Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 9/26/25: MASS WALKOUT Of Bibi UN Speech, Mystery Generals Meeting, AIPAC Dem DESTROYED

Episode Date: September 26, 2025

Krystal, Ryan, Emily and Griffin break down a range of topics this Friday including a walkout at Bibi's UN Speech, Drop Site reporting pushing Microsoft to withdraw tech for Israel, Hegseth calling all top generals for a secret meeting, I've Had It podcast host Jennifer Welch calling out an AIPCA Dem.   To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show AD FREE, uncut and 1 hour early visit: www.breakingpoints.comMerch Store: https://shop.breakingpoints.com/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast. I'm Jorge Ramos. And I'm Paola Ramos. Together we're launching The Moment, a new podcast about what it means to live through a time as uncertain as this one. We sit down with politicians, artists, and activists

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Had 30 agents ready to go with shotguns and rifles and you name it. Five, six white people pushed me in the car. I'm going, what about that? Basically, your stay-at-home moms were picking up these large amounts of heroin. All you got to do is receive the package. Don't have to open it. Just accept it. She was very upset, crying. Once I saw the gun, I tried to take his hand, and I saw the flash of light. Listen to the Chinatown Stang on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or anywhere you get your podcasts.

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please go to breakingpoints.com, become a member today, and you'll get access to our full shows, unedited, ad-free, and all put together for you every morning in your inbox. We need your help to build the future of independent news media, and we hope to see you at Breaking Points. com. Good morning, everybody. Happy Friday. How are my friends here, Ryan, Emily, and Griffin doing? Doing good. Happy to be here. I felt the need to specify this week because last week there was some confusion, whether I was saying, good morning to you guys or the audience. Good morning to everybody

out there also. Thank you. I'd like that you went to the whole list, too. Name by name. I don't want anyone to feel unwelcome. Lots of interesting stuff. Griffin, what all do we have this morning? Oh, boy. So we're going to be talking a lot about, we're doing a little Victor LAP at the top here with Ryan Grimm. Let's just get right to that, and then we'll get to the other stories. Ryan has been doing reporting at DropSight news about Microsoft and Israeli surveillance, and there was a little victory over the last, some good news for once. So we had this story that Ryan did in DropSight a few months ago.

The Israeli military is one of Microsoft's top AI customers leaked documents reveal. And now we've seen that Microsoft, as of, I believe, yesterday is blocking Israel's use of its technology in mass surveillance of Palestinians. Ryan, your reaction. Yeah, and we covered this, you know, multiple times on the program here, too. But, yeah, the backstory is we got a trove of internal documents from Microsoft that showed the amount of work and the type of work that they were doing for the Israeli Ministry of Defense and showed that it skyrocketed.

after October 7th. And what we did is we reached out to 972, which is the Israeli-Palestinian news outlet that had previously done some incredible work on the IDF's use of AI in targeting. Like if you remember, you might remember that story that they did where they exposed this program called Where's Daddy, where they were using AI to try to figure out,

you know, who their targets were, and then trying to find their, you know, find out when their targets were at home so they could kill them with their families. And this was this 972 story. So reached out to them, and in particular, Yuval Abraham, who has, is the Israeli investigative reporter who's done the best work during this genocide, is all, he was also, if you remember, one of the leading people involved with no other land that, that won the, uh, that won the Oscar, a lot of good it did them because they've continued to, you know, slaughter people at that, you know, at the site of the, uh, the setting of that documentary. And attack the filmmakers. And attack the filmmakers. We also brought in the Guardian, which still has this,

which still has an international reach. And so collectively, we published, um, these documents in, uh, January of 2020, uh, 2025. And subsequently, you've all did some, um, deeper reporting with his sources in Israel, exposing more specifically what precisely Microsoft's technology was being used for. Because what we could tell is that this Azure, this cloud computing software was being used at an extraordinary scale, but the contracts and the documents and internal stuff didn't show exactly what was going on. One of the things that it was clearly being used for was illegal by any stretch, surveillance of, uh, of, uh, Palestinians, and that surveillance was then being, you know, coupled with AI being used for

targeting. And to say, to use the word targeting almost doesn't make sense if you look at Gaza right now. It doesn't look like anything that was targeted at all. Like the entire thing is just, you know, completely annihilated. The real credit, to me, belongs to Microsoft employees, not only for providing the information to the public, but also, as we've covered here as well, they were routinely protesting at like, you know, major company events. And every time

they would do that, that's not cost-free. Like, you're fired. Like these people, you know, most of the people, I think, that did organizing around this for Microsoft, you know, have been, have been fired. Not all of them, but a lot of them. And fired into a very bleak tech job market right now.

Yeah, true. So putting their jobs on the line there. yet they've now been vindicated. Now, we're going to continue following this because Microsoft exclusively gave the news to The Guardian, which, because the Guardian was one of these outlets that has been reporting on this, what that tells you is that Microsoft's PR strategy is they want to tell the Guardian, they want to tell the critics, okay, we're hearing you, we're responding to this. what actually happens after this is something we're going to have to continue following up

and we'll continue working our sources to figure this out. But, you know, Israel's reaction is suggestive. Like they, you know, they're livid, that they're being told that they can't use this Microsoft technology anymore, you know, for, you know, this, this, what, what Microsoft is saying is, you know, against the rules and was was done surreptitiously, was, was, was done duplicitously, whether Microsoft actually was okay with it, like all of this continues to need investigation. But it does show that there is still an ability to, you know, publicly shame these major corporations into backing off of their complicity here. Yeah, BCG also comes to mind, you know, has revealed their role with GHF and they felt a need to back away.

They torch their reputation, yeah. Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. But, you know, again, once that came to light, they felt the need to do at least something to distance themselves from that. Ryan, correct me if I'm wrong, but I think this is the first major tech company to basically say, no, we don't want to be part of this. We're not going to be involved. And then the other thing I wanted to ask you about is it seems like there's a bit of a tipping point in terms of public sort of social and cultural pressure on Israel. We can talk about like the football league they might be kicked down of. They might be kicked down in Eurovision. We talked yesterday about how Spain and Italy and now you have additional countries besides saying,

listen, we're actually going to protect this flotilla. We're not going to let you just like murder our citizens that are on this aid boat brazenly at sea. But then again, I have felt those glimmers of hope and like, oh, the, you know, this must be there must be some ratcheting up of pressure and some sort of end point that that's coming before. So how do you think about those things? yeah there there there there's been some pressure on tech platforms before and some elements there there have been some small wins before i i would say it is it is fair to say this is by far the the biggest victory on in on this front to say like Microsoft is you know one of the giants now there's still oracle they're still you know they're they have places that they can go

to do this work um but every time uh every time the their universe shrinks a little bit it it it comes with a cost. So, yes, I think, like, this is, like, I think it would be fair to say that at this scale, it is unprecedented, and you're right. It comes at the same time that they're, you know, Israel is being threatened to be kicked out of the, you know, what's European soccer. And there was this attempt this week by Israeli media to say that the United States had stepped in to protect them and that there was not going to be a vote and they're not going to

be kicked out up the European Soccer League. That turned out, apparently, to be a bit of a misdirection, an attempt to like get activist pressure away to basically demoralize the people that were involved and were putting pressure on all of the European governments to say we don't want these, we won't want this genocidal country playing in our soccer league, in our football League. And so, you know, that, that still seems like it's happening. Like you said, Eurovision. And, you know, Italy and Spain, you know, sending ships, they're saying they're there to not, not to militarily engage the Israeli drones, but to, you know, rescue people if, if the ships are sunk. But still, any action at all is, is something new on the scene. Well, Italy is particularly interesting because it's not like Maloney is, like, a big. pro-Palestine lefty. Yeah, she attacked the flotilla while the ship is going out there.

