Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 7/3/25: Trump Says Don't Cut Medicaid, Scahill Reveals Hamas Strategy, Dems Turn On Israel

Episode Date: July 3, 2025

Ryan and Emily discuss Trump tells GOP don't cut Medicaid, Jeremy Scahill reveals Hamas strategy, CNN shook at voters turning on Israel.   Jeremy Scahill: https://x.com/jeremyscahill Will Chamber...lain: https://x.com/willchamberlain    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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Starting point is 00:00:00 This is an iHeart Podcast. 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. Every Tuesday, make sure you listen to Pretty Private from the Black Effect Podcast Network. Tune in on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. I'm Jeff Perlman.
Starting point is 00:00:34 And I'm Rick Jervis. We're journalists and hosts of the podcast Finding Sexy Sweat. At an internship in 1993, we roomed with Reggie Payne, aspiring reporter and rapper who went by Sexy Sweat. A couple years ago, we seted with Reggie Payne, aspiring reporter and rapper who went by Sexy Sweat. A couple years ago, we set out to find him. But in 2020, Reggie fell into a coma after police pinned him down and he never woke up. But then I see, my son's not moving. 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
Starting point is 00:01:02 podcasts. Adventure should never come with a pause button. Remember MoviePass? All the movies you wanted for just nine bucks? I'm Bridget Todd, host of There Are No Girls on the Internet. And this season, I'm digging into the tech stories we weren't told. Starting with Stacey Spikes, the Black founder of MoviePass, who got pushed out of the company he built.
Starting point is 00:01:21 Everybody's trying to knock you down and it's not gonna work and no one's gonna like it. And then boom, it's everywhere. And that was that moment. Listen to There Are No Girls on the Internet on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey guys, Sagar and Crystal here. Independent media just played a truly massive role
Starting point is 00:01:38 in this election and we are so excited about what that means for the future of this show. This is the only place where you can find honest perspectives from the left and the right that simply does not exist anywhere else. So if that is something that's important to you, please go to breakingpoints.com become a member today and you'll get access to our full shows, unedited ad free and all put together for you every morning in your inbox.
Starting point is 00:02:00 We need your help to build the future of independent news media, and we hope to see you at breakingpoints.com. All right, good morning. Happy Thursday. Welcome to Breaking Points. How you doing, Emily? Doing well. We're on the cusp of the 4th of July, so that's great news. We are, all right.
Starting point is 00:02:15 So today's program, we're gonna start the big, beautiful bill, which I guess Chuck Schumer changed the name, but we're still gonna call it that anyway, because we don't have any other name for it. Trump's bill. Let's go with that. I guess Trump's bill is as we speak, cruising towards passage, there's Hakeem Jeffries is speaking and there's all kinds of kind of parliamentary stuff that they're tying up, but it's going to pass. So that's going to happen. Yeah. Mike Johnson secured the votes. He did some arm twisting into the wee hours of the morning,
Starting point is 00:02:45 4 a.m. Scott Perry had to drive back to Pennsylvania to get new clothes after vacation. He's like York, so that's like, people commute from York, practically. So we'll be joined by Will Chamberlain, kind of a MAGA man about town, right? One of the leading MAGA kind of figures in Washington, I would say, who's going to kind of tell us why this is actually a good thing that this is happening. Yeah, we're absolutely going to hear from Will about why the right is absolutely happy about what's happening right now. Which I'm glad because it's one of those moments where I just genuinely don't understand it.
Starting point is 00:03:21 I usually like disagree but understand. I have no idea why they like this thing. I'm looking forward to hearing from Will on that. Then we're going to be joined by Jeremy Scahill, who's been talking to sources within Hamas and other resistance organizations about their response to Donald Trump's new ceasefire proposal. We'll get details from him on that. After that, we're going to bring in Mehdi Hassan. We've got three guests today. He's going details from him on that. After that we're going to bring in
Starting point is 00:03:45 Mehdi Hassan. We've got three guests today. He's going to be in the studio. There's been this bubbling scandal for a very long time where the BBC commissioned an extraordinary documentary on Israeli attacks on the medics and doctors, the medical community in Gaza, and has been refusing to air it. It finally aired on Channel 4 after they just said, fine, we are not fine. You can take this somewhere else. We are not running it. Mehdi Hassan bought the global rights for it, for Zateo.
Starting point is 00:04:20 And so we're going to play a little trailer from that, talk about the scandal, talk about how that whole thing came about. We've got an update on alligator Alcatraz and Kilmar Abrego-Garcia as well. His case, there's news out of that one. Plus, we're going to talk about Zoran Mondani's response to Donald Trump saying he's going to arrest him and deport him and how it kind of points away for Democrats to be a less awful party. Yeah. And a party that you could actually imagine being excited about.
Starting point is 00:04:54 It's just a really interesting topic to be able to talk to you about after you've written books on this exact topic. Yeah, it's nice to see it flourishing a little bit. Yeah. So we'll get into that and then we will cover what happened in the Ditty Trial yesterday where he was acquitted on three counts and found guilty on two of the less serious counts. So a lot to talk about today. Let's go ahead and start with the one big, beautiful bill, which as we are sitting here
Starting point is 00:05:20 right now is really on the cusp of passage because House Speaker Mike Johnson wrangled his conference. A lot of the Freedom Caucus fiscal hawks did not want to vote on the bill. They didn't want to vote on the rule. They didn't want to vote on the open debate on the bill, which is a parliamentary procedure you have to do to ultimately vote on the bill. And they are not happy that they're being forced to come to the table on this. So Mike Johnson and his conference have been doing intense math, trying to make sure, like
Starting point is 00:05:50 they literally had to wait for one member, Scott Perry, to drive back and forth from the York area, as Ryan points out yesterday, for his vote. He thought he had more time to go get a change of clothes because he came in after vacation. And this is happening at like two, between two and four in the morning. So, poor one out for the Capitol Hill press corps. There's a Nordstrom rack here in DC he could have gone to. I was sort of confused about that. Mike Johnson also said that he would have loaned him clothes.
Starting point is 00:06:13 So, all kinds of wild stuff going on. That was a story. He had to go home for some other reason. Yeah. It looked like the bill was actually on track to fail for a brief moment late last night around around like 10 30 p.m. It looked like Johnson had lost the votes but after Trump and Johnson were twisting arms all night. They now have the votes
Starting point is 00:06:36 So now the Keem Jeffries was called gets what's called a golden hour where he can talk endlessly Yeah, and and so I think he's an hour three. It's a real treat for everyone. Of his speech now. But when he runs out of steam, then, and maybe he'll just speak for 40 years, but at some point he will run out of steam and then they will put this on the floor and they have the votes. He ran out of steam like two years ago. To pass it. So should we roll some clips first? Yeah. And then bring in Will? Yeah, let's get Will to react to. We'll start with this clip of Jim Jordan. So a bunch of members were brought to the White House yesterday where Donald Trump was
Starting point is 00:07:11 working to convince them to vote for the bill. They had a lot of reservations on it just 24 hours ago. So here is Jim Jordan of Ohio on how they got to passage. I do want to ask you, in that context, it is Freedom Caucus members who are very concerned about this bill. I'm old enough to remember when, if there was a bill on the floor that added this much to our debt and deficit,
Starting point is 00:07:36 I cannot imagine you would have been happy about it in those years. And yet, you have been approaching this a little bit differently. What is your message to your colleagues in that group right now? Look, we all wish we'd saved more money, but you know this a little bit differently. What is your message to your colleagues in that group right now? Look, we all wish it'd save more money, but you know this is a good bill,
Starting point is 00:07:49 and I tell people all the time, you know it's a good piece of legislation because every single Democrat hates it. And the reason they hate it is because this bill actually empowers Americans, it empowers families, it cuts their taxes, it keeps their taxes low. It says to the hardworking people who are working and getting tips, we're not gonna tax those tips. It says to the hardworking people who are working and getting tips,
Starting point is 00:08:05 we're not going to tax those tips. It says to parents, we're going to give you school choice in our tax code. It says the border that's now secure under President Trump, we're going to allocate resources to keep it secure. And maybe most importantly or as importantly, is it says to hardworking American families who are paying for all this government,
Starting point is 00:08:22 for people who are getting a benefit in the welfare system, if they're able-bodied adults, guess what? From now on, they're going to have to work. So I think it's good for all those common sense, fundamental Republican principles. That's why the Democrats don't like it. While it doesn't cut enough spending, I get it, but we've got small majorities. And this is probably as good as it's going to get. So I am certainly for this piece of legislation. Okay.
