Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 9/30/24: Hezbollah Leader Killed, Biden Admits Bibi Humiliation, JD Vance Debate Plan, Dems Panic As Polls Tighten, Hurricane Helene Devastation, Cornell Student Deported For Gaza Protest, Emily Reveals Project 2025 Truth To NYT

Episode Date: September 30, 2024

Krystal and Emily discuss Hezbollah's Nasrallah confirmed dead, Biden admits Bibi humiliating him, JD Vance debate plan revealed, Dems panic as race tightens in blue wall, 'biblical devastation' as hurricane Helene smashes US, Cornell student facing deportation over Gaza protests, and Emily reveals Project 2025 truth to NYT.    To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show AD FREE, uncut and 1 hour early visit: https://breakingpoints.com/   Merch Store: https://shop.breakingpoints.com/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. is still out there. Each week, I investigate a new case. If there is a case we should hear about, call 678-744-6145. Listen to Hell and Gone Murder Line on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Here's the deal. We gotta set ourselves up. See, retirement is the long game.

We gotta make moves and make them early. Set up goals. Don't worry about a setback. Just save up and stack up to reach them. Let's put ourselves in the right position. Pre-game to greater things. Start building your retirement plan at thisispreetirement.org. Brought to you by AARP and the perspectives that matter 24-7 because our stories deserve to be heard. Listen to the BIN News This Hour podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, guys. Ready or not, 2024 is here. And we here at Breaking Points are already thinking of ways we can up our game for this critical election.

We rely on our premium subs to expand coverage, upgrade the studio, add staff, give you guys the best independent coverage that is possible. If you like what we're all about, it just means the absolute world to have your support. But enough with that. Let's get to the show. Good morning and welcome to Breaking Points. I am not Sagar and Jetty, at least not that I'm aware of. Crystal, can you confirm? Confirmed. Fact check, I am not Sagar and Jetty, at least not that I'm aware of. Crystal, you can confirm. Confirmed. Not Sagar.

Fact check, correct. Not Sagar and Jetty. But he's often joined some weddings. He's a great wedding guest. He's at that age where, like, apparently literally everyone he knows is getting married. So he had two different weddings this weekend. Within, like, 36 hours. Crazy logistics to pull it off.

So anyway, Godspeed to Sagar. Hopefully the airline gods are blessing him as we speak. We have so much to get to in this show. I know I always say that, but it really is true today. We have so many guests and so many important stories. As you guys probably already know, Hassan Nasrallah dead in an Israeli airstrike. Trita Parsi is going to join us to break down what all of that means and the consequences may be. We've got the VP debate tomorrow. We're going to be live streaming here with Emily Ryan and Sager. Shelby Talcott is going to join us to preview what J.D. Vance's debate prep strategy has been specifically.

Our election analyst, Logan Phillips, is going to be here with a polling update to tell us what his model is saying about where the odds stand for November. Hurricane Helene caused just devastating damage, biblical destruction, they're describing it as, throughout from the Florida Panhandle up through Appalachia. Also spawned a lot of conspiracy theories, so we're going to look at the horror and what needs to be done there, but also take a look at some of the more deranged takes that we saw out of this hurricane. We also have a Cornell student who is going to join us who is set to be deported over his pro-Palestinian activism.

And Emily was on with Ezra Klein over at the New York Times over with the fake news media. How did that go? It was fun. We had a little conversation about Project 2025, so I think we have a clip of that, and we can talk about it here. Yeah, absolutely. All right. So Hezbollah has now confirmed that their leader, now former leader, Hassan Nasrallah, was in fact killed in Israeli airstrike near in Beirut. Let's go and put this up on the screen with some of the details from CNN. Israel and Hezbollah both confirmed that on Friday. Ryan actually did a fantastic breaking news segment with Muin Rabbani at a time when we weren't certain.

But they did that segment as if because it looked very strongly like this was possible. That killing by Israel of Nasrallah marks a significant escalation, they say, in the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah, which has intensified in recent weeks. The same strike, in addition to taking out Nasrallah and quite a number of other individuals, we don't have an exact death count yet, also took out a senior member of Iran's powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. So, you know, to call it a significant development is an incredible understatement. We have some of the images of the bombings that have been occurring, not just this particular bombing that took out Nasrallah, but Israel has ramped up the bombing of Southern Beirut and Southern Lebanon in general.

We can put this up on the screen so you can see some of the images. This first is actually a mom who was recording her child doing cute kid things and then looks out the window and this is the scene of destruction. This is the aftermath of that bombing that killed Nasrallah. The indications I've seen is that they used some of those 2,000-pound bunker buster bombs based on this huge crater and footprint based on these sorts of images that you can see. This is Bibi Netanyahu in the U.S.

at the U.N. giving the go-ahead for this strike. The government of Israel releasing this image, so obviously quite significant. These are some of the Lebanese people who have been displaced now by this now new military offensive, an escalation here by Israel. And these are some of the additional bombings because this has continued past Friday. These are some of the bombings that have continued in Lebanon. And we also know that in addition to this, they have bombed, begun bombing Yemen as well. I'll speak to that in a moment. But Emily, just, you know, to get your reaction here off the top, what do you see as the significance of this and

where things go from here? Well, and obviously what Israel wants to do is create a buffer zone between northern Israel and southern Lebanon. They say, reports say at least, that they're hoping that it would be 20 miles, something like that. And so what you would need to do in order to achieve that is going to look like a lot more of what we're seeing on the screen right now. And they want to, Hezbollah started obviously bombing on October 8th. And that's where I think it's like 60,000 Israelis who are in northern Israel have been living elsewhere since. And so what Israel wants to do is bring everyone who's been displaced back to northern Israel.

And in order to do that, they're trying to create like a 20-mile buffer zone. So again, it's just, we're going to see a lot more of this to come. There's no other way to put it. Let's put A4. Guys, let's skip ahead to A4 and put this up on the screen.

This is something that an Israeli official said to NBC. They said, we decided to kill Nasrallah after concluding he will not agree to any solution that is not tied to ending the war in Gaza. And I think that, first of all, it's an extraordinary statement and, you know, reveals a lot that isn't exactly hidden about the Israeli government mentality. The reason that Hezbollah has been engaged in this, you can't even really call it tit-for-tat because it's continued to be, you know, quite one-sided in terms of the Israelis firing far more rockets. But this tit-for-tat exchange with Israel was all tied to

Israel's onslaught in Gaza. And so, you know, this statement is basically an admission that Hezbollah was willing to come to terms. And we saw that when there was a basically an admission that Hezbollah was willing to come to terms. And we saw that when there was a temporary ceasefire, Hezbollah stopped firing rockets. And they were willing to do that, but only if it was tied to an end to the assault on Gaza. And since they were, you know, unwilling to bend on that standard, and Israel in particular was unwilling to bend on that standard, this Israeli official saying, yeah, we thought we had to take him out. It reminds me of the decision also, Emily, to assassinate Ismail Haniyeh, who was the, you know, head of Hamas and the chief negotiator, who actually, in the context of Hamas, was much more open to this sort of, you know, negotiated ceasefire to end the Israeli onslaught in that

territory in Gaza. And so when you assassinate him, which happened in Tehran, which was also an extraordinary provocation towards Iran, that means that now the top negotiator for Hamas is Yahya Son, who is far more hawkish, who's seen as being the mastermind behind the October 7th attacks. You know, obviously it won't come as any surprise to those who are watching the show. It's been quite clear for a while that Bibi Netanyahu is not interested in a permanent ceasefire, does not see that as a goal, and has systematically gone about trying to make sure that there is no possibility of that lasting ceasefire on the table. And then, you know, the other thing to say about this, quite obviously, is now you have

another provocation towards Iran. There have been multiple efforts to try to draw them in more broadly to the conflict. And you have an incredibly weak U.S. government that, while they'll say, oh, we think only diplomacy is the answer, at the same time, you know, they back up Israel no matter what they do, even at a cost of many civilian lives here. Very different, for example, if you want to compare to the very targeted operation that we used to kill Osama bin Laden. Very different approach here in terms of the civilian deaths and civilian infrastructure that has been destroyed already in this exchange. And so it puts us also, because of our weak leadership, on the brink of a, you know, terrifying escalation, terrifying

broader war, and terrifying involvement of U.S. soldiers more directly, especially as we already have 40,000 soldiers at least in the region. The big question also, obviously, is for what? What is accomplished here? And there has been a lot of sort of hawkish people over the last couple of days posting these fairly stunning images of everyone in the Hezbollah chain of command who has been taken out by Israel recently. Jared Kushner tweeted something like, Israel has killed more of the people on America's most wanted list in the last two days than America has in 20 years, and that's been a huge line. What's interesting, though, is that reports about the reconstitution of Hamas, for example,

just since in Jabalia and other places in Israel, just since some of the intense bombing late last year and early this year, you then have to wonder. I mean, we're not going to be talking about the Houthis. We're going to be talking about what comes out of all of this. People in Hezbollah right now are recognizing Nasrallah as a quote, sacred martyr. This doesn't, this may have a really powerful effect on the chain of command, but we don't know how significantly this actually wipes out the power of Hezbollah, how big of a setback this actually is out the power of Hezbollah, how big of a setback this actually is for them.

