Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 5/28/25: Leaked Kamala Speech, Jordan Peterson Vs Atheists, Trump Wild Pardon Spree, Elon Turns On Trump Budget

Episode Date: May 28, 2025

Ryan and Emily discuss leaked Kamala speech, Jordan Peterson debates atheists, Trump wild pardon spree, Elon revolts on Trump budget.   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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We need your help to build the future of independent news media, and we hope to see you at BreakingPoints.com. She delivered remarks, presumably for a fat speaking fee, and actually started weighing in on some of what's happened over the course of the last year or so. Let's roll this first clip. Leaked video of former Vice President Kamala Harris. Right now, currently, we should add one of the frontrunners for the 2028 election if you look at polling and a potential candidate still for California government. Can you imagine how much liquor they go through at the Australian Real Estate Conference? Sounds amazing.

We really should have been there next year, 2026. We're going to go ahead and take a look at the clip. I do worry, frankly, about what's happening right now in our world. I do worry that it is important that we remember history. It's important we remember the 1930s. It's important that we remember that history has taught us that isolation does not equal insulation. It is important that we understand and remember history which taught us the interdependence and interconnection between nations. History that has taught us the importance of relationships of trust, the importance of friendships. Integrity. Honesty.

As I said, I think your best work is ahead of you for sure, 100%. I am unemployed right now. You know, I must speak truth. Okay, so what you heard her just say there, other than the importance of friendships, which we can all agree on. Yeah, evergreen sentiments is a comparison to the 1930s, but not in the context of like rising fascism and authoritarianism domestically, but isolation, which is a criticism of Donald Trump's foreign policy, obviously, through tariffs and other efforts on the world stage, which I don't think you can really call isolationism. But that's what the sort of neoliberal community sees these moves as, I suppose. Well, in her defense, there is an interesting parallel, and there's a book out now-ish about this, making parallels between the kind of post-World War I or leading until World War I, were this first period of globalization, of the, you know, which, you know, like internationalism becomes a real thing.

You also had the international working people's, you know, movement, the communists, you know, it was international. Like they called it, they saw themselves as bringing the working classes of the world together. It's the predicate of the entire Cold War, Red Scare. globalization in the 1900s and 10s, you know, creates World War I and then produces this like intense retreat away from globalization into the post-World War I period where everyone is kind of retrenching and isolationism becomes this, you know, the dominant ethos, which then produces like even hyper-nationalism,

and then we get World War II out of it. The book argues that what the proponents of liberal globalization the first time around didn't understand is that it was actually making things worse. It was making things better if you lived in London, and you were in the top 5% to 10%. There was some famous quote, you could order anything you wanted from around the world and have it by the end of the day in like 1910 or in London or something. But that was you. That was not 90 plus percent of people from England.

And it particularly was devastating for people around the world and so she's right that there is this interesting parallel going on and that isolationism can lead to cataclysmic world war it's a paradox

how could that possibly be? Do you think that's what she meant though? Because I see it as more I think she's just throwing out platitudes. Well, she's definitely doing that. Yeah. But I think it's also because her worldview is shaped by the post-Cold War Fukuyama internationalism, which is very different from socialist internationalism. She also very much wants the U.S. to continue to be the global cop. Exactly. Yeah. And I think that's a moment

on Charlemagne where he's like, the first caller was like, why are we spending all this money on these wars? Yeah. And she's like, because, you know, if we retreat, we're not safe. And like, so she really like makes this argument that the U.S. has to be a global superpower or else our national security suffers. And nobody buys that. Well, it's interesting because I think also Trump does buy it. Like Trump has the same general perspective. He has a different way of getting from point A to point B. But he would also say that America's empire, America's prosperity depends on its empire. He just would say he wants it to be a more logical empire. I mean, that's the Greenland, Panama approach, Taiwan approach to all of this.

He thinks it should be a more... The old school. A more logical, efficient empire than a sort of sprawling USAID empire. So what Tucker Carlson refers to as gay race communism. That's the... What's he call it?

Gay race communism? Gay race communism? Gay race communism, which should be a bumper sticker that you have on your van, by the way. Would I be for it or against it? You're very for it. Okay.

Race. I'm not even trying to make sense. But, I mean, you'd be for it and against it, I suppose. But that's what they would say, right? That it's not about the sprawling USAID, pro-China integration with our adversaries and all of that. So in a way, it's the same thing, but it's a different approach to it. And I think Kamala Harris

situating herself in this way as, I mean, polling again, it doesn't, it's not a surprise that because of name recognition, she's at the top of polls. When you look at 2028 presidential candidates, I think it's, she's definitely not running away from it. There was a quote in The Times recently of Kamala Harris saying she's staying in the fight, I think is the paraphrased version of what she said. So she's, she may be speaking at the Australian Real Estate Conference 2025, but she is very much still involved in American politics. She could run for California governor. California is what ran one of the, is one of the largest economies in the world, just as a state alone. It's one of the, I think it's like top 10. Yeah, it's huge. So she's not going anywhere, that's for sure. And we may end up using what we're about to talk about as the headline for this segment, if we do, apologies for making you sit through the Australian Real Estate Convention. But in

more Kamala Harris news, in the Jake Tapper, Alex Thompson book, Original Sin, there's this anecdote that says that she was quite angry at Anderson Cooper because – for pushing her so aggressively on why is Joe Biden having a medical episode in front of the entire country during this debate and not letting the kind of scripted line that she had come up with just sit and then move on. And so Harris told her colleagues, quote, this mother grabber doesn't treat me like the dang vice president of the United States, she said to colleagues. So in the book, the longer episode is kind of, we'll play the Anderson Cooper clip in a second. I remember we covered it at the time. It was quite something. So it goes through her watching the debate with her staff. And she's like, you know, how are people responding? And they're like, boss, people are calling for him to drop out. Like he's literally dying up on stage. And the Biden campaign reaches out to her and says, why don't you go what the upside is in you going on and talking about this.

And she said, no, absolutely not. I'm going for it. So then they sit down and they debate, you know, how they're going to respond. What talking points can they come up with to respond to this medical episode that the entire country just witnessed? And they talk so long, they miss CBS this morning because they just talk right through it. They miss CBS this morning because they just talk right through it. They miss another one. And then they go on Anderson Cooper and they had come up with the line. Well, just you'll see the talking points. Let's roll this Anderson Cooper back and forth.

