Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 7/24/25: Whistleblower Reveals Gaza Aid Site Massacre, Candace Owens Sued Over Macron Wife Attacks, Tulsi Says Obama Guilty Of Treason

Episode Date: July 24, 2025

Krystal and Saagar discuss whistleblower reveals Israel gunning down civilians in Gaza, Candace Owens sued over Macron's wife attacks, Tulsi says Obama is guilty of treason.   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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every morning in your inbox. We need your help to build the future of independent news media, and we hope to see you at breakingpoints.com. Good transition to build the future of independent news media, and we hope to see you at BreakingPoints.com. Good transition to what's actually going on down there. Yes. Which, as we said, is horrific to a point, which like, it's a new level of destruction. So as Hager was saying, there has been just abject, unimaginable horror unfolding in Gaza

at the hands of the Israelis. And we now actually have a whistleblower coming forward from that so-called Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. This individual is a 25-year U.S. military veteran who is sounding the alarm about the horrific ways that Palestinians are being treated there who are starving to death and desperately trying to seek any aid they can possibly get. Let's take a listen to a little bit of that. You're a veteran in the United States Army who has been deployed to combat 12 times for different wars.

Never in my entire military career have I been a part of a loud or bystander to the use of force against unarmed innocent civilians. There is no fixing this. This needs to be put an end to it. So this is from Israel's Channel 12. And in addition to what you heard there, he said that the aid centers treated the population very badly, put them in danger. He says, in all my years of service,

I have never seen such use of force. He described an incident where an unarmed Palestinian was picking up food off the ground on his knees and was pepper sprayed by American guards with a full can of pepper spray. In another incident, he talked about a stun grenade being thrown and hitting a Palestinian woman directly. He says, quote, she collapsed, fell to the ground.

That was the moment I knew I couldn't continue. In another incident, he says that Palastinians finished collecting the aid at the site. The American guards opened fire, shooting at them, at their legs, at the dirt mounds, to force them to leave. He says, quote, you can't fix this. It has to stop. In all my military service, I have never seen such force used against unarmed civilians, and I will not be a part of it. So he is coming forward and of course we've seen

some 1000 plus Palestinians who have been massacred while simply trying to seek aid. It is as dystopian a situation as you could possibly imagine. In fact, it's beyond my imagination how dystopian it is. You are starving two million people to death. You have now daily multiple deaths of children and infants because they are being starved to death. And then you create this deadly hunger game situation

in order to get any sort of aid. And it's not even the type of actual like nutritious aid that you would wanna provide in this circumstance, but people having to risk their lives and being fired upon with live fire on again, on your daily basis in order to secure what little bit of provisions are available. It's absolutely unbelievable.

And at the same time, we've got one of our members of Congress here, can put C2 up on the screen. This is Randy Fine, who is quote tweeting an ABC News article here about how 15 people, including four children, have died, have been starved to death in just the last 24 hours. And he quote tweets that and says,

"'Release the hostages until then, starve away.' "'Then in parentheses,' he says,, this is all a lie anyway. It amazes me the media continues to regurgitate Muslim terror propaganda. Now, where's the media freak out over this? Oh, I forgot, they're too busy writing their 5,000th piece about what Zoran Mamdani thinks about the phrase, globalize the Intifada.

Where's the censure from Congress over this? Oh, I forgot, they're too busy concerned about what was the Rashidus Haliab saying, like from the river to the sea. It's just unbelievable that you have a member of Congress who is saying genocide these people effectively. That's what that means, starve away. And it just is like an accepted part

of the discourse. Well, there's a lot going on in that tweet because it's also, it's not happening, but if it were happening, it's good that it's happening. And so which is it, Congressman? I mean, look, we can make all the fat jokes and all that stuff aside, but that almost, I think just what is happening is so horrific.

Just the images, the conduct, the lies, and now at this point, the complicity. You have to ask what possible reason are we putting up with this for? Every day, every hour, every second is all underwritten by the United States of America. For what possible purpose? every second is all underwritten by the United States of America. For what possible purpose?

You know, RFK Jr. has not put out a personal tweet in like months on any other subject, and he just responded to an article that's written, I'm a war scholar, there's no genocide in Gaza, and he writes, the genocide charge is a blood libel. Oh my god. Thank you for with Schmuck, for withering. So it's like, he reared his ugly head for what reason? To just, it's, look, I don't know what it is. All right, it could be blackmail. I think it's probably just like a deep ideological,

I have no idea, but this psychopathy, it runs deep at this point. And at a certain point, we just all have to idea about this psychopathy. It runs deep at this point. And at a certain point, we just all have to look at this and be like, this is unconscionable, unbelievable, it's evil. And the way that they get away with it and then have their defenders in our country tell us it's an anti-Semitic blood libel for mentioning,

it's too much. Yeah. You know, I mean, it has to break us forever from the chains of all of this anti-Semitism industrial complex because they don't care about that. They're using it as a cover to literally murder little children and women and starve them to death, to lure them to food, and to gun them down with impunity.