Well, also said, all right, she didn't attack it physically. Yes, verbally. It's important to specify these things at this point. But in any case, yeah, she was like attacking the flotilla and saying, I don't think you should be doing this, but at the same time announcing they're going to send an Italian naval vessel to, you know, help, I guess, rescue in the event that such a thing is needed. And then you also had the pressure from the Italian population. there was a general strike. You've got dock workers. You're saying we're not going to be involved in, you know, facilitating the shipment of these weapons to Israel. So, you know, at least one government there feeling compelled very much against what she would want to do to take action here.

Yeah, they had like 300,000 people in the streets or something supporting the dock workers. And the Genoa Port is one of the most crucial in Europe. So it really shows, it kind of shows. shows how little in some ways politicians matter because you've got, you know, this Maloney is far right and lockstep ironclad supporter of Israel. Yet they're the ones, they're one of the two, you know, sending out help because their population is demanding it. The other interesting element that I was to give too is this comes at a time when Microsoft is actually trying pretty hard to be in the good graces of the Trump administration. So I have to imagine that was an interesting factor in the politics of the decision to, Ryan. That's an interesting point. In the past, even if a tech company, that's a very good point, even if a tech company felt like,

okay, they lied to us, they bought these products, told us they were going to, you know, use it just for, you know, storing the, you know, whatever, you know, data that is. they're legally allowed to, and instead they used it to, you know, scoop up that on every single Palestinian and then target them. They would say, well, we would like to, you know, enforce our terms of service and have some integrity here. But the U.S. is going to punish us if we punish Israel. So Microsoft clearly made the calculation that we are in a, that we are now in a political era where they can be on the, wrong side of Israel, and it will not bring them so much heat in the United States that it's not worth doing. That is an interesting window into this moment. Well, the other thing is, I mean,

Netanyahu's in New York right now. So maybe his last trip to New York for quite a while, given that Zoran Mamdani's about to be elected on, in part on a platform of arresting his ass if he comes back to New York City. So, and he's got a huge protest outside of his hotel as well. Just in flying to New York, he had to take a somewhat like circuitous route with his plane because there's certain airspace that he feels he cannot fly over anymore because he is a wanted, you know, indicted criminal from the ICC. So, yeah, I guess I said, should say fugitive since he hasn't been officially found guilty. But in any case, I just, I don't know, it feels, I don't know enough to say. But my sense is that some of these cultural pieces, like the sense that Israelis can. travel abroad for their vacation and not face scrutiny, the sense that, you know, IDF soldiers can't just brazenly post war crimes and think that that's going to be okay and they can just travel around the world and no one's going to care. The sense that, you know, OK, Eurovision doesn't want us anymore. We can't, you know, our soccer team can't compete in this European League anymore. I mean, I have to think that those sorts of things land with the Israeli public in terms of the way that they're being ostracized in the world. Now, I'll

I know a lot of the responses, well, all these people are anti-Semitic and we're the perpetual victim and they're just being unfair because we're the only Jewish state, et cetera. But I do have to think that that has a sort of like impact on the cultural psyche for sure. I'm Jorge Ramos. And I'm Paola Ramos. Together we're launching The Moment, a new podcast about what it means to live through a time as uncertain as this one. We sit down with politicians. I would be the first immigrant mayor in generation. but 40% of New Yorkers were born outside of this country.

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This new podcast will be a way to make that ongoing intergenerational conversation public. Listen to The Moment with Jorge Ramos and Paola Ramos as part of the MyCultura Podcast Network on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. In early 1988, federal agents raced to track down the gang they suspect of importing millions of dollars worth of heroin into New York from Asia. We had 30 agents ready to go with shotguns and rifles and you name it. But what they find is not what they expected. Basically, your stay-at-home moms were picking up these large amounts of heroin. They go, is this your daughter? I said yes. They go, oh, you may not see her for like 25 years.

Caught between a federal investigation and the violent gang who recruited them, the women must decide who they're willing to protect and who they dare to betray. Once I saw the gun, I try to take his hand and I saw the flash of light. Listen to the Chinatown Sting on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or anywhere you get your podcasts.

It may look different, but native culture is very alive. My name is Nicole Garcia, and on Burn Sage, Burn Bridges, we aim to explore that culture. It was a huge honor to become a television writer because it does feel oddly, like, very traditional. It feels like Bob Dylan going electric, that this is something we've been doing for a hundred of years. You carry with you a sense of purpose and confidence. That's Sierra Taylor Ornellis, who with Rutherford Falls became the first native showrunner in television history.

On the podcast, Burn Sage, Burn Bridges, we explore her story, along with other native stories, such as the creation of the first native Comic-Con, or the importance of reservation basketball. Every day, native people are striving to keep traditions alive while navigating the modern world, influencing and bringing our culture into the mainstream. Listen to Burn Sageburn Bridges on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Well, speaking of cultural psyche shifting,

we got to light it up early in the show here with a little I've Had it clip. You know, Jennifer grilled Jeff Duncan over A-PAC money. And, you know, I've had it, girls, they keep slipping into these situations where people think they're going to get softball interviews from them and then are sorely, sorely mistaken. Let's take a little listen here. Will you take A-PAC money or have you taken A-PAC money? I'm not certain if I've taken it or not. I've run, I've been in office 10 years. It doesn't jump out at me as I'm taking it.

I think the most important part is... But will you for this race? I have no idea. I haven't even thought about it. Okay, come on, Jeff. This is like there's a genocide going on right now. And I mean, even human rights, Israeli human rights groups, see this, that the United States of America is funding.

To see these kids starving. And to not know if you're going to be beholden to the Israeli lobby is, to me, is not something that should take time to think about because you started off this interview with us talking about your fate. Will you take A-PAC money in this race? I have no idea. I haven't even thought about it. I want to take that moral clarity that you have right there.

