Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 5/21/24: CNN Admits Michael Cohen Crime Worse Than Trump, Trump Demands Biden Drug Test For Debate, Congo Army Claims Americans Behind Failed Coup

Episode Date: May 21, 2024

Ryan and Saagar discuss Michael Cohen admits to stealing money from Trump, Trump demands drug test for Biden before debate, Congo Army claims Americans involved in failed coup.   To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show AD FREE, uncut and 1 hour early visit: https://breakingpoints.com/   Merch Store: https://shop.breakingpoints.com/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. is irresponsible son, but I have DNA proof that could get the money back. Hold up. They could lose their family and millions of dollars? Yep. Find out how it ends by listening to the OK Storytime podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Camp Shane, one of America's longest running weight loss camps for kids, promised extraordinary results. But there were some dark truths behind Camp Shane's facade of happy, transformed children. Nothing about that camp was right. It was really actually like a horror movie. Enter Camp Shame, an eight-part series examining the rise and fall of Camp Shane and the culture that fueled its decades-long success. You can listen to all episodes of Camp Shame one week

early and totally ad-free on iHeart True Crime Plus. So don't wait. Head to Apple Podcasts and subscribe today. You experience dad guilt? I hate it. She understands, but she still pretends she likes me. Happy Father's Day. This show may be called Good Moms, Bad Choices, but this show isn't just for moms. We keep it real about relationships and everything in between. And yes, men are more than welcome to listen in. I knew nothing about brunch. She was a terrible girlfriend, but she put me on to brunch. To hear this and more, open your free iHeart app, search Good Moms, Bad Choices, and listen now. Hey guys, Ready or Not 2024 is here, and we here at Breaking Points are already thinking of ways we can up our game for this critical election.

We rely on our premium subs to expand coverage, upgrade the studio, add staff, give you guys the best independent coverage that is possible. If you like what we're all about, it just means the absolute world to have your support. But enough with that, let's get to the show. Let's go over to Trump trial. I want to give everybody an update. Yes, I know that the details are maddening, but yesterday genuinely was an important moment at the Trump trial. Let's put this up there on the screen. This was chaos at the trial. Judge clears the courtroom over irritation with the

Trump defense witness. So everybody stick with me here because it basically comes back to a lawyer. His name is Robert Costello, was actually called by the Trump defense team to discuss a previous meeting that he had with Michael Cohen. That meeting allegedly took place in April of 2018 after the FBI had raided Cohen's hotel room, home, and office. Now, according to Costello, he says, quote, he was putting on quite a show referring to Michael Cohen and that he was actually introduced basically to call into question Michael Cohen's both state of mind and to say that he was suicidal, that he was, quote, a drama queen, and several others.

The judge ended up actually clearing the courtroom because they were very upset with Costello apparently, like, audibly jeering the judge and his own rulings, saying, before clearing the courtroom, Merchant sent the jurors out, scolded Costello for saying, in response to objections from prosecutors and for giving the judge, quote, side eyes. So there were some shenanigans that were happening there. So all of this was actually called, Ryan, in the defense. You have anything you want to say before we get to what Michael Cohen admitted to on the stand? At one point, the judge said to the witness, are you staring me down right now? So they were squaring up. The witness to the judge.

They almost fought. Yeah. Trump really does bring out the worst of us, doesn't he? But let's get to the actual major part here. The media was all focused in on this part, right? On this Costello thing. without noticing that Michael Cohen, on the stand, under oath, straight up admitted to stealing $50,000 from Trump in this alleged transfer of funds. So again, if we'll all remember, Cohen takes out like a mortgage on his house. He pays off Stormy Daniels. Trump then has a portion

of his Trump Organization funds, which are then reimbursed to Michael Cohen. The allegation is that reimbursement, which Trump reported as a payment, was not actually for compensation. It was done for election purposes. To make it even more convoluted, in New York state law, what I just described there is just a misdemeanor and not a felony. So to make it a felony, it had to have been done in order to cover up a second crime, even though that second crime is a federal unprosecuted crime. You guys sticking with me here? Well, what Cohen admitted to does not require any convoluted logic.

