Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 7/10/26: Dems Scramble To Replace Platner, Iran Trump Assassination Claims From Israel

Episode Date: July 10, 2026

This Friday we speak to Nathan Bernard from Drop Site News on the state of the Maine Senate race and how establishment Dems are using super delegates to decide the new candidate. Then we speak to Dr. Trita Parsi about the latest strikes in Iran and the Strait of Hormuz as well as claims from Israel that Iran is plotting an assassination on Trump. Nathan Bernard: https://x.com/nathanTbernard Trita Parsi: https://x.com/tparsi    To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show AD FREE, uncut and 1 hour early visit: www.breakingpoints.com    Merch Store: https://shop.breakingpoints.com/   See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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and many more. Listen to Saburahua Football on the Aija Radio app, Apple Podcast, or whatever you can. get your focus. Hey guys, Saga and Crystal here. Independent media just played a truly massive role in this election, and we are so excited about what that means for the future of this show. This is the only place where you can find honest perspectives from the left and the right that simply does not exist anywhere else. So if that is something that's important to you, please go to breakingpoints.com, become a member today, and you'll get access to our full shows, unedited, ad-free, and all put

together for you every morning in your inbox. We need your help to build the future of independent news media and we hope to see you at breaking points.com. Good morning. It is Friday, July 10th, with another Breaking Points Friday show. We've got one Ryan Grimm and one Emily Jashinsky on my side of the time zone. Doesn't it suck waking up this early? It's brutal. I was going to say Ryan's outnumbered. We've got two California broadcast locations today. Well, we're about to have another East Coaster join us. But yes, you were all the way in California all week, Crystal all the way at the beach, hanging us out to dry with bro shows on quite an awkward week.

What a timing for bro shows. I just want to say, you know, as the program of this show, not my choice. This was not my vision. I think we did a great job with our coverage. Completely agree. Thank you. Yes. So now we have Emily here.

And the coverage continues. So we'll have Treata Parsi on later in the program to talk about the latest strikes going back and forth. The U.S., because it wants to constantly go for the title of the most vindictive and petty country on the planet, bombed the rail lines on the way in and out of Mashad, the city where they're holding the funeral for the Ayatollah. Like the only purpose of strikes like that could you be just to deeply inconvenience and harm the civilians going to attend the funeral of the Supreme Leader that the U.S. assassinated to start this war. But let's start talking about the process for replacing Graham Platner on the main Senate ballot line.

This is, this has, this was the contentious, uh, uh, decision that had Graham Platner, you know, withholding his resignation. He still hasn't filed his paperwork. He said he's going to do it on Monday. His argument was, we won more, um, we won more votes than anything. any other campaign in the history of Maine, and we did so on the back of a populist, anti-genocide, anti-war message, and we want to make sure that whoever replaces us also has a similar agenda. Otherwise, it is a coup against kind of the people of Maine.

And the Maine Democratic Party has pushed back saying that they don't want Platter's campaign to have anything to do with it. So they've now structured and they're in the process of kind of putting together a plan that will have kind of 600 delegates. And we're going to choose the next nominee. Nathan Bernard, who's drop sites reporter in Maine, is going to have some news on that. It's going to break that down. But first, you want to play the latest from Devin Murphy Anderson, the Maine executive director. This is the Democratic Party executive director in Maine who last night gave an update on.

the process. As you all know, we have been absolutely committed to transparency. So even though it is incredibly late at night, I am coming to you live on the ground from the Maine Dems headquarters. We are so excited to announce that our process for U.S. Senate candidates is now live. Candidates now have the ability to submit their declaration of intent and begin engaging Maine Democrats in earnest by earning their support and collecting signatures. We are fully committed to transparency. So we are making those candidates. rules available to everyone, and you can read them at maindems.org. We are continuing to race towards the release of our fair and inclusive process to select

a new U.S. Senate nominee, and we are not leaving this office until that process is in the hands of you, the people. In the meantime, you can expect more updates like this from the ground to Mainers. Thank you for being in this effort with us. All right. Ryan, have you gone to MainDems.org? I have not yet. I bet Nathan has. Do you want to bring in Nathan? Yeah, let's talk to good old Nathan, because things are moving fast. Nathan walks to the show.

How are you? Good, good. All right. Yeah, just be clear. Oh, sorry, go ahead. No, I was just saying Nathan has breaking a lot of news on this process along the way, including which candidates are running, who has the support of kind of which faction within the state, including, you know, Platner's erstwhile volunteers.

But yeah, yeah, Nathan, how are you doing this morning? joining. Good. Yeah, people are still hitting me up this morning pretty much constantly. And to be clear, Devin Murphy Anderson, I think is her name. That is about like the candidates that are running, not the delegates. Right. Right. So that, so the process is finalized for how candidates can get in, but they have not yet cemented the process for how the delegates are going to be chosen. Now, you reported that one county chair posted inside information about how this process was looking to unfold. Griffin, if you have Nathan's tweet, you can put that up. And Nathan kind of, it seems like this person got ahead of their skis. Yeah, that guy definitely jumped

a gun. Your lobster boat. Bruce Bryant. Yeah. Great name. Yeah, Bruce Bryant. Bruce Bryant. But Bruce Bryant, I guess he was in this meeting last night with all the different county chairs from across the state where they're still trying definitely to decide how the delegates will be elected. Bruce went on to his personal Facebook page and posted a press release, kind of leaking their thoughts on the process. So in Oxford County, yeah. Yeah, I'll read it for the audience in case you're listening on audio. It says press release, Oxford County, Maine, Bruce Bryant, chair of the Oxford County Democrats is convening a. county caucus for the purpose of electing delegates to the nominating convention for the United States Senate on July 19th from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. at Oxford Hills Comprehensive High School. Registration will begin at 1 p.m. All county Democrats are encouraged to intend.

And that's a Sunday, right? That's a Sunday. And the Cumberland County Democrats, which is by far the biggest county that'll have the most delegates, they do not have a process. yet. The vast majority of these places do not have a process decided. So Bruce is saying that there's going to be caucuses. I guess on the top level, we're going to choose 600 delegates across the state, 100 of which are just the state committee members themselves, which are essentially super delegates. They're the ones that are decided. Yeah. You pause on that, Nathan, because there's been a lot of grassroots effort since 2017 or so among, among kind of normal Democrats who aren't party hacks to kind of enter into Democratic Party politics. Has that happened in Maine? Because

some people might hear like a hundred party people and think, oh, these are just party establishment hacks. And maybe that's true, but it's also possible that genuine party activists have kind of entered the ranks. Who, like, who, who, who are these hundred people? How super are these delegates? Yeah. They're pretty super to be okay. Um, yeah. Yeah. These are, uh, largely party stooges, hacks. Okay. People that are highly involved in the establishment apparatus. Um, revolution is unfinished in Maine. Revolution is unfinished. Delegates very super, I would say, for those hundred. Okay. So you got those hundred and then the other 500. Go ahead. Well, I was just going to say structurally, which candidates does that process benefit?

I mean, I think we have to see how there's 500 county level delegates that are going to be decided, and we with Dropside, we obtained kind of the proportional breakdown of how that's going to look. I guess the main Democratic Party looked at 2024 votes during the election and kind of spread them out proportionally for the delegates for this. So it means that like Cumberland County where Portland is, for instance, will have almost a third of the delegates in this process. Troy Jackson won Portland's huge. So maybe it helps him. I've heard two different kind of stories, though,

of how those delegates will be chosen. One is the Bruce Bryant kind of line of thinking is that there's going to be caucuses, it's going to be more democratic, there's going to be opportunities then for Platner volunteers, let's say, or really every single coalition is organizing to go to these county committee meetings. So everyone's going to be vying for it. And if there's a caucus, it becomes a little bit more democratic. The other way that people are looking at this is that you're going to have to file paperwork.

You're going to have to be able to obtain 250 signatures in a small period of time. You're going to be able to navigate that process to even become a nominee, to become a delegate, to then vote on who the next candidate is going to be. So either way, it's going to lean towards favoring people that know how to navigate these processes. Walk us through the candidates a little bit. So Troy Jackson is this working glass logger. Where is it, northern Maine? It's an Alagash.

who entered politics in the 90s actually as a Republican candidate who was protesting the way and Emily will like this that American workers, main workers were in competition with kind of illegal immigrant Canadian workers sort of to like put a gloss on it.

