Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 5/11/26: Hantavirus Scares Erupt, AOC Vs MTG On Israel, Larry Wilkerson On Iran War

Episode Date: May 11, 2026

Krystal and Emily discuss hantavirus scare, AOC vs MTG on Israel, Larry Wilkerson on Iran war.   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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Should we get to the... More good news. Haunta virus. Yeah. Yeah. Hanta virus. Crystal, let's start. We can place some of what it was looking like yesterday as people disembarked in Spain.

That ship, obviously, where people have been quarantined for a really long time. This is D1. and you'll be able to see it off, see it on the screen. And if you're listening to it, what you're seeing is the ship coming into port in Spain's Canary Islands and people starting to disembark finally after, I believe, they actually got on the ship on March 29th. I think that was the first day of travel in this ship where the hanta virus was spreading three deceased already in connection with it. So how significant is the hanta virus as another coronavirus? Let's dig into this a little bit and go to the president being asked recently if he was briefed on the

hanta virus. This is going to be the next shot. This is D2. Let's take a listen. Big news. Big news. Have you been briefed on the virus? Yes, I have.

Can you tell us what you've learned in the briefing? Well, I think you're going to be told everything and you already have. It's very much we hope under control. It was the ship. And I think we're going to make a full report about. about it tomorrow. We have a lot of people. It's a lot of great people studying it. It should be fine. We hope. I hope not. I mean, I hope not. We'll do the best we can. Yeah. All right. So what you heard there is the invocation of the word hope twice. I hope not,

hopefully under control. Let's take a listen to NAH. Your confidence inspiring. Yes. How can you not take that and run with it, Crystal. NIH director, Jay Batatariah, who comes out of, actually, was appointed to this position because of what I would argue, his prescient work during the coronavirus pandemic. He is now the director of the NIH. Here is him on State of the Union with Jake Tapper, CNN yesterday, answering questions about the Hanta virus. I'm told that it can take up to six weeks for somebody who was exposed to Hanta virus to begin to show symptoms. So that is about four weeks ago. So they're not technically out of the woods yet. There's still two weeks left. When did you begin monitoring these seven? Do any

of them have any symptoms? Well, I think it's, we first learned about the CDC, roughly the time they started to come home, I think maybe three weeks ago. I'd definitely look the exact dates up, Jake. But it's, but I've been tracking the situation. The CDC teams have been tracking the situation for a while now. As I said, we're in close contact with the state and local public health agencies for protocols for managing these patients, including contact tracing, regular check-ins, symptoms checks and if there's if there's if there's any like symptoms that develop protocols for getting them to care rapidly and testing them so it's been it's

been basically the whole the whole time I think it's it's been interesting to again I sort of to watch a lot of the a lot of the the thinking around this is colored I think by the COVID experience in the in the press but the protocols that we have followed are more in line with normal hanta virus protocols that again were followed in 2018 in the united states well unlike all the precautions we're seeing this morning a few weeks ago when these seven people flew home they flew home with lots of other passengers has there been an effort to do contact tracing and let those other passengers know who interacted with those seven so those passengers those those past those

those those past the the passengers on the ship that flew home were not symptomatic when they flew home so the because the virus doesn't spread unless somebody has active symptoms, those passengers on the planes are considered contacts of contacts. So again, there's not a reason to do that kind of like, you know, sort of recursive contact tracing. But you do want to make sure that you check them regularly so that they don't have, if they develop symptoms or if there's other other considerations, give them advice especially to if they are, if they're, if they're to reduce their contacts with others, others when it's appropriate to do so. Crystal, reaction to Trump and Jay Batachari there, they are going to get more. I mean, so right now, we just put this New York Times,

tar sheet up on the screen the next element. Right now, what we have is U.S. passengers who were aboard the ship. They are being, they're disembarking, and as we just saw, they are now going to be quarantined at a center in Nebraska. So they're being transported to the center in Nebraska. These are the American citizens who had been aboard the ship. And the next element here, NBC News, seven states are preparing to receive Americans possibly exposed to the hantavirus. So the, quote, U.S. has entered emergency response mode as a cruise ship hit by a deadly hantavirus outbreak, sails toward one of Spain's Canary Islands.

Of the 150 passengers on board, 17 of them are Americans. and seven states are preparing their emergency response for people who are potentially exposed to this to return home and to also just tracking the spread where this could have already gone in the United States, based on that incubation period. Tapper was referring to apparently up to six weeks, six weeks, and some American passengers disembarked along with others on April 24th. So states like Georgia, Texas, they're monitoring two residents who were on the ship, Arizona and Virginia, each have one resident who disembarked that ship on the 24th California as well.

There's one California resident who is on board the ship. New Jersey has two residents who were not on the ship, but could have been exposed to an infected person. Texas as well has residents who were on board that they are monitoring. So potentially a rather dangerous situation, Crystal, but the World Health Organization, just before I'll toss it to you after we listen to a WHO outbreak expert here from the World Health Organization who says this is different from coronavirus, D4. This is not coronavirus. This is a very different virus. We know this virus. Hunter viruses have been around for quite a while.

There's a lot of detail that we know. I'm going to ask, and I used to come in and say this. but I want to be unequivocal here. This is not SARS-CoV-2. This is not the start of a COVID pandemic. This is an outbreak that we see on a ship. There's a confined area. We have five confirmed cases so far.

We completely understand why these questions are coming, and we are trying to provide all of the information that we can. That's why we're having a press conference here to give accurate information, and we're grateful for all of those out there who are asking these types of questions, but this is not the same situation we were in six years ago. It doesn't spread the same way, like coronaviruses do. It's very different. It's that close intimate contact that we've seen.

And most hanta viruses don't transmit between people at all. Most hanta viruses are transmitted from rodents or their feces or their saliva in their droppings to people. And only this one particular virus, the Andes virus, which has been identified here. We've seen some human-human transmission. We'll get to that in just one second, how this may have transmitted. about Crystal. Virginia, you're in one of the states affected here. Yay.

