Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 7/15/25: Trump Pressures Ukraine To Bomb Moscow, Bibi Floats Iran War, ICE Tracking App Freaks Trump Admin

Episode Date: July 15, 2025

Krystal and Emily discuss Trump pressures Zelensky to bomb Moscow, Bibi tells Trump Iran war on again, ICE tracking app developer freaks Trump admin.   To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show AD FREE, uncut and 1 hour early visit: www.breakingpoints.comMerch Store: https://shop.breakingpoints.com/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Elf Beauty, Capital One, and Novartis. Just open the free I Heart app and search I Heart Women's Sports to listen now. Hey guys, Sagar and Crystal here. Independent media just played a truly massive role in this election and we are so excited about what that means for the future of this show. This is the only place where you can find honest perspectives from the left and the right that simply does not exist anywhere else.

So if that is something that's important to you, please go to BreakingPoints.com, become a member today, and you'll get access to our full shows, unedited, ad free, and all put together for you every morning in your inbox. We need your help to build the future of independent news media, and we hope to see you at breakingpoints.com. We have some news from Donald Trump on tariffs related

to Russia. Donald Trump's frustration with Vladimir Putin continues to boil over. He was in a meeting in the Oval Office yesterday with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte and made some comments about, get this, a 100% tariff potentially on Russia. We can go ahead here and roll C1. We are very unhappy, I am, with Russia. on Russia, we can go ahead here and roll C1. We've spent $350 billion approximately on this war with Russia and Ukraine. And we'd like to see it end. It wasn't my war. It was Biden's war.

We want to see it end. And I'm disappointed in President Putin because I thought we would have had a deal two months ago, but it doesn't seem to get there. So based on that, we're going to be doing secondary tariffs. If we don't have a deal in 50 days. It's very simple. And they'll be at 100%. Okay, so that seems to be Donald Trump acknowledging or realizing, not acknowledging, but realizing Crystal that he is losing leverage.

What did he say to Zelensky? You don't have the cards. It seems like Trump is walking headfirst into what many of his critics said earlier was just the reality that Putin is so determined to continue the war that for Donald Trump to come to the table on this and get a deal not within 24 hours, but even within a month, two months, three months, four months, five months, six months is where we are right now. There will likely have to be significantly more concessions from Ukraine than the Trump

administration right now is willing to entertain. Yeah, no, it would be a bitter pill to swallow. I mean, there's no doubt that ending this conflict will be difficult and would require really forcing Ukraine to accept significant annexing of their territory by Russia. And that is a bitter pill to swallow. There is no doubt about it. It may be an unacceptable pill to swallow for, I think a lot of Americans would object to that.

And that's part of why you have these words go on and on and on because it's easier to sustain them and kick the can down the road than it is to actually bring them to a ugly, messy, which it would be, conclusion. And Trump came in incredibly arrogant, never was really pressed on how he would bring about this magical end of the conflict.

Before he even was in office in 24 24 hours he would have this ended. And I think he was arrogant and foolish enough to believe that he had that kind of relationship with Putin where he could just call his buddy on the phone and be able to work something out and do a deal the way that he is accustomed to doing. And obviously reality has hit him in the face right now. And so he's swinging now in the other direction

and going hard neocon. I mean, in some ways now we're getting a preview of a policy that will even be more hawkish than what the Biden administration did between this, you know, the hawks like Lindsey Graham have been pushing additional aggressive sanctions on Russia, which guys, we already have, Russia is already the most sanctioned country on the planet. Like the idea that additional sanctions are going to further do anything. I mean, I think it's, I think it's far-fetched. We should skip to C4 then.

Sorry to go out of order control room, but to your point, let's put C4 up on the screen. The Russian stock market actually went up 2.4% yesterday, which goes exactly to the point that you were just making. Maybe actually what Trump could have said at this Oval Office presser yesterday with Mark Ritta could have even been worse. Maybe stocks went up because there was an anticipation

that Trump could have done something that wasn't related to sanctions or that was in some ways worse than a 100%. They've been sanctioned to hell already. There's not much you can do on that front to some ways worse than a 100%. I mean, like, they've been sanctioned to hell already. Right. There's not much you can do on that front to make things worse. Well, in addition, we don't have an element for this because we're just seeing it, but Financial Times published a scoop that Trump asked Zelensky if Ukraine could hit Moscow,

according to people who were briefed on the call. Trump has privately encouraged Ukraine to step up deep strikes on Russian territory, even asking Zelensky whether he could strike Moscow if the U.S. provided long-range weapons, which we know now we are going to provide. According to people briefed on those discussions, the conversation took place during the July 4th call between the U.S. and Ukrainian leaders. Marks a sharp departure from Trump's previous stance on Russia's war and his campaign promised to end U.S. involvement in foreign conflicts, remains unclear whether Washington will deliver such weapons, but it appears that we are there.

