Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 4/3/25: Trump Wants Elon Gone, Tesla Sales Crater, Bezos Bids For TikTok, Trump Betrays Coal Miners, Zionist Group Behind Crackdown

Episode Date: April 3, 2025

Krystal and Saagar discuss Trump wants Elon out, Tesla sales crater, Bezos bids for TikTok, Trump betrays coal miners, Zionist group behind Trump protester deportations.   To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show AD FREE, uncut and 1 hour early visit: www.breakingpoints.com   Merch Store: https://shop.breakingpoints.com/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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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. All right. So at the same time, we have some very significant, it's not just political news, but it is also political news. Let's put this up on the screen. So some aides are leaking to Politico that Trump is saying Musk is going to leave soon. So let me read you a little bit of this so you can get the specifics here. President Donald Trump has told his inner

circle, including members of his cabinet, that Elon Musk will be stepping back in the coming weeks from his current role as governing partner, ubiquitous cheerleader, and Washington hatchet man. President remains pleased with Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency initiative, but both men have decided in recent days it will soon be time for Musk to return to his business and take on a supporting role, according to three Trump insiders who, of course, remained anonymous. Musk's looming exit comes as some Trump administration insiders and many outside allies have become frustrated with his unpredictability and increasingly view the billionaire as a political liability, a dynamic thrown into stark relief Tuesday after that Wisconsin Supreme Court race.

It also represents a shift in that relationship. However, they go on to say that this doesn't mean that Elon will be completely out of the loop. One senior administration official said Musk is likely to retain an informal role as an advisor continued to be an occasional face. Another caution that anyone who thinks Musk is going to disappear entirely from Trump's orbit is, quote, fooling themselves. This comes on the heels not only of that Wisconsin Supreme Court race where Elon went all in. He spent $26 million. He flew there. He did an event. He gave out million-dollar checks. He was basically, like, bribing people to vote for his candidate and his candidate ends up losing by 10 points. But also Musk himself had been making some noises about the temporary nature of his stay within the federal government. Let's go ahead and take a listen to what he told Brett Baier.

You technically are a special government employee and you're supposed to be 130 days. Are you going to continue past that or do you think that's what you're supposed to be 130 days. Are you going to continue past that or do you think that's what you're going to do? Well, I think we will have accomplished most of the work required to reduce the deficit by a trillion dollars within that time frame. So in that time frame, 130 days. And the process is a report at some point, 100 days? Not really a report. We are cutting the waste and fraud in real time. So every day that passes, our goal is to reduce the waste and fraud by $4 billion a day, every day, seven days a week. And so far, we are succeeding. So I think, Sagar, the easiest explanation here is that Trump now sees Elon as a political loser

and a liability and wants to sort of distance himself from that whole situation, especially after the big loss in Wisconsin. Well, that's accurate, no? Probably. Ryan had an interesting theory. I don't know if you listened. So others have floated this as well, but he articulated it. So there's a possibility that Trump believes that Elon actually rigged the election in the fall and

or at least isn't sure okay because you remember rogan was talking about like ah elon knew before anybody that you know that he that he had won and elon's got starlink and he's it's all computer right um with elon musk and so uh it doesn't require you to believe he actually did that to think that maybe Trump thinks that he actually did that. And so if you have, that would explain why he was so subservient to him long beyond what you would expect. And now that you have the Wisconsin result, it is like, oh, well, clearly you weren't able to pull it off there. So I guess you didn't actually rig the election for me in my favor. So now I can be

done with you. That was the theory that Ryan flew, which I thought was kind of interesting. I don't know. That requires some mental jujitsu that I'm not quite ready to embrace. The easiest explanation is that he just gave him a quarter bill and that Trump is subs. Also, just look at Trump this time around. Trump has lost much of his edge. What his edge last time. And I was, especially during this whole Mike Waltz saga, anybody who looks like such a fucking idiot on television, that person got fired in the first term. I was there. I covered the entire thing. I watched this happen over and over again. If you had even one screw up like that, he would call you, he would scream at you, and you were

done. I mean, it was, you know, one bad story, if it was embarrassing, that was it. With Elon and with Mike Waltz, because it's not just Elon. It's actually the whole government. It's that many of these guys, Howard Lutnick. I mean, Lutnick has crashed the stock market like five different times. Besson was heartily inspiring also in his response to tariffs. Scott Besson is, I'm not even talking at a mechanical level. He, in his presentation, he's just bad at this.

Like his confirmation hearing was a disaster. He clearly does not have confidence in his public presentation. He was not prepared for prime time at all whenever the stock market there was fluctuating. I actually literally had the S&P live ticker in my phone in front of me as he was on Fox News. I was watching it drop as he continued to speak. That's not good. It's like a Tim Geithner level situation from 2008. And the whole reason he was picked is because Trump thought that he would inspire market confidence.

Kind of. I mean, Besant is one of those like more MAGA friendly figures from Wall Street. Like he's somebody who made his fortune trading, but he's actually expressed a lot more nationalist beliefs about, let's say, the current tax deficits. Yeah, right. But he wanted someone who would have the confidence of the markets who also had some of those like mega nationalist tendencies. Exactly correct. And he's just not doing a good job at a communication level. I'm just saying basically, you know, you can watch the results of that.

He's not able to defend the policy all that well. I think the reason is, you know, not able to defend the policy all that well. I think the reason is, you know, not to make it even more about tariffs, etc. But if we go back and look at all of this, Elon has not tweeted once about the tariffs. Have you noticed that? Yeah, Elon's not a tariff guy. Yeah, Elon actually supported Javier Millet whenever he cut all tariffs coming in and out of Argentina, which is kind of hilarious. But if we think just about Elon generally, he has become the lightning rod. He's destroying his own company.

And Trump made him the figure that we will all remember the most about the first 100 days. When the history is written of the first 100 days of the Trump administration, we will remember two things. Today, quote, Liberation Day, or I guess yesterday was Liberation Day, I apologize. Liberation Day, and we will remember Doge. That's what we will remember two things. Today, quote, Liberation Day, or I guess yesterday was Liberation Day. I apologize.

Liberation Day, and we will remember Doge. That's what we will remember, the first 100 days. Everything else is bullshit that you'll really just – it will be footnotes. It won't even make the Oxford history. But those two things, you can say quite clearly, it's obviously going to have the impact in terms of not even what it necessarily did, but for the implication internally of what he decided his presidency is about. And so we can see that clearly by outsourcing much of the spotlight and the fights.

I mean, really, politics is ultimately about the fights that you pick. That really is what it's all about. Trump was a genius in terms of picking those fights correctly during the campaign. But this time around, like Doge, the idea of government efficiency and all that was popular. But the more that you saw it executed, it was just obviously stupid. It was haphazard.

It was, you know, there was no consideration. Elon himself is obviously not a good communicator. There is insane amounts of conflicts of interest. He's also just kind of an idiot in his general political presentation. And so you see all of that showing up in the Wisconsin numbers. And I think, you know, at the very least They don't like this guy. He is not popular. Put this up on the screen from Politico. So approval of how he's handling his work at Doge is at 41% with disapproval at 58%. For Musk himself, the numbers are even worse.

