Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 7/2/25: Senate Passes BBB, Trump Floats Arresting Zohran, Alligator Alcatraz, Gaza Ceasefire & MORE!

Episode Date: July 2, 2025

Ryan and Emily discuss the Senate passes BBB, Trump says DOGE will eat Elon, Alligator Alcatraz debate, Trump threatens to arrest Zohran, Newsom bends knee to abundance, Israel bombs Gaza cafe as Trump floats ceasefire, CBS settles massive Trump lawsuit.   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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and we hope to see you at breakingpoints.com. All right, happy Wednesday. Welcome to Breaking Points, everybody. Emily, how you doing? We won't bore you with the details of our travel, but Ryan had a literal planes, trains, and automobile journey this morning. So if we're a little late, I got in like 1 a.m.

because flights were canceled. There's storms on the East Coast tried to keep us out of the studio this morning. Yeah. But they but like Murkowski, you know, they buckled in the end. And here we are. It was just like Lisa Murkowski and Ryan. You may notice is what we call on the show raw dogging. Just not have a laptop. I did not actually travel with my laptop this time for the first time ever and I never made

it home because I flew straight to Richmond after my flight was canceled, took a train over to DC. Emily picked me up at the station. Here we are. It's been a wild morning. So our apologies if we're a little late, but we wanted to be here. So we have a big show, lots of crazy news. The big, beautiful bill passed the Senate, and JD Vance cast the tie-breaking vote, so

we have some information on what's actually in that bill and what's going to happen now that it heads to the House of Representatives. Donald Trump wants it on his desk by Friday, because that's the Fourth of July, and that is the deadline that he and Republicans set for themselves, so we will break it all down. Trump did a tour of, quote, alligator Alcatraz. Which I was at when I was down in Florida. Were you actually? That's right, you covered the protests. Yeah, I went down to alligator Alcatraz before it opened and saw all the trucks barreling in and there are hundreds of people out there protesting. It's, we'll talk about it in a segment.

It's quite something. Yeah, Gavin Newsom has come out as an abundance bro and we have news on exactly how that's playing out in California so far. Ryan, you're gonna do a breakdown on news out of Gaza. Yeah, we've got Trump is saying he's pushing forward with the ceasefire deal. There's no confirmation from the Israeli side yet. We're still, it's all still up in the air and the number of killings is just somehow accelerating, which seems impossible. Yeah, the news from the cafe that I know we're going to cover. Yeah, this is an attack on this cafe used by journalists. Also Trump says he's gonna

prosecute CNN for hurting the feelings of our jet pilots who Trump says came back feeling so proud of themselves after their bombing run, you know, they felt like they had just taped, you know, Top Gun 3 and only to see in CNN that perhaps not all of the centrifuges were destroyed and the uranium may have been moved and it deeply upset the bombers. And they should not be hurt like that. And I don't know if you caught those. These are people.

Pilots are people too. Yes, pilots are people. So I don't know if you caught this news overnight because you had a train situation, but also CBS settled with the Trump administration and we'll cover that in the CNN block but that is a very interesting suit as well. I was reading some of it. $17 million bribe. $16 million dollars, the exact same as the NBC settlement. So that's the price tag for a merger.

Yeah, we'll get into all of it. So let's start with the one big beautiful bill which has passed the Senate. JD Vance cast the tie-breaking vote. Let's go Yeah, we'll get into all of it. So let's start with the one big, beautiful bill, which has passed the Senate. JD Vance cast the tie breaking vote. Let's go ahead and roll A1. The yeas are 50. The nays are 50. The Senate being evenly divided,

the vice president votes in the affirmative. The bill as amended is passed. So they ended up losing Rand Paul, Susan Collins, and Tom Tillis. So Lisa Murkowski ultimately got on board with it. And while we're talking about that, So they ended up losing Rand Paul, Susan Collins, and Tom Tillis. So Lisa Murkowski ultimately got on board with it. And while we're talking about that, I'm going to control room, skip ahead here to A4. This is Lisa Murkowski being confronted by a reporter in the Capitol who was asking about

the process of getting Lisa Murkowski to a yes, which was very difficult, but doable for leadership. Senator Paul said that this was, that your vote difficult, but doable for leadership. say ma'am I'm just asking for your response. My response is I have an obligation to the people of the state of Alaska and I live up to that every single day. I advocated for my state's interests. I will continue to do that and I will make no excuses for doing that. Do I like this bill? No. Because I tried to take care of Alaska's interests. But I know, I know that in many parts of the country there are Americans that are not going

to be advantaged by this bill. I don't like that. In flashbacks to the corn husker kickback debacle of the 2009 This is being called the Kodiak kickback by Ruben Gallego Because Murkowski did get carve outs in the bill Yeah, she got the legislation changed so that the people who live in the 49 other states Will not feel the same will feel more of a punishment than people in Alaska will. Yeah. Which, and it is true she is a senator from Alaska. Her title is United States Senator. It's, it's

an, like, yeah, I get representing your state, but to actively do something that you know is gonna hurt Alaskans, but is going to hurt the rest of the country less, and so you go for it, is some weak sauce. And if you notice in that clip, I've followed her around the halls for many, many years. She has an energy press corps because she's so influential when it comes to the energy sector. And the energy trade reporters love her. She loves them.

Uh-huh. I'm sure. It's kind of funny to watch. Well, yes. And then, so she's not used to getting that in the hallway. Per Politico, as part of the Senate Republican sweeping final amendment to the bill that was part of the overnight negotiations, they removed a controversial tax on solar and wind energy projects

that Murkowski and a handful of other Republicans were agitating to be removed. Another goodie bordered on the obscure, if not for the senator, bowhead whaling boat captains recognized by the Alaska Eskimo Whaling Commission will be able to deduct more for whale hunting related expenses up to $50,000 from the current $10,000, which obviously we support here. That's an editorial policy of breaking points. We have a very strong, we always have had a strong position on that deduction. Your whaling write-offs. For the Alaska Eskimo Whaling Commission.

Yeah, got to keep that whale oil flowing. So this is how JD Vance, we can put A2 up on the screen. This is how JD Vance was talking about the bill. He says, massive tax cuts, especially no tax on tips and overtime, and most importantly, big money for border security. This is a big win for the American people. It's true.

These are across the board tax cuts. They will disproportionately benefit wealthy Americans. Most of the tax cuts are going to wealthy Americans. It doesn't mean that middle class isn't getting tax cuts. They are getting tax cuts. The no tax on tips, no tax on overtime, both helpful policies obviously for many, many, many average Americans, Ryan, but we can put Jeff Stein's breakdown of the bill on the screen. This is where things got very hairy for Republicans in order to pay

for those tax cuts to have a bill that doesn't look as egregious as this one ultimately ended up looking so it didn't really matter too much for them to be honest. They were going for austerity essentially so Ryan you can sort of walk through some of this but major safety net cuts targeting Medicaid as Jeff reports and food stamps So those do add work requirements. They add some cost sharing for the states, some paperwork. They think that'll save about $1.3 trillion. I think that's per the- Right.

So it's $1.3 trillion in cuts to Medicaid and food stamps. Right. Yep. $0.4 trillion to immigration enforcement and the military budget, which they got through the parliamentarian. And then they ended up cutting a ton of the clean energy subsidies. Basically Biden's green industrial policy got cut. So they put that at about $500 billion. I think it'll actually end up being much more because the tax credits weren't necessarily capped in the IRA so that we've had a surprising

boom in clean tech manufacturing over the last several years. And so the more you have, then the more tax credits there are going to be, which creates more energy, lowers energy prices, and on and on. So could be 500 billion, could be even more. So that's about 2 trillion that they're cutting out of federal spending by going after food stamps, Medicaid, and subsidies for energy production. And then they're spending it, we can go back, if you want to put the Jeff Stein post back up.

So the way that they're spending it, $2.5 trillion to extend the prior tax cuts. So those are the ones that Trump passed in 2017. This extends them out. And also your child care benefit goes from $2,000 to $2.2. With so many kids, hey, that's going to be nice for me. All right. Huge Ryan Grim win. Big win for me right there.

Then there are about a trillion dollars in various tax cuts that go to the top 1% including basically eliminating the estate tax. So think about that. So that's roughly the amount of Medicaid and SNAP cuts. It's at 15 million dollars. It's at 15 million dollars but with the stepped-up basis, loopholes and other loopholes, there are going to be very few people who end up paying estate taxes, like almost nobody. It's already a pretty small group. It's a small group already, but yeah. But it's gonna cost a trillion dollars.

That means it's not nobody that's currently paying it. So now they're pushing it very close to nobody. And then half a billion on his other things, you know, no cash, no, no, no tax on tips. Jeff Stein mentions the car interest deduction. Hey, that'll help me too. Yes, it will. This is going great for you. A couple car payments. I mean, two car payments. This could not possibly be going better for you. This is amazing. No, genuinely, like, this will be like for me, except for the fact that I'll live in a worse country. This is going to be better for you. This is amazing. No, genuinely, like this will be like for me,

except for the fact that I'll live in a worse country, this is gonna be good for me. It's a really, I think the decision-making process around this bill is, has been a very interesting glimpse into how Republicans are struggling immensely with these two disparate wings that became part of the MAGA coalition. On the one hand you have the austerity of Elon Musk who is now threatening a third party sort of like an American AFD basically that is focused specifically it's like a Doge party essentially is the way that he's talking about it. On the other hand you have the Josh Hawleys who are pissed about the cuts to Medicaid,

but ended up voting for the bill because they either had to look at, and this is a false choice, I'll explain, but the way that they saw it was they either had to look at tax increases because these tax cuts were expiring, and that was something that Trump didn't think would happen on his watch because he would have, when these were passed in 2017,

been done with two terms. So tax cuts were expiring so you either have to let the taxes go up or you have to look at something completely different than how they conceived of this entire reconciliation process but they don't have enough members. Like they, wildly naive, because there's nothing that you can do to actually tackle the national debt and the out-of-control spending. Will you still have to make Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, Rand Paul? None of this would have worked.

