Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 8/6/26: Ben Shapiro Grocery Meltdown, Plane Downed By US Military, Tucker 3rd Party Manifesto, Israeli Mole At The UN

Episode Date: August 6, 2026

Ryan and Saagar discuss Ben Shapiro shames Americans on grocery prices, military causes civilian plane crash, Tucker third party manifesto, Israeli mole at the United Nations. Murtaza Hussain: https://x.com/MazMHussain    To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show AD FREE, uncut and 1 hour early visit: www.breakingpoints.com    Merch Store: https://shop.breakingpoints.com/   See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Basically, what happened is that very recently a debate broke out amongst conservative influencers around the cost of burritos. And it stems from a tweet from Andrew Clevet, who's of the Charlie Kirk Show, where he said that one of his TPSA members had told him a burrito should not cost $20. Obviously, that was not just about the burrito. It was largely about affordability, the cost of groceries, which are up $40. over the last five years, and generally the feeling that life is far too expensive. It was also paired with a criticism of the Iran War, which has driven up gas prices and made

the affordability crisis even worse. All of this, of course, the neocons took great offense to, saying that if you are complaining about this, you are a spoiled little rich millennial, or you are a spoiled millennial, you are not rich because of your own failings. Actually, you are, shouldn't even be buying said burrito unless you're independently wealthy. Shapiro being the loudest of these voices. Let's take a listen. So Andrew Colvin over a TPSA. He tweeted out today, one of our TPPUSA college students gave me his take on affordability. A burrito shouldn't cost 20 bucks. Yeah, a lot of this is a hangover from COVID and Biden era inflation, but the lived experience is the same. It just feels like basic things cost too much. So obviously, I agree. Things cost more than

they should. But let's start from the beginning here. a burrito for 20 bucks? That's where we're starting. A burrito for 20 bucks. There is literally only one way in the United States of America in this year, 2026, for a burrito to cost $20. You went to a kind of expensive restaurant. A burrito at Chipotle probably tops out about $13.

A top shelf burrito option at Taco Bell, we have been informed by our intrepid daily wire Taco Bell correspondent Brad Bishop runs $5.99 plus to axe for the avocado ranch Krispy Chicken Burrito, which he also reports is jaw-droppingly delicious. But let us also pretend that you're just a poor young student, as I once was, or say you're a dude who is just starting his work life and wants some upward mobility like I once was. Here's what you do if you want a burrito.

You head on down to the supermarket. I'm going to give you today's prices via Instacart. You buy some tortillas for about four bucks for a package of 10. You also grab a can of refried beans for a couple of bucks 50, and then you grab some cheese. some salsa, maybe an avocado. And then you microwave some of that stuff. Boom.

You're talking a burrito? It's pretty good for less than $2. Like one-tenth of the price that that student is talking about. One-tenth, $2. So what the hell are we even talking about here? But unfortunately, this has become the mode for a lot of young people. Why can't I afford what my parents could afford when they were my age? Spoiler alert, when it comes to groceries, you can.

And in areas, by the way, for housing where deregulation has been the rule, you still can. In fact, you have today more restaurants. options, your food costs less of your disposable income, and it is probably significantly better. Back in 1950, your grandparents were consuming on average about 1,000 calories less per day than you do now. And as far as food expenditure as a share of family disposable income in the United States, look at this. And basically, that has been flatlined since the mid-90s at well under 10%. If you go back to when your parents were doing this, it was like 13, 14, 15%. but we're constantly being told that we can't even afford food, which is a wild exaggeration.

It's a wild exaggeration. So if you've been to the grocery store and you've noticed that prices are up, it's a wild exaggeration. Also note that Ben didn't put meat in that little medley that he calls a burrito there. So let's actually take a look at the data. Let's put D6 up here on the screen. Here we go. Grocery prices five years ago. What do we see?

Oh, interesting. The price of food purchased for home use from 2019 through June 2026 is up 30. 33% consumers are now buying fewer of their favorite foods or less food overall, which might explain why, actually, that you might be spending the same percent of your income on food, but you're actually buying worse food for you. Now, another thing, Americans have become a lot more health conscious, Ryan, so some of the stuff you and I grew up eating, we would never feed to our children. I can raise my hand and say that. What's a half gallon of grass-fed milk go for right now? $5.50, $750 a gallon? $7.50. $8 a gallon? You want 18 pasture raise eggs. That's going to cost you, maybe 10, 15 bucks, depending on where you're buying it from. People say, hey, organic food has always been more expensive. Okay, I choose to do that because, you know, I want my daughter to have a healthy brain. Not saying judging or anybody out there who can't afford it. I'm just saying, you know, if you want to buy a little bit healthier option, you've actually seen the skyrocketing cost in that as well. So all together, especially whenever you put, not just healthy options, put that off the table. Even just, you know, wholesale beef prices up tremendous. under the Trump presidency and especially from the beginning of 2020. But this basically comes down to their message of if you're mad about the cost of living increase on the Iran war, you're a surrender monkey and you are somebody who is, you know, pro-Iran

nuclear weapon. That's why they're going so hard about this. So for example, let's put D3 up here on the screen. Here is Mark Tiesin, one of the preeminent neocons in Washington, responding to the burrito shouldn't cost $20. Mark says, Cry Me River, the burritos in the college cafeteria are included in your meal plan. He later spazzed out after the vice president. Let's put his tweet up here on the screen, said, what did he say? He said, I'm surprised to hear Mark say this. You've ever met him in person. It's quite obvious the man has never missed a burrito. That's definitely true. I've seen Mark in person a few times. And fat shaming aside, which is always healthy, whenever we're talking about somebody who is trying to send your sons and daughter.

to a war, who himself wouldn't even qualify for military service. Whenever we look at this, you know, grotesque creature on our screens who says things like, we're not a real superpower if you can't afford $4 gasoline, and who brags about how he worked his way through college in the 1980s, and that tells people, cry me a river, you should go and eat at your cafeteria. What they're saying is, if you're mad about the cost of living concern, number one, it was Biden's And number two, you are, you are offering surrender to Iran. That's why they're going so hard right now, Ryan. And this connects me back to the original attack that we had on Al-Siyadh, where he's out here

being like, I want things to cost less. I want your health. But, you know, we don't even talk about health care premium. Mine went up by 24 percent year-over-year. Okay, cool. No saying that or any of that. I know my in-laws, I remember there. There's sort of like 400 percent before they have to qualify for Medicare.