And they did a bunch of direct action and then he challenged and they ended up running for the state legislature as a Republican lost two years later ran as an independent and won and beat this guy who'd been in there for decades or whatever. This seat had been Democratic for absolutely forever. And then eventually he switches and becomes a Democrat and eventually rises to, you know, state Senate. So he had, he has the support of Bernie Sanders yesterday.

He, oh, and Griffin, do you have this? Yesterday he. So, and I guess I have to take it back. On the show, on the program yesterday, we read his announcement, statement. He said he's going to push for Medicare for all fight corporate power. And I noted that one of the things conspicuously absent was one

thing that was conspicuously present in Graham Platner's agenda, which was ending the genocide and stopping the Forever Wars. He hadn't mentioned that. But yesterday, Troy Jackson in response to the oh, this was

in response to the killing of the man who organized putting up TV screens. So people in Gaza could watch the World Cup. Israel killed him, which we covered on the show. Troy Jackson comes out and says, this is unconscionable. Anybody with eyes and a heart knows the Israeli government is committing genocide in Gaza.

It has to end. And we as Americans have the power to end it. When I'm in the U.S. Senate, I'll never vote in favor of U.S. taxpayer-funded military aid to Israel. So Nathan, he ran for governor. And in running for governor, you don't really get asked a whole lot about farm. policy. But what do we know about where he is on the question of Israel's genocide in Gaza and in general, kind of the anti-war agenda, since this is something that did motivate a lot of people

to get excited about Plattenor? Yeah. I mean, certainly he's anti-Israel. He wouldn't hesitate to call what's happened in Gaza a genocide. I know during his gubernatorial campaign, there was the 314 pack, which I think Dropside has done some reporting on. It hasn't been used as an A-pack vehicle at other times. It's just backing scientists and public health officials. Yeah, and that vehicle was used as a means to attack him

and back Narav Shah, who's another candidate now running for Senate. So certainly against the Forever Wars. I would, there's no question about that. Yeah. And Rob Shaw also had video released yesterday from months ago of him calling out the genocide in Gaza as well. So it doesn't seem like Troy is the only one occupying this lane. Tell you more about this.

With the 314, that's going to be tougher for him. But yeah, go ahead. Yeah. Yeah, tell me more about this other gentleman. that you mentioned and his chances compared to Troy. Yeah, so Narav Shah, he won the first round of ranked choice voting here for the Democratic primary for governor. So he got the most votes, right? He ended up losing that race because of ranked choice voting.

There was a coalition that formed really through Platner of Troy Jackson, Chelly, Hannah Pingree, and Shenabello. And that coalition ended up being very successful in our ranked choice race. Narav Shah ran our CDC during the COVID pandemic. He became something of a mini-celeb here. He would do these kind of Zoom meetings where all the kind of 50-plus moms would tune in every single day. They absolutely loved him. My mom loves him, honestly. You know, so it became a thing.

Yeah. She, before he was even running, my mom who, very like middle of the road, liberal, she would tell me every time she saw me that she wished Narofshah would run for something because she'd, you know, she'd vote for him in a second. Right. Kind of like Cuomo, remember how he would do those basement videos? Andy Bashir did the same thing.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It was a version of that for Maine. And so it's a very small state. he gained a mega celebrity through that process and did do a genuinely good job of communicating tough public health information in a very understandable manner for people when people were really worried and scared. So his policy platform, I would just hesitate a bit on.

There is such, I don't know how to put it. There's like such angst of people and such worry that whoever this next next, candidate is, is not going to uphold what so many people just voted for in this Senate race. Anti-establishment, ending the wars, Medicare for all, workers' rights, housing rights, childcare shouldn't be a second mortgage you're paying and completely bankrupt you. And every candidate, it feels like, is coming out of the woodwork and just saying, well, now I want Medicare for all. now I want to end the genocide in Gaza.

So that, I would caution the Shaw stuff because of that and especially the 314 pack. It's just there's more to look into there and everyone is trying to jump on this train so that they can say, well, look at me. I'm just, I hold the same platform as Platner without all the baggage. On the public health front, there's a complicating factor here. So Tammy Duckworth just came out with a, uh, unendorsement, a non-endorsement of Shah. So, Nirov Shah was Republican, Illinois Republican Governor Bruce Rohner's public health director. And Tammy Duckworth

posted, Maine deserves better than someone who put his public health image before the safety of our veterans. Too many of our heroes lost their lives under Nirov Shah's watch as Illinois public health director. I called for his resignation then, and I strongly oppose his run for Senate now. I wonder how devastating that is to Shah. Is there enough time to get that out to voters? Like what's your sense of whether that would undercut

to have a popular Democratic senator from another state saying, do not send this guy to the Senate? A little inside baseball here. This is mini scoop for you. So during the gubernatorial, primary, Pingree, Bellows, Jackson, the whole cohort. There was a lot of talk behind the scenes of saying that there's absolutely no way Shaw

could be top of the ticket for us in this race because exactly the lesionaire disease outbreak that he helped oversee. They wanted to run ads on it. They were really pushing to get this information out there, which is important information, right? especially because he's supposedly this public health guru that led us through the pandemic perfectly. There also, this is another little inside information, there have been multiple accounts, and this was going to be part of the attack ads they wanted to put out, of nurses that said he internally did a poor job of leading the state through COVID.

Their voices weren't heard. he suppressed potential care to marginalized communities. And furthermore, he didn't really do anything. Everyone saw him as his great innovator because they loved watching him on his doish meal every morning and drinking their coffee. In Shaw, we trust mugs were all over the state, right? Like pumper stickers. Yeah.

Yeah. So it was a, you know, that kind of was his only innovator. people said, really he was just taking practices from other states to follow through on this. So I think if you were the nominee, I know right now that the volunteers for Platner, which are thousands of people. And really the people backing Troy Jackson or even a Shenabello's, they're not, they would not organize for this guy or work for this campaign. So there's real risks. I guess... Well, Susan Collins could put up an ad saying,

you know, Tammy Duckworth says this guy shouldn't be in the Senate. Like, that's pretty bad. Yeah. Yeah, there's real risks. And I just want to make clear, I guess, back to the overarching. I can talk to a couple more of the candidates. But overarching, there's 600 delegates that are now the voice for 200. thousand voters, just no one wants that. No one thinks that's good, right? Even if we have these

caucuses that decide 500 delegates, we still have 100 super delegates that are deciding this. There is still just this undercurrent feeling from all the conversations I'm having, even the most optimistic silver lining, hopium, you know, pill people that want to get out there and organize and take over the county committees that, this is extraordinarily undemocratic. I would... anecdotally, like, what are you hearing from people about the charges against Platner? Like, the successful effort to get him out by so many in the national and local scene.

Like, how are people like good? He's a terrible human being. I'm glad he's gone. Or is there some more complicated mix of reactions from just the people that you've kind of interacted with? And Nathan, can I tack on to that? Because it does seem like at first there was total unity. Platterner, this is the last straw. Then it seemed like as days went on, there was a more mixed opinion.

So is that what it's is that also reflected on the ground or is that just kind of the artificial X bubble? No, no. That is of I have, I'll say this anecdotally, because I've had so many conversations at this point. I don't think there's any question that of the validity of the story, the validity of the allegations. I think that people, though, are, they can't help but look at the timing and feel cheated. They can't help look at it and feel that establishment or the timing of it had something to do with it. I think that that, for better or worse, that is something that people are feeling. I've just heard it too many times at this point.

And there's different reasons that that unity that you talk about is fractured. I think some of it just, he's a terrible human being. He needs to get out right now, right? There's other people, though, that I think if you're just talking internet, it depends which platform you go on, for instance, that look at it in different ways. X has overwhelmingly one opinion. Facebook might have another opinion. Substack might have another opinion.

The people in Maine have a completely different. different opinion, right? And the other side of that fracture is that because of these allegations, the severity of it, electorally, it's going to be horrible for him and it diminishes his chances of winning a race that is so crucial. So there's that too. It's mixed, right? It's, this isn't, people are hurt, right? This is, this is, people have put a year of time into this, not just the volunteers and staff, the people that voted for him. The mood is not good, folks. Just, you know, period.

