Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 9/18/24: Hezbollah Pagers Detonated, JD Blames Media For Ohio Bomb Threats, Kamala Pressed At Black Journo Event, China Secures Pakistan Port, Matt Walsh Confronted On US Racism

Episode Date: September 18, 2024

Ryan and Emily discuss Hezbollah pagers detonate across Lebanon, JD blames media for Springfield bomb threats, Kamala pressed at NABJ event, China secures key naval port in Pakistan, Matt Walsh joins to discuss his new movie on anti-racism in America.    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.

This is an iHeart Podcast. is still out there. Each week, I investigate a new case. If there is a case we should hear about, call 678-744-6145. Listen to Hell and Gone Murder Line on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Sometimes as dads, I think we're too hard on ourselves. We get down on ourselves on not being able to, you know, we're the providers, but we also have to learn

to take care of ourselves. A wrap-away, you got to pray for the providers, but we also have to learn to take care of ourselves. A wrap-away, you got to pray for yourself as well as for everybody else, but never forget yourself. Self-love made me a better dad because I realized my worth. Never stop being a dad. That's dedication. Find out more at fatherhood.gov. Brought to you by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the Ad Council. I've seen a lot of stuff over 30 years, you know. Some very despicable crime and things that are kind of tough to wrap your head around. And this ranks right up there in the pantheon of Rhode Island fraudsters.

I've always been told I'm a really good listener, right? And I maximized that while I was lying. Listen to Deep Cover The Truth About Sarah on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey guys, Ready or Not 2024 is here and 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. Good morning. Welcome to CounterPoints, everybody. Emily, how you doing? Good. I like how you used your hands. If you're listening to this, you really missed out on some forceful gesticulation. I'm trying to be excited. Yeah, well, it's working. So, bizarrely, we have Matt Walsh later in the show.

Not so bizarre. Who's the Daily Wire guy, right? He has a movie out following up on his question about... What is a woman? What is a woman? Now he's asking, am I a racist? Right. So we'll get the answer to that question. I don't have the whole right wing ecosystem mapped out. Are you guys friends, frenemies? What's the situation as we go in here? You know, I've interviewed him several times, always fairly friendly. You know, he's probably further to the right than I am. I'll put it that way. So it'll be interesting.

But he's very, I mean, this is no surprise, but he's very, very, very popular with a big swath of people on the right, especially younger people on the right. So it kind of makes sense that the movie's doing pretty well. And apart from that, you and I can get into how we reacted to the movie. We'll save that. We'll save that till the end of the show. Sounds good. And we're also going to, I also have, the Federal Reserve is meeting at two o'clock today. So we're not going to have a segment on that. They're going to announce whether or not they're going to be cutting rates a quarter percent or half a percent. That seems to be what people are guessing. If they go a half percent, it's going to be a signal

that they think the economy is a little bit more sluggish than if they go with a quarter percent. I'm putting my money on half. I'm going with a half point rate cut. I haven't actually put real money in that. Not until they cut the rate. Today at the New York Stock Exchange and elsewhere, people just be gambling about whether it's going to be a quarter or a half the entire time. Where's your money?

I don't know. Who knows? Exactly. And I think who knows is as good as a guess as you can get right now. We also have over at Dropsite, based on a ream of new documents that we got out of Pakistan, the wild story that Pakistan has agreed to give China access to a naval base in the port of Gwadar, which is a key demand that China has been making of Pakistan for many years now and is sure to raise the hackles of the United States.

And it is another foreign policy failure on the part of the US because we have been, we helped overthrow their last government, installed what is supposed to be a pliant US government that has undermined democracy there, US friendly government there. And instead, it's winding up. They're pushing them closer to China. It's crazy how that works. Yeah, there's a lot to talk about. Actually, I have a lot of questions for you based on that. And Ryan, we should probably start with the biggest news of the day, which is developments from the pager attack. That's probably the best way to put it. Sounds bizarre. If you haven't been following the news, it sounds incomprehensible. But we can start looking at, if you're watching this, we can start rolling footage. What are we looking at here, Ryan? So what you saw there is

what is most likely a Hezbollah operative employee who had a pager spontaneously, not spontaneously, but just suddenly explode. And it sent chaos all through Lebanon, and there were reports of some explosions in Syria as well. So basically what happened here is that in the spring, Israel killed the chief of staff, Hezbollah's chief of staff. And Nasrallah, the leader of Hesbola, sent out a message saying, cell phones, you guys are using your cell phones in a sloppy, opsec manner, and they have become too much of a risk. Stop with the cell phones. We need to go back to the basics, and we need to use handwritten notes. We need to use couriers. We need to use pagers. Around that time, and this is according to a lot of the reporting that's coming out of the region, and according to the New York Times, they used a Taiwanese company for this.

Hezbollah ordered more than 3,000 pagers to implement this new OPSEC policy. The biggest pager order in the last 10 years. Probably not because, you know, maybe hospitals are ordering. I imagine that pagers are ordered in bulk because individual consumers aren't really ordering pagers anymore. If you're ordering them, it's because you have a system-wide situation. You're going to force people to use them. And so somehow Israel got inside the supply chain from Taiwan into Lebanon. And it appears that they were able to install some small amount of explosive. And they were able to also then tamper with the pagers such that they could remotely trigger them. Initially, there was some thought that they had

sent in malware that had raised the temperature of the lithium batteries until they exploded. But if you watch that clip again, you'll see just a sudden explosion. And if it were just a battery heating up, you would first you would see or first you would feel it getting very hot. Sure. And some of them, they would just smoke because that's how these crazy malfunctioning cell phones blow up. They smoke for a while and then they blow up. These, boom, just blew up. What the reporting also says, and this is extra diabolical, is that the message had the pagers pinging, like making a noise, you know, beep, beep, beep,

for a significant amount of time before they exploded, so that the people thought that there was a message from Hezbollah leadership. And so you're seeing an enormous number of injuries, more than 3,000 so far, including, I believe there's 11 dead at this point, including two children, because if this pager were in my house, for instance, and I was it was 11 dead at this point, including two children, because if this pager were in my house, for instance, and I was a Hezbollah operative, my kids might be playing with it. Well, you can see, actually, if we can even roll A1 again, if you're looking at it, this is, they're surrounded at a market in this case, and you can see two little girls. Like, there's two people right there. There's two little girls on the other side of the fruit cart.

So there are a lot of details about exactly how this was initiated and with what potential precautions. Who knows? It doesn't look like, obviously, when you see two little girls standing around across from the pager explode. So far, it seems pretty logical. You can understand how children were affected by this. Now, Ryan, the Taiwanese company. Oh, but just to finish what I was saying. Yeah.

That's why there's so many people went blind and so many people lost their hands. Because it appears that they were like looking at it like, what's wrong with this? And then it blows. Now, the Taiwanese company, to your point about the supply chain, is saying actually that they made a deal with a Hungarian company that they would use, the Hungarian company would just use the Taiwanese company's branding, but they were in charge of these pagers, and they're saying, these are not our pagers. The Taiwanese company is saying, these are not our pagers. These are, in fact, this came from a Hungarian company. It's not good for business if you're the Taiwanese company. Yeah.

Well, now we're the Hungarian company. But that does add a wrinkle to how this might have been pulled off, to your point about infiltration of the supply chain. Right. And so what we have also learned is that the scheme was discovered this week or within the last week. A Hezbollah operative became suspicious about the pagers and was planning to alert leadership about them. He was killed. The reporting suggests that he was killed, he was assassinated by Israel to stop him

from telling the leadership. Then a second person found out about it and was planning also to tell leadership. And the plan would have been foiled at that point. And so that's when Israeli military leadership faced a dilemma. And it's a kind of an interesting philosophical question here because all of the brutality that you see in war gets its just cause by the fact that it's happening within war and it's supposed to be aimed at combatants. What happens? So that's the construct for this. This now is an unprecedented attack. We've never seen anything like this. Everybody now who owns a phone or a pager is wondering, could this thing be remotely detonated against me for some reason? So Israel faced this question. Okay,

the pager plan was part of an invasion plan. Like, that's what the reporting says. But the idea was, as you're launching the offensive, you blow up the communication system of Hezbollah and at the same time maim and incapacitate a massive portion of the operatives. And as a result, you then are more successful in your operation. Israel was not ready to launch an operation or had decided for whatever reason was not going to launch an operation. So their choice then is we allow this thing to be rolled up and discovered and we just wasted this capacity that we had. An enormous operation, clearly, no matter what. I mean, to be able to have this

tack. Right. Or the other choice is we press the button and we maim, you know, 3,000 plus people, you know, kill some, kill, you're definitely going to kill some children and some innocent people. Like there's just no question about it because they're going to be near the pagers. And, but not for the operational value related to your invasion. But it obviously would be a blow to Hezbollah. But you're only in a kind of soft war with Hezbollah. You're not in a hot, open war with Hezbollah. And facing that choice of stepping back, not launching, not pressing the button, because it's not part of your operation, and maiming the 3,000 plus people, they decided, we're just going to take the casualties, even if it's not part of any, even if it's not part of our strategy.

Because now it's just, so now it's just, well, we could really hurt 3,000 people or we could not and we're gonna go with we could and I think What what that shows is that there's really very very little contemplation about the idea of just coexisting It's interesting because that's the other thing you could do is you could say Okay, you know what? We're actually gonna sign the ceasefire deal at which point Hezbollah stopszbollah stops launching its rockets. Hezbollah has said that they will stop launching rockets if there's a ceasefire deal reached. When there was a week-long ceasefire in November to exchange hostages, all the rockets from Hezbollah stopped, all the rockets from the Houthis stopped, all the rockets from the Syrian and Iraqi militias that are proxies of Iran, they all stopped. Which shows that coexistence and peace, it is possible.

And it has to be possible. We live on this planet together. And I think what this shows is that they're like, no, it's just not. And maybe their calculation is correct. Just coexistence isn't possible. Right. But then what a bleak world. So, OK, so your country then is just going to exist on endless war against all of its neighbors forever. Like, that's really your plan. That's quite interesting that the Iranian, I mean, a lot of people would say, of course, the Iranian ambassador to Lebanon had one of these pagers. But the geopolitical

ripple effect of this, I mean, obviously, on the one hand, you know, it's hard to have a more targeted approach than literally the pager in someone's pocket. On the other hand, we know that, you know, it's going to explode in a way that doesn't just affect that person. And if it's not in their pocket and their kids are playing with it, obviously, there are consequences that are beyond just taking out single individuals. But also just geopolitically, you know, they wipe out a huge amount of operatives. Why is, or what happens when you have the Iranian ambassador implicated in the amount of people who were taken out? Well, two things there. One is, so it reminded me of Jeremy Scahill's interview with the second in command of PIJ. And he asked him, you know, he said, yeah, people accuse you of

being supported by Iran. Right. And the guy said, yeah, of course. Yeah. We're allies with Iran. Like, yeah, they support our cause. We appreciate that they support our cause. Right. Why would we not accept their support from our perspective? That's great. And so, yeah, Iran supports Hezbollah. Iran's going to therefore coordinate with Hezbollah. It is interesting that Iran hasn't even yet responded to the last provocation. Right. The attack, the assassination of Hani outside of Tehran. And now there's another one. And it is getting to a point where a lot of Palestinians and supporters of Palestine around the world are saying, you know, Iran actually isn't capable, to whatever previous provocation, maybe that's what they've got.

