Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 4/25/25: Trump Caught Lying About Xi Meeting, Trump Pleads With Putin, Bannon Eviscerates Trump!

Episode Date: April 25, 2025

Krystal, Emily and Ryan discuss Trump fantasizing about a meeting with Xi, Trump pleads with Putin on Ukraine negotiations, Steve Bannon wrecks Elon and much more. Timestamps: (00:00)Intro (6:09)Stock Markets (19:38)Trump's Russia Comments (28:41)Tariffs (38:01)Steve Bannon/ActBlue (57:37)EoSSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. You might hear that term and think it's about celibacy, but to me, voiceover is about understanding yourself outside of sex and relationships. It's flexible, it's customizable, and it's a personal process. Singleness is not a waiting room. You are actually at the party right now. Let me hear it. Listen to voiceover on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The Medal of Honor is the highest military decoration in the United States. Recipients have done the improbable, the unexpected, showing immense bravery and sacrifice in the name of something much bigger than themselves. This medal is for the men who went down that day.

On Medal of Honor, Stories of Courage, you'll hear about these heroes and what their stories tell us about the nature of bravery. Listen to Medal of Honor on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Camp Shane, one of America's longest-running weight loss camps for kids, promised extraordinary results. But there were some dark truths behind Camp Shane's facade of happy, transformed children. Nothing about that camp was right. It was really actually like a horror movie.

Enter Camp Shame, an eight-part series examining the rise and fall of Camp Shane and the culture that fueled its decades-long success. You can listen to all episodes of Camp Shame one week early and totally ad-free on iHeart True Crime Plus. So don't wait. Head to Apple Podcasts and subscribe today. truly massive role in this election. And we are so excited about what that means for the future of this show. This is the only place where you can find

honest perspectives from the left and the right that simply does not exist anywhere else. So if that is something that's important to you, please go to breakingpoints.com, become a member today, and you'll get access to our full shows, unedited, ad-free, and all put together for you every morning in your inbox.

We need your help to build the future of independent news media, and we hope to see you at breakingpoints.com. We need your help to build the future of independent news media. And we hope to see you at BreakingPoints.com. Hey, guys. Welcome to the Friday Show. Ryan and Emily, great to see you guys. Nice to see you. So now that we have officially codified the Friday Show, I guess it's no longer a mini show.

And we also are recording some bonus content that is for premium subscribers only. So if you guys want everything that we're doing today, make sure you sign up at breakingpoints.com. We're going to roll through. We've got stuff on tariffs. Trump can ask questions about Russia, Ukraine. We got huge moves in the courts in terms of deportations, a bunch of interesting stuff going on the Democratic side, and also some Steve Bannon like Elon Musk drama, which is always interesting to take a look at and some updates with regard to israel so a lot to to get through this morning guys and ryan everything good on your end yeah everything's everything's going really well um and you know thanks everybody for all the the kind wishes the you know my for for people just tuning in me on my wife got surgery on tuesday to get the tumor removed and they went in there and they basically couldn't even find it.

This antibody called Herceptin developed in the 90s and 2000s is just an absolute miracle drug for HER2 positive cancer. It was also in the lymph nodes and they were worried that they were going to have to pull a whole bunch of lymph nodes, but they went in and the first two that they took out, which were not systematic, were tested negative. And they're like, all right, let's wrap this up. Let's sew this thing up and move on. So we'll find out next week if she's cancer free. Obviously none of this is ever over. Then there's radiation and then there's antibodies continue. And then you got to continue testing because you never know when it's going to come back. But this is what, what one of the doctors called like a best case scenario. So

things, things are going well. So recovering for about another week or two and then, yeah, then start the radiation. That is awesome. That is so incredibly good to hear ryan yeah um yeah this stuff can go lots of different ways and oh yeah you know as as everybody watching knows is this the drug you were talking to saga about a while back that it was like two researchers at a conference had like shared ideas and that's how you end it yeah yeah it's it's called her septum and the story is remarkable. It was this guy who was at a conference and heard a lecture by somebody not in the oncology field. And he was like, you know what? I think that has implications for cancer treatment. And this is a

UCLA doctor. He now runs their cancer clinic, their cancer situation, whatever they have at UCLA. And Genentech was the one that had come up with the initial advances in research, but didn't want to do anything with it because cancer drugs at the time were considered to be financial losers. They kept going through FDA trials and finding that they weren't actually more effective than anything else because cancer is so awful. And so they'd failed the FDA trial. And Genentech was like, no, if we go in through another FDA trial and fail it, like it's, it's going to be brutal for our stock price. So they're like, I don't care. We don't, we don't care about this. Oh my God.

He went out and got, you know, NIH funding and, and other grants and did the, did the work kind of on his own and then proved that it actually worked. And it turns out to be one of the most effective. It's the reason that breast cancer has gone from a death sentence to so many people to now something that you can say that this was a rough experience and now I'm moving on with my life. Yeah. Thank you to the NIH and thanks a lot, RFK Jr. for slashing and burning your way through that. Yeah. Elon has a say in that as well. But, you know, I, I wanted you to share that again, because sometimes these things can feel very abstract, but, um, you know, cuts to medical research, uh, it's going to have a huge impact

because all of the new drug molecules that have been developed over the past couple of decades, it's been with public funding because of exactly the reason you talk about the, what the drug companies, what they spend most of their like research and development on is like, how do I game the patent system? How do I do a new formulation of Viagra or Ozempic or whatever is their hot selling drug? Or hair loss. So that I can... You're looking good.

You're hanging in there, Ryan. You're hanging in there. Pull that hair. Hanging in for now. And the other thing that the Doge folks are so upset about is uh what what they call overhead on these nih grants right and a conference or you know a conference is the definition of overhead but conferences are where into into intellectual capacity is exchanged uh the guy was sort of research is not always, quote unquote, efficient. It requires

this sort of creative haphazard process that isn't going to necessarily be linear. Yeah. I've seen people say, well, I only want to fund the effective research. It's like, how do you know ahead of time? Yeah. Obviously, scientists don't want to spend years doing research into something that turns out to be a null hypothesis. But another example of overhead would be this guy who he was apparently or is still to this day a hoarder of biopsy samples. Like at UCLA had this like absolutely massive freezer of biopsy samples from like years and years and years. And that's overhead, like that's expensive to maintain. And there was, it wasn't obvious that it was going to necessarily yield a whole lot.

