Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 4/7/23: Mehdi Hasan Debates Matt Taibbi, Ukraine War Plans Leak, Blackrock Paris Stormed By Protests, TN Dems Expelled, RFK Jr, Taiwan and Kevin McCarthy, China Saudi Arabia Deal, Trump Indictment

Episode Date: April 7, 2023

Ryan and Emily discuss the confrontation between Mehdi Hasan and Matt Taibbi over The Twitter Files, Ukraine War plans leaking over social media, Blackrock Paris is stormed by French protestors, Tennessee Democrats expelled from House for participating in gun control protests, RFK Jr announces his run for presidency in Dem primary, Kevin McCarthy hosting the president of Taiwan showing the strain in US/China relations, China mediating a Saudi Iran deal, and Eliza Orlins joins the show to discuss her recent piece on why the Trump indictment is bad for US democracy.To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show uncut and 1 hour early visit: https://breakingpoints.supercast.com/To listen to Breaking Points as a podcast, check them out on Apple and SpotifyApple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/breaking-points-with-krystal-and-saagar/id1570045623 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4Kbsy61zJSzPxNZZ3PKbXl Merch: https://breaking-points.myshopify.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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and we here at Breaking Points are already thinking of ways we can up our game for this critical election. We rely on our premium subs to expand coverage, upgrade the studio, add staff, give you guys the best independent coverage that is possible. If you like what we're all about, it just means the absolute world to have your support. But enough with that. Let's get to the show. All right, welcome back to CounterPoints. I'm Ryan Grim here with Emily Jashinsky. Good morning, Emily. Good morning, Ryan.

How are you? I'm good. We've got some job numbers out. So the economy added 236,000 jobs, which is less than people were hoping for. And so CNBC and the Fed and all these people are celebrating. But to put that in context, if they were expecting 400,000 jobs, then about 150,000 people that applied for a job and were hoping to get it didn't get it. Or companies who felt like they were growing at a particular pace now have realized that they're not growing as much as they were, so they actually pulled that job opening. So lots of misery spreading throughout the economy, so congratulations to the Fed and

to Wall Street. I was going to say there are human beings behind those metrics, and in this case, tens of thousands of them affected by it. There's also new Title IX regulations, a proposed new rule in Title IX that we'll get to actually next week. It's like 150 pages long. This is around transgender competition sports. Right. It had nothing 150 pages long. And this is around transgender competition sports. Right. It had nothing to do with the kind of kangaroo court question of how sexual assault claims are adjudicated, but around transgender sport participation. It's really long. And we wanted to make sure that we had the best take on it possible, not rushing a judgment. So we'll certainly cover that next week, I hope. Meanwhile, we've got a war breaking out. So if you've been following the conflict in Israel, you had Israeli forces

raided the Al-Aqsa Mosque several times. You might have seen the visuals of the beatings of people during Ramadan prayers there. You've had so far, I think, Summer Lee, Cori Bush, and Rashida Tlaib have denounced it, but that's kind of it out of the United States Congress. Since then, Lebanon launched a couple of strikes towards Israel. Seems like they were all intercepted. Israel responded not just by striking Lebanon, but also bombing Gaza, which is like, wait, how does that work? Lebanon sends missiles your way and you are going to bomb Gaza as a result. So that's where we are now. We're probably going to see some retaliation now from Gaza, if I can imagine. We've also seen more Palestinians killed in the occupied

territories in the first four months than we've seen in decades. Big escalation this week. And on that note, we have big news out of Ukraine as well. We're going to get to that in just a bit. We're going to really dive into some breaking news that transpired yesterday. But before we do that, we wanted to take a look at a feud that's brewing between Mehdi Hassan and Matt Taibbi. Ryan, did you get a chance to sort of pick through this? Yeah. And so my rule for life is always do not debate Mehdi. And that rule remains undefeated. But we can get into some of the nuances of it. So basically, Matt Taibbi, so a couple of weeks ago, Mehdi went after Matt Taibbi saying, look, look what Elon Musk's Twitter is doing to critics of Modi in India.

Why won't you speak out on that? Taibbi responded, why don't you have me on the show and we'll hash this out. So that was a couple of weeks ago. So now Taibbi went on Mehdi's show. So let's play a couple of clips from that exchange. You said the EIP was founded in response to the government dropping its proposal for a disinformation government. Well, there you are. We're quoting you on screen. It wasn't. It was formed two years earlier. You suggest it was government funded,

even though during the 2020 election that you're covering, it wasn't. You say they labeled 22 million tweets as misinformation in the run-up to the 2020 vote. They didn't. They flagged 3,000 election misinformation tweets for labeling, so you were only 21,997,000 off. You also claim the EIP was partnered with the government's cybersecurity and infrastructure agency, CISA, to censor Twitter. But you mix up CISA, C-I-S-A, a homeland security agency, with the Center for Internet Security, the CIS, which is a nonprofit. And it's just error after error, Matt, on just this one topic. That's an error. But the other ones aren't. No, no.

22 million came from their own report. Yeah, it came from a report in March. Do you know what the 22 million number is, Matt? Can you tell me? Because we checked. 22 million is the number of tweets about election misinformation that they just mapped. How many tweets were they? The ones they actually flagged to Twitter before the election, 22 million came after the election.

It wasn't in the run-up. They flagged 3,000. So you're off by 21,997,000. It's not an error. I've said a lot of things. I stand by my story. You stand by what story? You stand by 22 million were flagged in the run-up to the election,

even though that number came in March 2021, which was after the election. No, this came in their report after the election. Okay, so Matt responded on Twitter. I think we have some of that that we can put up on the screen here, but someone told him to take the L. And this is a different quote. He said, you know, part of the job is facing critics.

And I went on Mehdi's show today and basically I was open to the criticism. I made corrections where they were warranted. He also said, no, I will not take the L. A misplaced acronym and a wrong date don't invalidate the months of important work nearly a dozen journalists, including Michael Schellenberger, Barry Weiss, and myself put in, so that the public could see the breadth of state censorship, of the state censorship program. Reaction to that exchange? Yeah, the whole thing is kind of disappointing on so many different levels because they don't end up having a conversation about the substance. Like it's people just moving into their camps. And they're still kind of fighting about this 22 million. Matt has said, no, my reading of this is that there was 22 that were flagged before the election. The folks who did the report have said,

no, that you're misreading it. It was the 22 million we flagged after the election. But even if that's true, 3,000 is also a lot. Yes, it's a lot. But 3,000 is a ton. And flag the 22 million we flagged after the election. But even if that's true, 3,000 is also a lot. Yes, it's a lot. But 3,000 is a ton. And flagging 22 million after the election shows you what they want to do in the next election. Right. So it would be nice if they would kind of debate the substance. Like, is this how we want various government agencies interacting with social media organizations or not?

And to Matt's credit, on the other two pieces where Mehdi caught him with errors, he said, I'm going to correct those errors. Those are errors. But they kind of didn't change the fundamental thrust of the story. The other disappointing thing was that Matt actually hadn't read up on the Modi thing. I thought that was interesting. Which was, like, that was the reason that he said, invite me on the show and I'll talk about it.

Right. And he had two weeks to talk about, to brush up on it. It looked like, and I do this all the time. You go on a show and you're like, oh, God, I'm supposed to be on this show in 30 seconds. Like, that's the only way I appear on shows, including this one. No, I'm kidding. I know ahead of time when I'm supposed to be on this one. It's like, and many will be like, hey, can you come on and talk about this thing?

Yeah, sure. And then I'm always asking the producers, what are we talking about? So, and it felt that way. It's like, oh. But it's like, because Matt had said, I'll come on the show to talk about this, then at least check into what Musk is doing in India. And it would be so easy to be like, you know what? Yeah, I do.

Musk is not my employee. I am not Musk's employee. I disagree with Musk's decision on this particular issue. Or I agree with Musk's decision on this particular issue. It's fine. Like, it's not going to hurt him one way or the other. And so, you know, we'll reach out to him and see what his take is when he gets a chance to actually look into the point. And my read on this was a little different in that I think what Matt was trying to do is make a point that I'm not playing this game.

