Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 6/5/25: The View Slams Male Republicans As Sexist, Trump Floats Diddy Pardon, AOC Backs Zohran In NYC

Episode Date: June 5, 2025

Krystal and Ryan discuss Joy Behar says men are sexist, Trump floats pardon for Diddy, AOC backs Zohran in NYC primary.   Touré: https://toure.com/    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.

This is an iHeart Podcast. I also want to address the Tonys. On a recent episode of Checking In with Michelle Williams, I open up about feeling snubbed by the Tony Awards. Do I? I was never mad. I was disappointed because I had high hopes. To hear this and more on disappointment and protecting your peace,

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I want to thrive. Fighting Words is where courage meets conversation. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. 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

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refugee here, Torre, who is doing all kinds of cool stuff now. You are blowing up on TikTok, been covering the Diddy trial really closely, among other things. You've got a sub stack. You've got a new show, Truth Talks Live, on YouTube that people should go ahead and check out. How are you, my friend? I'm good. I'm good. I'm upset about the situation that's going on in Gaza. And I've been doing a lot of CNN, a lot of Abby Phillips show where you get arguing with the right. I don't usually talk to people from the right in my real life because usually they're, I don't know, they're often in space. There was a segment that really bothered me about the rise of anti-Semitism in America. And I think that that is real, although we can talk about that

because I saw another segment that talked about how the ADL is inflating those numbers. But I think that Israel is making the world less safe for American Jews by destroying the image of Israel through this genocide. Well, and by insisting that Israel and Judaism are one and the same by erasing any sort of, you know, anti-Zionist Jewish voices who have been incredibly influential and instrumental

in the pro-Palestine, you know, protest movement here. We have definitely seen more Jewish people in the pro-Palestine movement over the last year, year and a half. And it's also, it's really disgusting the way that a lot of folks who are on that side try to reduce Palestinian people, many of whom are, 50% of that population are children, but they want to talk about them as if they are all Hamas and they are all terrorists. And the dehumanization that you mentioned last segment is absolutely real as if they are not real people

and we can kill them. They are all animals, even if they are young, even if they are children. And I think the world sees the way that Israel is approaching Palestine. And many people are responding in an appropriate way. The encampments, the college protests have been a very appropriate and aggressive way to protest. Now, we've also seen horrific, violent anti-Semitism that is obviously not appropriate.

But when a country sets its image on fire in the world, what do you think is going to happen? Well, you know, it's funny. Ken Klippenstein actually got the Intel report on the guy here who murdered the two Israeli embassy officials. And in it, they say in this report, they don't talk about anti-Semitism. They talk he is motivated by the horrors that he's seeing unfolding in Gaza and the fact that he feels there is no democratic way in order to effectuate change. And so it's important to understand that even while obviously saying this violence against civilians is exactly the reason why we are opposed to the genocide occurring in Palestine, in Gaza. But that is the administration's assessment that this was not actually, quote unquote, anti-Semitism, that this is a direct result of the horrors that we

are all watching in our feeds every day. So appreciate you offering your perspective there, Tori, especially since you are on CNN all the time and sort of inside these rooms still. Also wanted to get your thoughts today on a couple of things. So we're going to talk about the Diddy trial, which I'm looking forward to. But I also wanted to get your thoughts today on a couple of things. So we're going to talk about the Diddy trial, which I'm looking forward to, but I also wanted to get your thoughts and Ryan's thoughts on this effort among Democrats to figure out what's going on with the men, right? There's this big, significant conversation I think is important about the way that men and young men in particular have been moving to the right, you know, coming on the heels of a Bernie Sanders coalition that was smeared as being too male and too young and

whatever. And then once they, you know, trashed that part of the coalition, it started to shift away from them. So there's this ever, you know, official multimillion dollar effort to talk to the men and figure out what's going on. And let's go ahead and start with the ladies of The View and Joy Behar in particular and her take on this study and what the Democratic Party should really be doing in terms of men. Look, I don't know that you learn how to talk to men by being in a conference center at a New York hotel, holed up with strategists and experts in suits. I think people need to go into the barrios and the neighborhoods and the barber shops and the places where real people are. And I think one of the problems that the Democrats have, several of them, but one of the things is they keep talking about how weak their brand is and how bad their team is. I never met a man. I never met a woman.

I never met a human who wants to join a losing team. So maybe start projecting some, you know, winning attitude. You know what I think? I think it's a waste of money. Maybe these guys should spend their money on teaching men to not be such sexists. Maybe that's it. But the stats don't bear that out now that we've seen the election results. Donald Trump performed better than the previous several Republicans with most every people group. He did better with black men, better with Latino men, better with white men and white women.

Like, it's just a fact that he has tapped into something. And what I think is this. But he was running against a woman, I'm telling you. But I'm saying that men showed up more for him. Oh, so you think that Democrats who were with Biden in 2020 left to be with Trump because they're sexist? I don't know the reason, but it's very suspicious. So, Tori, do we need Democrats to spend more time

lecturing men about how they're too sexist? Is that going to bring them back into the party fold? No, I mean, apparently they feel like we have been lecturing them and telling them that they are too masculine, they are telling them that they are too masculine. They are too toxic. They are too disgusting. I understand what these young guys are saying, that the Democratic world, not necessarily just the politicians,

but all the people around them who are liberal in public or progressive in public, are making them feel like being masculine is inherently a bad thing. And like being Republican means being strong and being Democrat means being weak. And we've been dealing with that, I think, stereotype for a long time. Right. I mean, the Democrat has been the Democrats have been the mommy party for a long time. And the Republicans have been the tough on foreign policy daddy party. You know, we have all these sneaky conservative outlets now. Joe Rogan is not overtly conservative, but he keeps giving you conservative ideas, right?

Aiden Ross, these others who are not overtly conservative. There's definitely an image problem among men and Democrats who used to be, we used to be the party of unions. So clearly working guys thought the Dems were there for them at one point in our lifetimes. I'm not quite sure quite how you get back to that when we love the intellectual Dem, right? I mean, thinking about like Barack from Harvard andvard and and and bill for you know the way i mean like we love the intellectuals even bernie as much we love him he's an intellectual

like there's got to be a different way of communicating with people i don't know although bernie worked like bernie had the young guy across the board. That clip, though, to me was so revealing, that view clip. First of all, Anna Navarro is kind of misunderstanding what's going on here. It's like she's like, you're not going to win over men in luxury hotels. No, they're not going to luxury hotels to win over men. They're going to luxury hotels to shake down rich people for a bunch of money. And then they're going to use that money to, like, you know, do content and stuff that tries to reach what the barbershop and the boroughs and all that. Like, that's how that pipeline works.