This was their only option, other than letting taxes go up. It doesn't mean that that's where I think it's sort of a false choice. And actually, Bacha Ungar Sarganes pointed this out. They could have actually just let the top rate expire. They didn't have to cut it again. They could have just let the top rate expire. Or because they don't actually give a damn

about spending or the debt, they could have just been honest that they're blowing up the debt and not even bothered to make cuts. Yeah. If they're paying for the taxes. Yes, and so you're gonna have to explain to me what it what's up with this party. Because JD Vance kept saying in defense of this bill, look, everyone's got criticisms of it, but none of your criticisms could actually get, you know, 51 votes, get a majority in the House.

Mm-hmm. But having watched Trump's campaign, I could design not a bill that I would like, but I could design a bill that would match with the Bannon-Maga Trump ideology, and that would not raise the deficit like this. You could actually increase. Instead of spending a trillion dollars on the estate tax giveaway for just fail sons and fail daughters. Who is the constituency to defend the rights of children

and grandchildren of billionaires? As a populist movement, you could be like, look, you know what? We're going to tilt the playing field back towards regular people. Just because you're born with the last name gates Like just a random name. Yeah doesn't mean not anyone in particular and not the congressman Doesn't mean that you get to be a billionaire too Like you didn't do anything so you can be a very you can be a multi millionaire and never work in your life

The irony also all you ever meet these kids. They're all destroyed They're not happy. Mm-hmm Like it'd be one thing if we were destroying the planet and destroying the working class and the middle class and The point one percent were having the time of their lives the point one percent are miserable Their children are more miserable and their grandchildren miserable too. No, this isn't making anybody happy. So they okay There's a trillion dollars right there. You could also as Trump Hinted that he would do you could raise taxes on the super rich He talked about maybe creating like a another bracket for million and up he could do that

So then you can have tax cuts for 95 percent of the American public But doesn't actually cost that money and he ran, promising that he would never cut Medicaid. It was assumed he wouldn't cut food stamps. I don't know if he ever promised that. Then you wouldn't have to cut Medicaid and food stamps. And then you can go and bust the deficit to do your mass deportation. You don't need to do this. There are no cops around here.

Do whatever you want. But basically, according to JD Vance, they don't have the votes for that. So that's where I need you to explain to me what on earth is going on with the party, what I just laid out. Like 99% of the country getting a tax cut, you get your mass deportation, you get your populism, no tax on tips, all this stuff. The only thing you'd have to do is not a cater to the grandchildren of billionaires. But they can't do that, why?

I know a lot of cops, and they get asked all the time, have you ever had to shoot your gun? Sometimes the answer is yes. But there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be no. Across the country, cops call this Taser the revolution. But not everyone was convinced it was that simple. Cops believed everything that Taser told them.

From Lava for Good and the team that brought you Bone Valley comes a story about what happened when a multi-billion dollar company dedicated itself to one visionary mission. This is Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated. I get right back there and it's bad. It's really, really, really bad. Listen to new episodes of Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Binge episodes one, two, and three on May 21st and episodes four, five, and six on June 4th. Add free at Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. Welcome to Pretty Private with Ebene, the podcast where silence is broken and stories are set free. I'm Ebene and every Tuesday I'll be sharing all new anonymous stories that will challenge

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and reveal what it actually looks like, and sounds like, in real time. Each week, I sit down with people who've lived through harm, carried silence, and are now reshaping the systems that failed us. We're going to talk about the adultification of black girls, mothering as resistance, and the tools we use for healing.

The Unwanted Sorority is a safe space, not a quiet space. So let's walk in. We're moving towards liberation together. Listen to The Unwanted Sorority, new episodes every Thursday on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I think part of it is you're always going to have to give something to the Fiscal Hawks,

because on the house side, you have Chip Roy, someone, and people like Chip Roy. He didn't just use him as a proxy. But these Fiscal Hawks are choking on this. Well, he's, yeah, I mean, he's furious about the way everything stands. I mean, there's like a Thomas Massey criticism of the bill, and Massey basically will never come to a yes on it,

but there are people who basically share his perspective on everything, just see it as impractical to vote for nothing and let taxes go up. And I think you put Chip Roy and a handful of other people in that camp. So Biden spending actually was like, he exploded federal spending.

And he would say that it- And it started under Trump with the response to COVID, which gave us the best, Trump and Biden gave us the best economic recovery relative to any other country in the world out of COVID, by the way. That social democracy thing we tried for a couple of years, it actually works. This is where they start talking about how Trump, who promised not to touch Medicaid, and to your point about SNAP

like probably implied I think in all of that, similar to... Food stamps? You know who you're going after on food stamps? Like any... Yeah. Well I mean as somebody on the right I do, well, I mean as Somebody on the right. I do think that that I mean this was there's a GAO report This was like 2020 one in four Medicaid dollars were improper payments So they were either this should never have been made or they were in the wrong amount It was like 30 billion dollars in 2024. I think they're like significant problems, by the way This is what people not me but people were optimistic doge would start targeting is that like there is legitimate

That to be trimmed there. We have a problem with workforce participation among men in particular The Joint Economic Committee at one point this was under Mike Lee. We can't get men to go to a doctor anyway Taking their Medicaid is not actually gonna get them back to work. That's not the problem with men. If that's your theory of why men are not working. Yeah. Anyway, so that's actually up significantly since over the last several decades. There's a lot of stuff that you could do with this, but pairing it with a tax cut just politically is a huge giveaway to Democrats.

You are quite literally paying for tax cuts on the wealthy with this. And then on the other hand, morally, for a party that is now trying to represent working class Americans, you're actually not putting a dent in the debt. And I know that they dispute the Congressional Budget Office analysis, which is fine because Democrats often take issue with the CBO scores. Everyone has problems with the CBO scores. CBO has absolutely been wrong.

I get it. But the idea that this is going to generate enough growth to offset the revenue law. While you took a hammer to the IRS. I mean, I think it's highly unlikely, and everyone basically understands that. So you're not putting a dent in spending or the debt, basically, at this point.

And let's also think about how we're saving the money. And then think about, it's often not helpful to think about the country as a household or a company. But let's do a little exercise there. Imagine you're a company or a household. And one of your lieutenants comes to you and says, you know what?

The way we're going to cut spending and become profitable, either as a household or as a company, we're going to stop paying our insurance, health insurance, and we're going to stop basically in this case, whatever the equivalent is of energy production. So we're cutting half a billion dollars in investment of energy production. So we're cutting half a billion dollars in investment towards energy production. And that's going to make us richer. I think the CEO would be like, okay, but we're going to need energy.

So where's the energy going to come from? Because if we look at the charts of energy use, the demand is going through the roof. Guys ever hear of AI? Like it's a thing that's going on now, it's gobbling up a lot of it. It's happening. Clouds. Everything's becoming electrified.

Everything in your house is using more electricity than it did before. Electricity demand is going up relative to what it has been in the past. So we need more electricity production. You can hate wind, solar, and batteries ideologically, because you hate them. They represent 2 thirds of the capacity

that we've added over the last year and were projected to represent more than that going forward. So now, what are you going to do? You're going to do more natural gas, more oil? There are limits to what you can do. So what you're actually going to do more natural gas, more oil. There are limits to what you can do. So what you're actually going to do is get rolling blackouts. Demand is going to outstrip the supply that you have. And then you go, wait a minute.

We're going to stop paying our insurance bill? Are our employees or our family members all of a sudden not going to get sick? No, Americans are still going to get sick. Where are they going to go? Oh, they're going to go to the emergency room now. Who's going to pay for that? The hospital is going to pay for that.

Oh, also, the hospital that is now getting hit with a provider tax too, this is projected to throw 17 million people off of their health insurance and is likely to bankrupt a ton of hospitals. We're already losing hospitals all over rural America. Yeah. And some, like, struggling urban hospitals, mostly rural hospitals. Hawley was making a huge stink about this. Yeah. Susan Collins as well.

They were even, like, figuring out ways. There was an amendment on the floor to, you know, slightly tweak the estate tax to create a fund that would protect rural hospitals from going under. Mm-hmm It failed like 80 20 So People are still gonna get sick people still need energy. So, okay all of the savings in the bill quote unquote savings Actually make us poorer

Meanwhile the things we're cutting Like tack, you know cutting taxes essentially also make us poor. It's like It's the most self-destructive Piece of legislation I think that we've ever done like on purpose. It's like it's so weird. Well, Stephen Miller is Saying you remember this from like a month or two ago that it is the most important piece of all right This is very smart. Yeah, we're gonna get we're gonna get millions of people out of the country That's also gonna make us richer. Yeah Well, I mean there there's a tax definitely on the social safety net because of people who are in the country

Illegally or waiting asylum unless they're in their 20s 30s 40s paying in and not getting money out. That's right. Which is the case for a lot of them. Well yeah I mean that's absolutely an argument so I don't they put about it being self-destructive they would say that immigration enforcement is it's not even about the spending they would say the immigration enforcement is about like safety and culture that that's the Stephen Miller say that immigration enforcement is about safety and culture. That's the Stephen Miller argument. That immigration enforcement- As Trump said, if Stephen Miller had his way, there'd be 100 million people in this country

and they'd all look like Stephen Miller. They'd all look like- That's Donald Trump I'm quoting. What a country that would be. 100 million school shooters. Yeah. Right? I mean, you were thinking it too.