Ask you again, are you going to take money from A-PAC? Because just there, you talked about an A-PAC is what helped. They gave Trump over, I think, $200, $300 million. Are you going to take money from a group that lobbies to deny that that's happening through those children? I'm not going to give you the shallow answer of saying yes or no. If you can have moral clarity. The shallow answer and the genocide, then it's a very easy jump to then just say across the board,

you wouldn't believe how popular you'd be, Jeff. I just wouldn't believe if you said, I'm not taking money from A package. Jeff, I'm in your corner. We're trying to help you here. And she is. I love it. She authentically is in his corner. Like she wants, she thinks he should do this.

She wants him to do this. Yeah. That's intense. I don't think she'd mind me saying I was messaging with her this morning. And you're right, Ryan. She's like, this guy, you know, Jennifer is not like a leftist, you know. She's pragmatic, you know. She lives in this very red state.

She feels the impact of Republican policies are devastating for people in her state, in her community where she lives. And so she's, you know, she's not a purity tester. But she's like, dude, we would all love you. I don't know if you guys know this guy. I'm actually not that familiar with him. He's lieutenant governor of Georgia was a Republican. He's now switched parties. He's running for governor.

He was previously a member of the House. And so in any case, you know, he's got the story of sort of like waking up and coming to see the light and something that Democrats would love to rally around. But I think a lot of Democrats still don't realize that this is a moral litmus test, that it is, you know, basic question of whether you have any decency in principles, and that there is no way to take like a moderate position on a genocide, which is what he and Alyssa Slokin and many others besides are trying to find their way towards. Or even more importantly, like the fact that you can't have moral clarity on any issue. Like people aren't going to stand to listen about your moral grandstanding on other issues when you would still have to think about this one a lot.

Right. And the bullshit of, sorry, I'm just one more. It's the bullshit of like, oh, I don't remember if I took AIPAC money. I don't have to check. It doesn't jump down at me. Okay, well, will you say you won't take it anymore? I don't know. Maybe it's like, okay, yes or no. Like, if you're going to be John Federman, be John Federman.

But don't try to pretend like you care about these kids and you're so, you know, your faith is informing you and you're so morally righteous when you can't even ask, answer a basic question about the way you're going to approach your campaign and who you're going to ally yourself with. Think about the, like, establishment Democratic Party leaders who want the best for this guy, right? Like, they want this guy to be their thing because he's former Republican. They see the potential of a red state, a red state former Republican being super helpful for Democrats. They aren't prepping him for this because they don't know how serious it is for people like Jennifer Welch.

who is a normie, fairly normie, kind of dem target voter, actually. That's crazy that he wasn't prepared for this question. Like, that to me is part of this. Part of this as, like, as, it does remind me a little bit of, like, T-party years. I'm a broken record on this, but you'd have these candidates who go into a friendly, like, T-party, I don't know, radio host, local radio host, and say, do you stand with Ted Cruz shutting down

the government? Well, I don't know. And then just get absolutely torched. I can't believe that he, whoever is handling him, and I guarantee you, they're very powerful Democrats with big interests in his campaign. Let him go on that interview like that. And my only defense of him, now I think that, yeah, his operatives are clearly not watching this podcast very closely because you could have known that this was coming. Or the public sentiment, though. Like, that's what's crazy. But he is running for governor of Georgia. So if I were him, and I didn't want to answer the question, I'd be like, look, I'm running for governor of Georgia. What does that have to do with this?

Yeah. And then also, he could just be like, yeah, sure. Because also, you could be weaseling, like, I'm not going to take APEC money. And by that, you would mean directly from their political action committee or let their super PAC support within their super PACs not supporting him anyway. So it's easy. and then some A-PAC donors would give to him. And he'd be like, well, those are just people who they've given to the Sierra Club too. Individual people. Yeah, they're just, I disagree with them on this, but I.

He's afraid that, like, the thing is that it wouldn't be honest to say that that has nothing to do with this because, I mean, clearly he's afraid of getting crosswise with A-PAC and doesn't think that those individual donor checks are going to come in if he says he won't take A-PAC money. Exactly. So that's the reason he gets wrapped around. axle of this thing because, yeah, he would love to do a wink in and a non be, oh, yeah, sure, I'm not taking APEC and then privately message APEC and be like, don't worry. But they demand such total and complete loyalty that if you aren't publicly in every way backing them up, they're not going to be there for you and they may well spend, you know, money against you in.

No, you're an anti-Semite. It's not, or you're an anti-Semite and that too. Yes, exactly. Emily, will you, will there be that on the right? Will you, will you ever see this happen on the right where like right, right podcasters or pressuring Republican politicians about APAC or even like not a podcast or maybe like a kid at a town hall or something. Absolutely. I mean, we saw Ted Cruz and Tucker Carlson's interview from just a few months ago. So it's not going to be everyone for sure, but there will be some places that you

wander into as a candidate or yeah, like kids at town hall, like students at town halls. And Ryan's point about running for governor of Georgia is such an interesting one because the Democratic base right now is so completely divorced from the Democratic, I don't know, like the potential swing voter, like a potential Republican swing voter who like doesn't, probably doesn't think about Israel a lot, generally as favorable to Israel, might not even be tapped into this conversation about APAC. And so you know that Dem leadership is trying to figure out what to do with this puzzle because their own voters care so much about this and are in like, they have such a sense of moral clarity on their end about what they want to happen.

And then they're stuck with this position of balancing because they've half-assed it for however many years now, a couple of years since October 7th. I just think they've gaslit themselves into thinking that it's actually not that important. And, you know, like you hear this talking point from them all the time. They'll say, we heard this again from Slotkin, they'll say, like, well, why weren't those protesters? Why aren't they protesting Trump? why are they only protesting Democrats, which is, A, not true. And B, like, they're part of your coalition. So it makes sense they'd be pressuring you more.

And it makes sense that maybe they'd have higher expectations for you than Trump. Yeah. And C, they're departing people. Yeah, I mean, that's the other thing is there's like a literal authoritarian crackdown, if you dare speak out. So, yeah, great point, Griffin. But the insinuation is meant to be basically like, oh, well, these are all just Trump voters anyway. So we don't really have to pay attention to them. Like it's their fault that, you know, they, it's their fault that we lost, but also they were never going to vote for us anyway. And so I think that they've really gasslet themselves into thinking that this isn't a political problem for them. And I don't know how you can sustain that view when you see what's happening with Zoron in New York, when you see what's happening with Grand Platner in Maine, like this guy just literally comes out of nowhere, no elected position and is now, you know, garnering thousands of people coming to his events and all of this energy and, you know, a

Certainly, they're trying to get Janet Mills, who's the sitting governor into the race. And it's not going to be a sure thing for her whatsoever that she wins in the Democratic primary because he's been willing to be so incredibly morally clear. So, yeah, I mean, they're so far behind still trying to find a way to like, how can we massage our position? How can we find some moderate path that's going to please both sides? And it's like, first of all, in the Democratic Party, in terms of the base, there is no both sides. like basically the whole party is now like it's a genocide we need to cut off weapons what is wrong with you this is a moral and complete atrocity it's one of the greatest crimes of our time and they still seem to think that there's you know within their own coalition their attention great tension exists that doesn't the only place that tension exists is on their donor phone calls which is why you see the the result that you do my final question he's speaking at the UN apparently he got booed as he came out here and I guess a bunch of people got escorted out

this is not this is not normal UN the UN is a pretty staid like like very you know protocol oriented, civility oriented oh yeah he's so he's he's he's speaking now because they're escorted a bunch of people just listening

people are being escorted out some people are applauding some people are look confused oh he's got a walking out he's got another map he's got props oh this one's called the curse just in time for Halloween he's pointing at all the people he doesn't like I guess this is the Nathan fielder show promo.