Starting point is 00:08:46 So Speaker Mike Johnson also addressed the, let's say, imperfections from a conservative perspective in this bill. We can go ahead and roll A2 here. We can't make everyone 100% happy. It's impossible. This is a deliberative body. It's a legislative process. By definition, all of us have to give up on our personal preferences.
Starting point is 00:09:06 I never ask anybody to compromise core principles, but preferences must be yielded for the greater good. And that's what I think people are recognizing and coming to grips with. Now not all Republicans had to have their arms twisted to vote for this bill. Nancy Mace documented her journey. We can go ahead and roll this footage that she posted from South Carolina up to D.C. She got caught up in the same travel stuff that Ryan and I got caught up in. But she rented a luxury Sprinter van and went to Waffle House and Wawa and wore pajamas everywhere and posted this wonderful video of her pumping
Starting point is 00:09:42 gas and buying red bulls so that she could get up in time to vote for the bill. And I think, Ryan, on that note, this is a good time as any to bring in Will Chamberlain of the Article 3 Project, who is going to talk to us a bit about how the right is seeing passage of this bill, interpreting passage of this bill, why so many people, Nancy Mace included, are actually very happy about the bill, unlike the sort of reluctant folks like a Chip Roy. So, Will, first of all, thank you so much for joining us. Always great to be with you. Now, anytime you have like a reconciliation bill,
Starting point is 00:10:16 Mike Johnson is absolutely right. Not everybody is going to be happy with every part of the bill. You have to get your whole conference together. That's everyone from Susan Collins to Chip Roy, and that's no easy feat. Obviously they ended up losing Susan Collins, but kept Murkowski. It needed to keep Murkowski. JD Vant cast the tie-breaking vote. So tell us basically, give us your sort of big take
Starting point is 00:10:37 on why passage of this bill that'll now be on Donald Trump's desk by that 4th of July deadline, why you see that as a big win? I guess you can fit it into two big buckets, both of which are core parts of Trump's agenda, immigration and tax policy. So on the immigration side, I mean, this is a 20 times increase in total funding for immigration enforcement, 10 to 20 times, massively increasing the budget of ICE, massively increasing, spending $45 billion to build a wall,
Starting point is 00:11:06 spending another 45 billion on detention space. I mean, I remember having, you know, knock down, drag out fights over getting $4 billion to build a wall via national emergency funding in the first term, Congress wouldn't even breathe on it. And now we're gonna get 10 times that to solve what has been a major priority of the MAGA movement since its inception.
Starting point is 00:11:28 Massive increase in dissension. All this money is necessary because it's very hard to engage in mass deportation. It turns out that once people are in the country, that's a logistically challenging thing. It requires a lot of personnel. So you need the money for it. To say you're for mass deportation and not for the money necessary to do it is ridiculous. Like we don't, we don't, to change the law logistically requires 60 votes in the Senate, but to fund enforcement of existing law requires 50. So it's a huge win on the immigration front,
Starting point is 00:11:55 which we see as the most central issue in, in our politics. And I think the second big bucket would be tax policy. No tax on tips and no tax on overtime is a real thing. And this reaffirms the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. In the absence of this, you'd have a massive tax hike for everybody. Instead, you're having massive tax cuts, or keeping the massive tax cuts from 2017, and then additionally adding some very pro-working class
Starting point is 00:12:23 tax reform in terms of no tax tax tips and no tax on overtime. And to the extent there are decreases in benefits related to work eligibility, well, it seems kind of obvious that if you're also massively incentivizing work by making sure that people get more take home pay from their work, you're sort of creating the incentive structure that I think
Starting point is 00:12:41 kind of pro working class Republicans want, which is we want people who are going out there and working to get rewarded of pro working class Republicans want, which is we want people who are going out there and working to get rewarded. We just don't want it's like JV has talked a lot about this in his book. He thought you need to reward the working class for going to work and but not reward staying at home doing nothing. And so that that part I understand. And so help help me out for the parts that I don't understand because it makes sense to me that you guys would do, like throw billions, and I think the amount of money,
Starting point is 00:13:09 I don't even know how you're gonna be able to spend it, but good Lord, it's like, you know, like somebody said, it's more than the Marines. It's like, it's like the amount of money going towards mass deportation is absolutely stunning, but it goes into the category of something that I disagree with, but I understand that this is a thing
Starting point is 00:13:26 that you guys have wanted, like that. So I get that. On the bargain, encouraging, making work pay more, encouraging people to work, that makes sense. What I don't, the parts that I don't understand, and extending the Trump tax cuts, he did the tax cuts, obviously he's gonna extend them, I don't think that makes sense.
Starting point is 00:13:42 Part I don't understand, so let's take the explosion of the estate tax. Basically, you're spending something like $500 billion to a trillion dollars in this bill to make it so the threshold for people who pay the estate tax is going from almost nobody, but still raising a significant amount of money, $500 billion to a trillion dollars, a lot of money that, you know, wealthy people were paying in the estate tax, it's now going to go away. Like, so, and that money is coming out of, say, extending the tax, no tax on tips and no tax on overtime, because those things expire pretty quickly. You could tighten the estate tax and say, you know what, the threshold for how much wealth you can pass down without paying tax is going to go down a little bit. We're going to say the first $2 million that you want to give to your children is tax free. It's a huge amount of money.
Starting point is 00:14:42 That's an enormous windfall for somebody to get. And then we're going to take the tax revenue from that. We're going to permanently extend all these tax breaks for the working class, the tax on tips, overtime, etc. Instead, they blow out the estate tax, tons of money for Bill Gates' kids. But they make the working class part tight. Like, why do that? Well, I mean, from a political perspective, I assume that was necessary to get some votes in the Senate, right? That's my default assumption, because that's not the core. The core policy drive for Trump and the Trump movement is the immigration and the working class tax cuts.
Starting point is 00:15:23 But the MAGA movement is not completely reflected in the Senate as we've seen for the last decade. So I think if you're asking from the political perspective, why are these things that seem intention with the core Trump policy priorities in the bill? It's like well, we have a three seat majority in the Senate and effectively a two or three seat majority in the House. So, you know, we have to give a little get a little. Got it. What about the energy part? Like I understand that Republicans in general
Starting point is 00:15:49 kind of just think clean energy is icky, like that it's a problematic for reasons, but over the last year, like two thirds of new energy production was clean energy, it was batteries, wind, solar, and we need as a, to continue the expansion of the supply of energy if we're going to compete against China. It's Elon Musk's argument.
