direct answer to what should be a very simple question that he was asked. Let's take a listen to this. Euromed Monitor, Human Rights Monitor, reports that Israel is using drones to lure residents and then shoot them. They explain the sounds of women screaming and babies crying were heard late at night on both Sunday and Monday when some of the residents went out to investigate and tried to help.

They were shot at by Israeli quadcopter drones. The sounds they heard were, in fact, recordings played by the Israeli drones with the intent of forcing the camp residents out into the streets where they could be easily targeted by snipers. I've not seen that report, Sam, so I'm not going to comment on it, but broadly not relating to this particular circumstance at all, because again, I haven't seen the report and I'm not sure if it's accurate or verifiable. At every conversation that we have with our partners in Israel, we continue to stress the moral and strategic imperative that they have to work on deconfliction mechanisms and to ensure

that civilian harm is minimized in every which way possible. And we'll continue to stress that every way we can. Will you look at this report? I am sure we'll look at this report, Sam. I don't have any comment for it on it right now. Do you recognize the Geneva Conventions as applying to the president? I've answered your question, Sam. Go ahead. No, you've evaded it, and your colleague deceitfully responded to it. Do you recognize the Geneva Conventions? It's a simple question. Go ahead. Do you recognize the Geneva Conventions as applying to Gaza?

When you interrupt me, it's not a matter of I'm not going to take additional questions. Go ahead. You got two questions. No, I didn't get two questions. You did. You asked a question about your report and you asked to follow up. Please, go ahead. You're refusing to answer it. Go ahead. Do the Geneva Conventions apply to Gaza or not? Apply to everywhere on the planet except for the Palestinians. Isn't that right? We continue to stress everywhere and everywhere that international humanitarian law needs to be abided by and respected. Go ahead. Do the Geneva Conventions apply? You are now interrupting your colleague. Go ahead. I'm interrupting you. I'm not interrupting you. I'm insisting on an answer to a critical question. Go ahead. Doesn't want to answer the question. It's very, very testy there in reply. And yeah,

and also with regard to the original report, which is disgusting if you think about it, like playing sounds of crying babies. And then when people rush out to try to help this, you know, what they think is a struggling child or infant, then using that to lure them out and kill them, that's horrifying. Last thing we wanted to share with you is some of the tenor of the discourse in our great Israeli allies, the way that their assault on Gaza is being discussed. I don't know if you guys saw this.

There was a picture of Palestinians on the beach in Gaza that created this whole freak out on the Israeli right. There was a discussion about this on Israeli television and quite a reaction to it. Let's take a look at this and I'll read over the subtitles here since this is in Hebrew. Go ahead and put it up on the screen. They say, these people there deserve death, a hard death, an agonizing death. And instead we see them enjoying on the beach, having fun. He goes on, these people, there are no innocent people there in the Gaza Strip, none. They voted for Hamas. They won Hamas. They celebrated. They handed out candies. Some of them spat at the body. Some of them took selfies with our abductees. There are no innocents there,

and the fact they're now enjoying the beach instead of starving, instead of being jerked around, instead of being severely tormented, instead of hiding from shelling, they are enjoying the beach. We should have seen a lot more revenge, a lot more rivers of Gazan's blood. That is the commentary on Israeli television. Right. But please, let's talk more about a student protester, what a 19-year-old might have or might not have said at a college protest. Yeah. At the same time, Trump's trial kicks off today, and there were some very dramatic occurrings, I guess, that happened on Friday.

When a man actually self-immolated outside of the courthouse, it was actually caught live. We're not going to show you images of the self-immolation itself, but there were some reporters on the scene and this is what it was described like by them. Let's take a listen. What do you say? We also are seeing an active shooter. An active shooter is in the park outside the court. We have seen an arm that has been visible that has been engulfed in total flames. There is chaos that is happening.

People are wondering right now if people are in danger. I'm looking across the courtyard. There is a man racing to his aid. There is codes coming off to try to put out the fire. We have members of security details. NYPD is rushing to the scene. They are trying to come out. Officers are on the scene. A fire extinguisher is right now present,

being put on this man to try to put out. People are climbing over barricades to try to separate the public, to put out the flame on this man. He has lit himself out on fire. That was the initial reaction. Obviously, it was not an active shooter. climbing over barricades to try to separate the public, to put out the flame on this man. He has lit himself out on fire. That was the initial reaction. Obviously, it was not an active shooter.

It was a protester. He's put out a manifesto, et cetera. It appears to be a sad and horrible case of mental illness. And it's often people, you know, schizophrenia and others attracted to certain scenarios like this. He wanted to start, quote unquote, a revolution and decided to self-immolate himself outside of the trial. But anything you want to say on that, Crystal, before we move on? Yeah, I mean, I'll just add he did ultimately succumb to his wounds from self-immolation.

The reporting on him is that he had been prone to some sort of fringe or conspiratorial beliefs, and then his mother passed. And according to the people who were around him, that was really sort of a breaking point. So there was, you know, immediate speculation. Oh, is this about his protesting Trump's, you know, legal issues or whatever? It appears to have had nothing to do with Trump, Peter Thiel, crypto, Jeffrey Epstein. A lot of things were mentioned in the sub stack, but Trump was not central to it. So it appears to have been an incredibly tragic instance of mental illness. Yes, it was tragic, trying to get attention, et cetera. But of course, that does not obscure the fact that there is that trial that is happening today, significant. And let's actually go through some of it. The entire jury has been seated for the trial. Let's

go ahead and put this up there on the screen. New York Times says, will a mountain of evidence be enough to convict Trump? We're going to have the opening statements today in the people of the state of New York versus Donald J. Trump. And the case, quote, seems strong, but a conviction is far from assured. Some of the witnesses are actually very important here. One of them is David Pecker, who some of you might remember from the Stormy Daniels days. David Pecker was the, quote, tabloid publisher who had buried the damaging stories about Trump, the so-called pay for play scheme where catch and kill, where they would buy incriminating stories on behalf of Trump and then keep them

in the vault under an NDA before then reporting it. Other witnesses in the case will include Hope Hicks, the spokesperson who tried to spin around this, a witness again for the prosecution. And then, of course, Michael Cohen, who has already pled guilty and actually served time in prison specifically around this charge, but on the federal charge, which Trump was never indicted for. So three of those witnesses very likely to back up the state's case. In terms of will it be enough to convict him, conviction is going to go on whether they agree with this novel interpretation of the case, and in terms of the law, in terms of statute of limitations, but also in terms of how they view

the central charge around whether it was campaign finance fraud or whether it was a personal one or not. And this is, of course, Crystal, from the beginning around this case, why eventually the feds decided not to charge Trump with said charge around this because they thought they could plausibly not argue, at least in a jury, to convict Trump on the campaign finance fees in particular, which amounts to accounting fraud in terms of why the state is involved. Yeah. So just as a reminder, there won't be cameras in the courtroom. So this all be, you know, after the day's events are concluded, we'll kind of get a synopsis of whatever was said, who testified, what happened, what was said in the opening arguments, et cetera.