Let's move on to the feud between Elon Musk and Donald Trump, which is actually related to everything that we are talking about. This is a clip of Donald Trump being asked about Elon Musk yesterday on his Alligator Alcatraz tour. Go ahead and roll this. What happened to Elon Musk? Nothing. He's upset that he's losing his TV mandate and except killer He's very upset about things, but you know, he could lose a lot more than that. Thank you. Right? Elon Elon can lose a lot more than that. We might have to put those your feeling

You know, you know doges Those is the monster that has that might have to go back and eat Elon. We're nothing terrible He gets a lot of subsidies, Peter. But Elon's very upset that the EV mandate is going to be terminated. And you know what? When you look at it, who wants... Not everybody wants an electric car. I don't want an electric car. I want to have maybe gasoline, maybe electric, maybe a hybrid,

maybe someday a hydrogen. If you have a hydrogen car, it has one problem, it blows up, you know? So I'm going to give that one to Peter. So, Trump, that was at the White House before he left for the Everglades. He is asked by a reporter, are you going to deport Elon Musk? Trump says, we'll have to take a look. We might have to put Doge on Elon. You know what Doge is? the monster that might have to go back and eat Elon, wouldn't that be terrible?

He gets a lot of subsidies. Musk replies on Twitter, this is the next element, quote, so tempting to escalate this. So, so tempting, but I will refrain for now. Then Musk also posted, cut it all now in response to Trump saying that Doge might look at Musk's subsidies. Musk's argument, Ryan, is not entirely dissimilar from the point you were just making about

some of these or the nature of the cuts being self-destructed, but he's coming at it from a totally different perspective. Not totally. There's some significant overlap, which is that he is desperately concerned. And it goes back to both his business, but also his venture to Mars. He's desperately concerned with electricity production. He keeps posting these various charts of Chinese electricity production versus American electricity production. They're on track to make as much electricity with just wind, solar, and battery power as

we are total. And if you're in an AI race, which is related to his Mars race, then how do you think that's going to go? Like the country with more Jews is going to win this one. So that's where the overlap is. He also wants, he doesn't like the deficit busting stuff because he wants to spend that money going to Mars. That's where when he's saying cut all of the subsidies now,

I mean it's just, it's easy to say that when he's on the outside looking in. I don't know that- Oh is it that easy to say? I'm sure his shareholders are like... Yeah, his shareholders are probably super excited. He doesn't mean that. Yeah, he's... Don't cut all those subsidies. I mean, you also, we, and I blame everyone from Obama up,

empowered this guy to have this power. Oh, he wouldn't exist without federal subsidies that Obama... With Starlink and SpaceX and all these things like these guys this guy's got this guy has cards to play as by Barack Obama Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah, so I mean, but now he's got cards easy to say. Yeah. Yeah now he has cards. That's right So I don't know the threat to start a third party and all of that Musk also had a pretty interesting I thought it was a pretty interesting admission on X yesterday Ryan He was like a full reply guy

But he in response to somebody saying that the chainsaw kind of made it harder for for Doge to do anything He basically agreed and said that Millay gave him the chainsaw backstage But in retrospect he thinks that it did lack empathy. I believe that's what he said. Yeah, he says a fair criticism. He said, Malay gave him the chainsaw backstage, and he just went with it. Yeah, exactly. I'd kind of wonder,

I'm like, the original name for ecstasy was empathy because that that's closer to the feeling that it produces in a user and so I always wonder they didn't go with empathy because it's like that's not very cool marketing like ecstasy is gonna sell better in the club But I always wondered, how is this guy eating this much molly and this callus? How does he not care about the tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions, tens of millions of people plus who are affected by the whims of this bender

that he's on? And it turns this bender that he's on and It turns out that you know now that he's come back to earth a little bit He actually does know the word empathy and he and he regrets that it That it lacked empathy in his own. It also accomplished nothing except ruining a whole bunch of people's lives I mean, I think he just exists in the strain of libertarianism Which is kind of weird to say from somebody whose businesses are based on subsidies, but he exists in the strain of libertarianism libertarianism where empathy itself is is used to the belief is that empathy itself is used to hurt people and is used to like Inflict cruelty. I mean, it's just a standard Milton Friedman argument about how subsidies. Suicidal empathy is not what they say. Toxic empathy.

Toxic empathy. But this is more of how people get trapped in government dependency spirals and it's cruel and I think he thought in his own way. Also, by the way, if you guys think having humanity is bad, you took a wrong turn somewhere. It's like retrace your steps. I think we go ahead.

This is a Ryan Grim argument for USAID. Well for some programs, yeah. But I'm not even going to go down those. I was just going to say you could make that argument about some of the bad programs that you lack humanity if you strip away this USAID aid. Well, I mean, it depends. It very much depends. Right.

But Elon's perspective. If you take away some of a kid's infant formula without a plan to replace it with something else that they can live on, that's bad and lacks empathy. But yeah, I think- Whether or not that cutout was also involved in some regime change. Regime change baby formula,

it's the tastiest baby formula. But Musk is, he I think felt like he had the wind at his back culturally in a way that he didn't. That post was really interesting. Yes, exactly. He spent too much time with his own reply guys. Yes, yeah, 100%. All right, let's move on. Who would have thought that cat turd 2 would lead you astray? But here we are. And he's, Elon is like admitting that in this really, it's just a post on X, but he's admitting that he had basically terrible political instincts

and then demanding the Republican party currently follow his political instincts. Or else he's gonna start a political party. Sure that'll go well. I know a lot of cops and they get asked all the time, have you ever had to shoot your gun? Sometimes the answer is yes, but there's a company dedicated to a future

where the answer will always be no. Across the country, cops call this Taser the revolution. But not everyone was convinced it was that simple. Cops believed everything that Taser told them. From Lava for Good and the team that brought you Bone Valley comes a story about what happened when a multi-billion dollar company dedicated itself to one visionary mission.

This is Absolute Season One, Taser Incorporated. I get right back there and it's bad. It's really, really, really bad. Listen to new episodes of Absolute Season One, Taser Incorporated, on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Binge episodes one, two, and three on May 21st, and episodes four, five, and six on June 4th.

Ad free at Lava for Good Plus on Apple podcasts. Welcome to Pretty Private with Ebene, the podcast where silence is broken and stories are set free. I'm Ebene and every Tuesday, I'll be sharing all new anonymous stories that will challenge your perceptions and give you new insight on the people around you. On Pretty Private, we'll explore the untold experiences of women of color who faced it all, childhood trauma, addiction, abuse, incarceration, grief,

mental health struggles, and more, and found the strength to make it to the other side. My dad was shot and killed in his house. Yes, he was a drug dealer. Yes, he was a confidential informant, but he wasn't shot on a street corner. He wasn't shot in the middle of a drug deal. He was shot in his house, unarmed.

Pretty Private isn't just a podcast. It's your personal guide for turning storylines into lifelines. Every Tuesday, make sure you listen to Pretty Private from the Black Effect Podcast Network. Tune in on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. The summer of 1993 was one of the best of my life.

I'm journalist Jeff Perlman, and this is Rick Jervis. We were interns at the Nashville Tennessean, but the most unforgettable part? Our roommate, Reggie Payne, from Oakley, sports editor and aspiring rapper. And his stage name? Sexy Sweat. In 2020, I had a simple idea.

Let's find Reggie. We searched everywhere, but Reggie was gone. In February 2020, Reggie was having a diabetic episode. His mom called 911. Police cuffed him face down. He slipped into a coma and died. I'm like thanking you, but then I see my son's not moving. No headlines, no outrage, just silence.

So we started digging and uncovered city officials bent on protecting their own. Listen to Finding Sexy Sweat on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Let's talk about Alligator Alcatraz because Ryan actually took a trip to Alligator Alcatraz while he was in Florida over the last several days. We can roll B1 here. You can see how basically Ron DeSantis and Donald Trump constructed their own sort of little sea cot, brought a little flavor of El Salvador up to the Alford Glades.

It does seem like inspired by sea cot. It does. If you're listening to this, what you're seeing is bunk beds behind fencing. And it's being sort of trumpeted as an amazing feat. And it was put up really quickly, Ryan. You said you saw the trucks rolling in over the last several days. They did this in what? I mean, less than a week, right? Yeah, today's Wednesday. So I was there Saturday. And there was a big protest there.

There had been a protest, a smaller protest the week before. And I talked to people who had been there the week before. And there was basically nothing then. You could basically drive onto the base at that point. By the time I got there, you couldn't drive on there because there was so much traffic from the dump trucks and propane trucks and generator trucks and food trucks that were just streaming onto this site in a way that was like affecting, it was like ominous, like how much energy was

being put into this. And most of the trucks had names like, you know, Rodriguez Trucking or something like that. And they were planning to put this thing together in days. And they did. And on Tuesday, I'm getting my days mixed up, July 1st, Tuesday, Trump and DeSantis inaugurated the thing. They're going to spend, they say, these estimates are always low.

They say they're going to spend $450 million in the first year of the operation of this site. Meanwhile, it is hurricane season. Yeah. So there is, it took us about an hour, drove from Miami down to the protest there. Did you drive your wife and kids to alligator uncontrollable? Well, we only have one kid with us now, because the three are in camp,

and it was too early in the morning, she refused to go, but a friend's kid did go. Okay. Get up, Dad's driving us to alligator out of the tracks. Dads are going to alligator out of the tracks. Yeah, and it was packed. Maybe in post, I can send them back some of the videos, we can put them in there, although we're kind of late,

so maybe I won't do it. But it's the beginning of hurricane season. There's one road that takes you there, that's it. Like this is, you're driving through the Everglades. Trying to evacuate all of those people in the event of a hurricane, plus evacuating, there are a lot of, M Succa, there's indigenous people that live down there.

