Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 8/6/24: Kamala Picks Tim Walz For VP, US Troops Injured In Iran-Linked Attack, Google Ruled Monopoly, UK Riots, RFK Bear In Central Park, Israeli UNRWA Op Falls Apart

Episode Date: August 6, 2024

Ryan and Saagar discuss Kamala Picks Tim Walz for VP, US troops injured in Iran linked attack, Google ruled to be illegal monopoly, UK riots over immigration tensions, RFK admits he left dead bear in Central Park, Israeli media UNRWA op falls apart.    To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show AD FREE, uncut and 1 hour early visit: https://breakingpoints.com/   Merch Store: https://shop.breakingpoints.com/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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we here at Breaking Points are already thinking of ways we can up our game for this critical election. We rely on our premium subs to expand coverage, upgrade the studio, add staff, give you guys the best independent coverage that is possible. If you like what we're all about, it just means the absolute world to have your support. But enough with that. Let's get to the show. Hello, everybody. We have some major breaking news. We are changing our entire show and we're putting this up at the top. We have the breaking news that. We are changing our entire show and we're putting this up at the top.

We have the breaking news that happened literally as we were recording. Vice President Kamala Harris has chosen Governor Tim Walz of Minnesota as her vice presidential pick for the Democratic nomination. So I'm sure that Crystal's doing some backflips at home and I'm sure she wishes that she was here on the show with us. So, Ryan, we got this breaking news. Governor Walz really surged in the last 48 hours or so in the betting markets. There was a lot of speculation. I personally thought it was going to be Governor Josh Shapiro just because of the electoral calculus. But Tim Walz here is a popular Minnesota governor, Minnesota in the Midwest. He coined the whole weird attack on Republicans.

He was the choice of organized labor. There were also some late-breaking problems, it seems, with Governor Josh Shapiro and some of the baggage that he may bring to the tickets. So what do you make of the pick right now? I know we've only had minutes to process it. It's stunning in the sense that it's something that makes me happy. Yeah. And I'm not used to that when it comes to Democratic Party politics. Okay. Tim Walz was, always represented a rural district in Minnesota that became increasingly suburban over the time that he represented it. Right. But by 2016, it swung like 15, 20 points for Trump. And he held it rather comfortably. Not totally comfortably, but comfortably for a Democrat. And he did not do so

by tacking right, like the classic Democratic blue dog of old. He did it by championing kind of populist values. Like his first ad for Congress was talking about how due to his military service, he lost a lot of his hearing. He was able to get medical treatment that was able to restore his hearing. And one morning he woke up and he asked his wife, what is that sound? And he said, that's my daughter. That's your daughter laughing. Wow. And he said she'd been waking up giggling every morning, but he had not been able to hear her. And he finishes the ad by saying, like, every father should be able to hear their child's laugh in the morning.

Everyone should have that kind of access to health care. And so that's the kind of populism that pushes forward a kind of leftist agenda that people have been like crying out for that that's arguing like that's why Bernie Sanders was able to appeal so well to people who are independents and and so to have somebody like Wallace who's able to win these rural districts with that populist message and rather than sounding weird like a social justice warrior, kind of Democrat of the 2010s, to call out Republicans as being the weird ones, to kind of center his version of populist lefty politics, and to have the entire Democratic Party

kind of think that that is electorally beneficial, suggests something interesting going on with the party. Well, let's think then a little bit about how this was Josh Shapiro's to lose. Can we put B2, please, up on the screen? This was former Speaker Nancy Pelosi yesterday was on CNN, asked about the problems with Governor Josh Shapiro. And they said, does this stem from anti-Semitism? She says, I think it's probably more about policy, but the decision will be made by our candidate for POTUS. I think that it would be better if they weighed in more privately. So clearly she's throwing her weight behind Tim Walz. Reportedly, we had brought that to everybody on our show on Monday. Tim Walz,

a former House colleague. He helped make her speaker by winning a 2006 race. Helped make her speaker of the House. But I'm also just thinking a little bit about here about, look, I mean, Shapiro was probably the most obvious pick. So then in a certain sense, it's his to lose. I think that the Israel stuff obviously contributed to the decision, perhaps in terms of it might split the coalition. But let's not forget that organized labor played a role here, including here with Nancy Pelosi's pick, right? So, and her support, not only personally, you had the charter school issue, which Crystal had talked about here previously. So give us a sense of, you know, like why Kamala might have picked Tim Walz over a

governor, Josh Shapiro, who is, let's be honest, I mean, he's the literally popular governor of the must-wing tipping point state. I mean, it takes some guts to pick somebody else in that decision. Extremely talented politician too, like very well-liked in Pennsylvania. And there was some analysis that said that he might pick up 0.4% of the vote, like add 0.4% to Democrats totals in Pennsylvania, which is in a razor thin margin, an absolutely huge amount. Yes, the charter school thing doesn't make him a huge fan, doesn't make the teachers unions huge fans of him. I think it was more this murder suicide thing

that came out towards the very end. Tell us about that. What's going on with that? When he was Attorney General, it's very complicated and people can go read it, but it's now in the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, just now. Coincidentally, brutal timing for Shapiro. But basically, there was a, somebody died, a woman, and he knew the family, he knew the people involved. His office ruled it a suicide for years with the family saying, no, no, no, we believe that this is a homicide. I haven't looked at the details close enough to be an expert on this. People say

some of the wounds that she had were in the back of her head after she died. So it's like, how can that possibly be a suicide? But getting too deep into these details, you're going to go down a rabbit hole. But the point is, I don't think the Harris campaign wants to go down that rabbit hole. Because some of the family of the suspect donated money to Shapiro and Shapiro had ties to them. But then his defenders were saying, well, this is also anti-Semitism because they all went to the same Hebrew school. So you're saying that therefore anybody who went to this school can't be governor. It's like he later accused himself. He probably should have done that at the very beginning.

You can tell from just talking about it. It's a giant mess. Yeah, it's a giant mess. Yeah, it's a mess. Nobody. And so if you have this giant mess, like, is this really what we want to spend our time talking about for the next? I know these things sound stupid. Remember, guys, we've only got 90 some days to the election.

You don't waste a single day on something dumb when we think to. Minnesota was not a layup. Well, yes and no. But I mean, I mean, Kamala was up by six, you know, very lately. And yes, I think Joe Biden, I think you're right. I mean, one of the enduring things over all of this is that a friend of mine this weekend, I was talking with him and he's like, you know, Biden dropping out really makes me think like Trump was actually going to win New Mexico. Like it wasn't some right wing fever dream. He's like, I think he might actually have won like New Mexico and Virginia and Minnesota, right? Which he barely lost in 2016. When we think here too, let's go first of all, so let's think about the electoral

map. I also thought, I saw some very interesting analysis, which is that my theory of the election, the whole Pennsylvania 270 plus one electoral vote may be incorrect in that Kamala, by reconsolidating the Democratic coalition, picking somebody like a Tim Walz who gets suburban people, I think, very excited. I think Democrats really like the idea of the street-talking dad, and he's one of the, just plain weird. That's all they are. Now, I'll save, I'm sure we'll have many fights over weirdness and all that in the coming months. But just thinking about the electoral, who he excites. And I think there is, if we think the swing coalition here, Kamala needs to win white men back at the same rate that Biden won in 2020. That's really why Joe Biden won the race. So you pick like the

quintessential white dude from the Midwest, high school football coach and all of that, the straight talker. He's got a couple of pounds on him, I guess, which is as American as can be. And you make him, you know, like the number two on the ticket. Well, now we're not necessarily just playing the Midwest game and just assuming that the Sun Belt is gone. It could be that those same suburban white people who delivered Georgia and Arizona to Joe Biden in 2020, well, maybe they're back in play. So Kamala may actually have a path to the White House where perhaps she could lose a Wisconsin, a Pennsylvania, or a Michigan. But if you pick up Georgia, you can make up enough electoral votes.

You can hold down the fort in Nevada, New Hampshire, places like that, and you could still get there, you know, to 270. I think it's 279 is something like that. So I was playing a tight race in the Midwest, but a lot more fluidity in the Sunbelt, well, the Sunbelt then comes back into play. I had not assumed that, but it's possible that that's what her thinking was in her path to 270 here, where Tim Walz, get those suburban people, keep them in the coalition. These people are rich, they have a lot of money. They love to vote.

And they're obsessed with abortion. So excite them. Turn out the vote. You know, demoralize already Republicans kind of in a little bit of a mess here. They're not really sure what to do. And they feel like they're on their back foot. They were so excited because they thought they were the only ones who were pumped up for the race. And now they're a little bit, you know, trying to figure out their strategy in running.

And I think two things on that. One is that in the Sun Belt and in Georgia, a lot of those people are actually from like Pennsylvania and the Midwest. Yeah. And New England and elsewhere. Yeah, that's true actually. Like they literally are from there. And so, and then the second related point, there are no regions anymore. Yes, yeah.

Everything is national. Like this idea that, and this was the check that the framers thought would keep partisan intrigue at a minimum because the different regions had such significant interests that they would butt heads with each other, New England versus the middle south and the bottom south, deep south, et cetera. That's gone. We're like a monoculture. You drive around this country, you go anywhere in this country, we're the same place, whether it's Arizona, Wisconsin, Georgia, Pennsylvania. I mean, there's some moderate differences here. And also people are moving around constantly all the time. And if you have a person who just seems like an authentic individual like Walls, then he's going to play. And I think your point is exactly right. In Georgia and in Arizona, not as well as he plays in Minnesota because people know him extremely well there, but he's gonna play just fine The joke that I've seen from kind of centrist Democrats is that they've been saying like hey You left-wing Democrats out there who've been pushing for Tim Walz

Do you know that he called the National Guard out during the George Floyd riots? Don't you want to criticize him for that for the next three months? Like they think if if people like me on the left just beat him up for being too tough on the riots in 2020, then that will make him look better and tougher on crime. I'm glad you brought that up though, because I've actually seen the opposite, which is apparently the Minnesota Senate heavily criticized Tim Walz for not, for his bad handling of the riots. That's why they want the left to criticize him for being too strong. I see what you're saying. Okay. So, but anyway.

