Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 8/18/25: Hillary Praises Trump On Ukraine, Top Israeli Official Arrested In Pedo Sting, Trump Tariff Loyalty Scores

Episode Date: August 18, 2025

Krystal and Saagar discuss Hillary praises Trump on Ukraine, top Israeli official arrested in pedo sting, Trump creates loyalty score for tariffs.   Fort Bragg Book: https://www.amazon.com/Fort-Bragg-Cartel-Trafficking-Special/dp/0593655087    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.

This is an I-Heart podcast. Have you overlooked at a piece of abstract art or music or poetry and thought, that's just a bunch of pretentious nonsense? That's exactly what two bored Australian soldiers set out to prove during World War II when they tricked the literary world with their intentionally bad poetry, setting off a major scandal. We break down the truth, the lies, and the poetry in between on hoax, a new podcast hosted by me, Lizzie Logan, and me, Dana Schwartz.

Every episode, Hoax explores an audacious fraud or ruse from history. Listen to Hoax on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey guys, it's AZ Fud. You may know me as a gold medalist. You may know me as an NCAA national champion. You may even know me as a People's Princess. Every week on my new podcast, Fud around and find out. I'll be talking to some special guests about pop culture, basketball,

and what it's like to be a professional athlete on and off the course. Listen to Fun Around and Find Out, a production of IHart Women's Sports in partnership with unanimous media on the IHart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Every case that is a cold case that has DNA. Right now in a backlog will be identified in our lifetime. On the new podcast, America's Crime Lab, every case has a story to tell. And the DNA holds the truth. He never thought he was going to get caught. And I just looked at my computer screen.

And I was just like, ah, gotcha. This technology's already solving so many cases. Listen to America's Crime Lab on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, guys, Saga and Crystal here. Independent media just played a truly massive role in this election, and we are so excited about what that means for the future of this show. This is the only place where you can find honest perspectives from the left and the right that simply does not exist anywhere else. So if that is something that's important to you, please go to break. Breaking Points.com, become a member today, and you'll get access to our full shows, unedited,

ad-free, and all put together for you every morning in your inbox. We need your help to build the future of independent news media, and we hope to see you at breakingpoints.com. Good morning, everybody. Happy Monday. Have an amazing show for everybody today. What do we have, Crystal? Yep, lots to get into today. So Zelensky is in town, along with a whole bunch of European leaders, so we will see what will come out of that. Also, Hillary Clinton, agreeing with Trump on a number of foreign policy issues, so I'm... It's a sell time.

Looking forward to getting Saugger's reaction to that. Let's get the hell out of this timeline as soon as possible. In particular, yes. Actually, that's what we were just discussing before we went live. In addition, we have lots more to get to. This story, I can't even believe this is real. A top Israeli aid to Netanyahu was arrested in Las Vegas in a pedophilia sting. Nevertheless, he was released and allowed to fly back to Israel.

So what the hell is going on with that? We've got some economic news. particular, greedflation is back with a vengeance, and we seem to be shifting more and more towards the dreaded stagflation, so we'll take a look at that. We also have the State Department now at the behest of Laura Lumer deciding that they are going to block all visas of kids coming from Gaza to seek medical treatment in the U.S. Disgusting move, in my opinion. We will break down how all of this happened and what exactly it means. We've got Pete Buttigieg cleaning up his Israel comments from Pod Save America, which is a pretty interesting sign of where things are

within the Democratic Party and how slow Democratic leaders have been to adjust to the sentiment within the Democratic base. And today we will be joined by Seth Harp, who just wrote a book exposing the murders and drug trafficking coming out of Fort Bragg. It is an extraordinary read, and I really think you guys are going to find this very interesting. At its core, it's really a book about the blowback from America's foreign, you know, endless wars and what it has done to our own society. Yes, that's right. About the toll on the people who fought it, about the toll on everybody else. And that's why I think it's really worth talking. We always like Seth, I'm happy to have him again on the show, hoping that all works. Also, we will have the AMA.

If it works, we're trying again. All right, so if you want to go ahead and sign up to become a premium member, breaking points.com, monthly and yearly memberships. If you can't afford it, no worries. Just go ahead and hit subscribe on this YouTube, on your YouTube button. Is that what it's called right there on the channel? And or if you're listening to this on a podcast, please just go ahead and send the show or your favorite episode to a friend. Give us a five-star rating. It really helps other people find it. So let's go ahead and start with Ukraine.

We had Professor John Mearsheimer break down the exact kind of the meaning of the summit. We have some more details now that are coming out. We know, of course, that President Zelensky is already here in Washington. Almost every major leader of NATO from the European Union will be here. in Washington as well for a grand meeting between Zelensky, Trump, and all of them to kind of set the terms. We did get some interesting new revelations on what we could see in any sort of peace agreement from Steve Wittkoff, the chief negotiator of the president who was on television, giving some of that away. Let's take a listen. The thesis of a ceasefire is that you'd be

discussing all of these issues that we resolved in Alaska. You'd be discussing security guarantees. There's not a person on the European team who didn't acknowledge that we made substantial progress at this meeting. The fundamental issue, which is some sort of land swap, which is obviously ultimately in the control of the Ukrainians, that could not have been discussed at this meeting. We intend to discuss it on Monday. Hopefully we have some clarity on it, and hopefully that ends up in a peace deal very, very soon. You mentioned the Article 5 guarantee of it. of NATO an attack on one and it's an attack on all. Russia would allow that to happen?

No, Jake, that's not what I said. What I said is that we got to an agreement that the United States and other European nations could effectively offer Article 5-like language to cover a security guarantee, which is one of the real reasons why Ukraine wants to be in NATO. We sort of were able to bypass that and get an agreement that the United States could offer Article 5 protection, which was the first time we had ever heard the Russians agree to that. That is an absolutely extraordinary claim, which we really all need to sit with, because Steve Witkoff is claiming that Russia has agreed to some sort of Article 5-style guarantee.

I find that very difficult to believe for a number of reasons. Whether you have an Article 5-style guarantee outside of NATO or in NATO, If you have all the countries in NATO absent like Lithuania, actually no, they'll probably give them one, so it doesn't even matter. Oh, Slovakia, I apologize. And the United States give you snapback. We will, if one of us attacked, if not all, you're in NATO, okay? I mean, it's like, who cares whether you call it NATO or not?

Again, I find that very, very difficult to believe, considering Putin's rhetoric about why that started the war. I guess it's theoretically possible that they would have agreed to it if they could keep significant parts of Ukraine. What's come out of the summit now so far is that Putin is demanding not only the parts of Ukraine, approximately 20% that he already controls, but actually significant parts of the Dunbos region, and that would include Ukrainian withdrawal from areas of the front line, including some cities that they already control. Everyone, please keep in mind, the Ukrainian government is like, oh, well, we can't give that up. These cities are rubble,

no matter where they control it or not, both for Russia and for Ukraine. It's not like some thriving metropolis that they're just handing over, right? These have been completely emptied and destroyed, ravaged by the war. So that is by far the single most significant thing that has come out. But we should keep in mind, even if that is true, you have to get Zelensky to agree. Zolensky, in the last 48 hours, I have tracked every single one of his public statements. He is not even close to coming towards a peace deal. In fact, his chief aim, from the Financial Times and others, which I'll return to, is not only a ceasefire, an immediate ceasefire. Why does he want an immediate ceasefire? Because they're losing the war and they're expending and losing manpower. An immediate ceasefire, he wants a security guarantee before, uh, on top of the ceasefire. He's not ready to agree to a peace deal because he keeps saying, I can't even agree to a peace deal. I have to bring it to a national referendum, which of course he can control the process through which that would happen. Part of the reason he is here in Washington today with all the European leaders is actually to convince Trump to go back to Putin and say, you need to agree

to an immediate ceasefire or we're going to put all of these secondary sanctions on you. I believe, this is echoing Meersheimer, that Trump, it all finally clicked for him to say, no matter what sanctions I do, no matter what's going on, Putin, what he's demanded has really not changed all that much since Istanbul back in 2022. And it's basically immovable from that point forward. And so you basically have these two almost immovable objects now, considering the Ukrainian and the European Union position. The United States is caught in the in between. For some reason, we have subjugated all of our policy to the EU and to the Ukrainians. And then the Russians, of course, have no compunction about killing thousands of men on the front line every single day if they have

to, to continue to grind forward inch by inch in Ukraine. So it's bad all the way around. I see no possible way. Echoing actually the Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, on television, he's like, we're not even close to a peace agreement right now. So I believe him. I think he's right. And with the European Union and the Ukrainians, it's not good right now. Yeah, and just to spell out for people, and you guys did a great job with Mirschimer spelling this out over the weekend,

the difference between a ceasefire and a peace deal. The Ukrainians want a ceasefire because that means you don't have to actually deal with the reality of the territorial loss. You can just say, okay, we're just taking a pause, gives them a chance to sort of regroup, reconstitute, reconsider, et cetera. Whereas the Russians, I mean, he has been saying basically the same thing from the beginning of the war about what the conditions are that would need to be met. And, you know, fundamentally, they are unacceptable to the Ukrainians. They're unacceptable to the Europeans.