I mean, I have to hope that lady is right, because we are so screwed as a country if we have another pandemic. Like, no one is going to believe anything. And, like, a libertarian approach to a pandemic is a horrifying idea. Because we do all live together and have to do some community things.

And if the science says you need to isolate and you need to take these precautions, then, look, there are very, values that underpin that and those values can be debated. But no one is going to believe anything. And it is going to be a total and complete mess. We have a Health and Human Services Secretary and RFK Jr. who is a total nut jab crank, completely ideological.

He's staffed all of these agencies with fellow ideological travelers. I mean, Bada Charya even, like, indulged his idea that autism is caused by vaccines and wanted to pull the MRNA vaccine off the market and all this kind of nonsense. So it will be such a disaster. I just have to assume that this is going to be fine and it's not going to spread further and we're all going to be okay because I can't wrap my head around. Well, with everything else that is going on, I just cannot wrap my head around. What will happen to this country if we actually had another pandemic? Yeah. So I remember saying this like right as things we're starting to fall away.

Like we have not, the original restrictions and such from COVID we're starting to fall away. Like, we didn't earn a reprieve from a pandemic. Like, we didn't earn another century, like with the Spanish flu, to from 20, I'm sorry, from 1919 to 2020. It's not like that's guaranteed that you just, like, you went through a really tough time. And thankfully, it's behind us and we won't have to deal with it ever again. This can pop up at any, any time. And I think maybe the first piece I wrote during COVID was, like, prepare for a pandemic

during an era of low institutional trust, which Crystal, now feels so quaint because the institutional trust in 2020 versus institutional trust in 26 is such a different ballgame, a completely different ballgame. It has been where we are now, our ability to actually go along with any collective measures. If they were absolutely necessary, I mean, you and I do this for a living and actually getting to the bottom of what's happening in these situations is difficult enough because the World Health Organization, the woman who's talking about, talking to you now from the World Health Organization was also in charge of the COVID response.

So it's like you're getting your information either from her or from, I don't know, like, RFK Jr. who a lot of people don't have trust in. So good luck to us. Nor should they. I guess. Nor should they. Like best of luck. Well, the reason that some people have trust in RFK Jr. is because they also shouldn't have trust in his enemies. Like his enemies have proven themselves untrustworthy. And so then you get, it's like with Trump, right? Like people put their trust in him because his enemies have proven untrustworthy, and it becomes a vicious cycle, and nobody knows actually where to turn for good information. And that situation has only gotten worse, believe it or not, since 2020. I mean, everybody believes it, but that's how bad it is. It's going to, it, God forbid,

like, it will be such a mess. It will be a disaster. So many people will die unnecessarily. It's just, we just can't. Please, God, we just can't. Please, Emily, do some extra praying for us because we just can't. I got to. I got to. Just don't ask the Etsy witches for help. I don't think that's going to learn. You don't think so? I don't know. Maybe it's for the try. Don't do it.

I have as much faith in that as anything else. There was one noteworthy update, though. I wanted to put D8 up on the screen. So part of this story was that the original notion was that the patient zero in terms of this ship, that he and his wife had gone bird watching at a landfill. And that that was where they, I mean, this is logical, right? You've got birds like landfills. Apparently, this is something that birdwatchers do,

because there's a lot of birds at landfills because there's a reliable food source, but also rats like landfills for obvious reasons. And so the thought was, okay, this is where they contracted, this particular type of hunter, hanta virus where you can spread it person to person

and that's what makes this like really scary. But apparently the timetable for that does not work out. And they had also visited this other area in Argentina where there is a known infection and spread and problem of weeks earlier unrelated to any, landfill bird watching. So apparently that bird watching sort of vindicated here. So did want to make sure that people had that update.

Well, just like the pangolin, speaking of history rhyming, just like the vindication of the pangolin back in 2020. But actually I mean, they aren't totally vindicated because as far as we know, they still did this. And in my book, that's not vindication. Kind of like a bird's in a landfill and remote South America. I'm not, I just, even if you didn't cause the virus

outbreak, I refuse to vindicate you, get better hobbies. You don't want to encourage similar behavior from others. Please, like, well, I don't want to encourage, I don't want to encourage any behavior, risky behavior of just people going on cruise ships in general. Let's put D7 up on the screen. Apparently, there's a massive outbreak of norovirus, which is, neurovirus is hell. I'm sure everybody watching this has had it. Having kids, I've had it multiple times.

It's horrendous. Anyway, you've got 115 people on this cruise ship. who contracted norovirus, which again, absolute nightmare. Cruise ships are gross. They're just like floating petri dishes. People do something else for your vacations. Please let's take off the potential vacation list, cruise ships and landfill visits. How about that?

And then when you combine both of them, you do the landfill visit and then you get on a cruise? Yeah. And let's also go to a remote part of Argentina where there's a haunt of virus. a sound break and then hop on the cruise ship. Let's do that too. Yeah. No, why not? What could go wrong? What could go wrong? I tried to get it so that our next breaking point, staff retreat. Actually, our first breaking, we haven't done a straff retreat, but if we did Crystal, I think it should be on a cruise ship. I think we should take a Viking River cruise. I'm going to zoom into that one. Thank you.

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And now the PodMeets Twirled podcast. We're two men who were completely clueless to reality TV, who now have covered Dancing with the Stars, traders, and we're gearing up for the season finale of Survivor. So yeah, now we're experts. I know we annoyed a lot of our listeners by our severe lack of survivor knowledge. That is the point of the show. I'm just going to remind you.