But the Joy Behar one was even more revealing. Like, she's like, why would you do this? Because men suck. It made me more sympathetic to this study, actually. Yes. It's me more sympathetic to this study, actually. It definitely seemed like she had not prepared for the segment because if she had read the notes about the study, she would know you're doing the exact opposite of what Dems need to do. Well, I don't know. The audience ate it up, which was the other revealing part of what happened there. Let's go ahead and put D2 up on the screen

just so we can see a little bit of what the study is revealing so far. So the focus groups found young men feel they're in crisis, stressed, ashamed, and confused over what it means to be a man in 2025. They vented about conflicting cultural messages of masculinity that put them in a no-win situation around the meaning of a man, according to the SAM. What does SAM stand for again? Speaking?

Speaking about men? About men. Something like that. Put the next piece up on the screen. This speaks to some of what we've been saying for a while. They describe how the COVID pandemic left them isolated, socially disconnected. They said they now feel overwhelmed by economic anxiety, making traditional milestones like buying a home or saving for kids' college feel impossible, one analysis of the research said. And so,

and we've got, I think, one more quote we can put up here, too. Democrats are seen as weak. You were saying some of this, Torrey, whereas Republicans are seen as strong. According to Elise Hogue, who is involved with this, young men also spoke of being invisible to the Democratic coalition. And so you've got this weak problem, then you've got this, I don't think they care about me problem. And I think the combination is kind of a killer. And to be honest with you, I don't really disagree with any of that. I think the part that's a little like, LOL, is that you needed to pay millions of dollars to come to these conclusions, which, you know, to me are fairly straightforward and obvious that when the traditional definition of what it means

to be a man is to be a provider, you know, to be able to have the job and make the money and support the family and support the wife and the kids and the house and the picket fence and whatever. And over decades, we've stripped that ability away that that is going to create some, you know, some upset, some dislocation and some searching for answers. It does. It also represents the fundamental problem the Democratic Party has right now, and that for so long we have been about uplifting people who are not traditionally at the table, right? Black, brown, female, working class through unions. That's health care, right? That's what we, you know, we're about affirmative action. We're about lifting up the working class, right? And so that means we

are not here for the people in power. And I remember, I think it was like 15 years ago now, Harvard did a study that said white people see race as a zero sum game that they are losing, which is just the notion of the people in power, when we start to try to add some equity, they feel like they are losing. They are the victims. They are losing something in society. And here we are again, straight white men as Democrats try to say, hey, can we also give some power and some peace and some justice to trans people, gay people, women, black and brown people. And they're like, oh my God, you're taking away all my rights. We are literally not. But that's how you feel. I think it's a question of whether or not there's a welcome place in the coalition

for white guys. And, you know, I grew up a poor white guy. And in the 1980s and 1990s, the place for those people and the place where I would feel at home was within the Democratic Party. There wasn't any question like the Republicans were the party of Reagan, the party of George H.W. Bush. They were the party for rich country club. Yeah. Now I'm an upper middle class white guy and the Democrats are still the party where you're a white upper middle class guy is going to be welcomed in. Welcome also in the Republican Party, white middle class guys. They're upper middle class guys. They're welcome everywhere. Welcome everywhere, Ryan. Welcome everywhere. But if you're a poor white guy now,

it does not feel like the Democratic Party kind of wants you in there. And Joy Behar is saying like right there. And I don't think it's just white either anymore. Democratic Party Joy Behar said there's men are sexist. Like stop being so sexist. Like, do we really want these men in here who are going to be sexist? We're going to need some of them if we're going to win an election. Yes, exactly. And so I think this uproar about this study, I think it's worth unpacking where

it comes from, because if you think about it, it's of course, it's the Republicans when they were losing with women, they went out and studied women, tried to figure out how to win them back. And that was comical. But what was comical about it was not that they were trying to win them back, but it was that they had to study them in the first place, that they had gone so far around the bend, that they had lost women so badly that they needed to hire people to explain to how to talk to these mysterious creatures. And so now the Democrats are stuck in the exact same place. So it's obvious they do need to do this. And apparently the only way that Democratic elites will listen to anything is if it comes through a, you know, multi-million dollar focus groups rather than just, you know, like would be a preferable way of doing is just naturally attracting people into your coalition.

But the other thing that drives me crazy right about that, too, like, you did have an example with Bernie Sanders where it worked. So like, and that seems to me much better data and research than your sort of inorganic focus groups. You have a very recent example that was very successful with this group and did not require you to like abandon your principles or like, you know, become sexist. So go ahead, Torrey. No, I mean, I think, I mean, obviously that's right. I think Dems are still speaking to young men and to most people in an intellectual, logical way. I will help you with this policy, this program that you should intellectually understand is going to be beneficial for you. And then Republicans, Trump does this even better, but most Republicans come with an emotional thing that grabs you, you know, and makes you feel like, yes, this is a team that gets me, that that is a

thing that bothers me, and they understand those emotional triggers much better than the Democratic Party does. And I wanted to underline one of the things that was in that political article, which is the, their, their use of the term, um, economic anxiety. So the, the people who did these, uh, focus groups and did these studies, you know, said, you know, we, we now understand that men have genuine economic anxiety about their, their place in the world. In 2015, if you remember, if you ever used the term economic anxiety, you would get piled on on Twitter and say, stop talking about economic anxiety when you're not using the terms that you really mean, which is these are people who are racist and sexist. Yes. And so

it's belated. But 10 years later, they're like, OK, they actually are feeling economic anxiety. You're yes, there is genuine economic anxiety because the economy does not allow people in their 20s to reach the benchmarks that they did when the previous generations. Yeah, fine. But they are also being racist. They are also being white supremacists. They are also in love with white privilege and seeing it seep away. So both those things are true. But Tori, how do you then grapple with that you have not just white men moving into the Trump coalition, but you have black and brown men moving into the Trump coalition? And I mean, I'll tell you, my view is when you have these heightened levels of economic anxiety and people feeling like they don't know how they're going to find their place,

they don't know how they're going to achieve the things that their father and grandfather were able to achieve, that opens them up for the Trumpian explanations, the far right explanations of scapegoating this group and that group, whether it's trans people or immigrants or college educated women or whoever the villain of the day happens to be. And so to me, I don't think you could ever truly disentangle those two things because I think they are connected and I think there is a relationship there. Yeah. I mean, you know, I think that the Black movement there is perhaps less significant than we've been talking about. It was not a gigantic coalition. It was not statistically

way out of line with what Republicans have gotten. I think some Black men responded to some of the same things that white men responded to as far as masculinity, as far as misogyny against Kamala, as far as a sense that I clearly understand what this candidate wants and I don't understand clearly what that candidate wants. So some of them may have come to it with, you know, that sort of math. I think that when we think about Latino voters, we have wrongly thought that they would think of themselves politically As people of color And many of them do not And they vote as if they were white people And we are

As Dems we are like thrown off By like oh we thought this would become our coalition And they're like no we want to assimilate We want to make money Even if he says anti-Hispanic things, we are still rolling with him. It's a tricky position for the Democratic Party. We see, right, as unpopular as Trump is, the Democrats are even less popular. Yeah.