It is noteworthy that you got David Pecker and Hope Hicks who are testifying, so they won't have to wholly rely on the testimony of Michael Cohen, who is, you know, convicted liars. He's not the most reliable witness. And that is one of the things that the Trump team are certainly going to, you know, pursue and talk about is there's this one key moment where Cohen claims that he and Trump were in dialogue in the White House and Trump was talking about these payments because this is one of the things that they'll try to claim is like basically he had no idea that any of this was going on. So it'll be interesting not only to see how that, you know, that direct, like he said, he said, piece plays out, but what additional information Hope Hicks, who was, you know, for those of you who don't recall, who was omnipresent, who was in a lot of key meetings, who had a lot of time with Trump and also a long history with him, even predating, you know, her time in the White House. And David Pecker, now Pecker, who was the tabloid publisher of National Enquirer and also had a long history with Trump,

he is able to testify not just to this Stormy Daniels hush money situation, but to a couple other stories that he helped Trump to, quote unquote, catch and kill. So the idea being there was another, this Playboy model, Susan McDougal, who claims she had an affair with Trump. He purchased her story and then didn't run it. The other one was this doorman at the Trump Tower building who claimed, this is apparently not true, but who had claimed that Trump had a mistress and had the mistress that had an abortion. Pecker had also purchased and buried that story as well. Now, with Stormy Daniels, he didn't do that because she was asking for too much money.

But then he works, this is all the allegations, right? And the Trump team, they'll have their say. But he works with Michael Cohen to figure out this workaround to get this story hushed up, even though the price was too steep for him to be able to do with the National Enquirer. So that's sort of like the heart of this. You know, on the one hand, in terms of the

jury, it's Manhattan, not a lot of Trump love in Manhattan. On the other hand, you had a couple of these jurors who were ultimately selected, who said at least a few sort of like more or less favorable things about Trump who weren't just out and out Trump haters. And, you know, he only has to get one person. Just one. Right. On his side to prevail here in what would be a very, very significant win. So those are kind of the contours of the case as best as I can see. Can you imagine if he wins? Or can you imagine if it's a hung jury or if he wins? I think that's very possible. Oh, I think too. But the media freak out on that is going to be unbelievable.

Let's go and put this up there on the screen because there was some discussion previously about the jurors. Two jurors were actually dismissed in a trial before they eventually all 12 were seated. It appears that some of the jurors were dismissed, prospective jurors, because of critical social media posts about Trump. But the 18 people who have selected have decided and have said that they will decide the case based, quote, purely on the facts. Some of them, two of them actually, expressed positive feelings about the former president that are on the jury. Two of those who were dismissed. One, there was a lot of attention around this, which we previously had, where a juror with profile was described by Fox News and by other media outlets. And she was approached, and she was like, people were asking whether it was her who was on the jury. And she asked

to be taken off. And other jurors as well had expressed some feelings around that. It was just funny, though, Crystal, because Fox and Jesse Waters in particular was getting the blame. But if you went and you looked, like, you could basically, if you know these people, you could guess it because ABC, the New York Times and others had written similar write-ups of all of the jurors who were involved. I will say, I don't know how I feel about that in terms of reporting another, because I'm like, okay, well, if the entire, if we're not going to release their names, but just like for me, it's like, well, an Indian guy who wears glasses, who does a YouTube show. It's like, oh, I wonder who it is. Former White House correspondent. It's like either keep it secret or don't, but don't try and play this weird middle ground where we are right now.

True. Yeah. I think you could have released like they had in there what their news preferences were, which I thought was interesting. The comments they made about Trump and how they felt about him. that was interesting. But yeah, you probably didn't need like the person, they're a nurse. How is that really? Well, I don't blame the media.

Or maybe even like the top line, like, okay, it's a female, fine. But drilling down into a lot of those details. I will say this, I don't blame the media. I think if the law is going to allow all of this to be published, then fine.

I don't actually blame them at all. At the end of the day, it's up to the court to keep whatever its people safe or not. But if the court is going to have rules like secrecy and all that, then they should at least write them in a way that makes sense. I will never blame reporters or journalists for putting out a fulsome amount of information. Yeah, I agree with that. I think that's what they should do. Although I will say in the instance of Jesse Waters, there was a whole right-wing conspiracy that these were intentional lib activists who were sneaking onto the jury, which I think there is no evidence to support that in particular.

But I feel bad for these jurors. Whether they're public now or not, it's very likely to come out who these individuals are. They're going to be the center of a firestorm, the likes of which they probably can't even imagine that few people really could imagine. It's going to be an absolute circus. And, yeah, we'll see how it all unfolds. We have one more piece that I'll let you queue up. But I just do want to say on the political note, yeah, I know we're so used to thinking nothing matters for Trump. These are old allocations. As you say, it's all baked in. And I think those are all like totally fair and legitimate points. But

you do see his poll numbers right now slipping a bit. You see Biden now on a lot of national averages has claimed like a one point lead. His approval ratings ticked up a little tiny bit. How people are saying they feel about him on the issues versus Trump, he's doing a little bit better. And I do think part of what is dragging Trump down right now is just him being in the media now and it being in the context of legal troubles such as this case. And we also should remember when the first details of this emerged, like people really found it pretty gross. Even ones who said, eh, it may not be illegal, but it's certainly wrong. So having those details day after day in the news, I think that there's some cope on the Trump right of

saying like, oh, this persecution is going to guarantee him the elections. I think that's crazy. Like most of the country does not view these things the way that the Republican base does. I don't think there's any doubt that the criminal prosecutions helped him in the context of a Republican primary. In the context of a general election, it's a whole different ballgame. So maybe it's net neutral. Maybe it doesn't change anything. But I do not think that this is going to be a net win for Donald Trump the way that some of his supporters claim that it will be. Yeah, I don't think it will be. Oh, I think it would be a win for him amongst his base. I think any, you know, prosecution on terms of the public,

I think this one basically nets out and I think the others could be a lot more significant. Nonetheless, you know why it's most important is because the judge is threatening to throw him in jail if he's not there in person. But we'll see whether any of that even materializes. We would be remiss if we didn't play some liberal fan fiction, which has been making the rounds, about, what is it, Diaper Don? Is that the conspiracy? That's right. That's what they are claiming.