He was a very different person on the stage four years ago when you debated him. You must. I mean, that's certainly true, is it not? Anderson, the point has to be performance in terms of what a president does, a president who incites an insurrection against the Capitol. No, but I got the point that you're making about a one and a half hour debate tonight. I'm talking about three and a half years of performance in work that has been historic. But is that the man who we saw on the stage tonight? Is that the other guy on the debate stage? Anderson. Anderson. According to the book, the Biden staff loved that line. And that

wasn't that wasn't part of the talking point. But this line she came up with. You're talking about an hour and a half debate. I'm talking about three and a half years of genius delivering for the American people. The Biden campaign loved that. All of it was pointless. There are not words that you can put together to make people unsee what they saw. But this is a problem that Kamala Harris never will ever, ever, ever run away from. And it's one that the book identifies, the book shows that she identified immediately. It's obvious that she's locked into this position where, as she says in

the book, what do I do if I distance, what do I look like if I distance myself from Joe Biden? I look disloyal. And she's not wrong. I mean, you'd look like... And if you don't, you look like an enabling moron. Yeah, and she'll never get away from this. I mean, there's no way. This is the defining... I mean, she was the vice president. It's not like she was the green job czar. She was the vice president of the United States and was regularly... That clip you just saw was literally right after the debate, but she has three and a half years of defending him. So under that's how most people remember her. She was a senator before. So people's memory of Kamala Harris prominently is as Joe Biden's vice president. And I just think it's a permanent

stain that she's never really going to be able to shake. Yeah. And they Democrats deliberately nominated the person who was in precisely the worst position to talk about the thing that people were most concerned about at that moment, which was this lie that they all told about whether or not Biden was there or not. Yeah. Whitmer, Newsom, literally any other human being other than the vice president, they would have more distance from Biden and more ability to say, I was just as shocked as you were when I saw that, and I am angry about the cover-up. You can't have the vice president, because the vice president would have to admit that they weren't actually in the meetings and paying any attention. Exactly. It would hurt. Yeah, it's interesting because that shows— It's that Johnny Cash song.

Which one? I mean, I don't think he wrote the song, but it's the one where the only way that the guy could get off of the Capitol Punisher getting hanged. Oh, yeah. Is to admit that he was in the arms of his best friend's wife. Because his alibi was, to him, worse than just getting hanged for a murder he didn't commit. Yes. It's interesting because it shows Kamala Harris being sort of undermined by the things that made her vice president, which is that she was a black woman, which is why they kept her on the ticket instead of going for another vice presidential candidate because they didn't want to look. And you see this come out at some points in the book, too. It looks horrible if you pass up the opportunity to have the first black woman president. And then you're like, nope, we are going with we're going to run

Josh Shapiro as vice president or we are going to then have this little mini primary skip over her. So then she gets put in this position because she was seen as the necessary heir apparent. And I mean, any sitting vice president would have been in that position, but I think they were especially wary of having a mini primary because it would look like they didn't have faith in this pick. So it's just like she was in an awful position that I don't think she's ever going to recover from. Now, granted, she could still win different elections if they're in a lesser of two evil situation where there's a horrible Republican candidate. In California, that's obviously not—wouldn't surprise anybody. But so it's possible she continues to climb the ladder. latter, but whether she's actually able, her national reputation is ever able to recover, and she's actually going to be seen as a real leader in the Democratic Party again, I think is

unlikely, because this is everyone's memory of her, and I just don't know how you recover from that without changing completely a total transformation of Kamala Harris, and that also seems very unlikely. She's got time. The song was written by Danny Dill and Mary John Wilkin, originally recorded by Lefty Frizzell. Lefty Frizzell? The Long Black Veil. Oh, Long Black Veil. Yes, yes. You can probably play that, right? Oh, absolutely. Yes, and have. Beautiful song. Beautiful American song, too. All right, up next, Jordan Peterson getting dog walked by a bunch of college kids. Have you ever thought about going voiceover? I'm Hope Woodard, a comedian, creator, and seeker of male validation.

To most people, I'm the girl behind voiceover, the movement that exploded in 2024. Voiceover is about understanding yourself outside of sex and relationships. It's more than personal. It's political, it's societal, and at times, it's far from what I originally intended it to be. These days, I'm interested in expanding what it means to be voiceover, to make it customizable for anyone who feels the need to explore their relationship to relationships. I'm talking to a lot of people who will help us think about how we love each other. It's a very, very normal experience to have times where a relationship is prioritizing other parts of that relationship that aren't being naked together. How we love our family. I've spent a lifetime trying to get my mother to love me,

but the price is too high. And how we love ourselves. Singleness is not a waiting room. You are actually at the party right now. Let me hear it. Listen to VoiceOver on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The Medal of Honor is the highest military decoration in the United States.

Recipients have done the improbable, showing immense bravery and sacrifice in the name of something much bigger than themselves. This medal is for the men who went down that day. It's for the families of those who did make it. I'm J.R. Martinez. I'm a U.S. Army veteran myself, and I'm honored to tell you the stories of these heroes on the new season of Medal of Honor, Stories of Courage from Pushkin Industries and iHeart Podcast. From Robert Blake, the first

black sailor to be awarded the medal, to Daniel Daly, one of only 19 people to have received the Medal of Honor twice. These are stories about people who have distinguished themselves by acts of valor, going above and beyond the call of duty. You'll hear about what they did, what it meant, and what their stories tell us about the nature of courage and sacrifice. Listen to Medal of Honor on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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

that enabled a flawed system to continue for so long. You can listen to all episodes of Camp Shame one week early and totally ad-free on iHeart True Crime Plus. So don't wait. Head to Apple Podcasts and subscribe today. for Jordan Peterson, and that includes corners of the right that typically defend Jordan Peterson, who is controversial on the right. We'll get into all of that because this confirms a lot of the criticisms of Jordan Peterson. This was a debate that was originally billed as one Christian

versus 20 atheists, and that was the title of the Jubilee video. We are going to get into why that's controversial and why that became controversial. Before we do, take a look at this first clip, D1. So do you believe in the all-knowing, all-powerful, all-good notion of God? What do you mean by believe? Do you think it to be true? That's the circular definition. What do you mean when you say you believe? How is that circular? Because you added no content to the answer by substituting the word true and believe.

I said you think it to be true. All right. So if you believe something, you stake your life on it. What do you mean by that? You live for it and you die for it. That's what I mean by that. It isn't something that you say. It isn't something that's associated with logical consistency. It's not declarative. It's not propositional.

It's not a figment of your imagination. It's the presupposition of your attention and your action. And you're either fragmented, in which case you worship multiple gods, or there's some unity at the bottom of it that makes you an unstoppable force okay so you're saying that you don't believe something if you wouldn't die for it not really no okay so how would you define belief something you say can i explain like i could believe it is the case that this pen exists but if someone like threatened my life right i would lie in order to be able to save my life, right? Like I think you would do that too. You wouldn't lie to save your life? Don't be so sure. You wouldn't lie to save your life? How much do you know about me? I didn't lie to save my career. I didn't lie

to save my clinical practice. Would you lie to like save your children, your mom, your dad? I don't think lying would save them. Can there ever be a circumstance logically that lying could save someone's life? Yeah, and if you're steeped in sin, you're likely to live in circumstances like that. I'll give you an example. If you're in Nazi Germany, and it is the case that there's Jewish people in your attic

and you're trying to protect them, would you lie to the Nazis? I would have done everything I bloody well could so I wouldn't be in that situation to begin with. It's a hypothetical and it's not answerable. You can't answer hypotheticals? No, I can It's a hypothetical, and it's not answerable. You can't answer hypotheticals? No, I can't answer a hypothetical like that because it's far...

