Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 5/6/24: Frat Bros Vs Palestine Protesters, Alan Dershowitz Threatens To Sue Protesters, Israel Begins Rafah Evacuation, Congressman Indicted For Foreign Bribery, Kristi Noem Demands Biden Dogs Put Down, Media Begs For Kent State 2.0, Oil Companies Caught Price Fixing

Episode Date: May 6, 2024

Krystal and Saagar discuss Biden attacking student protests, NYPD pushes Columbia University book on terrorism hoax, Israel gears up for Rafah invasion, Rep Cuellar caught in wild corruption scheme, Kirsti Noem doubles down on killing dogs, media repeats Kent State Massacre mistakes, US oil companies colluded with Saudis on gas prices.   To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show AD FREE, uncut and 1 hour early visit: https://breakingpoints.supercast.com/   Merch Store: https://shop.breakingpoints.com/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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I'm Clayton English. I'm Greg Glott. And this is Season 2 of the War on Drugs podcast. Last year, a lot of the problems of the drug war. This year, a lot of the biggest names in music and sports. This kind of star-studded a little bit, man. We met them at their homes. We met them at their recording studios.

Stories matter, and it brings a face to them. It makes it real. It really does. It makes it real. It really does. It makes it real. Listen to new episodes of the War on Drugs podcast season two on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. 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. Good morning, everybody. Happy Monday. We have an amazing show for everybody today. What do we have, Crystal? Indeed, we do. Palestine protests have now hit graduation ceremonies. We have massive political reaction. We have total media freakout. We've got all the highlights and lowlights from that.

Also, big news while we were all sleeping. Israel has started the evacuation or forcible displacement of Rafah. They also are bombing that city. It appears that that ground invasion is imminent as these fire talks break down. We will bring you all of those very grim details. Meanwhile, Democratic Congressman Henry Cuellar, that Nancy Pelosi and others moved heaven and earth to save. He had a very close primary challenge, only won by 300 votes. Oh, he's been indicted. He's been indicted for corruption, him and his wife. Very similar, honestly, to the Bob Menendez thing, although they have not located any gold bars as of yet that we know about. But incredibly impactful because you have, you know, very narrow House majority on the Republican side. If Democrats manage to pick up a few seats,

this could be very consequential. So break that down for you. We've also got a big political debate over lab-grown meat. Well, this will be fun. Sagar and I will both weigh in. I think we have different views on this one, so it should be a fun one. And Kristi Noem, who was at least a top potential Trump VP pick, caught lying flagrantly in her book about a meeting with Kim Jong-un that apparently never happened. I don't know why you would lie about such a thing, but she did. So we'll show you that. We also are taking a look, I'm taking a look at my monologue about Kent State, any lessons that were learned, apparently not, and whether we are courting another version of that national catastrophe. And Matt Stoller is

going to join us to break down what is truly a massive scandal that had a direct impact on you and your wallet. Some quarter of the inflation during the height of the worst period of inflation likely came from a price-fixing scandal. Stoller himself helped to do some of the journalistic uncovering of this scandal. So he'll talk to us about what the hell happened and what it all means. Yeah, that's right. In real media, they would actually cover it. But here it is. I mean, domestically, it's one of the biggest stories in the country.

No question. And you probably, I mean, I don't think they covered it at all on the Sunday shows. Like, we're talking thousands of dollars that came out of your pockets because of this price-fixing scandal. So it is really astonishing. He has the receipt. It's not even a journalistic story. It's the FTC getting involved. So he'll break that down for us. I'm really excited to talk to him. Before we get started, though, thank you to everybody who watched CounterPoint's latest debate. They've got another one, awesome one, that is set for this Friday.

So as a reminder, you can watch it early and you can support that work here at BreakingPoints.com. Their show has been doing incredibly well. They've made record downloads, a lot of views on their last one on Israel-Palestine. The next one, I think, in particular is going to set, there's going to be some feathers that are ruffled and some familiar personalities. That's all we can say now at this moment. We'll see a little free speech debate. Let's just put it there.

We'll leave it there and you can decide who might be participating. So go ahead and support us at BreakingPoints.com so we can continue to have this brand new show for everybody. I know everybody's been really enjoying it. At least that's what the ratings tell us. So thank you all very much. We appreciate you. Let's get started, like Crystal said, with the protests. So there's been the political reaction. President Biden taking the White House podium to react to the campus protests. These were his first words in reaction after Columbia University. Let's take a listen. So let me be clear. Peaceful protest in America.

Violent protest is not protected. Peaceful protest is. It's against the law when violence occurs. Destroying property is not a peaceful protest. It's against the law. Vandalism, trespassing, breaking windows, shutting down campuses, forcing the cancellation of classes and graduations. None of this is a peaceful protest. Threatening people, intimidating people, instilling fear in people is not a peaceful protest. It's against the law. Dissent is essential to democracy, but dissent must never lead to disorder or to denying the rights of others so students can finish the semester and their college education. Look, it's basically a matter of fairness.

It's a matter of what's right. There's the right to protest, but not the right to cause chaos. Mr. President, have the protests forced you to reconsider any of the policies with regard to the region? No. So the two questions that were asked there at the end were, have the protests forced you to reconsider any of your policies in the region? President Biden, no. Do you think the National Guard should intervene? President Biden, no, before he was then exited the room. So President Biden then definitively speaking on the matter there, Crystal, what'd you think? Dissent must never lead to disorder. I think the founding fathers

would like to have a word with you about that conception of protest. I think the founding fathers would like to have a word with you about that conception of protest. I think the civil rights leaders, I think the abolitionists, I think the suffragettes, I think the Vietnam War protesters would like to have a word with you about all of that. I mean, disorder, the whole point of the media smearing of these protesters, the political class smearing of these protesters, is they don't want to deal with the central claim. They don't want to deal with the central issue. And the reality is, and Sagar and I were talking about this before this started, and we have an element we'll get to in a little bit, but 99% of these protests have been peaceful.

In terms of a mass nationwide student driven protest movement, I don't know that there has ever been a more peaceful protest movement. So that's number one. Number two, many people contrasted these comments and this approach with the very different and much more nuanced commentary from Biden specifically when it came to Black Lives Matter protests. He made sure to center the actual core of the claims and the demands that were being made there and said, listen, the violence here doesn't speak for the majority of the protesters who are peaceful. Now, I supported many of the calls and demands and those protests in general, and they were majority peaceful. But there was much more violence, including property damage, during the Black Lives Matter protests.

So it is blatantly hypocritical, his approach here versus his approach and his commentary with regards to Black Lives Matter. It's just, and then the final piece that I'll add here is, then he's asked, is this changing your mind? He says, no, it's actually a lie because no, he doesn't care about Palestinian lives. Yes, he's still committed Zionist, wants to do everything to support Israel. He's clearly soccer feeling the pressure.

We're gonna get to some of this in terms of the Israel segment. Reportedly, he was trying very aggressively to secure some sort of a ceasefire deal that appears to have fallen through. No, he's not really willing to use leverage to compel Israel to actually fall in line. But there's no doubt they realize this is a massive political problem for them. And guess what? The only reason that it is a political problem for them is because of the size of the movement, because of the persistence of the movement,

and because it's not just staying in the confines of something that is, you know, nice and decorous and can just be easily hand-waved away and dismissed. That's what him, I'm going to talk about Mika Brzezinski today, Peggy Noonan in my monologue, what they want is a protest that is so meek, so timid, so decorous that it can just be vanished, erased, that they don't have to actually grapple with it. Because to actually grapple with it is to deal with the fact that this country has been complicit in carpet bombing babies, starving them to death. Cindy McCain, head of the World Food Program, says now there is a full-blown famine in northern Gaza that is rapidly moving south.

That sort of protest that stays within the confines of, oh, write a letter to your congressman if you feel upset and can easily be ignored is what they want. Because this type of protest that's in their face, that shows up at every Biden rally, that's present at graduation ceremonies, that's present not just at Ivy League colleges, but colleges across the entire country, that's much harder to dismiss. It's much harder to ignore. Yeah, I think the thing is,

President Biden is trying to make a political calculation where he doesn't believe at the end of the day. I mean, he believes basically in the silent majority bet of the Nixon administration or in some sort of like sister soldier distancing, harkening back to the 1992 campaign. Well, honestly, we'll see. I have no idea. Tomorrow, we're actually gonna be talking a lot about the polling in terms of the reaction to the campus protest.

It's difficult to gauge. There's no real way to know. On the one hand, we have to talk about the margins. On the other hand, we have to talk about Biden basically trying to solidify the suburban white majority, especially amongst young, you know, like women and adults. Go ahead. Can I say something about that, though? He already has the suburban white majority.

Well, yes. The women who are voting on abortion, they're already in the Democratic Party camp. That's number one. Number two, before what has given the appearance nationwide of this like campus chaos and violence and and all of, you know, all of that, which I agree is not a great vibe for Biden because, you know, his whole thing was like restore calm and it's not going to be chaos and Trump is chaos. What created the chaos was the police crackdown. These protests have been going on at many college campuses since very soon after October 7th. And it hasn't been, oh my God, chaos. It's because of, and he greenlit with his commentary, this police response. So I think he is putting himself in the worst of all worlds,

where of course, young people absolutely hate his guts. There's no way that a young person for whom this issue is important and sees the president smearing them as violent anti-Semites is going to want to vote for this dude. So that's a disaster. He needs to win young people. And then if you're the person who's like, once the law and order candidate, do you think Joe Biden's going to be your guy? No, you've got a more aggressive, more hardcore authoritarian law and order dude on the ballot. So once again, I mean, it reminds me sort of of his immigration positioning, right? Where it's like, let me just accept the right wing framing of this. No,

if people, if you're buying into the right wing framing, they're not going to just go with like the lesser of the right wing framing. They'll go with the guy who's all in on that. So I think it's a political disaster all the way across the board. But it's a question of young people and their priorities. So yes, we can go look at But it's a question of young people and their priorities. So yes, we can go look at our poll. There were some young people who said they wouldn't necessarily vote for Biden. But there was a later poll that just came out a couple of days ago, Harvard-Harris, where they had Israel-Gaza as number 15 out of 16 for priorities.

I mean, I do think there is a danger that this is just an elite movement. And the truth is that most people, even if they do care about Israel-Palestine, I'll say this for myself, it's not my number one, not even my top five issue. I care much more about our country and policies that affect here. I don't think that that's necessarily an immoral thing to say. And by the way, I'm not going to tell people what to do. If that wants to be your top priority, you be you. I think that's fine. But the question does come for is this an elite-driven concern? And I don't

even mean necessarily in terms of left. I would say right, too. I mean, how much of our national discourse is captured by Israel and Palestine when the truth is that the vast majority of people don't particularly care all that much? And in fact, if you look at the uninformed issue, a lot of people don't know very much about the conflict because they either just don't care or they're just not consuming a lot of media and they decided to turn out. I think it is fair to raise the question of like, okay, is this a bubble, right? I think that's entirely fair. The idea, I very much dissent from the idea it's a quote unquote elite driven discourse. I know the focus is on like Columbia and other Ivy League institutions. This is, I mean, City College, which is famously a working class institution, New York City, also saw protests. You have protests at state schools, all sorts of institutions across the

country. So that's number one. Number two is, you know, okay, it's one thing when people are ordering their priorities and responding to a poll. It's another thing when you look at the poll numbers for Joe Biden with young voters. That's true. But the question is, how much of that is Israel-Gaza? How much of it is that shit is just way too expensive? Some of that is definitely the case. And we saw the fall off with young voters begin prior to Israel-Gaza. It has accelerated. I mean, the fact that you now have Joe Biden losing to Donald Trump by 11 points is astonishing. And certainly like smearing, if you look at young sentiment about Israel and Palestine, obviously very divergent from older voters. And then if you see the president of the United States basically smearing your

entire generation as violent anti-Semites, I have to think that that's probably going to have a negative impact for people that this issue is a real priority. Listen, it only takes a few percentage points where like this is their thing and there's no recovering from it for it to be, you know, a completely game changing type of political event. This is what you see frequently, you know, even with even with like abortion. OK, abortion is not the number one issue for, uh, like if you look for some people, it is just like what is your about? But it's not just how many people rank this as their number one, but how strong is the emotion? And is this like a single issue for some percentage of young people at this point,

it's a single issue. And I don't think there's any recovering at this point for Joe Biden on this issue. So, you know, we'll see. But I think that because the policy, it really ultimately comes down to like the policy is really bad. Now you have the specter of him smearing effectively an entire generation as like, you know, racist. And I don't think that's going to help him. But this is my thing with the entire generation as like, you know, racist. And I don't think that's going to help them. But this is my thing with the entire generation. Like half the people in this country, most of the people who are young don't even go to college. So they're not even tangentially involved. Like,

how do they feel about this issue? They may feel some way, but they're not necessarily like- A lot of students that protest are only on college campuses, which they're not. Sure. But I mean, okay, they'd be like saying, you know, all millennials feel this. And it'd be like, you're smearing my generation for going after, I don't know, the avocado toast thing. I don't feel particularly that way. I'm more just saying it's important that we try and segment this out for who are these protesters, who are the people who feel affinity for them. I don't think it's fair to say it's smearing an entire generation because not all young people do care about Israel and Gaza. I'm just trying to zoom out and really think about this politically, thinking about 1968 and the eventual ramifications,