That's my assumption of what he was doing because what Matty's doing is nitpicking errors. A couple of them were actual errors. I think one of them is definitely more questionable. And Matt was happy to correct them. The breadth of what he's been doing with the Twitter files. I mean, it is it's a lot of reporting and a lot of writing. So it's, you know, of course, there are mistakes in there as much as he may try to mitigate them. And I'm sure he does. Nobody wants to be corrected knowing the whole world is out there and every established center of power is out there looking to discredit you. So, I mean, it's in his own interest to mitigate the errors.

That said, Mehdi is nitpicking instead of really dealing with the central question of state censorship. To your point, like, why are we debating $3,000, $22 million, the date? You know, it's definitely worth a correction. But why are we getting hung up on yelling at each other over that when Matt has exposed, rightfully, this huge operation to censor and target heterodox American thought? That's a real problem. And the way I read him was, I'm not getting into this. I don't know, maybe this is a charitable read on the situation, but I'm not getting into this because I'm not going to play the game where you deflect from this much larger question. Even if that

wasn't his intention, I think that was the most disappointing part of this is the deflection from the larger question. I don't think that there's a journalistic high ground or a moral high ground in deflecting on that point. I wish Matt had an answer to the Modi question, and maybe he will. I'm sure you'll check in with him on that. But the bigger question here is obvious. Right. And it gives the kind of anti-Musk and anti-Twitter files, although I'm kind of like pro-Twitter files and anti-Musk. There's no overlap other than me in that category. But it gives people who want to dismiss it, now they're going to say, oh, that was debunked by Mehdi. Yes. Taibbi's reporting was picked apart.

But Mehdi would say, no, no, no, I didn't debunk the entire thing. What I did is I identified some errors, brought them to his attention, and he has agreed to correct those errors. But he's not going to say that the entire thing was, as a result, debunked. But the viewers are going to take that away. Watch Matt's mentions and replies on Twitter over the next couple weeks. It'll just be people throwing, like the Meti interview Adam saying, the whole Twitter, a whole Twitter file saying is completely discredited now, which is just a way for people

to not kind of grapple with these issues and instead do the easier thing, which is retreat into tribes. Yeah, I agree. And my big takeaway from it, honestly, was how hard it is to have good faith conversations in the cable format. It's interesting because you're looking at the screen and you see Matt with his podcast mic because he's got his SM7B and you see Mehdi

in the Tony MSNBC studio. And it's just like such a perfect juxtaposition of Matt, who I think is more used to these days, the podcast format, because MSNBC, as he explained on his sub stack last night, stopped having him after he threw some cold water on like Malcolm Nance's weird rantings and ravings about Russia collusion. But it's just really hard to have a good faith exchange and not retreat into camps and to really get to the substance. It's very difficult to do that in a cable news setting. And I think that's why people, especially younger people, are pulling away from it. Yeah, right. There's so much more time to breathe and to think. Right. Although if, I wonder if Matt had strategically gone in and been like, look, I'm with you on Modi, if that would have opened up space for that conversation to breathe more. It's interesting. But maybe not. Like, Mehdi is a knife fighter. I interviewed him for my podcast a couple weeks ago about his career

in debating. He's just an absolutely extraordinary debater, even if he's wrong. Like, I've said I wouldn't debate him about whether the world is round. It's too dangerous. Yeah, forget it. I'd come out and be like, maybe it's flat. I don't know. It's hard to say. Who can say? Well, big news out of Ukraine yesterday. The New York Times revealed that classified war documents, this is per their report, detailing secret American and NATO plans for building up the Ukrainian military ahead of a planned offensive against Russia were posted on social media channels, according to senior Biden administration officials. The Pentagon doesn't know who's behind the leak of this document. The documents seem to have been modified in certain parts, overstating American estimates of how many Ukrainians have died and then understating our estimates of how many Russian troops have been killed. Now, that, they say, could point to this being a disinformation effort on behalf of Russia.

Ryan, what do you make of this. Ukraine was already hesitant to share intelligence with the United States to the point where some of our military officials were saying we would know more about Russia's battle plans than Ukraine's at certain points in this war. This has to almost totally disrupt that once again. Yeah. So even though there are some figures that they're saying are inaccurate in here, the U.S. intelligence is also clearly basically authenticating what's out there circulating on, mostly on Telegram at this point. And what's important for Russia in there is that it's given a lot of details about American and Ukrainian capacity that they didn't have before. For instance, it lists, according to the Times, how long it takes basically a HIMARS unit to get worn down. These are those missiles that you see that are quite mobile and good at hitting those ammo depots or other locations, and then they can quickly move around. Russia didn't know how long they would last, how quickly

they could be replenished. Now they have that kind of information. They have information on the size of the trained battalions that are going to be coming. It looks like something like 60,000 mostly U.S.-trained Ukrainian troops will be ready, half of them roughly by March 1st, the other half by like April towards the end of April. Sorry, April 1st or the end of April, which also then gives a signal that this offensive that they've been talking about launching is coming. Or at least certainly the equipment material and the manpower is going to be delivered there. So it does give Russia some advantage and it gives, like you said, some psychological advantage because it'll

end up disrupting intelligence sharing further between Ukraine and Russia, but Ukraine and the United States. But it does seem like we are looking for another expansion, acceleration of the war over the next coming weeks and months. Absolutely. Yeah. And to your point, timetables for the delivery of weapons and troops, according to the Times, Ukrainian troop buildup numbers. And to be fair, this is a snapshot of intelligence from a few weeks ago. Yeah, March 1st. So things obviously could have changed, but military analysts and military officials are obviously nervous about this. That's the implication of their reaction is authenticating, essentially.

They've essentially authenticated it by their reaction. And they've also telegraphed, I think, some real concerns about the potential here. I wanted to ask you, in this broader context of how we've been expecting an offensive this spring, what does this look like in terms of how that now might play out? Does this, you know, is this really like severely hampering what the United States and NATO was expecting to be an offensive that could put Putin on his heels and change the trajectory of the war? I don't think so, because this has been a war where much, much has been out in the open. Yeah. Now, there's also been a lot of deflection like with the last offensive that Ukraine successfully pulled off

They had been signaling that they were headed toward a particular Spot down south instead they went up higher and caught caught Russia off guard there So but everybody knew there was an offensive that was brewing so that's still own That's still all that you basically know that there is There is a very well equipped well-trained offensive that's gonna be on its way, but anybody reading The New York Times, you know could have told you that or just following what's going on in Congress Like yeah, those billions of dollars are going somewhere like the all the weapons that we're shipping over there are for a purpose right and

You could also look at the United States' reactions to, like, China floating a peace plan. Like, absolutely not. And so if there wasn't some type of offensive plan, which we're publicly saying there is, they would have embraced peace plans. So, yeah, I think the best hope that people can have at this point is that this offensive will be the last one. So it says, this is from the Times, the modifications could point to an effort of disinformation by Moscow, the analyst said, but the disclosures in the original documents, which appear as photographs of charts of anticipated weapons deliveries,

troop and battalion strengths and other plans, represents a significant breach of American intelligence in the effort to aid Ukraine. When these get posted online with those alleged Russian modifications, other than some of the obvious things we've already listed, you know, psychological disruption of the intelligence relationship between the United States and Ukraine, what is, if it's Russia, what is the benefit of posting this to Telegram and other social media channels? Well, that's a good question. I would say that it is kind of morale. At this point, they presumably knew that the United States was aware of the breach. You know, it's March 1st it happened. So it's, you know, by now people have figured that out. And so the intel had been so one-sided on this war that I think Russia was kind of embarrassed and felt like a JV power.

And they've been called the JV power repeatedly. Right. And the United States calling their shot, like saying, like, look, you're going to remember the U.S. was like, you're going to invade on February 24th, 2022. And they're saying this in like January or something or December. And they're like, no, we're not. These are just training exercises. And then they moved their like invasion date by like 12 hours so that the U.S. wouldn't have like nailed the exact date that they invaded.