Yeah. There seems to have been, I think Ryan spoke and you spoke about this previously, you know, Iran, after Ismail Haniyeh was assassinated in their capital on the eve of their president's inauguration, there was this expectation that Iran will respond, right? Because, I mean, you can imagine if it was us and some foreign dignitary was in our capital, and that's the way they see him, and he was assassinated under our nose before Joe Biden was inaugurated or Donald Trump was inaugurated.

Yeah. You can imagine how we would respond. And they didn't because they had this sense of what Israel wants, what our adversary wants us to do is to respond in an aggressive manner. And I think it's been, you know, a lot the same with Hezbollah of they recognized that the game Bibi was playing was to try to draw them in to a massive escalation. And so the sense was like, why give our adversaries what they want? But at this point, you're at a position where it's

like Israel is not going to, they're not going to stop. So you either just sort of point, you're at a position where it's like, Israel is not going to, they're not going to stop. So you either just sort of like, you know, lay down and accept their dominance, or you escalate on your own, you know, behalf or respond in some way that leads further up that chain of escalation. And that's kind of where we sit right now. I saw a thread from Arnaud Bertrand, who we've had on the show before, that I thought was really interesting and something for everybody to contemplate. Like, take out, if you can, of your mind who these specific players are and just think about the moment that we sit at right now in global history, which is we're at a pivot point where the post-World War II international order, led by the sole superpower of the U.S., is either dead or dying. And we're birthing right now what we're doing, what we're engaged in, what we're allowing, what we're seeing, what's being accepted.

Those are the things that are going to set the terms of this next era. So right now, the terms of the next era looks like, you know, indiscriminately bombing hospitals, schools, refugee camps, taking out a thousand civilians to assassinate one adversary. Those are the sorts of things right now. Those are the precedents that are being set for what this new era could look like. It also looks like an era where, you know, you can just decide, okay, I want a buffer zone in Lebanon, so I'm just going to take it, right? I want a buffer zone in Gaza, so I'm just going to take it. Or you could look at the Russian, you know, invasion of Ukraine. They just wanted to take it. Like, those are the sort of precedents that are

being laid down right now that have broader reach. And that's not to undermine the specifics for the horror for the human beings who are involved right now, but have broader reach even than just this conflict in this moment. And that's part of why a lot of times people ask, like, oh, well, why do you care so much about this one thing? I think his thread helped to explain in a way I haven't been able to fully elucidate why it feels like this is such a pivot point and why it matters so much when you do have the world sort of declining superpower tacitly agreeing and then affirmatively shipping the arms to create a new order in which it's not like we ever fully lived up to the World War II commitments of civilians being off limits and territorial integrity, et cetera, but where those things are completely swept away and it's just the sort of law of the jungle, might makes right, you can do whatever the hell you want as long as you've got the guns and the weapons to accomplish it.

I actually think that's what's fascinating about this entire post-October 7th conflict, and it was a huge through line of the pre-October 7th conflict as well. But it's the countries that were the thought leaders in the post-World War II order. The people who were, it's always been the case. I mean, since the last 100 years, the people who were saying what we're going to do now is different. We are not going to have more Dresdens. We are not going to have more. We are going to protect civilians. And the countries who have wielded international law as a sort of realist tool, as a nationalist tool, as a tool of power

rather than as a sort of moral standard, you have this like unevenness in countries like the United States where a lot of people in public polling look at what's happened since October 7th and are really disgusted by what Hamas did, and they're really disgusted by the Israeli response. And so people want to live up to something better. It's just the government of the United States will invoke international law when it's Putin and then sort of dance around it and say, well, it's not really legitimate in this case when it's in Israel. And it's this, Israel challenges the United States fundamentally. Absolutely. To whether our leaders actually believe what they wield as a tool against other countries. Yeah. I mean, even just the, you know, the booby trapping of walkie-talkies and pagers, right? And causing them to, this is an infiltration of the civilian supply chain. And not only were there some civilians

who were among those who had these booby trap devices, but it's definitionally indiscriminate when you cause these things to explode, when people are at the market, at home, with their kids holding it. And this was not just, like, accepted. This was celebrated. And I found it quite noteworthy that Leon Panetta, who's, you know, former director of the CIA, et cetera, et cetera, and not normally someone I make common cause with, sounded an alarm about that and said, effectively, we're opening Pandora's box here and by any definition, this is terrorism. And so again, those are the sorts of precedents that are being set right now as this wasn't just accepted, this was celebrated by effectively the

entire U.S. political elite, whether it be Democrats or Republicans, with just a small handful of much derided exceptions. So, you know, we are authoring right now, we're authoring the world that we're all going to have to live in. And that's part of why, you know, I find what's happening so troubling and so horrifying. I want to go back to the very latest. I saw a headline this morning that, you know, we're all preparing. So far, these have all been airstrikes. There's an expectation, and Israel has announced that they're likely to go forward with a full ground invasion in Lebanon. I saw this morning that they had some special operations teams go in, sort of like a reconnaissance intelligence gathering mission to lay the groundwork for that very likely ground invasion. We also, as I mentioned before, are seeing now Israel striking sites in Yemen as well. We can put a three up on the screen,

the latest reporting about this. Israel's military say they launched a series of air raids on Houthi targets in Yemen, further heightening fears of wider regional conflict. I would say we're already at that further regional conflict. Military said dozens of aircraft, including fighter jets, attacked power plants and seaport facilities at the Ras Issa and Hodeidah ports. The attack killed at least four people, one port worker and three electric engineers, according to the local TV, citing health authorities. Ryan actually indicated Hodeidah. I didn't realize this is one of the key ports that's been used for humanitarian aid into Yemen. Yemen, of course, suffering brutally under, you know, a blockade and a famine that was, you know, devastating to the population there.

And Israel's also right now blockading Lebanon in certain key ways and seizing Gaza and the West Bank. I pulled this clip from Al Jazeera just explaining the importance of these particular targets. Let's go ahead and take a listen. Help us understand the significance of Hodeidah. This is really a key entry point for humanitarian aid to a country that has been suffering from malnutrition, starvation. The United Nations has warned of famine in several areas. What does it mean for Hodeidah to be bombed? I believe this is the main goal of the Israeli regime, is to put pressure on the Yemeni people. Hodeidah port, as you say, is one of the most economic cities for Yemen, and to target that port means that Israeli want or trying to close it

and as well targeting those power station. This means it will affect only the Yemeni civilians because Israeli, they know that they cannot actually target military installation or actually stop or prevent Yemeni from targeting Israel because they know that Saudi, for example, they have conducted more than 250,000 airstrikes. They couldn't stop the Yemeni army.

And as well, hundreds of attacks by the United States and the UK in the last several months, they could not stop. That's why I believe they will continue targeting civilian infrastructure that affects actually all Yemenis. But as well, I want to mention that Mohammed Abdeslam, the spokesperson of Ansarullah, also known as the Houthi, he said that those attacks actually will not stop or prevent or obstruct Yemeni from attacking the Zionist state of Israel or from keeping or continuing to support the people of Lebanon

and as well the people of Palestine. So for more on this, we've got Dr. Trita Parsi standing by to help us understand where things go from here. So let's go ahead and get to that. Over the past six years of making my true crime podcast, Hell and Gone, I've learned one thing. No town is too small for murder. I'm Catherine Townsend.

