Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 6/13/25: ANALYSIS: Did Trump Let Israel Start WW3?

Episode Date: June 13, 2025

Krystal and Ryan discuss the latest on Israel's attack on Iran, Senator Padilla thrown to the ground at Noem press conference & MORE! To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show AD FREE, uncut and 1 hour early visit: www.breakingpoints.comMerch Store: https://shop.breakingpoints.com/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. Just like great shoes, great books take you places. Through unforgettable love stories and into conversations with characters you'll never forget. I think any good romance, it gives me this feeling of like butterflies. I'm Danielle Robay and this is Bookmarked by Reese's Book Club. The new podcast from Hello Sunshine and iHeart Podcasts, where we dive into the stories that shape us on the page and off. Each week, I'm joined by authors, celebs,

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Open your free I Heart Radio app, search Rock Solid and listen now. Hey guys, Sagar 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 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 breakingpoints.com. Good morning, everyone. Welcome to Breaking Points. We have obviously a lot to cover this morning. I'm very fortunate to be joined by Dr. Treta Parsi of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft here

from the start to break down what is happening with us, with Israel, and with Iran. Of course, this comes on the heels of the Israelis launching an illegal, unprovoked, aggressive attack on Iran, Iran now promising retaliation. We have some updates from President Trump last night. Dr. Parsi, before I get you in, let me just go ahead and put this up on the screen in terms of the statement that he put out. He says, I gave Iran a chance after chance to make a deal. I told them in the strongest of words to just do

it, but no matter how hard they tried, no matter how close they got, they just couldn't get it done. I told them it would be much worse than anything they know anticipated or were told, that the U.S. would make the best and most lethal military equipment anywhere in the world by far and that Israel has a lot of it with much more to come. They know how to use it. Certain Iranian hardliners spoke bravely, but they didn't know what was about to happen. They are all dead now and it will only get worse. There has already been great death and destruction, but there is still time to make the slaughter. With the next already planned attacks being even more brutal come to an end, Iran must make a deal

before there is nothing left and save what was once known as the Iranian Empire. No more death, no more destruction. Just do it before it is too late. God bless you all. So Dr. Parsi, with that, if I can just get your reaction off the top here of what Israel has done and what we know about US involvement.

So what the Israelis have done is to follow the same playbook as they did in Lebanon, which is that they went after the chain of command and the heads of the various military installations as organizations in order to essentially paralyze Hezbollah and disable it from being able to respond. And once that has happened, then they went all out and just destroyed as much as they could. They did the same thing in Syria as well. Once the Assad government was gone, that's when the Israelis really started bombing the country to eliminate whatever military capabilities it had left to ensure that regardless of who would come into power in Syria afterwards, they would not be able to pose a challenge to Israel for years to come. That seems to be the same strategy. The Iranians seems to have completely miscalculated, thinking that any strike would go after economic

targets, it would go after oil installations, perhaps the nuclear program itself. I don't think they calculated that it would go after individuals in this manner, or perhaps they didn't think that the Israelis had the capability. I think also they were lured by what clearly now appears to have been a deception by the Trump administration, in which not a deception that I think at least took place from the beginning, meaning eight or so weeks ago when talks started, but a deception that started sometime over this weekend in which there was signaling of talks coming up that he didn't want to see an attack, which I think probably put the Iranians in a lot of thinking that if anything happens, it will happen

after Sunday's negotiations, which probably won't take place right now. But instead, the plan was to go ahead much sooner than that. It seems to have taken them by surprise. But I think also there's something very important here to mention. We've seen that they've been targeting apartment building, similar to what they have done in Beirut, what they have done, of course, in Gaza, in a much, much larger scale. in Beirut, what they have done, of course, in Gaza, in a much, much larger scale. What we've seen is that over the course of the last two years, but also before that,

the Israelis have run a campaign to essentially eliminate all of the norms around the use of force that have been developed over time, but particularly after the Second World War, to eliminate all international law, because what they're doing here is that they're going after civilians and military officials, but they're doing so not on the battlefield, they're not doing so in the barracks, they're doing it in their homes when they're asleep together with the

children and families as well as scores of other families in the same apartment building. If any other country were to do this against the United States, meaning that they would target even military officials, but outside of the battlefield, outside of the barracks, but at their homes together with their families, the United States would rightfully call that acts of terrorism. But this is what Israel has normalized. And I think, again, the Iranians may have underestimated how far the Israelis were willing to go

to break all kinds of norms when it comes to warfare. I think that's such an important point. Not only, of course, if our own military officers were assassinated in their homes, certainly if Israeli political leadership or military officers were assassinated in their homes, that would rightfully be recognized as illegal assassinations, terror. And yet this is just par for the course with the way the Israelis are allowed to operate. And I think it's exactly that impunity and that diplomatic cover that US and broadly the West have offered Israel that have led to this point of extreme escalation. Just to further your

point, I want to put up on the screen here the New York Times report of what exactly was struck to the best of our knowledge at this point. So they say that top Iranians were assassinated, Mohammed Bagheri, the commander in chief of the military, second highest commander after the Supreme Leader was killed. Ali Shamkhani, leading politician who was overseeing the nuclear talks with the US, also killed. Mr. Khomeini moved quickly to a point replacements aiming to avoid the appearance of leadership vacuum. In addition, in targeting the Natanz nuclear site, Israel struck at the beating heart

of the Iranian nuclear program. They say the Israeli military said it caused significant damage at Natanz and hit an underground compound housing centrifuges. Rafael Garci, the chief of the IAEA said there were no indications of attacks at two other major Iranian nuclear sites. In addition, Dr. Parsi, I understand

that there were several nuclear scientists who were also assassinated, is that your understanding as well, and talk to us about the significance of these targets and how detrimental they will be to Iran and their ability to function as an ongoing administration and also in order to retaliate. So, for instance, one of the people that they assassinated was a professor at Tehran University, a professor of physics. His wife and child was also killed when they targeted his apartment building. Unclear whether there were other people in other apartments in the same building that were also killed, but the apartment does look in pretty bad shape now.

These are the type of things that, and then when you take a look at what the Europeans are saying, they're starting off by condemning the Iranian response. No condemnation whatsoever of what the Israelis have done instead, coming out saying that Israel has a right to defend itself. So once again, even though the Israelis themselves say that this was a preemptive strike, which in and of itself is illegal, there is anticipatory self-defense and international law, but this is more of a preventive strike and there is no legality for that and the Europeans fully

understand this. Nevertheless, they come out and call this self-defense. So it's the same playbook that we also see from the West in the last two years. Whatever the Israelis do, whatever impunity they have and whatever impunity they grab, it is granted by Western powers, which then is dramatically reducing any moral standing that the West has in the eyes of the rest of the world, regardless of what the other countries may think of Iran. Now what this does to the program, first of all, of the world, regardless of what the other countries may think of Iran. Now what this does to the program, first of all, the Israelis have already assassinated quite a few Iranian scientists, including the head of the atomic energy program before.