Yep, exactly. The Assad regime. Oh, he's bragging about all the people he got rid of the assassination. Great. And there's also a battle. Iraq, yes, good for him. Yes, he talked us into going into Iraq. Is he really bragging about that? I'm glad he's taking credit for that one.

Credible. Battle raging in the chat there, the live chat. Should we jump in as breaking points? Yes. Well, they're gone, too. And Iran's gone to? Oh, some scientists. Atomic bomb scientists.

Yes, yes. They did kill scientists. That's true. Israel's 12-day war with Iran. Anyway, so we'll have more, I guess, Monday right from that speech. Yeah. Well, we can react in the premium half, too, because it'll probably be wrapped up by the time we get there. Yeah.

Yeah. There's anything big that comes down about. Well, my final question before we move on is how. long is Jennifer going to keep getting these interviews? You know, I feel like we had a moment with the Alyssa Slotkin thing, and now, you know, I'm not going to name names, but behind the scenes, I've

been trying to reach out to a lot of other politicians of similar level and getting ghosted. So what do y'all think? You know, because Jennifer seems like a safe podcast for Dems to do if they don't do a lot of research like Ryan mentioned. There's another good one for you.

Oh, my God. there he's not this is holding up a placard that says who shouts death to America and then it's a multiple choice question a is Iran B is Hamas C is Hezbollah D is the Houthis and E is all the above Who told him that was a good idea well actually this this flows out of their polling that that we reported on it dropside and over here at breaking points that nobody likes them but people also do not like around the world they don't like Iran they don't like

like Hamas and Hezbollah. And so in a straight one-to-one comparison between Israel and Hamas or Israel and Iran, Israel actually comes out ahead. So this looks like it comes straight from the Mark Penn and Anita Dunn polling operation. Oh, wow. Incredible. Great work there. Anyway, sorry, you were saying.

Oh, no, just return to my question. And do you think Jennifer is going to keep getting these interviews with Democratic leadership? I know she's doing a talk with Kamala Harris for her book tour coming up soon. No, they've got a whole chorus network of creators that they can feel comfortable going on their platforms that are, you know, approved and unlikely to ask them difficult questions. The problem, though, is that, you know, the people aren't necessarily going to be listening to the chorus if the chorus doesn't follow what people want to hear some. And so if they want audience, they're going to have to come to people like her and us. Yeah. But they, I mean, because they can't make their own.

They're trying very hard to make their own thing. And it's not going to happen. It's not working. Yeah. Ken loves to post the like, I guess the DNC started like a YouTube, like a podcast. And he loves to post the views. It's like, you know, they got 102 views this time. Way to go.

You know. So, no, they have. this idea that they can have this top-down level of control and never face a difficult question and that if they just throw some money behind it and some organization, then they're going to end up with like the next Joe Rogan or whatever. And, you know, if they, like, I guess at some point, maybe they're going to realize that that doesn't work. But the people who are at the top of the party, the Keem Jeffries, the Chuck Schumers of the world, they're just the environment they came up in, the skills and traits that they were selected for have nothing to.

to do with, like, going on a podcast and having a difficult conversation and saying something controversial, getting out there in the mix and fighting. Like, that's just not what these people will ever do. They're not designed to do that, right? And so I don't think that until you have a complete upending of the current party structure and new leadership, will they actually realize because the other thing is with these people, like, I think they would rather have Trump and the Republicans in power, then give up their own grip on power as well. And, you know, so and they feel like, so in any case, I don't see it happening until you have a complete switch in Democratic Party leadership, which may be coming. I mean, I saw an article. I wish I remember the numbers, but I think it was Politico went out and asked all bunch of Democratic Senate candidates, hey, are you going to support Chuck Schumer for majority leader or, you know, for leader of the party if you guys are still in the minority. And basically none of them would say. And say yes. Some of them were overt. A few, not that many, but a few were overt, like, absolutely not. And most of them were just like, yeah, we'll see. Who's in the race? I don't know.

So, you know, some kind of reckoning is going to come at some point. Yes. And they're only hurting themselves because what happens when you resist your own voters and your grassroots especially, but basically their own voters are on the same page about this right now. When you do that, you end up with Trump. That sounds crazy. But this is exactly what happened in the Republican Party where the leadership was brushing off the base and the grassroots, and they had this primary of who they thought was the very best talent in the Republican Party, like that in generations, they felt like was the buffet of generational Republican talent in 2016. And Trump came in and smashed it to bits and completely shattered the illusion because all of those generational

talents had been, I mean, other than like maybe Ted Cruz, but even he, by that point, had sort of gotten on, gotten with the program. That's what happens when you reject your vote. Someone, they're going to get more populism. They're only hurting themselves. They're only undermining Chuck Schumer's future and longevity or the Chuck Schumer replacement's longevity because something will burst. You will have someone, you will have a populist who comes in and and actually puts a lie to their power and destroys everything in a way that hasn't happened yet. Yep, that's right. So Democrats, Jennifer and Pumps, they're trying to help you. You just got to let it in. Okay? Let me help you. Help me help you.

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So let's move on. We've got to talk about this James Comey thing. This is a comity of errors, perhaps. Let's listen to a little bit of the indictment on James Comey here and his reaction. And then we'll break it down a little bit for you. My family knew for years that there are costs to standing up to Donald Trump. But we couldn't imagine ourselves living any other way. We will not live on our needs.

And you shouldn't either. Somebody that I love dearly recently said that fear is the tool of a tyrant. and she's right but I'm not afraid and I hope you're not either I hope instead you are engaged you are paying attention and you will vote

like your beloved country depends upon it can we pause right there did you do we think I think he might have a little Botox I was going to come and he looks good it could also just be a good ring light also possible

lighting does a lot for you. But that I assume was taken from his substack, Griffin? I'm not sure where it came from. I just get my Comey alerts directly sent to me on Google alerts. Well, he likes to, so he has a sub-sac, and he likes to post these vertical videos, and you may remember the Taylor Swift video that he posted. So it's, this is how James Comey speaks to the public, no.