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People love when I talk about AOC. Yeah, let's do it. Let's do it, Crystal. What should we be thinking about right now when it comes to Marjorie, Taylor Green, AOC and Israel. So AOC did do a few podcast appearances last week. Friendly spaces, but still, you know, she's getting out there a little bit more. And she did this talk at a university with David Axelrod and got asked a question about

how she thinks about working in a bipartisan manner with figures like Marjorie Taylor Green. Let's go ahead and take a listen to how AOC responded to that. I care about results. I care about results. Now there are certain places where, certain areas where I don't think that we should ignore some folks' record on some of these issues, right? It's about where we trust intent, where we trust where those outcomes are going. I personally do not trust someone like Marjorie Taylor Green, a proven bigot and anti-Semite,

on the issues of what is good for Gazans and Israelis. I know. It benefits our movement in that instance to align the left with white nationalists. I don't think it serves us. And so I think it's about looking at the context, the place, the results, the outcomes, intentions, and where we think that train would go. But as far as what someone says about me, I'm good care less, and I think it's really about what our outcomes are. And to be honest, there are some areas where things will not get done if they're partisan because they are anti-establishment. There is bipartisan consensus on keeping and protecting stock trading in Congress.

And so it's going to require a massive bipartisan consensus of people willing to come together across those differences to get it done. So we got a response from former Congresswoman, Marjorie Taylor Green. We can put this up on the screen. she says AOC refused to vote for my amendment to strip funding for Israel. She can run her mouth all she wants, but votes are the only thing that matters. Not a bunch of words and nasty name calling. And that is true. And in fact, I recall, if I recall correctly, the reason AOC said she did not vote for that

amendment is because she run into protect funding for Iron Dome, quote unquote, defensive funding, which of course is not a position that I agree with or really find acceptable as something that I pushed Alyssa Slotkin on when we have. her on last year to talk about this as well. I have so many thoughts on this, Emily. So I think first of all, one of the ways that this conversation has kind of fallen apart online is when people talk about Marjor Taylor Green or talk about Tucker Carlson and what the left's relationship to them should be, I feel like there's a lot of, there's a gulf between expectations of what that sort of quote-unquote allyship would look like. You know, it's a lot of. It's a gulf.

one thing, I agree with AOC. Like, I think there's a lot of reasons to continue to be skeptical of Marjorie Taylor Green. I'll get into some of the things she said and done that there has not been an explanation for it. Hey, how did you completely change your views 180 degrees? Have you change your views 180 degrees? Or do you still hold these incredibly bigoted Islamophobic views that you espoused in the past? Like, I think there is a lot of explaining to do still. I think there are a lot of amends to be made still from Marjorie Taylor Green. before people are just going to go, oh, yeah, welcome to the cause. You're our ally.

But do I think it's incredibly useful to be able to show someone like her, someone like Tucker Carlson, someone like Thomas Massey, others who are on the right, who have been strident Trump supporters who now have this very aggressive criticism of Trump and specifically on the issue of Israel and specifically on the issue of Israel and the U.S. committing a genocide? Do I think it's important to say, thank you for agreeing with us on this? this is very important and uplifting those voices in the context of opposing Trump. Yeah, I think that's very useful. I think it's something the right does all the time, by the way.

I mean, if you look at the last election, Emily, part of how Trump was able to succeed was by taking people who were former Democrats or former liberals or seen as being, you know, in the center or independent or whatever and finding the places where they agreed with him or supported him and really uplifting that. and that was part of how he built a coalition together. Now, again, do I think that means you should, like, trust Marjorie Taylor Green, even from the perspective of how do you change your views so wholly and completely in one year? Is there just like a petty motivation here?

And what would keep you from then switching your views again completely to the other side? That's a really good question. But the other thing I would say is, you know, MTG has more sort of explaining and amends to make. But AOC also has some amends to make here. And in particular, there's something Jasper Nathaniel pointed out, and it's not an original thought. But, look, she went on the stage at the DNC and said, Kam was working tirelessly for a ceasefire. That was really, it was not true. First of all, I think that's important that that was just a lie.

And second of all, it came at a time where they were trying very hard to maintain a position of support for genocide, but get progressives and leftists and people of good conscience who were worried about being complicity. in that genocide to get them on board. AOC being a person who has a lot of credibility with the left, going out there and carrying water and propagating that lie at the very D&C where they would not even allow a Palestinian-American on stage to speak. Yeah, that was very harmful. People aren't just going to let that go, nor should they.

So I would like to also see her. That's not to say she's, you know, like she can never be forgiven for that or anything. But I would like to hear from her why she said that. I would like to hear from her that that was a mistake. I would like to hear from her that that was damaging. And so I think that she also has some amends to make. I think she also has some, you know, explaining to do on how her position has shifted. And if her position has completely shifted, because you do have recent votes where she still was,

she still was doing this, oh, defensive weapons, et cetera. Right, and we have that thought, right, of her at the DNC. We should roll it because it's, I had actually forgotten how, I don't even know what the right, how aggressively pro-Harris that speech was. So we should just roll this here. It's going to be E3. She understands the urgency of rent checks and groceries and prescriptions. She is ads committed to our reproductive and civil rights as she is to taking on corporate

greed. And she is working tirelessly to secure a ceasefire in Gaza and bringing hostages home. Aggressive. I mean, that is an eager message in support of Kamala Harris. Yeah, and I'm not sure I bought by that corporate greed aspect either, given the way she walked back from some of the originally very powerful proposals she had with regard to corporate greed as she moved more into the arms of Mark Cuban and some of the other advisors. who pushed her in a more corporate direction and to de-emphasize some of those positions she had held originally. But yeah, I mean, the other piece here that, you know, just to back up AOC, and also we should keep in mind here, these are human beings. And Marjorie Taylor Green has

been viciously nasty and harassing of AOC. And those are very hard things to get past because you look at someone, you're like, oh, this is your true character, whatever you're doing now to try to position yourself as some moral actor is an act. because I've seen your own vindictiveness to my face. By the way, that's the argument MTG makes about Trump, just to keep those two things in the same space for a moment. That's true. It's exactly the argument she's made.

Like her break with Trump at one point is she texted him saying her son was getting threats. And if he could dial down some of his attacks on her, and he basically went and said, no, it's your fault, blah, blah, blah. And she tells that story a lot about how it kind of showed his character in a moment of test after she had gone on the line for him for so many years, which is all true. And so that character argument does, of course, go both ways. To your point, Chris. Yeah.