Starting point is 00:16:13 Yeah, well, there's Elon Musk's argument. And also common sense. You need energy to power your growing economy, whether it's clean or dirty. Why go after the energy industry this way? It's because it goes beyond taking subsidies away. It adds taxes, it adds regulatory burdens, it adds all of these obstacles that make it so that clean energy manufacturing and energy manufacturing is made more difficult by this bill. So that's one of the's that's that's one of the parts where I'm like Who's for this because like big tech needs energy?
Starting point is 00:16:50 Consumers need energy. They don't want to pay more like who's the constituency? Then what are the politics that drove that and then we'll knowingly Medicaid because I know you got to go pretty soon So I'm not I'm not a huge expert on energy policy I'll be frank, but I've you know, there's a guy, Alex Epstein, who had some good posts on this yesterday. My understanding is that it's a kind of technocratic argument about what you have to do in order to ensure that your project gets subsidized
Starting point is 00:17:17 and stays subsidized, like how quickly it gets on the grid. And if I recall his book correctly, don't hold me to this. Somebody will have to go check my work here. But his basic argument was that it's, you know, the question is like, how quickly does your solar thing have to be operational in order for you to get the subsidy? And they were trying to reduce that time to ensure that these projects actually were getting done and adding to the grid. And the problem was, if you don't have that limit, you get kind of what he described as spamming of the grid where people are just building a lot of random energy plants
Starting point is 00:17:51 to get the subsidy without any, you know, real assessment of the fact that they'll actually be online in a reasonable period of time. So that was one thing I think. So that's, that's one point. But I think in general, I mean, there's a lot of long-term standing injections to solar and wind. They're not a good reliable basis on which to build your grid. And I mean, Spain had massive outages as a result. Wind has all sorts of problems.
Starting point is 00:18:14 These are not like, the grid, especially in a lot of places, is ultimately sustained by fossil fuels. And that's not a bad thing. We're gonna have more technology to net more fossil fuels, I think, and we have tons of them sitting underneath your Colorado So I think that you know, I don't think this is it but I guess the meta point would be this isn't a core area Of concern for the Trump base either way And so whether or not again one of these questions about you know, people looking for places to cut spending
Starting point is 00:18:41 I think that and you know green energy subsidies would be one of them. And the irony is that Democrats, and we were critical of this at the time, it put most of the subsidies into red states, thank you. Yeah. And North Carolina and Texas in particular, also Kansas and Iowa and Maine have built up major clean energy industries that are going to get hit. That's why Lisa Murkowski was fighting hard. And so then Medicaid. Yesterday, Trump has a bunch of Republicans over at the White House, and he's waxing to
Starting point is 00:19:15 them about how you keep your seats. And he says the way not to lose elections is he repeats his mantra that he said so often over the last eight years, don't mess with, don't touch Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security. And one of the members in the room is like, bro, we're touching Medicaid in this bill, not just touching it, torching it, like massive, massive cuts. I guess the, so why, Like, why do that? No, I mean, this is my understanding of the Medicaid changes or that it's a work requirement. If you're able-bodied between the ages of 18 and 65,
Starting point is 00:19:55 you need to be working 20 hours a week to get Medicaid, which is, I think, and there are exceptions, obviously, if you're like caring for minor children or something like that, or you're disabled, obviously. But I think as a default policy idea, that sounds right to me. I don't think that able-bodied people should be getting free health insurance from the state. That seems wrong to me.
Starting point is 00:20:19 We don't have socialized medicine. Right. That's easy to sell. But it goes so much further beyond that. Basically, what it does is it readjusts the various formulas so that it's going to massively reduce the amount of funding that is going to go to states and also to food stamps to SNAP and it's going to increase the amount that states have to put in. And interestingly, because Republicans resisted the Medicaid expansion in Obamacare, which
Starting point is 00:20:49 John Roberts and the Supreme Court allowed them to do, as I'm sure you remember, there were so many movements in red states to push for the Medicaid expansion that a bunch of those states had to do it through constitutional amendments done by referendum. So a lot of these red states are now constitutionally obligated to put a particular amount of their budget into Medicaid. And now they're going to get a lot less from the federal government. And hospitals are warning that they're going to go bankrupt in rural America. And Holly talked a lot about this.
Starting point is 00:21:27 This is not just some Marxist on this program talking about it. Why wasn't that a bigger concern? The closure of rural hospitals and the throwing off of 17 million people of Medicaid, many of them in rural America, that feels like a MAGA issue. This is one of the places where I'm back in the place of just not understanding. Does it go back to, this is a coalition of the old Republican Party that I very much do understand that wanted to cut Medicaid for decades, and they just won? I mean, I think, again, the throwing off of people of Medicaid, it's, I mean, it's not just randomly throwing
Starting point is 00:22:05 people off. It's literally, it's imposing a work requirement. And I think even the MAGA base is pro work requirements. I think people really should go back and read JD Vance's book on Hillbillyology, right? It's actually laid out there. There's just this really clear difference. You know, on the one hand, we want, we don't want to get rid of Social Security Medicare But on the other hand there is this deep anger
Starting point is 00:22:27 from Working class Americans towards towards idlers towards people in their similar class Not working not having a job and collecting government benefits. So I think it just basically the policy fits that the policy fits that. As for rural hospitals. The policy doesn't, I think the messaging fits that. Yeah. That's not, I think it's kind of a myth that there's like.
Starting point is 00:22:50 Well, the knock on effects of the policy on rural hospital, I mean, people are, these are projections. I'm sure in a world where rural hospitals are actually in real trouble and there's like real talk of closures, then the policy will change, right? There's certain, you know, this is a general theme. You can actually use this as,
Starting point is 00:23:03 call this plan trusting, right? There's a general theme to how things work. This was avid in tariffs too. Like you name it. People are like, well, these catastrophic impacts will result. I'm like, well, no, there are competent people running our government. They're competent people running state governments before the catastrophe hits. Things will, things will change if you are right that the catastrophe is going to hurt. So I don't, I start, I don't know that, you know, these hospitals will close. I know people are right that the catastrophe is going to hurt. So I don't know that these hospitals will close. I know people are arguing that they might. If there really is a serious problem there, I assume it will get fixed when that happens.
Starting point is 00:23:34 So that I understand. It's like basically we trust Trump that he's going to do good by us. I guess last point on the deficit. I spent my whole life being told that it's the thing that's gonna like ruin America and it's like, oh, how about, how about we add a couple more trillion to it? And yeah, one minute on that one, because I know you got to run. The deficit is to Republicans, is global warming is to Democrats, the impending crisis that, you know, always will happen in the next year or two and
Starting point is 00:24:05 then never does. I mean I think that I've come to the conclusion that I mean the debt as a problem is not a problem in the way that you know the sort of freedom caucus people catastrophize it. It's just a long-term net inflation problem is the way I think about it. That's basically how some on the left think about it too now. Yeah and you know ultimately did was Trump getting people to reduce the deficit? No. One of the things that the Freedom Caucus loves to do,
Starting point is 00:24:33 and this is not limited to them, is pretending that their policy is the ultimate Trump agenda. And it's like, no, actually, that's not what the Trump vote base wanted. The deficit is like 10th on the list, or 15th on the list of concerns. And the ones that are addressing this bill are number one and two. That's a good point. Well, we're going to let you go. And then Emily and I have a couple more things to go through. So helpful. Well, thanks. Thanks a lot. All right. Absolutely. Thank you. The summer of 1993 was one of the best of my life. I'm journalist Jeff
Starting point is 00:25:02 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.
Starting point is 00:25:32 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. Adventures should never come with a pause button.