And another one was now killed as well. That has not had a dramatic change in the direction of the program. It has actually accelerated the program, but it has not taken out their full capacity because this is not a program in which you take out a couple of people at the top and it collapses. When it comes to the chain of command, then it's more complicated because without a chain of command, the military is paralyzed at least momentarily until it can regroup. In the case of Hezbollah, it never really managed to do so. Whether that will be the case in Iran or not remains to be seen, but we have to keep in mind that

if I'm not mistaken, the number of actual Hezbollah individuals that Israel killed in its pager attack was, I think, around 400 and scores more that were completely innocent, that were either killed or wounded. But that's 400 out of an organization, not an entire state. Here we're talking about 10, 20 key people in the chain of command. Very important ultimately, of course, but the numbers, I don't think in any way, shape or form get to the same numbers that you saw in Hezbollah case, which was necessary in order to paralyze that organization. But at a minimum it will delay it.

And I think this is part of the reason why we haven't really seen much of an Iranian response yet. And perhaps it will prove to be that the Israelis were so successful that the Iranians actually cannot fully launch such a counterattack. President Trump has seemed to indicate in the true social post that I read that he thinks this will put pressure on the Iranians to come to some sort of a deal. That seems insane to me. I think it seems much more likely we end up in this escalatory spiral. Obviously, the US is already saying they will protect Israel as they have in the past from any potential Iranian retaliation. I'm sure the Iranians, as they understandably should see us as directly involved, even as

our administration said, oh, they did this unilaterally. We had nothing to do with it. We just knew it was going to happen and didn't stand in the way effectively. So in any case, what do you make of that rationale from Trump that this illegal, unprovoked attack on Iran will help bring them to the table to effectuate some sort of diplomatic deal? So this is the argument the Israelis have been making to Trump saying either you or us were together, in this case, I think it was together, attack that will soften the Iranian position. They will come begging for a deal, or in this case, begging for capitulation,

essentially. This is also what they did in his first administration when they promised him that economic sanctions and maximum pressure would be sufficient to get the Iranians to come begging for a deal, which of course proved not to be the case. This time around, if it follows the previous pattern, it will see exactly what you just mentioned. It will be an escalation. The Iranian position will harden. There will probably not be any talks this coming Sunday, because one of the elements

here is that because Trump now is bragging about this and really convincing the Iranians that Trump not only was in on it, Trump played a key role in the deception to lull the Iranians into a false sense of security. If that is the case, he engaged in that deception. Why would the Iranians trust him now when he says, if you just do X, Y, and Z, we can have a deal. So that, even if Trump's logic is that, well, this will soften them and that automatically will make them come and begging for a deal.

It presumes that there is a degree of confidence, trust in Trump, but whatever that may have been, because the Iranians were at the table, at least there was some element of trust there, may have been destroyed precisely because of the manner that he is now bragging about having been a key part of this deception. To your point, I mean, this was a post from him hours before this strike. He says, we remain committed to a diplomatic resolution to the Iran nuclear deal. My entire administration has been directed to negotiate with Iran. They could be a great country.

They first must completely give up hopes of obtaining a nuclear weapon. Thank you for your attention to this matter. So we, you know, first saw the removal of some US personnel from the region and, you know, had other indications that this strike was imminent. Then the Trump administration seemed to downplay it and seemed to indicate that, you know, we really want to go forward with these talks and we're committed to these talks this weekend. Is that what you're referring to when you talk about the psychological deception that the Trump regime was involved with here to cover and confuse Iranians in advance of this attack? I believe so. I believe something changed at this meeting at Camp David on Sunday, in which Trump essentially adopted the Israeli plan, but then continued to talk about diplomacy, continued to talk about a meeting on Sunday, which I think led a lot of people, myself included, thinking that if anything would happen, it

would happen after Sunday because he had said that he didn't favor Israeli strike. The talks were ongoing. He made it look as if if Netanyahu did strike, it would be an act of defiance against Trump. And while Netanyahu loved defying Biden and got no punishment for it, there was a question mark as to whether Trump would be forgiving of them if there actually was real defiance. But now it seems clear that rather this was part of the deception in order to make the Iranians think that nothing would happen before Sunday. And that may have taken them by surprise, but even then it would be some criminal negligence by the Iranians in the sense of, even if you

thought an attack was going to come three days later, it seems like the Iranians nevertheless had very little readiness. What is your understanding of the tug of war that has been going on within the Trump administration? He fired Mike Waltz. The public explanation for that was that, or at least what was leaked to the press was that Waltz was too excited about pulling us into a war and a conflict with Iran. So he was turfed. There seems to have been some other skirmishes going on between the more hawkish factions and the more what you call America first factions who would

be perhaps more, object more strenuously to this direction for the country. So what is your understanding of what has been going on internally and how the tug of war ended up in this place of us greenlining and potentially being involved with these incredibly escalatory attacks, which in some ways go, I mean, they go against the Trump re and rhetoric of him being a pro peace candidate, they don't go against some of the direct things he said. He had said on the campaign trail, yes, Israel should strike their nuclear facilities.

But certainly the projection was, oh, he's gonna be a pro-peace candidate. He's not gonna get us involved in another Middle Eastern war at the very least. So what do you know about that behind the scenes? I think there has been a real struggle and a real fight, and a fight in which those favoring this approach actually has been losing out, including, of course, the firing of walls,

but several other people in the NSC as well. But what has happened now is a reminder that at the end of the day, Trump is himself the decision maker. And he may surround himself with more people that have the restraint or the end of the of thinking that may not have favored this. They may have argued against it at the Camp David meeting, but nevertheless, Trump makes a decision and once he makes that decision, all of them go along with it as of course was the case with the Biden administration as well.

At the end of the day, we didn't see any senior people resigning from the Biden administration over God's that we saw some mid-level people doing so, but none of the people that were actually at the decision-making table. So I do think that there has been a fight, but even though that fight was going in the direction of the restrainers in a very significant way, it didn't seem to matter because once Trump was convinced by the Israelis, that is the decision that has eventually ended up becoming policy. by the Israelis, that is a decision that is eventually ended up becoming policy. So what do you think happens now? What is the most likely chain of events to occur and what will America's involvement

be? So, first, it remains to be seen whether the Iranians will have the capacity to strike back hard and if they do so, that will change the picture potentially, depending on how large that attack is, if it actually has an effect. Right now, it does seem of course, that Israel is completely dominating the situation. And as a result, Trump, who always wants to be on the side of the winner, it feels even more attracted towards claiming responsibility for what has happened now and taking credit for it. That may change and it may not change. And

that's the one critical element. The other element, of course, is what happens on Sunday. I don't think there's going to be any talks, but if I think part of the reason why Trump is tweeting these things is essentially because he recognizes there's not going to be talks. So he's giving you onions, warnings publicly. But again, in order, even if capitulation was in the cards, you needed to have some level of credibility to make sure that the other side thought that if they capitulated X, Y, and Z that had been promised by Trump would happen. I think at this point, it's going to be very difficult to convince anyone inside the Iranian system that anything Trump says actually can be counted on. And as a result, the likelihood of capitulation is much, much smaller, which

I think is exactly what the Israelis want, because it means that there will be some sort of an Iranian response. And then that increases the likelihood that the Israelis managed to get Trump to jump in fully and open the end to this war. Lastly, Dr. Parsi, and then I'll let you go because I know you're very busy today, but how does this connect to Israel's genocidal onslaught in Gaza and more broadly in Palestine? I know West Bank, they've now instituted a complete siege. They also had a complete communications blockout. In Gaza, you have a broader regional context as well in terms of their aggressive actions

in the region. So how do these things all connect? Well, the Israelis are going to continue to do that until someone stops them. And the United States has the capacity of doing so and so far under Biden and under Trump chosen not to do that. I think what is also perhaps missed in all of this is that next week, there is a big UN mandated conference at the UN about the creation of a Palestinian state led by France. Emmanuel Macron was supposed to attend, as well as the Saudi Crown Prince. It remains to be seen whether that conference, which many had criticized for various reasons, and there's definitely points to criticize, but there was

also some promise in that conference that things could actually move in a new direction because we've been just in this twilight zone of a completely dead also process, but nothing to replace it, which then just meant that everyone was stuck. It had the potential of being able to start a new arrangement that could lead to something, but that is now going to be completely overshadowed by this new war that Israel has started. And it remains to be seen whether Macron or MBS even will show up because this, I'm not saying that this was a key calculation of the Israelis,

but one of the side effects is, is potentially that that conference more or less ends up becoming nothing. Yeah. And I saw Macron putting out some terrible statement, Israel has a right to defend itself, et cetera, et cetera. So not hopeful signs there. Ryan, we just have to let Dr. He could probably get in one question, Ryan, before Dr. Parsi has to run. But he's got a CNN hit he's got to get to. OK, just real quickly then, was this all inevitable?