Plus, they keep locating these generals that then get blown up, along with all sorts of other, you know, intelligence coups that the United States then very kind of subtly sort of takes credit for, but not really. And so I would guess that after they had kind of sopped up as much of the intelligence as they could, the goal was then to kind of embarrass the United States and show that Russia is actually still in the game. They're still able to purloin some classified information out of this. And also, you want Ukraine, and this may be the best reason, you want Ukraine and the United States to know publicly that you had somebody in there so that it creates the animosity and the suspicion. Like that's, you know, the benefit of a mole inside an organization is almost, you know, the benefit is blowing the organization up and getting everybody pointing fingers at each other

almost more than it is getting the information out. So this will lead to a lot of finger pointing. And probably, yeah, it probably already did before we realized. Oh yes. Yes, yes, yes. Over in France. Yeah, another part of Europe. Yeah, yes. Yes, yes, yes. Over in France. Yeah, another part of Europe. Yeah, Black Rock getting its headquarters sacked by angry Parisians. I shouldn't be laughing at this.

Through the barricades. Let's put this B1 up here. Yeah, that's Black Rock headquarters. So tell me if this is correct, but I'm imagining the right pack in the United States being like, see, the French are with us on woke capitalism and ESG. They're furious about whatever the French BlackRock is doing when it comes to like it's like DEI programming. And they're burning it down just like we would. Was that the reaction among the right here when they saw BlackRock?

BlackRock is not going up in flames. It's kind of some deceptive reporting there because you see the flames, you see BlackRock headquarters. But actually it was a couple hundred union people were able to get into the building and led some chants and then basically left. So they did not burn down BlackRock. No, they actually, yeah, they didn't actually even, not yet, right. They didn't even get to Black Rock in the building. They were in the lobby or whatever. Right. And it's funny because in the Reuters report, Reuters had to disclose, they're like, we have an office in the same building. That's how we broke this news. We looked down in the lobby and like, oh, hmm. Well, to your point though, about BlackRock becoming this absolute lightning rod in the realignment that's happening in the West, I think the kind of new right Vance and Donald Trump saying, we're not touching entitlements, we're not touching Medicare, we're not touching Medicaid, we're not touching, you know, Social Security in the near future.

That actually goes kind of perfectly with what they're seeing unfold in France right now. Two-year retirement age bump, very, very unpopular in polling. I saw one that was like 58 percent of people disapproved of. I think it was Macron's move to sort of jam it through. That's also— Right, he bypassed the legislature because he didn't have the votes. Yeah, that's part of what's extremely contentious in this entire question is that, yeah, he didn't have the votes. He bypassed the legislature.

We're expecting a decision from the courts in France next week, I think on the 14th, who will say whether or not what Macron did was constitutional. Is that the right word? Yeah, they have like 100 constitutions, right? They do a new constitution every couple of years. So yesterday was like the 11th day of the protests. This is all about Macron's proposal to go from 62 to 64. He lost his majority in parliament last year. So that's part of the reason he did campaign on all of this. It's not like this was a secret plan of his, but wasn't able to get it through the legislature. And so I think when you combine the potential for BlackRock, and it's been going on for years, you can go and read reports for years, the suspicion that BlackRock is going to capitalize on something like, and actually in one second we'll play the clip,

but that BlackRock is going to capitalize on privatization of pensions. That you have this American company that's going to implement American austerity and not the robust protection system that France has and is very proud of. Yeah, and in America, when you combine it with the fact that, you know, this is a company that is led by elites, cultural leftist elites, it's a recipe for getting the right on board with leaving pensions alone.

There you go. All right, let's leave them alone. Yeah, let's play this clip that we've got from More Perfect Union. So my favorite sign in the protests so far, explaining why they were protesting the increase in the retirement age, was we're French for a reason. Which to me, actually, that's perfect. That makes perfect sense. Like you're fighting for a way of life. You are French for a reason, which to me, actually, that's perfect. That makes perfect sense. Like you're fighting for a way of life. You are French for a reason. And so why give that up? If you want to be German, be German. If you want to be something else, be something else. But they're French and

they're fighting for their identity. And it's weird also to see the push towards austerity and towards working longer hours and working longer in your life at the same time that we have all this talk about UBI and the productivity gains that are going to come from AI and they're going to just lead to this job apocalypse that's going to put everybody out of work. So which is it? Like, are we, do we have too few jobs or do we not have old people working long enough? Like we need to, we need to line up which way we're headed. And to me, if we're going to have fewer jobs in the future because the robots are going to take them all, then what do we need these old Frenchmen and Frenchwomen

working until they're 63 years old? Let them have their French retirement. Their French retirement. It sounds like a Wes Anderson movie. The French retirement. Yeah, let somebody enjoy this life. You know, that's the thing also. As Karan said, you know, that's the thing also.

Macron said, you know, the proposal, I think at some point he wants to be able to have carve-outs for people who can't work until they're 64, something like that. And again, it's just this idea that you have firms like BlackRock that have an obscene amount of capital and that are exploiting it, by the way, that are exploiting people in all of these myriad fashions around the world, not just in America, not just in France, that you would not be able to have a 62-year-old retirement when you're in a country that prides itself on having that net and working towards that net. It's very different, I think, than in the United States, where we have a different culture and the question of whether that's moral or not is different but the culture is a different place and that's part of what they're part of why BlackRock is a lightning rod in France is because of that is because they see it as a this exportation of American values on individualism and it's definitely different and good for them I mean you

are French for a reason not good for them storming the headquarters. Good for them. Good for them doing that. I meant good for them for saying we're French for a reason. Because I think that's a really healthy way to have consensus on what your country stands for and what your laws should reflect. And if you don't have a consensus, that's one of the biggest problems we have in America right now is we don't have consensus on the values our laws should reflect. And that's a huge problem for any country. So over in Tennessee, meanwhile, just a wild night last night in the legislature.

We could put up C1 here. So for people who haven't been following along here, basically three Democrats in the Tennessee House participated in a protest inside the Capitol for gun legislation. The Democratic lawmakers kind of chanted along with the protesters who had come in. Some of them were leading. They had megaphones and were leading the chants. And so, right. And the charge that they're getting hit with is speaking from the floor without recognition, basically. And so Republicans said that they're going to go ahead and expel these three Democrats. They held the votes. They expelled two of them. They did not have the votes to expel the third one.

I will let the viewers guess which ones of those are black, which ones of those are white. She hung on by one vote. I think they need 66 and she got 65. Yeah. And so that was Gloria Johnson who survived. I think we have a clip of her. Here's Gloria, who's still Representative Johnson right here, actually. Yes. And we're going to fight hard to get him back. Gloria, why do you feel like there was a difference in the out-of-the-court? fight hard to get him back. I will answer your question. It might have to do with the color of our skin. And so let's roll one more clip too here. This is from Phil Lewis, my old colleague at HuffPost from his Twitter feed. Roll C3 here. After that vote was held before the Johnson and Pearson votes. So what's your reaction to this?

Yeah, it's interesting because I think on the right, there's a lot of conversation now about whether to fight fire with fire. And then you get into this whole, like, who started it, chicken or egg conversation about who actually ratcheted up, who broke the norm first. And I don't know that there's really any satisfying answer to that question in different cases. But the right has, I think, been cheering this expulsion, saying, you would do it to us. We all know how the media would react if a bunch of conservatives, you know, in opposition to abortion did that. We all know how the media would depict it. So get them the heck out of here. And I mean, 65 people voted to expel Gloria Johnson, too.

I mean, that's not a small number. That's a lot of votes for expulsion of three people. And they actually all had different final tallies of how many people voted to expel them. The argument is that the two gentlemen were using megaphones. They were part of the people. I've seen that argument circulated by Tennessee Republicans that they were the people that were actually leading chance with megaphones and extra disruptive. That said, I never liked the idea of

fighting fire over fire. It's never, I don't love it constitutionally. And, you know, I don't love it legally in the system. I'm not a huge fan of it. Yeah. And my, my objection is that it's not the same fire. So I've seen a lot of people saying like, these are insurrectionists and therefore, you know, they need to be expelled, clearly making January 6th references. Uh, and, but no members of Congress were expelled as a result of January 6th. No members of Congress faced even a censure vote. Although members of Congress weren't leading January 6th. No members of Congress faced even a censure vote. Although members of Congress weren't leading January 6th. I mean, like the picture of Josh Hawley even is completely misleading. They weren't.