So Midas Touch, which was that, it's that liberal organization that put out all those clips of Joe Rogan. They have reporters, sources, according to them, who are inside the courtroom who claim that Trump's flatulence is out of control inside the court, according to their well-placed individuals. Let's take a listen. And I'm hearing from credible sources who know what's going on in the courtroom. And what I'm hearing is, is that take it for what it's worth, but that Donald Trump is actually farting in the courtroom and that it's very stinky around him. It's putrid odor in the courtroom and that Trump's lawyers are like repulsed by the scent and the smell. And I'm not, I'm not just saying that to be like, Oh, funny, funny. I'm actually, you know, we have good sources there and I'm hearing it from actual

credible people that as he's kind of falling asleep, he is actually passing gas and that his lawyers are really struggling with the smell. His lawyers are really struggling with the smell. These are credible, credible reports. I love the conspiracy personally. Yeah. So this is also, and look, we're not chair picking. That clip, when I saw, had somewhere around 9 million views on Twitter and had been retweeted some 11 to 12,000 times. And of course, like made the rounds across, what is these like Occupy Republicans or, you know, all these things like Facebook boomer pages. So the boomers are eating this one up. They are really enjoying the idea of flatulent Don or diaper Don. Yeah. I support this resistance lib conspiracy personally. I mean,

it is relatively harmless. It is amusing, I'll tell you that. But yeah, this is what is capturing the minds and there will only be even more of this type of fan fiction that make the rounds the more that he finds himself.

We don't know it's not true. That's true. We can't prove it's not true. He's got credible sources in the courtroom. It is unfalsified. Who am I to deny that? 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. If you have a case you'd like me to look into, steal somebody's sister. There's so many questions that we've never got any kind of answers for. If you have a case you'd like me to look into,

call the Hell and Gone Murder Line at 678-744-6145. Listen to Hell and Gone Murder Line on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I think everything that might have dropped in 95

has been labeled the golden years of hip hop. It's Black Music Month and We Need to Talk is tapping in. I'm Nyla Simone, breaking down lyrics, amplifying voices, and digging into the culture that shaped the soundtrack of our lives. My favorite line on there was, my son and my daughter gonna be proud when they hear my old tapes. Now I'm curious, do they like rap along now? Yeah, because I bring him on tour with me and he's getting older now too. So his friends are starting to understand what that type of music is. And they're starting to be like, yo, your dad's like really the GOAT. Like he's a legend.

So he gets it. What does it mean to leave behind a music legacy for your family? It means a lot to me. Just having a good catalog and just being able to make people feel good. Like that's what's really important and that's what stands out is that our music changes people's lives for the better. So the fact that my kids get to benefit off of that, I'm really happy. Or my family in general. Let's talk about the music that moves us.

To hear this and more on how music and culture collide, listen to We Need to Talk from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. You say you never give in to a meltdown. on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. without you there? No, it can happen. One in four hot car deaths happen when a kid gets into an unlocked car and can't get out. Never happens. Before you leave the car, always stop, look, lock. Brought to you by NHTSA and the Ad Council. Let's turn to some slightly more significant news here. We had a huge victory for the United Auto Workers specifically, but the labor movement in general coming out of this Volkswagen plant in Tennessee. So this was the third time that workers at this plant had attempted to unionize. This time, with the landscape quite a bit different and quite a bit more pro-union, the workers prevailed in historic fashion. Let's start off by taking a listen to

what some of the workers had to say in their own words, courtesy of More Perfect Union. I was in the county, all you heard was yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, landslide. You know, many of the talking heads and pundits have said to me repeatedly before we announced this campaign, you can't win in the south. They said southern workers aren't ready for it. They said non-United auto workers didn't have it in them. But you all said, watch this. That last person you were listening to there, Sean Fain, the new president of the United Auto Workers, who has made an aggressive push, not only taking a bold stance going out on strike with regard to the big three contract negotiations, but in the wake of that victory, saying, listen, we're going to organize the South.

We're going to go after foreign automakers. This has basically not happened successfully before in American history. And so far, it's looking pretty good for them. Let's go and put this next piece up on the screen. Was not even close. 73% voted yes. 27% voted no. And again, keep in mind, this is a plant that had voted twice before in 2017, I believe, in 2019, and had rejected unionization.

Now, with the wins that you saw, you know, Starbucks, Teamsters, UAW, with a more favorable climate amongst the public in favor of unions, with a more favorable National Labor Relations Board, this time the result is totally different. And the next up, they have a vote in mid-May down in Alabama at a Mercedes plant that apparently they feel pretty good about too. So it's astonishing, Sagar. Not just that. So not only did they have 73% who cast in favor, but they had 84% voter participation. So of the 84% of the 4,300 eligible workers in the plant actually participated. This is the first vote in the South. They're saying the first time a Southern auto plant outside the three Detroit automakers has ever been organized by UAW. This, of course, makes sense because we have Volkswagen, BMW, Toyota, and all this with their blanketed across the American South with a lot of manufacturing

