Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 8/5/25: Trump Blocks Disaster Relief Over Israel, Bibi Plans Gaza Conquest, Trump Tariffs India Over Russia

Episode Date: August 5, 2025

Ryan and Saagar discuss Trump blocks disaster relief for Israel boycotts, Bibi plans conquest of Gaza, Trump tariffs India over Russia support.    Abdul: https://abdulforsenate.com/    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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I'm sure, I'm sure I'll be there in a few years there, right? You'll come back from vacation. Yeah, come back from vacation with your fingernails all pointed. kids' hands are all wrapped in band-aids. So I can't wait for it. It's going to be exciting. All right, what do we got today? Toughest part of the job. We're going to talk about disaster funding, aren't we?

This is an interesting story. I found myself actually at the center of it doing some reporting. So initial reports from the Trump administration, they would withhold disaster relief funds from any state that allowed the boycott of Israel, not just Israel, but Israeli companies. There's been some changes to that official language. however, the policy itself is still reserved the right of the Trump administration of the Department of Homeland Security to do so. That's a troubling trend of a boycott, basically using states, 39 states with anti-quote,

BDS laws on the books that are now being weaponized against U.S. citizens for their own tax dollars. That's obviously a good segue into our Israel segment. I'm going to rely on Ryan heavily there. There are some reports coming out of Israel. Netanyahu has approved a, quote, full-scale occupation of Gaza. What does that mean? is it a negotiation tactic? We'll see. We're going to talk about India, the Trump administration

escalating a trade war on India. Not, by the way, anything about our country and how, you know, our country's trade relationship would work with that country, non-tariff barriers, etc. But it's about Ukraine. Interesting, which obviously is an easy way to talk about some of the developments in that war. Ukrainians now allowing 60-year-olds to join the fight. So obviously the sign of a thriving war machine over there. We're also going to talk about gerrymandering, gerrymandering sweeping country, Texas, Democrats leaving the state after Texas Republicans attempt to basically change the districts inside of the state, try to gerrymander away a few Democratic seats.

This has actually caused some brinksmanship, New York and California saying, okay, fine, one-party states, let's game on, so it's a race to the bottom and all that. There's a lot to say. Ryan is actually an expert on gerrymandering, or at least much more of an expert than I am. But wasted a lot of time covering. I was going to say, there's a lot of time in the 2010s when gerrymandering was the top era where Ryan in particular cut his teeth. So I'm going to rely on him. And then my friend Andrew Schultz, breaking with Donald Trump on IVF, obviously that was a big, well, not breaking with,

asking Donald Trump why he decided not to follow through with his pledge to provide, quote, free IVF. It was a campaign promise, and it was kind of a signature way that they were trying to move away from the more, I guess, what distasteful parts of the pre-afts of the pre-fell parts of the pre-exemptive. pro-life coalition, so that's what they landed on. And we'll see if it actually does have some electoral pushback now that the GOP officially has zero plans to cover free IVF. And finally, we're going to be joined by Abdul El-Sayyad. He is running for the Democratic primary in the state of Michigan. Ryan, we're going to get his reaction to the Alyssa Slotkin interview. Yeah, of course. A few other... He's running to be her colleague. He's running to be her colleague. Does he think her colleague his colleague did well? Future colleague did well here. He's going to have

to navigate a lot of very tricky issues here in Washington, you know, being a senator, is he going to vote for Chuck Schumer for leadership? You know, how is he going to handle himself? Obviously, you've got a lot of Democrats which are very angry. He's running in this primary system right now. But once you get to the big leagues, how are you going to handle the John Fetterman's, the Alyssa Slotkins, and all that in the world? So we've got some good questions for him. All right. So before we get to that, though, thank you, everybody, to our premium subscribers, which let's start off with a deep apology for yesterday. So the team has fully informed formed us and we have gotten to the bottom of it. Here's basically the TLDR. Our premium show did not go

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absolute major outcry yesterday after the Trump administration put out a FEMA guidance. And let me just keep this up here while I'm talking just to explain how absolutely crazy this is. So FEMA put out a guidance, Ryan, to all states that who want to accept a disaster relief grants, which, you know, I would say all of them. And, you know, even the libertarians would be like, all right, you know, the federal government, you know, the federal government doesn't have a lot of roles. We could all probably say disaster relief, you know, broadly one of those.

Oh, the Trump for like five minutes was like, we're not, FEMA's not going to do anything anymore. Yeah, right. So, but I'm saying, if you were to ask most people what the role of federal government is, it's like, hey, if you get hit by a hurricane, you know, they're going to come in and help you. We all pay into the system. System helps us out whenever that happens. Well, the Trump administration slipped in this exact language into these FEMA grants. And I'm going to read directly, just so you all understand how absolutely crazy. it is. It says that by accepting, recipients will comply with all applicable federal anti-discrimination laws material to the government's payments decisions for purposes of 31 U.S.C. 372B4. Quote, definitions as used in this clause. D-EI means diversity equity inclusion. D-EIA means diversity,

equity inclusion, and accessibility. Discriminatory equity ideology has a meaning set forth, and they talk about an executive order. So so far, they're saying you can't have DEI policies on the books if you want to this disastrally funding. Okay, I'm totally fine with that. But then subpart D says here, quote, discriminatory prohibited boycott means refusing to deal, cutting commercial relations or otherwise limiting commercial relations specifically with Israeli companies or with companies doing business in or with Israel or authorized by, licensed by, or organized under the laws of Israel to do business. So let's underscore that is that the Trump administration was telling states

if you allow the boycott of Israel, if you allow the boycott of Israeli companies, if you allow the boycott of companies doing business with Israel, You as a United States citizen and as a state will be barred from your tax dollars from getting disaster relief funding. Now, this was, Ryan, I think just too much for everybody involved. And so what ensued was a fascinating about face, which is not really an about face, which takes us to the next one. Let's put that up there on the screen shortly after many of us drew, you know, basically had outcry about this, drew attention. the Trump administration removed that exact

language about discriminatory boycotts against the state of Israel. I have the original and the new, by the way. Do we have Rufo here? Yeah, well, I didn't originally have it in, but people like Christopher Rufo, who is a anti-D-I act. That's right.

He was like, hey, even this is not good. And Ryan, I just want your reaction here now because they've come full circle. Even though they did remove this anti-discriminatory language about the state of Israel. Put the next one up here on the screen, just so I can very clearly explain. The DHS put out this statement, quote, there is no FEMA requirement tied to Israel and any current, basically, guidance. No states have lost funding, no new conditions have been

imposed. FEMA grants remain governed by existing law and policy and not political litmus tests. Quote, DHS will enforce all anti-discrimination laws and policies, including as it relates to the BDS movement, which is expressly grounded in anti-Semitism. So my explanation, based on my reporting, talking with many of the people involved, is that after the outcry, they removed the specific language about Israel. But the DHS statement makes it clear they reserve the right to deny you your federal funding should you engage in BDS. And I mean, Ryan, I genuinely... And look at the last line there. Those who engage in racial discrimination should not receive a single dollar of federal funding. That sounds like Biden. I mean, in actual racial

discrimination, sure. If it's about BDS, no. And obviously, that's why the languages matter. And that's why, Ryan, I just think this is such, not racial discrimination. I know that. You and I know that. These terms, these terms all used to mean things and they don't anymore. But Ryan, this is just such a dramatic outrage to say that they would withhold federal funding based upon boycotting the state of Israel to any state. And, you know, the fact is, is that, look, yeah, it's great. They removed the language. The fact it was in the first place is insane.

