Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 9/19/24: Israel Hezbollah Attack, Fed Rate Cut, Teamsters Refuse Kamala Endorsement, Shocking Diddy Indictment, Panel Debate On Trump Abortion, NYPD Corruption And Subway Shooting

Episode Date: September 19, 2024

Krystal and Saagar discuss how Israel blew up Hezbollah devices, fed rate cut, Teamsters refuse to endorse Dems, shocking Diddy indictment details, conservatives debate Trump abortion policy, NYPD mafia allegations.    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. I also want to address the Tonys. On a recent episode of Checking In with Michelle Williams, I open up about feeling snubbed by the Tony Awards. Do I? I was never mad. I was disappointed because I had high hopes. To hear this and more on disappointment and protecting your peace,

listen to Checking In with Michelle Williams from the Black Effect Podcast Network 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. Like, that's what's really important and that's what stands out, is that our music changes people's lives for the better.

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 say you'd never give in to a meltdown. Never let kids' toys

take over the house. And never fill your feed with kid photos. You'd never plan your life around their schedule. Never lick your thumb to clean their face. And you'd never let them leave the house looking like less than their best. You say you'd never put a pacifier in your mouth to clean it. Never let them stay up too late. And never let them run wild through the grocery store. We have one aisle today. And aisle three.

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We have an amazing show for everybody today. What do we have, Crystal? Indeed, we do. More chaos in Lebanon. This time we had exploding walkie-talkies with more deaths and injuries. So we'll break down that. We also have some more information on how the hell this happened, how Israel was able to penetrate the supply chain and get these exploding devices in the hands of Hezbollah operatives. It is a crazy story. So we'll track all of that and, of course, what it means for us and for a broader Middle East war. Big, big economic news. This is something that has been much anticipated. The Fed significantly cutting rates yesterday. Obviously, that is meant to have an important economic impact, also may have an important political impact. Trump is reacting to that. We also have some more details about the direction

Trump is going in with his economic plans or concepts of a plan, I guess. So we'll break that down for you as well. Teamsters, union, decided not to endorse at all in this presidential race. You know, Republicans are excited about this, and it's not endorsement of them. At least Teamsters, in their view, are not endorsing Kamala. And we got some also interesting numbers from the head of the Teamsters about which direction their members are going in. The Diddy indictment has been revealed. We now know some of the details of exactly what the charges are and what the federal authorities are alleging. And frankly, it is all quite horrifying. So I'll show you that.

Some of the things that also they seized from his properties. And excited for a few guests this morning. We've got a panel that's going to debate the pro-life tactics coming from the Trump campaign. So these are both, you know, Sagar and I kind of had this debate before, but we're like, we're both pro-choice. So we don't really have a dog in the fight here. So we decided, let's get two people who are pro-life on to talk through this issue of whether or not Trump should be moderating on the issue or whether it's, you know, a moral red line. So Lila Rose is going to be one of those, Will Chamberlain's the other one. So that should be really good. And we have a reporter from New York to explain what the hell is going on in the Eric Adams administration.

Because some 15 members of his inner circle are now under some sort of federal investigation. Some people are saying this is like the worst corruption and the most insanity since basically like Tammany Hall is a wild situation unfolding. New York is fully back. I'm pro-Eric Adams. New York City is the— We need a deeply corrupt mayor to infuse life into the city. Well, the thing I like, I mean, he has created some legendary content. Oh, that's what I mean. I mean, you can't help but love this.

It's like we've got corruption. We've got this like blathering idiot, perhaps savant at times, just been like, New York is the Paris or New York is the Islamabad. The Rio de Janeiro. He said, you never know what can happen in New York. He's like, you could getting a bagel. And the other day, you know, the twin towers could go down. That's a real thing that he actually said. Yeah. Yeah. New York is fully back. We're back. I have way too much of the video that he did about like searching your child's're back. I have way too much of the video that he did about, like, searching your child's bedroom. Oh, that's great. I have, like, way too much of that memorized, including him calling a backpack a, quote,

popular knapsack with many different pockets. The vegan who's not really vegan. I could go on forever. It's just there's too much. So anyway, a lot going on there. We also are going to get to this horrifying situation with the NYPD where they chased down someone who jumped a $2.90 fare and ended in a bloody scene. A police officer was hit with friendly fire. The fare evader himself was killed. The passerbys were, it's an insane situation.

So lots to talk about from New York City. So we'll get into all of that. Before we get to that, thank you to all of our premium subscribers. As a reminder, you do get the show early on Locals and in your inbox for our premium subscribers. So yesterday, for example, CounterPoints had a good debate with Matt Walsh over at The Daily Wire. And our premium subscribers got that early. I know quite a few have appreciated that. And it's gone quite viral now since. Yeah, it's been really, really interesting.

So that's a way you can support not only our work, but you get the show a full hour early in your inbox, the full show, and also available RSS feed on Locals, etc. So subscribe if you want to be able to take advantage of that, breakingpoints.com. Let's get to Hezbollah though, because this story has really captured the popular imagination outside of the geopolitical context. It's literally like out of a Bourne movie. The details, the decision to do this, I mean, there's literally like a major death toll, geopolitical consequences from the United States, Israel, and Lebanon, a potential broader war.

So we have some video that we can share, people, but I mean, this is crazy stuff. Yeah, so let's go ahead and put these new scenes of chaos. So on Tuesday, CounterPoint's covered that Hezbollah pagers and some other devices that were not owned by Hezbollah exploded with creating mass chaos. I mean, you're talking about people who were at the market. Here you can see these are new images, walkie-talkies that exploded. And even things like this is a keypad entryway to get into a building that exploded. This is a picture of one of the devices, presumably after, you know,

it was blown apart. And it was sheer terror. You know, you had people who were in markets going about their business, and then suddenly somewhere an explosion happens. People are panicking. You had innocent bystanders. You had children who were killed. So, you know, some factors, some factions are calling this, you know, this highly targeted attack. But in fact, it's the polar opposite of that. You know, you had people who were at home with their families, out on their motorbikes, like I said, in a market when these things blew up and whoever happened to be around was hit and was injured. So you now have thousands of injuries. You have somewhere around a dozen deaths, four of them children, by the way. So like I said, I don't think there's any way to describe

it other than terror. It was quite clear Israel hasn't officially taken credit for it, but quite clear that it was Israel behind these attacks. And we can also show you some of the evidence of how this all went down and how they were able to penetrate the supply chain in this manner. But in addition, you know, here's Bibi Netanyahu thinking he's really cool and positioning himself as a new James Bond. Let's take a listen. So let's go ahead and put up the Wall Street Journal article that we have here that has some of the new details. Again, we had attacks on subsequent days. Tuesday was the pagers.

Wednesdays was, by and large, walkie-talkies. The headline here is Hezbollah walkie-talkies blow up across Lebanon in second wave of attacks. Those walkie-talkies used by the group, they said, blew up in homes, cars, and in operatives' hands across the country. People familiar with the matter said, just a day after thousands of pagers carried by Hezbollah members

exploded at roughly the same time, the new attack killed 20 people, injured more than 450 after Tuesday's bombings killed 12 and injured more than 2,800 people. That's according to Lebanon's government, which blamed Israel, which is reasonable. There was a quote here from Yoav Galant in terms of the broader geopolitical implications because we've been covering here, in fact, Monday morning when this – or I guess Tuesday morning when this was all unfolding and we were getting the initial images, we were covering the fact that Bibi Netanyahu very much wants to expand the official war into Lebanon. Now, there's already been tit for tat exchanges between Hezbollah and Israel. That's not new.

What he's talking about is a much more significant escalation, something that theoretically, at least, the U.S. opposes. You have Yoav Galant, the Israeli defense minister, who's kind of on the outs in the Netanyahu administration because he was more in favor of securing some sort of a ceasefire hostage deal. But he told the Wall Street Journal, the center of gravity is shifting to the north. This means that we are moving forces, resources, and energy to the north. I estimate that we are at the start of a new phase in this war. So any hope of, you know, I mean, one thing that would end the Hezbollah attacks right away is if you had some sort of a

lasting ceasefire deal in exchange of hostages. I think any hope of that is off the table, as long as, you know, it's very clear the U.S. doesn't want to use their leverage to force any sort of a result on the Israelis. It's very clear Bibi Netanyahu wants to not only continue the assault that he has already, you know, already been taking in, but he wants to expand into this new war as well. And, you know, no end in sight, basically, Sagar. It's super, it's very, there's so much to say, not only about the covert details, the attack itself, we'll get to that in terms of how it exactly folded out, showing how sophisticated Israeli intelligence is. But there's also a big why question, like why now? There's a couple of different stories out there.

One is that this could be the precursor to some sort of larger attack. Two is that it actually means a larger attack's not going to happen. There was a third explanation I saw floated that Hezbollah had actually realized that there was something wrong with their pagers. Yeah. And that once they got intelligence that they might lose their ability to detonate these, they're like, well, we might as well just do it right now whenever we have the ability. So all of those seem actually quite plausible. I'm not really sure. I did read that in Israel, there is a lot of mounting pressure on Netanyahu to actually either sign a ceasefire deal or enable some ability for those tens of thousands of people in the north of Israel sharing a border with Lebanon to be able to return home. That actually

could be part of the impetus as well to try and satisfy the domestic. I mean, people are pissed. They haven't been able to live home in over a year. So that could be part of it. But yeah, I mean, when you pair that with the calculus, I mean, it's extraordinarily brazen, right? I mean, I thought what over a thousand of them seem to have exploded. Multiple people were killed.

Multiple bystanders were, I mean, the videos that we showed and they showed previously yesterday, literal grocery stores and everywhere. They basically didn't really care about any potential collateral damage, and they sent that page immediately. I mean, it's one of the most brazen intelligence operations and assassination things that have played out in history.

I also think it's a really good reminder. Modern war is not glorious. It's not like a movie or Call of Duty. Watch videos coming out of Ukraine. You have guys who are Russian and Ukrainians napping in a hole and they look up and they see a drone who drops a grenade on them and then they literally blow up into smithereens. Or here, like this. This is what actual technological warfare looks like. It's bad. Being able to watch people get their limbs blown off. I don't

recommend it, but I have watched now several of these videos, and this is what it actually looks like. You know, this is what you actually want to stop from happening, generally. The reaction to it has been really just dark, in my opinion. Like, the level of dehumanization of, I guess, any Arab population at this point is really quite astonishing. And, you know, think about, use the Russia-Ukraine example, okay? Imagine Russia partnered with China, which, you know, they're allies. Which they have. And were able to similarly, you know, infiltrate the Ukrainian supply chain.

And were able to, you know, blow up thousands of pagers, walkie-talkie, cell phones, whatever, electronic devices, indiscriminately across Ukraine with a significant toll on children killed, random people just happened to be nearby, family members, etc. Imagine the way that would be discussed. People would see it clearly. Like, this is horrifying. This is indiscriminate. This is a terror attack. That would be discussed in a very clear way. Here, not only is it not discussed that

way overwhelmingly, there are a few exceptions out there, but it's discussed as like, wow, how cool and amazing and LOL, look what happened to them, et cetera. And, you know, it's just really disturbing the way that people are able to put their humanity to the side, put the humanity of this, you know, entire nation of people to the side, entire region of people to the side, just based on the U.S. propaganda that they're fed. So, I mean, that's part of what's really dark here. Sagar, you're alluding to as well, like, once you open these doors, they don't close again. Like, this is the new reality is that this could be a weapon

in anyone's hands. Well, that's scary. And that's kind of what I want to focus on too is, you know, how many years have we been talking about here on this show?

We don't make anything. This entire phone is made outside of the United States, the chip inside of it. Do you really know? I mean, as far as I know, you can't even take the back

off of your iPhone. You have no idea what's in this phone. You don't know what's inside. I don't even know what's in any of these cameras, you know, and how many of us buy new electronics on a day-to-day basis. So this is a very good glimpse into, look, it could be used against us. It could be used against anybody. And the details of how this all went down actually shows how, frankly, easy it was for the Israelis. This isn't just because they're Lebanese. Obviously, the Israelis wanted to do it to Hezbollah. This could happen here instantaneously if anybody wanted to. And also, Israel is a small country.