Starting point is 00:26:01 Remember the movie pass era where you could watch all the movies you wanted for just $9? It made zero sense and I could not stop thinking about it. I'm Bridget Todd, host of the tech podcast There Are No Girls on the Internet. On this new season, I'm talking to the innovators who are left out of the tech headlines. Like the visionary behind MoviePass, Black founder Stacey Spikes,
Starting point is 00:26:21 who was pushed out of MoviePass, the company that he founded. His story is wild, and it's currently the subject of a juicy new HBO documentary. We dive into how culture connects us. When you go to France, or you go to England, or you go to Hong Kong, those kids are wearing Jordans, they're wearing Kobe's shirt, they're watching Black Panther. And the challenges of being a Black founder.
Starting point is 00:26:46 Close your eyes and tell me what a tech founder looks like. They're not going to describe someone who looks like me, and they're not going to describe someone who looks like you. I created There Are No Girls on the Internet because the future belongs to all of us. So listen to There Are No Girls on the Internet on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Starting point is 00:27:02 Hey, I'm Radhita Vrithika, and I'm the host of a really good cry podcast. And I have the opportunity to talk to Vivian too. She is someone who is definitely changing the way we talk about money. She is a former Wall Street trader, turned personal finance educator, content creator, and now the author of a New York Times bestselling book, Rich AF. Whether you're trying to get out of debt, build wealth, negotiate like a boss, or just finally understand how to do money right, Vivian is the person to ask.
Starting point is 00:27:28 I think that is terrifying because not understanding your own money and not understanding finances is one of the easiest ways to get in a situation where you don't have options and there is risk for financial abuse. You don't have the money to leave. You cannot make choices that take money out of the equation because you don't have it. And that is why every single woman needs to be good with money. Listen to A Really Good Cry on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Okay, so that was Will Chamberlain. I guess I sort of see it from their perspective a
Starting point is 00:28:10 little bit more. They just really trust Trump. Like, I'm not saying that's rational, but I okay, you trust Trump. Like the idea that you've got a bunch of people that are saying like, hey, and there have been a ton of rural hospital closures already. And you've got people saying, if you do this Medicaid provider tax, you kick these other people off Medicaid, these hospitals are going to close. And the counter is, I trust Trump. Well, but this is also an interesting point that based on what Will just said. If you don't think there's a problem with spending overall, that this is, or at least that it's not
Starting point is 00:28:47 an urgent pressing problem. Right, but they might cut Medicaid. Well, that's what I was just gonna say. Yeah. Then why make these sort of, you just tweaks to a program that MAGA, as Steve Bannon has said, MAGA loves Medicaid, MAGA is on Medicaid, why do that to sell tax cuts that will benefit everyone across the entire, I mean, these
Starting point is 00:29:10 tax cuts will benefit everyone across the entire spectrum in the short term. Disproportionately will benefit wealthy people. You could have, as people like Bach, Younger, Sargon have said, just not have reauthorized the top rate cuts. You could have just let those expire. But if you don't think that there's a Urgent debt deficit problem. Why are you worrying about paying for are you worrying about offsetting the tax cuts at all? You don't have to yeah, I guess it goes back to the Republican Party still being
Starting point is 00:29:39 somewhat controlled by or at least having to deal with it's controlled by or at least having to deal with it's like 1% wing. I'm all for smart work requirements. The politics of this make no sense. Like just the politics of this make absolutely no sense of packaging them together with a tax cut for the rich. And I think there's an interesting element, so we'll get to Tim Burchett here, in the We Trust Trump and also in the We Do Not Trust Democrats and the media, that that kind of polarized people into just supporting the thing. And I think we watched it happen in real time on CNN with Burchett on the air.
Starting point is 00:30:23 Well, you had Jim Jordan, who we played previously in this block, saying, this bill is great because all the Democrats hate it. So that's right there. That's just explicitly polarization. Democrats don't like it, therefore it must be good. Burchett went on Brianna Keillar's program on CNN and was an undecided vote. And Trump had brought him and some other undecideds into the White House trying to push them into supporting the bill.
Starting point is 00:30:54 And then he gets into a fight with Brianna Keillar over whether or not the CBO should be trusted. And she's doing a kind of, ha ha, gotcha, you pushed forward a resolution that said all CBO estimates should be read on the House floor. And now you're saying that CBO estimates can't be trusted on this. And his argument is, yeah, CBO is the only game in town and also that resolution didn't pass. But I think the CBO is wrong on this. And then they go back and forth for a while on whether or not he's a hypocrite and by the end of the interview he's hardcore defending the bill yeah but he went from yeah on the
Starting point is 00:31:32 fence do you know what this bills gonna save the American Republic and this is echoes the Jim Jordan point also that he made in the the clip we rolled earlier that in Trump was pitching it this way, the left hates this bill. The left hates this bill. That's why it's a good bill. And they hate you, and so we're going to vote yes on this thing that's actually, I think, genuinely self-destruct. The left loves this bill.
Starting point is 00:31:53 By the way, they're salivating over this bill because they're able to talk about entitlement. Democrats, yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Democrats are so, like, they're salivating over, like, drying shots. He's like, I really hope the bill doesn't pass. But if it does, we are going to win the Senate. Let's hope it doesn't. So anyway, yeah, let's roll virgin. What did the president say to you that made you feel maybe closer to voting? Yes. He talked
Starting point is 00:32:14 about the economic output that we would have that was not in the CBO scores. And, and, and along those lines, he talked about other things that I'm not going to share, but because it was in privacy. But I think there's a lot of things that probably be revealed when this is passed. And I think America will will embrace it further. I think, again, once you you do some things like straighten up Medicaid and Medicare and you dispute a lot of the lies that are in the media about people beginning kicked off,
Starting point is 00:32:45 I think America understands what we're up against in this. Well, the CBO, which you put so much trust in for years and years that you passed a resolution wanting estimates read before bills, is very clear about how many people are going to be kicked off of healthcare until you were against the CBO. No, ma'am, no, ma'am, no, ma'am.
Starting point is 00:33:01 You're, listen, listen, if you wanna, if you wanna do the editorial, just go ahead and you don't need me on here. But the These are facts, sir. I don't have to editorialize. I would like to see what the economic in economic output of every bill you as a taxpayer should want that to. And the CBO is the only organization we have. If I could allow a private accounting firm to do it, I would much rather that happen. But the reality is it would have to be the CBO. And what do you have against knowing how much each bill is spent? Why does the media oppose that? Why do you all on the left always fight every chance at America knowing what's going on?
Starting point is 00:33:34 The problem you all have with this bill, man, is that it gets government out of our way and lets Americans make some decisions. And maybe hardworking Americans would have a better choice and a better shot at life in this country without you all just telling us how bad things are going and trying to construct and as you're doing with me trying to dictate what I've said. Yeah, and he goes on from there, just the rest of the interview, he just sings the praises of the bill and now he's for it.
Starting point is 00:33:58 That clip to me is like, and in the broader interview, is like the story of our politics. It's like the issue itself gets lost in the fact that we hate each other. And so then, Burj, it's like, you know what? She sucks. I'm voting for this. I'm going to yell that by CNN. So I'm voting for this. It's like, don't follow that train.
Starting point is 00:34:21 I would also notice that, just note, that Will started with immigration enforcement, and that's how Stephen Miller's been selling his bill as the most important bill for the future of Western civilization is that they believe if you don't do their definition of mass deportation, which is different than I think the public's definition of mass deportation, but literally deporting almost everybody, not just the worst of the worst but almost everybody for Assimilation and labor force reasons then you don't have a country anymore So it's from that perspective They would probably swallow a lot of bad policy to pass a reconciliation bill with massive immigration enforcement increase
Starting point is 00:35:01 Just do your do your crackdown then like I don't see why they had to lump it all in, but whatever. I didn't win. Up next, Jeremy Scahill is going to update us on his reporting on the latest in the ceasefire negotiations. 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 Oakland, sports editor and aspiring rapper. And his stage name, Sexy Sweat. In 2020, I had a simple idea.