But when this new breakthrough came, came around, he was then able to test this against all of his old biopsies that he had and get his graduate students working on it. And that's how he was able to initially prove without a huge influx of money that there was actually a lot to this. So all of that would have been, they'd be like, you know, you'd have a, you'd have a 22 year old with a, with a doge, like little lanyard saying, why do you need to freeze all these biopsies? Like this is, this is done.

Pull the plug on this stuff. Yeah. Well, um, we are all really, really happy for you and your family and very relieved alongside you. So thank you for keeping everybody updated because I know people were definitely concerned and thinking about you guys. Yeah, very relieving. All right. Let's check in with the markets this morning and what the hell is going on latest in tariffs. Apparently futures are down.

It's 913. Some markets haven't opened yet, but I saw an article on the CNBC website that Amazon sellers are starting to hike their prices. And that is kind of where we are in the whole trade war situation is we know, even if Trump whacks away from everything now, there's still going to be pain and disruption that is coming.

What we don't know is the size and the scope of that. And I don't think anyone really knows, but we have a lot of indications that should be very worrying to people. At the same time, you know, Trump had backed off this maximalist China position saying a 145 percent tariffs. No one thinks that that is going to last. He also indicated that there were ongoing talks with China, to which China is saying, I don't know what you're talking about. There are no ongoing talks. So Trump got asked about this yesterday. Let's go ahead and take a listen to what he had to say. Yeah, please.

A question on China. Can you clarify who the U.S. is speaking with China? They're saying it's big news that trade talks are happening. They had a meeting this morning, so I can't tell you. It doesn't matter who they is. We may read it later, but they had meetings this morning, and we've been meeting with China. And so I think you have Jeff, as usual. I think you have your reporting wrong. Thank you very much.

So there you go, your thoughts. It doesn't matter who they are. It's fine. Yeah, this is their big. I mean, listen, like if you are making deals, there's a way in which this scenario is so much better for the Trump administration. If you're like actually inking deals, countries are coming to you. You have something on the table with China and there's a light at the end of the tunnel for people who are looking for certainty in the American market, then there's a world in which, again, there's a

scenario in which the sort of bleeding can be staunched. And that's why we're... I don't know what you guys think, but for me, it seems like there's increasing desperation to project that and maybe to use it as a strategy to bring other people into deals by publicly being like, yes, we're doing X, Y, and Z. And then there's not a ton of evidence of that. The Japan disaster that Sagar and I covered earlier in the week, I think probably rattled them a lot because this is not, I don't, I mean, I don't want to say that they thought it was easy because I don't think anybody thought that this was easy, but it's proving to be a lot harder than my guess is that then they had anticipated. And part of that is probably because you guys have made this point, the way allies were roped in. I think maybe that just

people have lost trust. And so it makes the deal making the art of the deal becomes a lot more difficult. Well, it's really embarrassing for Trump here. And it's almost rude now on the part of the press corps, because this is like a situation where you've got some guy who keeps telling everybody that he has that he has a girlfriend in Canada. Everybody knows he has no girlfriend in Canada. And the press is now being these like jerks who like actually investigate. Is she in Montreal? Like where is she? What's the name of your girlfriend? When did you talk to her? Snapchat? It's like, just leave it alone. Like he doesn't have a girlfriend. There's no negotiations going on with China. Like it's super embarrassing Like, just leave this, leave the guy alone. The

whole thing has been a total humiliation. Just let him come to terms with it on his own. But yes, your point is exactly right. He had one play. His play was, I'm going to do this thing and China is going to cave to me. You know, what they're going to capitulate to, I'm not sure because I don't even know what I'm necessarily asking for, but they're going to cave and our allies are going to stand with us. Instead, the allies shockingly got upset that they were also attacked by Trump. They did not stand with us and China did not cave. And so he has no plan B. Plan B is tank the economy. Yeah. Well, and here's the thing is like even putting the tariffs aside, this administration had gone out of its way to be, you know, to piss off the Europeans, sending J.D. Vance over there to like lecture them about their free speech, which, you know, look, there are some valid points there. But hey, buddy, have you seen what your own administration is doing here at home we let people say whatever they want inside the van on the way to the detention center that they're being kept in for writing an op-ed against israel but inside that van they're they're free to

say whatever they want let it fly let it fly yeah and listen it's okay if you know you mostly okay if you criticize our own government just god forbid you say anything negative about israel but yeah so you know they they went on like a world tour making it clear that you can't rely on us and basically like we don't like you and piss off and then launch this trade war against the entire world and are surprised when countries are like you know if you're making me pick between you guys and China, number one, we get a lot more stuff from China at this point than we get from you. And number two, you made it crystal clear that you are not a good and reliable partner and that you have nothing but utter contempt and disdain for us. So perhaps there's another direction that

we should go in here. And then also that this is astonishing reporting from Jeff Stein, who just is, incredible on all of these things. Apparently, you know, one of the first moves that China made in retaliation was to say, OK, well, we've been spending all these years locking up these rare earth supplies and you're not going to get access to them anymore. You know, we've all been like, I don't really understand what these things are, but apparently they're really important. And, you know, go into EVs and important for defense and all of these different things. And this has been discussed for years and years. And yet the Trump administration are only now holding these high level meetings to try to figure out what to do about the fact that China made the most obvious chess move on the board out of the gates, which was to block our access to this. Jeff here says Beijing does not feel like it is going to back down and that the U.S. is in no

position to dictate terms. A big, big part of that is rare earths where they feel they have the capacity to do significant harm to American manufacturers. And they talk to people in this piece, companies that rely on these, and they're saying, you know, they're already really drawing down their stockpiles and are going to be in a very difficult situation if this isn't resolved quickly. Meetings have involved White House National Security Council, National Economic Council, Council of Economic Advisors, Commerce Department, Energy Department, Office of the Trade Rep, among several other agencies, financing capital um financing permitting and other ideas kicked around but timeline for scaling up domestic capacity uncertain so

apparently when you do that first you would think that you would have in your in your 4d what do i know yeah you might have considered the most obvious thing that china could possibly do to like hit you the hardest out of the gates. Trump brought his queen out on this, like the second move. Like that's, that's what this is not a kind way to refer to Peter Navarro. Yes, actually. Yes. So Peter Navarro is Trump's queen. Trump brought him out on his second move. And the queen is now just dancing around the board um anybody who plays chess knows like one of the the first things that a rookie player does the queen is such a cool player ryan's an online chess obsessive by the way you bring it out right away but if you bring your

queen out and there's and you haven't done any prep for it your queen is just going to get chased around the board while they set up their positioning eventually it's going to get trapped and killed and then you're going to get mauled and that's where he's in that he's in the queen is trapped position right now and next is us getting mauled the libs won't let us mine the rare earth so it's time to just what you do now is you just you just tip your king over and you give up like so they just need to somebody put needs to put the finger on the top of trump's little orange head and just tip it's over but he i mean he has he does have an uphill battle to get the finger on the top of Trump's orange head and just tip. It's over. But, I mean, he does have an uphill battle to get the rare earth mineral mining domestically done because that has been – and Ryan, you and I have talked about that.