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

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

call the Hell and Gone Murder Line at 678-744-6145. Listen to Hell and Gone Murder Line on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. She was a decorated veteran, a Marine who saved her comrades, a hero. She was stoic, modest, tough. Someone who inspired people. Everyone thought they knew her. Until they didn't. I remember sitting on her couch and asking her,

is this real? Is this real? Is this real? Is this real? I just couldn't wrap my head around what kind of person would do that to another person that was getting treatment that was, you know, dying. This is a story all about trust and about a woman named Sarah Kavanaugh. I've always been told I'm a really good listener, right? And I maximized that while I was lying. Listen to Deep Cover, The Truth About Sarah on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I think everything that might have dropped in 95 has been labeled the golden years of hip hop.

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

be like yo your dad's like really the goat like he's a legend so he gets it what does it mean to leave behind a music legacy for your family it means a lot to me just having a good catalog and just being able to make people feel good like that's what's really important and that's what stands out is that our music changes people's lives for the better. So the fact that my kids get to benefit off of that, I'm really happy, or my family in general. Let's talk about the music that moves us. To hear this and more on how music and culture collide, listen to We Need to Talk from the Black Effect Podcast Network

on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Joining us now to talk more about the American political response and the global political response and the global political response to the latest out of the Middle East is Dr. Trita Parsi with the Quincy Institute. Always great to see you, sir. Likewise. So the response that we've gotten from the Biden administration is to the killing of Nisrola and the escalation with regard to Israel and Lebanon is incredibly predictable. We've seen this many times before. You can put this up on the screen, A7. Biden says he's very upset. Biden told confidants in New York this

week he was livid at Netanyahu, did not believe the Israeli leader wanted to reach peace. Oh, really? You don't. He was frustrated about how often Netanyahu had humiliated Blinken and the president himself. I mean, what can we even say about these reports at this point, Dr. Parsi? I don't think we've ever seen a strategy of being politically pathetic being seen as a winning political strategy in an election season. But that seems to exactly be what the administration is doing. Bottom line is, Biden has not been trying to stop this, because while he says that he's trying to stop it, while he says that he wants to avoid an escalation, he has been providing Israel with the weapons, with the money, with the political protection, with the diplomatic protection to be able to do exactly what Biden says that he does not want to see Israel doing. So you can't really claim that you're trying to prevent someone from doing something while you are simultaneously providing him or her with the means to do it.

And at this point, the credibility of the United States is, you know, in shatters because after having said that they've been working night and day around the clock to secure a ceasefire and have absolutely nothing to show for it except a couple of leaks about how frustrated they are, It is the Biden administration itself that has revealed its weakness. Well, let's talk about, you were in New York last week as people from all over the world were gathering for the United Nations General Assembly. And Biden's posture on this doesn't just obviously affect him domestically. It affects the United States diplomatically, geopolitically. So what were you able to pick up on, even from just what you've seen over the last few days, about how Biden's handling of Netanyahu ordering

the strike from his hotel room in New York City when he was there for the UN General Assembly, how has that, do you think, affected the United States just in the last few days? I think one of the things, there were many important things that were seen at the UN in the last couple of days. One is the degree to which Israel is completely isolated outside of the West, but also within the European Union itself, in which numerous European leaders came out with very, very strong statements. Now, I know, of course, the strong statements is not necessarily what changes the course of history, but it is important to note that this isolation is the outcome of Israel's own actions and its complete disregard for international law. So, yes, Israel has won numerous military victories in the past. It has nevertheless

led to this situation with October 7th, in which Israel, according to itself, cannot live in peace with its neighbors. So just winning military victories clearly is not the pathway alone to be able to reach a peace and security for the long term for Israel. But that lesson seems to have been completely lost. And the other thing I think that is really crucial is to see the moral plunge on the Western side, because take a look at how the United States reacted under the Bush Jr. administration when the Israelis assassinated Sheikh Yassin, who was the former head of Hamas in 2004. Seven people were killed, civilians were killed in that strike. And the United States at the time heavily criticized and even condemned the Israeli strike. Today, you have a situation in which Nasrallah is killed with several hundred others alongside him, civilians. And there is not a word

about that coming from the Biden administration. The Bush Jr. administration seems to have a stronger moral fiber in this sense than what the Biden administration does. This is noted on the international scene, because simultaneously while this is taking place, the Biden administration is talking a big game about the rules-based international order, talking about the importance of defending Ukraine, because otherwise what good is international law if superpowers can break it? So that the hypocrisy, the double standards

are just so blatant. It was a very depressed atmosphere at the UN because when the United States behaves like this, with this level of hypocrisy, with this level of double standards, it paves the way for everyone else to do so as well. And that will bring about a much more anarchic and chaotic situation internationally than we have seen in the past. What do you think are the likely possible outcomes next? Where does the world go from here? What do you see as the most likely scenarios? Well, I think in the immediate term, it's of course going to be determined with what Israel decides to do in terms of the land invasion of Lebanon. That seems extremely likely. The Israelis believe that they have Hezbollah in a very dire situation, which is true.

And instead of allowing Hezbollah the time to regroup, rebalance itself, Israel feels that it needs to go in right now. The problem, of course, is that if Israel does this, it will very likely at some point lead to a situation in which the Iranians will conclude that Israel is not going to stop at Israel in Lebanon. It will continue. It will go on all the way to try to rebalance the situation in the region by also significantly degrading Iran. If the Iranians come to that conclusion, then the rational response from their standpoint likely will be to act sooner rather than later. And then we will have the very large regional war that Biden claims that he's been trying to prevent for the last 11 months.

And, you know, we heard, obviously, Netanyahu talk about how the goal of the post-October 7th conflict would be to eliminate Hamas. And as you just mentioned, this has clearly been a significant blow to Hezbollah just in the last couple of weeks. How significant has it been? Because I think there's still an open question about how significantly Hamas has been damaged over the course of the last year. Crystal and I were talking earlier about reconstitution of Hamas in areas like Japalia. What do you make of how significant this is to Hezbollah in the near term and in the long term? I think in some ways the blow to Hezbollah may actually have been worse than the blow to Hamas because of the fact that the Israelis managed to crack the communication system of

Hezbollah. That makes it much more difficult for them to be able to regroup. They also clearly know that there are plenty of Israeli intelligence assets inside of Hezbollah itself. They've not been able to identify them or root them out. That also makes it very difficult for them to be able to regroup. So that is a blow that Hezbollah has suffered. That is not a military blow. It's an intelligence blow that is not necessarily the same as Hamas has suffered. At the end of the day, Sinwar is still there after 11 months. And the Hamas operatives have been using non-electronic communication systems for quite some time,

precisely because of the awareness of how dangerous it would be for them if Israel managed to crack it. Having said that, I do also want to say another thing. There are stories going out there about how this was a major intelligence coup for Israel, and this is why they managed to get Hezbollah, the Hezbollah leader. Without a doubt, Israel has support some significant intelligence crew, including the Pager bombings. What is not being said, however, is that they actually already had two or three opportunities to take out Nasrallah back in 2006, and they failed. They bombed, but he survived. The difference this time around is that they dropped 85 bombs, 2,000-pound bombs. It is not an improved communications or intelligence operation. They knew in the past where he was, but they were not given the leeway, the carte blanche from the United States to drop 85 2,000-pound bombs on a residential neighborhood to kill everyone there,

including Nasrallah. That's the difference. Dr. Parsi, I also wanted to ask you about the treatment of the American citizens who are in the region. If we can put ASICs up on the screen. So, you know, quickly after October 7th, the State Department began booking charter flights for Americans who wanted to leave Israel. And that contrasts quite significantly with the treatment here, where the State Department has said, hey, if you want to leave Lebanon, where you might get bombed with, you know, U.S.-supplied 2,000-pound bunker buster bombs, book your own flight and good luck. And obviously, many of these flights are being canceled. They cost thousands and thousands of dollars, etc. So just an extraordinary discrepancy between our treatment

of our own citizens based on whether they are in Israel versus in Lebanon. Absolutely. And this is coming at a time in which the Harris campaign knows very well that it needs to do some outreach, build some bridges to the Arab and Muslim communities. And it seems, at least in the last couple of weeks, that they have done absolutely nothing. And in fact, even the most simplest of things, making sure that American citizens are finding a way to get out of a war zone, seems to be a bridge too far for them to do, despite the very crucial impact they could have on the elections. This is putting us truly at a loss.