60% have an unfavorable view of him compared with 38% that have a favorable view. Yeah, I mean, he has all of the chaos and insanity of Trump and none of the charm. Doge, listen, it honestly, like, it actually was kind of hard to screw up this idea with the American public because people are on board with, oh, let's make it more efficient. Let's cut the fat, whatever. Like, rhetorically, people were inclined to be on board with that. But it became incredibly and immediately clear that's not what was actually going on here. I mean, you have the level of just like cruelty of celebrating people losing their jobs, you know, and being axed. And you immediately get

these stories that are like, oh, these aren't some unsympathetic, pink haired liberal weirdo. We're talking about huge numbers of veterans who are losing their job. You're talking about just like normal people who were trying to do their best and are being unceremoniously kicked down. Then you see the level, and this is so obvious to everyone, the richest man on the planet who has his hands and involved in virtually every government agency is he's the one in charge of this. And then we get the stories about, oh, look, they changed this line item so that 400 million dollars were going to Tesla. Oh, look, he's at the FAA and the SpaceX engineers are running around the building and they're pushing contracts in his direction. Oh, look at that. These agencies that were previously investigating his companies. Now suddenly he's involved there and those investigations are nowhere to be found. So it did not take a rocket scientist to see what was

really going on here and to see that, you know, also I think probably the most politically damaging is how aggressively he has both rhetorically and in reality gone after the Social Security administration. These things are profoundly, profoundly unpopular in a way that Donald Trump always used to at least understand. And to your point, which is one that, you know, has been increasingly apparent to me, too, I do think that is, he is leading the charge there. You can see in the way Scott Besson is so uncomfortable in defending it and doesn't want to even speak in specifics about what this policy entails. I think that is all him. But even in the leaked Signalgate chats, it's all like, it's like he completely deferred this important foreign policy to this band of, you know, idiots and wackos who are there like kind of who don't even really seem to know exactly what it is that Trump wants them to do. So so many parts of this are he's hands off and he's just handed it over to Elon Musk. I think the other person that he's handed a lot of his policy over to is Stephen Miller.

Oh, yeah. Well, you know, even to be honest, I don't see it, though, because, Stephen, you might be right in the aliens and enemies thing. But look at all the other L's that the pro-immigration side has taken. I didn't bring this up because I already had too much to say about tariffs. But an hour into the talk, Trump said, by the way, we need a lot more legal immigrants to fill all these manufacturing. I was like, wait, what? I was like, excuse me, what's going on there? So that's not even an H-1B argument, right? He's making the argument that we need more workers to replace or, okay, sorry, to fill all these brand new manufacturing jobs that you're taking. I know for a fact that Stephen Miller and them have been fighting against that behind the scenes. So Stephen Miller, yes, he got his AIL and his Enemies Act. But I mean, there's been no change

on H-1B. Trump is out there basically like simultaneously endorsing McKinley-esque tariff policy, but then neoliberal immigration policy. These don't make any sense. I would say Elon has been empowered. And also, what I noticed the most about Trump is I don't think they necessarily planned this whole thing with Elon. But then what happened? When Elon became a lightning rod, Trump is obsessed with, quote, not giving a scalp. Even behind the scenes, it's obvious. It's true. He thinks Michael Waltz is an idiot, but he doesn't want to fire him because it would mean vindicating Jeffrey Goldberg. Well, with Elon, who has become, you know, this liberal, like,

lightning rod, same thing. He doesn't want to give his enemies a scalp, phase them out or whatever over a period. But I mean the issue is just the amount of damage that they're doing in the interim. Look at the Wisconsin numbers. We haven't even gotten a chance to really react here. I mean that was a midterm level turnout for some freaking judge's race. I couldn't even tell you who the judge where I come from is. And that's, you know,

Wisconsin voters were like, we got more ads on our TVs and we had more touch points than we did in the presidential election over this whole thing. That's the number of Democrats that came out to, it wasn't even close. It was like 55, 45.

It was a 10% margin of victory. It was a double digit victory. It was insane. Yeah. Now think about what's gonna happen here in Virginia. Oh my God. What, Spanberger? What do you think he's gonna win by? 20 points? It could be. It's gonna be unbelievable. It was insane. Now think about what's going to happen here in Virginia. Oh my God. What, Spanberger? What do you think he's going to win by? 20 points? It's going to be unbelievable. So yeah, that's where the Elon problem is. Just by not, quote, giving the enemy

a scalp, you're creating a massive, massive political problem. I don't think Trump cares, though. I don't think he cares about the midterms. I think he already expects Republicans are going to lose the House in the midterms. And so I don't know that that's really all that important to him. And so, you know, more he's less concerned about electoral fallout and he's more concerned about, you know, him being able to exercise maximal amounts of power and enforce maximal amounts of fealty. And so that's where, you know, the tariffs come in, the media tax, university, all of those sorts of things. But yeah, that's, I think, a really good insight with regard to him not wanting to give in to like the liberals or the liberal media or whatever with regard to Elon, especially when they immediately started cheering,

doing the like, he's the co-president. And when they immediately started predicting like, oh, there's no way that these two are going to be able to coexist and Trump's going to fire him. And then I also think that Trump is so enamored with money and so enamored also with like IQ that I think he's kind of, he is a little spellbound by Elon too. Like I think Elon was able to actually— Trump has his own reality distortion field that comes more from his charm and this giant personality. Elon has a reality distortion field that comes from him positioning himself as this grand, great man,

and he's the richest man on the planet, and that's what Trump ultimately respects. So I do think that he was also a little bit spellbound by Elon. I think that's certainly part of it. Over the past six years of making my true crime podcast, Hell and Gone, I've learned one thing. No town is too small for murder. I'm Katherine Townsend. I've received hundreds of messages from people across the country begging for help with unsolved murders. I was calling about the murder of my husband at the cold case. I've never found her murder of my husband. It's a cold case. They've never found her.

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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. All right, should we talk about Tesla? Yeah, so while this political fallout is unfolding for Elon, business fallout is also unfolding. We can put this up on the screen.

Tesla deliveries came in way below, even expectations, which the expectations were already not good, but they sank 13% in the first quarter compared to where they were last year. So I'll go ahead and read you a little bit of this article. Tesla's global vehicle deliveries fell 13% in the first quarter from a year ago. Further evidence that a growing consumer backlash against the brand and Elon Musk is hurting the automaker's business. The final quarterly tally of 336,000 missed analyst expectations of 396,000 deliveries, according to visible alpha Tesla shares fell. We'll see what

Tesla shares do today when the market's open. Yeah, it's going to be, you know, it's going to be not good for them. But, you know, some of this is not just Elon being this incredibly divisive, toxic, lightning rod figure. And remember, it's not just our politics. Obviously, he's been the most front and center, but it's not just our politics. He also has been tweeting about all kinds of countries around the world, but specifically intervened in Germany, specifically intervened in the UK. And you have to remember who is like the typical EV buyer. These tend to be more liberal types. So when you have someone who has aligned himself in such an aggressive, partisan, outspoken way, owning Twitter as well, with far right movements, not just here, but around the world, yeah, there's going to be

incredible fallout. And at the same time, you have other EV makers, BYD being the most prominent of them, but others as well, who are really competing now. You know, for a while, Tesla was really kind of, even in the U.S., was really the only EV game in town, so to speak. And now, even in terms of U.S. automakers, you have increasing competition in the market. And so it's the perfect storm for a catastrophic fallout for Tesla as a company. And the board is really stocked with Elon like total loyalty, like his brothers on the board, for example. So you would think maybe the company at some point would be like, you know, being so closely associated with this guy is not really working out for our brand. But I don't think there's any.