They weren't like out there with megaphones. There's a complete argument that it was ginned up by reckless statements by members of Congress. I'm not disputing that, but I think it's different. Granted, I agree with you. It's not apples to apples, but it is different when you're leading what is a disruptive protest. I don't think what happened at the Tennessee Statehouse was an insurrection. Right, because, and to back up a little bit,

I remember when January 6th happened, thinking that this was going to change the way that protest was going to be either done or responded to around the U.S. Capitol and other state capitals. that this was gonna change the way that protest was going to be either done or responded to around the US Capitol and other state capitals. You know, you and I covered the response to the Kavanaugh hearings. You had the Hart Building, which is one of the Senate office buildings right down the street from here,

just completely filled with protesters every single day. And those protesters would go into the hallways and they would kind of buttonhole members of Congress and sometimes yell at them. It's civil disobedience. And there was that viral moment with Jeff Flake where he's like, they're basically blocking his elevator from leaving and pouring their hearts out about the sexual assaults that they had gone through, these two women. And you can see Flake listening to them. It was this moment where civil disobedience had kind of transformed itself into civil society, into an actual conversation. And then Flake goes to the hearing and says, I'm not actually ready to vote for Kavanaugh. I want a one-week delay so that the FBI can investigate this. This really, really historic moment of people pressuring the Senate. And I remember thinking.

I don't think there's any sincerity behind that decision, but yes. No, but like it, he felt pressure. He definitely did. And so after January 6th, I was, I started thinking like that type of thing is going to be treated much differently. Because nobody, none of the Capitol Police I spoke to, none of the senators, thought that any of the people that were protesting Kavanaugh were going to hurt anybody. Or were going to kind of disobey the Capitol Police. Like, they would often get arrested, but it would be that kind of ceremonial arrest where it's like, all right, everybody line up and do your civil disobedience arrest now. And they would all put their hands behind their back or they would get, you know, carried out. But you didn't have people swinging giant American flags. You didn't have people who had bear spray. You

didn't have people, you know, poking with bats, you know. The bats were not flying. And, you know, the January 6th protesters were not, like, there to commit civil disobedience to make a point. Oh, yeah, it was a riot. Right, yes. Yeah, it was a riot. But I assumed, and I think Tennessee shows, that they're going to respond to even civil disobedience protests as if they're insurrections. Well, that's a really interesting point because one of the arguments here is that they had censure available. They could have censured all these lawmakers instead of expelled them.

They broke the rules, broke decorum, shouldn't have done this. You have a censure vote like that. Exactly. And you can kick them off committees. Like there are things you can do short of telling this these voters that your person can no longer represent you. You know, and the thing though with civil disobedience is that it is always this idea that you're going to get punished. You expect to get punished when the laws are broken, because we do have the rule of law. And when people break laws, even in pursuit of a righteous

cause, it's not as though people are, in every case of civil disobedience, there's some cases where people don't deserve to be arrested because they're not actually breaking laws. But in cases where you do actually break laws, even in pursuit of a noble cause, you expect the rule of law to be applied to you. That's why you use that. Right, it's the letter from the Birmingham jail, not letter from the hotel room I went to after the protest was over. And that's why you use that particular mechanism of protest. And that's one thing. So the punishment, then there's this question of whether the punishment fits the crime, the expulsion punishment fits the breach of decorum when there's a censure option available. I just think right now we're at a time when we're all like people, I mean, I'm on the right. People

are right now absolutely furious by the way that they are treated. There was a really interesting exchange between one of the guys who got expelled and one of the Republican members of the House who said, you called me a brown face to one of the guys that ended up getting expelled. And he said, well, I said, you put a brown face, a brown mask or something on white supremacy. This is really nasty. I mean, that's a level of, that is an accusation that I think you can understand why it is pushing so deep and pushing on people so deeply. And that is a really vitriolic and nasty thing to say. And I'm not saying it doesn't come from both sides. I am though though, saying that the, I think, sympathy for people who are also behaving in really, I think, abhorrent ways in certain cases, that I don't like. And that's the double

standard is exactly what has pushed Republicans to the point where they're like, screw it, we're expelling them. And the tit for tat then raises the question of, well, what else should people be expelled for? And you've got Representative Jones here making this speech, which stick around for the end of this one. You're going to be shocked at where it goes. For years, one of your colleagues who was an admitted child molester sat in this chamber. No expulsion. One member sits in this chamber who was found guilty of domestic violence. No expulsion. One member sits in this chamber who was found guilty of domestic violence. No expulsion.

We had a former speaker sit in this chamber who is now under federal investigation. No expulsion. We have a member still under federal investigation. No expulsion. We have a member still under federal investigation. No expulsion. We had a member pee in another member's chair in this chamber. No expulsion. In fact, they're in leadership. Yeah, so we've got to talk about decorum and the rules of the House floor. Maybe they never bothered to write down, you cannot pee in another member's chair. It's not enumerated.

But I think that it is understood as a common rule. You shouldn't do it. You shouldn't do that. And this was on Republican violence. It turned out I researched this incident. You should be expelled for doing that. And this was Republican on Republican violence. It turned out I researched this incident. You should be expelled for doing that. I mean, kind of. Yeah. But his point is they weren't. Right. And you have because Republicans control the House right now or control the legislature right now. Right. And then he also mentions domestic violence, the pedophilia,

et cetera. And those, you know, you could go to the House of Representatives. You got a in someone's chair, you should be expelled. That's just so obvious. And that rule applies to both of us, Ryan. Oh, man. And to you, Sagar and Crystal. What about a warning? First you get a warning. You get three strikes.

I was going to just finish, though, by saying the double standard thing is a real problem, not just for the right, but also for the left, because it's what creates more. And this is a serious point. It's what creates more January sixes. People feel like they're just getting trampled on over and over again. They're going to start justifying their protests of bad behavior. They're going to start justifying bad behavior as a protest of bad behavior. And you can go all the way down and you can always pull back more layers and do the chicken and egg thing. This person started it. Well, it goes back to Newt Gingrich. No, it goes back to Barry Goldwater. No, it goes back to FDR. Like you can keep saying who broke the first norm. It goes back to Abraham Lincoln. You know, they might keep going. But at the end of the day,

you're just going to get more bad behavior the more that we're incapable of controlling ourselves. So I think that applies in both cases here. And this isn't over. Now, in order to fill these seats, the people who are responsible for filling them have reportedly are going to send back representatives Pearson and Jones as the... Yes, special election. Well, I think first there'll be appointments. We'll see exactly what the details are. But you haven't heard the last of these guys. You can kick them out, but the voters and the local officials can send them back. And Republicans just elevated their profile to the next level.

I mean, these are now national political figures because of all of this. Right, and they elevated them to hero status, people will remember that legendary and horrifying story where Preston Brooks, the South Carolina congressman, almost beat Charles Sumner, abolitionist, to death, broke his cane. A bunch of people mailed him canes. They were about to boot him out of Congress. He quit. They held a special election. He ran for that special election and he won. Voters sent him back to Congress. There you go. It doesn't end.

No. Speaking of people lashing out at the establishment with increasingly questionable means that are nevertheless somewhat understandable, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has announced that he is a candidate. He actually filed papers to run for the Democratic nomination for presidency in 2024. He joins Marianne Williamson and President Joe Biden in that race. So three declared candidates now, two of whom are RFK Jr. and Marianne Williamson.

Now, RFK Jr. has really always been a figure of the kind of fringe left, I would say. And by the way, if what happened to him happened to my family, I would probably be on the fringes of politics, too. I'd have zero trust of anybody or anything. That said, he's really always been a figure of the left. He's made a lot of relationships with more people on the right, and I guess the right and maybe sort of the anti-establishment center to the extent that exists, over vaccines, over COVID, over all of that. But he's sort of new to those circles. I imagine you followed him for a while because he is, he has been a figure of the left. What do you make of this?

