Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 5/7/26: Billionaire Says Tax The Rich Is A Slur, Epstein Alleged Final Note, Glenn Greenwald On ADL & Animal Abuse

Episode Date: May 7, 2026

Krystal and Saagar discuss a billionaire says tax the rich is a slur, Epstein alleged final note, Glenn Greenwald on ADL & animal abuse.   Glenn Greenwald: https://greenwald.substack.com/ Gab...riela's GoFundMe: https://www.gofundme.com/f/support-gabriela-saldanas-legal-representation    To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show AD FREE, uncut and 1 hour early visit: www.breakingpoints.com    Merch Store: https://shop.breakingpoints.com/   See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Starting point is 00:00:00 This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed Human. Another podcast from some SNL, late-night comedy guy, not quite. Unhumor me with Robert Smygel and friends. Me and hilarious guests from Bob Odenkirk to David Letterman help make you funnier. This week, my guest, SNL's Mikey Day and head writer, Streeter Seidel, help an a cappella band with their between songs banter. Where does your group perform?
Starting point is 00:00:24 We do some retirement homes. Those people are starving for banter. Listen to humor me with Robert Smigel and friends on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Imagine an Olympics where doping is not only legal, but encouraged. It's the enhanced games. Some call it grotesque. Others say it's unleashing human potential.
Starting point is 00:00:45 Either way, the podcast's Superhuman documented it all, embedded in the games and with the athletes for a full year. Within probably 10 days, I'd put on 10 pounds. I was having trouble stopping the muscle growth. Listen to Superhuman on the IHard Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, what's good, y'all? You're listening to Learn the Hard Way with your favorite therapist and host, Kear Games. This space is about black men's experiences, having honest conversations that it's really not safe to have anywhere, but you're having them with a licensed professional who knows what he's doing.
Starting point is 00:01:19 How many men carry a suit or armor? It signals to the world that you're not to be played with. And just because you have the capability that does not mean that you need to. Listen to learn the hard way on the AHA radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. Hey guys, Saga and Crystal here. Independent media just played a truly massive role in this election, and we are so excited about what that means for the future of this show. This is the only place where you can find honest perspectives from the left and the right that simply does not exist anywhere else. So if that is something that's important to you, please go to breakingpoints.com, become a member.
Starting point is 00:01:54 today and you'll get access to our full shows, unedited, ad-free, and all put together for you every morning in your inbox. We need your help to build the future of independent news media, and we hope to see you at breaking points.com. Turning now to debt, a shocking new statement from the White House Economic Advisor Kevin Hassett talking about how credit card spending is up, and that's actually good for the economy. Let's take a listen. The head of one of the big five banks in my office yesterday going through the credit card data, and just as Secretary Besson said, credit card spending is through the roof. They're spending more on gasoline, but they're spending more on everything else, too.
Starting point is 00:02:31 Wow, really good. It's just great news to hear that so many people are spending more on their credit cards. That's usually a really good sign for the U.S. economy. How do you even think about that? Yeah. How could you possibly think that that is a good indicator of where things are? When your circle of, like, friends and peers is, like, credit card issuers, you know, like executives at visa or whatever.
Starting point is 00:02:52 Then you think a little differently about these things. If people are using their credit card and they're paying off their balance, then great. But what is it? It's like 70-something percent of people carry a balance, and the amount of balance has actually gone up even more under the Trump administration, and especially during the last six-month period. So, yeah, I would say that's actually a really bad thing, actually. We should probably cut credit cards off. But that's a whole other conversation.
Starting point is 00:03:12 Remember when Trump was going to cap the interest rate of that? Yeah, I do. We covered it. I mean, we gave it to some serious talk. In fact, somebody scolded me. I don't even remember who. They're like, why have you done more coverage on this credit card thing? And I was like, well, do you think it's real?
Starting point is 00:03:24 And they were like, no. I'm like, well, then that's why. Okay? I mean, we covered it whenever it came out seriously. It died in Congress. And then, oops, turns out that it's never actually going to happen. Or maybe it will someday, but in the immediate term, it's not. I do want, we were trying to pair of this because this is a story that we're both
Starting point is 00:03:40 really passionate about. And it really makes me sick that this can even exist in the United States. So we're going to spend some time. Let's put it up here on the screen. So ProPublica, phenomenal job here. This lender said its loans would help Tennesseans. It has now sued more than 110,000 of them. So let's take some time, shall we?
Starting point is 00:04:01 Is that across Tennessee, there is a company called Advance. What they have decided to do is they have sued over 110,000 people since 2015, more than any other payday lender, making it one of the largest plaintiffs of any Tennessee-based company collecting debt. In Hanson's Appalachian County, this is somebody who they profile, where nearly half of households make less than 50,000, the company has filed one case for every 32 residents over that period of time. Now, they began filing thousands of these lawsuits after Tennessee lawmakers approved something called Flex Loan, a product which is pioneered by Advance in Tennessee.
Starting point is 00:04:38 The loan's $4,000 cap is nine times higher than the limit for most payday loans. The company charges the equivalent of a 279.5% of a $279.5% annual interest rate. Let me repeat that. A 279.5% annual interest rate. Before it became legal, payday lenders could only lend $425, and a borrower could never be required
Starting point is 00:05:05 to pay back more than 500. Since then, those protections have been eliminated, and now thousands of borrowers are defaulting. Flex loans only stop growing when they are completely played off. When a flex lender declares the loan is in default, or when it sues the borrower,
Starting point is 00:05:22 If the loans do end up in court, the law allows lenders to recoup attorney fees, which cannot be done with payday loans, a practice that can add up to a third of the loan amount. Court judgments against customers are often thousands of dollars, some exceeding $10,000. 40% of all cases end up in wage garnishment. The consequences of flexulins were predicted in the Tennessee legislature 10 years ago. the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau wanted to regulate the product created by the agency, the Trump administration's effort to dismantle CFPB are even currently being reviewed by the courts. Advances argued this product would help consumers by offering them loans that are technically cheaper than a payday loan. It downplayed concerns by consumer advocates that these high-interest loans
Starting point is 00:06:08 targeted and trapped low-income borrowers of debt that they could never pay off. And when you just keep reading, I could go on forever about this particular company. but you have 279.5% annual interest rate up to a, what is a $4,000 limit. Now, this payday loan often the most predatory type of loan that is out there. I thought that we recognized all this like 10 years ago. We effectively passed all these regulations across the country. And I was like, oh, we're good. Little did I know that in the state of Tennessee that you have a product, which is somehow worse.
Starting point is 00:06:39 Now, I don't know what's worse is that so many thousands of people are actually using them, which I guess shows how desperate things are. but it validates my entire view on these types of things. We're like, no, actually, we just don't allow this shit here in the U.S. We do not allow people to lend out at 280 percent. There's a word for it, you know, usury, actually. And we decided that as a society, we weren't going to entrap desperate people in these types of circumstances, which will only bury them even more.