And I'm not even sure who is the person who will be the leader to get us out of this. We both love Bernie, but we need somebody. I assume he's too old to actually be the savior himself, right? Yeah. So the question then I have is things are getting objectively worse for men across the board in America. Things are getting objectively worse for women across the board in America. This is true. Things are getting probably relatively a little worse for men than for women by the board in America. This is true. Things are getting probably relatively

a little worse for men than for women by all the standards, but they're getting worse for everybody. So then what is the acceptable way for men to express that anxiety politically? They tried in 2015 and 16 with Bernie Sanders and were told that that's not an acceptable way of doing it because you're actually just racist and sexist and you're afraid of having Hillary Clinton as the nominee. Obviously, it's not acceptable to do with Trump. It's deplorable and, you know, he's racist and sexist, so you can't, you know, express it through him either. So then how? Like, what vehicle do men have to say, I think the world is getting worse and I want it to change without being dunked on?

It's a great question. Do you really not understand the question or are you just throwing me a question? Yeah. What is an acceptable way for somebody who feels that way to express themselves? I think with Trump, the message has been quite muddy with racism and the notion that you are not getting what you deserve is wrapped up in racism. I would love to hear a genuine conversation with a politician who I don't believe is racist, who is not playing on white fragility

and white victimhood to make the case of like, I can do better for you economically. We haven't yet seen that. We've come into this moment where we have this economic crisis and we have this population crisis because a lot of white people are afraid that they are about to become the minority versus people of color in this country. And so those two things and globalization are happening at the same time. If we could have just a conversation about the economy without it being wrapped up in racism, I would welcome that conversation. But I think that the racism has been cloaked in the economic argument.

I think, I mean, we understand quite often these people are blaming immigrants for things that are actually economic problems that are actually not their issue, right? They are not bringing crime. They're not taking away American jobs. So they are an avatar for something that's not happening. So that's not a quality argument for men. So I would want to have the, just let's start to have the conversation without tiling in the racism because quite often it is just a way of hiding the racism. Last thing I'll say, and then we'll move to Diddy, is I think you were onto something, and I've been thinking about this recently when you were talking,

and I think this is somewhere the left needs to work on, speaking as a leftist, when you say, yes, it's about the material concerns, but the other thing that the right has done is provided this sort of, like, hero story and, like, a sense of belonging. Like there's more than just we're going to, you know, check the box of you're going to get health care and you're going to get minimum wage.

Yes, those things are good. I think that would be a better, certainly a better political and policy path to go on, et cetera. But I think part of the appeal of Bernie's movement wasn't just those material concerns being addressed. There was a sense of like belonging. We're on a team together and we're doing a thing and here's our goal and here's our mission and we're in this together. And, you know, I think to Ryan's question, like right now and what the Democratic Party is like having these struggle sessions about is figuring out how to

like ultimately they need to figure out, you need an organic movement. You need a program that people believe in. You need a leader that's charismatic, that gets people buy-in into that program. You know, that's not just about men, but that's about everybody succeeding and it not being some zero-sum game. And, you know, to circle back to Joy Behar, you're probably not going to get there by being like, you're bad and here's why. There's some psychosocial scholars who talk about, you know, left and right, conservative and liberal, progressive. And one of the things that keeps coming up is that conservatives and the right, they like hierarchy. They understand he is at the top and we are below. And I think Dems innately understand a more flattened society sort of situation where, like, you know, we're a group without a strong hierarchy.

And I think young men respond to that, this sort of notion of like, here's this big, strong, tough guy who's going to be our leader. And they're like, yeah, that's great. And somebody who's like, you know, Dem, who's like, you know, let's work together and have a coalition and like figure things out together. It's a little too kumbaya for them. Yeah, I think an interesting flip of that is Bernie's slogan of not me, us. And that appeals to that flat lateral element. But he's also a guy who's been saying the same stuff for 30, 40, 50 years. And so people believed, OK, it's yes, not me, us.

But also it's him because he has integrity and we're going to follow him. But it's all of us doing it together. And I think, Tori, I'm curious for your take on this. I think the answer would be, if Democrats, and the reason it's not going to come out of these luxury hotels, if Democrats fight powerful corporate and oligarch interests, there's a masculine energy to that. And Bernie Sanders, despite not Bernie Sanders, despite not being, you know, the, a man's man, like he was, he was fighting against the 1% and the millionaires and the billionaires. And so. And casting you in a role as hero, what you're doing for others.

Right. We're going to all collectively fight for a better world. And so we're, we're going to, it's not going to be toxic masculinity. It's going to be. But but it is going to be a masculine, aggressive effort against the people who are robbing us. That would be amazing. The corporate Democratic Party would never do that. Exactly. That's why. Yeah. I mean, like, that's why they have to do just a care. They just do a care. We're going to take care of everybody, but we're not going to fight anybody. And it's not because they're mommies. It's because they're sellouts and they're bought off. Yeah.

That's basically what Welcome Fest is all about this week. It's like, let's make sure that challenging corporate power. Because if it was actually a party of moms, like moms fight hard. That is true. They fight. Yeah, but mom takes care of you. Mom nurtures you. It's not sexy, right?

Dad goes out to fight. And these are obviously ancient stereotypes. But like, that's the daddy party will attack the barbarians in Iran. But if a mom's mommy party will like, if the family's threatened. The mama bear, the Sarah Palin mama bear trope. Over the past six years of making my true crime podcast, Hell and Gone, I've learned one thing. No town is too small for murder.