I mean, and he kind of represents the evolution of the left to the right, or a giant segment of the left that has gone. The hippie to Q pipeline that you mentioned? Yeah, the hippie to Q pipeline. Absolutely. He is kind of the personification of the hippie to Q pipeline. Yeah, like you said, in the 2000s, he became kind of a leading kind of anti-vaxxer. But also environmentalist. That's the thing with RFK Jr. You were always going to get a ton of great positions,

and then a ton of ones where you're just like, whoa. Yeah. He's not Q, though. Where'd he come up with that one? No, he's not Q. Although his brother is, not his brother, his cousin, JFK Jr., right? Isn't he like the guy at the center? Like he's going to come back to life or something?

No, they believe he is. There are Q theories that he is still alive, yeah. Well, then Q is going to be, I'm sure they're going to be all over the fact that he's running for president then. His cousin's running for president? I don't know. That's a worthy question.

Maybe they're like, oh wait, maybe we were wrong. It wasn't JFK Jr., it was RFK Jr. That's going to come back and save the country. But yeah, like there was that there was that left wing anti-vaccine movement back in the 2000s. father assassinated, you know, he doesn't believe Sarhan Sarhan did it and there's plenty of people you know who agree with him and think that this was that there was a conspiracy around that obviously there was some type of conspiracy around his uncle getting killed and so to watch that to live to live with that and also all the trauma trauma that a Kennedy goes through. Yeah. Like there's so many. His cousin died in a plane crash.

So many Kennedys, you know, dying before. His own wife. Their time. Brutal. But he's kind of gone around the bend at this point. Right. To the point where when he's right, you're like, that's awesome, he's right. But then you're like, is he right? Because he got lucky this time? Because in order to embrace him when he's right, you have to really work hard to

ignore a lot of the things where he's so obviously wrong about stuff. I wonder if this actually really gets establishment Democrats nervous now that you have both Marianne Williamson and RFK Jr., people who are charismatic and interesting, who staked out populist positions, I think, in really sometimes very interesting ways. That's to your point about RFK Jr., sometimes just so horribly off base, other times really on target and with research that you aren't going to read anywhere else. And eventually some people will cover it. But you really have a hard time finding a lot of that information. And that's not to say it's always right. But going to be traveling around South Carolina and New Hampshire. Does that make our life easier or does that make the president really have to start answering some tougher questions than he'd like?

I don't know the answer to that. I think it is still early because he just filed papers yesterday. I was really surprised that he filed papers. I don't know. Were you surprised by that? I was actually surprised he he filed papers. I don't know. Were you surprised with that? I was actually surprised he filed as a Democrat. Were you? I mean, even though the Kennedys are obviously the most Democratic family in the country, when I heard he was running, I was like, which party? It would have made a lot more sense to me if he did the Tulsi,

where he came over and he's like, I didn't leave the Democratic Party, the Democratic Party left me kind of thing. He might be less of a Democrat than Tulsi at this point. He probably is, yet he's running in the Democratic primary. And I actually think that that hurts Marianne Williamson because she's going to get lumped in with him. That's true. As these like two loopy people. He's kind of a loopy dude. She's not right. Like, right. She, she gets mocked like that by the white house and by a lot of them, a lot of the corporate media. But if you actually listen to what she's saying, it's the kind of thing that appeals to like 80% of the country. Right. And it's, it's not actually the kind of orbs and

crystals stuff that, that, that is her caricature, But having RFK in the race is going to further allow the media to paint the opponents of Biden as these circus people. Anti-vax, crazy people. Right. But meanwhile, which she isn't though. Right. No, absolutely not. Although I think she was skeptical in the 2000s, right? We'll look that up. But that that will be the Biden line no matter what. That'll be that. You're absolutely right. They'll just try to. But again, like I don't know if that's entirely helpful for them to just because RFK Jr. is going to get media. Marianne is getting media like that. It's not going to be entirely helpful for them to just brush it all aside.

And the other question is, is it good for Marianne Williamson and for RFK Jr. that they're both in the race? Because does that force Biden to debate now that there's two of them? And one of them, by the way, is a Kennedy. I don't know. If they can get to the debate stage, Joe Biden is going to be the nominee unless he drops out. I think he'll skip the debates unless he's under a lot of pressure. Exactly. Williamson is, if you look at polls among, I was talking to Crystal about this the other day, if you look at polls among young people, she's doing extraordinarily well and is insanely popular on TikTok, actually. Yeah, she really is. Yeah. If the election were held on TikTok, she'd beat Biden two to one. But that's why I think like, yeah, if I were Biden, I wouldn't want to be on a debate stage if I don't have to.

I'm the sitting president and I wouldn't want to put up with this from a tactical perspective. It's not it's always going to be more helpful to not confront criticism publicly just from a strictly strategic perspective. That said, at a certain point, if people start really catching traction because nobody is into Joe Biden, and that's true, it's not like people are like, oh, I can't wait for Joe Biden's second term. Democratic voters are just super stoked about Joe Biden's second term. Then there's energy out there that can be captured by people who are putting in the time and going to different states, talking to different voters, and talking about issues that Joe Biden doesn't want to talk about. CNN had found in 2012, she had said she could see both sides of the issue and agonized as a mother over the decision to vaccinate her children. Her guest said she knew a lot of people who had vaccinated and then got an autism, which she said, yes, absolutely. That was a big debate back in the

2000s among, and you read so much about it, you heard so much about it, that there were a lot of parents who were like, who were genuinely concerned. Like, is this something I should worry about? So much so that the Pediatric Association actually created this kind of timetable. Instead of giving kids all the vaccines at these certain certain times they would stretch them out. And the Pediatric Association was basically like, we don't have any evidence that this is necessary, but there's so much skepticism among parents that we're doing this to make them feel better about it. See, that is a great place to camp out on in this point because nobody would do that today.

It is, if you- Today they would just be dug in. If you're- You're crazy. Right. You're nuts. Get all your jabs right now. And there's less trust in media now and there's less trust in institutions now. And so like both of us are vaccinated. And I've always said I hope my family gets vaccinated too. But people may disagree with that. The point is, if you live in a low trust environment and you just lump everybody in and say, I'm not dealing with you because you're a conspiracy theorist, you're a crazy person, when they have good faith questions that they just want answers to, and instead of

meeting them where they are and saying, we're going to work this out, how can we make you feel more comfortable? It's just, you're an idiot. You should be ostracized from society. And that has really pushed us to dangerous places. And I think now we're more likely to see that dynamic play out in the Democratic primary. Well, let's check in on Speaker Kevin McCarthy. That's right. On his way in, he was saying he was going to do just like Nancy Pelosi did. He was going to parachute into Taiwan if he had to, and he's going to meet with the Taiwanese leader. China freaked out and said, you better not. So what are we doing? So what do we have instead? Yeah. So he ended up doing a meeting at the Reagan library with the Taiwanese president instead of actually going to Taiwan. Now,

there's an argument that that's actually a really smart move because the threat of escalation has mounted since Pelosi took her visit to Taiwan, which was already quite risky. You know, I'm, of course, somebody who thinks we need to be much tougher on China and that the threat to Taiwan is greater and more immediate than most of the media is telling us or is willing to admit, even though the media is generally in favor of military intervention. In this case, the China connections, I think, are a complicating factor. But Nancy Pelosi then comes out and says she supports Kevin McCarthy's meeting at the Reagan Library with the Taiwanese president, who's made some different stops in the United States on this trip. I think it was at the Hudson Institute here in the district, and then went out to the Reagan Library and had this meeting with Kevin