Starting point is 00:07:06 But what's really gross is how many millions of dollars that these people make, you know, in the future. Because you're dead. You're dead. garnishing your wages and get a court judgment against you and your property. And you'll be digging yourself out of this for years when, I don't know, maybe you got a drug problem, you were in a desperate straight, you didn't think fully about the consequences. The next thing, you know, you're paying for 15 years later. One of the women in here that they talked to, she took in her grandkids and the added cost of their,
Starting point is 00:07:35 you know, school supplies, food, whatever they needed, just was too much for her to bear. And so she was at risk of losing her home. And so that's why she went to, you know, advance. And she was paying her loan off, but she didn't realize the way that it would continue to accrue. And they would let you borrow more on your principal. And she was doing that and got in this loop. And so many crazy things in this article. I mean, the whole thing is so heartbreaking and so disgusting.
Starting point is 00:08:02 The level of exploitation here, the level of predation, and also the level of corruption. Because this company was started in Tennessee. and they bought off all the legislators there. Big donors also to Trump, very happy, I'm sure, with Trump effectively eliminating the CFPB. So any sort of limits that would have come from the federal level, that is all gone as well. And there was one guy in the Tennessee legislature,
Starting point is 00:08:27 one who voted against the legislation that made all of this legal. And what he honed in on, he was a lawyer, had some experience in the area, he recognized that this ability for them to recoup the attorney's fees meant that it would give them a huge incentive to basically take everyone to court and put them through the ringer. And you're talking about poor people who don't understand this system don't have money
Starting point is 00:08:52 to hire a lawyer. So they're trying to navigate this incredibly complex bureaucracy. They have no idea what they're doing. They're never going to succeed or almost never going to succeed. And so this was the stat that really floored me in here. Advance, this company, has brought one lawsuit for every 50 Tennessee residents since 2015. One out of every 50 residents has been sued by this company. And yet Tennessee still allows this to occur. It's just so disgusting. They've won $200 million since 2015. And it's, and it like you said also, it's just a sign of how desperate people are, you know, how many people are in the position where it's like, I got, you know, I'm not going to be able to pay my mortgage. I'm going to get kicked out in my apartment. Like I'm, you know, right on the
Starting point is 00:09:39 edge here and in need of these sorts of incredibly predatory loan products. So really disgusting. At the same time, we've got, you know, any efforts to maybe fight back against this incredibly rigged system are now being deemed by a billionaire as like, you know, effectively like a racial slur to ask for the rich to be taxed more. So maybe people weren't in such dire circumstances. And you had a more equitable distribution where it wasn't the Gilded Age 2.0. Put C3 up on the screen. This is so crazy. So this is the guy who's the head of this Vornado real estate empire. His name is Stephen Roth.
Starting point is 00:10:17 And he was asked about the whole like Zoranamam Dhani, Tax the Rich, going after Ken Griffin, etc. And what he said in response to this is so crazy. And I quote, I must say I consider the phrase tax the rich, quote, tax the rich, when spit out with anger and contempt by politicians both here and across the country to be just as hateful as some disgusting racial slurs and even the phrase from the river to the sea, Mr. Roth said, referring to the pro-Palestinian phrase that some Jews believe amount to a call for ethnic cleansing. So you know how apparently Mr. Roth must feel about that phrase. He says, tax the riches even as bad, Zagher, is calling for Palestinian
Starting point is 00:11:03 liberation. But to claim that that's like a racial slur. That's like saying the N-word, tax the rich, literally a call for a policy proposal at a time when billionaires, I don't know what his effective tax rate is, but in general, billionaires' effective tax rates are lower than the tax rates of probably like many of the people who are getting screwed over by advanced lows, certainly by middle class people or small business owners or whatever. And to change that, he considers to be an epithet. He considers that to be beyond the pale. Just total, total insanity here. Yeah, look, I mean, these guys do know themselves no favors. They go on TV and they literally cry about...
Starting point is 00:11:40 Elizabeth. Who was that guy? What was his name? The billionaire? Cooperman? Leon. I want to say that's his name. If not, maybe I didn't. I apologize, Mr. Cooperman and your legal team. I'm purely speculating based on my own memory. I'm fairly certain in terms of my recall. But, yeah, I mean, it's like you're true. You nailed it. All right, good. So I remember that when they would do that. And I was like, you know, from a purely self-interested perspective, wouldn't you want to just lay low? Like whenever you're paying nothing and you're filthy rich, how old is this guy, Stephen Roth? It's like, dude, just, you know, just lay low.
Starting point is 00:12:17 Like, why even try to pick this fight? But because these guys really believe that they're like the kings of the city, that Vornado real estate trust or, you know, whatever, are these people who should be worshipped. And, you know, if you're in New York, I think the one thing that we all know is the people just love landlords in New York City. They're just the most beloved class that everybody's had a great relationship with is the landlords. Yes.
Starting point is 00:12:42 And the they in particular. And the real estate developers and the landlords are just the most beloved class of figures who we really want to hear sympathetic notes from. I mean, here's the thing too is like, when are you going to realize? Who we talked about this is what Roeb calls the wealth tax in California an anti-revolution tax? Like, when are any of these guys going to realize you've got to do a little something? or else you're going to have a big problem. This type of wealth disparity,
Starting point is 00:13:08 which is only set to spiral wildly with AI, this is not going to, you know, it's not going to be good for you over the longer, if there isn't some way to mitigate it, to make people feel like they're bought into this society and have some stake in what's going on. I mean, it's no surprise you have acts of political violence, including acts of violence against, you know, CEOs.
Starting point is 00:13:31 And the country looks and that's like, I kind of get it. I mean, that should be such a warning sign and a wake-up call of where we are and how disgusted people are and how desperate they are. And yet to even call generally for tax the rich he considers to be just beyond the pale, unacceptable. He thinks he said something in there, too, about how, like, you know, these are the best of the best and we should be thanking them or something like that. It's like, oh, my God, buddy. Like, that is crazy. You're a real estate developer at a time when, like, the vast majority of people are like, I'm never going to be able to afford a home.
Starting point is 00:14:02 vast majority. I think he's comfortable, but it's still the point. It's just like, because I'm pretty sure like those buildings are all the, you know, they're like in like Times Square
Starting point is 00:14:11 and all that, if I recall, it's been, I don't know. I feel like they do apartments to you about that. I don't know. I could be wrong.
Starting point is 00:14:17 But it's just generally like, don't you guys have any dignity, you know, whenever it comes to being like, self-awareness and dignity. You know, Ted Turner just died, the guy who created CNN. And they don't make it like him anymore. I think he was like 87.
Starting point is 00:14:34 Yeah, he created CNN. He was filthy rich. He was a playboy, you know, Jane Fonda and all that. He was a landowner. He's also a big environmentalist. And also in the last 20 years, he didn't really hear much about him. You know, he didn't use his vast media empire in his aging time to protect his wealth. He kind of just made his money and just went off.