Don't even have to ask me. Here is a CNN analyst who is like, honestly, this is a worse crime than what Trump is being charged with. Let's take a listen. Michael Cohen explained this whole thing. Quote, that's what was owed. And I didn't feel Mr. Trump deserved the difference. That's a lot different than I stole $60,000 from my boss on the transaction at the heart of this case. And by the way, the fact that he was never charged

with larceny is important because stealing $60,000 through fraud, which would be larceny in New York state, is more serious of a crime than falsifying business records. More serious of a crime than falsifying business records. Also, just so everybody is 100% clear, I'm going to read you a direct transcript from the trial. So you stole from the Trump organization, right? Trump's lawyer, ask Cohen. Yes, sir. That's what he said. It's like you can't even make this up. He also later testified that he stole as a form of self-help in response to Trump slashing his bonus from the $50,000 bonus that he received to the $150,000 that he had previously received. He says, I was angered

because of the reduction. So I just felt like it was a form of almost like self-help. Self-help. And he admits, so you stole. He said, yes, I stole. He said that under oath. But he's given immunity by the prosecutors, right? I looked it up. Statute of limitations on grand larceny in New York is five years.

Oh, okay. So I guess it's passed. But you can always fiddle with statute of limitations, which Alvin Bragg did in this case, too, because the statute passed. But like you said, he figured out ways to extend the clock on that. But yeah, stealing $50,000 or $60,000 is a serious crime. Right. I mean, that's a lot of money. That's the average American salary.

He goes, have you paid back the Trump organization? No. I mean, if it's self-help, what this is all, this is part of the transcript. Now, why are we even focusing in on this? Because from my estimate, so again, if you go watch CNN primetime, and I try and check up on what these people are all doing ahead of their shows, they are all leading with the Costello thing. But they're not even mentioning the Michael Cohen thing. Well, the Michael Cohen admission of stealing, of previously lying on, admitted criminal, and that they have enough

reasonable doubt that he's not telling the truth that it was purely done for election purposes. As long as there is a single juror who is there in the box who believes that Trump did this just so he didn't want his wife to find out, he's scot-free. I mean, and I don't think that there is anything yet in this trial where you could prove beyond a reasonable doubt that this was 100% for election purposes. Because I wouldn't believe that for anybody, including Donald Trump. Right. It's basically a state of mind trial and prosecution. And Trump has one of the most inscrutable states of mind and also one of the most readable. Yeah, true. It's a funny case because it turns on the question of whether or not he would feel personal or private shame

before his wife or before his friends or the public if news of this affair broke out. And with almost every human being on the planet, you would say, well, of course, there'd be some shame associated with that. Right. Then the question for the jurors is, is Trump one of the unique figures on the planet who actually wouldn't care at all if this was out and is only concerned about the election and how this appears in the wake of the Access Hollywood tape at all? And so they have Michael Cohen testifying. No, no, it was 100% about the, it was 100% about the election. And I know that because he told me this and because

I've known him for a very long time. So then it does hinge on Cohen's credibility. The prosecutors asked him, you really want, you hate Trump. Yeah. He's like, yeah. He's like, yes, I hate him. You want him to go down. Right. Don't you? And he's like, yeah, I want him to go down right don't you and he's like, yeah, I wanted to go down and then he does So he's motivated. He's a thief one person. He's a liar, right? On the other hand Trump did the thing he did but yeah that that's that's the wild question that this turns on was it purely for the campaign Or was there some shred left of decency in him that didn't want that exposed? That's the funny question for the jury.

Does Donald Trump have a single human shred of decency? And that's literally all you need. You just need a single question of there. But you could find 12 New Yorkers who are like, actually, no. It's possible. Yeah, right. It could be political, but then we have questions about appeal and all that. It's not like things just end in one way.