Yes, they're technologically advanced. But the actual details of the plot, they're not that difficult. They're pretty basic. That's actually kind of what's astounding. Why don't we get into that? We can put that on the screen. Let's go and put this Financial Times article. And these details have actually been confirmed and furthered by the New York Times. So, you know, immediately people, once the pagers blow up, are like, where the hell did these pages come from? Like, how did this happen? How were the Israelis able to penetrate the supply chain in this way? They say here, Hezbollah's preliminary investigation, according to one of

its officials, alleges Israel spies somehow hijacked and delivered pages to Lebanon, packed them with tiny load of explosives and components, and then detonated them almost simultaneously. They traced it back to this sort of shell company called BAC Consulting. According to Hungarian company records, it was just set up in May of 2022 by this woman you see on your screen. She's apparently the sole director of the company. She did not reply to calls and messages seeking her comment. file lists a PhD from UCL in particle physics among her qualifications, as well as stints at other elite UK institutions like the London School of Economics. One person who met her in recent years described her as an academic. So immediately there were a lot of questions about why this lady

is selling Taiwanese pagers to Lebanese buyers. And like I said, the New York Times was basically able to confirm like, oh, these are this BAC consulting led by this woman who, you know, very likely or very clearly has Israeli ties. They're the ones who inserted the explosives before selling these pagers to Hezbollah. You know, they went and tried to find her office building. It's empty. Went and tried to find her apartment. It's empty, but has like a multi, like complicated multi lock on the door. The people who were neighbors said, oh, we haven't seen her here forever.

So anyway, this appears to have been the way they were able to effectuate this plot. And, you know, the irony here is that Hezbollah knew that they needed to get ditched their like smartphones and their cell phones because they were worried about, they knew about Israeli innovation. We've even covered here what is it called, Pegasus, the advanced hacking tools that they have. It's for your cell phone. Yeah, where you're able to basically get access to any phone that you have the phone number for and be able to see what's going on. You don't even need to send them a text message, nothing.

Pegasus 1, you needed to send something, like a compromise message. Pegasus 2, if they want it, you're done. If they can get your phone number, then that's it. They can get access to your phone. So they knew that. They've been tracking that as well. And so there was a big push of like, all right, we got to get rid of all the cell phones. We got to go to this more like, you know, sort of terrestrial, outdated tech, the low

tech that will be more difficult for the Israelis to be able to track and be able to penetrate to keep our communications and our location networks secure. And, you know, once they made that move, that's exactly how Israel was able to jump in. As you said, Sagar, there was some reporting that the reason this happened now was because somebody in Hezbollah had figured out this was going on. And Israel was able to assassinate that individual. This is all, you know, this is all not fully confirmed. As you said, there's a lot of different stories about what might have happened or why now.

But Israel assassinates that person to prevent them from, you know, telling the chain of command what the hell is going on. But they realized, you know, the gig was kind of up. The other thing, though, I think that makes sense is we've seen any time that Bibi is a little bit on the rocks domestically, politically, what does he do? He, you know, assassinates a top Hezbollah commander in Beirut, or he assassinates Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran, or he does some sort of, you know, attacks an embassy in Syria. He does some sort of escalatory provocation that his domestic population absolutely loves and takes the pressure off of him politically so that he can keep holding on to power and keep doing exactly what he wants to do. That could be the best explanation, right? And that's actually one

that makes quite a lot of sense. That Bond video went quite viral in Israel. It makes sense. You know, there's one of those where, look, we got to think about it, I guess, in their domestic terms. I mean, the problem is, is that in Lebanon too, there could be a lot of chaos now in terms of what the fallout from this could be for Hezbollah and for any of their Iranian proxies. For them, can they really take this sitting down? I mean, you could see it both ways. One, you'd be terrified. You're like, wow, every element of our communications chain is totally compromised. We're going to get wiped, you know, if we ever have to go to a war again. The other is, well, this is the thing about Hezbollah.

Yeah, do they commit, like, terrorist acts? Yes, but it's difficult to describe really in the West because it's a non-governmental, like governmental institution. It's like almost part of the Lebanese society and government at a basic level of like schools, kind of like Hamas, you know, in Gaza. So it's a lot like the bath party in Iraq after our invasion. We were like, oh, we can't have any bath members. What about the teachers? What about people who run the electric companies? It's just, it's difficult to parse, you know, the difference. That's also another thing about the operation. I think it'd be one thing if they were all like in a meeting and you exploded a meeting, right? That's certainly like one area, but the way that they did it while people were in public, I don't really know. Like,

I don't know if it was a message or if it was just, we have to do this right now. Otherwise, we're not going to have any ability, but that's what's opened themselves up to a lot of criticism from its own allies like the U.S. and others who at least behind the scenes were stunned that something like this happened. Inside the Middle East, it certainly has created a lot of tension. We're going to get to this. Flights have actually now been canceled to Israel. We can put that up right now if we want. that's a7 so multiple carriers have canceled their um they have canceled all flights to israel amid lebanon explanation lufthansa air so not like arab like

ethiat airways or whatever i'm talking about lufthansa air france and multiple others that have canceled it i mean i guess out of fear that something's going to blow up on their plane, which is not, you know, unfounded, I would say. No. I mean, it could have, right? I mean, if somebody happened, if a, you know, a person happened to be on one of these planes when the signal was sent, I mean, I don't know. It seems pretty reasonable. Seems plausible, yeah. Yeah, seems pretty plausible. But I mean, again, if you think, like, try to put yourself in the shoes of the Lebanese people. Imagine if you had U.S. service members who were at the market, at home with their family, like, with their kids, whatever, and their cell phone explodes with thousands of, you know, people who were injured, many of whom were innocent bystanders, children who were killed, etc. You can imagine how we would view that.

We would rightly view that as a terror attack. Put A4 up on the screen. Just one of the details here of one of the young girls, a nine-year-old child who was killed yesterday. Fatima was in the kitchen when the pager on the table began to beep, according to her aunt. She picked up the device to bring it to her dad and was holding it when it exploded, mangling her face, leaving the room covered in blood. Fatima was trying to take courses in English. Her aunt said she loved English, and this is one of the children who was killed in this attack. Matt Miller was asked a little bit about this in a State Department briefing,

specifically if he supports the operations that target Hezbollah. Let's go ahead and take a listen to this exchange, which has to do with that, and also talks a little bit more broadly about legitimacy of targets. In general, yes, of course we support operations to target Hezbollah militants who continue to launch terrorist attacks against civilians. Israel has a right to defend itself against terrorism and a right to carry out legitimate attacks against terrorists, not civilians, but terrorists. So as a general proposition, yes, of course. Okay, so let me go take you back to the legitimacy of targets and so on. Yesterday, a group of settlers attacked a school in Jericho. They beat up the students, they broke their bones,

they beat up the teachers and so on. Are they a legitimate target? Should they be a legitimate target by the same kind of definition in which you have defined the other targets? Are civilians who the settlers attacking legitimate targets? Absolutely not. No, I'm saying the settlers who have attacked the civilians. Should the settlers be a legitimate target?

The settlers should be held accountable through law enforcement means, Saeed. Not through any type of extrajudicial process or military process. They should be held account by law enforcement, which is what we would say about any type of violent attacks on individuals. Law enforcement ought to hold them accountable to the full extent of the law. Although they do take the law into their own hands time and time again. Very violent. Absolutely, which is why we believe they should be held accountable. And as you've seen the United States make clear through our own actions, if and when Israel does not step up and hold people accountable, we will do so ourselves.

Interesting. Yeah, we really hold people accountable, we will do so ourselves. Interesting. Yeah, really hold people accountable. One, I think, very reasonable take for those out there, a guy named John Robb, who I often look to. He says, the reason the governments don't do this is it greenlights the booby trapping and sabotaging of civilian supply chains, electronics that explode, devolve into contaminated food and or water. And that's actually, frankly, what scares me the most. And part of the reason why I really wanted to flag this of like, this is what modern war would look like. If you think about total war, almost every war of the 20th century, major conflict between nation states

escalates into like a true do or die situation, especially if America were to ever get involved. Think about how compromised our supply chain is, how much we rely on exports. Even our own military often runs on stuff from afar. But then think about, too, about the legitimacy of Target allegedly here in America and who would count for that. You and I could technically qualify like, oh, propagandists of the state, depending on whose definition. If somebody was in here and they happened toandists of the state, you know, depending on whose definition. If somebody was in here and they happened to be one of those people, which is certainly possible, any of the supply or the transit networks that we take whenever we come here to work, you could just

see how this could very clearly go crazy. And that is actually probably what I'm most afraid of, is watching both, watching the Russia-Ukraine war. I mean if you look at it, what do the Russians strike whenever they do missiles? It's not the civilian population. They're going after like energy centers and the power stations inside of Ukraine. With Hamas, Israel has mostly done that as well. But now with Hezbollah, you're like you're giving these tainted pagers that have been exploited through some sort of supply chain. You're just blowing it up wherever you want.

Same with these cheap, commercially available drones, which we're seeing all over the Russia, Ukraine war. A lot of them fall out of the sky and blow people up all the time. So this is what it's really going to look like. This is why war is a nightmare, and you should avoid it at all costs. And we're getting now 4K video of what it really looks like when you get your entire face blown off. Previously, you know, at best, it's a government sensor. Let some guy write about it two years later. Like now you're seeing it 4K IRL. And that's really scary, honestly. No, it's Pandora's box. Like it really is. They really are opening Pandora's box with this. And so, you know, for all that we can put John Fetterman here up on the screen, A6, to finish this down, fools like him who celebrate these types of actions, I fully support efforts to target and neutralize any existential threat like Hezbollah and think it could never be done to us or one of our allies or some population that he happens to care about. You know, you're a fool. You're an absolute fool. And what can we say about

it if slash when it does happen to some group that we care about? What will we have to say about it when we, you know, maybe behind the scenes we'll have another tough talk with Netanyahu or whatever? But there's no expectation that the U.S. government is going to come out and condemn these indiscriminate attacks on, you know, this technology and infiltration of a civilian supply chain, et cetera. So very scary world that we're entering here. Yeah, certainly. The summer of 1993 was one of the best of my life. I'm journalist Jeff Perlman, and this is Rick Jervis. We were interns at the Nashville Tennessean, but the most unforgettable part? Our roommate, Reggie Payne, from Oakland, sports editor and aspiring rapper. And his stage name? Sexy Sweat. In 2020, I had a simple idea. Let's find Reggie.

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Let's go to the next part, the economy. There's been some major developments here with the Federal Reserve. Let's go ahead and put this up there on the screen. The Federal Reserve has announced now a half-point rate cut yesterday, lowers interest rates by, quote, 50 basis points. You can think of that as half of a percent. It still is the largest reduction, I believe, since 2008 and is the first time since 2020 that a rate cut has been announced now by the Fed. Really what it is is that it's an admission by Jerome Powell that this effort to curb inflation just through interest rates is now over. But it also reveals, I think, frankly, an extraordinary failure on their point, because what ended up happening is that we

effectively supply-side inflation that was not entirely fiscally caused. I'm not going to say fiscal policy didn't have any impact on it, but throughout the entire time, recall, we had very, very low unemployment rates. Now, we're actually beginning to see those unemployment rates tick up. Inflation, to the extent it has cooled, is largely because, again, of supply side factors. And all they have done really is jack interest rates up so high that it has made the basic attainment of American life from a car loan to a house loan incredibly expensive. The ratio now where prices where they are at all-time highs or near all-time highs for houses, specifically in the majority of housing

markets compared then to the mortgage. And then when you put that up against what the average income or even frankly, like a decent income, let's say $120,000 per year, you just put a vast majority of housing unavailable to a lot of people. Another really bad thing that happened is that high, high interest rates at the current time, at least compared to our relative history, locked a lot of people in who have low interest rates into their houses. So the housing stock took a dive. That's right. And so what happened is that the housing supply actually constricted significantly. Then you had borrowing costs significantly go up. Credit card interest balance and all these other things are all-time highs right now.

People's savings are very, very low. So, I mean, look, I'm happy to see it, I guess. Some people are calling it election interference and all that. To be honest, this is part of the problem, I think, with the so-called independent Federal Reserve and all that. It is actually quite common to cut interest rates in an election year. You could read into that kind of what you will. Oh, really? It's like statistics. Dave Ramsey talks about it all the time. He's like, election year is coming. He's like,

you know, they're going to cut interest rates. It's one of those where you could also basically bet on it. But also at the current time, it is pretty clear what the net effect of these very high interest rates were, which was very high credit card balances, a mortgage unattainability, locking people, a lot of the housing stock up. The only question is if this is even enough to still unleash some borrowing or some interest in the real estate market. Just because compared to where a lot of people still are with a 2% or 3% mortgage rate, 5% is still a lot, especially if you look at the comparison for the same amount of down payment and what your new mortgage would be. In some cases, like thousands of dollars more, depending on the house, especially if you live

in a market like we do in the DMV, where the average house cost is like $800,000 to $900,000. It's just extraordinary what it would cost you. It's insane. The amount of difference at one point in the mortgage interest rate. You should play with those calculators. It's really important to understand. It's insane. Like I really didn't, hadn't done that math until we started looking at it in the context of Fed policy. And I was blown away. But we never needed to because of 08. Right. We just grew up in an area. We used to like lower zero interest rates. And yeah, when you start looking at it, oh, when your mortgage interest rate is 5%, 6%, 7%,

how much of a difference that makes in terms of what you're getting, how much house you can get for your money, it's pretty mind-blowing. So I think that'll be one of the major impacts is hopefully it will help to start to get more movement in the housing market. I did see that housing starts, like new house building is up, but not enough to overcome the fact that you have, you know, you can imagine if you have a low mortgage interest rate, even if you kind of want to move or kind of want to get something else, there's no way you're going anywhere until mortgage interest rates come down.