I mean, there's a lot of truth to the fact that the protest movement, I mean, we talked about this previously, dramatically backfired and failed. The New Left as a project itself was a historic failure, specifically because of the idea of mass mobilization. And there's also a question, I think, again, of the silent majority, which became very relevant in BLM when it was the same thing where people were like, oh, all young people believe that there's like some mass violence of police against black people. It's like, well, not really, not actually true, especially if we look now and to what their overall reaction is. But the question is also going to come to

media and coverage, of course, which we, of course, will focus on. There's been some more demonstrations that have been happening. Let's put this up there on the screen and I can go ahead and narrate some of this. This is at the University of Michigan, obviously a major nexus. There were walkouts during the graduation ceremony in support of Palestine. There you see a lot of flags, keffiyahs and others who are walking out, who are disrupting the graduation ceremony. That Michigan one may be one of the most important because it's in that battleground state. Here we have graduates at Northeastern calling out their university for complicity. They say, Northeastern has arrested me. Why don't you listen to your students? NEU filed a genocide divest now. Here is that we have Georgia State students who are being escorted away

for wearing keffiyehs and for having Palestinian flags. So this is all, again, feeding into a vibe of chaos. The only question is kind of like which way and how to navigate this. Now, you are correct, Crystal, on the violence fronts. I will give it to you. Very, very different whenever it comes to the Black Lives Matter protests. Let's put this up there on the screen. This in particular was one that a lot of people focused on. I know, I think it was covered by Ryan and Emily, and we covered a little bit on Thursday

as well. This is from the New York Times. They say, how the counter protesters at UCLA provoked violence and unchecked for hours. This in particular was a grievous case because you had the like rent-a-cop camps, cops, like lock themselves into a building. And there was basically just like full-on street violence that was just happening between these counter protesters who were like firing fireworks and others at the Palestinian encampment. And it happened for a period of almost three to four hours in the middle of the night that was, you know, fostering all over social media. And it took them till 6 a.m. actually for the LAPD to come in. And it's obviously very blatantly hypocritical whenever

you do look at some of the other police reactions. So on this one, I'll absolutely give it to you. It was ridiculous that it even took so long for them to come in. And because, you know, look, you know, we believe in student safety, right? I believe that for all the students who are involved, if you've got people who are coming there looking to start a brawl and then they get, that's part of the most worst things about mob violence is that it begets itself and it's, you know, just keeps a vicious circle. And that's basically what happened at UCLA. Well, what happened is you had a peaceful encampment that was violently attacked and police stood by and let it happen for five freaking hours. Five hours. They were violently assaulted. LA Times, student reporters, now the New York Times all look at this and say this was

entirely one-sided, that this protest was entirely peaceful. And then these counter protesters who were funded, by the way, by Bill Ackman and Jerry Seinfeld's wife, a bunch of other people, came in and began assaulting and shooting fireworks and sent significant numbers, the numbers I saw originally, to roughly two dozen students to the hospital. And the police did nothing, nothing. And then when they did do something, did they arrest the violent people who were assaulting students? I thought we cared about student safety. No, they didn't arrest them. No arrests were made of the thugs that were violently assaulting the peaceful protesters. They got off scot-free. No, the peaceful protesters got

assaulted. So after night number one, where they're violently beaten by these thugs funded by a billionaire, on night number two, the cops came in and did the violence themselves and were shooting rubber bullets. The image of that and the violence inflicted against these students, the injuries from those arrests also quite significant. So it is outrageous. And this is the most significant incident of violence that we have had. It was, as I said, entirely one-sided. And going back to Joe Biden's comments and the comments of all these other freaking people, have you condemned that? Are you calling for, you know, where's your concern about disorder here? Where's your concern about lawlessness here? Absolute silence. Where's your concern about

Jewish student safety? Because guess what? There were many Jewish students in that encampment. Where is any of that concern when it's coming from the pro-Israel Zionist agitator thugs coming into assault students and police standing by and letting it happen and then doing it themselves the next day. Didn't hear any of that. I do think it's very hypocritical and this is part of the issue when we all start taking sides and we're all going to start trying to get to street gangs. And it's like, no, that's not what we want here. That's actually the opposite of what, I mean, if you do care about order and disorder and student safety, I actually do care about all those things.

Just not willing to say that words are violence, which is part of a segment that we'll get to. And that people being snowflakes and saying hearing dangerous chants is upsetting. However, if you have people who are actually firing fireworks and are beating people up, and then you allow that to happen, terrible, right? Absolutely terrible. And you are absolutely correct. You don't have a lot of people in media even condemning or even, frankly, commenting on some of the stuff here, which is just pretend that it doesn't exist. Very, very common amongst a lot of the Israel First crowd. Let's go and put this next part up here. On the screen, there was,

let's just say, a troubling incident that broke out over at Ole Miss University. You had kind of frat brothers versus some of these Palestine protesters. Some people were saying that they were mocking this woman, this Palestinian protester who is black and they're calling him a racist. This man has already actually been expelled from his fraternity. So you've seen the outbreak of kind of like fraternity versus Palestinian, wouldn't call violence per se, but I guess what clashes on campus, people screaming at each other, kind of like that. So I guess as a former frat boy, let me just say to all my brothers out there,

don't ruin your life for the sake of literally getting expelled and trying to go viral on social media. I would just advise you not to do that. And think about your future, as I had talked about previously for protest. Can we put that back up on the screen? Put that back up on the screen. Okay, because what you see here, you've got these dudes, you know, mocking her, calling her Lizzo, right? All of that. Okay, that's one thing. Then you have this guy who's making monkey noises and pretending like he's an ape at a black woman. And what you have here is a Republican member of Congress tweeting this video positively and saying, Ole Miss taking care of business. So it's not, no, people weren't saying that they're mocking. No, no, no. You have a man

making literal monkey noises and gestures at a black woman. It is as textbook racist as you could possibly get. And this Republican member of Congress is like, yes, I like this. This is good for me. So I agree that we should call out the Republican congressman. But in the same way, Chris, we shouldn't elevate a single person from this thing and say that this is who they all are. Well, here's why it's important. Because when it's a single anyone associated with the ceasefire movement, with the anti-war movement, then this is representative of the whole movement, right? And we have to get a presidential decree, multiple presidential statements in a press conference about how they're vile anti-Semites. But when you have the most racist shit imaginable, well, that's just a one-off. Well, it's one guy.

That's just a one-off. The rest of the guys are there, and they're just shouting out, and that's fine. I don't think there's anything wrong with it. So more what I would say is I think, unfortunately, there's been a bit of left hypocrisy here where everybody's like, no, see, like all these kids are racist. No, here's what happened. At UNC, those Palestinian protesters took down an American flag. Stupid idea, by the way. And then a bunch of UNC frat bros surrounded and defended the American

flag while they were pelted with trash. Again, explicitly aligning yourself against the US flag, wouldn't advise it in the United States. Those people went viral. And basically, from then on, all frat brothers around the country are like, okay, we gotta get involved in this. Again, I would say to my brothers out there, please don't do this. Do not engage in racist mocking of protesters because it's not gonna work out well for you as it worked out in this instance. I would say to my brothers out there, please don't do this. Do not engage in racist mocking of protesters because it's not going to work out well for you as it worked out in this instance. But I do think it's important to say that just because one guy did it doesn't mean that all of them are racist for coming up and for shouting against them. And I have seen, unfortunately,

a lot of people use the same tactics, which I don't think is fair. Because it'd be like saying that all of the campus protesters are anti-Semites because one guy who barely even goes there said something about Jews. And it's like, well, that's not really what it's all about. And I just wanted to put that out there. Sure. Because I don't think it's fair. But I think that's fine. Yeah.

I think there's a lot of hypocrisy on the other side where, as I said, one incident can be used to tar an entire movement as anti-Semitic. Whereas here, this is not even acknowledged. And actually, to the extent it was acknowledged, it was celebrated. And the governor of the state also celebrating and lauding, saying it warmed his heart, these individuals at Ole Miss. So fine, let's be fair-minded and focus on what one side stands for and what the other side stands for. One side stands for stopping a genocide. The other side stands for continuing it. That's not fair though for these kids. They're just pissed off because people have taken over their campus. They're shouting out. What is their movement about?

What's wrong with it though? It's just as legitimate. What is the pro-Israel movement is about? But they're not pro-Israel. Let's continue slaughtering children. That's what the conflict is about. And so, yeah, I agree with you to focus on who are they and are they racist? What are they saying? Whatever is to miss the point of what these protests and counter protests are about. The protests are about let's stop a genocide. The counter protests are about let's continuing. So yes, okay, let's have that conversation. Because this is all a distraction from the real issue that these kids are out there protesting

about. Well, we will have our real discussion, absolutely. But I'm saying, I don't think it's fair to say that people who are annoyed about protesters are coming on their campus and who are screaming and shouting and are basically like going out there to mock them and be like, hey, please get out of here because we don't necessarily agree with you. I don't think that means that they're pro-genocide. In fact, I didn't even see a single Israeli flag amongst a single one of those guys. Like I said, it was a huge mistake for those UNC idiots to take down the American flag. I don't know why they had to do it, but they decided to do it. And it's like, if you want to put yourself against America, you are going to get a lot of people who are coming out there to defend the flag.

Why do you have such vitriol? There's no vitriol. Towards people who, you know, took down a flag, but so much less to this man making monkey noises at a black woman. And you want to excuse him and you want to call them idiots. Not excusing him. I said he was an idiot and I don't think he should ruin your life for that. I absolutely don't condone what he did. What I'm saying, oh look, it's also about convincing people. Taking down the flag of your country in your own country is a dumb idea. I think it was huge. It was a backlash. There's a reason that it all went viral. I don't have vitriol for anybody.

In fact, I'm just trying to analyze it in terms of like which one is going to be more popular. But I'm not in the business, just as I'm not in the business of smearing, you know, counter or protesters as anti-Semitic, as a bunch of frat kids, as racist, because I've seen this happen. You know, I was in a fraternity, everybody, oh, a pro-sexual assault and all this other bullshit. And I see a lot of the media basically participating and trying to cancel or use the same tactics that I think Zionists are using as the counter protesters. And I don't think that's appropriate. More what I'm saying is that I don't, look, I mean, at the end of the day, I don't really believe in terms of that these guys are pro-genocide. I think that they're participating in a social movement where for a lot of people in this

country, it is annoying to have this happen. And so they're coming out and they're like yelling. And I don't think there's anything particularly wrong with that. You can think that one side is more moral if you'd like, but for a lot of people, they either don't care or they're, you know, they think this is something, this is worth to come out and just like make fun of people, which again is a fundamental American right. Look, I support their right to be assholes. That's part of what the First Amendment is. But I think we should stay focused on what the actual issue is that is being protested. And sorry, I don't think one side is more moral than the be an issue that is more clear cut at this point. When you have so many children slaughtered. We're going to cover this in the Israel segment. Every single child in Rafah right now is either malnourished, sick, or injured. Okay?

So, yeah, there is a morality gap between the two sides. And I agree with you. It's not fair to take one individual and say this is reflective of an entire movement. But that is what's been done to the pro-Palestinian students. And suddenly, when it's these kids or when it's the UCLA counter protesters who were the ones who were 100% violent, that's just, it's either completely erased or they're actively celebrated. That's what I'm upset about. I totally agree with you. And look, I mean, we can't, we can't control what the rest of the media does.

We can only try and, you know, cover it the way that we can here. And I don't think, you know, we're trying to erase any horrors or any of the other stuff. We have plenty of stuff about that in our show. I don't, I do think if you were on the Palestinian side, you should be upset about the way that the media has treated you, specifically MSNBC and so-called like fellow travelers. I'm with you. I mean, if I was on that side, I'd be furious about the way that they've covered BLM or others. I'm only saying, well, let's not descend, you know, fight fire with fire or any of that, because I don't think it will get us to a particularly good place.

And if anything, history shows it will probably backfire. So I think that's a decent enough lesson. Over the past six years of making my true crime podcast, Hell and Gone, I've learned one thing. No town is too small for murder. I'm Katherine Townsend. I've received hundreds of messages from people across the country begging for help with unsolved murders. I was calling about the murder of my husband at the cold case. They've never found her and it haunts me to this day. The murderer is still out there. Every week on Hell and Gone Murder Line, I dig into a new case, bringing the skills I've learned as a journalist and private investigator to ask the questions no one else is asking. steal somebody's daughter, steal 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. I know a lot of cops, and they get asked all the time, have you ever had to shoot your gun? Sometimes the answer is yes. But there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be no. Across the country, cops called this taser the revolution.