So just so everybody understands, Trump's lawyers are actually expected to rest their case in the criminal trial. That actually happened on Monday. And then as the testimony right now has gone forward, we would understand at least procedurally, we will not get anything, I think, by the end of the week, just because I think the prosecutors get another turn. They might call somebody. We have closing arguments, et cetera, that will all play out. So the actual judgment from the jurors will come soon, but it's not going to come this week. That's another reason we wanted to check in with everybody. And the content gods appear to have cursed us in that Donald Trump will not be testifying. Yes, I know. That's very,

very sad. Unless we all do some type of content dance for those gods. The irony is that he always wants to testify in his own defense. I remember covering all of the Mueller stuff and he was desperate, you know, he was desperate to do an interview with Mueller and to prove that he didn't do anything wrong, which, you know, you can read the report and tell me what you want. But his lawyers were like, absolutely not, we can't allow that to happen. So in this case, it does appear

that he has been convinced not to testify in his own defense. And he'll be very happy, I think, to get out of this. Regardless of what happens, he can at least campaign again. He doesn't have to be stuck in court. Until he has more cases. Those are going to be after the election, right? Yeah,

because of the incompetence of all the prosecutors. So there is not a lot, I think, that Trump needs to worry about, I think, in the immediate future. Although, listen, what do I know? Maybe he gets convicted and that's a whole other story. And then even if he's convicted, you can still appeal the conviction. Exactly. And you could be free on bond during that appeal. We'll see. Camp Shane, one of America's longest-running weight loss camps for kids,

promised extraordinary results. Campers who began the summer in heavy bodies were often unrecognizable when they left. In a society obsessed with being thin, it seemed like a miracle solution.

But behind Camp Shane's facade of happy, transformed children was a dark underworld of sinister secrets. Kids were being pushed to their physical and emotional limits as the family that owned Shane turned a blind eye. Nothing about that camp was right. It was really actually like a horror movie. In this eight-episode series, we're unpacking and investigating stories of mistreatment and re-examining the culture of fatphobia that enabled a flawed system to continue for so long. You can listen to all episodes of Camp Shame one week early and totally ad-free on iHeart True Crime Plus. So don't wait. Head to Apple Podcasts and subscribe today. DNA test proves he is not the father.

Now I'm taking the inheritance. Wait a minute, John. Who's not the father? Well, Sam, luckily it's your Not the Father Week on the OK Storytime podcast, so we'll find out soon. This author writes, my father-in-law is trying to steal the family fortune worth millions from my son, even though it was promised to us. Now I find out he's trying to give it to his irresponsible son instead,

but I have DNA proof that could get the money back. Hold up. So what are they going to do to get those millions back? That's so unfair. Well, the author writes that her husband found out the truth from a DNA test they were gifted two years ago. Scandalous. But the kids kept their mom's secret that whole time.

Oh my God. And the real kicker, the author wants to reveal this terrible secret, even if that means destroying her husband's family in the process. So do they get the millions of dollars back or does she keep the family's terrible secret? Well, to hear the explosive finale, listen to the OK Storytime podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Over the past six years of making my true crime podcast, Hell and Gone, I've learned one thing. No town is too small for murder. I'm Katherine Townsend. I've received

hundreds of messages from people across the country begging for help with unsolved murders. I was calling about the murder of my husband at the cold case. I've never found her, and it haunts me to this day. The murderer is still out there. Every week on Hell and Gone Murder Line, I dig into a new case, bringing the skills I've learned as a journalist and private investigator to ask the questions no one else is asking. Police really didn't care to even try. She was still somebody's mother. She was still somebody's daughter.