So that will certainly be one of the things people will be looking towards. You know, there are a lot of people that argue this rate cut, and I think emblematic of the fact that they went with the, you know, the 50 BPS or the half point rate cut rather than the standard 0.25 percentage point. A lot of people feel like this came kind of too late, like they hung on to the interest rate, you know, hikes and keeping it static for a little bit too long because we started to see these troubling signs in the labor market in particular, where you're having job misses in terms of the number of new jobs created. You start to have the unemployment rate tick up. And so there are many who would argue that this actually came a little bit too late, and that's why they're going with this larger rate cut. But, you know, obviously, huge impact in terms of the economy, impossible to predict how much because these are,

you know, there's a lag and these are very powerful tools. But sometimes it takes some time to see what exactly all unfolds. And also potentially, you know, powerful impact on the political situation, given that we are close to an election and any positive movement in the economy, which people expect, you know, when lending, when it's cheaper to borrow, it stimulates more economic activity. That's typically how that works. So the expectation is that this will help juice the economy in a way that could be beneficial to Kamala Harris, which is why Trump is not happy. Yes, that's why. Well, let's talk about that. Trump addressed this yesterday. Let's go ahead and take a listen. I guess it shows the economy is very bad to cut it by that much. Assuming they're not just

playing politics, the economy would be very bad or they're playing politics, one or the other. But it was a big cut. It was a big cut. Trump, a lot of people forget this, but he was obsessed with actually giving politics. I remember this. It was smart because he was one of the first presidents to, in a long time, a lot of presidents have this religion around the Fed. They're like, oh, we can't impact the Federal Reserve at all. And he would openly just tweet and berate Jerome Powell, being like, you need to keep interest rates low. It's because of his real estate background. I mean, he knows that he lived through the 70s and the 80s. That's when he made his money. So imagine playing in a world where 19% interest rates. I can't.

I really honestly can't imagine what mortgage payments and all that would have looked like, even if the prices were crazy low. So his interest and knowledge of interest rates was one where, as president, he consistently campaigned to keep low interest rates and to pressure the Federal Reserve. And he understands also the power. Now, as you said, the idea that a low interest rate or a cut of 50 basis points is going to materialize in a real way for most people in the span of, what is it, 40-something days now to election day, that is kind of ridiculous. But he does understand, too, what the overall economic picture of that can look like.

If you're willing to take a federal interest rate view of history, going back and reading the 80s, you really have two choices. You can look at it as a change in interest rates. You can look at it as a change in fiscal policy. And it kind of tells you – both can tell you a very compelling story as to why growth in an economy occurs or why people feel the way that they do. I think the number one lesson we can all take away is we now all understand why like boomers are so obsessed with inflation because of what it was like to live through the 1970s. And so we didn't get it nearly as bad, but I get it now, you know, in terms of what it looks like. And a lot of people will pay a lot more attention. And politically, of course, I mean, inflation is

probably the single biggest blow to Biden other than his age and to Kamala Harris that she has to work through. So we're learning really the impact that that has. And it wakes everybody up to what politics looks like. Yeah, that's right. And just let's put this CNBC article up that took a look at some of the overseas, you know, sort of the global impacts of what a Fed rate cut could mean. They say from currencies and commodities, equities to bonds, global markets are braced for that rate cut. This was written before it happened. They talk about how oil and other commodities, which are usually priced in dollars, often receive a boost with the rate cut.

A lot of emerging markets very sensitive to these factors. And they say much of the global stock market volatility over recent months was linked to speculation about when and by how much the U.S. central bank will reduce rates. Quote, interest rate cuts reduce the cost of borrowing U.S. dollars thereby creating easier liquidity conditions for companies around the world. Lower interest rates should also lower the yield available on U.S. assets like treasuries, thus making other markets relatively more attractive. So that's some of the prediction about some of the global ripple effects of the Fed lowering rates. The Fed was actually a little bit slow by global standards. Some other more advanced economies had their central banks had cut rates before we did, even though, you know, this is not to minimize the pain of inflation here. But if you look around the world, we actually fared a lot better than

many other advanced countries and were able to lessen inflation more quickly than other advanced economies. So the Fed a little bit behind the curve globally in terms of making this move. Yeah, you're right. And now we've got to turn to some more recent economic news. Trump with one of the most hilarious flip-flops of all time. Let's go ahead and put this up there on the screen. I wonder if he even noticed that he was flip-flopping. So Trump somehow buried this in the middle of a tweet whenever he announced a rally in Long Island, New York,

an area that has slowly but surely turned very MAGA. He says, Nassau Coliseum will be a really big deal. It's going to be packed, and it was packed. Hundreds of thousands of migrants, etc. What the hell do you have to lose? Vote for Trump. Wait, listen to this. I will turn it around.

Get SALT back. Lower your taxes. Okay, so we spent hours and hours on this show talking about SALT. It remains one of the most hilarious policy areas in Washington because this is a blue state, specifically rich person obsession. The way it basically works, it's kind of hard to explain. But previously, prior to the 2017 Trump tax bill, blue states where they had high tax rates, let's say California, the easiest way is to think of it. California and New York. California and New York.

So that's your primary. All right. But California is an easy one, and let's take a million dollars. Okay. And there's a reason I'm saying a million because that's really the only people this applies to. If you have a million dollars, you have to pay, what is it, 13-something percent income tax to the state of California. Okay. Okay. So what used to happen is that that 13%, 130K roughly, would then get subtracted from your overall federal income taxable burden, as in you would then pay the top individual rate after whatever cutoff on that $800,000.

Well, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act removed that so-called salt beneficiary and made it so that your taxable income at the state level was no longer deductible from your overall tax at the federal level. This massively hurts rich people. So you actually tweeted out this graph and it's very beneficial. Let's put this up there on the screen. For the absolute vast majority of Americans, this does not matter at all. But as you can see right here, the benefits of a SALT cap, basically what happened is they capped it at just $10,000. If you remove that cap, you massively benefit people who make a lot, high, high dollar income. So we're not talking about carried interest. We're not

talking about stocks. We're talking about specifically people who make over about a million dollars a year. So what you could see here from the tax policy center is after you pass the 360,000 level, you start to save a ton of money, especially like I just gave that example, some $5 million. Well, you can imagine now, you know, 13% or whatever of that 5 million then getting knocked off of what you are eligible to then to pay for federal income tax. We are now talking in the ballpark of five figures. And so that is something which rich people in blue states and California, New York, but New Jersey as well, and, you know, very other ones. This is their number one priority. Has been now for the last, you know, basically 2017, so last like seven years.

Josh Gottheimer famously, as we covered here on the show, he called himself Mr. Salt. He even said at one point, quote, no salt, no dice. Because, I mean, people are up in arms over this. That was on, what was that? This was during Build Back Better. Build Back Better, anyway. Basically, he tried to get it all through Congress. He tried to hold the whole thing hostage.

Yes, just for salt. He represents New Jersey. And, you know, the rich people in his district, this was priority number one. So I guess he's representing, you know, he's representing his donors. No, he's representing his donors' interest in particular. Because as that chart points out, the TLDR, to make this really

simple, is that what Trump is floating here is a major tax cut for the rich. Specifically the blue rich, which is hilarious. Yeah, the rich in New York, New Jersey, California, etc. And so, like you said, this was something that was in the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. It was controversial at the time because Democrats were saying, like, oh, you're targeting our states, et cetera, et cetera. I'm like, okay, so what? And then it passes. And not only that, but if you lift the cap and then, you know, you don't make the—it's also, like, it's expensive. It's extremely expensive.

Yeah. Because as I—but this is the other— I'm talking about it's expensive for the federal government. Right. Excuse me. It adds significant amount to the deficit. Like it is a very expensive benefit that you're talking about giving to wealthy blue state dentists. Because, and again, because wealthy people, they may not pay the same percentage, but the vast majority of the income is made up of a lot of, let's say, the top 5% of all households in the United States. I forget the exact stats, but it may be something like 50. especially New York City, they basically designed their entire tax income, their entire tax strategy

to rely on the top 100 individuals in the city of New York. So I think it's like the top 100 individuals in the city of New York made up almost 50% of all taxation coming in to the overall city. So when just one of those people leaves, it's a disaster. And what happened is that we had massive blue state outflow specifically of the richest individuals. So, for example, you had Ken Griffin move his entire Citadel operation, I think, from Chicago down to Miami. There have been multiple very, very wealthy individuals who changed their permanent residence and they spent six months and one day in Florida and in Texas. And in fact, that's part of the major problems that they've had. So one of the reasons that the blue states have been campaigning so hard is that they are getting hit by this because of out-migration of their wealthiest populations. And that is, so David Klan, he was saying, look, there is actually a progressive case for this blue state wealthy. I just want to make the case like to play devil's advocate here. He says, I'm going to stand up for salt on progressive grounds because someone has to. It's good actually to incentivize the rich to stay in states that tax them and provide services

rather than encourage them to relocate to states that don't and forcing austerity in states that do. So he's basically saying, you know, if you don't have this tax deductibility, then it incentivizes a kind of race to the bottom in terms of states just trying to cut their taxes as low as possible, provide very few services to their lower income population in order to attract the, you know, Ben Griffin or whoever. I'll give you the philosophical case. I don't believe this, but I'll give it to you as it was, as it has been made to me is it's unfair to tax money twice, which again, I don't think that's right. But the philosophical argument is like, look, you're paying 13% on a million, but then you're also paying – what is it? What's the top individual rate?

Like 37 or something? Whichever part of your income is eligible for that 37, you're getting double taxed on that money, which means you're effectively paying a much higher tax rate. So that's the philosophical argument. The practical argument also is that it incentivizes people not to get paid cash. So what it means is that a lot of people in the blue states and others, they change their whole compensation structure. So they're like, look, I don't want money anymore. Pay me in stock, and then I'll let it vest, and I'll just pay long-term capital gains, which is 15%. It's a broader problem, and it's generally indicative of how screwed up our entire tax system is, but that's the only philosophical argument.

Yeah. Again, I don't believe it. I mean, I just think that especially – I mean, the type of people who make over a million dollars a year, we're not – there's not a lot of people who make a million dollars cash on their W-2 per year. Right. I think it might be less than a million people or households in the entire United States. I mean, to me, this argument makes sense in like a broader context if you were going to do a whole overhaul. Because the bottom line is like people who are making that level of income a year, they get off with such a low tax rate. Generally, yes.

They have so many loopholes that they're able to exploit. They typically pay a lower rate than just like an average middle class person. And so then it makes it very tough for me to swallow like, yeah, but we should still give them this other tax benefit back that they previously had. to like the Trump point of this, this is very consistent with the way he has operated in this campaign. I mean, it's been pretty shameless the way that he has given his donor set whatever goodies it is that they're looking for, whether it's consistent or totally opposite of what he said in the past. This is a very obvious example. The complete 180 on crypto, another very obvious example. Going into a room of oil and gas executives and saying, give me a billion dollars and I will cut the regulations and make sure that your return on investment is rewarded. I mean, it's just absolutely brazen and shameless. So I think, you know, this falls into this category of he's got some blue state billionaires who are on his team now and he's like, I'm going to deliver for you because most average

people, they're not even going to notice the like salt part of that truth. But the people who it's important to, oh, trust me, this is number one. Trust me. They are taking a look at that. They are noting that very, very strongly. Absolutely. Especially the 250K, the 300. I mean, look, I guess again, I could make a case here in DC, if you make 360 grand, you're not actually

that rich. I mean, you are like, you're obviously way more rich than the vast majority of Americans. Yeah. I'm not saying you're a freaking farmer, but you're not, you're living, I mean, for example, I remember looking at Kavanaugh's financials. His household income was something like $320K. He was basically living paycheck to paycheck between – it was like Nats season tickets, two private school educations, and a very high mortgage on a million-dollar-plus house. I see that a lot with a lot of people in this area in particular, just because the cost of living is so, so high. So for them, a couple of grand that they would be able to save actually is kind of meaningful. So anyways, that is the latest Trump flip-flop. We're also getting some more on the concept of a healthcare plan that's worth talking about. Let's just touch on this quickly as well. I can put this up on the screen from Axios.