But not everyone was convinced it was that simple. Cops believed everything that taser the revolution. But not everyone was convinced it was that simple. Cops believed everything that taser told them. From Lava for Good and the team that brought you Bone Valley comes a story about what happened when a multibillion-dollar company dedicated itself to one visionary mission. This is Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated. I get right back there and it's bad.

It's really, really, really bad. Listen to new episodes of Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Binge episodes 1, 2, and 3 on May 21st and episodes 4, 5, and 6 on June 4th. Add free at Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. I'm Clayton English. I'm Greg Glod. And this is season 2 of the War on Drugs podcast. Yes, sir. We are back. In a big

way. In a very big way. Real people, real perspectives. This is kind of star-studded a little bit, man. We got Ricky Williams, NFL player, Heisman Tman trophy winner it's just a compassionate choice to allow players all reasonable means to care for themselves music stars marcus king john osborne from brothers osborne we have this misunderstanding of what this quote-unquote drug fans. Benny the Butcher. Brent Smith from Shinedown. We got B-Real from Cypress Hill. NHL enforcer Riley Cote.

Marine Corps vet. MMA fighter Liz Karamush. What we're doing now isn't working, and we need to change things. Stories matter, and it brings a face to them. It makes it real. It really does. It makes it real.

Listen to new episodes of the War on Drugs podcast season two on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And to hear episodes one week early and ad-free with exclusive content, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. Let's go to the next part here when we're going to talk about the campus protesters themselves. It's time to save some of our fire for the snowflakes on campus. And the snowflakes, it seems, have taken to Fox News, once the place where they would make fun of snowflakes and people who were against violent words. And there was no such thing as hate speech and safe spaces and all

of that. Now they have convened a panel of a bunch of people who are saying that they feel unsafe, that actually hate speech is not free speech. So let's take a listen to that. I think that one of the main issues is just the way that speech is being promoted. Because although I do believe that free speech should be allowed, of course, in America, I think that a lot of the speech is not actual free speech and should not be classified as such. And I think that there's also something to be said about the lack of speech, that Jewish students are being silenced. We aren't allowed to talk. We aren't allowed to speak.

I walk past these protests and I'm scared. I can't say anything to them. I just want to say something that's been incredibly frustrating in my eyes eyes and I'm sure a lot of them will agree. There are these token Jews, that's what I like to call them, who basically renounce their Judaism, don't associate with Judaism in the slightest bit. Even to me, they've renounced their Judaism. I was at a tabling event earlier this year for Mizrahi Heritage Month and this kid who's like the prominent face of JVP told me, I renounce my Judaism. JVP. Jewish Voices for Peace. Got it. Anyway, so he told me himself that he renounces his Judaism. But then, you know, the second CNN comes,

he puts on a talis, he puts on his kippah, and he sits in the middle of the camp and leaves a seder. And what's really frustrating there is that there are guys like Mark Ruffalo from the outside who are, you know, hopping in from their high horse saying there's no anti-Semitism. Mark Ruffalo, I understand that you're famous, but you're not on campus. Also, there's Professor Howley, the Jewish professor who I've never seen associate with the Jewish community once, come in and say, they're teaching about anti-Semitism here, so clearly there's no anti-Semitism. But Professor Howley, these same kids who are teaching about anti-Semitism are also the modern-day Nazis. They're the ones saying, let's globalize the Intifada, let's target Jews. They're the ones who are encouraging harassment against Jews.

So it's really frustrating when these token Jews step in, act like they understand what's happening, and then kind of make it as if we're weaponizing anti-Semitism. So what's anti-Semitic? Saying token Jews because Jews aren't acting like Jews that you should like. You're basically defining Judaism for everybody else. I would never dream of doing that for somebody who is Indian American or trying to define that for others. And then my personal favorite is that she feels unsafe because she, quote, can't, she doesn't even try to speak to the protesters whenever she's on her campus. And apparently that means that hate speech is actually not free speech. I mean, we're right back to where we started. This is war on terror crap.

You know, this might as well be Fox News in 2002. We're basically right back to where we were. It's actually more unhinged than war on terror. It is. Because think about, okay, so Fox News, this is not a one-off. They're just constantly bringing on these college kids to be like, I need my safe space and I'm, words are violence and all the stuff that they mocked, right, justly, in my opinion, that they mocked like, you know, overly woke college students for in the past. Now suddenly, oh, they're all in on the freaking safe spaces and words are violence. That's number one. Number two, that dude, so anti-Semitic to think you get to define who's a real Jew and who's a quote-unquote

token Jew. And you know what? I'm glad he said it because this is exactly the line of thinking that's used to dismiss Jewish Voices for Peace and the other Jewish protesters. Usually it's done more quietly. This kid comes out and says it. Basically, if you don't support Israel in the way I think you should, you're not a real Jew. And that's the way that Benjamin Netanyahu thinks about it. That's the way that many of the sort of like hardcore Zionists, that's the way they view it. And to conflate Jewish identity with one particular nation state, that's actually in the definition of anti-Semitism that just got caught by. You are correct. So to my point about how this is more insane than the war on terror, you not only have this media, totally manufactured outrage, panic, free count, etc., complete with presidential statements and members of Congress calling for the FBI to get involved.

I mean, they're not even doing covertly anymore. They're just like blatantly calling for the FBI to infiltrate these protests. And then you have multiple pieces of legislation that are passing that are codifying anti-Semitism as basically you can't criticize Israel. And you have the TikTok ban, which Sagar and I disagree about whether or not there should be a TikTok ban. But we do not agree on the fact that it was 100% sparked at this time by this panic, freak out, manufactured crisis over anti-Semitism. In fact, Mitt Romney was just talking to Tony Blinken and said the same crap. I mean, admitted it straight out. Think about that. We have to ban an entire social media platform because we don't like the information that these kids have access to there,

and we don't like the things that are being said there. We didn't even in the height of the war on terror, we didn't get to that level of censorship insanity. Now we're banning entire social media platforms. And Romney even seemed to indicate like that might not be the only one because we saw in our poll, the numbers are wildly different in terms of how people view this conflict, depending on whether they're social media news consumers, podcast news consumers, or cable news. Cable news viewers, they're the ones that maybe need to be shut down. They're the ones being brainwashed with all this fake anti-Semitism story.

Now you're starting to speak my language, Crystal. Now we're starting to actually get somewhere. Let's ban cable news for the good of the country. Speaking of war on terror idiocy, here we have the NYPD has really found its roots, Crystal. We're right back to the 2002 panics as well. Here you have an officer who holds up a book on terrorism and is like, this is what was found amongst the protests. Let's take a listen. Somebody's behind this. Somebody's funding this. It's probably bigger than New York City, bigger than New York City police department.

We've got to figure out what's going on. Wow. So it sounds like what you're saying is this raises your level of alert even higher here in New York City. But this could mean that, as you said, it's a national issue that then could involve potentially the FBI and CIA really trying to track down, as you said, who's funding this. Let's talk about Columbia. Let's talk about Hamilton Hall, right? A book on terrorism. Wow. And I've said it before, that there's somebody, whether it's paid, not paid, but they are radicalizing our students. Crystal, as a recipient of a national security master's degree from Georgetown, I hope the FBI never raids my house because I have a lot more incendiary shit than that.

Do you know why? Because that's what we studied in school. The school is called Terrorism, a Very Short Introduction by Charles Townsend. The book is, quote, a very short series introduction from the Oxford University Press that contains hundreds of titles in every subject area. And as they put it here, discusses the emergence of ISIS and an upsurge in individual suicide action, explores the issues involved in a proportionate response to the threat they present, particularly by liberal democratic societies. This is basic. You know why the book was probably there? Because somebody was studying for school. For their final exam. For their final exam. Which are going on right now.

It's like, we can have a, what is happening here? That is quite, for those who are too young, and there's a decent chunk of our audience who was actually too young to remember what a lot of this like. This, as I was coming of age like beginning to watch the news, this is what I most remember about the war on terror era. It was like they found one book in there or one guy tweeted one bad thing. And that's why he's doing 25 to life, you know, in a federal prison today because the FBI entrapped and ensnared him. Like we're on that level of type of craziness.

And they basically, we've been talking a lot about the 60s. I've been talking about some of the backlash. Well, one of the things that we don't study enough is the full-on police state infiltration of a lot of these leftists, which is probably one of the most insane anti-First Amendment things that has happened in the history of this country. It seems like they want to recreate it. This is like McCarthyism 2.0, except there's zero here as opposed to like 10% here. It's just insane. It's like a freaking textbook. Intellectual history of an understanding. Like you said, someone was probably using it to study for their class. Just like, remember the chain they brought in? Oh, these are the tools of professional agitators. It's a bike lock, okay?

Guess what? There are textbooks and bike locks on a college campus. You don't have to get the counterterror unit involved. And I just, I am losing my mind over this because it actually reminded me of at the beginning of this whole post-October 7th conversation. Remember when the bin Laden letter was going viral on TikTok? And there was a whole thing about that too like god forbid that people read some like relevant historical document and have a different idea about like it it was that level of panic but this is even more insane because it's literally one book found in one place um it also reminded me of remember there were a number of instances

where the idf would go in and claim like we found a copy of Mein Kampf or whatever in some house somewhere in Gaza or some other material that they claimed was really malicious, et cetera. It's like, you know, people still read Mein Kampf, by the way, for historical perspective. It's part of being a literate intellectual who understands history. Just like, you know, we watch Russian propaganda sometimes. As you should. They like, anyway, that's what we're talking about here. And New York City too, we can go back to A5 because this just shows you the level of the like, you know, monstrous rhetoric and total freak out here. This is a councilwoman in New York City who says the NYPD confirms that

99% of arrests at NYU were in dude students, not outside agitators, which was very inconvenient for their narrative. By the way, they were going hard on the outside agitators thing. So she goes, continues, the sad reality is that our schools are producing monsters and it's now our job to slay them. Simple as that. Producing monsters, and that's now our job to slay them. So words aren't literal violence, but I would ask you whose words are more important, those of some random student at Columbia University or a politician in a position of power who's saying that we need to slay our college kids because they're monsters. Like, it's just, and based, again, on like some terrorism textbook or a bike lock or whatever that was found. And finally, in terms of our War on Terror series, here we have Alan Dershowitz back.

He's fully back this time, guys. He has now started a new organization to launch, quote, massive offensive lawfare against anybody who they deem being anti-Semitic. Here's what he had to say. We are going to be engaging in massive defensive and offensive lawfare against bigots, anti-Semites and potential violent terrorists. We're going to take many, many kinds of legal actions. We're starting a group called Her to Jew, We Sue You, in which if you send us the name of a Jewish kid,

it could be a Christian Zionist too, who was hurt by one of these bigots, we will sue them and we will get their dorm rooms taken away and we will take their cars and their boom boxes and we'll bankrupt them. We will do whatever is necessary under the law in order to bring these lawsuits, bring them successfully and deter October 7th. Remember, there are people out there who have promised they will bring 10,000 October

7th. That's genocide. 10,000 October 7th is the end of the Jewish people. That's genocide. That's Hitler. In a sign that it is definitely 2002, Alan still thinks that young people have boom boxes, Crystal, apparently. I'm glad that Jeffrey Epstein's close associate has weighed into the conversation here. Very telling moment when he says, if you're a Jew who's been hurt by one of these bigots, oh, by the way, Christian Zionists would be fine too. Because guess what? I could refer you to some Jews who were hurt by, you know, aggressive agitators at UCLA, but they're not Zionists, so you don't care. You don't care about those

particular Jewish people. You probably think like that, you know, dude that they interviewed on Fox News, they're quote unquote token Jews, because they aren't Zionists. And so in your mind, they don't count. And it's, listen, I don't even know what to say about this. But the idea of aggressively weaponizing the law against college students for, you know, your own political purposes, and just that you feel open to admit that out loud is pretty disgusting, not to mention his own questionable past. Good point. Last thing that we had to put in here, actually, I'm curious what you think about this. Let's put this up there on the screen. This is from the Washington Post. They say, university endowments show few signs of direct Israel in defense holdings, but he has an idea.