And that's the other thing that I think really divides this from some of the earlier conduct of the war, because they always had, at that time, the excuse was what? It's all because of Hamad, they're using them as human. There's nothing about that right now, right? You already leveled the whole place. You're attacking the last city

and you're starving these people to death by your own admission, literally by your own admission. There's no getting around this. I don't know, man, this is dark stuff. It's dark. It's as dark as it gets. Doesn't even give the proper picture. To say dark is almost like,

oh, it's dark when something bad, it's like, no, man, this is a whole other level. It recalls the greatest horrors in history. I mean, you can't see those images of those skeletal dead babies and not think about Auschwitz. You can't look at those images and not be reminded of the greatest failures

and horrors of humanity of the past. And, you know, I mean, this is where people who want to dismiss the Epstein story, like, sorry to tie it back to that, but is the reason that we're cool with this? Is it because they have some sort of a blackmail on the President of the United States, or R.F.K. Jr., or whoever?

Like, why would you allow this to persist? It is, humanity will not be the same in the wake of this. And, you know, everybody who said starve away, who justified this, they're going to have to answer in the history books, but that's cold comfort to Palestinians who are starving to death literally right now today as we speak. Of course, the Israeli government, and this is going to be C5 guys, they claim that there is no famine in Gaza,

that this is all just lies, and that us even talking about this is quote-unquote playing into the hands of Hamas. Let's go ahead and take a listen to this. This idea of famine and starvation has been thrown at us consistently on a weekly basis for the last two years now. It has never come to far pass. So these are our false warnings, which come from these aid organizations. And I also would say that where there is hunger in Gaza, it is hunger orchestrated by Hamas. This is very clearly their tactic and it is working because Hamas seeks to put international pressure, which unfortunately too many international countries are too willing to follow suit on, to put pressure on Israel to support their negotiating tactics, stopping them initiating or agreeing to a hostage release pause.

So this pressure, which is coming, calling for, talking about starvation and famine, this is simply playing into Hamas's hands. Where there is hunger, it is hunger orchestrated by Hamas. It is hunger created by the terrorist organization. Hunger orchestrated by Hamas. Like is hunger created by the terrorist organization. Hunger orchestrated by Hamas. Like who believes this shit? How do people like this sleep at night? Truly, truly. And he says, oh we've been hearing this for two years now. Yeah because the defense minister Yoav Golan on October 9th announced, I have

ordered a complete siege on the Gaza Strip. There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel. Everything is closed. We are fighting human animals and we are acting accordingly. That was on October 9th. Now at times aid has been delivered. This is the most dire right now that it has ever been.

Right now there is truly a complete siege. And the only aid that anyone really has access to is through this Gaza humanitarian foundation, where you go and you might get a bag of flour or you might be murdered by the IDF. I mean, it is just unreal that anyone could claim otherwise at this point and that this is allowed to persist. At the same time, you know, there it's easy to lose sight of what's happening in the West Bank, where there's been also an extraordinary escalation

of violence and, you know, annexing and stealing of land. They just took a significant vote in the Knesset with regard to annexing the West Bank. Let's go ahead and take a listen to that. There are two things that you need to know about this. One, the vote doesn't actually do anything. It's a non-binding motion, it has no legal power, and the reason they did it is to unite the Israeli rights around something that they agree on because they've been fighting for a very long time over

whether to conscript the ultra-orthodox community into the army. So it makes for nice headlines, but it doesn't actually do anything on the ground. And two, the West Bank is already de facto annexed, and it has been for a very long time. Israel has controlled the West Bank completely for almost 70 years now, and even in Area A, which is supposed to be under Palestinian authority, Israel practically has all the power. They control the checkpoints, they control the energy, they control the taxes, and whenever they want, they can just invade it with the army as they often do. So de facto, we are living in a one apartheid state solution. So that is independent journalist Andre explaining,

what the details of this vote are and the relevant political context here. And I think it's important to understand what he says, which is this idea that there's sovereign, any sort of Palestinian sovereignty in the West Bank already is a mythology. And now they're just moving to further codified, further entrenched, and also to sort of like round up support on the right

because there are these various contentious issues that have sort of divided the Likud, the majority governing party coalition. And so this is a way to bring everyone together, to really unify everyone around the idea of just outright stealing all of the West Bank. What's also really funny too is that we forgot to mention the C3 police

that even the American Jewish committee condemned Randy Fine. They said, the serious humanitarian situation must not be taken lightly, implying that starvation is a legitimate tactic is unacceptable. All those should be, need of humanitarian aid should receive it promptly

and safely. Quote, our leaders must focus less on scoring political points and more on doing their jobs. Of course they would deny that, they would deny that this is actually even happening and that they would probably put the blame like that on Hamas, but the point still stands around all of this. It's not, this is the thing about the belligerence

and the actions in Gaza, which are unforgivable, insane, backstop by the US government. It's also part of this broader, greater Israel project, which, look, conspiracy theorists have been talking about that for years. It's real now. Gaza, Lebanon, Syria. This shit is real, guys.

They're bombing Damascus. They're claiming an indefinite presence. They're annexing the West Bank. Like, it's happening right now. You know, just this morning, Israeli ultra-nationalist minister, quote, all of Gaza will be Jewish. The government is pushing for Gaza being wiped out. Thank God.

We are wiping out this evil. We are pushing the population, educated on my... Listen to this shit. We are wiping out the population. We are pushing the population, educated on my, listen to this shit. We are wiping out the population. We will be Jewish. They say this shit out loud. This is my always problem with America. We're all focused on, it's like, just listen, all right?