I mean, they're unacceptable to a lot of the American leadership as well. So the question is, are you going to end up with a Ukraine that is at all, you know, sovereign? The faster this ends, the better it is for Ukraine. And it's going to be incredibly ugly. Like, if it ends now, it's going to be incredibly ugly, the kind of deal that would have to be struck. But if you continue, it is likely to only get even uglier because of the logic of Russia just having so much more manpower and Ukraine really spending so much of their manpower already in this war and being in such. a precarious position. You know, things have been like, the Russians continue to make sort of minor advances.

They did have a significant breakthrough that we covered last week. However, as time goes on, the Russians are betting that whatever economic strife they're facing from the sanctions, whatever potential societal instability they're facing, which, you know, from the surface level doesn't seem like a whole lot, that they can basically outlast the Ukrainians. And I think that's a fairly safe bet to make. Yeah, I mean, again, it's not on a timeline. both the Russians and the Ukrainians are living in insane, like, timelines where the Ukrainians are like,

look at this micro breakthrough that we made. It's like, look at the timescale. In 2022, you launched your grand counteroffensive and you made all of these talk about retaking this system, this. None of it happened. We gave you probably $100 billion since that time period. The front line is relatively frozen. And if there's been any movement, it's been on the Russian side. Now, Zelensky himself, again, reiterating those core demands where he wants a security guarantee, explicitly ahead of that. He only wants a ceasefire immediately before moving to peace. And then, in terms of any territorial concession, he's already ruling that out without a national referendum. The territorial question is one that he's not really willing to get to. Here's

what he had to say. The constitution of Ukraine makes it impossible, impossible to give up territory or trade land. Since the territorial issue is so important, it should be discussed only by the leaders of Ukraine and Russia at the trilateral, Ukraine, United States, Russia. So far, Russia gives no sign that trilateral will happen. And if Russia refuses, then new sanctions must follow. So you can see there about Ukraine does not even have the ability without some sort of national referendum. By the way, one thing that is interesting compared to the Gallup polling that we've shown here, Ukrainian people are already mostly broken. I mean, many of them want a negotiated peace to the settlement. Now, maybe what Putin is demanding is too much. Like, quote, negotiated

peace can mean a whole lot of different things. But the point remains. Like, you can see that he's absolutely not willing to even bring it up in this meeting right now with Trump. I want everyone to understand. All of this is in the public, like what they've said they're going to do. The European leaders there are there to hammer home only a single point. We need the ceasefire and we need it now. They want all, they basically want to box the United States into their own insane position, which is all of these preconditions for peace as if they are winning the war. The reason Putin is resolute is because he's winning the war. He has stood up against the sanctions. He has stood up against, obviously, the Ukrainian military. The Europeans have thrown everything that they

possibly could at him. It doesn't matter. If they had the military might, they would do it. I mean, I talked to some military experts. In terms of the cards, the Russians have the cards, because there's not a single thing not strapped to the ground that we could send Ukraine that was going to make a damn difference because of their own manpower issues. So this is all very important for everybody to understand. Have you ever looked at a piece of abstract art or music or poetry and thought, that's just a bunch of pretentious nonsense? Well, that's exactly what two bored Australian soldiers set out to prove during World War II.

When they pulled off what was either a bold literary hoax or a grand poetic experiment, publishing over a dozen intentionally bad but highly acclaimed works of expressionist poetry under the name Earn Malley in an incident that caused a media firestorm and even a criminal trial. The Earn Malley episode made fools of believers and critics alike and still fascinates poetry lovers to this day. We break down the truth, the lies, and the poetry in between on hoax, a new podcast hosted by me, Lizzie Logan, and me, Dana Schwartz. Every episode, hoax explores an audacious fraud or ruse from history, from forged artworks to the original fake news, to try and answer, why. We believe. Listen to hoax on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

A foot washed up a shoe with some bones in it. They had no idea who it was. Most everything was burned up pretty good from the fire that not a whole lot was salvageable. These are the coldest of cold cases, but everything is about to change. Every case that is a cold case that has DNA. Right now in a backlog will be identified in our lifetime. A small lab in Texas is cracking the code on DNA. Using new scientific tools,

they're finding clues in evidence so tiny you might just miss it. He never thought he was going to get caught, and I just looked at my computer screen. I was just like, ah, gotcha. On America's Crime Lab, we'll learn about victims and survivors, and you'll meet the team behind the scenes at Othrum, the Houston Lab that takes on the most hopeless cases, to finally solve the unsolvable.

Listen to America's Crime Lab on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey guys, it's AZ Fudd. You may know me as a gold medalist. You may know me as an NCAA national champion and recent most outstanding player. You may even know me as a People's Princess, but now you're also going to know me as your favorite host. Every week on my new podcast, Fud around and find out, I'll give you an inside look at everything happening in my crazy life as I try to balance it all. From my travels across the globe to preparing for another run at the Natty with my Yukon Huskies to just try to make it to my midterms on time, you'll get the inside scoop on everything.

I'll be talking to some special guests about pop culture, basketball, and what it's like to be a professional athlete on and off the court. You'll even get to have some fun with the fud family. So if you follow me on social media or watch me on TV, you may think you know me, but this show is the only place where you can really fud around and find out. Listen to fud around and find out. a production of IHeart women's sports and partnership with unanimous media

on the IHart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. The problem is right now is that Trump is, you know, everyone talks about how Trump is impressionable and that Putin is going to take advantage of that. Well, Putin ain't the only person taking advantage of that.

You think all those Europeans flew over here for no reason? Yeah, of course. They know what they're doing too, okay? And they've been wildly successful. Same with Zelensky. over under on whether he's going to wear a suit today, because apparently that was an annoyance of Donald Trump to try not to repeat the February disaster of his meeting. The question

is all about how they are going to impress upon Trump that it's really them who has the cards, which again is fake because all the weapons are coming from the United States, whether they're getting bought by the Europeans or not. But stuck within that is now this most recent Hillary Clinton thing, which I know this all sounds crazy. But I didn't appreciate how important it was until, so I was watching all day the coverage of the summit. Brett Baer has 10 minutes and the Air Force one to interview Trump. Right. What do you think one of the questions was on Hillary Clinton?

