Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 7/17/25: Trump Says Epstein Files A Hoax, MAGA Pollster Dire Warning, Israel Bombs Syria, Markets Panic, Zohran Meets NYC Billionaires

Episode Date: July 17, 2025

Krystal and Saagar discuss Trump says Epstein files are a hoax, MAGA pollster dire warning, Israel bombs Syria, markets panic as Trump floats firing fed, Zohran meets with NYC billionaires.   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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that will make you laugh, cry, and add way too many books to your TBR pile. Listen to Bookmarked by Reese's Book Club on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey guys, Sagar and Crystal here. Independent media just played a truly massive role in this election and we are so excited about what that means for the future of this show. This is the only place where you can find

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of independent news media, and we hope to see you at breakingpoints.com. Good morning, everybody. Happy Thursday. Have an amazing show for everybody today. What do we have, Crystal? Indeed we do. Trump making some more wild comments about Epstein

and trashing his own supporters. We've also got some reaction to that. Alex Jones is now wondering if Magna Magna is in fact a cult. He is asking. He's going through it. We'll share that with you. We've also got some interesting polling from some Republican pollsters in particular

about how people are feeling about all of this. We have some very significant international news. Israel bombing Damascus, an extraordinary escalation there, a really wild situation, complete Psy-op effectively. We'll break it all down for you what led to this and what they're saying. Trump is flirting with firing the Fed chair, apparently brought a bunch of Republicans in, reportedly even drafted a letter, but Jerome Powell remains in place as of right now.

Zoran Mamdani sits down with business leaders in New York, some interesting people in the room, and he drafted a letter, but Jerome Powell remains in place as of right now. Zoran Mamdani sits down with business leaders in New York. Some interesting reaction to that. New York Times total whiff on another Democratic primary is kind of a funny and enraging story all in one. And we're gonna have Michael Tracy join us for a little little debate on whether or not Epstein was an Intel asset. I'm gonna play the like neutral moderator, like, I'm on your side, but I'm going to try to play the neutral moderator, so it's just a one-on-one rather than, you know,

stacking the deck against Michael Tracy, but that should be a good one. He's been going in. I like Michael. I personally think that he's being a contrarian for the sake of it, but we will keep it respectful and we will make it so that... Look, I just want to lay out the case, and I'll have him respond to what that case is personally I think he's arguing against a lot of straw man But before we get to that thank you to everybody who's been signing up and supporting us at breaking points Comm we've got a lot of people coming in on the Epstein story, which we are very very glad to have you We're doing as much you know work on this as we possibly can and it is great to be back here at the desk

We got some interesting stuff that's coming up. I was on the flagrant podcast with Andrew Schultz. I think the podcast drops at some point today. And actually, I also filmed something with the flagrant guys interviewing them about reflections on the Trump interview, promises, some of their criticism, et cetera. And so that will be dropping later on. And that, of course, will be dropping first for our premium subscribers. So if you want to watch that, you can go ahead, breakingpoints.com.

Very excited to see all of that. Yeah, it'll be fun. All right, let's go ahead and start with the Epstein story. So Trump is, at this point, what is it? Quintippling down? Quintippling down. I think quintipple is the factor, the math factor that we're in right now. Basically trashing his own supporters, saying everybody that is interested in the

story is stupid, is that they are falling for a democratic plan, is that the files, to the extent that they ever existed, were actually an Obama hoax. Here's what he had to say. He's dead, he's gone, and all it is is the Republicans, certain Republicans got duped by the Democrats and they're following a Democrat playbook. And no different than Russia, Russia, Russia and all the other hoaxes. They're started by the Democrats. By the way, I think the biggest scandal, that's the scandal they should be talking about,

not Jeffrey Epstein. The scandal you should be talking about is the auto pen, because I think it's the biggest scandal, one of them in American history. I lost a lot of faith in certain people. Yeah, I lost, because they got duped by the Democrats. The Democrats are good for nothing. They've done a terrible job. They almost destroyed our country.

Would you consider appointing a special counsel to investigate the Jeffrey Epstein investigation? I have nothing to do with it. So that last part is very important. First of all, you know, basically saying it's an Obama hoax and I had nothing to do with it. Initially there was some MAGA cope basically saying, oh, don't worry, he's going to appoint a special prosecutor. It seems to be, you know, basically drifting very far away from that. But I mean, we got to combine this really with the actual truth social post that he made yesterday, which really, really trashed a lot of his supporters.

Let's put this up there on the screen. Here's what he writes, quote, "'The radical left Democrats have hit pay dirt again, "'just like the fake and fully discredited Steele dossier, "'the lying 51 intelligence agents, laptop from hell, "'which the Dems swore had come from Russia. "'No, it came from Hunter Biden's bathroom. And even Russia, Russia, Russia scam itself,

a totally fake and made up story used in order to hide Crooked Hillary's big loss in the 2016 election. These scams and hoaxes are all the Democrats are good at. It's all they have. There's no good at governing. Okay, I'm gonna continue now. Their new scam is what we will forever call the Jeffrey Epstein hoax.

And my past supporters have bought into this bullshit in quotes, hook line and sinker. They haven't learned their lesson and probably never will, even after being conned by the lunatic left for eight long years. I've had more success in six months, etc. He continues, what does he say? These people want to talk about with strong prodding by the fake news and the success star of Dems is the Jeffrey Epstein hoax

Let these weaklings continue forward and do Democrats work. Don't even think about taking talking of our incredible unprecedented success I don't want their support anymore. Thank you for the attention to this matter make America great again So he talks about his quote past supporters have potted into this bullshit about how he doesn't want their support anymore And I mean he's look the guys making it as clear as it gets, right? And I think again, you know, the reason why all this stuff kind of matters and talking about it all week is that the, you know, the prism of Epstein was one in which, you know, Trump successfully, I wouldn't, I would say he seized on that along with a lot of the MAGA movement to show everybody how it was outsiders versus insiders.

And it was very important, right, because it fit with the deep state and the prosecutions that were against him. And it was really like, you know, they're not coming after me, they're coming after you. And these very, very high level people in power. And it was like talking about corruption. And it revealed really in which the way the world worked and how they, the quote unquote MAGA and the Trump movement and all of that,

was like this renegade band of insiders coming in to destroy. And then really what you watch is like the complete flip that happens in their rhetoric and just becoming, you know, new boss the same as the old boss. So I really can't think I can overstate how important that prism is. No one is saying that this is the most important thing. But when you put it all together,

when you put the Iran strikes, the Ukraine policy, the tax bill, so much of the way, governance is happening. I mean, look, if you're a maha or whatever right now, I'm not sure if people know this, RFK Jr. just approved the Moderna vaccine for six months old. So I don't see a lot of Maha people calling him out. And there's like a big shakeup over there too.

They just fired his Chief of Staff, right? Yeah, the biggest win they have is that people can now drink cane sugar Coke. So congratulations, diabetics. You can now actually drink a can of Coke with 10 more grams or 10 more calories in it. Congratulations to everybody, because apparently that is a great maha victory.

The other one is they got artificial dyes out of ice cream, because I didn't know that was a problem with ice cream, is that artificial dyes, Crystal, are the problem in ice cream, not the shitload of sugar that people are eating. Well, not even all ice cream is just one brand of ice cream. It's just like, come on, okay? Oh, the steak and shake fries,

which by the way I checked, have more calories, the beef tallow shake and shake fries, have more calories per serving than McDonald's fries. Now, I'm gonna have all the seed oil bros in the comments. I don't care, okay, let's, I'll eat the McDonald's fries and the Diet Coke and all of that in the same amount, you know, and we'll compare our calorie content and then we'll check, everybody, we'll take blood work

and we'll look at our, we'll look at our, I will guarantee you, you're gonna be fatter and more disgusting if you continue to buy into this stuff. But my point is just like, if you look at all of these things, all these promises, all of this like renegade type behavior from the DOJ to Maha to all of this like insurgency, like I'm not seeing a whole lot of you know, like real love,

groundbreaking stuff that's happening right now. And I do think that this is beginning to erode some of Trump's support in some of these disparate coalitions. I will not sit here and say, MAGA grandmas are abandoning Donald Trump. That's ridiculous and that's just not really how it works. But, you know, you didn't win some popular vote

and some tens of millions of votes on the backs of MAGA alone. There's millions of people, specifically young people and all those as well, who really did buy into a lot of this vision because they were very upset about the direction of the cultural left. And now I think that they're very much up for grabs.

So it's a big political opportunity. I think it's just very interesting to see the way that this shake out of the last two and a half months has been in my... I thought Doge would kill Trump really politically, but I actually think it's the Iran strike forward that has eroded so much of what people saw in this person. And now the direction is pretty damn clear. Your first 200 days or whatever are over.