jobs and cars that have been strategically placed there because of right-to-work laws. Now, the question is about how that's going to change from this point forward. The Wall Street Journal even talks here about that there's less than 400,000 workers last year who are inside UAW. That is 75% less than where they were in the 1970s. So for them to have wins like this that grow for the future actually sets up that we're probably at the low point of U.S. union membership than ever before and likely to go up. And one of the reasons it's fun at least to cover this story, this might be the only rare piece of good news in our entire show. So we absolutely wanted to include it. Yeah, no doubt about it. And yeah, you can see the way the historic wins have changed. Like there's a huge backlash now

against, you know, we saw in COVID how these companies were screwing workers over. They were risking their lives. They were making money hand over fist. They continue to make record-breaking profits and not pass it on to consumers, let alone their workers, continue to, you know, corporate price gouging, et cetera. And people are through with it to the extent that even, you know, in a state like Tennessee, where the politician, the political class there is overwhelmingly hostile to unions. You had a bunch of Southern governors come out against this union drive. They've been threatened with, oh, they're going to close the plan, et cetera, et cetera. Those things just don't matter. And then, you know, you also just have this momentum now that's so important because previously when workers saw

just, you know, concessionary contract, union loss after union loss and the union based shrinking, shrinking and shrinking, it wasn't very compelling to join a union. When you see what the big three workers are getting, you're like, I do the same job. Why the hell shouldn't I be getting the same type of pay, the same type of benefits and have that similar type of life? So we'll see what happens in Alabama next. And speaking to that, you know, that momentum and this sense of solidarity across not just the auto industry, but a bunch of different, you know, variety of industries, white collar, blue collar service sector, et cetera. One worker said he was actually inspired by the writer's strike, which we thought was kind of interesting. Let's take a listen to that.

When all the labor strikes first, you know, like the writers and stuff like that, I was a communications major in college. And so seeing the writers go on strike and standing up for their rights, that was, I was so excited about that. And then seeing, there's a part of us, when we'd be talking about this, just secretly in the back of our minds, it's like, man, I wonder if, I wonder if auto workers, if we're going to start seeing something like that here. You can see the way these things have a momentum of their own. And I think it's, you know, the horse is out of the barn. I think you're right, Sagar, that we've seen now the low point in terms of population union density. And it really matters because having workers have a little bit of say in their

workplace, it's good not only for those particular workers, but it helps to set the standards across industries and across the entire labor pool in the U.S. So very heartening to see this. Congratulations to these workers who risked a lot, by the way, to organize here and stuck their neck out. And now they get to have a say in their workplace. Yeah, the big question is going to be, obviously, the spread, whether this will go to Toyota, apparently Honda, Hyundai, and other foreign power manufacturers all across the American South. So this is one. But this obviously is like a signal that goes out across that. And we also shouldn't forget, as we covered previously,

it's not like the state governments aren't going to fight back against this. Alabama, Tennessee, all these other places, they're going to use everything in their disposal to try and to quash any of these future votes. Yeah. The last thing I'll mention here is Volkswagen, they are used to dealing with unions in their European locations.

And so the reports are they were less hostile to unionization efforts than other automakers like Tesla, for example, may be. So that could be a key factor here as well. But the fact that this victory was so resounding, the fact that this same plant had lost two separate votes and now votes 73% for a union really does show you that we are living in a different era now. Things have decidedly changed. Absolutely. All right, let's move on to Tucker Carlson on the Joe Rogan experience. There were wild conspiracies flying when the episode itself was posted. Why doesn't it have enough views? What's going on there? Well, it's got several million views now, so everybody can relax. In general, just so people know who don't have YouTube channels, in the first 24 hours, it will

often be much less publicly than what it actually is on the back end. I'm not really sure why they do that, but just so people understand, that's what it is. After around 24 hours or so, you can go and check and you will see the actual number. But that belies what's actually important. There were some ideological disagreements that were made on the show where Tucker in particular echoed some of the things that he talked about previously, whenever I interviewed him before, about free speech hypocrites in the alternative media space. He names and shames Barry Weiss and then also heavily implies Ben Shapiro as well. Let's take a listen. If you hear someone talk that's saying something that's kind of horseshit, it resonates with you that that's what you've seen. You had a moment with Barry Weiss on your show that went everywhere. I saw a clip of it. I never saw the

show itself, but she was going on about, she was posing as one thing. And then you pressed her. You're like, well, hold on a second. What do you mean by that? You just attack somebody. And she had no idea what she was talking about. And it became really clear to me watching that completely changed my view of Barry Weiss forever. I was like, oh, this, she's a fraud. Actually, this person's not honest at all. Like she has a very specific agenda. That's all she cares about. The rest of this stuff is just a, is a kind of sleight of hand maneuver. You're talking about the thing with Tulsi Gabbard. That's correct. Yeah. She called her a toady and she didn't know what that meant. Well, but she had no idea. Like Tulsi Gabbard had straight

outside the lines on some Syria or something. Um, And Barry Weiss was, you know, going through the files in her head, like, what does she have to believe? And she was aware that, you know, Tulsi Gabbard had somehow violated that in a way that no one's willing to say, like, in detail to fully articulate. What did Tulsi Gabbard do wrong? No one will tell you. She's just bad. But I think it's-

It's important to be honest about what your agenda is. I think she is honest. I think she is honest. And I really like her. I like talking to her. She's a very intelligent person. I'm not against her personally. I just think that was a mistake. And I think you're allowed to do that and hopefully learn from that. If your agenda is neocon politics, which is her agenda, just say so. Don't pretend to be a defender of free speech as a principle, which is what she does. How is she a defender of neocon politics, which is her agenda, just say so. Don't pretend to be a defender of free speech as a principle, which is what she does. How is she a defender of neocon politics? Barry Weiss? Yeah. Like what specifically? Well, anyone, including me and Tulsi Gabbard, who thinks that America shouldn't be funding

wars that don't help America, she will attack. Yeah. I mean, that's empirically true. I'm on Barry's feed literally. And listen, I have nothing personal against Barry Wise. We've only ever been cordial. This is purely a professional disagreement. Let's put all that out there. But I'm on Barry's feed and everything is about individual students getting attacked at, yeah, for example, headline at the free press. I was stabbed in the eye at Yale because I am a Jew. And then I continue to scroll past and I see multiple retweets of like a panic going on,