And the reason why is if you watch all of Fox coverage, Fox's coverage is the most hawkish I've ever seen. I watched all three networks. Fox's coverage was just nonstop pro-Ukraine propaganda. And what I'm realizing is they're appealing to Trump's ego by saying, see, Hillary says you should, should get the Nobel Peace Prize if you do it the right way, aka the Ukrainian way. And so they're trying to box them into this by creating elite public opinion that says, I agree with you. So here's Hillary Clinton talking about the summit. Let's take a listen. I think all of that is a very good signal that there is beginning to be a better understanding, both by the president and the people

around him, as well as by the leaders of our European allies, that there can be common ground amongst us. And the kind of dismissiveness that we saw in the first Trump administration has been replaced by a much more obvious working relationship to the good of European security, transatlantic security, and hopefully Ukrainian security. So I'm actually encouraged. Nobel Peace Prize for Donald Trump. Hillary's encouraged, Sager. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. This is not good. We need to get out of this timeline, all right? Let's go to the next part, please, from the Financial Times. Zelensky and allies will press Trump on security guarantees. This, again, is one of the most singularly important

things, because if this war ends with the expansion of, call it whatever you want, I don't care, a bilateral treaty with Ukraine that is signed on by more than half of the NATO powers and or NATO, it's not going to change the difference that all of us will be on the hook. for a nuclear war, for the territorial integrity of Ukraine. Even if whether Russia could live with that, you should ask yourself at a very basic level, do you want that as an American taxpayer? They never put it to you in those terms, you know? And this is part of the problem. We can see the history. And everyone says these are Putin talking points. It's ridiculous because this argument's going long before Putin ever came to power. You can go and read George Kennan's

own theories on NATO expansion going back all the way to 1991. Bill Burns, very many serious foreign policy realists looked at the situation, said this is untenable and it's going to create a crisis. John Mearsheimer, who we interviewed on Saturday, said very similar things. At a very basic level, the border of NATO has been moving further and further towards the Russian territory. The result of the Ukrainian war was to bring Finland into NATO. Finland, a country which was neutral for 200 years, decided to join NATO, and we switched our fingers like this and immediately brought them in. Now, they're asking for 80% of Ukraine to be brought into this as well. When they say security guarantees from the Europeans, that's fake. Because

if Europe could guarantee their security, they would do it. They need America to do it. That's another part, which always gets left on the table here. And so this is, you know, look, I think Trump is very open to falling for it. And if that happens, you can't take that back. You cannot take back, you know, a full-on Article 5 guarantee. Also, because of the reality we live in, I would bet you that that would pass the U.S. Senate 99 to 1 or something. There may be two people who would be willing to vote against it. Yeah. I think Holly and Rand Paul. By the way, Rand abstained actually on North Montenegro, so I'm not so sure whether he would even do it. So, like, this is a crisis, in my opinion. No one seriously even wants to talk about it. And the real issue is if Trump, goes on the record to some sort of security guarantee, Putin has not said, yes, I will accept a security guarantee, at least publicly. We're not taking that back. Then that is a statement of U.S. policy under the Trump administration. And what if the Russians are like, okay, well, that's evidence for why we just need to keep rolling? That's the problem. What else do we have? We're going to tariff

China 500 percent. Does everybody want to shut down our economy because of Ukraine? It's preposterous. Yeah. I mean, I just see the whole thing as it honestly is sickening. because it is a tragedy of the failures of U.S. foreign policy over decades. You know, we used Ukraine as pawns, and that's what has led to this horrifying outcome where, you know, what the hawks are pushing for and is what is possibly going to happen and what the Europeans, you know, would want out of this meeting today and what Zelensky would want out of this meeting today is to use secondary sanctions, like as if we haven't already sanctioned, Russia is the most sanctioned country on the planet already.

In the world. But we're going to levy now secondary sanctions to try to put even more pressure on Russia to try to secure some sort of immediate ceasefire without a larger peace deal. Russia is not going to go for that. But what that means for you is that once again, the U.S. tariff policy and trade policy is being used to effectuate these foreign policy goals. And that does have real impact on you and what prices you're paying and what cost of living here is in the U.S.

and it's very unlikely to work. I mean, this is the insanity frequently of our foreign policy. I always think about Joe Biden when he was like, you know, we're talking about the hoofy strikes. And he's like, we're going to continue the hoofy strikes. Are they going to work? No. Are they going to continue? Yes.

So much of our foreign policy is driven that way. Do you think there's any reasonable expectation here in D.C. that if we levy some war sanctions or, you know, secondary sanctions against Russia, that that's going to somehow magically work? You know, to be honest, I used to think the way you did. I think they are as dumb as they seem. You think they believe it? I mean, okay, this is going to be a deep cut for everybody, but stick with me. But Michael McFall, I know you know, the former U.S. ambassador to Russia under Obama,

I saw him tweet the other day, at least this was not Yalta 2.0. Now, this is going to sound crazy. That was the arch, like, anti-communist talking point of the Republicans in the 1940s because they criticized Roosevelt for dealing with Stalin and the theory behind is that Roosevelt should have basically gone to war with the Soviet Union to protect against the expansion of the USSR. So once I saw that, I was like,

holy shit, we're living in a timeline where the neoliberal left talking point on Ukraine is that actually the United States should have pursued the Churchillian policy of declaring war on the Soviet Union after we won World War II to make sure that we didn't expand on a goal. that's why I was like, oh, we are living in a psychology of people who are still litigating the Cold War at its very foundation of Yalta.

And so seeing that, that's why I'm like, oh, no, the sanctioned policy and all of that makes sense because it's not that they think it's going to work, it's that they want a forever war with the Russian state until it is dissolved and destroyed. That's what they want. No, that's right. And it has to, and part of it too also does come back to money because after the, you know, after the Soviet Union collapses, after we had all of this gigantic expansion of the military industrial complex and the Pentagon spending, the logical thing would be, okay, this superpower

rival of ours has now collapsed. We don't have to spend all of these mass amounts of money and fund all of these contractors in the Beltway area to the extent that we have been. We could be spending that money. Oh, maybe people should have health care. Maybe people should have decent wages. Maybe we should invest in some infrastructure for once and, you know, really rebuild the country. No, instead, those people have every interest in saying, no, no, no, you have to continue. They're, you know, they're always a threat. They'll always be a threat. They'll never not be an adversary. They'll never be an ally. You have to always be in this, you know, aggressive, offensive posture towards them. And so the money fuels it, too. So that's why

I see the whole thing is just such a tragedy and cautionary tale about the U.S. foreign policy that has been pursued for decades across multiple administrations. And, you know, now you end up in this situation, which is truly horrible. There is no good outcome here. There are zero good outcomes in sight. There's not going to be any sort of end that is in any way just for anyone, right? It is outrageous that Ukraine was invaded by Russia. It's really not their fault, you know.

It was more us using them as pawns in our imperial game. And now that we get here, I see why Ukrainian. would feel like, well, you're the ones who dragged us into this position. So you should be fully backing us up, right? You should be doing what it takes to make sure that our sovereignty and our territorial integrity is preserved. You should be guaranteeing our security because you're the reason, a big part of the reason, that we're in this situation to begin with. So I have endless sympathy for the place that the Ukrainians have been dragged to in this situation. And it's not to say to take away agents from Zelensky to say that there's, you know, nothing that's gone on there

as well. But we're the big players in this game, and we have created this endlessly disastrous situation. Here's again where I need to stick with this. Zelensky today repeated the lie that the United States made a security guarantee to Ukraine in 1994. That is complete bullshit. He's referring to the Budapest memorandum of 94, where the Ukraine went now, again, I'm going to choose my language carefully, gave up control of the Soviet Union's nuclear weapons, because they say gave a control of our nuclear weapon. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. Gave up control of the Soviet weapons. Union's nuclear weapons. Well, here's news for you, Ukraine. That was a non-binding agreement made by the Clinton administration. Now, when Putin gives one of his long lectures about NATO expansion,

what does he cite? He cites how George Schultz and other secretaries of state told him, we will never expand NATO beyond the borders of Germany. That, by the way, is the exact same logic of Putin, who said, the Secretary of State told me that you wouldn't expand, and you expanded. Well, as the Russians well know in this country, nothing is legally binding unless it passes the United States Senate. It's the same thing with the Budapest memorandum. So you know what you should do? You should treat then the Clinton administration making a promise that they could never fulfill for the same, you know, timeline with the same weight of the United States telling Putin, we would not expand NATO. Neither are legally binding. We have a treaty system