But that's my point, is that you don't even talk about this stuff now anymore whenever it comes to affordability. And it's especially hard because, as you and I know, a conservative meme, which became very effective under the Biden presidency, was like at the gas pump, you know, in some boomer Republican Republican Republican would put a sticker of Biden being like, I did that. Which was effective. I mean, it absolutely was. Or when we would talk about groceries. What's his name? Republican governor of Virginia. Glenn Yonkin.

he ran in Virginia on reducing the grocery tax. Like that was a central pillar of his campaign. And now prices are high and remain high under Trump. It's, oh, actually, it's your fault. You're a spoiled little loser if you want to afford a cheap burrito. And we already did this whole thing 10 years ago with avocado toast. Yeah. That's a good point.

The whole reason the millennials are falling behind is not because the complete erosion of the public welfare. and the kind of seizing of wealth by the top 0.1%. It's that you spoiled kids or having too much avocado toast and complaining about the price of it. Maybe if we wrap the avocado toast in a burrito. That's the synthesis of this decade-long, this decade-long debate. I think, put up T6 again just so people understand what's going on here.

Okay, you want to quibble with, you can go to Chipotle and actually, if you don't get any guacamole and you don't give a tip, which is related to this. Because people feel like they want to put the dollar, $2 on there. And then that gets you closer to the $20. With the guacamole, you're at the $20. But this is the chart. Like, this is it.

Like, set aside whether you can get a burrito, and forget Taco Bell. Don't give me Taco Bell. Set aside whether you can get a burrito for $20 or $15 or whatever. This chart right here tells you everything about how much people are choking. Because if you look back at the numbers before the green line, 2018, 2019, 2020, people were not living high on the hog,

but at least for the last two decades or so, there had been roughly stable food prices, grocery prices. You don't see a concomitant rise in wages between this time. What you see is people

who were struggling already, now all of a sudden paying this much more for food prices. And what do we? we also, what also happened at that exact same time? In 2020, we had the massive kind of influx of money to kind of stave off economic collapse from the COVID shutdown. All of that wealth, all of those trillions of dollars that were spent and people were glad to get the checks and everything else, that all flowed directly to the top in terms of these companies

charging higher wages. Well, and the supply chain. Supply chain going through the roof. And we went from the, you can look at the exact numbers, but the top 1%, their share of wealth absolutely exploded after 2020. And what people need to understand is that when you have wealth transfers like that, they're coming out of your pocket. It's not totally fake imaginary numbers that are expanding the wealth of Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, they are taking, we haven't had economic growth. Like Western economies have been growing at roughly 1% for like two decades. And the riches, the wealth of the top 1%, they've been growing at 10, 20%.

So if we're not producing more wealth, but the rich are getting richer, it has to come from somewhere. And that chart that you saw, that's where, that's a part of where it's coming from. You are getting poorer and it's harder for you to afford things like food because you have less wealth. If the rich were getting richer because they were creating innovations that were growing our economy at 5% or 10% a year, then your living standards would stay stable. But they're not. They're taking it from people.

Right. And, you know, even more so, it's like, I remember there's this famous moment in 1990. presidential debate. A woman asked Bill Clinton about the national debt. No offense to this lady, she wasn't actually asking about the national debt. She was asking about the economy. Clinton senses this. And he goes, start talking about affordability, about cost, about trickle-down economics. As in, when she says the national debt, she means the economy. All right, sue her. So when the student complains about the burrito, they're complaining about the affordability of everything. So when we talk about grocery prices, like I said, Chipotle alone, guys, I

I sent my tweet to the group DM. You can see, I pulled this from when I was 20 years old. When I was 20 years old, it was 14 years ago, you could see this is what the menu at Chipotle looked like. Chicken, a chicken Chipotle bowl was $5.60. So that is $6 after tax. If you adjust that for inflation, that's roughly $8 or so. Today, it is between $12 and $13.

All of this. So at that time, I'm guessing, and I don't have the exact price, in front of it. me, the drink would probably go for around 89 cents if I had to guess. So you're all in cost on a meal is looking like six something bucks after tax. What we all know today is you're looking at 14, 15, maybe in $16. And that's just with the bare bones. No guacamptomy, no any of that. Also, these are not the same burritos, by the way. No, they're not. Yeah, they were a lot bigger back in the day. For a while, I was thinking like, have I just like developed the capacity to eat more as I've gotten older? Because it's actually supposed to go the other direction.

a 22-year-old friend and I, like at the time, would split it. Me too, did it all the time. A 22-year-old young man is eating a lot of calories, and you would split one and be full. And they would give you, they would give you tortillas on the side. It was awesome. If you're 20, I feel bad that you have never got to experience this. But the reason I, you know, engage in this debate is because to deny. That means it was $3 for us.

That's what I mean. To deny this reduction in the quality of life is crazy. Now it's at housing on top. of it. I have the numbers in front of me. If you look at you take median home price with the current interest rate, which is roughly 6.7%. Oh my God. That means your all-in cost of principal and interest alone is 2680 a month. In 2019, the median home price was $320,000 and the average 30-year interest rate was 3.9%, which is a little high, actually. And if you take that together, your all-in cost was roughly $1,200 a month. So you have a more than double all-in cost of just principal interest.

Haven't even talked about home insurance, which is up dramatically right now. And as we showed you all previously, the emergency services costs and stuff, which has all been rolled up by private equity, that's up 150%. So your cost of homeownership right now is dramatically, dramatically higher. And again, these people want to tell you that if you complain about this, that you are a poor, you are a irresponsible loser, avocado toast, overspender, and ultimately it comes back to Iran, which is why they're all getting mad. Let's put, you know, D.A. Real quickly, just the top 0.1% 20 years ago of households owned $7 trillion. Now they own $25 trillion. And most of that is because of the stock market. And we haven't had a 4x increase in our economy.

That they took that, that money has been taken from the wealth of what used to be the middle class. Yeah. And let's, we can even see some of this. Like, for example, put D8, you know, to underscore the neocon point, right? Here's Mark Levin. These people going on about the price of a taco haven't gone to Taco Bell lately. They're affordable. Buck 99 to 259.