We can all hit the Google Translate button. That's it, that's all it takes to actually see the stuff that they're saying on cable television in Israel and here as well. And it's just like, oh my God, like you were genuinely watching this almost like neo-colonialist project backstopped entirely by the American empire

for what possible purpose? You have the humanitarian and then the security situation. It would be different, I think, if this were, I don't know, if this were two countries that were fighting of their own accord, you know, that had their independent ability to inflict this type of horrificness on each other. That's one thing, right? And that calls for a tool set.

But it's really another when you're selling people the technology, the bombs, giving them money to continue it and then also using the full force of the empire to make sure that they bear no consequences for it. Like the United States withdrawing from UNESCO or whatever, from the UN body, accusing them of anti-Semitism, for talking about the humanitarian situation. I mean, that stuff really does matter.

And cracking down on the domestic population here over what we can say and do, and who's allowed to get a college degree if you dared speak out against these absolute atrocities. And then I can't let this go, I was looking at the New York Times front page, and on the one hand, okay, they're covering the fact that people are starving to death. But there is still no culpability assigned.

I mean, first of all, this is not getting remotely enough coverage throughout the press, and as I said before, they're way more fixated on how hard Zoran will condemn this or that particular phrase or what some rally chant was or whatever. Here's their headline. Gazans are dying of starvation. Severe hunger has gripped the war-torn Palestinian enclave

where growing numbers of people are starving and the doctors treating them are working on empty stomachs. Guess what's not mentioned there? The fact that it's Israel who is starving them. And as you read through this, it takes to paragraph one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, it takes to like the 10th paragraph

before the word Israel is even mentioned. I mean, it's a parody at this point. And I know you guys have seen probably the way that, you know, the headlines are like barely English to have these passive weird phrase constructions to avoid assigning blame. Imagine it was Russia that was starving Ukraine. Do you think that the New York Times

would have a hard time figuring out how to phrase that headline, how to cover that story, how to talk about it in the clear, moral, and factual terms that are justified? Of course not. Of course it would not be any sort of an issue there. And so look, the situation is dire enough that they feel

that they have to cover it. It is, you know, the top of their website right now. But even so severe hunger grips Gaza grips as if that just happened out of nowhere as if it's some sort of natural disaster unavoidable calamity. It's just unbelievable at this point. It's just unbelievable. Yeah, it's sick. I don't think there's really another word for it. Yeah, exactly. Can we put C6 up there on the screen? I mean, look, you know, warning images, this shit's hard to see.

Quote, we faced hunger before, but never like this. Skeletal children fill hospital wards at Starvation Grips Gaza. Ryan made a great point whenever him and I did the show, is that the timeline laid out by these food organizations has been almost exactly correct. That's right. It takes about 60, 70 days to starve to death.

60, 70 days ago, they were like, hey, people are gonna starve to death if there's not a change in the status quo. Here we are. I don't know, at this point, I know there's some potential movement or whatever on a ceasefire, but considering what's happened in the previous ceasefires,

they're not dying of bullets at this point. You're dying of severe malnutrition even in those previous ceasefires. It's not like there was a ton of humanitarian aid that got into Gaza. And also, once you get to the severe malnutrition, you're right for disease type, whatever. A mere cold can take you out. Yeah, and you get to a certain point too where it's not just like, okay, there's food of it. You need specialized treatment.

And the ones who are dying the most rapidly, it's these infants, it's these babies. The mothers are too weak to breastfeed. They're dependent on formula. There's no formula. I mean, you have a baby, huh? Like, you can't, you really can't. And my kid is sick and my wife is sick, so I literally,

and we're living in the most developed country in the world with access to food and all of that, and this shit's still hard, so you put yourself in that situation. I mean, I genuinely can't even really fully go there because I cannot even imagine that level of horror, and that's what's happening. For My Heart Podcasts and Rococo Punch, this is the turning, River Road. I knew I wanted to obey and submit, but I didn't fully grasp for the rest of my life what that meant.

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Someone was posting photos. It was just me naked. Well, not me, but me with someone else's body parts on my body parts that looked exactly like my own. I wanted to throw up. I wanted to scream. It happened in Levittown, New York. But reporting the series took us through

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Let's put this up on the screen. So the first family of France is suing Candace Owens over her allegations, core among them, that the first lady of France, Brigitte Macron, was actually born a man and is transgender and at the age of 30, transitioned to being a woman and is hiding this from the world. Let me go ahead and read this, a little bit of this New York Times article. So they say the French president Emmanuel Macron

and his wife Brigitte Macron filed a defamation suit on Wednesday against an American right-wing podcaster who falsely claimed Ms. Macron is a man. The lawsuit filed in Delaware against the podcaster, Candace Owens, argues that Ms. Owens used false claims about the Macron's to promote her independent platform, gain notoriety, and make money. In a filing running more than 200 pages, the Macron's are suing for 22 counts of defamation and related claims and are seeking actual and punitive damages. The amount was not specified, as well as legal costs. The battle began in March 2024 when,

according to the lawsuit, Ms. Owens, quote, told the world she would stake her entire professional reputation on the accusation that Ms. Macron is in fact a man. Ms. Owens made the claim on her podcast, then carried by the Daily Wire, and repeated it in a post on X. And this series that Candice did,

called Becoming Brigitte, it was a sensation. I mean, it got millions of views. I think we have the first page of the lawsuit here that you can see this was what was filed in court and details a little bit of what the allegations are. I mean, listen, I dug into the, well, let me first play a little bit of what the allegations are. I mean, listen, I dug into that. Well, let me first play a little bit of Candace here so you can hear her response.