I was speaking to a diplomat from a South American country last night who also has a large number of citizens in Lebanon, and they're doing everything they can right now to make sure that all of them can get out safely. And they were stunned as well to see how little is done on the American side, even though the American number of citizens in Lebanon, I think, dwarfs that of this South American country. And who's running that Biden administration policy? I think it's always a question worth asking as we are in this ongoing constitutional crisis where the president himself appears to be incapable of fully managing the jobs,

the job. So is that, the reason I think that's relevant is because it speaks to what could happen in a potential Harris administration. So do you have thoughts on that, Dr. Parsley, and just how even- I wish I had a good answer to you on that question. It has been increasingly mysterious over the last couple of months, I would say, particularly given some of the incomprehensible decisions. And it goes back all the way to what we saw, for instance, in December 2023 on the two-month anniversary of October 7th, the White House issuing a statement only mentioning the Israeli victims. No word at all about the more than at the time about 20,000 Palestinians who had been killed. How is it even possible to make an oversight of

that kind, particularly mindful of the fact that only weeks earlier the administration was doing outreach to the Arab and Muslim communities because of the uncommitted vote actually gotten a lot of momentum and they recognized that they needed to do something about it. And then they issue a statement like that. So this is just continuous and it's just intensifying the mystery. Yeah. I saw a clip this morning where Joe Biden was asked, a reporter yelled to him a question about Israel's strikes in Yemen. And he seemed to misunderstand and think they were talking about literal labor strikes and started talking about collective bargaining agreements, which, listen, you know, anyone can mishear a question, right? But speaks to some deeper

concerns we have about his capabilities and his ability to even understand what's happening in the region, let alone what the broader implications are for American interests at this point. Thank you so much for joining us this morning. It's always so great to hear what you have to say and your analysis of where we go from here. So thank you so much. Thank you so much for having me. Our pleasure. Over the past six years of making my true crime podcast, Hell and Gone, I've learned one thing. No town is too small for murder. I'm Katherine Townsend. I've received hundreds of messages from people across the country begging for help with unsolved murders.

I was calling about the murder of my husband at the cold case. They've never found her. And it haunts me to this day. The murderer is still out there. Every week on Hell and Gone Murder Line, I dig into a new case, bringing the skills I've learned as a journalist and private investigator to ask the questions no one else is asking. If you have a case you'd like me to look into, call the Hell and Gone Murder Line at 678-744-6145.

Listen to Hell and Gone Murder Line on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. She was a decorated veteran, a Marine who saved her comrades, a hero. She was stoic, modest, tough, someone who inspired people. Everyone thought they knew her, until they didn't. I remember sitting on her couch and asking her, is this real? Is this real? Is this real? Is this real? I just couldn't wrap my head around what kind of person would do that to another person that was getting treatment, that was, you know, dying.

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

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

Just having a good catalog and just being able to make people feel good. Like, that's what's really important, and that's what stands out, is that our music changes people's lives for the better. So the fact that my kids get to benefit off of that, I'm really happy. Or my family in general. Let's talk about the music that moves us. To hear this and more on how music and culture collide, listen to We Need to Talk from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. All right, guys, as mentioned before, the vice presidential debate is tomorrow night. We are

going to be live streaming. Very excited about that. Also, as a reminder, we got a little discount for you guys through Election Day. I'm going to put this up on the screen. $15 off. So it's basically like you get from now until Election Day free. And the code is BP2024. So avail yourself of that if you can. Also, reminder, we are 35 days until the election, which makes me feel a little sick to my stomach, if I'm being honest with you. This has gone very, very quickly. So to preview the VP debate and all of the things that are going on, we are happy to be joined in studio this morning by Shelby Talcott. She is a reporter for Semaphore. Great to see you, Shelby. Welcome back. Thanks for having me.

Yeah, of course. So I guess, what do you think are the expectations for this debate? J.D. Vance is a little better known than Tim Walz. Tim Walz is a little bit lesser known. You know, certainly Donald Trump is probably the main character, as always, in terms of this presidential context. So what do you think are the expectations for this debate going in? I go back and forth on how important this presidential debate is. And part of me thinks it could be more important than a normal presidential debate just because it is potentially the last debate of the entire campaign. Right. And also, I think there's an argument to be made that could be particularly important for Donald Trump's campaign because of how the last debate went for him. But for Tim Walz, it's really important as well because he's a lesser known figure.

And so I just I I think that overall it is a more important debate than normal vice presidential debates. Both of the campaigns are sort of doing their normal expectation settings. We had a report over the weekend noting that Tim Walz was really nervous going into this presidential debate. Now how much of that is actual nerves versus they're trying to set the expectations pretty low. Because remember Tim Walz was the candidate who when he was being interviewed by Kamala Harris told her hey I'm not really that good at debates. And so it'll be really interesting to see, I think, in particular,

how he performs because we've seen a lot less of him. Yeah. When we can put B3 up on the screen, that's sort of what we were talking about. This is an NPR look at how much VP debates actually matter. So I want to get your take on that, Shelby, as well, how the campaigns, and let's particularly ask about the Vance campaign, are anticipating what this could do to the shape of the race. How are they approaching that question? And I'll add to that through this lens of the weirdness subplot to the entire election, because that's been basically the fundamental kind of difference that Tim Walz is trying to produce between himself and J.D. Vance. That guy's weird. And that's something that J.D. Vance has battled ever since he was named the

candidate. So on the Vance camp, where you've been talking to sources, what are they thinking about in terms of how that contrast may come out? Yeah, this is, J.D. Vance, to be clear, has done a lot of interviews and press avails. I think as of a week or two ago, he had done 115 since becoming the vice presidential nominee. So there's an argument to be made that he is already pretty well known. He's been on adversarial networks. He's been on the friendly networks. So that has sort of helped his campaign in combating that weird image. But this is sort of the first time we're going to see them go one-on-one.

So it is a really big opportunity for the Vance campaign to show or to push back on that narrative that he is weird, right? And that's something that I think we're going to see them try to do. At the same time, when you talk to Donald Trump's campaign, they historically have not put too much stake in the vice presidential option. So I remember talking to his campaign several months ago before really the vice presidential talk was really brewing. And the big narrative that they felt was it's not that important. The vice presidential pick doesn't make a huge difference.

Donald Trump really feels like if people are gonna vote for him, they're gonna vote for him. They're not gonna vote for him based on who his vice presidential pick is. So in that nature, I think the campaign is sort of doesn't think it's gonna make a huge difference. They're relaxed about it.

I mean, he even said that himself at that National Association for Black Journalists event. It was like, eh, VP, they're telling me that doesn't matter anyway. So he's even said it publicly. He said it publicly. So we know Donald Trump doesn't really do traditional debate prep. He likes to sit in a room, have people sort of throw questions. Not that he doesn't prepare.

He just doesn't do it in quite the traditional way. Kamala Harris did a very traditional debate prep, like hold herself up in a hotel, had someone playing the part of Trump, you know, went through that rigorous process. I know Tim Walz has, Pete Buttigieg is playing J.D. Vance, which I actually think is kind of a good choice to play that role. I could see him channeling that pretty well. How is J.D. Vance going about preparing for this debate? J.D. Vance is different than Donald Trump. So he's sort of doing a mix of traditional debate prep while still going out on the campaign trail pretty aggressively over the past few weeks. So he is going to do a full mock debate trial. And Tom Emmer, the Republican from Minnesota, has been playing Tim Walz. He's doing murder boards, which is sort of sessions where— Tell us about that. Yes, murder boards.