They wrote this up. They said the Hill GOP, anyway, is setting their sights on scrapping drug price talks. So one of the accomplishments of the Biden administration that is overwhelmingly popular and the comic touts on the trail for good reason quite frequently is on certain drugs. They are now able to negotiate with the Medicare program to lower the cost of those prescription drugs. Well, you have a lot of Republicans in Congress who hate this because, I mean, because they're on the take from the pharmaceutical industry, but they say it's cautious innovation, blah, blah, blah. That's what they say. So anyway, they've made this a priority to try to, if Republicans are able to gain control,

try to get rid of even this, you know, it's a pretty modest reform, frankly, from the Biden administration because it only covers a certain handful of drugs. But in the next administration, there's an additional wave of drugs that would be subject to this price negotiation to lower costs as long as the law remains in place. So Trump hasn't said anything. You know, he uses his general rhetoric about pledging to take on big pharma, blah, blah, blah. But he has not said actually anything specifically about the Republican plans to roll back. This was in the Inflation Reduction Act, these Medicare drug price

negotiations. It'd be a huge fight. I mean, if I recall, Josh Hawley actually put it up 51 over 49 in the Senate, voted on behalf of flowing prescription drug price. This will be a titanic fight. I just looked at it. I couldn't find the exact voting record, but it looks like he sponsored at least some bill. I believe he voted on it on reconciliation because there was a whole Kyrsten Sinema showdown on this as well. The whole point is that this will preview many of what the Trump admin major fights are going to be. We just talked about taxes and salt. Actually, it's funny because if I were to guess, Republicans would be much more likely not to give him salt in favor of something like prescription drug price. They don't care about salt because it's about blue states.

And they like it. They think it's funny to tax blue states even more. Outside of the like, you know, the Republicans that represent Long Island or places like that. Right. Yeah. Outside of that. But in the Senate specifically, the Senate, what matters the most in reconciliation. So then it comes back to what their major priority would be. Drug price would actually be probably much more on the table. You should recall this. Both of these are incredibly expensive in terms of the deficit, like you just said. I mean, I don't forget exactly. Remember, the prescription drug price legislation is frankly BS, even the way that it's currently been enacted,

which is it only, what is it? It only allows them to negotiate the top 10 drugs that Medicare buys, not even all the drugs that Medicare buys, even though Medicare is the largest purchaser of pharmaceuticals in the entire United States. So every other, what is it, PBM, you know, like Blue Cross Blue Shield, they all get to negotiate. But the government doesn't. They just have to pay. Yeah, I mean, obviously. It's a ridiculous policy. It should obviously apply to all drugs.

I mean, it's one of those things you're like, it's an improvement, and it genuinely is. And, you know, the top drugs that they're negotiating on, like, there's been a huge, significant impact for seniors in particular, Medicare recipients. It matters. I don't want to say it doesn't. But, yeah, I mean, this is a very modest, modest reform. And, you know, just to rebut directly the argument that Republicans and some Democrats, by the way, make who are on the take with the pharmaceutical industry about this, like, oh, they're not going to have the money for innovation, blah, blah, blah. First, go and take a look at what we pay for these drugs versus everywhere else in the world, and you will be utterly disgusted. Why should our country be the piggy

bank for these pharmaceutical giants who are wildly wildly profitable too, by the way. Filthy rich. In addition, every single new drug molecule that has been invented in this century has been with the aid of federal tax dollars. By and large, the research and development that these pharmaceutical giants partake in is like, let me reformulate Viagra because it's very profitable so that, you know, it's a different dosage or it's a different delivery mechanism to try to extend patent life. That's a lot of the R&D type, you know, investments that they're making, not developing the new life saving blahaving blah, blah, blah, because that's risky. And by the way, you know, what if not a lot of people have that incurable disease? Then it's not going to be all

that profitable. And so that's why public federal funding has been absolutely vital in the development of new drug molecules and drug company development, not so much because they're driven by the profit motive and not, you know, what would actually be like most beneficial to society. So anyway, the talking points against this are total and complete bullshit. And one look at what we pay versus what the rest of the world pays should tell you that. The summer of 1993 was one of the best of my life. I'm journalist Jeff Perlman, and this is Rick Jervis. We were interns at the Nashville Tennessean, but the most unforgettable part? Our roommate, Reggie Payne, from Oakland, sports editor and aspiring rapper. And his stage name? Sexy Sweat. In 2020, I had a simple idea.

Let's find Reggie. We searched everywhere, but Reggie was gone. In February 2020, Reggie was having a diabetic episode. His mom called 911. Police cuffed him face down. He slipped into a coma and died. I'm like thanking you. But then I see my son's not moving. No headlines, no outrage, just silence.

So we started digging and uncovered city officials bent on protecting their own. Listen to Finding Sexy Sweat coming June 19th on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I know a lot of cops, and they get asked all the time, have you ever had to shoot your gun? Sometimes the answer is yes. But there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be no. Across the country, cops called this taser the revolution.

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

Season 1, Taser Incorporated on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Binge episodes 1, 2, and 3 on May 21st and episodes 4, 5, and 6 on June 4th. Add free at Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. I'm Clayton English. I'm Greg Glod. And this is Season 2 of the War on Drugs podcast. Yes, sir. We are back. In a big way. In a very big way.

Real people, real perspectives. This has kind of star-studded a little bit, man. We got Ricky Williams, NFL player, Heisman Trophy winner. It's just a compassionate choice to allow players all reasonable means to care for themselves. Music stars Marcus King, John Osborne from Brothers Osborne. We have this misunderstanding of what this quote-unquote drug ban is. Benny the Butcher. Brent Smith from Shinedown.

We got B-Real from Cypress Hill. NHL enforcer Riley Cote. Marine Cor vet. MMA fighter Liz Karamush. What we're doing now isn't working, and we need to change things. Stories matter, and it brings a face to them. It makes it real. It really does.

It makes it real. Listen to new episodes of the War on Drugs podcast season two on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And to hear episodes one week early and ad-free with exclusive content, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. Let's go to the next part about the Teamsters. This is actually really, honestly, it is a crazy development. It's very interesting.

This is the first time the Teamsters have not endorsed a Democrat since 1996. So let's go ahead and put this up there on the screen. The Teamsters has announced they will not be making an endorsement in the presidential race. I'll go ahead and read here. It says the General Executive Board of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters on Wednesday elected not to endorse any candidate for U.S. president. After reviewing six months of nationwide member polling, wrapping up nearly a year of rank-and-file roundtable interviews with major candidates, the union was left with few commitments on top Teamster issues from either President Trump or Vice President Kamala Harris, and found no definitive support amongst members for its party's nominee. In data released publicly earlier this day, President Biden won the support of Teamsters voting in straw polls at local unions

between April to July prior to his exit from the race. But in independent electronic and phone polling from July to September, a majority of voting members twice selected Trump for a possible Teamsters endorsement over Harris. The union's extensive member polling showed no majority support for Vice President Harris and no universal support amongst the membership for President Trump. He goes on to say the Teamsters thanks all candidates for meeting with the members. So this is an extraordinary development, obviously, for a couple of reasons. Traditionally, the Teamsters always just endorsed a Democratic candidate.

But Sean O'Brien has made some interesting plays in the last couple of months. So he spoke at the RNC convention, which was kind of shocking. And not only did he speak at the RNC convention, he, a blistering speech against corporate profiteering. The crowd kind of didn't know what to do with it. They were like, do we support this? You know, they're like, some people were like, yeah. Other people were like, I don't know what's going on with this communism here in the building. He's given interviews in the past. He has praised J.D. Vance. He praised, I believe, Josh Hawley, but he's put down people like Mitch McConnell and others. With Trump, it was very much like a questioning agenda. With Kamala previously, I mean, look, let's also be fair. He was relatively

complimentary to Joe Biden when we had him here on the show. He'd been complimentary at that. He seemed to portray himself more as like a hardline issues guy, talking about the PRO Act and others. We've interviewed him twice here in person. So regardless, I've always found him to be an interesting character. But, you know, this development is actually really major, especially because I think it reveals a lot about cultural politics, something I've been talking about here a lot on the show. But, you know, when you had some plus 50% majority of the Teamsters union members in that poll switched from Biden to Trump, you can't help but just say that's crazy. Obviously, we have, and look, let's also be

fair. Teamsters is probably the most conservative union, not in terms of the union itself, but its membership. It would make sense. Not the most, but among the most. One of. These are white working class folks. So to be surprised that white working class people are supporting Trump at nearly a 60-40 margin, that's not really a surprise in these days, but it does tell you the power of a lot of culture and how these individual union members have voted. Remember, Trump won some 40% of the union vote back in 2016. He shocked everybody against Hillary. That was a way higher number under Barack Obama. So there is actually a lot.

Analytically, this is a very interesting result. Yeah, your cultural point is really important. I saw someone tweet that this is a real blow for, quote unquote, deliverism, which is, you know, the theory of politics that I would like to believe was the way it actually works and probably isn't. In which, if you deliver for a key constituency, they reward you. The one thing that in the Teamsters announcement they point to that's legitimate is they have some members that were impacted by that railway strike and the way the federal government came in with a heavy hand and crammed down, you know, a deal on them that they did not want and blocked any sort of continuing strike activity. That's legitimate.

But if you, you know, okay. And Trump also, you know, would not commit to doing any better on that. So they're kind of like, you know, even on that one. On the PRO Act, very clear, you know, Democrats, almost every Democrat supported the PRO Act. Kamala Harris supports the PRO Act. Joe Biden also supports the PRO Act. Donald Trump doesn't. Even more clear, though, on this question of deliverism, Democrats, over the objections of every single Republican, saved the Teamsters' pension as part of the American rescue plan. And, you know, I know Teamsters' members who were close to retirement, where this was really quite existential for them. Their pension fund was totally screwed. They were looking at, you know, maybe I'm going to get a quarter of the pound. I was promised that I worked hard for my entire life and career.

And it was Democrats, led by Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, who, again, over the votes of every single Republican, made sure that that pension fund was made whole. So Teamsters retirees would be able to retire with, you know, the levels of funding that they had worked for and had been promised. So, yeah, when you, you know, I think there's a lot to say here. I mean, first of all, Sean O'Brien, how strongly did he, you know, educate his members about the disparity between the Republicans and the Democrats on that issue? By going to the Republican convention, even though he wasn't just like flowery towards Republicans, he really gave them a kind of a talking point. And I think also didn't do an effective job of educating on the very clear disparity between Democrats and Republicans just purely on labor issues. Then with regard to the difference in, you know, how the membership voted between Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, yeah, on the one hand, you're like,

this is perplexing because they're in the same administration. On the other hand, Sagar, to your point on the culture, like Joe Biden reads as moderate old white guy, Kamala Harris, black woman who has a more, you know, progressive record, comes as moderate old white guy, Kamala Harris, black woman who has a more progressive record, comes from California, et cetera, et cetera. It's hard to think that it's anything other than that cultural vote. Given that on labor, they have an identical record and posture. I mean, I guess the case you could make, we had Teamsters president on, talk about Gavin Newsom. A lot of Teamsters people hate California. They don't like Gavin for signing, what was it, that bill about driverless cars that he overruled the Teamsters on.

That's the last time that we talked to him. What does she have to do with that? No, I'm just saying they're like, look, she's some California, Silicon Valley, you know, liberal, which is kind of true. Her record on unions is rock solid, though, you know, and Trump's record on unions was horrific. So there's a lot of debate and always there's a lot of criticism when unions come out and endorse like lefty causes, like the UAW came out and, you know, in favor of a ceasefire in Gaza, a number of other unions did as well. And there's always this refrain from the right of like, just stick to the policy, stick to wages, stick to like what you're focused on. And here it almost feels like the reverse, because again, if you're just looking at the

issues, it's really not close between the Democrats and Republicans. I actually, I not only understand, but I support unions withholding their support for Democrats who don't deliver for them. But this administration, the Biden-Harris administration, I have a million other critiques of them that you guys hear on the show all the time. On labor, they were not perfect. They are by far, by far the best administration on labor in my lifetime. It's not even close. Way better than Obama, way better than Clinton, obviously way better than every Republican. So yeah, that's what's like depressing to me about it is because I would like the politics of deliverism to be a real thing. The fact that on a very specific, really important,

very tangible issue, this administration delivered for this union and then, you know, they get slapped in the face. What incentive does it give them in the future? If we're just talking like naked political maneuvering, what incentive does it give them in the future? If we're just talking like naked political maneuvering, what incentive does it give them in the future to go to the mat and expend political capital in a similar fight when it's clearly not rewarded? Yes, but you know, a union's job is to represent its members. Its members clearly support Trump, you know, at least right now. And so maybe the wash is the best that you are going to get when they're like, okay, our members clearly are supportive of one candidate. We don't necessarily think that candidates can deliver us on a policy

level, but we can't turn around and support somebody who's got only 40% of our membership. At the end of the day, organizations at least are going to be quasi-democratic. This is probably the best result that Kamala could have gotten if the majority, vast majority actually, in this particular case, are supportive of Donald Trump. I do think it also is indicative of just what cultural politics look like and mean today. If you were going to go, if I were probably go ask these teams, these guys were like, look, why do you guys support Trump? I pretty much guarantee you immigration can be number one at the top of that list, which they clearly could have major beef with the Biden-Harris

administration. So that actually validates the thing a lot of what we talk about here is that, look, worker issues is not just the PRO Act. A lot of people who are actually white working class people, they don't necessarily care as much about that as they do a widespread amount of issues. of the further class realignment where we have where regardless of individual issues, the overall cultural orientation of the Democratic Party is trending towards white upper class voters and the overall cultural orientation of the Republican Party is white working class voters. The interesting thing is that various races began to split then between Democrat and Republican based on their educational level. And I love this. I just see a poll this morning from New York Times-Siena, high quality, Harris-Trump tied at the national level. Terrible. Harris up by four in Pennsylvania.