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Listen to Hell and Gone Murder Line on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,, then this is your tribe. With guests like Corinne Stephens. I've never seen so many women protect predatory men. And then me too happened. And then everybody else wanted to get pissed off because the white said it was okay. Problem. My oldest daughter, her first day in ninth grade, and I called to ask how I was doing. She was like, oh dad, all they were doing was talking about your thing in class.

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Let's put ourselves in the right position. Pre-game to reach them. Let's put ourselves in the right position pregame to greater things. Start building your retirement plan at this is pre-tirement.org brought to you by AARP and the Ad Council. Let's move on to what's going on with, um, with Diddy here because, um, you've been, you know, blown up on TikTok talking about this trial. What are we now? What are two weeks in, three weeks in? I think this is the end of the third week. Okay. So let's put this Business Insider tear sheet up on the screen that had some of the key details here. And, you know, I think most people will be familiar with the horrific hotel video of Cassie being, you know, beaten and dragged by Diddy. And this is, they played

this pretty early in the trial to sort of set the stage that the prosecution did. And it is also critical to their case about, hey, this was an act that was taking place in the context of sex trafficking, which is one of the charges here. So just take us through sort of the broad strokes of where we are right now. We have heard the government is still putting on their case. They have produced many, many witnesses who have said Diddy was violent. Diddy was controlling. Diddy was using his organization to control Cassie. We've heard so many insane stories. Just yesterday, this woman who's a friend of Cassie's got on the stand and talked about Diddy dangling her over a 17th story balcony and then dropping her onto the furniture of the balcony. The $100,000 thing you mentioned

is an incredible moment because it brings in multiple predicate crimes that the government needs to prove in order to prove racketeering. Long story short, Diddy beat up Cassie. It was videotaped. His chief of staff and Diddy himself both went to the hotel personally multiple times saying, we need that tape.

Finally, the hotel first said, we can't give it to you. We don't have access to that room. And then they kept pressing the issue. And the guy's boss says, OK, give us 50K. And I didn't know that this sort of a bribe would happen that easily like well if you just pony up 50k then you can get whatever security tape you want so diddy shows up with cash and a money counter they give him the tape and then he counts out a hundred thousand even though the fee was only 50 000 and000. And they're like, well, this is for the other guys.

So he's proactively bribing the other people in the situation. So this is multiple bribes. This is obstruction of justice. This is witness tampering. That's three separate predicate crimes in one story. He's also committed kidnapping, which is also that extortion. We just saw that extortion proved because the CFO of Bad Boy came up very briefly and said, yes, we did receive $20,000 from Cassie's father, which happened after Puffy said,

I'm mad at you and I'm going to put out this sex tape if you don't give me 20K. And so they took out a home equity loan so that they could access 20K and sent it to Diddy. But the other part of that story that I noticed, she was a recording artist at Bad Boy for at least four years when the $20,000 extortion request was made. And her mom takes out a home equity loan, she was not liquid enough to come up with $20,000 in an absolute emergency as a recording artist? Clearly, she's kept with no money. So this is how he's coercing her. Because you get, as a recording artist, you're going to get money when your album comes out, right?

Like generally, they give you an advance to go make the album. And then when you come back for the next album, they give you another check. So if you're not putting out albums, you're not, and you're not touring, you're not getting any money. So he's keeping her in this economic prison. It sounds like you don't need the freak offs to make the case here. Like, is that, is that right? It's because a lot of this stuff. The freak off is the center of the whole thing. The government's case is that the whole operation is to get the freak offs to happen and to facilitate them, to make them happen, to control Cassie. So she stays in the organization and then to clean up after them.

Like in this situation when we needed to get that tape. OK, the chief of staff and diddy and diddy's corporate money are getting that back for him i think we started with cassie and and yesterday the government put 10 sex tapes including cassie into evidence under seal and i think that what they're doing is they're preparing for the end of their case to be them showing these videos to the jury. The public and the gallery will not see them, but the jury will see them, I think. And that I assume will be quite devastating for the defense. Because my understanding is that, I mean, they have him

dead to rights on all kinds of, I mean, they, he beat the shit out of her on multiple occasions. They've got all kinds of witnesses. They have another woman who came forward and said he raped me too. You have the Kid Cudi incident where he reportedly bombed his car out of jealousy and was in his house and messing with the Christmas presents that he had wrapped up to give his family. Just total, insane, unhinged, violent behavior. My understanding of what Diddy's side is prepared to argue is basically like, that's domestic violence. That's not sex trafficking. And so is that where they're headed? And is that why the freak offs, which entailed, you know, bringing these male sex workers in and coercing Cassie and all of these things, is that why the freak offs, which entailed, you know, bringing these male sex

workers in and coercing Cassie and all of these things, is that why that becomes so central? Well, yes, the freak offs are the central sex trafficking act that all of this is built to construct. The Kid Cudi story is actually quite devastating for Diddy because arson is also a predicate offense that proves racketeering, that you use to build toward a racketeering case. You say this is a criminal enterprise, not just individual acts of violence, which is not what this case is fundamentally about. Right, right. And people keep going back to the notion of like, well, it's not a criminal enterprise like the Sopranosanos which overtly tries to commit crime

as its main job right lawyers have said to be well the money's going the wrong way they're not making any money from the crimes they're committing fine but like the sex trafficking cassie is coerced and controlled by violence by blackmail i'll release the tape by economic means if you don't do what i say i will not put out your album um and by violence that diddy has bodyguards who act like soldiers who go and retrieve her from wherever she is if he doesn't know where she is in any given moment so she's stuck in this world she tells one of his assistants i can't get out so she's trapped in this thing and thus used for sex trafficking or she is sex trafficked and used sexually week after week after week. She says the freak offs are like two to three, four days every week for like nine, 10 years.

Like I don't even know how a person could function in that way when you're having that much every week. And it's like she's like, we're not sleeping. We're just doing drugs and staying up for 48, you know, 72 hours and like. Well, and there's a horrible scene where I believe they're on a plane and he's beating the shit out of Cassie in the bedroom. And there's all these people around.