Yeah. Well, and so we could put E4 up on the screen. Marjor Taylor Green really pushed this condemnation of Rashida Taleb. She said that this one, proud to stand with Israel along my Republican colleagues, AOC, Ilhan Omar, Rashida Fleeve, Ayanna-Pressley, and Corey Bush, the jihad squad, openly support Hamas terrorists attacking Israel. Okay, that's what she said. Again, there's been no apology for this. And that was 2021. And if you see the press conference, she's behind a giant Israeli flag. Yes, so 20, this is pre-OVtober 7th. Yep. Right. So, you know, when MTV says, well, votes are all

that matter. Well, if you stack up the voting record between her and AOC over any length of period of time, outside of that one vote, AOC comes out on top, head and shoulders, it's not even close, right? It's not even close. And then we could put E5 up on the screen. This is after Zoran, Mom, Donnie is elected mayor of New York. And she posts this, I guess this is on Instagram. It's the Statue of Liberty cloaked in a burqa. So, you know, this is the sort of Islamophobic content that she was posting. This was quite recent, right? Zorn was not elected that. That was June of last year. Yeah, it was. That was not that long ago. I guess this was after the primary victory. But still, yeah, this was not like ancient history. And again, we have seen Marjor Taylor Green grapple with some of her positions talk about,

for example, how she got sucked into QAnon. I have not personally heard. Maybe she said it, and I haven't followed all of her content, but I have not personally heard her grapple with her own hateful bigotry when it comes to Muslims. And I think that would be very important. And that doesn't mean either that would be sufficient to completely trust this individual. But, you know, I do think that would be an important thing to hear if you want to be someone that's taken seriously as actually defending human rights at this point in a universal way and not just picking a new racial scapegoat that you find to be more evil than the previous racial scapegoat that you were pushing. So, you know, from that perspective, I understand where AOC is coming from. I would just

say, I think this is all, if you're just looking at like, my ideological lens and trying to elect progressives and trying to have a better place with regard to a relationship to Israel and opposing genocide and supporting human rights, I think Marjorie Taylor Green is very useful. I think that, you know, the things she said have been important. I have appreciated the things that she has said with regard to genocide in particular. You know, I feel very similarly about Tucker Carlson, who I also do not trust, who I also think has a Christian nationalist view overall. So it's not like I'm going to make common cause with him, but do I find him politically useful in this moment when I think we need to rethink our approach to the world and certainly our relationship with Israel and need to get back to a place where universal human rights are something that we can talk about and something we can aspire to? Yes, I find them useful in that regard. Well, yeah, this is a really interesting, like just the quandary that the left has found itself in over MTG is, I think really useful in the way that it blends the personal and the political. that's kind of what you're getting at is like there's so many people who have personal skepticism of AOC's character as opposed to like her utility as a leftist in Congress. And that's where you saw them kind of comparing AOC's votes on Israel. Some people comparing AOC's votes on Israel to MTGs and the way that MTG like actually

as soon as she changed her mind went out and started voting on this stuff. And I actually think there are a lot of people on the right who change their minds about this. quickly in the scope of kind of the history of the conservative movement and positions on Israel, but it happened over the course of a couple years and it was a buildup. You know, for me, it started before October 7th and you guys gave me a lot of grace on that. We've talked about it extensively. But for a lot of people, it started in the last couple years of that war. And it was because people on the right became really skeptical, obviously, even more skeptical, as they had already been of what was coming out of the media. And when people started to see the rug get pulled out

from under them with these narratives, people started questioning everything, basically. And so I don't necessarily, I think she's had a pretty normal transition from point A to point B that a lot of conservatives, especially conservatives who are like kind of America first, people who were motivated by MAGA to get involved in politics exactly like her to start paying attention to politics. I think it's pretty normal and consistent with what a lot of people experience. And I do think she put herself on the line and like has been fairly brave in pushing back against some of this stuff. But just that she was brave, you know, to be as pro-Trump as she was in Washington, even when I disagreed with her. And many people disagreed with her.

It was uncommon to be like that, you know, pro just as like the sort of like rally-going MAGA voter. It takes some bravery to do that in Congress. because even the ones who act like it for the cameras don't do that behind the scenes. They don't believe any of it behind the scenes, many of them. So I have some respect for her. I wish she hadn't quit. I genuinely wish that she hadn't quit because then we would get to see where some of these votes and pieces of legislation that she was introducing would go going forward. But, Krista, this actually makes me think we should perhaps invite her to talk about what she thinks on some of these questions.

Now, it would be interesting. I would be down for that. I would absolutely be down for that. She had a really interesting interview on The View where she actually apologized for her rhetoric and for her actions. And she stepped back from some of it and said she felt like she contributed to a lot of the tensions that had escalated in Washington. I do think it would be interesting to hear some of that from her because her tactics and rhetoric actually is kind of an interesting part of the picture here. So we'll say, I mean, but it's a very, it is a quandary for the left. I think I don't blame anybody for being skeptical, but the political utility is, I think it is

fairly obvious. It's just the personal questions that remain unresolved. Absolutely. And the point you raised about it, which she hadn't quit is a really important one, because if she was in Congress right now, there are, there's a lot she could be doing. She could be, you know, an ally for Thomas Massey. She could be an ally for Rokana. She could be taking votes that actually matter and in a very closely divided house, that could be making a difference. So, you know, one place where I, uh, I slightly disagree with our beloved Ryan Grimm is, you know, he said she paid, she paid a political price. Well, there's no doubt that it was going to make it more difficult for her in her district. She also quit before she really paid a political price. You know, she didn't, she didn't find out

if she could withstand the, um, the onslaught, whereas Thomas Massey is still in there in his seat. He's up against a very well-funded primary opponent. He has got. Trump backing, you know, strongly backing his primary opponent and tacking him all the time. And he's in there fighting the good fight and taking it and doing his best. So I do think that that is very unfortunate that she decided to quit rather than try to hold on to these newfound principles in a body where it really makes a difference. The other thing that I would say is, you know, AOC called her an anti-Semite. And I think at this point, because of the way that term has been so used to abuse, that you really need to offer concrete examples of what you mean by that. You know, when you say that, why, how did you come to that conclusion?