Why? White people. White people in the mainline suburbs of Philly who all went to college, probably working pharma or banking, or actually, yeah, right now, Pennsylvania is exploding in healthcare. So it's like this was a bunch of rich doctors and nurses who are pro-comma. Now, I actually love that result, just because, again, it demonstrates what, first of all, it validates a lot of stuff that we say here about class dynamics and orientation, but it also just shows you how different the current electorate is from the past and then the various ways that things look. So we talked about SALT, right? Well, now we have two pro-SALT candidates.

So rich people in blue states should be very happy. Now we also— Actually, do we know where Kamala stands on SALT? I'm not sure that we do. I don't know that she does support it. But anyway— Most Democrats. No, they don't. A California Democrat, not who's pro-salt? That would be shocking. It was like a fairly small group, the Gottheimer group, that was trying to reinstate the, or to lift the salt tax cap. But I don't know. I don't think- Never put out a position. I would be shocked. I don't actually think that she does support it.

I would be shocked to see a California Democrat not support salt. Because the administration, at least the Biden-Harris administration, wasn't supportive of it. That's right. But Joe Biden was not. I guess Delaware, I think it's a lower tax state and it doesn't matter. But my point is just at least Trump is now pro-salt. But on the union front, I mean, I do think at a discrete policy level, this is going to have some impact where a lot of Democrats, you know, in the future are going to be like, look, if you got a bunch of white, specifically a majority white union, and they're not college educated, the likelihood that they don't support you is going to be very high. And that will have some impact. That's straight up. That's what the future will look like. I guess the converse is, I would hope, you know, if you're a Republican, that you look at this too, and you're like, hey, we could actually get some votes over here.

So maybe one or two, you've got J.D. in the White House. If he wins, he's in the White House. This would be a chit that him and his staff would be able to use if they were talking about Teamsters and they were up against, let's say, a Larry Kudlow across from the desk. And they could remind someone like Trump. Which way will Trump go? No clue. Evidence suggests probably in the Kudlow direction. You never know. I mean, Trump won't hesitate to throw Sean O'Brien and the Teamsters under the bus the moment that it conflicts with, you know, Bill Ackman or whoever, whatever. Maybe. I don't know if that's true. He loves the unions. Judging by past record, you know, that's what we have to go on.

He didn't move any of his positions on unions and he's a lifelong union buster. Actually, remember when Trump and Elon were like joking about how awesome and cool it was that Elon fired striking workers? Sean O'Brien came out and called that economic terrorism. That's true, yeah. And that's the guy you're, you know, you're not endorsing him, but you're giving him a big talking point that he's celebrating. So listen, I think, you know, I hope it works out for you. We have Trump's comments actually on this. B8, please. Let's take a listen. Mr. President, any reaction to the Teamsters' decision not to endorse? No, they were. It's a great honor. They're not going to endorse the Democrats. That's a big

thing. And this is the first time in, I guess, 50, 60 years that that's happened. Democrats automatically have the Teamsters. They took a vote, and I guess, 50, 60 years that that's happened. Democrats automatically have the Teamsters. They took a vote, and I guess I was at 60 percent or more. And that's a great honor. I mean, it's really, I've had a lot of Teamsters work for me. A lot of the concrete trucks have built all these buildings that you see in New York City. They're Teamsters. There you go.

It's a great honor to not be endorsed by the Teamsters. The summer of 1993 was one of the best of my life. I'm journalist Jeff Perlman, and this is Rick Jervis. We were interns at the Nashville Tennessean, but the most unforgettable part? Our roommate, Reggie Payne, from Oakland, sports editor and aspiring rapper. And his stage name? Sexy Sweat. In 2020, I had a simple idea.

Let's find Reggie. We searched everywhere, but Reggie was gone. In February 2020, Reggie was having a diabetic episode. His mom called 911. Police cuffed him face down. He slipped into a coma and died.

I'm like thanking you. But then I see my son's not moving. No headlines, no outrage, just silence. So we started digging and uncovered city officials bent on protecting their own. Listen to Finding Sexy Sweat coming June 19th on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I know a lot of cops, and they get asked all the time, have you ever had to shoot your gun? Sometimes the answer is yes. But there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be no.

Across the country, cops call this taser the revolution. But not everyone was convinced it was that simple. Cops believed everything that taser told them. From Lava for Good and the team that brought you Bone Valley comes a story about what happened when a multi-billion dollar company dedicated itself to one visionary mission. This is Absolute Season 1. Taser Incorporated.

I get right back there and it's bad. It's really, really, really bad. Listen to new episodes of Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Binge episodes 1, 2, and 3 on May 21st and episodes 4, 5, and 6 on June 4th. Add free at Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. I'm Clayton English.

I'm Greg Glod. And this is season two of the War on Drugs podcast. Yes, sir. We are back. In a big way. In a very big way. Real people, real perspectives. This is kind of star-studded a little bit man we got uh ricky williams nfl player hasman trophy winner it's just a compassionate

choice to allow players all reasonable means to care for themselves music stars marcus king john osborne from brothers osborne we have this misunderstanding of what this quote-unquote drug man. Benny the Butcher. Brent Smith from Shinedown. We got B-Real from Cypress Hill. NHL enforcer Riley Cote. Marine Corps vet. MMA fighter Liz Karamush.

What we're doing now isn't working, and we need to change things. Stories matter, and it brings a face to them. It makes it real. It really does. It makes it real. Listen to new episodes of the War on Drugs podcast season two on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And to hear episodes one week early and ad-free with exclusive content, subscribe to

Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. All right, let's go and move on to shocking new details that we're learning about this federal indictment against Sean Diddy Combs. You can put this up on the screen, tear sheet with some of the details. He's been denied bail. This is per Variety. Sean Diddy Combs denied bail on sex trafficking and racketeering charges. So he was charged with three counts, racketeering conspiracy, sex trafficking by force, fraud or coercion, and transportation to engage in prostitution. The judge decided there were no conditions that could guarantee Combs' appearance in court. She said she considered alternatives like home detention, substantial bond offered by Combs, but ultimately concluded that the presumption in favor of detention has not been rebutted by the defense.

Makes sense. This is a man with nearly endless resources. You know, if anyone was going to be a flight risk, seems like it would be him. In fact, I'm a little bit shocked he didn't already try to flee knowing that this was coming, but he has pled not guilty and is, I guess, going to have his day in court. Let's put the next details up on the screen from the indictment, which I read in full. It's a 14-page indictment, not overly lengthy. So this is what the grand jury charged. As I said, it was three counts, racketeering, conspiracy, sex trafficking by force, and transportation to engage in prostitution. Go ahead, guys, and put up some of the next details so that I can read this off of the screen. So the core of this, the allegations

here involve these quote-unquote freak-offs. And they say in the indictment that he subjected victims to physical, emotional, and verbal abuse to force them to engage in these freak-offs. He maintained control over his victims through physical violence, promises of career opportunities, granting and threatening to withhold financial support by other coercive means, including tracking their whereabouts, dictating their appearance, monitoring their medical records, controlling their housing, and also supplying them with drugs. During and separate from freak-offs, Combs, among other things, hit, kicked, threw objects at, and dragged victims at times by their hair.

These assaults resulted in injuries that took days or weeks to heal. He threatened their careers and livelihoods, including if they resisted participating in the quote-unquote freak-offs. Victims believe they could not refuse his demands without risking their financial or job security or without repercussions in the form of physical or emotional abuse. Combs also used the sensitive, embarrassing, and incriminating recordings that he made during freak-offs as collateral to ensure the continued obedience and silence of the victims.

Sagar, if you read through the indictment, yes, this is, you know, Sean Combs is at the center of it, but they really frame this as a, you know, years long, we know decades long, allegedly criminal enterprise. So bad boy records was not just about, you know, media, entertainment, culture, et cetera. They frame a core priority of bad boy records being, you know, this repeated systematic abuse and the cover-up of that abuse being at the core of the enterprise. And really, I mean, this is a portrait of a monster that you're looking at here. And what's being alleged, he says he's not guilty, what's being alleged is wholly consistent with what Cassie, the R&B singer, alleged he had done to

her. And of course, we saw in the public domain that horrifying video of her being beaten and dragged in a hotel hallway that comes up in this indictment. And they also talk about how he paid off a hotel worker to make sure that that never saw the light of day. Yeah, that's right. And included, by the way, in the search of his home, they found narcotics, videos, three AR-15s with defaced serial numbers, and quote, more than 1,000 bottles of baby oil and lubricant that were called freak-off supplies. His employees were instructed to ensure that, quote, freak-offs were always stocked with baby oil, linens, and lighting. Law enforcement seized multiple of those supplies as evidence in both of his homes of not only his proclivities, but obviously what they allege is basically a scheme arranging for

victims of sex workers and others to be able to move about the country and enable him to continue this scheme. I will say this really does actually validate a lot of the details in terms of like forcing a lot of the people involved to engage with like male prostitutes is something that they allege here. The fact that he was denied bail is a pretty big deal just to show the way that the court sees it. They claim that they are going to appeal the decision.

Their defense basically comes down to this, quote, is it sex trafficking? Not if everybody wants to be there. That is what his attorney, Mark Agnafillo, said in terms of his client's innocence. And that actually is going to be a key part of the case. And I mean, it is an interesting question about consent and about what it exactly means case. And I mean, it is an interesting question about consent and about what it exactly means for that. I mean, I think they probably have him from reading the indictment relatively like dead to rights in terms of transporting people across lines for sex purposes. That is a federal crime whenever it comes to prostitution. I guess the big question that they're going to get is about the consent, not necessarily of the sex workers themselves, but also the other people who are involved and

their allegations of being a victim where they have, I think a better case is about the violence and then the evidence of the violence that he perpetrated on those people. But I could see some interesting like legal chicanery around that question of, like, whether people voluntarily wanted to be at these things or not. I mean, if the government proves the allegations they made here, it will not be a difficult question because you're talking about, you know,

any given girl being beaten, you know, and forced, subject to emotional abuse. You're talking about her being drugged. You're talking about him saying, if you don't come, I am going to destroy you. I will destroy your career. There are allegations of arson in here and multiple instances of arson. They actually don't go into the details. But one allegation that we know that's in the public sphere is that he threatened Cassie that if she left him and continued dating Kid Cudi, rapper Kid Cudi, that he would, I think he threatened

to blow up Kid Cudi's car. And then lo and behold, Kid Cudi's car blows up in the driveway. So that could be one of the instances of arson that they're talking about. So again, government has to prove their case, But also keep in mind that allegedly this was all recorded by Diddy himself. And they searched his residences. So I think it's entirely possible, if not likely, that they have a library of video footage to substantiate the allegations that they are making here. So as I said, if they prove what's in this indictment, it will not be a difficult question of coercion, consent, etc., etc.