He apologized. He said, I failed at how I handled that. Well, that's what I think is interesting is now I think there will be a little bit. So I've seen the right-wing reaction that I've seen right now is that, okay, let's go. Let's play. Let's talk about BLM. Let's talk about the bail fund with comma. I mean, that is probably one of the more potent attacks. Now, in general, the issue is, guys, it was four years ago. Now, look, I'd love to relitigate BLM, but it's not going to happen. I mean, most people have moved on. I think you're right. I think people agree with them, agree with Republicans on this point, but also don't care and want to move past it.

It's possible. So, for example, I'll give people a taste of the right-wing reaction here. I've got Charlie Kirk. He says, welcome to the race, Tim Walz. Let's make sure America knows who you are. You helped ignite the George Floyd riots, the worst country has seen in decades. While Minneapolis burned, you stalled on deploying the National Guard. You let your daughter leak the Guard's deployment plans online so that rioters would know they had to loot the city. Minneapolis is a war zone because of you. Days after the attempted murder of Donald Trump, you called him and his supporters fascists. You have overseen some of the most radical youth trans surgery laws in the country. You have the most radical abortion laws in the country,

zero limits. On immigration, you famously said you wanted to provide a ladder so that invaders could come over the wall. You oversaw the worst fraud of the COVID era, the Feed Our Future case. I don't know anything about that. I guess I'll have to get up to speed. Yeah, there was some fraud where Minnesota got ripped off. During COVID, you approved $500 million in hero pay, only for 40% of that money to go to people who were literally deceased. In the House, you were Pelosi's sidekick and did whatever the Democrats demanded. You know, of all everything he's said so far, only BLM and the Pelosi sidekick right now are like clicking

for me. The Pelosi sidekick thing is interesting just because, I mean, she's not exactly the most beloved figure. And that's part of the way that they could help. They could help energize Republicans perhaps against. They can try. They ran against Pelosi for 20 years. That's true. And it never worked. Well, it worked in 2010. Let's be honest. It worked in 2010. It was a while. I don't know if that was Pelosi or that was Obama, I think. Yeah. I mean, I guess I'm just sitting here just trying to grapple with the real, let's think here. I'm just, I'm sitting here just trying to grapple with why you turned down a Shapiro. I mean, so you brought up the murder case, you brought up the Israel stuff. I mean, but my contention was, I'm curious what you think.

I think, let's be honest, I think a lot of the Israel people are willing to cut Kamala's shit ton of slack because they're like, well, maybe we can bully her or whatever. You know, who knows what this lady actually believes. I mean, at the same time, Tim Walz, I mean, this guy's signed like BDS legislation. He's pro-Israel as it gets, right? So do you really think the Israel stuff was the main reason not to pick Shapiro? I understand the whole KKK thing and some of the comments, but I mean, substantively, I don't think there's a lot of daylight here between these two people. I don't think it was Israel. I think there was some probably vibes element to it that some of her advisors probably thought, okay, well, if we pick Shapiro, the vibes online are going to be not good for several days. And the vibes, like it's been a purely vibes campaign for two weeks.

No interviews, no press conferences. Literally no interviews. No policies. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just vibes. Wait, no, no, no. You can't say that there's been no policies. There's been disavowing of every policy position that she's ever taken, Ryan. There's been un-policies. Yeah, yeah. It's been 16 days now this lady's

running for president. I think part of it also maybe is that Shapiro is, yes, he's a governor, but he was just elected. True. And he's a little young. And so people are looking at Harris. How old is Tim Walz? Good question. I bet he's like 64. He's 60 years old. Okay. Spring chicken, you know, when it comes to our current politics. But he's only 59. But he was in the House for 10, 15 years and then governor since 2018. Whereas Shapiro is really kind of new to the scene. And so, you know, the knock on from political consultants and knock on a woman candidate for president is that they say, oh, she's not ready to be a commander in chief. Like that's, that's what the political consultants worry about from their focus groups. Um, is a woman ready to lead?

Yeah. Uh, and if you think back to when, you know, 20 years ago, you would attach a general or something to them. You know, Hillary ended up going with Tim Kaine, one of the most boring picks ever. I think people regret going with Tim Kaine there. But I think that Shapiro just didn't have the kind of national gravitas, maybe. I don't know. Walls is a pretty obscure figure, too. I'm coming back to ambition. I think that's what it has to be because Kamala is a deeply insecure person.

The only reason she's doing well right now is because she got it handed to her. She didn't actually have to run for it. Every time that she's ever actually been in a real competition, she's crumbled in an interview, a press conference, or not even a contentious one, but on the debate stage famously, I think it's very possible that Josh Shapiro just coded as way too ambitious. I mean, obviously he wanted to be president and he was going hard for the job. All the Obama impersonation, I think it may have just, it could have come down to personality where, look, let's be honest too. Anybody who spends their career in politics, you're a weirdo and you're also ambitious. And you also very much want to be president. But it also comes, it matters the way that it comes across. And I think

with Walsh, it's very possible that they just got along well. These are two people. They meshed well. She didn't think that he would try to upstage her. Really, all you could really ask for in a VP is a loyal number two. He's a good attack dog. That's what they want. They also could let him absorb some of the hits, send him out there to do interviews and all these things and protect the top of the ticket, who is a lot more averse to media. So I see some of the wisdom. But really, like if I zoom out 50,000 feet, this just tells me that their

theory of victory, which I have to assume is based on something, is not the, what I had envisioned for them, the 270 plus one, just hold down the blue wall. They really believe they can be competitive in Arizona and in Georgia. And so this is a historic decision in that it gives us insight to how their theory of victory actually looks and their map to 270, which is very different than Joe Biden's original map. Yeah, and Shapiro didn't go on air like Tim Walz did. That's true. He didn't go on TV a lot. He didn't go for it. And he's really good on air. So that was, I think, a blunder on his part if we it makes me go back to the Opening that they had for an actual open process for president

where you would have like a five-week period where Harris would make her case on online, you know on on cable having rallies walls would make his case Pritzker Shapiro, they'd all make their case and The kind of vibes would then end up picking, they nominate in Chicago for president. And I think that's basically what happened here. The vibes were drifted towards Walls' direction. I think in an open five-week situation like that, Walls could have actually won the nomination. How ironic is that? Is that IRL, if he actually ran in an open thing, he might've won. Like that's the craziest part here

is that he is probably a far better candidate. I mean, so was Josh Shapiro, let's be honest. If he would have run against Biden instead of Dean Phillips. Crush him, yeah, absolutely, yeah. Who would have thought that the Minnesota Democrat who would triumph from this whole process was not Dean Phillips and was actually Tim Walz all along?

Last point, we've talked about this with Emily on CounterPoints. Minnesota and Iowa used to both be swing states. Minnesota slightly becomes blue and Iowa slightly becomes red. Iowa's rammed through enormous amounts of right-wing legislation. Minnesota rammed through enormous amounts of left-wing legislation. Minnesota ran through enormous amounts of left-wing legislation. So there might not be a governor other than say Pritzker in the entire country with a solid, a progressive legislative record as walls from materials, class, social, labor stuff.

Also, isn't the Democratic Party there called like the Farm- Democratic Farm Labor Party. Farm Labor, yeah, that's right. I mean, that's a good name, right? Yeah. That's one of those where- That's their old populist group. I think it definitely helps. Yeah, that's right. I mean, that's a good name, right? That's one of those where it definitely helps. That's their old populist group.

Yeah, that's right. We also, interesting analysis here. It says if the Obama folks had anything to do with this, and they probably did, a big factor would have been picking a run of me, ostensibly, with limited personal horizons who covers obvious weaknesses and will stick to a defined role, a.k.a. what Joe Biden did. And they're crazy. He wants to be president. Yeah, I mean, look, I think he definitely wants to be president, but maybe he just didn't. Maybe he just came across a lot less threatening. Because urban Democrats, like cosmopolitan Democrats, are fooled by the all shucks thing. Yeah, yeah, I know.

It's like, guys, all shucks. You and I have been in Washington long enough to know, to have met the real all shucks people when the cameras are off and be like, oh man, you're just like everybody else. But most people don't, they don't pay attention to as much of this and I don't blame them. They should be living their lives doing something else. So I guess the thing that we can zoom out and say a couple of things, number one, my big one, Kamala theory of victory, very different than how I originally envisioned it. And that's very interesting to me because maybe they have some data points, you know, everyone's saying that this is very online. I don't know.

It's possible. But I think these people really want to win. I mean, that's actually what I have taken away from the last couple of weeks. I'm like, oh, these people are playing to win. They're going to win on vibes. And maybe Harris can dodge doing any interviews. I think she can. Forever.

Just putting walls out. Hey, why do you want to hear from me? You got this guy. That's what I was thinking. You put the number two out there and you're like, what? Our campaign has been the most transparent in history.

And everybody else is like, hey, lady, what do you believe? Do you believe anything? Literally at all? Let's see if she can do an entire eight years. Oh, let's not forget this, Ryan. We don't even have a debate

right now on the schedule. Trump is like, I'll be at the Fox News debate. Kamala says she'll be at the ABC debate. Are we even going to get a single one? Yes, and Tim Walz to go debate. Hopefully we'll get a J.D. Vance versus Tim Walls debate. I would enjoy seeing that, actually. The guy who coined weird versus the person who allegedly is weird. My own bias aside,

I'd like to see J.D. clean his clock, but we'll see. What else can we think about? Josh Shapiro, it was his to lose. Mark Kelly, yeah, what a disaster too for him. I mean, look, all these people will be loyal. This is a gamble. I do think it is a gamble. She didn't pick the quote unquote safe choice. A lot of the right wing reaction is that this was a bad pick. Only time will tell. There's just no way to say immediately in the moment. It could be brilliant, honestly. It could cement that theory of victory for where she goes. I am telling Republicans, though, do not underestimate these people because I just think every choice that they have made in the last 16 days from not agreeing to interviews, to disavowing everything, to running basically on nothing except I'm not Trump and I'm not Joe Biden, I hate to say that it is

a very viable path to 270. The polls kept saying generic Democrat could beat Trump. And they were right. They went and found generic Democrat. That's true. And so anyway, I think it would also, I mean, let's not whitewash this. The media is on these people's side. The media doesn't even care. They're like, oh, interview? You don't need to do that. That's fine. And so they're like, oh, interview? You don't need to do that. You know, that's fine. And so they're going to make Tim Walz the next Jesus Christ, you know. And it's Republicans. They'll scream about it.