In general, nobody really does anything after this point as president. You're basically just managing more international crises, which worked out well the first time. So I think we can see the direction that the plane is pointed towards. Iran, Ukraine, Epstein. Yeah, all in just the past several weeks. All in two months, yeah.

Yeah, so I mean, that's, if you thought that he was gonna make good on those promises of no new wars and we're gonna end the Ukraine war and we're gonna release the files. You've got to, this has been certainly head spinning. I do wanna just pause on what he's actually saying here because it's easy to just be like,

oh my God, this guy is insane and he's just saying all this wild stuff. But he's now consistently asserting that there are Epstein files, remember the memo they put on, there is no incriminating client list, case closed, it's over, we're moving on. Well, he's indicating there are files,

but they were created by his enemies, and so there are hoax. And it's hard to read that in any other way than he is sort of laying the groundwork to give himself an excuse if things come out that do point to him in connection with Jeffrey Epstein. And I mean, the bottom line is he's acting so guilty. And there's really no other explanation that makes sense

for the insane way that he's behaving here. You're throwing, slamming his own supporters, saying, hey, I don't even want your support if you're interested in this and daring them to defy him. Now some of them are already going along with it. We watched this interview that John Solomon said with him where he's not in line. Oh yeah definitely the Democrats definitely rigged it you know against you and they're definitely inventing things against you. So plenty of people and influencers will actually go along with this line.

We'll see how many will ultimately buy it. But it seems very much like he is laying the groundwork to try to inoculate himself against potential damaging information coming out. So that's number one. And number two, as I've been going back through, I know you've been going back down the rabbit hole and I've been looking into,

okay, well, what are all the Trump-Eppstein connections? And one of the things that I stumbled upon yesterday is a pretty This is sort of thing. You're like, how is this not common knowledge? It was written up in a British tabloid actually the tabloid that galane Maxwell's father had once owned before he died under also mysterious circumstances Wrote up that Trump at age 51 was dating a 20-year-old who he had been introduced to by Ghislaine Maxwell, who it later came out had been an underage trafficking victim of Jeffrey Epstein.

Trump dated that woman. And this piece also said that this was not the first woman that Ghislaine Maxwell had introduced him to. I mean, you go back and you look at the quote where Trump says, infamously, I knew Jeffrey for 15 years. He likes beautiful women, maybe as much as I do, many on the younger side.

You can't tell me this man who was a fixture at Epstein parties in Manhattan, who was practically his next door neighbor down in Palm Beach, Virginia Gouffre worked at Mar-a-Lago, that's where Ghislaine Maxwell met her. You can't tell me he didn't know what's going on. Because even, there were all sorts of whispers

and rumors in these circles about exactly what was going on because he wasn't exactly discreet about it. So when you think about that, then you start to think, oh, interesting that Trump owns these, you know, beauty pageants, and bragged about going into the dressing room where the girls were getting dressed.

Oh, interesting, he owned a modeling agency, which are known to be hothouses of underage exploitation and abuse. And then you see the way he's behaving here and the way he's trying to give him some sort of out if there is damaging information that comes out. I don't know guys, y'all can draw whatever conclusions you wanna draw, but the lines are all pointing

in one particular direction. And last thing, sorry, I'm gonna get you to react to this. Megyn Kelly said something interesting too, and Emily actually pointed this out, and I didn't really fully wrap my head around it when she said it. Megyn Kelly said, I have insiders who are telling me that the files were all set up to point directly to Trump. Now, I guess there's a couple ways you could read that. One is just like Trump's guilty. Another is she's also trying to indicate like all the Democrats set him up. You know,

they rigged these files and inserted fake information about Donald Trump. As if they, you know, if they were going to do that, like they wouldn't release that before he got reelected. You know? Well, and also, if that is true, then you can prove that that is true and be like, look, you know, here's the paper trail.

Yeah, here's where, yeah. Or, you know, you could do a retrospective and you could quote, make the files more fulsome. But yeah, I mean, listen, all of that is public record basically. I mean, I didn't know about the 20 year old thing, but the rest of it, it's like,

all of it was kind of baked in. It's like, yeah, Trump is a sleazy old man. That was basically baked into the pump of consciousness. I think everybody was willing to be like, okay, well, at this point, it's pretty clear track record of behavior, the divorces, the tabloid behavior, et cetera. But like his behavior over the last week or so

has a lot of people being like, hey man, I don't know, like this really could be, like it shows you something, there's a real, you know, there may be something there. And at the very least, like it's a cover up of some kind, for what purpose? It could be personal. I personally think a lot of it is intelligence-related.

It could be both. And it could be a combination of both. I don't know, the intel stuff just makes a lot more sense to me considering just the rabid pro-Israel direction that we're going in right now. Yeah, but that would make even more sense if they have something on him. And that's why anybody who tells you,

oh, this is a side show and this isn't important and people care about the price of eggs, of course, people care about other things, no doubt about it. And we're covering other stories in the show, there are other things going on in the world. If Massad has pedo blackmail material on the president of the United States,

I think we should know that. I think that's probably a pretty important thing to know. So no, we can't just dismiss this story out of hand, especially after the way that Trump has responded to this in such a bizarre and inexplicable fashion, and is now seems to be explicitly laying the groundwork to have some sort of excuse if something bad does ultimately come out.

And let's also not forget that Steve Bannon apparently said previously, going into 2016, that Jeffrey Epstein was the one person who he thought could nuke Trump's presidential ambitions. There you go. 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

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on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. American history is full of wise people. Well women said something like, you know, 99.99% of war is diarrhea and 1% 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. Just like great shoes, great books take you places. Through unforgettable love stories and into conversations with characters you'll never forget. I think any good romance, it gives me this feeling of like butterflies.

I'm Danielle Robay and this is Bookmarked by Reese's Book Club, the new podcast from Hello Sunshine and iHeart Podcast. Every week I sit down with your favorite book lovers, authors, celebrities, book talkers, and more to explore the stories that shape us, on the page and off. I've been reading every Reese's Book Club pick, deep diving book talk theories,

and obsessing over book to screen casts for years. And now, I get to talk to the people making the magic. So if you've ever fallen in love with a fictional character, or cried at the last chapter, or passed a book to a friend saying, you have to read this, this podcast is for you. Listen to Bookmarked by Reese's Book Club on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. All right, let's go and put the Elon Musk thing up there on the screen. A reply from Elon.

Here's what he had to say. Quote, they, oh, the old admit nothing, deny everything, make counterclaims, but it won't work this time. And quote, wow, amazing, Epstein killed himself and Ghislaine is in federal prison for a hoax. By the way, Ghislaine's legal team has been citing the government's actions and appealing the US Supreme Court to overturn her conviction. So that's great. Really, congratulations.

And appealing. Great work by the US government. Directly to Trump. Yes. Directly to Trump. I mean, she's like, hey, you said it's a hoax, so if it's a hoax, then why am I serving 20 years in federal prison? Great question, isn't it?

Let's also get to Alex Jones and some of the, basically dissident, I don't know what you would call it, but people are speaking out and basically saying, okay Trump, if this is the way that you wanna play it, then I'm basically out with you. Here's what Alex Jones had to say. He says, I'm not in a cult. You people that bring this up don't even deserve

to be involved in this movement. You are excommunicata. You are henceforth ex cathedra from the mouth of the God King. You are expelled from the Church of the Holy Golden Toad, Donald John Trump. Well, I was never in the Church of the Holy Golden Toad. I do like you being a maverick, standing up for the country. We have the same enemies. I respect your stamina and courage.

Been a big cheerleader when I agree with what you're doing. But if I'm being excommunicated, let me be clear, I was never in your church to be excommunicated. So you can't excommunicate me because I was never in your church. I was never in a cult. I never said MAGA was a cult. I said a lot of people want it to be a cult.

I was never in a cult, basically calling Trump out, saying, listen, you're like some great God emperor. I mean, in some ways, basically calling Trump out, saying, listen, you're like some great god emperor. I mean, in some ways, like Alex is correct in terms of it was never presented necessarily as a cult, but let's be honest about the way this politically has ended up working out and the way operationally it is. I don't know, did you guys cover the Ukraine thing yesterday? The poll, which is like when told Trump's decision.

Oh no, we didn't cover that. Yeah, this is a main, just so people know, this is a new Echelon Insights poll and it was MAGA voters when asked, if they said do you support sending more arms to Ukraine, the original answer was like the vast majority no. Then when told Trump supports it, it's Trump's decision, 65% were like yes.