Their sort of cope is like, oh, well, NATO is going to pay for it, but first we're shipping the weapons, and we'll see if we get reimbursed on the back end, I guess. The discussion underscores Trump's deepening frustration with Putin's refusal to engage in ceasefire talks. So you remember how he talked in the campaign trail, and I think justifiably so. His desire to end this conflict, as articulated at times during his campaign, I think was one of the appeals, certainly with the Republican base,

but I think more broadly with the American people as well, was part of the key to him creating this impression that he would be an anti-war president. And he talked about how we were flirting with World War III, that under Kamala Harris we would get World War III because of this conflict with another nuclear armed superpower. And so now here you are, fast forward to July 15th,

and he's encouraging Ukraine to strike Moscow and strike St. Petersburg as well with weapons provided by us. I mean, look, I get that we've gotten this far and there hasn't been a nuclear blow up. That's good. But that doesn't mean that a catastrophic escalation isn't still something that we have to concern ourselves with. That's a really good point about how he was criticizing potential Harris administration. And when we look back on the Biden administration, the bluster was so dangerous. The Atacams. It really, really was dangerous and Republicans capitalized on that. And one of Donald Trump's most important arguments from his perspective about how he approaches Vladimir Putin is that he doesn't needlessly

antagonize Putin and this is what neocons Critics said all along was foolish about Trump's strategy towards Putin How many American presidents have gone in and said they you know saw Putin's soul? I think that was George W Bush, in his eyes. They have trusted Putin and the neocons said, it always happens. You always get the rug pulled out from under you by Vladimir Putin, etc. It doesn't undermine Trump's point that it's better not to be antagonistic towards Putin,

but it does start to make it look like Trump had carried with that some genuine naivete about his relationship with Vladimir Putin to your point, Crystal, that is not panning out the way that he thought it would, where essentially he was like, well, we can just pick up the phone. I'll send Steve Wittkopf and we'll make a deal. Did not go quite that way. And we can sense his frustration. I'm going to play this moment that Trump had with a reporter in that meeting with the NATO secretary general yesterday. This is C2. I want to get the war settled.

They're not Americans that are dying in it. And, you know, I have a problem and JD has a problem. It's a stance that he's had for a long time. They're not Americans dying, but there are a lot of people dying on something that should be able to be settled. We all agree with that. But I am very disappointed with President Putin. I thought he was somebody that meant what he said and he'll talk so beautifully and then he'll bomb people at night. We don't like that. Thank you, everybody.

So, Crystal, I know that Trump, and this actually I do understand, doesn't like to telegraph exactly how far he might go. But now we pretty honestly have to ask ourselves a question if it's as far as the Biden administration was willing to go in ways that really were gambling with potential nuclear escalation. Yeah, I mean, at this point,

the policy is pretty indistinguishable from the Biden administration and he seems prepared to push it, continue pushing it forward, which was the effective trajectory of the Biden administration because it was, you know, we sort of drew lines around, okay, well, we consider these defensive weapons

and then, okay, we want these longer range things and over time, you give more and more and more and more. And there were always these operations that were occurring pretty quickly. We got to operations that were quite inflammatory that were occurring within Russia. And we just sort of turned a blind eye to that, even though we had said originally that we wanted to keep the conflict within Ukraine and not have these attacks within Russia. And so that trajectory of continued step by step by step escalation at this point appears to be followed by the Trump administration as well.