And then I can tell you what I learned in digging into some of these claims and whether there was any veracity, spoiler alert, there's not. Let's go ahead and take a listen to Candace responding on her show yesterday. If you need any more evidence that Brigitte Macron is definitely a man, it is just what is happening right now. The idea that you would file this lawsuit is all of the proof that you need.

I have been in communication with their lawyers or via our lawyers, like their lawyers and my lawyers have been speaking, Phone calls, emails since January. She's now named her law firm. I protected that, but now we can tell you it's Claire Locke. Claire Locke is representing Brigitte and Emmanuel Macron has been in communication with us for months. And yet they did not send us a copy of the lawsuit. They did not give my lawyer a heads up

that they were filing a lawsuit, but they did instead opt to give this lawsuit ahead of time to the Financial Times, the New York Times, CBS News. What does that tell you? It's a PR strategy. They don't care if they win. This is about running it through the press.

And how much PR are we talking here? Yeah, Claire Locke, Tom Locke, or Tom Clare, whatever his name is, they actually uploaded the lawsuit to their websites. And then they gave CBS News a link to the uploaded lawsuit before I had been served, before my lawyer was even informed about it. I found out with all of you.

I found out with the world. I found out from the financial times, but they were unwilling for some reason to allow us to fly to France to interview Brigitte, which we offered to do before we started the series. They were also unwilling to simply answer our yes or no questions that we emailed to them so that we could ascertain facts.

We did all of this before we aired the first episode. So the core claim here, Sager, as I said, is that Brigitte Macron was born a man. There are other allegations made as well that Emmanuel Macron was installed as president through some sort of a CIA MK ultra style mind control. I mean, he does. he's a little weird. There are all kinds of, I don't know what other claims are made, some sketchy associations to this or that,

but the one about her being a man. Where this comes from is there were some French bloggers and a quote unquote clairvoyant who base this allegation effectively off the fact that Brigitte Macron has a brother, and there's a picture of her brother when he's a child that looks a lot like Brigitte. Lo and behold, it turns out sometimes siblings

kind of resemble each other because they have the same parents. In reality, Brigitte Macron, they've released her birth certificate, pictures of her as a child, she has three children, et cetera, et cetera. But this has now, because this series was such a sensation, in some right-wing circles, it's become almost like an article of faith.

And so that's where this lawsuit ultimately comes from. And on the legal piece, Pisco, who we've had on before, he told me he was digging into the legal aspect. I'm curious what his take will be, because he's pretty good at parsing these things, calling calls and strikes as he sees them. who we've had on before, he told me he was like digging into the legal aspect. I'm curious what his take will be, because he's pretty good at parsing these things, calling balls and strikes as he sees them. The standard's very high.

You have to either demonstrate like a reckless disregard for the truth, which I think is a standard they might be able to meet. Or that she knew and intentionally lied. I can read from it. Yeah, go ahead. What's the standard? It's section three of the lawsuit.

Oh, the lawsuit, okay. It says, these claims are demonstrably false and Owens knew they were false when she published them, yet she published them anyway. The reason is clear, it's not pursuit of truth, the pursuit of fame. Quote, after being fired from the Daily Wire, she used these demonstrably false claims

to promote her independent podcast, and then they note the number of followers that she gained after following. Now the reason they frame that specifically is because that is the legal standard. Now, from what I have read as well. And she did, by the way, she got a lot of paying subs off of this.

Yeah, that's fair, that's fair. She made a lot of money and got a lot of notoriety off of this thing. I will say, I mean, I think that's definitely true, but I wouldn't say that's the totality of what she's more recently known for, which is Israel. Oh, sure.

A lot of her popularity. This was big. I agree, but this is part of where the financial things come, she's filthy rich already. She's married to a billionaire. So, is it really monetary? Perhaps, as they say, it is fame. The legal standard is very tough.

The one thing going against Candace, actually, is people need to remember, she's a Delaware LLC, and this is some of the talk that I've seen online, is that this is gonna be litigated in Delaware state court, specifically around, like in terms of the way that it was filed against her, and that the standard there, a lot of people are pointing to remember the Yvonne situation in terms of the way that it was filed against her Yeah And that the standard there a lot of people are pointing to remember that you on

Situation in terms of the way that the state courts there can rule or not as pro business as they originally were And the way that this all works out and this is part of why I'm not a lawyer I'm only relying on two I've looked at actually two separate Conservative lawyers people who looked at this that guy will chamberlain who we had on the show He says he thinks the Candace is going down and is going to be owing a large sum of money. But he also, he does hate her though. Yeah, he does.

Over Israel. Yeah, I'm framing it. I think. As you know, he said that. Mike Sternovich also was a lawyer, looked at it and he was like, you know, actually the legal standard here is a little bit different. The only reason she may go down is because she's in Delaware State Court. If this was in California or elsewhere, you know, the legal standard is such that it would be very difficult.

The thing is, though, is that the damages that they're claiming here are also really tough for somebody who's a first lady because they say that she's been inflicted—let me find it. These lies have caused tremendous damage to the Macron's. Defendants subjected them to a campaign of global humiliation, turning their lives into fodder for for-profit driven lies. Owens has dissected their appearance, their marriage, their friends, their family, and their personal history, twisting a grotesque narrative to inflame and to degrade.