I was like okay, so you actually are in a call because you're- We saw the Iran numbers. And this is where everything surrounds the whole trust the plan. They genuinely only trust Donald Trump. There's no really getting around that. But I just want to caution again everybody,

and there's a lot of Republicans who are like, look, he can do anything and he can get away with it. I just don't think that that is true at a macro level. And there are a lot of people who are now talking about how Republicans are gonna take an absolute beating in the midterms. They probably weren't gonna anyways, even if this was a decent, right enough administration

just because of the way that political cycles work. But now you're really setting it up for demoralization. And it's not, again, not the base, but these lower propensity voters who crawled out of the woodwork to vote for Donald Trump. So many people voted in the last election, never even voted before. Those types of people who were brand new Republicans, and there's always an opportunity every time some candidate is able to bring those people out

and then actually convert them into like sustained parts of your political base, they're not coming back, you know, for a variety of reasons. I think Epstein is actually a decent enough reason for one of them, and it connects to so many different tentacles in our foreign policy. But yeah, how is Fox News and other people spinning it? They're like, well, actually the auto pen scandal. That's the real scandal. So Trump is like, hey, we need to move on.

There's little girls who are dead in Texas. How dare you ask me about Epstein? And that's why the auto pen scandal involving the last president, that's actually the biggest scandal in American history. Let's take a listen from Fox News. If you care about the constitution and the rule of law, Trump is right. The auto pen is way more serious than Jeffrey Epstein

because you could have a series of aides here who seized the power of the presidency and used it for their own purposes. Way more serious than Jeffrey Epstein. By the way, for all of our younger viewers, if you don't know who John Yoo is, John Yoo is the guy who was in the Bush White House who authored all of the infamous torture memos

and executive privileges for George W. Bush to expand his authority basically to the levels of a king. So in case you're wondering about constitutionality and the love of constitution. The expert on the rule of law there. 20 years ago, John Yoo actually was a household name amongst a lot of Americans, because they're like, hey, fuck this guy,

just so people know who it is. So yeah, just laying that out there in terms of who they, it's amazing to me how you can whitewash your reputation, and 20 years after authoring these memos, and being like a legitimate pariah in American society, and you can bring your way back and say, hey, by the way, actually the auto pen scandal is a much bigger scandal than the Epstein thing.

I mean, the auto pen thing, sure, okay, let's talk about it. To the extent that it matters, it's really not about the auto pen itself, it's about Biden's senility. I'm fine with that. Okay, fine, let's, you know, Biden's doctor, what are these, pleaded the fifth

whenever he was before Congress. I agree, that's a huge problem. I'm totally on board, but in the words of Laura Loomer, who we're about to show up soon, you can walk and chew gum at the same time. The Epstein one actually does seem a lot more urgent for today considering all of its foreign policy implications. Don't see a lot of people talking about that.

It's one of the first times I really have seen the right and Trump specifically try and fail to change the subject. Usually they're very good at this. They have like their media machine, the auto pen thing's gonna be a scandal, we're just gonna go in and go in and go in and get people to care about this

and it just hasn't really worked out. So anyway, you've got that going on. I wanted to run something by you that I mentioned to Emily yesterday, I think it was. This moment for Trump and the way he's asking his base to completely repudiate something they believed five seconds ago, the thing it reminds me of most

is actually the grabber by the P word moment. Because think at that time, you had these evangelical right Christians who were in the tent, who were a little leery of Trump anyway, Mike Pence on the ticket, and this comes out, and he's asking them to turn on a dime from all of their outrage about Bill Clinton getting a blowjob in the White House

and being the moral majority and family values, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, to turn on a dime and say, nope, this is locker room talk and we don't care. And you know what, they did, they did. Now, there are some things that are different today. Number one, the media ecosystem is different. His coalition is a little bit different.

And he is potentially, maybe, a lame duck, depending on whether he tries for his third term or whatever happens there. So there also may be people who are looking past him and thinking there's going to be a post-Trump Republican party. So that could create a situation that is different, but you know, that is to me what rhymes the most

with this moment where he is asking his own base to completely throw out the window, long-held core beliefs, just to back him up and go along with him. It's almost like a test the way that that was. The only reason I think it's a little bit different is that, well, first of all, at that time, he basically had something

that he could offer them that nobody else would offer, where he literally said, I'm going to appoint pro-life justices to the Supreme Court and overturn Roe versus Wade, right? So that's pretty different in my opinion. Also, it's a little different as well because the MAGA- Well, he's offering them cane sugar and the Coke. Yeah, but that's what I mean.

That's not the same thing. That was their, look, I mean, at that time, I know it's been a while, that was their number one priority. That's the only thing that a lot of these people voted on, was pro-life, that's it. So that doesn't really exist this time around. They can't offer them the same type of thing. Even then, I would say, if you look at the MAGA coalition

of 2016, the evangelicals were a small minority of it. They were not the MAGA base. They were the people who came over and were reluctant to come in. Most of it was working class whites who thought the whole story was stupid and bullshit. So I would put it like a little bit differently. The Epstein thing, the reason why I think it's different

is look, it's also been a long time since that, when was that story, 2016? So it's been seven years, right? So since that broke, the internet is pop culture now, it was then, but it is like way more. It's just different. Like, and that's part of the reason why I've been getting annoyed when people are like, oh, in the real world and all of that.

I'm like, guys, you know, the internet actually is the real world to a certain extent in terms of this is the media now. Like, this is where public consumption is on TikToks, on Instagram, it's on YouTube. I can guarantee you this is one of the most viral stories that I have seen in years, and not just on this platform, on every platform.

And actually, my interview with Tucker has more views than the Iranian president. Like, that's what I'm trying to give people an example of. I've literally never seen. I've got people reaching out to me, who I haven't spoken to in 10 years, you know, about this. My point is just that this is capturing the attention of the country.

Would I claim that it is the number one issue or anything? Again, absolutely not. But in the same way that you're cartoonishly asking people to move on, and it's also, the other key and the difference is that was before an election. That's when shit's on the line. It's between Hillary and Trump. He's got three and a half more years to go.

In a certain way, people who are speaking out are like trying to have a corrective and a push on the administration. So it's actually more like a power struggle in terms of like who gets to set the agenda and who doesn't as opposed to, look, we have two choices. Sometimes you just gotta hold your nose and vote for somebody like a lot of people also did for Hillary.

But yeah, I mean, that's not a terrible comparison. I would really more, I'm trying to think of anything else and I can't really because at the same time, he ran on releasing it and it's not just him running on it, it's the entire MAGA apparatus. And that's what makes it so stark. If you listen to him, he never cared that much. He was always very squirrely.

And that Fox News edit is now infamous, where the way they edited his response to will you release the Epstein files was just, yeah. But then he goes, yeah, well maybe less so. And then he goes on to give a bunch of privacy and I'm concerned about this and that and the other of why he actually probably wouldn't. And he was like, every time he got asked about it he was

squirrely in the same way but there is no doubt that the he flirted with you know all of those conspiracies including the QAnon conspiracy which was sort of like you know adjacent to this that was like the bullshit made-up version you know and on was way dumber of course yeah yeah yeah yeah becomes you know. QAnon was way dumber. Of course yeah that goes without saying. It becomes you know like this idea of Pizzagate, QAnon, Jeffrey Epstein all gets lumped together as like elite pedophiles mostly Democrats are like running the world and he flirted with all of this stuff and so he certainly gave people the impression that he was gonna be on their side in this. He was gonna be the person, the white knight to ride in

and expose all of the criminals and bring them to justice, whatever. And then people in his movement, like Dan Bongino, like Cash Patel, like JD Vance, they were very explicit about the files are gonna be released and this is gonna be a major priority. And so- Well, he was explicit too.

He said it, I think it was in his Lex Friedman interviews, like, yeah, I'm gonna release all of it. He literally said that. I mean, you know, like, there's multiple clips of Trump, of Jay, so the president, the vice president, the FBI director, the deputy FBI director, the attorney general of the United States, multiple, I mean, I can't even think

of the rest of the Trump surrogates, if you think about that. Like, people directly involved in the campaign, come on now, like, that's part of what makes this so galling. Well, and the people who, to your point, who are like, oh, this is in real life, nobody cares about this. Are you kidding me?

Americans don't care about some grand sex scandal involving potentially the president of the United States. You don't think they don't care about that? Have you met Americans and their tabloids? Were you alive in 1998? Because of their tabloid sensibility? I think they care. If they're interested, I think you've got their attention.

Right, if Lewinsky captured the, I mean, Lewinsky was the biggest door in the country for like 18 months, just so everybody remembers. And also, a little Lewinsky callback, if we all remember, when Bill Clinton got into a war with Serbia to distract the country from the Lewinsky scandal. So these actually can have some pretty big ramifications, just saying.