So people are feeling like there's an establishment coup. People are feeling like there's some sort of establishment coup that's trying to get in here. You know, I've seen a lot of establishment people say, oh, they didn't really care. I mean, Platner's policies are one thing, but they really just like Plattenor the guy is what I'm hearing from. more national sort of centrist dem liberals, whereas we've been hearing from a lot of people on the ground that it was really more about his policies. Do people feel that Troy Jackson will be a spiritual successor that really embodies the things that got everyone excited about Platner? Yeah, I think it's foolish for people to the establishment piece to look at this and assume that

158,000, 150,000 plus people who just voted for Platner, that none of those people are going to be skeptical about this. Maine is the oldest state in the country, right? They're not all on X. They're not all on Facebook. A lot more of them are on Facebook, right? I was going to say, they're probably on Facebook. Yeah, they're on Facebook. Like, Facebook is the hub up here for people chatting. So, yeah, it's, it would be foolish to totally. totally disregard that. I think in his message, his message leaving, it was all focused on the establishment. I think it would be, it would be foolish for people not to take that message seriously. Another little bit of information, his wife just did an aunt, his aunt just did a post on

Facebook that got widely shared and liked. Maybe I'll post it at some point on Twitter. but she basically said, hey, I hope Graham and Amy don't leave doing the grassroots work that they're doing, that they can give back to that. But also, hey, if you think the establishment had a part in this, but with your conscience, right? So that's his aunt saying that on Facebook. So again, I think there is a part of that feeling that we just got screwed. Now this process is a comma 2.0 where we're just inserting it. The establishment inserts a candidate and it goes against everything that this movement was built on, which is an anti-establishment movement at its core.

I think Troy Jackson can fit that anti-establishment molds and the policy platform the most closely. But again, I think to discount, there's the platform piece and then there are genuinely is Platner as a person and what he was doing across the state as just a 41-year-old guy that was outside the system that represented someone who could be in this office and gain seniority for years to come, I think it would be foolish just to say that played no part in it, right? That's not Troy Jackson. They cannot, I mean, truly, Nathan, you'll know this, that depressing turnout is going to be a disaster.

You know, if you have depressed grassroots activists who just are disillusioned by the party and not excited, not even just the grassroots activists, but Democrats, center left type people in November who just say, I'm not showing up for this. I'm not excited about this person. That was the edge that Platterner had until recently. In a close race, that really is a disaster for Democrats. Yeah, yeah, it's not good. And I think that there are certainly, there's all sorts of talks. And I think I'll post some stuff just about how volunteers are approaching who will be and the people that have dedicated the most time to this race are approaching who the next candidate will be. And Ryan and I have texted a bit about this already. But I think the other people that are- know, is it going to be Ryan?

No. It's the next candidate. You know, actually the best candidate, I think Miss Rachel is from Jennifer Mayn. So she, I wish she would run. But I think the other people that are potentially going to step in here, across the board,

they all just lost their primaries. They all just lost, right? They're all loose. I hate to say it. Literally. Yeah, like, yeah. Like they literally just lost. Lost.

Do respect. Do respect. But and one of them, there's a guy, Dan Kleban running, who runs main beer company here, fantastic beer, horrible candidate. Yeah. And he ran for two days. He raised, I think, $250,000 and then dropped out and gave it to Janet Mills because Chuck Schumer said, Hey, hey, Dan, this is our girl.

Like, now you got to go. And he's coming out. and posting all this stuff of it's a genocide, I want Medicare for all, what are we talking about? You know, so it's all that sort of stuff too, where I take it,

same with the Shaw stuff, take it with a grand assault. These people all just lost their primary, they're unemployed politicians that want to now jump at the next race to run in. We're like one more minute. Shennebello deserves a little time here because she's kind of popular across the board.

she knock on her, if there is one, as she ran in 2014 against Susan Collins. So Collins has been there, done that. Now, she's much more a grown politician at this point. Now, she finished a tight, what, fourth in the third or fourth in the governor's race? Fourth. But everybody was kind of lumped together. She was part of the Trinity of Troy Jackson, Pingree, and Bellow.

Those quick thoughts on her. I mean, obviously she's not the anti-establishment firebrand, but she's pretty progressive and well-liked across the state. Yeah, she's good. She's the secretary of state right now. She blocked ICE from getting access to our license plate information. She's blocked Trump from getting our voter rolls. She's very pro-labor. The labor unions love her.

She absolutely would be for Medicare for all. I would assume that she would call out the genocide in Gaza and be against Forever Wars. So she's a good option. And if it's not Troy, I think depending on how these caucuses go and how this finest, final county-level delegate election system is decided, someone like her probably has the best chance, right? Because the party likes her, people generally like her. And then I guess the last guy that's running is Jordan Wood. He lost his Senate race.

He then went and lost the congressional district two race. And now he's back in the Senate race running again. His husband is with mothership strategies, which is the email firm that pioneered the panic emails in your inbox that try to look like utility bills and like the sky's falling if you don't give us $3. So he raises a lot of money. He's got a shot. He spends it all then on.

fundraising. He doesn't use his husband's firm to his credit, but he uses... But there's a good drop site. There's a good drop site story on that, right, Ryan? Yeah. Yeah, he's raised. He switched races to CD2 just because he was losing and a hurry raised, I think, $2 million in the Senate race and then raised another several million dollars from doing the gun to my head. I'll vote for Democrats, email headers. And to raise every one of those dollars, you have to spend like 95 cents. So it like, it comes out in the FEC like, oh, look, I raised $4 million. It's like, yeah, but you've spent

$3.8 million on Facebook and on email, like, raising that. So it's not as impressive as it seems. Well, Nathan, Nathan, thank you so much for joining us today and informing us from the trenches of Facebook. Please

continue that reporting there for us, because I'm certainly not on Facebook anymore, and I'm sure there'll be more reporting from you for us to share in the future. Where can people find you if they want to individually keep tracking your updates. I'll keep writing for a drop site on this. Ryan and I are following the race.

We've been at this for almost a year now. So drop site, you can look for the written pieces. And then Twitter, Nathan T. Bernard, you can follow me on there as well. And I'll be posting stuff. But yeah, glad I could share in Shaw we trust. That's the Shaw of Maine, not Iran. Thank you. Nathan. We'll see you later.

That's it. All right. The return of the shot. Listen, just when you thought he was out, they pull him back in. His mug just say, inshallah with a little music note. Updrated.

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and what it really means to live forever for all of us. I learned about some rad science. I can make a brain for you and then we can test what draw is the best for your brain, as opposed to his brain. Here are some hard truths. I would expect Indians to age faster, but I did not expect it to be almost a four-term.

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How to Live Forever on the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Well, this leads us nicely to our Iran segment here. Dr. Atreta Parsi from the Quincy Institute. Welcome back to breaking points. Great to be with you guys. Where do we begin, Ryan? What do we want to start with here?

Well, Trita, we have two major piece of news, the bombing of the tracks and the other civilian infrastructure. And then did you see Trump talking about arming protesters? Jeremy seemed to think he was implying he was arming the M.E.K. I thought he was referring again to the Kurds. Did you see this? I didn't see that part. but I would not be surprised that they're taking a second look if not at the Kurds,

perhaps at some other groups, the Baluchis or others. Because as you know, next week Netanyahu is coming. The Israelis have been very much pushing this narrative. But all of this could have worked out so well if just the Kurds had been armed, had it not been for that decision that had been pulled mainly because Erdogan objected, but also because the Kurds' objective, which is kind of lost in the story. But had that not happened,

then everything would have been awesome, and this war would have been won in four days, which is complete nonsense. I think this is an Israeli effort to kind of give war another chance to stay in. To create a narrative that allows that. Griffin, let me play this Trump clip for Trita. Are you ready?

Here we go. Immediately. And that's an edict. That's in writing. If they protest, If they go out in the streets, they will be immediately shot. They don't have guns. You know, we sent some guns.

But the group that was supposed to give, which I said what happened to my people, I said it, I called it exactly. We sent guns. A lot of guns. They were supposed to go to the people so they could fight back against these dogs. You know what happened? The people that they sent them to kept them because they said, what a beautiful gun. I think I'll keep it.