The result is relentless bullying on a worldwide scale." I just think that's a very high bar. When we talk about public figure, there is nobody more public than the president and the first lady of another country. I mean, look, we can say here about Donald J. Trump, and everybody can, I think that's the way that it should be. So the ability to prove damages here, I think would be incredibly difficult,

which for the lawyers to be able to argue. Again, I'm not a lawyer, but having read a couple, and I've specifically tried to seek out like two kind of conservatives, or whatever who were talking about this, I think it's iffy in terms of the way that it comes out. In terms of the evidence, like you said,

yeah, it seems to rely on this blog. By the way, I have not watched Becoming Brigitte. I don't particularly want to. It's not what I appreciate Candice for, which is her Israel commentary. But broadly, I mean, I don't know. I don't know what you think of this. I think it's as dry as a end effect, personally.

From Brigitte Macron, you're the fucking first lady of France, like, you got bigger problems. You know, is this really something that strikes at the heart of like, your personal, you know, narrative and all that? I mean, I can't blame her. It just seems weird. I can't blame her, because if I had to guess, I have no idea.

Develop some thick skinned lady, I don't know what to tell her. If I had to guess, I have no idea. Develop some thick skin, lady. I don't know what to tell you. But if I had to guess, remember there was that whole thing that went viral of her slapping Minny Rong, whatever. And I think that brought back up. Because becoming Brigitte, that was posted, I don't know, a year ago or something, whatever. It's been a while back.

But I think that brought all of this back up. And so they probably decided, because I'm sure they are aware of the Streisand effect and how this will draw more attention and what an extraordinary action is, or whatever. They probably got to the point where they're like, okay, well, this has gone beyond. This has become a widespread accepted phenomenon.

And what other recourse do we have than to fight back and prove this in court. Now she had sued these two individuals in France who originally surfaced these claims. And originally they sided, the courts in France, sided with her on her defamation suit in France and then it was overturned on appeal basically because they found that like,

oh, you know, we believe that this was done in good faith and they didn't really know that they were lying and making things up. And they have a different standard too. About you. In France, they have a very, very different libel and defiance. Yeah, and I'm not an expert on that standard either,

but this isn't the first lawsuit that she's launched surrounding these claims. I will also just say, like, there's this whole phenomenon, like putting Candace and Brigitte and how you feel about them and this whole particular situation, right? There's this whole trans-investigation phenomenon that I found disgusting.

And I find it disgusting as a woman because it's just basically all about policing whether or not you look womanly enough, like you fit the societal expectations of what a woman is supposed to look like, and vice versa for the men, of like, are you manly enough, is your jawline strong enough, what do you look like over the years,

let me do this whole thing. And so I find it very damaging. I find it very damaging to men, I find it very damaging to women, and I think it's a truly disgusting thing to ultimately engage in because, let's say that Brigitte Macron was born a man and is transgender.

I don't give a fuck, I don't care. How is this relevant to my life, to Candace's life, to your life? I don't care. So that's the other thing that I would say. I think that's totally fair. That I would say about all of this. I hadn't thought about that.

I mean, honestly, can't really relate to it or whatever, but it makes sense. I wouldn't want to necessarily be dissected. Yeah, for somebody to pick you apart. Oh, you're not this, you're not that, you know? I mean, it's a disgusting thing to do and to engage in. I guess what part of me is, do you think what really gets her is all of this,

A, like the circumstances of you guys getting together is sketchy? Because I was thinking about that too. That may be one of the more personal aspects, where by the way, I think Candice is correct, in terms of their original relationship, where your school teacher and all of that. By the way, I went to the town where Macron is from

in Amiens, and it's the talk of the town, let's just say that, in terms of the way that they all joke about it. They're like, oh, Macron is from, this is where he met his wife, and all of this. So it's a joke in France, just so people know. I don't know, I mean, perhaps that's the gossip. Apparently there was a report that Donald Trump

called Candice, and he was like, you need to drop this whole Brichet-Macron. Candice said that. Yeah, she said that. She was like, if you drop this, what did he say? He's like, then I'll give you an interview. And he's like, I need to drop this whole Brigitte Macron. Yeah, she said that. She was like, if you drop this, what did he say? He's like, then I'll give you an interview. And he's like, I've met her darling, she's a woman. I promise you, 100%.

So I'm assuming then that maybe the Macron's asked Trump to intervene on their behalf. I'm not so sure. That was her belief was that they had. Trump is gonna call her for no reason. Yeah, and then the last piece we can put up here, D4 on the screen is her original, That was her belief was that they had. Trump is gonna call her for no reason? Yeah. And then the last piece we can put up here, D4 on the screen is her original like,

I will stake my whole reputation. Well, she's done it now, so you know. Yeah, you did it girl, you put it out there. This episode is blowing up, she says, so I just wanna say, after looking into this, I would stake my entire professional reputation on the fact that Brigitte Macron is in fact a man, any journalist or publication that is trying

to dismiss this plausibility is immediately identifiable as establishment. I've never seen anything like this in my life. The implications here are terrifying. I do not intend to let up on this story. I'm calling on other journalists to look into this explosive story and report accordingly. So.