Before we go on to the other mag, I just wanna mention that one more item to put on the list of strange things that are happening in the Trump administration, they just fired the Manhattan prosecutor who handled the Jeffrey Epstein and the Ghislaine Maxwell case, now this is someone, this is Maureen Comey, so it's actually Jim Comey's daughter.

So in fairness, this is someone MAGA has hated, and she also just handled the Diddy trial rather poorly as well. But you still have to ask why she's getting fired now when she is the one who handled both Gullane Maxwell and Jeffrey Epstein's cases. She was the prosecutor. I agree that the timing is weird. It's what I told you.

I was like, to be fair, Maga has hated her for years. They're like, this lady needs to be fired from the Department of Justice and the Diddy trial is the best excuse. It's like you totally, you botched the entire case with the biggest charges against him. You would also say, I mean if you look at not only the charges of Epstein,

but really against Ghislaine Maxwell in the SDNY, like that in my opinion is more part of the coverup than anything else. Because the way that the case was set up was so that it only implicated Maxwell and Epstein and not everybody else. And they focused on these charges from like 1994 or whatever. So I don't know.

I mean, I don't think she's innocent in all of this. But by the way, hey, Maureen. Her name's Maureen, right? Yeah, Maureen, you're free now. All right, come. Let's talk. Let's give some interviews, all right? Don't just shut your mouth and become a resistance hero.

If you have some information, tell us what you learned about the pressure from inside of the Justice Department. We'll hold my breath. Last thing here is just about kind of some of the MAGA reaction. Let's go and put this up there on the screen. So we got people like Laura Loomer. She's of course standing with Trump.

She says Epstein is one issue of many. It's wild to me how many people can't walk and chew gum at the same time. You can ask for answers on Epstein while also not for allow it to consume the only thing that you speak about. Trump is doing many great things on a daily basis. He knows how to walk and chew gum at the same time. But let's continue because there are some other examples here.

People actually pushing back pretty hard. Here you got General Flynn, General Mike Flynn, who was a former national security advisor. He says, this is where his argument went off the rails. It is not about Epstein or the left. It's about committing crimes against children. If you were part of an intel operation known or run by CIA, shame on them. And those responsible must be held accountable.

If there's any other country involved, then shame on them as well. If there are elites inside of our country that committed crimes against children, shame on them and they must be held accountable. Let's go to the next just to show people. You got some various different like MAGA influencers and others.

Here you have Trisha Hope, she says, "'He just called supporters like me stupid "'who spent 10 years standing with him "'through thick and thin. "'This is what he has to say. "'Well, maybe he is right because I feel pretty dumb "'for standing with him all those years "'and I won't be doing it again.

"'Hashtag Epstein coverup.'" Let's go to another one here. This is from Evan Kilgore. "'I've been a loyal Trump supporter since 2016. "'I lost job, friendship's been smeared online, docs, press charges on people who have stalked and harassed me for supporting him. If Trump doesn't want my support

because I care about the Epstein files, then I'm done by. So you can see, look, again, that's something. I'm not ready to say yet, it's like some gigantic civil war or any of that, but it is certainly having some impact in support for the president. And nonetheless, it's consuming all of tabloid media and of political media at a time

when you really would want your attention focused elsewhere. 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 podcasts. American history is full of wise people. Well, women said something like, you know, 99.99% of war is diarrhea and 1% 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 iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get

your podcasts. Just like great shoes, great books take you places. Through unforgettable love stories and into conversations with characters you'll never forget. I think any good romance, it gives me this feeling of like butterflies. I'm Danielle Robay and this is Bookmarked by Reese's Book Club, the new podcast from Hello Sunshine and iHeart Podcasts. Every week I sit down with your favorite book lovers, authors, celebrities, book talkers, and more to explore the stories that shape us, on the page and off.

I've been reading every Reese's Book Club pick, deep diving book talk theories, and obsessing over book toto-screen casts for years. And now I get to talk to the people making the magic. So if you've ever fallen in love with a fictional character, or cried at the last chapter, or passed a book to a friend saying, you have to read this, this podcast is for you. Listen to Bookmarked by Reese's Book Club on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. That's a good transition here to the polling, intramagga.

So here, I'm pointing somebody, a guy named Rich Barris. I've talked about him here on the show before. He is definitely more of like a maga-aligned pollster. But one of the things that Rich does, I think, really well is try to keep his finger on the pulse of the MAGA base of Trump approval and specifically the Trump coalition. He looks at things very similar to I do.

There's the MAGA base, then there's the Trump voter, there's the non-traditional person. All of these people kind of come together and became the Republican party in 2024, or at the very least, voters for the Republican Party. So here's what Rich had to say about Trump's approval rating, how it continues to go down and cracks within the coalition.

Let's take a listen. As it stands right now, the voter groups where Donald Trump is now himself starting to hurt with, those are the ones that Republicans needed to bring into the fold. And just from the polling this month, here are a couple of groups that need to really stand out

in people's minds. 18 to 29 who voted for Donald Trump. That's some of his biggest decline this month came from that group. Hispanic men. All right. The groups where he did increase are kind of funny, Steve. Those who have a four year degree or more, right? And that's great. Perfect. That helped offset some of the decline with his core voter and his 24 base. But it doesn't matter because they're still voting Democrat at the generic ballot by 10 points. So I mean, it's like a pointless bump that's going to evaporate in a month or two anyway, even if it lasts that long. They're just happy he bombed Iran for now, to be honest. And they'll go back to disapproving of him

and what will be left is a weakened base. And that is something that people aren't understanding while they're, again, you know, attempting to browbeat all of these different groups into submission. 18 to 29 year olds don't care about what's going on all the way around the other side of the world. They didn't vote for him for that. I mean, it's just the reality that people are going to have to start to face. They're simply out of time. They can't afford to continue to carry on with business as usual. They had to convince these voters that they were becoming more like Donald Trump, not

that Donald Trump was becoming more like them. They're out of time. I mean, so there are all these people, the clapping seals and the rest of them, they're going to clap their way right into an utter defeat. I mean, that's the reality. And by the way, this month, Democrats took a lead on the generic ballot for the first time in our polling since Donald Trump's second presidency began. I think that's actually a very good way of looking at it all, with the younger voters,

with the rest of the types of the coalition. Also, let's think about how there's been a great flip in political coalitions. What did Democrats excel at even before 2024? Winning special elections in midterms. Why? Because it's highly educated, mostly like upper middle class people who love to vote and who are much more civically

and politically engaged. The rest of the people, the Hispanics and the young guys and all these other guy more working class folks, they only really pay attention during a presidential election. The rest of the time, they don't give a shit. And that's a huge problem if you're walking into a midterm

where what's the margin right now for the House? Two, three? Something like that. Good luck, all right? Yeah, good luck holding onto that one. And the Senate as well actually has its own problems. So what he's pointing out are strips in the political coalition,

all of these things that make it not only up for grabs, it will alter the balance of power. I also think everyone in Washington should start waking up to a reality of what does it look like when one or two houses of Congress are controlled by Democrats. I mean, I've talked about this with Doze, but now with Epstein, any enterprising Democratic politician would be an idiot not to immediately announce an Epstein investigation on day one in 2027. And by the way, impeachment and all of that, that's already happening.

Like don't even get me wrong on that one. But my point is that the amount of political, like institutional pushback, showdowns with the White House from everything to funding the government, to taxes, to whatever, especially given the attitude of the base, is taxes, to whatever, especially given the attitude of the base, is basically going to be analogous to how the Democrats were from 2006 to 2008

under George W. Bush when he was also a lame duck president with a very, very low approval rating. Bush got nothing through the House or the Senate at that time. He was a pariah, they hated him. Congress basically said screw you on almost every important decision that was happening. That's gonna be the political tenor

of what those last two years look like. They can make your life hell. I mean, every Trump appointee, I hope you have a lot of money because you're gonna be paying private lawyers out the ass when you're testifying before Congress. Like, this is the reality that people are staring down and the Republicans are just like, don't seem to care.

Or Trump himself, I guess he never cared, but for personal reasons, if he doesn't even care about the party, your own presidency can be consumed by stuff like this. And that just looks more real every single day that we go forward. Yeah, no doubt about it. I mean, I think Republicans just pretty much assume they're going to lose the House at this point. Okay, but you don't have to lose the Senate too. Like yeah.

Yeah, it's a big difference. It could be possible, yeah, It could be possible at this rate. I just saw a poll, you know, Virginia and New Jersey have their gubernatorial elections this year, the half year. The Virginia one in particular is typically seen as a bellwether. And you've got a really lame Democrat,

Abigail Spanberger, she's like former CA, whatever. Anyway, I'm getting those ads at my house and they're terrible. My neighborhood is all in for Spanberger. There's signs everywhere. Apparently the whole state is, because I just saw a poll that has her up 12 points. 12 points on, when serious,

who's a current elected statewide official. So this is not someone coming out of nowhere. We elected Youngkin by two points. That's a 14 point swing in five years. That's crazy, all right? So we'll see how that goes, but I think Abigail Spanberger's gotta be feeling pretty good about where she stands at this point.