Did you eat today? Look, don't play games. I'm not playing games. Yes, you are. If you present me with an intractable moral choice that's stripped of context and you back me into a corner, you're playing game. I just told you I would do everything that I could to make sure that I'm never in that situation. By the time you've got there, you've made so many mistakes that there's nothing you can do that isn't a sin. Being born in Nazi Germany and trying to protect

people that you care about, like there could be a Jewish friend that you have and you want to protect them. I think you should just give up on that line of questioning. Give up on just trying to clarify your position? I did clarify. Are you uncomfortable with me asking this question? It's just a basic hypothetical. It's just a basic hypothetical. You put Jews' lives at stake in Nazi Germany. That's just a basic hypothetical.

Obviously, you would lie in that scenario to save their life, but you're not trying to answer this question. So what you're trying to do is you're trying to muddy the waters when I ask you, do you believe this? Do you think this to be true? So you don't actually have to answer this question. So what you're trying to do is you're trying to muddy the waters when I ask you like, do you believe this? Do you think this to be true? So you don't actually have to answer the questions. And plenty of Christians don't like that because they clearly see that you don't really like want to be associated with Christianity. I can imagine that I was in a situation where the best I could do as a consequence of my previous mistakes was to tell the least amount of lie I could manage. All right. So Ryan, first of all,

I would lie to save you, but we're all chomping at the bit to respond to that before we do. Let's roll this next clip of another person getting the better of Jordan Peterson in this exchange. Let's go for your definition of worship again. What's your definition of worship?

Attend to. Attend to. Prioritize. Do Catholics... And sacrifice for. Do Catholics attend to? Do they prioritize Mary over all other human beings? No, I didn't say over all, did I?

I didn't add that to my definition. You understand. I said there was a hierarchy as well. You attend to Catholic. So you can attend to something trivially, or you can attend to it deeply. And now you're adding stuff to the definition. But your original definition.

I added the hierarchy part at the beginning. Are you familiar? You just didn't understand it. Are you familiar with the Immaculate Conception? Why is that relevant? Because you go to a Catholic church, don't you? Or you've attended recently. You're interested in Catholicism, aren't you?

Sure. All right. Are you familiar with their doctrines? Somewhat. Okay, you're familiar. Their doctrines are very deep. How do they regard Mary? Why are you asking me that?

Because you're a Christian. You say that. I haven't claimed that. Oh, what is this? Why are you asking me that? Because you're a Christian. You say that. I haven't claimed that. Oh, what is this? Is this Christians versus atheists? I don't know. You don't know where you are right now. Don't be a smartass.

Well, either you're a Christian or you're not. Because I won't talk to you if you're a smartass. Either you're a Christian or you're not. Which one is it? I could be either of them, but I don't have to tell you. You could be you. You don't have to tell me. I was under the impression.

I was invited to talk to a Christian. Am I not talking to a Christian? No, you were invited to. I think everyone should look at the title of the YouTube channel. You're probably in the wrong YouTube video. You're really quite something. You are. Aren't I?

But you're really quite nothing, right? You're not a Christian. Okay, I'm done with him. All right, so that guy came out later and said, indeed, the event was billed to the people during casting and who were invited as Jordan Peterson, as a Christian versus 20 atheists. And so the controversy, because the video has since been changed to from one Christian versus 20 atheists to Jordan Peterson versus 20 atheists. But what is a Jordan Peterson?

Yeah, define a Jordan. Can you define a Jordan Peterson, right? But Jordan Peterson, if you are a Christian, people know that Jordan Peterson has long been seen as very problematic because he goes out and does these, what are billed as very deep academic lectures on Christianity, but cannot bring himself to ultimately say that he believes in the truth of the resurrection. He believes that Jesus actually died and was raised from the dead and is not, is more of like a, maybe the right

way to say it would be a cultural Christian. He's a heretic. He's definitely a heretic, but everyone has sort of given him some patience because he's sort of discovering. It's almost like Russell Brand, right? He seems like he's on a journey. Let him cook. Right, right, right. But in the process, he has said some things that are just utterly heretical. He is a terrible representation of Christianity, but the 20 atheists brought that out better than most conservatives ever have in conversation with Jordan Peterson. So what did you make of it, Ryan? The whole thing is comical.

The guy is such a fraud. And the final line was devastating because it was blunt, but also earned. Like, he said, he wouldn't say whether he's a Christian or not. And then he used the line, you're really something, aren't you? Set him up for this frying pan across the face. Walked right into it. And you're really nothing. And so, the kid had such a delightful retort because it works on so many levels.

It's like, okay, you're nothing because you won't say whether you're a Christian or you're an atheist and yet you showed up here at this debate where you're supposed to be a Christian. You won't allow anything to be defined so you constantly escape having to make any genuine analysis

or give any thought to anything but it works on the deeper level that there is nothing there like and and you know you should clean your room like that's his big thing like you should actually do that like it's smart but he can't answer the question of why ultimately the satisfaction of really anybody um just that it's like the christians would say there's a reason that you should do that. But he's never been able to get from point A to point B on that in a way that. And the first one was hilarious where he's like, I would not have put myself in that situation. I would have done things to prevent it.

So what are the things that he could have done? The kid mentions one of them. You could be not born in Nazi Germany. But like in the hypothetical, that's not an option. Like you were born into that. After that, is he saying that he would have through force of will prevented the rise of Hitler? Yeah. Is he saying he would just not have actually participated in rescuing Jews from the Holocaust? Well, he's making this absurd. Or is he saying he would have been a Nazi? So therefore he would have been actually knocking on the doors, not on the other side of it. Well, he's making...

Yeah, I mean, it doesn't... What he's saying actually does not make any sense. And that's what everyone... There's no logical route to the point he's making because that would be predicated on this idea that truth prevents awfulness from happening. That a culture can be sort of like based on universal truths and it will all be great, which is not Christian at all because the truth, the fundamental truth at the heart of Christianity

is that man is fallen. So if you're a Christian, even that, even classical liberalism and democracy doesn't save you from evil. So it doesn't save you, prevent you from being put in those awful positions. So, no, that doesn't make sense in and of itself. But, Ryan, also Jordan Peterson is sort of in this position where I don't know if I blame him or Jubilee because he's talked about himself as people ask him if he's a Christian. There are other Christians you could get. Of course. But he also doesn't even, people ask him if he's a Christian. Are there other Christians you could get? Of course, but he also doesn't even ever agree with anybody saying he's a Christian.