And the thing that frustrated me under the Biden administration, the thing that frustrates me now is I just don't think anyone could explain or really has a plan for how this is brought to an end. Like okay, so they and then they strike within Moscow. What then? Like there's no sign that Russia is just one Moscow or St. Petersburg strike away from south, you know what, you're right. We capitulate, we want to come to the table, we want to strike a deal that's going to be acceptable for Zelensky, there's no sign of that. So, you know, I just, it's one of these incredibly foolish and idiotic, but very typical,

American foreign policy situations, where there's just sort of like, it takes on a logic of its own. And there's really no plan or no feasible plan for effectuating any kind of a you know, a positive or beneficial or least bad of all options, sort of an outcome. It's just huh, I guess we're going to do this now and see what happens. Well, let's and that frustrates to no end, obviously, people

like Elbridge Colby, who caught all kinds of strays in the press last week for trying to pause some of these weapons because the United States at any given moment, whether or not you or I agree with the policy, could find itself in a kinetic conflict over Taiwan and Trump overruled that. So those frustrations are just going to be, I think, stronger and stronger among the people who were... I don't know that anyone has the ability to do anything about it. I mean, this is clearly Trump is driving the show on this. It doesn't matter to some extent that there were people brought in who disagree with the hawkishness here.

But that frustration from hawks and just from regular people, like that's a pretty significant concern. I want to roll this clip from Fox News. This is Lisa Booth reacting to Trump's comments. Let's go ahead and roll this as C3. See the business guy and President Trump. Look, I have concerns similar to what Paul expressed about, is this war never ending with Russia and Ukraine? Will it ever end?

You know, Russia has a larger military. They have more people to sacrifice at the altar of this war. However, I think President Trump deserves her deference. He's always right. When has he been wrong about foreign policy? His naysayers are the way everyone said there was going to be a World War three after, you know, sending those bombs to Iran and taking out some of their nuclear facilities or at least badly damaging them, that didn't come to fruition.

So he's repeatedly been, or moving the embassy to Jerusalem, everyone was worried about that. So everyone has been wrong. He's always been right. So he deserves her deference. Crystal, I was thinking about this. It reminds me of like, if you have a friend who's playing blackjack and like hit me, hit me. And they make the most irrational call and they end up winning.

And then they turn to you and they're like, see, you were wrong. And I'm like, no, I wasn't. You shouldn't have done that. I'm glad it worked out really well, but you shouldn't have done that. This is not the right strategy. Right, well, and I mean, with the Iran thing,

that presumes that that's all over and done, which we're about to talk about Israel, is not a good assumption whatsoever. So yeah, but I mean, you know, it speaks to this broader conversation about MAGA disappointments with Trump, and certainly the most upset I've seen any portion of the MAGA base is over Jeffrey Epstein,

although already in real time, you see the influencers trying to gather everybody. You know what? We're going to trust Trump. We're going to move on. But you know, you would think that on a matter of war and peace, this really was a central promise of how he would be different than a potential Kamala Harris administration. And now you've got a complete 180 where it's just an embrace effectively of the Biden policy and you know, the line here, at least from this individual on Fox News, but I think, you know, I don't think we'll see much upset over this from the MAGA influencer world or the MAGA faithful is well, he knows what he's doing. So we'll just trust Trump. That's what it always kind of comes back to. Yeah. And you know, as I think that sounds rather naive to put it nicely, I suppose, or charitably.

I don't think you should trust anybody. That's what I was just going to say. Yeah. I mean, I don't care how much you like the guy or feel like whatever. Like, no. And, you know, I think there were a lot of people on the Democratic side who fell into this trap under the Obama administration where it was like, well, we love this guy. So sure, he's like upping the drone war and doing these, like getting a list of people to assassinate and going forward with it and committing all these,

but it's Obama. So he must be doing it in a responsible way. And I think it's even more so under the Trump, with Trump, because he has such a strong force and cult of personality that this idea of just like, well, he must know better, so we're just gonna trust him on this, we're just gonna trust him on Iran, we're just gonna trust him on Epstein and whatever,

that is a place where I think it is always safe for mega-influencers to land. I know we're both in the same boat on this, but however this war, like this war is a meat grinder It is a tragedy every single day. So if If Trump pulls this off if he says hit me and it works then I think that would be wonderful, but we are six months in and he's he's even testing the patience of

Fox News on the Ukraine question. So not a time for optimism as it relates to finally getting an end to this. So what happened at Chappaquiddick? Well, it really depends on who you talk to. There are many versions of what happened in 1969 when a young Ted Kennedy drove a car into a pond. And left a woman behind to drown. There's a famous headline, I think,

in the New York Daily News. It's, Teddy escapes, blonde drowns. And in a strange way, right, that sort of tells you. The story really became about Ted's political future, Ted's political hopes. Will Ted become president? Chappaquiddick is a story of a tragic death and how the Kennedy machine took control.