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

Let's go to the debate section here. We wanted to give everybody an update on the presidential debates actually going to happen next month, which is kind of incredible. You know, not a very long turnaround. The earliest debates in modern American history, Trump agreeing to do two, actually three debates, Biden only agreeing to do two debates. There's been lots of questions around the format, what that's all going to look like. The very first debate is going to take place on CNN. But this time around, Trump has an interesting stipulation. And remember this, the rules are not up to anybody except the two campaigns and the network. It's a trilateral negotiation. There is literally anything could happen. It's the only

campaigns. There's no preset rules like with the commission on presidential debates. Trump is saying that he is going to demand a drug test for Joe Biden. Let's take a listen. No, I have fake tappers. They said, I just want to debate this guy, but you know, and I'm going to, I'm going to demand a drug test too, by the way. I am. No, I really am. I don't want him coming in like the State of the Union. He was high as a kite. I said, is that Joe up there, a beautiful rogue? And by the end of the evening, he's like, well, it was exhausted, right?

Now, we're going to demand a drug test. But fake Tapper and these people, they're going to be fine. They're going to be fair. I think they're going to be fair. And if they're not, you know, you have to deal with it, right? You have to deal with it. They're going to be fair, but they're fake, but they're not fake. I'm going to demand a drug test.

Is that really Joe up there? As I said, it's not a terrible idea. We should drug test them all. Anybody who's up there on the stage. Why not? There are now betting odds on what he would test positive for. And to your point, yes, both candidates should take a drug test. And if RFK Jr., we should test him too.

I want to see his testosterone. I would actually really like to know his testosterone levels. Yeah, what it looks like. Yeah, and who knows what kind of holistic stuff he's working on too. That'd be interesting. Yeah, that'd be interesting. But yes, Trump, a lot of Sudafed probably coursing through those veins. I've seen that before. You have people talking about that. The irony, of course, is that in the previous debate, there was a COVID test requirement. That's right. Trump flew in late.

Circumvented it. Skipped the COVID test. Yes. Had, appears to- Likely had. Likely had COVID at the time. Tried to assassinate. All right, all right, all right. Think about it, if Biden-

Well, I mean, he is very old, but that's actually a point against Biden, is that if he's so old that he's that vulnerable to COVID. Yeah. Breeze all over him. Yeah. Joe Biden somehow dodged that bullet. He did dodge that one. It was the only interaction he had practically for like six months, right? Yes. That literally is the only time that they brought him out there. They're like, you will win as long as we just leave you in this house. Your only risk is you will be with 12 feet away from Trump.

And we're golden as long as he doesn't have COVID. And it worked. It actually worked out for him. So Biden could agree to the drug test and then just show up later. Well, here's the question about Biden and the drug test, what is actually needed in terms of the cocktail. Just the latest thing, somebody was pointing out the debate is only a month away and we're still in the middle of Biden quite literally forgetting episodes of modern history. Here he is thinking he was the vice president during the pandemic. Let's take a listen. And when I was vice president, things were kind of bad during the pandemic.

And what happened was Barack said to me, go to Detroit and he'll fix it. Well, poor mayor, he spent more time with me than he ever thought he was going to have to. Say that again? He was the vice president during the pandemic? It's like, what are we talking about? Like, Ron Klain was tasked with Ebola, but that was over in Africa in one case in Texas. Yeah, that was in 2014. That was a long time ago. You know, and also, I checked, this is the most dystopian part, and you'll appreciate this too. So I'll explain it for everybody. When you're the White House correspondent and you're transcribing things live, it can be a little bit tricky. So sometimes you're like, hmm, okay, did he say that? How did he say it? So for the official government record,

there's something known as the official White House transcript. Now, officially, the White House transcript is run by nonpartisan actors. They're like bureaucrats. They're not hired necessarily by the president or not. But recently under Biden, and this is something that not even the Trump administration ever did, they have been going in and editing his remarks to mean what he actually meant. So again, nonpartisan official government record does not include that remark. It meant to say the recession. So again, nonpartisan official government record does not include that remark. It meant to say the recession. So they literally in the official transcript, strike out the word pandemic and put in, he meant recession. So historians, let's say,

you know, 40 years, 50 years from now who want to come back and to study this episode, let's say there's a, what, nuclear holocaust or something. This video and everything is all gone. But for some reason, the White House transcript survives. It's a very convoluted scenario. They would look back and they would actually have no idea what happened. I mean, that is kind of terrifying. Does the transcript have both?