And she says, don't you all see what's happening? And one of the other, you know, he was young at the time, 23 years old or something, assistants who was on the plane, who then goes on to, you know, ultimately resign. But he watches all this happen. And nobody does a thing. Nobody does a thing to try to intervene and protect her from this ongoing violence and horrific abuse. It's not, and you're not saying this, it's not domestic violence. Domestic violence is happening in this situation, but this is not a domestic violence case. He is using his power and his resources as a person who controls a massive corporation to control her. And that is why he's able to have her sexually every week

and to beat her up and she cannot leave. So already the 10 album deal and the refusal to release any of your music already controls her. Plus I beat you up all the time. I pay for your apartment. So if you know, I will extort you. I am blackmailing

you because early on he's like if you don't do everything that i say i will release these tapes i mean one of the most horrific moments in the trial to me uh was when mia no no capricorn said that they were arguing she was arguing with diddy about uh why she didn't have a boyfriend. And Diddy summoned Cassie into the room and said, sit down. And she did. And stand up. And she did.

And then he said, turn around. And she did. And he said, y'all bitches don't want to do that. That's why you don't have a man. But this is the level of control and humiliation that he's willing to dole out to her at any given moment. And Tori, what did they do in cross with Cassie to try to undermine her character? And, you know, there's always this

question of the perfect victim and the attempt to say, oh, she, you know, she was into it and she liked it and she was participating and all of these sorts of things. What did they do on that front? I mean, you know, they exposed the complexity of trying to adjudicate what happened in a domestic violence situation. They talked about Cassie doing a lot of drugs. They talked about Diddy being jealous and being bipolar. And they talked about Cassie suggesting that she actually liked it. And they showed text messages of her basically saying, I can't wait to freak off. LOL, I'm always down for a freak off. Now she's consistently saying in general ways,

yes, I want to do this. I'm so happy about doing this. She's not saying it in very specific ways. Like if we really wanted to go have dinner, we would be talking about like, yes, I can't wait to eat the sushi or whatever it is. She's not discussing it like that, but you can take it like, does he know that she doesn't want to do this? Because when he asks her, she says yes. But she also says, if you read it critically, she'll be like, yes, but I want to spend alone time with you or I can't wait to be with you. So she wants the alone time.

She loves him. And I think that's another way that he's coercing and controlling her through love. And she keeps trying to get to the good part of their relationship, which is very typical in a DV situation that you think maybe we can erase or get away from the bad part and get back to the good part, which of course is impossible. And that's why I was asking about the centrality of the freak-offs to the actual charges, because if a jury comes away and says, all right, look, we've got these text

messages. We think they're weird, but she seemed to not object. So he didn't like, you know, physically force her to participate in them. Would there still be enough evidence of all these other crimes that even if a jury wants to be like, you know what, she participated in these willing, willingly, she's an adult, that's on her. But there's all these other obvious crimes. Extortion and violence. It's a great lawyer question. I haven't passed the bar yet.

That's the one thing Kim Kardashian has over me. But like, here's the thing. The government has to prove that he conspired. It's a conspiracy to RICO. It's not a RICO charge. They have to prove that he conspired to commit two of this long list of offenses. And we have heard like eight or nine or ten of them in this trial. So when they go to summation, they're going to be like, look, we have proven this.

We need two and there's already a ton and i you know i named three in one story there's two or three there's three alone in the kid cuddy story because he kidnaps capricorn within that um so i mean like there's multiple moments when the jury can be like, he's hitting a lot of the predicate offenses that prove that this is a criminal. Somebody made the point, people keep saying, how could it be a Rico if there's only one person? Imagine a mobster with no lieutenants. He doesn't trust anybody else. So he just has underlings. But also, you can unwittingly participate in a conspiracy. You don't have to know. The person who sets up the hotel room for the freak-offs does not have to know what's going

to happen there. Diddy does. So he's creating this whole situation so he can have the freak-off. He's the planner. All they have to do, they don't have to prove that he did it. They just have to prove that he planned it. One question have to prove that he planned it. One question I've had, and maybe this hasn't even come up in the trial, is it seemed like he knew these charges were coming and made some kind of efforts to get out of here, get out of Dodge. How did he end up with these charges taking so long to land? How was it that he didn't flee to somewhere that doesn't have extradition?

And has that come up at all as consciousness of guilt, like attempts that he made? That's a great question. We haven't gotten to the defense's part of the trial. Perhaps they'll mention that. I suspect that he was unable to leave the country i suspect that that thing once they raid you and they make it clear that they're going to arrest you like i believe that his attorneys were negotiating from a while ago and saying you know please don't take him into custody

now we promise we won't leave and like different assurances that they would not leave um you know, please don't take him into custody now. We promise we won't leave. And like different assurances that they would not leave. You know, the whole, when he was in prison on bail, he was saying, I'll sell my plane. I'm proving to you that. But like, look, when he is arrested, he has gone to New York City where he does not live anymore to effectuate the arrest,

to be there to make it, you know it more amenable, let's say. Now, the thing we have learned is that while he was in New York to allow himself to be arrested, he was also planning, it seems, on another freak-off. The hotel, after they picked him up, and he was surprised that they picked him up when they did they thought it was going to be the next day or something like that uh they go of course they go up in the hotel room and they're like there's a lot of baby oil and astroglide up

in here like and a bunch of like ecstasy or something too right you're gonna do it again like right now like okay for the road um last question for you, Tori. So Trump has floated. He might be open to a party, a party, pardon. Maybe party two, you never know. For Diddy, has, you know, we've seen this play on so many times of suddenly, you know, someone who's in trouble with the law, suddenly they love Donald Trump and they're the biggest MAGA fan ever. And this is the deep state coming to get them or whatever. Has he made any of those attempts to kind of appeal directly to Trump in order to, you know, try to be able to get this pardon? We don't know. Obviously, Diddy cannot speak publicly right now. I saw a report that said that he was his group, his team, his allies were trying to

back channel to Trump. And then of course, Trump said he had not heard anything about that, but you know, we take all of Trump's words with a grain of salt. I imagine that it could happen. Trump is a total wild card. He pardoned NBA Youngboy and Kodak Black. Alice Johnson may decide, oh, Diddy would be another good one to bring in some Black voters, right? I mean, it's this bizarre okey-doke of like, you know, we're going to pardon specific individuals while we're taking away your rights over here. But that's the game we're playing. Trump's a total wild card in this. I don't expect him to look at it and say, oh, there were actual problems here, actual miscarriages of justice. It'll be like, do you like Diddy or not? Right. And how much are you willing to pay me?

And what do I think the political benefit will be? Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, like, the release of Diddy at this point would be extremely dangerous for a lot of people. A lot of people would be looking over their shoulder for quite a long time, myself included. And I'm sure I'm not top 99 on his list, but if he's petty enough to be making a list, I'm probably in the top 100. But Cassie has a lot to be afraid of. He knows who Mia is. She worked for him. She sat in front of him in the courtroom. And so she has a lot to be afraid of.