Maybe that's it. Maybe they weren't holding back. And now Hezbollah seems to be seriously weakened. Like, I don't know how many operatives they have. And you can always recruit more. Right. But it's also a blow to their communication system. Because now what do they do? I mean, they can go back to pagers, but now they're going to be very careful about where they get their

pagers from. If they go back to phones, then that helps Israel with its cyber technology get closer to more assassinations across the board. They've been assassinating Hezbollah leaders left and right. And there was a book a couple of years ago that we're helping turn into a podcast drop site called Palestine Laboratory, which is about how Israel's weapons industry is one of the world's most sophisticated because, as Israel puts it, they get to use the occupied territories as a laboratory for their weapons, where they're using experimental weapons on civilian populations and also on militant groups and developing better weapons technologies as a result. And this is an interesting example of that. Yeah, that's a really interesting point. We haven't seen the last of this, probably. We can put the next element up on the screen, just breaking down the various other aspects here. So

Hezbollah is vowing to respond, obviously, at this point. So Ryan, one of my questions for you is, to the point about Iran not having responded to the assassination of Hania outside Tehran yet, what potentially could a response from Hezbollah look like? What should people perhaps expect? I mean, they supposedly have some significant kind of hypersonic missile technology that they've been saving. So everybody's been, the thinking is that everybody's been holding back a little bit because A, they don't want a regional war and B, they want to have their stockpiles if they do have a regional war. The Houthis sent a hypersonic missile into Tel Aviv several days ago, which caused significant damage. And they've claimed that they're going to be sending dozens more in the coming days. And actually, we should put A3 up. Four Israeli

soldiers were killed in an ambush by Hamas fighters just yesterday as well. Yeah, including, I believe, and five others wounded, three quite seriously, as well as another Israeli officer seriously wounded in a separate clash in Rafah. So this continues to go on. This is one of the more significant casualty events for the IDF, four deaths and three serious injuries at a time in an ambush, which shows that despite the incredible military superiority and 11 months in, having troops amidst a population of 1.5 to 2 million people who are hostile to them, long term is going to continue to be extraordinarily difficult and lead to these types of casualties. And that brings us to the final element here. This is from Dropsite, actually, about the—so they'll just read the headline. New Gaza health numbers show Israel kills two babies every day with no end in sight. Also,

if you're just listening to this, the header photo on this, Ryan, is brutal. Yeah, one of those mass graves. And so, Sharif Abdel-Kadous, correspondent for Dropsite. You may have seen he obtained the health ministry's latest data over the weekend, and we converted it into a downloadable PDF form and a CSV that people can check out because it has, of the 40,000 plus casualties, it has about 34,000 of them that have names and IDs and ages and birthdates and gender to them. There are obviously going to be some mistakes. People can go sift through it and might find duplicates here or there. There have been mistakes discovered in previous Ministry of Health data that they've put out, but they've been in the range of just a handful of names been mistaken. They then update and fix that data.

Kind of shocking that they're still able to even produce a document of this length and this detail. That's a good point. At this point. You mean the infrastructure? Yeah. And it's also just a devastating indictment of what's been going on. It's the first, I think, 14 pages. Our children under one.

It just goes on and on and on and on. Like the conflict itself, which to the point that this brings us to, which is there's really no end in sight. Right. There seems to be nobody saying, like, well, what if we don't do this? What if we just coexist here? Well, it seems. There is a deal to be had. Like, Iran, Lebanon, Iraqi militias, the Houthis, like they all have better things to do.

Like they all have domestic problems to deal with. Israel has better things to do than just carry out a genocide inside its occupied territories. I don't remember if this was in one of Jeremy Scahill's interviews, but even the persistent point that people are making, you know, whether it's from Israel or from Palestinians or Hamas leaders is, what's the point of a so-called ceasefire when we know what's going to happen a month later, two months later, six months later? What's the point? There's just no trust that the other side is not going to egregiously violate it under the auspices that something changed, even if those aren't legitimate. And that's basically what's been going on for half a century. Yeah. And while Haniyeh was negotiating the ceasefire and then was assassinated,

you know, he was then replaced as the top leader of Hamas with Yahya Sinwar, who recently put out a statement saying that, okay, if there's not going to be a ceasefire, we, the Houthis, Hezbollah, the Iraqi militias, we're going to continue fighting and we're going to do it until we've driven Israel completely out of the region. Which, you know, the Hamas charter supports a two-state solution. They have been pressured into agreeing to that situation. Now under this conflict, they're saying, you know what, all right, if there's no ceasefire, it's going to be a war of attrition.

Their belief, or their stated belief at least, is that because so many Israelis have other passports, because they can move to the United States, they can move to Europe, that as the economy collapses and endless war continues, that those citizens are going to choose at that point to move to those safer places. Whereas the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza don't really, don't even have that option. Like they can't leave. You can if you raise enough money on GoFundMe or have enough support somewhere, potentially get to Egypt and then you can fight to go somewhere else. But it's a massive uphill climb for that to happen. Whereas from their perspective, all an Israeli has to do is just go to the airport and fly to where they have citizenship elsewhere,

which goes to their kind of fundamental ideological belief that half the countries aren't legitimately native to the region anyway. And that's what you're seeing in that thought, where they believe they can win a war of attrition because they don't have anywhere to go. Right. Well, I don't know if they're right or not. But it's not pretty. In the context of the story that we just had up on the screen, two babies every day.

Yeah. 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 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. She was a decorated veteran, a Marine who saved her comrades, a hero. She was stoic, modest, tough, someone who inspired people.

Everyone thought they knew her, until they didn't. I remember sitting on her couch and asking her, is this real? Is this real? Is this real? Is this real? I just couldn't wrap my head around what kind of person would do that to another person that was getting treatment, that was, you know, dying. This is a story all about trust and about a woman named Sarah Kavanaugh. I've always been told I'm a really good listener, right? And I maximized that while I was lying. Listen to Deep Cover The Truth About Sarah on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I think everything that might have dropped

in 95 has been labeled the golden years of hip hop. It's Black Music Month and We Need to Talk is tapping in. I'm Nyla Simone breaking down lyrics,

amplifying voices, and digging into the culture that shaped the soundtrack of our lives. My favorite line on there was my son and my daughter gonna be proud when they hear my old tapes.

Yeah. Now I'm curious, do they like rap along now? Yeah, cause I bring him on tour with me and he's getting older now too so his friends are starting to understand what that type of music is and they're starting to be like yo your dad's like really the goat like he's a legend so he gets it what does it mean to leave behind a music legacy for your family it means a lot to me just having a good catalog and just being able to make people feel good. Like, that's what's really important

and that's what stands out is that our music changes people's lives for the better. So the fact that my kids get to benefit off of that, I'm really happy. Or my family in general.

Let's talk about the music that moves us. To hear this and more on how music and culture collide, listen to We Need to Talk from the Black Effect Podcast Network

on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Meanwhile, here in the United States, J.D. Vance, media critic, or I should say J.D. Vance put his media critic hat on yesterday at an event in Sparta, Michigan, where the fallout from the cats and dog meme cycle continues on the campaign trail.

Let's go ahead and roll this clip of Vance criticizing media coverage of bomb threats that have come into various places in Springfield, Ohio, since this really took off just in the last couple of weeks. Here's what J.D. Vance had to say. A lot of people who pretend to be fair journalists, you know what they've been saying? For the last few days, Springfield has been experiencing an unbelievable number,

something like 35, 40 bomb threats in Springfield in just the last few days. And you know what the governor of Ohio came out yesterday and said? Every single one of those bomb threats was a hoax, and all of those bomb threats came from foreign countries. So the American media, for three days, has been lying and saying that Donald Trump and I are inciting bomb threats, when in reality, the American media has been laundering foreign disinformation. It is disgusting, and every single one of them owes the residents of Springfield an apology. All right.

Well, David Frum weighed in on this, and J.D. Vance then responded to David Frum. J.D. Vance has been very online as of late, to say the least, at least for a non-Trump presidential candidate. That is to say, someone who is not Donald Trump himself. David Frum said, the difference, the upsetting things said by Trump and Vance are not true. The upsetting things said about Trump and Vance are true. Trump really did mount a violent coup against the Constitution. He and his relatives really did take bribes in office,

including from foreign governments, et cetera, et cetera. And Vance really did, and by his own admission, intentionally, quote, create stories for political advantage that put residents of his state at risk of physical harm. J.D. responded, I'd say the most important difference is that people on your team tried to kill Donald Trump twice. Ryan, what do you make of that back and forth, and not just J.D. versus David Frum, but also J.D. versus the media writ large? What about either of those shooters, I'd say, makes them part of, quote-unquote, David Frum's team? Also, who's David Frum's team? Ukraine. There might be something to that one in the very, very zoomed-out advantage point that

this suspect has been, obviously, a stalker. Crystal have been covering a- The Ukraine nut. Ukraine nut, right. And a sort of the most intense version of a hawk that you could find on Ukraine, on China, I guess roughly aligned with David Frum, probably on those two policies in the abstract. So maybe Frum needs to eat that one. The other guy- I don't know. Not so sure about the other guy.

Yeah, we still have no idea, which is strange in and of itself. But it does seem kind of funny that J.D. Vance wants precision and accuracy in the reporting on the bomb threats and wants context as well. When his original story that he was telling, which led to these bomb threats, led to them, whether or not they were pranksters from the little Russian troll army or whatever he's suggesting it is. Okay, that's funny, by the way. The bomb threats, right. Right. Can we acknowledge that that's funny, that he's saying it's like foreign interference in the election? Yes. Okay, that's funny. Yes, that is funny. They were triggered by the stories that he was telling. He has said,

look, I created this story. Now, what he'll say is, what I mean by created is I repeated some stories that I had heard from constituents. Right. And in context, that was one of the annoying things about the David Frum tweet is that he did that legitimately. If you watch that entire interview in context, he said that so poorly. I mean, just from a political standpoint, his comms staffers were probably like groaning when they heard that. But in the larger context, he was saying, this is not a fabrication because my constituents have been coming to me for months, blah, blah, blah. So even if that, whether or not that's true, it's not actually what he was saying. Right, but the claims don't seem to be standing up. Like, they have found no missing cats and dogs. The original source of that claim has apologized for circulating a bum rumor. And it's sad that she has to apologize nationally

for just like- She posted something on Facebook. She posted something on Facebook that she heard from her daughter who heard it from a cousin who heard it from a friend. Not a good source. Not the kind of thing you would base a national story around. The whole 20,000 number also looks rather flimsy. It's in the New York Times. Yeah. No, but that's what I'm saying. That's in the New York Times. Yeah. No, but that's what I'm saying. That's why I think it's taken off. It's in the New York Times.

Well, right. But the Times reported it, which is where a lot of people source the number to. Yeah. And I think the town manager or the mayor had said it like a year ago or something like that. My rule of thumb is be very skeptical of nice round numbers, whether it comes to no contest bidding, like $50 million for McKinsey, as Matt Stoller reported. Yeah, that's right. Remember, it's $50 million.