This gentleman who wrote this column, Todd Frankel, he says, student protesters could try a different tactic, one that does not seem to have found any traction amid these volatile demands. They could instead become investors in defense contractors or other companies that they want to influence. That would then allow them to become activist investors and push for the changes that they want to see from the inside, Marciano said. So I know he was being dunked on. I don't think it's a terrible idea. Sagar. No, I'll tell you why. Because that's basically what divestment is, is that they're asking their school endowments to act, quote unquote, as active investors and to divest

from these defense contracting companies. By becoming an investor, you would get an active say in the company. I mean, how much money you had to invest in stocks when you were a college student. But it doesn't I doubt that it's going to match the like multiple billion dollar investments that the students have. Not to mention the idea of like, we're going to, instead of divestment, we're actually going to invest. We're going to like bolster the stock of Lockheed Martin or Boeing or whatever. Not a bad investment. It's the most neoliberal idea I have ever heard of, not to mention being one of the stupidest ideas I've ever heard of. Because again,

we're not talking about Bill Ackman here. We're talking about like, you know, Susie, who can barely afford her meal plan or like is struggling to be- I'm looking up the market cap. Yeah, so market cap of Lockheed Martin is 110 billion. I'm sure they'll be able to really- It's gonna be a little difficult to get a very good chart. They'll be able to really make a dent. They'll be able, with their activist investing, to make sure that Lockheed Martin does their bidding. Rate beyond market cap is $134 billion. It's one thing for someone to have a stupid idea, okay.

But then for The Washington Post to publish this is like, hey, here's something to think about. Why don't you just throw your weight around in the stock market and see how that works out instead of having all this disruption, which is so uncomfortable. Why don't you just play with money like all the people on Wall Street? I'll defend the students there in that because their universities have become hedge funds, you know, pressuring their hedge funds with actual power to make an investment. It's not a bad idea. Part of the thing is that, for example, in Texas and a couple of other states, they've actually passed laws that either force or will go after companies that invest in ESG. And one of the reasons that they're able to throw their weight

around is not through the state's banks. It's through the endowments, like for the University of Texas or the University of Texas A&M and Love. I think it's Texas Tech as well. Now, by the way, I don't think any of these endowments should even exist, period. But if they are going to exist, you might as well pressure them in order to do something. It does. I mean, that is part of what these students have exposed is the way that these universities are like hedge funds first. It's true. Before educational institutions. And trying to say this. You have to ask yourself, because there are a few places that have said, okay, not even some of them.

It wasn't even we'll divest. It was we'll have a vote on it. And guess what? The students were like, OK, that's that's sufficient. We'll accept that. And we'll, you know, we'll just disband. We'll like dismantle our protests, whatever. You don't have to call in the cops. You just have to actually negotiate in good faith with them. And there are a few places that took steps towards divestment because you have to ask yourself, like, you know, with Columbia University, I'm sure this president of Columbia is not enjoying this. Why are these investments in Lockheed Martin or like, why are they so dear to you that that's completely off the table to even consider,

especially when you consider the fact there was a vote at Columbia Barnard and the students are overwhelmingly in favor of divestment. So the student body is overwhelmingly in favor of it. The faculty is overwhelmingly in favor of it. So it's not like you're capitulating to this very small sliver minority demand. It's like very broadly supported. So when you look at this, you're like, why is this so important to you that you're willing to die on this hill? That's because of all the donors who donate to the university. The students are the customers.

Robert Kraft is the actual guy who runs that university. I also looked it up. It makes sense. Brown's university's endowment is only 6.6 billion. That's like nothing. Columbia's is like almost 15 billion. And Brown is the one who said they'd have a vote on divestment. And the other schools that I saw that were willing to negotiate were, by and large, like smaller schools. For example, University of Texas Austin, $18.8 billion. I mean, you know, Harvard University. Harvard University's endowment is larger than the GDP of many small African nations. That is the level of insanity that we currently live in.

And that's why we need an endowment tax. There's lots of other things you could invest in. You know, there's lots of other things you could invest in. One thing, you could invest in your students so they don't have to pay $80,000 a year. How about that? But that's not possible. How about that?

Columbia, actually, I did a whole monologue on this back in the day. Princeton University, just on the like 4% withdrawal rule, could pay tuition for every single student that they have just on the interest of the capital that they already have in their endowment, except they continue to increase tuition. So they're criminals in a different regard too. And I wish that this would spark a conversation

about that as well. Yes, indeed. All right, let's move on to the very latest out of Israel, because we have some big breaking news this morning. Over the past six years of making my true crime podcast, Hell and Gone, I've learned one thing.

No town is too small for murder. I'm Katherine Townsend. I've received hundreds of messages from people across the country begging for help with unsolved murders. I was calling about the murder of my husband at the cold case. They've never found her. And it haunts me to this day. The murderer is still out there. Every week on Hell and Gone Murder Line, I dig into a 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 got 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.

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

From Lava for Good and the team that brought you Bone Valley comes a story about what happened when a multi-billion dollar company dedicated itself to one visionary mission. This is Absolute Season 1. Taser Incorporated. I get right back there and it's bad. It's really, really, really bad. Listen to new episodes of Absolute season one, Taser Incorporated,

on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Binge episodes one, two, and three on May 21st, and episodes four, five, and 6 on June 4th. Ad-free at Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. I'm Clayton English. I'm Greg Lott. And this is season two of the War on Drugs podcast. Yes, sir. We are back.

In a big way. In a very big way. Real people, real perspectives. This is kind of star-studded a little bit, man. We got Ricky Williams, NFL player, Heisman Trophy winner. It's just a compassionate choice to allow players all reasonable means

to care for themselves. Music stars Marcus King, John Osborne from Brothers Osborne. We have this misunderstanding of what this quote-unquote drug thing is. Benny the Butcher. Brent Smith from Shinedown. Got B-Real from Cypress Hill.

NHL enforcer Riley Cote. Marine Corvette. MMA fighter Liz Karamush. What we're doing now isn't working, and we need to change things. Stories matter, and it brings a face to them. It makes it real. It really does. It makes it real.

Listen to new episodes of the War on Drugs podcast season two on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And to hear episodes one week early and ad-free with exclusive content, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. So we have some very grim news to report out of Israel and the Gaza Strip this morning. Let's put this up on the screen. Evacuation orders have been issued for over 100,000 Palestinians in Rafah. Bombing of Rafah, which had already begun in a sort of sporadic manner, seemed to escalate as well. Let me read you a little bit of this from Reuters. Headline is, Israel begins evacuating part of Rafah. Hamas decries dangerous escalation. Israel's military carried out airstrikes on Monday, residents said, hours after they told

Palestinians to evacuate parts of the southern Gaza city where more than a million people uprooted by the war have been sheltering. Fears are growing of a full-blown assault in Rafah, long threatened by Israel against holdouts of the Palestinian militant group Hamas, as ceasefire talks in Cairo stall. Instructed by Arabic text messages, phone calls, and flyers to move to what the Israeli military called an expanded humanitarian zone about seven miles away, some Palestinian families began trundling away under chilly spring rain. Some piled children and possessions onto donkey carts, others left by pickup or on foot through muddy streets. One refugee, Abu Raid, told Reuters via a chat app, quote, it has been raining heavily. We don't know where to go. I've been worried that

this day may come. And as I referenced before, there was an overnight aerial assault on Rafah. Israeli planes hit around 10 houses, killing somewhere around 20 people and wounding several more, according to medical officials. So there's a lot to say about this. First of all, keep in mind, Rafah, why is it so significant? You have over a million people who have been already forcibly displaced who are sheltering there right up along the border with Egypt. The U.S. has been warning against a Rafah invasion because the results are inevitably going to be catastrophic on a humanitarian level. So the fact that you now have more than 100,000 people who are being once again forcibly displaced, some people, some of these individuals will, this will be their third, fourth displacement at this point.

It indicates that that long feared Rafah invasion is set to begin. And as I mentioned before, you also already have airstrikes occurring. So, Sagar, it's a very dire situation that we're watching unfold this morning. This is going to be major geopolitical developments. Everybody brace yourselves. What we're seeing here is that the evacuation notice delivered by text messages, phone calls, flyers, broadcast in Arabic, that's actually what the IDF has bragged about in the past. We're the most moral army because we warn people before we're coming in there. So previously, we knew there are 1 million Palestinians currently sheltering in Rafah, the only city which hasn't

been subject to the ground invasion. The unfortunate thing, Crystal, is that the area which they're being told to move to has apparently already been overcrowded with tents. There's also a major question as to whether a military age men are going to be allowed to leave. Previously, we brought in everybody the report that they were not. But this puts Israel on a major standoff with the United States, which has been telling them that they do not desire this. And it also is a major diplomatic failure for Joe Biden. I mean, because at a certain point, if you were going to say, what, for the last three months, we don't want to see a Rafah invasion, and then it happens anyway, and you have exerted the full might of your superpower to prevent that, then you just look like an idiot. And that's really a lot of what we're seeing right here, although there may be some policy developments.

And I'm curious to hear what you think about this ammo thing. Yeah, let's put this up on the screen because, I mean, I think it is really clear. I think it's really important to make clear we didn't use the full might of our superpower status. We used some rhetorical public warnings, allegedly some tough conversations. We now have this report that I don't know if I believe that claims the US put a hold on an ammunition shipment to Israel. The Israelis were concerned because it's the first time since October 7th the US had stopped a weapon shipment intended for the Israeli military. The Biden administration, according to two Israeli officials, put a hold on a shipment of US-made ammo. So it's not saying it's not going there, claiming that there's a hold on it. Again, I don't know if

that's true or not. But according to this report, it raised serious concerns inside the Israeli government, said officials scrambling to understand why the shipment was held. And they put it in the context of this concern over a Rafah invasion from the Biden administration. You had US Secretary of State Antony Blinken visiting Israel last week and having a tough conversation with Netanyahu regarding a possible Israeli operation in Rafah. Blinken told Netanyahu that a major military operation would lead to the U.S. publicly opposing it and would negatively impact U.S.-Israel relations. A day later, John Kirby, White House spokesman, told reporters that Israeli leaders understand President Biden is sincere when he talks about the possibility of changes to U.S. policy regarding the Gaza war should they move ahead with a ground operation in Rafah that doesn't take into account the refugees.

National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan also said at a Financial Times conference on Saturday the Biden administration made clear to Israel the way it will conduct an operation and Rafa will influence U.S. policy towards the Gaza war. So what you hear in all of that is no firm threats. There's if we don't like it's not even like you can't do a way that we don't like, that doesn't at least give us some kind of ass covering because we're under a lot of political pressure here at home, then maybe we might possibly, in some unspecified way, change our policy vis-a-vis Israel. And I think, you know, Bibi is basically calling the bluff because many other times there have been concerns raised about this or that and tough conversations that were happening. And Israel did whatever the hell they wanted and there was absolutely

no price to pay. So I think they're once again betting that is what's going to happen again. The alternative explanation I want to put forward is there's a lot of ammunition experts out there who don't even think this had anything to do with Israel. They just think that they probably had to send the ammo to Ukraine because Ukraine is so hard up for ammunition right now. Just shows us also that it's a choice to supply both of these nations, not particularly important to us. And all of these wars for what purpose exactly? Let's go and put the next one up there on the screen. This is important to highlight. They say that Israeli officials confirmed that the U.S. had told Israel that any uncoordinated operation would lead to delays in weapon shipments and

possible restrictions on U.S. weapons. Significant. This is from an Israeli media report. Again, it's a hypothetical. And one of the reasons I don't necessarily believe it, given the fact that these ammo might have been held for Ukraine purposes, is Biden is on tape saying that there are no conditions whenever it comes to Israel. So then why would he now all of a sudden just decide to put it in practice? Like there's no real military, let's be honest, no actual difference between the military's conduct in Rafah or will be so far from the previous execution of the war.

So what makes this particular one so much worse? Like if you've stuck with them throughout all of this, like if we're going to draw lines, we should have drawn it a long time ago, or we should have set very clear diplomatic standoff or like, if this goes on, you will lose aid. There will be a major political reaction here in the United States. We will allow X, Y, and Z to go through, you know, at the United Nations. But very clearly, Bibi does not believe, either believes that's not going to happen, or he believes if it does happen, he'll be totally fine. And I think he's right, you know, in both respects.