But that's not how it works, guys. You actually have to really run something. You got to, you need to see a lot more discipline, I think, too, from Trump. You know, what did I just talk about here, Ryan? That their theory of victory could be different. Well, maybe attacking Brian Kemp in the middle of that new theory of victory. Maybe not such a good idea, huh? Not necessarily the one I want to be running on whenever I see such a massive changeup in the race.

I am seeing a report here that Tim Wallace will be at that rally in Philadelphia. Man, that sucks to be Josh Shapiro. To have your rival anointed in your city, whew, that's rough. I'm sure that he'll get some, he'll have some, you know. Also, if Kamala and Walls lose, Shapiro's well-positioned. That's a good, great point. Yeah, if you are Josh, now you are the number one out of this whole process. And Whitmer. Yeah, and Whitmer too. Although she's kind of kept a low profile recently. I guess it'll be a battle between the two of them. So anyway, that's our snap interesting analysis. I'm sure you guys will have a show tomorrow so you can break down

everything and kind of tell us about maybe Tim Walsh's speech, etc. But let's get to the rest of the show that we were recording previously before this news broke. Across the country, cops called this taser the revolution. But not everyone was convinced it was that simple. Cops believed everything that taser told them. From Lava for Good and the team that brought you Bone Valley comes a story about what happened when a multibillion-dollar company dedicated itself to one visionary mission. This is Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated. I get right back there and it's bad.

It's really, really, really bad. Listen to new episodes of Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Binge episodes 1, 2, and 3 on May 21st and episodes 4, 5, and 6 on June 4th. Add free at Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. Binge episodes one, two, and three on May 21st and episodes four, five, and six on June 4th. Ad free at Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. Over the past six years of making my true crime podcast hell and gone, I've learned one thing. No town is too small for murder. I'm Katherine Townsend. I've received

hundreds of messages from people across the country begging for help with unsolved murders. I was calling about the murder of my husband at the cold case. They've never found her. And it haunts me to this day. The murderer is still out there. Every week on Hell and Gone Murder Line, I dig into a new case,

bringing the skills I've learned as a journalist and private investigator to ask the questions no one else is asking. Police really didn't care to even try. She was still somebody's mother. She was still somebody's daughter. She was still somebody's sister. There's so many questions that we've never gotten any kind of answers for. If you have a case you'd like me to look into, call the Hell and Gone Murder Line at 678-744-6145. Listen to Hell and Gone Murder Line on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The OGs of uncensored motherhood are back and badder than ever. I'm Erica.

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You actually sent it? Listen to the Good Moms Bad Choices podcast every Wednesday on the Black Effect Podcast Network, the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you go to find your podcasts. Terrible news out yesterday evening. Let's put this up there on the screen. U.S. personnel wounded in this attack against a U.S. base in Iraq. So the details are actually very scant. Unfortunately, it just says at least five U.S. personnel were injured in this attack against a military base,

U.S. officials said, as the Middle East braces for a possible new wave of attacks by Iran and its allies following last week's killing of senior members of a militant group by Hamas in Hezbollah. There were two Katyusha rockets that were fired at Al-Assad Air Base in western Iraq, according to two Iraqi officials. Iraqi security sources said that rockets fell inside the base. It was, quote, unclear whether this was linked to attacks by Iran. The Iranian-connected group, Qatab Hezbollah, in Iraq. Ryan has claimed responsibility for the attack. And the big question remains, is this the precursor to a larger movement by the Iranian regime in response

to both the United States and to Israel after that assassination of the Hamas leader in the middle of Tehran? But as of now, the region continues to boil, and this is just the first sign, perhaps, of what's to come. And it's a good sign of how inflamed the region is, that you can't tell whether these types of attacks actually presage part of the coming Iranian retaliation, or are just part of the bubbling conflagration that has been kicked off since October 7th. You also had Hezbollah launch some drone attacks on the north of Israel. Again, are those just repetitions of attacks that have been happening for weeks and months now, or does this presage something bigger? You also don't know whether or not Iran directed this Iraqi militia to attack this U.S. base or gave a green light to it.

And one problem that Israel is walking itself into through its assassination campaign, which the US is also involved in in the sense that they also assassinated Qasem Soleimani. So Qasem Soleimani was the guy that basically had a lock on all of these militias across the region and became a boogeyman. Trump assassinated him. After that, the grip that the Iranians had on all of these proxies is loosened just a little bit.

Like that's how organizations work when you have such a kind of charismatic leader putting things. For decades, he'd been putting this structure together. Then you get a new guy in place. He gets assassinated. And each time the grip that Iran has on these proxies loosens a little bit. And maybe you'd say, well, that's a good thing because Iran is evil and they're doing dastardly things with these proxies. These proxies have their own capacity. And so cutting the leash might not actually be to the benefit of the U.S. or to Israel because now we don't even know for sure. Is this Iraqi militia now just fed up at Iran's inability to protect the leaders of the Axis of Resistance organizations? The difficult thing is we have no idea if this is directed by the regime or not.

I mean, regardless, we've got five guys who were injured. Don't forget, we had three U.S. service members who were killed in that base in Jordan on the Syrian border. It does, of course, raise the question of why are all these people over there exactly in the first place? Why are American troops getting hurt in Iraq in 2024? Yeah, in 2024, more than 21 years after the initial invasion. Yeah, maybe somebody should be asking that question. Of course, most people just continue to go on with their lives. Or Syria, for that matter. Yeah, I mean, Syria, that's a whole other one.

You know where they're not getting attacked? Where is that? Afghanistan. Oh, right. Oh, because we're not there. Oh, right. Interesting how that works, right? Well, you know, the U.S. Secretary of State, of course, has very inspiring words and language

after U.S. service members have been confirmed to have been injured in this attack. One apparently has been very seriously injured. Let's take a listen to what Secretary of State Blinken had to say. A few words on the situation in the Middle East because it is a critical moment. We are engaged in intense diplomacy, pretty much around the clock, with a very simple message. All parties must refrain from escalation. All parties must take steps to ease tensions. Escalation is not in anyone's interests. It will only lead to more conflict, more violence, more insecurity. It's also critical that we break this cycle by reaching a ceasefire in Gaza. That, in turn, will unlock possibilities for more enduring calm, not only in Gaza itself,

but in other areas where the conflict could spread. So for the United States, for many other countries, both in the region and beyond, this is our focus. And what it comes down to really is all parties finding ways to come to an agreement, not look for reasons to delay or to say no. It is urgent that all parties make the right choices in the hours and days ahead. It is urgent they must make the right choices in all the days ahead, he says, as the U.S. continues to flood the region with U.S. service members. Let's put this up there on the screen.

This was the Iranians, Iranian media taking responsibility and kind of touting this attack on U.S. troops. The two explosions reported near Iraq's Al-Assad Arab base, which houses American service members. The IRGC says that Iran-backed militant groups have launched the rocket attack against the U.S. base. So the fact that the IRGC basically taking responsibility for the attack does tell us a little bit about, at the very least, you know, they want to appear connected.

President Biden reared his ugly head, as they some say. Put this up there on the screen. Came out of nowhere. He's in the dungeon in the White House Situation Room. Tweeted out this photo. He says, earlier, the vice president and I were briefed in the Situation Room on developments in the Middle East. We received updates on threats posed by Iran and its proxies, diplomatic efforts to de-escalate regional tensions, and preparations to support Israel should it be attacked again. Everybody really focus in on that one. We also discuss the steps we are taking to defend our forces and respond to any attack against our personnel in a manner and a place of our choosing. So that is always the Biden line, a manner and a place of our choosing.

Doesn't mean very much, but what it does mean is that there are significant U.S. assets in the Middle East. Here we have actually a map. Let's put this up there, please, just to realize the sheer scale of everything that we have here from an amphitheatrist group, the USS Roosevelt, the USS Bull Kelly. You've got the Roosevelt Carrier Strike Group over there, the USS Russell, the USS Michael Murphy, the USS Cole, the USS Laboon, all of that basically poised all around the region. Also, both in a place where they can protect Israel should they need to, to use guided missile destroyers and other U.S. assets to shoot down anything incoming from Iran. You've also got them on the other side, basically just hanging out right next to Iran should they need to also interdict anything there on top of the continuing,

you know, Houthi mission that happens with Yemen. So the situation is not good. You basically got the entire, you know, Middle East surrounded there by U.S. naval assets. You don't even want to know how much this one is costing us, right, Ryan? Every minute. Just think about that. Yeah, I mean, this is what people don't get in terms of the sheer dollars. Like, just think about that you've got a U.S. aircraft carrier alone. I mean, it's like a floating city. Do you know how much money it costs just to make it move a single foot and now thousands of feet and then feed everybody on board and resupply this thing and keep it going, you know, basically in continuum? And that's what we have signed up for for the last 10 months. I would

venture to say it's probably cost North over $100 billion, probably just in the last 10 months. If we think about continuous operations, we know that it costs a billion dollars in a single day just to shoot down those Iranian missiles on that were launched on Tel Aviv or on Israel in retaliation for the embassy attack But yeah, I mean, what do you think of this? It's it's it's asymmetric because the weapons that the Iraqi militia or Iran or Hezbollah or Hamas fire off our dirt cheap compared to what two thousand we caught Yeah, same with the Houthis. The Houthis are spending in the thousands of dollars for some of these rockets and are sometimes going after drones that are worth like millions of dollars. The asymmetry is completely unsustainable. We can sustain it for a

very long time, but it's not indefinitely sustainable. Now those Blinken comments, a lot of people read his comments as directed largely at Israel, because Iran, the US can say what it wants to Iran. And, you know, we can offer carrots, we can offer sticks about what the response is going to look like. But ultimately, we don't have an enormous amount of leverage over what Iran is going to do. Right. We do have leverage over what Israel is going to do. We do have leverage over what Israel is going to do. But if you listen to Blinken there, and you follow his body language,

you would think that we had zero leverage whatsoever. That we're just out here after three days of not sleeping just pleading with Netanyahu to just please, please stop doing all this stuff that you're doing, please It's not in anybody's entry right and he keeps saying Escalation is not in anybody's interests that that assertion has just been made Over the last several months without being backed up by evidence. There is increasing understanding among the global diplomatic community that Netanyahu and a lot of elements

of the Israeli government do actually believe that escalation is in their interest. And not for any obviously rational, like, here's how we're going to win a regional war against Iran, but that the trajectory that they have put themselves on due to their response to October 7th has them headed towards international isolation and economic collapse internally and political collapse and anarchy and chaos, as we saw over the last couple of weeks. And so therefore you need to flip the table. That's the closest that you get to a rational argument for why a regional war would actually be in the interest of Israel, that you need to just absolutely reset everything. And then sifting through the rubble and the ashes

several years later, maybe people will forget what happened in the months after October 7th. It's basically the U.S. 9-11 strategy, which they were warned repeatedly. But in the moment, it makes complete rational sense for Bibi Netanyahu to escalate, escalate, escalate, escalate the war. You also have from the Financial Times, I just read this morning, that the new president of Iran says, quote, Iran will definitely retaliate against Israel for the killing of Haniyeh. And said a response time for crimes and insolence as the U.S. continues to send its reinforcements. So we are definitely on a trajectory, which is not good right now. And for people who haven't filed this, this is a new president who ran on closer ties with the United States.