Like if a woman is being beaten and emotionally abused and threatened within her career and an inch of her life and you're gonna blow up your boyfriend's car to force you to participate in these things, then I think is a pretty clear lack of consent in that situation. And they also allege that he used kidnapping in order to get his way. So again, portrait of a total and complete monster. He will have his opportunity to argue otherwise. But obviously, the other big question here is like, who else was at these freak-offs? Who else participated? Who else in the Combs enterprise? They make allegations here as well about how employees, assistants, etc. were securing not only supplies for the freak-offs. Okay, that may not be illegal if you don't know that, you know, what the supplies are going to be used for, but who helped to cover up

the abuse. Remember, you're talking about women who had to be hidden for weeks at a time because, again, allegedly of the abuse that they suffered, their, you know, visible marks that could not be hidden. You're talking about him tracking their medical records so that he's in control of their medical care after they are subject to this abuse. So, you know, what other stars and celebrities could be implicated here? Is, you know, Diddy the top of the chain or is there someone else that they're going to try to get him to roll up on? Still a lot of questions. Put C4 up on the screen. We've got some reaction from the celebrity world. We had 50 Cent apparently tweeted a photo of himself and actor Drew Barrymore captioned, here I am keeping good company with Drew Barrymore and I don't have a thousand bottles

of lube at the house. Okay. Radio host Charlamagne Tha God said on Monday, on a Monday segment of the Breakfast Club, if Combs is convicted of racketeering and sex trafficking, there will be others involved who will be probably going to jail. And singer Audrey O'Day, who's been outspoken about Combs, said Monday she felt validated after the arrest following up the tweet by saying she chose to speak to people who could move justice in the way I needed to. So, yeah, there's a – my sense reading the indictment is it just scratched the surface of, you know, the specifics and doesn't get a lot into the evidence of what they have. I think we're going to learn a lot more here. Oh, absolutely. I think it's a pretty clear cut case of just like Weinstein where we don't know none of those assistants never got prosecuted a lot of the people behind the scenes in the Weinstein company basically walked free or none

of their names were brought up obviously the whole Epstein case with Colleen Maxwell so it's really a question of what the feds have and who they're able to prove as complicit also I guess it depends on Combs himself and whether he strikes a plea deal with the government. Like you said, Charlemagne and many other legal observers say he's almost certainly going to jail, at least for some undetermined period of time. So we'll see. I mean the details are truly crazy and I think demonstrate again some of the rot within hip-hop and a lot of the behind-the-scenes stuff, which were obviously floated out there but were ten times worse than anybody knew, allegedly, for the lawyers. Yeah.

We'll see what we find out next. We've got a great panel standing by. Let's get to it. The summer of 1993 was one of the best of my life. I'm journalist Jeff Perlman, and this is Rick Jervis. We were interns at the Nashville Tennessean, but the most unforgettable part? Our roommate, Reggie Payne. From Oakland.

Sports editor and aspiring rapper. And his stage name? Sexy Sweat. In 2020, I had a simple idea. Let's find Reggie. We searched everywhere. But Reggie was gone. In February 2020, Reggie was having a diabetic episode.

His mom called 911. Police cuffed him face down. He slipped into a coma and died. I'm like thanking you. But then I see my son's not moving. No headlines, no outrage, just silence. So we started digging and uncovered city officials bent on protecting their own. Listen to Finding Sexy Sweat coming June 19th on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,

or wherever you get your podcasts. I know a lot of cops and they get asked all the time, have you ever had to shoot your gun? Sometimes the answer is yes, But there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be no. Across the country, cops called this taser the revolution. But not everyone was convinced it was that simple. Cops believed everything that taser told them. From Lava for Good and the team that brought you Bone Valley comes a story about what happened when a multi-billion dollar company dedicated itself to one visionary mission. This is Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated. I get right back there and it's bad. It's really, really, really bad.

Listen to new episodes of Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Binge episodes 1, 2, and 3 on May 21st and episodes 4, 5, and 6 on June 4th. Ad-free at Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. I'm Clayton English.

I'm Greg Glod. And this is season two of the War on Drugs podcast. We are back. In a big way. In a very big way. Real people, real perspectives. This is kind of star-studded a little bit, man. We got Ricky Williams, NFL player, Heisman Trophy winner.

It's just a compassionate choice to allow players all reasonable means to care for themselves. Music stars Marcus King, John Osborne from Brothers Osborne. We have this misunderstanding of what this quote-unquote drug man. Benny the Butcher. Brent Smith from Shinedown. Got B-Real from Cypress Hill. NHL enforcer Riley Cote. Marine Corvette.

MMA fighter Liz Karamush. What we're doing now isn't working, and we need to change things. Stories matter, and it brings a face to them. It makes it real. It really does. It makes it real. Listen to new episodes of the War on Drugs podcast season two on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

And to hear episodes one week early and ad-free with exclusive content, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. We are very excited now to be joined by a panel where we are going to discuss the topic of abortion and how Republicans should respond. So joining us now is familiar face Will Chamberlain. He is a conservative commentator. We have Lila Rose as well. She is host of the Lila Rose podcast. Thank you guys so much for joining us. We really appreciate it. Thank you for having me. Absolutely. Okay, so we're going to start off kind of with the way that you guys think Republicans

should respond to the general abortion topic in the United States. Kamala Harris out with a new ad, and it gets to some of the debates that have been happening in the conservative movement and what that should look like. Let's take a listen to the ad and we're gonna get both of your response. I've never slept a full night my entire life. I was five years old when my stepfather abused me for the first time. I just felt like I was alone on a planet with a monster. I was 12 when he impregnated me. I just remember thinking, I have to get out of my skin.

I can't be me right now. Like, this can't be it. I didn't know what to do. I was a child. I didn't know what it meant to be pregnant at all. But I had options. Because Donald Trump overturned Roe v. Wade, girls and women all over the country have lost the right to choose.

Even for rape or incest. Donald Trump did this. He took away our freedom. This is an important ad because it kind of highlights some of the difficulties in the conservative movement right now. Will, I want to start with you. Both of you guys have been kind of embroiled in a general topic online about how conservatives should respond on the topic of potential like moderation, supposedly, on the abortion issue, specifically in terms of exceptions for rape, the Trump campaign's current navigation of the topic, and then the general idea of, quote unquote, moderation on the issue in the context of the 2024 election politics? I mean, I think the Trump campaign is doing what makes sense at the moment. I think they have two big messages. One, they think abortion's a state issue now, which it is

under law. That's the conclusion of Dobbs. And then second, that they generally support the exceptions, you know, rape, incest and the life of the mother. I mean, whenever you hear Trump talk about that they're basically false outright. Most of every heartbeat bill that I know of has the exceptions in it. So I think the Trump campaign is basically doing the right thing in its messaging on this issue. And I think that's largely because, you know, for the, this is, in a sense, if you look at the polling, it is where Republicans are seen as weakest. And so it's the issue we wanted to talk about the least, and it's the issue where we are playing defense. Lila, can we get your response? Because previously I know that you've been embroiled in some of these debates, specifically about Trump,

at least J.D. Vance coming out in an interview and coming out supposedly saying that Trump would veto a national abortion ban, something that you were very critical of. So in the context of the politics and your own activism, how do you view this? Sure, well, I wanna start by just addressing the ad, which was absolutely heartbreaking that you guys shared. I mean, this is the common approach used by abortion advocates is, you know, find the

most tragic and heartbreaking story. And usually it's the victim, a 12-year-old victim, a sexual assault survivor, and use them as justification for legalizing abortion on demand. And I think it's important to note that, first of all, there's almost a million abortions every single year. The vast majority of them are convenience abortions. These abortions are not having to do with these severe cases. They're having to do with general choice. And these are human beings. The science is very clear that at the moment of fertilization, this is a unique individual human life. And abortion is the intentional destruction of an innocent human life. In the case of rape and incest, these are the worst and most horrific and heartbreaking cases. But I think that the focus should be instead on

getting justice for that young girl and removing her from a situation of sexual abuse. Because the reality is I've spent a decade of my life investigating abortion clinics. And abortion clinics love, abortion loves sexual abuse because sexual abusers find abortion to be a great outlet, a great way to hide and cover up the crimes that they were committing on their victim. So this idea that abortion is a solution to sexual abuse or rape, that this is all that this young girl needs, this is her solution. I think it's horrible. I think the solution needs to be to remove her from the sexual abuse situation, to get her the healing and the support that she needs, and to get justice against her abuser. Often that doesn't happen instead of taking out the penalty of this crime on this innocent developing new human life. So Lila, just to be clear, you believe that Hadley, the young lady in that ad, who also was featured in an ad in the state of Kentucky, very red, very conservative, very socially conservative state. She was also featured in an ad there that was very effective.

You believe she should have been forced to carry that baby to term when she was 12 years old. I do not. I do not think that that baby should have been killed for the crime of the father. OK. No. And I think that she deserved the best medical care and support, and she should have been removed from the abusive situation. But in many of these cases, abortion is not taking away the trauma of the rape. I mean, I think people get so horrified by rape as they should be, and they think that somehow the baby, the new pregnancy,

is the fault, is the reason for the trauma and the pain, when the reality is the trauma and the pain, when the reality is the trauma and the pain is from the sexual abuse. And that's what needs to be addressed. So Lila, do you accept that that view, that that 12-year-old girl raped by her stepdad should be forced to carry that baby to term, do you accept that that's an unpopular view in the American public and a political liability for Republicans like Donald Trump to run on? Yeah, I think a lot of people have not really grappled with what abortion is, that it's the intentional killing of an innocent human life. And I think that a lot of people haven't heard the stories of sexual assault survivors

who have chosen life for their babies or who had abortions and suffered afterwards trauma from the abortion, not just the rape. We don't really have these stories or these ideas in our lexicon typically when it comes to this issue, because unfortunately the abortion advocates like Kamala Harris, who's extremely pro-abortion, is using these very tragic stories to justify their agenda, which is abortion on demand. I mean, don't forget. Lila, I understand. I understand. Don't forget where the Democratic Party is on this issue. I understand your perspective, but what we're trying to get to here is the political implications. So do you think that this ad is a problem for Donald Trump? Do you think that his stance generally on abortion and the fact that he's the person who put the justices in place that overturned Roe versus Wade,

do you think that that's political liability, as most do, or do you reject that analysis? Well, as you probably may have seen some of my statements about former President Trump and his campaign, his campaign is not as pro-abortion as the Harris-Walls campaign, but they're in support of abortion. So the fact that Kamala Harris is using this ad, I think it's very deceptive on multiple levels. But the reality is the Trump-Fance campaign supports abortion pills. They support, as Will was saying earlier, they support abortion in multiple cases. They support, they don't want the heartbeat law as an example. President Trump has been critical of the heartbeat law that the pro-life movement worked very hard for in the state of Florida.

So there have been a number of really troubling positions and policies coming out of the Trump fans campaign. And that's why the pro-life movement and the base has been critical and saying, well, this is not the correct position to take. These are human lives that deserve protection. Well, this is where I want to get your response, because one of the most interesting points I saw that you make was you previously worked for Governor Ron DeSantis and you were like, listen, if the pro-life community had wanted to come out and the Republican Party generally had wanted to support the best person on the issue of life in that campaign, they would have voted for somebody like a Ron DeSantis or a Mike Pence even at one point who was thinking about it. So on that

political point of what Lila said, what would your response be to her? I think both of these are totally legitimate arguments and it gets down to the actual politics of it and navigating this in this current election. What do you think? I think the way the pro-life movement view what President Trump is doing is that he's just the messenger for where the broader public is. Trump was a deeply pragmatic and transactional leader when he was in the White House. And he has even more reason to be pragmatic now that he's facing criminal indictments across the country from a weaponized justice system against him. So, I mean, if anybody was designed to be like, how am I going to get the White House back? And who's focused on that goal beyond others, it would be Donald Trump. And so when he looks at the abortion issue, he says, this is a political liability for us. And I'm going to take the position that, you know, I'm going to try and obviously balance the need, the fact that pro-life conservatives are a part of the conservative coalition and we don't want to tack to the center. And I think, you know, I don't hear a lot of,

you know, Green saying that Kamala Harris is betraying them when he, when Kamala Harris says she now supports fracking or that the LGBTQ people are saying that Harris is betraying them when she no longer stands by her earlier position that there should be transition surgeries available to illegal aliens detained. So I think there's an attack into the Senate that inevitably happens during campaigns. Sure. I think the equivalent issue right now on the left, speaking as someone on the left, is the Gaza ceasefire and the commitment to, you know, that many of us would like to see from the Biden administration to embark on weapons. And so there's a very similar debate that plays out between what we call the lesser evil voting that, you know, that Lila was somewhat articulating of, you know, from her perspective, Harris walls are worse on abortion from her perspective.

Trump advance may be better, but they still don't meet her moral red line. And, you know, a part of why I am empathetic to that view because I find myself in a similar position on the left. But yeah, Laila, if you could just explain a little bit more of how you think about your vote and more broadly how you think about the votes of the pro-life movement. You know, has Donald Trump done enough, come enough towards your position

that you feel like, okay, yes, I can vote for this person as he's not where I want him to be, but he's, in your view, the lesser of two evils? Or do you still continue to feel like there's a moral line here and your threshold has not yet been met by him? Listen, context is key here and the recent history has to be stated. So what happened, as many folks may know or may not know, the Republican National Convention obviously chose Donald Trump as the nominee. And during that convention, after four decades of a pro-life platform due to reportedly Trump's influence and pressure on the convention and the delegates, they gutted the Republican Party platform on life.