I think he's right, too, because there is no track record of them actually paying a price with Joe Biden for any of their actions, including, you know, murdering an American aid worker. There were no consequences to that. There haven't been any real consequences for anything that Israel has done, whether it's dropping 2,000-pound bombs on refugee camps, you know, destroying the entire medical system, completely annihilating most of Gaza. There have been no consequences. So, of course, he's pretty justified in thinking there's not going to be a consequence for this either. It's just more empty words. I think that is likely a very safe bet. Just to back up a little bit and give a little bit more of the context here,

this new apparent development with regard to RAFA and the evacuation or an apparent imminent ground invasion and increased already airstrikes on RAFA, this comes immediately after those ceasefire talks that were ongoing and that supposedly the U.S. was really pressing for, which I think I actually think that they were because I think Biden realizes what political trouble he's in right now. Those talks have collapsed. So we can put this up on the screen because I don't want you guys to get hoodwinked by the way the media is definitely going to frame this. So this is from Haaretz. This was a couple of days ago, they say, report, Hamas accepts Gaza's ceasefire deal, but Israeli officials reject the prospect of the war ending. So without getting into all the details here about phase one, phase two, phase three, what they were negotiating, what the

framework looked like, et cetera, because it looks like this is all now null and void, Hamas agreed to return all of the hostages and all of the human remains of the hostages who had died or been killed in order to end the war. Okay, we've been hearing this line from Israel defenders for however long. Like, if Hamas just returns the hostages, then the war will end. Well, Hamas says, okay, we'll return all the hostages, but the war has to end. And Israel said, no, they rejected that. Bibi does not want the war to end. And we all know why. And this is over, by the way, the objections of Israeli society who, you know, they're not worried about the humanity of Palestinians, but they're very worried about the hostages. And it's very clear that Bibi would rather keep the war going than actually rescue the hostages. There have been

huge protests in Israel, tens of thousands of people coming out. We covered the polling that even right-wing voters want the hostages back, even if it means an end to the war and a calling of elections. Bibi doesn't want that. Put this next piece up on the screen because, once again, Haaretz really put it quite clear. This is Ken Roth who's quoting from a piece that was in Haaretz. He says, Netanyahu hoped Hamas would reject the ceasefire offer. When it didn't, he turned to sabotage by saying he would invade Rafah, whether or not there was a deal with Hamas,

torpedoing Israel's last and best chance at bringing the hostages home. Bibi had hoped, they write in this piece, that the Egyptian proposal, which was more far-reaching than anything he'd been willing to accept in the past, would be rejected by Hamas. But when the negotiations took a positive turn, he found himself in distress, as was expressed by his flurry of statements. Given our familiarity, they go on to take some shots at his, quote unquote, pampered son on the front in Miami.

His fright is indeed understandable. If Hamas says yes, and even if it adds a but in one form or another, Netanyahu will have no choice but to carry through what he agreed with Egypt and the US. Doing so could lead his kahanis, those are the hard right flank, to bring down the government. On the other hand, if his attempts at sabotage succeed, the National Union could pull out of the government and its leaders who still have the trust of a large section of the public would join the growing cause for early elections. Is it any wonder he is hysterical?

So that's basically what happened. He wanted to have these sham negotiations. He wanted to put a deal out that he thought Hamas would reject when Hamas was like, actually, we're open to that. We'll give you all the hostages back, but you have to end the war. He had to do something to sabotage this deal because it is overwhelmingly popular in Israeli society to have some sort of a deal to end the war. He can't do that for his own, you know, holding on to power purposes. That's very tragic. So that's, you know, and the other piece of context I want to add in here too, which is highly relevant to the imminent ground invasion of Rafen, evacuation orders, etc., is they have now officially banned Al Jazeera in Israel, shuttered the offices, etc.

So a huge crackdown on any sort of dissenting media coming immediately before this escalation as well. Yeah, no, you're absolutely right, Crystal. It's actually very tragic because it seemed like it was on the horizon. We were prepared to do a segment to come. Yeah, that's right. It just completely fell apart at the last minute. The key part is that the, and this is where I do believe the reporting about the US, where they basically told Hamas, they're like, listen, if they agree to this, we're going to end the war. Like, it's not going to happen. Well, eventually, yeah, there's 40 days. We're going to give you our personal assurance. But it appears that that personal assurance was enough for the Israelis to just say,

okay, if you really want us to commit to a new war, it's not going to happen. And we're just going to go into the Rafah and we're going to, you know, quote unquote, finish the job. So good luck to them because, you know, this is going to, this is just going to be like the previous iterations of the war, but honestly on steroids now at this point, because at this point there really is nowhere else to go for a lot of these people. And the conditions are so much worse that mass death is only even more likely at a worse scale. That's exactly right. There is nowhere left to go. There is nowhere left that hasn't been completely devastated. There has been multiple reports from entirely mainstream outlets like The New York Times and NPR and wherever about how the quote unquote safe zones, none of them have been safe. None of them have been excluded from bombing campaigns.

And by the way, as Sagar was mentioning before, the place they're telling people to flee to, it's already jam packed. It's already in crisis in terms of lack of sanitation, lack of water, illness running rampant, malnourishment of children, etc., etc. So it's a horrific situation that appears set to get even worse. With regard to that, some extraordinary comments made from Cindy McCain. She is the director of the UN's World Food Program. She was on NBC's Meet the Press. And she indicated to them that northern Gaza is no longer on the brink of or on the verge of, et cetera. It is in full-blown famine, and that famine is rapidly expanding to the south. Let's take a listen to what she had to say.

Famine happens. And so what I can explain to you is that there is famine, full-blown famine, in the north, and it's moving its way south And so with what we're asking for and what we continually ask for is a ceasefire and the ability to have unfettered access to get in, safe and unfettered access to get into Gaza, various ports and various gate crossings. I just want to be very clear because what you're saying is significant and I believe it's the first time we've heard it. You're saying there is full blown famine. Yes. In northern Gaza. I am. Yes, I am. And there has not been an official declaration that there is famine, but you are saying that based on what you've seen. Yes, it is based on what we've seen

and what we've experienced on the ground, yes. Which is? It's horror. It's so hard to look at and it's so hard to hear also. So horrific, absolutely horrific. And for all of Israel's child, we're increasing humanitarian aid. It's wildly, wildly insufficient to deal with this increase in malnourishment, in hunger, absolute starvation, and, you know, moving to the South and invasion of Rafah is only going to make

the situation worse. And we have some more indications of the humanitarian crisis in particular facing children. Put this up on the screen. Catherine Russell is the executive director of the United Nations Children Fund, UNICEF, said the war has already taken an unimaginable toll and a major military operation against the crowd of southern Gaza City would bring catastrophe on top of catastrophe for children. She said, quote, nearly all of the 600,000 children now crammed into Rafah are either injured, sick, malnourished, traumatized, or living with disabilities. All of the 600,000 kids in Rafa. I mean, you can only imagine what they're going to be dealing with. Injuries, loss of family

members, just unbelievable levels of trauma for the entire rest of their lives. That's already been done, and God knows how much worse it's going to get. No, it's very tragic and clearly a major failure of U.S. policy. It could be posturing possibly to get a ceasefire deal, but I don't think so. I think we're probably just at the point where the domestic popular, I mean, Bibi's in a put up or shut up moment and Biden is also really in a put up or shut up moment too. He's basically allowed this to happen and it does seem like this is the most likely scenario given the Israeli military actions, the 100,000 people evacuation order, doesn't seem like anything else is possible at this point.

Yeah, I think that's right. 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. I know a lot of cops and they get asked all the time, have you ever had to shoot your gun? Sometimes the answer is yes, but there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be no. Across the country, cops called this taser the revolution. But not everyone was convinced it was that simple. Cops believed everything that Taser told them. From Lava for Good and the team that brought you Bone Valley comes a story about what happened when a multibillion-dollar company dedicated itself to one visionary mission. This is Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated.

I get right back there and it's bad. It's really, really, really bad. Listen to new episodes of Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Binge episodes 1, 2, and 3 on May 21st and episodes 4, 5, and 6 on June 4th. Add free at Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. I'm Clayton English. I'm Greg Lott.

And this is Season 2 of the War on Drugs podcast. We are back. In a big way. In a very big way. Real people, real perspectives. This is kind of star-studded a little bit, man. We got Ricky Williams, NFL player, Heisman Trophy winner. It's just a compassionate choice to allow players all reasonable means to care for themselves.

Music stars Marcus King, John Osborne from Brothers Osborne. We have this misunderstanding of what this quote-unquote drug man. Benny the Butcher. Brent Smith from Shinedown. We got B-Real from Cypress Hill. NHL enforcer Riley Cote. Marine Corvette. MMA

fighter Liz Caramouch. What we're doing now isn't working and we need to change things. Stories matter and it brings a face to them. It makes it real. It really does. It makes it real. Listen to new episodes of the War on Drugs podcast season two on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

And to hear episodes one week early and ad free with exclusive content, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. So in a very Bob Menendez-esque situation, Congressman Henry Cuellar, a Democrat, probably the most conservative Democrat in the House, has been indicted on foreign corruption charges, him and his wife. Again, very much like Bob Menendez. Let's put this up on the screen. This was the press release issued by the DOJ. Headline here, U.S. Congressman Henry Cuellar

and his wife charged with bribery, unlawful foreign influence, and money laundering schemes. I'll read you a little bit of the details here. They say, according to court documents beginning in at least December 2014 and continuing through at least November 2021, Cuellar and his wife accepted, allegedly, approximately $600,000 in bribes from two foreign entities, an oil and gas company wholly owned and controlled by the government of Azerbaijan, and a bank headquartered in Mexico City. The bribe payments were allegedly laundered pursuant to sham consulting contracts through a series of front companies and middlemen into shell companies owned by the wife, Imelda Cuellar, who performed little to no legitimate work under the contracts.

In exchange for the bribes paid by the Azerbaijani oil and gas company, Carson Cuellar allegedly agreed to use his office to influence U.S. foreign policy in favor of Azerbaijan. in exchange for the bribes paid by the Mexican bank. Congressman Cuellar allegedly agreed to influence legislative activity and to advise and pressure high-ranking U.S. executive branch officials regarding measures beneficial to the bank. I won't go through all the charges here, but the potential prison time is quite significant because you not only have these conspiracy to commit bribery of a federal official and to have a public official act as an agent of a foreign principal. You've got bribery.

You've got wire fraud. You've got money laundering. I mean, just the money laundering is 20 years in prison on each count, and there are five counts of money laundering. So this is no little oopsie slap on the wrist. If he's found guilty and if his wife is found guilty, you're talking about potentially significant prison sentences. And listen, this is obviously on its face, an important story. A member of Congress charged allegedly taking money from a foreign government basically and saying, hey, I'm going to use my position of power here to do your bidding. And Cuellar is relatively senior. He was co-chair, I think, of the Azerbaijani caucus,

which is apparently a thing in Congress. But also worth recalling that Nancy Pelosi and the Democratic Party leadership moved heaven and earth to keep this man in office, even though the FBI had already raided his home. So it's not like this came out of nowhere. We knew for years that Cuellar was being looked at by the FBI. And yet we can put this up on the screen. So Cuellar was challenged by a progressive, Jessica Cisneros, very close and hard fought race. Pelosi came out and aggressively supported him saying, I'm supporting Henry Cuellar. He's a valued member of our caucus.

The FBI has said he's not under investigation. Oh, really? I thought you were going to take it to choice or something, which is a reference to the fact that he's also not pro-choice. Yes. He is pro-life. He's like one of the only Democrats left in the House who is conservative on abortion. And he's also like, you know, that's OK. That's one thing. He's also told corporate sellout. I mean, he's pretty conservative across the board and especially noteworthy given the post-op climate and how important choice has become. It's like the saving grace of the Democratic Party, either their fig leaf or whatever they're holding onto, grasping onto with their fingertips. So she overlooked his anti-choice positioning and overlooked the FBI raid, which we can put up on the screen, C4, which happened back in 2022.

Yeah, before the election. This was all well known in order to keep this guy in power. So this is back from 2022 FBI raid on House Democrats home related to Azerbaijan probe. So a lot of this was already known. She stuck by him anyway. And the end result was put C3 up on the screen. Jessica Cisneros, his progressive opponent, lost by only some 300 votes. So there's no doubt that the, you know, weighing in of Pelosi and the money that flowed into Cuellar, et cetera, to keep him in this position was definitely the reason. I mean, that was a determinative factor in Jessica Cisneros failing. And now you've got this dude who's indicted. Right. Congratulations. Great job.

Are you going to kick him out? They kicked out George Santos. So now what? Honestly, they should kick him out. Yeah, they should kick him out. They really should. I agree. But what we have here is, I mean, some of the, again, the details just to go back are so cartoonish. Wife was paid 120 grand. Congressman emails an Azerbaijani diplomat and says, I'm planning to give this speech on the floor of the House of Representatives. A year later, texts him to say he's introduced legislation favoring of Azerbaijan. The diplomat replies, you are the best, El Jefe. He's like a mafia boss or something. Around the same time, he is entering into a series of corrupt deals with a bank in Mexico. And then in March of 2015, the congressman expresses concerns that

the arrangement would be discovered and asks a bank official to quote, create a middleman to disguise the payments. He literally said quote, we need to find another scheme. The cartoonish corruption of some of the people who are in power here is just so on its face. You almost don't even wanna believe that somebody so stupid could be elected to Congress so many times from 2004, but idiocracy is real life. So these people are just as corrupt as anybody would think. He's up there in terms of a cartoon level villain as Bob Menendez. And let's see if he pulls a Menendez defense and says that it was his wife's fault the entire time. Yeah, I was thinking that too. Because what Menendez was able to do is his lawyers were able to get his trial separate from his wife. Right, because of health issues. I

think for his wife's health issues. Yeah, she had some sort of a surgery or something was going on with her. I don't really know exactly what, but anyway, they were able to use that to get those trials separated and those cases separated. And then we reported on the fact that he's apparently planning to just like throw her under the bus in hopes of getting himself off scot-free. So we'll see what happens if Cuellar follows a similar path here. But, I mean, you probably know more about this district saga than I do since it's in Texas. But this is one that it's not a it's not a gimme for Democrats if he's out to be able to hold on to. Because you guys know the way that Latinos have been, especially Latino men, have been increasingly identifying with the Republican Party moving to the right.