The other thing I was thinking about listening to Rich Barris talk there is where was Trump's strength? His strength was with low information voters. Always. The type of people who aren't listening to the show or watching CNN or even watching Fox News. The type of people who are watching like the O'Banns podcast

or you know, Andrew Schultz or Tim Dillon or Joe Rogan or whatever while they're you know, doing their job or driving the Uber shift or whatever. And to the contrary of the people who wanna say, oh, real people don't care about this, this is actually a story that really penetrates pop culture. Yeah, it's easy.

It's the easiest one that gets you. It completely penetrates pop culture. I mean, all the late night shows, of course, are all over it. Shane Gillis hosted the ESPYs last night, Epstein Joke brought down the house. Epstein Joke and it killed. Yeah, killed.

Yeah, like, you don't think people know about this? Give me a break. This is exactly the sort of issue that actually breaks through with low information voters, the very people who were the ones who put Trump over the top last time. So you know, I think there has already been a lot of erosion with Trump among people who are really paying close attention and who were, you know, independents and they voted for him but they weren't sure about it, whatever. I think you've already seen that erosion.

But this cuts deeper because it does go to just pop culture and the sense of this guy, first of all, what is going on here? Like, what are you doing and why are you acting this way and what is actually going on? And second of all, you just lied to us to get a light. Like you are, you betrayed this notion that you're gonna be down inside,

or come in and clean up things like total and complete bullshit. And look, it has always been bullshit, but this is such a blatant, obvious betrayal of how he positioned himself, that it becomes impossible to ignore and to spin if you have a shred of integrity. I totally agree. Let's also put this next one up here. This is from Mark Mitchell who works over

at Rasmussen. And you know, I follow these guys because, I mean, look, you can say a lot about biased pollsters and all this, but one of the things I like about, you know, following the quote biased pollsters is that some of them actually do have some integrity. And here, like this is from Rasmussen, youussen, one of the most Republican leaning polling outlets out there, and here's what Mark Mitchell has to say. Update, looks like Trump approval has bottomed for the second term. And what he and Rich and these guys are warning about

is just the absolute destruction that Republicans face in the midterms, but again, more importantly, for Trump and his coalition in the future for whatever that looks like. The other thing is, is like, let's say that Trump is a lame duck and he's done. Everyone's like, oh, he's not gonna care. I genuinely don't believe that.

I think he will be the most interact. Till the day he dies, he will be a god king of the Republican party. It would be as if Ronald Reagan, who I guess kept his mind after he left his presidency, and continued to wield his influence. Now Reagan, not only from his own personal issues, but believed in norms, even though I know that's cringe,

and was like, no, I'm done, I'm an old man, George, take the reins, you can do whatever you wanna do. I'll respect that. You think Trump is gonna be sitting down in Mar-a-Lago? Let's say JD gets elected. He's gonna have to go down there once a month, all right? To get Trump truth socials and all this other stuff to back him up because at the end of the day,

the loyalty does not transfer. We've seen that a million times. There's affection but not the loyalty. And so for him, like if you continue to diminish and just bring things down to a MAGA type coalition, you put every future Republican in such a dangerous position where they can't piss off Trump, but to win, they can't also go in the direction

and the loyalty that he demands, which increasingly that seems like what he's likely to do. Of course, could be wrong. Only six, seven months or whatever into the first Trump administration, things could go in all kinds of different directions. Remember, it's only six, seven months or whatever into the first Trump administration. Things are going in all kinds of different directions. Remember, it's only, what, July? I mean, Biden's presidency didn't really bottom out

until October, so there's still a long way to go. You know, it's like a- We've still got a few months. Yeah, we still got months and months to go, but things seem to be on track, you know, for where we are right now. We don't know what the future looks like. Yeah.

And yeah, like, they need to pray for several things. We'll talk soon about the Fed and all of that. They need lower rates. They need a lot more housing. And they need inflation to go down. And they need the stock market to remain up. They've accomplished, I think, one out of four of those. So you need to land the plane, especially,

in the next two and a half years. And I just don't see a path forward. I think it's also, I agree with you that the idea Trump is just gonna go away. Yeah, ridiculous. Live a quiet life of Mar-a-Lob, okay please. Like, look at who this man is. Even if he doesn't technically run for a third term,

it will be his party until the day he does. Absolutely. That's just how it is. And the other thing that is I think increasingly clear, both as you see the warring factions over Iran and over Ukraine and now over Epstein, he is the only person who can hold this coalition together. He is the only one that can do it.

And there's some similarities there with Obama, actually, where he never was able to translate his popularity over to other Democrats and over to the Democratic Party more broadly. And I think it's the exact same thing with Trump. You know, when he's not on the ballot, Republicans have been losing an election after election after election. So, you know, the idea that he's going to be able to just bequeath his popularity and his coalition to JD Vance or even his own son or whatever, like I think that is, there's

just no chance that they're able to pull that off. I totally agree. Because no one else is Donald J. Trump and that's just how it is. Look, remember, Obama literally was like, you need to act like I'm on the ballot in 2016. People were like, yeah, I'm good, actually. So you can try, it basically never works.

Yeah. It's a very, very important lesson. And Hillary was his choice too. Yes, they literally said that. Biden wanted to run in that election. Obama basically killed that. Biden, I think at that. In that election, Obama basically killed that. Biden, I think at that point, you know, he was at his peak. He would have been a much better candidate than Hillary Clinton. Yeah, he had a much better chance. He did have a better

touch with working-class people. He was more closely affiliated with Obama that people had, you know, warm fuzzies about at that point. But anyway, I mean, the point is just that he got his chosen successor. He did what he could to put her across the finish line. And it's like, no way, even though I think if it was Obama who was on the ballot again, he would have probably won. I've done so many monologues about this. People can pull them from five, six years ago.

I have all those clips of all the times that Obama was like, you need to act like I'm the person running on the ballot. And people were like, yeah, actually, I'm good. 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, Lon 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 iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. American history is full of wise people. Well women said something like, you know, 99.99% of war is diarrhea and 1% 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 iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Just like great shoes, great books take you places, through unforgettable love stories, and into conversations with characters you'll never forget. I think any good romance, it gives me this feeling of like butterflies.

I'm Danielle Robay, and this is Bookmarked by Reese's Book Club, the new podcast from Hello Sunshine and iHeart Podcasts. Every week I sit down with your favorite book lovers, authors, celebrities, book talkers, and more to explore the stories that shape us on the page and off. I've been reading every Reese's Book Club pick, deep diving book talk theories, and obsessing over book to screen casts for years. And now I get to talk to the people making the magic. So if you've ever fallen in love with a fictional character or cried at the last chapter or passed a book to a friend

saying you have to read this, this podcast is for you. Listen to Bookmarked by Reese's Book Club on the iHeartRadio app. Apple podcasts are wherever you get your podcasts. All right, turning now to Syria, some extraordinary developments. Israel bombing the capital of Syria after major violence breaks out in Swida province. We're going to get to all of the details, but let's just take a look at some of the video.

I mean, it's absolutely extraordinary. You're watching a Syrian newscaster there broadcasting live from the capital after right behind her you can watch Israeli airstrikes in the middle of Damascus. And by the way, these are not secret strikes like normal. These are claimed and public proclamations from the IDF, including the command and control network of the Syrian general staff, as well as the Syrian presidential palace. So you're watching just, I mean, this is wild, like out in the open.

And you might ask, so what the hell is actually going on here? Now, I've done my best to, it's very, very complicated. So everybody stick with us in terms of the exact TikTok of how this all went down. We gotta start at the very, very beginning. You'll remember that the Assad regime fell. Well after the Assad regime fell, the Israeli government claimed a quote indefinite presence inside of Syria past the Golan Heights,

further expanding their borders. Basically the justification was they need to protect their own border at the Golan Heights as well as the Druze population who they have long had a close relationship with. Okay, so let's put things out that way. That's ever since the Israeli government or the Assad regime fell and now the new power al-Qaeda is in charge of the state. After al-Qaeda kind of came into power of the state there has been a tacit alliance between the Israelis and al-Qaeda. They met recently. There was supposed to be normalization

between the two governments. Much of the sanctions from the US government were taken off. So everything seemed to be on a road of normalization and of a tacit agreement where the new al-Qaeda government is going to recognize Israeli sovereignty over this new portion. All right, so let's start there. However, the Druze population, of course,

is allied with Israel, and there's also been calls within Israel to basically further their attacks on the Syrian government, and all of this kind of came to a head in the last couple days. So let's start with this. Let's put this up there on the screen. So late on July 11th, Bedouin gunmen ambushed a vegetable truck on the Damascus-Sueda Highway,

beating the driver and stealing the truck and its contacts. The next day, Drew's gunmen kidnapped eight Bedouins as retaliation, triggering the Bedouin gunmen to kidnap five Drews in response. By the way, this is what Alala State looks like. So next, July 12th, saw a flurry of quote, tit for tat kidnappings, amid attempts by local notables to negotiate a calm down.