I remember they were 99 cents, Mark. They say, I just grabbed a couple of my local Taco Bell last night, not just for the wealthy. What a stupid and a phony argument. You also have old Crenshaw weighing in. Let's put D9 up here on the screen. I love this one, by the way. Just hearing about this dumb $20 burrito debate, so I thought I'd make the losers on social media angry before going to bed.

Stop whining. Get a job. Eat ramen like the rest of us did in college on a budget with four roommates. The market doesn't care what you think something should cost. Only communist care. They set prices, remember? than everyone starves, remember, are you communist or are you an American adult male capable of handling his own shit? Now, you might be surprised to learn that it's September 8th, 2021.

Dan Crenshaw said, quote, America, our food prices are too high. What are you doing about inflation? And he says, Biden admin says, just be vegan and stop complaining you bunch of rooves. Interesting. And I think people would actually be fine with this like go eat ramen and chill with your four roommates if there was a sense that that was going to be limited upward mobility. Like, okay, you know what? I'm working hard. I'm going to pay my dues with the ramen for four years. And then I'm going to get a decent job. I'm going to buy a home. And then I'm going to go to Chipotle. Fine. I won't go to Chipotle for four years. But in four years, I will be able to go to Chipotle. I mean, nobody believes they're going to get there.

That's part of the thing. It wasn't, as we just told it was just basic. It was ability. You did not have to make a lot of money to be able to eat. And now, like, you do. Your friend is three bucks. You have three bucks. You get a burrito. Yeah, it was not bad. Like, it really.

And that's the thing about fast food now. I mean, McDonald's all in cost, you know, is roughly the same now as like a crappy diner or sit-down restaurant. I mean, oh, my God. I mean, that is a sea change in American life. It just simply is McDonald's not good for you. Not saying it is. But it's one of those where it was cheap. It's certainly if you were living on a budget.

That stuff is just gone. And so when you put all this, the dollar menu is still helpful. But there's no dollar menu anymore. Or there's still some cheap stuff. It's the only one that's like remotely appealing to like, you're saying, see, I fell into this trap. It's because I complained here on the show. And then our viewers said, that's because you're not using the app. Now I have the app literally bombarded by McDonald's being like, oh, going by your boy.

I'm like, I don't stop. Like, please stop. Yeah, I don't want all of these deals or whatever, which aren't even really deals, ultimately when it comes down to it. But that's fast food all across the board. There's no way you're going to tell me Taco Bell is, quote, affordable, especially when I've seen those prices. On some of those things, I've seen them go up by like, you know, 500%, let alone by 50 to 100. Remember $5 footlongs?

Like, people who are young cannot even comprehend how cheap a lot of fast food used to be. Again, it wasn't good for you, but it was damn cheap. You could eat off of that for a long time. Yeah, not for me, right. But again, it was available. So this is where the neocons are. If you complain about burrito costs, food cost in general, you're a communist. You are a surrender monkey.

You're a loser. You're not an American male capable of handling your own shit. Dan Crenshaw, the man who, between serving the military and in Congress, has never had a private sector job, literally, never had a private sector job, defended his ability to trade stocks while he was in Congress. Congress, defense docs, you'll recall, and who just lost his primary. Maybe that has something to do with it. And maybe this message has, you know, is going to come back to bite the Republicans in the midterms. Just my own personal, you know, elementary political analysis. Let's get to UFOs. Eating well shouldn't be complicated, but somehow it turns into recipes, prep, cleanup, and half your Sunday gone.

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Will the pastos survive the first bite? Will the lunchbox come home empty, half full, or come home at all? And will you finish episode 8 before you're done slicing the cucumbers? Get Bell Pure Fiber Internet with Craved Netflix and Disney Plus from $94 a month. Price guaranteed for two years on internet with a two-year term and auto pay credit. Visit bell.com for details and to check availability. Bell, connection is everything.

What's up, fam? I'm sports journalist Ari Chambers. Hey, what's up y'all? It's your girl, Sam J. And we're the host of Everyone Watches Women's Sports, a new podcast from Together and I-Heart Women's Sports. Because let's be real. Women's sports is giving us way too much to talk about these days. So Kelsey Finler, she became the first female solo rower to go from California to Hawaii. My first thought is like, what's up with the snacks? Like, what are we eating?

The highlights, the rivalries, the breakout stars, the moments that take over your entire timeline. And the conversations that start during the game and somehow keep going all week. Every week, we're breaking down the biggest stories across women's sports. Naomi Osaka showing out, she beat. Sabalinka. Shout out to you, Naomi. You get the palm, Naomi. You get the palm for that.

Because we're not just interested in what happened. We're interested in why everyone's talking about it. Because everyone watches women's sports. Listen to everyone watches women's sports on the IHeart Radio app. Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcast. We wanted to give everybody an update on this absolutely insane story, which of course has a, you know, there's a UFO connection, and we'll get to that in a second.

But let's take everything at face value for what it is right now. Let's put it up here on the screen. So, according to Wired and Futurism, their new ride-up, it appears that the U.S. military accidentally killed everyone on board a civilian Medevac flight in New Mexico. Not just in New Mexico, Roswell, New Mexico. But let me read. When the FAA shut down air traffic to El Paso airport earlier this year, nobody could have guessed then that an experimental, high-energy laser weapon was the cause.

After days of chaos and speculation, it was revealed. CBP officials had fired off a laser volley from a U.S. Army base adjacent to El Paso. Thus, the trigger-happy Border Patrol grunts evidently thought they were firing at drug-smuggling drones. Their real target, it turned out to be a kid's party balloon. Regardless, it was later reported that the cutting-edge weapon was taken for a tresprive a week before the FAA and Pentagon officials had a chance to discuss how to safely implement the laser device, making it a small miracle that nobody was killed.

Not every use of an experimental aerospace weapon goes off without a hitch. New reporting reveals that a testing of an experimental GPS jammer resulted in a medical plane crashing into the side of a mountain. The horrifying incident happened in May when a small twin-engine medevac aircraft carrying two pilots and two medical workers departed from Roswell, New Mexico, heading west for the small mountain village of Russodo. The crew became the... the victim of electronic warfare exercise being conducted at White Sands Missile Range, a test which

rendered their navigational system completely inoperable. Due to the combination of low visibility and air traffic control that was stretched far beyond capacity, three other planes also reported navigation disruption due to GPS jamming. The pilots failed to register a mountainous formation between their plane and the landing strip. Pilot and crash analysts said that the visual effect of that approach would have been stupefying. When the lights go out, you know that you are in big trouble. The disoriented crew ran straight into the side of the mountain they never saw, resulting in the loss of every life on board. It is the first instance known where a military GPS jammer played a role in the downing of a civilian plane in U.S. airspace. So that's the

official story, Ryan, as that's out right now from Wired Magazine. On its face, absolutely bonkers and insane. A lot of people in the UFO community, they sent it to me. It's very interesting. Even if it's true, this alone is a massive scandal, et cetera. I have some questions.