anti-free speech that's happening at Columbia University. If I continue to scroll and look at the Free Press, I see articles that are justifying more aid to Ukraine, more aid to Israel, but really what gave away the game to me, and this is actually just pure 100% proof, is that Barry did an event in Israel with a guy named Natan Sharansky. Now, most of you probably don't know who that is. Sharansky is an Israeli politician and a father of neoconservative ideology. He, his book, was chiefly responsible

for George W. Bush's second inaugural address and the freedom agenda about spreading democracy to Iraq. So if you are doing an event with the father of the freedom agenda from Iraq, you are a neocon, 100%. And she did that unironically in Israel. And then also while there was posting videos, like this is what it's like to be under attack. You know, while we're in Israel, people were like, yeah, what about a couple miles away over there in Gaza? Like, I'm not justifying the attack, but I'm just like, come on, you know, like let's chill here a little bit on the propaganda. So look, with all due respect to our friend, Joe Rogan, I do think Barry is an absolutely unreconstructed neoconservative, a hypocrite whenever it comes to free speech,

as Tucker correctly was calling out there. And he wasn't just talking about her. He was also talking about Ben Shapiro because both of those individuals raised, and let's be honest, monetarily became multimillionaires speaking out against free speech hypocrisy and all that. And it's very easy to attack the left. We'll do it here anytime if we see hypocrisy as well. But, you know, whenever it comes to an issue there where they have a deep emotional and religious attachment, then all of a sudden all that stuff gets thrown right out the window. Listen, part of Joe's charm is that he sees the best in the people that are sitting across from him. That includes Barry Weiss. So we'll put him aside. In terms of the commentary, you know, the free speech part with Barry, it's so blatant. Because, you know, when she was a college student, she was engaged in some of these activist efforts to get Muslim professors who she found to be saying things she didn't like canceled.

Now, she claimed once she entered her quote-unquote free speech era that, oh, I was a college student and people gave her a pass. Okay, fine, you're a college student. People, you know, make mistakes and they change and they grow, et cetera, et cetera. But the minute it came to Israel, suddenly she is the biggest cancel culture proponent that you could possibly imagine. I mean, that is what her entire Twitter feed is at this point. And it's not surprising that this tactic is being used to smear an entire protest movement and an entire cause. Because we see this play out throughout history. It's easier to, you know, find the asshole in the movement, use that person to smear the entire movement, and then use that smearing of the movement to delegitimize the cause. And at this point, if you're an Israel supporter, that is a lot easier than actually out and out justifying what Israel is doing in Palestine day after day. It is a lot easier than out and out

trying to argue that us continuing to support them as they, you know, risk sending the world catastrophically in a World War III is somehow in American interest. So it's, you know, it's a cheap and easy playbook that we see throughout history. And yeah, she was happy to ditch the free speech language the minute that it became inconvenient for her after she built an entire media empire off of it. So I mean, that's just the reality. You believe what you want, okay? It's a free country. If you want to be rabidly pro-Israel, cool. You want to cancel people who are Palestinian activists while you're in college and then apologize for it, which is what she did. Objectively, she came out and said that

she regretted her past and that. I will take you at your word. But then if you're immediately going to regress back to that same behavior, then I'm not going to take you at your word. I'm going to say that you are a giant hypocrite. And that's the same problem I have with Ben Shapiro. Again, a man who I have only ever had good personal interaction with, but this is a professional and a principal disagreement about what we view as important and what we view as actually, whether you're standing up for what you said you believe in or not. And I think it was, I'm glad that Tucker said that. I would hope, you know, that Joe would maybe be, take a look at some other free press articles that are out there because I do think it's very important. There were also some allegations that Tucker made about blackmail and members of Congress, according to him, that he's seen from

the intelligence community. Let's take a listen. By the way, you know, whatever, that's all I'll say. By the way. No, I mean, you know, people don't say that because they're worried about getting punished. They're worried about someone putting kiddie porn on their computer. Members of Congress are terrified of the intel agencies. I'm not guessing at that. They've told me that, including people on the intel committee, including people who run the intel committee, the people whose job it is to oversee and keep in line these enormous secretive agencies whose budgets we can't even know. They're black budgets. They're the parents. The agencies are the children. They're afraid of the agencies.

That's not compatible with democracy. Interesting. Alleging there that they'll put kiddie porn on your, I mean, listen, it's certainly possible. The broader thing, I definitely 100% agree with. Glenn always loves to play that clip of Chuck Schumer from 2017 whenever he's like, Trump shouldn't mess with the intel agencies and the CIA because they can really make life hard for you. And you're like, wait, what? It's like your job is to oversee the CIA. Are you saying that there's the opposite?

And I mean, considering what happened with Mike Johnson, where you have a guy who voted against Ukraine aid, spoke out against Ukraine aid, became president, and then literally said because of the intel that he decided to flip and become Winston Churchill and he preyed on all that, I am not gonna rule out blackmail, Crystal, in terms of this Mike Johnson. Remember the Russian space nuke? I'm just saying. I'm just saying.

Situation when they were trying to get the FISA thing through. Listen, the kiddie porn thing, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. No evidence presented. In addition, like this does kind of give a pass to how any member of Congress in the future ends up with kiddie porn on their laptop to be like, it wasn't me. It was the Intel committees. It's just because I'm such a like, you know, warrior for truth that they're coming after me, whatever. Look at what Tucker had to say about it. It's all out there in the open. So I don't love those comments. Certainly in terms, the thing is that many of these conspiracies are out in the open. Like we were discussing before, we know the way that they rolled Obama. We know, you know,

Trump was easily manipulated. Mike Johnson publicly admitted that he was emotionally manipulated by them into completely changing his previously held multiple positions. So, I mean, that part of it is just like, it's not even conspiracy. That's just an undeniable fact about the way that they operate and they can threaten to leak to the press. And there's any number of stenographers out there who print whatever they want to print, and they can ruin you. And these politicians know they can ruin you. You add to that then, you know, the amount of money coming in, not only through the Israel lobby, but also critically across every issue from the military industrial complex, these defense, the defense industry is one of the largest funders

of political campaigns. And you see how you end up with the results that we have, which are directly contrary to actual democracy and actual will of the people, which is why over and over and over again, you see these things only go in one direction. Yeah, absolutely. All right. Let's second part here. And this requires an entire discussion on its own. Tucker and I do share a fascination with UFOs, UAPs, whatever you would like to call it, but he seems to believe that the phenomenon as it exists involves something supernatural,

but of this world, and something that is not alien or extraterrestrial. Here's the case that he laid out on Joe Rogan. When you say spiritual, like what makes you draw that conclusion that they're spiritual? I mean spiritual may be the wrong word. Supernatural. They're beyond nature as we understand it. I mean obviously they are. I mean just chart their physical behavior.