Okay, so this was his second most important video. But I did see it on Twitter. Crystal. Emily, can you explain for us in the audience? Like, what is this indictment? What is he being indicted for? And what is this original rivalry? In case people forget, if we can go back through the annals of history, what's this beef about? Well, so this is going to be about lying to Congress. So it's going to be a perjury charge. He testified to Congress five years ago on September 30th, which is why these charges had to come down quickly. That's why Trump was sort of accidentally post. posting his DMs to Pam Bondi. I still don't know whether that was an accident or intentional, but because that September 30th, 2020 testimony is where he said that he, quote, had not authorized someone else to be an anonymous source in news reports. The indictment says that statement was false. So the bar for actually getting a conviction on this charge is going to be really high because

you have to prove that he knowingly lied to Congress. And that involved. some measure of mind reading unless you have, like, just incontrovertible evidence, which they may have in this case because there is a document trail with Russiagate. But Comey was shopping around information about the Russia collusion hoax. There's a decent bit of evidence. It was in the Inspector General Michael Horowitz's report. There was pretty decent evidence that Comey was part of getting this information to the media. He's going to have great attorneys and can parse this in different ways.

whether he was technically the one who leaked or whether he did it through a conduit, which we have pretty good evidence that he was doing. But that's where the origins of this are Comey was shopping information to the media to sort of prime the pump. As everyone was saying, was Donald Trump in bed with Putin? Was he in bed with Russia? Hillary Clinton was making some of these claims. Comey was giving little tidbits, dishing out little tidbits. And the FBI was dishing out little tidbits to the media, basically suggesting that they were working on this because they were actually getting some heat from Hillary Clinton. Remember the beef between Comey and Clinton because of those charges that were dropped late in 2016, late October 2016. So all that is to say,

also Comey didn't indict Hillary Clinton, but didn't charge Hillary Clinton with the email, after the email investigation. So he was trying to basically suggest to the public, we've got something, we're on it. And Trump kept Comey on. And then it all exploded. And here we are today. Yeah. Well, I think it's just important to zoom out while those specifics are significant. And I also want to note that they had to force out another Trump picked U.S. attorney and put in this total crony who has never prosecuted a case before in order to move to try to secure this indictment. There was memos from career DOJ, prosecutors who said, listen, there's no, this is not going to, you're not going to be able to secure a guilty conviction at trial. So you should not go forward with this. You've had some, at least one resignation also in the wake of these charges moving forward. So there's a lot of indication that this is trumped up that to not intentionally use that pun. But I mean, literally Donald Trump came out and said, you need to charge the skypan Bondi. Like, what are we doing? She was. was under pressure. There's reporting as well that she was uncomfortable with the case. So, listen,

I think Comey is an odious figure. I think Comey is a big part of the reason Trump gets elected the first time. I have zero love for this man. This is a bullshit politicized charge. There is no way that if Trump doesn't directly tell the attorney general and his new hand-picked crony that they need to charge Comey, that he ends up getting indicted. The grand jury indicted him on two of three counts. I think especially given the president's public involvement here, very likely this thing gets immediately tossed. It's been assigned to a Biden judge. And, you know, this is the sort of thing that in normal times would literally be impeachable. And it's not just Comey either. They're trying to go after Letitia James on some bullshit mortgage fraud charges. They're trying to go after Adam Schiff

on the same thing. Trying to go after Lisa Cook on the same thing. It's not like I have particular love for these people. I actually do like Letitia James, but, you know, not a big Adam Schiff fan. Don't really know anything about Lisa Cook in particular. Not a Comey fan. But it is now official. The DOJ is just an arm of Trump's weaponization regime. That's what it is. And so, however you feel about Comey, we need to acknowledge that this is a, you know, not to say the DOJ's been perfect in the past, there hasn't been this or there hasn't been that. But we have really crossed a threshold. here where even any appearance of independence is totally and completely gone. I think, you're right.

Go ahead. No, just to the indictment itself is like a page and a half. And the thing they're getting him on is that they say that he told Ted Cruz that he had not, quote, authorized someone else at the FBI to be an anonymous source in news reports regarding an FBI investigation concerning Trump. and basically they're saying that he authorized McCabe to be an anonymous source

and so McCabe McCabe's testimony on that would be critical or any evidence that they might have that he did authorize McCabe to be a confidential source so just for the details of this indictment but agree with Crystal's point that

the details are you know you can get somebody on mortgage fraud but you're not actually if you're not actually going after them on mortgage fraud, then tangling with the details is kind of playing into their hands. Well, my perspective on this is probably a little different from your guys, which is, I think there should be, with Comey, Comey is a good example of, like, when did we cross the threshold?

I think we crossed the threshold, like, accelerated with Trump, especially 2.0. I, like, not happy with a lot of the politicization. In this case, I look at Comey as someone who arguably started, like, he to me is pretty high up in the candidates for who started us on the doom spiral. And because he was part of weaponizing the FBI to cook up an investigation beyond reasonable bounds against Trump and the Trump campaign and then was leaking to media, I agree a thousand percent that this is politicized. I just don't quite agree that it's bullshit because I don't know. another way out. I'm not saying that this is a guaranteed way out of the doom spiral, but this man I think is part of, like, Donald Trump wasn't even president yet, and James Comey was weaponizing the FBI to attack Donald Trump. So I just don't, like, I think Comey should face consequences. I agree that

the charges here are political. And I, like, lament that this is the state of the country. He's not someone I'm particularly, like, that's actually of all of the people that I think probably should face consequences. I think he's pretty high up on the list. Now, of course, the process to get from A to point B, the installment of Lindsey Halligan to Crystal's point to get these charges, all of that, I totally understand. But Comey to me is one of these central figures that thrust us into this moment. Okay. And the politics, too, of, though I've consistently said that for January 6th, you know, Trump came at the system. and he missed, and the proper response to that is he should have gone down for that.

Like, you come at the system, you come at everything and you miss, basically trying to do a, you know, a coup. You should go down for that. And the same, you know, I could turn that logic around on Comey, and, you know, Comey came at the king and he missed. And so now he's going down for this. Now, when it comes to the Doom Spiral, I think this, there's no question that this further ratchets us closer to a political system that none of us want, where when you lose power, you go to jail. And there are a lot of countries that have systems like that. And prime ministers and lawmakers know that being in politics means that you're going to go to prison

sometimes when you're out of power. And that creates that that is extraordinarily corrosive to civic life and it ends up consolidating authoritarianism undermining democratic norms and making it much more of a zero-sum game which then perhaps ironically

increases a lot of corruption because as authoritarianism consolidates doesn't matter whether you're breaking laws or not the only thing that matters is whether you're close to the king close to the current leader and so if you're going to jail anyway Like, then people just start breaking laws wildly and getting involved in all sorts of illegal activity. So this is an important point, Ryan, because listen, how many, like we had multiple, we had the John Durham investigation.