I know. Any diplomacy that gets the United States and any of Israel's adversaries closer to dealmaking, Netanyahu considers to be a threat. And that's why, you know, AIPAC is one of the lead opponents of the Iran nuclear deal, for instance, and pushed to have that blown up. Yeah, it's very troubling. There was also, the U.S. finds itself in knots because it really doesn't know how to respond to any idea of, quote, unquote, Iranian self-defense. So here we had a reporter that asked the U.S. State Department, does Iran have a right to respond for self-defense? If you continually acknowledge on the Israeli side, let's take a listen to what he had to say. Do they have the right to respond? I mean, is that part of self-defense?

So as I just answered that question. I just answered that question in response to what he got from Simon. A right is one thing. Taking steps that are productive and are conducive to the interests of their people, that are conducive to the interests of the broader region are another question. And in no way would a retaliatory action by Iran in any way serve the interests of the Iranian people or the broader region. And that's precisely why I'm asking, because you mentioned the word right. So you are acknowledging that they do have the right to respond. No, I did not acknowledge that.

I acknowledged the question. Okay. Then let me ask you, if this was, let's say, happened in any of the Western capitals, wouldn't they be sort of obligated to respond? I'm not going to deal with a hypothetical side. Okay, all right. We'll deal with something real. Last week, a week ago, yesterday, Sunday, an Iran rocket hit, or maybe intentional, hit a small town of Medjil Shams, a Syrian town, Syrian citizens, and so on.

And you said that Israel had a right to defend itself. I'm not you personally, but I'm saying, yeah. So what's different? I mean, you know, everybody was that all, everyone was saying, Israel has a right to defend itself. Why doesn't Iran have a right to defend itself when the guest house, you know, I don't want to make comparisons, but it's like the guest house in London or maybe Blair House or anything. I mean, something that really touched the sovereignty of Iran. So I take the point of your question, Saeed. It is not in any way, however, useful at all for anyone in the region, for Iran to consider taking such steps because of the risk, as I said,

that this could potentially get out of control. And that's the message we will continue to impress on them. He is not acknowledging their right to self-defense. Now, I think this whole right to self-defense thing is annoying because, like, who bestows a right to a sovereign state? Nobody, okay? The legitimacy, I think, of its population, those are the people who confer the right.

The way that you check that quote-unquote right is where you have deterrence and you have enough weapons to make sure and to try and guide their defense. So there is no such thing as a right to self-defense. There's the ability to have self-defense and to try and guarantee that ability. And I think, I mean, this is where I look at with Iran. This is a blustering nation, which for decades has held itself up as this check against Israel, against the West. I mean, what self-respecting nation can tolerate a guest being blown up in the middle of their most secure compound and the beginning of a presidential inauguration?

It's not possible as a self-respecting nation to tolerate that. Now, at the same time, they don't want to be suicidal, so they have to check and think about. But I would caution everyone to think that just because they don't respond right now does not mean that they don't have the ability or the fortitude and the foresight to actually set the stage where they can cause real problems. For example, Russia, as Sergei Shogun, the former defense minister, is spotted in Iran immediately after this attack. It comes out that the Iranians are likely to get their hands on the S-400 missile system.

I mean, this is a real issue, okay? Like, this is sophisticated technology that the Russians don't just hand out to everybody. You can ask NATO planners and others about how well that system can work when it wants to. And that's just another both alliance between the Iranians and the Russians. It creates more problems for any future, quote unquote, attack by Israel or by potential conflagration with the United States and just ratchets up, you know, how much worse the conflict would be when it already would be a complete and a total nightmare. So what do you think? Yeah. And what makes it hard for us to analyze it here in the United States is that we are bathed in this kind of propaganda that Iran is the most evil country on earth and run by complete

madmen. And it makes it very difficult to understand this fact, which is that Ayatollah Khomeini and also this new kind of US-leaning president are both very reluctant to take major risks. But just saying that just clashes so kind of flagrantly with the idea that, well, I thought this is a bloodthirsty madman that just wants Hitler-like domination of the world. And the only thing holding them back is Israel and the United States constraining them. And so people who are watching Iran think that there might be a possibility here that, to your point, the longer delay we see in their response, the worse it might end up being. But on the other hand, there's a possibility that they do not take a severe response, that they do something similar to what they did last time for the geopolitical reasons that you laid out. They are now

successfully positioning themselves globally as a rational actor in contrast to the unhinged, irrational Israeli actor in the region. And so if they go over the top and break international law in their response to what Israel did to Hania inside Tehran, then they upset that balance that they've been able to strike. And they like this new kind of global perception that they're a sane and normal country and Israel's completely out of control. So they have a lot of incentive to actually keep that going. If they can keep it going, it makes it easier then for Russia to send the kinds of weapons systems that you're talking about. It makes it easier for China to be more tightly invested in the economy. And the more

that they are seen as a rogue state, the harder it is for Russia and China to kind of bring them into the fold. And then the final thing that I worry the most about is here, the sheer hubris of the American system and the American foreign policy elite to just think, yeah, this is no problem. You know, hundreds of billions of dollars. Cool. Don't worry about it. Two front war. What a joke. Of course, we can handle that. We can handle that. Aaron Mate flagged this clip of President Biden speaking just, I think, last October and scoffing at the idea that America was not prepared for a two-front war. Let's take a listen. Are the wars in Israel and Ukraine more than the United States can take on at the same time? We're the United States of America, for God's sake. The most powerful nation in the history,

not in the world, in the history of the world. The history of the world. We can take care of both of these and still maintain our overall international defense. We have the capacity to do this, and we have an obligation to. We are the essential nation to Paris, France, the former Secretary of State. And if we don't, who does? I believe he was trying to reach for indispensable nation. That does not age well, if we think a little bit about it. That was in the hubris of the Clinton administration.

And that is where his age just is so grating to anybody who has lived through two failed wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. To see the strain that the two-front war of Iraq and Afghanistan put on the US military there at the time, we're not even fighting like real peer competitors. The America that exists in his head is gone. And it's largely gone because of people like him with limitations. Already we face, look, I've been tracking the situation and continue to track it almost daily in Ukraine. Well, it turns out that the Ukrainian, the average age, 45, 50, starting to get acknowledged. Oh, we've sent F-16s over there. That's going to turn the tide. Nope, I just checked this morning. A strategic town in the east is literally on the brink of falling. Ukrainian manpower disaster. So just because you can pour money into this thing and try and appear

tough and feel cool doesn't mean that the Russian Colossus, which basically can produce weapons for one-tenth the cost and has basically unlimited manpower through its vast reserves on top of a total war economy, can't quite easily overcome that in the long run. Yes, in the short term, you cost them some damage. But I mean, if anything, we battle-tested the Russian military. We helped them reform its economy for total war production. Who's the loser here? It's definitely them. It's not them. We certainly did the opposite of degrading the Russian military. The Russian military of 2024 and 2025 is much superior to the one of 2021 and 2022. Right. And it's just, when we think about that, we think about here, you know, with the continued situation with Iran, the speed in

which this can get out of control is just one that we should never underestimate. Perhaps some good news just came across the wire. Russian President Putin has asked the Supreme Leader for, quote, a restrained response to Israel's killing. Exactly. So this really backs up exactly what you're saying. Exactly. Russia and China see this as a way to make the U.S. and Israel look insane. Like the aggressor states. And that they can no longer responsibly run a hegemonic kind of global operation. Yes. All right. Well, that certainly does kind of tell us. And we're certainly helping every step of the way in creating that.

Continued U.S. decline in position for us in the world. Five of our service members injured. And can anybody credibly answer the question, for what? No, they can't. So everyone's just going to memory hole it. And we'll continue to move on. I know a lot of cops, and they get asked all the time, have you ever had to shoot your gun? Sometimes the answer is yes.

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And then me too happened. And then everybody else wanted to get pissed off because the white said it was okay. Problem. My oldest daughter, her first day in ninth grade, and I called to ask how I was doing. She was like, oh dad, all they was doing was talking about your thing in class. I ruined my baby's first day of high school. And slumflower. What turns me on is when a man

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accusing it of, quote, illegally cementing its dominance by paying other companies like Apple and Samsung billions of dollars a year to have Google automatically handle search queries on their smartphones and web browsers. Google is a monopolist. It has acted as one to maintain its monopoly.

So what this means potentially, now, of course, let's be honest, like this is going to make its way through the US court system and it will take probably a decade before any of this is resolved. Nonetheless, the ruling by the federal judge on the most significant antitrust case against probably the largest company and emblem of a quote unquote monopolist in the entire business, does both mean a significant setback for Amazon and online shopping, for Facebook and Instagram, whenever it comes to social media, the ownership of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp for future acquisitions and driving company behavior. This is both a bipartisan effort that was done

by the Trump administration, continued by the Biden administration. And the fact is, is that the ruling only sets the stage now for what some sort of future, quote unquote, unwinding may look like, because he did not include remedies in his decision. There are all kinds of interesting possibilities. The idea could be that Google Search and AdSense might have to remain its own company. They would have to divest itself, perhaps, of YouTube, the platform that we're talking about here right now. I mean, we haven't seen significant changes and actions like that in the US economy in literally decades. And it's something that a lot of anti-monopoly activists, people like Matt Stoller and others, have been pushing for quite some time.