No, they can't. He's not in any kind of danger of that because they were specifically selected to be with him no matter what. There are two things can be true. Tesla would never be where it was today without Elon. And also Tesla's downfall, if it does come, will be because of Elon. And that's really where things are right now. Go ahead and put this next one up on the screen, because this is where all of my attention is right now. At the very same time that you're seeing global market drop for Tesla, which let's face it, like you said, it's the premier electric vehicle made by the United States in one of our

exports. It was one of the crown jewels, actually, of major U.S. economy. And if you think about it, this is an auto company startup that was able to export and become a brand and bestseller across the world. That's one of the best case scenarios you could actually make for a U.S. company. But at the same time, what we've been talking a lot about in the last several months is BYD. And BYD sales have now topped $100 billion for the very first time. Actually, their demand is exploding. Right now, their revenue is up 29% from last year. And actually, you have seen increases in the very same markets where you are seeing Tesla decrease, right? Remember, the rest of the world doesn't necessarily ban Chinese electric vehicles the way that we do. And they're cheaper. That's the other extraordinary thing. Tesla's revenue and BYD revenue can be roughly similar. BYD has to sell three times the number of cars

that Tesla does to be able to reach that same level. Now, of course, they have access to China, the world's greatest consumer market. So, you know, there are a lot of other mitigating factors. But look, you just can't simply sit here and deny that this is not a even bigger problem. This is not a big problem for Tesla because what is happening in Germany, in Mexico? I mean, the entire idea of Tesla, their strategy is they basically had to choose. Are we going to be a luxury brand or are we going to be a brand that is accessible to the everyday person? That was their, you know, they went for it with the Model 3. That was really what made it a multi-trillion dollar company. Well, that's what we're, sorry, multi-billion dollar company. What their strategy is to sell as many of these ECA 3s and Ys as

possible to, you know, the average consumer and to make it so that the everyday man could afford it and to be in one, as opposed to some sort of luxury vehicle strategy. Well, now you're competing against BYD, which not only has state subsidization from the Chinese, it's also just a fantastic car. And those are two things that are very, very difficult to beat. Oh, and did I mention tariffs on top of all of this? If you're a foreign country, what's the easiest way to needle Trump? What are you going to do? I'm tariffing Tesla tomorrow, right? Yeah, there you go. Yeah, absolutely. And the Tesla stock is also very vulnerable because for a long time, a lot of analysts have looked at this and said, you know, this level of valuation,

given the number of cars that they actually sell, is crazy, like does not make any sense. But there was a story about, especially after Trump gets elected, well, he's going to be close to Trump and that's certainly going to help his business a lot. That one didn't really work out for him. And then also, you know, oh, well, the technology that goes into Tesla, that's going to be the thing of the future. And, you know, we also haven't really talked about the way that one of the things that Elon wanted to be very invested in was these automated taxis. And Waymo is eating their lunch in that regard as well. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, we haven't talked as much about Waymo. You know, I saw one the other day here in Washington, D.C., but there was actually a driver behind the wheel. So I'm not

sure how that works. I still have not been in one. I would love to go. But they have really cornered the, to the extent that, you know, the autonomous robot taxi market exists at this point, which you could go out to what San Francisco, these things are in the street everywhere. It's Waymo. It's not Tesla. That's right. And they're trying, they've got the, what is it? The robo taxi, I think, which is coming online. Same thing, like you said, that was part of the strategy. So it's incredibly vulnerable now to his overall, you know, I just want to return to something we were talking about earlier in our Elon block. Elon did kind of give the game away when he's like, you know why the midterms matter? Because if the Democrats take the House, they're going to subpoena and investigate. That's right. And I was like, yeah, they actually do. You should really worry. Like if I was Elon,

he's lucky he's rich because you better be ready to lawyer the fuck up. You are going to spend a hundred million dollars in legal fees just appearing before all these, or even fighting all of these subpoenas from all these, what, House subcommittees and all of this. And you can't, look, you can't blame the Dems for doing that whenever that's the chief political opponent of people who are energized against, right? They're giving, like, one of the mandates they're going to run on is we're going to stop Trump and Elon. So, of course, they're going to investigate Elon, Tesla, subpoena, all of this stuff. Yeah, because also the things he's doing are, like, wildly illegal. I mean,

you know, something didn't even make it into the show today because of all the other shit that's going on. But, you know, RFK Jr. is doing these massive doge cuts at HHS. And you can just look at, I talk about one of these in my monologue, actually, you can just look at these individual programs like what is called LIHEAP. It's the heating program, low income heating assistance program so that, you know, old people who are poor in Maine don't like freeze to death during the winter. These are congressionally authorized programs. Like Congress said, we want to do this and here's the money to do it. And now Doge comes in and just zeroes out the workforce. So there's no one there to administer

the program. Like this is, to me, it's a blatant violation of, you know, the separation, the checks and balances between these various branches. So and obviously the courts have looked very skeptically at many of the things that Doge has done. So they have entirely legitimate, like legal reasons that they would want to look into this, not to mention the level of secrecy. I know Elon likes to pretend like there's tons of transparency here, but there's not. The level of secrecy around who is doing what and to what ends and to benefit whom, et cetera. So yeah, of course, they're going to be off to the races with endless investigations and subpoenas. And I think it's, I mean, I think it would be shocking at this point if Democrats didn't win big in the midterms. Because not only did you have the Wisconsin race double digits in the liberals' favor, but if you look down at those two Florida, both of them, Florida special election seats,

it was roughly a 15 point swing. Yeah, exactly. Towards the Democrats. Now midterms will be a little bit higher turnout and, but Republicans have a, you know, low propensity voter issue at this point. Democrats are highly motivated. Republicans have a razor thin margin. Like I said, I'd be shocked if Democrats don't take the House. And I think Trump has already written off the idea that they'll be able to hold on to the House. The last piece we have here with regard specifically to Tesla, you can put this up on the screen, is understated in all of this is just what an incredible flop the Cybertruck has been. They've had issues with safety and with recalls. Every Cybertruck effectively was just recently

recalled because some of the trim can just fly off because it's just glued on. And we now know that they're sitting on $200 million worth of Cybertruck inventory. They're having so much trouble moving Cybertrucks that they actually have banned people from, you know, current Cybertruck owners from trading in the vehicle at Tesla dealerships. So they say Tesla's having issues selling new Cybertrucks. The automaker is reportedly not taking any as trade-ins. So they won't accept their own vehicle as a trade-in. Many Cybertruck owners reported trying to trade in the truck for a new vehicle. They were told the automaker currently doesn't accept its own vehicle as a trade-in. Some owners who have had their trucks in service for extended periods of time are also trying to get Tesla to take it back.