ascribed by the constitution in this country. But yet both sides take the word of some previous administration as law that we're supposed to follow. And yet, if I told the Ukrainians, it's like, well, by your own logic, then we never should expand NATO, what would they say? That's a Putin talking point. That's completely non-binding. And then Zelensky, with a straight face, says the same thing. I get it. Okay? It's unseemly the fact that we signed a memorandum and then didn't end up backing it up later on. It's also unseemly to me that we expanded NATO later on, even though we didn't say it. But that's our system. We live in an elected government where different Democratic leaders get to make different changes to foreign policy. You have to view it

in that context and have to do so fairly. And if you want it changed, then pass it through the Senate. But that's the unfortunate part of all of this. And this is the structure, the superstructure on top of today's talks. It is the biggest NATO propaganda effort in modern times, basically since the expansion and the initial start of the war back in 2022. The goal, is to set completely ridiculous and out-of-step parameters for the Trump administration and for the Europeans and the Ukrainians, such that Putin will not agree. They do not want this war to come to a close, period. They are not ready to stomach it. And the net result is probably going to be the Europeans continue to buy our scarce weapons from us, which again are coming from us,

who pays for it almost doesn't matter if the stocks are, you know, is what matters the most. Yeah, the money is not really the issue. And the war will continue day after day after day. And the Ukrainian position will further erode day after day after day. I mean, this has really been, well, one of the lessons, again, of this war is we've said all of the conditions for nations to take the lesson of like, keep your nukes or get nukes, number one. And number two, the earlier this conflict was resolved, the better position that Ukraine would have been in. I mean, it still continues to be such a tragedy that we blew up those peace talks that were ongoing in Istanbul, because that would have been the moment when you had the best

potential possible outcome from Ukraine. And every day that they want to continue this war, the likely position of Ukraine, and the likelihood that it's even able to persist truly as a sovereign, independent nation continue to diminish. Yeah, absolutely right. All right. So that's the context. We'll see how it goes for today.

It's going to be a truly extraordinary day here in Washington. The schedule is an initial meeting first with President Zelens. then a lunch to follow with the head of NATO, all of the major NATO powers and their heads of state, as well as the European Union, and then some sort of press conference release memorandum or whatever that will be released afterwards. That will be the set terms. Then we'll see what the Russians have to say. Do we expect them, Zahar, to take questions at any point?

So let me take a look at the schedule just very quickly. Of course, we'll cover whatever. Whatever transpires today will, I'm sure, be leading. Knowing Trump, there's going to be something. So, yeah, on his public schedule, there is not currently any public press conference, but there is a press spray. What that means is when Trump is like in the Oval Office and the cameras all come in to ask questions. So we have two of those scheduled, one with Zelensky and one actually with the European leaders. So most likely that 3 p.m. press pool in the East Room where they're going to have some sort of big meeting, that is where we will probably see the most significant taste. out of today. But we'll see. And as we saw with the Putin summit, things move around and get canceled and stuff all the time. It moves at a very rapid pace. So who knows what's actually going to happen. But that's the context. Let's go ahead and get to this situation that unfolded in Las Vegas. I can scarcely believe

that the details of this are correct, but we have double and triple checked. And yes, in fact, this all really did unfold. Let's put this up on the screen. And shout-down. to, I'm actually not sure her full name, Mel, her handle on Twitter is Village Crazy Lady. She's done some really important reporting, not just here. So shout on to her for really breaking this down and highlighting this, bringing it to the forefront. So she tweets, the executive director of Israel's national cyber directorate was arrested this week in Las Vegas in a child predator ring sting. There were a number of other people who were arrested as well, I think seven different individuals.

So he gets arrested in this sting of trying to lure a child on a computer for sex acts. And then he's released and allowed to go back to Israel. Keep this up on the screen for just one moment. So you can see she has screenshots here. One from Wynet News, which is an Israeli publication, says U.S. detains worker from Israel's top cyber defense agency for questioning. the prime minister's office says the incident resolved quickly and then with brief questioning of National Cyber Directorate Stafford before his release. So that's the way they're spinning it is like, oh, he was just questioning, it was all fine. You've got the local news saying that all of these

individuals, by the way, one of the other dudes in here was a pastor, a minister. So that's cool too. But he actually was arrested, apparently facing charges. They all face felony charges of luring a child with a computer for a sex act and were booked. into the Henderson Detention Center, with the exception of one of the individuals who's booked into a different detention center. So again, all of them arrested and booked. You can see she also has this guy, Tom Alexandrovich, who was the executive director of Israel's, still is, Israel's national cyber director, which is a very important position,

by the way. There you can see his Twitter profile, so you can see sort of what his whole deal is. Let's put the next piece up on the screen with some more details. reported out here by Mel. She says, just to clarify, she's got the arrest record here on the right. Okay, so again, rebutting the line of the Israeli prime minister's office saying, oh, it's just questioning that he was released. No, no, no. Here he is the arrest record right there on the right of your screen. She says, number one, Tom Alexandrovich was 100% charged. It's on the county website. His next hearing is supposed to be 827, 2025. I'm sure that's not happening.

Number two, Tom was charged with luring a child with a computer to engage in sexual conduct. Number three, in order to be charged with this specific offense, Tom had to seek out a child under the age of 16 with the explicit purpose of luring them from their parents to engage in sexual conduct. Who, she says, in the Trump admin, intervened on behalf of him. Was it cash? Wouldn't surprise me since the FBI was part of the sting. We want answers now. Sean King does have some reporting. Now, his quote-in-poor reporting should be taken with a grain of salt.

He claims to have sources within the police department who said, yes, this was, you know, our sting and the Trump administration intervened and pushed, forced him to be released so that he could fly back to Israel in order to escape any sort of charges or accountability for this. I don't even know what to say. I mean, like, again, the details of this, you could not even make up. But it appears that he was caught dead to rights as part of this broader child pedophilia sting in Las Vegas. And then the federal government, the Trump administration, very likely, we don't have that totally locked down, but very likely, because how else would this happen? Intervened and said, no, you got to let this guy go. And he's allowed to fly back to Israel. Unbelievable soccer.

It's very interesting, isn't it? I think a lot of it speaks for itself. So I'll just leave some of it. Not much commentary is really needed here, is it? I just, you know. I mean, we could, yeah, we could talk about, you know, also what's going on with Epstein kind of connects into this, that you could make that connection if you'd like to,

but you could talk about whose interests are being protected here. Yeah, just so you know that this is the first time. How Jewish American pedophiles hide from justice in Israel, in a tense stakeout, they talk about having to look at, quote, the widespread problem of many accused American pedophiles flee to Israel, bringing them to justice can be very difficult. In fact, an entire watchdog organization has to track pedophiles inside of Israel because they flee there and they use their dual citizenship basically to seek, you know, escape the legal system here of the United States. I'll recall, everyone will recall that Epstein at one

point fled to Israel. It was open talk in U.S. society returned from Israel to the United States for his sweetheart plea agreement in April of 2008. Yeah, he was negotiating that deal from Israel, correct? Yes, that's right. And what they say, actually, inside of it is at least more than 60 have fled the U.S. to Israel, given its limited resources to identify these individuals. They say the actual number is probably much higher. Again, basically a weaponization of dual citizenship.

But in here, you know, it could actually be a weaponization of diplomatic immunity. Now, you and I have lived here in Washington and or you lived in New York, too. So the diplomatic immunity thing is always, you know, a source of tension. of it's we have a ton of diplomats here in dc they have diplomatic plates they often ignore traffic signs or whatever but that doesn't absolve you as it says very specifically a felony charges it's limited but in many cases like if you commit like murder or something it's not like you just get diplomatic immunity it's not how it works right and so one of the things there are a lot of questions here is how exactly did you escape you know from a questioning standpoint especially

because all of the other people from what we can see have been arrested right in this sting. And by the way, there were some initial questions around this. But other organizations, news organizations, including The Guardian, have confirmed his identity. So we're going off of their reporting. But it is still, you know, extraordinary because the very fact that he was released, whether it was state, local, or federal, is outrageous, right? Because you have somebody, came to our soil. I mean, he did the worst thing he can do, in my opinion. The absolute worst crime of all is trying to exploit a small child, right? I mean, far as I'm concerned, like that's where we get the death penalty. And then you get not,

you get to flee the country and go back. There's just so much about, you know, the actual crime itself, the way that our government is willing to look the other way. Again, we don't know if the feds were totally involved. I don't really see how they couldn't be. How could they not be? Because how do you just get let somebody go? Right. Like that. Or, you know, maybe they got scared because he was a diplomat and he flashed the diplomatic passport. That's possible? I mean, does he even qualify for diplomatic immunity because, I mean, he's not like an ambassador, you know. I mean, he's an Israeli official, but not every, is every government official is entitled to diplomatic immunity. It's supposed to be ambassadors, high commissioners, other senior diplomatic officials.