But I also will say that some significant chunk of the Republican, newfound Republican antipathy towards Israel is about anti-Semitism, is about griperism and Nick Fuentes and noticing. and just direct anti-sit. It doesn't come from a place of we believe in universal human rights. It comes from a place of, oh, we decided the Jews are actually worse than the Muslims. We decided that the Jews are the real problem in this country, not Israel, not our policy towards a foreign country, but quote unquote, the Jews. And Marjor Taylor Green, who trafficked in some anti-considic conspiracies in the past, that your space laser thing or whatever that was, it's a reasonable question to say,

is this where you're coming from? are you coming from a place of we are all God's children and participating in this barbarism is horrifying? Or are you coming from a place of I have a new ranking of racial superiority and I have a new racial scapegoat. I don't think it's out of the question given her previously state of views, her very clear Islamophobia from the past. I don't think that it is out of the question to push with her where these views come from. And, you know, so I think that skepticism is fair. is warranted with regards to her, with regards to Tucker Carlson, with regards to others on the right who have made a very quick pivot towards being anti-Israel and who have flirted or

overtly embraced bigoted narratives, racially charged narratives in the past. I wouldn't say it's out of the question. I do think her Tucker, I mean, Tucker has sort of started to his, I mean, he is getting slammed by the right for this now to, for even saying that he thinks he was suckered in by some propaganda campaigns on Islam. And I don't know where MTV. It would actually be interesting to see MTV get on the record about some of this stuff. But from him, from MTV, from like Carrie Prejean, some of them are leading very heavily with this,

exactly this religious argument saying that nobody, like nobody should be treated like the people of Gaza were treated for the last several years. And Tucker said last week he, thinks that actually Israelis are less safe, Jewish Israelis are less safe now than ever before. I feel like they've definitely led in with that aspect of this, that it's just destruction of human life that's really enraged them. And so I feel like, I feel pretty comfortable. I don't, again, I don't think it's, I don't think you're wrong that it's out of the question.

I feel pretty comfortable, at least personally, that they're coming from a place of horror and disgust at what transpired over the last several years and not, you know, attributable. that to anybody for purposes of immutable characteristics and the like. But it's, I mean, we'll see where this goes from here. I mean, obviously Netanyahu was on. I mean, I don't feel comfortable, just simply because, again, to stick with the case of Marjorie Taylor Green, it would mean that she's not only broken with Trump and she's not only changed her view on Israel, but truly some of her foundational views of the world have changed, right? Because she was obviously in the past not coming from a place of we are all equal and everyone deserves.

equals equal rights. So is she in a different place on that? I'm open to that. I'm open to it, but I don't know. And so, you know, that's that's where I am. Again, do I find her politically useful? Absolutely. Do I think we should do I think we should embrace and encourage the things that she said in opposition to genocide and in favor and, you know, in opposition to this horrible barbarism? Yes, 100%. Do I think we should also embrace, you know, the genuine outreach that she's made for sure. But, you know, do I still have some deep concerns about what her underlying ideology is and what sort of things she could easily push in the future? Yes, those concerns certainly were made. Totally fair. I actually think that's one of the big fault lines in the, like,

left-right foreign policy coalition right now or emergent coalition. I think one of the fault lines is even some probably some things that like you and I would disagree on or Sager and Ryan all us would potentially disagree on about like things down the line that might come up on foreign policy questions. It might not be that much. It might probably, it would probably be more between Marjor, Taylor Green, and all four of us, to be honest. But I think it is actually one of the fault lines. So we'll have to see. But now who was just talking about on 60 minutes, we'll probably play the clip tomorrow, how support for Israel, he says, is directly declining in course or in correlation to, I don't know if he uses that exact word, but to the rise of the

And geometric relation to, which I don't know if that's really the right language. I don't know. I'm imagining triangles. But the point he's really making is that people have more access to information. And the more access to information people have is making them less favorable towards Israel. And so I feel like, you know, there's, for a lot of people, it's very real. I don't know. I don't personally know MTG, so I can't speak for her.

But I think some of the good news is that there has been, very real and sincere questioning of some of these first principles that conservatives always bought into and believed by people on the right, certainly young people on the right, who are saying we can't support, we can't just automatically support a country that is going to be willing to engage in some of what we saw in Gaza over the last few years. And Crystal, at least that is something to be optimistic about in the future when it comes to, yeah, hopefully, hopefully. the rupture in this unquestioned and reflective alliance between the United States and Israel.

Yep. All right. Well, we've got Colonel Larry Wilkerson standing by to talk to us more about the Iran War. So let's get to that. Experience Harry Styles live in London, England at Wembley Stadium. This is Harry Styles. IR Radio wants to send you an mate across the pond with flights from Virgin Atlantic. Hotel from TripCentral.ca, tickets, and $1,000 cash.

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Hey, everyone. It's Ryder Strong and Will Ferdell from PodMeets World. And now the PodMeets Twirled podcast. We're two men who were completely clueless to reality TV. who now have covered Dancing with the Stars, traitors, and we're gearing up for the season finale of Survivor. So yeah, now we're experts. I know we annoyed a lot of our listeners by our severe lack of survivor knowledge.

That is the point of the show. I'm just going to remind you. I have watched some Survivor. I obviously haven't watched enough. Did people not like it? Yeah. Just because we... Yeah.

We'll be recapping the big conclusion in the 50th season from the final attempts at gameplay to the desperate. to the desperate plea as a finalist to a bunch of ha-hoo. Again, we are experts. So make sure to tune into Pod Meets Twirled for all our Survivor 50 takes. Listen to PodMeets Twirled on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. We're joined now by retired U.S. Army Colonel Larry Wilkerson. Thank you so much for joining us, sir.