There are like all kinds of environmental obstacles to achieving that, political and environmental obstacles to achieving that. Yeah, and also manpower and industrial and – yeah. I mean, but we also don't have a stockpile of everything that we would need. Like we don't have everything that we would need here. And, you know, my understanding is, and this is also part of, you know, what USAID, remember when Chris Murphy like accidentally told the truth about what USAID is about. It's like, well, we do a little bit of health care and then we get access to like these minerals that we need. So we've been going in the opposite direction of securing the lithium or whatever it is that is critical and that we don't have sufficient quantities of. And apparently this didn't really occur to the Trump administration until now. There's one other piece of this that

I wanted to touch on, which I just think is extraordinary. So Charles Gasparino with Fox News reports this. He says, Scoop, people inside the Trump White House are alerting Wall Street executives that they are nearing an agreement in principle on trade with India, according to my sources, who are senior Wall Street execs with ties to the White House.

No details on timing, and recall that we have been here before with Japan only to have the goalposts changed and terms renegotiated. But if this holds, the India deal being envisioned will include agreed upon goals and issues, blah, blah, blah. So and they think it could be potentially a template for a deal with Japan, South Korea and Australia. So, you know, the sub story here is that the administration, as Emily was saying, seems

kind of desperate to say, hey, they're,, hey, I promise there are going to be deals and we're really close with India and that's going to set off this firestorm of deal making, et cetera. But the headline here, which Gasparino seems to not really notice is, wait a second, you're giving Wall Street executives knowledge on things that are going to be incredibly market moving at a time when we've seen extraordinary volatility. And I mean, it's just like it's just classic from this administration. It reminds once again of Charles Schwab being in the White House and Trump bragging about him making two point five billion dollars in a single day based on Trump's moves to roll back some of the initial quote unquote reciprocal tariffs. So now here you have this, you know, administration aligned reporter was like bragging about the fact that they're giving out inside information to Wall Street executives so they can front run Trump's announcements here.

Well, and if this is real, I'd like to hear more publicly about what that is, not through leaks to reporters. I would like to see, you know, if that's true, it's obviously significant, which is why they're using it to ease concerns on Wall Street. But if it's true, they should be very public about the details, because I just I mean, that could go in a lot of different directions and just vaguely gesturing at it behind closed doors to Wall Street executives. I mean, maybe it's not even insider trading. Maybe it's actually them just trying to ease the markets without having anything to back it up. It could be. And that's an interesting point. And I actually think in Gasparino's defense that he did recognize what he was reporting and he phrased it that way so that

everybody else would see what was going on, but that he'd maintain his access. I don't think so, Ryan, because he's going back and forth with Weisenthal and a bunch of other people on Twitter about how there's nothing to see here and it's no problem and it's not insider trading. Well, the separate reason it might not be insider trading is when you get credible information that you can act on. What if this White House is just not credible at all? Like, okay, you talked to Peter Navarro. When I dropped Elzane off at her first appointment on Tuesday, I saw Peter Navarro. I talked to him briefly. He's not credible.

I don't care what he says. You can't trade on that. And also, Trump is such an idiot that it gives other countries huge advantages in these negotiations. Like, if he had somebody like Lighthizer in here telling him, here's what we need from India, from a strategic perspective from the United States, then they could make an interesting deal with India that might be useful to us. He doesn't. He's got Navarro, and he's got his own addled mind. And so he's like, they don't, we don't have enough Fords on the roads in India. And so India knows that he's such a moron that all he wants is like to reduce the tariffs on American cars going into India

without understanding that you can do that. And we're still not going to sell, you know, more than a trivial number of American cars inside India for lots of different reasons. And so they'll like be like, yeah, sure. We'll lower our tariffs on your American cars inside India for lots of different reasons. And so they'll like, be like, yeah, sure. We'll lower our tariffs on your American cars. UAW is happy. He gets, because he's a moron and it's the only thing he understands. He's like, great, we won this. And in the end, you're barely going to sell any extra cars into India. So can you trade on that? Like, I guess you can try. I mean, sort of, since so much of the market is just like vibes. If it's just vibes, yeah. You know, like I do think if they announced

even something that was sort of pathetic with India, there would be a big market spike and they'd get all excited about the deals are coming, et cetera, et cetera. Short Indian car company and then, you know, buy it back in like 20 minutes and make some money. Exactly. Yeah, exactly. Camp Shane, one of America's longest running weight loss camps for kids, promised extraordinary results. Campers who began the summer in heavy bodies were often unrecognizable when they left. In a society obsessed with being thin, it seemed like a miracle solution. But behind Camp Shane's facade of happy, transformed children was a dark underworld of sinister secrets. Kids were being pushed to their physical and emotional limits as the family

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

So don't wait. Head to Apple Podcasts and subscribe today. The Medal of Honor is the highest military decoration in the United States. Recipients have done the improbable, showing immense bravery and sacrifice in the name of something much bigger than themselves. This medal is for the men who went down that day. It's for the families of those who didn't make it. I'm J.R. Martinez.

I'm a U.S. Army veteran myself. And I'm honored to tell you the stories of these heroes on the new season of Medal of Honor, Stories of Courage from Pushkin Industries and iHeart Podcast. From Robert Blake, the first black sailor to be awarded the medal, to Daniel Daly, one of only 19or to be awarded the medal, to Daniel Daly, one of only 19 people to have received the Medal of Honor twice. These are stories about people who have distinguished themselves by acts of valor, going above and beyond the call of duty. You'll hear about what they did, what it meant, and what their stories tell us about the nature of courage and sacrifice.