Like, he actually said this. So the first has a strikeout, but the official published record is not going to have that in there. Yeah, so they had an initial version and they usually have an edited version that comes second. That becomes the official draft of history. Which is going to distort historians' understanding of this period in the sense that, let's say Trump does win. When historians go back, they'll be like, why didn't the American public reelect this guy? Yeah, exactly. Unemployment was really low. Trump seemed crazy. It's all right here, right? I mean,

and his speeches seem quite coherent. Yeah. And again, this may sound dumb, but this is actually very important for 30, 40, 50, 100 years or something like that. Yeah, it is Soviet. It's like that photo where Stalin had that guy like photoshopped before photoshopped out of the photo. And that's currently the state of the U.S. government right now. And then finally, though, we can't forget about RFK Jr., who, as we've all said, we do believe he should be up there on the debate stage. He actually believes and has been saying now for quite some time that he will be on the stage here. He laid out his logic in a Fox News interview. Let's take a listen. So your reaction to you not being

offered this position, have you heard from the campaigns or from CNN or ABC to ask your your plausibility of being on that debate stage? We are in discussions with CNN. CNN published a list of criteria, four criteria for four candidates getting in the debate. And we have shown CNN that we meet all of those criteria and that President Trump and President Biden cannot meet those criteria. The key is that every candidate has to have and be on the ballots in enough states to get 270 electoral votes by June 20th. And we will qualify for that. President Trump and President Biden cannot qualify for that because they don't have any electoral votes at this time.

They are presumptive nominees for their party, but they themselves are not on the ballot. I will be the only one on the ballot. The other criterion is four polls that have me at 15% national polls, and they listed the polling firms that they would take those polls from, and we've given them five national polls that show me, including the CNN poll, the most recent CNN poll that has me at 15%. The Harvard-Harris poll, the Monmouth poll, the Quinnipiac poll, they all have me at 15 percent or more. So I qualify for the debates. They have now made a public offer.

We consider that a contract, and we're in discussion with CNN now. So this is actually fascinating because I noted this. I remember immediately when Crystal and I were talking about it, and I was like, you know, Crystal, technically, you know, they say you have to be on the ballot for 270 states. Well, neither of these candidates has actually been nominated by their parties. They're not on the ballot. So he's right because he named Nicole Shanahan. And this is part of the reason, by the way, that they named her is in several states, you are not allowed to be on the ballot unless you have your running mate and others. So the real question is, is that is CNN going to allow him on the stage? Because according to the published rules that they have put out, he should be on the stage. Now,

technically, according to them, neither of those should be either. What excuse are they going to come up with to keep him off? He should be there, so should Jill Stein. This is like the Palestinians thinking that the rules apply equally to everybody, rather than made up by people in power to benefit them. What's unique about this situation is that Biden and Trump both- Yeah, neither want him up there. They're not quite clear who he benefits. If it was clear, then whichever one of them was going to win would be like standing up for the rights of democracy and free expression and let everybody on stage. Because process is always subsumed by your agenda. Yes.

But yeah, in this case they don't know. So your point earlier where you said that this is a tripartite agreement, like the negotiating between CNN and Biden and Trump is the key one. It's a negotiation between those three. Yes. And they don't care what the rules are. Yeah, I'm fascinated to see what the official rationale is because you can't ignore him at this point. He's just too big.

And even CNN analyst Harry Enten, you know, their own polling guy is like, look, you know, according to the commission on presidential debates criteria, they would have, he probably would have qualified for this. So then they put out this cutesy 270 thing. But I mean, California and Texas is half the battle. He's already on the ballot, or allegedly on the ballot in both. Now, not officially yet, but you throw Michigan, Ohio,

maybe you get Florida, New York, and then you're good to go. That's it. That's all you need for 270 just because of the way that the electoral college works. So in that regard, that's all you need for 270 just because of the way that the Electoral College works. So in that regard, it's pretty clear. According to their rules, you should be up there. There's no question about it. And I think ultimately it probably won't. It will not be up to CNN as much as I love to CNN. They'll just say we're not going to do this.