He recommended no charges against Comey, right? There's a difference between bad behavior and things that are criminal and illegal is number one. Number two, I mean, if the charges were legitimate, he wouldn't have had to like fire his push out his own handpicked person in order to secure some sort of. of a charge, which again is almost certainly going to get immediately thrown out in court. You wouldn't have had to bring in this lady who was like a pageant queen and insurance lawyers never prosecuted a case before. You wouldn't have had to publicly threaten your own attorney general in order to secure these charges. So, Ryan, I think your point, you know, January 6th and call me whatever, like it's very intellectual and it's very high-minded,

but it also ignores the fact that like it's not just call me, okay? It's Letitia James. It's Adam Schiff. It's Lisa Cook. It is using the whole of government to go after the media, to go after law firms, to go after universities. Now we've got the entire Democratic Party designated as a terror organization. I mean, guys, when we zoom in too close on these details and start fighting about what Comey said in testimony, Andrew Cave McCabe contradicted him, blah, blah, blah, we missed the fucking forest for the trees because the authoritarian consolidation of power. has been so rapid and so extraordinary and we're living through it in real time in these past couple of weeks. So I find it a little beside the point to argue about what Jim Comey did in fucking

2016. Yeah, but also since that's what the indictment is, the IG looked into this and found that there's no evidence that Comey actually authorized McCabe to leak. Well, that's going to that McCabe did it on his own and informed Comey later or allegedly informed Comey later. So I, but I agree when you're arguing about the details when the details are not actually like they're going after Comey because Comey went after him. Like that's it.

Yeah. And if it wasn't this, they pull up his mortgage applications or his tax filings or whatever. Like let's not be Pollyanna about what's going on here, guys. So the point that Ryan was making about how going,

thrusting us further down the pattern of tit for tat retaliation actually can consolidate authoritarian power grabs. That is my argument to people on the right who are, like my friends, who are absolutely have this bloodlust. Some of them, people were like unfairly targeted and all of that during this type of investigation in Trump one. That's my argument to that.

So like, it's not as though I'm a proponent of doom spiral politics. On the other hand, it's just really hard for me to think of a way for people who are in the FBI or the CIA who have abused their positions and put us in this position. I really, really think that's true. Without the Russia collusion, uh, investigation against Donald Trump, I don't know what his first presidency would have looked like. Um, my assumption is that it wouldn't have been he there would not have been a first presidency because he would not have gotten elected if Jim Comey didn't come out and do his whole multiple press conference thing. So he should be thinking. You shouldn't he be thanking him? Yeah. Why is he so mad at?

him. Come me. Well, because he tried, I mean, and then Trump had in his interim period had all of these bullshit lawsuits thrown at him. So I, like, this to me, like, I get it. I, I get it. I just think it's hard for me to imagine Republicans being in this position and not trying to dish out some of what Trump got in the interim period.

So the question to that. Yeah. Like, so like, let's say Democrats, he, he cooed the, he tried to coo the government and he got to run for office again. Democrats didn't even get around like appointing someone to look into it. Like he, you know, so I'm sorry. Like, it's not equivalent whatsoever. Trump tried to steal an election. I think it's worse. He ginned up his supporters to storm the Capitol on January 6th. He put together fake slates of electors to try to undermine the whole thing. And then, you know, There was genuine there there with the classified documents that were stored in his bathroom, for example. It's not like this was completely invented. So, you know, we can debate the details. But I don't think that. And here's the other thing, why I have no patience for this argument is Republicans were, oh, we're going to end the weaponization.

There's a whole like task force against weaponization and, oh, we're going to be free speech. And then it's like, no, actually, we didn't mean any of that shit. Stephen Miller's in charge. Trump is going to threaten Bondi until he basically all of his political opponents are threatened with jail. The entire Democratic Party is going to be classified as a terror organization. If you have any sort of left-leaning views, we're going to call you a terrorist. We're going to deport people based on writing essays and op-eds. Like, this is not, you know, first of all, it's not remotely equivalent to what was done in the past.

And second of all, like, there is no principle here that is justifiable outside of Trump. Trump consolidating power and weaponizing the government and trying to secure a total and complete victory over his political opponents. And that's the language they use. Like they think that they that's what they're going for. And there's a chance they succeed too, by the way, which is why, you know, I think people should be paying attention to what is unfolding, not just with these cases, which is an extraordinary development, but with the universities, with the law firms, with the media, with the, you know, the labeling a vast swath of a vast swath of a. Americans as domestic terrorists with the ICE crackdown of, you know, I just read this morning the 79 year old business owner who was thrown to the American citizen thrown to the ground, ribs cracked because ICE wanted to go after a few of his employees. Like, what is going? This is,

this is a horror. And it's rolling out at a increasingly rapid pace. People need to wrap their heads around where we are right now. So like, if the demo, if the demo, I'll, sorry, I'll let you go in a second, but just a question. Because I, I agree. We're with what Crystal's saying, but like, maybe this is a stupid question, but let's say Democrats win power. They win 2028. Should they not prosecute people like Tom Holman for taking that 50K bribed from the FBI? Criminals should be prosecuted. But that's the thing is like these are fake charges.

If Comey did something criminal, you don't think John Durham would have recommended charges against him? There is a newly released FBI memo that says Comey also used Richmond. So this is this guy he hired as a liaison onto the media on several occasions. Richmond spoke with the media without consultation with FBI, DOJ's offices of public affairs. Like, there's, there is pretty significant evidence that, but even that didn't wind up in this indictment, which shows you how flimsy that is. Right. It's, it doesn't meet the legal threshold.

I'm just saying, I think it's pretty obvious that Comey did lie to Congress. Do I think they're actually going to get a perjury conviction? No, I don't. Lied to Congress like yesterday. I mean, like, in a provable way. I mean, I just, you know, again. They don't have credibility. They don't.

It's not like they have sterling credibility to say to your point that they're ending the weaponization of government. That's absolutely not true. It's just frustrating from my perspective because there was so much that set the stage for this moment. And I'm a like throw all the bums out type of person. I think probably all of us are. Like Crystal just said, crimes, criminals should be convicted. I agree with that. And the Trump administration, if they were really ending the weaponization of government, would go after people on. the right who weaponized the government and would go after people on the right who were abusing power and they wouldn't be doing it themselves. Completely agree with that. It's what terrifies me about this moment in politics. So I don't disagree with any of that. And it's not only that. It's not only the prosecution of political enemies. It's also the pardoning of all of the January 6ers, for example, of all of these white-collar criminals, of all these crypto fraudsters who are just directly bribing the Trump administration in order to get their charges dropped or their investigations dropped or whatever. So, I mean, this is the system

we have now. It's not, it's completely overt. And just to quickly go back to Griffin's point about like the midterms in 2028, I don't know why people are so confident that we're going to have anything approaching like meaning. And Matt, here's, I sketch out the scenario before. And I think this is the direction we're heading. Let's say Democrats, you know, are able to overcome the, the gerrymandering, whatever else is thrown at them. They win the House. in the midterms, you think Trump's going to accept those election results? I mean, what is, what is going to happen? Go ahead, Ryan.