And he's not the only Kennedy to survive a scandal. The Kennedys have lived through disgrace, affairs, violence, you name it. So is there a curse? Every week we go behind the headlines and beyond the drama of America's royal family. Listen to United States of Kennedy on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast,

or wherever you get your podcast. American history is full of wise people. Well, women said something like, you know, 99.99 percent of war is diarrhea and one percent is glory. Those founding fathers were gossipy AF and they loved to cut each other down. I'm Bob Crawford, host of American History Hotline, the show where you send us your questions about American history and I find the answers, including the nuggets of wisdom our history has to offer. Hamilton pauses and then he says, the greatest man that ever lived was Julius Caesar and Jefferson writes in his diary

This proves that Hamilton is for a dictator based on corruption My favorite line was what Neil Armstrong said it would have been harder to fake it than to do it Listen to American history hotline on the I heart radio app Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Pretty Private with Ebene, the podcast where silence is broken and stories are set free. I'm Ebene and every Tuesday, I'll be sharing all new anonymous stories that will challenge your perceptions and give you new insight on the people around you.

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Tune in on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. All right, well, let's talk about our great ally in all of this, Israel. Bibi Netanyahu making some pretty interesting comments on his reflections about the various fronts of this war, saying that actually the eighth front in his many wars that he started is disinformation.

Let's take a listen to that. This is the eighth front. The disinformation campaign is among us, you know, takes a second for a lie to circulate the world and then you have to battle it with the only weapon you have, which is the truth. And truth is slower than lies and more difficult to ascertain because you have to get the facts.

You have to, when you lie, you can say anything, and it's instantaneous. When you tell the truth, you have to ascertain the facts, and until you do that, in the electronic age, boy, that lie could encircle the earth, you know, a thousand times. So it's a handicap, but we'll fight the information war too.

Basically, the weapon of truth, we just have to be more efficient at this claim. And I think we have to shame the media that does this. I have to think that this is a reaction to, I mean, first of all, there's just a sense that they've lost control of the narrative. And yeah, after now we're coming up not too long from now, in two years of all of us seeing like bombed and, you know, obliterated babies and bomb tents and hospitals and schools and mosques and churches and everything else in our timelines, that,

guess what, some of that is going gonna break through despite your best efforts. It's interesting, of course, that he thinks in these explicit terms. It's interesting that this front of the war, like all of the other fronts of this war, this assault, requires the assistance of the United States of America, where I'm sure he would love to see,

even more censorship than has already been put in place on the domestic population in service of his atrocities. So I think it's very interesting and revealing comments. And I think it betrays Emily a sense that of a loss of control of the narrative and the democratic base is basically gone. I mean, there's some 80% that are disgusted with what Israel's been doing in our support of Israel on the Democratic side. But you had a turning point USA on display, especially among young Republicans,

increasing disgust there as well. That in the sense that this is not America first, it is not in America's interest to constantly be catering to this one client state. So it seems to me that he has some concerns about the way that American attitudes on both sides of the aisle have really shifted against them. Yeah. I mean, I imagine, and I think you're right, that we can sense this and creeping into public

view. this and creeping into public view, there is something close to panic in Likud when they look at American polling and when they look at on the American right and this gets, it manifests in the grossest way of just trying to weaponize anti-Semitism, charges of anti-Semitism very bluntly to rather than actually, I mean, a much more constructive way if you're Netanyahu to deal with all of this would not be to accuse people of believing false information or peddling disinformation or antisemitism or Netanyahu's allies like Mike Huckabee.

The constructive way is to deal with the substance of people's questions and concerns. But the, I think, fear and panic is just inducing this impulse to lump people into awful categories and to dismiss things as disinformation. It is, it goes without saying, of course, but it is very rich to hear a lecture on disinformation from Netanyahu. I mean, that's incredible stuff. To say the least.