Starting point is 00:14:52 He was one of the largest landowners in the U.S. And I was like, you know, a lot more rich people should be like Ted Turner. Like, why is it so hard, right? In your waning days to be like, okay, my. My time of relevance is coming to an end, and I should enjoy time with my family, whatever, and just kind of not, you know, you had your heyday, you're working time, and it's over. And yet these people, they're like, they cling to these riches with, you know, with the desperation where, look, you know, I don't, I, maybe the wealth tax wouldn't solve everything. Because as long as you don't use it for the right purposes, then I don't know.
Starting point is 00:15:27 But my point is just like, we've got to figure out something. We need some sort of a social contract. I don't know if it includes a wealth tax. You know, maybe it would include more of a financial tax, like more of going after our hedge fund industry. There's all kinds of tax loopholes alone would raise hundreds of billions of dollars. Like, you don't even have to do that.
Starting point is 00:15:44 I guess that would technically be a wealth tax. So there's all these different solutions, but, you know, to Rose point, I haven't looked fully at the California thing, but the anti-revolution one is just empirically correct. Like we have a complete, it's not just about inequality, just in terms of wealth.
Starting point is 00:16:01 I think it's really about inequality whenever it comes to the opportunity that people have to start off from a baseline. The American dream is built on the idea your kids will have a better future than you. That is just not the case
Starting point is 00:16:12 for the last 25 years, period, end of story. So that has to be solved. Some of it starts with housing, but a lot of it starts with a lot of other different things. And yeah, so tax the rich is a one way in which it's being channeled, but it's also being channeled in a lot of things.
Starting point is 00:16:29 very, you know, very different ways in people's, the way that they feel about our society, the news, AI, social media, the level of control that they feel data centers, you know, as like a physical manifestation of all that. So, yeah, I don't know. I'll never understand these people, but that's why I'm not one of them. It's a sickness. It's literally a sickness. Yeah. And I mean, this will be transition us to our Epstein block here. I mean, one thing we learned from the Epstein files is they just don't see other non-elites as like fully human the way that they are. And so That's how they justify this immense wealth, this immense privilege, this immense power, is they deserve it. And that also comes out in his comments here.
Starting point is 00:17:09 Imagine an Olympics where doping is not only legal, but encouraged. It's the enhanced games. Some call it grotesque. Others say it's unleashing human potential. Either way, the podcast's Superhuman documented it all, embedded in the games and with the athletes for a full year. Within probably 10 days, I'd put on 10 pounds. I was having trouble stopping the muscle growth. Listen to Superhuman on the I-Hard Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Starting point is 00:17:38 Hey, this is Robert from the Stuff to Blow Your Mind podcast. Joe and I are both lifelong Star Wars fan, so we're celebrating May the 4th with a brand new week of fun, thought-provoking Star Wars-related episodes. Join us as we tackle science and culture topics from a galaxy far, far away, such as the biology of tauntons and wampas on the ice planet hot, or the practicality. and corporate business sense of the Sith rule of two. Listen to stuff to bowl your mind on the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. My mother-in-law spent years sabotaging our relationship until karma made her pay for it. Wait a minute, Dakota.
Starting point is 00:18:15 How bad did it get? Well, it got bad enough that her son-in-law had to eventually arrest her himself. She moved in for two weeks, lasted for five. She left nail clippings in the bathtub, candy stuck to the furniture, and then she pressed her ear against the bedroom door and burst in screaming. She did not burst in while they were. She did. They kicked her out and paid for her hotel, and they thought, it's finally over. Days later, she called her son-in-law at work, claiming that his partner had been in some
Starting point is 00:18:40 kind of freak accident and had been rushed to the hospital in an ambulance. He called every hospital in the city, and his partner was making coffee the entire time. She faked a medical emergency just to test whether or not he loved her son? Yeah, and she sat in the hospital parking lot, waiting for him to see if he would show up, When that didn't work, she walked into the son-in-loss police station and filed a kidnapping report against him. She filed a kidnapping report against him in his own police station. And spoilers, karma's going to show up in the best way possible. So if you want to hear how this story ends, search OK story time on the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you're listening to podcasts.
Starting point is 00:19:19 Let's get to this Epstein suicide note, alleged suicide note, which was released by the court. Let's go ahead and put D1 up on the screen. This is from the New York Times. Okay, so here's the note on the right. You can see the handwriting there. And I'm going to give you like the punctuation and stuff as well just because I think it's significant in terms of analyzing whether or not this is a real product. They investigated me for months.
Starting point is 00:19:44 Found nothing, all caps. The note begins, adding that the resultless charges going back many years. It is a treat to be able to choose one's time to say goodbye. what you want me to do, dash, m-dash there, bust out crying, the note reads, no fun, all caps, not worth it, all caps. So the backstory here is that this note was, according to Epstein's former cellmate, who was a former cop who killed four people, was convicted of killing four people, he maintains his innocence.
Starting point is 00:20:15 In any case, he was put for some reason in the same cell with Jeffrey Epstein seems kind of crazy to start with. In any case, that's what happened. And he says that he found this note tucked into a graphic novel that was Jeffrey Epstein's. It was written on like yellow paper, he said, and he opened the book to read and he found it there. It has been sort of caught up in court proceedings of what's this guy's name, Tartagliani? Yes. It's been caught up in his court proceedings and was sealed because of his own proceedings.
Starting point is 00:20:47 There was now this motion to, hey, let's release this thing because it's subject of public interest. and so it was released. Tartaglione and his lawyers claimed that they verified that this is truly from Jeffrey Epstein, but we don't know how. We've been given no evidence of that. So that's what we...
Starting point is 00:21:04 He told the times that he found the note in a graphic novel. I would actually love to know which graphic novel. After Mr. Epstein was taken out of the cell after the apparent suicide attempt, I opened the book to read it, and there it was. It was written on a piece of yellow paper
Starting point is 00:21:18 ripped from a legal pad. The medical examiner, remember, then ruled his death a suicide. Also, this was not the actual alleged suicide. This was an attempted suicide that they claim happened. And Tartolone is, I think he's the former cop. Yeah, he's the former cop who it was awaiting trial at the time for quadruple homicide. Yeah. Just to be clear.
Starting point is 00:21:40 I will do the most boneheaded thing of all time. I asked AI, Claude, does this fit with Epstein's writing style? All right. So with that caveat that this is the lowest-tier commentary you could offer, and I apologize. He said, this is what Claude says. What I can say, the note style, fragmented, dramatic, heavy use of caps and exclamation points is unusual for a suicide note.