Yeah. Right. CNN would probably love it. Like, what do they care? I'm not so sure, though. I think they would care. And this is one of those. Their bias is probably toward that

Just keep it in the two parties. Isn't they do love ratings. They love they love a spectacle And if though if if the candidates were like, yes, we want RFK jr. On stage then CNN's like yeah Sure, absolutely put him on stage there. They would not fight against it Right because they that's not that's that's not their first second or third agenda Even if that is where their bias lies. Well, here's the question then. Would Biden and Trump pull out if RFK were included? I actually think the answer is yes for Biden. It's an interesting game of chicken for CNN to play, to be like, look, we're putting, now they don't care. So that's where the bias comes in. But let's

say they played chicken and they're like, he is a serious candidate. Some of our viewers want to hear from him. We think he deserves to be on stage. He is accepted. He's going to be on stage. Then, yeah, do one or both of them back out. Let's see. It's going to be fun. All right, let's get to the Congo.

Camp Shane, one of America's longest-running weight-loss camps for kids, promised extraordinary results. Campers who began the summer in heavy bodies were often unrecognizable when they left. In a society obsessed with being thin, it seemed like a miracle solution. But behind Camp Shane's facade of happy, transformed children was a dark underworld of sinister secrets. Kids were being pushed to their physical and emotional limits as the family that owned Shane turned a blind eye. Nothing about that camp was right. It was really actually like a horror movie.

In this eight-episode series, we're unpacking and investigating stories of mistreatment and reexamining the culture of fatphobia that enabled a flawed system to continue for so long. You can listen to all episodes of Camp Shame one week early and totally ad-free on iHeart True Crime Plus. So don't wait. Head to Apple Podcasts and subscribe today. DNA test proves he is not the father. Now I'm taking the inheritance. Wait a minute, John. Who's not the father?

Well, Sam, luckily it's your not the father week on the OK Storytime podcast, so we'll find out soon. This author writes, my father-in-law is trying to steal the family fortune worth millions from my son, even though it was promised to us. Now I find out he's trying to give it to his irresponsible son instead, but I have DNA proof that could get the money back. Hold up. So what are they going to do to get those millions back? That's so unfair. Well, the author writes that her husband found out the truth from a DNA test they were gifted two years ago. Scandalous. But the kids kept their mom's secret that whole time. Oh, my God.

And the real kicker, the author wants to reveal this terrible secret, even if that means destroying her husband's family in the process. So do they get the millions of dollars back or does she keep the family's terrible secret? Well, to hear the explosive finale, listen to the OK Storytime podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. Over the past six years of making my true crime podcast hell and gone, I've learned one thing. No town is too small for murder. I'm Catherine Townsend. I've received hundreds of messages from people across the country begging for help with unsolved murders. I was calling about the murder of my husband at the cold case. They've never found her.

And it haunts me to this day. The murderer is still out there. Every week on Hell and Gone Murder Line, I dig into a new case, bringing the skills I've learned as a journalist and private investigator to ask the questions no one else is asking. Police really didn't care to even try. She was still somebody's mother. She was still somebody's daughter.

She was still somebody's sister. There's so many questions that we've never gotten any kind of answers for. If you have a case you'd like me to look into, call the Hell and Gone Murder Line at 678-744-6145. Listen to Hell and Gone Murder Line on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. So we've got some coup drama going on over in Congo. Let's put up this New York Times headline. So the military there saying that it foiled a coup,

which appears to be true based on the fact that a bunch of dudes were kind of shooting up the presidential palace and live streaming it. What actually happened behind that is really anybody's guess, but Sagar, let's unpack what we know about it. Tell me about this. Absolutely, just incredible, the details. So the main character here, Christian Malanga, who fled the Congo when he was a child for Utah and made a lot of money in Utah. He's only 41 years old. He has eight children. He went back about 10 years ago to try to basically launch a political career in Congo. Failed. Did a couple weeks in prison after that failure and then managed to get back to Utah, which is where the story could have ended instead.