So I'm very upset with a certain group of people, and they're going to pay a big price to that. very poetic for it to be the wild wild west underneath that ridiculous what a ridiculous timeline we live in so there are some who saw that clip and assumed that he was talking about the attempt to arm the Kurds which is which there's been plenty of public reporting on others have seen and said no

looks like he's talking very specifically he's talking about January like we were arming the protesters which would be somebody like the M.E. some anti-government group, and then he's saying that they kept the guns. After seeing that, your reaction to it, but also what do we draw from the fact

that he's still kind of blustering about their inability to kind of spark an uprising that is successful there? I do think he's talking about the Kurdish groups because there was an effort back then to give weapons, to Kurdish groups that would then be part of the war effort, as well as Kurdish groups that actually were part of the violent elements of the protests back in December and January.

There's a group called the P.A.K, which actually was trained by the United States back in 2014 to take on ISIS. Now, it was supposed to be an Iraqi Kurdish group, but it was an Iranian Kurdish group. I don't know if the U.S. didn't know that it was an Iranian Kurdish groups, but nevertheless, they trained. and it's been a very violent group, and it was using violence throughout the protest, even before the protest. So I suspect that there's some Kurdish groups that he's talking about,

and he's mentioned in other interviews that he's very upset with the Kurds. Now, they didn't do it because at the end of the day, the Turks intervened, but also some of the Kurdish leaders of the Kurdish government in northern Iraq were dead set against it because they knew that it would be a disaster.

And they knew that they would end up paying the price for it because it would be running retaliation. The Israelis have very much pushed this narrative that everything would have been just amazing had this operation with the Kurds gone through. And I don't believe that for a second. I think it would have been a disaster in many different ways, but it's an Israeli effort to essentially give war another chance to claim this narrative that everything would have worked out.

Well, had this just one thing been done correctly. And that way go back and be able to say we still can do war because we actually didn't really fully try regime change. And we were just talking about. talking about what that might mean just in terms of going back to the beginning of the war, Netanyahu seemed to convince Trump that that was actually a great plan and obviously didn't work out the way that Netanyahu told the president that it would. This time around Trina, what could we see happen if that's, if that attempt at least is successful?

You know, it's interesting. On the Iranian side, there's a lot of football. so they are very worried that the whole MOU is just used to be able to, for the United States to be able to prepare itself for another round of war. And given how the U.S. under Trump has behaved, it's not necessarily surprising that they would think so. When you take a look at the fundamentals of the situation, you're still seeing a scenario on which only a third or so of the traffic of the strait is actually up and running.

We're not seeing the strategic reserve of oil actually being filled up in the manner that I think the administration was hoping for. The second and third level consequences of the previous oil shock is still being felt some of it has not even started yet. So to under these circumstances restart the war without having, at a minimum, a completely different approach and strategy, to me, does not seem to be something that possibly could work. If there's going to be another war,

you're going to have to think it through very differently. And the circumstances are not such that there's been enough recuperation. And I don't have the data on what the levels of interceptors, et cetera, are. But it certainly doesn't look as if that in any way, shape, or form has managed to be restocked in order to have another war. What I think may be happening or ends up happening is that if the war is kept at this level in which it is below the threshold for the Iranians to close the strait of Hormuz,

then the U.S. may find a degree of benefit in the war because it is degrading the Iranians without paying the price that the U.S. and the world economy was paying when the war actually was fully in shape because that's when the trade was closed. The economies around the world were suffering tremendously. The Iranians are aware of this as well, but they're also looking at a different scenario,

which is that even if the trade is not closed, this warfare is reducing the traffic already. and the reduction of that traffic combined with the very low inventory of oil, including in the Strategic Reserve of the United States, which is, by the way, is not supposed to be used in the matter that it is used, is enough for the U.S. to simply not have enough time to be able to conduct any of these military campaigns in a way that would strengthen its negotiating position if this is at the end of the day some sort of a negotiating strategy.

If I can take it just a step back and say, this whole thing is just so idiotic. Because there was, I mean, look, this whole thing was about the fact that the MOU Article 5 has different interpretations. I personally don't find the Yvonian reading of MOU article 5 to be convincing. But their view is that it essentially gives them control

over the straight during this period until it is completely reopened and a final agreement has been signed. The GCC and the American interpretation, is different in the sense that they say yes Devaniis are responsible for making sure that this is safe passage but it doesn't mean that they're the only ones

that are in charge and as a result the US is using the southern corridor in the strait which is in the Umani waters to pass ship throughs. Now the Iranians are saying that's fine. They can go through there as long as they notify the Iranians. The vines want to make sure that all ships

that are transiting the strait are notifying them because according to the article they are, even though it doesn't use the word, responsible for. Exactly. Iran will make a way. So as long as those ships actually do indicate to the Iranians that they're transiting, the Iranians are saying they're not having a problem.

The U.S. position in the GCC were like, well, hold on, that kind of gives you complete control. It's better to have a scenario in which if there is any type of notification, the notification should go both ways. So there should be some entity on the GCC. is the C-side that also gets the notifications and someone on the divine side. And the two sides were converging towards this agreement. But then diplomacy was paused because of the funeral of the Supreme Leader.

And during that funeral, Saudi and Qatar and I think one other ship was trying to transit through the southern part having its transponders off, which is not permitted apparently, and this caused this big conflict now because the Iranian saw that as a confrontation, as a provocation, something that was being used while the Iranian attention was on the funeral. And then eventually shot at these ships and this is what apparently caused Trump to really get infuriated

and now this whole thing started. And it really doesn't matter because at the end of the day, this is just for about another 10 days. Out of the 30 days in which this was supposed to be more or less resolve. It's not entirely the MOU. It was just like 10 days left. And now we're seeing the entire

MOU and everything coming crashing down frankly because both sides are overreacting. I think the Iranians were overreacting in terms of using force against these ships, even though they didn't sink any of them. And I think the U.S. is completely overreacting by restarting the war over this issue. Someone else crossed

our desks that I would love you to react to. This is from CNN, which says that Israel shared intelligence with the U.S. that Iran had devised a new plan to assassinate President Donald Trump, two sources familiar with the matter told CNN. And how are we supposed to consume this news? You know, it's been used in the past assassination attempts on Trump as one of the reasons that we have to go to war with Iran.

What do you know about this alleged new assassination attempt? Obviously, I have no idea what they're talking about. But let me put it this way. Someone should do a graph of looking at the moments in which the Israelis are releasing this type of intelligence and how it coincides with massive Israeli campaigns to get the war restarted. I think the Israelis are very astute at playing Trump's psychology. They see that he is right now in a very bad space in general. He seems to have been very upset having to spend the last week with a bunch of

of EU leaders in NATO that he hates. And on top of doubt, the Iranians are shooting at ships. And Ukraine, Russia is not going well. So he just seems to be in a terrible, terrible position. And treated the funeral, probably the funeral clips, they were all, my assumption is that those were all over Fox News where they were saying, assassinate Trump, death to America, that sort of thing. So they probably realized this is a ripe environment.

Certainly, yeah. But also, I think the size of those crowds may have made Trump a little bit jealous. it may not have played very well with him either. But you're right, there were slogans, et cetera, during the funerals calling for revenge against Trump, undoubtedly. What was important to notice is that it was never any senior or even mid-level official of the government that was issuing any of those different threats.

And that difference is, of course, important. But personally, you know, we've seen it before that they have tried to say that there's these assassination attempts, and perhaps there are. When Trump wanted to go towards diplomacy, he completely ignored it. When he wanted to go towards a military confrontation, then he apparently was impacted by it. Are there any attempts? I have no idea, but I think if there were, I would suspect that the U.S. intelligence would know more about it than the Israelis do. You got something, Ryan? Well, yeah, I wanted to ask you about these strikes themselves.

it appears like the U.S. is attacking a lot of civilian infrastructure in Iran, particularly bridges and train tracks leading to the latest site of the Ayatollah's funeral. What do we know about and what do we know about what damage Iran has done to Bahrain, Kuwait, and facilities there? And then there were also these reports that somebody was attacking Iran back from Bahrain and Kuwait and it may actually have been Bahrain and Kuwait themselves. What like what? What? What? What? What do we know about the specifics of the fighting? Sure. So first of all, let's remind ourselves attacking those railways, bridges, et cetera.