All right, well. There you well, to Candace's point, I guess we'll find out in discovery, but that's part of why I think it's humiliating for- Or she may, I mean, she may end up settling. She may. But I think that'll be, given how hard she's gone, it would be embarrassing for her. And how filthy rich she is, right?

Like, you can burn money in a pile. Like, the main reason people settle is because they don't want to spend any money, but if you're that rich, like, what incentive do you have? I have no idea. I mean, for if you're, this kind of gets to the point about Trump. It's like, Brigitte Macron, you really want to spend any money. But if you're that rich, what incentive do you have? I have no idea. I mean, this kind of gets to the point about Trump. It's like, Brigitte Macron, you really want to settle this by taking a fucking blood test

and submitting it to Delaware Superior Court? That's humiliating to me, as the former first- But I think she already feels humiliated. Maybe, I don't know. What other recourse does she have at this point? At a certain point, you get to her, okay, you have to, you can ignore it for so long, you have to, like, you know, you can like ignore it for so long.

And then it's like, all right, I guess I have to fight back. I have no choice. I'll see. I'm wondering how this story's playing in France. I actually wonder what they think over there. Discover the exciting action of BedMGM Casino. Check out a wide variety of table games with a live dealer or enjoy over 3000 games to choose from like Cash Eruption.

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Listen to The Turning, River Road, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. In 2020, a group of young women in a tidy suburb of New York City found themselves in an AI-fueled nightmare. Someone was posting photos. It was just me naked. Well, not me, but me with someone else's body parts on my body parts that looked exactly like my own. I wanted to throw up. I wanted to scream. It happened in Levittown, New York. But reporting the series took us through the darkest corners of the internet and to the front lines of a global battle against deepfake pornography.

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Joining us now is Isaac Saul. He is the executive editor over at Tangle News. For our purposes, he has done all of the reading into the new Obama-gate scandal. What's there? What's there there? There's been a lot of claims from the Trump administration. Yesterday, the director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, took to the White House podium and told our own Emily Jashinsky that she would pursue or refer criminal charges

against former President Obama regarding this matter. Let's take a listen to that, and then we will dig into it with you, Isaac. Do you believe that any of this new information implicates former President Obama in criminal behavior? We have referred and will continue to you as a have referred and will continue to refer all of these documents after the department of justice and the fb i uh... to investigate the criminal implications of this for you know the evidence correct the evidence that we have

uh... found and that we have released uh... directly point to President Obama leading the manufacturing of this intelligence assessment. There are multiple pieces of evidence and intelligence that confirm that fact. Ed, go ahead. Director Gabbard, thank you. Just two questions, but to begin on that. The President yesterday, you've inferred that the former president helped lead a coup. Based on what you now see,

you believe President Obama is guilty of treason. I'm leaving the criminal charges to the Department of Justice. I am not an attorney, but as I've said previously, when you look at the intent behind creating a fake, manufactured intelligence document that directly contradicts multiple assessments that were created by the intelligence community.

The expressed intent and what followed afterward can only be described as a years long coup and a treasonous conspiracy against the American people, our Republic, and an attempt to undermine President Trump's administration. All right, Isaac, so let's go ahead and put this graphic up on the screen. It was released here by Tulsi Gabbard

and the Trump administration, and this is what they've put together. Now, given all the reading, start from the beginning, tell us what's going on here. What's the core allegation? Yeah, so I mean, the core allegation is basically that there was this House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence report, which was done 2017 and edited up until 2020 that analyzed an

intelligence community assessment that was released by the Obama administration in January of 2017. We did not have access to the HPSCI for a long time. It got buried. And what Tulsi Gabber, the DNI released this week yesterday, was basically the goods on that report, what it found. And to be clear, I think a lot of what was in the report was previously known information. It is things like the Obama administration, CIA officials relied on pretty shoddy intelligence that was manufactured, I think is a pretty strong word, but at least was ginned up to

make it look like Trump was very much in the pocket of Russia. The way the intelligence was released and leaked to news organizations created this circular ecosystem where news reports were feeding the intelligence community. intelligence was released and leaked to news organizations, sort of created this circular ecosystem where news reports were feeding the intelligence community. The intelligence community was feeding the news reports. They were applying for FISA warrants using news reports. They used all this to surveil a person who ended up becoming the United States president. This is a really big deal.

I don't want to downplay the fact that what happened in 2016, 2017 was not a big deal. I think it was. That being said, the same report that Tulsi Gabbard's citing here, I mean, literally, if you go read the report that she released yesterday, on the very first page of the report, it says things like, most of the ICA judgments on Russia's activities in the US election employed proper analytic tradecraft and were consistent with observed Russian behavior. It says that the key judgments found to be credible include that Putin ordered conventional and cyber influence operations.

I mean, I'm reading directly from the report, notably by leaking politically sensitive emails obtained from computer intrusions, which was the DNC hack. So, you know, Putin's principal motivations in these operations were to undermine faith in the US democratic process and to weaken what the Russians considered to be an inevitable Clinton presidency. So it requires people holding two things in their mind at once, which I think is one, that the investigation into the Trump campaign was basically built upon really shoddy intelligence

and that what the intelligence community was telling us and telling the Obama officials was basically built upon really shoddy intelligence. The intelligence community was telling us and telling the Obama officials and what Obama was projecting to the world in 2016 and 2017 was kind of overwrought based on what they had at the time. It was an exaggeration. This report specifically, the most damning thing in this report is that the idea that Putin had a clear preference for Trump, according to the HPSCI report, was based on scant, unclear, and unverifiable fragment of one

sentence from a human source that five CIA authors read five different ways and was initially left out, but Brandon asked them to put it back in this ICA, this initial report, which blew the top off the whole thing and generated all the news coverage people remember. That's right, I covered it at the time, the ODNI report, et cetera. But that's the core revelation here, is that what you're saying?