The reason I think, the reason I think he would is because I think, uh, Republicans would actually be, feel like they're better off with Democrats and control of the House so that they can blame them for things and they're not going to want them to have like subpoena power or whatever. I mean, it seems pretty clear that he does not want to. They're going to ignore the, they're going to ignore the subpoenas. There is no subpoena power anymore. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Like, his federal agents won't enforce the subpoenas. People ask me why I don't support Trump, and this is maybe one of the biggest concerns. There are obviously many, and there are also obviously things we can talk about. But, like, this is what happened, we think about January 6th, but what happened after the election in 2020, after November, 2022, January 6th was completely reckless and was. something that thrust us even further down the doom spiral. And it was, I think, horrifying. So I think the right underestimates the extent to which Donald Trump will continue playing with fire. That's

actually how Ben Sass phrased it after January 6th that Trump had been playing with fire. Completely agree with it. I think people on the right underestimate the extent to which that's happening or that could happen again. So like I share a lot of these concerns. I get it. I just like it. I don't know if the Democratic Party fully appreciates the extent to which, and I think sometimes this is a problem with the media, the extent to which, for example, with the January Sixers, like, there were people who had their homes raided by the FBI who did, were not even in the vicinity of going into the Capitol on January 6th. Like, the FBI was weaponized. And some people who didn't do anything wrong were caught up in that process. So that set the stage for Trump to come in and hit back. So if I were, like Griffin's question is such an interesting one because if I were a Democrat who was worried about weaponization of government going into another Democratic presidency or Democratic midterm, then the question is, well, our base is really going to want Tom Holman, for example, to be prosecuted. And we need to get out of the doom spiral. Like Chris Murphy is talking about this. He's saying we have to fight fire with fire. That clip of him, that is exactly what even like mainstream Republicans were talking like in 2020. before Trump won again. That could have been, I actually thought about

as an experiment, clipping that, or posting the transcript of that on X and be like, who said this, Ted Cruz or Chris Murphy, because it was so similar.

So I don't have a good answer to how we get out of this, but it's also, I think to some extent, people like Chris Murphy, Adam Schiff, James Comey have to take responsibility

for their role in it. I'm not a fan of cooking up charges. I do think James Comey lied to Congress. So that's sort of where I land on this right now. All right. One last thing on the midterms piece.

I mean, what you're sketching out is effectively another path to just like the election's not really existing. You're just like, yeah, they'll let the Democrats take their seats, but then they just won't get to do anything. And they'll just be like, you know. So it's the same thing. Yes. No, I still think there is a very strong chance because he's rhetorically setting up that he

just denies the election results that they, you know, they have consolidated path. like the courts, the Supreme Court goes along with whatever they want, that they'll gin up some, oh, mail and ballots were fake and there's no way Democrats could win and they're providing material support to tear, whatever, they'll come up with something. And then have their own separate, you know, Republicans who they claim one, that they basically just pretend like this is the House majority and these are the rightful members of Congress. And, you know, if that happens and you've got some significant portion and some 35 percent or whatever the country that believes. that, you know, I don't know. I don't know what happens then. But it is absolutely possible that they do allow Democrats to take their seats and then they just literally have zero power. So it is as if it doesn't matter who people voted for and what they want to see. And the one reason I, the only reason I feel like they might try to hold on to power in the House is so that they can control certification of the election in, you know, January of 20, 29. but I don't I think so it's it's a tradeoff for them I think they have to factor in what's more important so we got to keep moving we're cooked we all we all agree so Emily thinks that line of Congress is a crime and then Ryan and Crystal believe it's too it's it's too flimsy I think we can all agree that Donald Trump has just created a million James Comey's let's let's move on we got to get this in the public half. Speaking of playing with fire, the military playboy, Pete Hegseth, is calling a summit of all of the top generals and admirals around the world for an unspecified meeting that is causing anxiety among the top ranks of the military. He's pulling everyone into Virginia for a big

announcement. What are we to make of this? Yeah, anybody got any guesses here? What's going on? I got no reporting on this. This is probably the weirdest thing about it is that it's so public. Like, the Washington Post got a hold of this story. They were the ones that broke it, right? And then they reached out to the Pentagon for comment. You know, news organizations will typically, like, if they can be shown a justifiable national security concern from publishing information,

they will withhold. And the Pentagon was like, yeah, no comment, go ahead. So that's what's really weird about it. Because, you know, having the whole world, including your adversaries, know that you have all of your top military leadership consolidated in this one particular location is I'm not an expert here, but doesn't seem like the greatest idea. But, you know, who am I to judge, I guess? Mm-hmm. In The Dark Night Rises, they put all of the cops in the subway tunnels and then Bain traps them in there. So maybe it's a similar situation like this.

I don't know. Like, HECSeth seems to really like the. camera. He's been making lots of to camera videos. So is this just like going to be a big speech about how much he loves his warfighters or is this prep for some Iran war? I don't, Emily or Ryan, what do you make of this? Well, I would be more concerned to be quite honest about Latin America or Mexico because there have been a lot of rumblings of agitation in that sphere. And we've obviously already seen three boat strikes. We've seen, there was a story that leaked a couple of weeks ago that there were people, I think it was in the DEA, that were agitating for more military

involvement in Mexico, like basically full military involvement in Mexico. And it was the Pentagon, people at the Pentagon who shut it down and were like, this is not a good idea. But that, that honestly is more concerning to me than anything in the Middle East or China. Maybe I'll be proven wrong. But I could see this being maybe like a full, a meeting to like fully declare with the symbolism of the military behind any announcement that this is the regime change of Maduro or whatever. That's, that's just, but everyone I talked to has absolutely no idea what's happening and is like concerned that there's something on the horizon. It could be some type of like LARP, obviously. hey, here we are. We're making a show of force. But, you know, obviously we can't rule anything out. So a lot of talk about Middle East, a lot of talk potentially about China. But I feel like people are underestimating whether this could be something in Latin America, too. I mean, if I had to guess, it's, you know, they've talked a lot about they need to reduce the ranks of generals. If I had to guess, there's some sort of a major, like, leadership reorg thing going on. Does seem like.

something you could maybe accomplish over Zoom or signal, since they're partial to signal. Trump is, I saw one report that Trump is supposed to join virtually. So he's supposed to participate as well. So I don't know. It's, you know, the things I read were like, this is not just unusual. It's unprecedented. You're talking about like some 800 people. You're talking about all of the top brass who have been summoned to this one location.

And also that they're cool with it being known publicly. is, I don't know, is just, it's interesting. So something to certainly keep an eye on. I didn't know the Trump part of it, but that tells me this is probably not related to a military, like, like a conflict. That sounds more like a big HR concept. Yeah, like the way you plan.

They're going to do trust balls and a rope, ropes course. That's what they're going to do. Right. You don't, you don't organize and plot. regime change or efforts or invasions even with like hundreds of people. You would think. Sauru had some insight into it tells me it's, quote, it's probably something really mundane and stupid.