White Sands base, long known for UFO in the UFO world for testing, a lot of rumors and other reports going back all the way to the 1960s. Immediately is what a lot of us flagged when the El Paso shutdown happened. CBP shooting at cartel drones just to me never passed a sniff test,

even as crazy CBP and I. And all this is like, I'm sorry, these drug drugs drugs. They cross the border every single day. We have drone jamming technology. I guess you could believe that Trump's ICE or CBP would be so insane to do something like that, resulting in the no-tam that was issued over El Paso in the middle of the night, totally shut down the airport.

It does, though. I mean, it happened to Roswell, New Mexico. So we're talking about Roswell, obviously. Again, the site of the original UFO crash here in the United States. If you believe the official story, you're an idiot. But when you look at what's happened here, it's very clear, why are we testing this GPS jamming device? Now, maybe it's for drone warfare. It certainly does have, you know, a – it has an explanation of Iran, drones, Ukraine, and all of that.

But a lot of that stuff we know already exists is in the works, has been tested previously before. We're shooting experimental lasers up into the sky to shoot things down. Seems like something you may want to do if you're worried about things that are flying up in your airspace. So I know I'm taking people a bit far. This is my personal, you know, pet kind of thing. But even if we just take it on its face, it does appear that four people died here in a GPS jamming caused by the United States military. And it was a, it's a MEDAVAC flight. Yep.

And I'm also curious what happened to the person who the flight was trying to rescue because they appear not to be on it. Right. But if the- They were probably inbound belief. That's what the reporting seems to indicate. So if the, so if they needed emergency. evacuation and and their plane crashed, you know, that, that may, there may be an additional victim on, on top of that. So what's the, what are the questions that they think? So they think this is, they're trying

to shoot down UFOs or something? Maybe. Yeah, I mean, it's been one of the project, look, I mean, one of the, you know, some of, so let's say if we, if we take it back, like to the one of the most credible UFO siding in American history, off of the, off the coast of California. One of the things that was reported was interference with their own onboard technology, was their inability, or they were, you know, tracking it as we saw in the 2017 footage that was released by the New York Times between the Tic Tac and some of these other UFO craft that were caught on video. But there has long been reports of many of these pilots of interference with their own craft. And of course, like if you have something flying around, you would want to try

and to bring it down. Maybe with experimental GPS jamming, not even GPS. Again, we're taking it their word. We don't really know. Experimental lasers that are able to shoot things out of the sky. I just, again, find it crazy that this is being used for cartel drones. Like, that does not pass a smell test to me at all. Small drones like that. I mean, if you listen to people who are in prison, right now, you've got small drones

that drop drugs off in the middle of prison yards. Apparently this is extremely common. This is the way they get drugs that are into prisons. Like the idea that this is not a known quantity is ridiculous. We have well-known drone jamming and drone enforcement, which doesn't interfere with civilian aircraft. Here in Washington, D.C., it's not like you can just fly a drone over the national mall. It's going down instantly. And we have all kinds of tech that is non-experimental.

So it just seems to me that something crazy was going on at this missile base to be using such an extraordinary technology, which is interfering both with the civilian craft where a bunch of people crashed in. died, but multiple other aircraft on the scene, as verified now by these internal reports by Wired. So that's all I'm saying, you know, more general. And again, what I'm trying to say is, even if it has nothing to do with UFOs, what an insane situation, regardless, is you're testing an experimental jammer and you cause a crash of four people. That in and of itself is a massive scandal, which is getting no attention. We also recently had, and this is where I'll steal man in my own case, we just had an incident here in Washington where Marine One, the president's helicopter, a civilian aircraft was able to get within a mile of it because of bad air traffic control.

And this is after the crash that happened at Washington Reagan Airport, where you had the helicopter and the civilian airliner collide, no after-action report, which has actually changed all much of anything, and multiple close calls that continue to happen because of air traffic control. So I just put all this together, and we have two things. You know, obviously you could have incompetence and insanity by the government is an easy explanation. There is, in my opinion, again, potential for something more. That's all. Either way, like utterly reckless. Yes. To, I mean, they claim that they warned the pilots that there was GPS jamming, but like, heading, heading into this mountainous region. Right. In the night. Trying, yeah, trying to land that

plane without GPS and they're kind of, it's not like they got a warning days in advance. So what's the, what's the emergency? Like, anybody who's taking off and heading to that airstrip should be told. Also, what are you doing? Get out of here with this freaking GPS jamming stuff. Well, that's why they shut down that El Paso. Yeah. Well, that was, yeah, so they shut down El Paso because of the lasers, the experimental lasers. Again, I just, I still, it never passed a smell test to me, you do not shoot experimental lasers in the sky at aircraft, causing the shutdown of a civilian airport for nothing. I will never believe the cartel drone story. And combine it with this, it's clear that at White Sands, again, a long, long history of UFO sightings, of experiments,

of all kinds of crazy technology and things that have been tested here. The fact that this happened in Roswell, New Mexico, a lot of questions that surround the Meanwhile, I wonder if the cartels are going to start using those first-person... The FPV drones? They probably do. Ethernet connected so that they can't be jammed. Because the only need... I think they do. I'm pretty sure, actually...

You just snip the cable. What I have... I read a report from one of the cartel strongholds where they have their own GPS jamming technology. I bet they do. To not allow rivals to use drones to surveil them and the Mexican government. Some cartel, one cartel killed another cartel boss with... with a drone dropping the dropping a thing on his little tent.

Straight out of Syria, out of Ukraine. It's crazy. Okay, let's get to Tucker. Eating well shouldn't be complicated, but somehow it turns into recipes, prep, cleanup, and half your Sunday gone. Factors solves all that. These are fresh, ready-to-eat meals

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From $94 a month, price guaranteed for two years on Internet with a two-year term and auto pay credit. Visit bell.com for details and to check availability. Bell, connection is everything. What's up, fam? I'm sports journalist Ari Chambers. Hey, what's up, y'all? It's your girl, Sam J. And we're the host of everyone watches women's sports, a new podcast from Together and I heart women's sports.