Starting point is 00:22:05 It reads more like someone venting frustration than someone in a final and a reflective state of mind. In terms of Epstein's writing style, what they say is that because it's mostly legal documents and correspondence with associates, not just casual personal prose, it is hard to establish a clear stylistic fingerprint. So there you go, in terms of what Claude thinks of how it fits with the alleged suicide note. I mean, if I'm being honest, it just seems kind of fake. This is my own personal opinion and speculation. It seems fake to me. It just doesn't fit with a lot of his stuff. I've read thousands of his emails between the Epstein Fon. and those hacked emails that Ryan and I had access to.
Starting point is 00:22:51 I feel like I'm pretty familiar with his writing style. The MDASH thing in particular is weird. That said, people write very differently by hand necessarily than they would type. And Claude makes a good point that he's corresponding mostly with his teams of lawyers and other people, not as many of his personal communications that were in there. So I don't know for sure. It does feel like the grandiosity of himself, definitely, but the level of like humor and other things,
Starting point is 00:23:19 you know, alleged within it, bust out crying. Like, I don't know. I could be wrong. I'm not sure I'm buying it now, personally. That's just my opinion. Yeah, me neither. I mean, and we also just say, like, Tartaglioni has a bit of an incentive here because,
Starting point is 00:23:35 and he even said at some point, like, you know, in case they thought that it was me that did this to him. And so that also should be taken into account that the person that allegedly found it would have a reason for reducing such a note to get any sort of suspicion that he did something here, you know, off the table.
Starting point is 00:23:54 So there you go. Okay. All right. We also had some interesting developments with regard to Mr. Howard Lutnik, a little bit of upset from both Republicans and Democrats. Let's actually put D5 up on the screen first. So Lutnik testified behind closed doors
Starting point is 00:24:10 about his relationship with Eubbzine, what he knew, blah, blah, blah. And so this is, kind of fascinating. James Comer, who was a Republican, actually admitted that Lundick had not been 100% truthful about being on Epstein's Island ahead of this interview with the Oversight Panel on Wednesday. So this was for a closed-door, transcribed interview as part of the oversight panel's investigation into Epstein. After the fact, a number of the Democrats who were part of that interview were extremely frustrated and discussed it with Lutnik and said outright that
Starting point is 00:24:46 thought he was lying during that interview that they had with him. Let's go ahead and take a listen to what Rokana had to say this is D2. Well, now we know why that interview was not videotaped. If Donald Trump had seen the video transcript, he would have fired Howard Blutnik. It was really embarrassing. He was asked very straightforward questions about whether he regretted misleading the American people. I mean, he said that he would never see Epstein again in 2005.
Starting point is 00:25:22 And everyone knows that he took his wife and kids to see Epstein in 2012. And yet it was just contortions and lies and no acknowledgement that he misled the American public. And then he's raised even more serious concerns about the investigation. He originally had said that Epstein engaged in blackmail and recorded videotapes. Now he's saying, well, he was wrong. He was just speculating and Epstein actually didn't engage in blackmailing. This raises the question of what the cover-up is. Did someone tell him to say that? I've not heard that he is, that Epstein never engaged in blackmail. Why is Howard Lucknick changing his testimony, changing his story? He's lost
Starting point is 00:26:09 all credibility and really it's a shame that the American people don't get to see what he did. there. And you'll recall, of course, Letnik famously gave that interview where he told this elaborate story about my wife and I from the very first moment that we met Jeffrey Epstein. We were disgusted and we said we would never have anything to do with him. And then lo and behold, the emails come out, and they'd gone to the island and maintained a relationship, et cetera. So Roe was pointing out that he still is trying to avoid grappling with the fact that he just, you know, clearly outright lied in that original telling of his disgust and how they vowed. They would never have anything to do with Jeffrey Epstein. James Walkenshaw,
Starting point is 00:26:45 also had some pretty strong comments after the fact. This is the Congress. He represents Fairfax County, replaced Jerry Connolly after Jerry Connolly died. Let's go ahead and take a listen to that. I hope today that we would have heard some remorse, some contrition from Secretary Letnik for flat out lying to the American people. Instead, what we've heard thus far is hours of testimony where he's attempting to redefine the meaning of the word I.
Starting point is 00:27:13 He claims that when he said, I would never be in a room again with Jeffrey Epstein. He meant only him and Jeffrey Epstein. Epstein was so gross to him, so disgusting, that he wasn't willing to be in a room with him, but he was perfectly okay with his wife and family being in a room with Epstein. He's lying. And today's transcribed interview is part of the ongoing cover-up,
Starting point is 00:27:42 because the American people deserve to see the video of what's taking place in there. They deserve to see the sweat on the secretary's brow as he struggles to answer basic questions about his lies to the American people. So, anyway, Sager, they were apparently none too impressed with what Mr. Lutnik had to say behind closed doors there. Shocking, yeah, really shocking, right, in terms of Lutnik. No, I mean, Comer even said it straight up. He's like, yeah, he didn't tell the truth. Well, he wasn't 100% truthful. What percent truthful was?
Starting point is 00:28:13 Right. Yeah. It's like, remember when Andrew Schultz interviewed Trump and Trump was like, I'm mostly truthful? Andrew was like, what do you mean mostly? Anyway, all right, what do we have standing by? Glenn Greenwald? Let's get to it.
Starting point is 00:28:27 Imagine an Olympics where doping is not only legal but encouraged. It's the enhanced games. Some call it grotesque. Others say it's unleashing human potential. Either way, the podcast's Superhuman documented it all, embedded in the games and with the athletes for a full year. Within probably 10 days, I'd put on 10 pounds. I was having trouble stopping the muscle growth.
Starting point is 00:28:51 Listen to Superhuman on the I-Hard Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, this is Robert from the Stuff to Blow Your Mind podcast. Joe and I are both lifelong Star Wars fan, so we're celebrating May the 4th with a brand new week of fun, thought-provoking Star Wars-related episodes. Join us as we tackle science and culture topics from a galaxy far, far away,
Starting point is 00:29:12 such as the biology of ton-tons and wampas on the ice planet hot, or the practicality and corporate business sense of the Sith rule of two. Listen to stuff to bowl your mind on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. My mother-in-law spent years sabotaging our relationship until karma made her pay for it. Wait a minute, Dakota. How bad did it get?
Starting point is 00:29:35 Well, it got bad enough that her son-in-law had to eventually arrest her himself. Oh. She moved in for two weeks, lasted for five. She left nail clippings in the bathtub, candy stuck to the furniture, and then she pressed her ear against the bedroom door and burst in screaming. She did not burst in while they were. She did. They kicked her out and paid for her hotel, and they thought,
Starting point is 00:29:53 it's finally over. Days later, she called her son-in-law at work, claiming that his partner had been in some kind of freak accident and had been rushed to the hospital in an ambulance. He called every hospital in the city, and his partner was making coffee the entire time. She faked a medical emergency just to test whether or not, he loved her son?