Listen to Medal of Honor on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I know a lot of cops and they get asked all the time, have you ever had to shoot your gun? Sometimes the answer is yes, but there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be no. Across the country, cops called this taser the revolution. But not everyone was convinced it was that simple. Cops believed everything that taser told them. From Lava for Good and the team that brought you Bone Valley comes a story about what happened when a multi-billion dollar company

dedicated itself to one visionary mission. This is Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated. I get right back there and it's bad. It's really, really, really bad. Listen to new episodes of Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Binge episodes 1, 2, and 3 on May 21st and episodes 4, 5, and 6 on June 4th.

Add free at Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. all right let's go ahead and move on to some of the comments trump made about russia yesterday i'm sure you guys saw his vladimir stop the truth social that he put out which is just incredible it really was giving for me remember when hillary said that she went to wall street and told them to cut it out that's what it was that's what that tweet was giving for me do not come vladimir do not come right that's right that was her right no it's giving um jersey shore ron stop ryan gets it ryan gets i don't i'm sorry crystal's too serious jersey shore the. You lost me. All right.

So he gets asked about, you know, how he feels about because Russia genuinely opened up, you know, a series of new brutal strikes, including on Kiev. And so he got asked about, hey, I thought you were working with these Russians. What's going on here with your buddy, with your buddy, Vlad? Let's take a listen to what he had to say. In a social post, you use the words, Vladimir, stop. That seemed like a slightly different message, a personal message. What is your level of frustration with President Putin? I didn't like last night. I wasn't happy with it.

And we're in the midst of talking peace and missiles were fired. And I was not happy with it. That's what I meant. And that's, you know. Mr. President, why are you... I assume that's what you mean. I'm sorry. If the bombs keep falling, will you consider additional sanctions toward Russia? Or what will you do if President Putin does not respond?

I'd rather answer that question in a week. I want to see if we can have a deal. No reason to answer it now. But I won't be happy. Let me put it that way. Things will happen. The Pressor, why are you not putting more pressure on Russia? I know a lot of Europeans would like to see that.

The President You don't know what pressure I'm putting on Russia. They're dealing. You have no idea what pressure I'm putting on Russia. You're putting a lot of pressure. The Pressor Can you tell us, then, what kind of pressure are you putting on Russia? The President And Russia knows that, and some people that are close to it know,

or he wouldn't be talking right now. The prime minister understands that better than anybody. He wouldn't be talking right now. He's talking and we're putting a lot of pressure. I think he wants to make a deal. We're going to find out very soon. But it takes two to tango. And you have to have Ukraine want to make a deal, too. And they're being hit very hard. And I do believe they want to make a deal. So, Em, this turns out to be the longest 24 hours in history since he said he was going to get this deal in 24 hours from the time that he's inaugurated. And by the way, I just got a news alert on my phone that a senior Russian officer was killed in a car explosion near Moscow. So almost certainly, you know, Ukrainian ops going on. And this is a pattern we've seen from them

before sort of potential retaliation for what uh for these strikes within ukraine and yeah let's just pull this true social post up this was from uh thursday i'm not happy with russian strikes in kiev not necessary and very bad timing vladimir stop 5 000 shoulders a week are dying let the peace deal get done so that's what he was being asked about um and i mean he another interesting thing about trump is what we just saw him being like you have no idea what's happening behind the scenes which of course is why the press is there uh to kind of suss some of that out but it's just his this is why he thought he could end it in 24 hours because

in maybe he'll land the plane like maybe he'll be able to land the plane in a couple of days and i think the outlines of the peace plan look like pretty legitimate that we've seen and look like they can be worked with but all along everyone has said putin will gesture at this and not ultimately uh be serious about any of it and does trump end up i don't want to use the phrase taking that bait. But does does he end up just with egg on his face and Putin just walking away? It seems like that's what's inching closer and closer to the reality. I mean, Ryan, when JD Vance and then Trump like exploded on Zelensky in the Oval Office,

that was basically what he was trying to say. It's like you can't you know, it's very hard to negotiate with these people. And I mean, in a sense, I'm somewhat sympathetic because I just don't think there are any easier answers at this point. You know, the time to deal really ideally was at the beginning of this war with the peace negotiations that Biden intentionally blew up because they thought they could play regime change, you know, games. And now here we are in a situation where Zelensky does not want to give up anything, including Crimea. And the Russians are like, why should we deal? Like, we're in a strong position. We can just lock in here for the long term. Yeah. And the Trump administration is trying

to give them as much as they can think of. It seems like he's, you know, they're offering recognition of Crimea as Russian territory and they're offering, you know, significant amounts of Ukrainian territory as recognized, you know, Russian territory. And the thing that Trump says he's, that he's, that Putin is conceding in exchange is not taking over the entire country, which unfortunately for the Ukrainians at this point does appear to be an actual concession because the Russians have the industrial capacity and the manpower capacity to continue this war. Now, if they did try to take over all of Ukraine, they would face a decades-long insurgency funded by the United States. Victoria Nuland said that like out loud. I think it was on

NPR or maybe she said it in Congressional Testament. She said, you know, if when it looked like Russia was going to like roll into Kiev and take it, she was saying, well, you know, look out because we're going to fund a guerrilla campaign against you and just bleed you for decades to come. Wow. And in some ways, the U, the US would almost prefer that from a strategic perspective because then they get to fund their guerrilla campaign and cause lots of problems for Russia. So Putin has to look at that as a cost of doing business there. Does he just want to take a massive win here, seize enormous amounts of Ukraine? It seems like he wants to push deeper into the Black Sea and fully turn Ukraine into a complete rump country that then he can go back to the original Russian plan for Ukraine, which was to have a Ukrainian friendly, you know, proxy government, you know, in place

in Kyiv. It would be a nominally sovereign country, but effectively kind of under the sway of Russia. Yeah, I think the, you know, this is in some ways the least important part, but I think the politics here are difficult for Trump, too. Like everybody likes the idea of him coming to the table and trying to get some sort of a peace deal and end this conflict. But the public is very negative on the idea of Russia being able to annex Ukrainian territory. And, you know, I think we obviously saw with the end of the Afghanistan war, the way that winding these conflicts down when you have to actually

deal with the reality of where things are, you know, it can be very ugly. So, you know, when you're looking at we've been covering this week, some of the polls in the fall and approval rating and where Trump is on various issues, his foreign policy is now one of his lowest rated issue areas when you ask, you know, how do you think he's doing? And I do think that this is part of it because, you know, and this part I'm not sympathetic to. He said, we're going to have a deal in 24 hours. He made it seem like this would be easy peasy. I've got a plan.