Just heated rhetoric, shall we? There's sessions where essentially they're focused on some of those vulnerabilities, which of course include the fact that he has said several things on the campaign trail that Donald Trump himself hasn't endorsed in terms of policies. It includes, obviously, I'm sure the cats and dogs rhetoric that we have heard from JD Vance. So those are the sessions where they sort of focus in on those vulnerabilities.

But at the same time, when I talked to his campaign, they've said, well, he's done so many interviews that we're less concerned about those kinds of questions and more concerned about how to combat who Tim Walz is and how he's going to come up on the debate stage. Yeah. I mean, that does make some sense because, listen, J.D. Vance has been out there taking tough questions and having to spar. And I'm pretty shocked by how much the Harris campaign has buried Tim Walz, who, of all these candidates, has the highest favorability rating, got the job primarily because he nailed it in these cable news interviews.

And then they just have completely buried him, I guess, out of fear that he would overshadow Kamala Harris, who is sort of famously uncomfortable in interview settings and doing very, very little in terms of media. Yeah. And I think that's something that I think that maybe is a mistake we're going to see on the debate stage. Yeah. Because when I talk to both of the campaigns, particularly, you know, when I talk to Donald

Trump's team, when I talk to J.D. Vance's team, when I talk to Kamala Harris's team, that everybody agrees that reps, it's just like in sports. Yeah. The more you do something, the better you are and the more you're comfortable about it. That's right. So you have J.D. Vance, who's done over 100 press avails and interviews. And then you have Tim Walz, who is I'm pretty sure he's done less than 10. And so that alone could be could be interesting to see because, you know, is it a situation where Tim Walz is is normally good in an interview aspect, but just hasn't had the reps recently?

And so he's just feeling more nervous. Yeah, that's entirely possible, I think. Very possible. Now, how are these campaigns preparing for the potential of fact checks? We have this tear sheet before. This is CBS News saying, actually, it's going to approach the debate more like CNN approached the first Trump-Biden debate, which is allowing the candidates to fact check each other, but not interjecting like David Muir did, sort of notoriously at this point in the last

presidential debate. So what are they thinking in terms of those moments? Because Vance has, one of Vance's strengths is seen as actually his performance when he goes on with like Dana Bash in a CNN, a hostile CNN interview. But if there's no sort of, that was almost like a cope after the last debate. There were some legitimate complaints about, there were some legitimate complaints about the moderation, but it was the big talking point coming out of the debate. So if that's not there almost as a foil, what are they thinking in terms of that? I think Tim, I think Tim Walz's campaign wants to focus more on Donald Trump's policy. So despite this being a vice presidential debate, he's going to be really honing in on the Donald Trump policy aspect of it. When you talk to J.D. Vance's team, again, they go back to the fact that he has done

so many of these interviews, and they sound pretty confident that he's going to be able to sort of push back on and sort of self-fact check despite the fact that the moderators might not. He's good in those moments, I think. He's had the practice. He's been with Dana Bash. He's good in those moments, I think. He's had the practice. He's been with Dana Bash. He's been on MSNBC. And so they're less concerned and have sort of been prepping a little bit less on that side of things just because he's done it so much over the past few months.

How do you think he handles abortion? Because this was one of the big missteps he gets asked predictably in a Sunday News Show interview about whether Donald Trump would veto a national abortion ban. And sort of under pressure, he's like, yeah, I think he would. And then Trump gets asked about it in the debate. And he's like, well, J.D. said that, but to be honest, we hadn't talked about it. So sort of indicating like, no, I wouldn't veto that. As far as I know, this tension of what the campaign's actual position is remains unresolved. So how does J.D. Vance handle a situation like that where it's kind of unclear what exactly he's supposed to be repping for his boss? Yeah, I think we got a preview of how he's going to handle those kinds of questions.

A few weeks later, he was asked on Meet the Press about that moment on the debate stage from Donald Trump. And he said, well, you know, I've learned my lesson about getting ahead of Donald Trump. So I do anticipate if there's a question to that effect, that's going to be sort of his- He'll just dodge by saying, yeah, I don't know. He'll just say, I've learned my lesson. But at the same time, during that same interview, he also seemed to get ahead of Donald Trump on health insurance. That's right. Yeah, that's right. He started talking about how Donald Trump's plan includes separating people into high-risk pools. And I asked the campaign if that was their policy, and they declined to directly answer whether that was their policy. So I think the problem,

the risk that J.D. Vance has on Tuesday night is that historically, when I talk to people on the Hill who have covered him, he likes chatting. He's a little bit nerdy. He likes chatting about policy. He likes to riff off of policy. And I don't know if it's he doesn't understand that his words hold more meaning now or if these are truly Donald Trump's policy plans and he just hasn't rolled them out yet. But there's a risk, I think, that he gets too bogged down in policy. And we end up hearing more of these situations where J.D. Vance previews a policy that Donald Trump has not yet endorsed. At the end of the day, it doesn't really matter, though, because, I mean, it's not like I don't get the sense Trump is like mad at him for that stuff. No. And unfortunately, in a lot of ways,

we're living with this is like a post-policy type of campaign. So the specifics of, I mean, Donald Trump got away at the debate with saying like, oh, I've got a concept of a plan on healthcare. Healthcare, which how many years do we spend litigating the ins and outs of healthcare? And so even if J.D. Vance is just like, make it up on the fly what Donald Trump's policy is, because even Donald Trump doesn't know

what Donald Trump's policy is, at the end of the day, sadly, I'm not sure it really matters. Yeah, I do think overall, on both sides of the spectrum, this is a very policy-light presidential campaign. And Donald Trump, to be clear, despite J.D. Vance getting ahead of him on some of these things,

he really likes J.D. Vance. He sees him on TV. He sees him go on these adversarial networks. He likes his personality. He likes how he pushes back. His networks. He likes his personality. He likes how he pushes back. His beard. His beard, apparently.

And so that's the ultimate thing is if Donald Trump doesn't care that J.D. Vance potentially gets ahead of him on things, it doesn't really matter. Well, so can we just do, my last question for you, Shelby, is a vibe check. Like you're talking to people in these circles, VP debate, as we just talked about, 35 days left until the election. There was just a near assassination attempt a couple of weeks ago. So in the Vance camp, at least, what's the morale? How are the vibes? I think the vibes are pretty good from J.D. Vance's camp. Now, you know, when I talk to people on the campaign, whether it's J.D. Vance's team or Donald Trump's team, which is essentially one and the same at this point, there are certainly nerves in terms of depending on who you ask on how they're doing. They'll give different answers. Some people say it's 50-50. Some people

are convinced Donald Trump is going to win. Some people are really frustrated about the dynamics of the campaign overall. But J.D. Vance's team is sort of full steam ahead. They're pretty focused. They're pretty confident in him as a vice presidential candidate. And they know that he goes out there and he can do these interviews and he performs pretty well. He's certainly had some hiccups, right? The weeks of dog and cat rhetoric and comments was not something they wanted to deal with. Really? But, yeah. They wanted to deal with it.

Surprising. Donald Trump didn't seem afraid of dealing with that since he's the one who blew it up nationally on the debate stage himself. His, their advisors. Yeah, I see. His team sort of has quietly said, you know, well, I don't know why we're talking about this. Yeah.

But at the end of the day, I think there's a lot of confidence internally in J.D. Vance's policy experience. And he is somebody who prepares a lot. And so I feel like they're feeling more confident than some of Donald Trump's advisers were for his presidential debate. How do they explain how unpopular he is if they're happy with him? And then, you know, also in the converse, like, Republicans really hate Tim Walz. They think he's such a disaster. He's the most popular guy on the ticket. So what is their understanding of that?

I think the argument I've heard from a few folks has been, A, well, Tim Walz hasn't been out there. So Americans just don't really know him. So he's sort of been sheltered in this cocoon that J.D. Vance hasn't because J.D. Vance has gone out and taken the tough questions, yada, yada, yada. But I think the other argument is I think they just don't really care necessarily because they're— They want him to be the attack dog and they don't mind him being a bit of a villain. They want him to be the attack dog. They don't mind that he's seen as the bad guy. And that's, again, why I think this vice presidential debate could potentially be important for him. Because if people come out and see him in a different light than what the Kamala Harris campaign has been putting out, it could help him.