Because let's be real. Women's sports is giving us way too much to talk about these days. So Kelsey Finler, she became the first female solo rower to go. from California to Hawaii? My first thought is, like, what's up with the snacks? Like, what are we eating? The highlights, the rivalries, the breakout stars, the moments that take over your entire timeline.

And the conversations that start during the game and somehow keep going all week. Every week, we're breaking down the biggest stories across women's sports. Naomi Osaka showing out, she beat Sabalinka. Shout out to you, Naomi. You get the palm, Naomi. You get the palm for that.

Because we're not just interested in what happened. We're interested in why everyone's talking about it. Because everyone watches women's sports. Listen to everyone watches women's sports on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. Turning now to Tucker Carlson, the potential for a third party. Here's Joe Kent on TYT, previewing it. Let's take a listen. Somebody needs to begin work immediately on one question, which is what unites all of us?

It's probably not going to be that hard. Because most of the divisions that we think are irreparable, they're careful. There's no way. I have anything in common with that person. And my daughter married him, I'd freak out. Most of those divisions are artificial. They were actually foisted on us by our leaders whose incompetence and graph needed a cover. There are smart people who've been saying this for a long time. It's not to say there aren't natural differences between people. Of course there are. Including between races. Of course there are. But are they bigger than the things we have in common? No, they're not. but they've been exacerbated and inflamed and intentionally highlighted as part of a long-term

project to divert our attention from what is now very obviously true, which is that both parties have colluded against the population to make their lives better and our lives worse. There's kind of no arguing that that's a fact at this point. And unfortunately, they have been extremely successful. So if you're going to fix it and rebrand, build this country and turn into a place that the grandchildren you hopefully will have can inherit and thrive, you're going to need to do something about the pressing question of American identity. What does it mean to be an American?

But it's fixable. You just have to try. And we will be trying. And we'll tell you as we continue to do that. So very interesting point here. He says, we don't want Israel dictating our foreign policy. we don't want any more foreign wars. This was followed up by Tucker himself saying he was going to make a major announcement

yesterday in a 90-minute-long stream. Here's a taste of what some of that was. Let's take a listen. So, Joe, tell us, could it potentially be a new third party? Certainly could. I mean, when I got together with Tucker, with Thomas Massey, Marjorie Taylor Green, as we were just kind of comparing notes, most of us came to the conclusion that most Americans that we talked to,

They're sick of the Republicans. They're sick of the Democrats. Now, most of us, you know, have been in Trump world for quite some time. All of us kind of had our own, you know, break, to put it politely, with the Trump administration. And even a lot of, like, hardcore Trump supporters right now, they feel very betrayed. I mean, one of the core tenets of President Trump's agenda was no more endless wars. We felt, I mean, I became a Trump supporter in 16 when Trump went after Jeff Bush on the debate stage because I served and fought in Iraq, lots of friends there. we have all come to our own conclusions that, look, this is not working.

And the confines of the traditional Republican Party, the traditional Democrat Party, most people are just sick of that. And so we do think that there is, I would say from a lot of your viewers, from people who find themselves more on the left, people who find themselves more on the right, we don't think the current political system is working just because of the results on the ground. No matter who we vote for, we get another war in the Middle East. no matter who we vote for, APAC and these major donors, most of whom most Americans don't even know, they dictate the policy that sends our best young men and women off to go fight and die in foreign battlefields. They make our taxes go up, and then they give us nothing back in return. So that was the big tease there from Tucker at the end around third party. Apparently it was a 10-point plan.

Let's put F4 up here on the screen. Ryan and I will react. Here's what Tucker laid out. Number one, fair. The same rules should apply to president's federal agent. and elites such as Jeffrey Epstein. Agreed? Yeah.

So far. Take it. Sovereign. Carlson says Israel pushed the United States to the Iran War through bribery, threat, or both, while described with foreign lobbying, corporate control of government as forms of slavery along high-interest debt. Yes.

Amen. Debt. Yeah. You don't like that. Productive. America should rebuild farming, manufacturing, craftsmanship, while rejecting an economy dominated by finance, real estate speculation, surveillance system, and weapons.

Check. Sign me up. On board? Beautiful. Urban planners deliberately uglified. American cities portraying brutalist architecture, graffiti, public drug use, violent crime as deliberate attacks on the public. Pretty your stuff.

I'm for it. Huh? Yeah. But public drug use? Public drug use? You're, you're, okay. You're cool with that? Yeah, what do you do?

Okay. Listen, I just want to make sure. I want to make sure that the guy who literally wrote the book on why drug should be legalized is grappling with what that means. I said in the book, you also have to keep it under control. Otherwise, they're going to ban it again. Right. Which is what we're eventually.

Take it inside. Unless it's still. Let's just a concert. Then that's fine. Ryan's still on board. I like it. Healthy. Carlson embraces RFK's food agenda,

calls for universal sobriety, and said widespread use of drugs such as Xanax, Adderall, SSRIs have left Americans half-addled. If you want to do a public health campaign towards sobriety and that sort of thing, I'm fine with that. When it drifts into banning stuff

and jailing people, then I'm out. You shouldn't jail people for using fentanyl in the park in front of children. You don't think so. No. So what should you would be?

to what you do with that person? They need treatment. Okay. But what if they don't want treatment? We need to have, we need to have, well, are they committing crimes? If they're committing other crimes, then you can't be a drug addict and not commit crime. But being a drug addict by definition is a crime. I'm talking about like other crimes outside of that.

Well, how do you think they're funding their lifestyle? Then go, then go catch them. Okay. Prosecuting for that. Okay, so we're still, we're still together. All right, a little bit. Universal sobriety, I like that one. Six, honest.

Government officials should be punished for lying to citizens. Most classified records, including on JFK assassination 9-11, should be open. Okay? Yeah, we're going. We're in. Optimistic. Carlson argues having children is a biological imperative, the foundation of long-term thinking, blaming aging and childless elites for policies that disregard future generations.