He always sort of takes it and says, well, I'm a new kind of Christian. That's one way he's answered the question. The other way he's answered the question is by saying, you know, Judeo-Christianity, are these like human archetypes that are based on the truth about humanity that's inside of us. And because he's a psychiatrist, a psychologist, and so he pulls that out and says, this is very like Jungian approach to what truth is. And then Christianity through that lens is true in the sense that it's human. And it's just a mess as you're trying to work that out in public and also be treated as like a political spokesperson for the right. So I feel like I don't know whether Jordan Peterson agreed to that

or if Jubilee invited people to do one Christian versus 20 atheists. I don't know if Jordan Peterson, I mean, the kid who we just played, I don't know if he's a kid, but he came out, he looks young, and said, Suez Canel. No, that's a callback to earlier in the episode, but he came out and said, Jordan Peterson seemed to know that that was what the debate was being billed as before. Right. Yeah, of course he did. Anyway, Jordan Peterson got wrecked. Well, my final take on Jordan Peterson is just that he is a person who said something really obvious at a time when it was somewhat difficult

to say something like that, and he made a good point. What was the point? It's just his interview. No, his original interview that went mega viral. He had already started to have some presence before this, but about like biological sex. That interview goes mega viral. That's where he took off. Okay. Yeah. Catapults him to huge fame. After that, the book comes out and becomes this massive bestseller. And I think the book did some real good. And I also think it was low-hanging fruit. And so because of that, he was catapulted into megastardom, which is difficult for anybody to cope with. He seems like

he's coping with it not particularly well. And on top of that, he was famous for picking some low-hanging fruit. And that doesn't make you a genius, you know, to sort of make a point about biological sex and then to make some decent points for young men. It was hard to say those things at the time, but it doesn't take a genius. But I think he's been thrust into this position where everyone expects him to be a towering thought leader. And he never really came from that background. He just, he said something. Thought he did. Right, right, right, right. It's easy to confuse it when everyone is, you're selling out, you know,

massive venues around the country and you have a massive bestseller and everyone's telling you that. People are paying money for your advice, big money for your advice. So I sort of think that's the position that he's found himself in now. And at UnHerd, we've covered this debate about cultural Christianity a lot. Ayaan Hirsi Ali wrote the essay for us about how she's now a Christian, not just a cultural Christian. This is something real going on. I interviewed Alex O'Connor after he moderated a debate between Dawkins and Jordan Peterson, which was just as frustrating as this. Because Peterson cannot bring himself to say that he believes. He'll use different definitions of true about what's true about Christianity. So let's find another representation on that side of the debate, I think, at this point going forward. We can no longer rely on Jordan Peterson to represent a sort of cogent side of the right going forward. He's on his own journey.

All right. Jubilee, get it together. Let him cook. the movement that exploded in 2024. Voice Sober is about understanding yourself outside of sex and relationships. It's more than personal. It's political, it's societal, and at times, it's far from what I originally intended it to be. These days, I'm interested in expanding what it means to be voice sober, to make it customizable for anyone who feels the need to explore their relationship to relationships. I'm talking to a lot of people who will help us think about how we love each other. It's a very, very normal experience to have times where a relationship is prioritizing other parts of that relationship that aren't being naked together. How we love our family.

I've spent a lifetime trying to get my mother to love me, but the price is too high. And how we love ourselves. Singleness is not a waiting room. You are actually at the party right now. Let me hear it. Listen to VoiceOver on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. 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. The Medal of Honor is the highest military decoration in the United States. Recipients have done the improbable, showing immense bravery and sacrifice in the name of something much bigger than themselves. This medal is for the men who went down that day. It's for the families of those who didn't make it. I'm J.R. Martinez. I'm a U.S. Army veteran myself, and I'm honored to tell you the stories of these heroes on the new season of Medal of Honor, Stories of Courage from Pushkin Industries and iHeart Podcast. From Robert Blake, the first black sailor to be awarded the medal, to Daniel Daly, one of only 19 people to have received the Medal of Honor twice.

These are stories about people who have distinguished themselves by acts of valor, going above and beyond the call of duty. You'll hear about what they did, what it meant, and what their stories tell us about the nature of courage and sacrifice. Listen to Medal of Honor on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Let's move over to Trump, who is now engaged in a pardon spree. And we'll talk about a whole bunch of these that he just did. Todd and Julie, what are their names?

Todd and Julie Chrisley. From the reality TV. Chrisley Knows Best, yeah. So they're getting a pardon. Ken Vogel has a piece in the New York Times about this fraudster whose mom gave a million bucks to Trump and did three fundraisers for Trump. Paul Walsh got a pardon just before he was about to report to prison, I believe. I don't think he ever actually had to go to prison. We'll talk about his crimes. They're really atrocious. And then a sheriff in Virginia who was basically selling fake badges and letting rich people be fake deputies in order for

bribes. In exchange for bribes, he also got pardoned. So let's start with the first element up here. There's Alice Johnson, who was pardoned during Trump won and when Trump is so proud to have pardoned her She was she was in prison for selling drugs and running a kind of drug empire and She's now sort of become the pardons are she was over prosecuted. Yeah, and that's the argument he's gonna make about these other pardons. Yeah Mostly weed dealer right or something wasn't cracked weed dealer, right? Or was it crack? I thought it was crack. It was a crack.

Anyway. Go back and look. Yes. So anyway, here they are in the Oval Office calling up Chrisleys. That's a terrible thing. It's a terrible thing. But it's a great thing because your parents are going to be free and clean. And I hope we can do it by tomorrow.

Is that okay? We'll try getting it done tomorrow so give them i don't know them but give them my regards and wish them wish them a good life mr president yes thank you for bringing my parents back yeah well they were given a pretty harsh treatment based on what I'm hearing. Congratulate your parents. Congratulations, Savannah. And Alice had a lot to do with this. And just congratulate your parents.

And I hear they're terrific people. This should not have happened. Thank you so much. Boy, they have good children. You're no longer children, but I'll say it anyway. They have good children, don't they? So top reality TV stars, they were busted for tax evasion. Yeah.