Starting point is 00:35:37 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.
Starting point is 00:36:03 So we started digging and uncovered city officials bent on protecting their own. Listen to Finding Sexy Sweat on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Adventure should never come with a pause button. Remember the movie pass era, where you could watch all the movies you wanted for just $9?
Starting point is 00:36:23 It made zero sense and I could not stop thinking about it. I'm Bridget Todd, host of the Tech Podcast, There Are No Girls on the Internet. On this new season, I'm talking to the innovators who are left out of the tech headlines, like the visionary behind MoviePass, Black founder Stacey Spikes, who was pushed out of MoviePass, the company that he founded. His story is wild and it's currently the subject of a juicy new HBO documentary. We dive into how culture connects us. When you go to France, or you go to England,
Starting point is 00:36:52 or you go to Hong Kong, those kids are wearing Jordans, they're wearing Kobe's shirt, they're watching Black Panther. And the challenges of being a Black founder. Close your eyes and tell me what a tech founder looks like. They're not gonna describe someone who looks like me, and they're not gonna describe someone who looks like you. I created There Are No Girls on the internet because the future belongs to all of us.
Starting point is 00:37:15 So listen to There Are No Girls on the internet on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Radhida Vleukya, and I'm the host of a really good cry podcast. And I have the opportunity to talk to Vivian too. She is someone who is definitely changing the way we talk about money. She is a former Wall Street trader, turned personal finance educator, content creator
Starting point is 00:37:33 and now the author of a New York Times bestselling book, Rich AF. Whether you're trying to get out of debt, build wealth, negotiate like a boss or just finally understand how to do money right, Vivian is the person to ask. I think that is terrifying because not understanding your own money and not understanding finances is one of the easiest ways to get in a situation where you don't have options and there is risk for financial abuse. You don't have the money to leave. You cannot make choices that take money out of the equation because you don't have it. And that is why every single woman needs to be good with money.
Starting point is 00:38:15 Listen to A Really Good Cry on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Ceasefire negotiations are at an advanced stage. Jeremy Scahill, my colleague at Dropsite News, joins us now to talk about his reporting on what we know about where we stand. Jeremy, thanks so much for being here today. Good to be with you guys. All right, so walk us through where we are now. Donald Trump, several days ago, announced that he had gotten an Israeli agreement on some version of a ceasefire.
Starting point is 00:38:46 There was conspicuous silence for a while from the Israelis, but then a media campaign started rolling out about what was in this agreement. My understanding, though, is that only recently did Hamas even receive a proposal. So what is the current situation? I mean, Trump is riding really high on what he perceives to be an ultra successful military campaign against Iran. And, you know, he's had his own, you know, series of kerfuffles in Washington over how much damage was done to Iran's nuclear program. But clearly, he feels empowered now to try to keep the ball rolling with his own agenda in the Middle East. And what we've seen happen throughout the Trump administration is,
Starting point is 00:39:30 on the one hand, Trump messages that he wants all these wars to be brought to an end. On the other hand, he's really fully empowered Netanyahu to continue and intensify the war and actually to expand it, not just in Lebanon with repeated violations of the ceasefire, but also these 12 days of intense Israeli bombing of Iran that then at the end became a joint U.S. Israeli bombing operation. But setting aside any analysis we could do about what really was at play there, Trump really, I think, sees that he has momentum.
Starting point is 00:39:59 And so what happened is that earlier this week, Ron Dermer, who is Netanyahu's point person, and really kind of like his Roger Stone of sorts, his political hit man, he arrives in Washington, DC for talks with a series of Trump administration officials. And what I'm told by sources is basically they concocted what they felt would be kind of the final ultimatum that would be delivered to Hamas by regional mediators from
Starting point is 00:40:26 Egypt and Qatar saying, this is your last chance to make a ceasefire deal. You saw the kind of power that we unleashed in Iran. Now is your time to do it. There's been a lot of reporting over the past couple of days in the Hebrew language press, the Arabic language press, as well as in the American press about what the terms of this proposal being put in front of Hamas are. I'm told, though, by sources on the negotiating team, that despite this flurry of media reports about what the terms are, Hamas was not actually given any document until late last night. In fact, they haven't really been able to do full consultations within Hamas or the
Starting point is 00:41:03 other resistance factions. I've spoken this morning to a source who is close to the negotiators that actually has that document in hand. And in general, what I would say is this, it is almost identical in most ways to the previous ultimatum that Steve Witkoff, Trump's special envoy, delivered back in May. It does not contain any clear guarantees that Israel will not resume the military assault on Gaza after an initial 60-day period. It has very vague language about how humanitarian aid
Starting point is 00:41:36 is going to come into Gaza. It doesn't say anything about the fate of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, this aid scam where Palestinians are being gunned down every day. It does mention that the United Nations and the Red Crescent are again going to be involved with the distribution of aid, but there aren't any clear definitions.
Starting point is 00:41:55 Perhaps the two most significant changes or amendments, I guess, that you could say in some way inch the position more toward what Hamas wanted is that they've sharpened some of the language about President Donald Trump. There's 13 points in this agreement, in point one and point 13, Trump is mentioned by name. And what they're saying is that Trump is committed to an actual end to the war. And as long as negotiations are committed,
Starting point is 00:42:20 you know, are conducted in good faith, that he wants to see this two month window of a temporary truce continue on toward a resolution of the war. Hamas, though, had wanted much clearer language, and they wanted Trump to guarantee that he would prevent Israel from resuming its military assault on Gaza as long as the negotiations were continuing. That language is not in this document.
Starting point is 00:42:43 On a technical level, the most significant change is that the Israelis back in May wanted to have 10 living captives, Israelis held in Gaza, released within the first week of any ceasefire deal, 60-day deal. Hamas looked at that and said, then it's just going to be a one-week deal, because after the Israelis are freed, Netanyahu is just going to resume the genocide.
Starting point is 00:43:04 So it's not a huge change, but what we're looking at now is a formula that says eight Israelis would be released within that first week. I believe it's on day five. And then the other two living Israelis would be released on day 50. You would also have the bodies of 18 Israelis who are deceased, but still in captivity in Gaza, staggered out over the course of those two months. What is not mentioned in the document is how many of the more than 10,000 Palestinians held in detention camps and prisons in Israel are going to be released.
Starting point is 00:43:36 That's unusual. In other agreements, there has been some formula cited for how many Palestinian captives are going to be released. The language on this is very vague. While there is not, again, Ryan, you and I have talked about this on this show before, Hamas has offered to relinquish governing authority of Gaza. They put it in writing, it was in their draft
Starting point is 00:43:55 that we talked about on this show a couple of months ago. It is not in the actual text of this agreement. And Israel and the United States, for whatever reasons, have taken that term out every time Hamas has put it forward. But I was told last night by a senior Hamas official that the mediators have made clear to Hamas that that is a condition that Israel and the United States are going to insist on. And what is unclear is who takes power if Hamas does relinquish its authority. It's not just a resistance movement, it's a government. So a lot of questions up in the air. And the final thing I'll say on this is that while Hamas,
Starting point is 00:44:27 I think Hamas is very seriously considering taking this deal, even though they don't think it's a good deal, they're under a lot of pressure. These guys, the negotiators all have family members that have been killed. People are suffering immensely in Gaza and there is unprecedented pressure against Hamas right now, not in a hostile way, but in a desperate way, please make a deal. So I'm told that they're giving very serious
Starting point is 00:44:50 consideration to it. The question is if they're going to be able to get some amendments to this language. Last time this happened, Hamas came through and put a whole new proposal on the table. I'm told that they're looking now at a more surgical approach where they're going to zero in on what they've defined as their red lines. They really don't want Israel to be able to resume the genocide and they want a full Israeli withdrawal. What is not in this document is anything about the Philadelphia corridor, which is the very crucial part of Gaza because it represents in the south of Gaza, it represents the only gateway to a world beyond Israeli control for Palestinians. It's on the Egyptian border.