These are war crimes. Not that that's something new, but unfortunately it's continuing. Those specific railways were repatched and fixed within 24 hours. So the damage was not long-lasting. That's different if the U.S., if the Trump administration targets bridges, et cetera, that's going to be much more difficult to rebuild. But the reason my dose were very important was because they had really gained significance during the period in which the U.S. was blockading the Persian Gulf. It turned out that the Iranians started to shift a significant amount of trade and export of oil through the railroad system that had been built.

It was not fully operational or not been used to its full capacity. It started to be used to its full capacity. So I think the Iranians probably are viewing this as a signal from the Trump administration that if, war goes back on, not only will the U.S. close the Persian Gulf again with his blockade of the blockade, but it will take out Ivan's alternative paths to export oil or to import different things. So I think it was more of a warning, particularly mindful of the fact that the Iranians could rebuild it in 24 hours. It was not aimed at doing long-lasting damage. When it comes to the idea that the Bahrainis and the Kuwaitis are striking at the Yuanians, this information came from Israeli media.

Doesn't mean that it's false. But I personally doubt very much that the Kuwaitis and the Bahrainis would do that on their own because I would really invite a completely different type of an attack. What the Iranians have done so far is they're going after the U.S. bases. And their argument is that if there weren't U.S. soldiers there and they weren't in the U.S. bases there, they wouldn't be attacking them. If Bahrain and Kuwait themselves are attacking, it's a completely different story,

then the set of legitimate targets from the Ivani perspective will of course grow significantly, including military targets that are owned by the Kuwaitis and the Bahrainian. So I'm skeptical at this point. We'll have to wait to see. But this is part of the imbalance that exists. Whenever something happens in Iran and we get images out of it because Ivani's are not censoring people using their cell phones to film the damage. whereas that is taking place throughout the entire GCC states at this point, certainly in Dubai and of course in Israel,

in which we hardly have any images coming out of what is happening there, particularly during the exchange of fire between Iran and Israel just a couple of weeks ago. And I really, you know, I think folks should go back and just do searches on videos from October and April 24 to June 2025, the amount of images that came out of Israel of ordinary people just filming it to the essentially zero videos coming out right now. That is because of military censorship. That is not because damages are not done.

That's not because the missiles are not hitting. It's because there's a near total censorship that does not allow us to see what actually is happening. Well, you mentioned earlier the crowds for the funeral blanketing Fox News. Now, Fox News has also recently, Brian Kilmead was on a Fox News, news segment saying he's not really sure if Whitkoff and Kushner are the men for the job.

Let's take a listen for your reaction. Also don't think that Whitkoff and Kushner should be the ones doing this. They're business guys. They have not been effective in Ukraine, not been effective in Gaza. They have not been effective in this. They can't have three portfolios to begin with. We have a state department for a reason. Marco Rubio, even Democrats admit, has looked at as a genius internationally.

He is the guy that most people would want, even if you are, if you gave truth serious, with the Democrats, he should take the lead on this because you can't do this like a business deal. You have to understand the history of the region and how distrustful the Iranians have been. They will only make a decision if they have no other choice. I like that of all of those, well, I like that of all Brian Kilmead's reasons, the fact that they're massively corrupt and like financially tethered to the people they're negotiating with didn't come up. But yes, your reaction, Trita. For business guys.

I think this is actually a very important clip because the fact that he is very explicitly saying that, this file should go to Rubio and the State Department tells you something about what's going on here because you do have a split in the administration in which you have a camp that is favoring the negotiations and the one that is much more skeptical of it. And he's essentially saying take the negotiations out of the hands of those people who believe in negotiations and put it in the hands of those who never have believed in negotiations with any of these people, with any of these different countries. And that tells you something about what they're really looking for.

But he also makes me wonder. I mean, the Wall Street Journal is reporting that it was Hexet and Rubio that went in and informed Trump of the fact that the Iranians were starting to shoot at some of these ships again for going through the Southern Corridor without coordinating with them. And that that prompted this whole beginning of him deciding to take military out. action, et cetera. It does not appear, at least from the Wall Street Journal reporting, that the actual negotiators, the ones that are in charge of the file, were particularly participant in, at least in the initial discussions in which this was done. And I think it adds to the picture in which we have

seen in the past week or so, Rubio, after the MOU was negotiated, suddenly emerging into the seen here both in Lebanon and in the GCC, despite the fact that prior to that he spent most of his time focusing on Venezuela and Cuba. But now suddenly he showed up. He mediated a deal between Israel and Lebanon that completely contradicts the MOU. And it appears to me, at least to be an effort to sabotage the MOU. He went to the GCC states and got them to sign this public statement that completely closes the path towards one option of resolving the issue over the Strait of Hormuz. So both of those, to me, seemed as an effort of undermining the negotiations. And now you have Fox News saying actually put the negotiations entirely into the hands of the person who was opposed to these talks from the outset.

Trita, we appreciate your time. I know you had to get out of here pretty sharply. but always helpful to have you on. Thanks so much for having you. Appreciate it. Thank you. All right. Have a great weekend. Check out Trudeususack as well. Canadian women are looking for more. More to themselves, their businesses, their elected leaders, and the world are out of them.

And that's why we're thrilled to introduce the Honest Talk podcast. I'm Jennifer Stewart. And I'm Catherine Clark. And in this podcast, we interview Canada's most inspiring women. entrepreneurs, artists, athletes, politicians, and newsmakers, all at different stages of their journey. So if you're looking to connect, then we hope you'll join us. Listen to the Honest Talk podcast and IHeart Radio or wherever you listen to your podcasts. Welcome to Sabara Football, the sweet and the spicy on and off the field.

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or whatever you get your podcast I'm Munges shit together and I'm back with a new season of the podcast Skyline Drive

this time I'm diving into a rabbit hole of peptides organoids blood boys blue zones and brain

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as opposed to his brain. Here are some hard truths. I would expect Indians to age faster, but I did not expect it to be almost a four-to-five-year acceleration. and get myself into a world of trouble. I'd say probably start bone smashing. That doesn't work. To make it look more defined.

They say it works. I don't know. Listen to Skyline Drive, How to Live Forever on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. All right. I've got something pretty fascinating for you guys. It really isn't getting enough attention.

Let me put this up on the screen here. So as a bunch of people probably already realize, Germany's auto manufacturing capacity is collapsing amid basically twin pressures. One, their energy costs have skyrocketed because somebody blew up a pipeline that was supplying them with all of their cheap energy from Russia. And so as a result, they can't compete like they used to be able to. And secondly, Chinese electric vehicles are just, as Emily, you saw it, just dominating the global market.

You were recently in Brazil. Can you tell us real quickly about? the BYDs? I was all up in those BYDs. How are they? I've never seen one with my own naked eyes. Yeah, no, I was actually really excited. It's, I would say, you know, at least in Brasilia, probably half the time, if you're

getting an Uber, you're getting a BYD. There's a big BYD dealership right outside of the Brasilia airport. They're everywhere. They're obviously very, very slick and a huge competitor to Tesla. So that's definitely a major. they're obviously not a major player on the global EV marketplace, and you can totally understand why.

I'm not an EV person in general, but they're slick. And so Germany sees the writing on the wall, and what they're doing is they're saying, okay, well, if we can't compete when it comes to auto manufacturing, we do need a lot of drones because we live in fear of a Russian invasion,

and so let's convert a significant amount of our industrial auto-making capacity into drone-making capacity. But there's an interesting hitch that just arose, not just drone-making capacity,

but all kind of defense capacity, Iron-dome, etc. Yeah. So let me put up this Jerusalem Post article. So the headline here, Qatar vetoes Volkswagen deal

with Israeli defense company Raphael in Germany. So in other words, the Germans were trying to convert a Volkswagen plant into an Iron Dome manufacturing plant and they're like solves all of our problems except oh wait a minute Qatar is a Gulf country

that was just bombed by Israel back in 2024 and considers them to be a geopolitical rival and they're the ones that have an enormous amount of investment in Germany and so you've got the Israeli technology, but you've got the Qatari money, and so the Germans are kind of caught between the two of them. So now this effort to kind of rehab this Ozenabrück plant

into a weapons maker is now stalled because of that. It's an interesting window into the way that all of these kind of conflicting structural forces that we're watching play out on a daily basis are colliding with each other in what seems like a really unsustainable way. That's crazy. And for the record, Ryan surprised us with this story and what I did not expect him to say. None of those was on my bingo card.