I mean, like, there's a lot of people who would be very afraid for a long time. Yeah. All right, Tori, tell people where they can find you and follow your work. Yes, I'm on a show called Truth Talks. You can find us on YouTube at Truth Talks dash live. I got a sub stack, Culture Fries. We're talking about Diddy and other things. Follow me on TikTok and Instagram too.

I was just telling Torre, I don't follow many people on TikTok. He's one of the few that I do. And so you're in my feed all the time. I love it. I follow you too, Ryan. You're killing it on there. I love it. You follow you too, Ryan. You're killing it on there. I love it.

You got to get Crystal back. Yeah, I've been slacking. I'll get back in the game, guys. Don't worry. Chairman, she needs that content. Tori, good to see you, my friend. Thanks, guys. Love you.

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Start building your retirement plan at thisispretirement.org. Brought to you by AARP and the Ad Council. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has now endorsed Zorhan Mamdani, number one on her rank choice ballot. This comes after last night's New York City mayoral debate. This and endorsement by Bernie Sanders have been much watched. There have been a lot of pressure on AOC to get off the sidelines and get in and endorse Zorhan as he has been surging and closing to within about eight points of Andrew Cuomo in the latest race. Last night, there probably were not an enormous number of people watching this debate, so we can overstate its impact. But boy, was it fascinating. And it is,

the entire conversation becomes just much more interesting when you have a social democratic voice in there debating, pushes everybody else to be like, oh yeah, I'm going to do this good thing. I'm going to do this good thing. I'll do this amazing thing as well. So let's start with Cuomo getting piled on. Should we do that first? Yeah, let's go for it. Yeah, because Cuomo as the front runner is just naturally going to get piled on. Well, and there's plenty of ammunition to work with, too. Right. And also he's Cuomo. So you're going to pile on him anyway. So, you know, he's facing an investigation by Trump's DOJ, which on the one hand is a boon because it rallies Democrats in New York kind of behind him, because if you're against Trump, then you're objectively a good thing, according to a

lot of Democratic voters. On the other hand, he did lie to Congress and he did cover up a bunch of deaths. So this was a needle to thread for his opponents. Let's roll F1 here. The question is whether or not it's political and whether or not your congressional testimony was truthful. Were you, now that you've had time to reflect, involved in producing that report that undercounted those nursing home deaths? Oh, there was no doubt that my administration produced the report and it did not undercount the deaths. OK, but you're still saying you were not involved in producing it. It's very it's very clear. That's the Trump line, the MAGA line. Right. Because this was during his the Trump reelection. OK. The New York reports always counted the number of deaths where they

occurred in a nursing home or in a hospital. Okay. Now that all the dust is cleared. Okay, we have to move on, though. We have to give other people a chance. We'll all have a lot more time on other subjects. It's a very easy answer. All right, hold on, candidates. Did you lie to Congress? All right.

Will you acknowledge the deaths? Okay. I mean, it's a very black and white. Did you lie to Congress or will you acknowledge the death? 15,000 people died and he still won't answer your question. All right. Here's a chance to answer the question as Melissa presented it. Yes. Mr. Cuomo. No, I told Congress the truth. No, we did not undercount any deaths when they are all counted.

We're number 38 out of 50, which I think shows that compared to what other states went through, we had it first and worst, and that only 12 states had a lower rate of death. We should really be thanking the women and men who worked in those nursing homes and did an extraordinary job. Very quick yes or no follow-up, if I may. Just the question is, were you involved in the producing of that report? It's just a yes or no question. I was very aware of the report. I spoke to it at press conferences. No, before it was released, Mr. Cuomo, the question is about the production of the report.

We're going to move on. We're not getting an answer. I stand by the report. It was just a whether or not you were. So to refresh people's memory, Cuomo had a policy where he forced nursing homes to take COVID positive patients. That led to outbreaks in nursing homes that led to people dying. When the New York state produced a report on that, he the report systematically undercounted the deaths by saying, well, they didn't actually die in the nursing home because they got taken out and died either in the ambulance or in the hospital an hour later or whatever. And then the question was, well, were you involved in the fudging of this report?

He told Congress no. And then we get an email that says, attached are the governor's edits to this report. And one of his staffers said, yeah, this is Cuomo's handwriting in the margins of the report. The criminal question might turn on whether or not his denial to Congress was, you know, ironclad or whether he was saying, I don't, as far as I remember, I don't, I was not involved in that report. And so there's a question like that. You're lying. You do remember. But then how do you prove that somebody has a memory? Like it's clearly he lied. Right. So, so. I mean, which which is like you can very much tell in the way he's dancing around and still doesn't have a good answer for this. Like, were you involved in the report? I was aware of the report.

There's no question my team was involved in the report. That's not the question. That is not what we asked you. Let me be very clear and say nothing clear. Right. And Soran's line on this, you know, when he was asked about it, because like you said, it is a bit of a needle to thread for, you know, his opponents who all want to position themselves as being vehemently anti-Trump, especially after Eric Adams' collusion with the Trump regime, etc. He was like, listen, he did lie to Congress. That being said, I totally, Trump pursuing him has everything to do with retribution and nothing to do with justice.

But yeah, he did commit a crime here. He did lie. He did ultimately lie to Congress. I thought overall, Cuomo, you know, he seemed like he seemed kind of rusty and complacent. You see this sometimes with politicians who've been in for a long time and, you know, they sort of take things for granted and maybe don't take their opponents as seriously as they should. Like he clearly has a level of contempt and derision towards Zoran in particular. And so he seemed kind of rusty and off his game in this debate. And I think that's evidenced by that exchange where the question that he gets asked is obviously going to be asked of him. And he still doesn't have really prepared a great response. We also had, you know, Cuomo's

running this very traditional playbook of, I have the experience, and Zoran has, he says, like, you know, he's been in government for 27 days, and he doesn't know what he's doing, which is this sort of throwback argument, you know, play to expertise, although maybe in a mayoral race, it has more salience, I'm not sure. But I thought Zoran had a really good way of flipping this on Cuomo in this debate. Let's go ahead and take a listen to that. The difference between myself and Andrew Cuomo is that my campaign is not funded by the very billionaires who put Donald Trump in D.C. I don't have to pick up the phone from Bill Ackman or Ken Langone.