Yeah. But it didn't end there. It didn't end there. He came back over, used his wealth to do a decent amount of business over in the Congo, some of it with an American pot entrepreneur, which is going to be part of this soon. Yeah, there's this white guy who's into pot who goes over to Congo to make a fortune. Okay, sketchy already. So recently he went over there also with his son, Marcel Malanga, one of his sons.

Social media influencer. Yeah, 21-year-old social media influencer. Very pro-Trump. People have loved to point out that he's just MAGA to the core. And all these photos of him just flashing money and just absolutely classic Trump-style influencer. It's going to stop being funny in a moment, but not really it's so this so so there was a very contested presidential election at the end of 2023 which didn't resolve until early 2024 essentially because of all the allegations of

Irregularity there have been very few presidential elections in in Congo period since since Congo became Zaire and then under Mobutu and then becomes Congo again. And so it's a very, very fragile hold on democracy. So out of nowhere, you've got this Christian Malanga guy who, with a handful of other armed men, first they go to basically the home of the incoming speaker of the assembly. And they shoot that up. One of the assailants is killed. They're live streaming all this on Facebook. Yeah, literally on Facebook. A couple guards are killed. And then Malanga says to the camera, he says, Felix, we're coming for you next.

And Felix is the head. Felix Shisekedi is the president of Congo. So this is early morning hours. So they march their drive down to the presidential palace. And they start to shoot that up, too. He's never there. The president of Congo is never there. He lives far away.

He's very rarely in there. He wasn't there at the time. None of these are the power centers. It's not an army base. It's not a radio station. It's not anywhere where you would need to actually take control in order to gain power. They're very quickly arrested. It's a pitiful coup attempt, and Malanga is killed.

They say resisting arrest. So we don't know exactly what happened at that point. We don't know if he was actually resisting arrest, if he was just summarily executed after getting captured. His son, it was successfully captured, Marcel, as were two of these Americans. So the Congolese military puts out video the next morning. U.S. citizens. Saying, yeah. With U.S. passports. Yeah, saying, look at these guys.

Who are these guys? They're not an entrepreneur. Matt Miller was asked about this at the State Department, and he said because of privacy laws, we can't say anything about these citizens, period. He said, as with any American citizens in custody, we are requesting consular access, so we're going to visit these folks who were captured in their failed coup attempt. Okay. Now, let's get into the different theories on what is going on here, because clearly the idea that a handful of people with assault weapons were going to take over Congo by attacking these residential areas that had, even if they take them over, then they're just holed up in a house and they would be finished off by the morning.

So there's a couple of theories. One theory is that Malanga had a bunch of allies within the opposition who betrayed him at the last moment and said, we're not doing this. I'm not so sure about that theory. Another theory is that he was goaded into this by allies of the president because the president is on his heels. The president is facing serious opposition right now. Anytime you have a coup attempt that is foiled, we've seen what every country does after that coup attempt. They suspend every law. Right. They declare martial law.

You consolidate the center. So they may think it was a false flag operation. He was killed, though. Right. And a false flag in the sense that the perpetrator would not know. So he didn't know he was being put into it. That would be the theory. He doesn't know. He's not part of a team

here. He's just a crazy person who's very able to be manipulated by more powerful people. What about the CIA? Yeah. So, that- I mean, here I'm looking at a multimillionaire African businessman with ties to Utah, an American citizen cannabis entrepreneur. By the way, all cash business, last time I checked, which are good fronts. Yeah. The CIA has always been in bed with drug runners. Now it would be funny if they're like above board plot dealers. The one guy doing business in Africa that isn't involved.