When he opened up by talking about the German Volkswagen plant, that was floored, Ryan. Didn't think it was going to Doha and Jerusalem. I didn't. Yeah, so no, just wanted to share that with the audience. No huge deeper thoughts. but like this is fascinating. Yeah, this will have implications for the U.S. too because in order, you know, so in the U.S., you're going to have a bunch of weapons makers who are going to want to team up with the

Israeli military, which they're trying to fuse with ours, Elbit systems, in fact, which is the number one military contractor in Israel is in the lead to get the American Howitzer contract. So this is a multi-billion dollar contract for an Israeli company to be making howitzers, like iconic American weapon system. Which we also just authorized patriots in Ukraine, right, this week? Right. Authorized, right. They're like, oh, go ahead and make your own. Because Ukraine is complaining that we're wasting all of our patriots and this unnecessary war with Iran. And meanwhile, all, like the last ballistic missile strike from Russia on Kiev, every single ballistic missile went through and something like 32 people were killed.

So they're starting to take, you know, significant casualties in these ballistic missile attacks from Russia because their stockpile of interceptors is basically exhausted. And so the U.S. solution was, well, here's a license you can make your own. It's like, bro, we're getting bombed today. like so like and you know if they try to build a factory in ukraine right now russia will bomb that so ukraine has moved most of its defense technology and drone technology into Poland and germany and elsewhere and the russians have said you know if that's what you're doing maybe we need maybe we're then justified in hitting Poland and germany so yeah they have a license

but like a license doesn't do much for you when the when the missiles are flying like right now. See, the defense stocks up on the screen here. Pretty much everybody down, except for Northrop Kamam. How are they losing money? How do you lose money? In this environment. Right now.

So if I'm going to understand this correctly, Ryan, due to Trump's war in Iran, it has slowed down Germany's ability to turn a car company into a drone warfare company. Is that what I'm supposed to get? Or in this case, Iron Dome. But yeah, their broad strategy is to stop, you know, move away from some of their concentration in vehicles, which is sad.

Those were cool cars because that was a short-lived thing. I called the VW bug, the Iron Dome. Always have. Yeah. We'll have Mercedes drones. But if Qatar has anything to say about it, it's not going to be done in coordination with Israel. And Israel helped develop the Iron Dome with the United States, which they love to remind us. of. So they have some, they have some, you know, purchase to make these objections.

Well, Trump is slowing down the German war machine with his own war. I think that's eligible for another peace prize. Put it on the board for him there. But why don't we end, why don't we end with another story that's, let's get back home for a sec to New York City, where Zoran Mamdani is enraging, enraging people with a new map. of immigrants or immigrant locations, immigrant areas of the city, enclaves, which has angered one Rudy Giuliani. Let's look at that. And many more. There's an army of Rudy Giuliani's that are angry at Zaron over this. We are Rudy. Rudy. Rudy says, Mamdani's decision to leave out little Italy on his map of enclaves within New York is beyond shameful. Italian Americans contribute so much, not just, in New York City, but the entire nation. He also left out Irish and Jewish enclaves. We all know what's going on here.

And here we've got a map that they put out here. We've got all sorts of places. We've got little India, little Egypt. We've got a little Palestine, little Odessa. There's a little Ukraine. Don't worry, Ukraine. We got you. Ecuador, you know, all sorts of stuff here.

But no, little Italy on this map. And of course, our friends at the free press had to dig into this and speak to local little Italians about this. Little Italians. Let's see. I love Little Italy. This is one of my favorite restaurants right here. Let's think and listen. Hey, Mandami, I give you a year.

You are not a New Yorker. You have told me. I'm in Miller Regi. And today, we are here in Little Italy asking the locals how they feel about one of the oldest immigrant communities little Italy not being included on mayor mom donnie's immigrant on clave map i don't consider you to be my mayor i think it's this christful for what i'm going he's got to be fair to everybody and he's not fair to everybody he's not fair to the jewish people but she makes everybody notice he's not fair to the jewish people and now he hits the italians for what reason what do we

do them that he should ate us they always sort of pushed us to the side i got it yeah but they're literally to care of their own problems. And we always push the side. And I think it's a lot of time that we have to be firm about this. Otherwise, we'll totally be forgotten. If you understand what took place here over 100 years ago, between 1880 and 1920, when the mass migration of Italian immigrants first came, this was the stepping stone for the Italians.

Well, the Bari family came here 120 years ago from Sicily. They were immigrants. They landed down in what's known as the five points. Grandma started the San Genaro Festival. That right up there, that is Grandma. That is Grandma, Grandma from the Barrie family. Okay, she is a heart and soul of this neighborhood. My grandfather was on the Society of San Janeiro,

which happens to be this year a hundred years. So it means a lot to me little, you know? There's no such thing that's left or right down here. Both sides of the street are beautiful. And what makes New York City such a special place is a collage of many different cultures. People from all over the world come here and settle. settle. And they need to be recognized for the contributions that they brought to this,

to this wonderful country. All right. I stand with them completely, honestly, and I think this is an inexplicable decision. That's actually sort of beautiful. Yeah, there we go. I mean, why did he leave off? Why did he leave that off, honestly? Yeah, they brought us, they brought us pizza. They brought us the mob. They brought us anarchism. I mean, what more could you ask for? But what actual question? Why were they not on the map? I don't know how they missed. I don't know how they left that all this. It's absurd.

Maybe like somebody read like how the Italians and Irish became white and they're like, well, they don't count anymore as immigrants. They've got little Ukraine. Well, they're a little more recent, little Ukraine. I don't know. Put out a new map. Come on. Yeah.

New map. Take the L and put out a new map. Breaking point stands for a new map. We absolutely need a new map. This is the most atrocious thing that he has done. in office. Anti-Iang indiscrimination. It's bad politics, though.

Like, it's actually bad politics. Mom-Dani misstep. Huge Mom-Dani misstep here. We call balls and strikes, and that most definitely was a strike. I was a wild, wild pitch outside. And, yeah, I mean, listen, I think we're all going to be pouring out a mcroni in honor of the little Italy, which is incredible. everyone should go get a slice, sit on the street. I honor of the Italian influence in New York every time I go.

I was surprised that there was a lot of, you know, clearly he, this one Italian owner also felt that way about his handling of Israel and Jewish nature stuff. So it seems like the free press will be up and down those streets. How'd the Irish catch a stray there? Was there a... Ryan, every time he's in New York City. Yeah, that's right.

Michael Scott outside Sparrow. My favorite pizza plot. Sparrow. That would be the ultimate humiliation. His mom, Donny's next video is a Sabaro. Wow. Sabro's not bad.

I'm not going to lie. It's an institution. Well, that's going to do it for all of our important news segments for this Friday. But why don't we get into a little bit of supercast AMA questions for our members

to round out this episode. All right, and it's time for some AMA questions. If you join at breakingpoints.com, you too can submit an incredible written question that we will read on the Friday shows. This is my favorite part of the show, and sorry sometimes if that runs short. But let's start with Amy Seneas, who asks,

there's a big call on the left for media outlets like Breaking Points to interview Kashama Sala. I'm sorry if I don't know if that's how I say her name, about her independent run for Congress against Adam Smith, one of the architects of the attempt to merge the Israeli military with the U.S. military. I think you all should interview her. It would be weird to only interview Democratic candidates running against these incumbents backed by the Israeli lobby. As a leftist in Michigan, I have largely abandoned the Democratic Party except for a very few local candidates like Abdul,

who I'm willing to vote for, but ultimately do not trust to be better than AOC. It would also be nice to hear from people like Brianna Joy Gray on some of these electoral issues. She offers a left's perspective that Crystal and Ryan don't often get into. your response. Yeah, so on Kashama Sawan, so the way that we think about what having candidates on is basically two things. One, there has to be,

let's say there's something very interesting going on in their race. Like we have some news on the race, there's some particular influence in the race, there's a particular issue that this candidate relates to. even if that candidate isn't like neck and neck with the other opponent, with their opponent.