Yeah, it's just incredible stuff. And that's part of what has, I think, shifted opinion on the right is people sort of looking around and realizing that their beliefs about Israel were sort of a house of cards to some extent, or their beliefs about, you know, sort of deference to Netanyahu, not about Israel itself. You know, I think broadly, you would probably still have support for the concept of Zionism on the American right.

But for American, continued American support, and for Netanyahu's ongoing war, no, you have cratering support, especially among young Republicans, which bodes very poorly for their ability to keep America in Israel's corner decades into the future. Yeah, I mean, if you look at the polling, basically the one group that is still firmly in the Zionist, yes, we support Israel no matter what camp,

are like boomer Republicans. Young Republicans are pretty evenly divided. And so I think you know for Bibi he was probably, because he's part of making it a more part of like making it more partisan when he came to Washington under Obama and he was advocating against the JCPOA whatever, I think he's probably kind of okay with the Democratic Party shifting away from Israel, as long as he's still got the Republicans, and as long as he still has, you know, obviously at the elite Democratic level, they still have plenty of influence there.

But to see the bubbling discontent on the Republican side as well, and Israel becoming a real fault line within the Republican Party in the same way, it's a huge schism between like the base and the elites and the Democratic Party, but it's become a real fault line within the Republican Party in the same way it's a huge schism between like the base and the elites in the Democratic Party. But it's become a real schism in the Republican Party as well as talking to Sagar about this yesterday. Because in the same way on the Democratic side, Israel exposes a hypocrisy of a supposed commitment to human rights. On the Republican side, it exposes a hypocrisy of a supposed commitment to America first.

So it really has become this sort of central dividing line. And at the same time also, you have, and this also speaks to that America first orientation, put D2 up on the screen, you had an American from Florida who was just murdered by Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank, he's visiting family in this village, when settlers beat him

unconscious and then blocked an ambulance from reaching him for hours. So they beat him nearly to death and then when medics attempted to respond, they blocked those ambulance from being able to come and provide medical assistance to this, again, American citizen who was their visiting family and he died. In addition, Emily, I think you probably saw this, CNN's Jeremy Diamond, who is their Jerusalem-based correspondent, was traveling out with the team to try to cover this story and their vehicle was attacked

by violent, illegal settlers as well. So, you know, in what way is it America first? I guarantee you won't hear from any Republican, but Donald Trump isn't gonna be concerned about this American who was beaten to death by settlers who are enabled and supported by our great allies, the Israelis. You won't hear about it from this Republican administration

that is supposedly, quote unquote, America first. Well, this conflict is obviously, it always has been a swirl of disinformation. That's hard if you're on the other side of the world to know immediately what's true and what's false. But for Netanyahu in this case, or actually let's just take the Jeremy Diamond post, he says that their car was attacked by settlers.

What was CNN doing, just getting to the disinformation claims that often come up here, and have in the case of the American who was killed, and I don't know the truth of that, but I can look at the case of CNN and say, I don't think CNN was throwing rocks at the settlers. I don't think CNN did anything to warrant this attack. And so often we are told that there are not unprovoked attacks, that the attack was any attack that we're considering must have been provoked in some way or another.

But that's obviously not the case with the CNN crew who was just trying to do their jobs. So it's just like, here you go, an example right there to refute any claims that, say the CNN crew had just been Palestinians, you would probably hear all kinds of things about provocations and other things like that. You wouldn't even hear about it, Emily. Well, if you did, you would hear that they were throwing rocks or something.

Yeah, no, they're Hamas. They would be Hamas for sure. But it's hard to say Jeremy Diamond is Hamas in this instance. The other thing I think about is imagine it was a Jewish American who was visiting family in Israel and was beaten to death by Palestinians. How do you think that that would be treated by the news media? How do you think it would be treated by this administration? I mean, just the absolute blatant double standard is so glaring and so grotesque at this point

that to take it back to Bibi there concerned about the disinformation front in his eight front apparently war that he is committing here. His ability to keep a lid on things that are so obvious, like the fact that there's this blatant double standard when it comes to Palestinians versus Israelis is part of the loss of his control.