Don't worry. We're going to get it done. And that was just not honest. Like, it just wasn't either. He's a complete fool. I mean, we know he's a fool and a liar. But yeah, so it could be all of the above. And, you know, honestly, again, I didn't think that was completely insane because,

well, first of all, what they did with the ceasefire, the first ceasefire that fell apart, was start working with the Biden administration and pressuring the Biden administration. And they were able to just sort of make something work. Now, Ukraine, I think, is, you know, obviously, because they're looking to something very, very long term, like a demilitarized zone, conversations about those types of things. It's going to be a very, very heavy lift. But at least having a significant breakthrough in the first 24 hours didn't seem completely insane. But it proved me wrong. It really proved me wrong. Really prove me wrong, because it just hasn't the the attempt so far to operate, like to do an art of the deal on Putin. It's not Trump 1.0 anymore. It's not quite the same.

So we'll see if he can land the plane. I mean, it's possible. And this is actually I mean, it would be a good thing. It would be a good thing if he could land the plane. I mean, it's possible. And this is actually, I mean, it would be a good thing. It would be a good thing if he could land the plane. This plane is in the woods. Wings are off. Land the plane on the wrong way. The wheels are everywhere. But that's like, I'm genuinely cheering for them to land this plane because this deal looks like something that could have been negotiated by the Biden administration a year

plus ago. And people are going into a meat grinder every single day yeah yeah that's exactly right update on our first segment by the way on china producer griffin sent this to our chat um trump told time magazine that she called him and the chinese embassy is denying it like so not not only is he claiming that there are non-existent talks that are happening between they he said his can Canadian girlfriend like visited him over the weekend. And the Canadian girlfriend was like, no, we're not, we're not, we're not together. No, I've never seen this man.

I don't even know who this person is. Not even, not even unofficial. He's just talking to like a Chinese businessman or something. Yeah. Somebody called him and was like, Hey, I'm Xi Jinping. Howard Stern pranked him. He's like, I have $3 trillion in trade locked up in an account. If you send a billion dollars to this account, I can unlock it. And your social security number. Do it. Do it. For some reason, it has to be. Oh, my God. It has to be in crypto. It has to be in Trump coin.

This is one of the interesting like he does seem like so desperate for this conversation. Keeps asking for it. Keeps, I mean, they haven't spoken. Invited him to the inauguration. That's right. Yeah, that's right. And also, if he wanted to meet with Xi, all he had to do was send out a polite request. Like, Xi's entire thing is China is not going to be bullied and humiliated.

And that's been his thing since he became premier. Right. That's all he wants is to be treated with respect. And it's the only thing Trump won't do. So weird. Yeah. Yeah. No understanding of the psychology there.

Doesn't cost him anything to be nice. Yeah. And I, the other thing that's funny, just as a side note is, you know, It doesn't cost him anything to be nice. And, you know, he's sort of having that effect of like unifying the world against us and bolstering some of the like sort of liberal internationalist forces that he's ideologically most opposed to. Yeah, this is like James Buchanan level, like incompetence. Like, it's it's incredible. None of this had to happen. That was every other tip of my tongue. But every other crisis that a president has faced has had some external element to it.

Right. That was out of their control. Right. And then they screwed it up or they responded well to it. He created this and then responded terribly to it. Yeah. It's utterly incredible. I mean, if you're going to take if you're going to try to do some global economic reordering, right, like, you know, we're going to get rid of the Bretton Woods system and we're going to figure out this, you down and we're going to use these stable coins

to force people to stay on the dollar, but we're going to reduce the trade imbalances so that we can re-industrialize. If you're going to do this giant, extremely risky, massive gambit, there needs to be some thought and preparation put into this. And I mean, I don't even know if I buy that that was the level of, maybe some people had some ideas about that. Maybe, to me for Trump, he just likes tariffs because it gives him power and control

and puts him in the position of being this ultimate deal maker. And I think he likes that. I don't know that he was doing all the like, oh, the dollar will do this and the reserve, the bonds will do that. And here's how we'll rectify the trade ballot. And here's why we're getting right. Like, I'm not sure that he was operating on that level. I think he just instinctively likes tariffs because he

likes the feeling of being in that position. But if you're going to go for it like this, you have to have thought through, OK, here's how the world's going to respond. Here's how China's respond. Here's how we're going to support our small businesses. Here's how we're going to lock down our rare earth mineral supplies. And none of that happened. And that was never more clear than when you when we learned that the way that the tariffs got rolled back was because Peter Navarro was tricked into going to some meeting on the other side of the White House. And Bessette and Letnick are able to sweep in and like force Trump to type out the tweet in real time while they're sitting right there. And I think Trump, one, was able successfully to jawbone Mohammed bin Salman twice

into making moves on oil prices that he wanted, which changed the global economy in directions that were favorable in each case to Trump. And he was also able to jawbone Powell into lowering interest rates through 2019 and 2020. And Janet Yellen as well in the early days. And so I think that he took that experience away. It's like, oh, I could tweet at these people and use American power and they will do these things for me. And then he extended it to the entire world. I also think they live in a sense of unreality.

And because genuinely like, you know, in Trump 1.0, they did some tariffs like there was some protectionist policy. There was a lot of economists freak out about prices are going to go up and it's going to escalate and it's going to be tit for tat and that you know there were not no impacts there were impacts but it was not this sort of more catastrophic scenario that some had sketched out and so i don't know i just i also feel like there's an element of their brains are so cooked by being online all the time where nothing ever feels like it's real everything exists in the state of like suspended or mirror reality that they can't really comprehend that what you're doing is going to have these like real massive reverberating terrible impacts with no real compensating upside on the other side of it. I think it's their brains are like it's this on the libs reflex. And the idea it's it's in a way. But the idea was just basically to give a

middle finger to the global financial system and say, because the chips are in the U.S. hand, that it'll be the shock to the global financial system automatically will reward the United States in the long term, because just giving everyone else the middle finger and exploding the foundation of the global financial system, that will just, people will have to come to the United States. And you can see the kind of like logic behind that argument. But what happens in the immediate aftermath of you have to like if you if you buy that and that's your philosophy, you have to manage really carefully, even by your own, even by your own argument and your own strategy, which is to just blow things up. You have to then augment it with all kinds of different policies. The chips are not just going to fall in a way that's automatically better for the United States when you also have China on the other side offering all of these other alternatives.