Like that could be a reason to get on to do an interview with someone who we don't necessarily think even has a shot of winning, but they're very interesting and newsworthy in their own right. And then the second is if they have a realistic shot of winning and represent some newsworthy kind of movement in our politics. and you know we're happy to have people from all all spectrums like on it's not just the lefties or not just the you know megatipes happy to have the establishment folks on to like go back and forth with them and you know pressure test their own arguments so those are the kind of the two buckets that they fit into um so on uh doesn't quite fit the first one you could cover adam smith and his role infusing the thing you could cover adam smith and his role infusing the

military without, you know, needing to talk to the opponent. And maybe fits into the second, but we would need some evidence of it. I was actually talking to Sabby Sabs just about this yesterday, and I was asking her, she was saying, hey, why don't you guys have Kashama Swanton? And I was like, you have, do you have any, like, do you have any evidence that this is a, this is a real race? because what we don't want to do is tell our audience this is a serious candidate who is in this election

and then election day comes and they get 7% of the vote because then the audience is like, you guys have no idea what you're talking about. Next time you tell me that this is a serious challenge, I'm not going to believe you. So there's a threshold factor there. But we had point, not to interrupt, to that point, you know, some people would then say, but wait a second, you had Zoron on when he was at like 1% in the polls.

Like how do you make the delineation there? And also, some people also feel like a lot of people also feel like when people request us to have candidates on, they're like, that would be the thing that changes everything. If they get that breaking points interview, that's going to create a big avalanche that's going to change an entire race and boost a candidate from obscurity to the mainstream. It's an interesting dynamic because it does have this reverse chicken and egg type of feel to it. Like the same way that candidates have a hard time raising money if they're not considered

to be viable, but they can't be considered to be viable until they've raised money. It's the same problem that kids often confront right out of college. Like, well, we'd like to hire you, but you don't have any. experience. Well, how can I get experience if you won't hire me? So there has to be an art to it as well to say, you know what? For a variety of reasons, we think this particular candidate,

if given a little bit of attention, actually will catch fire. Mamdani fit that bucket, but Mamdani also fit the bucket that he was doing something that was interesting on its own. He was out in the street interviewing Trump voters about why they voted for Trump in New York.

That was the hook, right. And he was incorporating that into his message. So even if he flamed out in his election, like that was interesting in its own right. In 2018, when I decided to kind of go all in on covering AOC's primary, I didn't suspect that she would beat him. I thought it would be more competitive than people thought. But Joe Crowley was in line to be the Speaker of the House. Might even have challenged Pelosi or Pelosi may even have stepped down at that point. And so I saw it as a vehicle to tell people who Joe Crowley was because at the time he had a national name ID of like 5%.

He had a, he had a DC name ID of 100%. He was extremely powerful. But nobody nationally knew who he was. So I was thinking like, okay, this is a way to like just let people know who Joe Crowley is through covering this election. But then as we covered the election, she starts to catch fire. Yeah, he was way high up in the Pelosi chain of succession. Yeah. So the short answer to that is it's about, it's an art. It's guessing. We had Chuck Park on in New York City. He ended up running a very close race. People didn't get behind him. If they had, he probably wins. And people regret, I think, at this point, not getting behind him, he'll probably run again. So what I said to Sabby Sabes, is there any polling? And she said, I don't know about it, but there's, you know, she's raised like $400,000. That's a lot. of money. You know, she's going to be facing millions if she gets serious. So if there's polling, this is what I would say to the Svant campaign. If there's polling that shows that this is a serious race, then, you know, then we're interested in covering it. Absolutely. If she raised

$400,000, you know, a poll is only five or 10 grand nowadays. Like they're, you know, they're much cheaper. You can go ahead and run a poll. She had Sabby was like, you know, I know you guys have beefed in the past. I was like, actually, we, we haven't beefed. Like she has, it's been a one-way beef. She's dumped on me at them. I don't have any problem with her at all. And that's fine.

That's also not how, it's okay to, we would still have them on. Absolutely. Like, the whole world at some point or other has dunked on me at one point or another. It's fine. Like, that's what I'm here for it. Like, have at it. We're absolutely fine to have people. on who had dunked on me two years ago or today.

Like, it's fine. Neeratandon come on the show. Neeratan. Neeratan is welcome, like, today on the show. That'd be a lit Friday. Yeah. Yeah. This morning I was saying that she should apologize and resign for her comment that she's

talked about Abdul al-Syad. She's welcome to come on. Anyway, and she's retweeted somebody calling me a scumbag. she's still welcome to come on. Yeah, I retweeted that. I'm here. Shama. Griffin liked it.

He thought his like was secret. I have special access to likes. So anyway, so that's what I would say. Bring us some data that shows us that this is a serious race, and then we'll talk. Absolutely. All right. I think that was a great insight in how we make all of these decisions. And then also, you know, there are other candidates that, you know, we might find sort of interesting, but don't really have like a big hook that the audience cares about sometimes.

I'm not saying that about Kashama, but, you know, we, for, you know, for opening up the kimono or partying it for a second, you know, we probably get like 20 requests a day. Right. You know, different candidates and different stuff. And if it was just candidates for two hours every single day, people would like to watch that. It would be tough. So we try to wrap it into a story that people care about. So that's another. The pitch was Zoron literally was he had just been out in, I think it was Queens.

I remember. Yeah, he had just been out that weekend after Trump won talking to Trump voters. And so that's where we were like, oh, this would be super interesting to talk to him. And it was a, I don't remember if they pitched it or if we just knew that that was happening. But that's how the segment was booked. And I guess our instincts were right on that one. All right. This next one is from Brent Combs.

Ryan, appreciate your courage to have hard conversations and report on sensitive topics. I'm sorry for all the misguided hate and commentary you're getting lately from reporting on the Platner story and such. How do you deal with this kind of stress and what motivates you to keep going? You are one of my heroes, man. Keep up the great work.

Oh, I appreciate that. That's awesome. Well, you motivate me. We talked briefly about this on the show yesterday. we have a independent source of support and revenue here at breaking points and also at drop site, just from regular people. And as a result, we don't have bosses who wear suits and down the hall who tell us what we can say. We don't have corporate or other sponsors that can threaten to withhold money.

and that gives us a unique ability to just say what we believe, to search out the truth and report the truth. And very few people have that opportunity to do that. Most people, most reporters have to go through layers of complications to get from the gathering of news to the reporting of news. because we don't have to do that, I just feel this like moral obligation to do it,

especially when it's uncomfortable. Because the audience has put so much, the audience has built this because they want us to do that. So if they've built that, and then we shrink from it, all we're doing is grifting. All we're doing is like producing

some entertaining content and cashing people's checks. who believe that they're funding something that is going to have the courage and the strength to stand up when it's difficult, but actually doesn't do it when the chips are down. So that's why I feel like an extra obligation to do it, even if it's not terribly pleasant.

What would the process have been like or how would it maybe have been different reporting out that Politico story if you were still at Interceptor or HuffPost or other places that you've worked right? Intercept probably would have been fine. Probably could have probably could have done that just the same at the intercept

because you know, then, you know, when we left, it was because we felt like that might be changing. But during the time that we were there,

I don't think I would have had a problem. And I did a, you know, a bunch of stories at the time that were, you know, controversial and we published them proudly. The Huffington Post,

it was interesting. Like, that kind of stuff didn't really come up in the same way. At the time, right. Yeah, I had full free reign of the Washington Bureau. Ariana had just complete, had just delegated complete authority.

So I could have done it, but it was a different time. And like that, you just didn't have stories like that, really. That came up. Yeah, makes sense. Now, today it would be absolutely different at what remains, I think, of the Huffington Post.

Yeah, so, I mean, that's basically, that's basically how I see that. Like, because we've been given this opportunity by the audience, we have to deliver on it. Or we're basically ripping them off and defrauding them. And that's what I've told everyone on blue sky. So. Can I say? Yeah, blue sky. My first, so when I was a college student, I was doing it at the,

the time, and Griffin, you're the same age as me, so you'll remember this, and Ryan will remember it well. It was the era of the rape culture discourse. And so my first journalism work is when I was a college student reporting out some what we would now call Me Too stories, but at the time, we're kind of rape culture stories. And then went on to do a lot of like media criticism of Me Too and have like reported out some of the stuff in the past. And I just think, you know, a non-traversy, the criticism that Ryan and to some extent, Stager got this week for including a perfectly relevant detail because people read into it, projected onto it, their own position on X, Y, or Z. So I wasn't on this week except for Monday. So I just wanted to put that out there too.