He can no longer keep all these things together in the age of social media, and just with how brazen it all is at this point. So, you know, it doesn't surprise me that part of what he and his allies in the US and the Trump administration has been happy to go along with is this intense censorship campaign against Americans

and against foreign students as well who have come here. Christy, I, I just wanted to see me such an important point about social media and them losing their grip because if we go back to the Shireen Abu Akhla case, also an American, and in that case, the Israeli government put out statements that I think they thought would hold but because the media had access, CNN I think initially did a long and thorough investigation into this, they had access to all of these different social media posts or people had taken videos with their smartphones and all of that. And because of Google Maps and their ability

to sort of piece these things together, they were able to have audio experts listen to different snippets that had been recorded. And everything sort of fell apart when you were able to kind of with free information string, put different pieces of the puzzle together. And so you can't just put out a statement and expect the American government to swallow it whole cloth anymore because the American media is not always going to swallow it whole cloth.

Now, American media is obviously gonna be more concerned about deaths of journalists than people who are visiting family. So that's sadly true in the case of Srinabh Bhakla. But it's much, much harder to just say, this is our story, this is the story, and then get the United States and the US media to go along with it.

Let's go ahead and put D3 up on the screen because this is just, this picture says so much. So this is when Netanyahu was in town and you've got a bipartisan group of senators there and members there who are meeting with him. And that's Cory Booker trying to hide. So, and it's just so perfect. And I think it speaks to the moment so much,

where it's like, Cory Booker is still all the way in with Israel, but he's smart enough to realize it's not a great look at this point. So he tries to have it both ways by being at the photo op with Netanyahu, but also trying to hide Gretchen Whitmer style during the picture. It's just, to me, it's a perfect encapsulation of the cowardice of Democratic Party elites,

the culpability of Democratic Party elites, and of Cory Booker himself. I mean, that picture for Cory Booker is brutal. Yeah, Cory Booker. Cory Booker is brutal. And you asked Congressman Khanna about this a little bit earlier in the show, Crystal, but the sentiments of Democratic voters have shifted so significantly that

it's very possible this is a picture that follows Cory Booker throughout his political career and is a problem for him. Oh yeah, I would say so. Last piece I definitely want to get to here, because it ties back to the Iran conversation we were having, put D4 up on the screen. Bibi has apparently told Trump that Israel will go back to war with Iran if the, quote, nuclear threat resumes. And apparently, Emily, we are in the business

of just taking Israel's word for what is going on in Iran. So if Netanyahu down the road tells Trump, hey, they restarted the nuclear program. Now they may well, in fact, what we've done has made it much more likely that they actually pursue a nuclear weapon that created a logic that would make it much more likely that they would pursue a nuclear weapon.

But I think it's very likely, I would say, possible to likely that we come down the road a little bit and Netanyahu says, sorry, look, they restarted their nuclear program. You can trust our intel. It doesn't really matter what the US intel community says apparently. And we're gonna be right back in the situation

that we saw unfold before. So Netanyahu's in town last week. We mentioned this earlier in the situation that we saw unfold before. So Netanyahu's in town last week, we mentioned this earlier in the show, and the New York Times publishes a single anonymous Israeli source saying that not all of the enriched uranium was moved, which, Crystal, we talked about this on Friday's show, I think we all believe, that sounds very plausible, that may well be true,

but the reason that you put it out that way is you're trying to plant the seeds for escalation once again. And that was never, I mean, I think that was never out of the question at all as soon as the 12 day war. And that's where there's a lot of victory laps being taken like, oh, you guys were wrong that World War III would start. It's like, well, it's been a month or what? It's been like 10 days.

I hope to goodness that we were wrong. I don't know that that's the case yet and examples like this are why. Well, and I don't think any of us ever said it will lead to World War III. Right, it's a gamble. You're playing with fire. And they were and continue to play with fire.

And Bibi knows what he wants and is going to continue to plant those seeds and push in this direction. And so, you know, one step was that article saying, hey, they kept their uranium. And the next step is informing Trump, like, look, we don't wanna do it, but if they go back to, if they restart the nuclear program, we're gonna have no choice. And it also ties into the Epstein thing, because hey, if there's there there with regard to Trump, then we all know he's gonna go along

with whatever the Israelis ultimately want him to do. Right, yeah, what choice would he have? Now, obviously you always have a choice not to get blackmailed, but it's, if that's what's happening, but yeah, what choice would he have? Now obviously you always have a choice not to get blackmailed, but if that's what's happening. But yeah, there's a significant sway in all likelihood. All right, Emily, I'm going to let you go for the day because I know you have some other things to tend to, but thank you as always.