Okay, what are you going to do with that? Don't worry about it. It's just $50 million. We'll do something with it. Whenever somebody says, oh, the number's 20,000, it's like, hmm, I'm not so sure that that's actually based on anything other than let's put a number out there that is large enough to convey the concern that we have for the growth in the population. Turned out, you know, they're not here illegally. That's complicated. Well, and interesting, actually. Yeah. And so, J.D. Vance, on the one hand, wants his bigger truth to withstand the fact that a lot of what's underneath it isn't actually

true. But when it comes to the bomb threats, he wants all of the motivations checked before people report that there was a bomb threat. If you're walking out of your school because the Russians called one in, or because it was like a MAGA dude, you're walking out of the school either way. I will say a lot of the media coverage, though, did implicitly or explicitly blame the bomb threats on J.D. Vance. And that's an argument that can absolutely be made. J.D. Vance and Donald Trump were the ones that— Russia would not be, or whoever, wouldn't be doing it without—

Right. But here's where I think it gets especially interesting. And I'm just thinking about this from the perspective, obviously, of a conservative. It's like Springfield, Ohio, the New York Times did a follow-up here. Estimates range between 12,000 and 20,000. To your point, 12,000 is a significantly different number than 20,000, although still a very significant number for the size of Springfield. There's a serious population there of Haitians. Right, yeah. According to city officials who have spoken with the Times, and those estimates are based on data from the Ohio Bureau of Motor Vehicles, Springfield's public schools, healthcare providers, and social service agencies. So in the big picture, there's obviously a story here of strain on a social and economic level from this influx of migrants. And that's a story that can

be glass half empty or glass half full, depending on how you look at it. You could say, these strains are what we've always done in America as we accommodate new populations who come in and do great jobs in the factories and build their way into middle class lives. Or you could say these are taxpayers who are having trouble with overcrowding in schools and housing costs going up. And they have all of these like perfectly well-intentioned objections to what's happened over the course of the Biden-Harris administration. So you can see that from different perspectives no matter what. But one thing is true, and that's basically that the press didn't talk about this story until J.D. Vance and Donald Trump started talking about it in outrageous, these outrageous, the outrageous context. And one thing to the story that I would say is not in defense of politicians lying,

of course not. But on the other hand, the sort of legacy press does not do itself any favors by ignoring some of these bigger plot lines for ideological reasons, because that's what, like things boil over in the absence of attention on what is legitimately a newsworthy story. And then we end up, it makes the Donald Trumps and J.D. Vance's of the world more and more likely to talk in, like, massively exaggerated terms. That's not a defense of them talking in massively exaggerated terms whatsoever. It is, though, just to say there's some responsibility on the part of the media to dedicate proportional coverage here and to cover immigration much better than it does. It's just sort of, for me, like crying over spilt milk when they start to whine about J.D. Vance and Donald Trump. It's like, well, you're creating an atmosphere that makes this more and more likely, and it's an unforced error because your job is to cover this stuff fairly. But while it's true that they haven't covered

Springfield, Ohio, because it's a town of roughly 50,000 people or whatever, as a national story, I think they have covered immigration in a pretty hawkish way. I don't think they've done a very good job of covering... I mean, the border, like, I mean, Democrats talk about how the border is a complete disaster. Republicans talk about how

the border is a complete disaster. The mainstream news media covers the border as a complete disaster. And related to that is the suggestion that there's like hordes of people coming up. I think from like an immigration hawk's perspective, the media is serving up all the hysteria that you could want. Like, okay, now they're talking about Springfield in particular, but have they really been ignoring the question of the border? Well, the question of, I think, integration of this, like that's what I think has been, I don't think the corporate press has been entirely ignoring the question of the border, but the question of what happens once people get over

the border and then seek to integrate in sometimes mid-sized, mid-range communities, Springfield, Dayton area, that story is, I think, very rarely covered. And it's an interesting story, actually, from the left and the right. The claim was that they're not integrating into the community. Right. And the evidence for that was that they're stealing and eating like dogs and cats. Well, no, I mean, there were people talking at all those town council meetings about housing costs going up, about the problems with schools, about like, I mean, those people being forced out of housing situations. I mean, there weren't just people repeating the dogs and cats stuff at those meetings. It was everything else too. And that's why I think it's unfortunate,

because even from the perspective of the left, there's a lot that could be said about, are these factory workers being taken advantage of? Are they union? Are these conditions fair and acceptable for people? Right. And what would the city look like without them? Right. No, seriously. I think that's super interesting. And it doesn't have to be right wing. But I think a lot of journalists are just stuck in this rut where criticizing, and there are certain countries in Europe that have gotten out of that reflex, but where criticizing mass immigration, which has clearly objectively happened. And I didn't say mass illegal immigration. I think that's important because a lot of the Haitian migrants, you look

at their papers and they're perfectly legal. They're making asylum claims and waiting for them to be adjudicated in the asylum courts. And they have work permits and all of that. And it's a perfectly legal form of immigration because they're making asylum claims en masse. So it's not just like illegal immigration. It's going through legal pathways that we've expanded. So there's just a super, I think, super legitimate and interesting questions that don't have to result in necessarily like conservative arguments. But the media is just in this reflexive rut of being disinterested in anything that might be highly critical of mass migration.

The New York Times did do an excellent series on children who were being exploited that had been trafficked over the border and were missing. DHS just missing thousands of migrant children. That was a great series, but there's so many different stories like that and different sort of downstream effects that I just rarely see covered. And just to check out, so I just Googled the number of journalists in Ohio. And the first thing that comes up is from 2012 to 2019, Ohio lost 43 percent of its newspaper journalists. I agree with that. From 2019 until today, you can imagine that the number collapsed much further. I imagine if you looked at whatever the newspaper situation is in Springfield, the news situation is in Springfield, 10, 15 years ago,

and what it is more broadly from the Ohio papers, the Dayton paper, and also like the Toledo Blade and the others who cover the state more broadly, you'll see probably a 90% collapse in journalistic capacity. And when that happens, you only have time to cover the weather, traffic, new businesses that are opening. Sport, local sports. Local sports. And a lot of times. But like actual reporting on anything that takes effort.

Yeah. What they call that enterprise at those newspapers, enterprise reporting. It takes enterprise to go and do it. That is the thing that gets cut. Right. And it often ends up coming from a bureau in a city tens, like dozens of miles away, at least, if not. And those bureaus are shut. Right. So like those are the first ones that get shut down. You have, you know, the Cleveland reporters or the Columbus reporters reporting on Springfield, Dayton, as opposed to having a robust

local paper in Dayton. This was one of the big things, I think, during the sort of school culture wars during COVID. I think I did a monologue on this. If we had more robust local news, that used to be the pipeline where a lot of the stuff got worked out before it ended up in the national media because some of these conversations would be hashed out by the free press.

Like the free press would facilitate sharing relevant information to the community and the community would come together and sort of figure out a solution. I think a lot of these school board confrontations would have stayed local instead of being blown up into divisive national news cycles. I could not agree with that more.

So it's just- And yeah, it looks like Springfield was a victim of corporate consolidation from Cox Enterprises, which is this, you know, you know, Cox, it's like this gigantic behemoth of that gobbles up local news and then basically gets rid of all the local in it, centralizes it at the top, combines it with radio and other local newspapers and basically just gives the same news with a slight tweak, maybe one person in Springfield.

So that's the Springfield Sun, it looks like. And in late 2010, Cox Enterprises merged all of its local media holdings under the CMG Ohio brand and consolidated locations. In addition, its print publications holds include a bunch of different, like radio and local locations. In addition, it's print publications. Holdings include a bunch of different, like radio and local TV. So they're just consolidating it all and getting rid of all the workers. Lovely. And then, yeah, you're not going to get, you're not going to get, you know, you get what you pay for or you get what you allow the oligarchs to control. Right. As this democratic society. So let's watch this Hillary Clinton clip, which is a little

bit of a pivot, but gets into the broader conversation about disinformation. So this was Hillary Clinton on Rachel Maddow talking about what consequences should come to people who are allegedly disseminating Russian propaganda. I think it's important to indict the Russians, just as Mueller indicted a lot of Russians who were engaged in direct election interference and boosting Trump back in 2016. But I also think there are Americans who are engaged in this kind of propaganda. And whether they should be civilly or even in some cases criminally charged is something that would be a better deterrence because the Russians are unlikely, except in a very few cases, to ever stand trial in the United States. You know, they're not going to be going to a country where they can be extradited or even returning to the United States unless they are very foolish.

So I think we need to uncover all of the connections and make it very clear that you can vote however you want. But we are not going to let adversaries, whether it is Russia, China, Iran or anybody else, basically try to influence Americans as to how we should vote in picking our leaders. You can vote however you want. You just can't say whatever you want. It's a nice concession. We appreciate that. Yeah, she's willing to compromise, willing to come to the table. You can vote however you want for now. You know that in her heart of hearts, she thinks it should be a crime to have voted for Donald Trump. To vote for Donald Trump, right, because you're a Russian puppet, and we can't stand for that. And for her to go on television and float that some Americans should perhaps be charged criminally for repeating what she calls Russian talking points is amazing. It's utterly amazing.

Where is old leftist Rachel Maddow to jump in and say, excuse me, ma'am, former Secretary of State? What exactly are we talking about here? I guess we don't look to former Secretary of State to uphold principles of democracy anywhere around the world, so we might as well not look for it here at home. But good Lord. Glenn had a great point. He said, if Hillary's, Glenn Greenwald posted,

if Hillary's insanely repressive measure were implemented, people spreading disinformation could be imprisoned. The first two people to share a prison cell should be her and Maddow, who drowned the country in Steele dossier, Alphabank service, and other demented, debunked lies, which, by the way, could easily have been Russian disinformation that was funneled intentionally to Christopher Steele as Steele would be the sort of useful idiot.

He's out with a new book. Maybe we can get him on. All we can do is let a jury sort it out. That's right. That's right. Disinformation, very real. Punishment for disinformation, also increasingly very real. And these two things are not necessarily or should not necessarily be related.

Well, amazing. You have to have some tolerance for disinformation. In a free society, of course, but I guess we're losing that muscle memory. 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. She was a decorated veteran, a Marine who saved her comrades, a hero.

She was stoic, modest, tough, Someone who inspired people. Everyone thought they knew her. Until they didn't. I remember sitting on her couch and asking her, is this real? Is this real? Is this real? Is this real? I just couldn't wrap my head around what kind of person would do that to another person that was getting treatment that was, you know, dying? This is a story all about trust and about a woman named Sarah Kavanaugh. I've always been told I'm a really good listener, right? And I maximized that while I was lying. Listen to Deep Cover, The Truth About Sarah on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I think everything that might have dropped in 95 has been labeled the golden years of hip hop. It's Black Music Month and We Need to Talk is tapping in.

I'm Nyla Simone, breaking down lyrics amplifying voices and digging into the culture that shaped the soundtrack of our lives my favorite line on there was my son and my daughter gonna be proud when they hear my old tapes yeah now i'm curious do they like rap along now yeah because i bring him on tour with me and he's getting older now too so his friends are starting to understand what that type of music is and they're starting to be like yo your dad's like really the goat like he's a legend a legend. So he gets it. What does it mean to leave behind a music legacy for your family? It means a lot to me. Just having a good catalog and just being able to make people feel good. Like that's what's really important. And that's what stands out is that our music

changes people's lives for the better. So the fact that my kids get to benefit off of that, I'm really happy. or my family in general. Let's talk about the music that moves us. To hear this and more on how music and culture collide, listen to We Need to Talk from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Let's move on to Kamala Harris,

who has done six interviews since being named the presidential nominee after President Joe Biden stepped down. Three of them have been with, like, friendly radio hosts. I think we all remember how some of those radio interviews have been handled in the past. But she did sit down yesterday for a fairly long back and forth. In addition to the Dana Bash interview, she did one other interview. This one— With the local Philadelphia TV reporter. So this one was really the longest exchange I think that she's had, at least live, since being named the presidential nominee.