Yeah, and for people who missed that, we reported that Politico was aware that Jenny Raskot had texted Grand Platner that evening about saying I need a glute massage and he's like I'll come right over and then she says she said no no no don't come over and Politico reported it as

they exchanged text messages and she told him not to come over our point is that those are different scenarios the Politico version supports a breaking and entering the one that Jenny told truthfully and transparently supports possibly believing he saw that text message. He jumped in the car. He came over and didn't see the follow-up text messages.

And we don't know the wording of those follow-up text messages either. So if you're going to try an allegation in the court of public opinion, then you put forward as many facts as you have for the public. And the reason I'm not too bothered by the criticism is that anybody who looks at this reasonably agrees with that. It's relevant context. And you don't have to believe it's relevant context to believe it should still be shared because you're not the only person in a democracy. A democracy includes all of us. And it is unquestionably the fact that many people do believe it is relevant. And so it's for them then.

It's not for you. If we were just a dictatorship and there's just one person making the decision and it's you who's offended by the inclusion of this detail, then okay, fine. But that's not what we are. We are a democracy. Goes to the credibility of Rassikot as well that she was willing to say that to Politico. That's a good point. And then Politico ironed it out. Like if she was like, yeah, right, it shows a level of confidence in her own condition of the events that she was willing.

willing to include that. And it shows something else on Politico's part to withhold it. Yeah. Our final question... Yeah. Our final question comes from MMC. Ari Platner, I took one look at this guy's Wikipedia, which I'd not read before this morning, with the trust fund background, the being kicked out of Hotchkiss, the dropping out

of GW, the bartending at the tune-in, the getting the job farming oysters due to his mother's fancy food connections. Who in God's name thought this person was a reliable person to put forward as a paragon of progressivism or as a person we thought was capable of completing any kind of structured process? There is no evidence this person has ever completed anything of substance ever. What were we thinking? And I guess if you're saying weed, does that mean you live in Maine? Because the Mainers, they didn't really care about any of that.

I mean, this guy got the most votes in any primary in Maine, in history. And it does seem Trumping in the sense that I see so many centrist liberals trying to nail people like Emma Vigland and other people who are supporting Platner on this and being like, oh, well, the Mainers liked him just because he had a deep voice and because of all of his personal bona fides. But it seemed like it was more Trumpy and they're like, yeah, I don't like everything about this guy, but I like the policies that he is so loudly. you know, pushing. So that seems to me to be what the majority of Mainers felt about Platner.

I don't know if you guys have anything else to add. There was an Axios article, Dunking on some progressive media. I've seen this in other quarters as well, including us. I don't know if we were mentioned in the Axios story, but I know, Ryan, you've probably gotten some of this

over the course of the week. it's an interesting criticism. He did complete four combat tours of duty, which is what actually turned some of the hard left against Grand Platner. And it's one of those things also where if you're going to criticize a guy for not having true working class bona fides,

I think it's fair to say, to give scrutiny of where that loan actually came from. Looks like it was from his dad, like $200,000 from his dad. I think it's perfectly fair to be, to scrutinize his record. I think it's fair to say he went to Hodgekiss, even though as he explained to us, he dropped out because he didn't like it. All of those things, totally relevant context that the voters of Maine had in front of them, and so did the progressive journalists and the independent media outlets that were covering the guy. I just think when you serve for combat tours of duty in those wars,

for better or worse, and I really mean that, it can give you a totally, I mean, you can't define that as blue collar or white collar, but I can tell you that it's not white collar, right? That's not, that's an enormous physical sacrifice, human sacrifice tragically in many cases, and it just does give you a perspective on these things that is absolutely worthwhile. It doesn't mean it's the only qualification anybody should have, but I do think it was a major. source of, and he talked about it constantly, he talked about foreign policy constantly. I think it was a major source of people's attraction to him, to be honest. And I don't, I consistently think when you have, you know, D.C. journalists being like, he went to Hachkiss or, okay, like he went to Hachkis or his grandfather was a famous architect, I get it. I do think that's relevant. But he served for combat tours of duty in the Middle East. That does completely change the story. If you're just, want to say he's some little hotchkiss dropout, rich little hotchkishish dropout who had his mom's, you know, restaurant to serve with the oyster farm. Do I think that his consultants and probably

him played, also him, played into building a character? Yes, of course. That's politics. And so if some people were overly credulous about it, I hear the criticism. But also, again, like he had that chunk of, what was it, Ryan, like 15 years of his life. Um, dedicated to that. That's a significant wrinkle in the story that he's just some rich kid. Right. Plus bartending. Plus the oystering, which people say, oh, this is just a hobby, blah, blah. Like, he's been doing it for five or six years. You know, I grew up on the eastern shore, which has a very strong waterman economy. I went out with my buddy, one of my best friends, was a grabber a couple times and 20 years later I still remember how hard that work was like you're waking

up at 3 a.m. You're out on the water before the sun rises. You're pulling out of the water like extraordinarily heavy. This was trot lining. It's dangerous like the whole thing is dangerous. and then you're sometimes done you know for at least crabbing you can be done by like nine or ten a m you just completely wrecked for the rest of the day and this is the eastern shore of maryland he's up in main where it's like absolutely freezing he is every single day going out on the water before the sun rises pulling up you know 50-60 pound you know like gigantic oyster crate and doing that for hours in frigid miserable conditions for years. Like, you can call it, like, people have hobbies. Like, does that sound like something you're doing for fun?

There's also an infantry, by the way. That's also worth mentioning. It's not like he was in the infantry. He was not J.D. Vance. He was like a spokesperson for like stars and stripes or whatever. What was his job? I mean, I'm not going to die. Great going to O'WR Zone.

Pete Buttigieg who just went to Kabul for like, you know, five months and didn't. Anywhere that had Wi-Fi. All right. And to talk about how hard it is to fish him, then you got to shuck them, which is equally hard. If anyone's ever tried to shuck an oyster, also incredibly dangerous and respect. When did you shuck an oyster? I worked in restaurants for a long time. I was a dishpick guy.

But you were shucking oysters? Not in the dish pit. But, you know, I got behind the counter for a little bit. You know, I've shucked me a fair share of oysters. Think about that. Like Griffin remembers like viscerally, you know, the difficulty and the danger of that. And he's maybe done it, you know, days or weeks. He's doing it for like five, six years.

Like, that's not nothing. And I think people just don't really think, that's what I think. I just remember getting yelled at by the oisterman at Sager's wedding for briefly putting my drink on the table where he was shucking his oysters. Oh, you were going to get some oyster guts in your drink there. He was looking out for you. Probably fair. All right.

And we'll end with Sabas 101 saying, for wonderful BP, given the betrayals of Platinum and Federman, should progressos avoid ogre-looking candidates for a while. To me, he looks a little bit more like the Lorax. Yeah. But. Yeah. Shrek is out.

Shrek is out. Yeah. That's going to be an implication. That's for sure. Yeah. Yeah. It really is. It's not just Maine.

That's going to have a ripple effect for all of these indie startup candidates. Mm-hmm. Okay. Well, with that, we are going to end the Friday show here. Thank you all so much for supporting us at breakingpoints.com and enjoying the newsletter. If you are somehow listening to this but not getting your newsletter emails still, please check your spam folder or promotions folder or your filters for breaking points because I do have stats on the background that say that 99.78% of the emails are hitting

the inboxes, the little tiny rounding error amount, is, because someone input their email incorrectly. If you're still having issues, please reach out to help at kit.com. And that'll do it for us today. Check out DropSight News with Ryan. Check out After Party with Emily Jashinsky. And we've got Sager back next week.

We've got Crystal back next week from vacation. Lots more to cover. And we'll see you then. Bill, why is my eye twitching? Does this mean I'm in perimenopause? Where's my phone? Juliana, maybe we can ask an actual human. Yes, because I have questions.

And I bet you do too. Like, is it normal to sleep in separate bedrooms? We do that. And I still need to know why my poop's been green. We've got actual people answering these exact questions. Listen to Bill and Juliana. The podcast. On the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your podcast.

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