Starting point is 00:30:11 Yeah. And she sat in the hospital parking lot, waiting for him to see if he would show up. When that didn't work, she walked into the son-in-loss police station and filed a kidnapping report against him. She filed a kidnapping report against him in his own police station. And spoilers, karma's going to show up in the best way possible. So if you want to hear how this story ends,
Starting point is 00:30:30 search OK Storytime on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you're listening to podcasts. So, guys, we have a new annual report from the ADL. on alleged anti-Semitic incidents. We can put E4 up on the screen. This is their audit of anti-Semitic incidents in 2025. According to them, the number has gone down since 2024. Still remains elevated, and they say the number of violent incidents has increased.
Starting point is 00:30:58 Join us now to break down the import of this report is Glenn Greenwald, independent journalist and publisher of the Glenn Greenwald Substack, which, of course, we recommend you guys all subscribe to you. Great to see, Glenn. Good to see you. Great to be with you guys. Yeah, of course. So let me kick us off with this segment with Jake Tapper and Jonathan Greenblatt explaining
Starting point is 00:31:17 this report and how they defined quote-unquote anti-Semitic incidents in this report. And then we also have our own little slideshow. We can pull up of the nature of some of these alleged incidents. This is E9, guys. Let's go ahead and take a lesson. How did you define an anti-Semitic act? I mean, if somebody criticizes the government of Israel, is that anti-Semitism? What was the way that you defined it?
Starting point is 00:31:41 Well, the ADL has been tracking anti-Semitic incidents in a systematic wage-ache for 46 years. We have a very rigorous methodology. An anti-Semitic incident is defined by an act like harassment, vandalism, or violence, directed at an individual or an institution because of its Jewish identity or connection to the Jewish people. So pro-Palestine activism is not anti-Semitic. Criticizing the state of Israel, Israel is not necessarily anti-Semitic, but wishing violence against all Zionists or Israelis
Starting point is 00:32:16 or Jews, that's anti-Semitism. Saying free Palestine, marching down the street is not anti-Semitic, screaming free Palestine, at elderly people walking into a synagogue is anti-Semitic. So, you know, to a certain degree, time, place, and manner really is important here. But let me note, ADL looks at this, and we found. in 2025 that more than half of the anti-Israel demonstrations were an anti-Semitic at all, and we didn't count them. In fact, we don't count most of the things that are reported to us, only if we can ascertain with certainty that there was a motive, again, to marginalize,
Starting point is 00:32:56 intimidate, or threaten people because of their faith. Your reaction, Glenn. All you have to do is look at the data set that the ADL produced as part of this report to see that everything Jonathan Greenblatt just said is basically at best deceitful, if not outright lying. There are all sorts of incidents where as part of anti-Israel protest, meaning protests against what they've done in Gaza or what they're doing in Lebanon or what they do more broadly with the treatment of Arabs and Palestinians in the West Bank, where if you say free Palestine, if you say from the river to the sea, if you say globalize the intifada, that automatically goes into the of anti-Semitic incidents, no matter where you're saying it, how you're saying it, at whom you're directing it, you can just go through the data set. I think, I hope you guys, we can go through. I'll read off a few of these to give you guys a few of these to give you guys a sense of some of the nature of the incidents here. So a Jewish public figure received anti-Semitic harassment from a user on X who accused them of being involved with the assassination of Charlie Kirk and being a foreign agent. That was one alleged incident here. And his really flag was moved.
Starting point is 00:34:09 from a locker and a, I like this, potentially anti-Semitic flag was placed across from it at Syracuse University. Let's go to the next one here that we have. At an anti-Israel rally organized by groups including Palo Aura, Indivisible and the Party for Socialism and Liberation, protesters displayed messages including Zionists F off. Let's see the next one. An individual wearing a Palestinian flag harassed people participating in a pro-Israel march, saying, free America from the chains of Israel, free America, and you are propaganda. I'm not sure what is the problem with that one. Students for Justice in Palestine and Brooklyn College post a message on Instagram attacking Hillel writing, Hillel is not a student group as it claims, but an active participant
Starting point is 00:34:53 in genocide. The post also targeted two Jewish students by name who had served and volunteered with the IDF. So those are some of the types of incidents. As you can see, there are many incidents incidences that were reported here, some under harassment, some under vandalism, and some under overt violence. Some of them are genuinely, you know, things that are terrible, like assaults and things of that nature. Although I also have to say, because the ADL has so be clown themselves and undermine their credibility, you have to look at those and be like, well, did this really happen? Did it really happen in the way that they're presenting it? Right. Even the assaults, which generally are what people think about when you hear about hate crimes, like anti-Semitic hate crimes,
Starting point is 00:35:30 racist crimes. I think, you know, if you look at the bar graph, you will see the drastic number of these kinds of incidents where people are expressing political views, not aimed at Jews, aimed at the IDF, aimed at Israel, aimed at Israel defenders, aimed at the ideology of Zionism, which is not the same as Jews. There are huge numbers of Jews, huge numbers of them who don't believe in Zionism, don't believe in the apartheid state of Israel, don't believe in the moral justice of committing genocide in Gaza or stealing land from Syria and Lebanon and the rest. So it's all done with a conflation. Now, of course, you can find some genuinely anti-Semitic incidents. And under the assaults category, even if you were to credit the ADL, which would be very
Starting point is 00:36:16 foolish to do in light of what we know about them, but even if you were to credit all the assaults that they counted as actual anti-Semitic assaults, it numbers in like the low hundreds, like 160 or 200 or something like that, which, you know, I'm not saying should be dismissed, but is far from the sort of epidemic they're trying to depict. And I think the context here is so critical, which is that there is, and very well documented and rather still rapidly accelerating collapse of support for Israel in the United States and throughout more broadly the democratic world. And the solution that they've embraced, the only one that they can really think about,
Starting point is 00:36:54 is to equate protest against Israel or even opposition to Israel with anti-Semitism. And we saw that in the encampments on college, which were all deemed basically intrinsically anti-Semitic, even though they were filled with Jews and led by Jews and all kinds of Muslims who only had a problem with Israel's destruction of Gaza. And then also the broader institutional imperative, these kinds of groups, if they're a group aimed at injustice X, they have an inherent interest, an institutional interest, in depicting X as grave of a problem as possible. And that's what really is going on here. Yeah, and one case, what drives me crazy is.