Yeah, and the case on the search side is pretty straightforward. What Google has been doing has been paying companies like Mozilla and Apple to make its search engine the default search engine. And quite simply, the judge said that's illegal, that that is cementing your monopoly. You can't do that. That it has disincentivized these other companies from fostering competition, and it has allowed Google to turn into a crappy search engine because they don't have any competition. And I think anybody who uses Google, which is everybody basically, can attest that it's not as good as it used to be, and that becoming a monopoly has predictably done what people predict would happen to monopolies.

The quality of the product gets lousier. The amount of money that they extract from the different clients that they work with, advertisers, etc., just goes up and up and up. And consumers and small businesses are harmed by it. Yeah. It's really interesting. I mean, here, I'm going to read a little bit from Matt Stoller on his big sub stack. And he just says, today is a big day for American business. 15 years after it was first investigated, search giant Google is finally going to be held accountable for unfairly thwarting competition. He says, I'm going to discuss the complaint against Google, why it lost, the next steps,

and what this case means for American business going forward. But make no mistake, the decision is huge for Google, the web, and the revival of monopolization law against giants across the economy. It's a big deal for anti-monopoly, as he talks about. What he really discusses is that the crux of the case is that paying not only Apple, but LG, Motorola, Samsung, AT&T, T-Mobile, Mozilla, Opera, Verizon to make sure it is the only search engine that consumers ever saw. You also note that Google allegedly, according to the judge, destroyed evidence actually that was due for its case. And the judge noted that this was obviously going to contribute not only to his decision,

to the behavior of the company, but also urged future judges and others to keep that into consideration, the behavior of the company. I mean, what's also been interesting is to see the competitors of Google discuss this. Rumble, for example, a video platform which we also post on and which we're part to partner with via Locals, know, the CEO says, today's decision confirms what everybody knows. Google is a monopolist. Rumble has been making this argument for years in multiple antitrust lawsuits against Google, both currently and ongoing. You also saw Bing celebrate this decision because Bing has effectively been not even allowed to compete, you know, even if it wanted to, to try and become the default search engine on other mobile platforms or with other browsers out there.

And when you think about the sheer scale of like the vertical integration of the Google empire, this just shows us that the idea of the whole pay for play that really exists in a lot of these companies and with social media as well, doing away with that would allow a more competitive ecosystem, perhaps, you know, to rise. Although at this point, I'm not sure, you know, the damage may all be done. Yeah, it might be.

And we might just get overcome by China and others that have actual innovation, like inspiring economies. The remedy phase is what comes next. And that will then be up to either the Harris administration or the Trump administration and his stolen rights and his peace. He doesn't have confidence in either of them to pursue this as vigorously as the Biden administration did, because this is Jonathan Cantor pursuing this from the Department of Justice, who is just a massive enemy of big tech and other monopolists.

And then, of course, he's an ally of Lena Kahn and her very strong FTC, who Kamala Harris has still to this day not said that she will stand behind in the face of billionaire pressure from Diller and from Reid Hoffman, urging her to get rid of them. The billionaire class, which is under the gun by the FTC and Cantor at the DOJ, is at the same time giving money to the Harris administration and asking them to then roll back on their prosecutions of these antitrust cases. Now, should we note that there is some bipartisan nature to this. This case started under the Trump administration, and it was then taken to completion by Cantor and the DOJ. The concern is that a new Department of Justice head who would not be Cantor, if they push him out, would go to Google and say, look,

it's the remedy phase here. You're going to appeal this. It's going to go on for years. Let's just come to a settlement here. You will promise to do good behavior in the future. Give us a couple hundred million dollars, a couple billion dollars, whatever it is. And this will all just go away rather than breaking it up and potentially creating a playing field that would allow for innovation again. Because if you think about the amount of innovation that the tech sector had from the 2000s into the mid-2010s, it was exponential. And then it just flattened off as Zuckerberg, Bezos, Apple, and the rest of them just got complete control of everything. Every new startup that came along no longer was interested in becoming a company that was serving people.

It wasn't even interested in becoming an IPO. All they wanted to get their 10x was to get bought by Facebook or Google or somebody else. You just threaten to be like a successful company that's innovating, and then you would get bought off and you'd become a multimillionaire, and then you would go do that again after your lockout phase is over. That is the opposite of any type of economic innovation. And it's not surprising that then TikTok sweeps in with a new algorithm and just takes everything over. So there you go. It just shows us both the holes of where everything is and also what the landmark decision means there for Google. I also wanted to give an update, you know, just on the economy. Things have actually rapidly changed since yesterday, as we said. So just in the morning,

we brought everybody yesterday the news that they're the largest single day drop in the Nikkei since 1987. Let's put this up there on the screen. Is this 1987 all over again? There were all these questions. Well, it turns out it dropped by, I think, 12% in a single day. It also, while we were all sleeping, guess what, guys? It rose by 10% after its worst one-day drop, which led to the global rout. And the yen was, quote, giving back some of the gains that it made on Tuesday morning. So it does look like there's a significant amount of volatility. It also, look, I don't yet know where the market will close at the end of the day, but both Dow and S&P 500 futures are up a little bit despite their 3% loss or so yesterday and the 1,000 point drop in the Dow Jones. Just to say that there's a

lot of whipsawing going around. People don't exactly know, you know, people don't exactly know where this market will end up and what the fundamentals were driving. So in Japan, you know, for example, part of what triggered this was a lot of fear over U.S. slowdown and then consumer spending, which they should be real about because we have seen the bad unemployment report here in the U.S. too. Apparently there was a lot of, there were a lot of traders that were doing something with the Japanese yen in which they were borrowing low interest dollars here in the U.S., then buying high interest stuff in Japan and taking the spread as profit. The Japanese traders, I believe,

were trying to drive some of that out. So there's a lot of stuff going on behind the scenes, which is difficult kind of to wrap our heads around. But I think in general, we can probably say, Ryan, that when we have this amount of chaos, it's just not good. It's not good for U.S. financial markets, for the U.S. system. In fact, U.S. retail brokers, let's put this up there, please, on the screen, actually had massive outages yesterday because so many people were trying to check their portfolios, including Charles Schwab, Vanguard, and Fidelity. I mean, those are three of the largest consumer retail brokers. I mean, at the same time, so look, I agree this should not have gone down. They inadvertently probably save people like billions

of dollars by just stopping them from panic selling. Because imagine if you panic sold yesterday at the bottom. And now today, you're seeing, especially if you're like invested in some Japanese ETF or something like, oh my God, I got to go. I got to sell them and bounce it back 10% after you were sleeping. So just let that be a lesson. You should never sell, you know, whatever. We should never panic sell. You should always try and think rationally about these things. You're probably going to get taken to the cleaners anytime you try to be a professional at this. Right.

Yeah. In general, you're not a day trader. And even the real question or the real answer is that even the day traders, as we learned with this whole Japan situation, they don't even know what the hell they're doing. So it's all kind of, as Crystal likes to say, the graph of rich people's feelings. It's all about the line. Like, if you're a day trader when the market is going up, then most of your trades are going to work out well for you. If you're a day trader when the market's going down, you're going to lose most of your trades. And people just

get a sense of their own importance. You know, I was a stockbroker like 20 years ago. Really? We can talk about that some other time. An actual stockbroker. Series 7, 6, 7. So he could call you up and you would place a trade for me? Yeah, I could have. Why wouldn't I just do that on E-Trade? Oh, oops. Okay. That's part of the stock trade. You wouldn't have gotten my expertise.

Yeah. Oh, of course. Right. That's what you're paying the 2% premium fee. And the 2% in and 1% out. Yeah, of course. That's what the fee is for. The Trump campaign is trying to capitalize on this, calling it the, quote, Kamala crash.

Here's what they had to say. Here we go. Look at them go down. What some would call history in the mystery. Don't say that. We have never been down 1,000 points ever, not even intraday on the NASDAQ. Here's what they had to say. It's called Bidenomics. The Dow fell more than 600 points Friday on a weaker than expected jobs report. 5%, Meta 6%, Amazon 6%, Apple 9%. Bidenomics is working. Fears of a recession began after Friday's disappointing July jobs report. Bidenomics is working.

A rise like that is historically a sign that a recession is imminent. This is bidonomics. What you're seeing right now, the stock market is what Americans have been feeling for the last three years. It's just a manifestation of it right now. All that is called bidonomics. All right, let's see if that sticks, Ryan. I'm not sure yet if it will, especially since the stocks went ahead and rebounded. Can I just say, Trump has been saying that he deserves credit for the stock market's rise during a Biden administration.

But it's actually Kamala that deserves the blame for the crash. I like that. I like that. Inconsistency is a hallmark of a good politician. All right, let's go ahead to the UK. I know a lot of cops, and they get asked all the time, have you ever had to shoot your gun? Sometimes the answer is yes. But there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be no. Across the country, cops called this taser the revolution. But not everyone was convinced it was that simple. Cops believed everything that taser told them.

From Lava for Good and the team that brought you Bone Valley comes a story about what happened when a multi-billion dollar company dedicated itself to one visionary mission. This is Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated. I get right back there and it's bad. It's really, really, really bad. Listen to new episodes of Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Binge episodes 1, 2, and 3 on May 21st and episodes 4, 5, and 6 on June 4th. Add free at Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. Over the past six years of making my true crime podcast hell and gone, I've learned one thing. No town is too small for murder. I'm Katherine Townsend. I've received hundreds of messages from people across the country begging for help with unsolved murders. I was calling about the murder of my husband at the cold case.

They've never found her. And it haunts me to this day. The murderer is still out there. Every week on Hell and Gone Murder Line, I dig into a new case, bringing the skills I've learned as a journalist and private investigator to ask the questions no one else is asking. Police really didn't care to even try. She was still somebody's mother. She was still somebody's daughter. She was still somebody's sister.

There's so many questions that we've never gotten any kind of answers for. If you have a case you'd like me to look into, call the Hell and Gone line at six, seven, eight, seven, four, four, six, one, four, five. Listen to hell and gone murder line on the I heart radio app,

Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The OGs of uncensored motherhood are back and badder than ever. I'm Erica and I'm Mila. And we're the hosts of the good moms, bad choices podcast brought to you by the black effect podcast network. Every Wednesday, historically men talk too much.

And women have quietly listened. And all that stops here. If you like witty women, then this is your tribe. With guests like Corinne Steffens. I've never seen so many women protect predatory men. And then me too happened. And then everybody else wanted to get pissed off

because the white said it was okay. Problem. My oldest daughter, her first day in ninth grade, when I called to ask how I was doing. She was like, oh, dad, all you were doing was talking about your thing in class. I ruined my baby's first day of high school. And slumflower.