And this was at the National Association of Black Journalists in conversation at an NABJ event. We all remember how Donald Trump's NABJ sit down went. Yeah, it was perfect. It was a perfect phone call. So let's take a listen to this answer that Kamala Harris gave on the economy yesterday. We had been a lot of work to do to clean up a mess. As of today, we have created over 16 million new jobs, over 800,000 new manufacturing jobs. We have the lowest black unemployment rate in generations. We have invested in small businesses, and they're to the benefit of many people, but including black small businesses, some of the highest rate of creation of new

black small businesses in years. We have done the work of capping the cost of prescription medication for our seniors for issues like insulin. And again, I'm speaking to the black journalists who care about all people, but in particular, I'll talk about the impact on black people, where we know black folks are 60 times more likely, 60 percent, excuse me, more likely to be diagnosed with diabetes. And we have now finally capped the cost of insulin for our seniors at $35 a month, capped the cost of prescription medication for our seniors at $2,000 a year, because we, unlike the former president who promised to do it, we finally have allowed Medicare to negotiate drug prices against the big pharmaceutical companies.

And these are just some of the accomplishments. Is the price of groceries still too high? Yes. Do we have more work to do? Yes. All right. Do we have more work to do? That's one way to kind of handle questions about how you're part of an administration in which people still see grocery prices as being too high compared to the administration that came immediately before it. Now, Kamala Harris also commented on, was asked actually, about what she makes of trends that are showing up in polls among black men, in particular being sort of polled towards Donald Trump in some numbers that just Republicans aren't used to seeing, Democrats aren't used to seeing. It's hardly hardly going to be a landslide for Donald Trump among black men, but the patterns are interesting enough

to warrant further speculation, of course. So here's how Kamala Harris responded to that. You have engaged black men and censored them in your economic opportunity tour. But polling shows that some black men, particularly young black men, are considering voting for Donald Trump and they see

him as better for the economy. What is your message to young black male voters who feel left out of this economy, and how can your economic policies materially change their lives? So I appreciate the spirit of the question, but I'll tell you I've often been asked this question in a way that I've had to respond by first saying, that I think it's very important to not operate from the assumption that black men are in anybody's pocket. Black men are like any other voting group. You got to earn their vote. So I'm working to earn the vote, not assuming I'm going to have it because I am black, but because the policies and the perspectives I have understands what we must do to recognize the needs of all communities. And I intend to be a president for all people. So I have to say, I actually thought that was a pretty good answer, partially because of what Nina Turner said. Nina Turner during the DNC told the free press that the Democratic Party kind of emasculates black men from Nina's perspective, at least. I think

there's probably some truth to that. And Kamala Harris saying, I'm not taking anything for granted was probably the best way that she could respond to that. I don't know. What do you think, Ryan? Yeah, I think that's right. And on the previous clip, I would love to have a politics where people are constantly competing for who can take on big pharma more. Yes, that'd be great. Like Biden pushing through with the Inflation Reduction Act, Medicare negotiation after the Democrats had ran on it in 2006. And then when they took over the White House in 2009 and had both houses of Congress, they traded it to pharma in exchange for pharma support for Obamacare. And then they were like, it's just a one-year deal. After this, then we're back at it. And then they claimed they were going to do it for the next 10 years.

But then they finally did it. And it, you know, it took them 15 years, but it's, you know, a real credit to the advocates who were pushing for it, to, you know, seniors who have been organizing around that issue, because you're up against one of the most powerful lobbies in Washington. Like, I think they have something like five or six lobbyists for every single member of Congress. The amount of money that they have to spend because of federal policy is ungodly. And they did beat them. And the Medicare negotiations, the insulin cap is a literal lifesaver. And the negotiations estimated, saved something like $7, $8 billion for both Medicare and seniors,

and also pushes down prices for everybody. But it also is a huge kind of toe in the door. So to have them, I would love to see then Trump come back and be like, no, I'm actually going to be tougher on big pharma when I come in. He never does. As you were outlining that, I find it, you know, we've talked about this before, but it is so interesting that, and Matt Seller has actually gone back and listened to Trump's speeches from 2016 and compared them to Trump's speeches from 2024. He was constantly railing, not just against like elites, but against other corporate elites. And I say other because he would say, I know the system. And these guys are corrupt and they are fleecing you.

And he's never really gone in on that with Big Pharma at all, despite the mounting opposition to pharma, ag, health industry from conservatives. Tucker has popped from these conversations on his show that have really resonated with a lot of people on the right. You just don't hear it from Trump at all, despite the fact that it is really a massive opening. And if there was anything that could shake the Republican Party out of its absurd blind spot and inability to come to the table on health care, which is repeatedly in polls shows up as one of the most important issues for voters, it would have been Donald Trump coming in and just taking a bulldozer to corporate allegiances in the Republican Party, and it hasn't happened. Yeah, and they already have old people,

so lock those old people in. He did do an executive order that had a voluntary price cap on insulin at $35 for seniors, which did help some seniors. I've seen Trump try to take credit for what happened later in the Inflation Reduction Act. But a voluntary executive order that applies just to seniors is totally different than a law that applies for everybody across the country.

Yes, but I like to see Trump upset by the fact that he got outflanked on that, because then hopefully it shows Republicans this is a winning political issue. Yeah, clearly. Make people's lives better on a daily basis and then brag about it. That would be a cool politics. Yeah. Well, there's really interesting studies of happiness in indigenous communities that have been basically isolated from technology. So people living like

they did thousands of years ago. And one of the biggest sources, you know, they have pretty high levels of happiness. Their sources of stress or things that contribute to unhappiness are community and health. So it's kind of interesting, right, that you can have all of your needs met. You can feel content across the board. But if health is a concern for you, it will drag down your levels of happiness. It's one of the things, in addition to community, that can really drag down a person's level of happiness. And Republicans just have zero idea what to do about it and zero interest in talking about it. So, Wren, let's pivot to what Kamala Harris said when she was entertaining questions on Israel and Palestine. This was the,

she was asked about the ceasefire and ongoing negotiations. Let's just roll the clip. The matter, Vice President, just to follow up really quickly, is there a specific policy change that you as President of the United States would say you would do that would help this along? Because, you know, you've gotten a lot of credit for emphasizing the humanity of Palestinians. But what I often hear from folks is that there's no policy change that would, that either you or the president, President Biden, have gone and said they would do. Is there a specific policy change as president that you would do in our helping of Israel? We need to get this deal done.

And we need to get it done immediately. And that is my position. And that is my policy. We need to get this deal done. And we need to get it done immediately. And that is my position. And that is my policy. We need to get this deal done. But in the way that we send weapons, in the way that we interact as their ally, are there specific policy changes? Well, Eugene, for example, one of the things that we have done that I am entirely supportive of is the pause that we've put on the 2,000-pound bombs. And so there is some leverage that we have had and used. But ultimately, the thing that is going to unlock everything else in that region is getting this deal done. And I'm not going to disclose private conversations, but I will tell you I've had direct conversations with

the Prime Minister, with the President of Israel, with Egyptian leaders, and with our allies. And I think we've made ourselves very clear this deal needs to get done in the best interest of everyone in the region, including getting those hostages out who, I mean, we saw the latest example of what happened with the six most recently, one of whom was an American citizen. But what do you say to those that say that's not enough, that stopping the 2,000-pound bombs the one time wasn't enough, that this administration, your possible administration, has to do more? Well, we are doing the work of putting the pressure on all parties involved to get the deal done.

That one kind of reminds me of Trump saying that he has concepts of a plan. What did you make of Kamala Harris's response? You make yourself either look like a liar or like you're just terribly weak and incompetent. A caricature of a politician. Or, I mean, as a statesperson. Because either you're lying and you completely support this war effort and are sending the weapons so that the weapons can continue to be used, which is the most logical reason you would send weapons to somebody. Or you're just such an incompetent moron that you run the most powerful empire in the history of the world, and you can't figure out how to get a country of like 7 million, 8 million people to do what you want it to do, despite the fact that you fund and arm

that country. If you can't figure out how to do that, how can you do anything difficult when it comes to world affairs? So it either makes you look like you are completely weak and just getting steamrolled by Israel, or that you're completely comfortable and complicit in what is being done. Eugene just kept pushing, like, is there anything you would do differently than the Biden administration? Anything.

And to his credit, she tried to use the 2,000 pound bomb point. He pointed out that that was one time and limited. So they're not even doing that anymore. They just dropped three of those a week ago and shredded dozens of children. Those exact 2,000 pound bombs that she's over here trying to claim. And that claim would have hung out there as unchallenged if Eugene hadn't contested it. The support for Biden's policy

is in the 20s. She also is struggling to find ways to distance herself from Biden. Yes, from the Biden-Harris administration. Yeah. Yeah. And here's a policy that's not working and is in the 20s and you won't divorce yourself from it. Therefore, you're either a complete moron or you actually think it is working and you like what's being done. There's really only, those are the only two options. Yeah, I think that's true. It's a failure by their own terms. It's either a failure by their own terms or their own terms are accepting the status quo. They're lying about what they are and they're actually fine with what it is.

The status quo, yeah, exactly. No, I mean, again, we heard all DNC week about how close we were to a ceasefire. And I think they like having the ceasefire on the table politically because it makes them look like they're working for something better. And I'm not trying to impugn anyone's motives, but I do think politically during the presidential election, having the ceasefire on the table allows Kamala Harris to get away with these sort of laughable, two-sided statements where in one breath she will say something that isolated the sentiment is totally pro-Israel. And then the next breath, she will just say a sentence that isolated the sentiment is totally pro-Palestine. It's just a complete farce. It's like a political farce.

It's almost like satire. And I think having the deal in negotiation is sort of a tool for them to be able to do that. Remember when you had Biden licking the ice cream and being like, oh, yeah, we're getting a deal by Friday. Yeah. Watch this drive, basically. Yeah. That was, I forget what month that was. Many, many months ago. Jake Sullivan told Netanyahu in his cabinet back in November, like, this has to be over by the end of the year. That was 2023. Right. We're closer every day, Ryan. Closer every day. All right. Well, you have some great reporting on Pakistan that we should get to. So let's pivot. This is a fascinating one. Yeah. Let's pivot to Pakistan. 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. She was a decorated veteran, a Marine who saved her comrades, a hero.

She was stoic, modest, tough, someone who inspired people. Everyone thought they knew her until they didn't. I remember sitting on her couch and asking her, is this real? Is this real? Is this real? Is this real? I just couldn't wrap my head around what kind of person would do that to another person that was getting treatment, that was, you know, dying.

This is a story all about trust and about a woman named Sarah Kavanaugh. I've always been told I'm a really good listener, right? And I maximized that while I was lying. Listen to Deep Cover, The Truth About Sarah on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

I think everything that might have dropped in 95 has been labeled the golden years of hip-hop. It's Black Music Month, and We Need to Talk is tapping in. I'm Nyla Simone, breaking down lyrics, amplifying voices, and digging into the culture that shaped the soundtrack of our lives. My favorite line on there was, my son and my daughter gonna be proud when they hear my old tapes. Now I'm curious, do they like rap along now? Yeah, because I bring him on tour with me and he's getting older now too. So his friends are starting to understand what that type of music is.