There's also, I think it's mostly, mostly native people that live down there because it's mostly native area. But there's some, you know, and there will always be like Florida residents down there as well. Trying to evacuate all the workers and all of the staff and all of the people in detention and all

of the other people on this little two-lane road would be calamitous. So we just have to, I guess, cross our fingers that we don't get an extreme mass casualty event from a hurricane that forms quickly and hits that area. Where I thought you were going with us was that some of the news reports included statements from people whose homes have been flattened by hurricanes and saw DeSantis really quickly construct this massive facility. With FEMA money. Yes. 450 million dollars, I think it was like eight days, something like that. It wasn't there last week and now you have this massive.

We haven't rebuilt Western North Carolina, we haven't rebuilt even like from Hurricane Michael and like the panhandle in Florida, DeSantis. It still looks like it went through last week. So yeah, they're wanting it to get up to 5,000 beds. I think it's 3,000 right now. Now, in the couple things that I would just add to this, we have a serious problem with lacking detention capacity

for immigrants. Lack land in Florida though. Yeah, that's a totally, totally legitimate point. And if I were someone who was waiting for their house to be rebuilt in Florida, I'm not sure that this would thrill me at all, but we have like 59,000 people detainees because of the ICE enforcement. But the ICE enforcement itself is because the Biden

administration at minimum created an influx of 8 million people over the course of a few years. And so the Trump administration enforcing that means that they have a record number, 59,000 people. They're running out of room. And so there is absolutely, unless you are full, and this is probably where Ryan and I disagree, full, let people stay, you absolutely do need more room for all of this. And you do need incentives for people to use things like CBP Home, which allow you to just very humanely self-deport. And you don't end up getting detained, you don't end up getting arrested, at least that's the theory. So they believe these are disincentives

for people to continue staying in the country if they've not shown up for court dates or anything like that if the process has run out. Right, but they're trying to break the process by arresting people at their court dates. Like they're doing this loophole where they will dismiss somebody's proceedings at a hearing and then just arrest them at it and say, okay, now you're moved into expedited removal. And so basically it's incentivizing people not to show up.

Let's say, okay, y'all won. You want to deport lots of people. Why not just do ankle bracelets? Okay, here's the process. We're gonna change the law. They just showed they can pass any law they want. We're gonna make the laws such that if the expedited removal is actually expedited. There's gonna be a little bit of due process,

but we won, so it's gonna be, you know, fig leaf, but there's gonna be some process, and then once you're ordered deported, you're deported. Yeah. And in the meantime, you can, you know, you wear an ankle bracelet or whatever, like, or like there's other ways, like we live in a surveillance society. We sure do. Just have Peter Thiel handle it. Yeah, if, like, this should not be like something that, like, if the right is going to go in this dystopian direction of building, like, mass camps in the Everglades. The Bukele LARP.

Yeah, then it's not as if they have something, like, they would shrink it, like, exercising some extreme surveillance authority. Let's watch how Donald Trump was describing all of this yesterday. This is B2. Take care of our farmers and hotel workers and various other people that we're working on it right now and Ron's going to be involved and you're involved already. So we have a case, a lot of cases where ICE will go into a farm and these guys working there for 10, 15 years,

no problem, the farmers know them. We're gonna put, let's call it farmer responsibility or owner responsibility, where they're gonna be largely responsible for these people, and they know these people. They've worked on the farms for 15 years, and all of a sudden, so I have a great, Ron does, Christie does,

we have a great feeling for the farmer and for others in the same position. And we're going to give them responsibility for people. And we're going to have a system of signing them up so they don't have to go. They can be here legally. They can pay taxes and everything. They're not getting citizenship, but they get other things. And the farmers need them to do the work.

Without those people, you're not going to be able to run your farm. Mr. President, Mr. Governor, what's your message to Governor Gavin Newsom inside of this facility? The first thing we should do is come here and run something. Because they don't do this. They would not. But if we did, I think they did it in a plus of a hundred times. Are you here? To be honest.

Hey, Biden wanted me in here. Okay? That's it. He wanted me. It didn't work out that way, but he wanted me in here. Okay, that's it. He wanted me, it didn't work out that way, but he wanted me in here. Trump saying that Biden wanted him and alligator Alcatraz. We have a couple of more clips because he was on a roll yesterday. This is Trump being asked about what the sort of point of the alligator branding is. Teach them how to run away from an alligator, okay? If they escape prison. How to run away.

Don't run in a straight line. Run like this. And you know what? Your chances go up about 1%, okay? Not a good thing. He's sort of bragging about his knowledge of alligator escapes. From his golf courses.

Oh, that's a good point. If you're looking closely at the hat, by the way, which I didn't until it was just in front of us now, there's a subheading If you're looking closely at the hat, by the way, which I didn't until it was just in front of us now, there's a subheading on the Gulf of America MAGA hat that says, yet another Trump development. That's what it says on the hat. I'm glad he's having such a wonderful time

bringing like abject fascism. Like this is like completely. That was, it's not really fascism. Fascism to like build a giant concentration camp in the middle of the Everglades? Where the people are at immediate risk of getting killed if a hurricane comes through. And then joking about them getting eaten by alligators and snakes.

Well, yeah, that part. Oh, okay. And also... Here's what I was saying, it's fascism, it's him... LARPing. It's like fascist LARPing. And he's also doing some weird planter-class LARPing in the's like fascist LARPing. And he's also doing some weird planter class LARPing in the first clip that you played there. He's like, we're gonna have owner responsibility. That was his, I'm not putting words in his mouth. He said owner responsibility for migrants who work on farms. I don't even have to like say anything else about it.

Yeah, you're right. I thought we settled this. And he's also like, we're going to take care of the hotel workers. You know Stephen Miller, speaking of Stephen Miller, his brain is exploding when he hears that. Yeah, because Miller's like, I guess he's torn there. He's like, hmm, slavery. We're really moving the Overton window here.

But he's like, will they assimilate? Will the slaves assimilate? That's the question. Well, you know, it's... Owner responsibility? Like we literally did a war and we settled this. You're not owning people in this country. We don't do that.

Yeah, I mean... Everything is apparently up for grabs. I think that's where I think the administration is often, it feels like a lark to me. It feels like they're not, he doesn't do half of the stuff that he does. He does some of it, and then he doesn't do the others. Maybe they never fill this camp.

Let's hope. Honestly, not impossible. Because they're saying they want it to house up to 5,000 people they want to keep doing more of this I don't know. I mean they they were doing this This is actually a really good illustration of the way that I'm thinking about like they said they were gonna use Guantanamo Trump said he was gonna use actual Alcatraz. They're using Guantanamo. It's like it's costing them half a million per detainee There's like 30 people there. Yeah, there's like 30 people. He said he was going to send all these people to CICOT. To be fair, he sent 300 people, but stopped after that.

And it's like, I think part of it is they're trying to create this very visual, vivid imagery to distance them. Right, a sense of fear so people just leave, which is probably working to some degree. Probably to some degree. And then they don't go all the way. But it ends up feeling like a big fascist bukele larp. I don't disagree with

that at all. Yeah and also it's in immigrant communities people are like you know kids are told don't open the door for anybody. People don't congregate outside afraid that if somebody there is undocumented and gets picked up they're just gonna sweep everybody up, even the citizens, which they are doing off in LA and elsewhere. Anyway, yeah. There is definitely always larping when it comes to Trump, but sometimes the larping becomes reality. Yeah.

You talk it into existence. You never know. And that's where, yes, I think one thing I disagree with a lot of conservatives on is I think you actually always have to take him seriously because sometimes you don't actually know when he's serious and when he's joking. So you can't just be like, oh, it's Trump being Trump in every circumstance because then he goes and does stuff. I know a lot of cops and they get asked all the time, have you ever had to shoot your

gun? Sometimes the answer is yes. But there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be no. Across the country, cops call this Taser the revolution. But not everyone was convinced it was that simple. Cops believed everything that Taser told them. From Lava for Good and the team that brought you Bone Valley, comes a story about what happened when a multi-billion dollar company

dedicated itself to one visionary mission. This is Absolute Season 1, Taser Inc. I get right back there and it's bad. It's really, really, really bad. and episodes four, five and six on June 4th. Add free at Lava for Good Plus on Apple podcasts. Welcome to Pretty Private with Ebene, the podcast where silence is broken and stories are set free. I'm Ebene and every Tuesday, I'll be sharing all new anonymous stories

that will challenge your perceptions and give you new insight on the people around you. On Pretty Private, we'll explore the untold experiences of women of color who faced it all, childhood trauma, addiction, abuse, incarceration, grief, mental health struggles, and more, and found the strength to make it to the other side. My dad was shot and killed in his house. Yes, he was a drug dealer. Yes, he was a confidential informant, but he wasn't shot on a street corner.

He wasn't shot in the middle of a drug deal. He was shot in his house, unarmed. Pretty Private isn't just a podcast. It's your personal guide for turning storylines into lifelines. Every Tuesday, make sure you listen to Pretty Private from the Black Effect Podcast Network. Tune in on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. The summer of 1993 was one of the best of my life. I'm journalist Jeff Perlman, and this is Rick Jervis. We were interns at the Nashville Tennessean, but the most unforgettable part?

Our roommate, Reggie Payne, from Oakley, sports editor and aspiring rapper. And his stage name? Sexy Sweat. In 2020, I had a simple idea. Let's find Reggie. We searched everywhere, but Reggie was gone. We searched everywhere, but Reggie was gone. In February 2020, Reggie was having a diabetic episode. His mom called 911. Police cuffed him face down. He slipped into a coma and died. I'm like thanking you, but then I see my son's not moving. No headlines, no outrage, just silence.