Is this just the inexorable logic of American empire? Like despite all the kind of public pressure towards non-interventionism, despite the fact that Trump built his political career and his campaign on ending wars, not starting new ones, was, is the logic of the US foreign policy apparatus just such that this is what it is? Which I wouldn't write its face. Yeah.

Well, I mean, there's part of what you say that I think I would agree with, but I wouldn't say that this was inevitable. I think things could have changed, evolved in a completely different direction. I think there were some significant mistakes that the Trump administration did that put themselves in a vulnerable position publicly because of the sensitivity they had when it comes to comparing the deal they were negotiating originally to how the Obama deal looked. And I think after that, you saw how they started shifting back. If they had not gone out and said 367 in that interview that Witkoff did, I don't think that opening for attacking

them would have been as clear and as a result could have shifted in a different direction I think there is one element of inevitability not for this specific scenario However, is that if we continue on a grand strategy of global domination liberal hegemony Then yes, the United States will end up in wars all over the world all the time That is where we have been for the last 30 years. Now one of the key things that came with this administration was that there were several individuals in it that really rejected that grand strategy, wanted to shift it, but I think what we have seen now is that even their presence in the administration, which was not the case in

the previous administration, has not made any shift towards a more restrained foreign policy stable. At any moment Trump can still change his mind because it's all about Trump. Whatever he sees to be is in his benefit even if it completely contradicts what he has said with the instincts of many of the people in the administration is ultimately he is the decision-maker. So the stability that I think many people had hoped would come with many of these other individuals in the top ranks of the administration with the ousting of Mike Waltz, etc. has not materialized. Thanks, Trita. Dr. Parsi. Thank you so much.

Thank you so much. Great to see you. Appreciate you. Appreciate it. Thank you. Just like great shoes, great books take you places. Through unforgettable love stories and into conversations with characters you'll never forget. I think any good romance, it gives me this feeling of like butterflies. I'm Danielle Robay and this is Bookmarked by Reese's Book Club, the new podcast from Hello Sunshine and iHeart Podcasts. Every week I sit down with your favorite book lovers, authors, celebrities, book talkers, and more to explore the stories that shape us, on the page and off. I've been reading every Reese's Book Club pick, deep diving book talk theories, and obsessing over book to screen casts for years. And now, I get to talk to the people making the magic.

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If you're a woman dating men, nobody wants to talk to you about your sexuality. They just want to either say you're a prude or a slut. If you date too much, they criticize you. If you don't date, you must be frigid, whatever. And then the thing that gets added when you're actually more fluid with your sexuality is the swing goes to, you better identify exactly who you are so we can figure out what name to call you. And it's like, okay.

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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 iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Binge episodes one, two, and three on May 21st, and episodes four, five, and six on June 4th. Add free at Lava for Good Plus on Apple podcasts. So Ryan, it sounds like Dr. Parsi is saying basically like the, oh, so you're just getting back in Obama's deal,

provocation worked, which is so pathetic. Like it's beyond pathetic. And I mean, I will say like to your question about, was this inevitable? There's a part of me that also feels similarly in a sense, because so much of the Trump foreign policy is a continuation of the worst aspects of the Biden foreign policy.

But the original negotiation of the TCGA under the Obama administration would indicate that there was a possibility of another path. And yet you have, Trump decides he's going to get out of it just because Obama did it. And so he has to do the opposite. And his administration, first administration stacked with a bunch of new I mean, there's no dissenting voices from that in his first administration, then

you have the Biden administration come in, they should have gotten back in the deal immediately. And that opening was there. And I remember doing, you know, multiple segments with Dr. Parsi talking about this. And the time is now you yeah, and there's going to be elections and a more hardline administration is going to be more difficult to do. And then of course, once you have October 7, like that is dead and gone. Right.

But now you have two and a half years into the almost three years. Exactly right. Absolutely. And so now here we are. So what is your sense of what unfolded here? Because it seems like the two pieces were the, oh, you're getting back in Obama's nuclear deal, number one. And number two, it looks like the Israelis maybe

convinced Trump that this illegal attack would somehow create an opportunity for diplomacy in the same way that he thought the maximum pressure, let's just crush them economically as much as possible in the first administration, that would create some possibility. That was a failure. This is clearly going to be a failure too.

Right. And on the one hand, it almost doesn't matter what rationale Netanyahu was able to use to get him to go along with it. It was whatever the argument was, it worked, and it propelled forward the logic of American Empire, which is to just understand everything in terms of violence.

But it does seem, as a matter of historical significance, that that may be possible. So and I talked about this on the livestream last night that I had just spoken with an Iranian analyst who was like, our assessment here is that somehow Netanyahu convinced Trump that doing this will actually make a deal more likely and better for the US. And then it gets out of that cul-de-sac that Trita Parsi talked about. Now he can say he did a better deal.

This is not the Obama deal. How could it be the Obama deal? He just dropped a bunch of bombs, or Israel did with his green light. And I thought that that was a bit of a far-fetched analysis when I first heard it. But then Rubio's statement, which came out saying, we're not involved in this at all, do not attack us, seemed to be trying to leave some room open to continue talks with Iran. And then Trump's very explicitly says, all right, we hit you, or Israel hit you with our weapons. All the people I was dealing with are dead.

All caps dead. But now you can make a deal and save the rest of you from not being dead. So it does seem like Trump believes that this was a step towards a better deal, which is very interesting. It's demented. It does not understand the Iranian kind of government

and how it's positioned. Like it didn't read his own intelligence assessments, which have always said Iran is not interested and is opposed. Like Iran's leadership is opposed to pursuing a nuclear weapon for a variety of reasons. Here are the reasons. The only way they would try to pursue a weapon is if their civilian nuclear operations are targeted.

Then we assess. This is the US intelligence. Then we assess that they would pursue a nuclear weapon. So according to that, I don't know if it's right or not. They were wrong on WMDs. Maybe they're wrong on this. But according to that, Iran now will be trying to pursue a nuclear weapon.

And the US can just bomb them within five years. They would be in a much better position if they had pursued a nuclear weapon instead of getting in the deal originally with Obama. I mean, that's the cold hard facts of the matter. That's the incentive structure that the US empire has set up, whether it's Iran around the world. I mean, quite frankly, given Israel's genocidal fervor and aggressive illegal actions, not only in Iran, but throughout the entire region, feel more comfortable with Iran having a nuclear weapon

than with Israel. They're a little unhinged. Yeah. They're completely unhinged. And I would love for you to talk more about that, because you guys cover this so closely at Dropsite too. I know there's a siege that was implemented now in the West Bank.