What turns me on is when a man sends me money. Like, I feel the moisture between my legs when a man sends me money. I'm like, oh my God, it's go time. You actually sent it? Listen to the Good Moms, Bad Choices podcast every Wednesday on the Black Effect Podcast Network, the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you go to find your podcasts. There's been chaos erupting in the

United Kingdom with riots over immigration, far right and immigrant protesters clashing in the streets quite literally. Let's go ahead and put some of the video, our team assembled here. This is just some examples of what's been happening. I will tell everybody how this all kicked off, but in the meantime, what you're watching here is a group of protesters surround a Holiday Inn Express. That hotel allegedly was holding asylum seekers that have been coming to Great Britain. This then erupted into literal street violence with flags and others of the so-called English Defense League and protesters. You then simultaneously saw activated immigrant

protesters who took to the streets. There you go. You can see that in front of you. This has spread to multiple kind of working class cities all across the UK of where immigration and tensions between the population has been high for quite some time. And if we think about going all the way back to Brexit and the impetus for that, yeah, here you see people literally getting beaten up in the middle of the street. It's unclear exactly who or what is happening here. Then, of course, a time-honored tradition, looting literally happening in the middle of these

riots. Lots of the so-called anti-immigrant protesters also just making sure they stop by a grocery store and take whatever they can for free. I'm not sure I'd be taking English chocolate, but hey, that's just me. So what do you think, Ryan? And so you're also now seeing anti-racist protesters, like explicitly anti-racist. Basically, versions of Antifa over in England are now showing up and doing battle with the far right protesters across England. This all started when, I guess, a little more than a week ago, three girls were killed at a Taylor Swift. Yeah, why don't we put this up there? The Financial Times is a pretty good breakdown.

Just go ahead. You can continue. Yeah, so three girls were killed at basically a Taylor Swift event. It's like a yoga studio or something that was playing Taylor Swift songs. Guy shows up, kills three of them. Well, not from Rwanda. I think he was born in the UK. But of Rwandan descent. So immediately, it starts disseminating on Twitter and elsewhere that this was an undocumented, illegal immigrant that came in and killed,

that was a Muslim illegal immigrant that came in and killed these three girls. Turns out, is a person was born in Wales from Rwandan parents and was Christian, actually. And the UK took the rare step of publishing all the information about the suspect. It said, look, it's not true. This is not, it didn't matter. Side note here, if you go back and read the histories of almost every famous riot throughout American history, but also European history too, even the storming of the Bastille They all start with usually

Misinformation is not necessarily the right word but rumors that are incorrect Yeah, and spread out of control when they when they stormed the Bastille. Mm-hmm. They expected to find like hundreds of political prisoners who've been abused by the king, and they found like six completely insane people, basically. I mean, I'm oversimplifying here. They're like, well, nevertheless, let's have a revolution anyway. So you're seeing this demand for Twitter and others to stop spreading all this hateful misinformation, which, okay, let's don't spread hateful stuff. Great. But even before social media, whatever it is, you go back and normally these riots are the result of just word of mouth. And getting the

correct information out there didn't matter. Because what matters is whether or not you're on a tinderbox. Right, it's a powder keg. UK is on a powder keg. It's on the one hand, blowback from the British Empire, like going out and propping yourself up for hundreds of years based on raping and pillaging around the world, and then taking the refugees from those parts of the country and putting them in your poorest districts back in England, that process is kind of playing itself out without British imperial power anymore. Yeah, it's a very odd situation. And there's also an economic thing to consider here,

is a lot of Americans don't understand how poor British people actually are. British people's GDP per capita is lower than the state of Mississippi. If they were a state in the U.S., they'd be the 51st poorest state. Everybody thinks about London. It's like, well, yeah, that's where the financial and rich elite live, you know, where the king and the queen. The rest of the country is like global elite. Yeah. If you've ever been actually spent time in real England, UK, Scotland, you know, not in the major cities, it's a very poor country. You actually see something like how can you be an empire for so long? And I can, as you know, there's nothing I love more than dunking on Europeans. That said,

if we got back to this, the real like, and I think there's a lot of dangers here for America. And this is part of the reason why we decided to do this story is perhaps this could be a precursor to what things are here. When you bring in a bunch of very low-educated, low-skilled workers, and then you also have very stagnant economic growth on top of literal assimilation problems, then you basically set up the situation where we have right now, where you've had immigrant enclaves and neighborhoods which don't feel British, even though they may be British citizens or UK citizens in name. And then you have the population itself, which is very angry both about that lack of assimilation, the lack of cultural meshing, on top of the economic problems of literally feeling as if you are in a stagnant country,

which has not delivered for you for quite some time. And that's where I think the powder keg comes from more than anything, is the lack of outlook of growth and of potential in the UK. And if we think about the economic situation now going into this, these people were crushed by energy prices after the war in Ukraine.

Obviously, Brexit, even though I supported Brexit, Brexit turned out to be kind of a nightmare just in terms of the execution of that. The economic prospects of the country, part of the reason that they took it out on the Conservative Party is they're like, hey, you guys are just bandits for the rich. And so they're giving the Labour Party, you know, this massive victory that it's had. But the Labour victory does not paper over

the social tensions, which have been brewing now in the UK for quite some time. We've seen stuff like this pop off in Ireland, too. I don't think it's an accident that it happens at a time of economic stagnation and, frankly, like decades of mismanagement of their own immigration policy. Look, they're another country. They can do whatever they want. I'm just saying I wouldn't personally have done it the way that they did. Yeah. And the conservative government did not actually even restrict immigration.

Yeah. Well, that was a huge thing with Nigel Farage and with a lot of the UK rightists is that they were like, why exactly should we support conservatives? You guys are not even restricting immigration. Remember, their asylum situation too is very different. I mean, yeah, we have major border problems here with Venezuela and all the people coming from basically everywhere all across South America, on top of anybody who can buy a plane ticket to Mexico. But they also have had now, what, a 10-year sustained asylum nightmare with the Syrian civil war, with Afghans, the whole Germany situation in 2015. And they've had major flare-ups. And this was a major

contribution literally to Brexit, was not wanting to be party to EU refugee policy. So I think that what this sets up is, well, A, we saw the death of the Conservative Party and that kind of liberal immigration policy, that's definitely, that's over. Now though, and this is something funny, I think that the Euro-rightists have significantly overplayed their hand because they don't have free speech in England. In England, the major commentators are all calling for Tommy Robinson, who's the former head of the defense league. He's kind of the one, he's like the king of protesters. He's not even in the country right now. But if we see how the government is responding to this, this is one of the biggest surveillance states in the world, GCHQ. And they have no, they have no, literally no First Amendment, no freedom of speech.

They're, all the leading European columnists are calling for his deplatforming off Twitter and for his prosecution. They're going to throw him in jail. I, I genuinely, I don't think he should ever return to England. Like, he is going to prison 100%. And over there with their home office, they don't even need a pretext. They can just imprison you forever. Keir Starmer alluded to it. Well, let's get to that. So we have a statement here from the Prime Minister, Keir Starmer. Let's take a listen to what he had to say.

I had a COBRA meeting this morning, which was an opportunity that I took to thank the police for their work over the last few days, to express my support for the police officers who have been injured and the communities impacted by this mindless thuggery. There were a number of actions that came out of the meeting. The first is we will have a standing army of specialist officers, public duty officers, so that we'll have enough officers to deal with this where we need them. The second is we'll ramp up criminal justice. There have already been hundreds of arrests. Some have appeared in court this morning. I've asked for early consideration of the earliest naming and identification of those involved in the process who will feel the full force of the law. And thirdly, I've been absolutely clear that the criminal law applies online as well as offline. And I'm assured that

that's the approach that is being taken. So you saw a little bit of that already. I mean, I think the English, you have quite literally the Labour government in a super majority in power. Then you've got one of the most oppressive governments in Europe when they want to be. And you don't have to ask me, it's funny, ask the Islamic population of England what it was like in 2006. They can throw your ass in prison, or they can put you under house arrest for no reason and place you under surveillance. And they can even revoke your citizenship if they want to with no trial, as they have done on multiple occasions. So I think they're going to have a similar situation to what we had here, where they're going to use their security state apparatus,

architected after the war on terror, and basically turn it onto their own right-wing protesters that are in the country. So police state just seems even more likely in the UK after this. And Starmer said that they were going to make sure that there was accountability for people who instigated this on social media. And yes, Tommy Robinson, I think he's in Corsica on vacation or something, but he's been, you know, weeding up a storm.

Yeah, he's been tweeting. And he's been sharing a lot of the stuff that, no question he's instigated it. The question is, you know, should that be a prosecutable offense? As Americans, you and I would say obviously not. Obviously not. In England, they're like, obviously it should be.

Yeah, yeah. They think we're crazy. Yeah, he's been to jail like four or five times already, right? Yeah, that's right. He has been to prison before. So this is one where, look, I think it's going to be, at the same time, you know, there's a lot of American rightists that are kind of seizing onto this. I just think my only caution— Oh, yeah, they're saying, like, they're trying to justify the rioting.

We live in such an amazing, like, doom loop. Look, rioting is bad. I think we should all just probably stick with that. The other thing that I would urge Americans is it's a very different country. It's totally different. It's tiny. Their immigrant population, by and large, is very different from our at least legal immigrant population. Now, don't get me wrong. I do think it's crazy that 8 to 10 million people are here illegally.

But they don't even have anywhere close to the same level of generational problems and establishing these immigrant enclaves. And they have major clashes over religion. England also doesn't have the whole melting pot mythos. I was going to say, I mean, Margaret Thatcher very famously said like America is, you know, what is it? America is built on an idea. Europe is built on history, something to that effect. But it's true. I mean, it literally is a population and place that has all been stratified by like cultural affinity and language going back like a thousand years. Very different story to, you know, to assimilate into. On top of stagnating economy, they don't have anywhere close to the same level of GDP growth, you know, that we have or the mythos. So you take those two things, you're setting yourself up for a real clash here with the

immigrant population. So regardless, I do think that the rightists and all these others, the riots are a precursor potentially to some immigrant backlash by conservative voters who lost faith in the conservatives and they would go towards somebody like Nigel Farage. But in the interim, with the labor government so solidly in power, the almost certain outcome is that all these people are just going to be thrown in prison. Massive roundup. Yeah. Yeah. That seems like most likely what's going to happen. Yeah.