Companies forcing them to go through the Lemon Law process. And then other dealerships also are either not taking in Cybertrucks or they're giving incredibly low-ball offers to potential sellers as they wait to see where the price will stabilize. Right now, used Cybertruck prices are down 55% year over year, 13% over the last three months, and 6% over the last month. Yep, not good. And especially because the Cybertruck has just become like a symbol of Elon. Yeah, that's right. That's really weird. Yeah, that's exactly right. It's such a like in-your-face vehicle to buy. It's a unique vehicle, right? And then you made that vehicle political. It's like, well, that's not, like I said before, you know, if you've got a truck

that's like $80,000 to $90,000, there's only a certain subset of people that can afford that, or I guess should afford that. So as much as you may want to own the libs, you maybe don't want to own them to the tune of $90,000, right? That's true. Although there are a lot of people out there driving, what, Ford F-150, or what's the bigger one? Not bigger than Ford F-150. Yeah, the Super Duty. What are the double deckers? The ones that are like super wide. Yeah, the dually. That's what the control room is telling me. There are a lot of guys out there who owe like 80 grand to their local Ford dealership. But we can talk about personal finance and stuff for another day. Yeah, but I mean also look, it's still kind of a pain in the ass to own an electric vehicle.

You know, like the charging network is still like, eh, it's okay. But it's still kind of a pain in the ass. I wouldn't say it's a, quote, pain in the ass, but it is for, well. If it's your primary vehicle and you're wanting to use it for like long road trips and stuff like that. Yeah, you're going to stop more. There's no question. I mean, at the same time, like most people do stop.

Statistically, they usually stop every like two to three hours. So it's more that your stop will be a little bit longer. The truck case is really more about if you're statistically more likely to live in a more rural area, so you're going to have less access to charging. Yeah, which is where a lot of Trump supporters would be. Which is where a lot of Trump people would be. So anyway, we can talk about that later.

Yes. A lot of you don't need trucks, though. I'm specifically talking to my Texans out there. Living in a suburb with an $80,000 truck is stupid, but we'll get to that later. 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. This is your girl T.S. Madison, and I'm coming to you loud, live, and in color from the Outlaws podcast. Let me tell you something.

I broke the internet with a 22-inch weave. 22 inches. My superpower? I've got the voice. My kryptonite? It don't exist. Get a job. My podcast? The one they never saw coming.

Each week, I sit down with the culture creators and scroll stoppers. Tina knows. Lunar's ex. Will we ever see a dating show for the love of Lunar's ex? I'm just gonna show all my exes. No, here it is. My next ex. That's actually cute, though.

Laverne Cox. I have a core group of girlfriends that, like, they taught me how to love. And Chapel Rome. I was dropped in 2020 working the drive-thru, and here we are now. We turn side eye into sermons, pain into punchline, and grief, we turn those into galaxies. Listen, make sure you tell Beyonce, I'm going right on the phone right now and call her. Listen to Outlaws with T.S. Madison on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts, honey.

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 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. All right, let's get to TikTok. So we got another deadline for some sort of deal or sale.

You'll recall that Trump, at the beginning of his administration, a law had been passed through Congress that was like, OK, there has to be a sale or it's being shut down. And Trump basically came in and said, I'm just not going to enforce that law. And he gave himself a deadline up until this date. And that's coming now, I believe, this weekend. So we're, you know, getting down to crunch time here yet again of what is going to happen with regard to TikTok. So let's put this first element up on the screens from the Financial Times. They say the White House is close to approving the sale of TikTok's U.S. unit to investors. This is a group of investors, including Blackstone and Andreessen Horowitz, among the firms that would wrest control of the social media site from China's ByteDance. Let me go ahead and read to you a little bit of the details. They say,

under the terms of the transaction, a group of new outside investors, including Andreessen Horowitz, Blackstone, Silverlake, and other large private capital firms would own about half of TikTok's U.S. business, according to several people familiar with the matter. That U.S. unit would be spun off from its Beijing-based parent company, ByteDance. Large existing investors in TikTok, including General Atlantic, Susquehanna, KKR, and I don't know how you say this, KOTU? KOTU? Let's go. Whatever. Would also take stakes in the U.S. arm, constituting about 30% of the business.

The plans, still in preliminary stages, could yet change, according to those involved in the process, come ahead of a deadline for U.S. law on April 5th that would ban the app in America unless its Beijing-based owner sells it to non-Chinese entities. So, I mean, there's a couple

of outstanding questions here. By the way, Bezos, and I'll get to that in a minute, Bezos also putting in an offer wanting Amazon to bid on ByteDance. From what I've seen, this group is the more likely victors in this attempted sale. But, I mean, a few questions here are, number one, the Chinese entity has to agree. So there's a question there. No, no, not the Chinese entity. China has to agree. China has to agree.

The entity has no say. Big questions there. China originally struck a very hard line about this. They have since apparently softened some of their rhetoric about what sort of deal they might be willing to accept. So question marks there. I can't imagine China's feeling like real warm and fuzzy towards the U.S. right now, given the 57% tariffs that we just levied on China. Well, if somebody just put 54% or whatever tariff on you and you have leverage over them over a platform where 100 million people use, what are you going to do? You're going to give them exactly what they want? Maybe,

as long as it's a prelude to something different. Yeah, I mean, my problem with this is what's even the point of all this fakery about sales? If Beijing gets to keep the algorithm, that was the whole point. That's why it was a national security issue in the first place. That's part of this deal is that basically the group of, you know, the conglomerate of investors would own half, but Beijing would still maintain the algorithm. And that, you know, the conglomerate of investors would own half, but Beijing would still maintain the algorithm. And which brings in the other question of whether this even legally meets the requirements passed in this original law.

I'm sure, again, there would be lawsuits. Who knows how it's going to ultimately be litigated, but that's where we are. If you want to keep it, then just fucking keep it. Like, you know, all this other fakery is nonsense. If Beijing controls the algorithm, then that's the whole reason why I would be against TikTok in the first place. If we're going to keep it, then, and ByteDance gets to maintain the proprietary algorithm and all of the data. And we have all this fakery with Oracle and US investor groups and all that. What's even the point of the approved sale? Either sell it or

don't or ban it. Okay? Again, I think we'd all be better off if it was banned, but whatever. Apparently, the president has decided otherwise. And that is perhaps, as you said, legally, considering the fact that even a sale of half the company without the algorithm would not meet the requirements, I would be very curious to see how that shakes out in terms of its ability to actually have that sale go through. Because it's not just a regulatory, it has to pass legal scrutiny. And what, ByteDance, they're just going to give it up? No. Of course they're not. Like I said, ByteDance is an arm of the Chinese government. You think they're just going to hand over with a

crown jewel of pop culture to the United States of America without any sort of concession on their part? That would actually make me even more furious is if we allowed, if we did some deal where ByteDance allowed some fake deal to go through for TikTok and maybe we lessened like soybean tariffs. That would be worse, right? Because at least those are trying to correct

some trade imbalance, whatever it comes to farming and for the U.S. consumer in preserving TikTok and some brain rot algorithm as a result of that. So whatever. I mean, I've washed my hands of this a long time ago. It's genuinely sickening. I saw JD on TV this morning be like, oh, it's a platform used by many Americans. I'm just like, okay, all right, whatever. What's the point? Why believe in anybody at this point? I mentioned Bezos is putting in his offer.