This is not one I get super worked up about because they did some time. They did the crime. They did some time. And does the world necessarily benefit from them spending 20 years in prison? I don't want people to get special treatment just because— They're getting special treatment. Obviously, they're't want people to get special treatment just because... They're getting special treatment. Obviously, they're getting special treatment, literally special treatment. They're literally getting pardoned by the President of the United States. Now, so that is ridiculous and outrageous,

but setting that aside, you do your tax evasion, go do a little bit of time. You don't need to lock these nonviolent people up for decades The Alice Johnson pardon people remember from Kim Kardashian spearheading that effort I think with Van Jones mm-hmm, but that was coupled with what was called the first step Act which was a Large-scale policy effort, but this is you know, not that this is very much That's it. That's the kind kind of difference between targeting one over prosecution and then coupling it with a big policy act. That's not what's happening in this case.

This is literally just special treatment based on Savannah Chrisley, and that's who he was talking to. He was talking to the Chrisley's children. Savannah Chrisley was the voice that you heard. Did you watch that one? I watched it when it first came out. It was pretty, I feel like it cooked the first couple years,

and then it went downhill. Yeah, it went downhill. But that was the era of, like, Duck Dynasty, when these big networks were trying to appeal more to middle America by putting these, like, family sitcom-type reality shows out. And it was fine for a little while, but it just, it wore off. The luster wore off pretty quickly with that one. They're not the most appealing characters. Yeah. And the argument on their behalf was that the IRS and the lead IRS person that was going

after them had their face up on a bullseye and really wanted them and considered them to be like Trump's kind of avatar. He said they were the Trumps of Georgia. Right. And so there was some political motivation behind going after them according to this defense. And, you know, all right, they got him.

They did a little time. Let him go. It's fine. Their tax advisor also went to jail, was also prosecuted for this. They were found guilty of tax evasion and bank fraud. Basically, they were hiding their money to defraud the IRS and banks is what they were found guilty of, as well as the tax advisor, the financial advisor in this case. We don't have to dwell too much on the Chrisley case because there are a couple of other ones. But I will just

say, Ryan, I remember at the RNC, I was sitting in the press thing watching the kind of boring stuff happen before you get the keynote every night. And Savannah Chrisley came out and did this like utterly, what's the right word, like obsequious pitch to about her parents to Donald Trump. And it was so cringe worthy because it was so it was such a nakedly transactional attempt to free her parents from prison. And I remember thinking, oh my gosh, this is going to work. And here we are. Sure enough. She went on Laura Trump's Fox News show just in the last several weeks. And Savannah credits that with bringing it to Trump's attention. She said just in the last 24 hours, like he watches every edition of that show and I'm pretty sure it's what brought it back to his attention. So it's

just sort of funny how easy it is to like cooperate with Donald Trump, how easy it is to negotiate with Donald Trump. You just have to, I remember watching this at the RNC and hearing her compare their plight to Trump's plight and just thinking, oh my gosh, this is going to play him like a fiddle. Yeah. One of the things, like the word downtown, is that one of the ways you're supposed to pay Trump now is not just the Trump coin, but you're supposed to, quote unquote, invest in Melania's documentary. Because there's all these legal ways you can move money. Like, hey, you put in a million dollars, you become an investor in this documentary. Oh, it turns out this documentary is not going to make any money.

It's a write-off for you. It's a business loss. You invested it. You lost it. But it's a legal bribe. The other way, of course, is Trump sues you with your CBS, and then you pay him a settlement. So there's all these clever legal ways to do bribery. Some of it is just you just give him a million dollars, which is what Paul Walzak's mother did.

So move to the next one. Great story by Ken Vogel in The Times. So this is a guy who dropped out of college and then inherited his – we're a meritocracy. So he inherited his mom's nursing home company in Florida. Red flag already, nursing home company in Florida. The way that these companies, all companies work is you

withhold money for Social Security and Medicare, payroll taxes from your employees, and then you send that to the state and the federal government. You withhold the tax money and then it goes that to the state and the federal government. You withhold the tax money and then it goes back to the state because it's not your money. They earned it.

It's their paycheck. But you do handle it. The businesses handle it. If you notice on your paycheck, this money is withheld. There is a bank account that that withholding goes to before it is sent off to the government. And what a company can do, what a CEO can do, is just take that money. Yep. And that's what Walzak was convicted of doing.

He took that money. He bought a $2 million yacht and lived just enormous, you know, Bergdorf, Goodman, Cartier, just lived enormously large with stolen money. His mom, you know, who was wealthy from having run this nursing home company, you know, hosted three fundraisers for Trump. So it gets you in the good graces. Big fundraisers for Trump. So it gets you in the good graces. Big fundraisers too. Yeah.

But then it was, she paid, what, a million dollars. So they reached out. They're trying to get this on clemency. So she reaches out to do this. She then gets invited. So this is how this works. They know she wants something from them.

Yep. So then, as he writes, Ms. Faga was invited to a million-dollar-per-person fundraising dinner last month that promised face-to-face access to Mr. Trump at his private Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida. Less than three weeks after she attended the dinner, Mr. Trump signed a full and unconditional pardon. It came just in the nick of time for Mr. Walzak, sparing him from having to pay nearly $4.4 million in restitution and from reporting to prison for an 18-month sentence that had been handed down just 12 days earlier. A judge had justified the incarceration by declaring that their, quote, is not a get-out-of-jail-free card for the rich. False.

Thanks, Judge. There literally is a get-out-of-jail-free out of jail free card it's not gold like the the visa card but it could be it might as well be a million dollars yeah and so um wildly insanely corrupt this is a person who stole money from working people to buy, literally to buy a yacht, and then used some of that stolen money, or his mother, I guess his mother, let's assume she didn't steal the money, used money that they made on the backs of the workers, we can at least say that, and paid it to Trump, and now he's, and not just commuted, like there's different, you can do, you can commute a sentence, which leaves the felony on your record. And you would, he could have said, I'm commuting the sentence, but you still have to pay the restitution to the workers, 4.4 million that you've been sentenced to pay. You can also just do a full and unconditional pardon.

You know what? You want to keep their money. You earned it. Right. How'd you earn it? By having the password to the bank account and moving it from them to yourself. Mm-hmm. So, and not, it won't spend a day in jail. Yeah.

And you can keep, go ahead, keep the money. No, this story by Vogel is insane. And it also gets into the wild connection between the Ashley Biden diary, Project Veritas. Oh, we didn't even talk about that. Lay that element because that's the argument that his mother made. Yeah. That his mother was involved with this Ashley Biden diary and that the law enforcement came after them. And so this was actually all payback. It wasn't about the workers that he stole the money from. This was payback. So, yeah, what was the – do you guys remember this Ashley Biden diary situation?

It's a – I mean, the diary is a horrible, horrible – Like she went to this rehab. She left a diary behind. That had allegations that were disgusting. Basically it said, was it weird that my dad would shower with me or something like that? When she was older. Yeah. Yeah.

Like 12 or something. Yeah. It was some creepy stuff in there. Yes. And, you know, not no smoking gun, but creepy stuff. Yeah. And who knows if that's true? It was a diary of someone who was mentally unwell in rehab, but it was there.