Starting point is 00:37:30 because, you know, it's one thing to label something anti-Semitic, but it's another to use the instrument of the law against them. Can we put E7 up here on the screen? This was a case, Glenn, I'm sure you're familiar with, where this Florida International University student, Gabriella Saldana, was arrested for wanting Israel's Netanyahu, what they say, to drop bombs on the school event. What it really was is a joke in a WhatsApp group of 215 students,
Starting point is 00:37:55 where she said, Netanyahu, if you can hear me, drop some bonbons for us, capstone students in Ocean Bank Convocation Center. In Bond Court, they said she also wrote, there's going to be a bomb in the Ocean Bank Center. It was going to be Jonathan's fault in reference to another student in the chat. She appeared before a judge and was literally not only arrested, but we learned from her, according to her, she made contact with our team
Starting point is 00:38:18 that the charges have gone ahead and been filed or continued to be in the court case against her. Now, we're going to have a GoFundMe, a link down in the description. But this is beyond the ADL's weapon. of the term anti-Semitism to extend it further. This is the state of Florida or many other jurisdictions across the United States using these types of incidents to weaponize the law against our own citizens. In this case, a joke, but in often cases, protests against the government of Israel. Yeah, look, I'm somebody who obviously has advocated or not obviously, but I have advocated
Starting point is 00:38:52 for free speech and a pretty aggressive and robust. One might even say absolutist version of free speech for decades versus a lawyer. and I was a journalist. And there have been many threats unrelated to Israel or ADL, the ADL-type groups over the years. But at the moment, far and away, the greatest threat to free speech, both in the United States and more broadly in the democratic world are laws that are being passed designed to ban or limit or punish or even outright criminalize all kinds of criticisms about Israel by conflating those with anti-Semitism and then kind of pushing them into the hate speech laws. that had been promulgated all throughout the democratic world. And this, thankfully, we have the First Amendment in the United States, which makes it more difficult. But the very first agenda item, seemingly of the Trump administration, was to figure out ways to weaponize the law,
Starting point is 00:39:44 to punish Israel critics as anti-Semites imposing broadened hate speech codes on our college campuses. And then you have all these state governors, often read state governors, but not always, who have been promulgating all sorts of laws designed to punish and limit. how much you can criticize Israel in the United States. It is a grave problem from a free speech perspective. And the way in which the ADL is manipulating this report is exactly the underlying framework for how it's done. I would just quickly add, you know, this was sort of the excesses of the woke movement and the fallout of the L.M and Me Too that even a lot of its original supporters felt uncomfortable with how far it went. And the American right was apoplectic.
Starting point is 00:40:26 And I thought they had legitimate grievances. And now basically the primary tactic of at least the pro-Israel faction of MAGA and the American right is to go around screaming bigotry and anti-Semite and racist and everybody who disagrees with them and then going further and using these institutional and even legal mechanisms to punish and stifle it. It's remarkable to watch. They have no self-awareness. Well, and I think they're probably, I mean, if you really want to fuel anti-Semitism,
Starting point is 00:40:53 how about we pass a bunch of suppressive authoritarian-style laws and, a government-wide crackdown on any criticism of Israel while simultaneously insisting that Israel is inextricably linked with the Jewish people and that every Jew is aligned with Israel and that attacks on Israel and attacks on all Jewish people. Like, that is a surefire way to increase anti-Semitism. So I think Jonathan Greenblatt and his ilk have done more to stoke actual genuine anti-Semitism than virtually anyone else in this country. I could not agree more.
Starting point is 00:41:26 You know, it's a human impulse to want to be free in terms of how what you can think and what you can say. And it's been documented over many centuries. Obviously, some cultures deprioritized and others, but all of us have that instinct. And it's an especially American ethos. Like, I think we all just instinctively have this kind of backlash or anger effect when we're told we can't say certain things or certain topics are off limit. I do think there was backlash from the kind of excesses and free speech suppression in the name of racism or, you know, homophobia and transphobia and misogyny and the like. And I think we're seeing that now.
Starting point is 00:42:02 But, you know, the irony crystal is that under these new hate speech laws that the Trump administration forced are leading universities to accept this IHRA, expand the definition of anti-Semitism. One of the new definitions of anti-Semitism is you can't conflate Israel and Jewish people. So if Israel does something, you can't say, oh, look, the Jews are committing genocide. That is actually anti-Semitic. to attribute to all Jews what the state of Israel, the government of Israel do.
Starting point is 00:42:30 And yet they do this all the time. This is the whole foundation for what they're doing is to say, if you criticize Israel, it means you're criticizing, quote, unquote, the Jews. They're the ones constantly conflating it because that's a prerequisite for being able to characterize Israel criticism and anti-Israel activism as anti-Semitism.
Starting point is 00:42:49 So they punish it when it's done by their adversaries or their enemies, and then they turn around and embrace exactly that formulation but it's in their interest to do so. It's so crazy. We're watching this to the government level. Can we put E2 up there on the screen? So there's this recent incident in New York City
Starting point is 00:43:04 where the assistant attorney general, Harmeet Dillon, has now announced that the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice is going to investigate this protest that happened at a synagogue in New York City. Now, if I put it that way, it may sound bad. But when we dig a little bit further into what exactly was going on,
Starting point is 00:43:24 can we put E3 up there? on the screen, this was at a synagogue in New York City, the Park East Synagogue, where a person who was able to go to the event saw that there were properties that were being advertised, not necessarily for sale in that jurisdiction, but for being advertised to invite American Jews to make Alia to Israel where properties, in some cases, available in the West Bank were being sold or being told them that they could go. and they could go and live there. A very, very different, you know, event
Starting point is 00:43:59 than the way it was initially sold is just a protest against a synagogue. And in this case, Glenn, these protesters were clearly going and protesting against this, you know, this advertisement of land available in the West Bank. And now the Civil Rights Division is saying protesting that, you know,
Starting point is 00:44:16 protesting that, which, you know, even the New York Times and others who, when they cover this, are like usually acknowledged as illegal. That's how they refer to the West Bank properties. the civil rights division of our government is going after protesters for sales of that type of land and property in the West Bank currently in Palestinian land. I mean, this is the lie at the heart of everything that this whole campaign of deceit is arrest on,
Starting point is 00:44:43 is to pretend that people who are protesting Israel or people who are protesting stealing of land in the name of Zionism are somehow targeting Jews for being Jews. Again, this was the lie at the heart of the smear campaign against the student protesters that these people were supposedly harassing Jewish students, not letting Jews pass, when in reality these camps were full of Jews, of Jewish organizers, of Jewish leaders who were leading in many cases and certainly participating in these anti-Israel protests. They weren't targeting Jews. They were targeting the ideology that says America should pay for and finance an arm
Starting point is 00:45:18 the genocide in Gaza. I know you guys interviewed them. I interviewed tons of students on my show. At supposedly the most anti-Semitic encampment, which is at Columbia, they had Shabbat dinner every Friday night because there were so many Jews. They had, you know, dinners for every kind of religion, including Shabbat dinner every Friday night. And this is the same thing.