I would say that is the, to me, the biggest thing that pops off the page is that this idea that they knew then, in January of 2017, that Putin had a clear preference for Trump was based on really, really, really shoddy intelligence. And the reports kind of lists the four or five different sources, which include things like this sort of this sentence that they heard that everybody interpreted differently.

The Steele dossier was included in it. There was sort of like reports from 2014 well before the campaign even started. Diplomatic and media reports is what was quoted. So it seems like that is to me the biggest thing, that sort of damning evidence that that initial ICA was built on really insufficient intelligence. What happened later was that many investigations that that ICA launched did kind of verify

that Putin preferred Trump and that they did hack the DNC. If you believe the WikiLeaks Russia story, which I think our government and intelligence community does, so they used sort of shoddy intelligence to get the investigation going. The investigation sort of concluded some of the priors that the Obama administration had. It's a weird, you have to hold some complicated things

at the same time. Yeah. And what about the direct connect to Obama here? Like, I mean, I don't think any of us believes that criminal charges are gonna be filed against Obama, even if they were, the Supreme Court has said basically, hey, you can do whatever you want when you're president, there's no reason, not really anything

anyone can do about it. So what are they using to try to even make the case that there shouldn't be criminal charges against Obama? So earlier in the week, a couple of days before this, a different report and a different trove of files was released by Gabbard. And in that report, there was, you know, the sort of bombshell, if there was one there,

was that there was a presidential daily briefing, which was about to be published, that was assessing that Russia did not have the capability or the intention to hack our election infrastructure. The FBI pulled that report, pulled the presidential daily briefing right before it was about to be published. Then Obama ordered all his intelligence officials together. And then weeks later, they produced this ICA, this assessment that I was just talking about. And the sort of fundamentals of what that assessment would end up being leaked to the press immediately before it was published, before it was released.

And the core allegation is basically that Obama brought together these intelligence officials hell bent on advancing a specific narrative that he didn't really have the goods for. The problem with that is that Obama and the Obama administration, weeks before any of this had happened, they had already applied for the FISA warrant for Carter Page and in applying for that FISA warrant, they had stated their case to the court, which was that they thought Russia hacked the DNC and they believed they were going to strategically release those emails to damage Clinton.

The Obama theory was not invented after the presidential daily briefing was squashed. They had already believed this for weeks. We know that because they went to the FISA court and made their case to the FISA court. So yeah, I don't think Obama's gonna be tried for treason. I mean, this is the frustrating part is that Gabbard gets out over his skis and has to kind of say this ridiculous stuff.

Like, he's gonna jail him. Well, and we all know why. I mean, they're trying to distract from Epstein until he's trying to get back in his good graces after the whole Iran situation, and her coming out and being like, oh, Iran is not actually pursuing a nuclear weapon. So that is what hangs over all of this

and why this quote unquote disclosure is happening now. And Isaac, I know that the DOJ has announced a quote strike force around this, but my friend Christian Detock, who was in the briefing room, asked force around this. But you know, my friend Christian Detock, who was in the briefing room, asked a great question. He said, you know, the statute of limitations for conspiracy is five years. So you've only got one charge at this point

that you're looking at. I mean, even with, you know, RICO, conspiracy, I mean, wire fraud, which is apparently all the things that they usually look at, these so-called strike force teams, they have a very limited number of crimes that they can go into. And as you noted, treason basically is the only one that could even be pursued here against the former president.

So go into what that would actually mean at a practical level for trying to charge that in a criminal court of law. Yeah. I don't look again, I don't think that there is, I mean, it's a fantasy. I think it's, you know, the Andrew McCarthy who wrote an entire book making the case that Trump's presidency, his first term was basically destroyed by a gin up conspiracy that, you know, he colluded with Russia. I mean, a very pro-Trump narrative. He's been covering these latest releases and I think doing a really admirable job at National Review writing honest pieces.

None of this information is new. John Durham did the most thorough investigation of the Mueller probe and the investigation into Trump. He didn't charge anybody even close to Obama's orbit after that time period. I mean, there were some, you know, there's the FBI official who kind of edited the email and there are real crimes there that got charged. But the idea that Obama, I mean, you know, as McCarthy put it, it's not a crime, unfortunately,

to kind of gin up a political smear using vaguely worded intelligence assessments. There is no crime there that they can actually charge them or it's certainly not treason. And as you just pointed out, the maybe more reasonable idea that they would go after a former president for like conspiracy is something that has passed the statute of limitations,

which is something that Andrew McCarthy mentioned too in his reporting. So I honestly don't have the imagination to tell you what a treason charge against Obama would actually look like. This is what is important here. Look, there are three people here, I think, Isaac, I can't speak for you,

who did a lot of stuff on Russiagate, and about how it was BS, and about the way that it was used, how politically disastrous it was. By the way, I think it has major foreign policy implications, and all of that, et cetera. We are still here eight years later now at this point, which is part of why there's almost a deja vu aspect of which Tulsi was asked.