True? We need more people. You're a father of four, right? You're actually, I mean, for a leftist, you're doing it. I'm doing my part. You're majorly doing your part. So, okay, we're all in. Wise.

schools should teach how physical world actually works, what he calls unchanging facts about human nature, including innate differences between men and women, rather than credentials, screens, and technological fads. I haven't listened, to be fair, I have not listened to any of this. This is literally... Right, this is Axios. Because it's 95 minutes.

It came out late last night. We had to do the show this morning. This is the write-up. I do like this non-credentials, tech screens, and technological fads thing and teaching how the world works. Again, I don't know exactly what he says. said, but how crazy is it in the United States? They don't teach you about debt. Like in high school,

they don't actually do a lot more financial literacy. You have to memorize cell structure. Fine, fine, but they don't tell you like, hey, if you take out a credit card, this is how annual percentage interest works, APR. This is what it means. If you don't do a minimum payment, then this is how long long you're going to be in debt. This is the process of getting a mortgage. This is what a mortgage is. I mean, so much of it is like a black hole. So, okay, I think we're on board so far. Decent.

The United States should apologize and pay restitution for killing non-combatants, reverse the Trump's Department of War rebrand, stop funding allies that commit what Carlson called genocide, citing Israel. I think we're on board? Jack, right? I actually disagree with Tucker on the Department of War.

I think we should keep the name because it's the only honest name. Department of Defense is bullshit. We've launched more. wars under Department of Defense that we did under Department of War. Department of War was an understanding that when we use it, it was for war. And so the public was like, well, we shouldn't use it then, right? So under DOW, we actually fought less. So that's my bigger diggers disagreement. Finally, and this is where I think everything will start to come apart for you, Ryan. Carlson calls for

halting immigration until the effects of AI become clearer, ending benefits for undocumented immigrants, and making English the sole language of the federal document and ballots. See, I'm okay with some, like, reform around our immigration system, and I think we should be able to come up with something. But this is exactly where I get nervous because what I don't see in here, we're not done yet, is taking on the super rich. Now, fairness, which is number one there. I think fairness is where he would say that.

But he also, like, fairness, he shoehorns in a lot of, like, anti-DI stuff. So I would put in going after the super rich. See, no one Tucker, though, he doesn't care about taxing rich people. I mean, he attacks cons. I mean, I did a segment with him five years ago. He started talking about taxing Jeff Bezos. So it's like. So he's for it?

I would say so, yeah. I mean, I'm not going to speak for him, but I, you know, saying let's not pay our credit card debt or any of that. I'll be on a few weeks, so I'll ask him. To me, to me, taking on this oligarch class has to be at the center of any bipartisan, transpartisan, whatever you want to call it, agenda that brings both sides together. Because if you don't, what the oligarch class is going to do is, say, is fuel the cultural wars over the things that he says we shouldn't be arguing about. And my fear of the populist rights advocacy in this arena has always been that it will take energy that's aimed at the oligarchs and direct it towards immigrants and say that they're that's that's the problem. So on the one hand, there's plenty of immigration policy reform that I think a sensible left can agree with, like a Bernie Sanders style left can't agree with.

But if that becomes a deflection away from the oligarch class, then I'm out. We have to take on the oligarchs. You take on the oligarchs, then let's talk about immigration too. If you were to ask a true, someone like me who opposes mass immigration and oligarchy, we would point out that the oligarchs are the people who wanted mass immigration for cheap labor. to exploit, which literally true, to drive down wages and to make it. So, I mean, that's where- But they can find cheap labor by just moving their factories all over the wall. Right, but now if you have a, well, let's look at the Trump administration.

What has the Trump administration done? They have made it so that you have enforcement, quote, on immigration, but with none of the crackdown on mass capital. Right. Lawyers on any of the corporations which employ them, mandatory e-verify. any of the hotel chains, any of these people, that would be, frankly, if you want people to just self-deport, make it illegal to work in the United States illegally. It's really actually not that difficult. They refuse to do that because a huge number of these companies, stock prices, meat prices, all of that stuff, would go up. I'm acknowledging that. I just did a segment about burritos,

but I will be honest with you that if you enforce immigration very effectively, there will be some sort of a price increase. That's just basically. And the only way to fix that is because, and we talked about this in an earlier segment, because we have not had economic growth much at all over the last, you know, 20 to 30 years, yet the very rich have gotten much richer. We have all gotten poorer to make that possible. And one way that we have kind of staved off a real collapse of the complete and total collapse of the middle class is what Tucker talks about is debt. Yeah. So we're kind of, that's that's basically kind of foaming the runway for this crash landing that is coming.

The middle class is trading away its assets, giving the assets to the rich, taking on debt so that their quality of life doesn't deteriorate too quickly. But when the next crisis comes, that's going to say, oh, well, you no longer are interesting to us. Now let's do the turn, though. After though, we've said all, this is good. Third parties are bad. Sorry, I'll say it. They don't work. Do we have anything else, though?

Well, that wasn't 10. Oh, that was all 10. Oh, that was all. Okay. But see, Ryan, this is, look, Joe, nice guy. Obviously, I like Tucker, you know. But third parties don't work. I mean, there's no third party, which is meaningfully going to win. If you want, the only, so there, we have a very recent test case, which had a promise of working, ended up being Trump who screwed them and the leaders of set third party, where you actually saw a third party candidate who was very effective with his coalition. His name is RFK Jr. You can hate RFK Jr. RFK Jr. was an independent candidate, originally Democratic candidate.

that Maha was part of the coalition. Trump called him and said, look, I need Maha as part of my coalition. You will be my HHS secretary. You will come and campaign for me. You will get X, Y and Z. Now, obviously, Trump ends up assuming that, corporate interests and all of that take over.

However, Maha got, you know, X, Y or Z thing. The stupid shit that they're obsessed with, like, cane-s-sugar diet Coke, or cane-sugar Coke and steak and shake. Whatever. All right. But my point being that they took Maha and subsumed it into the report.

Republican Party. No matter what you think of whether that was affected, it politically, it was a strategy, right? So to the extent that we have now seen multiple third party efforts, it is very obvious, asked the DSA, what they did is they took their party, their activism, their platform, they said, we're going to do what Trump did to the Republican Party, we're going to take it over. Same with the Tea Party wave. For example, you run within the primary, you work against the establishment. Now, for a very effective third party, what ends up happening? is that it doesn't actually have any capacity to win, but it can pressure a major party to subsume it

and to integrate some of its options. We've seen this many times of popular challengers throughout history. Huey Long, FDR, right? What does he do? He's afraid of Huey, so he starts to adopt some more economic populist positions. Other things that he didn't even necessarily want to do.