I put this up on the screen from the New York Times. I mean, of course it would make sense. I didn't even know they apparently tried on Amazon to do some TikTok competitor. Did you know that? No, I didn't know that. Yes, obviously did work out. Are you saying like even AWS, like they use AWS?

Yeah, I think so. According to this article, I was like, I did not even know that was the thing that happened. But anyway, that didn't work out for them. So, I mean, you can see why he would want to acquire TikTok and have even more power in terms of the U.S. economy and get even more directly into. I mean, Jeff Bezos and Amazon, the amount of data that they have about all of us is completely astonishing, right? The things that they know about all of us is already very disturbing. And TikTok could be important for gleaning even more data. You know, as the AI race develops, you can see how this would be increasingly valuable as well.

So anyway, he is making his bid too, from what I saw. Like I said, I think the other group probably has the edge here, the Andreessen, Horowitz, Blackstone, et cetera, that conglomerate. I am a little bit surprised that Elon isn't in the mix here because remember that was what China had kind of floated. Like, hey, maybe Elon would be someone we can work with. I mean, I have the cash. I mean, that's one, right? But that may be true. Because there's also, as Tesla stock falls, and Elon just did, we didn't even talk about it on this show, but he had his AI company buy Twitter in the steel.

I mean, in some ways, it makes kind of logical sense because, of course, Grok is on Twitter and so you put the two together, etc. But in any case, in order to purchase Twitter, he used as collateral significant amounts of his Tesla stock. And so one of the things, and nobody knows exactly what the terms of the deal were, and then he renegotiated the deal, so that makes it even more opaque what exactly the deal was originally. But that's why Tesla stock dropping significantly also has reverberating impacts throughout all of Elon's empire and most specifically with regard to this loan he took out in order to be able to acquire Twitter. So you may be absolutely correct that he just is not in a cash flush position to be able to make this kind of a gamble. But that was the direction that I was kind of expecting things ultimately to go in.

And I'm glad that they're not because Elon's Twitter has been a nightmare. Good. Yeah. Last thing here. I wanted to make sure we got this in. Let's put this on the screen. Zuckerberg was at the White House yesterday lobbying Trump to avoid the meta antitrust trial. This is just so ironic because actually the very same time that Zuck was at the White House, I was at an antitrust event yesterday where Lena Kahn and some of these other folks were, Doha Meki as well. And we were talking about the future of antitrust and how it was really up for grabs and what the Trump administration, et cetera, was going to do. And then I find out that probably at the exact same time that we were

doing that and Steve Bannon was there praising Lenaita Khan. Oh, is that where that picture got taken? Yeah, we were all at the same time. Oh, that's funny. At the same time that this was happening, where Zuckerberg is lobbying Trump specifically to avoid the meta antitrust trial. How does it compare to TikTok? Well, obviously, it's not just about TikTok in terms of for sale. There's still bigger, more meta questions, if you will, about concentration and antitrust and market competition. And if anything, this is actually getting away from that, where we're still keeping the company, TikTok itself, the algorithm proprietary to big conglomerates, which have huge market power over a lot of us.

It's the same problem, actually, that applies across the board, whether it's a foreign company or not. It's also important for antitrust policy to be seen to be as politically neutral as possible. Because, you know, because this is a very powerful tool that the federal government has, where basically they get to say whether your merger is going to be good to go or whether you're going to have some problems and whether or not they're successful in court, you know, blocking mergers or causing companies to have to break up or divest. Just going through that process is a major business risk, puts a lot of other things on hold, is very costly, etc. And so if you have a muscular antitrust division, but you're only training it on your political adversaries or people who haven't

sufficiently bent the knee, like that's what, you know, Mark Zuckerberg has been all about for months now at this point, then it becomes a real, you know, it becomes a real political weapon. And again, you know, consistent with the overall theme of the way that Trump has consolidated power. So that was, has been my concern for a while, that that's the way that the new antitrust division, which I am so supportive of, and I think is such an important corrective to the mass, you know, aggregation of power among these giant monopolies, tech monopolies, but all kinds of monopolies across the board. So I'm super supportive of that. But it is really vital that it remain seen and in practice be as politically neutral as possible. And I think, you know, I just I don't think that's the case whatsoever under this administration. And,

you know, that's why Zuckerberg is there again Again, unbended knee, pleading to the king, trying to get in his good graces so that he can get the business favors and outcomes that he ultimately wants for his company. Let's hope that he doesn't listen to him. We'll see. Crystal, what are you taking a look at? 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.

This is your girl T.S. Madison, and I'm coming to you loud, live, and in color from the Outlaws podcast. Let me tell you something. I broke the internet with a 22-inch weave. My superpower? I've got the voice. My kryptonite? It don't exist. My podcast? The one they never saw coming.

Each week, I sit down with the culture creators and scroll stoppers. Tina knows. Lil Nas X. Will we ever see a dating show for the love of Lil Nas X? Let's do a show with all my exes. X marks the spot.

No, here it is. My next ex. That's actually cute, though. Laverne Cox. I have a core group of girlfriends that, like, they taught me how to love. And Chapel Rome. I was dropped in 2020, working the drive-thru, and here we are now.

We turned side-eye into sermons, pain into punchline, and grief, we turned those into galaxies. Listen, make sure you tell Beyonce, I'm going right on the phone right now, and call her. Listen to Outlaws with T.S. Madison on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts, honey.

I know a lot of cops, and they get asked all the time, have you ever had to shoot your gun? Sometimes the answer is yes. But there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be no. Across the country, cops called this taser the revolution. But not everyone was convinced it was that simple. Cops believed everything that taser told them. From Lava for Good

and the team that brought you Bone Valley comes a story about what happened when a multi-billion dollar company dedicated itself to one visionary mission. This is Absolute Season One, Taser Incorporated. I get right back there and it's bad. It's really, really, really bad. Listen to new episodes of Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Binge episodes 1, 2, and 3 on May 21st and episodes 4, 5, and 6 on June 4th.

Ad-free at Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. This Saturday will mark 15 years to the day since the Upper Big Branch mine disaster when 29 miners were killed in a deadly explosion. It was the deadliest mining accident since the 70s, the Upper Big Branch mine disaster when 29 miners were killed in a deadly explosion. It was the deadliest mining accident since the 70s, and it focused the nation's attention on the conditions that these workers face every single day, as well as the combination of corporate greed and lax regulation that ended in unimaginable disaster for these miners, their families, and an entire community. When the final investigation was released by the Mine Safety Health Administration, they found that Massey Energy, the owner of the Upper Big Branch mine,

had flagrantly violated safety requirements for adequate ventilation, allowing an explosive buildup of methane that caused the tragedy. But there was another culprit that was identified in the report, the Mine Safety and Health Administration, called MSHA, itself. The agency, in spite of issuing Massey with some 515 safety violations at that mine alone in the year preceding the tragedy, they never escalated to issuing a flagrant violation which would have triggered a much larger financial penalty. The admission reflected a recognition that without dogged regulators, all the laws in the world mean absolutely nothing. The tragedy triggered a reform effort to crack down on unscrupulous coal barons, tighten up enforcement, and ensure that the regulators were not in bed with industry. The effort moved forward in some fits and starts, and reforms were more incremental than transformative.