It was like, hey, listen, wasn't the time to do all of this in the first Trump administration? Right, and she was like, oh, well, there are people working for him at the time. But that's part of where, when we bring the politics into this, it just seems a little bit convenient to be having this full-scale rollout at a time of all this uproar and concern over the Epstein files.

When look, the information released, the historical record is now clear. It was BS from day one. Okay, that's great. And I guess it is a scandal, et cetera. But the context in which it all is happening just seems like it undermines the, you know, maximal extent for what they're trying to go for. Is that your read of it?

Yeah, I mean, what I would add, and this is something that I've said a lot in my writing, is just the Trump administration and the Trump campaign didn't help themselves at the time, you know, Trump was asking WikiLeaks to drop more emails. Rush out there if you're listening. Donald Trump Jr. was taking the meetings with the lawyer promising dirt on Clinton. There was stuff there that I think justified skepticism and concern about them.

We have had, we've turned over basically every rock and the collusion theory has obviously crumbled and it is very clear that the Obama administration and intelligence officials from that time period were feeding the media stories to make it look as bad as possible. And they were preventing us from hearing things that probably would have calmed the air a little bit, that would have calmed tensions a little bit.

So I get the anger and the fury from the Trump camp. I just think what's happening now, as you guys have pointed out, is very obviously designed to be a distraction. I mean, the self-interest from Tulsi Gabbard is obvious, given where it seems like she stands in the administration. And the Epstein-Feyal stuff is consuming the base and dividing Trump's most loyal supporters.

So sort of trotting out this eight-year-old story that puts the focus on Obama and Obama officials. I mean, it's smart. We're sitting here talking about it. It's working and they're getting a lot of attention for it. And I think it's an effective thing to do. I think we as journalists have to look at it honestly and explain exactly what's going on.

But yeah, that's basically my best read of the situation, I think. Yeah. I mean, I also think Hillary Clinton sort of escaped scrutiny in some ways in this too, because yes, Obama administration, they were in place and their officials and the official actions are being taken there.

The reason this took off so much with the liberal base is because Hillary Clinton wanted an excuse for why she lost to this guy. And that's where this was intentionally planned after she lost of okay how are we going to escape culpability and that's you know that was very successful and so for me Isaac is very ironic to see the way Russiagate usually originally used by Democrats to cover for their failures and now being

used by this Republican administration to basically cover for Trump's failures so it truly is the story that never dies. Yeah, it's a good observation. I mean, if you go back and watch the Clinton campaign and look back at their old tweets from this time and even what Hillary was doing on the campaign and on the debate stage, I mean, he's a Putin puppet. All their tweets, all their social media

was about tying Trump. And we know now we have contemporaneous documents in their internal communications where we know the Clinton campaign was strategically trying to tie Trump to Putin. I mean, they were involved in this. And to believe that the Clinton campaign didn't have contact with Obama officials or people in the intelligence community, I mean, of course they did. So we know that that was part of their strategy to win the election that obviously backfired.

And yeah, it's a good point. I mean, we sort of memory hold that part of it too. Actually, that's my last question here. I know there was, so she talked a lot about Hillary and some of this info that they sat on with Hillary. This just goes to my old coverage at the time. Is there, what was she talking about? About they were sitting on information

that she was on tranquilizers, and then her health was compromised. Can you go into any of that? Yeah, I mean, this was, I would, you know, this wouldn't be like the main headline, like I said. I think the biggest story from this drop was that the assessment that Putin favored Trump was based on really bad intelligence.

But they did, one of the allegations that is made in this report is that the Russians had much more damning information on Hillary Clinton, that she was going through these violent mood swings and she was taking tranquilizers and she was basically in some manic state and was not emotionally prepared to sit in the White House basically. And part of what they found or what they're saying they found is that Russia had this information and they sat on it. They didn't release it to the public.

And that sort of raises questions about what their real preference was. And the idea was basically that Russia thought it was a foregone conclusion Hillary Clinton was gonna win. And they wanted to push some stuff out to sort of weaken her presidency, but they also didn't wanna go too far that maybe they blew up the entire relationship.

And then Trump won and shocked the world and that changed everything. But yeah, it is, I mean, there's some juicy stuff in there, certainly if you're into the kind of salacious things. But again, I don't really know, it's hard to know how legitimate any of that information is either and what kind of stuff like that is just sort

of the classic Russian compliment or whatever. Yeah, exactly. Nobody knows if it's real. Equivalent of the P-tape or whatever. I will say, I will never forget that day when she collapsed on 9-11. That was like the craziest thing for those of us who were involved in right-wing media. But Isaac, thank you for joining us, man.

You did such a great job of breaking all this down. Tangle, we will put a link down in the description, and we recommend people go ahead and subscribe. So thanks for joining us, man. We appreciate you. Thanks so much for having me, guys. I appreciate it. Thank you guys so much for watching. We appreciate you. We didn't, unfortunately, have the time to get to the home segment.

We want to get the show somewhat on time out, so maybe we'll kick it to the Friday show, Discussed Then, but thank you all so much for watching. We appreciate you, and we'll see you later. ["I Heart Women's Sports"] Join I Heart Radio and Sarah Spayne in celebrating the one-year anniversary of I Heart Women's Sports.

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