Tensions and conflict between these clans and the Druze date back for years, tied to drugs and the weapons trade, control of smuggling routes, and land ownership. On July 13, negotiations break down. Armed conflict erupts in Sueda between Bedouin clans and Druze militias. Druze militias start getting shelled, Bedouin areas are besieged, 30 people are dead,

100 are injured in 24 hours. All right, now continuing, on July 14th, after attempts to mediate talks, Syria's new government intervenes, these are al-Qaeda forces, right? Deploying military and interior ministry forces into Suwita to quote, enforce order, and put an end to the internal fighting.

Then, as these new government forces, the Al-Qaeda forces, enter the city, they are ambushed by the Druze militiamen, 10 soldiers are rounded up, executed and used for celebratory photos, and eight other soldiers are taken hostage, stripped and marched to a nearby village in their underwear. All of them are believed to have been dead now.

That's when shit really kicks off. Intense fighting ensues, government forces advance into the city, the Druze militia starts shelling the Bedouins, killing a child apparently, a photo of which gets sent around everywhere in terms of anti-Sunni mockery. This is all according to Charles Lister. He's a long time Syria analyst,

and he speaks the language as well and has translated all this. Then what happens is quote, as fighting rages on, Israel begins drone strikes there, first targeting the Syria militia armored forces and pickup trucks of the interior ministry. So eventually what happens is there's a negotiated ceasefire on July 15th between the Druze,

the Christian, the Sybil Council, and Wu invited the government forces to secure order. However, one Druze cleric, I'm not even gonna try and pronounce his name, he is allied with Israel, and he's the person who's like, no, we're not doing that, and that's when the Israeli strikes

start to go into full effect. Israel strikes not only the Syrian government, basically saying, hey, I'm the boss here, you do what we tell you to do. So it's the Druze, IDF soldiers and others start flooding to the Israeli-Syrian border. They tried to smuggle weapons and to go into Syria. It's basically, what they were trying to do

is instigate like a full on rise up and have complete autonomy over there that Israel has control over. Many of them are actually raising the Israeli flag over the territory. So this is all, the reason I went through exactly that is if you were looking at the Israeli version, you're like, oh my God,

the Syrian al-Qaeda forces just came in and they're massacring all these Druze. It's a little bit more complicated than that, isn't it? Because they came at the invitation of the interior forces, but this one Druze cleric and militia leader who's allied with Israel was like, no, we're not doing that, and actually we need Israel to come in

and show the new Syrian government who's boss. All of that escalates to the point where they're bombing the presidential palace. Now, let's just diminish this. They're like, oh, we're doing it to prevent, they literally said, we're doing it to prevent a genocide. Assad killed how many people in Syria? Over the last 15 years?

How many hundreds of thousands were slaughtered? Okay, you know, you didn't do anything at that point. Like you give a shit about humanitarian situation in Syria. Give me a break, all right? This is about control, it's about territory, and really, it's about telling the Syrian al-Qaeda government you answer to us You don't even get to you're not even allowed to enter our allies Territory without us coming and bombing the shit out of your capital city

The crazy thing is that this Syrian government had already basically been like you're right we answer to you Exactly, you can take over the Golan Heights But it's not enough The guy who leads Syria now is literally from the Golan Heights. I know. And he's like, effectively ceded the territory to Israel. I mean, there's a reason why the Trump administration dropped the sanctions on him and redesignated HTS, which was his organization.

It's like, oh, they're totally not terrorists anymore. It's because they were playing ball and doing everything that America and Israel wanted them to do. But it is still not enough for the Israelis. They want it to be a completely failed state. They want to be able to take over and cede whatever territory they possibly can. And so they're using the pretext of this effectively like ethnic strife, which is the apparently the tensions between the Bedouin and the Druze in this area is in fact long-standing. Now that you have this also you know civil war now leading to this takeover and this power vacuum I'm sure that creates even

more possibility for escalation of that ethnic strife. And so they're using that as a pretext to come in and just directly bomb Damascus and bomb the Syrian government. It's crazy. What was going on there with the government negotiations and them coming in and trying to assert control. I mean, you have to keep in mind here, this is a new government. They are trying to assert control over their territory.

So they come in, they actually negotiate. There were multiple ceasefires that were negotiated that everyone agreed to except this one dude who seems to be the Israeli plan. And then as soon as he blows up the negotiations, lo and behold, Israel comes in with their bombs. So that's the reality of what's going on here. And yeah, I mean, the lesson you have to take is like,

there's no working with these people. There's no, even if you give them everything that you think that they want, things that should be really outrageous and off the table, even if you do that, it does not matter. So what is this now, the ninth front in the Israeli war? And I have seen some people even who are like pretty pro-Israel being like, what are you doing?

Like we were with you when you were bombing the Palestinians because they're obviously evil and hate you or whatever, but like what is going on here? Why are you, how does this make sense? How is this at all justifiable? And the truth is, because they completely act with no accountability, with utter impunity, they just feel like they can take over

and do whatever they want, because they have been able to do that up to this point. Yes, and that's the point. The point is, is that, look, I know I'm saying this is a new front war, the point is, is just that they are allowed by us to come in and do whatever they want to do to every single one of their neighbors, and we're going to back them up. And if you want evidence of that, here's the response from the US State Department where they call on the Syrian government, by the way, they're the ones who recognize the government,

and they tell the government, you need to withdraw from your own territory so that we can reach a negotiated solution. Let's take a listen. Has the US asked Israel to halt strikes on Syria? I cannot speak to specific conversations or the exchanges diplomatically. We are calling on the Syrian government to in fact withdraw their military

in order to enable all sides to de-escalate and find a path forward. And I think that that's obviously the goal because of the nature of what's happened and the Secretary's phrasing that this was a misunderstanding. He's optimistic that this can be achieved. So you said you're looking for an Israeli withdrawal and a Syrian government withdrawal from the area. Can you be more explicit about where you're... No, Israeli withdrawal and a Syrian government withdrawal from the area. Can you be more explicit about where you're-

No, I can't. I can't. Right, so, okay, got it. And let's go ahead and put Netanyahu's statement up there on the screen. He says, my Druze brothers, citizens of Israel, the situation in Sweda and Southwest is dire. The IDF air forces are in action.

We are working to save our Druze brothers and eliminate regime gangs. I have one request for you. You are Israeli citizens. Do not cross the border. You are putting your lives at risk. Remember I was telling you there were a lot of Druze who were crossing the border with weapons by the way.

Some of it appeared to be facilitated by the IDF, but they're like, oh, actually you're hindering our efforts. Basically saying don't go there because actually we're bombing it right now. Here we have Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who was asked about it, and his response is, look, this is a centuries old conflict. That's what this is all about. Let's take a listen.

I think I'll ask Marco to say a few words on Syria. Yeah, it's complicated, obviously. These are historic, long-time rivalries between different groups in the southwest of Syria, Bedouins, the Druze community, and it led to an unfortunate situation and a misunderstanding, it looks like, between the Israeli side and the Syrian side. So we've been engaged with them all morning long and all night long with both sides, and we think we're on our way towards a real de-escalation and then hopefully get back on track in helping Syria build a country and arriving at a situation

there in the Middle East is far more stable. So in the next few hours, we hope to see some real progress to end what you've been seeing over the last couple of hours. Centuries old conflict. It's like, guys, as I just laid it out, it's actually not complicated at all. It's really not. It's like what happened is, yes, there was some fighting and then this pro-Israeli guy said, no, I don't accept that, and asked the Israeli government,

which they did, to send a message to the new Syrian government that we're in charge, actually, of your country. I mean, I don't know, it's like, who do you even root for in this? You got Al-Qaeda on one side, you got IDF on one side. I'm like, okay, well, glad I'm complicit in all of this. You know, it's just so ridiculous.