So you had four decades of a strong Republican Party platform on life, protecting life. Abortion was mentioned and decried 23 times. Now the platform mentions abortion once, and they talk about access to things like IVF and birth control. They were basically weakening, softening the platform on life. Then you look at the last several weeks, President Trump's campaign coming out and saying they support access to abortion pills. Abortion pills are 60 percent of all abortions in this country. That's over 1,000 abortions every single day killed via children, killed via the abortion pill. So these are dramatically huge concessions that the Trump campaign is making, ultimately throwing not just the pro-life movement, which has been a base for the campaign in the past and for President Trump in the past, but throwing the cause, the issue under the bus here.

So this is not just these tiny little quibbles. These are significant steps that have been unprecedented in recent decades coming from the GOP nominee. And that's why it is my responsibility as a pro-life activist speaking for people who have no voice. Unborn children have no vote. They have no voice. They are being killed by the thousands every single day in this country legally. And it's my responsibility to speak for these children. And so I have been speaking out, urging the campaign to change course. The policies that they've been recently upholding and the statements that they're making are extremely pro-abortion and it needs to stop.

So that's my position. And look, the left— But will you vote for him? If he doesn't change his position, will you vote for him? The vote is at risk right now. There are weeks before the election. He can change course on this. President Trump actually recently started to change course in the right direction because of pressure. So, you know, pressure works. Keep in mind these campaigns, they work for the voters. The voters don't work for them. These are, they're trying to be public servants to serve this country and represent this country.

We don't vote work for them. They work for us. So it's our position and our responsibility to speak out for those that have no voice, and those are children in the womb. And Lila, one more question for you, because I'm still not really clear if you recognize the embrace of rejection. You reject the morality of IVF. We can actually put up on the screen D3, the polling on IVF, even only 10% of Republicans even agree with your position on IVF, which, listen, you're, you know, you're allowed to

have the views that you do. But would it be worth- Can I respond to that? Yeah. Well, just one second, and then you can respond. Would it be worth, in your opinion, Donald Trump losing this election to Kamala Harris in order to, for example, oppose IVF or even forcing a 12-year-old girl to bear the baby of her rapist? Do you think it's worth losing an election over those issues? Listen, there's a few key distinctions here. First of all, you're assuming that by galvanizing his base, President Trump will somehow hurt his chances. The reality is this.

Pro-abortion voters, voters that abortion is their top issue for them, that's what they're going to gut out their vote for, are already voting for Kamala Harris. I don't think the strategy of the Trump fans campaign to say, well, I'm going to win some, you know, hardcore abortion supporters who care about this so much, they'll show up to vote on this issue. Those people are already voting for the Harris-Walls ticket because Kamala Harris has a extreme pro-abortion record, and that's been tried and true for now her entire career. So to think that Donald Trump is no more going to get the abortion vote, I think is just pie-in-the-sky thinking.

In addition, he's going to hurt and suppress his own base, the pro-life base, by basically, again, throwing this issue under the bus. And then on the issue of IVF, I have to state about that. The data shows that 93 percent—there's an education gap on this issue, which is why the polling is the way that you indicated, or some polling may appear that way. 93% of babies conceived via IVF end up being frozen, killed, destroyed, or miscarried. Only 7% of them make it out alive. This is a highly dangerous and expensive and quite frankly, extremely difficult technology for the women, for the families. It is expensive and it is highly dangerous for the

new human lives that are being created. There's a reason that there is concern about this and there's ethical issues with this. And what the Trump Vance ticket did recently wasn't just to say we support IVF. It was to say we're going to do tax funded insurance companies subsidized and mandated IVF. So it was saying, we want everyone in the country to do IVF if they want that. This is about $60,000 to achieve one live birth. And there's a million babies, embryos that are frozen indefinitely right now. So no one's talking about these facts, right? We're just up in the hundred thousand foot view of, well, we support choice, we support reproductive freedom. Well, what are we actually talking about when we use this terminology? We're talking about human lives that are recklessly being destroyed.

And that's where the pro-life movement needs to be speaking out, right? I totally understand where you're coming from, Lila. Will, I want to give you obviously a chance to respond on the politics of the issue. You can go all the way back both with the RNC platform and then towards IVF. Okay. So I guess back towards the politics of the issue, you can go all the way back both with the RNC platform and then towards IVF. Okay, so I guess back towards the politics of the issue. I mean, Crystal said something interesting, which was the analogy to the left in Gaza, which I think is actually very, very interesting and appropriate. And I hope, you know, as a Republican who wants to see Donald Trump in office, I hope that these pro-Palestine people stick to their guns and refuse to vote for Kamala Harris, who is very obviously the better candidate for a Gaza,

pro-Gaza, you know, platform, because I guarantee you the Republicans are going to be pro-Israel 100 percent of the time, every time. So, you know, that said, you know, I hope that Democrats don't take my advice and, you know, go ahead and continue to abstain and withhold their vote from Kamala Harris on because of Gaza. And at the same time, I really, really hope that Lila comes around and realizes that Trump is still and the Republican Party is the home of the pro-life movement in the same way that the Democratic Party is the home of the Palestinian sympathizers and comes around to vote for us. Well, let me let me let me let me just press. I'll get you in just a second, Lila, but Will hasn't had as much of a chance to speak. But

let me just press you on one thing, Will, because I do think that from Lila's perspective and from your perspective as well as a pro-life person, you know, Republicans have, under Trump, Trump specifically, has somewhat accepted the Democratic framing around abortion. And we do see post Roe versus Wade, you see an increase in support for choice. So for the first time in, I mean, kind of ever, it's not really a 50-50 issue anymore. You have very clear, consistent majorities in favor broadly of choice. So isn't there a risk of longer-term harm to the pro-life movement of a Republican who, in certain key ways, accepts some of the Democratic framing on the issue? So I want to correct you at the outset. I wouldn't characterize my politics as pro-life. They're more pro-natalist. So I end up disagreeing with Lila on things like IVF, for example.

OK. But and I don't want to like falsely portray myself to your. Fair enough. Yeah. Important clarification. But I think on the on the question of would this do harm to the pro-life movement to have Trump in, I think the much greater harm is is the risk of a Kamala Harris presidency. Something I tweeted out, which I think is true, that I think the pro-life movement, if they were being strategic, should realize that they don't want abortion to be an issue at the federal level for at least a decade, given where the polling is. Because the likely outcome of abortion being salient at the federal level is a national convocation of Roe or further, right? Going all the way to saying that the federal government says no state can impose any restrictions on abortion whatsoever, or packing the Supreme Court if they get that chance and then effectively reversing Dobbs and reinstating Roe and writing it into the

Constitution with a permanent Democrat majority in the court. So I think that, you know, I think perhaps the mistake that's being made in worrying too much about, oh, well, Trump is going to move us a little bit to the left, is if the Democrats win, I think they are not considering just how bad it could get. It's like, effectively, I feel like you guys are treating Dobbs as the new baseline and not recognizing how things could get substantially worse. Lila, I want to get your response to that because I think that seems to be the key one. It's like, okay, Trump can lose and then the Democrats will basically resolve the abortion question for all time by nuking the filibuster and making it national. Or you can have the current outcome where multiple red states have at least some restriction. I mean, I guess I understand where you're coming from, but you also have to intersect with the practical realities of the American political system. So how do you think about that question? Yeah, well, that's on a few things. First of all, again, what the Trump influence has done so far

in the GOP and what the Trump fans ticket has done in just the last few weeks is moving left on abortion. And the job of the pro-life movement is not to just show up and vote for whoever the GOP candidate is. The job of the pro-life movement is to advocate and be activists for a group of people who have no voice and no vote. Those are children in the womb. They're in danger of being murdered by abortions. So that's our job, right? And I look at, you know, Cecile Richards, who is the former president of Planned Parenthood, the biggest abortion chain globally. And she's in the New York Times just in the last week telling Kamala Harris to be more pro-abortion. The left knows how to do this. I mean, I think the right makes ourselves

increasingly impotent when we just let the politicians do whatever they want and we don't stand up for what is good and true, what we believe to be good and true. You know, Cecile Richards is out there saying Kamala Harris, be more pro-abortion. It's not even good enough. And she's for abortion through all nine months. That's tax funded. It's obscene, right? And so for the pro-life movement to be silent right now and does not say a word of criticism, to say instead, oh, it's fine. Whatever you want to do, we don't care. As long as you're a little bit better, as long as you're better than Kamala on this, we're going to show up no matter what. I think that it would be a serious mistake. I think it is a responsibility of pro-life voters.

You know, my top issue is life. I know that's not Will's. That's okay. He's going a different track. But my top issue is life because there's 3,000 babies being killed by abortion every single day in this country. If you care about the future of this country, if we care about justice for the most vulnerable and the most innocent, then we would be all caring about this issue. We would all make this our top issue. This is the leading cause of death in America. And so my responsibility is to say, stop doing this, GOP. Stop pushing towards the left on this and becoming more pro-abortion. And I will continue to say to the Democrats, there are some pro-life Democrats. Stop being so radically pro-abortion as a party. Instead, why don't you embrace justice and human rights for the most vulnerable and create a better view for women that we don't

need to kill our babies as our so-called health care, that we can do better. You know, there's countries like Malta that have one of the lowest maternal mortality rates in the world, and it's a pro-life country. We can do this where we love and care for both mom and baby. That should be our demand, not just for the GOP, but for the Democrats as well. So then I got a question for Will. So the effect of this pushback from Lila and the pro-life activism appears to have been something like Trump on the debate stage, then disavowing J.D. Vance on saying he would veto a national abortion ban. So do you think then that pro-life voices like Lila, which are entirely legitimate, I'm not putting that down, would help put, could put Trump in

a more vulnerable political position? I mean, it's possible. I ultimately don't think Trump will end up taking, you know, tacking too far towards the right, given where, you know, we're, what, two months away from a general election, six weeks? Yes, six weeks. So I think that that's the context. And I mean, I just, I think I just fundamentally disagree with Lila's political strategy here. I think that was absolutely appropriate during the primary. I worked for a different candidate during the primary. I supported Ron DeSantis. I wanted him to win. And, you know, even though I'm not personally as pro-life as Governor DeSantis is, I was perfectly happy to support him because I thought he would be a great president. But he didn't win. And, you know, the general election is where, you know, the two great,

you know, political forces in our country collide and we see who is persuading more of the public. And I think that it's really important that the pro-life movement recognizes, you know, and this is for its, you know, really for itself, for the health of the pro-life movement and its political salience going forward, that it's on the right. And the Republican Party is the vehicle for its concerns, imperfect as it may be in their eyes. And so, you know, pro-life voters should come out and vote for Trump, even if he's saying things they don't agree with.

Will, one last question for you, because, you know, Lila pointed out, took a lot of the pro-life language out of the RNC platform. J.D. Vance floats he'd veto a national abortion ban. Trump won't really say. But there have certainly been efforts for him to moderate on the issue and even just leaving it to the states. You know, if you view this as murder, it's murder whether it's happening in California, it's murder if it's happening in Mississippi.

That's not the way I view the issue, but it's the way Lila and many other people do. So if in spite of being thrown under the bus like that, every pro life voter shows up and votes for Donald Trump, aren't they then, you know, can't every Republican president there on forward basically take their vote for granted? And don't they lose power within the coalition if they're not willing to even threaten to withhold their votes? I mean, no, I think I think it's the opposite, actually. I think the way you demonstrate your power within the coalition is in the primary

and through your strength in the primary. And Donald Trump's views were not a secret during the primary. He was critical of heartbeat bills, like one that Rhonda Sands before, during the primary. And it didn't matter. Polling, he won the primary going away.

So I think that that's the place to start. And if, you know, I think for any political movement, you know, internal faction within a party to say, oh, we're going to withhold our vote in the general if you don't do exactly what we want, even though what we want is opposed by 65, 70% of the public. I mean, for, you know, that suddenly, the end result of that is that movement gets more

and more marginalized because ultimately even a lot of followers of that movement do want to win and do want to see that their their faction take power because we see what happens when the other guys take power i mean people need to remember what it was like to have you know i mean well we have biden right now but even i mean obama was absolutely terrible on life and religious conscience when he was in power. Think about cases like the Little Sisters of the Poor. Why is the Little Sisters of the Poor a plaintiff against Barack Obama? Guess what the Obama administration was forcing down their throats. So- Yeah, last word to you, Lila, and then we gotta go.

Thank you so much. We have another guest nearby. Go ahead. Thank you so much. Yeah, briefly, listen, what Will is saying, I understand what he's saying, but the reality is what has happened in the last few weeks is new. President Trump coming out saying that he's going to do forced tax-funded, taxpayer-funded IVF for all people. This is new. These are not policies that he was doing in the primary, okay? He supports access to abortion pills. This is new. Gutting the Republican Party platform. This is new. They didn't do that in 2020 or in 2016, obviously.