And they're starting to be like, yo, your dad's like really the GOAT. Like he's a legend. So he gets it. What does it mean to leave behind a music legacy for your family? It means a lot to me. Just having a good catalog and just being able to make people feel good. Like that's what's really important and that's what stands out is that our music changes people's lives for the better so the fact that my

kids get to benefit off of that I'm really happy or my family in general let's talk about the music that moves us to hear this and more on how music and culture collide listen to we need to talk from the black effect podcast network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. So over at Dropsite News, my colleague Martaza Hussain and I have a fascinating news story on the way that Pakistan is stuck in the middle of the superpower struggle between China and the United States. If we can put this element up on the screen, headline over there, Pakistan promised China a new militarized naval base. Leaked documents reveal. And so I want to unpack what's going on here, but let's roll back a little bit. So one of the best examples of the United States shooting itself in the foot

geopolitically came in 1953 through 1979. So 1953, Iran and, I mean, the US and the British go in and they overthrow the Iranian prime minister there. The Iranian prime minister had been saying like, hey, wait a minute, we got all this oil. Shouldn't this oil be benefiting the Iranian people, not just Western companies like British Petroleum? And we said, no, in fact, it should be benefiting Western countries, overthrew them, installed an autocratic regime, the Shah. And we all know how that ended. Oh, yeah. 1979, you get the Iranian revolution. It's going great. Which has created an enemy in the region ever since, for really no reason. So in other words,

not only did we betray our democratic, our ostensible democratic values, we didn't even get the thing that we wanted, which was a client, kind of client regime that is going to be friendly to Western interests. There are- Despite Kermit Roosevelt's best efforts. Despite Kermit Roosevelt's best efforts. There are so many examples of this throughout American history. Today's story brings it up to the present. Because now you have the United States intervening in Pakistan's democratic affairs to oust Imran Khan, to then bring in a more pliant kind of military regime,

which we assume is going to be more you know, more sympathetic to U.S. interests. Instead, despite all of our support for the democratic backsliding going on in Pakistan, we have internal documents showing that a very desperate Pakistan has now granted one of China's longstanding demands of its Pakistani allies, which is to allow China to build a naval port in Gwadar, a militarized naval port. And to understand just how significant this is, we could put up a couple of maps here. So you see Gwadar is over on the western side of Pakistan, over near what's called the Strait of Hormuz. So if you look all the way to the left of that map, that's one of the kind of most important strategic

locations on the entire globe. If you show the next map, it will immediately become clear why this is so important. To the west there is the Persian Gulf. So you get around this straight, you're heading into, there's the UAE, there's Saudi Arabia. This is where an enormous amount of the world's shipping, not oil in particular, but shipping in general flows through. And so control of this sea route is critical, not just strategically, economically, but also militarily in the event of a war. And so if you look at that port over there, you can see that it is one of the most important locations that you could possibly have. It is something that the United States has been eyeing warily for many, many years.

That they have known that Pakistan and China have a close relationship. They have known that China has wanted to militarize this port for its, and also develop it strategically, economically. And this is a huge player in the Houthi situation as well, right? Fears that this could escalate into the Strait of Hormuz. Right. Right. And you've had all sorts of, right. Literally right now. Economic difficulties around the world because of the way that the Houthis have been able to shut down shipping around that area. It shows how important this entire region is. So if you roll back a little bit, what's happening in Pakistan, and people should read the entire story to get the full context of what's going on. Pakistan, the kind of prime minister has had dominion over, dominion is too strong a word, but has had influence over domestic policy. Whereas the military

traditionally managed Foreign affairs here in the United States, you know, the civilians are supposed to manage everything That's how and that's how it ought to work that the the compromise those we that the military allowed in Pakistan We'll let the Prime Minister do a few things internally. Imran Khan did things like brought about like a version of Medicare for all, like expanded health care to people. They're like, all right, you don't do that as long as we can still have our graft and we still control foreign policy, fine.

But then Imran Khan started getting involved in foreign affairs. He had a good relationship with the Trump administration, interestingly, given that the Trump administration was in the middle of enacting a Muslim ban. But they got along well, the two of them. The Biden administration and Imran Khan, not so well. He famously tried to get a call from Biden after Biden was elected, couldn't do it. Like, there was something about that relationship that the Biden administration wanted tried to get a call from Biden after Biden was elected, couldn't do it. Like it just, there was something about that relationship that the Biden administration wanted distance in. So then in June, 2021, he sits down with Jonathan Swan of Axios actually, Axios at the time. And Swan asks, you know, if the Taliban takes over in Afghanistan, you know, will you allow, you know, drone flights out of Pakistan? That was a key element of the Biden administration, what they called

over-the-horizon approach. They said, we're going to project power over the horizon. We don't need to occupy Afghanistan because our over-the-horizon capacity is unparalleled. Key to that over-the- horizon capacity was being able to operate out of Pakistan. Imran Khan said, absolutely not. I'm not doing that. And so that was looked at by the United States as a major affront to them. Then in February of 2022, Imran Khan had a long planned state visit to Moscow that coincided with the invasion, Russia's invasion of Ukraine. The U.S. tried to put pressure on him to turn around, come back, cancel the trip, or at minimum denounce the Russian invasion. Imran Khan refused. He said, at a rally, he said, what are we,

your slaves, that we're going to just do what you tell us? He said, we're going to remain neutral. We are friends with Ukraine. We are friends with Russia. This is a war between them. Because Pakistan desperately needs grain from both, energy from both. It's not in their interest to get in the middle of that conflict. Around this time, the State Department official, Don Lew, two weeks later, meets with the Pakistan ambassador and says, listen, we are very bothered by this, what he calls aggressive neutrality that Imran Khan is taking between Ukraine and Russia. But the United States believes that it is a policy of the prime minister alone, not

a policy of, you know, Pakistan government more broadly. And if Imran Khan is removed in a no confidence vote, all will be forgiven from the United States and everything will be cool. Just days later, weeks later, the army chief gives a televised address where he denounces the Russian invasion of Ukraine. So breaking with the prime minister, the army then orchestrates the no confidence vote that the US had said it wanted to see happen they put pressure on a number of imran khan's party officials who had been who had links uh to the military and who had who could be compromised by the military they flipped their votes they oust they oust

imran khan uh and then they start shifting back toward the United States. So if you remember, Nancy Pelosi travels to Taiwan for October, September, August, September of 2022. And this is after they have ousted Imran Khan. And China goes to all of its allies, and they want a full-throated denunciation of Nancy Pelosi's visit to Taiwan. Pakistan demurs. They put out a little statement that is extremely mild and it kind of infuriates the Chinese. Like, you're not gonna stand with us? You're like, you are, we have,

they call it an iron brotherhood, they're supposed to have between Pakistan and China. In October of that year, as we report in this article, Bajwa, who's the military chief, finally gets what he's been demanding of the United States or begging of the United States, which is a state visit to the U.S. While he's in Washington, he gets to meet with the top officials. He also, at the Pakistani ambassador's residence, he meets with a bunch of kind of foreign policy heads here in Washington. And he tells them he doesn't really like the Chinese. They've always loved the

United States. And he says two things that really raise eyebrows to make the point. He says he loves American sitcoms from the 90s. Many such cases. His favorite, Married with Children. Married with Children. Married with Children, which is excellent, by the way. I'm surprised that you're willing to go to the mat for Married with Children, given the various political incorrectness. It's satire. It's satire, you're right. Absolutely genius. Yeah, genius show. And he adds, he doesn't even like Chinese food. So he's sending a very clear message. This leaks out, of course, to the Chinese. Important to establish that. As well. And back in New York, the Pakistani representative to the UN starts getting chided

by the Chinese representative there. These sarcastic comments about, no, you're best friends now with the US. What happened to us? At the same time, China keeps telling Pakistan, look, we do not see ourselves as in a Cold War, a zero-sum Cold War with the United States. It is okay if you want to have good relations with the United States. That does not mean you have to have bad relations with us. We don't see it that way. But what our reporting shows is that Pakistan understands that that's how the United States sees it. That they have to pick one or the other.

And so this whole time they're having a very difficult balance, but they choose the United States. They figure United States is the way to go. And at first it starts to pay off. As we also reported, Pakistan not only stops becoming neutral, they start producing 155 millimeter shells for Ukraine. Because they're very good at making these like low-grade crappy shells, which are the kind of shells that are important for this kind of stalemated war in Ukraine. You're just lobbing endless cheap munitions at the other side. And it's a boost to the Pakistani economy.

Boost to the Pakistani economy. And the U.S. secretly agrees to let Pakistan use this clandestine weapons program as basically collateral financing for an IMF loan that comes in. And so the IMF loan is supposed to help stabilize things. Many such cases. The IMF loan, because Pakistan is such a basket case and because it's not following through on any of its commitments when it comes to reforms, doesn't fully come through, and the economy keeps collapsing. And because it keeps spiraling out of control, they have to go back to China. And that's where our story comes in. They go back to China, and they're like, look, we're done. We love Chinese food.

We love Chinese food. Married with children, really kind of problematic in some of its depictions. Not a huge fan. Love you guys. What can you do? And basically the what that they need is they, China has lent them a bunch of money that is coming due. They need that, they need those loans refinanced at a nice rate. Or else they're, you know, completely screwed because they're not getting money in From anywhere else and so China is like well, you know what we want Like we want access to this this port like what are right? And also we want you to start protecting our Chinese citizens who were in Pakistan doing

the Belt and Road construction projects And which Pakistan had not been doing effectively. You keep having these terrorist attacks hitting these Chinese officials. The Chinese started to think that at first they're telling them, okay, here's where the Chinese workers are going to be. Make sure they're protected. And then it seemed like they were more likely to get hit when they told them. So they go, what's going on here? It's a compromise. They're leaking this out. So now they want private security. They want joint security. They want, the Chinese want, they don't trust the Pakistanis anymore to do the security. They want their own

security forces. But that's a huge affront to sovereignty. It's Pakistan saying that they can't protect the Chinese civilians within Pakistan's borders and then have to allow foreign government to have its own security forces in there, which they would already be doing with a militarized port of Gwadar. And meanwhile, because Pakistan's position is now so weakened, Pakistan didn't even get anything for this concession. It's just a concession. Now, the documents also suggest that there is no timeline for the execution of this, that Pakistan is going to continue to try, say, okay, yes, we've agreed in principle, and this is going to happen, quote, in due time, as one of the documents says.

But that doesn't mean necessarily tomorrow. And now that this reporting is out, I'll be at the State Department later today asking them about this, the U.S. is going to, I'm sure, raise significant concerns. But then it raises the question, what on earth is the United States getting out of supporting basically a military dictatorship that is embarrassing it on the international stage because they're trying to sanction Venezuela, they're trying to sanction Georgia for democratic backsliding while Pakistan is engaged in just complete evisceration of its own democracy. And they're not even getting a military ally out of it. They're handing this key port over to China instead.

Just complete debacle on every level. And can you maybe give some context on the state of the Pakistani economy? Because I think that gets to the motivations of Pakistan in navigating the difficult relationship or trying to balance U.S. interests, Chinese interests with its own interests. So the IMF just announced that within a couple weeks, they're going to go to their final executive board meeting with a $7 billion, what they call EFF, a bailout, which right now, the economy is a complete disaster, rampant joblessness. They recently put in a new firewall to try to censor the media.

Try to censor Ryan. I think it was time to some of our articles. They banned drop site news inside Pakistan. And it slowed the internet to a complete crawl. You've got constant blackouts. The heat waves there are insane. They're getting hit with know, worse than most other countries because of just where they are geographically on the planet and what their climate already was. And so right now the military basically controls the entire economy. And so you have, you know, 50% illiteracy and a completely stifled population. It's very much like Egypt, where you've got these military-run corrupt companies that just exist to basically make the generals get richer. And the generals then take their money, this is what's fascinating about the international relations, and they stash it in London and the U.S. through properties and other holdings.

And so, yes, it's true that the Bajwa likes married with children and doesn't like Chinese food. And he talked about his culture. He was trying to say, I like America better. Right. And who can blame him? It's great over here. We love it. But what is really also going on is that their children are being educated here and their illicit gains are housed here. And that means we can snatch them. The Russian oligarchs learned that the hard way. After Putin's invasion, the UK and the US seized a bunch of oligarch property.