So I think a lot of it was just screw everyone. They will come crawling back to us. And that's where the details got completely. I don't want to say like overlooked or lost. I think the details were like intentionally not ironed out by the, did you guys see Henania's tweet where he was like, AOC is going to be the Democratic nominee and these people are going to make me like have to vote for her? Yes, because you was thinking about that. And also I was thinking about, I think it was Weisenthal who tweeted out, you know, Trump just recently came out and said that they're not going to do a tax on millionaires because it'd be too disruptive, too disruptive. Imagine this guy saying something is too disruptive and that millionaires would leave

the country or whatever. And he said, if you pulled millionaires, the choice between like, I'm going to have to pay a little more in taxes and this whatever this is, they would overwhelmingly be like, I'll just pay a little bit more in taxes. And so it did make me think of, you know, now I'm like going back in history and the way that FDR was able to forge this New Deal coalition is that there was a threat of something that was much worse for capital on the other side. At the time, it was communism, right? It was like, listen, you're going to pay more in taxes. You're going to have to fund the government. You're going to set up social safety debt. We're going to have labor regulations. That's happening. Or those people over there can just totally take your shit. Like, which one do you want? And I almost feel like this Trump Mao kind of approach is setting up a similar dynamic where this has been so destructive and so terrible for corporate America, unless you're one of the Wall Street executives that gets the like insider trading info that when you compare on the other hand,

like, oh, or we could just like pay a little more in taxes and people get health care like that doesn't seem so bad and so crazy in comparison to what's being done right now um well this is the argument that bannon kind of made yesterday about how it was like do you see luigi mangione like do you do you see that people like genuinely really like him and he's like looking out in this crowd of elites saying the reason people like him is because they don't have health care. Like people are not doing well. And so you have to like if your alternative is paying a little bit higher taxes, you know, that's probably better than continuing to let the world burn. And that's a different version of the argument that you made, Crystal. But it's Bannon, I think, maybe he's even drawing on that exact example, saying, you know, the pitch to the elites right now is that this populism is your better alternative to what comes after

if the populism isn't sort of dealt with through policy. Yeah, I saw Mike Cernovich saying that too. Oh, really? Yeah, yeah. And he was saying, look, we're trying to take our country back. And if you oligarchs, I don't know if you use the word oligarchs, but if you oligarchs screw this up and don't allow us to successfully implement our populist revolution here. And you get AOC instead.

Do not come to us asking for help. We're stepping aside. Do not come. He said, we're going to step aside. We tried. We're not fighting for you. We're fighting for us. And if you screw this up, we're just going to let AOC run her communist,

tyrannical empire or whatever. what do you deserve because he he was like his argument was like maga is the compromise um right you know the same way that you know fdr you know was the and the new deal with a compromise stopping either a communist revolution or a fascist revolution like that's kind of the argument being made. The Medal of Honor is the highest military decoration in the United States. Recipients have done the improbable, showing immense bravery and sacrifice in the name of something much bigger than themselves. This medal is for the men who went down that day.

It's for the families of those who didn't make it. I'm J.R. Martinez. I'm a U.S. Army veteran myself, and I'm honored to tell you the stories of these heroes on the new season of Medal of Honor Stories of Courage from Pushkin Industries and iHeart Podcast. From Robert Blake, the first Black sailor to be awarded the medal, to Daniel Daly, one of only 19 people to have received the Medal of Honor twice. These are stories about people who have distinguished themselves by acts of valor, going above and beyond the call of duty.

You'll hear about what they did, what it meant, and what their stories tell us about the nature of courage and sacrifice. Listen to Medal of Honor on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Camp Shane, one of America's longest-running weight loss camps for kids, promised extraordinary results. Campers who began the summer in heavy bodies were often unrecognizable when they left.

In a society obsessed with being thin, it seemed like a miracle solution. But behind Camp Shane's facade of happy, transformed children was a dark underworld of sinister secrets. Kids were being pushed to their physical and emotional limits as the family that owned Shane turned a blind eye. Nothing about that camp was right. It was really actually like a horror movie. In this eight-episode series, we're unpacking and investigating stories of mistreatment

and reexamining the culture of fatphobia that enabled a flawed system to continue for so long. You can listen to all episodes of Camp Shame one week early and totally ad-free on iHeart True Crime Plus. So don't wait. Head to Apple Podcasts and subscribe today. But there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be no. Across the country, cops called this taser the revolution.

But not everyone was convinced it was that simple. Cops believed everything that taser told them. From Lava for Good and the team that brought you Bone Valley comes a story about what happened when a multibillion-dollar company dedicated itself to one visionary mission. This is Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated. I get right back there and it's bad. It's really, really, really bad. Listen to new episodes of Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Binge episodes 1, 2, and 3 on May 21st and episodes 4, 5, and 6 on June 4th. Ad-free at Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. Let me go ahead and jump forward then to. I have some of the Bannon comments about both him saying, like, we need to tax millionaires more and also really taking the moment where Elon seems to be a little down and out to really go after him as well. Let's go ahead and take a listen to this. So the day of reckoning is here, folks. The simple math is unless you raise the taxes at the upper bracket, the math doesn't work. The math ain't that great with doing that. But that's kind of a starter.

And so anybody wants to show me the comeback with some math and, you know, what they're going to say is like what Elon said was going to be a 5% growth rate. What Elon said, a lot of stuff and none of it's turned out to be accurate. Like, where's my two training cuts? Uh-oh, where's my one training cuts? Uh-oh, where's my 150 billion cuts? Just show me any cut. That's not programmatic because the programmatic were being done by other people. Show me waste, fraud, and abuse. You've been over the Pentagon for two months, bro. That's a viper's nest of, wait for it, hang on, waste, fraud, and abuse.

You're nothing. You're going to have to cut the defense budget. All these fantasies. People are running around and they've got fantasies. They're fantasizing now. The global bond market gets a vote here. Don't forget the equity market. That's just lowering

the cost of equity capital for the companies. It's important. It's very important, but it ain't the main thing. The main thing is the bond market because the world's got $300 trillion of debt at every level. And guess what we're having? A margin call. There you go. A lot packed in there, Ryan. You got the taxes on the rich. You got the, like, Elon failed. He didn't even touch the Pentagon. What's going on here, bro? Show me even a single cut that you made. And then the reference to basically, you know, bond market being the real deep state. Yeah, no lies detected there. I've told this anecdote before, but, you know, James Carville, when he was Clinton's top advisor, they ran on this big agenda that they were going to launch after winning in 1992.