I'm not super surprised that the vibes are good in the Vance camp. Because I feel like, if anything, they're kind of rubbing their hands together with Tim Walz, expecting that J.D. will be able to actually have someone he can start talking to about, like, the late-term abortions. He can flip that question. They see it this way. Transgender issues, they can flip the question on him because Tim Walz has that. And J.D. Vance, that's how J.D. Vance sees his strength on the campaign trail is being able to flip the media narrative. So I bet they're actually kind of looking to lean into that. Yeah, we have heard less expectation settings from J.D. Vance's team compared to Tim Walz's team. And I think that's notable because typically in a presidential debate, both of the campaigns are really doing expectation setting. I mean, Donald Trump

historically likes to set the bar extremely low for his opponents, but his advisors will sort of expectation set for him. Yeah. But we're not really hearing as much of the expectation setting from Vance's team. And I think that's because they're pretty confident. They know what J.D. Vance is good at. And a lot of what J.D. Vance is naturally good at is things that he's going to have to do on the debate stage. He's not going to just crumble. There's no doubt about it. Now, whether people like him at the end of it, I think, is a very different question.

Yeah. But you're not going to, you know, catch him off guard where he's just stuttering and stumbling and doesn't know what to do. You're not going to bait him in the really easy way that they did with Donald Trump, which was just embarrassing at the end of the day. So I think that makes a lot of sense. Shelby, thank you. It's so great to have insights from you. We appreciate you coming in. Thanks for having me.

Yeah, our pleasure. Over the past six years of making my true crime podcast, Hell and Gone, I've learned one thing. No town is too small for murder. I'm Katherine Townsend. I've received hundreds of messages from people across the country begging for help with unsolved murders. I was calling about the murder of my husband at the cold case. They've never found her. And it haunts me to this day.

The murderer is still out there. Every week on Hell and Gone Murder Line, I dig into a new case, bringing the skills I've learned as a journalist and private investigator to ask the questions no one else is asking. Police really didn't care to even try. She was still somebody's mother. She was still somebody's daughter. She was still somebody's sister.

There's so many questions that we've never gotten any kind of answers for. If you have a case you'd like me to look into, call the Hell and Gone Murder Line at 678-744-6145. Listen to Hell and Gone Murder Line on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. She was a decorated veteran, a Marine who saved her comrades, a hero. She was stoic, modest, tough, someone who inspired people. Everyone thought they knew her, until they didn't. I remember sitting on her couch and asking her,

is this real? Is this real? Is this real? Is this real? I just couldn't wrap my head around what kind of person would do that to another person that was getting treatment, that was, you know, dying. This is a story all about trust and about a woman named Sarah Kavanaugh. I've always been told I'm a really good listener, right? And I maximized that while I was lying.

Listen to Deep Cover, The Truth About Sarah on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I think everything that might have dropped in 95 has been labeled the golden years of hip-hop. It's Black Music Month, and We Need to Talk is tapping in. I'm Nyla Simone, breaking down lyrics, amplifying voices, and digging into the culture that shaped the soundtrack of our lives.

My favorite line on there was, my son and my daughter gonna be proud when they hear my old tapes. Now I'm curious, do they like rap along now? Yeah, because I bring him on tour with me and he's getting older now too so his friends are starting to understand what that type of music is and they're starting to be like yo your dad's like really the goat like he's a legend so he gets it what does it mean to leave behind a music legacy for your family it means a lot to me just having a good catalog and just being able to make people feel good like that's what's

really important and that's what stands out is that our music changes people's lives for the better so the fact that my kids get to benefit off of that I'm really happy or my family in general let's talk about the music that moves us to hear this and more on how music and culture collide listen to we need to talk from the black effect podcast network on the iheart radio app apple podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. All right, so heading into that vice presidential debate, we wanted to do a quick check on where the polls stand and who's at what chances in terms of November and the ultimate result here. So we are turning once again to Logan Phillips of Race to the White House. Great to see you, sir.

Great to see you, sir. Great to see you, too. So we got some interesting news last week about this one congressional district in Nebraska that we covered here. And this is significant because it counts for one electoral vote. There was a push to make Nebraska winner take all. Like most states are, that push failed. So now they're still going to be allocating electoral college votes by district. And we got a couple of relatively high quality polls in about how that district is leaning. We can put a C2 up on the screen here and get a sense. This is the CNN poll. It shows Harris plus 11 in Nebraska's second congressional district. Biden won it by just six in 2020. Aaron Blake of Pines helps explain why the Trump campaign was so keen to change how

Nebraska awards its electoral votes. What do you make, there was another poll that showed a similarly significant margin for Harris in this congressional district. Logan, what do you make of where things stand there right now, and why it matters? Yeah, I fully buy it. I mean, we had another poll that was plus nine, another one that was plus 15, and these are three top pollsters. And so this is really surprising because this was very close in 20, or pretty close in 2020. So there was a chance for Donald Trump to win it, but he might have messed up by focusing so hard on changing the rules 50 days before the election. I think he struck a nerve with the voters in any two because this is how they have political relevancy. The moment that happens, politicians are skipping Nebraska from that point on.

Yeah. And, you know, it was a five point race there. And then overnight, Harris's lead expanded to, you know, over 10 points in my polling average. And so we weren't seeing that anywhere else. So I think it's a direct reaction to it. And interesting. Can you tell us about any two basically like why that might be? What types of voters might have been animated by what happened? It's I believe it's the Omaha area, right? Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think it's along the same lines of when people were concerned in New Hampshire that maybe, although it didn't really come to play, that moving the primary date around in New Hampshire might annoy the voters there. This is so specific to that place's relevancy that even though it's a lot less political, I think, than New Hampshire, which is probably the most political of any of the states, it still is going to matter. And, you know, if it really annoys 5% of voters that might be in play, that's a game changer.

And so the reason why this one district matters, it probably doesn't seem like much because, hey, you need 270 to win. There's 538. Why focus so much on one? Well, the way the math has worked out for this decade, because every year, every 10 years, they decide, you know, how many electoral votes will be for each state based off population. This time around, if Harris wins the state she's expected to, and she wins Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin with Nebraska second, that gets her exactly to 270.

Wow, that is so crazy, which shows you why they were trying to change this. But also, it is understandable. It also exposes the absurdity of the electoral college system that if you aren't one of those swing areas, politicians literally don't care whether you exist or not. So it makes sense that they wanted to try to hold on to their political relevance here. I wanted to get your sense of this New York Times Siena polling that we have. Let's go and put this up on the screen. They did some polling of Wisconsin and Michigan in particular, and they found a very tight race. Kamala Harris up 49 to 47 in Wisconsin, just 48 to 47 in Michigan. This is another one of those

polls that had a large gap in Nebraska. No surprise Trump leading in the state of Ohio there as well. They polled Ohio in the context of also polling the very competitive Ohio Senate race there. But at least in the context of this poll, this shows some tightening in those quote unquote blue wall states. Is that consistent with what we're seeing across the board? Ever so slight tightening, I would say, across the board since the debate. And that kind of makes sense because you have high points and low points for candidates and tends to adjust a little more to the middle. I just think, you know, I don't want to be repetitive because I said this last time I was on, New York Times is a great pollster, but they've consistently, with the one exception, the last PA Michigan poll, been missing a few, or not missing, but they've been a few points to

the right of other pollsters. Yeah. So yeah, they might have it right, but chances are they're going to be a little bit to the right this cycle. So having a small lead in those states when everyone else showed you with a small but slightly better lead, I think is honestly a good sign for Harris. Yeah. And what are you seeing in Michigan? Because there's a lot being made in the tightening here that this could have been from the Dearborn area, that this could be hemorrhaging among Arab Americans, Muslim Americans around the Dearborn area in Michigan that when you have such a slim margin, it could wreck the whole

state for you electorally at least. Is there anything there? I think it's a valid concern, but I also think this is a bit of a narrative that the Harris campaign and the Slotkin campaign are all about because the last thing they want is their own voters in Michigan to not take it seriously. Yeah. And hey, Slotkin would love if national Democrats invest more in Michigan. So there's nothing wrong for Democrats to have the I'm concerned narrative because it gets their voters more likely to volunteer, more likely to donate. I don't see too much of a tiny thing in Michigan relative to other states, other than a tiny post-debate slippage.