I wouldn't be surprised if it's just a big last minute Trump photo up. No. It's just not you wouldn't, this isn't, this isn't how you do a coup or an invasion or a regime change. I could imagine it being like Trump like, I want to see all my generals, get all my, Pete, get my generals together. I want to see what they look like. You know, like some dumb Trump ego bullshit is probably is a pretty good guess, Ryan.

Yeah, he wants to see how many women there are and get rid of them because they don't fit the stereotype that he likes of his his like top brass. Mm-hmm. I don't know. I mean, yeah, if I had to guess same as Crystal, that's what I would put it as. But it's just odd to me that nobody

knows what's going on in D.C. That's unusual. So. if it were a war with Mexico like Ryan what would that even look like like it would be a war with Venezuela Venezuela yeah so like is that just like I was doing like more

drone strikes would we be deploying people I think that they I think that they would just bomb Maduro the same way that Netanyahu bomb Nasrallah and bombed Hanayah and bombed the Hamas offices in Doha

There's a new meta. Or Panama. Okay. Well, I guess we're all praying for a lot. Like the Panama, Panama, they went in with overwhelming force and, you know, drag, drag Noriega out. What was that one?

Operation just cause. That sounds right. Operation, go get our CIA asset. Like, literally, Noriega was a CIA asset for decades. For a George H.W. Bush. Yeah, for the guy that took him out. But you can't do that in Venezuela.

Like, it would take, you know, six figure plus troop deployments. Like, that's just not happening. All right. Well, I guess we're all hoping and praying for a LARP at this meeting. And then we'll just see what goes on from there. I did want to pull up this story about ICE. We've got it here from democracy now, but it's been reported quite a lot of places. that about two-thirds of the detainees at Alligator Alcatraz have completely disappeared.

They're not able to find records of these people, where they went from here, which is leading a lot of people to ask a question, are these just kind of like official U.S. black sites now? I mean, I think you have to say yes at the moment since they literally just disappeared these 1,200 people. their family and friends, their lawyers, nobody can locate them. So they were originally at this facility in horrific conditions, then they get moved and, you know, they're nowhere to be found. So, yeah, I mean, literally, they're just disappeared. And, you know, we already had very little info about who was sent to this facility, of course, as always were told it's the worst to the worst.

The little bit of information the media could get was that that was not remotely true. You know, these were, many of them had had no criminal interaction. with the law, et cetera. So it's very disturbing and that the government could just like disappear these people and it's barely a blip. Emily, what do you make of it? Do you think that they got put on planes and just didn't get reported or what do you think is going on here? You know, I think that's, I think that's probably the case for some of them. I don't know how many of them, but I think any time, and this is why the seat cut stuff was actually really disturbing because it was, you know, you sort of push

the limits, push the limits, push the limits of what you can get away with when it comes to non-citizens and end up, you know, in crowded news cycles with a bunch of missing detainees. They weren't letting journalists into Alligator Alcatraz. And that kind of thing is, like, I can't just chalk it up to that. I think that is probably what happened because sometimes these cases are genuinely difficult to track. I don't know what proportion of them that's the case for versus what the proportion of people are in random African countries. Like what, Eswatini, that's the Kilmora-Bregor Garcia country. So I don't know. And I think people should care that we don't know. I don't

think it's like a non-issue that we don't know just because they're non-citizens. Because, you know, that's what I've said to against some people who are fine with the Ramesa Oz Turk stuff or even the Mahmoud Khalil stuff. It's that when you are broadening these definitions, as it relates to non-citizens, that can set the stage for the targeting of citizens. Because if it's anti-Semitic or material support for terrorism, for example, when a non-citizen does it, well, why is it not material support for terrorism when a citizen writes an op-ed? You know, there are, like, the process matters a lot. Right. Yeah. And, you know, that's increasingly been the asserted view of the administration as those sorts of things do constitute material. support of terrorism. And then, you know, since we don't actually know all of who was in Alligator Alcatraz, like, I think likely these were all undocumented migrants, but we don't actually know that for sure. And we do know that American citizens have been caught up in ice raids and detained for a certain amount of time. So, you know, even if you don't care, which you should, but even if you don't care that migrants are, you know, disappeared by our government and without a trace, there's nothing that prohibits. There's there's no limiting principle here on what they're able to do, which was the same thing we said when, you know, people were shipped off to Seacot with no due process. Like the whole point of no due process is there would be no chance to say, hey, I'm an American citizen. I don't deserve to be deported. Like, this is illegal. Which happened. Yeah. Yeah. When you completely skip over any sort of due process, any sort of transparency, even at the most base level of like, hey, family, your brother. dad, uncle, whoever has now been moved to this location, then you open up a Pandora's box

of endless potential government abuse and horror. And I think that's what's extremely, you know, disconcerting about what we're seeing here. Yeah, and what Griffin referenced was a Miami Herald report from the 16th. So go ahead, right. Yeah, that's right. One of the original, and Emily can testify to this, one of the original radicalizing narratives from from the right in the 2000s, was that the government was going to build a bunch of FEMA camps and just round people up and keep the minute. And now we'd literally have FEMA camps. Yeah, Alex Jones.

Where are you at, brother? Yeah, come on, man. That's a great one. Something about these FEMA camps. He's too busy doing like a Hitler mustache is what I saw him do yesterday. I don't know if anyone else caught that. He's been very busy. He's busy.

I'm going to sell a little Sandy Hook scores. Not to harp on Alex Jones here, but come on. Like, your whole thing was like, oh, my God, they're going to surveil us. And now we got Palantir, you know, the FEMA camps thing. It's like happening and he has nothing to say about it. He's too busy, you know, owning the libs. I guess is his job now on behalf of the regime. This should be his moments that he warned about. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. He was warning that he was going to do it, actually. Right. That's what it is. We misunderstood. Yeah.

Alex Jones often misunderstood fellow, actually. Yes. Yes. Well, well, I think that will leave it for us here on the public half. We're going to talk more about Ice, the Ice Shooter, and J.D. Vance, calling attacks on ice blood libel, as well as a few other stories we might get into something about. Yeah, we'll do some Freddie DeBore. We've got an article about the extreme acts of public violence, is I believe what he calls them. Spectacular. Spectacular.

Spectacular. Razzle-dazzle. And then we're going to talk about maybe a little Peter Thiel anti-corps. Christ, sweeten the second half. And then we'll do some AMA questions. Folks, if you want to see the second half of this show, go to breaking points.com. Link is in the video description. You can sign up for a membership, get access to that, as well as access to answer asking any of us questions in the weekly AMAs. So we will see you all there. In the second half of the show, I will be arresting Crystal for weaponization purposes. That's right. Citizens arrest. I mean, I get it.

We have to stop the doom loop or whatever. So if I had to be the person who stops the doom loop, then it's a fine line and it happens to be Crystal Ball. That's right. That's right, folks. Okay, we'll see you there on the other half, arrested or not. Bye. I'm Jorge Ramos. And I'm Paola Ramos.

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