McCarthy. It pretty much proceeded as you would expect it to. But there's an interesting note of bipartisanship when you have Nancy Pelosi actually offering active support to Kevin McCarthy. And we saw a similar measure of bipartisanship when it came to the TikTok hearings against China, bipartisanship against China. We're starting to see this coalescing of bipartisan anger directed at China, and that could be channeled in some really bad ways. That could be channeled in some potentially important ways, but it could definitely be channeled in bad ways. We've already seen an example of this with the Restrict Act that we covered here last week, a bill with support from Mark Warner and 10 other Democrats, along with 11 Republicans, including John Thune, that is just an

incredible Patriot Act-style power grab in the interest of curtailing TikTok's influence, but doesn't actually mention TikTok once in the bill. And that was proposed and started gaining traction despite the fact that there were a couple of clean TikTok ban bills actually on the floor. And so we see where some of that bipartisan stuff can start to snowball as people start to coalesce in their opposition to China for different reasons, you can start going in some really counterproductive directions. Now, this is one layer of a dynamic that's playing out on Capitol Hill right now that is really, really interesting. This is one layer of sort of establishment bipartisanship. Let's turn to the anti-establishment bipartisanship

that's coalescing right now as well. Politico has a super interesting article out this week. E2 here. Yeah, this is a good article about how the Freedom Caucus and Justice Dems are starting to talk more about the war power, curtailing war powers, getting rid of the AMF. But it doesn't stop there. I think that's what's really important about this Politico article. It's really framed as the right-left, it says it right there on the screen, the right-left alliance on Iraq war powers. And then they go on to say, but House liberals and conservatives are linking up on other issues too. That's an important point. It's not just war powers. And then they go on to say, but House liberals and conservatives are linking up on other issues too. That's an important point. It's not just war powers. You're seeing this anti-establishment bipartisanship coalesce in opposition to things like the Restrict Act, like these heavy handed efforts to delegate tons of power over the Secretary of Commerce

in an effort allegedly to ban TikTok, which is about so much more than banning TikTok. And also, it gets super interesting, I believe Rashida Tlaib is working with some Republicans on surveillance. And that is, we've covered that here a couple of times, there's a reauthorization that will be coming up. It's later this year, right, Ryan? It's like December, September, something like that, reauthorization of surveillance powers that absolutely demands, from the perspective of a conservative, attention from Republicans. It's a very easy case from progressives. And so when you see that happening, if you're Kevin McCarthy, you're going to be really nervous about that slim, slim majority that you have

and the slim majority of support that you were able to get among your Republican colleagues precisely because if they have the numbers to stick together with Justice Democrats and with progressives in the House, they can throw their weight around in a way that makes Kevin McCarthy, for instance, change his position and give way in the establishment position on war powers, to give way in the establishment position on surveillance. There are some really big issues. And this is the democracy in action that so many people claim to champion. They love democracy. Well, this is it. This is the actual, this is the beauty of our design, is that when you have divided government like this, you are finding reasons to collaborate.

And that's going to put a lot of pressure on Kevin McCarthy. And I don't think he's blind to that. I think he understands completely that he now has a lot of pressure. I'm sure this Politico article circulated in McCarthy's office because it makes a really serious point that in the months ahead, he could find himself really negotiating, playing hardball with people who don't have much incentive to get along with him after a certain point and have more incentive, for instance, on an issue like the Iraq war powers that are still, for instance, on an issue like the Iraq war powers that are still on the books and an issue like surveillance that's extremely easy to take to Republican voters and talk a populist narrative to, and rightfully so because these are bad policies.

They have a lot of incentive, no incentive to just settle down and cooperate and collaborate. Now, Kevin McCarthy is very skilled at negotiating with people that he may sort of ideologically be on the other side of in his own party. But this makes life, I think, really difficult for him. Ryan, you may know more about what's happening or what could happen on the left in this issue. And I know we sort of swerved from the point on Taiwan, but I think it's an interesting sort of combination here. We have the establishment bipartisanship and the anti-establishment bipartisanship crossing each other kind of at the same time. I was really surprised in the Politico article that some justice stems were saying,

hey, we can agree on things. Because for a while, both on the left and the right, it was toxic to even acknowledge that you might have things to work together on. And it represents a thaw that set in on January 6th. The kind of left, lefty activists who had been trying, trying to create some of these coalitions over the last several years and had successfully created them on, like you said, some civil liberties issues, some surveillance stuff, some war powers issues, were deeply nervous that in the wake of January 6th, most of their interlocutors that they'd been effectively able to work with on, say, war powers or civil liberties, also were the ones who were the most vocal or among the most vocal that stopped the steal and

voting. Or at least not certifying. Right. And voting not to certify the election. Which, by the way, is something that sort of fringe people have. It's always it's kind of like a tradition in the last 20 years. Like you have Jamie Raskin doing it in 2016. And so I think Republicans didn't realize how serious what they were doing was.

That's true. But the vote was held after the riot. Agreed. At that point, they could have been like, okay, we're stepping over blood and glass to get to the chamber. We could not cast this vote. But politics were what they were and they did what they did.

And that made it so that it was very difficult to get any Democrats to say, okay, yes, I'll co-sponsor a bill with this guy. But the fact that they're able to do it now, I think, represents the distance that we've come since January 6th. And that people are now able to say, you know what, I disagreed with that strongly, as strongly as you could possibly disagree with anything.

But we agree on this particular issue. And so that's more important, and we're going to push ahead on it. And Roy put it well in this political article. He says, this is Chip Roy, a Texas Freedom Caucus member. He says, sometimes the political spectrum is more of a circle than a line. At some point, you might have sometimes differing motives or different ranges, but you end up at the same conclusion and that's okay. That's kind of how our system works. And if you can get back to that, then yes, that can create headaches for McCarthy, especially when he has just a couple vote margin. These headaches would

be good for the American people. So that's the positive news. These are good headaches. All right, Ryan, you're going to be talking about China and Saudi Arabia. What have you got? Yes, and we've got, we actually have some breaking news out of this entire, so yesterday, China announced that they had reached a further deal with Saudi and Iran. Embassies are opening up. There was a press conference with the kind of Saudi foreign minister and the Iranian foreign minister in China where they invited each other. They're opening up direct flights now between Riyadh and Tehran. It's a real step forward. And at the same time that they were making these announcements, you started hearing word that there was going to be a ceasefire extended in the Yemen war.

And this is all tied in because the Houthis are talked about in the U.S. media as basically a cat's paw for Iran, but they're not. They're an independent actor, but they're only independent in the sense that they could continue to get, you know, weapons and supplies, you know, mostly from Iran. And so if Iran were to cut that off, that has an influence over the Houthis. So Iran can influence the Houthis, even though they can't basically order them around. At the same time, the Saudis and the Emiratis are basically running the war on the other side of that. Now, there has been a ceasefire collapsed or expired in October of last year, but hostilities hadn't picked up again. The reporting that we were getting yesterday and now breaking news is that the war may actually be coming to an end, which would just be a huge kind of gift to humanity.

Next would be the rebuilding of Yemen. But, you know, the people of Yemen have faced just unspeakable horrors over the last seven years or so since Saudi Arabia launched this war after the Houthis took over Sana'a. But so this is from the news organization Al Mayadeen, which is basically a kind of Lebanese pro-Houthi organization. Yesterday, the Wall Street Journal, and we can put this Wall Street Journal clip up here. Wall Street Journal was and we can put this Wall Street Journal clip up here. Wall Street Journal was reporting that Saudi officials were saying that they were going to extend the ceasefire to the end of 2023. Houthi officials in this article were denying that that was the case, but you could see that things were moving in the right direction. So to have a pro-Houthi organization putting this news

up now is extraordinarily hopeful. And so at the same time that you're having the Wall Street Journal report that the blockade is going to be lifted, you're going to be able to get, they simply said batteries, fertilizer, like the basics of life. Like life in Sana'a, life across Houthi-controlled Yemen has just been Mad Max style because of the inability to import basic goods. Just a horrifying existence. And so to see this lifted and then to see kind of a pro-Houthi news outlet to say that, yes, there actually is almost an agreement to end the war

represents a huge step forward. And it is truly remarkable that the United States is only involved in this in the sense that it's been supporting Saudi's war effort. Like China comes out of this as the peacemaker, as the one who is responsible for finally finishing this off. And the United States couldn't because they were such a partisan belligerent in the war. How are they going to take a role in kind of mediating this situation? And so great news, if it holds, that's great news, but also a real kind of chink in the U.S. imperial armor if China is starting to be seen around the world as somebody that can end conflicts

and end conflicts that are fueled by the United States. This is huge. Yeah, I mean, it's absolutely huge. And that question of the geopolitical positioning of the United States, obviously the first and foremost concern is for the people of Yemen, who, as you say, have suffered immensely. But second to that, the geopolitical positioning of the United States is China knows exactly what's doing. If you listen to the way Xi Jinping talks about his ambitions for China's role on the world stage, this is exactly it. This is exactly what they want to do is replace the United States as the global leader, as the one nation that everybody is looking to for leadership and guidance on the world stage because of obviously our military and our money and our economy and all of that.