So, no, I mean, I think it almost has to be that, you know, probably the Israelis caught wins. Look, somebody somewhere did something. So Israelis caught wins. They called up, you know, the FBI account. Maybe it's cash. Who knows? Someone in the Trump administration was like, this can't happen. And, you know, and I'm sure they were, this will be a scandal and this will be a big deal. And you don't want to have to deal with this and hope that it would just fly under the radar.

And it may well have, if you didn't have, you know, a few people, a few like Twitter sleuths and journalists who looked into this and were like, hey, guys, this is kind of a big deal. But, yeah, we need answers to who intervened at what point and at what level. because this is absolutely insane. To go back to the piece that Sagar was citing before, was that CBS News that did the reporting there. This was a few years back, what, like 2018 or so, that that report came out. But in any case, you know, they talk about it

and compare it to the scandal in the Catholic Church, where you had a mass cover-up. And within the Jewish community, oftentimes, it's in these, you know, more orthodox sect. Hasidic and... Where they don't want, you know, shame on the community. And so it's just, okay, well, you can flee to Israel and, you know, there'll be people there that will take you in and protect you. The Hasidic stuff is even crazier.

I've read a number of... There's a New Yorker story from back in the day about inside the Hasidic community, how they protect them. Yeah, I remember this too. You know, and he was like, they're like, oh, you just pay them off. Like, you pay them $20,000 or whatever. And everybody makes it go away and nobody goes to NYPD. I was like, this is disgusting. Because it was just a serial predator protected over and over and over again.

And they don't want scrutiny. Yeah, they don't want scrutiny of their community, which is, I mean, sorry, you live in this country, you know. By the way, if you want to live under religious law, there's a place called Israel. You can go and live there. Apparently, you can live with impunity here, apparently to these Jewish-American pedophiles. In the story, they talk about how some of the people who pray on children here go there, flee, and actually continue to, you know, do it while they're in Israel. Of course, yeah. So they're going after Israeli children.

too. Sick. Absolutely sick. Speaking of sick, you guys will recall there was a right to rape protest in Israel because there were IDF soldiers who were caught on camera raping and abusing a Palestinian detainee. And for once there was an attempt to intervene, arrest these guys. And there was a mass protest against just the most basic level of accountability for these actions which were again caught on camera. Apparently this... a magazine article announced something incredible. Two young girls had photographed real fairies. But even more extraordinary than the magazine article's claim

was the identity of the man who wrote the article, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the man who wrote Sherlock Holmes. Yes, the man who invented literature's most brilliant detective was fooled by two girls into thinking fairies were real. How did they do it? And why does it seem like so many smart people keep falling for outlandish tricks? These are the questions we explore in Hoax, a new podcast from me, Dana Schwartz, the host of Noble Blood. And me, Lizzie Logan, every episode will explore one of the most audacious and ambitious tricks in history,

from the fake Shakespeare's to Balloon Boys, and try to answer the question of why we believe what we believe. Listen to hoax on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. A foot washed up a shoe with some bones in it. They had no idea who it was. Most everything was burned up pretty good from the fire that not a whole lot was salvageable. These are the coldest of cold cases, but everything is about to change. Every case that is a cold case that has DNA. Right now in a backlog will be identified in our life. time. A small lab in Texas is cracking the code on DNA. Using new scientific tools, they're

finding clues in evidence so tiny you might just miss it. He never thought he was going to get caught, and I just looked at my computer screen. I was just like, ah, gotcha. On America's Crime Lab, we'll learn about victims and survivors, and you'll meet the team behind the scenes at Othrum, the Houston Lab that takes on the most hopeless cases to finally solve the unsolvable. Listen to America's Crime Lab on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey guys, it's AZ Fudd. You may know me as a gold medalist. You may know me as an NCAA national champion and recent most outstanding player.

You may even know me as a People's Princess. But now, you're also going to know me as your favorite host. Every week on my new podcast, Fud around and find out. I'll give you an inside look at everything happening in my crazy light as I try to balance it all. From my travels across the globe to preparing for another run at the Natty with my Yukon Huskies to just try to make it to my midterms on time, you'll get the inside scoop on everything. I'll be talking to some special guests about pop culture, basketball, and what it's like to be a professional athlete on and off the court. You'll even get to have some fun with the fud family.

So if you follow me on social media or watch me on TV, you may think you know me. But this show is the only place where you can really fud around and find out. Listen to Fud Around and Find Out, a production of IHeart Women. in sports and partnership with unanimous media on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. This debate over whether or not Israeli soldiers should be, you know, raping prisoners continues to this day. Let's go and put this up on the screen.

This is a VO. This is channel 12 news. This person says, you know, it's one of the most popular news channels in Israel, and they host a debate for and against institutional rape of Hamas detainees. as a policy. Remember, also, I mean, not that it would be okay, even if they actually were, quote, unquote, Hamas detainees, but they also arrest, they arrest children, they arrest any man who is, quote, unquote, a military age. The level of abuse that has been documented by multiple human rights organizations is just absolutely sickening. So they're having, you know, a little pro and con,

you know, a little crossfire style debate there on Israeli Channel 12 news. Let's go and put this next one up on the screen, Sager, because I know you're going to enjoy this one. The ADL has updated their glossary of extremism and hate because they're a really incredible, a really credible source now of extremism. And they say that America First is now considered to be an extremist term used by extremists in anti-Semitic, racist, and xenophobic ways. Now, let me be honest. There is a certain way in which you could define this that maybe you could get me to go along and agree. But we all know what's going on here. We all know what's going on here.

It's that there are any Republicans who use the America First label to say, hey, maybe we shouldn't be supporting this genocide in Gaza. Maybe we should be focused on what is actually in the interest of our country and not participate in this barbarism that is going on with our tax dollars in our name. That's the part that they truly object to. Of course, and they did this before. I mean, remember the interracial marriage, intermarriage thing that we talked about very recently. And the reason why all of this is important is that it's about defining the terms and making sure that all discussion, sane discussion, is pushed to the realm of being branded anti-Semitism. Now, I again think that it's backfiring spectacularly, and that's part of the reason why I don't quite get it. Popular culture has long moved now against Israel.

Mainstream media is the last bastion of any pro-Israeli support. And most people who are like us who don't have any ties. funding ties, right, to the establishment can say what they want. When they're confronted with this level of smearing, they just say, screw you. I'm not going to deal with it anymore. Ms. Rachel is actually the perfect example. She just shared this. I'll go ahead and read it. She says, the group, stop anti-Semitism is calling me evil for wanting starving children to have food. They called for me to be investigated by the DOJ because I care about Palestinian children, along with all children. It's led to me getting threats, needing security, and they have tried to

ruin my career. It has been incredibly painful, but the pain does not compare in the slightest to what the children of Gaza experience, my dedication to children and their human rights is stronger than any of it. So that's what you've done. You actually turned the most popular children's influencer in the world with the most streamed show on all of Netflix ever for children on top of YouTube. I mean, I was recently looking at your view. I didn't even know views like that were possible, like 1.1 billion outside of Gangnam style or whatever. I was like, I did not know this existed. And so, and she's only been doing this for five, six years. She's got, she's a multi-million dollar, honestly, maybe a billion-dollar brand, you know, here in the U.S.