So we started digging and uncovered city officials bent on protecting their own. Listen to Finding Sexy Sweat on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Let's talk about what he said yesterday regarding Zoran Mamdani. We are going to go ahead and roll the sought. It is B6 Trump being asked about Zoran Mamdani. We are going to go ahead and roll the sought. It is B6 Trump being asked about Zoran Mamdani. Your beloved New York City may well be led by a communist soon, Zoran Mamdani, who in

his nomination speech said he will defy ICE and will not allow ICE to arrest criminal aliens in New York City. Your message to communist Zoran Mamdani. Well then we'll have to arrest him. Look, we don't need a communist in this country, but if we have one, I'm going to be watching over him very carefully on behalf of the nation. We send him money. We send him all the things that he needs to run a government. And by the way, they get already, they get about three times what you get, Ron.

If you look at the per capita, Florida gets one third of what New York gets in terms of the numbers. Why don't you give us those numbers? Yeah, well, that's what we should send him. Yeah, well, sometimes people say Florida gets more because they count social security recipients, but that's not money to the state. Those are seniors that live here.

If they moved to North Carolina, you could count it there. So it has no interaction with the state government. They get more on the city and state governments than we get. Right. Substantially. We're going to be watching that very carefully. And a lot of people are saying he's here illegally. We're going to look at everything. But... So here's B7. This is how Zaron Mamdani responded. And I actually am curious what you make of this, Ryan. I found his response to be quite interesting. He says The president the US just threatened to have me arrested stripped of my citizenship put in a detention camp and deported not because I've broken Any law but because I will refuse to let ice terrorize our city his statements

Don't just represent an attack on our democracy But an attempt to send a message to every New Yorker who refuses to hide in the shadows if you speak up They will come for you We will not accept this intimidation and then he goes on to talk about Eric Adams, says, Trump included praise for Eric Adams and his authoritarian threats is unsurprising, but highlights the urgency of bringing an end to this mayor's time in City Hall,

goes on to talk about destroying the social safety net, kicking millions of New Yorkers off healthcare, enriching their billionaire donors and expensive working families. It's a scandal that Eric Adams echoes this president's division distraction. And, hey, Ryan, the reason I found that statement interesting is he pivots to the social safety net and pivots to

Eric Adams kicking New Yorkers off healthcare, etc. Billionaire donors. Yeah, he pivots the class warfare essentially and when Trump was asked that question by very MAGA Benny Johnson, he, I think, is in his own mind the strategy, not that he wouldn't have said that anyway, but in the strategy, in the question of strategy, what they're trying to do is get Mamdani to talk about immigration as much as possible because as unpopular as the way Donald Trump's ICE has approached this is in a blue city like New York, the immigration policies of the Biden administration and the way Eric Adams handled them at first

was deeply unpopular, which is why Eric Adams then pivoted. So I think Republicans see an opportunity to talk about immigration over and over again. Mamdani in his statement pivoted. That I thought was pretty interesting. Right. Because I think that's right, because as Bannon said, Mamdani is the first populist who has connected populism to affordability. Yes. Which is a huge indictment of our political class across the spectrum.

That this guy is the first one that's been able to do it. And so I think Trump and Bannon recognize that they're vulnerable to him on that issue. And prices are going up and they just, you know, your energy bills are going to be going up pretty soon thanks to this big, beautiful bill, et cetera. And so yes, they think they're on better ground if they can get him back to, they want to be back in like 2018, 1920, where they're fighting Democrats on cultural issues. That's where Bannon and Trump feel comfortable. And when Zoran, by the way, was tweeting things about how defending the police was queer liberation,

which he doesn't talk about anymore. Right. They like that. That's where Trump wants to be. He wants to bring that Democratic party back. They want to force him into that. The problem for Trump is A, Zoran's not really going to take that bait, but B, like their issue of immigration, Trump's losing the public on his own issue by being so over the top.

If you look at the polling, independents are now swinging. Again, people have very fluid views about immigration policy. But then he and Stephen Miller are betting on being the lesser of two evils, right? That even if their popularity dips, Dem's popularity with things like sanctuary cities, for example, which are massive pull factors, although less so when the board is still.

What he's letting them do is just, what he's letting Zoran do is defend against masked ICE agents, just like scooping people off the street, which the public is like, yeah, what are you doing? This is not how we do things. Especially with all these people now impersonating ICE agents across the country. It's becoming like an actual legitimate crime problem.

It's like a safety issue, what ICE is doing. And so if you let them just say, we're against ZCOT, we're against alligator alcatraz, we're against the masked agents doing fascism on the streets, then you don't force Democrats to like grapple with their unpopular immigration policies. Right. And I think the Trump bet is that as long as Mamdani is talking about immigration, then Trump and Republicans and probably Eric Adams as well, it's an opportunity for them to talk about sanctuary cities, sanctuary cities.

Yeah, and for Mamdani, as long as Trump is boosting Eric Adams and attacking Mamdani, Mamdani is just growing in popularity in New York. That very well may be the case, the poll that came out yesterday, which showed, wasn't there a poll that came out yesterday that showed him hypothetically beating Cuomo? We got the final margin yesterday as well, which was what, 12 points?

A 12 point rout of Andrew Cuomo, unbelievable. I thought a general election poll came out yesterday showing if Cuomo were to win. Anyway, I'll look it up, but it wouldn't be surprising at all if it were the case that Mamdani was was winning. But the more, yeah, it's just the more that Eric Adams gets associated with Trump. Right. Or Cuomo with Trump. Right. Or Mamdani as the anti-Trump, it helps him. Right. Yes. And finally, did you see Ryan this apology from Kirsten Gillibrand? Yes. So we have this last element up on the screen. I'm reading from Politico here.

Kirsten Gillibrand apologizes around Mom Donnie on Monday after she falsely claimed in a radio interview that the presumptive Democratic nominee for mayor of New York City had made quote, references to global jihad. The junior senator at Mayoral candidate spoke by phone Monday and there was a readout of the call that Gillibrand's team gave to Politico that said Jill LeBrand apologized for

Mischaracterizing mom Donnie's record and for her tone on the call. This is in reference to a Brian Lehrer segment Where a caller asked Jill LeBrand about holding mom Donnie to account for quote glorifying Hamas and Ryan this was like the Brian Lair segment heard round the left. This was playing everywhere. Tell us a little bit about it. I mean it was bonkers. Go listen to it. She sounds completely unhinged and she just and Brian Lair gives her like three or four like opportunities to like correct herself and to like add in a little bit of complexity or humility or uncertainty about the situation. She's like no absolutely not and at one point like correct herself and to like add in a little bit of complexity or humility or uncertainty

about the situation. She's like, no, absolutely not. And at one point accuses him of wanting to wage global jihad, which actually goes to Zoran's point. The reason he said in that initial interview where he gave this long, like nuanced answer about why he wouldn't condemn the phrase globalizing and to fight it So basically because you're asking me to condemn a phrase that to some Arabic speakers or to all Arabic speakers means, you know globalized the resistance and You can't ask an Arabic speaker to condemn the word resistance, right?

Like like just because some people don't like it It would be like saying that the Trump administration whenever they arrest a Palestinian a pro-Palestine protester, they tweet out shalom. So therefore when pro-Palestine people hear the word shalom, they get in their feelings about this assault on their dignity and their liberty. So therefore nobody should say shalom anymore. It's the same logic, but it's absurd. No, shalom, that's not what what it like. I'm sorry. I mean like Trump is misusing the phrase. Yeah but that doesn't mean that nobody else can say it and Gillibrand then makes his point that the whole argument is is racist by Confusing jihad and intifada

Because she doesn't matter to her. It's just scary sounding Arabic words Because she doesn't matter to her. It's just scary sounding Arabic words. And so the entire political class, the media, all the Sunday shows, everyone tried to get him to condemn this phrase. He wouldn't, and Gillibrand winds up being the one that apologizes. That's, I don't know, it's too much to say

it's a watershed moment, but it's it's definitely a data point They're gonna have to bend the knee. They are Slowly, but surely realizing it even Kathy Hokel told Gillibrand like there's there's no room for this racism in our state If you lost Kathy Hokel That's I think that's probably when she was like, okay, I need to apologize That's probably when she was like, okay, I need to apologize for this. It's over. Geez. Speaking of unlikable and unpopular governors, let's pivot to Gavin Newsom, Ryan.

That was really... So mean. It was. Such a likable character. It was low hanging fruit. We were talking about Gabby O'Cole. It just made sense to talk about Gavin Newsom right after that. So Gavin Newsom is now taking aim at

the California Environmental Quality Act, which if you've read Abundance, if you followed Ezra Klein's work, that is a sort of fixation. Ezra's been writing about it for a matter of years. And Gavin Newsom held a press conference yesterday. Let's take a look at his nod to the abundance community in this clip. To the NIMBY movement that's now being replaced by the YIMBY movement. Go YIMBYs. Thank you for your abundant mindset. It's a plug to Ezra.