Yeah, I mean, that's when you have them stepping into the vacuum that we are now leaving in the way though, I mean, Afghanistan was huge news in the White House briefing room yesterday. What happened in Afghanistan is because we no longer can do basic tasks of governing, whether it's in the military, whether it's in social services, we can't do it because we are hampered. And this is an argument, by the way, that China makes. We are hampered by our divisions. Our divisions and our sort of corporate capture, to your point about support for Saudi Arabia, make it really difficult for us to come in. Now, it's much easier for China to come in because they don't have some of these pre-existing deals, relationships, etc., which is both, I think, a blessing and a curse, but in some way makes it easier to just

sort of step into that vacuum. That said, our differences are surmountable. We don't have to be this divided. We can come out of it. I think our divisions are much better than a unity brought about by censorship in the countries that are purporting to have the moral high ground here. And I'm talking, of course, about China. I'd rather have our division than their censorship and ostensible unity behind that censorship regime. But I think if they start becoming, they've also tried to negotiate peace deals in Ukraine. The more that this is successful, I mean, the more that this is successful, the more that the exact sort of plans of Xi Jinping are starting to really be set in motion. And so, and we're still digesting exactly what

this news means and will mean for Yemen, but just to read from a little bit of Al-Mayadeen, and this is their English version, so it's not perfect, but the sources pointed out that the Saudi vision for the solution welcomes extending the truce in Yemen for another year in agreement with Sana'a, adding that, quote, the vision provides for extending the truce in exchange for handing over employee salaries, unifying the currency, and opening the port of al-Hudaydah completely. And those were the big sticking points that the Houthis wanted. They want their government officials to be able to be paid. Teachers have been going for years without getting paid. The Saudi was saying, okay, fine, we'll do that, but we're not paying your military

and your police because we're at war with you. But our military and our police are part of our government, and this is our money. And so this seems to be a complete capitulation from Saudi Arabia, because I've seen elsewhere reported that military and police salaries would be included in this. Also, opening up this port completely is crucial. It's the main port of entry into Yemen. And like with our baggage, we would not have been able to... Oh, no, no way. And it says, the sources explain that an extension of the truce with these new conditions will be followed by an official Saudi announcement of the end of the war and the

cessation of its interference in Yemen, which means though that there will still be kind of some forces that Saudi Arabia had been supporting in Yemen that will likely continue to fight. Where they're going to get the arms and the ammunition remains to be seen. How long that fight lasts also remains to be seen. There'll have to be negotiations there to work that out. We'll see if the Emiratis want to get involved in that. So it's not completely over. But if Saudi Arabia gets out, that's it. There is no path for this kind of rump faction that Saudi was supporting without just Saudi Arabia constantly funneling money their way. The official Yemeni government, as recognized by Saudi Arabia is basically like in a hotel in Riyadh. And what Saudi Arabia is saying is like, yeah, you guys are no longer the government. We're done with this. I mean, China, Iran, Russia, that is an

alliance that I think is we're seeing in time, start to tighten and grow and peace is great. There's just no, if you're upset about this peace, we can have a separate conversation about that. But peace is, should be the ultimate goal of, that is the goal of international relations is peace. But, you know, behind this peace, I think is a dark growing alliance that's not good for the world at large. Right. Which, you know, if we didn't want the world turning against us, maybe we could have not been so hostile and cynical toward the rest of the world. There's one other line in this story I want to read because it shows just the fundamental lack of legitimacy of the quote unquote Yemeni government that Saudi Arabia was supporting.

They write, the sources stated that Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, informed the Presidential Leadership Council, that's the fake kind of Yemeni government in Riyadh, of its decision to end the war and conclude the Yemeni file permanently. So they walked over to the hotel. Yeah, the war is over and your file's closed. It's closing the file. Yeah, the war is over and your file's closed. Yeah, checkouts at 10. Ryan, we have a really good guest in this week. You'll be introducing the listeners to her and the viewers to her in just a little bit too. But maybe tell us a bit about what we're going to talk about. Yeah, this is exciting. Eliza Orland will be joining us. She ran against Alvin Bragg as a progressive. Man of the week. As man of the week in the election in which, you know, the big kind of campaign issue, one of the campaign issues was, are you going to get Trump? How are you going to get Trump? Now, because it was for the people

who actually live in Manhattan, a lot of it was about crime and criminal justice reform and who, you know, who, who is better on criminal justice reform. Right. But so, you know, Eliza is a public defender. She's still a public defender. She's, you know, known Bragg for a long time, obviously, you know, got to, got to know him pretty well during the campaign. So we're going to ask her for her take on the charges, for her take on Bragg. And as a side note, her previous career was as a reality TV star. People who are like my age would remember her from the early 2000s because she was like on the cover of all the magazines because she was like winning Survivor or like the top in Survivor. And then she got brought back for like the Survivor reunion or whatever.

So if you're in, if you were in that 2000s kind of reality world, you'll be like, do I recognize her? Like, yes, you do. You do recognize her. So after her reality TV star turn, she went to become a public defender. It would have been quite wild if she had won and you had a former reality TV star prosecuting a former reality TV star who was president. That would have been something. So stick around for Eliza next. Eliza, thanks for joining us. You're joining us from Italy, is that right? Taking a

rare vacation? It is. What a week to be away, huh? For sure. So what's it been like for you to follow this case? Let's start with the anticipation. What was your guess that that the prosecutor Bragg was going to bring forward? And did what he actually brought forward kind of match with what you expected? Well, I mean, if you think back to when he took office and Pomerantz and Dunn very loudly quit that office because Alvin wasn't pursuing the Trump prosecution. I think if we're rewinding that far back, our anticipation, a lot of us and myself included, was that Trump might not be prosecuting Donald Trump at all. So that was interesting. And then when it seemed as though he was starting to bring in witnesses, it really did seem as though this was all going to stem from the Stormy Daniels hush money payments by Michael Cohen. And so it was surprising to see the Karen McDougal and Dorman incidents included within the falsifying business records and the first degree indictment.

Remind us about that, because that's sort of been memory hold a little bit. But I remember that incident that some of the top prosecutors said, this guy is just not serious about going after Trump. So we're out of here. So were they wrong or did he change his mind or did their quitting kind of pressure him? What's the sense among kind of the lawyer legal community in Manhattan about how you went from that moment to the moment that we saw this week? Well, I think people who know Mark Pomerantz and what he did, it was pretty clear how sanctimonious and obnoxious and frankly racist he was being in his criticisms of Alvin. And he decided that if he didn't get to run the show,

if anyone was going to have any oversight into what he was doing, especially a Black man, he was not going to stand by and take that. And then he basically decided to do this self-promotional book tour, jeopardizing the investigation. And now he's facing the repercussions of that in that he was just subpoenaed, I believe, and is going to have to deal with that. But I think that Alvin was always very serious about this, but he took the case very seriously and he wasn't going to rush into it. And I think that, you know, we may never know what exactly had gone on prior to his taking office in terms of when Cy Vance was in charge. But it doesn't seem as though the prosecution was seriously going to go forward until Alvin took office. And so I think Alvin took his time, was measured and careful,

and really considered which charges he would be able to bring and prove beyond a reasonable doubt. And that is why we're seeing the indictment that we see. What do you make of how Bragg has sort of led all of this or like as the leader of his office and as somebody who was looking into this office, who ran for this office, what do you make of how he's conducted himself as a leader over the course of the last, I mean, I don't know, not just several days, but several weeks, several months. You know, do you think he's handled all of this well? Do you think, you know, there were unnecessarily, do you think there were any blunders along the way? Like if you had to grade him in terms of the Trump indictment, where would you land?

Well, if we're only talking about the Trump indictment, you know, that I think remains to be seen. But I think he made some massive blunders in taking office and certainly has not run that office in the way that I would have. I think that the fact that he did not clean house at all, that the only people who left that office are people who up and quit and he did not fire a single person means that if he even was serious about making real changes, he's had a really uphill battle in doing so, given that the entire administration has basically remained the same as it was under Cy Vance. So I have a lot of gripes with how Alvin is running that office, but not necessarily with regards to the Trump administration., I mean, the Trump prosecution.