They sell stuff of hers at like Target. So you have turned that person into one of the most prominent, you know, spokespeople for the children of Gaza by branding them anti-Semitic. We are just, you know, news commentators and others. But the more that this comes for other people inside of the system, you just make it so that you look at the ADL thing and you just laugh. And then next time they're going to come and talk to me about anti-Semitism, even if it's genuinely anti-Semitic. I'm like, I need six other sources. I need to, or let me check it out for myself. Any credibility.

That's what I do. Any credibility. It's like when someone calls something racist, I'm like, all right, show it to me. Let me see, you know, let me scrutinize it for myself. I don't believe you. That's my number. If the media is saying it, I'm like, let me check it out. Hate crime attack.

I got to see all the details. If it didn't happen on camera, don't believe it. Same thing here. You know, it's one of those where they have turned. turned it into a social weapon against everybody. And we are now, I think, collectively, at a point where we're like, if you are not outwardly, you know, denying the Holocaust or whatever. And if it's about Israel, I'm not going on.

Well, and guess what? Genuine anti-Semitism is on the rise. And it's precisely because of the actions of Israel and the insistence that every Jew must be associated with it, which is preposterous. And in and of itself, anti-Semitic. I mean, just think about the discourse around Zoran. winning in New York, which continues to this day about, oh, he needs to do more to appeal to the Jewish community, blah, blah, blah.

Then you actually look at the numbers, you're like, wait a second, he has overwhelming subpoenas more support than any of the rest of these people with the Jewish community in New York. So maybe stop being so one-dimensional and caricaturish and stereotyping people and what they care about and their position on this issue because, no, turns out not every Jewish American wants to be associated with a genocide being perpetrated in their names in Gaza. It is utterly and completely disgusting. And so then when you have this intense censorship and when it's so clearly weaponized to just completely crush any sort of legitimate dissent on our nation's

policy, by the way, vis-a-vis a foreign country, vis-a-vis the country of Israel and opposition and horror was being done there, when you have that, then yeah, I mean, this is part of why people like Nick Fuentes, who are genuine white nationalists and genuinely anti-Semitic, guess what? You have a lot of people who are, oh, well, what he's saying is making sense. No, he has a disgusting ideology. What is he's saying does not make sense, but should you be surprised, are you remotely surprised that those are the types of people who will gain traction in this moment?

You certainly shouldn't be surprised by that. And the ADL is probably, you know, part and parcel of sparking more anti-Semitism than any other group in America outside of the U.S. federal government. Let's go ahead and play this next part. So obviously there's this disgusting alliance between, you know, the absolute psychos in Israel, the psychos in our national government and the evangelical Christian base, some of whom, you know, believe and certainly some of the leaders of whom believe that it is their God, you know, that it is their duty to God to support Israel no matter how many babies they massacre.

So as emblematic of that, here is Mark Levin talking about how this is God's war that we're fighting. Take a listen. This is good versus evil. This is civilization, as the ambassador said, versus the barbarians. We're fighting the seventh century. And we just beat the crap out of them. This is a righteous war. fighting. And let me say this, this is God's war that we're fighting right now.

And if Europe is too stupid to understand, that's their problem. I will remind you, that's where Hitler was born. Kufi conference there, Christians United for Israel, and he's saying, oh, this is good versus evil. Really, the good side is the one that's massacring and starving the babies, starving the entire population. The good. good side is the one that just announced complete and, you know, authorized complete ethnic cleansing displacement plan into concentration camps, which is currently in talks with different nations to permanently displace Palestinians from Gaza Strip. That's what your religion is telling you. That is utterly absurd and disgusting. And still counter to any basic sense of morality.

It's also so inarguable because if they're fighting, I mean, people have always made this term, but it's like if you fight God's war, then nothing is out of the question. Of course. Yeah. And that's why they frame it that way. That's what makes it so sick. This is God's war that we're fighting. If Europe is too stupid to understand, that's their problem. I will remind you that's where Hitler was born. It's like, where does this shit come? You know? And look, that is the perfect view into a Republican support for Israel, you know, a quasi, you know, either pre-diabetic or diabetic man who could barely breathe whenever he's giving his speech in front of a bunch of evangelical boomers, you know, who have been like, I guess, brainwashed into the specific

type of Christian dispensationalism for support of the political state of Israel. Look, I'm not Christian. It's not my job to sit here and to litigate these intra-Christian debates. You can be a human with a view. Yeah, that's right. I'm just like, I mean, seems pretty crazy to me,

but it's not my beef, but it's just one of those where I just feel that you can't help but look at that and see the psychopathy of what it takes at this point to be so rapidly. pro-Israel. That's who they are. They look down on you, by the way, completely, you know, and they have nothing but contempt, unfortunately for all of us. It used to be the right that was more aggressive in the, like, you know, you should be actually

judgmental of extremist religious views and the left that was more like morally relativist. I mean, I still think that's true on Islam, but anyway, yeah. Yeah. No, you should, I think if you, your religious belief is leading you to support horrors that are morally atrocious, yes, I think that should be subject to judgment. I think that for society, I think that should be absolutely subject to it. You're talking to an OG Richard Dawkins guy, all right? I've been from day one, but I did come to find that it does turn you into a little bit of a debate, bro, and a little bit, you know, it doesn't accomplish necessarily the goal that we would want.

We may need to bring it back. Yeah, maybe we need to bring it back. Let me just one more piece here. We're not having an element for it, but it fits in with the Mark Levin piece, and it's very important. I don't know if you guys remember. there was a judge at the International Court of Justice, of course, they're the ones hearing South Africa's claim, along with others who have now joined the case, that Israel is committing genocide. And there was one judge there, the Ugandan vice president of the ICJ who had put out a dissenting opinion that was just pure Israeli husbarah. And it was, I mean, it sounded like it was literally written. And it may have been by the Israelis. It was like, what is going on with this lady? Well, now she has come out, Sagar, and said that, quote, God is counting on me to stand on. the side of Israel that the signs of the end times are being shown in the Middle East right now. So now we understand why she was so out of step with all of the rest of the, including the American

one, by the way, all of the rest of the judges at the ICJ in this dissenting opinion. She is not evaluating facts. She is, you know, coming from this place of religious extremism and, you know, her view that the end times are nigh and so she has to do whatever she can to back up Israel no matter. or what. So, you know, not only are the consequences here domestically in the U.S., but the consequences of these viewpoints are global as well. Yep, absolutely. Very well said. All right, let's get to the economy. Have you ever looked at a piece of abstract art or music or poetry and thought, that's just a bunch of pretentious nonsense? Well, that's exactly what two bored Australian

soldiers set out to prove during World War II. When they pulled off what was either a bold literary hoax or a grand poetic experiment, publishing over a dozen intentionally bad but highly acclaimed works of expressionist poetry under the name Earn Malley in an incident that caused a media firestorm and even a criminal trial. The Earn Malley episode made fools of believers and critics alike and still fascinates poetry lovers to this day. We break down the truth, the lies, and the poetry in between on hoax, a new podcast hosted by me, Lizzie Logan, and me, Dana Schwartz. Every episode Hoax explores an audacious fraud or ruse from history from forged artworks to the original fake news to try and answer why we believe. Listen to Hoax on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

A foot washed up a shoe with some bones in it. They had no idea who it was. Most everything was burned up pretty good from the fire that not a whole lot was salvageable. These are the coldest of cold cases. But everything, is about to change. Every case that is a cold case that has DNA. Right now in a backlog will be identified in our lifetime. A small lab in Texas is cracking the code on DNA. Using new scientific tools,

they're finding clues in evidence so tiny you might just miss it. He never thought he was going to get caught. And I just looked at my computer screen. I was just like, ah, gotcha. On America's Crime Lab, we'll learn about victims and survivors. and you'll meet the team behind the scenes at Othrum, the Houston Lab that takes on the most hopeless cases to finally solve the unsolvable.

Listen to America's Crime Lab on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey guys, it's AZ Fudd. You may know me as a gold medalist. You may know me as an NCAA national champion and recent most outstanding player. You may even know me as a People's Princess.

But now, you're also going to know me, as your favorite host. Every week on my new podcast, Fud around and find out, I'll give you an inside look at everything happening in my crazy life as I try to balance it all.