I have to pick up the phone for the more than 20,000 New Yorkers who contributed an average donation of about $80 to break fundraising records and put our campaign in second place. Mr. Cuomo, you want to respond to that? Yeah, please. You know, Mr. Mondami is very good on Twitter and with videos, but he actually produces nothing for him to accuse me of lying. He also called President Obama a liar and said President Obama was evil. So take everything with a grain of salt. Donald Trump would go through Mr. Mondami like a hot knife through butter.

He's been in government 27 minutes. He passed three bills. That's all he's done. He has no experience with Washington, no experience in New York City. He would be Trump's delight. All right. Brief response, Mr. Mondami, then would be Trump's delight. All right, brief response, Mr. Momdani, then we have to move on.

Look, it's true that I don't have experience with corrupt Trump billionaires who are funding my campaign. I don't have experience with party politics and insider consultants. I do have experience, however, with winning $450 million in debt relief for thousands of working class taxi drivers and actually delivering it to the working class people.

Thank you, Mr. Momdani. So I thought he kind of, I thought he kind of crushed him in that exchange. Yeah. I mean, it's going to be, I guess, is a question partly of like, do you want Andrew Cuomo back? Do you want him in your face for the next four or eight years as mayor? And a lot, you know, is it a thing where, OK, a lot of people don't like Cuomo, but he is what you get. I don't know. Well, it's hard to say. He's such a known quantity. And, you know, his father. His camp has been trying to call Mom Donnie a Nepo baby.

But he's a known quantity because his own father was governor. His wife was Kennedy. It's like, come on. Who's the Nepo? By the way, he is no Mario Cuomo, by the way. He is no Mario Cuomo. Yeah. Also the Trump's delight part is just a funny way of phrasing that.

And look, Cuomo is running a playbook that I think prior to this moment would have worked very easily in New York City, not only with regard to just like, he's got the name, people know who he is. You know, there is a tendency in New York City politics not only with regard to just like he's got the name, people know who he is. You know, there is a tendency in New York City politics to reach for someone who is sort of like the safe establishment candidate, how Eric Adams ends up winning. De Blasio was a little bit of a break from that, but he's not that far out of like the, you know, the mold, the mainstream, whatever. And so this playbook that he's running, I think in any other year would be guaranteed to win him like a 30 point victory. But we first of all, he went through his own scandals and is sort of disgraced in trying to recover his reputation at this point.

Second of all, there is a real disgust among Democrats with the establishment Democratic Party that helped to usher in Trump that did capitulate to Trump in many ways, Eric Adams, again, being emblematic of that. And so it's more of a question mark now over whether or not this traditional playbook, which in any other year likely would have worked, is going to work for him this time. And that is also on display in the way that they are aggressively attacking Zoran over his position on Israel. Obviously, there's a significant Jewish population in New York City, and they're, you know, really important electorally. And there are various, you know, relatively organized voting blocs that, you know, Cuomo in particular, but many other candidates have been trying to appeal to. So there was this extraordinary moment at the end where they're doing their quote unquote lightning round. And they ask all the candidates, what is the first country you're going to visit once if you get elected mayor of New York

City? And so you have them all going down the list. And Soran gives this answer of, I'm not going to visit another country. I'm going to be here in New York working for the people. And unlike any other candidate, they decide to, the moderators decide to jump in to say, okay, yeah, but would you visit Israel? And then go on this, you know, to dig into like, and do you support Israel? It's right, not only right to exist, but right to exist specifically as a Jewish state. Let's go ahead and take a listen to how that all went down. Given the hostility and the anti-Semitism that has been shown in New York, I would go to Israel. Mr. Tilson, where would you go? Yeah, I'd make my fourth trip to Israel, followed by my fifth trip to Ukraine, two of our greatest allies fighting on the front lines of the global war on terror. Mr. Mamdani. I would stay in New York City. My

plans are to address New Yorkers across the five boroughs and focus on that. Mr. Mamdani, can I just jump in? Would you visit Israel as mayor? I will be doing. As the mayor, I'll be standing up for Jewish New Yorkers and I'll be meeting them wherever they are across the five boroughs, whether that's in their synagogues and temples or at their homes or at the subway platform, because ultimately we need to focus on delivering on their concerns. And just yes or no, do you believe in a Jewish state of Israel? I believe Israel has the right to exist. Not as a Jewish state?

As a state with equal rights. He won't say it has a right to exist as a Jewish state, be very clear on that. And his answer was no, he won't visit Israel. I said that. That's what he was trying to say. No, no, no. Unlike you, I answer questions very directly. And I want to be very clear. I believe every state should be a state of equal rights.

Ryan, your thoughts. First of all, the guy that wants to go to Israel and Ukraine. That's what he needs to say. And I like how they were competing. He's a big Ed Reformer charter school guy. Billionaire charter school guy. Competing for who could have bigger yellow ribbons. There was a lot of memes going out about that.

He must have been so angry when he came out and saw somebody had a bigger yellow ribbon than him. Outrageous. Some staffer got fired over that. But what is, what's this guy going to Israel and Ukraine? Like, I had to like check. This is a New York City mayoral election, right? What is he going to do in Ukraine? There are a lot of Ukrainians and Russians in New York City.

Yeah. Well, Zoran's answer is, yeah, I will meet with voters here. Yeah. That's what I will do. And then the moderators need to jump in. Like, wait a minute. Are you saying you won't go to Israel? Will you go to Israel? It's like, can you imagine them going through a checklist of every other foreign? Well, what about what about Russia? You're not going to Chad? What about that? Are you going to Mexico? I mean, when's your trip to Brazil? I mean, it's just only for the country. And then the other piece here is Zoran says, I think Israel has a right to exist. And well, but what about as a Jewish state?