And their economists came to them and said, if you do this, the bond markets are going to freak out. Interest rates are going to spike. And here's what will happen to the economy, to mortgage rates, to unemployment. And James Carville later said, you know, when he dies and gets reincarnated, he wants to come back as the bond market because it's the most powerful thing in the world. He understood that at the time. And unfortunately, it is true. And now Trump is finding out. It's kind of shocking that Trump didn't know that because one of the only things he does understand is interest rates is debt yeah interest rates and debt because his entire real estate uh shtick was basically a cash flow play using an arbitrage between the money coming in and the and

his in his refis and his different and and the way that he was playing with you know different interest rate um it moves he's basically said that, by the way. He's come out and basically, he's not like ashamed of that. This is like very Trumpian. Most people would see that as like a very shameful predicate for wealth. But yeah, no, he gets, but he completely understands

the role of debt and interest rates and their centrality to our economy. So for him to make this fundamental mistake is just comically inept. But yeah, so Bannon's right about everything there. Emily, how are megatypes feeling about Elon these days? Because I thought it was interesting. You know, Bannon initially was taking some shots at him, H1B. By the way, New York Times did a fascinating analysis of how Laura Loomer and all of those like aligned accounts who were going after Elon over H1B.

They got crushed in Elon's Twitter algorithm, which interesting side note here. But Bannon kind of laid off for a little while when Elon seemed to be riding a little bit higher in the president's esteem. And now that he's relegated to like meekly being at a cabinet meeting, like, well, actually, maybe those cuts are more like 150 billion. And by the way, I'm on my way out of here and Tesla stock is cratering. It's like, let me see the 150 billion. It's like, I got to go. Yeah, right. Exactly.

Now, Bannon is coming back at Elon in those comments. And also he said something at a conference where he was like, you know, Elon's looking out for his own interests, not the nation's. Yeah. So this is what I mean, we predicted on this show is that there wouldn't ever be like a big kinetic blow up between Trump and Elon Musk. But what would happen would be the sort of quiet quitting, the conscious uncoupling of the relationship, that it would gradually wind down in a way that saves face for both parties and i think elon is throwing in the towel clearly he's throwing in the towel a little bit early um you know again there are limitations on the special government employee status that he has but we know they're all very by the book and you know they would make sure not to exceed the proper time period of the special government employee status. That would be important to them.

He's also supposed to be delivering regular like getting exceptions for conflicts of interest, according to the statute. So. Right. Yeah. How's that going? Yeah. Right. So but yeah, that's what I was like. I don't think that they particularly could have come up with a different role. Maybe he could have been an advisor to the campaign or they could have actually created he had this like big political capital behind him that was growing. But that is not where he is right now. And because he has said, especially on that Tesla investors call, Crystal, that we covered Wednesday, that was a Tuesday call. Nobody is even like, at least that I can see, nobody's even really fighting bitterly about Elon anymore because he's fading into irrelevance.

And that doesn't mean he's not going to be powerful. it just means he's not going to be running the show so it's like why are people why would you at this point waste uh your own political capital getting over getting in a fight over someone who is giving a bunch of money the republican party is still going to you know be a powerful backer of Trump, but is not going to be at the center of the action in the administration in Washington, D.C. It's almost not worth it for people. But his stench is going to linger. And as crises pop up over the next three years, and we are unable to respond to them effectively, which always happens with government, people are going to be able to point back to what he did to the government already.

You've got, you know, bird flu ripping through everything. And you have the FDA saying that it can't actually, you know, keep up with the different, you know, E. coli inspections and they can't really inspect milk like they would like to. You can't do the same kind of quality control. You got a measles outbreak you got like uh you know arkansas is being told it can't have uh emergency declaration kentucky too kentucky like and all of these things are then going to go back to the stench of elon and so right now bird flu is like you know somewhat contained and people aren't like um it's it's not having the the it's not

it's not contained it's contained as a story uh but that might not always be the case and when if that is not the case people are going to be like oh yeah that guy came in and destroyed everything out of spite to own the libs and now we're taking the arrows yeah right exactly government spent i mean you know i never thought this was about government spending as you guys, but government spending is higher than it's ever been. They're doing a trillion dollar budget, Pentagon budget. They're giving massive taxes for the rich. And even Steve Bannon is out here like, show me any of you like show me a single cut that you made just one. So, you know, in terms of the numbers, it's gotten to a point where you either just have to blatantly close your eyes or it is clearly obvious that they either failed or, in my opinion, that was never the real goal to start with. But to Ryan's point, that doesn't mean that their actions didn't have extraordinary impact and won't have extraordinary consequences, some of which I think will be really unpredictable going forward. You know, it could be something that's on our radar, like bird flu or like, you know, airline safety or something like that. It could be something that we're not even aware of or thinking about that got slashed in the melee that turns out to be really critical and really important. And, you

know, the other thing I was thinking about politically is like, first of all, I think that Supreme Court race genuinely was a turning point for Elon's power. That really seems to have been the moment when it was like, OK, well, this guy doesn't have the juice. So goodbye. And number two, you know, the two big stories now that are dominating the news are deportations and tariffs. And Elon I mean, Elon's actively opposed to the tariffs and told his has said that before and ideologically been very clear and also reiterated that on his Tesla investor call. He has apparently been trying to lobby Trump behind the scenes to back away from this. And there's no indication that his entreaties had any impact on Trump whatsoever. So he's irrelevant effectively to the tariff story's also irrelevant effectively to the deportation story. So, you know, in a culture or in a culture within the Trump administration that values who's able to trigger the libs and who's able to grab attention and hold on to it, his currency in that regard is also really's a good point. I wonder actually if his lobbying on terrorists behind closed doors maybe diminished him in Trump's esteem because Trump is an ideological protectionist and he does have this like bitter hostility towards people who are, you know, what he sees as like not America first.