And so we really have them. Pakistani elites are tethered to the US. We have the Pakistani elites kind of captured in the sense that it might not be in the interest of Pakistan itself to continue to have this tight relationship with us, but it's in their personal interest because we can just, oh yeah, is that your penthouse apartment on 34th Street? Your yacht? Yeah, your yacht? Not anymore. Another? You're sanctioned, boom.

And once you're sanctioned, once it's snatched, you're done. So we'll see it, which is why it will be difficult for them to actually execute, and China knows it, actually execute on this promise that they've now made. One of the more interesting subplots of the war in Gaza right now is how China has distanced itself from Israel in the aftermath of the invasion after October 7th. China sort of is trying to make inroads, literally inroads, with a lot of different countries around the world and sort of curry favorability and realized that it couldn't continue having this friendship between Netanyahu and Xi Jinping that was playing out very publicly.

I mean, Netanyahu would rebuke the United States by turning to China before October 7th in various ways. That was like sort of a strategic maneuver that he was very intentionally making. And I'm curious, Ryan, what you think about how this is playing out in the context of Gaza, which is obviously very important to countries like Pakistan and is important to China, given its reputation, being on the line as it tries to make, again, literal inroads. Pun, please excuse the pun. It's in different countries as a critical mission to its own self-interest on a world stage going forward. Yeah, publicly, Pakistan doesn't recognize Israel and is critical.

But privately, it is quite friendly and on good terms. The ISI is on good terms with Israel. Whereas Imran Khan, if he were free now, he's in prison, would be one of the most vocal critics of what's going on there. As would his supporters, if he were, yeah. Yeah. But as it is, the country's neutralized when it comes to that question. But I think what, from China's perspective, Africa plays a huge role in this and the global South more generally, that China sees, China believes that the global South and the BRICS countries see U.S. hegemony as not beneficial to them and see the rise of China and multipolarity as potentially beneficial and giving them more

room to maneuver and actually have a sense of their own agency and nationalism. And they see Israel as a bulwark of American hegemony and see siding with the Palestinians there as favorable to a rise of multipolarity. I mean, yeah, there's so many layers to this. So fascinating, great story. Interesting stuff. A lot of people won't be able to read it in Pakistan, unfortunately. Well, they call it VPNistan because everyone there has a VPN. So I think people are going to find ways to get to it. I'm sure they will.

All right, so coming up, we have an interview with Matt Walsh about his new film. And it's going to be quite an interesting conversation, Ryan. Sure will. Looking forward to it. 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 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. She was a decorated veteran, a Marine who saved her comrades, a hero. She was stoic, modest, tough, someone who inspired people. Everyone thought they knew her until they didn her. Until they didn't. I remember sitting on her couch and asking her, is this real? Is this real? Is this real? Is this real? I just couldn't wrap my head around what kind of person would do that to another person that was getting treatment, that was, you know, dying. This is a story all about trust and about a woman named Sarah Kavanaugh. I've always been told I'm a really good listener, right?

And I maximized that while I was lying. Listen to Deep Cover The Truth About Sarah on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I think everything that might have dropped in 95 has been labeled the golden years of hip-hop. It's Black Music Month, and We Need to Talk is tapping in. I'm Nyla Simone, breaking down lyrics, amplifying voices, and digging into the culture that shaped the soundtrack of our lives. My favorite line on there was, my son and my daughter gonna be proud when they hear my old tapes.

Now I'm curious, do they like rap along now? Yeah, because I bring him on tour with me and he's getting older now too. So his friends are starting to understand what that type of music is. And they're starting to be like, yo, your dad's like really the GOAT. Like he's a legend. So he gets it. What does it mean to leave behind a music legacy for your family? It means a lot to me.

Just having a good catalog and just being able to make people feel good like that's what's really important and that's what stands out is that our music changes people's lives for the better so the fact that my kids get to benefit off of that i'm really happy or my family in general let's talk about the music that moves us to hear this and more on how music and culture collide listen to we need to talk from the black effect podcast network on the iheartartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. We are joined now by Matt Walsh, who is out with a new movie called Am I Racist? That is in theaters around the country. Matt obviously hosts his eponymous show with The Daily Wire. Matt, thank you for joining us. Thanks for having me. Of course. Yeah, now the movie's doing pretty well. One of the, I don't

know if it was a coincidence or fate, whatever it was, as it happened, when your movie was released last week, everyone was debating whether a very particular post on social media was racist. So we thought we would play a little game of, was it racist? With Laura Loomer's infamous curry tweet. If Kamala Harris wins, the White House will smell like curry and White House speeches will be facilitated by a call center. The American people will only be able to convey their feedback through a customer satisfaction survey at the end of the call that nobody will understand. One of the interesting things about your movie, which I really enjoyed, Ryan might have something to add on that, we might disagree on it, I really enjoyed it, is getting to the bottom of the kind of

the industrial complex that's been built up around race relations that often will advance this silly, incoherent, elite definition that used to be prolific in academia and then leaked out into the rest of the world. So by the sort of definition of racism that you're challenging in this film, is that Laura Loomer tweet racist? And then by the kind of definition that you're trying to promote of racism, which maybe you have a way to explain it, I would define, I don't want to put words in your mouth, there's just sort of like genuine discrimination based on this belief

that people of a different race are somehow inferior. Yeah. Is this post-racist? I mean, by the definition advanced by the DEI industry, it certainly would count as racist. Right. I wouldn't call it racist. I think it's just kind of a dumb joke. Not very helpful joke.

And also, by the way, I like Indian food. So I think when things smell like curry, I'm a huge fan of curry personally. So I don't see that as an insult. But look, someone engaging in stereotypes, it might be insensitive. It might be unhelpful politically. But it's not necessarily racist. In fact, I would say it's often not racist. Because to me, what racism means

is that you hate people of another race and or you think they're inferior to you in some way, inherently because of their immutable characteristics. So that's racism. And as long as you don't feel that way about another race of people, then you're not racist. You might have stereotypical views about another group of people. Everybody does. But it's not automatically racist if you don't also harbor that ill will towards them. And as far as whether or not, so the real answer is that with the Laura Loomer tweet, I wouldn't say that it's racist. The only person who can answer whether it's racist is her. We'd have to ask her, well, do you hate people of Indian descent? Do you think that they're inferior to you in some way? If the answer is yes, then yeah, that's racist. But she'd probably say no. And if she said no, then I'll have to take her word for it. She's the only

one who can speak to her own, you know, what's going on in her own mind and her own heart. Although she's a Trump supporter, she wants Kamala to lose. Presumably she's making the point in a negative way, right? Like this is a bad thing. Like call center and like she's saying these are all bad things. This is an interesting point about stereotyping. By your definition, make it. Because stereotyping is often leveraged to say that there's something negative that is generally attributed to someone of a different race. Right. It's correct. It's negative.

She means it in a negative way. Right. Because we can assume that she thinks things smelling like curry is a bad thing. I guess not a fan of Indian food. But you can believe or engage in or repeat negative stereotypes and not be racist. You might just happen to think, so for example, I'll give another example. Somebody might say, you know, Asians are bad drivers. I don't know if that's actually true statistically. I'm not sure. But if you happen to believe that it's true, does that mean that you hate Asians? No, it just means that you think that

Asians by and large are bad drivers. It doesn't mean you hate them. It doesn't mean that you're racist against them. Although it could mean that you think that Asians, by and large, are bad drivers. It doesn't mean you hate them. It doesn't mean that you're racist against them. Although it could mean that you think there's like an intellectual inferiority, or it could mean you think there's a cultural reason that they're bad at driving in Western countries. Yeah, it could be. I mean, and no one thinks that Asians are intellectually inferior. I think everybody understands that they're, that's one of the other, because stereotypes can be positive too. Another stereotype is that they're very good at math and science and that sort of thing. So, you know, there are generalizations you can make about groups of people that can be largely true. And, you know, I'm not sure I've ever heard a stereotype

where I thought to myself, well, that bears no resemblance to reality. I don't know, unless one of you can think of it. I've never heard a stereotype where I said, I don't even know where that comes from. That's just falling out of the sky. Usually stereotypes arise because, you know, society has observed things about groups of people and they can be negative, they can be positive, but I don't see them as inherently racist. Now we have a clip from the film that we want to roll here. Let's go ahead and play this. This is from the dinner scene. Matt, you've probably seen this a hundred times by now, but let's take a watch. I used to be a white woman, an unsuccessful one, for many decades, and it was a miserable

experience. And really, the hatred of yourselves and each other is like the most, the not seeing your power, the being afraid. Like, all you do is talk shit about each other, talk shit about yourself. Oh my God, I'm so fat. That's all they do. I'm telling you. These white women? But it's, it's, that's it. It's, I'm so fat, I'm so stupid, I'm blah, blah, blah. Sorry.

Your kids are watching you. And they're watching you talking shit about each other, raging against the machine or being silent or whatever the hell it is that you're doing or not doing. And they know that you're not doing shit for them. That's so important. That is so important what you just said. It's really important.

We may have to add you to our team. Oh, I would love to take a seat and join you. No, you're not allowed to. How did you get the cameras in there, by the way? Like, what's the—set that up for us? Yeah, they're not hidden cameras. Obviously, they're like cinematic level. Yeah, absolutely.

Everybody knew they were being— Everybody was mic'd up. Everybody was mic'd. Everybody knew they were being filmed. And they thought they were being filmed for a documentary about anti-racism, which they were because that is what we made. So that's what we told people. We're making a documentary on anti-racism. Did they know you were involved in it?

Probably not. Probably not. So this waiter, they didn't know that the waiter was part of the film? No. No, they didn't. They didn't know that the waiter was part of the film. No. No, they didn't. They didn't. But they knew you had to be mic'd up because everybody in the kitchen and everywhere else had signed the thing. Is that how that worked?

I don't think they knew that I had a mic on. And I wanted to sit at the table at the race to dinner and be a part of the conversation. But we were told that they only accept women to be at the table, which I thought was interesting because then our next question is, well, what is a woman? Which kind of harkens back to our first film. And you later do sit down in that scene. Yeah, well, I kind of invited, I earned my seat at the table. I invited myself to be a part of the dinner and I felt...

As a man does. It's painful. Yeah. Did a little mansplaining to the women and they seem to really enjoy it. It's weird to me because they famously, I guess it's not so famous, but they back in, I mean, this was years ago. I think it was pre-COVID. There was a podcast called Femsplainers that Danielle from Crittenden, Crittenden from and Christina Hoff Summers hosted where they had a similar experience with Saira Rao over the race to dinner stuff. And you'd think

they would be way more careful, but it seems as though maybe they let their guard down. I don't know. Yeah, that is, of course, I get this question all the time. It's like, how did they not recognize me? Or how did they not ask more questions? And I guess I don't know the answer to that question, but I do think that the answer I generally give that I think is correct

is that a lot of these people live in kind of a bubble. So number one, they're not as aware of, you know, people outside that bubble as we assume they are. So me as someone in conservative media, I'm actually outside of their bubble, which is weird to me because I know everybody in liberal media because I want to know what they're saying. So I kind of assumed that they do the same. You're familiar with Ryan Grimm, noted liberal journalist Ryan Grimm. So he's right about 12% of the time, which I appreciate. I'll take that.

So they're kind of in this interesting bubble that they don't, not only didn't know who I was, but also I think it was kind of inconceivable to them that they would ever find themselves in a room with someone who doesn't agree with them. I think that just never occurred to them because it's never happened before. Robin D'Angelo appears later in the film. And I think me sitting in the room with her was probably the first time in like 20 years that she's actually sat across the room from someone who doesn't already agree with everything that she thinks. Part of the 12% that I've been right about over the years, I think, has been that I do think this entire DEI industry is a grift, and it's just milking corporations.