And by the way, on top of all of that, Bibi Netanyahu is on trial in Israel you might forget Don't worry the United States actually sent our ambassador Mike Huckabee to the courtroom to express their support for Netanyahu's government Extraordinary let's put this up there on the screen. What do you think he did whenever there were strikes on Syria? He said hey guys, I'm involved in this military operation in Syria and that's why the trial needs to adjourn. Oh got it and by the way it's only the fourth time or so now that you have had the trial postponed because of military action and I'll read some headlines. June 26 2024 Prime Minister's lawyers

till court Netanyahu can only testify in a corruption trial later on in March of 2025. Prosecutors cancel Netanyahu's testimony in corruption trial amid renewed Gaza assault March 18, 2025. Court lets Netanyahu skip testimony next week for a U.S. trip. July 2, 2025. July 17, 2024. July 16, 2025.

Yesterday, trial adjourned because of strikes on Syria. So look, doesn't take a genius to figure out what's going on here. Really glad that that's something that we're all signed up and supporting. And lastly, let's put this on the screen here, from Ben Gavir, part of the Netanyahu Coalition, who says here, now they want to quote,

eliminate the Syrian president. The only thing to be done with Jelani is to eliminate him. We need to eliminate the head of the snake. Keep in mind, this is the same leader who has already given Israel everything that it wants, who is open to normalizing relations, open to coming into the Abraham Accords.

Somebody who, you know, and this is where I don't even wanna sound sympathetic to Al-Qaeda, but like, if you're a part of the new Syrian government, wouldn't you think that you have been sovereignty over your territory to, you know, restore order whenever there's something that's breaking out there? You might think that, but been sovereignty over your territory to restore order whenever there's something that's breaking out there? You might think that, but no, the Israelis are like, no, no, no, no, no, we rule your country, not you.

So, okay. They weren't even really trying to assert authority over all of their country. They were like, okay, Israel, fine, you can have that peace. We'll be over here. But even that wasn't good enough. I'll just close with this. There was a good quote here from an expert who said,

listen, Israel's demanding that they withdraw their troops further, obviously. And the paradox that creates for them is pretty obvious. If you withdraw, then you just effectively announce Israel controls the country. And you fail in your bid to try to assert sovereignty, even over the pieces that you haven't already ceded to Israel.

And if you don't, then they're going to keep bombing you. And then that obviously threatens your ability to hold onto power at all. So that's kind of where things stand right now. And really great, great situation. Just really, you know, very fortunate for Netanyahu the way these things keep coinciding with his trial date. He's the luckiest man in history. Isn't that interesting?

He really is. 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 podcasts. American history is full of wise people. Well, 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. Just like great shoes, great books take you places through

unforgettable love stories and into conversations with characters you'll never forget. I think any good romance, it gives me this feeling of like butterflies. I'm Danielle Robay, and this is Bookmarked by Reese's Book Club, the new podcasts from Hello Sunshine and iHeart Podcasts. Every week I sit down with your favorite book lovers, authors, celebrities, book talkers, and more to explore the stories

that shape us on the page and off. I've been reading every Reese's Book Club pick, deep diving book talk theories, and obsessing over book to screen casts for years. And now I get to talk to the people making the magic. So if you've ever fallen in love with a fictional character or cried at the last chapter or passed a book to a friend saying,

you have to read this. This podcast is for you. Listen to Bookmarked by Reese's Book Club on the iHeartRadio app. Apple podcasts are wherever you get your podcasts. All right, let's go ahead and get to the machinations over the Fed chair. So Trump has long expressed in this administration his upset with Jerome Powell, who he initially was the one who put in at the Fed, by the way, which is going to become relevant during this during this block. So in any case, apparently he gathered a bunch of Republicans in the Oval Office this week. He reportedly drafted a letter firing, announcing the firing of Fed Chair Jerome Powell, asked the Republicans in the room, hey, should I do this?

According to Trump, they all were like, oh yes, Mr. President, yes, sir, that sounds like a great idea. He has not moved forward with that whatsoever. So in any case, he got asked a question about whether or not he is going to fire Fed Chair Jerome Powell. Let's go ahead and take a listen to what he had to say. He's a terrible Fed chair. I was surprised he was appointed. I was surprised, frankly, that Biden put him in and extended him, but they did.

So, no, we're not planning on doing anything. We're very concerned. And that goes for his board, too, because his board is not doing the job, because they should try and rein this guy in. So he's doing a lousy job, but no, I'm not talking about that. So he says there Biden put him in. Biden did not put him in.

He put him in. Whatever. He says there he's not planning on doing anything. So maybe this was like kind of a trial balloon. Maybe it was an attempt to distract from other things like Epstein that was going on. But we can put the reporting about this draft letter up on the screen. According to the New York Times, he penned this letter to fire the Fed chair. He asked Republicans if he should send it. The president, they say, waved a copy of a draft letter firing Jerome Powell. And meeting the Oval Office with House

Republicans remains to be seen whether he follows through with that threat. And then the last piece here, Sager, is there was, while this was all swirling, and it seemed like more of an active possibility, there was a pretty significant market reaction, especially with regards to the value of the dollar and also the bond yields, both of which are significant and important. And so it's possible this was like a trial balloon,

Mark, it's freak, he decided not to do it. Like I said, it's possible it's a distraction. I don't know, what do you make of all this? I mean, it's complicated. As in, I do think that Wall Street worships at the altar of the Fed in a very unhealthy way and have fetishized this whole idea of central bank independence.

I understand why Donald Trump seems to be an unreliable actor through which he would not want to break that norm. That said, I mean the argument is sound in terms of he's out of step with the rest of the entire world's central bank cuts. If you look at the where the rates are right now and the labor market, inflation and all of that etc, your reaction is not working if you want to look at the core economic problems of the American people. One of the main reasons that buying a house right now is just exorbitantly expensive is because of where the rates are.

We have not had a rate cut, or at least a substantial one, in multiple years. A lot of people who bought, who wanted to refinance in the future are getting hosed. A lot of people are having to sell for much less than they wanted to. It's one of the main barriers to entry. It makes the average mortgage payment double what somebody who got a rate four or five years ago. I can sympathize with all of that. It also makes the carrying cost of business very difficult.

People cannot finance expansion at such high rates. There's a lot of different effects that the rates and all of that have. So it's really one of those where I'm not sure there's two heroes on either side of the story. Like if you look at it, we had supply side inflation under Biden, and the Federal Reserve was like, OK, well, we're going to crush the demand side. I just disagree with that fundamentally, because I think they look at their mandate in a very

different way, in the way that Wall Street and all of them want to, in old school economic theory that, in my opinion, does not account for the way that Wall Street and all of them want to, in old school economic theory that in my opinion does not account for the way that real markets and the real world work. So I think they've done more damage than they have good. I agree with a lot of that. I mean, Trump wants them to cut the rates by three percentage points. Which would be awesome.

That seems crazy. Seems awesome. That seems wild. And I guess I feel about this sort of similar to how I feel about the term limits conversation where it's like in general I don't support term limits but I'm glad they're there right now with Donald Trump. And I kind of feel the same thing with the Fed chair.

I actually think that presidents should be able to have their choice in there and have the Fed monetary policy reflect their agenda and their view of the economy. Do I trust that power in the hand of Donald Trump? No, I do not. So that's kind of where I am. And I do think if he decided to fire Jerome Powell, I do think there would be a significant market

reaction because they are very like, you know, attached to this idea. And they also have no confidence in like Trump putting in someone there who would be remotely responsible. That's the problem. But you know, I mean, this is where I want people to think like a little bit differently. It's like, look, it's not in the Constitution that the Federal Reserve is like this wholly separulker of separate part of government. And if you went back in time, people would say it's preposterous

that you have this separate independent bank unanswerable to the public. I mean, if you look back at some of the things, like the Volcker, Jimmy Carter situation, it was insane. It's like 19% interest rates or whatever, and the things, like the Volcker, Jimmy Carter situation, it was insane. You know, it's like 19% interest rates or whatever, and the president was like, oh, I don't even agree, he appointed him and then basically ruined any chances

of him ever getting elected. And take the political stuff out of it. If you want to work and have some sort of democratic say in your economy, having an independent central bank is probably the worst possible way to do that. It's basically like a giant insurance scam and all of that for the global financial system, that's fine. Their argument is like, oh, well that trickles down

to all of you, I don't agree with that at all. The housing situation is perfect. So look at the people who are getting crushed by rates, look at the people who worship at the altar of this independent Fed and all of this. It's mostly Wall Street bond traders and others. But yeah, that's the Trump factor as in his chaos and capriciousness makes it so that

if he were the one to do it, even though again, I think it's a sound enough idea, like democratically, it would cause tremendous market reaction and pushback, which I think he would significantly, he would come to regret if it were to ever happen but he's Socializing the idea on Congress because he wants Powell to resign. He wants him to go away. Yeah, I mean, it's not gonna happen Yeah, yeah, so I don't know. He's stuck. I'm by the way as you said, he's the one who appointed him So why'd you do that? Right? Yeah, once you shift it off. Why'd you do that? Yeah, you appointed it Do have brains that have memories that are longer than that of a goldfish.