And that's where Elon got really offended by Peter Navarro saying that because he's like and his supporters like, look, we're doing so much more in the United States than a lot of auto manufacturers. Like, what are you talking about? They're actually the most American car in terms of the parts and the assembly taking place to the largest extent in America. Yeah. Peter Navarro says auto assembler, not a manufacturer. But I think that's a I think Trump would probably agree with that. Seriously. I think he's much more in the Navarro camp. So I wonder if that also, he found, he was apparently really upset when that leak happened about Elon potentially getting briefed at the Pentagon on China. The leak suggested that Trump was actually furious about that. Probably because he sees it as something that's really damaging to

him. He knows that his grassroots is more aligned with the Bannon wing, and it sounds like he was furious about that. So it's possible that Elon started grading on him from those sorts of things too. Elon is not a people person either. He doesn't know how to, you know, Trump requires a lot of massaging and like tiptoeing and jujitsu to try to make your point. And Elon is not really that's not really his particular skill set. Quite the opposite. Ryan, I wanted to get you in particular way. And just quickly on this piece, this Trump targeting Act Blue in this presidential memorandum,

basically directing the Justice Department to investigate them. Republicans have this, they've really just completely lied about what ActBlue even is. ActBlue is just this payment platform so that Democratic candidates or causes can raise grassroots dollars. They're framing this as being some, you know, that ActBlue is some way that George Soros can nefariously funnel foreign contributions into Democratic causes. And then, of know, that Act Blue is some way that George Soros can nefariously funnel foreign contributions into democratic causes. And then, of course, that's before you even talk about the fact that, you know, one administration ago, it would have been absolutely blockbuster news for the president to direct the DOJ to investigate the, you know, anything to do with his political

rivals. So just wondered your reaction to that executive order, which has been rumored for a while. You know, I've argued with a bunch of people on the right about this, but, you know, ActBlue, who think that ActBlue is this giant scam that allows billionaires and people from overseas, you know, to funnel, you know, hard dollar, small contributions to Democratic candidates and organizations. And that misunderstanding about what ActBlue is flows from the same mistake that Democrats and the left sometimes make about Republicans, just not believing that their opponents are real people. Like they saw Kamala Harris raise hundreds of millions of dollars in the first day and then like a billion within the first month or whatever.

And they're like, that's impossible. Like nobody likes Kamala Harris. There's there's this must be like George Soros money that's being secretly funded to her funneled to her. It's like, no, actually, you know, a lot of people do like Kamala Harris, a decent number of like countries, roughly 50 50. Yeah. Middle class people do like her. And also they really hate you. Yeah. Like they hate you so much. Yeah.

Think about that. They don't like her at all, but they despise you with enough of a passion that they will send $50 in there. What? And so when red does the basically exact same thing as act blue on the Republican side. Yeah. It was modeled on ActBlue, to my knowledge. Totally. And Trump is not asking the DOJ to go after WinRed. What he's saying is that, and what the EO points to, are instances of fraud that ActBlue itself identified and publicized and then kicked off of their platform. Act Blue will allow you to, like, keep your information saved, just like, say, Stripe or something like that.

So so it's easier than when you get another email or see a tweet or a Facebook post to then donate to this person because you're mad. is put more obstacles in the way of people and basically make them, you know, reenter all of their card info and all of their, you know, their occupation data and everything each time they make a contribution, because the data analysts know that, you know, every hurdle that you put in front of somebody is going to make it less likely that they convert all the way. And we understand that over here at Breaking Points, you know, you go to breakingpoints.com and the more complicated that it is made for people to subscribe, the fewer number of people are going to subscribe by, by the time they get through the maze and their entire, you know, business models built around making it easy. Cause there's nothing more frustrating in this world than when you're trying to like donate your money to something

or give your, you know, subscribe to something and you keep running up against error messages or like oh you didn't fill in this things and then so you're like you know what i'm out of here i don't have time for this the one that drives me crazy is when i'm trying to pay a bill and it's like that i'm like you're you want my money to pay you like i'm really trying my best here you know it's like take take my. Jesus Christ, what's wrong with you? Now, ActBlue, what ActBlue is telling people in the Democratic space is that this is gross and a threat and all that, but that they're not scared. They're not worried. Worried.

You know, it's going to cost them money. But they said they're not shutting down. They're not changing anything. They're going to sue. They're going to counter sue. They're going to fight this in court. And they think that they will win like it is flagrantly criminal what what trump is trying to do here and they don't and they and they're confident maybe this is naive but they're confident

that the courts are are not going to not going to allow this okay interesting yeah and i i mean i do think there's an element here too obviously it it's aimed at Democrats, but also, you know, the more difficult you make it for grassroots donors to contribute, the more important, the big donors, the people like Elon Musk are to, you know, to campaigns. So I think there's an element of that as well of like, let's get these small dollar donors out a year and just make sure it's us you know the the people who are able to stroke the big checks who really have all the power democrats themselves have been trying to get the small small i mean i think it's just like true i think it's just like mob mentality like that's how trump thinks it's okay to run politics and

it was just fueled by um the way the like russia invested like this is all downstream of right and this was sparked by this jack posobiec right didn't jack posobiec jack posobiec pulled like some data from the fec and like posted it and went viral on the right oh really and it was like you totally read this wrong. It's like it was like literal fake news. And they're doing an EO based on it. But no, yeah, I mean, it's it's all downstream of the the correct upset about what happened with the FBI and what happened with these law firms. And it's all saying this is the this is fighting the fire with the fire. And again, my argument is not that makes it right. But that's the mentality that I think is behind it. It's just where we're doing this. We're we're Roy Cohning it now. I want to get you guys reaction to one more thing on the Democratic Party side. All right, guys, thank you so much for watching the free portion of the

Friday show. We're going to move into some premium bonus content. So if you want to watch that as well, make sure to go and subscribe at breakingpoints.com. And for all of you guys who are already premium subscribers, that portion is going to start right now. Have you ever thought about going voiceover? I'm Hope Woodard, a comedian, creator, and seeker of male validation. I'm also the girl behind Boy Sober, the movement that exploded in 2024. You might hear that term and think it's about celibacy.

But to me, Boy Sober is about understanding yourself outside of sex and relationships. It's flexible, it's customizable, and it's a personal process. Singleness is not a waiting room. You are actually at the party right now. Let me hear it. Listen to VoiceOver on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. DNA test proves he is not the father. Now I'm taking the inheritance.

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

Yep. Find out how it ends by listening to the OK Storytime podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. The Medal of Honor is the highest military decoration in the United States. Recipients have done the improbable, the unexpected, showing immense bravery and sacrifice in the name of something much bigger than

themselves. This medal is for the men who went down that day.