If you're participating in those riots on any side, like, there's going to be cameras. Good luck with the masks. Actually, yeah. I believe London was one of the most surveilled cities in the entire world. I'm not sure. So, that's the only thing that's so challenging. You think they'll even throw the immigrant rioters in prison? Yeah.

Oh, that's a... Of course. Well, we'll see. We'll see. That'll rioters in prison? Yeah. Oh, that's it. So, well, we'll see. We'll see. That'll be a good test as to whether, you know, there will be equal application of the law. A lot of the Euro-rightists

don't think that they will. They think that they'll let them go and they'll throw them in jail. They misunderstand the center. You think so? Yeah. Okay. All right.

I'll hold you to it. I know a lot of cops and they get asked all the time, have you ever had to shoot your gun? Sometimes the answer is yes. But there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be no. Across the country, cops called this taser the revolution.

But not everyone was convinced it was that simple. Cops believed everything that Taser told them. From Lava for Good and the team that brought you Bone Valley comes a story about what happened when a multi-billion dollar company dedicated itself to one visionary mission. This is Absolute Season 1. Taser Incorporated. I get right back there and it's bad.

It's really, really, really bad. Listen to new episodes of Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Binge episodes 1, 2, and 3 on May 21st and episodes 4, 5, and 6 on June 4th. Add free at Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. Over the past six years of making my true crime podcast,

Hell and Gone, I've learned one thing. No town is too small for murder. I'm Katherine Townsend. I've received hundreds of messages from people across the country begging for help with unsolved murders. I was calling about the murder of my husband at the cold case. I've never found her, and it haunts me to this day. The murderer is still out there. Every week on Hell and Gone Murder Line, I dig into a new case, bringing the skills I've learned

as a journalist and private investigator to ask the questions no one else is asking. Police really didn't care to even try. She was still somebody's mother. She was still somebody's daughter. She was still somebody's sister. There's so many questions that we've never got any kind of answers for. If you have a case you'd like me to look into, call the Hell and Gone Murder Line at 678-744-6145.

Listen to Hell and Gone Murder Line on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Michael Kassin, founder and CEO of 3C Ventures and your guide on Good Company, the podcast where I sit down with the boldest innovators shaping what's next. In this episode, I'm joined by Anjali Sood, CEO of Tubi, for a conversation that's anything but ordinary. We dive into the competitive world of streaming, how she's turning so-called niche into mainstream gold, connecting audiences with stories that truly make them feel seen. What others dismiss as niche, we embrace as core. It's this idea that there are so many stories out there. And if you can find a way to curate and help the right person discover the right content, the term that we always hear from our audience is that they feel seen. Get a front row seat to where media, marketing, technology, entertainment and sports collide.

And hear how leaders like Anjali are carving out space and shaking things up a bit in the most crowded of markets. Listen to Good Company on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Okay, on to the RFK Jr. story. Perhaps one of the most bizarre incidents yet that we've covered here on the show. I say this with no, I guess, judgment electorally or whatever, only to say that the circumstances are genuinely shocking. So all of it began when RFK Jr. released a video talking about how he left a dead bear cub in Central Park. The photo has been released of the bear. And RFK Jr. has put this up here on the screen. It came out yesterday in The New Yorker with a profile. Here we see RFK Jr. He's roughly like 60 years old now at this time in the back of

his trunk with a bear, clearly who's been wounded. We'll get to that. The bear was running. Oh, I think the bear was hit by a car. Oh, is this fly down? I didn't see that. Who amongst us? I mean, it could happen. It's happened. It happens. RK's got his hand in the bear's mouth. This reminiscent of the previous photo that was released of him. Remember though, that I did ask about him. What was it? The Daily Beast or somebody claimed it was a dog. He told me it was goat. So anyway, this time he's not or somebody claimed it was a dog. He told me it was a goat. So anyway, this time he's not disputing that it was a bear. Let's take a listen to his version of events

of how he encountered this bear and where he ended up dumping this bear. Let's take a listen. Woman in a van in front of me hit a bear and killed it. A young bear. So I pulled over and I picked up the bear and put him in the back of my van because I was going to skin the bear and it was very good condition and I was going to and put the meat in my refrigerator and you can do that in New York City. You can get a bear tag

for a roadkill bear. Instead of going back to my home in Westchester, I had to go right to the city because there was a dinner at Peter Luger's Steakhouse. And at the end of the dinner, it went late. And I realized I couldn't go home. I had to go to the airport. And the bear was in my car and I didn't want to leave the bear in the car because that would have been bad. People were drinking with me who thought this was a good idea. And I said, I had an old bike in my car that somebody had asked me to get rid of. I said, let's go put the bear in Central Park, and we'll make it look like he got hit by a bike. It would be fun and funny for people.

So everybody thought that's a great idea. So we went and did that, and we thought it would be amusing for whoever found it or something. You know, it's going to be a bad story. So that was him with Roseanne Barr. And what? To summarize, the bear was hit. He saw the bear. He then wanted to skin the bear and eat the bear.

So he put it in his trunk. Then he was out falconing. They were running late. I love that part. So, and eat the bear. So he put it in his trunk. Then he was out falconing. They were running late. I love that part. So, yeah, I know. He drove to Manhattan with the bear in his trunk. He had dinner. Then he had to catch a flight.

So he had to get rid of the bear out of his car, this bloody dead bear. So he decided to put it in Central Park and stay. That's where I don't understand the staging. Why don't you just dump the bear? Why do you have to make it look like there was a, what did he say, a bike accident? So he said, so this is around the time, 2014, just as they're putting all the bike lanes in New York City. And if you remember from this time, a lot of bikers were getting killed by garbage trucks and cars that weren't used to the bike lanes. And so there were these

weekly or daily tragedies occurring. And RFK Jr.'s idea was this would humorously slot into these multiple tragedies by making it look like instead of a car or truck killing a biker, that a biker had killed and run over a bear. Right. Okay. So how would that even happen? You have to be pretty – I don't know how many bottles of wine they had at Peter Luger, but it was a lot. Hey, he's sober. But listen, the circumstances of this –

Everybody else was drinking it, but apparently – Okay. He says he was the one that had the idea. He said he had the idea. Okay, so he had the idea. This is according to him. Now, here's the funniest part. Look at the way that this set off a firestorm in New York at the time after the bear was discovered. Take a listen to the local news. Bear cub is discovered dead in, of all places,

Central Park. An apparent case of animal cruelty. CBS2's Matt Kozar has more on the bear mystery. In a popular section of Central Park, an unusual crime scene. Florence Slatkin says she was walking her dog this morning when she saw something furry underneath the bushes. Police say the three-foot-long black bear cub had stab and slash wounds and appears to have been dumped there. Adding to the mystery, Slatkin says the baby bear was lying on top of this bicycle, which police confiscated as evidence. The bicycle was under the bushes. Part of the bicycle was sticking out, and that's what we saw. Then when we looked closer, we could see something on the back wheel, just laying on the back wheel.

It's horrible. It's very bizarre. To think that somebody with criminal intents would do such a thing right here in our backyard is disturbing. New York bikers JFK's granddaughter, Tatiana Schlossberg, his close relative. She wrote the headline, bear found in Central Park was killed by a car, officials say. So this set off an absolute firestorm 10 years ago. Nobody knew who dumped the bear, how the whole bear thing came to happen. And look, I don't really have anything electoral or anything to say. This is just the most insane thing. And as I previously said, the craziest thing to me is that I believe every word of his explanation. And that's why it's so funny to me, is that every word, I'm like, I would never do that,

but I see how you got there. And that's how the chain of events unfolds as even crazier than it initially sounded. The one thing I think we can add to this too is that it paints a portrait of RFK Jr.'s life at the time. Okay. So here's something. So that New York Times report that we put up.

Yeah, October 14th. October 7th. Yeah, October 7th, sorry. It was October 7th, 2014. Oh, wow, October 7th. Which, interesting coincidence. So I just looked that up because I'm curious about RFK Jr.'s life. Okay.

That's a Tuesday. Whoa. Which means. He was falconing on a Tuesday. Well, it came out on a Tuesday, which means the day he described was a Monday. It was a Monday. What a Monday. What a Monday for this dilettante of an environmental lawyer who was like, you know what I'm going to do today? I'm going to drive up to the Hudson Valley. I'm going to falcon all day. Oh, I hit a bear. Oh, but then I've got a dinner, just a random dinner at Peter Luger's Steakhouse

on Monday evening. And then we're going to get wasted. I won't be wasted because I'm sober. And then we're going to go dump this. Not that any of this is okay on a Saturday, but this is Saturday behavior. This is not Monday behavior. So if this is a Monday for RFK Jr., my goodness. I mean, if I was the scion to the Kenna fortune, I think I would do it. Yeah, exactly. That's what he is. That's what I'd be doing on a Monday, too. I would also be doing that on a Monday.

Yes. He is who you think he is. Yeah. He's falconing. He's hanging out with Peter Louie. He's got a flight to catch, and he's dropping off. My only thing is with Bear is he's a out with Peter Louie. He's got a flight to catch and he's dropping off. My only thing is with Bear is, you know,

he's a health nut. As I understand, you know, bears are like gross animals. I don't mean that in a disparaging way. I'm saying like, they eat,

they eat like trash, like rotten garbage. They eat rotten meat. Sort of catfish or gross. Yeah, but don't you have to cook the shit out of it? Like to,

anyway, so I can't really see how it would be all that appetizing because he was like, it was a beautiful bear. It's organic. And all that. I can't really see how it would be all that appetizing because he was like, it was a beautiful bear. It's organic. I don't look at that and be like,

oh, what a beautiful animal. Well, he said it was a baby bear, so maybe that's like a foie gras or whatever. Maybe he was less riddled with trichinosis, but yeah, I'm not eating bear. Literal roadkill. I mean, it's actual roadkill. That's the difference between Larry David.

Larry David is never eating roadkill, but otherwise, this is like dark Larry David behavior. Yeah, this is. Like the whole thing and winding up on the news. And the fact that he's married to Cheryl Hines is just what kind of world are we blessed to live in?