I don't know if Gaza communications are still cut off. But Israel's really, they're really going for it right now. They're really going for final solution with regard to, I don't think even just think just Gaza with all Palestinians, they're going for greater Israel in terms of acquiring territory of their neighbors that the, you know, hardcore fringe, formerly fringe elements now mainstream elements have long coveted. And because of every American administration, allowing them to act with utter and complete impunity, they've

launched this wildly escalatory reckless attack on Iran. And I mean, it's not a question whether we get drawn in. Like we know if Iran seeks to retaliate, which they've already promised to do, we are going to be there defending Israel. And Iran has also said that they're going to directly retaliate against our service members who are located throughout the region. Yeah, it's this short-term thinking that just one more series of assassinations is needed. And then peace and justice will be on the other side of that.

And if you truly believe that, and a type of peace, that is domination. We're not talking coexistence here, like the way that you have in, say, South America, for the most part. Those little skirmishes here and there, but in most part, South American countries are not lobbing missiles at each other and invading each other constantly and bombing each other.

That's coexistence. Israel believes that a piece through domination, what they call the piece between the lion and the lamb, that piece is just on the side of this this assassination. And then the next assassination and the next one and the next one, which then if that logic if you if you buy that logic killing a few children in the apartment along with the IRGC general or the you know, deputy chief of staff or the nuclear scientist or whoever you have just killed, if you kill a few children, you know, that's okay. That's an acceptable cost because on

the other side is this is heavenly, like peace and world of peace and justice through domination, but from their perspective. And then, you know, if you bomb an entire city block to kill one person and hundreds die, that's also an acceptable cost. It was Kim Il-sung, who was the first North Korean president, whatever you want to call him, dictator, had a famous quote where he said, and I think he might have been even paraphrasing Mao, where he's like, we are building a world of worker's paradise for an eternity.

What is it? How do you compare? If several million people are killed to get there? Compare that to the billions of people who will be liberated into this workers paradise that we're creating. So that's the logic. And from a math, if you want to take it from a mathematical level, like, okay, yeah, if you really are going to create a paradise for billions of people for eternity, then yeah, a few million people dying on the way there is an acceptable cost to pay.

Of course, all we ever get is the few million people killed. And the only thing on the other side of that is just more suffering and more death. More death and more justification for why this time the bombs and the bullets are going to accomplish the goal. And of course, with Israel, when you add into it, and I mean, they use biblical language all the time, when you add that level, and you layer on top of that the constant posture as eternal victim, which I mean, this is one of the, the constant posture as eternal victim, which, I mean, this is one of the, let me pull this up on the screen.

This is one of the things that is so disturbing and disgusting to me is the wave of American politicians. Here we have Lindsey Graham is one example game on pray for Israel wave of American politicians saying pray for Israel After Israel just launched this illegal, like in any other context, right? If this is Russia, Ukraine, we immediately, okay, unprovoked illegal attack in, you know, as long as it's an official bad guy nation of the US,

we see very clearly the implications of international law. And yet we're supposed to be praying for the aggressive genocidal nation that has just illegally assassinated Iranian political leadership and scientists while they're at home with their kids and with their families. I keep thinking about the murder of those two Israeli embassy staffers here in DC. You know, by the Israeli logic, that would be all fine and good. No problem there. Look, they're affiliated with the government, so fair game.

And of course, in that context, everyone sees this. You can't do that. This is not acceptable. This is terrorism. But when it's the Israelis who do it, it's celebrated. I mean, the beeper attack, they celebrate that. Like that was some glorious, you know, accomplishment and something to be praised and admired. Yeah. And to take it even further, if the shoe was on the other foot, not only could you kill those embassy staffers, if they were surrounded by their grandparents, their cousins, their friends? That would just be unfortunate.

But hey, it's part of the game. To give a sense of, speaking of the depraved. And we should be praying for the dude who assassinated them. That's who we should be praying for. Yeah. Apparently, right. And so speaking of that, to underline the depravity of our politics, let me put up this one

statement from this Democratic congresswoman, Yasemin Ansari. She's the only Iranian-American that is in Congress, as far as I'm almost certain about that. And if you remember, there was this under-the-radar race in Arizona that went down to this, based to a recount and to court fights and it was a Democratic primary. And the candidate that was backed

by Democratic majority for Israel, kind of an APAC shootout, offshoot, she got an enormous amount of support from DMFI and beat a progressive challenger in this primary. And so she won. So now she's in office. So only Iranian-American in Congress. Her statement is all about essentially supporting the attack on Iran.

The Islamic Republic must never be allowed to acquire nuclear weapons, and the current brutal regime must be replaced. Iranian people who have suffered for more than four decades at the hands of the regime deserve democracy and freedom. I do not want to see further regional escalation that could lead to US military action. De-escalation now is imperative. I'm truly disheartened. I mean, this is the other thing, sorry to cut you off.

This is the other thing that utterly disgusts me is these people that posture like they're doing the Iranians a favor. Right. By attacking their country and bombing their cities and their scientists. Like that, I mean, that and then Yahoo did the same thing in his speech, which I know you and Maz covered

and went through last night to postulate, oh, this is all for your own good. We're gonna be greeted as liberators. I mean, that's the energy, that's the vibe. Yeah. I don't know how much you talked with Trita about it, but it looks like over 70 killed, including huge swaths of the top echelon

of the Iranian military and government, the top civilian. Including some of the people who are negotiating with us. Involving the nuclear talks. Yeah. Which tells you, I mean, they did the same thing in the context of when people who are negotiating with us. Yeah. Which tells you, I mean, they did the same thing in the context of, you know, when there were ongoing ceasefire talks, Israel would make a point of going, okay, whoever the top political leadership is.

That's right. We're going to go and assassinate them so that these talks can't continue to go forward. Yep. Uh, and according to Trump though, they're going to go, you know, now he's got them right where he wants them. Um, yeah. Well, the Iran's got them right where he wants them. Yeah. Well, the Iranians have already said the talks are off.

So as if that was any, you know, anyone had any doubt. We didn't know we needed to let you know that we're not showing up on Sunday for these talks. But just to make it official. Most of us have been killed. We're dead, actually. Yeah. Yeah. supposed to have been killed? We're dead, actually. Yeah, so we won't be there because you're great ally with your weapons and very likely

with your assistance. I mean, definitely with the assistance. Like, who are we kidding? Maybe last point for me on this is like, Amit Siegel and other Israelis are out celebrating the cleverness and the strategic brilliance of this like long-running deception The part that's missing there is that the United States and Israel Do not need deception to bomb a country like Iran into smithereens

Like right we we have the military capacity to tell them, hey, Thursday at 1130 Eastern Time, we are going to kill your nuclear scientists. Now, it may be difficult to pull off some of the assassinations with the heads up. But in general, the US has the military capacity to smash Iran and could do it every five years indefinitely, as long as the US remains this hegemonic power, which

we're doing our best to shed ourselves of that. But we don't need deception. Like, Israel doesn't need deception. It has a massive firepower advantage over Iran, and especially when the US is included. It's just overwhelming. Like, this idea that the US and Israel are some kind of plucky underdogs that

needed to be super clever to defeat this gigantic military force is absurd on its face. Sagar sends a DM that says Tel Aviv confirms that their pride parade today is canceled. So just update there. Important update there. I was looking for, let me pull up this thing that was reposted from JD Vance, something he said a year ago and get your reaction to this. And then by the way, guys, there's other big news. I mean, this is monumental and blows everything else out of the water, obviously, in terms of US involvement and where this all goes from here. There is other significant news that we're going to cover as well. This senator who was, you know, wrestled to the ground and handcuffed.