It doesn't – it goes outside of what we understand about physics. So if you have a craft, any object underwater that's traveling at 500 knots as measured by sonar, right there, you're challenging our understanding of physics. Like, what is that? How can that be? So, yeah. They've tracked that? They've tracked things going 500 knots under the sea? Yeah, really. Yeah. Yeah, much faster than any object can actually go under sea. Oh, for sure. Oh, yeah.

There's a lot of stuff going on underwater. And a lot. And there's video of these things coming out of the sky into the water and also emerging from the water. But then there's a deeper level, which is like, okay, what's your relationship with these things? What is the US government's relationship with these things?

And there's evidence that there is a relationship and that it's a longstanding. And that raises like a lot of questions about intent. And, um, and so so like what is that? And I just personally decided – and people have been hurt by these things. That's a fact. That's a fact. It's a knowable fact. It's a provable fact. And killed.

And I'm not saying millions of people have been killed by whatever these things are. But people have been killed and it's known because it's working its way through the courts out of the VA. So I don't know. An object that is by definition supernatural, it's above the laws of nature as we understand them, and that has resulted in the deaths of people. We don't spend enough time thinking about like what that adds up to, like not good, actually not good. So he's implying kind of the same stuff that he previously talked about here crystal i mean he seems to believe that uh uap ufo whatever you would like to call it a beer in here for hundreds of years which definitely there is evidence for that uh but uh that they are like some sort of

biblical angels and demons as opposed to extraterrestrial. So I'll let you weigh in before I give some of my thoughts. Well, this came out of the context before of his interview with Putin. We asked Putin something about this, and Putin was like, no. Yeah. I don't know. I feel like I have to get you to decode this for me. Because I was asking you previously how large of a percentage of the, like, UFO interest community shares this, like, Christian spiritual angel demon's view of whatever the hell is going on.

This is more of, like, a 1970s, 1980s UFO phenomenon. Oh, really? Yeah, oh, yeah. People back in the day used to really believe. I thought this was, like, a new school, like, Christian nationalism. No, no, no, definitely. Absolutely not. If anything, it's much older.

The more of the extraterrestrial school, I guess you could call it, is, I mean, it's always been there for the entire time. Sure. There's always been debates and all around this. To a certain extent, I don't even care because as long as people are interested, it's going to lead to more transparency. What kicked off this entire discussion actually was the declassification of the Kona Blue program. And these were declassification of the Kona Blue program. And these were declassified documents, News Nation reporting this, and I've confirmed at least some of it as well from those people that I've spoken to, is specifically about a proposed program to try and

reverse engineer back UFOs. It was, quote, scrapped according to them when no alien technology was found. And the Pentagon continues to maintain there is no evidence of alien life. So what they, basically what they're claiming is there was a proposal to back-engineer UFOs, but then they weren't able to find any UFOs, but why would you have a back-engineering proposal if there were no UFOs, whatever, okay? There's a lot of conversation, I guess, around this.

To be honest, I mean, look, you know, no disrespect, doesn't it seem more plausible that we're dealing with extraterrestrial life than we are angels and demons? That we're dealing with something, you know, one is in the realm of all scientific, all sci-fi is premised on what? On the idea, and specifically toying with the Fermi paradox and all that, that if intelligent life is able to arise on a relatively unremarkable planet like Earth, then why would it not be able to arise in the billions and billions and trillions upon stars that exist in our galaxy? At the same time, if there are, and extraterrestrial life is almost a certainty, then why haven't we been able to see it or observe it? And that's where it comes

into play of like, well, an intelligent life would have to be able to achieve, you know, faster than light travel at the exact same time that the human race has 150,000 years or whatever of human evolution is a blink of an eye in terrestrial terms. So there may have been vast, great civilizations that have been risen and fallen in the interim. And that way we may be the only ones in our star system or whatever at the current moment that is able to even see. So I accept and see both certain possibilities, but I think that that is a lot more of a possible explanation. I will just say very humbly myself. That's very diplomatically put. So I'll just defer to you on that one. Okay. Yeah. Look, in terms of the evidence for their theory, what they point to is again not necessarily incompatible

with any theories around extraterrestrial life because with their evidence for supernatural and or like religion and all that really relies again on like big conversations within physics around the fourth and the fifth dimension and this whole idea if you ever watch interstellar you know the idea of it's future humans that sent themselves back. I think that's the, like, explanation, if there is one, for kind of what he's talking about. Gotcha.

If that makes sense. Okay. Anyway, so there we go. All right, guys, we have a great guest standing by who's actually been tracking these protests on the Columbia University campus for quite a while. So let's go ahead and get to that. Over the past six years of making my true crime podcast, Hell and Gone,

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She was still somebody's mother. She was still somebody's daughter. She was still somebody's mother. She was still somebody's daughter. She was still somebody's sister. There's so many questions that we've never got any kind of answers for. If you have a case you'd like me to look into, call the Hell and Gone Murder Line at 678-744-6145. Listen to Hell and Gone Murder Line on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I think everything that might have dropped in 95 has been labeled the golden years of hip hop. It's Black Music Month and We Need to Talk is tapping in.