And then the fact that the DHS basically put out a statement saying we reserve the right to do so if we would like to shows us that the policy effectively remains in effect today. It's preposterous. It's un-American. It's the exact same policy because the states have been put on notice by that DHS statement that they put out on Twitter there that they believe that the law, as it's written, gives them the right to withhold. aid money from any state that involves itself in a boycott of Israeli companies. And not even involves itself, allows it's state's residence to engage in boycotts. Right. And so are they saying that, and we can put these up next if we want, the list of states, you know, more than 30 states across the country have laws on the books that say that if you want to do any business with that state whatsoever, which means like, you know, a lot of contractors that work for, you may work for a private company that itself does some other contracting. with the state set aside being a teacher or some other obvious state employee, that if you

participate in BDS, you can't participate in any of, in this work in your own society, that you pledge that you will never boycott, which then the line in there that says you won't even limit your. So what if you're like, well, I was going to do 10 orders of hummus for this party, but I think I might only need five, and they're like, wait a minute. Now, do you really only need five? Or are you limiting your purchase of five? Well, what's preposterous about it is that it includes Israeli companies, companies doing business with Israel. And what? Is the state going to come in and be like, you're not doing enough business with Israel? Do more business with Israel? You need to do more business with Israel? Who's telling me that as a private business, who or what I can do business with, whatever I want? Also, we'll all recall that conservatives is gleefully support. reported the boycott of Bud Light. Great. Okay. All right. Yeah, you should be able to. Yeah, as you should be able to. Or what, Ben and Jerry said that they don't want to do? Fine, whatever. You know, you don't want to buy Ben and Jerry's ice cream. Be my fucking guest, all right? You know,

same. I mean, we could go on forever. The Conservatives started who they went after Target, right? All right, fine. Don't shop at Target. That's okay. And then we'll shop at any of these places. And then the liberals went after Target too. Okay, good. Yeah, you know, same. Or Target. Yeah. No, not poor Target. We don't need any more. All right. That's the message to my wife. We need to stop going to Target. All right. Why are they obsessed with it. There's too much junk in target. There's too much bullshit in target. I totally agree.

But my point just broadly is that we should, of course, as private businesses and as citizens, be allowed to do whatever we want to do. And part of the reason why this is so ridiculous is that we could simultaneously refuse to do business with any other country. It's a carve-out here specifically for the state of Israel. So us as a private business, Ryan, could refuse to do business with Peru or, I don't even know. Not Lithuania. Yes, sorry. Not-Lithuania. Yeah, that's right, as Alyssa Slotkin made very clear in our interview.

You can boycott Russia. You can boycott Russia? You can pour their vodka right out on the sidewalk. Yeah, smear or not. Is that still Russian owned? I don't know. But, yeah, all right. You can.

You can boycott, if you want to. You can boycott Ukraine. Huh? You can boycott Ukraine if you want to make your neighbors in the suburbs angry. That's right. You can do that. Maybe I will. Yeah, I can't.

Well, that would require a boycott on any of Ukraine and company, which, you know, I can't even think of any, but my point. So is the question then that you actually have to pass a law? Like, that if it says that if you allow your citizens to boycott Israel that you don't get this aid money, does that mean you have to, you have to join these other 30 plus states and implement your own anti-BDS law or else you can't get this aid money, it's, it's truly extraordinary. And it all fits with a bigger pattern. This is something that red states have now have been doing for quite some time. Let's put this A5. Please. up on the screen. This just came a few months ago. Governor Abbott, Greg Abbott of the state of Texas, sent a letter to the city of San Marcos for condemning a proposed anti-Semitics resolution, according to him, openly flouting Texas law. It says here, quote, Israel is a stalwart ally of the United States and a friend to Texas. I have repeatedly made it

clear. Texas will not tolerate anti-Semitism, quote, anti-Israel policy. Are we seeing how these things are getting conflated. Anti-Israel policies are, quote, anti-Texis policies. Over a year ago, following Hamas' attacks openly celebrating, I issued an executive order addressing anti-Semitism in higher education, and I have proudly signed legislation prohibiting government entities from supporting efforts to boycott, divest, and sanction Israel. That remains the law here. In the letter, Governor Abbott noted San Marcos is required to certify. It will comply with all state laws when it enters into grant agreements with its office, including laws prohibiting government support for boycotts of Israel, and the governor's office is reviewing active grants to determine

whether the city has breached these terms. If the city adopts this anti-Semitic resolution, the office of the governor will immediately terminate all active grants not in compliance with state law. By the way, I've been to San Marcos, great city. There's a lot of some fun water parks and other things down there, rivers, et cetera. Nice part of the state. What in its... Its governance has anything to do with the state of Israel, and the governor of Texas is withholding funds based upon the city of San Marcos' position on Israel and Palestine, in a non-binding local resolution. Yeah, and the city voted it down, so as not to bring on the wrath of the governor of Texas,

all the resolution said, by the way, was there should be a ceasefire. That's it. The citizens of San Marcos support a ceasefire. and also what it did is it calculated the percentage of state and federal money that goes to Israel and then divided it basically and figured out what proportion San Marcos citizens were chipping in on that and they said we object to this like we don't want to be funding this they were not they have no capacity to claw that money back like that that wasn't even what was happening in other words they were not allowed to say

in a non-binding way that they disagreed with what was happening with no teeth at all. They were not allowed to publicly voice their opinion on the question or else they would lose all of these state contracts. Wow. Yeah. Like that's it. They weren't actually going to

take any bombs away from Israel. Yeah, what are they going to do? It's the city of San Marcos. got the river. It's a population. I just look at 94,000 people, all right? And if they want to pass some non-binding resolute, whatever, all right? I mean, you know, it shouldn't have any, had any state or impact. Yeah, people do it all the time. And just so people know, it's not just red states that's happening. These are some of the biggest states in the country. Let's put this up there on the screen. This is from January of 2025. Kathy Hokel and the New York governor actually condemned the NYC University System faculty union for an Israel boycott. So again, a resolution

passed by the SUNY professional staff Congress representing its 30,000 members, puts his organization at odds with the university administration and the state government. The union, again, a union of the professors at SUNY had a resolution, quote, citing the death toll in Gaza, talking about the ICC and the International Court of Justice as reason for a boycott. The resolution then said that this small student or this small professorial union, will not will divest itself from investment vehicles

with Israeli corporate stocks. Okay, I mean, again, we're talking about 30,000 people. Do it, man. They're pooled funds. What is that? A couple million dollars. Let's be honest.