You know, it's a really competitive state that she's more likely to win than the other electoral, than the other swing states. But I don't think things are falling apart there, at least not what I'm seeing in the polling. Gotcha. Guys, Logan is going to stick with us and reveal the latest from his forecast, the race to the White House forecast. That's going to be available for everyone later in the week, but we're going to post that exclusively for premium subscribers right away, you know, after we record it and post and all that good stuff. If you want to become a premium subscriber, we can put the discount back up on the screen,

$15 off through election day. Just enter in that code BP2024 so you can avail yourself of that discount. You can see more of Sagar's face. And you can see more of Sagar's face. Looking like that, mischievous. Is my blessing that I get to enjoy every day in here, genuinely. In any case, all right, we'll post all of this, like I said, later in the week, premium subscribers. Stick around. Logan, let's go ahead and put your model up on the screen here. Over the past six years of making my true crime podcast, Hell and Gone, I've learned one thing.

No town is too small for murder. I'm Katherine Townsend. I've received hundreds of messages from people across the country begging for help with unsolved murders. Every week on Hell and Gone Murder Line, I dig into a new case, bringing the skills I've learned as a journalist and private investigator to ask the questions no one else is asking. Police really didn't care to even try. She was still somebody's mother. She was still somebody's daughter.

She was still somebody's sister. There's so many questions that we've never gotten any kind of answers for. If you have a case you'd like me to look into, call the Hell and Gone Murder Line at 678-744-6145. Listen to Hell and Gone Murder Line on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. She was a decorated veteran, a Marine who saved her comrades, a hero. She was stoic, modest, tough, someone who inspired people.

Everyone thought they knew her Until They didn't I remember sitting on her couch And asking her Is this real? Is this real? Is this real? Is this real?

I just couldn't wrap my head around What kind of person would do that To another person That was Getting treatment That was You know Dying This is a story All about trust to another person that was getting treatment, that was, you know, dying. This is a story all about trust

and about a woman named Sarah Kavanaugh. I've always been told I'm a really good listener, right? And I maximized that while I was lying. Listen to Deep Cover, The Truth About Sarah on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I think everything that might have dropped in 95 has been labeled the golden years of hip hop. It's Black Music Month and We Need to Talk is tapping in. I'm Nyla Simone, breaking down lyrics, amplifying voices, and digging into the culture that shaped the soundtrack of our lives.

My favorite line on there was, my son and my daughter gonna be proud when they hear my old tapes. Now I'm curious, do they rap along now? Yeah, because I bring him on tour with me, and he's getting older now too, so his friends are starting to understand what that type of music is and they're starting to be like, yo, your dad's

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

Or my family in general. Let's talk about the music that moves us. To hear this and more on how music and culture collide, listen to We Need to Talk from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. More video is coming in of the utter devastation that is sweeping parts of the East Coast in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene.

Let's go ahead and roll some of this footage. It's really shocking and upsetting. The death toll, it should be noted as well, is approaching 100 as the time that we are recording this. It's at 89, expected to grow. And if you're looking at this video on your screen, you can understand why that's expected to grow because we are seeing stunning levels of flooding in places like Asheville, North Carolina, it's on your screen right now.

I mean just, that was a Wendy's, if you're listening to this, it was a Wendy's with the water almost all the way to the roof. Incredible levels of flooding. So Crystal, you've actually spent a lot of time in Asheville and in places that are being so heavily affected by this right now. It's shocking.

This video we're watching right now, too, is of a house floating down the street. And it is shocking. You know, I mean, this is not actually, this isn't a coastal area. This is western North Carolina. You know, it's the Great Smoky Mountains. It's truly one of my favorite parts of the entire country. This is in now in Florida. And the way that the path this hurricane took, you can see mudslides onto the highways. Many of the interstates, by the way, leading into this area are completely blocked

and closed. Here you see some of the roadway that just like, you know, fell, just fell apart. Here's the highway that fell apart. These are people recording from within their own homes. I believe this one, yeah, this was a hurricane house flood victim in Tampa. This one I believe also is in Florida. And the track that this hurricane took, it hit the Big Bend area of Florida. And then it came up through the inland areas and dumped just massive amounts of water on areas like Asheville, North Carolina. And so, you know, if you're a coastal Florida resident, you've seen hurricanes before, you evacuate, you know what to do. These are people who have never imagined that they would be hit

with a hurricane like this in a way that has just been utterly devastating. I mean, the images are unimaginable. People are stuck without food, without water, without gasoline, without the ability with cell phone. Yeah, no power, no cell, no Wi-Fi, nothing. And so you have people who are stranded and we don't know what condition they're in. You know, that's why there's a lot of fears that this death toll, which is approaching 100, will continue to rise because the devastation was because you saw some of the images of the bridges and roadways that have just utterly collapsed. Your best bet, according to what I'm reading, is to try some of these different mountain back roads to get out of the area because the main interstate highways have all been devastated. And we could put D2 up on the screen here. Some locals are describing this as biblical devastation in these North Carolina towns that

have been flooded by Helene. And from the images, you can understand why. Let me read to you a little bit from the story because it speaks to that, you know, just how unexpected it is to suffer something like this in this region. Beverly and Baxter Eller had lived in the same house in this small North Carolina hamlet for 37 years. Never once had it flooded. In 37 years. Never once. Until just before dawn on Friday as Hurricane Helene tore through the region. The water from the raging river rose fast and faster until it reached their yard.

The couple fled not a moment too soon to huddle with neighbors inside a Baptist church up the hill. On Saturday afternoon, they returned and found their home utterly destroyed. The manager of the county that includes Asheville, North Carolina says this is looking to be Buncombe County's own Hurricane Katrina. And the assistant emergency services Director says we have biblical devastation through the county. We have biblical flooding here. Put the next one up on the screen that gives the latest in terms of the death toll. At least 87 people killed in six different states, including at least 30 in North Carolina. The image here is a truck, you know, upside down, nose down, rivers, swollen creek there, and a road that had clearly been flooded at one point. And this article gets into how difficult it is to leave because multiple stretches of Interstates 40 and 26, which are the main roadways for traveling in and out of this area, are closed and will remain closed for God knows how long. You guys saw the devastation.

How long will it take to fix and repair these roadways? And search operations and recovery operations sadly do continue. So two feet of rain. Unbelievable. Two feet of rain dropped on this area. And it's just, it's unimaginable. It's absolutely unimaginable. So and the couple that was profiled briefly by the Washington Post, they right now, the Eller family, they don't know where their son is. They can't find their son. And in just that Washington Post article, you see the accounts of people who don't know where all of their children are. There are a lot of people missing. North Carolina, Kentucky's being hit really hard.

There are a lot of people missing. And so we're to nearly 100 fatalities already. As you mentioned, the emergency director in the county that the Washington Post also was reporting on has invoked the, quote, mass fatality plan. So these numbers are going to get worse and probably so much worse. So it's just, you know, this is, these areas like Asheville, for example, people have posted is in a floodplain. But that doesn't mean that people are used to it. It doesn't mean that it's obviously something that happens every year. There's such a thing as 100-year floods. This is, you know, this level, two feet of water. Yeah. It's not something that people, it's not the Florida coast, that's for sure. Right. And this hurricane strengthened very rapidly as it was coming over the Gulf. It

strengthened from a tropical storm and rapidly escalated to when it came ashore, it was a category four hurricane, which is of course close to the highest level. And so lots of devastation in Florida, the entire swath that it took, you know, really tons of devastation. And, you know, there is a sense that previous eras, like I remember being glued to the coverage of the horror and the failures of Hurricane Katrina. You know, I remember some of the massive media attention on hurricanes and natural disasters of the past. And it does seem like because now we're getting 100 year floods every 10 years because the pace of these extreme weather events has escalated due to warming waters and due to climate change. It's sort of like the, you know, mass shooting at the school phenomenon where people just become inured and the media becomes inured and sort of numb to the scale of the devastation.