I'm Nyla Simone, breaking down lyrics, amplifying voices, and digging into the culture that shaped the soundtrack of our lives. My favorite line on there was, my son and my daughter gonna be proud when they hear my old tapes. Now I'm curious, do they like rap along now? Yeah, because I bring him on tour with me, and he's getting older now, too. So his friends are starting to understand what that type of music is, and they're starting to be like, yo, your dad's, like, really the GOAT. Like, he's a legend, so he gets it. What does it mean to leave behind a music legacy for your family? It means a lot to me, just having a good catalog

and just being able to make people feel good. Like, that's what's really important, and that's what stands out, is that our music changes people's lives for the better. So the fact that my kids get to benefit off of that, I'm really happy, or my family in general. Let's talk about the music that moves us. To hear this and more on how music and culture collide, listen to We Need to Talk from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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Brought to you by NHTSA and the Ad Council. Very pleased to be joined this morning by Prem Thakkar. He's a reporter for The Intercept who, as I mentioned, has been covering these Columbia University protests for quite some time. Great to have you, Prem. Welcome. Good to see you, ma'am. Happy to be here. Thank you. So we all were witness to some extraordinary scenes coming out of the campus grounds over the weekend. Let's go ahead and put this up on the screen and maybe you can tell us what we see here.

It's the New York Police Department coming in to arrest what appear to be peaceful student protesters. Just give us a little bit of what we're looking at and what the backstory is here. Yeah, so on Wednesday, as many people know, last week, Colombian administrators, including Colombia President Manu Shafiq, had been called to Congress to testify in front of the hearing, the House committee that has been hosting hearings on anti-Semitism. And at the same morning that this was happening, hundreds of Columbia students had launched an encampment, both kind of in relation to this hearing, but more broadly sort of escalating

ongoing demands they've had for years now about financial transparency and to call for the school to divest from companies that might be implicated in Israel's violence in Palestine. And so there's this encampment that sprouts up on Wednesday morning, very massive encampment. At the same time, the administrators are testifying in front of Congress at this hearing, of course. I was at the hearing live, but as many people were just following through Twitter and C-SPAN, if that's your choice, these members of Congress, especially Republicans, had really gotten Colombian administrators to agree to this premise that more needed to be done

in response to these students. And so you see the day after, Thursday, Columbia acts on those premises and sends the NYPD to sort of sweep out this encampment and begin conducting arrests, of which I believe over 100 students were arrested. I believe 50-odd students from Barnard, the women's college at Columbia,

and then 30-odd Columbia students. And I think this number has probably grown since then, were also suspended. part, especially of the university, to kind of meet these students, not with sort of perhaps good faith, willingness to negotiate or discuss the issues at hand, but really just to police them. And I'll note last night at 1.15 a.m., President Manoush Shafiq sent an email kind of expressing an interest in some ways, you know, of course, people criticize the statement, but she's expressed a desire to kind of hash things out and bring the temperature down. So that's kind of the latest update. OK. And so you also put out an image, which we're about to play here, which was the aftermath after the NYPD came in, where it appears to have to pour gasoline on that. Let's actually see that image right now.

And so Prem, that image underscored that it actually ended up increasing the amount of protesters. It's drawn attention now. What is the current status quo? And give us some background because things now have reached the national discourse level. We've seen people calling for the National Guard to be brought in, the NYPD, Mayor Eric Adams. Actually, I think we have that statement out there. F7 guys, if we can put that up there on the screen. We have Mayor Eric Adams, who has put out a tweet where he says that he deplores the amount of anti-Semitism on campus. I'm horrified and disgusted being spewed around the Columbia University. Hate has no place in our city. I've instructed NYPD to investigate any violation of the law. Rhetoric is certainly

ramping up there. So what do you expect the fallout to be? Yeah, so for context, in the past day or two, there have been instances of alleged anti-Semitism that have been circulating throughout the internet. Things that we ought to verify and also things that it's not clear if they were in fact pro-Palestinian students making these claims or doing these things. There's concern as with protests, especially with regards to Israel-Palestine, for years of potential infiltration slash false flags.

You know, we're not sure. But regardless, in any case, those instances have helped propel numerous members of Congress, even the White House, as you saw, Eric Adams, as well as Governor Kathy Hochul, to issue statements essentially condemning the student protesters in all sorts of ways, whether it's, you know, describing them or comparing them to possibly being terrorist sympathizers or at least echoing terrorist rhetoric. I believe John Fetterman had a much more direct comparison that if you gave these students tiki torches, they'd be unmistakable from the Charlottesville Unite the Right rally. But regardless, you know, that has definitely, I think, probably prompted this late night statement from Manoush Shafiq. And so as far as how students and faculty members are navigating this today, all classes are virtual. I think as the administration tries

to figure out what to do today as well, faculty starting yesterday had a very hard time getting around campus. Their ID access to buildings, a lot of faculty reporting was either severely hindered or even just blocked and they had to be escorted to buildings. And that change was made kind of spontaneously, which means students and faculty who had, you know, whether it was a notebook or project in various buildings, they couldn't really go to get those things. So I think everything is kind of, you know, being done by the sealer pants. In terms of how far this is spreading, to your point, Sagar, yeah, like after the NYPD was authorized to come in and arrest students, that set off hundreds more students to have more

interest just in Columbia's campus, but also now students throughout the country who have already also been protesting against perhaps university involvement or investment in Israel's violence. They've been escalating to schools. And these aren't just Ivy League schools that are often, you know, seen as the centrifuge of these actions. You know, there's the University of North Carolina, there's Michigan University as of today that's doing an encampment, Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, which I love to say the full sentence of, because it's a very silly series of words, but there's a lot of schools across the country that now are being host to actions that are not just in solidarity with these Columbia students,

but really just ramping up their own actions to say, well, if Columbia can do this to Columbia students, I should say, then we ought to be escalating as well, is kind of the mindset of these students. Prem, have you seen any evidence that anti-Semitism is one of the core emotions or goals that are fueling these protest movements across a variety of college campuses? So I've been speaking to students all across the country throughout the past six months. And I think as in any case, of course, individual instances of antisemitism

would surely happen in any place because reality check, there are antisemitic people in this country and in this world. But in terms of this specific protest movement, what we've seen at the Columbia protests, what we've seen at protests throughout the past six months, throughout past years, is that it's very much both just visually, if you take a look, but also in terms of their rhetoric, in terms of what they want. It's a multiracial interfaith group of people that really just seem fired up by the idea that

their schools, their elected officials, the people that they trust or just simply pay are implicated in what they see as a state government that's committing apartheid, that's committing violence, that they might be financially implicated or institutionally implicated. That seems to be the driving force for all these protesters, for the most part, as sort of an organization, as a group of people that are coming together for goals. It's to not allow the images that they've seen over the past six months, especially, to continue. And as a lot of anti-Zionist Jewish people say, not in their name either. So we have yet seen, though, the chief rabbi at Columbia F5, who can please put that up there

on the screen, where the chief rabbi has put out a message to the more than 290 Jewish students at Columbia University yesterday morning recommending that they go home until it is safe again for them on campus. So is there any evidence that any of these students are unsafe on their campus? Yeah, so I think similarly, again, I would say that, you know, there could very well be individual instances of anti-Semitism that students are facing and if they're reporting them to their own, you know, whether it's their faith leaders or campus leaders, as the administration has recommended, then, of course, some of those leaders will say, hey, you know, I personally don't think it's safe. For what it's worth, there have been also lots of Jewish students and Jewish student leaders and faculty members as well that are pushing back against that quite severely, especially given that many of the people within the encampment themselves are either Israeli or Jewish.