But progress was made. The new MSHA protocols brought down injury rates and helped to bring a little more security to an inherently dangerous job. Fifteen years after this tragedy, however, that small agency charged with looking out for minors is being shredded by Elon Musk's doge effort to chainsaw through federal bureaucracy. Perhaps even more devastating, longstanding efforts to research, prevent, and treat Black Lung, which has become more severe and devastating than ever, have been completely defunded. Local newspapers are increasingly sounding the alarm over these

developments. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette ran a terrific expose titled, Deep Fear in Coal Country, Doge Cuts Put Regions, Miners, and families on edge. In this piece, they focus in particular on the planned closure of the Mount Pleasant Mine Safety Office, which has been the busiest MSHA field office in the country, having investigated 20 fatalities and conducted more than 6,000 regular inspections just over the past decade. Now, that office lease has been canceled, and officials there have no idea what the future is going to hold. Will those regulators be fired, transferred? Doge has offered zero answers.

But we know that this closure is not the only one, nor is it the only Doge attack on minor health. Local news reports in Kentucky, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Virginia suggest that some 35 MSHA field offices have had their leases cut by Doge. Now, these field offices, they really are the lifeblood of mine inspections, and they shoulder the burden of trying to hold corporate greed at bay to keep workers safe and keep them alive. Chelsea Barnes from the nonprofit Appalachian Voices tells Grist, quote, there are going to be fewer inspections, which means that operators that are not following the rules are going to get away with not following the rules for longer than they would have. In fact, even prior to Elon

coming in with the chainsaw, MSHA was already understaffed, already underfunded, and failing to meet its own annual inspection targets. Think of how much worse things are about to get. Now, these cuts also could not come at a worse time. After the upper big branch reforms, injury rates at some of the most active mines are once again rapidly rising as the industry declines and coal companies chase deeper seams of coal at increasing risk to workers. Quote, at the Marshall County mine in West Virginia, one of the largest producers of coal in North America, the injuries rose by more than 50% from a decade ago, records show. At the Buchanan mine in Virginia, the numbers of miners hurt on the job increased ninefold from three injuries to

at least 27 during the same period. And at the same time, a particularly brutal new form of black lung has also been ravaging miners at younger and younger ages, sometimes after only a short period on the job due to increased airborne silica dust. So underground miners, they're cutting through more and more sandstone to mine thinner seams of coal using continuous miner machines that kick huge amounts of dust into the air. Miners today are also compelled to work longer hours. 10 to 12 hour shifts are common, with fewer breaks contributing to more intense levels of exposure. Remember, Appalachia continues to suffer from poverty. Coal mining remains one of the few ways in the region

to earn a middle-class living. So these conditions of economic deprivation have stripped workers of power and left them with few choices but to trade their health for their livelihood. Sadly, union representation among miners has also fallen significantly from its peak. Many miners today are in fact non-union. And as worker power declines, minors are at the mercy of regulators to enforce the safety standards that can make the difference between facing the miserable, slow suffocation of black lung and getting to enjoy the fruits of your hard work with your family into old age. Identifies just how badly impaired his lungs have become. The test confirms what he and respiratory therapist Lisa Emery already know.

Almost there. Big breath in. Suck in, suck in. Good. Take a break. Kevin's black lung is so severe that he can no longer work in the mines. Yeah, these things are tough. What's different about Kevin is his age. Used to be Black Long didn't force a man out of the mines until he was in his late 50s or early 60s. Kevin is just 34.

Kevin has been a coal miner almost half his life. There he was at age 18, suddenly making more money than he ever dreamed possible. The first six months on the ground, at $12 an hour, I made $76,000. In six months? In six months. That's how much I worked. Sometimes I wouldn't even go home. I'd go out and sleep in the parking lot, get back up and go back in. Then you look at stuff different. Oh.

You really realize the dangers when you have something to live for instead of just yourself. Now, every aspect of dealing with black lung, from prevention to research to early identification to treatment, all of it is under assault by this administration. First of all, Trump's new mine safety head is the former head of an industry lobbying group, which is suing over the planned implementation of a new rule to help to combat black lung. But the primary assault on minor health is coming from RFK Jr.'s indiscriminate cuts at HHS. In particular, hundreds of workers have been laid off from the National Institute of Occupational Health and Safety. That's called NIOSH. This is the office within HHS, which is specifically targeted at worker safety, cops, firefighters, and miners.

And there is probably no group of workers that benefits more from the work of NIOSH than miners. In fact, researchers at this commission, they were the first to identify this new aggressive form of black lung that is afflicting minors due to that increased silica dust. According to Louisville Public Media, quote, Pittsburgh's research branch alone boasted an experimental mine, an acoustic chamber, and a lab that was instrumental in proving that minors were slowly dying by inhaling toxic silica dust. NIOSH also runs a mobile clinic that rolls through coal country to screen miners for black lung in its early stages

and consult with them on treatment plans and track the spread and virulence of this deadly disease. But perhaps NIOSH's most important work is administering a program that allows any miner with signs of black lung to receive a job transfer within their own company to non-dusty work with no loss of pay and no loss of benefits. Yesterday, I had the chance to speak with a West Virginia lawyer named Sam Patson. He explained to me just how pivotal that program has been in protecting the

health of thousands of coal miners. He also explained to me the utter heartbreak of watching men who are not even out of their 40s sitting across from him, wheezing and strapped to an oxygen tank because of what this horrible disease had done to them. These are human beings. We know how to protect them. This administration, though, has chosen to throw them to the wolves. Now, many minors also depend on local clinics funded through MSHA for black lung treatment. That, too, is now in doubt.

Current funding for those lung treatment. That, too, is now in doubt. Current funding for those clinics lasts through June, and safety advocates tell the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette they have no idea what is going to happen after that. There is probably one hope for a potential reprieve here. West Virginia Senator Shelley Moore Capito, she's a member of the powerful Appropriations Committee, and being a Republican, she could potentially appeal to Trump or Elon for a stay of these disastrous cuts. So far, she's put out what I would classify as a fairly tepid statement, saying, quote, during my meetings with Secretary Kennedy prior to his confirmation and as recently as last week, we discussed how important the health of coal miners is to West Virginia. Any cuts that impact their health monitoring need to be restored immediately.