And it really is about abundance. And to the movement that they represent, which I think was reflected in the comments made a moment ago about getting big stuff done. Okay, we can put the tear sheet on the screen. You heard him there say he appreciates to the Yimby community the abundant mindset. They are rolling back that landmark quote environmental law quote landmark environmental law as the New York Times puts it. Ezra Klein has written, Ryan, pretty extensively for a long time as we mentioned earlier about the California Environmental Quality Act

that sort of become a symbol, not just you obviously they're substantive complaints, but it's become kind of a symbol of what abundance, the sort of abundance world is trying to change about blue state governance. This is how Klein put it in an op-ed, I want to say this was like a year ago, quote, laws like the California Environmental Quality Act have been used to block countless harmful projects. A faster, more streamlined process could make it easier to build solar farms and rail systems, but streamlining could also make it easier to build infrastructure that communities

have reason to oppose. So what's going on with this, Ryan? Well, and so Ezra tells a story in his book about the creation of this law being quite a quiet affair. Like, it's now understood as this landmark law, but it was not actually...and this is the case for a lot of laws. They pass quietly, nobody really knows what's going on, and then only later do they take on some significant importance.

And this one took on importance because the California Supreme Court Interpreted it in a in a way that the original authors of it did not Intend which gave it enormous amounts of teeth and then yeah, so you did then have a lot of you know communities and other people that wanted to block projects able to hire lawyers and gum things up. And so, you know, it's, I think there is some nuance to this because I think on the one hand the political power of billionaires and incumbent kind of monopolies and power centers are the thing that is their power that that blocks a lot of these projects and their power if it is unchecked in it what should be a democratic society is going to find

Different vehicles for it to be exercised just like you know water Running downhill. It's gonna find a way to get there And right now it's fine sequel you. You get rid of sequa, but you don't check the power of billionaires. It's not gonna solve the problem. Does it fix it? Is it a short-term solution? But on the other hand, you know,

maybe you packed a little bit of dirt there for a while. And maybe it does move the flow of the water in a productive direction for a little while. It doesn't solve the underlying problem, which is that we're not a democracy. But yeah, maybe get some projects going. It might. Like I don't want to say that it won't. But my point is unless you restructure the political economy, these people are going

to continue to mess with you and gum everything up. No question about that. I think actually that Ezra would agree with that point, don't you? I think he might. You should have him back on. Yeah, I think he might. I think the centrist groups and the pro-corporate groups

that have basically adopted all of the messaging, they would not like that. But Ezra might. Yeah, come on, we've got to get him back on and see if he does agree with that. Big win for abundance. I mean, yeah, you get name checked, your book gets name checked at the signing of the repeal of this major law.

I mean, that's as we're getting results. Yeah, within months of the book coming out. Yeah, I think it played a role. Definitely. Because here Newsom said that he would not sign the budget unless they included this with it. So this was not like a standalone thing that the legislature wanted to pass Newsom said that he would not sign the budget unless they included this with it. So this was not like a standalone thing that the legislature wanted to pass. Newsom demanded it through this process.

I know a lot of cops, and they get asked all the time, have you ever had to shoot your gun? Sometimes the answer is yes. But there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be no. Across the country, cops called this Taser the revolution. But not everyone was convinced it was that simple. Cops believed everything that Taser told them. From Lava for Good and the team that brought you Bone Valley comes a story about what happened when a multi-billion

dollar company dedicated itself to one visionary mission. This is Absolute Season One, Taser Incorporated. I get right back there and it's bad. It's really, really, really bad. Listen to new episodes of Absolute Season One, Taser Incorporated on the iHeartRadio Welcome to Pretty Private with Ebene, the podcast where silence is broken and stories are set free. I'm Ebene and every Tuesday I'll be sharing all new anonymous stories that will challenge your perceptions and give you new insight on the people around you. On Pretty Private, we'll explore the untold experiences of women of color who faced it all, childhood

trauma, addiction, abuse, incarceration, grief, mental health struggles, and more, and found the strength to make it to the other side. My dad was shot and killed in his house. Yes, he was a drug dealer. Yes, he was a confidential informant, but he wasn't shot on the street corner. He wasn't shot in the middle of a drug deal. He was shot in his house unarmed. Pretty Private isn't just a podcast.

It's your personal guide for turning storylines into lifelines. Every Tuesday, make sure you listen to Pretty Private from the Black Effect Podcast Network. Tune in on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Black Effect Podcast Network. Tune in on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. The summer of 1993 was one of the best of my life. I'm journalist Jeff Perlman, and this is Rick Jervis. We were interns at the Nashville Tennessean,

but the most unforgettable part, our roommate, Reggie Payne, from Oakley, sports editor and aspiring rapper. And his stage name? Sexy Sweat. In 2020, I had a simple idea. Let's find Reggie. We searched everywhere, but Reggie was gone. In February 2020, Reggie was having a diabetic episode. His mom called 911. Police cuffed him face down. He slipped into a coma and died.

I'm like thanking you, but then I see my son's not moving. No headlines, no outrage, just silence. So we started digging and uncovered city officials bent on protecting their own. Listen to Finding Sexy Sweat on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Let's talk about Israel, Ryan. We'll move on here to a post from Piers Morgan. This is D1. We can put it on the screen saying, huge, great work, President. Real Donald Trump, because Trump posted a truth social yesterday, saying, my representatives had a long and productive meeting

with the Israelis today on Gaza. Israel has agreed to the necessary conditions to finalize the 60-day ceasefire, during which time we will work with all parties to end the war. The Qataris and Egyptians, who have worked very hard to help bring peace, will deliver this final proposal. I hope for the good of the Middle East

that Hamas takes this deal, because it will not get better, it will only get worse. Thank you for your attention to this matter. Ryan, when he signs the post, thank you for your attention to this matter. It gives me time, every time even in these awful, awful news cycles, which is what we're talking about here, because some way, somehow, this is D2, it's a VO, we can start rolling, this is getting worse. The situation in Gaza is getting worse. Right, yeah. Every time you check the drop site Twitter feed, it almost seems like you're going to

see another report of 25, 30, 45, 80 Palestinians killed in the latest strike or attack at an aid center. This was shot by one of our reporters in Gaza. And as you could see there, it's this absolutely beautiful seaside cafe, which is very popular among journalists. Because it has Wi-Fi. Because it has Wi-Fi. And it is very, very, all you have to do is look at it to see that obviously this would

not be anywhere that a militant, you're not building, you just, I mean, just physically you can't build a tunnel right next to the beach like that. You can see the beach from the cafe. This is a place where journalists go. And it's in families too, of course. You can't build a tunnel right next to the beach like that. You can see the beach from the cafe. This is a place where journalists go. And it's in families too, of course. And it's known for being a place where journalists go. Right, and there was a, and this is about a month

after they struck a Thai restaurant in Gaza City that was also known for its Wi-Fi, but also just culturally became known as like a place where all the journalists hung out. And they struck that directly Killing, you know multiple journalists at both both times in that case you you saw the results more than 20 people killed and and and they go on and on the

Anyway, there's there's more to that but you can you can read about it in the story. Don't need to burden people with it here. It's just an absolutely ongoing genocide. It's unbelievable that this continues to go on. So, how serious is this ceasefire? The Israelis finally are now... There was a long pause between Trump posting that he had gotten their agreement to a ceasefire. Very, very long pause.

And the Israelis coming out and saying that there's some optimism around it. They didn't even go all the way and confirm it. Kind of like when, these long pauses can be disturbing, like when Ross Duthatt's like, should humanity survive? It's like, Peter That's like, should humanity survive? It's like, Peter Thiel's like, I mean. Depends. So they're now saying, okay,

so it's clearly some pressures being applied. And they're saying, okay, maybe we're gonna get there. Hamas is saying that they're open, as always, to any deal that leads to an end to the war. Like, that's, that has long been their position. And they, and they have said that we will, we will turn over authority in Gaza to some, somebody else. Not the Israelis, like, they have to withdraw.

But they will turn over authority to somebody else. And we could have this deal by now. All the hostages could be out by now, because the deal that was reached in January was in phases. And the phase one went off effectively. And then as phase two was supposed to start, Netanyahu unilaterally broke it. And so the only, now at the end of July, the Knesset goes out of session until the fall. So there's some thinking that Netanyahu wanted to wage war all the way up until the Knesset went out of session, then be pressured

into the ceasefire, and then he can't lose his government because even if Smotrich and Ben-Gavir quit at that point, there's no Knesset to overthrow him. Also there was a vote to oust him, and you can't have a second vote within six months, So he actually should be fine. Like he could take this and his government shouldn't fall apart at least for six months or so. Meanwhile, Trump's been trying to get the judges to drop these corruption charges against Netanyahu,

thinking that like that might be some obstacle to Netanyahu getting a deal. Because if Netanyahu feels this gun to his head that if he loses the power, he's going to jail, then he will just continue the genocide indefinitely just to stay out of jail. And Dropset had a report on the cafe attack. This is D3. Yeah, you can put up D3. This is, yeah, check this one out, because this piece also

includes lots of details about the ongoing negotiations. Yeah, and in the meantime, Ryan, D4, this is from HuffPost, a couple of interesting developments out of the Pentagon. Yes, well, I shouldn't say out of the Pentagon, but out of the Trump foreign policy. So I think this was what, Patriot missiles, they're halting some shipments of air defense missiles to Ukraine amid concerns that its own stockpiles of such supplies have declined too much, officials said, according to HuffPost. And Bridge Colby was getting tons of heat from Hawkes on X yesterday, who were saying

this is just shameful. People like David French, just absolutely shameful. I don't think Bridge has said anything yet. He's undersecretary for defense. But the argument, according to his defenders on X and it is a very legitimate argument by the way is that the United States is supply is running low for our own defense Dan Caldwell had a good post that I'm pulling up right now about all of this it's just like an incredible that it you can be treated

yet so Dan says the choice was either this, either prioritize equipping our own troops with ammunition in short supply, and which was used to defend US troops last week, or provide them to a country with their limited US interests. So does David support supplying Ukraine over our own troops?