You know, in terms of... It's not a lot of hummus. It's not a lot of sob bra. All right, you know. And it called on the teacher's retirement system to, quote, enact a complete divestment of Israel. Okay. So that resolution passes

by a vote of 73 to 70. The union confirms, the New York governor then comes out and says exclusively in a statement to be times of Israel. In my first week as governor, I signed an executive order to divest public funds from institutions that participate in the harmful BDS movement, and that order remains in effect. I strongly oppose the resolution, narrowly passed by delegates, and will continue standing up against anti-Semitism and hate in all forms. So the New York Democratic governor and the Texas Republican governor have two things in common. They have BDS executive orders that were very quickly signed, you know,

in these two states. We have a blue state and a red state here just to show you how big of a problem this entire thing is. 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 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 in the

poetry in between on hoax, a new podcast hosted by me, Lizzie Logan, and me, Dana Schwartz. Every episode But 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. The Stuff You Should Know guys have made their own summer playlist of their must listen podcasts on movies. It's me, Josh, and I'd like to welcome you to the Stuff You Should Know summer movie playlist. What Screams Summer? More than a nice, darkened, air-conditioned theater. great movie playing right in front of you.

Episodes on James Bond, special effects, stunt men and women, disaster films, even movies that change filmmaking, and many more. Listen to the stuff you should know summer movie playlist on the IHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. It's the biggest party of the summer. WWE SummerSlam is here and wrestling with Freddie is all over it. We're talking wild matches, big surprises, and our boldest predictions yet. From celebrity showdowns to the chaos inside a steel cage, we're breaking down every. every match and calling who we think walks out on top. This card is loaded.

From Cody Rhodes, John Sina, Ria Ripley, and Tiffy, just to name a few, this lineup is ready to tear down the house. We'll give you our unfiltered takes, honest debates, and you already know a ton of laughs along the way. We're covering the upsets, the wild returns, and the championship moments nobody expects. We'll get into the matches that steal the show, the storylines that explode, and those, oh my God, did that just happen moments that make SummerSlam legendary. Don't miss it. Listen to Wrestling with Freddie as part of the My Cultura Podcast Network. Find us on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Finally, Ryan, can you explain this next one to us? Let's put it up there on the screen. This is from the Institute for Pure and Applied Mathematics at UCLA. Pay 7, please. And Ryan's going to explain to us what happened. This one is truly enraging from top to bottom. So, and this is Paul Graham had shared this post. from Terence Tao, who is a UCLA mathematician, who is broadly agreed to be the greatest, or at least one of the top three mathematicians of the last, like, 50 years. Like, this is a guy who has, and nobody wants to hear me attempt to describe the mathematics that he has, that the kind of breakthroughs that he has rendered in mathematics. People say he's good. All right. Look it up.

Suffices to say it's some incredible stuff that has actual, that has led to, and I was looking up last night, like, it's, what he has done is theoretical, but his theoretical advances have led to a, a MRI machines working 10 times better than they would otherwise because of the, the expanded capacity to do, to do visioning. And so, and when it comes to all sorts of other, um, practical applications, advances in mathematics, help in ways that we can't even begin to understand. And if we don't have those advances, then we don't get those technological advances either. And that's for the people who are like, well, who cares about math, like, whether it's like applied or pure. So this guy has been at, has been a full professor at UCLA since the 90s when he was 24, the youngest person to ever become a full professor at UCLA.

He is known throughout his field for his collaborative work. hundreds of papers, more than 60 of them, are with other mathematicians. So he's the kind of guy that is working with others to lift people up. What he's announced here is that he's now lost all of his funding through the NSF and NIH. Because he's a UCLA professor, he'll still have his UCLA salary. So it's not like he personally is being fired as a result of this. But what it means is that all of his grad students are now unfunded. And if you think about who his grad students are, these are the up-and-coming best mathematicians in the world. Because if you're a math prodigy anywhere in the world, you want to work with Terrence Dow. This is the guy,

because not only is he a genius 10 times over, but he's collaborative and he loves working with people. What he's, what he wrote in his post here is that he had already had a bunch of of his grants cut earlier from when Doge was coming through. And so what he did is he took all of his own funding and deferred it. So he's like, I don't need any money for myself. I want all the money that was coming to me to go to my grad students so that they can stay on for a little while longer. And now they've come back and they've cut that too.

And why? Israel. Oh. Israel. And what's the justification? They don't, they don't, Trump doesn't like the way that UCLA. A. L.A. handled protests. Okay. But if you remember...

I was going to say, if I recall... The cops let a bunch of Zionist thugs beat up the students. Right. And even that is not good enough. So you had Joe Lonsdale, private equity guy. Yeah. I know Joe. Tweeted, so Paul Graham

posted this. Joe Lonsdale shared it and it's like, look, Terence, obviously a genius. We all respect his work, but he should work somewhere else because UCLA is actually terribly anti-Semitic and handled the protest. They let the thugs beat the students

and then he disciplined a bunch of students for protesting a genocide. That's not good enough for you? That you have to like destroy Terence Tao? And who wins out of this? Well, okay, and the irony is that UCLA and the University of California system

has already taken extraordinary steps to comply with the Trump administration. So currently, Just so everybody understands, UC system, the University of California system, has put a ban on BDS and has said that any student organization that participates in BDS, which is like all of them. Which is, yeah, a lot. Not a shocker. The UC system will not be eligible for funds from the university. So already the university system, so it's like, well, what else do you want?

And, you know, reading through all of this, the justification of the, look, it has nothing to do with America. And that's why it's just infuriating to me. You want to pull the guy's visa or whatever if he's here illegally? He's American, though. No, I'm not saying, but I'm saying previous there were examples of that, right? You want to pull the guy's visa because he committed a crime because he's a foreigner who, you know, violated the visa law or whatever. I'm fine with that. Or at least it's justifiable.

If you want to pull the person for being discriminatory against fellow U.S. citizens or engaging in racial discrimination or something, I would be fine with that, but here it's about anti, what they claim is anti-Semitism, but as you just laid out, is about boycotting a foreign state. And by the way, this guy didn't even, from what I can understand, he's not even political, right? Or, I mean, probably political to the extent all academics are, which is like vaguely liberal. Probably voted for Gavin News. Yeah, voted for Gavin. Yeah, loves Gavin, loves Kamala, you know, and this guy's funding gets pulled at the UCLA.

So I just want people to understand the justification for this. sledgehammer from the government and the deploying of funds across all sectors of our economy and of our states that are based on boycott of Israel. And this is a right-left problem. This is now a Trump problem. And it's just completely absurd. And finally, Ryan, you have an update here, 8-8 about Elon and Twitter removing a blue check from Francesca Albanese. Who has been on the show, by the way? Yeah. So this is like this is wild. Like there are our entire organizations that have been set up, I think UNwatch.org, which is referenced in this tweet here, is one of them. Specifically, it seems, for the sole purpose of trolling Francesca Albanese,

who is an unpaid UN special rapporteur for, like, Israel, Palestine. She was sanctioned recently by the U.S. government, which people need to absorb what that means. It makes it very difficult for her to bank, to travel, to kind of exist as a human in the world. Sanctioned. For the report, what does she do? She has no power whatsoever. She can

convene events. Yeah, and made a report. And put out reports, which you can read, or you can not read. I read it. She was here on our show. You can go watch that interview, by the way, if you're interested. Oh, you might get sanctioned. Yeah. Actually, yeah. I don't know. Yeah, right. So, these pressure, these pro-Israel pressure groups

reached out with lawyers to, to, Twitter, to get her blue check. Are you joking? And Elon, immediately. Okay, fine. Blue check gone. Wow. Taking the blue check.