And there's a court decision with regard to the deployment of the National Guard. So a bunch of other things that we're going to get to here as well. But just to wrap up on this, I want to would love to get your reflections, Ryan, on something that JD Vance said a year ago. He said, I'm very worried about Israel, worried about it as a country, because I think what's happened the last couple of months has revealed deep fissures in Israel support around the world. A more short-term worry I have with Israel, something analogous to what happened

after 9-11 will happen, right? You get all this bullshitting about how the deep state misled Bush about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, or maybe Bush misled himself, or maybe Cheney misled him. There are all these theories you read about why we invaded Iraq. But when you think back on it, the most important reason we invaded Iraq was social psychology. Afghanistan was too easy, September 11th was too bad and we needed to fuck something else up.

That was just like this need to fuck something else up, and Afghanistan didn't satisfy that need. I worry about that with Israel. I think the Hamas thing, obviously, there are a lot of civilians who have died, but Israel expects to lose more troops going into this. I think they've had a more successful military operation than they expected to. And I have a big fear for Israel right now. It's about the same exact dynamic that they're going to need to try to fuck something else up because the psychology

impact of October 7th was so, so powerful. And I guess what I would say to that, I mean, first of all, the fact that you had these JD Vance and these supposedly non-interventionist voices within the Trump administration didn't end up mattering one bit. I think there was a prelude to that when we saw inside the signal chats and how quickly everyone who was supposed to be in the non-interventionist side immediately folded when Stephen Miller comes in and is like, big guy says we're bombing Yemen. And they're like, okay, cool.

Go America, USA. Here's my American flag emoji, fist pound, et cetera. That was kind of an indication of where things are going to head. But in a sense, yes, Israel has been able to bomb Gaza to smithereens and murder. God only knows how many civilians. I just saw a report yesterday that it may be 400,000 Palestinians in Gaza who were killed by Israel. But there are no, there is no amount of bombs

that actually solves their problem. Like they still, Hamas is still there. Hamas is still in control. So in a sense, yes, they're successful at blowing shit up. But in terms of actually, you know, creating some sort of lasting peace, they have there, it's another incomplete failure. Yes. And I think that JD Vance's fear is well founded. Andne out here. The only thing I would add is that if you remember, and some of our younger audience won't,

but those who lived through it can never forget, the feeling, the blood curdling rage that was coursing through the American public after 9-11 is unlike anything that has happened before or since. But presumably Pearl Harbor, I think, if you read people talking about the moments after that, that was maybe similar. Yeah.

That faded after a period of a couple months. Remember, the Baltimore Sun had an American flag. They sent an American flag out to everyone in the newspaper. And everyone put the American flag cut out of the newspaper onto their window. And as that newspaper was withering, like two months later, people were kind of calming back down again.

But there was still enough energy for the politicians to use it to go to war in Afghanistan and Iraq. But the public blood had moved down to a simmer and then back to room temperature. Israel's blood is still boiling. All of them. Yeah. You can read their posts or you can look at any poll and just squint at it and be like, I'm sorry, 79% of people say they would support what? That's important. So that's what we were able to accomplish with just a few months of blood boiling rage,

what our imperial leaders were able to accomplish. Imagine if they have gotten that boil on the stove for, we're now going into the third, you know, we're in the third year of this. So that with no, with no end in sight. So this is anybody's guess how the, you know, how, how this ends. So, um, before we move on, I mean, how do you think this ends? Like what happens now? What does this look like? I mean, a lot depends on how Iran responds and what that response looks like.

And how effectively they have been neutered for now. It does seem like it would heighten Israel's isolation. But a lot could change depending on what the Iranian response is, what the Israeli response is to that. I mean, unfortunately, I'm not convinced that it heightens Israel's isolation in the short term because all of these Western countries, at least, you know, France, which had been some of these European countries that had been starting to make some noises about being unhappy, what

was happening in Gaza, you know, France is on immediately with Israel has a right to defend itself, blah, blah, blah, kind of blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah,

blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah,'ll be about it. On the Republican side, mostly Rand Paul, Marjorie Taylor Greene, you'll get a handful of voices. But mostly, they're going to be all in for this. They're going to be all on board the Mark Levin talking points about how this is amazing and glorious and brilliant and wonderful and going to be the greatest thing for all of us even as we hurdle towards a potential massive regional war. The other point Maz made, which is obvious,

but worth underscoring last night, is that Iran is 10 times bigger. And maybe they knocked backwards their ballistic missile production, but they're making 50 missiles a month. They have a stockpile of 3,000. A war of attrition between a country that is a tenth of its size isn't necessarily going to go well, even if you have long term, even if you have the United States backing you to the hilt.

Well, we're a mess. We're a mess. How long are we going to keep? Are we going to really keep sending endless amounts? We're running out of magnets. I mean, we haven't make our own. We can't make our own. We can't make cars. We I mean, how is our endless support of Ukraine? Has that been enough for them to push back Russia, which is a country that I don't know, is it 10 times? It's probably about similar math in terms of size differential. China had a delightful time testing all its, China arms a lot of the Pakistani military

and they had a delightful time watching Pakistan, go toe to toe with India with Chinese weapons. I'm sure China would be happy to keep this, keep this long running war going for the precise same logic that we would love to keep the Ukraine war going. Right, to tie up Russia and drain their resources. Except instead of draining Russia, we helped rebuild their industrial capacity. Whereas we actually are getting drained because we don't have the capacity to build anything. Yeah. China would love to continue to, uh, invest in their society and developing

research and, you know, leapfrogging paths and high tech development and, you know, um, huge development for the, I saw that the chart that you shared about how the bottom 50% in China per capita is actually doing better than the bottom 50% in this country. So they'd love to continue in that direction while we get ourselves tied up in another, yet another disastrous Middle Eastern war. The whole reason Obama wanted to do the peace deal was his,

he and all of the entire blob in Washington has been saying, pivot to Asia, pivot to Asia, pivot to Asia. Wrap up this starting wars in the Middle East. It's bad for us strategically versus China. China agrees that is good for them, bad for us. So we're going to wrap that up. We're going to move over and focus over here. And I guess luckily for Asia, that hasn't, we haven't been able to extricate ourselves because where we decide to focus means that's where the most there's going to be the most you know killing and and chaos. So yeah, if I were Asian, I heard that the country that was just focused for the last 50 years on the Middle East is now going to focus on us like, oh boy. Yeah, new Chinese century this may seal the deal century. This may seal the deal.