It's pleasure to have you on. Good, good to be with you. Yeah, thanks for having. Thanks for joining us. Let's put this first tarot sheet up on the screen. This is from the Wall Street Journal. Headline, Israel built and defended a secret Iran war base in Iraq. So details from the journal, quote, Israel set up a clandestine military outpost in the Iraqi desert

to support its air campaign against Iran and launched airstrikes against Iraqi troops who almost discovered it early in the war, people familiar with the matter, including U.S. officials said, Sir, just wanted to get your response right off the top here to revelations in the journal. How significant is this? It's odd that the journal would come out with this, since it is so pro-Israeli, it's revelation, if you will. But it's nothing new. They have had major operations in what is called Kurdistan, northern Iraq,

for some time. In fact, the Iranians know about most of them, and in their first volley of missiles some weeks ago, struck them that they have things in the Western, desert, which is vast and virtually empty, is no surprise. And I will guarantee you 99% certainty that the United States, probably Great Britain and perhaps others like the Jordanians, had complicity in running these bases, as it were, from Western Iraq. Yeah, actually, Harat's reported that the U.S. told the Iraqis, hey, just stay away from that area. We're doing some

things over there. So you are spot on with your instinct that there was some U.S. complicity here as well. I wanted to just get your reaction to where we are currently with the quote-unquote negotiations, with the war. We discussed earlier that Trump has outright rejected the Iranian proposal. Trump also met with Netanyahu yesterday by phone. Netanyahu is insisting that the war is not over. And we've seen some indications, certainly from the hawks and from the fact that Israel continues to bomb in Lebanon, that they would like to undercut any possible negotiated settlement and head back to war.

So what is your sense of where things are right now? Well, the last thing you said is absolutely a certainty, I think. Backing up a little bit, I don't think it's a certainty that negotiations are going to produce something that Donald Trump will ultimately accept. I think it is at least a 50-50 chance that we would resume bombing Iran mercilessly, just as soon as the stock markets are right for it to happen. And I don't mean that cavalierly.

Donald Trump is coordinating through Heggseth, of course, and Kane, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, these strikes based on his desire for his friends and ultimately his family to make money off the stock market. So that's part of it. And then the other part of it is I don't think there's a chance he's going to get what he really wants, which is none of the things that we've been talking about

other than a nuclear deal. And certainly Israel is not going to buy that. So that's going to be a real stopgap measure, if you will, in trying to make that the only thing we do. So there's at least a 60, 40 chance we're going back to bombing Iran again. Disasters as that will be. It won't produce anything but more resolution, more missiles coming out of Iran, this time aimed at everything in the region to include Saudi Arabia oil facilities. Bahrain again, Kuwait, all the countries that depend on that black gold for a lot of their wealth, will find it all pretty much drying up because Iran is going to target it all with the help of Russian and Chinese satellites,

which we know are helping them now, just as we help Zelensky strike Russia with our satellites. So this is a very complicated game we're playing now, and Donald Trump is, I think, somewhat desperate to get out of it, but he is unable to fashion away with all the pressures and powers that are around him that don't want it to happen. Yeah, that's a great point. He's heading, obviously, to China in the next couple of days, supposed to be there on Thursday for a major state visit. And what is your sense of when the bombing could resume based on, I know you just mentioned the stock market? What might we expect to see in terms of the timeline going forward?

Well, generally speaking, he does it on a Friday. but I don't know if that will be a telltale sign of anything this time because it could all be a faint just to put more pressure on Iran at the moment that they think they're going to come to some kind of deal. But I don't think so. As I said, I think the odds are 60-40 that we're going to resume this conflict and it's going to be with a vengeance with everything in terms of our air power we can pour at them. And before people say, well, the carriers are in position and all that. That's not what I'm talking about.

The carrier air power is really insignificant when you start talking about what we're planning to do. This is marshalling almost the entire United States Air Force and ancillary forces to drop bombs from B-2s, B-502s, all the way down the line on Iran to further pulverize it, create war crimes, and kill a lot of innocent civilians. So this is not something I look forward to, and I hope I'm wrong. I hope I'm wrong. I hope we come to some kind of nuclear deal. But then what are we going to do about Netanyahu, who has said, I'm going to keep the war up. Yeah, no, that's absolutely right. I also took note that President Trump has been posting clips from neocon, Mark Levin. This one in particular is very noteworthy to me. A lot of historical revisionism, I think one could say that, or at least noteworthy historical take here from Mark Levine that I wanted to get your reaction to.

Guys, let's go ahead and play F5. We don't have to create opposition. There is opposition. We need to seize the opportunity. And we need to see the opportunity. And by that I mean that our CIA, along with the Israeli Mossad, make determinations about the best way to determine who to train an arm. While at the same time, we continue the economic stranglehold and our military, along with our allies, the Israelis, provide coordinated support with targeted and supportive attacks on the IRGC and the Basij paramilitary police. That's, in my view, how you do it.

Well, Mark, you never served in the military. I know history. I know history. Nobody alive ever served in the Civil War either. Nobody alive ever served in the Revolutionary War either. That's not the point. You do leave it to the experts. to figure this out.

But the President of the United States, the Commander-in-Chief, he makes the decisions. And I look at history. I look at success. Success in destroying the Soviet Union. Success in pushing communism out of Central and South America. And we did this. Success in pushing communism out of parts of Africa. Success in pushing the Russians, the Soviets, out of Afghanistan.