Starting point is 00:45:39 Nobody remotely honest thinks that that that protest was about targeting a synagogue because it's a synagogue. As you say, they were protesting what the U.S. government for decades under all, parties has said is a direct threat to national security, which is Israel annexing more and more of the West Bank, which prevents a two-state solution, which destroys America's ability to operate safely and in its interest in the region. Now as an American citizen, you can't go and protest the seizure of land, the stealing of land, the selling of land, simply because you happen to put it in a synagogue, which is exactly why they put it there so that it looks as though they're protesting a synagogue rather than protesting this this this this policy of theft yeah which is so disgusting
Starting point is 00:46:24 the strategy there to use a synagogue as sort of like a shield you know a human shield a building shield I guess a religious shield yeah exactly um in order to oh look at these mean protesters they just hate Judaism it's like no they hate that you're selling illegal stolen land how about that but that gets left out of almost all of the coverage or it's buried um saga was looking at the new york times article and the way that you know in the headline in the subhead they don't mention anything about West Bank, illegal land sales. You have to read in before they even mention it. And then they use this sort of bullshit wishy-washy language.
Starting point is 00:46:57 Oh, in most places around the world, they consider this to be illegal. So, I mean, the way the liberal media has helped to, you know, create enough runway for this genocide against Palestinians to occur as a whole separate topic altogether. Imagine an Olympics where doping is not only legal but encouraged. It's the enhanced games. Some call it grotesque. Others say it's unleashing human potential. Either way, the podcast's Superhuman documented it all, embedded in the games and with the athletes for a full year. Within probably 10 days, I'd put on 10 pounds.
Starting point is 00:47:33 I was having trouble stopping the muscle growth. Listen to Superhuman on the IHard Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, this is Robert from the Stuff to Blow Your Mind podcast. Joe and I are both lifelong Star Wars fan, so we're celebrating May the 4th with a brand new week of fun, thought-provoking Star Wars-related episodes. Join us as we tackle science and culture topics from a galaxy far, far away,
Starting point is 00:47:58 such as the biology of tauntons and wampas on the ice planet hot, or the practicality and corporate business sense of the Sith rule of two. Listen to stuff to blow your mind on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. My mother-in-law spent years sabotaging our rights, relationship until karma made her pay for it. Wait a minute, Dakota. How bad did it get?
Starting point is 00:48:21 Well, it got bad enough that her son-in-law had to eventually arrest her himself. Oh. She moved in for two weeks, lasted for five. She left nail clippings in the bathtub, candy stuck to the furniture, and then she pressed her ear against the bedroom door and burst in screaming. She did not burst in while they were. She did. They kicked her out and paid for her hotel, and they thought, it's finally over.
Starting point is 00:48:40 Days later, she called her son-in-law at work, claiming that his partner had been in some kind of freak accident and had been rushed to the hospital in an ambulance. He called every hospital in the city, and his partner was making coffee the entire time. She faked a medical emergency just to test whether or not he loved her son? Yeah. And she sat in the hospital parking lot,
Starting point is 00:48:59 waiting for him to see if he would show up. When that didn't work, she walked into the Sun-in-Laws police station and filed a kidnapping report against him. She filed a kidnapping report against him in his own police station. And spoilers, karma's going to show up in the best way possible. So if you want to hear how this story, Ends. Search OK Story Time on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you're listening to podcasts.
Starting point is 00:49:24 I want to turn to these stories, two different stories, but let's start with the bill that passed the House that's made it into the farm bill, which enforces, requires federal government mandated cruelty against pigs in particular and could put F2 up on the screen. And Glenn, you can explain this certainly better than I can, but California, among other states, had passed some legislation saying, Listen, what we do to these animals is horrific enough. At least we can require that they're in a cage large enough where they can turn around. This bill that's already passed through the House now heads to the Senate says, no, we're not going to allow states to carve on even this level of humanity towards these highly intelligent animals. So can you give us a little bit of the background here and what this bill would actually mandate? Yeah, I read an article in 2017 for the Intercept where there was this case where animal activists. went into Smithfield farms where they have tens of thousands of pigs held in the most nauseating
Starting point is 00:50:24 conditions you can possibly imagine. And they rescued two little piglets who are basically on the verge of death, obviously not stealing from Smithfield in a monetary way. These pigs had no monetary value. They were going to die. But symbolically to kind of personalize the pigs and to show what their conditions were. And the FBI went on a nationwide hunt in order to find these two piglets. They went into refuges and shelters, and they clip parts of the pig's ears to do a DNA test to try and find these two piglets and then prosecute the activist because they're working at the behest of this gigantic factory farm industry that's led by Smithfield Farms, which is owned in large part by the Chinese.
Starting point is 00:51:05 But even before that, it's a complete bastardization of farming values. As you showed a picture of what's called a gestation crate where the female pigs are put into this tiny crate where they're, They cannot turn around. There's no space for them to turn around. And they live like that their whole life. They're impregnated. They have babies. The babies are taken away from them.
Starting point is 00:51:24 After the minimal amount of time, they often step on them. They don't see them. They go insane. They actually start biting through the metal cages and losing all their teeth because I have a small farm with a bunch of farm animals. And pigs are as intelligent as dogs, as sentient, and probably more emotionally complex. And what they are above all else is extremely social animals. It's just like if you put a human being in prolonged isolation of solitary confinement, they're going to go crazy because you've deprived them of what they need as human beings, which is interaction with others. Same with these pigs, but it's done on a massive scale.
Starting point is 00:51:58 And so a lot of states, and it's happened in Europe and elsewhere around the world has said, no, we're not saying we're going to be vegan. We're not going to stop eating meat. But there's a level of sadism and cruelty and torture that we won't tolerate. And these states, democratically lucky, it was a referendum in California, others as well, The Biden administration challenged it, tried to get the Supreme Court to overturn these animal rights, these animal abuse laws in California and elsewhere. The Supreme Court upheld it. And so now the industry is using their control over the Congress and the Senate with their money to basically ban what voters enacted saying we don't want in our state to consume products that are a byproduct of the most sickening torture you could possibly imagine. And is really all of this, Glenn, just at the behest of corporate profit, is that the entire drive behind?
Starting point is 00:52:45 because it doesn't even seem fathomable, you know, that you could be against something like this. Unless, I guess, it's what, X more sense in order to moderately care for these animals. Is that really the drive behind this entire thing? Yeah, yes. I mean, you know, farming for so long has been based on organic and natural values. You have free-range chickens and cows and pigs. This is total industrialization. of the process that disregards what the Bible and religions teach
Starting point is 00:53:19 is the inherent value of God created animal life. One of the most majestic things we have on the planet, it's designed to take it and completely objectify it solely for corporate profits. That's the only reason why they don't give pigs a little bit more space before they're slaughtered so that they can at least turn around and have like a minimally decent life on their way to the slaughterhouse. It is all about corporate profits, and then they have these lobbyists.