I think this part of Texas is one of the hotbeds of that type of party switching. facing these bribery charges could really be significant, especially given the tight margin in the House and how closely fought all of this is. So this could end up being really significant politically in terms of control of the House. Right. So this is the Texas 28th District. And the thing about the 28th District of where he is, is that he is very popular there, but it did have some of those large swings towards Republicans back in 2020. So very likely that it could happen. It doesn't, I mean, it makes a lot of sense. This is the congressman who represents like Nuevo Laredo, which is across from Laredo in Mexico.

And it's not much of a surprise. It's like, oh, you're telling me the guy who's on the cartel district is involved with banks in Mexico? It's like shocking and it's deeply corrupt. This has long been known about Henry Cuellar. People have been whispering it for years in Texas. This is just a confirmation. This happened, again, this happened in 2014, 2015. So there's been whisperings about him for quite a long time. But that's part of the reason why the Democratic establishment has always tried to save him is he backs them up basically on everything. The reason that Pelosi loves him is that, yeah, even though he's pro-life, like he is, you know, a reliable vote, reliable fundraiser, knows a lot of oil guys, been around

there for a long time. And they think he's like a checkbox in terms of diversity too. So he's a longtime enforcer for the Democratic establishment. Yeah. And I think, you know, it's one thing, listen, sometimes voters are complex. Sometimes they're like, hey, he's a little corrupt, but, you know, he's delivering for our district. We still like the guy. That's quite common down where he is. It's quite common in all kinds of places, to be honest with you, where you're like, yeah, but I know him. And now what are you going to do? Right. Wasn't the case, though, with Bob Menendez. The minute those charges came out, he plummeted in the polls.

But the fact that he narrowly won his Democratic primary, I think, indicates that wasn't really the case with him in this district. I mean, if you have a challenger coming in, coming within 300 votes, and it's taking the Democratic leadership, you know, moving heaven and earth in order to keep your grip on that seat, I think that tells you that there wasn't like an overwhelming love for this individual in this district at this point in time. And I can't imagine that these revelation of these charges are going to help his political standing or the political standing of the Democrats. So, congratulations, guys. Well done here. Good point.

All right, guys. So, originally, we had planned to have a little lab-grown meat debate, but we've been talking too much. So, we're going to put that in the show tomorrow. You can look forward to that. And we're going to go ahead and move on to the doings of one Kirstie Noem saga. That's right. Our eyes were bigger than our stomachs whenever it came to the meat segment. Let's go ahead and start with Kirstie Noem. I don't even know how to transition to this. I've never seen somebody implode their already middling career faster than Kirstie Noem, but she's definitely trying as hard as anybody can. Here she is on CBS News Face the Nation, getting exposed for claiming in her book that she then wrote and read in an audiobook that she had met with North Korean leader

Kim Jong-un, even though that literally never happened. Let's take a listen. Talk about meeting some world leaders and one specific one. Quote, I remember when I met with North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un. I'm sure he underestimated me, having no clue about my experience staring down little tyrants. I've been a children's pastor after all. Did you meet Kim Jong-un? Well, you know, as soon as this was brought to my attention, I certainly made some changes and looked at this passage.

And I've met with many, many world leaders. I've traveled around the world. As soon as it was brought to my attention, we went forward and have made some edits. So I'm glad that this book is being released in a couple of days and that those edits will be in place and that people will have the updated version. So you did not meet with Kim Jong-un. That's what you're saying. No, I've met with many, many world leaders, many world leaders. I've traveled around the world. I think I've talked extensively in this book about my time

serving in Congress, my time as governor, before governor, some of the travels that I've had. I'm not going to talk about my specific meetings with world leaders. I'm just not going to do that. As soon as it was brought to my attention, when I read the audio book, she read the audio book. So, bitch, you didn't read it. You obviously didn't read or write your own book. And to a certain extent, I sympathize. Well, no, you and I have had to read off teleprompters before, right? You kind of lose it. You don't even know really what you're saying. But it's like, you clearly, you didn't read your own book. You did not write this book. I hope there's a ghostwriter credit on there because that person deserves all the money.

There is now, the book company has put out a statement being like, we've decided to remove this relevant passage at the request of Governor Nome. But what an insane situation. She won't even say straight up, I've met with many world leaders. Yeah, but not with Kim Jong-un. And then I like how she gets on her high horse and she's like, I'm just, I'm not going to talk about my meetings with world leaders. I'm just, I'm just not going to talk about it. You put it in your fucking book. It was in your book.

It was in your book. I mean, I just, this is one of these, it was sort of like when we were talking about George Santos. Yeah. Like, it just doesn't make sense to me. What did you think you were really going to gain from lying about this? Because if it had been true, no one would have even noticed this passage in the book. By the way, no one would have even noticed this book even existed if you hadn't bragged about murdering a puppy and a goat. Okay.

I'll get to that. So, yeah. So yeah, so that's step number one. But like, that's what makes it feel pathological is when you lie about something where there's really no reason to lie about it. There's nothing to be gained from lying about it. And then on top of that, it's very easy to find out that you are lying about it. So what are we doing here? And okay, so there's, I guess, a few possibilities. She lied to the ghostwriter. The ghostwriter puts it in. The ghostwriter misunderstood something and gets put in. But to your point, if, okay, if you read the

audio book and you knew this was in here, you can't just make up a meeting with Kim Jong-un that didn't happen. You have to put on the brakes. Guys, we got a crisis. We got to change this. I don't know why they thought this happened. It didn't happen. And you change it. I don't know.

It just, like I said, it almost feels pathological. It makes me call into question whether the puppy story was actually true or whether she's so psychotic that she thought bragging about murdering a puppy would be good for her brand or something. You can't, obviously, if you're going to make up something like this that is so weird and so inconsequential, ultimately, in terms of how people perceive you, nothing for you to lie about is really off the table at that point. Well, she's sticking with her dog story, not only saying that she killed her own dog,

but that she would have killed President Biden's dog. Let's take a listen to that. You talk multiple times about it. In fact, at the end of the book, you say the very first thing you would do if you got to the White House that was different from Joe Biden is you'd make sure Joe Biden's dog was nowhere on the grounds, commander say hello to cricket. Are you doing this to try to look tough? Do you still think that you have a shot at being a VP?

Well, number one, Joe Biden's dog has attacked 24 Secret Service people. So how many people is enough people to be attacked and dangerously hurt before you make a decision on a dog and what to do with it? Well, he's not living at the White House anymore. That's the question that the president should be held accountable to. You're saying he should be shot? That's what the president should be accountable to, is what is the number? I mean, yeah, she is saying he should be shot. That's wild.

She's defending murdering this goat, murdering a dog, and now she wants to kill Biden's dog at the White House. This is quite a political decision. Quite a political decision. Remember how Emily tweeted, like, she's got to double down. She's got to kill another puppy. This is like the political

equivalent of this. She's like, what other dogs can I mark for murder? And listen. I'm flabbergasted. The handling of Commander at the White House, we covered it. That's on Biden. It was outrageous. That's not the dog. Completely.

I mean, imagine the situation for this dog was incredibly stressful. They should have removed him from the White House immediately. And this was clearly not a good situation for the dog. Okay? the White House immediately. And this was clearly not a good situation for the dog. OK, Biden has all the resources in the world to put the dog in a better situation that's going to be better for the dog and make sure also, yes, that the people around the dog are now safe and not in danger. That, like you said, that's on Biden. But for you to now be like, you know, making life or death decisions about other people's dogs and pets as well. I don't know.

I keep this lady away from my pets, man. I don't even know. I mean, this is some wild stuff. It's like out there. By the way, I talked to them. I've never seen someone flub like an anodyne politician book as astonishingly as this lady. Most of these books are just like, you know, paper mill fodder. They end up in, you know, those mill fodder. They end up in,

you know those little free libraries? That's where I go and stick all my political books. It gives them an excuse to like, you know,

get booked on a show and do a little book tour. It gives them an excuse and a way for them to like, you know, make some speaking money or whatever.

But there's never anything that's actually interesting or controversial as the whole point of these books is for them to be as anodyne as possible. That's a good point.

We don't talk enough about that. Politicians have a book exception where they're allowed to have speaking fees and to accept book royalties. One of the ways that politicians become millionaires and do a workaround while being elected is through books. So we should close the book loophole. And it's like, I don't think you should be able to profit like millions and millions, take speaking fees for some BS book talk, you know, while you're out there shilling. But separate conversation, clearly what she intended. Hopefully this thing doesn't sell all that well because she doesn't deserve it. Do you think she's still a possible Trump VP pick?

I never thought she was. You really? I thought she was. I did think she was. To me, probably the bigger problem for her was the thing that was reported previously about how he's looking at any governor from a state that has like a heartbeat bill or like really extreme abortion laws. It's like, I don't want that person on my ticket. To me, that's probably the biggest problem for her. I can't imagine Trump being like too upset about, oh, you made up some Kim Jong-un thing. Well, he also hates dogs, apparently. Trump famously hates dogs.

He didn't even like being, remember that dog that like bit Al Bechdadi? He didn't even want to be around it, like at the White House. They had to convince him to bring the, really? Yeah, no, they had to convince them to bring the dog that bit Baghdadi to the White House. He like barely, he was like very far away from it. Famously does not, does not like dogs. There was some speculation that maybe she was trying to brag about killing a dog to endear herself to Trump. You know, I mean, think about how he always talks to me. He's like, like a dog. Get this guy out of here.

That's true. That's true. He does say that a lot. Proof is in the rhetoric. 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.

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. I know a lot of cops, and they get asked all the time, have you ever had to shoot your gun? Sometimes the answer is yes. But there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be no.

Across the country, cops called this taser the revolution. But not everyone was convinced it was that simple. Cops believed everything that taser told them. From Lava for Good and the team that brought you Bone Valley comes a story about what happened when a multi-billion dollar company dedicated itself to one visionary mission. This is Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated. I get right back there and it's bad.

It's really, really, really bad. Listen to new episodes of Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Binge episodes 1, 2, and 3 on May 21st and episodes 4, 5, and 6 on June 4th. Add free at Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. I'm Clayton English. I'm Greg Glott. And this is Season 2 of the War on Drugs podcast.

Yes, sir. We are back. In a big way. In a very big way. Real people, real perspectives. This is kind of star-studded a little bit, man. We got Ricky Williams, NFL player, Heisman Trophy winner. It's just a compassionate choice to allow players all reasonable means to care for themselves. Music stars Marcus King, John Osborne from Brothers Osborne.

We have this misunderstanding of what this quote-unquote drug man. Benny the Butcher. Brent Smith from Shinedown. Got B-Real from Cypress Hill. NHL enforcer Riley Cote. Marine Corvette. MMA fighter Liz Karamush.

What we're doing now isn't working and we need to change things. Stories matter, and it brings a face to them. It makes it real. It really does. It makes it real. Listen to new episodes of the War on Drugs podcast season two on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

And to hear episodes one week early and ad-free with exclusive content, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. Crystal, what are you taking a look at? Well, I wonder if you would give us your view of the state of the American society and where it's heading. Well, that would require a rather extended answer. Briefly, this country

is not headed for revolution. The very fact that we do have the safety valves of the right to dissent, the very fact that the President of the United States asked the district commissioners to waive their rule for 30 days notice for a demonstration,

and also asks that that demonstration occur not just around the Washington Monument, but on the Ellipse, where I could hear it. And you can hear it pretty well from there, I can assure you. That fact is an indication that when you have that kind of safety valve, you're not going to have revolution, which comes from repression. Now, the second point with regard to repression, that is nonsense in my opinion. I do not see that the critics of my policies, our policies, are repressed. I note from reading the press and from listening to television that criticism is very vigorous, sometimes quite personal. It has every right to be. I have no complaints about it.