Interesting. And the justification is that sanctions now, so the Ayatollah has a blue check. Can't take her money. If she can't take her $8 a month. How do you even know she's paying for it? Because nowadays you don't even have to pay to get your quote blue check.

All you have to do is have a certain of followers. How did that work out, by the way? I remember a lot of people in my mentions talking about how genius the blue check system is really worked out well didn't it so that's where we're at guys and like i said i mean if you want to have some hope you i guess you can you know there was outcry about the explicit anti-semitism boycott language in the document they took it out so okay i mean you know somewhat of a win but the truth is is that the policy remains in effect if they want it to. They can enforce it at any time. They say BDS is rude in anti-Semitism. Thirty-nine

states in this country, red and blue. You can't accomplish that if it's not truly bipartisan, have anti-BDS laws and or executive orders on their books, which is probably the vast majority of the U.S. population now living under those laws. It's ridiculous and just shows you the extent to which our government is basically at this service, state, local, federal, now all at the service of the interests of a foreign nation. Just think everybody should keep that in mind. And the other downside of this weird relationship with this small country is that you just had to spend the first block of this program talking about it rather than, you know, things that actually should matter. Well, I mean, the reason, and so, and that's a reasonable question.

But you have to get, you have to get, like, we don't control, we don't, if we don't control our own politics, then what's the point? Yeah. And I think that's why, you know, reasonable question, why lead with it? Well, number one, you know, obviously is topic. I think, near and dear to a lot of people in our demographics like audience is heart. But two is, it's like you just said, how can we talk about anything if the framework is such where people have to be weary of their language and of their actions as private citizens, as businesses, as state residents, and others if we're literally not allowed to freely say whatever we want, especially it stings coming from a near decade-long freak out over anti-racism.

which I was there with you, okay? I fought in the trenches, anti-racism and DEI. And, you know, I was there long before a lot of these other folks were, talking about Nicole Hannah-Jones and the 1619 project. And I was with the Trotskyites over at, what was it, World Socialist Web, who were writing some of the original takedowns. I loved them, guys, by the way, shout-out, you know, some of the originals who were speaking out against this.

So for me, it stings because I literally was there and saw many of the people who were enacting this policy speak out against or speak out for free speech for censorship and cancel culture for this type of behavior you know similarly remember i'm i had uh i remember i met a texist politician they were outraged for example that um that their state funds would be subject to uh black rock policies or bank policies because they weren't allowed to invest in oil and gas and or gun companies and i was like yeah i mean why should they tell you you you know, put your money wherever you want. This is the same, you know, freak out about ESG.

You remember that? Right? I mean, think all of these things, almost pale in comparison now at this point to the state explicitly denying you funds and or telling you what a new can't do. So I think that everybody should speak out of it. And last point, none of these states actually do boycott. Yeah, come on. What they do actually do, and we've done some reporting on this.

Yeah, you told me, I was fascinated by this. Please explain it. The cities and states buy high-risk, low-yield Israeli bonds as a statement of political support. They're high-risk bonds that ought to be high-yield. If you're willing to take on risk, you're supposed to then take on a higher interest rate as a result of that. But because we're so friendly, we're going to oversubscribe to these high-risk Israeli bonds. So all of these cities and states could be getting higher interest rate returns for their taxpayers, instead they're sending the money to support Israel's debt policy.

Interesting. Wow. So far from boycotting Israel, what cities and states are doing is propping it up. That's crazy. The expense of... Absolutely crazy. The returns that states could be getting. Yeah. 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 IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The stuff you should know guys have made their own summer playlist of their must listen podcasts on movies. It's me, Josh, and I'd like to welcome you to the stuff you should know summer movie playlist.

What screamed summer? More than a nice, darkened, air-conditioned theater, and a great movie playing right in front of you. Episodes on James Bond, special effects, stunt men and women, disaster films, even movies that change filmmaking, and many more. Listen to the stuff you should know summer movie playlist on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. It's the biggest party of the summer.

WWE SummerSlam is here, and wrestling with Freddie is all over it. We're talking wild matches, big surprises, and our boldest predictions yet. From celebrity showdowns to the chaos inside a steel cage, we're breaking down every match and calling who we think walks out on top. This card is loaded. From Cody Rhodes, John Sina, Ria Ripley, and Tiffy, just to name a few, this lineup is ready to tear down the house. We'll give you our unfiltered takes, honest debates,

and you already know a ton of laughs along the way. We're covering the upsets, the wild returns, and the championship moments nobody expects. We'll get into the matches that steal the show, the storylines that explode, and those, oh my gosh, God, did that just happen moments that make SummerSlam legendary? Don't miss it. Listen to Wrestling with Freddie as part of the My Cultura Podcast Network.

Find us on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Ryan, let's get to Israel. Tell us what's going on. The actual war. So Netanyahu, and we'll get to this in a moment, has announced that he is going to transform the assault on Gaza into a long-term occupation, Whether or not he actually does that or this is just a negotiating ploy remains unclear. Donald Trump has supposedly green-lit this strategy. He was asked yesterday, does he believe that what Netanyahu is doing is a genocide?

Here was his response. Can they see evidence of a genocide in Gaza? I don't think it's sad. Look, they're in a war. Some horrible things happened on October 7th, as you know. It was a horrible, horrible thing. One of the worst I've ever seen. I've seen a lot of bad things in some president in terms of wars and potential wars.

I mean, if you look at the one that we just stopped, there are thousands of people being dead already at the border between Thailand and Cambodia, thousands of people. I mean, I've seen some bad things, but that October 7th was with Hamas was really, really bad. Thailand and Cambodia. Yeah, definitely the hot spot. I don't remember thousands of people. I think it was one tie. So, so Amit Siegel, who is important to follow because he is, he channels Netanyahu. He's a Netanyahu English mouthpiece.

Right. And is very open about his not only support, but conveying the internal views of the government. So that's why we're putting this up there. So whether what Amit Siegel is saying is true or not isn't the point. we know it is coming direct from Netanyahu. Correct. So we can put up B2 here. He had a major report yesterday that Netanyahu has made the decision that there's going to be a massive expanded invasion of Gaza, including a long-term occupation,

and that they're willing to operate in areas where they suspect that hostile. are being kept, which has been a line that they have publicly at least attempted not to cross because, for obvious reasons, it puts them at immediate risk of being killed, you know, either by Israel, by the IDF, or by their captors who Hamas has long said have been told if you're guarding hostages and they're trying to take them by force, Like, that's it. Like, you all go down. Well, let's go even further.

He says, we are going to occupy the strip. The decision has been made. Hamas won't release more hostages without total surrender. We won't surrender. If we don't act now, the hostages will starve to death and Gaza will remain under, the hostages will starve to death, not everybody else, will starve to death, and Gaza will remain under Hamas control. Amid says, Israel was at a crossroads.