From my travels across the globe to preparing for another run at the Natty with my Yukon Huskies to just try to make it to my midterms on time. You'll get the inside scoop on everything. I'll be talking to some special guests about pop culture, basketball, and what it's like to be a professional athlete

on and off the court. You'll even get to have some fun with the Fud family. So if you follow me on social media or watch me on TV, you may think you know me, but this show is the only place where you can really fud around and find out. Listen to fud around and find out, a production of IHeart women's sports

and partnership with unanimous media on the IHartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. We've talked a lot here on the show about inflation, about tariffs, and what the overall effect will be. But one of the things that we may have discounted is greedflation.

You will remember there was a huge, huge debate about the sources of inflation back in the day from 2021 onwards as to whether it was corporations raising prices, inputs prices going up. It turned out to be a part of both, but part of the reason why the stock market actually did quite well during the Biden years, despite horrible inflation, was that corporate profits were able to be maintained. How do you do that exactly? Well, you eat some of the costs, but you pass some of it all and also to the consumer. And so we are seeing some of that with tariffs as well. Let's take a listen to this report from CNBC.

I don't quite understand why the government is saying that profit margins increased when we're not seeing the essentially a lot of inflation in the consumer prices, but we're seeing prices higher on the wholesale prices. That should compress margins. And we've had a whole bunch of companies come on and say, we're taking big hits because of these tariffs. So this number should be going the other way. I'm not sure what's happening here.

I'm actually not surprised that we didn't see. compression of corporate profits. That's something that's characterized the inflationary period since the beginning of the pandemic, that corporations are actually able to protect their profit margins and actually even increase their profit margins at times using inflation and uncertainty as cover for price hikes, even if their costs aren't going up. And so one of the things we're going to be looking for in the CPI as consumer prices are starting to rise is our corporations actually taking hits, or are they able to use this moment of supply constraint created by tariffs and uncertainty created by the Trump administration to pass on higher prices,

even above their increased costs? All right. So there it is straight from CNBC. You know they were killing themselves for that one because they hated greedflation narratives back in 2021 and 2022. But what it does generally fit with the pattern of is that the companies are broadly okay right now. That's one of the things I've emphasized about this tariff policy.

If the tariffs were working, then the S&P should be down by 20%. Because if a company had to actually increase its costs, CAPX costs here in the U.S., why would their stock go up? You know, it'd be like, okay, well, we have to massively eat all of this new policy. The only way to offset that would be a shit ton of federal dollars or a tax break not happening because I can read what the tax code is. And that's why the S&P 500 is doing pretty well. Now, one of the ways that they're doing well is basically this weird pay-for-play system inside of the White House.

Let's go and put this up there on the screen. The West Wing has now apparently created a loyalty scorecard for 553 companies and trade associations on how hard they work to support and promote President Trump. So, Trump, apparently the unusual spreadsheet fits to the administration's proclivity for micromanaging and administering loyalty tests. Factors in the rating include social media posts, press releases, video testimonials, ads attendance to the White House, and other engagement related to OB3, the one big, beautiful bill. The organization's support is then ranked as strong, moderate, or low. Examples of good partners include Uber, DoorDash, United, Delta, AT&T, Cisco, Airlines for

America, and the Steel Manufacturers Association. apparently other companies, you know, have not, you know, been able to rate on the list. One of the ways that you do is to cheer on things like no tax on tips if you're Uber or being a DoorDash person who is promoting some of the policy. But this gets to the heart of that NVIDIA deal. I'm not, I think I covered it with Emily, which is still so crazy. It's like, yeah, you can do business in China, but you have to literally pay us a cut of the profit. Nothing to do with strategy, nothing to do with anything. And again, there are plenty of good arguments for letting Nvidia send the H20. I went through all of them during the segment.

Yes. Us getting a, quote, cut of it is not on the list, you know, of what that is. And now apparently we're doing the same thing with Intel, which, by the way, is a U.S. company, which is even crazier, because it's not even about that. You can put C3 up on the screen about this. C3, please, from Intel, considering, quote, buying a stake in Intel. I am not even fundamentally opposed to sovereign wealth funds, I don't think they're always a bad idea, as long as they're actually, you know, done properly or any of that. That's not what's happening here. That's right. And that's the opposition that I have to so much of this. If we want to have a full-on strategy the way that China does it, where they have stakes and they control things for the overall

national interest, which is actually benefiting the people, has a track record, I'm all in, okay? But this is not what we're seeing right now, which is basically like some loyalty-feelty thing to Donald Trump, you know, so he can get a solid bar of gold, which I'm still not over that. In the Oval Office, we should never be over that. It's pretty wild. Here's your good, you know, literally. Here's your tribute, sir. Yeah, it's like, you know, when Amazon, when Amazon explorers would go into the jungle,

they would come with beads and other things to exchange for goods. It's like, that's how primitive that is to present the leader with a bar of gold to the chieftain. That's why the loyalty score story and the Intel stake story tied together so importantly, because it would be one thing if, yeah, if you were pursuing something like, you know, a China policy, which is very long-term driven and very much in the interest of, hey, what do we want life to be like in China for Chinese? What do we want to invest in? What are the industries of the future? Like this very intentional strategy that instead, what we have here is just, did you talk? tweet about the one big beautiful bill, you know, did you show up with your bar of gold at the White House? Like, how slavish and devoted have you been to the person of Donald Trump?

Oh, okay, then we're going to look upon you favorably. And if not, then not. So all of these, like, all of this involvement in the economy, which, yes, if done in a different way, I would support too. And in fact, I'm hoping that some, you know, candidate on the left picks up this road that has been mapped up by Trump and does it in an actually intelligent way to actually, you know, benefit the manufacturing economy here and benefit, you know, jobs and wages and all those sorts of things and invest in critical industries and industries of the future. But no, this is not that. This is about just, you know, what's going to be good for Trump, who paid the best tribute, who had the best gold bars in the Oval Office. You know,

the DoorDash example they had. They had a delivery driver who wore a red DoorDash mom. T-shirt as she stood behind Trump at a White House event promoting no tax on tips also in a Fox News digital interview and that's what earned them their great loyalty score and now they'll be able to reap the benefits of that. It's also why Wall Street hasn't been that upset about the terrorists because they know that they have the money to be able to get in those rooms and they know how to, you know, work as eagle, go massage as ego and be able to get whatever they want. I actually read a fascinating analysis, which is that economists have undercounted the actual terror. Part of the reason why, you know, people are shocked right now about the S&P and everything is because the official tariff rate is like 15% or whatever, on average. But what the piece dug into is that economists took the government to literally, as in they took it for what it is and thought it was being applied across the board.

That's not what actually they're paying. If you look at the corporate profit and the reported costs of tariffs, it doesn't line up with the government figures. And the actual tariff rate is much lower, indicating a ton of, exclusions, which are not public, which it turns out that the Fortune 500 is probably paying about half of what the government actually says they are paying. And that is the only thing that you can possibly reconcile the profit numbers and where things are today, the lack of effect, and then the government published number. There's no other way to do it. And it was a long,

like more economic analysis, but translating it to others is basically saying, like, yeah, you know, what they say they're charging is not what they actually are, because there's all these corporate exclusions that are being cut at the Fortune 500 level that you and I know nothing about, but this is all deeply legalistic, you know, it's all with the Commerce Department, et cetera, but it results in the fact that the tariff being paid are actually much lower than they say. So it makes, you know, that's, again, in terms of the cronyism. I mean, and they're probably using this loyalty support to determine the car bounce. Right, and that's why I think it's very important, you know, for actually understanding

some of this. And that actually gets to the Scott Besson point with a very extraordinary comment about sovereign wealth fund. Let's take a listen. We have these agreements in place where the Japanese, the Koreans, and to some extent the Europeans will invest in companies and industries that we direct them largely at the president's discretion. And has that work? I mean, it's almost like an offshore appropriation. I'm not sure we've ever had anything like that in the states before. Have you consulted with, I don't know, the Senate Finance Committee or the House Ways and Means Committee or what? Well, Larry, I think a good framing of that is other countries, in essence, are providing us with a sovereign wealth fund. They're going to build our

factories. They're going to help us to build new factories, which Mr. Trump loves. Exactly. So the way to think about it is these huge surpluses accumulated offshore, Let's take Japan. We're going to have $550 billion, and they will be reinvesting that back into the U.S. economy, and we will be able to direct them as we reshore these critical industries. Okay, so translating that a little bit, and our friend Arnaud, you know, put it this way, quote, this is without exaggerating, one of the most extraordinary things the Treasury Secretary said. He says, what he is saying is that the U.S. will now treat U.S. allies' wealth as an American sovereign wealth fund and direct them at the president's discretion, how to use their money in order to build American factories and reshore American industries. As even Larry Cudlow says, he's like, what?