Yes. Yeah. Truly, really may seal the deal. Just like great shoes, great books take you places. Through unforgettable love stories and into conversations with characters you'll never forget. I think any good romance, it gives me this feeling of butterflies. I'm Danielle Robay, and this is Bookmarked by Reese's Book Club, the new podcast from

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Add free at Lava for Good Plus on Apple podcasts. Let's go ahead and move to the story that would have been the top news story and now seems kind of trivial in comparison, but still important, we wanna cover it, which is this United States Senator from California, Alex Padilla. He's the one he got elected when Dianne Feinstein died. Is that right, Ryan? That's who that's where when he gets elected. Yeah. So what happens here is he's in LA. He is in the federal building that has been the center of the protests and all of the action and where the National Guard have been hanging out and all of this sort of stuff. So he's in the building

for a briefing about what is going on there. And he learns that a couple doors down, Kristi Noem is giving a press conference. So he decides, I'm going to go in and I'm going to watch this press conference and I'm going to try to assert myself and get a question answered because by the way, I've been trying to get some answers from DHS and they completely stonewall and I don't get anything from them. And so a scene unfolds where he ends up getting forcibly removed by the whatever government thugs happen to be there. I don't know if they're FBI or what agency particular they're with.

And then wrestle to the ground in handcuffed, truly extraordinary scenes. Let me go ahead and play. This is the, I think this is the fullest video that I've seen, so you can see exactly what unfolded here. You guys ready? And in bell seat. Sir, sir, hands up, hands up.

Senator Alex Padilla, I have a question for the secretary because the fact of the matter is a half a dozen violent criminals that you're rotating on your hands up. On the ground. On the ground. Hands on your back. Hands on your ground. On the ground. On your back. On your back. On your back. On your back. On your back. On your back. On your back. On your back. On your back. On your back. On your back. On your back. On your back. On your back. On your back. On your back. On your back. On your back. On your back. On your back. On your back. On your back. On your back. On your back. On your back. On your back. On your back. On your back. On your back. On your back. On your back. On your back. On your back. On your back. On your back. On your back. On your back. On your back. On your back. On your back. On your back. On your back. On your back. On your back. On your back. On your back. On your back. On your back. On your back. On your back. On your back. On your back. On your back. On your back. On your back. On your back. On your back. On your back. On your back. On your back. On your back. On your back. On your back. On your back. On your back. On your back. On your back. On your back. On your back. On your back. On your back. On your back. On your back. On your back. On your back. On your back. On your back. On your back. On your back. On your back. On your back. On your back. On your back. On your back. On your back. On your back. On your back. On your back. On your back. On your back. On your back. On your back. On your back. On your back. On your back. On your back. On your back. On your back. On your back. On your back. On your back. On your back. On your back. On your back. On your back. On your back. On your back. On your There's no recording allowed out here. There's no recording allowed out here for that guy right there.

What? I'm sorry? There's no recording allowed out here. That's my boss. There's no recording allowed out here. There's no recording allowed out here. I'm not a member of this. There's no recording allowed out here. I understand that's your point.

No recording allowed out here by their public press conference, Ryan. Outside the press conference. And yeah, I've seen it. It's such a scary, scary footage. And it's one of these classic police moves where you're giving the guy contradictory information. And so many people have been killed

because one cop is yelling, put your hands up, and the other cop is yelling, don't move. Yeah. And you come here, come there and the guy doesn't know what to do and then they just shoot him. In this case, they've got him down on his knees and they're pushing him towards the ground and also telling him to put his hands behind his back. Behind his back.

Right. Which would very obviously lead his face to smash into the floor. Right. And so he says, like, oh, let me get up, like, stop. And so he puts his hands down. Now they think he's, like, resisting. He's like, no, you just, that was the only option you gave him. And then they manhandle him further to get his hands behind his back. Apparently, what, Crystal, what they said, they didn't realize he was a senator. In the video, you hear him say, I'm Senator Alex Padilla and I have a question about you

said six violent criminals. They said he lunged towards her and did not identify himself. And by the way, in the post on Twitter, in the post on Twitter, where they say that, they included the video. And in the first two seconds, you hear him say, I'm Senator Alex Piddy from California. So I mean, it's just like, they expect us to just accept their lies even when they themselves are providing the evidence that their narrative of what happened is blatantly false. Like in the first like two seconds of the video is provably false. That's become a new

phenomenon. I've noticed on social media that and this is these are even government sources that are doing this. You write a statement and then the video you put under it contradicts what you just wrote. But it doesn't matter. You're like, I'm just going to say it. Sometimes it's a bad misquote. Right. 90% won't watch the video. You just assume, oh, people won't watch the video and so they'll just take it for granted. I mean, it used to be that they'd at least have the decency to falsely edit out the part that was inconvenient for them and like put together some clip mishmash to try to make it seem like it actually happened the way they're saying it. Now they don't even bother with that. They just lie in the

post and just hope that you don't actually watch the video. Or if you do, you're so partisan brain-addled that you can't see through the fact that their post and the video doesn't line up whatsoever. Yeah, maybe what they meant was we didn't believe that he was a senator or they did and this is what they're doing. Like they don't care. Like they have an unpopular agenda that they're planning to ram through,

and you're going to have to do that through force. Well, and you had the chaos that unfolded in New York when Mayor Ross Baraka was there with several members of Congress. The members of Congress were at this facility, it's a federal facility. The city, by the way, rejects it and says it's not permitted properly. Like they're in court over the presence of this facility at all. So it's disputed to start with.

There's members of Congress who are there to provide oversight, which they have the legal right to do based on a law that was passed, I think during Trump's first administration, and then the mayor is there as well, trying to also gain access. They tell him, okay, well, you can't go in. So he leaves and then they arrest him. And it leads to there's protesters on site, at least this chaotic scene. And now not only they arrest him, then ultimately they said, we can't really charge you.

They dropped the charges because there's no, they're there with regard to him, but they've now charged one of the congresswomen who was there, Representative McIver, is that her name? Lamont McIver, I think that's right. And with charges that could result in 17 years in prison. So, you know, when you ask, okay, well, was this intentional? Did they just not believe that he's the United States senator because his skin tone wasn't the right hue or for whatever reason? You know, you have to think about it in the context of everything else that they're doing, which is brazenly, you know, strong man,

authoritarian, fascist tactics. You have the National Guard deployed. You have the freaking Marines deployed. Like this is insanity for some pretty run of the mill protest that spanned a few city blocks. Okay. They're threatening the deployment of troops, active duty military troops in cities across the country.

Right. Just for, just for, yeah. Shits and giggles. Like, yeah, Trump is throwing himself a birthday party military parade. And he says any protesters there will be met with force, not violent protesters, not rioters, protesters will be met with force. So, you know, if it was a different administration that did not have all of this track record of things that are happening, I'm just talking about the last week.

Those are things that all happened this week. If it was a different administration, maybe it was a mix up. Maybe they really didn't think it was a senator. Maybe, you know, they, you know, the FBI or whoever was there guarding her. Maybe they really did think that this was some sort of a public safety threat, even though, again, you're inside of a federal building wherever you search for weapons before you even go in. Maybe, but there is no reason to give these people any benefit of the doubt when this

is part and parcel and entirely consistent with the authoritarian strongman tactics that they've been deploying again and again and again. I have the statement from Senator Padilla, his explanation of what he was trying to accomplish and how this all went down. Let's go ahead and take a listen to him and then I can put up the DHS statement as well to give their side of the story. Good afternoon, everybody. Senator Alex Padilla. You guys have some questions? I'm going to read a brief statement. I will not be taking questions, but allow me to read my statements. I'm here in Los Angeles today, and I was here in the federal building in the conference

room awaiting a scheduled briefing from federal officials as part of my responsibility as a senator to provide oversight and accountability. While I was waiting for the briefing with General Giyoke, I learned that Secretary Noem was having a press conference a couple of doors down the hall. Since the beginning of the year, but especially over the course of recent weeks, I, several of my colleagues, have been asking the Department of Homeland Security for more information and more answers

on their increasingly extreme immigration enforcement actions. And we've gotten little to no information in response to our inquiries. And so I came to the press conference to hear what she had to say, to see if I could learn any new additional information. And at one point I had a question.