We've seen this also with Maha. We've seen it with Ross Perot. I mean, many tenants of Ross Perot's original campaign are now standard. issue talking points of the Republican Party today, but they are not actually going to win. And so in this case, it seems to me that if this is the platform that you want, you set this platform, maybe not necessarily as a third party. And then you say, within our two-party system, whichever party is more likely to agree more with me, we will become part of said party,

and we will hold that party to account with this set of principles. That's the only way that it actually works. I know people get mad about this. People like to dream and all this about Republican Party, but, you know, or sorry, third party, it's just not going to happen. Taking over the major parties is only what works. You can say I'm perpetuating the duopoly. I'm sorry. That's bullshit. There's too much evidence. Now, in the, from what we've seen. Look at Kashama-Sawan. You know, she just ran as a, what, independent or whatever? She got stumped. Is it humiliated in this race? And so, look, we have the evidence. It's out there. I'm sorry. It doesn't work. You can use it to try to get another party to cater to you.

I'm cool with that. Totally fine. But that is the most effective way that you're – that is the only effectiveness that you will ever have as a group of party. What does work is having a grassroots organization that is organized around a set of principles that then tries to, yes, pressure either party. And so free consulting advice for Tucker's new thing. They need a DSA, but they call it DNA. Democratic nationalists. of America. Anything with the word nationalist, the press is just going to beat you on.

Democratic, patriots of Americans? Patriots, I like that. DPA? Or RPA, Republican Patriots of America? See, I would just do a call back to like the revolution, Sons of Liberty or something like. You know what I mean? Like it just, yeah, that's true. A lot of these, you know, Patriot groups have all stolen that. I would find maybe Bull Moose. I like Bull Moose. Boose part. Bull Moose is totally, I think I have Bull Moose. Yeah, right over there. Bull Moose mug that I have back there. Are there no-nothings? Yeah. I mean, you know, they got very unfairly treated in history, Ryan, in my opinion. I called him.

Well, they were there. The American Party is what they went with. Last, I know we're going late. But no-nothing is a perfect example. No-nothingism became completely enmeshed and absorbed by the Republican Party of the day. The amount of, you know, Lincoln actually was very, had a real, like, he had to really, he really struggled with no-nothingism as part of his coalition, having to deal with all these German and these Irish immigrants in the brigades and, I mean, obviously with the New York City draft riots and having to balance all of that. But the no-nothing is actually a

perfect example of no-nothingism eventually just gets absorbed into both of the coalitions post-Civil War. The only time a new political party would actually be capable of winning, like the Republican Party of 1860, is you need an issue which destroyed Whigory, which was slavery, where Northern Whigory and Southern Wigory fundamentally could not. right reconcile there's no compromise because of slavery that was the one thing that was going to and so there's no issue like that in the republican party today there simply isn't that it's going to where a person who has this position cannot live with the other person it's it doesn't exist and so that's why it's such a unique you know time to even that that even happened but we should respect why that happened

and be very sober minded about where we are i also think some of those both sides is kind of lame in my opinion, because, and you know, look, this is just objectively, like, you have an entire democratic revolution right now happening of candidates who are rejecting Israel. Like, that's not, you know, like, that's not happening on the Republican side. I wish it were happening. It's not happening, period. Thomas Massey got his ass stomped in his primary. So, you know, if you're going to do a cost-benefit analysis, and I encourage people to do that to be realistic when they vote, they should say, okay, if this is my number one issue, this is the side where I'm going to go, right? And you could use third-party activism to pressure, but in and of itself, it doesn't have a chance.

That's the truth. And I'll tell them that, you know, if we would ever talk about it. Okay. I got to go on there, too. Make my case. You should. I was supposed to go on. I had a scheduling issue.

Oh, is that what happened? Yeah. We'll get you back on. Get back on. Okay. Make my wealth tax case directly to the hopes. I'm telling you, I don't think you would object whatsoever. I, again, my personal view, not speaking for him, but I would be, find it very,

difficult to see him. We'll find out. Something like that. All right, let's get to Murtaza Hussein, he's standing by. So the head of the Washington Office of UNICEF, which is the UN agency responsible for the welfare of children, is a man named Yajav Lishner. This is an Israeli official who in the 2010s was working at the United Nations. Dropsite News has some new reporting revealing that while Lishner was at the United Nations,

he was acting effectively as a mole for the state of Israel. to discuss that report and the fallout from it is my drop site colleague Mertaza Hussein, Maz. Thanks for being here on breaking points. Good to see you, man. You could see you guys. Yeah, so really kind of, it's one of those stories that is shocking and not surprising, but the details of it are quite incredible, particularly given the fact that Lichner remains as the head of the Washington office of UNICEF.

So walk us through a little bit of how. how he wound up. And later I want to hear, if you can, you know, to tell us as much you can about, like, the reporting behind this, because that's also really interesting. But how does, how does Yav Lishner wind up at the United Nations at all? Sure. So these stories, this story is based on a set of emails from 2014 and 2015.

So a little while ago, that were posted on this website that we've used for other stories, distributed denial secrets. It's a cache of leaked emails from the then-U.N. ambassador, so then-Dan-Azraeli-in-Ran-Prosur. And Lickner, before he worked for the UN itself, he worked for Prosser. He was working with the mission, the Israeli mission, and so forth. And Prossor worked really hard to get Lickner into the UN, as we can see in these emails. And one individual, people probably know, who was very integral in getting him in that role, was Samantha Power.

Samantha Power seemed to work very closely with ProSor in many ways when she was at the UN. And they, ProSor was very keen on Lickner getting into the UN system itself. And he asked her to make recommendations and make a few phone calls, apply pressure and, you know, other incentives to EUWN officials to get him in there. And then this is around early 2014. By May 2014, he's in there. almost immediately after getting into the UN, he begins leaking information, confidential reports, and documents, and internal correspondence to his former colleagues at the Israeli mission and other Israeli diplomats.