Starting point is 00:45:28 We reported some days ago, Ryan, that mediators last week told Hamas that they may have to be willing to concede the timeline for an Israeli withdrawal from the from the Philadelphia corridor. So I think what we're seeing here, just to sum it up, is it's basically the same ultimatum that was put on the table with a few amendments that seem aimed at trying to give Hamas something. Hamas is very clear-eyed about it. A senior official told me last night
Starting point is 00:45:53 that Trump is a crucial part of what he called Israel's deception operation. Even though they say that this is a deception, they're wide-eyed about it. They understand what the stakes are. And so I think we're going to see some really intense attempts at negotiation. I get the sense that Hamas very much wants to make a deal.
Starting point is 00:46:10 And it was announced just a couple of days ago that Netanyahu will be at the White House on Monday, Jeremy, which seems to signal confidence from the Trump administration that something's coming. What does the timeline look like, and what did you make of that announcement? Yeah, I mean, as often happens with Netanyahu, he sort of projects one message in English
Starting point is 00:46:30 and another message in Hebrew. Netanyahu has been totally unhinged belligerent in his Hebrew language remarks over the past 24 to 48 hours, where he's saying, we're not gonna stop the war until Hamas is totally eradicated, we're gonna kill everyone with a gun, we're not going to stop the war until Hamas is totally eradicated, we're going to kill everyone with a gun, we're not going to have Hamasistan anymore. On the other hand, what we're hearing is that Trump really wants to kind of put on a show with
Starting point is 00:46:53 this. I think he wants to make a big announcement when Netanyahu is in town. Also, we can report based on Israeli media accounts from well-connected journalists that there is talk again of another side letter, a secret side letter that Trump apparently has told the Israelis he will give them, saying that they can resume the war in Gaza if Hamas does not leave power and disarm. So, it's sort of Groundhog Day again. I think that with Netanyahu coming to Washington,
Starting point is 00:47:24 Trump wants to put on a big show, he wants to make a big announcement. He wants to sort of portray himself, you know, in a way that's going to go down in archival reels that are going to be shown, you know, for decades to come. He may get that moment. The real question is, is Trump serious about ending this war? Because if he is, he can put Netanyahu in a corner. The Israelis don't seem to think Trump is going to do that. I think Netanyahu in a corner. The Israelis don't seem to think Trump is going to do that. I think Netanyahu feels like this is sort of his own victory tour of sorts, so we'll see what happens. So to your point about Hamas being under significant pressure, our colleague Abu Bakr Abed had posted yesterday, and we can put this up maybe in post, he said,
Starting point is 00:48:03 growing and pressuring calls among Gazans to accept the Qatari proposal for a ceasefire that people are desperate beyond words for arrest 60 days can offer a huge source of relief and respite from the ongoing Holocaust. It's better than nothing I hope it I hope it will happen. I think it's a good representation of the desperation at play here despite the fact that Abu Bakr and everybody else understands that it could be just 50 or 60 days, and then he resumes it again. What's the confidence level among people that actually, yeah, that, okay, we'll take it because it's 50 days of peace, or even let's say 60 days of peace. But like how certain are people that Netanyahu will actually just use that side letter and go right back into war yet are considering it anyway?
Starting point is 00:48:54 I mean, I think a lot of this also boils down to Donald Trump's relationships with leaders in the Arab world. You know, clearly Qatar, Egypt, others want this to be brought to an end. They haven't, you know, ever raised the prospect of using military force to end it, but it's quite clear, you know, that Trump has deepening relationships with Saudi Arabia.
Starting point is 00:49:16 He wants to push forward with his so-called Abraham Accords and get potentially Syria or Lebanon to join on. Saudi Arabia would be the big prize. So, you know, there is some motivation for Trump to try to make this thing stick. But at the end of the day, you know, I spoke to a source close to the negotiations right before I spoke to you guys. And what he's saying is, look, they realize that after 30 days or 60 days, the Israelis
Starting point is 00:49:41 could resume this genocide. But from their perspective, they still would have cards. They would have 10 living Israeli captives. They would have about a dozen or so bodies of deceased Israelis. They don't feel like they would have depleted everything they have, but they will be giving up half of what they view as the only negotiating assets that they have. I really get the sense that they feel like they need to make a deal right now. So I think we're going to see a last minute flurry of activity where they try to get some concessions or even get a side letter of their own from the White House, which I've been told by sources is a possibility, saying like, look, we can't put this in the real deal.
Starting point is 00:50:19 But as long as Qassam Brigades and Saraya al-Quds are not firing on the Israelis, meaning that they're not the ones breaking the ceasefire, and as long as youassam Brigades and Saraya Al-Quds are not firing on the Israelis, meaning that they're not the ones breaking the ceasefire, and as long as you are negotiating in good faith, Trump is committed to making sure aid flow continues beyond 60 days and that the Israelis are not going to resume a full scorched earth bombing campaign. I think Palestinians are in an unspeakable situation right now. The level of desperation is off the charts. The entire society is being slowly strangled to death.
Starting point is 00:50:50 And these guys negotiating this deal as cartoonishly as they're portrayed, they're not immune to it. Some of them, their mothers have been killed, their brothers have been killed, their children have been killed. You know, we think of them in a cartoonish way, but actually as Adam Bowler, you know, after he met with Hamas said, you know, they're human beings too. So I think what they're trying to do is get the best deal they can get that doesn't surrender the cause of Palestinian liberation. And that's why they fought so hard to get that withdrawal and a commitment that the genocide won't be resumed. Well, Jeremy,
Starting point is 00:51:18 thank you for your reporting on this and thanks for joining us. We'll certainly continue to follow it. Thank you guys. 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.
Starting point is 00:51:49 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 iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Starting point is 00:52:25 Adventures should never come with a pause button. Remember the movie pass era where you could watch all the movies you wanted for just $9? It made zero sense and I could not stop thinking about it. I'm Bridget Todd, host of the Tech Podcast, There Are No Girls on the Internet. On this new season, I'm talking to the innovators who are left out of the tech headlines, like the visionary behind a movie pass,, Black founder Stacey Spikes, who was pushed out of MoviePass, the company that he founded. His story is wild and it's currently the subject of a juicy new HBO documentary. We dive into how culture connects us.
Starting point is 00:53:00 When you go to France or you go to England or you go to Hong Kong, those kids are wearing Jordans, they're wearing Kobe's shirt, they're watching Black Panther. And the challenges of being a Black founder. Close your eyes and tell me what a tech founder looks like. They're not going to describe someone who looks like me, and they're not going to describe someone who looks like you. I created There Are No Girls on the Internet because the future belongs to all of us. So listen to There Are No Girls on the internet on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
Starting point is 00:53:29 wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Radhida Vlukya and I'm the host of a really good cry podcast and I have the opportunity to talk to Vivian too. She is someone who is definitely changing the way we talk about money. She is a former Wall Street trader, turned personal finance educator, content creator, and now the author of a New York Times bestselling book, Rich AF. Whether you're trying to get out of debt, build wealth, negotiate like a boss, or just finally understand how to do money right, Vivian is the person to ask.