It's achieving neither victory nor hostage release. The figure says that the mandate of negotiations is, broad, but no deal was reached, so they're going to move to occupy Gaza. Now, quote, occupying Gaza entails what exactly, Ryan? I mean, it could entail all sorts of things. First, it could entail literally like house-to-house combat. I'm going to rule that out because they haven't done it in the last two years. And that would be what you would actually want to do if you want to rest the houses. So they just destroy the houses, starve the population, immiserate the entire population, try to drive them out. You know, quote, voluntary migration, I guess, in the ways that they put it. But

second is occupying Gaza entails the, quote, indefinite presence that they originally had wanted. And so this is not an occupation. It's an annexation. And it's an annexation, which will be, look, I mean, I know we're already an extraordinary part. And yes, they already control the borders and all that. But it is important to distinguish what this, quote, full spell occupation would look like because it would mean the political administration of the state. And it would be entirely, not just U.S. funded, but it would allow them to facilitate their so-called voluntary migration, the forced expulsion of whoever is left living inside of the Gaza Strip, further, you know, basically enacting their policy of starvation or denial of aid or all of these other things.

On top of a U.S.-led administration, I don't want to drop that either because that's the American point of all of this, is that you think Israel has the money or the manpower to actually, Take quote, occupy, forget about it. Okay, look at them. They can't keep up what they're doing. Yeah, exactly. Their current pace of operations, they've already had a thousand soldiers killed, a bunch of them. They're already having major reservist problems, money. I mean, it costs an extraordinary amount of money to continue their military. They're going to need untold numbers of bailouts from the U.S. to continue this occupation. And considering the way that they've acted, I think we all know what that occupation would look like.

It'll literally look like Iraq, look, cakewalk. And of course, the political risk and all of that then falls on who? America, right? And I think that's a very important part of the story and broadly what this will all look like for this occupation. This is not about hostages. This is about full-scale annexation, recontrol of the land, maybe even more so than the West Bank now. And tactically, because of the tunnel system, it's not at all obvious how they could even accomplish this. In Baitanun, for instance, IDF has gone in, I believe, five times and declared each time that they had operational control. Yes.

They went back in recently to this place that they said they had operational control and immediately got hit with an ambush. Hamas and the other resistance factions is not just Hamas, rely for their primary supply of weapons, unexploded Israeli bombs. Israel has dropped multiple Hiroshima's worth of explosives on Gaza. because they are dropping them in what they call non-ideal circumstances

in other words you're not supposed to just drop them on random urban environments and when you do they don't explode at the normal rate and they're already started with a bunch of their older stuff so you're looking at a 10 to 20%

dud rate even if it's a 2% dud rate that means that there is nearly an unlimited supply of explosive material for Hamas and other resistance groups to extract.

That's literally where they get their weapons. Then they turn them into small bombs and they, on foot, walk them up to tanks and then blow up the tanks. So it's like basically an IED. North Vietnam story. Very common. And so as long as there are

human beings alive willing to do that, they're going to continue to do that. So you have to depopulate entirely the Gaza Strip, basically. Like, if you're going to if you're going to hostily occupy it. How do you do that without American troops? Yeah, well, okay.

And even with them, honestly, with American troops. Yeah, by the way, even with U.S. troops, it would be a disaster. And we should have absolutely nothing to do with that. And I don't think that will happen, but Gaza Lago, which is basically what Trump determined is the policy, the U.S. is going to own it. If it is a U.S.-led administration, then we own all, I mean, we already are funding and

are diplomatically running cover, but it's a whole other thing to actually have actual administration. And that's what Israel wants. They want our ownership of Gaza so that they can push off the diplomatic cover and everything and then make all of us own it. And effectively, that's what Trump declared originally in the Oval Office in his meeting with Netanyahu about taking over Gaza. But this basically pairs with the literal expulsion of all the citizens, them over, and there's just no world where this is going to work out better for the people

and for the Palestinians, right, where they're going to be under genuine direct Israeli occupation. In the same way, let's just look at the peaceful West Bank, which we cover yesterday, where people are being murdered in cold blood, by a lot of these settlers. I mean, how soon do the settlers start coming behind the IDF, which is the dream of the Israeli cabinet? They say it out loud. Smok and all those, that's what they want. They want settlers in Gaza. And to talk, just to show how it kind of corrupt the negotiation process was recently put up b3 here so the times of israel saying that you know there's there's a Saudi report that says Hamas is under pressure to show flexibility but unclear if new talks are in the offing and Jeremy Skehill I'll have more on this

for drop site tomorrow but you know Hamas officials have been speaking publicly and we have the paper that was passed back and forth in the negotiations according to that nahu and Whitkoff, who walked away, that one of the big stumbling blocks was Hamas was refusing to disarm. According to Hamas, and according to all of the documents that are public that were swapped back and forth,

that was never discussed as part of the negotiations because it's just not going to happen, so you don't discuss things aren't going to happen. Like Hamas said, we're not asking Israel to, like, abandon Tel Aviv. Like, we'd like them to. They say out loud,

they'd like to do, but we're not asking for that in the negotiations. We're trying to, Hamas says that they were on the brink of signing the, and they were moving toward the implementation phase. There was nothing in there about disarming. It was about, you know, the pace of the Israeli withdrawal from their current positions, the number of hostages exchanged on each side,

and the flow of aid in the Gaza. Like, that's what they're talking about. And then all of a sudden, Whitkoff and the others, like, just blow the whole thing up and are now talking about a massive occupation. And the thing they're blowing it up over Ryan, as I understand it, having read Scahill's and others reporting, is about this literal occupation in the terms of occupation.

Because they don't want them to just, like, demilitarize and lay down their weapons. They're like, you have to effectively surrender. They're like, all of Gaza, we will determine what area is ours for a DMC. It will have a humanitarian zone. I mean, it basically looks like it does right now, right? But, I mean, last time we had talked, You had told me that a lot of the population was even willing to take that.

Well, where's the population on this question? I think still to this day, anything that gets in aid, food, and stops the bombs for 60 days or 30 days, just do it. Because they don't trust what's written down anyway. So it's like if we can get 30 or 60 days. So Hamas was, you can look at what they were willing to move on. was being quite flexible just because they knew how much pressure they were under from their own population. And that's why it had to end the way it did with Hamas thinking that they were about to sign a deal and move to the implementation phase. And Whitkoff shocking even the Qatari and Egyptian mediators and announcing that Hamas is being inflexible and the whole thing and the whole thing is off.

Because it couldn't end with Hamas being inflexible and announcing that they were walking away because they weren't willing to. Hamas was going to cave on whatever. Yeah. So that's why you had to have this weird, like, wait a minute. Whitkoff is announcing that Hamas is saying no? Like, wouldn't Hamas be the one that would say no if it's true that they were saying no? Right. And then Hamas comes down to like, we didn't say no.