And is it you and Ryan tomorrow? I think Ryan's in Ireland. Wow. Is it you and me tomorrow? I don't know. I guess I do like when we have to do this on air. I think it's good for everyone. All right. Well, I'll message you later and we'll work it out.

Maybe I'll make Saga be in for me. We can have an all-Maggot show again. People may enjoy that. All right. See you later, lady. See ya. So what happened at Chappaquiddick? Well, it really depends on who you talk to. See ya. blonde drowns, and in a strange way, right, that sort of tells you.

The story really became about Ted's political future, Ted's political hopes. Will Ted become president? Chappaquiddick is a story of a tragic death and how the Kennedy machine took control. And he's not the only Kennedy to survive a scandal. The Kennedys have lived through disgrace, affairs, violence, you name it. So is there a curse? Every week we go behind the headlines and beyond the drama of America's royal family. Listen to United States of Kennedy on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast, or wherever

you get your podcasts. American history is full of wise people. What women said something like, you know, 99.99% of war is diarrhea and 1% is glory. Those founding fathers were gossipy AF and they love to cut each other down. I'm Bob Crawford, host of American History Hotline, the show where you send us your questions about American history and I find the answers, including the nuggets of wisdom our history has to offer. Hamilton pauses, and then he says, "'The greatest man that ever lived was Julius Caesar.'" And Jefferson writes in his diary,

"'This proves that Hamilton is for a dictator based on corruption.'" My favorite line was what Neil Armstrong said. It would have been harder to fake it than to do it. Listen to American history hotline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Pretty Private with Ebene, the podcast where silence is broken and stories are set free. I'm Ebene and every Tuesday I'll be sharing all new anonymous stories that will challenge your perceptions and give you new insight on the people around you.

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Pretty Private isn't just a podcast. It's your personal guide for turning storylines into lifelines. Every Tuesday, make sure you listen to Pretty Private from the Black Effect Podcast Network. Tune in on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Really excited to be joined this morning by Joshua Aaron. He is a tech entrepreneur and he is

the developer of an app called IceBlock that allows users to report where they've seen ice in the vicinity. Joshua, it is great to have you. Welcome. Thank you so much for having me, Crystal. Yeah, of course. We can put a little bit of view up on the screen of what this app looks like, so people can kind of get a sense of it.

You can see maps showing location that has been reported of ICE agents. Just talk to us a little bit about why you decided to develop this app and what you hope that it accomplishes. Sure, so when I saw what was going on with the first Trump administration and then of course his rhetoric on the campaign trail for his second, you know reading project 2025 and just

kind of seeing the forest through the trees I guess, I knew what was coming down the pike and I wanted to do something to help fight back. So you know growing up in a Jewish household and being a member of that community, I had the opportunity to meet Holocaust survivors and learn all about the history of Hitler's rise to power in Nazi Germany. And so when we see five-year-olds in courtrooms

without representation, when we see college students being disappeared for their political beliefs, and even worse, when we see babies being ripped from their mother's arms with their screening for their children in the name of patriotism, we're seeing history repeat itself. This was the best way that I could use my talents to help fight back. Tell people just specifically

how the app works and what it actually does. Sure. It's a crowdsourced app. Basically, what it does is akin to something like Waze or Apple Maps, where when you're driving down the road and you get an alert that says, hey, there's a speed trap reported ahead. What do you do? You slow down, you avoid the situation. Sort of the same concept with IceBlock where users can report sightings of ice that they see in public. You know,

so they see an ice raid going on or they see trucks pulling up. They can report that location, and all users within a five-mile radius get an alert, and it comes up in the list on their device within the app. And the idea is, inform, not obstruct. So let's have them avoid that situation, turn left, turn around, go home, protect themselves and their families.

It will not come as a surprise to you that this is very controversial. Can put E3 up on the screen. In fact, you've come under fire sort of directly from the administration. CNN wrote an article about IceBlock and the response here from the Ice Acting Director, Todd Lyons said,

CNN's promotion of an ice spotting app is reckless and irresponsible. Advertising an app that basically paints a target on law enforcement officers backs is sickening. My officers and agents are already facing a 500% increase in assaults and going on live television to announce an app that it goes on from there. But basically you get the sense of their position here.