You've written about that. Yeah, and that it is actively harmful in the sense that when corporations, I actually believe that corporations oftentimes internally do have racist structures set up within them. And also they operate sometimes in racist ways. And when they get sued for that and they're facing the consequences of that, one of the things that they do is they hire these DEI consultants. Right. And say, well, you can't come after us, actually. How could we possibly be racist? Like, we spent this money to bring these consultants in.

And the consultants then cover for their more systemic racism to be allowed to continue without being interrogated, what it does is it turns the interrogation inward, where you say, well, these structures and these corporations can't be challenged. What we really need to do is look inside and find our own racism. And because we're all born with it or whatever, it's just inculcated in us. None of us are then responsible for it. And so therefore, we're not responsible for actually changing anything on a system-wide basis. But I'm curious, as somebody who spent so much time within this grift of a system, what was your take on these folks? Do they believe what they're saying or have they found a consultancy

that they're able to make money on and they're kind of now locked into it? Yeah. Well, the short answer is I don't know exactly if they believe what they say, but it strikes me that they probably don't believe much of it, especially the parts of it that are so absurd on their face. But there's a lot of money in it, as we discover making the film. And then, of course, there's a lot of power and influence. And also, it must feel very good for them to be consulted as these kind of moral experts. And so that's what they get out of it. So it's actually not very complicated.

That's why they're in this, because money, power, influence, right? It's the tale as old as time. Now, on the other hand, you've got, so that's like the Robin DeAngelos of the world, selling the books, making millions of dollars. But then you've got the people that are actually buying the books and who are going to the race to dinner and going to these seminars that we kind of crashed for our film uh they're a more interesting case because they're not getting any money out of it they're spending money and they don't they're not getting power influence out of it uh so for them i think part of it's like a virtue signal they want to be able to tell their friends that hey i went to race to dinner and it was so life-changing uh but then most of it for those people is that I think they actually do believe it. It is speaking to something. There's like something going on inside

them. I don't know if it's just like a kind of guilt or something that they carry around. And a lot of them are secular. They don't have religion. And so this becomes kind of like a replacement for religion. I don't know if that's part of it. I think it's probably part of it. Yeah, I feel like those people have kind of correctly identified that they were raised in a society that still does have racism as part of it. And I think any multicultural society always will. It's their way of kind of trying to confront it. I think it's ill thought out, but I understand where they're coming from

But what I would say to yes, there's still racism in society There always will be as I mean as long as there are different races and cultures living together. You can have racism I think we have a lot less of it than then pretty much anywhere else on earth but the Whatever racism you find in society now is individual. It's not systemic.

It's not in the system. These systems are not set up to disadvantage quote-unquote people of color. In fact, the only real systemic racism you find anymore is the kind that's targeted at white people and also Asians. That's what affirmative action is. The only time you ever find a policy that specifically says, here's an advantage that you can't have if you're a race, the only time it ever says that is if it's singling out white and or Asian people. It doesn't go the other way anymore. Well, so what about, even people on the right now are saying Republicans have singled out Haitians. And this is an interesting segue because we were just talking about multiculturalism and how wherever you have different people from different backgrounds, races, ethnicities put together, there will always be some types of

discrimination. And the goal of the culture should be to minimize that. Has there been legitimate racism directed by high-profile Republican lawmakers? This is the accusation on the table, towards the Haitian community in the United States, and particularly in Springfield, Ohio, in the last couple of weeks? No, absolutely not. I haven't heard it. Everything I've heard has been critical of the fact that we're, thousands of people from the third world who are coming into communities. And look, America, nobody thinks that it will benefit America to become more like Haiti. Nobody thinks that. Or I would challenge anyone, if they do think that, to explain how that's the case. Like, in what way could this country be improved by making it more like Haiti? When you look at Haiti, what part of Haiti are you saying to yourself, we need more of that?

Beaches. Well, we have more beaches than them too, right? Don't we? Right. We're a much bigger country. We don't want a marine invasion and occupation of the United States that constantly decapitates governments and takes the money out of the country. And saddles us with debt from a revolution. Right. Although I don't, so you were saying that.

We wouldn't want to be like basically a colony that the entire West spends 200 years punishing after the Haitian revolution. I get that. I understand that, but also at a certain point. We wouldn't want that. No, yes. We wouldn't get that. I understand that, but also at a certain point. We wouldn't want that. No, yes. We wouldn't want that, but I would also say that that's not entirely why Haiti's in the position that it's in. I mean, at a certain point as a country, you have to stand on your own two

feet and take care of yourself. But at what point is that? They elect Aristide and we overthrow Aristide. Then they elect Jovenel Moise. Jovenel Moise has assassinated a bunch of people with American connections. And then we install in 2021, like the United States installed the prime minister that we just ousted. Like, so we can say, okay, yeah, you got to get over the, you know, 200 years ago, but like, we're still doing it. Yeah. I mean, and I'm not in favor of, I'm very non-interventionist in my policies. and I'm not in favor of I'm very non interventionist in my policy So I'm not in favor of most of the things that we're doing in other countries We just made the new government in Haiti in a hotel room in Jamaica And then we insisted that whatever government we made in Jamaica had to allow Kenyan police

Kenyan troops to come in under the flag of the UN in order to go to war with the gangs. Yeah, I'm not, look, I'm not interested in, if it were up to me, I'm not interested in doing anything in Haiti. Like, let Haiti be Haiti and take care of them. That's sort of my whole point here. Let them take care of themselves and their own problems. I'm also not saying that there's like never a scenario where we let someone from Haiti

into the country. But it doesn't have to just be about Haiti. But when you're throwing open the gates and just inviting anyone, in particular, you know, the third world. I guess your assumption there was that it is Haitian people that are creating the conditions on Haiti and that if the Haitian people come to Springfield, they will recreate the conditions that are Haiti in Springfield, whereas what I'm saying is that it's actually the U.S. that has... I don't think you can entirely put it on Haiti. Like, largely. But it's still a country comprised of people.

Right. But without its own autonomy. Okay, but I don't think you can entirely put it on the United States. Like, Haitian people have nothing to do whatsoever with the state of their own country. Nothing. I mean, I think that's a bit absurd. I'm perfectly willing to, as I said, agree that a lot of the United States sort of adventurism and interventions in other countries has been unwise. And I'd prefer for us to focus on our own country, not try to build governments in other countries has been unwise. And I'd prefer for us to focus on our own country and not try to build governments in other countries. But at the same time,

I think that you can't completely absolve the people of any country of the problem, just like in this country. The problems that we have in our country, we can point to the government, we can point to immigration, we point to all those things. But ultimately, the people of the country have to be responsible for their own nation. And I say that of all nations. 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. 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.

She was a decorated veteran, a Marine who saved her comrades, a hero. She was stoic, modest, tough, someone who inspired people. Everyone thought they knew her

until they didn't. Everyone thought they knew her. Until they didn't. I remember sitting on her couch and asking her, is this real? Is this real? Is this real? Is this real? I just couldn't wrap my head around what kind of person would do that to another person that was getting treatment, that was, you know, dying. This is a story all about trust and about a woman named Sarah Kavanaugh. I've always been told I'm a really good listener, right?

And I maximized that while I was lying. Listen to Deep Cover, The Truth About Sarah on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. amplifying voices, and digging into the culture that shaped the soundtrack of our lives. My favorite line on there was, my son and my daughter gonna be proud when they hear my old tapes. Now I'm curious, do they like rap along now? Yeah, because I bring him on tour with me and he's getting older now too. So his friends are starting to understand what that type of music is and they're starting to be like, yo, your dad's like really the GOAT.

Like he's a legend. So he gets it. What does it mean to leave behind a music legacy for your family? It means a lot to me. Just having a good catalog and just being able to make people feel good. Like, that's what's really important and that's what stands out is that our music changes people's lives for the better. So the fact that my kids get to benefit off of that, I'm really happy.

Or my family in general. Let's talk about the music that moves us. To hear this and more on how music and culture collide, listen to We Need to Talk from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. You said earlier

that we have less racism here than lots of other countries, which I think is a fair point to make. Glass half full. And obviously you would acknowledge that at some point in our history, we had lots of other countries, which I think is a fair point to make. Glass half full. And obviously you would acknowledge that at some point in our history, we had lots of racism. Sure. Lots of racism then, less racism now.

So when did we get to a point where it wasn't systemic and it was no longer a problem that we as a democratic society need to deal with? Like, what was the moment in your mind? Well, I'm not sure that you could point to one exact moment in time when it goes from a systemic issue to not systemic anymore. But what we know for sure is that right now, we are certainly in the moment where it's not systemic. Any time in history, I'll answer your question. At any point in history when you can go back and look at actual laws and policies that

were in place that deprived black Americans or any other group of rights, well that was a time when you had systemic rights. And we know that that existed historically. So if you wanted to point to an exact moment, I mean, I guess the most obvious moment would be the Civil Rights Act. But of course, these are changes that happen gradually over time, just like with slavery. You know, you can't, even with slavery, you can't really, people like to point to the Emancipation Proclamation as the moment when slavery was ended. Of course, we know that

wasn't when it ended. So we know we don't have slavery anymore. But if you were to ask me, what's the exact moment when slavery stopped? Well, it wasn't an exact moment. It was a gradual ending of that horrific institution. But certainly now it doesn't exist anymore in this country anyway. And I'd say the same thing with systemic racism as well, that there's not, nobody is creating policies, again, that are deliberately intended to create disadvantages for quote-unquote people of color. I have a question about that. A lot of conservatives

will say there is one policy, and this is, you know, you're about as anti-abortion and pro-life as it gets. A lot of conservatives will say a remaining institution of systemic racism is abortion because it disproportionately, as conservatives make this argument, affects black children and black families. Is that an example of systemic racism or racism, period? And I think it's a mistake when conservatives make that point, because I think conservatives are very desperate to be able to do the whole thing where they turn back on Democrats and say the Dems are the real racists. And I just think that's a lame move. And you're trying to use the left's own language against it, which I think

it doesn't work because you're accepting sort of their premise. So what I'd say about abortion is, no, it's not systemically racist. It does disproportionately impact the black community, no question about it. And, but does it exist for that really? Is Planned Parenthood, is that why they exist right now? Because they want to kill black babies? No, Planned Parenthood exists because they want to kill babies and they don't care what color the baby is. They just want the money that comes from it. But it just so happens that that ends up disproportionately impacting the black community. And this goes to the disproportionate impact thing, which I'm glad you brought that up because that's usually what's used to support the theory of systemic racism is they say, well, but these policies disproportionately impact certain groups. Okay. They might, but that doesn't mean that they're intended to do that.

You know, just a disproportionate number of black Americans end up in prison. Does that mean that prison, that that's why the prison is there to put black Americans in it? No. The reason why a disproportionate number of black Americans end up in prison is that unfortunately a disproportionate number of black Americans commit violent crime. That's just what the stats show. And so. Right. But so there's an argument that a system is what it does. And that claiming otherwise is just kind of hocus pocus, just magic. If a system produces a certain result, but you as an observer of that system say, well, actually, that's not what the system is supposed to do. Those words are just meaningless. What about a system? The system just chews them up and spits them you've got laws on the books that are systemically racist, that allow for, you know, straight up racist results. And when it comes to-

Design of the system was explicitly racist. Design of the system is aimed at producing segregated schools and low-income households, I mean, low-income neighborhoods that are predominantly or almost exclusively populated by black Americans, right? Mm-hmm You then pass laws that reform those laws that make it so that you you can't Legally do those things anymore yet the power structure broadly remains in place and The results stay the same you still have You know broadly speaking, massive low-income areas, predominantly populated by black families they're more likely to grow up in one of those neighborhoods. They're

more likely to go to terrible schools rather than good schools. They're more likely to end up in prison or in part of the system. And so you would step back and say, well, the system is still doing what it is. The system never stopped doing it. There was never a day from Monday to Tuesday to Wednesday that all of a sudden the system stopped working in the same racist way, which we acknowledge was racist when it was written into the law. Although the system produces— But now we pretend it's not because we struck through that one line. Yeah, but if we agree that the—you say the system is what it does. I'd probably disagree with you on that.