The Trump indictment has come in for a lot of criticism from people who say that the attempt to raise it from a misdemeanor into a felony by saying that it's, you know, in furtherance of an additional crime runs into all sorts of problems, one of them being that one of the crimes is, you know, an FEC violation, which wasn't actually charged. The other, that it might not be even in the federal jurisdiction. And for people who really wanted to see Trump, you know, hit with something that was a slam dunk, is this really the best that could have been done? Was, you know, was there more criminal behavior from that, that could have been charged? As you were running for office and you were contemplating, like, OK, how would I set up a prosecution? What kind of holes do you think you would have dug that might have been left here?

Well, the interesting thing about bringing forward a prosecution is that you're the person who has all of the evidence. So even when being asked about it while campaigning, I could say, listen, if I believe Trump committed crimes in Manhattan, I will prosecute him. I will not be afraid to go after him despite his power and everything else. But I don't think that anyone aside from the people within that office know what the exact evidence is at this point. So I think that, are there other crimes that were committed? I don't know. Maybe. But these are clearly the ones that Alvin feels are the strongest to go forward on. And I don't think that he would have gone forward on these charges if he didn't feel he had a very strong case because of how thoughtful and measured and cautious he is as a person. I think that in terms of whether or not

there are some of these legal arguments that are being made by attorneys who've never practiced in New York State or who feel like weighing in on this, saying that, oh, well, some of the underlying crimes might be federal. He might have, you know, the preemption doctrine might apply. That is not at all for me. I think that, first of all, Alvin hasn't had to, nor has he said exactly what those underlying crimes are. Could they be New York state tax offenses? Yes. Could they be state election law violations? Yes. Could they be federal campaign finance violation? Also, yes. And I don't think that there will be any issue, having heard some of the arguments on the other side, that those are valid underlying crimes to go forward on. Again, this will be up to a jury.

This will be a question of fact for a jury to determine. And if the jurors feel that the misdemeanor conduct was proven, but the underlying crime wasn't, they could still convict on what's called a lesser included offense. And so they could convict on the misdemeanor, even though the top charges are felonies. The big thing that we've heard from the right, and Emily might have more thoughts on this, has been around the George Soros backed prosecutor. But I want to unpack that a little bit, because as you remember, I covered this campaign as well. And I do remember when the Color of Change PAC, that's the organization, I think it spent about $4 million in the entire year, and about a million of that was from Soros. They did eventually endorse Alvin Bragg. They did spend on his behalf.

So as an opponent of him, what was your sense of, A, kind of how important was the Color of Change pack? And B, did people understand that as, oh, this is the Soros kind of world getting behind him? Or was this Color of Change, which had Soros, some Soros money? So if I remember correctly, all of that kind of happened at once. It was the New York Times endorsement, the color of change endorsement, which was going to include that PAC spending and a couple of other things that fell in Alvin's favor, and it felt like a domino effect. So it's

hard to say that there was any one thing that really determined the course of the election. But I think that in that moment, when all of that perfect storm of endorsements came raining down, and therefore a ton of spending along with it, that it certainly helped Alvin get elected. But I don't really remember people saying, oh, this is Soros money. I think it was more, OK, he got the Color of Change endorsement and the New York Times endorsement and all these other things simultaneously. And I think that most of the attacks calling him this Soros-backed prosecutor are, frankly, anti-Semitism, and we should disregard them as just completely disingenuous.

So you have an op-ed out in the Daily Beast this week called Stopping Trump from Running for Office Again is Bad for Democracy. Could you just sort of flesh out the argument you make? We've actually already touched on some of the points, but could you flesh out some of the points that you make in this really interesting piece? Thank you. I'm glad you enjoyed it. I did not choose the headline, although it is something that I said in the piece. Basically, I heard, I think, on MSNBC this week people saying, oh, well, if he's convicted of a felony, we should bar him from running for president.

It should be a bar. You know, this is a bar on voting in many states. It should be a bar on running for president. It should be a bar. You know, this is a bar on voting in many states. It should be a bar on running for office. And I, that led me to kind of just shooting off a tweet saying that this would be bad for democracy because of the way the criminal legal system operates, the way that it disenfranchises and marginalizes, you know, people of color, low-income folks, you know, other marginalized groups. If we are to bar those people from running for office, preventing people with felony convictions, it would be very bad for democracy.

It would be something that would be problematic. It would be, you know, weaponizing something that is not, that it's not good. And so, yes, a lot of people are salivating at this over the idea that it would apply to Trump. But the reality is we should be evaluating candidates based on their bios, their backgrounds, their histories. And individual voters should do that. And if they're convicted of a felony and that makes someone not want to vote for them,

then that's fine. But due to the way our criminal legal system disproportionately disenfranchises and stigmatizes people of color and poor, vulnerable people, we should not be pushing for this as a overarching thing. If you had to put a number on it, what would you say, what portion of the campaign was about Trump and holding Trump accountable? And what portion of it was about local issues, you know, local to Manhattan voters? Oh, gosh. I would say Trump came up in most of our forums or debates. It was certainly an issue that was brought up time and time again. There were pieces about what each of

us had said with regards to a Trump prosecution. And so maybe I would say it encompassed 20 percent or less. I mean, I think the majority of the campaign was still about local issues, about bail, about criminal justice, about public safety, about other things that the DA's office would do. But I do think Trump was a huge factor. How do you feel watching this unfold? What's your portion of FOMO and what's your portion of like, man, I'm glad I'm not in the middle of this? It's funny.

I've had a lot of people reach out to me saying, hey, selfishly, I am glad that you are not the person doing this because you would be the one getting these death threats. You would be the one whose family would be being put on blast, whose life would potentially be in danger from all of these people who are so angry about this prosecution. But that's not all how I feel. I certainly, uh, still very much wish that I were the person running the Manhattan DA's office. And, um, yes, with regards to this one prosecution, but mostly with regards to how that office is still, you know, destroying families, ruining lives, um, especially the lives of my clients. And so I see on a daily basis the ways in which

my clients are hurt by that office, the way their prosecutions are still more of the same. And in many ways, Alvin is Cy Vance 2.0. And so I very much regret not having won that election. All right. Cy Vance 2.0, but prosecuted Trump. Like that seems to be kind of the distinction that we're working with here. Uh, well, Eliza Orleans, thank you so much for joining us. Really appreciate it. Of course. Anytime. That was really interesting. Yeah. I actually thought your last question was one of the more interesting ones just in that it was a, it was a great interview, but when you at the end asked the question about, um, you know about whether she was more, whether she had FOMO, that was a great answer just saying

yes, because I think the office could be run better. Yeah. And I love people who want to be in the ring. Yeah. Because if you're going to try to throw your hat in the ring, you've got to be, you've got to want it. And the amount of misogyny that a former reality TV star like her would be dealing with would be just absolutely extraordinary. The country is having a difficult enough time with the racism getting thrown at Alvin Bragg as a result of this. It would be such a spectacle. And it is such a spectacle. We were destined for a spectacle no matter what. That's the story of the United States of America. We are always destined for a spectacle.

I hope she runs again for DA. It would be interesting to follow. And if this falls apart in Bragg's hands, then certainly that makes it much more difficult for Bragg to run for re-election. Yeah. And he's gotten a lot of criticism even just since we were on the air. At the Federalist, we published a list of 12, I think it was like, liberals and anti-Trump pundits who have questioned Bragg's indictment. It goes from like Andy McCabe, like Andy McCabe. A few people are like hungrier for, you know, Trump to be in prison than him.

Has anybody gotten Comey on the record? Comey tweeted. What did he say? I think he tweeted like, today is a good day, something stupid like that. God, Comey. there have been New York Times, New Yorker op-eds in support of what he did but then there's also been a chorus of establishment voices questioning it which is when you're anti-Trump you're not used to that

the great brag drag anyway thanks everybody for joining us and we'll see you next week The OGs of uncensored motherhood are back and badder than ever. I'm Erica. And I'm Mila. And we're the hosts of the Good Moms Bad Choices podcast, brought to you by the Black Effect Podcast Network every Wednesday. Yeah, we're moms.

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