And let me emphasize, just to emphasize the right for people to peacefully protest and to stand up for their First Amendment rights, for our fundamental rights. I was there peacefully. At one point I had a question. And so I began to ask a question. I was almost immediately forcibly removed from the room. I was forced to the grounds. And I was handcuffed. I was not arrested. I was not detained. I will say this. If this is how this administration responds to a senator with a question, if this is how the Department of Homeland Security responds to a senator with a question, you can only imagine what they're

doing to farm workers, to cooks, to day laborers out in the Los Angeles community and throughout California and throughout the country. We will hold this administration accountable. And we'll have more to say. We'll have more to say in the coming days. I think that last point is the most important one, Ryan. Like if this is how you're treating us Senator, just imagine if you're a defenseless, nobody farm worker, day laborer, mom, student who dares to ride it off bed.

Just imagine the way that people who don't have the ability to go in front of a camera and tell their story, just imagine how they're being treated. Yeah, that's really well said. And we don't have to totally imagine the reports that are coming out of the way that migrants in detention are being treated in Florida, Louisiana. Well, and some of it is apparently so brutal. Even Trump felt the need to put on a statement saying, Stephen M's going too far, effectively, although he then quickly walked that back. Right.

He was saying, yes, because it was going after the farm workers and hotel employees. And I think Trump probably, if you actually got him in an honest moment, doesn't have a problem with, doesn't want to round up everybody that works on farms and in hotels. I think that's probably pretty obvious. I think probably most of his, probably a lot of workers

at his properties would get rounded up. Yep. So that seemed more like an honest moment, whereas the rest of it is kind of dishonest. But yeah, the conditions that they're keeping people in, no food, no water for long stretches, very, very long stretches, keeping people in pitch dark. That's part of what sparked these protests. They were keeping in this federal building in the basement, they were holding immigrants that they detained, including families in spaces that are not meant to be detention facilities. So very limited food, limited water. Pitch black. Pitch black. Lights went off, I think, at

5 PM and then you're just sitting there in pitch black. They're talking about family kids. It's crazy making. That was part of what sparked the protests in LA to begin with. That and then the roundups at Home Depot and this one, Garment Manufacturer as well, were what kicked off these protests. And then according to the reporting from the LA Times, protests start off, you know, just obviously upset but peaceful. And then the cops start throwing, you know, spraying tear gas and throwing flashbang grenades. And that's when the more violent behavior kicks off.

This is often the case started by the cops. I wanted to show you, this is the DHS statement that we were referring to before. Senator Padilla chose disrespectful political theater. Again, Kristi Noem talking about political theater. Be so for real right now. Anyway, and interrupted a live press conference without identifying himself.

That's the part that's like, in this video right here, he identifies himself or having a Senate security pin on as he lunged toward Secretary Noem. Mr. Padilla was told repeatedly to back away, did not comply with officers repeated commands. That gets to what you were saying, Ryan, about how they give these conflicting commands that that's impossible to comply with. Secret Service thought he was an attacker. Officers acted appropriately. Secretary Noam met with Senator Padilla after and held a 15 minute meeting. And, you know, it's interesting. Like I think

that this is, I think the footage is very disturbing. I think people should be upset and disturbed by it. It's also interesting, Ryan, the things that really get to democratic elected officials. They've been kind of quiet about the military being unleashed against U.S. citizens in LA. They've been kind of quiet about Trump green lighting Israel starting World War Three. They have not been quiet about one of their colleagues getting arrested in this manner. And again, I don't want to downplay it, but it is just interesting to me that suddenly this is the thing that they were like, oh shit, this hits close to home. They did a, you know, home. I think Schumer immediately made some statement on the floor.

They did a march to Senator Thune's office. They've certainly all been putting out statements, et cetera. They are very exercised. They're getting up off their asses for this one. And as Dave Dan pointed out, when Schumer took to the floor and asked unanimous consent for a moment to make that comment, what he was interrupting was a bipartisan tongue

bath for the crypto industry. Schumer was in the middle of empowering all of the crypto allies of the Trump administration when he took a moment to condemn them for manhandling Padilla. Too perfect. Too perfect. And crypto now makes up itself.

Okay, speech over. We can go back to the crypto. Yeah. Right. We go back over to like letting scammers fleece the American people and enrich our corrupt president. In the White House. Yeah. Destabilize the global financial system. Let's

get back to that bipartisan work that we were doing previously. Yeah. It says a lot, doesn't it? Let me go ahead and show you this piece, which is so understandably, most of the attention is focused on Fidya, what he's doing, the arrests, you know, him being wrestled to the ground, etc. By the way, they didn't charge him or anything. So that's good, at least, which I would not have put past them whatsoever. I guess even they realize that might be a bridge too far. But it's worth taking a listen to what Kristi Noem was actually saying in that press conference. So let me go ahead and pull this up. I'll read the caption, and then we can actually

play the sound as well. But this person, Jason Kirk, is pointing out, before they dragged out Padilla, Noam said, we are staying here in LA to liberate the city from the socialists and the burdensome leadership that the governor and this mayor have placed on this country, and he opines accurately so, sounds close to declaring a regime change attempt on millions of Americans.

Here, you can go ahead and listen to her deliver those lines. Stain and increase our operations in this city. We are not going away. We are staying here to liberate the city from the socialist and the burdensome leadership that this governor and that this mayor have placed on this country and what they have tried to insert into this city. So I want to say thank you to every single person that has been able to do this. Also I want to talk to you.

So there you go. That's the moment she's interrupted is when she's announcing effectively a regime change change operation in LA, which as far as I know, I mean, that's been quiet for a couple days now. They don't even have enough like, they're there to get their riot porn images to play on a loop and Fox News, which is why I guess they were playing these images from Las Vegas, which were just protesters like standing there facing off with the cops. images from Las Vegas, which were just protesters standing there facing off with the cops. Yeah. It's interesting that they aren't even getting the war that they wanted. They provoked some way MoCarr burning, sent in the National Guard, then sent in the Marines, I think hoping that they would get like another George Floyd moment where people pour out into the streets of every city. And they're going to continue to be protest, but they're not getting... And maybe it's so transparent that it's what they want, that a lot of people are just like,

I'm not going to give you what you want. What do you think of, we've got these no kings, no king protests that are happening this weekend. These were pre-planned. Trump, as I referenced before, said any protesters of his military parade are going to be met with force. What do you expect unfold there? What do you think the significance is? I have to say, I think the branding is good. Fits with the moment, certainly. Yeah.

Fits with the moment, certainly, and plays into, there was all this criticism of the Mexican flags. This is a deeply American sentiment. Listen, this is America. We don't have kings. So I think everybody can give them the object seal of approval on this one. Yeah, nos reyes.