We didn't send in troops. We armed the freedom fighters, the Mujah Hadin in Afghanistan and others throughout the world. He was reading a script prepared for him by either Mossad, the IDF or moat. That's all I can guess. I would be willing to bet a lot of money on that. He was reading from that script. And we've already seen how false that narrative is, what happened earlier that is, that is being, touted by certain people like the Wall Street Journal and others, that was so effective in terms

of almost overthrowing the regime was a joke. It was worse than 53 and Kermit Roosevelt's attempts to overture Mosaddeg. Worse because it did not succeed and yet it killed a lot of Iranians and the people killing the Iranians either directly or indirectly were MI6, Mossade and CIA, not the the Iranian security forces. The Iranian security forces were stunned at first, then figured out what was happening and went after those mechanisms that were allowing them to operate so freely within their country, eliminated them, and then began to eliminate those people.

In fact, so much so that Mossad has very few people on the ground in Iran right now. But the point is, it wasn't the Iranian people that were fomenting revolution, and it won't be in the future either. It was Massad, CIA, and MI6 in combination, making it look like they were doing it. And the Iranians, they're not stupid. They've figured that out. They've had it been done to them a number of times before, and they eliminated most of the operatives inside the country, which is bothering Israel big time right now because they have

no eyes and ears on the ground in Iran like they've had for so many years. So these are all lies that Levin's telling. Well, I want to go also to F4 because this was from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's interview on 60 Minutes last night. He said that he is hoping that Israel can, quote, wean itself off remaining military support from the United States. Let's go ahead and roll F4 here. Do you believe it's time for the state of Israel to reexamine and possibly reset its financial relationship to the United States, meaning what the United States provides to. Israel on an annual basis? Absolutely.

And I've said this to President Trump. I've said it to our own people. Their jaws drop. But I said, look. What do you mean? What are you saying? I want to draw down to zero the American financial support, the financial component of the military cooperation that we have, because we receive $3.8 billion a year.

And I think that it's time. that we weaned ourselves from the remaining military support. Can you give me a timetable? I said, let's start now and do it over the next decade, over the next 10 years, but I want to start now. I don't want to wait. Do you buy it? That's interesting.

I had heard rumors to that effect. I hadn't heard that particular film clip or seen that interview. But I think what he's talking about are several things, one of which he's demonstrated by his travels. over the last several years. He understands what I've been telling everyone I can speak to about, is this inexorable shift of power that's moving to the east, with the magnet being China.

But now increasingly China, India, and Russia, Bricks is going to meet in India in September, and Modi's going to preside, and we're going to see a very different bricks, I think, after that, because they've all pretty much decided to pitch in. So Netanyahu's no idiot. He's a very smart man. He's been prospecting all across these other countries to find potential U.S. replacements

because he realizes that the big daddy is not going to be the big daddy much longer with the colossal debt that we have. And what Xi Jinping is going to do to deepen and exacerbate that debt and is already doing. So that's one thing. The second thing is he's sending a signal to the United States, a rather subtle signal. But nonetheless, I've known Bibi for a long time. Before him, I knew Eric Sharon. They do this sort of thing to signal their disdain for the Americans, for the United States, so that we suddenly come begging back to be their benefactor again.

And then the next reason is he's trying to needle Trump in order to keep him from end in this war, insinuating that there are actually other people in the hope that we could use to back us, even if we wanted to continue this war and you stopped it. And you know who they are, et cetera. etc. So it's a very smart man. He's evil. He's genocidal. He's maniacal. But he's a very smart man. That's what makes the other traits so dangerous. Talk a little bit more about the upcoming meeting in China. You know, what sort of a position is Trump coming into this meeting with, at least as far as it looks today? What sort of things will you be looking for as you observe from the outside?

50-50 that he doesn't go. That's the first thing. Oh, wow. Second, he is going to be embarrassed severely when he meets Xi Jinping because there's going to be no warmth, no friendship, no cooperation in his mind. He's going to be there to lecture Donald Trump. And Donald Trump doesn't take lecturing too well. So we could see the meeting start and it abruptly it. Nobody knows. But Xi Jinping is in the catbird seat now in terms of global power, in terms of ascending power. We're in the dark seat. We're in the seat of the empire with Darth Vader and the Sith Lord having been exposed to the world.

And that's a very difficult position from which to operate. What scares me about that position is that no empire descending into the depths, if you will, in human history that we know of, 5,000 years, has had the technological means to at least temporarily arrest that development. And what I mean by that is nuclear weapons. As long as we have nuclear weapons and we have a leadership that is going to fight this dissent majorly, then we have the prospect of using nuclear weapons. We have to remember the only country in the world that has used nuclear weapons against human beings is us. Let's talk about Lebanon as well. I want to roll some of this clip. And people will be able to see in here.

This is going to be F2. Courtesy of drop site news, they write, Israel killed 51 people in Lebanon in 24 hours on Saturday as the Israeli army continued its attacks despite the so-called ceasefire. The toll since the beginning of March has surged past 2,846 killed and 8,693 injured, according to the Ministry of Public Health just yesterday. Now, the sound and video here is courtesy of court.

Beno, who is a journalist over there and recorded this video from southern Lebanon that I also want to get your reaction to. This is going to be F3. Hi, I'm reporting to you from the town of Tora. I don't know if you can hear the armed drone buzzing above our heads in the Air Force. We just heard of bombing in the distance. We're at the site now of a massacre that took place yesterday. Five members of the same family, mostly women, were killed in an Israeli air strike. violence has been escalating really fast here in south Lebanon. Yesterday, the Israeli army targeted 39 towns and villages, killing more than 30 people, all civilians. Multiple force displacement orders have been issued, including in the town where I live since yesterday.

Since midnight last night, until now, I've been listening to shelling, bombing, and machine gun combing in the hills across from where I'm staying in the Almansoori and Al-Bayada area. This morning came a fresh wave of displacement orders and death threats, and with that came a fresh wave of bombings and killings. Multiple people have been killed already today, and I just received a heartbreaking report of a Syrian laborer traveling by a scooter

with his 12-year-old daughter in Nabatia. They were targeted on the scooter. The father was killed instantly, and the little girl, who again, is 12 years old, managed to run away. And when she started to run, even though she was injured, the Israeli drone targeted her again. And she's alive for now. She's critically wounded. She's currently in surgery.