Oh, yeah. It's a little bit too perfect. I know a lot of cops and they get asked all the time, have you ever had to shoot your gun? Sometimes the answer is yes, but there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be no. Across the country, cops called this taser the revolution. But not everyone was convinced it was that simple. Cops believed everything that Taser told them. From Lava for Good and the team that brought you Bone Valley

comes a story about what happened when a multi-billion dollar company dedicated itself to one visionary mission. This is Absolute Season 1. Taser Incorporated. I get right back there and it's bad. It's really, really, really bad. Listen to new episodes of Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Binge episodes 1, 2, and 3 on May 21st and episodes 4, 5, and 6 on June 4th.

Add free at Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. Over the past six years of making my true crime podcast hell and gone, I've learned one thing. No town is too small for murder. I'm Katherine Townsend. I've received hundreds of messages from people across the country begging for help with unsolved murders. I was calling about the murder of my husband at the cold case. I've never found her and it haunts me to this day. The murderer is still out there. Every week on

Helling Gone Murder Line, I dig into a new case, bringing the skills I've learned as a journalist and private investigator to ask the questions no one else is asking. Police really didn't care to even try. She was still somebody's mother. She was still somebody's daughter. She was still somebody's sister. There's so many questions that we've never gotten any kind of answers for. If you have a case you'd like me to look into,

call the Hell and Gone Murder Line at 678-744-6145. Listen to Hell and Gone Murder Line on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Michael Kassin, founder and CEO of 3C Ventures and your guide on Good Company, the podcast where I sit down with the boldest innovators shaping what's next. In this episode, I'm joined by Anjali Sood, CEO of Tubi, for a conversation that's anything but ordinary. We dive into the competitive world of streaming, how she's turning so-called niche into mainstream gold, connecting audiences with stories that truly make them feel seen.

What others dismiss as niche, we embrace as core. It's this idea that there's so many stories out there. And if you can find a way to curate and help the right person discover the right content, the term that we always hear from our audience is that they feel seen. Get a front row seat to where media, marketing, technology, entertainment, and sports collide. And hear how leaders like Anjali are carving out space and shaking things up a bit in the most crowded of markets. Listen to Good Company on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. New reporting in Semaphore this week, and we can put this element up on the screen from media

reporter Max Tanney. Headline, Journal still can't confirm January story about UN agency for Palestinians. And so, Sagar, if you remember, the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal both simultaneously roughly reported two facts. One, the New York Times reported that Israel had said that 12 people affiliated with UNRWA, UNRWA employees, had participated in some way in the October 7th attacks. The Wall Street Journal then quickly followed with an explosive story that said that according to intelligence sources, 10% of UNRWA employees had some affiliation, and they were very loose in their definition of affiliation, with Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad. In the wake of that, the United States immediately suspended all aid going to the primary aid organization supplying, doing relief efforts in

Gaza, ultimately leading to a congressional ban on U.S. funding, as well as to other countries around the world also suspending funding for UNRWA, which no doubt led to a significant number of deaths in Gaza, but also escalated the amount of suffering probably exponentially between January and where we are now. And so what Semaphore did is they checked in on this reporting that the Wall Street Journal had done on this 10% figure. And I'll read this quote from a private email that was sent by Elena Charney, the chief news editor, that email obtained by Semaphore. She wrote, quote, the fact that the Israeli claims haven't been backed up by solid evidence doesn't mean our reporting was inaccurate or misleading, that we have walked it back or that there is a correctable error here. So in other words, the Wall Street Journal, according to Semaphores reporting, worked extremely hard to try to back up what it had

already reported. It talked to intelligence sources in the US and Israel. It did its own forensic efforts to try to verify what they had already reported was the case. And they were unable to do so, and they basically concluded they can that Israel made this claim. Now, if you go back and read the Wall Street Journal report, on first reference, all they say is intelligence sources. Wall Street Journal is an American newspaper. The strong implication there is that you have American intelligence sources that are making this claim. They reference intelligence sources like 14 or 15 times in that article. Only one time do they say, oh yeah, by the way, these are Israeli intelligence sources that we're relying on here. And so yesterday I asked a State Department spokesperson, Matt Miller, about these revelations from Semaphore. We can roll this clip. I'm not sure if you saw there was a report in

Semaphore that the Wall Street Journal tried valiantly to try to confirm its reporting on the UNRWA allegations made by Israel. Talk to American intelligence sources, Israeli intelligence sources. We're completely unable to substantiate them. Does the State Department have anything new about those UNRWA allegations? And in the future, will the State Department consider allegations coming from Israel differently, given that these have not yet been backed up with such drastic measures? So I did see that report. I think it is a good time to remind everyone that the action that we took was not in response to information that the government of Israel brought to us. It was in

response to UNRWA coming to us and UNRWA saying that they had received these allegations from the government of Israel and they found them credible. And so that was what made us – that was what led us to make the decision that we made. It wasn't getting anything from the government of Israel. It was when UNRWA itself said they found the allegations credible that we thought it was the appropriate step to take to pause the funding. Yeah, so he also – we went back and forth a little bit longer. We also alluded to, he also alluded to a statement by the United Nations, which we can put up here,

put up this Reuters element here. Basically what the United Nations is saying is that they have, that they investigated Israeli claims that 19, because eventually they sent more, they sent seven more staff names to UNRWA saying that they had participated They investigated it and found that nine likely or very likely

participated in these attacks now UNRWA has also said well, so first of all the UNRWA never said that the 10% claim that 10% of their staff were Hamas was credible. What happened is that Israel shared this dossier of about 12 UNRWA employees saying that they had various levels of evidence that they had participated on October 7th. And UNRWA immediately passed that on to the State Department. There's no evidence that they said, look, we believe all of this. They're just saying, like, this is what the Israelis have given us here. Like, we don't want to cover it up for you. We're just

going to share what Israelis have given you. And the US used that, the fact that UNRWA passed it on to them to then cut all the funding. They said that for seven of the 19, or for many of the 19, they were unable to find any evidence that this happened. But for nine, they said it's likely that they actually did participate. Now, UNRWA has about 35,000 employees. It's the biggest employer in Gaza. Teachers, janitors, custodians, and on and on. So it actually would be kind of shocking that only nine were somehow involved in the armed resistance there.

You think in a society, like let's say in the United States, if the National Guard is going, a certain percentage of your teachers are in the National Guard. That's just kind of how it works. So, it did, and the allegations against some of these nine were that they were civilians, but once the fence was busted, like, they went across and did some, like, looting or some otherwise participated in the ransacking of southern Israel, which in some areas went on for several days. Like, it was complete and total chaos. So, that happen? Yes. UNRWA says it's highly likely that a handful of them did. But the major claim was that this 10% number, because that is much more systemic and goes to a central rot if that is true. We have absolutely no evidence whatsoever that it's true, and it just gets repeated. And for U.S. media to stand by it because they say, well, Israel says

it's true, try to flip it around. Remember when there was a bombing of the hospital and Hamas said, and there may have been some mistranslation going on, but Hamas said 500 casualties, which then got translated to 500 deaths from an Israeli rocket attack. And then there was speculation, wait, maybe this was a PIJ rocket that actually landed errantly here. Since then, there's been counter speculation that, well, actually maybe it was an Iron Dome rocket. The New York Times issued a public apology for its headline that said, Hamas claims 500 dead. Right. But Hamas did claim, well, they mistranslated it, but let's pretend Hamas did claim that. So in just the same way that Israel is claiming X, so the American media uses the fact that Israel is claiming X to stand by their reporting. But when Hamas claims X, and then that's called into question, there's a public mea culpa. So which is it? Like what's

the standard here? And obviously the standard is the bias is extreme towards Israel here. And you also challenged the State Department spokesperson again in a separate— Oh, yeah. This is an interesting one. The IDF announced that it had assassinated the economy minister. Right. And according to international law, and we can discuss this, you actually can't go around just assassinating civilian ministers or like the CEOs of like, let's say, Raytheon. Maybe you should be able to. It's an interesting question.

Let's roll this clip from this State Department briefing yesterday. The IDF also announced that they assassinated the Gaza minister of the economy. I'm curious, does the State Department consider somebody like that to be a combatant? So I didn't see that announcement. I don't know who the person was. I don't know if he had an active role in the Hamas military wing or not. So to be able to answer that question, I'd have to know more about this specific person. They said he counts because he had a role of the economy and the economy is as a role over manufacturing and within manufacturing there are weapons that are manufactured again i would have i'd have to look at it in more detail before i could give you uh any kind of detailed assessment so at least in

his response there he's he actually is assuming that he needs to have ties to the military wing in order to be a combatant. Did you notice that in his response? Yes, I did. Yeah. Which Israel does not believe. Well, I mean, as you and I were talking a little about before, there is an interesting question as to whether that should be a legitimate target. I actually kind of do think so. I'm not justifying the strike. I'm just like, yeah, well, in a total war, you go to war in the totality of the society. That's actually what a war looks like. Now, though, if we zoom out a little bit, what I think you're getting at is that the U.S. defense is always like, well, that's complying with international law.

And it's like, well, obviously that is outside the scope of what a real total war would look like. I just think broadly, the media example of what you gave and the falling apart of so many of these stories in American newsrooms has really diminished a lot of their credibility, from the October 7 rape story that they've never retracted to the Wall Street Journal story, which had massive holes in it at the time. At every instance, a lot of these organizations, they bet their reputation by basically believing their sources and then are refusing to issue retractions, which is just massively detrimental to their long-term reputation on any future conflict

for what it looks like. And it's wild because Israel is not gonna be mad at the Wall Street Journal. They got what they wanted. Yeah, they got what they wanted. They got what they needed at the time. And the Knesset and the Israeli government was very clear at the time that they were trying

to get UNRWA shut down and diminished and destroyed. And this was a method of doing that. It worked. So they're satisfied. If the Wall Street Journal at this point put an update, we can't verify any of this. It wouldn't be like all of a sudden Congress would then reauthorize funding for UNRWA. You won. You got what you wanted. Congratulations. All right. Well, thank you, Ryan, for breaking that down. It was super interesting. Just another good media example of what all of this is going to look like. And as we continue to parse all of those events, thank you. I'm glad you were here, my friend. It was fun. We got the VP pick. That's a big show that people are going to remember for breaking points. We will see the VP pick. That's a big show that people are going to remember for breaking points. We will see you all later.

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