Starting point is 00:53:56 I think that is terrifying because not understanding your own money and not understanding finances is one of the easiest ways to get in a situation where you don't have options and there is risk for financial abuse. You don't have the money to leave. You cannot make choices that take money out of the equation because you don't have it. And that is why every single woman needs to be good with money. Listen to A Really Good Cry on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Israel's ongoing assault of Gaza has led to a radical transformation of views when it comes to Israel and Palestinians.
Starting point is 00:54:40 Harriet and CNN has shocking poll numbers. Who Democrats sympathize more with, Israelis or Palestinians? In 2017, the Democratic Party was a pro-Israeli party. Look at this, they sympathized with the Israelis by 13 points, more with the Israelis than the Palestinians. But look at this, see change. Now Democrats sympathize more with the Palestinians
Starting point is 00:54:59 by 43 points. Oh my God, that is a change in the margin of 56 points over the course of just eight years. So all of a sudden it's the pro-Palestinian position that actually reigns supreme in democratic politics, not the Israeli position. Now you see this, you see this among Democrats overall, right, but we know that Mondani's base
Starting point is 00:55:20 was younger voters within the Democratic Party. And so I wanna break it down for you. With younger Democrats. Correct. So take a look here. Who age 18 to 49 Democrats sympathize more with? The Israelis or the Palestinians? Again, in 2017, younger Democrats sympathize more
Starting point is 00:55:34 with the Israelis by 14 points. Look at this shift now. Palestinians, they sympathize more with the Palestinians by 57 points. That is an over 70 point shift in the margin in just a matter of eight years. I rarely ever see shifts like this, Kate, in which you see one side of the equation
Starting point is 00:55:51 leading by 14 points eight years ago, and then all of a sudden the other side of the equation leading by 57 points. The bottom line is the politics around the Israelis and the Palestinians have shifted tremendously among Democrats, and they've shifted specifically tremendously among Democrats who are under the age of 50. They have just shifted more so than I think that anyone could possibly have imagined,
Starting point is 00:56:11 say eight years ago. Yeah. So, Emily, that is a major swing. And I'm not shocked that there has been a shift. You can kind of watch it happening in real time. But a 70-point swing among young voters, and by young he meant under 50, which I'd be young and I don't consider myself young. Congratulations on your newly rediscovered youth.
Starting point is 00:56:33 Young according to Harry Antin. But across the board, a massive shift. How much of the – and we're also seeing a shift in the Republican Party. Yeah, particularly young. So if you add that in, particularly among young voters. Yeah. So, you know, how do you think this kind of reshapes the way that this issue affects our politics? Well, I mean, you've written so extensively about APAC and I think we're seeing...and also like the Jonathan Greenblatt and the Anti-Defamation League people, we're seeing a complete freak out because they coasted off America's good vibes on Israel for a really long time, especially inculcated in the minds of so many Americans after 9-11.
Starting point is 00:57:24 Don't need to debate the reason, but obviously there was just an immense sensitivity to radical terrorists in the United States in those years, and so it was much easier for them to frame Israel as a sort of good versus bad Manichaean dichotomy. it just was even they took for granted how easy that was So now you see they're they're freaked out trying to paint people like Rumeza Oz Turk as Hamas sympathizers And I don't think tough student who was recently released but jailed for the op-ed, right? Yeah, that's just like snatched off the street by mass Apparently ice agents and so anyway all those say, they have a lot less power than they used to.
Starting point is 00:58:11 And that is going to materialize, I think, in the next couple of cycles, as politicians who take their money realize it's not as helpful for them to be taking the positions that they need to in order to get the money. And I don't know that that'll show up right away. But it's, I mean, I think the polling is pretty clear that it's already showed up. But I don't know how powerful it'll be as an electoral force in the next four to eight years. But it is going to be a powerful electoral force.
Starting point is 00:58:40 They've lost the public support that they coasted off of. Yeah, and I think some of this is a backlash to AIPAC and the pro-Israel lobby interfering in democratic politics in a way that has not done them favors. And so, in my last book, The Squad has this history in it. So that poll started in 2017. 2018, you get the squad elected, Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar in particular becoming first two Muslim women to serve in Congress. And in early 2019, Democratic majority for Israel, DMFI, formed as basically an offshoot of an APAC by APAC supporters and APAC consultants specifically
Starting point is 00:59:28 to push back against Tlaib and Omar. That was their, that's why they rolled out. They said that they were seeing a current of what they called anti-Israel sentiment within the Democratic Party, and they were going to spend enormous amounts of money to suppress that. If you look at the numbers since then, DMFI and AIPAC have been engaged in the greatest failure of political operations, like, ever. Like, what an absolute, like, catastrophe for them.
Starting point is 01:00:03 If their goal was to do the thing they set out to, they did, they instead did the opposite. So they launched in 2019, the first candidate they ever spent money against actually was Bernie Sanders in Iowa. They then spent enormous amounts of money defending guy Elliot Engel, who was the chair of the Foreign Relations Committee, Foreign Affairs Committee in the House, who was being challenged by Jamal Bowman. They spent millions of dollars against Bowman, and Bowman beat him and knocked him out anyway. And so what they concluded from that 2020 cycle was that they had not spent enough money. And so APAC, so DMFI raised more money for 2022.
Starting point is 01:00:44 APAC itself launched its first ever super PAC. It had never had a super PAC before. They had always just done small contributions of maxing out directly to candidates. And buying goodwill with trips and those sorts of things. Goodwill with trips. And then if you cross us, we will fund a primary challenger and we will take you out. And you only have to do that a primary challenger and we will take you out And you only have to do that a couple times and then everybody else is like, okay Don't care this much about that issue. Just gonna just use tell I stand with Israel You tell me what to do and I was just I'll say it. So 2022 they spend somewhere around 30 or 50 million dollars
Starting point is 01:01:22 Going after going after Democrats who had said things that were sympathetic towards Palestinians. And they succeeded. They spent like $7-$8 million stopping Donna Edwards from coming back to Congress. Because in 2009, she had voted against some...in 2008, there was another Israeli war on Gaza. She had voted the wrong way on one resolution. So they spent seven million dollars to stop her. They spent many millions of dollars in North Carolina to stop this city council candidate, Nida Alam, from becoming a member of Congress. She famously had been friends with three or, there were three or four Muslims students, if you remember in Chapel Hill,
Starting point is 01:02:08 who were killed in like this brutal hate crime, killed because they were Muslim. And she then got into politics. As a result of that, was city council member and was trying to go to Congress, would have won, ended up losing by like two points because they spent like $7 million against her. Then in 2024, and so across the board, they really blunted the growth of the squad, like
Starting point is 01:02:29 politicians. 2024, they spend $20 million against Jamal Bowman and knock him out, and $10 million or so against Cori Bush, knock her out, and spent $ million dollars in primaries across the country for in the Democratic primaries Making sure that nobody is critical of Israel And so they were effectively able to beat the decent number of candidates like the Democratic Caucus would look different when it comes to Israel Palestine than it does now if not for all of this spending. Yeah But good lord, the public, it has not worked on the Democratic public. In fact, if anything, it
Starting point is 01:03:09 seems like it's backfired. Well, it often takes time because we're not a direct democracy. We're a public for the makeup of elected officials to catch up with public opinion. That's one of the things Trump forced among Republican voters, is that you now have like a Jim Banks in the Senate, for example, or you now have... And even if you dispute that they're helping the working class, I know that that's a raging argument, obviously, but even if you dispute that,
Starting point is 01:03:37 they at least understand public opinion. They're reflecting public opinion. And that hasn't quite happened on this issue yet, but I don't think either major political party understands how much it's about to happen because they've been scapegoating, you know, this idea that all the anti Israel sentiment is anti-western Marxism as opposed to just saying this is insane. This is wildly bad policy. It's not making us safer. And I just don't
Starting point is 01:04:09 think they're fully ready for how that's going to manifest in public opinion. Those numbers don't just reflect a shift. I think they reflect, especially for younger people, a shift in the, like this is way down on the list of most American voters priorities, still is is but it's getting increasingly Important to people it's becoming increasingly animating because people are so pissed off About what they're seeing now that the media gatekeepers are less powerful. This information is coming through drop site It's coming through breaking points and I don't know right the last question that I have on this is is how much how much of it is? the way the Netanyahu government
Starting point is 01:04:47 has waged this war since October 7th? And listen, we could go back and debate the history of how Israel's conducted itself in previous decades before October 7th. Seems that everyone at least agrees that what's happened since October 7th has been on another scale. Yeah, I think basically that's all of it. Like it's the public recoiling of what they're seeing. And actually, for an unbelievably crystallizing example of that, let's pull up C2.