So, you know, it's very interesting. A U.S. official at the behest of an Israeli official got a certain individual into a role within the UN, and then immediately upon that happening, that individual starts sharing insider political intelligence and confidential documents and so forth with the Israeli government. That's kind of the chain of how this started. And, you know, as you've mentioned in your introduction, Ryan, this gentleman has continued to rise in the ranks of the UN in the year since, such that he holds a quite influential office at UNICEF in D.C. So he's here in Washington. He is, I mean, can we call it what it is? Like, you call him an Israeli mall. Like, he literally worked to pass

information to the Israeli government. Why do they have an incentive to have somebody embedded in UNICEF? I also find it a bit ironic, as I understand that they were often accusing UN personnel of being Hamas themselves. Well, you know, it's funny because in the story itself, I never really editorialized per se about, you know, what this person was exactly. I just described what they were doing. Right. And the description is basically all on their own communications in the email. So, as I said, like, they got the role. Then immediately upon getting the role, and for a very prolonged period of time, as long as the emails go, they're leaking information to the Israeli government thereafter.

So it does very much look like the behavior of somebody who was input in an organization as a mole or a spy or something to that effect to basically undermine it or shape its operations and so forth. That's what the information strongly suggests. I suggest people read the article and draw their own conclusions, but it's their own communications. So, you know, if you look at the broader picture, there are a lot of countries that would surely like to manipulate the operations of global governance organizations, the IMF, World Bank, the UN, and so forth, because they feel they can obtain political benefit from that, or they feel that they're facing scrutiny from these organizations, that they would like to defray. And at this time, Israel was probably not as unpopular as today. It was kind of walking down the path through various wars in Gaza to reaching the present state. But, you know, they were facing scrutiny for the occupation of the West Bank.

The conduct in the 2014 war in Gaza, which killed a large number of civilians. And they were seeking ways to mute that criticism or, you know, ended or even turn it around at the United Nations, which is a forum for a global public opinion in many ways. And having individuals on the inside who are able to provide information and advice and guidance and confidential information and documents is a good way of doing that. I imagine there are a lot of countries who would like to do that, but in this case, what's different is that the U.S. government was helping seemingly

the Israelis input their person into this role in the U.N. such that they could play that a role. So not every country has the assistance of Samantha Power or other, if once you're U.S. officials, to, you know, do this form of entryism, so to speak, into an organization. And, you know, I'll add one very quick point, too, is that the U.N., in a way, if you think about, it's kind of like a utopian idea of the organization, because the idea is that people will come and work here, and in doing so, they will shed their national identities or downgrade them

importance and embrace a universalistic identity based on their membership in the U.N. And that's actually going to be referenced in our story, the UN's official Code of Conduct and Regulations. They ask that you see yourself as exclusively international official and non-national official. That's a very interesting sort of, you know, unique way of framing someone's a membership in an organization. And I think some people maybe are capable of doing that. They will put aside the national identification entirely and focus only on the interest of the organization. But for other people, you know, the tribal identity or national identity is extremely overpowering, strong and they will never abandon it in favor of what the UN is at in this case.

And in that case, of course, you're going to have people who are leaking information and things like that. And again, it could be many countries, but in this case, because of American assistance, perhaps, it was much more easy for the Israelis to do that. And while you didn't editorialize in the piece, there was an interesting moment where Lichner himself is preparing talking points for the ambassador, Proser, to describe Lichner. and he in his own talking points, he says, Yajav has very good political and analytical skills.

He knows exactly what member states' political positions are. He's an intelligence officer in training and was a political officer in the Israel embassy in the UK, working with the MPs in the House of Commons and Lords. So according to his own self-assessment, he calls himself an intelligence officer in training. What kind of... So what one piece of pushback I've seen,

sort of attempting to formulate is goes to that question of whether you can actually divide your national and international affiliations and your service to your country and says well it's not like working for the CIA where you're secreting out information in the UN you're sort of allowed to share information

what are you allowed to share what aren't you supposed to share what what type of information was he sharing with the Israelis that has that has drawn criticism from UN officials in the days in the in the time since your story has been published? Yeah, so we spoke to some UN officials to try to get a sense of their interpretation of the conduct, and one individual was a former Assistant Secretary General. And, you know, his view is that the conduct describing the emails is completely adverse to the ethos and the rules of the United Nations because, you know,

undermining the interests of the organization by leaking private correspondence, private reports, reports which are marked confidential specifically, and requested UN officials not to disseminate and so forth. And, you know, there are other things in there. There were accounts of private meetings between UN officials and, you know, officials of the Egyptian government or the Iraqi government or other global governance organizations. internal accounts from the Secretary General's circle of individuals who, you know, jockeying for positions and, you know, political appointments and so forth, which are forthcoming, even unpublished draft texts of then Secretary General Ban Ki-moon's remarks, which Lickner was saying, telling his former colleagues he's going to help change them

to be more favorable to Israel and so forth. So this is tremendously undermining the U.N.'s impartiality or undermining its ability to push forward policies and so forth. And there were also specifically some reports of killings of Palestinian teenagers in the West Bank that the UN was receiving inquiries about from reporters. Lickner, according to emails, he was involved in sharing information about that privately with Israeli officials and also giving them proactive advice how to respond to this and frame their own response. And, you know, tellingly, a lot of these emails are sent from a Gmail account because, you know, if you work for an organization and you want to hide your communication,

you will often move to a private email account such that your communications, which you don't want people to see, cannot be queried by somebody inside the organization. That's why Hillary Clinton used a personal email account, for instance, to do things some years ago. It's very common for people in governments to do that when they don't want people to see. So I think that it was all very, something that the UN would completely disapprove of. The issue is that unlike the CIA, unlike the U.S. government, the UN doesn't have a classification system and confidentiality and so forth,

but there's not the same enforcement mechanism. It's not that you will go to jail if you do this or you will even be fired necessarily. It's more like an honor system. Maybe, you know, if it's such an important subject, maybe you should have more of a rigorous, you know, regime to prevent for leaks of information. But in the absence of that, it's sort of a broken system a little bit more porous than that should be given the gravity if the matter is at hand. Great story, Maz. Appreciate you joining us, sir. Thank you.

Thank you guys so much for watching. We appreciate it. Pro show. It's always fun talking with you. It was good to see you. My friend, there will be a Friday show for everybody tomorrow. See you then.

Hey, Portlandia fans. Carrie Brownstein and Fred Armisen here. The Dream of the 90s is alive in podcast form. We're launching Podlandia A. Our brand new podcast where we revisit every episode of Portlandia together. Breaking down sketches, going deep on our iconic characters,

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