Right. And then somebody finds it, sells it. Like there's this whole sordid Coen Brothers-esque. It is very Coen Brothers. That winds up with it getting published. Project Veritas? Like O'Keefe got raided over this? her about the diary. Ken Vogel writes, when she was first told of the diary, she said she thought it would help Mr. Trump's chances of winning the election. And then they brought that diary to a fundraiser at her home that Donald Trump Jr. and Kimberly Guilfoyle attended. The diary was shown. And Trump Jr. was like, get this away from me. This is, yeah, Trump, I think this is one place where Trump Jr. actually did the right thing. He was like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Do not involve me with this.

It's crazy. It's just such a crazy story. When Donald Trump Jr. is like, this is too much. The fact that this woman was involved in that, like you said, it's Coen Brothers' ass. It's the only way you can even look at it. And he was... Then it starts getting bought and sold. Right. So, Walshack was about to... He was about to be sentenced. He was sentenced. He was about to report to prison.

He was about to report, and Ken Rice came just in the nick of time, clearly. And one thing just to note there is it's similar to the Savannah Chrisley case of people knowing how to make these appeals. So the mom, Faga, was apparently openly making an appeal based on her – This was persecution. We were persecuted.

Yeah, exactly. Yep, exactly. So now we have this other story. This is – I believe the next element. Yeah, this is E4. So this is a story of Sheriff Scott Jenkins, who Trump is giving a quote, full and unconditional pardon to. He was also, he was the one who was about to report. CNN commentator and future Kentucky Senator. Oh, Scott Jennings. Scott Jennings. No, this is Scott Jenkins, who was convicted on federal

bribery charges last year. He was about to report to prison. I think today he was about to report to prison. And then within 24 hours of him reporting to prison, Trump pardoned him. So from Reuters, they write, he was, quote, a former Virginia sheriff who served an area about two hours outside D.C., was convicted by a jury in December 2024 for accepting more than $75,000 in bribes in exchange for appointments as auxiliary deputy sheriffs. He had been sentenced to 10 years in federal prison. And Ryan, I suppose there's potentially an argument that the sentence and also the

Chrisley sentences are long. Too much. I'm with them. Okay, 10 years for that. And you took $75,000 in campaign contributions, which is different than taking it in cash money. And in exchange, you made the local car dealer a fake cop. You let him be a fake cop for a day. It can be dangerous. Like Oklahoma, there's this case in Oklahoma where they let this rich guy be a fake cop and he shot and killed a guy because he meant to pull his taser and accidentally pulled his pistol and killed a man. So, like, this is, to me, if you want to take your fake badge and go home with it like happens with nine-year-olds, fine. But like you give them a fake badge and a real gun and no training, now the community is the

one that's going to pay so that you can get these bribes. Yeah. But still 10 years is a little bit excessive. Yeah. And that's the argument Trump's going. He keeps saying. But he's a big Trump guy and they're like they came after me because I'm a Trump guy. And you heard right. And that's the argument Trump's going. He keeps saying he's a big Trump guy. And they're like, they came after me because I'm a Trump guy. And you heard right. And that works so well on Donald Trump. And everybody knows it works so well on Donald Trump. And he said it in the Chrisley conversation with Savannah. He said they were treated very badly. And so, yeah, it's what Blagojevich got this to. Right. He sort of made a turn to being pro-Trump, and that's all it took. And I don't know, Ryan, if Trump is being taken for a ride so much as he just enjoys the deference and the obsequiousness.

Anybody who goes through the criminal justice system comes out hating prosecutors. Including Trump, yeah. Yeah, and so he feels that. If I ever get convicted of anything, I'm going to remind Trump of all the nice things I said about him. You have so many clips. So many good clips. I mean, endless reel. I compliment his sense of humor a lot.

So just, you know, let's clip this one and save it for if I ever need it. This one's for Ryan. I never get caught stealing people's tax money and buying a yacht with it. And let's just mention, of course, Joe Biden had an unprecedented pardon policy. He pardoned family members, corrupt family members, pardoned Anthony Fauci. Absolutely. That all happens. He pardoned this terrible sex criminal in Pennsylvania. Preemptive pardons. And those are always favors right like people would say why would you pardon that guy it's a favor to someone right someone got that in front of him must have yeah so yes the joe biden was unprecedented in that respect and was transactional in that respect

this is a different level obviously this is a level of people nakedly making transactional appeals to the president and him responding when you get that sort of obsequious approach. And usually they wait till, presidents wait till the end of their term. They're so embarrassed about this stuff. That's interesting, right? He's doing it right out, like Tuesday afternoon. Yeah. It's a really interesting question about what norm, or to what extent that sets a norm going forward. and to what extent Biden's pardon set a norm going forward because those were quote unquote preemptive pardons of people who hadn't even been convicted. Trump has learned that nothing matters. But that's the era that we live in right now.

This last decade, we're 10 years since Trump descended the golden escalator and we're learning that we don't actually know what the norms are anymore and where they will be in the post-Trump era if we ever approach such a moment. Up next, we're going to talk about the energy portion of Trump's massive, big, beautiful reconciliation package which bizarrely helps China develop its energy infrastructure and will destroy ours both clean and dirty. We'll see. Stick around for that. Have you ever thought about going voiceover?

I'm Hope Woodard, a comedian, creator, and seeker of male validation. To most people, I'm the girl behind VoiceOver, the movement that exploded in 2024. VoiceOver is about understanding yourself outside of sex and relationships. It's more than personal. It's political, it's societal, and at times, it's far from what I originally intended it to be. These days, I'm interested in expanding what it means to be voiceover, to make it customizable for anyone who feels the need to explore their relationship to relationships. I'm talking to a lot of people who will help us think about how we love each other.

It's a very, very normal experience to have times where a relationship is prioritizing other parts of that relationship that aren't being naked together. How we love our family. I've spent a lifetime trying to get my mother to love me, but the price is too high. And how we love ourselves. Singleness is not a waiting room. You are actually at the party right now. Let me hear it. Listen to VoiceOver on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. 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.

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

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

Listen to Medal of Honor on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The House passed a reconciliation bill, the big, beautiful bill, as everybody knows, takes a sledgehammer to Joe Biden's Inflation Reduction Act and all the clean energy tax credits in that. But something strange has happened on the way through the House and over to the Senate, which is that the dirty energy industry, the fossil fuel industry, has realized that it takes a sledgehammer to it as well. And so to talk about this and to walk us through how it is and why that is and what's going on is Ducky Hewn, who is the founder of a dirty energy company, trying to make it as clean

as possible, called C-. I say dirty energy because it's involved with fossil fuels. A lot of your career has been trying to make fossil fuels cleaner, but not trying to eradicate fossil fuels. Because everybody in the energy industry, as I understand it now, and correct me if I'm wrong, is pretty agnostic about energy source. People are just like, how do I get the wattage? How do I get the electricity? What's the most reliable and the cheapest way that I can move energy from A to B and sell it. And so the clean energy, kind of dirty energy divide within the industry isn't really as salient necessarily as it used to be. And this bill seems to be smashing both of them at the same time. So, Ducky, can you walk us through a little bit about what are the key elements of the IRA that are being nuked, so to speak, by this bill?