I mean, what the system is intended to do is what certainly matters here. But why? But also... Why would it matter what we intend a system to do? Because that's what we're talking about. The system produces a robust Nigerian middle class.

People who come here from Nigeria... Thomas Sowell makes this point. It's a point that's popular. So then that's a defense of the system. That's what I'm saying. Because that's what defense of the system. That's what I'm saying. Because that's what it does. Right. That's what I'm saying. So does that go both ways? No, because the intent of this, my point is that the intent,

whatever you intend a system to do is meaningless. If you intend for a house to have a roof and a second floor that is sturdy but but when you walk into the second floor you fall through it but that doesn't reflect on you but that doesn't reflect on your anti-roof sentiments yeah and also it doesn't matter and also if you okay but to use your analogy if you walk into a house and uh there's a problem in the house you can't automatically assume that it's the fault of whoever built the house. It could be, depending on the problem. But you also have to look at who's living in the house, who's supposed to be maintaining the house. And if you're living in a house and you're not taking care of it, and in fact, you're mistreating the house and it goes to hell,

and then you turn around and blame whoever built the house 100 years ago, well, I'm going to say, at some point, you got to take responsibility for your own house. And so that's my point with the black community as it stands right now in America. Yes, as we've already established, there was systemic, actual systemic racism against the black community for a long time. It's a terrible, evil thing. Everybody agrees on that point. I don't think anyone disagrees. That is over now. There is no longer a system in place that is designed to deprive black Americans of rights. I mean, would you agree with that at least? No, I do think it's still designed that way, but it's designed in a way where it can't be litigated because it's not in the law.

Okay, so can you point to me an exact point of the system an exact place in the system a policy That is designed to Deprive black Americans of rights the the in the the same people that designed the system To protect the wealth of the upper class, you know in the 40, you know throughout American history I continued to be in control. Yeah, but now you're talking about class, not race. I'm talking about race. Right. But how do you disrupt class if you're so segregated by, I mean, how do you disrupt race if you're so segregated by class? Well, but I don't think you can bring class into this. Because

I mean, I would agree that there's, we could talk about class. I'll agree that there are elites who care about themselves and don't care about the lower class. I would say that those people are just as unconcerned with a white person in a trailer park in Appalachia as they are unconcerned with a black person in the inner city. So it is class. We could talk about that. But my question was, where – because we're talking about the system. It's a broad concept here. So let's narrow it down. Let's find a piece of the started doing is saying, oh, okay, well, we can't legally keep black people out of our neighborhoods or out of our schools, but what we

can do is we can secede from our neighborhoods. You've been to the Atlanta suburbs? A little bit. Like every four. Unfortunately. Like every four blocks. Try to stay away. Like every four blocks for a long time, you had like new school districts and they would be drawn, they would be basically gerrymandered. Like they would know where the white people were and they would gerrymander the school district

so that only white people would be a part of this. Yeah, but you're going back to desegregation. No, no, no. This is what they're doing now. Like, this is up to today. Like, so what they're doing is they're saying, okay, these are the new laws in place. However, we like our system of segregation and racism that we have here. So how do we hire the best lawyers?

Is that about class? To show that, but it's also about race. Well, but I'm saying, do you think primarily in the minds of the designers of the system, are they actually discriminating intentionally on a class basis? I think there it's pretty race-driven. I don't think that there's any evidence that it's race-driven. I think, like an example you give, it's class, it's people wanting to avoid crime-ridden, impoverished areas. Maybe someone doesn't want to send their kids to school in a place that's high crime.

There's going to be a lot of delinquency and everything in the school system. I don't think it's because the kids are black. It's just because of that. And also, the other thing is when we talk about- But at what point then does it- No, no, it's like when we talk about school districts or the way communities are set up, here's another point that rarely comes up. It's pretty simple. You can move, right? So, you can always move. I mean, if you live in a community where you're claiming it's been set up systemically to disadvantage it, I don't buy that. But if I did,

I would say, well, you should probably move from that community. I mean, you can go somewhere else. It's not, there's no law saying you can't. And if there was, I mean, if there was a law saying- Some HOA situations will like try to- Yeah, but they're not going to say you can't move here if you're black. It's also why a lot of black community groups support voucher systems to allow, like work with conservatives on voucher systems to allow kids to get to different schools. So when you see stats that say like a black homeowner who's trying to get a mortgage, who has a higher credit score and higher income, gets a higher interest rate from the average bank than a

white applicant. A bunch of these studies have been done where they'll put in a black-sounding name and higher credit scores, higher income, better candidates on paper other than their name. And they get a overall, like there have been so many studies that have replicated this. They get a higher interest rate, which means their cost of borrowing is higher, means the mortgage is higher, which means you have to have that much more, you know, money to move into the neighborhood that you're talking about. So systemically, it doesn't say, well, if you're black, you can't live here. But systemically, what it does is it makes it easier for white people to move into these

wealthier neighborhoods, harder for black people to move into those neighborhoods. And that's before you even get to the wealth effect. You know, Jim Crow only ended recently, which means that if you look at the kind of savings rates and the inheritance rates for the average black family, it's close to nil, especially after the subprime mortgage wipeout of 2008, compared to white families, which can go to mom and dad and grandpa and say, can you help put my kids in private school? Can you pay the down payment? 20% is an awful lot for this mortgage. Generational wealth. Yeah. Right. So you combine the fact that they have to pay higher

interest rates with the fact that there's lack of generational wealth, that to me is systemic. But I'm curious specifically on the interest rate question. What's going on there? And should that be a problem that we as a democratic society should address? Why are black loan applicants paying higher mortgage interest rates across the board? And that interest rates across the board. And again, that is replicated across the economy. Okay. I'd have to look at the studies you're talking about.

You say that they've been replicated time and time again. There's no issues with the studies and there's no issues methodology. I'm sure people could pick some of the studies apart, but it's pretty well accepted. Yeah. I'd have to know who is accepted by exactly. But so for the sake of argument, let's say that those studies are totally legit. I would still go back to a class issue on that. And the reason is that, look, banks. But the white. Well, can we explain? Like banks care about the money. That's all they care about. They don't care about, I mean, these banks are not being run by people who are saying, you know, we got to keep black people poor. I don't care about

that. I don't think they care about anybody. They care about the money. And so if that's happening, they're making stereotypical assumptions, class-based assumptions that I believe they would probably also make if they if if somehow they got They had the impression that this was say a white Quote unquote white trash as they're often called from the trailer park, you know if if I think the banks would have the same sort of Skeptical Discriminatory attitude in that case as they would to someone who they're assuming

is from the inner city, let's say. Right. So the other word for that would be implicit bias. So let's say the banks- We have to wrap, by the way. We have a hard time. Oh. But let's say that, okay, well, we got to wrap in a second. But let's say the banks only do care about money. That's a reasonable thing to say. So then what could explain why they would treat the two differently? It would have to be, like you're saying, but what you're saying is there might be some implicit bias toward, if they could identify some poor white guy, which goes to the point, though, of how it's easier for poor whites,

which I was one, used to be one of, but it was easier for me to migrate out. My name is Ryan Graham. You can't even tell that I was white trash. Right. I mean, you can if you like, you know me pretty well, but, but you can't tell on a resume or an application. You see as a rest record. Yes. I don't know. You're wearing a tie and everything. I wouldn't say, I mean, there you go. Could have fooled me. Yeah. Look, I, but I wouldn't even call it implicit bias. I think it's just like banks, they are biased against people that they don't think will pay their mortgage, basically. Right. And so why don't they think

a person with a black name will pay their mortgage? Because I think in that case- Despite a high credit score and a high income. Because if that is true, then they're making assumptions about, they're making class-based assumptions. This is a lower income person coming from a low income neighborhood, even if their current income is the same, that's the background. And so people- Sounds like those people face a systemic problem. Well, class based, but that's what I'm talking about. We're getting told. Yeah, we're getting this in the ear. Matt, thank you so much. This is a fascinating conversation.

I really enjoyed the movie. Ryan, what'd you think? It's funny. I will acknowledge this movie's funny. These guys are clown a fascinating conversation. I really enjoyed the movie. Ryan, what'd you think? It's funny. I'll acknowledge this. The movie's funny. These guys are clowns. You can put that on the poster. These guys are total clowns. Matt Walsh, thank you so much for joining us.

Thank you. Appreciate it. Thanks a lot. Well, Ryan, I actually thought that was really interesting. We had a lot of questions that we couldn't quite get to because that exchange, we wanted to sort of let it play out. And I think the reason for that, we wanted to ask about anti-Semitism and abortion, and Matt's actually coming on my

Unheard show tomorrow, so I'll probably try to, I'll even take questions from Ryan Grimm if you have remaining ones. But I actually think that exchange that you guys were having was so rare and well worth playing out because it is incredibly rare that two people engage on good faith on what the question or what the sort of semantic debate over systemic racism is. And that is at the heart of so many disagreements. Yeah. I mean, I just think if you're a black person born in this country, you face systemic difficulties that a white person doesn't. I'll agree with that. I think that's true. Yeah. Yeah, I think that's true. You probably get him to agree with that to some extent too. It's just, I think it's a question over the scale.

At the end of the day, we disagree over like maybe the scale or the scope. Yeah. Well, super interesting. That's fine. Yeah. That was super interesting. I thought that was even going to be like, I don't know. I thought that was just really, even listening to your rebuttals was, I think, so helpful. And I hope everybody in the audience enjoyed it as well. Hope so, too. All right. Well, thank you so much for joining us for this week's edition of CounterPoints.

No Friday show. Count that as the Friday show. Right. We wanted to get this out today. We didn't want to wait until Friday to get this interview out. So we just attached it to the regular show. So we will be back here next Wednesday, of course, with more CounterPoints. Subscribe over at BreakingPoints.com. You can get

early editions of the show. You get the full edition of the show straight to your inbox early. So it's a great deal. Who wouldn't want that? See you guys next week. Over the years of making my true crime podcast, Helen Gone, I've learned no town is too small for murder. I'm Catherine Townsend. I've heard from hundreds of people across the country with an unsolved murder in their community. I was calling about the murder of my husband.

The murderer is still out there. Each week, I investigate a new case. If there is a case we should hear about, call 678-744-6145. Listen to Hell and Gone Murder Line on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Sometimes as dads, I think we're too hard on ourselves. We get down on ourselves on not being able to, you know, we're the providers. But we also have to learn to take care of ourselves. A wrap-away, you got to pray for yourself as well as for everybody else.

But never forget yourself. Self-love made me a better dad because I realized my worth. Never stop being a dad. That's dedication. Find out more at fatherhood.gov. Brought to you by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the Ad Council. I've seen a lot of stuff over 30 years, you know, some very despicable crime and things that are kind of tough to wrap your head around.

And this ranks right up there in the pantheon of Rhode Island fraudsters. I've always been told I'm a really good listener, right? And I maximized that while I was lying. Listen to Deep Cover, The Truth About Sarah on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an iHeart Podcast.