He asked in response to David French saying, terrible halting patriots in particular is vile. Yeah, David French and these others want to live in a world of no limits. I would love, that'd be great. I mean, not necessarily when it comes to weapons. Patriot missiles for everyone, yeah. Abundance, times, yeah.

Get the environmental rules out of the way and you'll just have endless amounts of shells and patriot missiles and all the other things that you need to wage. And high speed rail. Yeah, you can wage war basically anywhere you want all the time and shoot as many rockets off as you want

and you will never run out. That is the world that David French would like to live in. It's not the world that we live in. We instead have just been emptying all of our warehouses, putting them on planes, flying them to Ukraine and Israel for whatever they're doing over there. And yeah, now we're running low. And who are you going to get mad at?

Like, physics? Yeah. Math? Like, you're not mad at yourself for exhausting all of your supplies. Yeah. Killing how many people? Good Lord. I mean, if you combine the number of people killed in Gaza and the number of

people killed in Ukraine, Russia, like you haven't killed enough people yet. I mean, and you're sad and you're, and you're upset that you exhausted all your supplies, killing many hundreds of thousands of people, maybe over a million? For what? Like, it's now 2025, I've been doing this since 2022. Is the world better today because we killed those million people?

Well, here is a connection between what we were just talking about, Gaza and Ukraine. We're gonna get to Syria in a moment as well, because that's one of the other interesting developments of the Trump foreign policy just in the last couple of days. But when the Ukraine war broke out, correct me if I'm wrong, Ryan, but I believe Israel did not send weapons

per Zelensky's request. We were begging, like we were asking them to, and Zelensky was begging them Just like send us some of these patriots look at look at these Poor people and keep getting attacked like send the missiles help help help and the whole world is standing with Ukraine and it was like No Think so well enough in a sense. They're recognizing they have not an infinite supply of patriot missiles Yeah, right and they cost enormous amounts of money

Yeah, oh incredible and then we make like 90 or whatever the Thames or whatever they are. Yeah, actually there's probably an abundance argument for the price of patriot missiles being a wildly high because of Yeah, and it's probably actually more of a strategic argument because if you can't get the cost of those down You can't win a war of attrition a strategic argument, because if you can't get the cost of those down, you can't win a war of attrition. This was a 12-day war with Iran, and they were basically out. Yeah. So, okay, so your whole strategy is you're going to win every war in 12 days?

Yeah. That's it? Okay, good luck. And let's talk about Syria for a bit as well, because, Ryan, I don't know if you've caught this Reuters report, this is the next tear sheet that we can put on the screen. It's an insanely horrifying report. And you always have to be skeptical of journalism in the region, I guess is maybe one broad way to put it, but this is a very-

It's such a chaotic place though, that the journalism is actually more doable because people are freer to speak than they would have been under Assad. Yes. You know, you have to obviously take everything with a grain of salt. Also, you have to be careful with the claims of competing, you know, like sometimes literally tribal factions and all of that.

But this report is incredibly well detailed. What Reuters said basically was put together names of like 1500 people that were slaughtered by, no, they make a connection to the government forces. People can dispute that. But the Reuters report is that with knowledge, complicity, and probably direction from the new administration, the Trump administration, meanwhile, has just lifted sanctions on the new administration. The Trump administration, meanwhile, has just lifted sanctions on the new government.

No, yeah, and particularly on the guys who were singled out for these massacres. Right, but I don't know, so here, go on. Yeah, so the backstory here is, in March, there was some moves by regime remnants to try to reassert authority in certain areas. They had become, and Maz has been on the show talking about this, Assad wasn't, his forces were not totally routed.

Some of the regime elements became like gangs that control particular areas and were still involved in like the Cap-to-Gone drug trade and were going to hold on to these territories and actually, you know, in some respects, depending on how you count it, they still do. And so there was some sense that they were making a move to kind of actually take back power because Jolani's hold on power is extremely tenuous. Like, you know, he swept in with like, you know,

couple hundred, couple thousand guys on like pickup trucks and motorbikes, trying to hold a massive country. And how much he actually controls Syria is exaggerated. Like, there's, like, you know, Mazo's there, how much he actually controls Syria is exaggerated. Like there's, like, you know, Maz was there, it's been several weeks since he was there, but he was saying, like, from suburb to suburb, like, there's different, like, controlling authorities

with various levels of allegiance or rivalry with the quote unquote central government. So he's kind of, he's like a fake it till you make it leader. He acts like one, but you can't really do much in the way of direction. So these... Although the sanctions are now lifted after he had a apparently good meeting with Donald Trump when Trump was in the Middle East. That's the make it part. Yeah. Yeah, so he might end up making it. Put that suit on till you get those sanctions lifted. That's right. And so these two guys, I don't have my laptop, I think one of them's Noam DeGaer's Abu Bakr,

another is like, was it Hamza? These guys are directly tied to Turkey. But Turkey has, you know, sponsors the entire thing, but like they directly sponsor particular factions. And this massacre was carried out by this faction that was directly sponsored and takes direct orders from Turkey. And so, yeah, these were out. And it became a complete massacre that roped in many, many civilians.

The Reuters story starts with a man's heart being literally cut out of his chest and placed on top of his body. Yeah. Just medieval. It was a dark, dark several days, and then interestingly it was quote-unquote central government that sent in, sent in troops quote-unquote central government that sent in Sent in troops quote-unquote because we're we're watching state formation take place. So I'm putting all these things in quotes To tamp this down. Mm-hmm And then you had Israel come in and like bomb the Druze or whatever and like a totally bizarre way

So what are you doing? Like and why are you attacking the Druze? Like, stop. Like, not helpful here. And so the central government did put a stop to it after this, like, extreme level of violence. Like, absolutely horrifying level of violence. And then, so now Trump has lifted all these sanctions across the board, which is a separate policy from specifically lifting sanctions on these two guys who are known to be or understood to be the main culprits who are tight with Erdogan. So that feels like that was an Erdogan ask.

Because you could lift sanctions on Syria and say, all right, you want to do reconstruction? That's fine. Energy infrastructure, it's fine. Telecoms, American companies can work there. We're lifting all of those sanctions. But these butchers who carried out this massacre, they're still sanctioned. Those are different kinds of sanctions you could do. To lift those is a choice and I'd be curious

Hopefully we'll get some reporting like of what role Erdogan played like why and why the Trump administration was like, yeah We'll do that. Well, yeah, especially because Israel was not in favor of the United States lifting all of the sanctions Jelani now goes by Al Sharah says that They want to start talks over a deal with Israel, potentially. Right. It shows you can be like former al-Qaeda. And as long as you're cool with Israel.

It's inspiring, really. Anybody can make it. Anybody can make it. Just one condition. Just one condition. All right. Well- And they can still bomb you

whenever they want. Like Israel continues to just bomb Syria at will. Like I said, just a true heartwarming story. It is. Of, yes, of redemption and peace maybe someday. I know a lot of cops and they get asked all the time. Have you ever had to shoot your gun? Sometimes the answer is yes. But there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be no. Across the country, cops call this taser the revolution.

But not everyone was convinced it was that simple. Cops believed everything that Taser told them. From Lava for Good and the team that brought you Bone Valley comes a story about what happened when a multi-billion dollar company dedicated itself to one visionary mission. This is absolute season one, Taser Incorporated. I get right back there and it's bad. It's really, really, really bad.

Listen to new episodes of Absolute Season One, Taser Incorporated, on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Binge episodes one, two, and three on May 21st and episodes four, five, and six on June 4th. Add free at Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. Welcome to Pretty Private with Ebene, the podcast where silence is broken and stories are set free. I'm Ebene and every Tuesday, I'll be sharing all new anonymous stories that will challenge your perceptions and give you new insight on the people around you. On Pretty Private, we'll explore the untold experiences of women of color who faced it all,

childhood trauma, addiction, abuse, incarceration, grief, mental health struggles, and more, and found the strength to make it to the other side. My dad was shot and killed in his house. Yes, he was a drug dealer. Yes, he was a confidential informant, but he wasn't shot on the street corner. He wasn't shot in the middle of a drug deal. He was shot in his house, unarmed.

Pretty Private isn't just a podcast. It's your personal guide for turning storylines into lifelines. Every Tuesday, make sure you listen to Pretty Private from the Black Effect Podcast Network. Tune in on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Sometimes it's hard to remember, but... Going through something like that is a traumatic experience, but it's also not the end of your life. That was my dad reminding me and so many others who need to hear it, that our trauma is not

our shame to carry and that we have big, bold and beautiful lives to live after what happened to us. I'm your host and co-president of this organization, Dr. Lea TraTate. On my new podcast, The Unwanted Sorority, we wade through transformation to peel back healing and reveal what it actually looks like, and sounds like, in real time. Each week, I sit down with people who've lived through harm, carried silence, and are now reshaping the systems that failed us. We're going to talk about the adultification of Black girls, mothering as resistance, and

the tools we use for healing. The Unwanted Sorority is a safe space, not a quiet space. So let's walk in. We're moving towards liberation together. Listen to The Unwanted Sorority, new episodes every Thursday on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Let's talk about this CNN threat from Donald Trump, the latest CNN threat from Donald Trump, and also pair it with breaking news. This happened actually not long before we came into the studio

that CBS, which has a pending merger, which by the way, is with a company owned by Larry Ellison's son, run by Larry Ellison's son run by Larry Ellison's son Larry Ellison is obviously Oracle founder very close with the Trump administration Pending merger between Skydance and CBS CBS settled for the exact same amount of money that ABC settled the Trump suit over And that was a much more serious lawsuit by the way Because ABC had actually misreported information

about Trump's liability in, I think it was the E. Jean Carroll case, $16 million settlement for CBS, that's a small price to pay to potentially get their merger through. And we'll talk about that in a second. Let's, before we circle back around to that, play this point that Trump made, or play this clip that Trump made about potentially

prosecuting CNN over its coverage of the Iran bombing. This is E1. CNN yesterday pushed an app that lets you track where ICE agents are. Tom Homan was saying that perhaps CNN should be prosecuted for that. That's a disruption of law. are Tom Homan saying that perhaps he eventually prosecuted that with the destruction of law, forcing your response. We're working with the Department of Justice to see if we can prosecute them with that because what they're doing is actively encouraging people to avoid law enforcement, have activities, operations, and we're going to actually go after them and prosecute them with the furniture for damaging them because what they're doing people think is illegal.