And what will the effects be on projects that are either ongoing throughout the United States or are planned for the coming years? Well, you're right on a lot of those points. So when you think of energy, I think you want to take a step back and see it's more of a transition than clean versus dirty or fossil. So the transition is really what is kind of getting lost in this new bill. A lot of the fossil energy guys, which obviously is natural gas and coal mainly, obviously oil in there as well, they were investing a lot of time and resources to processes that would clean up their existing facilities, existing fuel sources like carbon

capture. They were transitioning to hydrogen, investing a lot of money there. So those technologies were packaged in the IRA as transitions to clean existing fuel sources and introduce new ones that fossil, you know, legacy fossil guys could participate in. Obviously, the other end of the spectrum or the solar battery wind guys, those guys are definitely a lot more advanced in this transition. So I don't think it's really a competition. I think it's more of this transition that is getting, I think it could be on the chopping block here. I'm just unsure where, who wins really, who wins in this, whenever we're cutting these incentive programs?

Because just like solar was 20, 25 years ago, we advanced a lot of those technologies, but production went to China. And unfortunately, it looks like we might have to do the same here because they've invested in a lot of these technologies in parallel with the United States. But a lot of production was slated to come to the United States for these projects because of the IRA. And unfortunately, I think if we don't kind of nip this in the Senate, a lot of these projects might end up going back to China or Europe. Yeah, and you're talking about fossil fuel projects, right? That's right. If you can put up F1 here, this is the utility industry complaining. They're talking about clean energy, but if you read deeper into the story, they're talking about the entire thing. You know, I've seen you make the point,

and I've seen others make it as well, that in order to, you know, we're talking about AI and other computing. Trump says everything is computer. Requiring something like a doubling of U.S. energy production over the very near term. And I've seen you and others talk about the fact that the natural gas turbines that are needed to ramp up, let's say you love natural gas, you hate clean energy, you just want to burn natural gas. The turbines needed to produce energy from it are facing something like, you tell me, something like a 96-month backlog, or 10 years almost, like if you wanted new ones. I mean, I think-

Can you walk us through, like, what does it actually mean to produce this energy? Right. So these projects that the IRA kind of incentivized, they their long duration. There's a lot of engineering that goes into these projects. So even on a short scale, if you didn't have these projects in development before, I mean, these are three to five-year projects. So a lot of these have not hit the ground yet, so to speak. So in the realm of natural gas, I mean, it is, I mean, everyone's always said natural gas is a transition fuel. And in the near term, I believe we do have to ramp up natural gas with, you know, a lot of, you know, carbon capture, if possible. I mean, that seems to be kind of left in the lurch now to meet these

energy demands. But, you know, the big gas turbine manufacturers, GE, Siemens, Mitsubishi, I mean, I think on a very conservative estimate, they're five years out from delivering. Even if you, I mean, and we're going back to kind of putting deposits down to get in the queue, essentially, kind of what we were back in the early 2000s, the last time natural gas was relevant. So, yeah, we're going back to the, you know, the five-year weights. And, you know, if AI does ramp up aggressively. I mean, we're talking about maybe 10 years backlog. So none of these are going to happen quickly. I think everyone should understand that. I mean, these big AI and data centers and crypto announcements, I think everyone's

a little too optimistic if they're thinking one to three years. You just can't get these components. Gas turbines are one thing. I don't know if you've heard about the transformer issues. Another key component that the backlog

has just ramped up tremendously since COVID and doesn't look anywhere near resolving itself. I want to roll this clip, F2, of Elon Musk, who is going to be on CBS Sunday morning this week. And they're revealing sort of teaser moments from that conversation. And Musk sort of talks about the quote unquote big, beautiful bill in this exchange. We can go ahead and roll the clip. You know, I was like disappointed to see the massive spending bill, frankly, which increases the budget deficit, not just decrease it, and it reminds the work that the Doge team is doing. I actually thought that when this big beautiful bill came along. I mean, like

everything he's done on Doge gets wiped out in the first year. I think a bill can be big or it can be beautiful. But I don't know if it can be both. My personal opinion. So there we have clean energy domestic manufacturing slash assembly man Elon Musk looking at the big, beautiful bill with a dose of realism after he spent, I guess, the last six months or so in Washington, D.C. So I wanted to ask, I mean, a lot of people on the right are actually criticizing the bill for not going far enough on dismantling the IRA. That's something a lot of people want to see happen when it goes over to the Senate. But my understanding is also that some of what the bill does is meant to disentangle production from China and bring it back to the U.S.

It sounds like the way that they're going about that, I mean, it's the like foreign entity clause in the bill. It sounds like some of the way they're going about that is actually counterproductive possibly as well. Can you just kind of flesh out that dynamic for us? Yeah, I mean, it is puzzling. You know, the intent versus the reality of it. I think it's going to be difficult to get these projects off the ground with those kind of last minute tweaks to that bill, especially the foreign entity, because we still don't make a lot of these components in the United States. Obviously, we were getting there, but I don't think we would have really justified

making all the smaller components, maybe some of the larger components that would comprise of these projects. But it's a big hurdle. Can you explain that? So the foreign entity of concern is basically referring to China. The bill says, correct me if I'm wrong here, the bill basically says if you're getting components from China. Or investment. Or investment. Okay. Or investment from China, then you cannot get the access to the tax credits, which make the project kind of pencil out in a financial way. So as somebody

who's involved in the industry, how possible would it be if you were told, okay, you want these credits, every component and all investment must come from the U.S.? I guess you can get French investment, but you can't get Chinese investment. You can't have Chinese components. Like, could you get a project going anytime soon under those circumstances? You could get break ground, but lead times would definitely delay the project tremendously. I think another component of the kind of last minute, you know, negotiating for this bill, I think the more dangerous component is the start time. So a lot of these projects... Explain that. This is a really interesting component. So a lot of these projects, so they didn't scrap the IRA per se, but they did put some stringent regulations like the FEOC.

And then the start time for a lot of these projects to qualify for the incentives are 60 days from the final passage of the bill. So that's really a killer right there. I mean, I think that would kill 99% of the projects that are slated to come. And you have to finish by a certain time too? Yes, you have to finish by 2028. And like I said, these projects are long lead time, a lot of engineering involved. And some of these projects are really relying on incentives that were finalized in January. So a lot of these financial modeling, the projections, I mean, they're still in limbo.