Starting point is 00:53:43 And unfortunately, there's no countervailing. lobby that is for, say, animal welfare. The interesting thing is that this has become genuinely bipartisan. I think, like, dogs are kind of the gateway into understanding the cruelty to animals. And there have been now bipartisan efforts and genuine bipartisan movements to curb the worst of animal cruelty. It might run into problems in the Senate. But, you know, I've watched Congress long enough to know that you never place your bets
Starting point is 00:54:10 against industry lobbyists. They always seem to get their way. Yeah. And they frame it as they call it the safe. our Bacon Act. And so they go after, you know, Americans love of bacon. Oh, bacon's going to be too expensive if we don't, you know, torture these pigs a little bit more. And so I know that's the way. I remember when California was looking to pass this legislation. That was the way that they framed it, the sort of fear-mongering tactics that they used. Using, you know, I mean, frankly,
Starting point is 00:54:36 using the like exploitation, desperation of the American people and their sensitivity to prices against them in, you know, on behalf of this large industry. I also want to to get your reaction to, we could put F4 up on the screen to the rescue of this 1,500 roughly beagles. I mean, these images are just like, how can you not be moved by these adorable little dogs being, you know, getting to go outside and run around after being subjected to horrific conditions and being used for tests. Glenn, give us a little bit of the backstory here, if you could, about the way activists were
Starting point is 00:55:13 able to, at great cost to themselves, were able to secure the significant victory. Yeah, you know, it's such a feel-good story, but it also has so many lessons for how activism can actually succeed. I think sometimes we get jaded. I even just said, like, hey, I wouldn't put my money against, you know, industry groups in Congress. But this is actually a success story, but it's so long in the making it. The first time I wrote about Ridgeland Farm was 2017 or 18. And the only reason I knew was because there were these activists kind of working, you know, on the fringes about an issue that hadn't gotten much attention. And if you looked at what happened with Ridgeland Farms, they breed dogs into the world,
Starting point is 00:55:49 purposely beagles because it's a very docile, loving, trusting breed of dogs. So that's purposely what they want in their labs. And they sell them for these absolutely sadistic, gratuitous experiments to research facilities or corporations that are funded by the U.S. government. And while they're bred, they're kept in these. metal cages, these just completely overcrowded metal cages, they never see the light of day. These dogs that just got released, it's the first time they went outside. It's the first time they were actually on ground.
Starting point is 00:56:21 They had spent their whole lives in metal cages. And these activists, you know, there's Wayne, Wayne Sung, who's with the DXA, the direct action everywhere group that does civil disobedience. They're the ones who rescued those pigs that I mentioned before. They have been working to get Ridgeland Farms closed. and what finally enabled them to do it was that there's been these bipartisan groups like White Coats Waste that have said, hey, conservatives, you don't want your government money funding, hideous animal experimentation. They've said to the left, you love animals, you want to protect animals.
Starting point is 00:56:51 And it kind of became this bipartisan movement because they weren't picky or ideologically pure about who their allies would be. They just wanted to shut this facility. And finally, it's getting shut. It's saving thousands of these beagles who would have been destined for the most horrific animal experimentation, and they breed them into the world just for experimentation, and then they killed them after. So that's their whole lives. Ridgeland is finally being shut down, but it's still a massive industry of dog experimentation that this kind of symbolizes how to do successful
Starting point is 00:57:22 activism, both in this area, and I think more broadly. Yeah, and you know, just to make it bigger than animal welfare, because that's a key component of this, this fits with generally, I think if you were to ask RFK Jr. of two years ago, maybe three years ago, he would have been vehemently. opposed to things like this. It fits also with some of the betrayals from the Trump administration on the Maha movement of glyphosate and of the prioritization of corporate profit, let's say, here in terms of pigs and animal welfare. But generally, one of the more inspiring parts, you know, you would think originally of Maha was like, okay, let's actually take our environment seriously what we put into our body. It's not just good for us, but also in terms of regenerative agriculture.
Starting point is 00:58:02 or like many of these things have just not come to pass, not only not come to pass, but I've been outright rejected by this administration, Glenn. And I know, I'm just curious, you know, what you make of that. But at the same time, I do think there's more heightened awareness because of the work that you've done, activists and others on these things.
Starting point is 00:58:19 I'm just, you know, curious how you're thinking about it. I mean, if you enter these facilities, which I have done, you'll obviously be shocked by the animal cruelty, but it's also physically repulsive. Like the smell, the conditions of these animals that then are fed into people's bodies. They use massive amounts of antibiotics just to kind of mass treat these animals
Starting point is 00:58:39 to prevent them from dying before they can sell them. And this mass use of antibiotics has a very high risk of creating antibiotic-resistant infections that can be a gigantic threat to the human species. They dump this waste, this disgusting, repulsive. These conditions go into poor neighborhoods where they just dump enormous amounts of waste without any real studies of what the impact is.
Starting point is 00:59:01 there's all kinds of psychological effects on the workers who are required to just slaughter and devalue human life. They come out with all kinds of trauma, all kinds of psychological issues. It's a multi-level sickness that this industry is producing. But of course, the problem again is, you know, our Congress operates based solely on money. And they are a very well-funded group. If I could just quickly tell you, like just one short antidote, which is in places like Montana and Idaho, which typically have a kind of libertarian free market ideology, like you can do what you want. The government shouldn't tell you.
Starting point is 00:59:36 They just pass bills that ban lab grown meat, which was the alternative for people who still want to eat meat but don't want to consume animal products. And in other words, people who want to buy alternatives to factory farm meat are now banned from doing so because these industries are so powerful that they got the legislatures and the governors to ban their competitors. even though these are free market states of consumer choice and the like, that's the level of power that we're talking about. Incredible stuff.
Starting point is 01:00:05 Glenn, thank you so much. Thanks for breaking down all of these issues for us. We really appreciate it. It's great to see you. Thank you, man. Happy with you guys, thanks. Talk to you soon. Thank you guys so much for watching.
Starting point is 01:00:14 We appreciate it. Friday show for everybody tomorrow. See you then. Another podcast from some SNL late-night comedy guy, not quite. Unhumor me with Robert Smygel and friends. Me and hilarious guests from Bob Odenkirk to David Letterman help make you funnier. This week, my guest, S&L's Mikey Day and headwriter, Streeter Seidel, help an
Starting point is 01:00:32 a cappella band with their between songs banter. Where does your group perform? We do some retirement homes. Those people are starving for banter. Listen to humor me with Robert Smigel and friends on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Imagine an Olympics where doping is not only legal, but encouraged. It's the enhanced games. Some call it grotesque. Others say it's unleashing human potential. Either way, the podcast's Superhuman documented it all, embedded in the games and with the athletes for a full year. Within probably 10 days, I'd put on 10 pounds.
Starting point is 01:01:08 I was having trouble stopping the muscle growth. Listen to Superhuman on the IHard Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, what's good, y'all? You're listening to Learn the Hard Way with your favorite therapist and host care games. This space is about black men's experiences, having honest conversations that it's really not safe to have anywhere,
Starting point is 01:01:29 but you're having them with a licensed professional who knows what he's doing. How many men carry a suit or armor? It signals to the world that you're not to be played with. And just because you have the capability that does not mean that you need to. Listen to learn the hard way on the IHard radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. This is an IHart podcast. Guaranteed human.

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