What are you doing, bro? And so this is all under pressure from whom? Is this from the Israeli government on the American government? You know, in terms of the way that they're... Well, the way that it all seems to me... It's like the U.S. and Israel just are a lockstep. Yeah, it looks to me as if not only lockstep, but... basically making it so that Hamas,

they said they won't do it and they wanted occupation this whole time. That's how it appears to me. And they were, I mean, they've said if they want occupation the whole time. And meanwhile, we can put up before Netanyahu is trying to reshape the government in multiple ways.

People who aren't following this close, they might not realize the man spends a significant amount of his time in court. It's like Bill Clinton in 1990s. Starting wars to distract from his own personal problems. And he and his aides are accused of being on the dole of Qatar, which is hilarious on a bunch of different layers. So now he moved to get rid of the Attorney General who's prosecuting him. The Supreme Court has held this up.

This is at the heart of his judicial reform that kind of blew up the country's politics prior to October 7th. You had all these protesters out in the streets for a year trying to stop him from doing this kind of judicial reform that everybody assumed was related to his own prosecutorial problems. Now he's going after the actual prosecutor. And meanwhile, he got rid of this Edelstein, who is the head of the committee that oversees basically the army and in a massive fight over whether or not the Heretti should be subject to the draft and should participate in the war. And so Netanyahu, on the one hand, getting rid of the Attorney General,

on the other hand, doing everything he can to keep his right-wing coalition together by excluding a huge portion of the population from having to participate for religious reasons in this war. And so the country is thoroughly united on the... kind of genocide. Like you look at the polls on that, it would be an interesting challenge for a pollster to try to find

a question that was so grotesque and over the top that it wouldn't get a majority of Israeli support in surveys. So they're united on that, but everywhere else the society is torn apart.

And that is those are the conditions on which he thinks he's then going to launched a massive war in Gaza while at the same time hugely inflaming tensions in the West Bank they're currently if you haven't been following this that there was a radical settler murdered a well-known West Bank activist we covered it yeah yeah who's featured in no other land he's free the guy's family is still in jail for no reason and and they're keeping the body And like, so you're going to do all this and also then launch a massive occupation of Gaza?

See, that's why so many Americans, it's, there's so many ironies going on here. Number one, the Israel Firsters in America are always like, you're funded by Qatar, if you're critical of Israel. And I'm like, well, the only people where there's some like direct evidence are being funded by Qatar are Netanyahu's closest political advisors who were under indictment. And Bibi is under who he was using to fund Hamas. Right. And so then we use it even further. Well, Bibi's actually under corruption trial. Every single time that something happens, he's like, oh, I'm sorry, we need to pause this because

I'm bombing Syria today. Or I'm occupying Gaza today. And then slowly but surely, he's fired. I mean, it's literally like the original scandals back in the day in 2017 about firing Comey. I mean, he fired his FBI director, the shin bet director, over this corruption investigation. Now he's firing the attorney general. They had the, quote, judicial reform. I mean, it's cartoonish corruption.

And every single point, escalation in the war in Gaza and or with Iran and or with Syria is linked, lo and behold, to developments with his corruption trial. It happens like clockwork. But people here are so illiterate that they don't even know, even the pro-Israel groups, about what's actually happening in the country that they're supposedly passionate about. Is that, you know, he's obviously using his. foreign policy to protect himself for political purposes. First, it was October 7th. Remember, we'll talk about October 7th after the war in Gaza is finished. You never end the war? Never

have to talk about it. Wait for people to forget. It's like 9-11. By the time of the 9-11 commission report were bogged down in Iraq. Everyone's like, eh, whatever, it was three years ago. Right. It's the same thing. It happens every time. Right. It's all in the past. Why are you so harping on the past? You mean the event that literally got us into the war? Yeah, that's the that is the difficulty of all of it. And then finally, B-6, Ryan, tell us what happened. Yes, this is just utterly tragic, outrageous. Ode Nahl-Al-Kareen nurse at Al-Axa Hospital.

Just days ago posted a video talking about how humiliating these aid drops are, that what are you doing? Like, why are you dropping aid out of airplanes when you have all of these land crossings just right? there. If you want to bring in aid, put it on a truck, put the truck in first gear, hit the gas, and bring it in. It is not complicated at all. And bring in enough trucks so that starving people aren't looting them the second they get in. Like quite simple. This nurse, O'Day, killed by a falling aid drop yesterday. Wow. Like, and many of these airdrops have killed

a lot of people. So we covered it. And the U.S. This dropped aid, the same thing happened. And meanwhile, the head of nursing at Nasser Hospital was killed by a targeted strike yesterday in his tent with his family. So they killed this nurse accidentally with airdropped aid, and they still continue to target top medical professionals. Not collateral damage as part of some targeted operation at some militant or something. but identifying top medical staff and killing them in their tents with their families. Like, what are we doing?

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. The Stuff You Should Know guys have made their own summer playlist of their must listen podcasts on movies. It's me, Josh, and I'd like to welcome you to the Stuff You Should Know summer movie playlist. What screamed summer? More than a nice, darkened, air-conditioned theater, and a great movie playing right in front of you. Episodes on James Bond, special effects, stunt men and women, disaster films, even movies that change filmmaking, and many more. Listen to the stuff you should know summer movie playlist on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

It's the biggest party of the summer. WWE SummerSlam is here, and wrestling with Freddie is all over it. We're talking wild matches, big surprises, and our boldest predictions yet. From celebrity showdowns to the chaos inside a steel cage, we're breaking down every match and calling who we think walks out on top. This card is loaded. From Cody Rhodes, John Sina, Ria Ripley, and Tiffy, just to name a few, this lineup is ready to tear down the house. We'll give you our unfiltered takes, honest debates, and you already know a ton of laughs along the way. We're covering the upsets, the wild returns, and the championship moments nobody expects. We'll get into the matches

that steal the show, the storylines that explode, and those, oh my God, did that just happen, moments that make SummerSlam legendary. Don't miss it. Listen to wrestling with Freddie as part of the iCultura podcast network find us on the i heart radio app apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts moving now to the conflict with india donald trump has gone off on the indian government raising tariffs on them to 25 percent however dramatically now escalating said tariffs why again not because of any of the business or non-tariff barriers in the country but because of their policy on the war in ukraine and buying russian oil here he is to Just this morning from an interview with CNBC, let's take a listen.

With India, what people don't like to say about India, they're the highest tariff nation. They have the highest tariff of anybody. We do very, very little business with India because their tariffs are so high. So India has not been a good trading partner because they do a lot of business with us, but we don't do business with them. So we settled on 25%, but I think I'm going to raise that very substantially over the next 24 hours because they're buying Russian oil, they're fueling the war machine, and if they're going to do that, then I'm not going to be happy.

I'm not too happy. So dramatically increasing tariffs on India for the war in Ukraine. Got it. This is genuinely a Lindsay Graham fever dream of the neocons. And we've covered it here for years now since 2022, is everyone's furious with India and with China. By the way, yeah, interesting China is not listed in that, isn't it? Even though they're on a pause right now.

the two largest buyers of Russian oil. Russia, of course, able to sell oil out on the market. In fact, the Indians and the Chinese are getting a discount on the oil because the rest of the world is not buying it. And they're using those profits to fund the war machine. Now, okay, I mean, you can be upset about that, but everyone should ask, should U.S. trade policy with its 10th largest trading partner,

which is what India is, if you look at overall bilateral trade, be subject to the war in Ukraine. The war in Ukraine. Just so everybody understands here now, we have two separate instances of Trump using tariffs to enforce foreign policy goals, which have no impact on any of us. First is Canada, if you'll recall, when Trump put out his tweet where he said something along the lines of, wow, Canada just raised or just recognized Palestine, that's going to impact our trade. What? So our tariffs on maple syrup going up. On maple syrup and lumber.