I mean, what's your response to this allegation that you're painting a target on law enforcement's backs? Well, let me say this. First of all, Crystal, welcome to the party because now you're helping kind of get the word out as well. And I do appreciate that. As far as painting a target on ICE's back, that's not what this is at all.

And just to my point that I just explained, this is informed, not obstruct. No one my point I just explained this is informed not obstruct no one is doxing agents no one is obstructing justice as far as like what we're purporting to do right this app just simply says hey this is where ice has been seen avoid the situation so you know as far as their 500% rhetoric with assaults it was 400 the week before now it's you know it was 500 that now it's 700 to you know tomorrow to be 5,000 and the reality is these assaults are ridiculous for the most part of me it's as innocuous as

brushing your arm up against an ice agent are patting them on the back and now we're seeing is if the U.S. citizen gets rounded up in these raids, they figure out they're a US citizen and then they charge them with assault so that they don't look bad. So, you know, it's just all fear mongering and hate rhetoric. I recall earlier in this administration, Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez was doing informational sessions just for immigrants to know their basic rights.

And she came under fire from this administration and has been threatened with being charged and arrested. Tom Homan went after her directly. Are you concerned of similar legal jeopardy because of your development of the Ice Block app? You know, I got to be honest, I'm not really concerned about it because this is protected speech under the first amendment.

It's very clear. And I had multiple constitutional and criminal attorneys look at this before the app was launched and all of them agreed that this is protected speech. So much like any authoritarian regime, spreading fascism throughout their nation, anytime anybody opposes their mission to basically hurt people and take control, they're going to push back and they're going

to demonize that person. They're going to come after what they're doing. And that's exactly what they're doing. So as I've said before, they can continue to come after me. They can continue to demonize me. They can continue to demonize the app all they want, but none of their arguments hold any water, and all it serves to do is energize their base.

Josh, what have you thought about the alliance between the many of the large tech companies and this administration? Obviously you have some major tech figures, so Elon Musk previously as a major part of this government, Peter Thiel was significant influence, Mark Andreessen, David Saxon, active part of this government. Peter Thiel was significant influence, Marc Andreessen, David Saxon, active part of this government. JD Vant seems to have been handpicked

by these tech right figures. What do you make of this alliance? I think it's terrible. I mean, I guess that's the best way to put it, but these are people who have the priorities mixed up. I would say, look, we understand that you have employees to take care of, we understand that you have stockholders to report to,

but at what point do you say enough is enough? When are you going to grow a backbone and start going, I don't think this is the right thing to do and hurting people may not be the best path to longevity for my corporation. People have said, well, you released it on the Apple platform. Well, Tim Cook donated a million dollars to Trump's campaign. And I've countered that by saying, I think what he did was donate that money to avoid tariffs on his products, because if those tariffs went into effect, people would be paying $4,000 or something for an iPhone.

I don't think Tim supports this at all. I don't think Apple supports this. They are very much a, for lack of a better way to say it, a DEI company. They support the LGBTQ plus community. They support all walks of life. And those are the people that we wanna align ourselves with. And to the people like Elon Musk, really dude, that's all I'm going to say.

Well, and I would also say to the Apple point, like I don't know what's in Tim Cook's heart, but you sort of have to exist in the world as it exists. And so if you were going to not put the staff out on the Apple platform, I'm not sure how people would be able to find it and utilize it. Joshua, thank you so much for joining us. Anything in particular you want to place where people can find you or more information about the app you want to put out there? Sure. So the official website is iceblock.app,

and you can find me on Blue Sky. I'm Joshua at joshua.stealingheather.com, and of course the official Ice Block account is on Blue Sky, and it's at iceblock.app. All right, Joshua, thank you so much. Great to meet you. Thanks, Crystal, bye bye. All right, guys, that does it for us here today.

Hope you have a fantastic day and we will see you back here tomorrow. I knew I wanted to obey and submit, but I didn't fully grasp for the rest of my life what that meant. For My Heart Podcasts and Rococo Punch, this is The Turning, River Road. In the woods of Minnesota, a cult leader married himself to 10 girls and forced them into a secret life of abuse. But in 2014, the youngest escaped. Listen to The Turning River Road on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Just like great shoes, great books take you places. Through unforgettable love stories

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