So, you know, I'm not going to, as an individual reporter, say who should or shouldn't feel safe generally for their own individual sake. But in terms of the campus as a whole, I think if we're going to look for documented instances of violence that have been committed, of course, one of the main ones that's been on people's mind is, of course, the incident in January where students were sprayed with some sort of chemical. It's not been confirmed what, um, um, at a rally for Gaza. That's one of the more prominent instances of, of, of violence against students. Um, and nevertheless, those students, um, continue to organize and be together. Um,

I believe the craft center as well, um, which is a big space for Jewish students, has encouraged students to sort of, you know, or to not exit campus in this way, because I think, you know, they want to make sure that they provide a space for students as well. In case students are feeling, you know, distressed. But I think for one, especially politicians to operate on this presumption that Columbia and other college campuses are not a safe place for Jewish people or Israeli people, are really teeing off on these sort of viral claims of individual instances. And they're not entertaining the fact that there are scores of Jewish and Israeli students and students of all backgrounds that not only feel safe on campus, but feel empowered on campus because that they're of this organizing together. Prem, last thing for you, I wanted to get your reaction to the White House statement.

Guys, this is E6 we can put up on this on the screen. They said, well, every American has the right to peaceful protest calls for violence and physical intimidation targeting Jewish students in the Jewish community are blatantly anti-Semitic, unconscionable, and dangerous. They have absolutely no place on any college campus or anywhere in the USA. And echoing the rhetoric of terrorist organizations, especially in the wake of the worst massacre committed against the Jewish people since the Holocaust, is despicable. We condemn these statements in the strongest terms. How would you compare this reaction to the White House, to reported isolated comments of random protesters near college campuses? How would you compare that reaction to the reaction they had, for example, to a member of Congress calling for Gaza to be nuked or another one saying goodbye Palestine or another one saying

there are no innocent Gazans? Yeah, I think your question kind of lays out the answer itself. You know, this is actually something we had reported on two weeks ago, just going through every single sort of anti-Palestinian thing that a member of Congress had said over the past six months. And of course, that list could not be all-inclusive just because it's so normalized. But this administration has not issued any sort of direct, formal response or statement with regards to that growing pile of just vicious anti-Palestinian rhetoric,

as Lindsey Graham saying to love the place, Tom Cotton saying Israel can bounce the rubble in Gaza, as you just said, you know, numerous representatives saying to, you know, we're going to turn it into a parking lot. Representative Brian Mast, who famously wore his IDF uniform to Congress, which I'm not sure how usual it is for an American member of Congress to wear a foreign military uniform to the halls of Congress, but he compared Palestinian civilians to Nazis and has said other vicious things as well. You know, this administration has not issued any sort of formal statement on it, let alone, you know, rhetorically or politically exhibited any sort of counter to that idea. Those things kind of exist in the ether, and it's not sort of evidently clear in

the same way that the Biden administration has issued many, many, many statements about October 7th, about condemning Hamas, about anti-Semitism, which is all good and great. You know, you should be making those evidence statements on violence and anti-Semitic rhetoric. They have not done the same at all, even for their own colleagues saying, you know, genocidal rhetoric. I will note one other thing is that this was in the same 24 hours the White House statement as Israeli forces killing, I believe, 18 or 19 children, and then a husband, his pregnant wife, and then two, yes, yes, exactly, and two more women in Rafah, which should be underscored, is not only where over a million civilians are

taking refuge after being displaced, but is where the United States has ostensibly said over and over and over again that they do not support a major operation without a plan to protect civilians. But in that time, Israel has repeatedly done what I guess is normalized as a not major operation and has just been killing people just over time on mass. But of course, nevertheless, there was no formal clear statement on that. And I will update people soon on this, but it's been hours since I reached out to the White House since midday yesterday about that exact thing to see if, you know, at least upon being prompted, if they would, you know, share a comment. I have not heard back yet. There you go.

Pram, thank you so much for joining us this morning. It's a pleasure to meet you, get to speak to you. And we've also enjoyed some of your exchanges with the State Department. So please keep up the good work. Thanks, man. Take care of you both. Yeah, thanks. You too.

Thank you guys so much for watching. I'm sure we'll have a nice long show for everybody tomorrow too. And we'll see you all later. I think everything that might have dropped in 95 has been labeled the golden years of hip-hop. It's Black Music Month, and We Need to Talk is tapping in. I'm Nyla Simone, breaking down lyrics, amplifying voices, and digging into the culture that shaped the soundtrack of our lives.

Like, that's what's really important, and that's what stands out, is that our music changes people's lives for the better. Let's talk about the music that moves us. To hear this and more on how music and culture collide, listen to We Need to Talk from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. What up, y'all? This your main man Memphis Bleak right here,

host of Rock Solid Podcast. June is Black Music Month, so what better way to celebrate than listening to my exclusive conversation with my bro, Ja Rule. The one thing that can't stop you or take away from you is knowledge. So whatever I went through while I was down in prison for two years, through that process, learn.

Learn from me. Check out this exclusive episode with Ja Rule on Rock Solid. Open your free iHeartRadio app, search Rock Solid, and listen now. car without you there? No, it can happen. One in four hot car deaths happen when a kid gets into an unlocked car and can't get out. Never happens. Before you leave the car, always stop, look, lock. Brought to you by NHTSA and the Ad Council. This is an iHeart Podcast.