He's like, have you run by this by the Senate? Yeah. Or any of that. I mean, Arno and I probably have more of a difference, but because I think, you know, in terms of our trading relationship or other, I don't really see the point of being an empire if you're not going to, you know, tell your imperial outposts how exactly to pay their tribute, I would say that's part of the problem with the global American empire right now in terms of who's benefiting from it or not.

But the overall problem I really have with the way that this is all being done is that it's stupid and it's not really to the benefit of anyone. Because if you take like the Norwegian sovereign wealth fund or frankly even the Saudi one or many of these others, they have been to the tremendous benefit of their actual countries and of the people who participate. There's a lot of democratic input.

I'm not sure if you saw it. They just divested from Israel as well. More recently, which was a huge deal just because one of the largest sovereign wealth funds in the world. But the point is, is that it's being actually used and has a lot of democratic input by the people because they see it as a way not only to ensure their own security, their financial status, et cetera, but part of the problem for the country. We have not had any of that get put on the table. It's being used entirely by the administration and setting a precedent

where, you know, if you think about it in the future, if you can just have this discretionary funding completely available, then President Biden or President Newsom or whoever is going to come next can also use it to their end, which of course people would freak out about, you know, by saying that these are the public dollars within the government treasury. That's what I would say is you're setting it up in such a capricious in a stupid way, not only setting a bad standard going forward, but you're not even accomplishing what you allegedly set out to do. Yeah, no scrutiny, no accountability. And we know the way that Donald Trump operates. It's all about, you know, what's going to be good for him and his bottom line. So, you know, don't be

surprised if that wealth that's supposed to build American factories is going to his shit coin or whatever Trump hotels or some sort of deal that, you know, benefits him or just the, you know, to whatever CEO happens to be the most, like, embarrassing and willing to humiliate themselves and grovel at his feet. So that will be the criteria by which those investments are judged. At the same time, you know, we've got a few different indicators of, you know, economic turmoil. We can put this up on the screen.

They say the jaws of stagflation are wide open. This is from Bloomberg. You've got employment shrinking. you've got prices paid rising, so, you know, what stagnation is when you have low growth or no growth or negative growth, and you have inflation. And the reason why this is such a terrible thing to happen, I mean, first of all, it just causes a lot of pain. Second of all, it's very difficult to deal with because if you are trying to control the economy using the Fed and you hike interest rates to get the inflation under control, well, then you're going to further crush growth. If you lower interest rates

to help to, you know, trigger growth and deal with unemployment, well, then you're going to get inflation. So that's why stagflation is such an incredible concern. And we can put the next piece up on the screen as well from Joe Wisenthal. We just got new consumer sentiment numbers, overall sentiment down, inflation expectations, much higher. This comes from University of Michigan. I think this is kind of the preeminent consumer sentiment index. And it's fallen to 58.6 when it was estimated at 62 and long-term inflation expectations rising to 3.9% when they had been estimated at 3.4%. So, and it turns out, Saga, the public is paying attention to how they're feeling economically and to some of the legislation that has been passed by this administration.

This is extraordinary. Put this next chart up on the screen, C-7. Trump's support with people who are on Medicaid, and of course, Medicaid, you know, significantly cut by the, quote-unquote, one big, beautiful bill, has gone from being quite positive to quite negative. So you can see if you track this at the beginning of Trump's term, 52% of those on Medicaid approved of Trump. So he was above water, 52% and only 34% disapproved. Now it's completely reversed. Now you have 55% of those on Medicaid who disapprove and 36% who approve. This person tweets their, his support is down 37 points among those who are on Medicaid since his first week in office.

So as Steve Bannon famously said, a lot of MAGA on Medicaid saga. That's exactly. I mean, you know, look, we're going to find out some of this stuff. There were a lot of contraindications going into 2022 and more. I'm really just desperate for the 2026 midterm data to, see who overperforms and who doesn't, who doesn't come out to vote, overall Republican support, and if there are any hidden surprises, because Medicaid right now is the number one thing that you would put your money on for the backlash. Similar to 2018, there was a lot of, you know,

crediting of the resistance and stuff in 2018 for the midterms. I guess I wouldn't downplay that, but it really wasn't the driving force. If you talk to many of the Republican candidates, they all said, my vote to repeal Obamacare is what nuked me, right? That was like the story of the 2018 midterms for a lot of the anti-Trump backlash. It kind of came together. And a lot of the Republican senators, I remember, what was her name, McSally? I think that's what was down in Arizona. Yeah. She was like, me voting on Obamacare. She's like, that's it. Killed me. She was lost by 13 points. That's right. It was a disaster. So my point is just that broadly, this could be the sleeper issue. I think it is. I think so too. I'd be willing to bet, just given some of the

previous, just the way that things went with 2018 and with more. I'm still not quite sure. I guess I could you know, how would it, what would it take for Trump and the Republicans to declare victory? Probably be keeping the house, which, you know, the gerrymandering and all that doesn't help. But the actual, like, demographic data on this and the extent to which people are either demoralized or not enthusiastic to come out to vote is going to be a very important story. The Medicaid thing is the number one thing to watch. The fact they're doing this whole thing with the maps and the census and whatever tells you they think they're going.

No, they're worried. Yeah, they're trying to rig it as best they can to try to, you know, prevent massive losses. is because, listen, I mean, if Democrats have the House, the Senate is a longer shot, but if they have the House, there are things they can do, right? They will have subpoena power. It will be the end of, you know, of a lot of what's going on in the Trump presidency, although, you know, Trump has done a lot with just executive power without even using Congressmen, most of what he's done.

But, you know, I think they're worried about scrutiny over things like the Epstein files. They're worried about scrutiny over all these mass ICE agents and other federal agents that, you know, who have their identities completely shielded. There are a lot of questions to you to be revealed about what exactly is going on there and who is doing what within some of these various agencies. So I think they are concerned about that. And that's why they're pulling the fire alarm. Ah, come on. Why is this taking so long?

This thing is ancient. Still using yesterday's tech, upgrade. To the ThinkPad X1 Carbon, ultra-light, ultra-powerful, and built for serious productivity with Intel Core Ultra-Processors, blazing speed, and AI-powered performance that keeps up with your business,

not the other way around. Whoa, this thing moves. Stop hitting snooze on new tech. Win the tech search at Lenovo.com. Lenovo, Lenovo. Unlock AI experiences with the ThinkPad X-1 Carbon, powered by Intel Core Ultra processors so you can work,

create, and boost productivity all on one device. In 1920, a magazine article announced something incredible. Two young girls had photographed real fairies. But even more incredible, that article was written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the man who invented Sherlock Holmes. How did he fall for that? Hoax is a new podcast for me, Dana Schwartz, the host of Noble Blood. And me, Lizzie Logan.

Every episode, we'll explore one of the most audacious and ambitious tricks in history and try to answer the question why we believe, what we believe. Listen to hoax on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey guys, it's AZ Fudd. You may know me as a gold medalist. You may know me as an NCAA national champion. You may even know me as the People's Princess.

Every week on my new podcast, Fud around and find out. I'll be talking to some special guests about pop culture, basketball, and what it's like to be a professional athlete on and off the court. Listen to Fun Around and Find Out, a production of IHart women's sports in partnership with unanimous media on the IHart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an IHart podcast.