That was President Richard Nixon responding to questions about the state of American society in the immediate aftermath of the Kent State Massacre, in which National Guardsmen opened fire on student protesters in Ohio, killing four and wounding another nine. That seminal American tragedy happened on May 4th, 1970. That's almost exactly 54 years ago. And the events surrounding Kent State have, frankly, never felt more relevant. In fact, we're learning how close Columbia came to being another Kent State. The NYPD has now confirmed that one of their officers fired a gun while clearing students who had occupied Hamilton Hall. How the hell did we get

here? Clearly, we never learned the lessons of Kent State because while thank God no students have yet been killed in the crackdown on their protests against America's war in Gaza, there are nonetheless eerie echoes of the national political climate, the media gaslighting, official lies, and intolerance of dissent that characterized 1970. Now, with the luxury of time and distance from the events, a national consensus is formed around what happened at Kent State that day. It stands as a national cautionary tale of what happens when the overwhelming violence of state power is used to crack down on young protesters. A horrifying, militarized response in which the guns of the government were turned on our own children.

A chilling tragedy to never be repeated. But the first thing to know about Kent State is that at the time, it was not remotely seen that way by the public. Publishers of the Gallup poll asked respondents at that time who they thought was most responsible for the student deaths at Kent State in the immediate aftermath of those killings, only 11% blamed the National Guard. A majority, 58%, blamed the students themselves, and the remainder expressed no opinion. It seems incredible, doesn't it? How did so few blame the ones with the guns that did the killing? But if you look back at the media coverage from the time, you can see exactly how it all happened. Here's an opinion column from the time explaining why really the students brought this all on themselves. After first

blaming drugs for campus unrest, an echo of the outside agitators narrative that is being used now to paint campus protests as super scary and dangerous, this columnist wrote, quote, certainly if there had been no disorders on the campus, there would have been no necessity to call in the National Guard. So the sequence of events made it possible for the tragedy to happen. Maybe students themselves will discover they can better advance their cause if they publicize their protests by writing to their senators and representatives and the President of the United States, or by making their views known in the press. In the long run, this can accomplish more than demonstrations with reliance on disorders and tragic events to call attention to their point of view. Now, I can't read these words without thinking of Morning Joe's

Mika Brzezinski recently saying something that was actually quite similar. Why can't these kids lodge their dissent in a more decorous and less disruptive fashion? Richard, to your point, I think that's where we've all, that's the place we've all been sitting in watching this going, what the hell is going on? What are these universities doing? Why aren't they doing something? And I'll echo the horror that this does look like January 6th. What a terrible example for our students.

At the same time, these are young adults. And the question is, why do you choose to learn about the complexities of other situations around the world. But this one, you want to set up an encampment. This one, you want to scare people. This one, you want to come to the edge of violence or even go to violence. Not the edge. They're breaking into buildings. You risk your future and your education for. See, I think these college students obviously are missing the part where they need to see what's going on across the country with these protests, that it's now in the realm of violence. It's in the realm of hatred, whether some are peaceful or not. be adults or start learning to be adults and set up discussions and debates across college campuses

or their colleges or universities are going to have no choice but to expel them and ruin their future, the impact they want to have on the community, society and the world at some point. Now, a variation of this argument can also be found in Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan's horror that student protesters didn't want to engage with her as she planned her next column smearing them. She even compared them negatively with the Vietnam era protesters like those at Kent State. Noonan writes, quote, the Vietnam demonstrations came to a country at relative peace with itself and said, wake up. The Hamas demonstrations come to a country that hasn't been at peace with itself in a long time. It watched and thought more jarring hell from kids with blood in their eyes making demands.

The people of my liberal left town were relieved to see the NYPD come in, drag the protesters away, restore order, and let people clean things up. Now, it's sort of hilarious to hear this rewriting of history. 1970s America would have likely been very surprised to hear that they were at peace with themselves during this famously tumultuous time. And the fact that Peggy Noonan's wealthy white neighbors are cheering the crackdown is no surprise or historical anomaly. When this demographic was polled in the civil rights era, they were against lunch counter sit-ins. They sided with the National Guard that had just murdered unarmed college kids. They rejected the college protests against apartheid South Africa, and they smeared as

anti-American the Iraq War protesters. These are the white moderates that Dr. MLK Jr. famously wrote about as the biggest obstacles to progress during the civil rights era in his letter from Birmingham Jail. He wrote in April of 1963, quote, I've almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his strive towards freedom is not the white citizens counselor or the KKK, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to order than to justice, who prefers a negative peace,

which is the absence of tension, to a positive peace, which is the presence of justice, who constantly says, I agree with you and the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action, who constantly says, I agree with you and the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action, who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom, who lives by a mythical concept of time, and who constantly advises the Negro

to wait for a more convenient season. Shallow understanding from people of goodwill is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. This is King basically describing the 1960s iterations of Noonan, Brzezinski, and their well-heeled moderate social circles. Noonan joins with other media and political elites in gaslighting on history in another way though too. The anti-genocide protests of today are vastly more peaceful than the Vietnam era protests.

At Kent State, the days leading up to the May 4th massacre included significant property damage, including breaking of shop windows and the burning of the university's ROTC building to the ground. Here in 2024, a new report just found that 99% of anti-war protests have been entirely peaceful. The New York Times, the LA Times both reported that the one protest that did have

significant actual violence was wholly one-sided. Pro-Israel counter-protesters backed by billionaire Bill Ackman assaulted peaceful anti-war protesters as cops stood by and watched for hours. No word from Peggy Noonan on this disorder. She's too busy recovering from the silent menace of students wearing masks and refusing to take the bait on her provocations. The truth is that these student protesters have been far more disciplined and far more intentional in their nonviolence and strategic in their messaging than those in the Vietnam War era. It hasn't stopped them, though, from being demonized in similar ways to the college protesters of the 60s and 70s. In fact, Richard Nixon famously called college protesters, quote, bums two days before Ohio National Guardsmen took matters into their own hands

to murder these people the President of the United States had casually derided. On May 2nd, Nixon said, quote, you see these bums, you know, blowing up the campuses. Listen, the boys that are on the college campuses today are the luckiest people in the world going to the greatest universities. And here they are, burning up the books, storming around about this issue. You name it. Get rid of the war.

There will be another one. How much does that sound like the discourse today from Nate Silver or Bill Maher about these privileged, narcissistic college kids today? They're so coddled, so self-indulgent. They're out there protesting just to be cool and make friends. In other words, just a bunch of bums. And in the same way Nixon rhetorically greenlit attacks on college students, Biden rhetorically gave the go-ahead for violent crackdowns of today's student protesters. Only what he called them was frankly worse than bums. Biden smeared protesters as violent anti-Semites, providing the intellectual rationale for a police

response that has seen nonviolent protesters seriously injured by rubber bullets, has seen live ammo fired during the arrest of students whose most serious crime was breaking a window, and elderly professors assaulted as they attempt in vain to protect their students. In another eerie echo of history, part of why public sentiment in 1970 was so overwhelmingly on the side of the National Guard was because of official lies echoed and furthered by the media, which framed the protesters directly as the instigators. Now, we remember the famous photos of kids in horror and shock at their classmates being gunned down. But here's the New York Times write-up of the slaughter the very next day. In it, they give credence to the National Guard lie that a mysterious sniper had fired on them first.

Quote, in Columbus, Sylvester Del Corso, adjutant general of the Ohio National Guard, said in a statement that the guardsmen had been forced to shoot after a sniper opened fire against the troops from a nearby rooftop, and the crowd began to move to encircle the guardsmen. This was completely false on every level. There was no sniper. There was no encirclement. The worst that students had done that day was to throw rocks. Now here in 2024, how many lies and hoaxes have we seen spread by a credulous and complicit media? From the student provocateur who lied and said she was stabbed in the eye, to the insistence that rally chants are actually genocidal, to the claims that a run-of-the-mill

bike lock was a tool of professional agitators, to the presentation of a college textbook about terrorism as proof that students are actually terrorists. These lies have fomented the most insane media analysis I have ever seen, in which college students are being framed as literal Nazis by supposedly neutral CNN news anchor Dana Bash in a near copy of the rhetoric of actual genocidal Nazi Benjamin Netanyahu. But history has largely forgotten these media lies, the public bloodlust, the controversial radical tactics deployed by anti-Vietnam protests. All has largely collapsed down to one big takeaway

about the actual conflict itself. The kids were right and the government was wrong. So it is with Vietnam, South Africa, with the Iraq war. Civil rights eras remembered not only for this basic moral story, but for the disruptive tactics themselves that have been upheld as a model of successful nonviolence. From blocking traffic by marching across the Edmund Pettus Bridge to John Lewis's famous exhortation to get in, quote, good trouble. Now, history doesn't provide answers on whether these student protesters will achieve their goals. The Iraq War campus protesters of my college years failed.

We invaded Iraq on false pretenses. We still haven't completely left. The Occupy Wall Street protesters similarly failed. The banks were not broken up. Bankers were not jailed. Our politicians are still bought and paid for. The protesters against South African apartheid, they succeeded as part of a global movement and internal struggle against that racist regime. The civil rights era protesters, of course, succeeded in large part, although the murder of MLK Jr. stifled the progress on further demands for economic justice.

The Vietnam War protesters eventually succeeded, took many years of horror though before that bloody insanity was ultimately brought to an end. So to these protesters, a few things do seem guaranteed. First of all, you'll be smeared. You'll be vilified in real time.

We see it now. You'll be judged, correct, by history. And in the meantime, you are making Palestinians in Gaza feel seen and making American politicians squirm. The ultimate outcome is unfortunately not in your control and not in mine. One more thing, though, is guaranteed. 20 years from now, when we do know how this chapter of American history ends, you will know that even when it was difficult, when it was risky, when the personal stakes were real, you had sufficient backbone and morality to stand for what is right. And I would dare say that counts for more than what Peggy Noonan's

neighbors might think about your dissent. The Kent State thing was interesting. And if you want to hear my reaction to Crystal's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at BreakingPoints.com. Over the past six years of making my true crime podcast, Hell and Gone, I've learned one thing. No town is too small for murder. I'm Katherine Townsend. I've received hundreds of messages from people across the country

begging for help with unsolved murders. I was calling about the murder of my husband at the cold case. They've never found her. And it haunts me to this day. The murderer is still out there. Every week on Hell and Gone Murder Line, I dig into a new case, bringing the skills I've learned as a journalist and private investigator to ask the questions no one else is asking.

Police really didn't care to even try. She was still somebody's mother. She was still 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. I know a lot of cops, and they get asked all the time, have you ever had to shoot your gun?

Sometimes the answer is yes. But there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be no. Across the country, cops called this taser the revolution. But not everyone was convinced it was that simple. Cops believed everything that taser told them. From Lava for Good and the team that brought you Bone Valley comes a story about what happened when a multibillion-dollar company dedicated itself to one visionary mission.

This is Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated. I get right back there and it's bad. It's really, really, really bad. Listen to new episodes of Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Binge episodes 1, 2, and 3 on May 21st, and episodes 4, 5, and 6 on June 4th. Ad-free at Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. I'm Clayton English. I'm Greg Lott.

And this is Season 2 of the War on Drugs podcast. Yes, sir. We are back. In a big way. In a very big way. Real people, real perspectives. This is kind of star-studded a little bit, man. We got Ricky Williams, NFL player, Heisman Trophy winner. It's just a compassionate choice to allow players all reasonable means to care for themselves.

Music stars Marcus King, John Osborne from Brothers Osborne. We have this misunderstanding of what this quote-unquote drug thing is. Benny the Butcher. Brent Smith from Shinedown. We got B-Real from Cypress Hill. NHL enforcer Riley Cote. Marine Corvette. MMA fighter Liz Karamush.

What we're doing now isn't working, and we need to change things. Stories matter, and it brings a face to them. It makes it real. It really does. It makes it real. Listen to new episodes of the War on Drugs podcast season two on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. And to hear episodes one week early and ad free with exclusive content, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. So a massive scandal has been revealed, price fixing on an extraordinary level. We can put this up on the screen from Matt Stoller.

He is helping to expose that there was an oil price fixing conspiracy that caused some 27% of all inflation increases in 2021. This is at his newsletter, which is called Big. And Matt Stoller joins us now. He also works at the American Economic Liberties Project and is a partner here at Breaking Points. Great to see you, sir. Good to see you, man. Thanks for having me. So actually, let's put that chart back up on the screen. And while we have that up, explain what we're looking at and explain what the hell happened here. Yes. Yeah.

So that chart is what happened in 2021 when the rebound from COVID was an explosion of corporate profits. It was also an explosion of inflation and corporate profits. That increase in corporate profits, about $700 billion. And that was responsible for about 60% of the inflationary increases above normal. So, you know, there's always a little bit of inflation, but like the extreme amount of inflation, that new stuff, 60% of it is corporate profits. Wow. And so that's what that chart suggests, or shows. That's a chart that I published in 2021. And then of that, and this is what was just revealed, about $200 billion,

guess, guesstimate, we don't know exactly, is just one conspiracy of price fixing in the oil industry. Wow. So that's a little over a quarter of that increase was from one price fixing conspiracy in the oil industry. And this is like, the reason it matters from like a macro standpoint is, because remember all the debate over green inflation and economists saying- We were conspiracy theorists.