It would almost be negligent to not have him involved at this point. Right, because the geopolitics here is that they have a ton of cobalt and other rare earth minerals. If Joe Rogan talks about this all the time, right? Like the amount of cobalt and you're in my cell phone. If you drive a Tesla, probably 80% of the cobalt in your battery is from the Democratic Republic of the Congo. It's one of the most mineral-wretched places in the entire world. Yeah, and guess who owns almost all of that is China. Yes. And so while the U.S. has spent its last 70 years

kind of overthrowing governments and doing our aggressive elbow-throwing foreign policy, China just kind of comes in and just cleans up the mess and then just buys the rights. Yeah, zero interest loan. Yeah, like, here, we'll build you some roads. Right. And we'll take the mining rights for all of this. And so you've had a whole bunch of coups in Africa over the last several years, many of them involving US-trained kind of military figures. And most of those involve internal African politics. Well, we should say too, this also comes, I'm sure you can expand this as well. This comes on the heels of what just happened in Niger or Niger.

In Niger, there was just another coup where the U.S. had, what was it, 4,000 troops or something like that, which have basically summarily been kicked out of the country. They've already kicked the French out. They kicked out the French. U.S. troops basically have no idea what's going on, and they've invited Russian troops actually onto their soil. So U.S. position in Africa right now is actually quite shaky. Yeah, and the irony is that the Niger coup was carried out by a lot of officers who had U.S. training. Yeah, literally. So a conspiracy theorist might look at that and be like, well, clearly the U.S. was involved in

that. Yeah, but it didn't work out to our benefit. In fact, no. It appears that it was much more organized, Wagner Group, Russia, because all of a sudden, yeah, now the French are being thrown out. Because the French were the real colonial power in Niger. But yes, now they're saying the US troops need to go too. Right. And so not only did we produce just absolutely indescribable amounts of pain and suffering and suppression of people's democratic will and nationalism over the last 50 years, we're not even coming out on the winning side. Yeah, we're not doing well, folks. So my immediate thoughts with Congo was I was like, I bet you this is in response to Niger. Again, most people have no idea about this. This is totally flying under the radar. But this was a very important military base, as I understand it, for monitoring, you know, ISIS in Africa and all that.

A big part of the counterterrorism footprint for NATO, for France and the U.S. But I think most importantly, from what I understand, it was a big-ass drone base down in Niger. It's Djibouti and Niger were the two that we really relied on. So the loss of this, people in AFRICOM are freaking out about it, which is the command. It's like, I'm trying to explain, like CENTCOM is like the central command. AFRICOM is for U.S. command of all forces in Africa. As I understand, this was like a code red event for them. Then you look at the Congo, the wealthiest nation by mineral rights in the entire African continent. Oh, and a US citizen, cash business entrepreneur just

with a multimillionaire Utah businessman happens to get caught up in a coup on the government. And if people want the background, Emily and I interviewed the author of the new biography of Patrice Lumumba, The Lumumba Plot. I know you love these kinds of books. If you haven't read that one yet, put that on your Audible. It's so good. But Patrice Lumumba was a very American-leaning nationalist. I remember him, yeah. And he wanted a close relationship with the United States. He even sold a bunch of mineral rights in Congo to this fraudster American businessman. He had to revoke it when it became clear that the guy was a fraudster, but he wanted to be an American ally.

He flew to New York to try to make that case. We in the United States looked at him and saw saw a communist. Because he wore glasses, basically. And helped with the Belgians to assassinate him and replace him with eventually Mobutu, who led absolutely brutal dictatorship, changed the name of the country. He led that for decades. Results in this civil war that kills like five, six million people, creates all this instability. And it's not long from there to where we are here. And so, yeah, there's major power politics going on here. And it's something to watch because the surface level story of this Utah guy thinking he's going to take the country over.

Well, it's like with Haiti. Remember those guys? It's like all of a sudden we hear, oh, they're ex-DEA. And it's like, well, you know, they're all from Miami. You're like, what? And they're like, oh, they all speak English too. Interesting. Camp Shane, one of America's longest-running weight loss camps for kids, promised extraordinary results. But there were some dark truths behind Camp Shane's facade of happy, transformed children.

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