Lumber. Is going to be impacted by the Canadian governments and oil, yeah, great example, is going to be impacted by the Canadian government's position on Palestine. So in this case, because Trump has unsuccessfully been able to wind up the war in Ukraine, something he said that he would do before he was even in office, is now tariffing India at a very, very high rate because they're buying Russian oil. Something, by the way, that his own vice president and others when the Biden administration was considered. doing this, spoke out against that very policy, using the full force of the empire and punishing more important allies for the purpose of protecting Ukraine and trying to, quote, force peace over there. Also, guys, let's all be honest here. We've punished the Russian economy into the ground, right, supposedly, from the way that the Western sanctions. They're doing fine.

Their GDP and all that. It's not also, by the way, not just because of oil. It's because of their own domestic war production and more. I'm not saying this wouldn't hurt, but we're all, like, let's think about the consequences. Like if you import something from India or if you have some business relationship, whatever, do you really think that you should have to pay more for that or have a shortage of it because of the war in Ukraine? This is a Biden policy. And if you think about it, our sanctions, our sanction policy has created the circumstances that you're talking about that the Russian economy is doing well-ish, but significantly because of the war. It's this Keynesian situation where war production and production for that effort is driving

economic growth. Absolutely. So we've put them in this position where if they unwind the war, which is what they want them to do, then they will suffer a short-term economic setback. So our own sanctions policy actually incentivizes them to keep the war going. If our economic policy towards Russia was to balance out their economy so that the war machine was not such a central part of it, that would actually then free up the Russian kind of political calculation on which Putin rests to be able to then leave the war without the economic ramifications.

Now maybe he still wouldn't because he just wore mad lunatic but he would have the opportunity to be able to do so without the short-term political hit of an economic crash. Yeah. Because just like Netanyahu just wants to go from Monday to Tuesday

and keep himself alive, keep the war going, you know, if it's easier to do A than B for a politician, that politician is usually going to do A. Yeah, and just broadly, I mean, somebody's some, they're like, you only care about this because you're Indian. Yeah, that's definitely the only reason.

It's not that I haven't said anything similar about Vietnam or about the Philippines or any of the other critical allies in Asia, which are non-Chinese, a classic thing that you would want to do, let's say some Kisingerian style, Realpolitik would say, okay, our global, whatever you want to call it,

competition, adversary, et cetera, is China. So what do you do? All of the countries around China, what would you want? You would want some decent relations, which is why we should maybe not hit Japan with a 50% tariff or Korea or, I mean, I can go down to us. Philippines, India, any of these other powers. And we would say, we want all of these people to have great economic relationships there. U.S. manufacturers can still benefit from trade in Southeast Asia and in Asia without having to rely on bolstering the Chinese economy and to make sure that the U.S. maintains whatever its economic, giant, power. There, by the way, this was a Trump administration policy, as you all might recall, Apple announcing that it would move production from China to India.

These are strategic goals, which I'm very okay with. Again, it does nothing to do with my heritage or whatever. I'm saying broadly, if they could move it to Vietnam for all I care, I don't care. All right, just get it out of China. My point is just that this is completely counter to the Europe first mentality that the Biden administration had with this religious obsession with NATO, punishing nations like China, India, and subjecting our entire foreign policy. to the war in Ukraine, which again has nothing to do on any impact, on any life of an American. And by the way, if sanctions or any of this could solve it, it would happen a long, long time ago. And in fact, every single day that the war continues, Ukrainian people are suffering.

They're raising their age to 60, which we'll get to in a little bit. And now you're isolating an ally again, or fine, a trading partner, which I think is very critical in maintaining strategic balance in Southeast Asia. With that, go ahead. Just the line that you only care about this because you're Indian would actually make a lot more sense if it was you only care about this because you're American. Yeah, yeah, that's true. I mean, look, they're a huge trading partner.

Do you like, do you like generic, pharmaceuticals? I would say the same thing about Taiwan. I would say the same thing about any of these countries. By the way, Taiwan is even more important training partner. Guess who also got hit with the tariff, if you want to know, under these. This is the point is that the policy makes no sense. It's computed stupidly. And here, explicitly, the original 25% is about non-tariff barriers.

Fine, it's true, by the way. India is an insane economy, the way that they shut out Western, like Western investment. I don't blame them, per se, because if I were them, I'd probably do the same thing. We still export it, that up $50 billion. Yeah, it's a lot. Well, okay, their theory is we want total control of our economy because we don't trust the West and we don't trust China. I mean, you know. Also, aren't they two out of three on the things we're supposed to care about?

Like, the things that countries are supposed to do for us is they're supposed to support Bolsonaro and be mad. Oh, right. I forgot about it. That he was not able to carry his coup out. They're supposed to support Israel. And I think Modi is, like, check and check. He's fine with both of them. But three, you also have to hate Russia and love Ukraine.

Right. Okay. Got it. So we should definitely, that's the way that we should be conducting it. So we wanted to give you guys a view into how this is being received in India. We've got a clip here from Republic TV. Our Indian viewers may know what it is. It's kind of hard to explain Fox, I guess.

I mean, it's not exactly the same media environment, but this is Arnab Goswami's, I guess, the Tucker Carlson-ish of India. Very popular voice. Very, very popular voice. We'll say that on Indian national television. Here's how they are reacting to it, a nationalist India. Trump escalates the tariff war with India.

Trump says he's going to substantially increase tariffs on India. Trump puts out an aggressive post saying we're going to be. be further, further slapping more tariffs on India, and he is linking it to India's friendship and our business with the Russians. We have no response to Russia yet, but it's quite clear that we are caught in the middle of this Russia versus U.S. trade battle, that we become the linchpin of this battle. So it serves Trump both ways. He targets Russia, and, of course, he squeezes India at a time when we were ahead of the

other countries in terms of negotiating a tariff deal with America. He's sending, I think, Mr. Witkoff in the next week to negotiate with Russia. So he's opening up a line of conversation with Russia, increasing the threat and pressure on India, opening a line with Russia, and then saying, using his advisors to say that India and China are together raising the pressure, raising part of the machine that is, supporting the Russian economy. Now, these are all last-minute gambits by Trump. He's not liking the noises coming from India,

or rather he's not liking the lack of a response from the Indian government. Man, okay, no offense, Indian TV. I don't know what is going on with the motion tracking there over on those cameras. All right, let me, call me, all right, we can talk. But the Indian foreign ministry has also put out the statement. Let's put it up there on the screen.