I will keep you updated about that as I can. To my Western followers, I really want you to think critically about the definition of terrorism, to whom it gets applied and who does it benefit? Because where I've been sitting for the last 18 months, you know, this mass murder and mass, you know, look at this, this mass destruction, this ethnic cleansing of South Lebanon. You know, this looks a lot like terrorism to me. And so Courtney was, if you're just listening to the standing in front of just heaps of rubble in southern Lebanon,

Where do you think this goes for, as Netanyahu looks at the prospects for taking some of that land, some more of that land, I should say. What do you think his next moves could look like? First, let me say that I agree with every word she uttered, and much more than that, because I know people there and I know what's happening. And I know what Israel has done in the past, even in 1982, when Eric Sharon was the defense minister, and they went into Lebanon wholesale. And only Ronald Reagan was able to tell them stop and get out. And they did. After they were told to stop and they did, they created massacres and camps.

This is Israel. I'm sorry to say it. I'm sad to say it. But this is Israel. And it's gotten far worse. They did Gaza in accordance with what you just heard her say times 10. They still haven't defeated Hamas in Gaza. Naftali Bennett is angry with Netanyahu because he will not order the IDF into those tunnels

to go after Hamas for good reason, because Hamas will tear them up if they go into those tunnels. And he's frustrated and he's angry. And he gets mean when he's frustrated and angry. And he is the world's greatest state sponsor, individual sponsor, of terrorism, period. And he's doing that now in Lebanon. And he is not honored, and I used to say a day, he's not honored an hour of the so-called ceasefire in Lebanon. And he's using it now to do what he used it to do earlier with less results, but now sweeping results. He's destroying Lebanon's ability to recover.

He's killing Lebanese citizens, not Hezbollah, not even remotely Hezbollah. He's killing Lebanese civilians. He's destroying their homes. home by home, bulldozer by bulldozer, bomb by bomb. He wants southern Lebanon as part of the greater Israel complex, give him that, and he'll go on like Hitler did, and take all of Lebanon. And Erdogan and Turkey knows that, so we're setting up the prospect of a real clash between Turkish forces, which are superior to the IDF and IDF forces. So this is a disaster unfolding. Yeah, absolutely. I wanted to get your reaction also to you. I don't know if you saw this opinion piece in the Atlantic,

but I found it quite noteworthy from Robert Kagan, who's co-founder of the project for a New American Century, very noteworthy neocan. He's a senior fellow at Brookings. And his headline was Checkmate in Iran. Washington can't reverse or control the consequences of losing this war. I'm just going to read you the opening two paragraphs here. He says it's hard to think of a time when the U.S. suffered a total defeat in a conflict, a setback so decisive that the strategic loss could be neither repaired nor ignored. The calamitous losses suffered at Pearl Harbor, the Philippines, and throughout the Western Pacific in the first months of World War II were eventually reversed. The defeats in Vietnam and Afghanistan were costly, but did not do lasting

damage to America's overall position in the world because they were far from the main theaters of global competition. The initial failure in Iraq was mitigated by a shift in strategy that ultimately left Iraq relatively stable and unthreatening to its neighbors kept the U.S. dominant in the region. Defeat in the present confrontation with Iran will be of an entirely different character. It can neither be repaired nor ignored. There will be no return to the status quo ante, no ultimate American triumph that will undo or overcome the harm done. The Strait of Hormuz will not be open as it once was. With control of the strait, Iran emerges as the key player in the region, one of the key players in the world.

The roles of China and Russia as Iran's allies are strengthened the role of the U.S. substantially diminished. far from demonstrating American prowess as supporters of the war have repeatedly claimed, the conflict has revealed in America that is unreliable and incapable of finishing what it started. That is going to set off a chain reaction around the world as friends and foes adjust America's failure. I get a little nervous when I start agreeing with people like Bob Kagan, but I wonder what you make of his analysis and also the significance of someone with his worldview saying that Iran has checkmated us and that this will be a defeat like none other in history?

Well, I detest Robert Kagan. I've detested him ever since. I learned of his complicity in the clean break strategy and other things like that that we got so embroiled in the George W. Bush administration first term. But in this case, I know why he's doing it. He's trying to anger those decision makers and advisors to decision makers who are thinking about ending this conflict. That's what he's trying to do. He's trying to anger them so that they'll go full money against Iran with everything the empire has and everything is. Interesting.

But I agree with you. He's right. And the reason that's happening is because we did this war of choice, which was stupid. And it's going to rebound pretty much in the way that he. described. I think we could even be if the Iranians are resolute, if we bomb them again, as I said, there's a good chance we'll do. And they hit their second tier of targets. We will have undoubtedly recession by June, global recession by June, and by September or October, we'll have global depression. And you know what happened after the last global depression,

World War II? Well, very frightening prospect. Thank you so much, sir, for joining us today. really appreciate your analysis and your time. Surely. Well, that does it for us on today's edition of Blue Blazer Point, Crystal. It was great to be here in the country club. Dark Navy Blue Blazer. Yeah. We both got the dress code, little, I guess, tastefully small necklaces there.

Wow. I just got to bring my glasses next time. That's right. Do you have glasses? Do you wear glasses? No. I was going to say, I've never, are you contacts? My eyesight is just naturally perfect, Emily.

I don't know what to tell you. I was going to say we're going golfing after this, but I'm driving the cart. That's what the place is. Please, I agree with that. All right, guys. Tomorrow we're going to have a nice little fascist points. Emily and Sager will be in, and then we'll be back to actually me and Emily on Wednesday. So mixing things up this week.

I will see you Wednesday, and they will see you tomorrow. Another podcast from some SNL late night comedy guy, not quite. Unhumor me with Robert Smygel and friends, me and hilarious guests from Bob Odenkirk to David Letterman, Help make you funnier. This week, my guest, S&L's Mikey Day and head writer, Streeter Seidel, help an a cappella band with their Between Songs banter. Where does your group perform? We do some retirement homes.

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