I'm working with the Department of Health and Human Services to understand the depth of these cuts, both to programs and the workforce in Morgantown. She made sure, though, to emphasize that she believes in, quote, the broad vision. Let's be clear here. This attack on minor health and safety, it's a betrayal. It's the latest betrayal in a long list of national betrayals of Appalachia that has led to over a century of extraction and exploitation that helped to build the nation, made a few very wealthy, and hung the workers and ordinary citizens of this region out to dry. It is also specifically a betrayal by Donald Trump, who built his political victory in 2016 on the back of these workers. He promised to be their champion. And with his celebration of fossil fuels to lead an economic renaissance that would deliver greater prosperity for them and their communities. Never trust a robber baron. He will use you to get power and

he will dump you the second it does not serve his billionaire buddies. The miners of Appalachia, unfortunately, will never compete with the guy who dumped a quarter billion dollars into Trump's campaign coffers. And, you know, this program I spoke to the lawyer Sam about. So he really wanted me to understand how important it was that you have this mobile NIOSH clinic. It's like, you know, looks like a bus that rolls through community. It's very high visibility. Everybody sort of knows about it and really values it. They're able to do early detection. And then if you have even early signs of black lung developing, which, by the way, guys, there's no cure for.

It only gets progressively worse. If you have even early signs of that, you're able to avail yourself of this program to transfer to what they call a non-dusty job. So you're no more at risk. If you don't have anyone to administer this program, it's just gone. Like, it just doesn't exist anymore. Even though this is something Congress said we want to do, it's important. It's important to, you know, all the legislators from this region. And now it's just going to be completely ended. There's nothing even to say. It's sick. It's gross. Especially because, as you and I know, these are all Republican voters too, right? So this is a state which went 40 something percent. And honestly, and this is what I worry about, will they really know about this, right? Not even in terms of media, but given the connection to

coal mining and so much of what we've seen with the culture war, like this is the real test of theory about like how much you can punish somebody and still see if they'll actually continue to support you. Because I mean, you tell me, what have you seen in West Virginia politics? Is there senators speaking up for them? Is anybody saying a word? Barely. Yeah, barely. No, that's exactly right. And, you know, it's devastating. I think it's important, you know, zoom out from these minors, which again, have just been betrayed at every turn in our country's history and, you know, do this from these minors, which, again, have just been betrayed at every turn in our country's history and, you know, do this incredibly difficult work that truly did help to build our nation. But to zoom out from them, you know, when you see the people who had their

badges revoked at HHS and they're being kicked down, they're lined up and whatever, you can sometimes gloss over what each of these individual programs might mean to a certain person, to a certain community. The way that just getting rid of, you know, really is an end run around Congress too, because they wanted this program to be in place. They were trying to do something to, you know, assist and protect this group of workers. And this administration has just figured out that if they can get rid of the people that are administering the program,

then it's like they ended the program altogether without having to go back through Congress. So, you know, it really is going to be, unfortunately, devastating for this community unless Shelley Moore Capito can, you know, plead her case and, you know, petition the king to get some of these things revoked. So I certainly, you know, call her and ask because that's kind of the only prayer.

He used to work in coal, didn't he? Oh, he's a coal baron. That's what I mean. He's a coal billionaire. Last time I, well, I guess they don't love black lung screeners or any of that. No, he doesn't. He doesn't want this program that allows people to transfer jobs or whatever to be administered. No, he has been one of the dirty operators in this industry where he's a billionaire, really rich guy. And miners have had instances where they go and do their 10, 12 hour shift and they're 80 hours a week. I mean,

imagine that 80 hours underground in a mine and then their paycheck bounces. That's grim. Yeah. So that's who we're talking about as the other West Virginia senator. So there you go. Let's see. Let's see what happens. All right.

We got Zed Jelani standing by. Let's get to it. Joining us now is great friend of the show, Zed Jelani, to talk about a new gambit by a Zionist organization which is distributing literal lists of people to be deported to the Trump administration. Let's go ahead and put that up there on the screen from the Washington Post. The militant Zionist group, Betar, is threatening activists online with a, quote, deport list. And all current indication is that that list is actually being used by people in power. So we thought nobody better than Zedd to break some of this down for us, give us some of the background on this, and just to really just describe how completely

insane it all is. So Zed, first of all, it's great to see you, my friend, but really just lay it out for us what kind of a threat this is to not only free speech, but really just to take orders from an organization like this. Yeah, I mean, Bayitar actually, you know, its history stretches back more than 100 years, right? It was established as sort of a militant sort of wing of the Zionist movement in the early 1900s. It was active throughout Europe. And then I think it was also continued in activities after the establishment of the State of Israel. And in many ways, it's kind of like, you know, remember Howard Dean used to say he was he represented the Democratic part, the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party, or, you know, that line actually goes back further than Howard Dean.

But anyway, Beitar kind of does the same thing for the Zionist movement, right? It's sort of it's it's kind of on an island of its own in terms of some of its points of view and the ideology that it promotes. And actually, even the Anti-Defamation League and other organizations that tend to be very supportive of the Israeli position, consider Beitar to be an extremist group, right? The Democratic majority for Israel, which basically supports a super PAC style or 501c4 type spending in the Democratic Party to support Israel, even they have labeled Beitar to be an extremist group. And in fact, in the Washington Post story that you just mentioned, they called that story anti-Semitic.

Then they also called Beitar an extremist group in the same statement, meaning they just don't want any Jewish person to be blamed for these deportations, I guess, is why they call the story anti-Semitic. Because I don't think it's 100% clear or transparent how the Trump administration is going about labeling and then deporting people.

But Beitar has been claiming credit for it, right? This organization has been, particularly on their social media and their public utterances, have been saying that basically they've been assembling lists of people to offer to the Trump administration based on students who they identify, particularly foreign students that they identify at demonstrations or other campus or university events. I think Beitar has quite a presence in New York, which has been sort of an epicenter of some of the demonstrations, the high-profile demonstrations. Actually, I think the other day they even said that they're trying to do the opposite. They're also trying to give lists of Jews to the Israeli government

to have them banned from Israel. And these tend to be, you know, left of center or center-left Jews, you know, even liberal Zionist Jews who have, you know, questions, concerns about the war, about Benjamin Netanyahu's government. And so, yeah, I think the organization is kind of seeing itself as a moment to shine. They've kind of been a pariah, an outcast in the Jewish community, particularly in the United States. But I think they see a little bit of confluence of interest here, right? They think that this is a time where there are a lot of people in the Jewish community who have been uneasy about the protests because they're sort of torn about the war, but they don't necessarily like all the rhetoric in the

demonstrations or divestment movements and so on and so forth. So Beitar, I think, sees an opportunity to step up and say, hey, actually, we're on your side. Look at all this useful work that we're doing for you, helping get rid of these troublemakers, right? So it's kind of a way for them to try to, you know, sane wash themselves or demarginalize themselves in their position because, you know, like I said, they'd never been considered to be mainstream in any way in the Zionist movement, or even with an American Jewish community. Good point.

It feels like the opposite of saying Washington to me. It feels like, Oh, we're, you know, we're part of this effort to destroy free speech in America. Aren't we great? Aren't we cool?