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. And as it turns out, there's a lot of reasons to think that consolidation and price-fixing is really what's driving a lot of the price increases, but to have just one alleged conspiracy, I should say alleged, alleged conspiracy, drive so much of it is kind of overwhelming and interesting. Right. And so what you write about is that this has been released from evidence by the FTC, which was banning the pioneer CEO of being on the board of Exxon in a murder. So can you explain

the evidence that was released in some of this case? Sure. So the gist of what happened is, you know, in the oil industry, you have OPEC, right, which is the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries. It's a global cartel run by Saudi Arabia, and they control roughly 50% of the global oil reserves and the price of oil. Well, what happened is in the US in the mid 2000s is the discovery of a new technique for getting oil, which is, you know, shale drilling fracking. And the fracking is kind of, you can spin up a well pretty quickly. So it's as close to oil on demand as we have. And what that means is that it kind of broke the leadership of OPEC because Saudi Arabia controls OPEC by flooding the market with oil if anybody produces more than they should.

Well, all of a sudden, you have these shale producers in the U.S. who can do the same thing when there are oil spikes or oil declines. They can increase or reduce production. And that broke the cartel. And so from 2014 to 2016, you had this vicious price war. And oil was around $40 to $60 a barrel. The shale oil producers in the U.S. and OPEC got tired of a low price. Now, here's what's important. OPEC is a cartel, which ordinarily would be illegal. But because it's foreign

governments, the law doesn't apply to governments. It only applies to firms. However, U.S. shale producers are corporations. And so antitrust price-fixing law does apply to them. So they're not allowed to collude with OPEC even if they wanted to. But that didn't stop them. So the theory, and this is from a class action firm, and I wrote about this a couple weeks ago ago. And then this is the evidence is the FTC came out with confirmed this theory is that in starting in 2017, the shale producers and OPEC started getting together at these dinners in Texas and then through multiple communications saying, you know what? We're not so different. You and I let's collaborate on and share information on investment, on drilling, on plans, maybe pricing.

And investment, which is really the key to oil production, started going down. And, you know, the price went up a little bit starting in 2017 to 2019, but it really didn't change that much. But in 2021, when oil just skyrocketed because of the post-COVID restraints were lifted, you would think that the oil producers would say, hey, this is a great opportunity to take market share. Prices are really high. But they were all like, no. And they were public. They were like, we are absolutely not investing. Anyone who invests, we're going to punish. And so the price skyrocketed. And you might remember there was a lot of fights, public spats between the Biden administration and the oil producers in 2021, 2022 about the price of oil. And they were like, oh, you're not letting us drill enough on public land or whatever it was.

Well, as it turns out, what the FTC just released, a bunch of these shell producers wanted to merge. And so the FTC did a lot of investigation. And that means you look through emails, you look through text messages of executives and whatnot. And what they found is that the CEO of one of the big shell producers, which is Pioneer, was sending hundreds of WhatsApp messages and emails and text messages to OPEC officials and colluding on coordinating on investment, on drilling, potentially pricing. A lot of the complaint is redacted, unfortunately, so we can't see the details. But he has public statements where he says that they're doing this. And at a certain point, he's like, you know, I think that in about 90 days, OPEC is going to make a surprise cut. And then 87 days later, they did.

Wow. Right? And so this guy's name is Scott Sheffield. Yeah. The FTC allowed the Exxon to buy Pioneer for about $60 billion. But they said Scott Sheffield can't serve on the board and can't be an advisor. And so they banned him from the industry. It's big. It's controversial, the fracking industry.

They're all like, what? I can't believe somebody got punished. And there's a lot of like, you know, a lot of people are very upset that there are allegations of price fixing by the frackers. But that's the story. So I have from your piece, some of these text messages. You write, Pioneer Natural Resources CEO Scott Sheffield, leader in the fracking field,

exchanged hundreds of text messages with OPEC representatives and officials discussing crude oil market dynamics, pricing, and output. He was explicit about his goal, saying, quote, If Texas leads the way, maybe we can get OPEC to cut production. Maybe Saudi and Russia will follow. That was our plan, he said, adding, I was using the tactics of OPEC Plus to get a bigger OPEC Plus done. He talked to shareholders, publicly threatened rivals, ultimately achieved output cuts across the

industry regardless of price. And Matt, I remember some of this discourse. We talked about it some on the show about all these theories of, okay, prices are really high. Why aren't they investing? Why aren't they expanding? Why aren't they expanding production? What were the excuses that they were using publicly for why it made the sense for them to keep production low at this point outside of excuses to avoid the obvious implication that they were colluding? It's kind of funny. So some of the excuses were, oh, those environmentalists, right? They're always pesky and annoying. But in many cases, they weren't making excuses. They were just saying, we're going to pay our shareholders back.

We're going to pay dividends. We're not going to, we're just not going to invest. Like they weren't making excuses. It was like, it was pretty open what they were doing. Some of the quotes from the complaints that I relied on were public, right? Where he was like threatening, he was saying, we're going to go to your shareholders and punish you. And so what was really going on is that a lot of economists were saying that it's crazy to assume that there is any sort of games or price fixing going on here because there's just an increase in demand. And that's what happens in

commodity markets. Even as the oil CEOs were like, we're literally saying, we're not investing, like we're going to be disciplined. I mean, that's kind of the whole story with inflation. I don't know, you know, a significant percentage I think is just price fixing or various forms of price gouging. And CEOs are fairly explicit on investor calls. They're like, oh yeah, we're all going to be disciplined. We're going to raise prices. We think there's more margin that we can get. They use all these, it's not that subtle, right? They don't say we're going to violate the Sherman Act Section 1, but they're not subtle about it. And it's the economists who come in and say, you're crazy if you think that those CEOs are telling the truth to their investors. It's really weird. It's like

a really weird thing. I have it in front of me. I forgot that this was Scott Sheffield who said on camera that they wouldn't even shale and drill more if there was $200 a barrel. And I remember that because I was like, what? I was like, what are you talking about? This was one of the topics that came up in that Bill Maher appearance that I did. Oh, that's right.

And I was treated like people, they acted like I was insane for suggesting that this was part of what was going on. So I remember this discourse very clearly, but I mean, we shouldn't make light of it because this was, we're talking, what was the economic impact to like individuals, how much more money was coming out of their pockets, which is not just about what they're paying at the gas pump. But I mean, this has massive cascading impacts throughout the economy. Right. Oh, it's just oil. I mean, whatever. Right. It's not that important, right? It's only an inelastic product that people have to buy.

Yeah, those many wars have been fought over and like completely determined geopolitics. So Scott Sheffield said that it was about $20 to $30. The frackers took $20 to $30 a barrel off the price of oil in the last 10 years. I just used that number. I said, okay, it's $20 to $30 barrel. I guess it's probably more during spikes, right? That's like, you know, the dynamics or spikes matter more. But if it's $20 to $30, we consume about 7 billion barrels of oil a year. So, you know, that's between $500, $400 to $1,000 per person per year, direct and indirect costs. That's what you pay at the pump. Plus all of the things like, you know, it goes into potato chips. It goes into, you know, everything gets moved on trucks and plastics and yada, yada, yada. So that's a lot of money,

right? That's for a family of four, that's between $2,000 to $4,000, right, in 2020 per year, right? And that's just a direct transfer from consumers to, and consumers being businesses too, right? It's not just, you know, you and me, it's firms. Yeah, trucking, groceries, I mean, it's the input cost for everything, right? And then I think there's also probably this dynamic where the spike in oil kind of revved up the engine. And a lot of corporations were like, oh, if they're raising prices, we can raise prices. So it probably had like a little bit of a cascading effect. Well, we can't forget about the Federal Reserve too, right? You know, the implication for high interest rates was also done in response to some of this.

That's right. That's a great point. So even borrowing costs now are sky high, mortgages and everything, all because of a lot of this. Right. And it's an interesting dynamic with the Federal Reserve because they raised interest rates because they thought, well, prices are going up because our models tell us that people are asking for higher wages. And they don't have models that look at commodity price hikes or price fixing. They just don't have models.

And so they're like, well, of course we're going to have to raise interest rates to throw lots of people out of work. And you remember Larry Summers who said that allegations of price fixing or antitrust being a fix for inflation, that was, he called it science denial, right? That's right. Yeah. He called it science now. And he said, to deal with inflation, we're going to have to have a massive recession, five, 10% unemployment, because that's the way that they think about, that's the way economists and macroeconomists, the people that run the Fed, think about the economy, because it's too difficult to consider power. And so they're just like, let's just throw a

bunch of people out of work, and then people won't have money, and that will sort of gradually bring down prices instead of, and so that's why borrowing costs are way up. That's why the price of oil and these, these increases in profits and price fixing convinces the Fed to raise borrowing costs. It's insane. It's totally insane. But like, yeah, I mean that it, it, we're not the crazy ones. Yeah. The emperor really has no clothes. Well, here's the other thing that I can't wrap my head around. This is a massive scandal. These villains were robbing literally every American, every American. They were robbing all of us. And yet I have yet to see this covered really at all. And I don't hear the White House talking about it. Like I would think for them

politically, this is like, look, guys, it wasn't our fault. These people were trying to take me. We're trying to tell you it wasn't our environmental regulations or whatever. Yeah, where's the DOJ? It was these assholes. So where is that? Yeah, so it's in the business press, right? And that's the thing. The Wall Street Journal wrote, you know, FT, right?

Right. So, you know, the trade journals are all over it. You know, so if you're in the industry, you know about it. The FTC apparently has issued a criminal referral to the DOJ, right? Because this is a crime. And but the White House, you know, the press secretary was asked about this Exxon Pioneer deal and she said, no comment, right? And it's just kind of like, what?

Like, what's going on? You have a massive scandal here. And, you know, I think the Senate Democrats and Republicans, the Republicans are very into oil. So they're, you know, and particularly they're into the oil companies. So they're going to be, they want to attack the environmentalists and they're not going to do anything about this, or they're going to lie about it. The Democrats, I think, are kind of like, they may slowly notice it and they may slowly start to make a big deal. I don't know. But I don't know what motivates these people.

I don't know why they don't talk about this kind of thing. It makes no sense to me. Everyone is mad about the price of groceries, about the price of gas, about the price of rent, about the price of food. And you have allegations of price fixing and you actually have litigation, right? The DOJ and FTC are going after price fixing in meat, in rent, in a whole series of areas, vegetables, and they don't talk about it. And it's really weird to me. I don't get it. It's like, this stuff is really compelling. And they just like, you know. And I think the public, I remember seeing some polling a while ago, even as they're being gaslit by the Larry Summers of the world and whatever, they really felt like there was something nefarious here.

Like they were directly being price gouged and screwed. So it's not like for your average American, this is a crazy story to tell. Corporate greed is very easy to understand. It's something that everyone has some like personal experience with. Yeah, well said. Yeah, no, I mean, they were saying it to investors, right? Everybody seems to know about it except the economists and the politicians who listen to them. And so it's really, it's like, you know, so you're in, you get on, you get on Bill Maher, you say, Hey, there's, you know, Scott Sheffield is saying that he's

likes to steal money. Like it's, it's nice. He likes to have that. Like, it's nice. He likes to have that. And everyone's like, you're crazy, right? But everybody knows this is going on. Like, this is not, everybody, as you noted, has experience. We all notice that people are getting richer. So, like, clearly, things get more expensive and other people get richer. It's like, where's the money going?

Right. Gee, I can't figure it out. It's weird. Actually, like, people are much smarter than economists. We're running out of time here, Matt. But we just want to say thank you very much. We appreciate you, sir. Great job.

And we'll have a link to the newsletter in the description. Massive scandal. Thank you for helping us understand it. Great to see you, Matt. Thanks for having me. Our pleasure. See you guys later. Over the years of making my true crime podcast, Helen Gone,

I've learned no town is too small for murder. I'm Catherine Townsend. I've heard from hundreds of people across the country with an unsolved murder in their community. I was calling about the murder of my husband. The murderer is still out there. Each week, I investigate a new case. If there is a case we should hear about, call 678-744-6145. Listen to Hell and Gone Murder Line on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever

you get your podcasts. I know a lot of cops. They get asked all the time, have you ever had to shoot your gun? Sometimes the answer is yes. But there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be no. This is Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated. I get right back there and it's bad. Listen to Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated on the iHeartRadio app,, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Clayton English. I'm Greg Glott.

And this is season two of the war on drugs. Last year, a lot of the problems of the drug war this year, a lot of the biggest names in music and sports. It's kind of star studded a little bit, man. We met them at their homes. We met them at their recording studios.

Stories matter and it brings a face to it. It makes it real. It really does. It makes it real. Listen to new episodes of the War on Drugs podcast season two on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an iHeart Podcast.