And they're not going to be in Washington, DC. Some people may organically protest Trump's. It's like a two block parade that he's having. But in general, the protests, the protest organizers have said, let's, you know, protest everywhere except Washington, DC. They don't want, you know, they don't want to conflict with the military there. It could be it could be quite large. If you're watching this video, let us know down in the comments. But if you're going, my sense is that you could get an enormous numbers of people coming out

into the streets. I mean, the Trump administration is certainly giving them lots of incentive to go out right now, just in this week, you know, provoking a large and emotional response understandably. So, I thought this was interesting, you know, in terms of the, the polling that we've seen so far, we've got a Washington Post poll on immigration enforcement.

Let me put this up on the screen. I also saw when we were put up in just a second about the way, the like places where his approval rating have declined, the times during his administration. So you've got, do you approve of the Trump, how Trump is handling immigration enforcement, including deportations? According to this poll, take it for what it's worth, disapprove is now 52%.

So even on this issue, that's supposed to be his best issue, 52% disapprove, 37% approve, and 12% are unsure. Do you support or oppose the protests in LA against federal government's immigration enforcement? Opposes 40%, support is 39%, pretty much along partisan lines. Oftentimes, Ryan, I feel like people don't like protestors even when they support the things

that they're protesting against. Right. Especially if they see cars burning. Right. Yeah. Once they see flames, people are like, eh. I'm out. Yeah.

Completely. Let me just hold on. Give me a second and let me pull up this other poll that I just saw this morning. Someone had marked up where Trump's approval rating had fallen off most quickly. And it was like, here we go. It was like when the Trump administration defied the court on Kilmar Obrego Garcia.

And right now, there's been a significant decline over the past week. So you've got the Trump administration defies Supreme Court on Abrego Garcia. You can see that his approval declines. Then he was actually building back up here, and then he deploys the National Guard in Los Angeles and it falls again.

Now, you could say, okay, maybe these polls are, maybe there's not enough polling, maybe these polls aren't correct, et cetera. But I've seen enough at this point, certainly on the Kilmar-Abrego-Garcia piece, Ryan, that I am quite convinced that fight was really bad for the Trump administration. And I think we know that, especially at this point,

because he backed down and brought him back and realized that between the court pressure and the public pressure, this was not going well for him. And I think you see some similar indications of that with regard to the deploying of the National Guard in LA. I mean, first of all, like you said, he's not getting the scenes that he wanted out of that and thought would be so great. the scenes that he wanted out of that and thought would be so great. But the fact that he put out that post yesterday, which I can pull up here in a second, where he was basically like, oh, we don't want hardworking people being pulled out of the country or sent out of the country and, you know, for the farmers and for the hotel workers, etc. That also was an indication to me that he did not feel like this aggressive, visible crackdown that Stephen Miller demanded, where he said,

stop going after the criminals and go to the Home Depots in the 7-Eleven, that he didn't feel like the optics of this were working out for him in the way that Stephen Miller had projected. Right. He and Stephen Miller are different. Stephen Miller is a revolutionary who has an ideological vision for the revolution that he's trying to carry out.

Yes. It's not exactly what Trump says. Right. I mean, Stephen Miller is a white nationalist. He thinks that anyone is brown is here illegitimately. And not just, by the way, undocumented immigrants. That's what all of these efforts to rescind legal status to hundreds of thousands of immigrants. That's what that's about. So it's not about illegal immigrants.

They're taking legal immigrants and making them illegal so they can have pre-tax to deport as many people as possible. And then you also had, you know, this strange, I guess not that strange moment from a bunch of right-wing influencers like Charlie Kirk and I think it was Jack Pesovic and Kamerula, there was one other, where they all started putting out the same message about how we need zero migration in from what they described as third world countries. Like, just making it as plain as possible

that, you know, we want a white ethno-state. And so if you come from a country where we deem the melanin shade to not be correct, then you are no longer allowed to come here. Right, and we need to double the number of medical schools and nursing schools, which we should do anyway. But they have no plan to do that. No, of course not. Yeah, of course not.

Yeah, what did you, I mean, did you have that same political read of the Trump post? And then he also made some comments about the farmers and the hotel workers that he sort of felt like this isn't really going that great. Because the polling also, if you ask people, okay, do you want to deport violent criminals? They're like, absolutely. If you ask them, do you want to deport day laborers

at Home Depot who have been here for years and have no criminal record? It is overwhelming the level of opposition. I'm talking like 75% are like, why the hell would you do that? Yeah, and I think not just that, to Trump's credit, he is always on the phone. And talks to, not just with rich people. It's usually rich people on the phone,

but he authentically talks to a lot of people as he goes around the world. It's his effort to stay in touch with public opinion. And I'm sure that he was hearing from with public opinion. And I'm sure that he was hearing from owners of large farms, ranch owners, like others who and other hotel types who were having their businesses ruined by ICE. And it's not just that. The level of fear that they have struck into the immigrant community is off the charts. Which is intentional.

Which is intentional. But it means that even if you don't get an ICE raid, you just have a lot of people just not showing up. Right. Showing up less. Right. Showing up less. I'm sure that some non-trivial number are self-deporting. And so people who rely on those workers

are then calling Trump and saying, bro, like, what are you doing? And from Trump's perspective, he's like, Steven, what are you doing? And from Jon's perspective, he's like, God, Stephen, what are you doing, man? What about the criminals? They ran for years on how many murderers and rapists are running free. And it's embarrassing to them that they can't find them.

Because they manufactured that storyline. Right. Right. And I think that's a big part of why they want the show of force, like rolling up in a military vehicle with a whole phalanx, partly of militarized officers, partly plain clothes, ice thugs with their face covered. Because if you have that level of show of force, it makes it feel like you're apprehending a criminal, even when you're just going after some guy who posted some flyers, as was the case in one instance,

or, you know, a dad who has no criminal record or people even who've been doing exactly what they were supposed to do and going through the asylum process. But if you roll in with that kind of equipment, people just sort of assume like, oh, well, they must be going after some real super bad guy, violent criminal. If you're coming in with that kind of, you know, that kind of equipment and that kind of approach, using all these resources to go after just some random like mom who's not done anything wrong. But we know that's the case because we know when they sent, they used military planes to fly migrants down to Guantanamo Bay, they had no criminal record. Most of them had no

criminal records or they had like, you know, jaywalked effectively. The people they sent to CICOT, vast majority of them, no criminal record. And so, so I think that's part of trying to create the perception since the reality that they had projected does not actually exist. Yep. Yep. I think that's right. All right. We'll go ahead and wrap the free portion of the show now.

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That's really important. I think we'll take a look at Zoran's beard situation just to have at least something that's fun in the show. And then we'll take a few questions as well. So we'll go ahead and get to that now. All right guys, two quick things. Number one, by popular demand, we are bringing back the monthly subscription.

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There you go. Just like great shoes, great books take you places through unforgettable love stories and into conversations with characters you'll never forget. I think any good romance it gives me this feeling of like butterflies. I'm Danielle Robay and this is Bookmarked by Reese's Book Club, the new podcast from Hello Sunshine and iHeart Podcasts where we dive into the stories that shape us on the page and off. Each week I'm joined by authors, celebs, book

talk stars and more for conversations that will make you laugh, cry and add way too many books to your TBR pile. Listen to Bookmarked by Reese's Book Club on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. This week on Dear Chelsea with me, Chelsea Handler, Sophia Bush is here. Tell me how that feels to be a hot, considered a hot lesbian. Quite an honor. You know what's funny? When you're actually more fluid with your sexuality,

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