Starting point is 01:05:19 This is a SOT. What appear to be heavily armed American security contractors at one of the sites discuss how to disperse Palestinians nearby. At that moment, bursts of gunfire erupt close by. shots. The camera's view is obscured by a large dirt mound. The contractor who took the video told AP that he saw other contractors shooting in the direction of Palestinians who had just collected their food and were departing. That's video obtained by the Associated Press that was posted yesterday along with a long investigation into
Starting point is 01:06:11 allegations from American consultants working with the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation who say that what the Palestinians have been saying and what Haaretz has reported recently is true that people connected to GHF have been firing at aid seekers and what you heard in that video was 15 gunshots followed by I think you hit one and then yeah hell yeah, boy. Now there's a mound, so you can't see exactly what's happening, and that apparently has even left
Starting point is 01:06:51 some room for apologists to say, well, you know, who knows what could have happened? Yeah, he said, we heard the gunshot, and he said you hit one, and then they celebrated hitting one, and later in that investigation a guy says he saw somebody fall right like he after the shot and a celebration of having hit one they saw somebody fall this is the Hamas is nowhere around here this is there's not a live battle between Hamas and Kazaj man it's not a life battle but the claim that I think is probably obvious is that there
Starting point is 01:07:26 are Hamas people who are getting aid. Right. I'm not saying it justifies it. I'm just saying there plausibly are Hamas people in the crowd, but that's not what they're going after. Right. It might be a guy who used to be part of Ham mosque, but he's going and getting a box or something. But yeah, they're not, GHF's not claiming that's why they're shooting at them. They claim they're not shooting at them. Like they straight up deny that what you just saw in that video is happening.
Starting point is 01:07:54 So I play that as an example, I think, of the reason that you're seeing these numbers shift. It's horrifying. And nobody can support shooting at hungry people. Unarmed, hungry people. And one of the interesting things about after that, Haaretz report, I don't know if he picked up on this. I know maybe it's just me, maybe it's naivete,
Starting point is 01:08:20 but I thought it was very interesting that the Israeli government announced that they were doing an investigation instead of just flatly denying. I mean, obviously they're denying it, but they didn't dismiss it. And the reports that they changed their rules of engagement. And you've now had IDF soldiers complaining that it's harder to get permission to shoot these quote unquote warning shots athmm after they changed the rules they said we're not really doing this but then they changed the rules of engagement on whether they could do it
Starting point is 01:08:52 and so the Democratic leadership has been you know mostly immune from a lot of this pressure because of all the money spent by DMFI and AIPAC. But let's take a look at how voters now feel about their own Democratic leaders. This is B3. Party leaders, Democrats who say they want to replace their party leaders, look at this, 62% nationally say yes compared to just 24% who say no. That lines up with the idea that Democrats view their own members of Congress, their own leaders in Congress, record low approval rating. Democrats right now are out for blood.
Starting point is 01:09:30 They want to take out their party leaders. And you saw that with Andrew Cuomo going, adios amigos, goodbye. See you later in New York this past Tuesday. And Emily, that is not the Democratic Party that I know. The Democratic Party base has always been a kind of support the leaders, support the leadership. To have them in this open state of rebellion is a genuinely new phenomenon. Well I wonder, I mean yeah, that is a really big distinction between what happened post Tea Party and what happened with with
Starting point is 01:10:05 Democrats because it was pretty obvious that Republicans were furious with leadership. I think it was pretty obvious that Democrats were had a lot of reasons to be furious with leadership but they kept... I don't know I wonder if it's just because they didn't feel like there was any alternative to democratic leadership. And it also, I think democratic leadership was much more willing to signal cultural solidarity with the progressive wing, meaning they were using it, and you've written about this, they were using some of it as a shield, saying Equality Act, trans rights in ways that signaled
Starting point is 01:10:42 equity, in ways that signaled solidarity with progressives. And I wonder actually if that got them by for a decade and it's just not working anymore. Maybe, I don't know. Whatever it is, something is changing. And also, it seems like all of this has shut Richie Torres up for a second, which is quite amazing. Put up before, this is just kind of an amusing development, I guess. You check out this, and you can go check out this tweet from Hamid Benaz. He says, here's a remarkable stat showing the Zoran effect.
Starting point is 01:11:17 The account, Richie Torres hasn't tweeted either the word Israel or Hamas since June 18th, 14 days ago. It's now more. That is the longest stretch by seven days that Torres has not tweeted one of those words since October 7th, 2023. And you can just scroll through the Richie Torres' quote, post. So Torres, the most kind of outspoken democratic, Democrat when it comes to support for Israel, the most
Starting point is 01:11:45 combative and aggressive out there for him to be quiet for this long I think reflects that there is there is a centrifugal force involved in those numbers hey I mean I can't think of Richard Torres anymore without flashing back to Jamal Bowman with his arm around you and Griffin at the Zaraun. That was something else. He's a whack MF. Maybe that did it, actually. Maybe that was, Richie Torres was like,
Starting point is 01:12:10 you're right, I am whack. And he's since self-corrected. That's true, Jamal Bowman just canceled him. It's the Bowman effect. Actually canceled him, amazing. Things are changing, things are changing, that's for sure. 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
Starting point is 01:12:48 your perceptions and give you new insight on the people around you. 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. I'm Jeff Perlman. And I'm Rick Jervis. We're journalists and hosts of the podcast, Finding Sexy Sweat. At an internship in 1993, we roomed with Reggie Payne, aspiring reporter and rapper who went by Sexy Sweat.
Starting point is 01:13:15 A couple years ago, we set out to find him. But in 2020, Reggie fell into a coma after police pinned him down and he never woke up. But then I see, my son's not moving. 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. Adventure should never come with a pause button.
Starting point is 01:13:37 Remember MoviePass? All the movies you wanted for just nine bucks? I'm Bridget Todd, host of There Are No Girls on the Internet. And this season, I'm digging into the tech stories we weren't told, starting with Stacey Spikes, the black founder of MoviePass, who got pushed out of the company he built. Everybody's trying to knock you down
Starting point is 01:13:54 and it's not gonna work and no one's gonna like it. And then boom, it's everywhere. And that was that moment. Listen to There Are No Girls on the Internet on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an iHeart Podcast.

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