And they may be prosecuted also for having given false reports on these acts in Iran. Maybe with totally false reports. It's totally obliterated. And our people have to be celebrated and come home and say, what do you mean we didn't hit the target? We hit the target pretty well. You know the pilots came home and they said we hit the target pretty well. So they made me very well cross the future. What they did there, we think is wrong.

Oh boy, Ryan. We were talking about this earlier in the show. We were sort of debating it earlier in the show about fascism and Trump's seriousness about fascism or not serious about fascism because I tend to think a lot of it is a lark, not all of it ice agents pulling Ramiza Oz Turk off the street over an anti-israel op-ed is a good example of them very much not larping and making good on Their their sort of flirtation with authoritarianism this how serious we do. We think this is I don't think this one's serious. I Guess I don't know I think

Say I think what presidents say matters, so it is direct intimidation of the press to threaten to put them in jail for reporting something that they don't like. We also, speaking of Maz over at Dropsite, we have a piece today at Dropsite, which is an interview with a Iranian nuclear scientist, saying, Oh, I saw saying, yeah, they didn't

actually like, according to his information, they moved a bunch of stuff. And like, the Fordo was not, you know, totally destroyed, like Trump is saying, which matches with what the Intel is that's been leaked so far. And so they can prosecute us too? Like, just think, like, and they're gonna try to- That's what I'm saying, is anyone actually intimidated by this though? I wasn't, yeah, we published.

That's true, good point. We're making fun of it here. So yeah, I guess not afraid of that. The funniest part to me remains Trump's fixation on the feelings of the pilots. He does like that. They were so brave, and they were so proud of what they did. Don't you think that works with the public though?

Don't you think the public hears that and they're like, yeah. No, because these are fighter pilots, not nine-year-olds playing soccer. Yeah, that's true. They don't need a participation trophy. Like, it matters, like, yeah, like, sorry, we keep score. Like, we're not doing this thing we're like what was the score dad oh we don't keep scores doesn't matter if the

ball went in the net or missed the net like that's the like American approach to it I mean I also think you're doing war it matters if the ball goes in the net like did you did you hit the target or not it's not it I'm sorry that your feelings are hurt if you missed it well pretty usual I well you just did everyone gets a trophy. That's gotta get rid of that mentality. No, but I actually think- Yes, you don't get a trophy just for pressing the button on your bomb.

It's gotta actually hit the target. The media, I feel like actually was pretty celebratory about the raid. They were. But the media loves to take beautiful bobs. Usually are about, yeah, military actions. And also, I'm happy to pretend that the nuclear program was absolutely annihilated. If it stops.

Let's just say it here. No need for any more war. The beautiful pilots courageously struck all of their targets, especially the ones way underneath the mountain. It's completely obliterated. And nothing was moved either. Nothing was moved, and we need no more war.

And give them all a trophy. Give them like four foot tall trophies that they need. They need like both hands to carry them home. Just to continue the point about whether this is actually intimidating or not, as I recover from the double handed trophy illustration. How do you take a selfie? Like you don't want to drop your trophy. Yeah, that's a good point. And you can't pop the champagne if you have two hands on a trophy or take a selfie. So maybe a little smaller. A dignified-sized trophy.

A medal. It could be a beautiful medal because then you have both hands free. I participated in the 12-day war. Okay, recovered. The seriousness of the threat, a great example of this, is the CBS lawsuit that was just settled at the recommendation of Sherry Redstone because they want to get the Skydance merger through. This was not a serious lawsuit. I was reading through the lawsuit this morning. Actually, while I was waiting to pick Ryan up at that union station near DC, it refers to like Kamala, not Ms. Harris, Senator, Vice President Harris, Kamala throughout it, cites like Breitbart articles.

It wasn't a serious lawsuit. And it just speaks to the fact that CBS was not at all intimidated that they were going to be found in violation. They wanted me for that interview. By the way, I will say they deceptively edited the Kamala Harris interview. Every network does that every single day. What they aired on Face the Nation was different than what they aired on 60 Minutes, and I think it was materially different. I think you got a different version of the answer, a significantly different version of the answer. Kam significantly different version of the answer. Kamala Harris was being pressed on Gaza, basically, and Israel,

and whether the Biden administration was being taken seriously by Netanyahu, basically. And they aired a very different version of it on both shows, and that speaks to the power of the media. Everyone kind of knows that the media is doing that. This was a good example of it. It is not, and it should not, be something that you can actually be found liable of defamation or whatever by a politician for doing. It's wrong.

Can you imagine though, if the president was set that everybody who doesn't give full context to a clip of an interview has to pay $17 million to Trump. Seriously. Like how many Twitter accounts are out there clipping like 25 seconds of an interview where Trump would be like, you know, the whole two and a half minutes gives a slightly different context. Yep.

So that'll be $17 million or you don't get your merger. Yeah, or you don't get your merger. This is not about what it's about. What it's actually about is this merger. It is a way to give money directly to the president so that he will sign off on a corporate merger that's worth much more than $17 million. Right. And CBS is not admitting wrongdoing in the settlement.

It is money that is going to his presidential library, which I think was the same thing in the ABC case, both $16 million settlements. I think when ABC settled, people who at the time were worried about the precedent that they set by settling are being vindicated because Trump has realized that he can essentially extort money for his presidential library. If that's what is going on behind the scenes of this, it looks like Redstone saw that and realized that you can sort of come to the table and look like you're making a deal with the administration

in a way that actually grants favor with the president. And we'll see what happens with their merger. I mean, that's a... The other tin cup. Zuckerberg tried to do that. Sorry, I was just saying, Zuckerberg tried to do that with the FTC, and it did not work. Zuckerberg tried to do that. Sorry, I was just saying, Zuckerberg tried to do that with the FTC and it did not work. Zuckerberg tried to give a ton of money to Donald Trump into the inaugural fund and all

of that and the FTC is continuing its suit, its meta suit. The other tin cup that they put out, and I wonder if you've heard this around town. So people should look to see whether or not ABC or CBS end up becoming like investors in Melania's documentary. Like Amazon? Like that's the word around town. Another way that you need to, another, basically it's a coin operated and you have to find the different buckets.

And one of the buckets you're supposed to put coins into is this Melania documentary. We'll see if it ever gets made. But you can imagine how the scheme would work, that the thing will raise a billion dollars in investment capital. And then it'll make 100 million. And you'll go back to the investors and be like, real shame that investment didn't pan out. But you got your merger.

You don't even know how much it makes, though, because it's going to be on prime. So it's not like there are tickets. Right. And then prime can overpay them much it makes though, because it's going to be on Prime. So it's not like there are tickets. Right, and then Prime can overpay them for it. Yeah, 100%. So as dumb as the CBS editing was, it's also just like we're... I don't even think Trump would deny this. We're in Roy Cohn territory once again.

Oh, yes. Yeah, he's loving it. Yeah. All right, well well thanks everyone for sticking with us on this wild travel 24 hour period as we made our way into the studio, Ryan doing a literal planes, trains, and automobiles journey from Miami to Washington. Also the show would have been on time if this were in China.

Like, it took like, what, four, it took like three and a half hours in the end to get from Richmond to DC. That's a 30 minute train ride in China. Yeah, the Richmond leg of your trip was especially egregious. I had- It was supposed to start at 4.52 a.m.,

didn't start till 6.05, didn't get in until nine. And here you are. I had two delayed flights and one canceled flight yesterday. It was trying to get back was also wild, but not quite as wild as yours was. Stick around for the Ask Me Anything if you are a premium subscriber. If you aren't a premium subscriber,

breakingpoints.com monthly subscriptions are back. They'll become one. Good deal, yep, absolutely. So head on over there. Otherwise, Ryan, I think both of us are back here tomorrow. That's right. We will be... It'll be an easy one. Just coming in from inside the city. Yeah, yeah, compare it. It'll be very easy. Alright, we will see you back here tomorrow, everyone. I also want to address the Tonys.

On a recent episode of Checking Game with Michelle Williams, I opened up about feeling snubbed by the Tony Awards. Do I? I was never mad. I was disappointed because I had high hopes. To hear this and more on disappointment and protecting your peace, listen to Checking In with Michelle Williams from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,

or wherever you get your podcasts. In our new podcast, Everybody's Business, we talk about the business news that concerns everybody. From Bloomberg Business Week, I'm Stacey Bannock-Smith. And I'm Max Chafkin. Each week we unpack what is happening on Main Street and Wall Street, all the streets. WrestleMania has taken over the US economy.

Poetry that executives write on LinkedIn. A little actual magic in our underrated story of the week. The single greatest marketing campaign the music business has ever seen. I decided to ask people how they felt about the penny going away. Listen to everybody's business wherever you get your podcasts. I know a lot of cops and they get asked all the time, have you ever had to shoot your gun?

Sometimes the answer is yes. But there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be no. This is Absolute Season One, Taser Incorporated. I get right back there and it's bad. Listen to Absolute Season One, Taser Incorporated on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an iHeart Podcast.