So these are new things that are happening. And again, I believe it's the responsibility of pro-life voters to speak out right now. I do think that Trump will respond and does respond to pressure. I think that's our responsibility to speak out on behalf of the people that don't have a voice.

And so that's what we will continue to do because there are lives on the line. All right. Well, we really appreciate both of you joining us. It's a very interesting conversation, one that you don't generally see on television. So thank you both. We really appreciate it. The summer of 1993 was one of the best of my life. I'm journalist Jeff Perlman, and this is Rick Jervis. We were interns at the Nashville Tennessean, but the most unforgettable part? Our roommate, Reggie Payne. From Oakland, sports editor and aspiring rapper.

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I know a lot of cops, and they get asked all the time, have you ever had to shoot your gun? Sometimes the answer is yes. But there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be no. Across the country, cops called this taser the revolution. But not everyone was convinced it was that simple. Cops believed everything that taser told them. From Lava for Good and the team that brought you Bone Valley comes a story about what happened when a multi-billion dollar company dedicated itself to one visionary mission.

This is Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated. I get right back there and it's bad. It's really, really, really bad. Listen to new episodes of Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Binge episodes 1, 2, and 3 on May 21st, and episodes 4, 5, and 6 on June 4th. Add free at Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. I'm Clayton English. I'm Greg Lott. And this is Season 2 of the War on Drugs podcast. Apple Podcasts. It's just a compassionate choice to allow players all reasonable means to care for themselves. Music stars Marcus King, John Osborne from Brothers Osborne.

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For a look at whatever the hell is going on in New York City, which I have struggled to comprehend, we are joined by a great friend of the show, journalist Ross Barkin, who is a contributing writer for New York Times Magazine. Great to see you, sir. Great to have me, and it's great to be back. Great to have me. I like that. More people need to say that. Let's go ahead and put this first

tear sheet up on the screen. This is the latest New York Times accounting of some of the developments with Eric Adams and his circle. The headline here is pressure grows on Mayor Adams as key officials leave amid investigations. We just had two prominent officials resign. We had the police commissioner resigned on Thursday at the request of City Hall. Lisa Zornberg, the mayor's chief legal advisor, resigned abruptly on Saturday. Largely, they say in frustration over the mayor's refusal to follow her advice on personnel matters. As I was looking into this, there seem to be more than a dozen Eric Adams associates who are under some sort of investigation. He himself appears to be under investigation for relationships with the country of Turkey. Can you just help us understand

what's going on here and if these are all just like individuals doing their own thing or if it really all goes back to Mayor Adams himself. What a question. What's going on? So there are at least four federal investigations into Eric Adams and his administration. It is not clear at this point if Adams himself is a target. His phone in one of the investigations was seized. So right now, you had the police commissioner who recently resigned because he is under investigation because his twin brother, stay with me, was running a security, a consulting firm of some sort that was helping, helping in quotation marks, restaurants and businesses deal with various nightlife complaints.

And this business of this twin brother would allegedly go over to these restaurants and tell them, hey, you know, we can make these complaints go away if you pay us a fee. So you have a sort of possible favor trading there. You've a completely separate investigation into Eric Adams' possible, his mayoral campaigns, possible ties to the Turkish government, possibly taking foreign money, which is illegal. You have another investigation into a consulting firm being run by a close Adams ally, Tim Pearson, who's very close with the NYPD.

You have his deputy mayor for public safety, another Adams ally, Philip Banks. He had his phone seized. And then there's yet another investigation. The question is, where does this all go? What does this all mean? It's all very confusing. There are a lot of moving parts. We do not know, obviously, the outcome if Adams himself will be indicted. I will say no sitting mayor of New York City has ever been indicted.

But there's always time. There's always a first time for something. Right. But already Adams has had people in his administration indicted. In another separate case, his buildings commissioner resigned over an indictment related to a completely separate corruption probe. So you have many different corruption probes. You have a lot of possibilities for further resignations. And you have a city that, quite frankly, a city government that is somewhat paralyzed right now, that is not governing. It wasn't governing very well before all this started, but certainly now even less has happened. Sticking with that, I want to talk to my personal favorite, which is this idea of business owners being forced to pay protection racket money.

Can you tell us some of the details on it? This is one of those which is often alleged in movies. I did realize it was somewhat real, this idea of like having a pension benefit card, any of that. But this seems to go up to the highest levels of the New York administration. Can you talk to us about that? Sure. So again, this is all, you know, in various reports that have not been, have been verified in the sense that they're in mainstream outlets. But, you know, the indictment has not been brought. So basically, as far as we understand, the former police commissioner who just resigned named Edward Caban, he has a twin brother, James. James is running. James is a former NYPD officer who was forced out a long time ago and had issues. He was running this private firm that, as far as I

understand, would go to restaurants or nightclubs or nightclubs would come to them either way. The nightclub would have, you know, maybe they're having an issue with a noise complaint or something with the city. They've been slapped with, you know, some type of fine or something else, right? These things happen. And so this firm would help you deal with these issues and would take a fee, right? Of course, the firm is being run by the twin brother of the police commissioner. So you can imagine some of the conflict of interest issues that might surface yeah and how they're securing that help yeah help whether this is enough to warrant a crime in the sense that an indictment will come we don't know yeah but this is one of the investigations and it has been enough to force the police commissioner

to resign new york is now on its third police commissioner in a three-year period, which is quite insane. We had three police commissioners in eight years under Bill de Blasio and then one under Michael Bloomberg. So three in three years is not great. So this is perhaps an impossible question to answer, but you can feel free to baselessly speculate. You know, are these the sort of things that are just like always going on in New York City government, but normally don't see the light of day and some, you know, federal prosecutor, investigator, whatever, got to be in their bonnet and decide they're actually going to crack down on it? Or do you think that there is an atypical level of pay to play corruption scheming occurring under the Adams administration?

I think it's atypical. So I will say there have been investigations into prior mayors. There are inevitably scandals of some sort. Bill de Blasio was investigated. No charges were ever filed. There were, Michael Bloomberg himself was not investigated, but there was this City Time scandal many years ago

that damaged his administration. But this is unusual. You do not see this in many investigations. And I think what strikes me is the brazenness. It's very much old school machine politics. But I would add it's old school machine politics without the delivery of public goods attached to it. So you looked at like the old Tammy Hall model. It was corrupt. It was what they would used to call honest graft. You would take money and get rich, but in turn, you'd be kind of delivering something for your constituents. I've argued for a while now,

putting aside all the corruption, Adams has not been a very effective mayor because he hasn't accomplished very much. And I think most voters look at him and just see a mayor flailing about who's not serious and who now appears to be corrupt. And they don't see their city getting better. They don't see what they're getting in return. I think that's a big issue for him. So it's atypical to see this many investigations. And then further, I'd say it's atypical in certainly modern times for a mayor to be three years plus into their first term and not really have any signature achievement that people can remotely talk about or remember. Yeah. So we got to get back to those good old Tammany Hall days. I agree. Honest graph. At the same time, I also wanted to get you to weigh on an extraordinary and deeply disturbing situation that's unfolding.

There are protests now over the NYPD's handling, bloody handling, of a fare evader on the subways. We put up E2, guys, just to see a little bit of the protests over this NYPD shooting various people over this fare evasion. We can go ahead and put also this tear sheet up on the screen to talk about some of the details here. Four people were shot after police opened fire on what they're describing as a knife-wielding subway fare evader. Some questions now emerging about that knife. I'll let you lay that out for us, Ross.

But effectively what they say is that four people were shot, including a New York police officer by quote-unquote friendly fire. When two officers opened fire while pursuing a subway rider who didn't pay his fare, the man jumped back onto the subway platform, started approaching one of the officers with this alleged knife. Both officers fired their guns. As they handcuffed the man, one of the officers realized he himself had been shot, was bleeding from his chest. The bullet struck under the officer's left armpit, missing his vest and lodging in his back. Two random innocent bystanders, a man and a woman, also shot by police. The woman was grazed by a bullet, and the man was struck in the head.

The suspect, whose name has not yet been publicly released, has apparently, you know, long track record, arrested more than 20 times, history of mental illness, et cetera. But all of this starts with someone, you know, effectively jumping the turnstile over a $2.90 subway fare. Yes. And it's really a terrible episode. And I think it speaks to the fact that in too many cases, police are called in to handle issues or handling issues in such ways where they're not necessary. Or certainly one should not be drawing their gun to stop a fare evader. I think that is the real problem. Supposedly he wielded a knife or brandished it, but then you're shooting enough to hit him, to hit others, to hit a police officer. So it's this rank incompetence combined with features of the system, which police are trained in a certain way.

And there's also a big push now to crack down on fare evasion. It's actually a much bigger issue on the buses than the subways. And it's something that, on one hand, no one should evade the fare. I think it should be paid. But this is also one of those problems where if the MTA had better gates like they have in other countries, one couldn't really evade the fare of the subway and you also wouldn't have cops running around the gun so you kind of start there with there should just be better security physical security infrastructure at the subway station but you see in other foreign metro systems and of course the m MTA and most American authorities and bureaucracies are very bad at spending money and run way over budget.

So things that you can do in Asia and in Europe for a fraction of the cost become these insane endeavors where it should be very easy to secure subway stations and build just nice new gates. So one doesn't hop the turnstile and then therefore one is not being chased by a cop with a gun so it's kind of like all these various problems converging um kind of at one time but you know also new york is a real problem which which we've talked about actually on the show before dealing with mentally ill people there's a lot of mentally ill people on the streets who should not be on the streets i think one thing i I'll say about Eric Adams that he's been correct about is that authorities need to be more aggressive about getting mentally ill people help and getting them to secure facilities, not prisons, but places where they can really be medicated and kind of

have their lives restored to a degree. But at the same time, you know, sending a cop out with a gun is not the way to do it. And you also need the infrastructure, you need the facilities, you need the mental health services, the psychiatric hospitals, which we closed down over the many decades to house these sort of people. So you see kind of an episode of real incompetence in the NYPD, which isn't new. And then I think you take all these bigger macro issues. And this is an incident that you wouldn't really see in other countries. And I think if you speak to all these issues, you can kind of see why.

Very fair point. Confluence of a lot of things. Last thing, Ross, to that point about incompetence, you can put this up on the screen. So the police said on Monday they were searching for a man who allegedly removed that knife from the scene of that police shooting at the Brooklyn subway station. That contradicted an earlier claim that they had recovered the weapon from the scene. They said later that it was a different knife. So what exactly is going on here as best we can tell? I mean, I would say just from reports, incompetence and also could be lying involved. I mean, police do lie, but I'd say never underestimate rank incompetence. I'm a bit of an Occam's razor person.

I tend to think, okay, you know, I think the average, not the average person, but I think I'd say a lot of people in politics think, oh, this is an odd conspiracy, right? And then I think most of the time, like the Trump assassination attempt, the more you read about it, the more you realize it was just a real screw up. I mean, a real security failure and lack of coordination. So here at the police, I mean, it's, look, the NYPD is not, I would say on one hand, it's a better trained police force than a lot of others across America. I'd rather deal with the NYPD than than some like small town small-time police that are paid less money and go through less training and don't have sort of the awareness of these kinds of situations at

the same time look you've got a lot of you know cops who are in there i don't know much about these police officers a lot of them just in their 20s and they didn't go they didn't really get much education and they do some training and then they're on the force at like 22 23 and you get problems like this and and so I I do think we need honestly better policing um I don't think we need the absence of policing but we do need better police on the force that's like that's a bigger bigger conversation, right? But I do think, like I think of policing, like the German model, Germany has like a highly trained police force,

from what I understand, and they go through like years of sort of education and really are prepared to be out in the world. I do think with NYPD and most American police, you're giving very young, inexperienced people guns. You're telling them go out and go to these neighborhoods that are, you know, not like the neighborhoods they know. And I don't know much about this police officer, but it's typically what you see. Yeah, it's part of a confluence of some of the, you know, the worst ills of American society, untreated mental illness, you know, relatively compared to other similarly developed countries, violent society, cops that are insufficiently trained who

are, you know, perhaps fearful in the situation anyway. So, and it ends in absolute horror. Ross, thank you so much for breaking all these issues down because I've been trying to figure out what the hell's going on. I really appreciate it. Thanks, man. We appreciate you. Always happy to be here. Thank you so much. It's our pleasure. Thanks so much for watching, guys. We appreciate you. Become a premium subscriber if you want the show early.

Otherwise, we'll see you guys later. 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. Like, that's what's really important and that's what stands out, is that our music changes people's lives for the better.

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 say you'd never give in to a meltdown, never let kids' toys take over the house, and never fill your feed with kid photos. You'd never plan your life around their schedule. Never lick your thumb to clean their face. And you'd never let them leave the house looking like less than their best.

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