And he refuses to back an explicitly ethno-nationalist state and says, I think they should have equal rights. And again, I think this playbook, it may well still be effective, right? I'm not saying it won't be. But there is a completely, frankly, racist and caricaturish view of what Jewish voters actually think about Israel and Palestine. And many Jewish voters, by the way, a majority voted for Democrats. A majority are opposed to us continuing to endlessly fund this horrific genocide. Many have been involved in the protests against our government policy vis-a-vis Israel. And so, you know, the tried and true playbook of saying he's not pro-Israel enough, maybe it will work. Maybe. It's possible. I'm not saying it doesn't have any power. But I do think it represents a completely outdated mode

of politics that does not reckon with the fact that Zoran is getting at there that, hey, I'll meet Jewish voters here wherever they are, because guess what? They are complete human beings who have interests separate and apart from whether or not I decide to make a trip to Israel and whatever statements I make about this one foreign country. And there was a poll a couple of weeks ago, specifically of Jewish voters in New York, that found that Cuomo was only leading him by 11 points among Jewish voters. And that was happening at the time when overall Cuomo was leading him by something like 16 points. Well, there was that poll recently that found AOC beating Schumer by a significant margin among Jewish voters. So this caricaturist view of what you need to say to appeal to this, I mean, it really is a racist view of what you need to say

to appeal to this one demographic is completely, you know, it is completely outdated and anachronistic. And one of those propagandists, Eyal, I forget his last name, who's always in my Twitter feed. When he saw that poll showing that 20% of Jewish voters in New York were supporting Mamdani and 31% supporting Cuomo, he said not a single one of them is actually Jewish. Just like that's anti-Semitic. What do you mean they're not Jewish. Like they're only Jewish if they vote in a New York City mayoral election for the candidate that you believe they should vote for. Right. That thinking is very common, though, I feel, especially on the right, this thinking of like, well, some of these. Or Joe Biden, you're not black. If you don't support Biden, you're not black. But there is this view of like, oh, well, the, you know, people who are culturally Jewish or who are more like secular Jewish or like reformed Jewish,

like they don't really count. That doesn't really count. The only ones that count are the ones that I say count or that uphold that, you know, lockstep Zionist pro-Israel view. But if you go too far right and it's an anti-Zionist Orthodox, do they count? No, they don't count either. They don't count either. So, yeah, I mean, it was really, I think, a fascinating debate all around. Like you said, Liz, I have floor sounds about how many people are going to watch it, although you will see the Twitter clips floating around. But I think the dynamics were good for Zoran in that he handled himself very well. Cuomo handled himself badly. And Cuomo has taken fire from absolutely everybody on the stage, which is also, you know, a difficult position to do and that he did not

handle all that well. So AOC's in now. Do you think that moves the needle? Do you think she got it at the right time? I know people are saying she should have come out earlier and really been there on the ground trying to build name recognition for him. And now basically he's sort of coalesced all the AOC voters. So it may not make that much of a difference. Earlier is probably better. The best argument for this one is that it maximizes public attention to the endorsement. You know, if she does it right away, you know, we had him on the program very early in the race. And it's like, people didn't really care. People didn't really care. It's like, who's this guy? Right. I'm like, no, this guy's really cool. You're like, trust me, you're going to see him. It's going to be interesting. And so

if she did it then, it's like, eh, whatever. And then he would have been known as the AOC-endorsed candidate, but he's already known as the DSA candidate. So there's a ton of media attention now around the fact that she just endorsed him. And he did very well in that debate, and Cuomo did poorly. So it's combining to create some energy. It may be a case, I don't know, but it may be a case where waiting ended up on net being better than going early because it's almost never better. Now, if she would start early and do a unified thing, like, we're going to raise enormous amounts of money for you from my email list, and I'm going to rally with you everywhere, that's better. But that was probably never in the cards, which is an interesting question in its own right,

why that wouldn't have been in the cards. She's very cautious. I mean, I also think this is kind of an outdated mode of thinking, of being so cautious of who you give your endorsement to. Right, Trump just endorses any kook right away. Exactly, right, and if they don't win then he just blames someone else, you know, it's like, oh, it was their fault. Would it have been worse if I didn't endorse? Yeah, so I do think that that is also kind of an outdated playbook and then the other question is whether Bernie is going to ultimately get involved here as well. Maybe it's possible he was sort of

waiting for AOC to jump in since she is actually New York City. And I don't know. So we'll see how all of those things play out. But, you know, the polls have been tightening. He has definitely outperformed what anyone's, I think, including his own team potentially's expectations of where this race would ultimately be. And, you know, in the final stretch here, as people who are lower information voters who weren't tuned in before start to tune in, what are the sort of messages that they're hearing and what is appealing to them at this point in time? It's, I think, important from a national Democratic Party conversation because there is this big question about where the Democratic base is and how things are shifting within the coalition, what types of candidates they're looking for,

what sorts of things may be on the table that previously weren't on the table. And this could be a kind of canary in the coal mine for where things are heading nationally as well. So that's why it's interesting, not to mention it's a giant city and important and all those things too. Yeah, and Cuomo is still the odds-on favorite.

The ballots go out, I think, June 14th. The actual election is June 24th. 24th or 26th. Don't want to give any misinformation. Just Google that yourself. But yeah, we'll see. And anyway, don't forget that for the rest of this month, one month free if you go to breakingpoints.com. You're right, 24th.

The 24th. BP free is the promo code. This gets you into the $10 a month club, which, you know, like I was saying yesterday, it's breaking points on a layaway. That's right. There you go. You won't even notice it. You will notice it every time you're like, ugh, 10 more dollars. That's why I prefer to do the annual, actually. Just get it done and then it's not just like constantly. Reminding me that I'm losing money. And we give most of this away for free. So we understand that, you know, you don't have a lot of incentives to support it, but we appreciate that you do. This is, you know, an expensive endeavor to put together.

Yes, indeed. Speaking of the expansion of the show and your support, we'll be here for the Friday show tomorrow. So everybody have a great day and we will see you then. What up, y'all? This your main man Memphis Bleak right here. Host of Rock Solid Podcast. June is Black Music Month, so what better way to celebrate than listening to my exclusive conversation with my bro, Ja Rule.

The one thing that can't stop you or take away from you is knowledge. So whatever I went through while I was down in prison for two years, through that process, learn. Learn from me. Check out this exclusive episode with Ja Rule on Rock Solid. Open your free iHeartRadio app, search Rock Solid, and listen now. I also want to address the Tonys. On a recent episode of Checking In with Michelle Williams,

I open up about feeling snubbed by the Tony Awards. Do I? I was never mad. I was disappointed because I was never mad. I was disappointed because I had high hopes. To hear this and more on disappointment and protecting your peace,

listen to Checking In with Michelle Williams from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

This Pride Month, we are not just celebrating. We're fighting back. I'm George M. Johnson, author of the most banned book in America. On my podcast, Fighting Words, I sit down with voices that spark resistance and inspire change. This year, we are showing up and showing out. You need people being like, no, you're not what you tell us what to do. This regime is coming down on us. And I don't want to just survive. I want to thrive.

Fighting Words is where courage meets conversation. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an iHeart Podcast.