They say India has been targeted by the United States and the European Union for importing oil from Russia after the commencement of the Ukraine conflict. India began importing Russia because traditional supplies were diverted to Europe after the conflict. Interesting. The United States at that time actively encouraged such imports by an infrastructure strengthening global energy market stability. India's imports are to ensure predictable and affordable energy cost to the Indian consumer. They are a necessity compelled by the global market situation. However, it is revealing that the very nations criticizing India are themselves indulging in trade with Russia. Unlike our case,

such trade is not even a vital national compulsion. The European Union had bilateral trade of 67 goods, billion in goods with Russia. In addition, it had trade in services estimated euro, 17 billion in 2023. That is much more than India's total trade with Russia that year. Subsequently, European imports of LNG, in fact, rich a record 16.5 million tons surpassing the last record of 15 million tons in 2022. Europe, Russia trade includes not just energy but fertilizer, et cetera. Where the United States is concerned, it continues to import Russian uranium hexafluoride for its nuclear industry, palladium for its EV industry, fertilizers as well as chemicals. In this background, the targeting me in India is unjustified and

unreasonable. And interestingly enough, actually, Modi this morning basically is like, yeah, we're just going to keep buying Russian oil. And we'll see you guys on the other side. They're not taking this all that seriously. And increasingly, with the conflict with Russia, you're watching all of these crazy belligerent actions, which again are straight out of Lindsay Graham. Let's put C4 up there on the screen. So, for example, there was this more recent development from the Russians in response to Trump's deployment of nuclear submarines, where former President Medvedev said that NATO countries have abandoned, has blamed NATO countries and says that Russia will now, quote,

abandon a moratorium on short and medium range nuclear missiles and said Moscow would take further steps in response. This was after Trump went after him for making belligerent statements about the conflict and deployed nuclear submarines publicly, saying that if we need to, of course, we have the ability, to strike Russia back. Well, the same time, what's happening in Ukraine? Let's go ahead and put C6, please, up on the screen. The Ukrainian army now opening its ranks to the 60-plus club to volunteer for military service, contract terms, say one-year enlistment, medical clearance, and no

upper age limit. This was after a revelation a couple of years ago now at this point, that the average age of the Ukrainian military at that time was in the 40s. And they're already losing. losing thousands of people on the front line. They're losing territory. This is despite the fact that Trump administration has accelerated weapons going to the country, including Patriot missile batteries, which we massively depleted for another country called Israel. It's just all so preposterous. And just to cap it all off, Ryan, at the same time we're supposedly defending democracy in Ukraine. Let's go ahead and put the next one up there, C7 please, up on the screen, is that Ukrainians recently took to the streets to protest Zelensky for cracking down on corruption watchdogs.

Quote, for writing corruption has been a central issue for Ukrainians, and new curbs on watchdog agencies have alarmed many. So Zelensky and his top people, quote, granted the general prosecutor control over Ukraine's main anti-corruption bodies, which, quote, many citizens fear will roll back reform, introduced after a pro-democracy revolution more than ten years ago. The demonstrations were the country's largest since 2022 invasion were peaceful, but the crowds simmered with rage after a population that survived nearly three and a half years of war, drone attacks, loss of loved ones, et cetera. And now, you know, supposedly the grandmaster democracy champion Zelensky himself is cracking down on the very anti-corruption institutions, which were We're modestly pointing out the billions of dollars of money laundering and others that have been wasted on this conflict by the West.

That's who we're all supporting. And that's why we're now tariffing India and putting our relationship with them subject so that Zelensky and his cronies can continue their anti-corruption crackdown in their own country. That's what we're all paying for. And we're paying for, you know, Ukrainian yarn shops and pensioners while people here are going to lose medicare. Karen Snap. Makes a lot of sense, obviously. Yes, you would think that sending billions of dollars to Ukraine and canceling the elections would root out the corruption there. But it turns out there's still work to be done, but that work will not be done by the anti-corruption groups that Zelensky is getting

rid of. By the way, one amazing quote from Trump on Sundays, he said, you know, if he gave this month-long ultimatum to Putin, then he's like, actually it's 10 days because I don't trust that he's going to do anything. And if you don't do it or out, you know, you make peace or else. And they said, well, what else? He's going to, I'm going to sanction them. And then Trump said, well, there will be sanctions, but they seem to be pretty good at avoiding sanctions. Yeah, that's right.

Real tough talk. And so that's basically where we're at. I mean, the Indians have effectively called the bluff and they're like, okay, fine, let's go for it. And their theory is, yeah, we'll sign a trade deal and all of this will go away. And so actually, you know, even the Ukrainians are basically, if that's true or used as a pawn in negotiations with India over trade, it's not like any of it all matters. But, you know, inside of India, this is not being met well just from what I can see in terms of looking at public opinion and the way that the Biden administration previously treated

them. They thought it would be different. But it turns out that the new boss is actually crazier than the old boss. I'm curious for a day. But I think what Trump doesn't understand here is that when you are starting at 25 percent tariffs, that's an unserious tariff rate. it would decimate trade between India and the U.S. if it stayed at 25%. It would seize it up. It's well over the rate at which companies are able to just absorb this hit and keep moving. So therefore, anything above that is meaningless because 25 is already killer. So they're at 25 now, and Trump is like, I'm going to make it significantly higher.

It's like, well, it's, are you? It's like, the difference between 25 and 50, to most... Yeah, people talked about this with China. To most companies... 60 and 150 makes it. Mo dope. No difference. Like, you're, that's it.

You're not, you can't, you're not making money at 25 or at 50. So both of them are prohibitive. So that's why I think India can be like, all right, bro, well, like, talk to us when you're not at 25. Well, we'll see. I mean, you know, we're just broadly, it is their foreign policy. right now, our trade policy, our economic policy, is focused on Israel and on Ukraine and has nothing to do, apparently, with the rest of us. Poor Bolsonaro. He can't even crack the top.

Sorry, yeah, and Bolsonaro. Yeah, that's apparently why we should pay more for coffee. By the way, as a coffee fanatic, I don't know if everybody knows this. The coffee prices right now are out of control. Go and take a look at coffee futures, largely because of these Brazil tariffs, and there was some horrible storm or something like that that killed a bunch of the coffee crops. So, yeah, If you like to drink coffee every day, even low-rate coffee, all of that, well, I have bad news for you. It's probably going to go up by 20, 30 percent based upon the futures markets that I was looking at recently. People need the sacrifice for Bolsonaro.

Yeah, you're right. Yeah, you're right. I should pay more for coffee for Bolsonaro. Makes a lot of sense. Thank you guys so much for watching. We appreciate it. Ryan and Emily and be on tomorrow. Thank you, Ryan.

It's great to see you, man, and have a great counterpoint show tomorrow. All right. See you later. The Stuff You Should Know guys have made their own summer playlist of their must listen podcasts on movies. It's me, Josh, and I'd like to welcome you to the Stuff You Should Know summer movie playlist. What Screams Summer? More than a nice, darkened, air-conditioned theater, and a great movie playing right in front of you. Episodes on James Bond, special effects, stunt men and women, disaster films, even movies that change filmmaking, and many more.

Listen to the stuff you should know summer movie playlist on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. 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 IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. We're breaking down SummerSlam, the biggest party of the summer on wrestling with Freddie.

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