So you're not getting to a final investment decision considering the uncertainty, essentially. So even the projects that were heavily financed saying, you know, you have to break ground 60 days after finalization of this bill. I think that's really killing all the incentives that are in the IRA to begin with. So basically, if we zoom out to the broader goal of onshoring, nearshoring, friendshoring, near-shoring, friend-shoring some of these industries. The bill, I guess, is from that perspective then actually kind of hurting its own goal or undermining its own goal if it is on-shoring, near-shoring, friend-shoring, because maybe the ultimate goal or the less

honest goal is just to hurt the industry's period, the clean energy industry's period? Like, what do you make of what the, we were talking earlier about who benefits, like, what is the actual end goal, do you think, based on what's in the bill? Well, I mean, that's the confusion I have, for sure. I don't know who benefits. I think a lot of the benefits that we've already seen from the IRA have benefited a lot of the Republican states and Republican districts. I mean, maybe to the tune of, you know, 70 or 80 percent of the jobs created are going to those districts. And we're talking about hundreds of thousands of jobs here. And some of those plants that relied on those incentives may lose them and close.

So, I mean, it's really confusing to me who benefits. I mean, it's tough because, obviously, we're talking about a lot of new projects in addition to the ones that are already opened. So, I mean, we're talking about hundreds of thousands more jobs going to a lot of red districts. So it's confusing to me what, you know, who wins. I mean, I don't know if it's a zero-sum game. I mean, I think everyone can benefit from this, but I think everyone could lose too, right?

So I don't think there's any clear winners to me. And for people who want to read more about that, we can put up F3. You can find this piece. Ducky had recommended this at Latitude Media. As you're talking, I wonder if the answer to this question of who benefits ironically might be China. If you want to develop these both clean energy projects and also projects that are making fossil fuel energy cleaner, it seems like the place that is making that possible after this would be China. And it seems like the bill is, if you wanted to write a bill to basically stop the development and production of energy in the United States, you couldn't do much better than the way this bill is currently written.

Well, that's what it seems like. I mean, like I mentioned with the solar industry 20 years, you know, we did a lot of development in national labs. And then we sent all the manufacturing to China. I mean, it's unfortunate. But, yeah, I think they're pretty happy about the manufacturing to China. I mean, it's unfortunate, but yeah, I think they're pretty happy about the prospects of this. Yeah, and China doesn't even have much of a lobbying operation in the U.S., like basically zero. And they're getting a bill that is just straight up written for them. It's amazing. We'll see. We'll see what the Senate does. It's very confusing. Yeah. Yeah,

the Senate, I think, is going to have some real tweaks to this part. Yeah, because North Carolina, and Doug, you might know, last question for you, you might know a little bit about this. North Carolina senators, I know, are both concerned about what this is doing to solar, because North Carolina has become one of the kind of leading builders of solar energy. And now this is going to take a sledgehammer to, to that, you know, and it's an, it's an industry that is, that supports Republicans and, and hires Republicans to work at the, in it. So you've got, you got North Carolina, maybe you've got some Texas, which has a lot of energy production, including clean energy production.

Georgia is a big one. Yeah, Georgia as well. Do you have a sense of, although I. I mean, there was a letter that a lot of Republicans drafted, 20-some-odd senators and House members supporting the benefits of the IRA. Unfortunately, 20 of those House members kind of signed on to this last minute. So hopefully the senators kind of have a little more influence on this and don't have, well, have the right kind of influence,

essentially, to support their constituents. Or we'll see them go in another direction. And just support China. What are you guys doing? A lot to be determined in the next month. It's an incredible watch. Ducky Hume, founder of the energy company C-. What are you guys doing? A lot to be determined in the next month.

It's an incredible watch. Ducky Hume, founder of the energy company C-. Thanks for bringing us up to speed on this. Appreciate it. Thank you for having me. All right. Be well. Honestly, I don't get it. What are you all doing?

Look at me. What do I have to do? This is your responsibility. How is this my responsibility? You need to clean this up. It's insane. And his point about how we developed the solar industry in the 90s, 2000s, and because it's associated with hippies or whatever, and it was manufacturing, we just shipped it off to China,

and now look how that's working out. And now here we are 20 years later Like doing the exact same thing Listen, I'm all for innovation renewable energy sector because it gets you off the grid Get to you, you know, you don't have to worry about the government controlling your energy sources But and a lot of what his company does or his companies that he's founded over the years they take like I'm saying it takes waste products and it, and they take fossil fuels and they try to reduce the carbon emissions and the pollution related to it, acknowledging, which the left doesn't really like

to do, acknowledging that fossil fuels are going to be here for a very long time. And if they are getting burned, how do we reduce the emissions and pollution from them in the meantime? All that, that entire industry being built up, it's just going to go to China. I mean, on the other hand... And like with the transformers, without the transformers, you don't have energy production, which, you know what? This AI sucks. So if these goons don't have enough juice for their AI, fine. Good. Find it in the sun. Except they're going to win. You're going to get rolling blackouts. Their AI is going to get the energy.

Yeah, that's true. On the other hand, the IRA was grifty. I mean, you had John Podesta overseeing the, you know, long-time lobbyist overseeing the distribution. No, no, Tony Podesta is the lobbyist. Well, he was, I mean, John Podesta was a lobbyist as well. Who did he lobby for? The Podesta group. No, no, that's Tony Podesta. No, back in the 90s. Oh, in the 90ist. Well, he was, I mean, John Podesta was a lobbyist as well. Who did he lobby for? The Podesta Group.

No, no, that's Tony Podesta. No, back in the 90s. Oh, in the 90s. Yeah. But I mean, Was he in the 90s? I thought he's always been in there. I think the Podesta Group

was founded like late 80s, early 90s. Anyway. Was John Podesta, I mean, he was always, anyway. We can look up John Podesta. The producers literally

got it out here just out of like, look it up. Tony Podesta's the scuzzy lobbyist. Tony Podesta is definitely a scuzzy lobbyist. But anyway, they put John Podesta in charge of distributing some of the IRA. All that is to say, we will see what happens when the bill goes to the Senate. Republicans want more cuts, but of course they also want to undermine China and nearshore and reshore all of these wonderful industries. So good luck to them.

Also, while keeping Elon Musk happy and having a tiny margin in the House and actually the Senate as well. And by the way, they also think they need this to augment the tariff policy. So best of luck to the GOP and to all of us, really, who will have to be dealing with the consequences. Yeah, so dumb. So dumb. Stay tuned here to Breaking Points for all of the details. BreakingPoints.com for a premium subscription. We will be doing a Friday show this week. We do Friday.

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