And one of the things that they've been saying in claiming credit, at least for the targeting of the Trump administration of these students, some of whom are permanent residents, some of whom are student visa holders, is they're saying naturalized citizens are going to be next. They tweeted out, we told you we've been working on deportations and we'll continue to do so. Expect naturalized citizens to start being picked up within the month. You heard it here first. Those who support jihad and intifada and originate in terrorist states will be sent back to those lands. And listen, again, I don't know if the White House is directly like following their lists and moving in the direction that Beitar wants them to. But it was noteworthy to me that the State Department spokesperson got a question about whether or not naturalized citizens would be targeted. And she would not say, which is an extraordinarily different direction and policy than we have seen,

you know, in basically the history of this country. So, Zed, I wonder if you can reflect on how extraordinary that is and whether you think it's possible, given what we've already seen from this administration with regard to student targeting. Yeah, so I think the issue with naturalized citizens was actually brought up in the first Trump administration. I think it was kind of a Stephen Miller idea or someone in his camp or orbit

that you could actually, in certain cases, remove citizenship from people who have been granted it after coming to the United States, right? And as far as like how possible that is, I think that maybe is reserved for a case where somebody like lies on their citizenship application. Right. Or has defrauded, you know, the American government in some way. Right. It's not someone having their citizenship, you know, denaturalized or stripped based on ideological disagreement or some utterance of some idea or speech. I can't really think of an example of that.

But it would kind of be precedent setting for them, right? I think that a big part of the reason why some people on the right are supporting all this is not just like the sort of the more niche cause about the Middle East or about Israel, right? Which, you know, organizations like Beitar, you know, organizations that are a little more softly in support of this, like the ADL, you know, maybe they're concerned with that. But I also think that like there's this broader nativist project, right, which I think that like someone like Stephen Miller does not really want to see the, I guess he would consider it the browning of America, right? He thinks that America has brought in too many people from foreign lands to begin

with. And so it's kind of a overlap in interest, right, between sort of people who are very fixated on the Middle East conflict, but also people who just like, would like to see fewer foreigners in America, period, right? There is a wing of the GOP base that feels that way. And that might be part of why they're not as disturbed by rollbacks in due process, by rollbacks in freedom of speech and expression,

because like, hey, at least we're getting rid of them, right? We don't really care about how. Many people I think would argue, look, Biden brought so many people in through all these channels, which we didn't appreciate and which were irregular, and they're in some ways abusing the asylum process or similar laws. So we don't really care what process it takes to get rid of these people, right? And I think that's also, like, a bigger part of this because even a lot of, like, the Republican base doesn't care that much about the particulars, about the Middle East conflict, about Israel or so on and so forth.

But I think they do have this larger resentment about immigration. Right. And I think those two things combining could end up, you know, having the Trump administration take a second look at like this denaturalizing process, which I think they had. I think they did float in the first term, but they didn't really do much with it. They seem to be pushing the boundaries a lot more this time, so who knows? Well, Zed, I mean, first of all, you're absolutely right. And certainly, listen, we had a whole debate here. That's certainly where my sympathies were. And so I get where they're coming from.

One of the things that actually pulls me back are people like you, people like Glenn Greenwald. And so even taking the naturalized citizenship out of this, Talk then about the free speech implications about going after these protesters solely on the grounds of speaking against this foreign country. In many of these cases, they have not been charged or committed with crimes in order to at least normally justify their removal from the United States. Look, I think that a lot of, this is the other part of like the overlap between different parts of GOP coalition I think that a lot of, this is the other part of like the overlap between different parts of GOP coalition. I think a lot of people in the Republican party were upset at colleges and universities, probably going back 10 years or more. I mean, even when I was in high

school, I remember, you know, teachers complaining about Marxist professors at UGA. You know, UGA is not a very radical school. It's my alma mater. But I think particularly the past 10 years, because of heightened censorship and all these trends on university campuses, a lot of conservatives just didn't really trust them or like them to begin with. And so I think parts of the GOP base are also like, OK, screw Harvard, screw Columbia. They were never kind or generous or compassionate towards us conservatives. Why do we care about them? But what I would caution about that is like, OK, there are steps that the Trump

administration could take to enforce greater freedom of speech, greater freedom of assembly, more protection of conservative voices, more promotion, even ideological promotion of maybe more diversity and viewpoint, so on and so forth, at colleges and universities. I think maybe they've done a little bit of that. They've hinted they want to do a little bit of that. But for the most part, what they're doing is they're actually making things worse, right? They're establishing a precedent where the government itself can severely crack down on certain political points of view at these colleges and universities. And the precedent they're establishing could easily be utilized by a future president. I mean, anytime you give the

government an inch, it tends to take a mile or really any large institution, right? So like, let's say, you know, in Bizarro and Earth 2, you know, a democratic president is deporting immigrants because they don't use the proper pronouns, right? Because in their country, they don't have the same ideas about transgenderism, right? Or, you know, third genders or so on and so forth, right? Like, you could see a slippery slope that goes in many different directions, but it's all going against greater speech rights, right? It's not really benefiting conservatives to create all these speech codes around Israel because the people who are pushing that, like Miriam Adelson or Bill Ackman or so on and so forth, they don't really care about conservative speech, right?

That's not their cause, right? They're part of it. They see themselves as part of a much larger blood feud between peoples in the Middle East. And whatever it takes to win that in the United States, they'll do it. But they're not really super interested in conservatives. And look, it is a very difficult precedent to establish because this is happening three months into the Trump administration, three, four months into the Trump administration, right?

Imagine what three or four years into it looks like, right, if they manage to establish this kind of rule so early on. And then three, four years, they keep pushing the envelope. I mean, I think talking about what happens to naturalized citizens whose speech they dislike, they may not even be too bold of a thing for them to do. Other times, Trump has said that maybe boycotting Tesla should be illegal. People are saying that vandalizing a car is an act of terrorism. I don't think you should vandalize a car or engage in road rage. I think all that stuff's really juvenile and wrong.

But like when you're expanding what the government can do to people in response to things, and it's wildly disproportionate to what the people are doing, you know, whether it's speech that offends you or minor acts of vandalism, you are giving the government a lot more power. And you can pretty much guarantee that anytime you give the government more power, they're going to use it. I mean, the Patriot Act, right, was passed after 9-11. What did the Patriot Act mostly ended up being used for? Mostly ended up being used for their war on drugs, right?

They mostly used it for those kind of searches and seizures and, you know, extra legal powers. They didn't even use it mostly for terrorism at the end of the day, right? But if you hand someone a bunch of power to do something like that, that's how it ends up being used. It ends up being used in the maximally possible ways. Yeah, well, and help pave the way also for this additional extraordinary power grab by the executive. So you're absolutely right.

These things rarely, if ever, actually go in reverse. Zed, thank you so much for joining us and helping us to understand what's going on here underneath the surface. Thanks, man. Missed talking to you. Thank you. Thanks for watching, guys helping us to understand what's going on here underneath the surface Thanks man, missed talking to you Thank you Thanks for watching guys We appreciate it

We will see you all later Over the years of making my true crime podcast Hell and Gone I've learned no town is too small for murder I'm Katherine Townsend. I've heard from hundreds of people across the country with an unsolved murder in their community. I was calling about the murder of my husband.

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