Totally, I was there. Sometimes I do. I literally remember whenever he was nominated. And especially because he immediately started criticizing him almost after he nominated him. Like a year in, it's like nothing has changed. Even at that time when we had lower rates, he wanted them to go even lower.

So Trump is a real estate guy, I get it, but I do actually think a lot of the country would be on his side. Most people don't necessarily understand Federal Reserve and all of that, but this is again, if you wanted to make a case, if Trump were to give a grand speech and be like, all of you are paying too much in your mortgage prices and I want all your mortgage rates to go down and that's why I'm firing the Fed Chairman, it would be very popular, but they don't have the message discipline or any of that to actually be able to sell that idea.

It would fall, and nobody on CNBC is gonna be articulating that either. They're gonna be, oh my God, freak out. One last note on this, and I think I am remembering this correctly, so the Supreme Court recently ruled that Trump could fire some of these other sort of supposedly independent,

I think it was maybe at the CFPB, officials. But they explicitly tried to write their decision such that they were like, but the Fed is totally different. So I think he also would probably run into some legal issues. Now, as we've seen with this administration, they just act first and worry about the legal consequences later, and that has been a strategy that's been very effective for them because the Supreme

Court in almost every instance on the shadow docket where they can just, instead of actually ruling on something, just say, well, you can do it for now as these things work out. They have ruled, sided with Trump in almost every instance where that is concerned. So in a sense, they could get their way at least for a while. But I think also ultimately, probably the Supreme Court, being as corporate friendly and business friendly as they are, would ultimately come and say, yeah, this is too far. You can't actually do this. Yeah, I agree.

OK, next part. Let's get to Zoran and his big meeting with business leaders. Yes. So as we have now moved from the New York City Democratic primary into the general election, Zoran Mamdani had a big meeting this week with business leaders in New York City. Some pretty interesting commentary on that from MSNBC. Let's take a listen.

They heard a really charming, affable guy who was well-prepared. He made jokes, he made self-deprecating jokes, but they did not hear someone who changed his policies. And so if you had concerns about his economic policies going into the meeting, you had the same concerns going out. For some people, the charm and his disarming nature

was enough to calm people a little bit. For others, the fact that he was very much sticking to his policies further enraged him. So there was a bit of a division coming out of, for him in terms of response. But in the room, it was mostly cordial, it was mostly pleasant. There was one quite pointed question,

effectively saying, how can you tell us you're not gonna drive business out of New York? And he danced around it a bit. I think his message was, I believe strongly in my policies, but I don't think they're bad for business. And I think many of the business leaders saw a little bit of a disconnect in how you connect those two dots.

But overall, they found a nice charming guy and they were, you know, they appreciated the fact that he wanted to meet with them. But he also enters a race here where the setup seems to really favor him. First of all, anytime there's a you have a D next to your name, you're the Democratic nominee in a deep blue city, that is helpful. He's got that. But if Andrew Cuomo and Eric Adams both persist in this race and are both vying for the same sort of centrist vote, they split that, that only helps them, Donnie.

The fact that he's in makes it highly unlikely that Zuran does not win. I talked to some people last night who were part of the partnership meeting and they were relatively impressed with Zoran. They had very serious concerns and they were impressed he's very charismatic, which we found he came twice to National Action Network. And some of them agreed with him, some disagreed,

but they say he's a lot more personable and more informed than they thought. Apparently at that meeting, the CEO of Pfizer had asked him a question about, well, what about globalized the Intifada, which it's just worth reminding everybody. Wait, the CEO of Pfizer? Why do you give a shit about the deal?

I know. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was like, oh. This is your question, right? Yeah. Whatever. And also, just as a reminder, because because he's been lied about so many times, he never even said that.

He got asked about the phrase, he quote unquote refused to condemn it, apparently in this meeting he said he would discourage its use, which is basically what he said from the beginning. I mean, it's just, it's insane to me that out of all these people, he's the controversial one.

Andrew Cuomo had to literally resign in disgrace saga after killing grandmas in the nursing home. And then lying and covering it up. And, I mean, the real reason he was pushed down and had to resign, to your point, was like, what, 11 different women accused him of sexual harassment. He's just Italian.

Curtis Slewa has a new line of like, he was spanking fannies and killing grannies. That's good, I like that. It's also, by the way, accurate. That's actually true. Eric Adams was indicted on federal corruption charges, has a 20% approval rating in the city. I lost track of the number of members

of his administration who were under indictment or being federally investigated. His former police commissioner has just accused him of running in court, of running the NYPD in City Hall as if it is a criminal enterprise. And Zoran, that's the controversial one? Okay, sure. Kathy Hochul also, I believe, stopped by morning, Joe,

to get asked these very similar questions. Let's go ahead and take a listen to her too. I'm gonna make sure that we have a climate where businesses can thrive. They create jobs, they give us the revenues I need to be able to have very generous social safety net programs. Everyone is having a hair on fire moment. And I said, let's just calm it all down.

I've spoken to hundreds of business leaders saying, listen, nothing is going to happen to this city without me being aware of it and involved in it. So don't talk about packing up and leaving and all these other overreactions. We're going to be okay no matter what happens. So there you go from her. And interestingly, she's actually facing

a primary challenge. Zoran is pushing, of course, for the top tax, for hikes on the top tax bracket. Hokel has said absolutely not. Her primary opponent is saying yes. And so that is actually becoming a core issue you know, for hikes on the top tax bracket. Hokel has said absolutely not. Her primary opponent is saying yes, and so that is actually becoming a core issue in terms of the New York primary.

But again, like, he is the Democratic nominee. There is a Democratic process. People voted. He won. He won by 12 points. He completely changed the electorate in a way that you think Democrats would be like, that's great, how could we do more of that? And instead they just like, you know, don't know what to do with them.

Don't know whether to endorse. Don't know what to do with this guy. And a new poll just came out. I mean, he's winning first of all for the general election. But also, rank-and-file Democrats, like the people who vote in the city, they're overwhelmingly positive about him. Like there's no question about it. And his favorability with young voters is like off the charts and the other guys are dramatically underwater and hated. So it's just such a crazy situation to me. Yeah, especially with your point about

what's controversial and what's not. It's like okay, you know, the tax thing. I mean, by the way, New York, you guys should think about it because, you know, your whole tax system is relied on taxing the super rich. So if even 12 people leave, you're actually screwed. You should actually really reform

the way that you guys do that. That's just my opinion. Also, I was just there for flagrant, the subway, shithole. I'm just gonna say it. I mean, it was the day after the floods that came in. The entire platform, imagine waiting in the platform. Everybody is soaked already from the humidity, and the platform itself is steaming

from all of the flood water, and we're all crammed in there together, and then you walk into the AC, which you think will be refreshing, but actually what happens is now your entire body is covered, and your suit and everything is wet, and you absorb the sweat off of another person onto yourself. That was my experience yesterday in the New York City South.

So yeah, we've been there. But it's one of those things where like, this is not great, okay, in terms of the flooding situation. Didn't enjoy it myself. And so that just shows you the rank and file, like the stuff that actually animates people. That's really what matters. Also I did check and Zoran is right.

Halal, too fucking expensive, all right? I went to the cart and I said no. First, I don't have any cash on me, the guy's not taking a card or whatever, and yeah, it's like 12, $13, sorry, it's too much. It's too much. I miss New York so much. One last piece here on the Zoran business leaders

because this was just too funny. Put D3 up on the screen. This tweet just really sent me. So this lady says, tough meeting for Mom Donnie with the partnership for New York CEOs today, I'm told. Stood his ground on intifada language and wouldn't commit to keeping the New York PD commissioner, Tish, whom this crowd likes in the job.

Also didn't recognize her dad, Jim Tish, when he rose for a question. How dare he not recognize a Tish when they rise for a question. I know a lot of people out there in the comments were saying, I'm a single issue voter, which is, can you recognize Jim Tish when he stands for a question?

I didn't realize that the NYPD commissioner is part of the Lowe's dynasty. Yeah, they're one of the wealthiest. Yeah, this is actually wild, I didn't know that. They're one of the wealthiest families in the country. Okay. And so they were offended that he, how dare he. How offensive.

Didn't have his billionaire Hootoo book, Facebook in front of him. Anyway, so that's how things are going in that race. That's New York. ["Dreams of a New Yorker"] Ugh, come on, why is this taking so long? This thing is ancient. Still using yesterday's tech? Upgrade to the ThinkPad X1 Carbon.

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powered by Intel Core Ultra processors so you can work, create, and boost productivity all on one device. 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 iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an iHeart podcast.