Because I don't think it's wrong to call this akin to their Katrina in terms of the level of destruction and how long it will take this area to recover based on the images that we are seeing. And yet, you know, the national attention, even the political attention, like Kamala Harris is still at a fund—doing a fundraiser in L.A. Yeah, I know. Like, nothing's—like, nothing happened. I don't—I mean, I'm sure Biden has put out some statement. Has he come out and addressed the nation? Where are the plans to, like, fly down and be on the ground? Where are the assertions of, like, you know, whatever you need, we're going to make sure that you've got it covered. I just, I don't see that level of political or media response. That doesn't mean that they're not

receiving resources. You know, the governor has said there's National Guard resources and federal resources already on the ground there. But it does feel like we've just sort of become numb to this level of catastrophe. I mean, it's and this is where also, by the way, having a president who I mean, I continue to think of this as a constitutional crisis, a president who don't know his level of lucidity at any given moment. Yeah, it really does matter. And it really should infuriate people that this is who the leader of the United States is when you have people missing all over. You have nearly 100 fatalities already. The president actually does have a lot of tools as the executive in situations like this one. And so, I mean, it's just enraging, really, when you think about it through that context. Now, some people may remember after Hurricane Sandy, which happened in an election year.

Superstorm Sandy. Superstorm Sandy, 2012. People have those kind of indelible images of Barack Obama and Chris Christie surveying the damage together. We can put D3 up on the screen. There are already conspiracy theories proliferating actually about HAARP. Now, HAARP is, I'm reading from the University of Alaska at Fairbanks website, so this is like the exact language that they use to describe it. It is the High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program. They describe it as

a scientific endeavor aimed at studying the properties and behaviors of the ionosphere. If you follow sort of the conspiracy world, you've definitely heard of HAARP before. Had you heard of HAARP before? Yeah, yeah. Because it comes up. I have not. It comes up in situations like this. And so D3 is on your screen. They are using HAARP, this Twitter user says, to ensure that Hurricane Helene devastates the largest Republican stronghold area in Florida. This hurricane will destroy homes, displace thousands, and ensure much less participation in the presidential election in November. They will stop at nothing. So the

theory there is that HAARP was being used to actually create this entire hurricane and natural disaster to affect the vote, essentially, in the presidential election. That was a theory that circulated when Sandy hit before the 2012 election. So this isn't entirely new, but there are some people we can put, we have a mashup that we can put up here. There are some people, Crystal, your favorite Twitter user, actually. Cat turd. Everybody's favorite Twitter user, I think. Yeah. Something is off about the reporting of this hurricane he posted. And then, I mean, the fact that it just popped up on the radar out of nowhere, another person replied, I think it's weird. It

hasn't been hyped up for days in advance, like storms in the past, no wall-to-wall coverage, and all of a sudden it's here and it's serious AF. So, and then the other meme, I don't mean to harp on it, but I don't trust the government. So, and I think the other thing about that meme, to your point, Crystal, is that harp is really familiar in some of these conservative circles to the point where you can slap it on a meme. I shouldn't say conservative. These conspiracy circles, because it tends to be, it can be like fringe left and fringe right, because it is like a very advanced and kind of like science fiction program.

But we have a lot of things that are like straight out of science fiction in this world these days. So that's already happening. And what's interesting is I think the media question is interesting. The media not spotlighting this to the degree that it should be seems like it's fomenting some people to be like, wait, this is so weird. And actually, the story is that journalists just don't know people in Appalachia. They just don't know people in North Carolina and Kentucky and don't understand probably how severe it is if they're producers in New York City. Yeah.

I mean, I think that's probably the best explanation for what it is. I think that's definitely a part of it. There's no doubt if this happened in New York City- Oh my gosh. The coverage would be different. Like Sandy, by the way. Like Sandy. Yeah.

And, but in addition, because like Florida, for example, right now, like their property insurance, their homeowners insurance market is just basically completely collapsed and fallen apart because of the number of billion dollar plus extreme weather events that happen now. So it's also a frequency issue where it's like another hurricane. Big deal. We get those all the time now. You know, another like devastating only once in hundred years thing that happens now every year. Eh. Yeah, it's important. We'll cover it a little bit, but it's, you know, it loses the shock value when it happens over and over and over again. So I think it's those two things combined. I mean, I don't want to harp on the, like, conspiracy instinct. You don't want to harp on it? I don't want to.

I can't believe I just did that. I don't want to harp on the conspiracy instinct. But there is something that I've been thinking a lot about here, which is not, as you point out, Emily, this is not a new instinct

in American politics, right? The paranoid style. Right, you've been reading how I have been reading it because I've been thinking a lot about this. It's not a new instinct in American politics. I didn't even know about the Superstorm Sandy conspiracies, that this was like a Democrat-generated hurricane to, what, convince Chris Christie to hug Obama in the final stretch and hand the election to him.

I didn't even know about that one. But it was interesting to watch this conspiracy develop, too, because initially, when it was first hitting, there were, Katchard and others were sort of insinuating, like, oh, this isn't even real. Like, I live in Florida. There's, like, barely anything happening. And then once it was clear that this was a horrible, devastating situation, then it shifted to, oh, well, it must have been, like, a Soros-funded Democrat hurricane because look how it's hurting these Republican areas. But also, Asheville, North Carolina is like the most liberal, hippie. It's pretty crunchy. It's like the crunchiest place in all of North Carolina.

So even on the merits of your own deranged conspiracy, the whole thing falls apart. But, you know, there's something that happened. Like I said, this isn't new, but it does seem like there's a new level and a new acceptance of just any event that happens. It can't just be what it is on its face. Like, for example, it's hurricane season, newsflash, like we get hurricanes during hurricane season, number one. Number two, because the water temperatures are warmer, et cetera, et cetera, you would expect the hurricanes to be more severe. In fact, in under the radar thing, some nefarious, shadowy, or very specific Soros, Democrats, et cetera, wrongdoer.

And I do think that it escalated post. Emily, I want to know your thoughts on this because you knew about Harp and I didn't. So you're clearly more read in on these circles than I am. But what I've been thinking is that after Stop the Steal was really, you know, became normalized in the Republican Party. And in spite of the fact that there was zero evidence that there was actual like election manipulation, I'm talking about changing votes or hiding votes or bringing in votes or whatever. I'm not talking about, you know, social media companies doing a thing or Pennsylvania changing their laws. I'm talking about like out and out vote rigging. There was no evidence for that. And yet you have a majority of Republicans who are convinced by Donald Trump, who holds enormous sway with majority of the Republican base to go along with that. And you have, you know, whatever influencers were willing,

like Cattert or whoever, to also go along with that, they became the new trusted arbiters. And so now there's no requirement of any sort of evidence. And now whatever those people say, if they can just add to it, like, oh, the mainstream media doesn't want you to know, it becomes credibly believed by a really large number of people. So it's not this, you know, in a sense, I think it is a fringe, but it's also not a like minuscule number of individuals who are buying into things like, oh, the Democrats made a hurricane to help hurt people in red parts of Florida. Back in 2012, one of the websites that was spreading the harp stuff about Sandy was InfoWars. And Alex Jones is now on tour with Tucker Carlson.

Right. And Tucker was at the RNC. Right. Sitting next to Donald Trump. Right. And so, I mean, I think there's something to that. There's kind of a mainstreaming. And part of it is because, you know, there have been so many problems with media coverage. So I understand it. And I think

Alex Jones is legitimately and Tucker are interesting figures. But when you're at that level and you're Donald Trump, for example, and you're going into these places as a kind of cope for losing an election, or he was even saying it, HBO has a pretty good documentary out right now, I think it's called Stop the Steal. And when you look back on how Trump was talking about the election before the election even happened, at one point he said the only way that we'll lose is if it's rigged. When you have the president of the United States saying that, it obviously gives weight and it's obviously something that gives people sort of permission and reason to believe. If you're not somebody that's, like, you're not working professionally in politics, you have a job, you don't have to, like, you can't follow politics obsessively like people who work in the media do. When the president of the United States says something, it means something.

It means that to you it signals there must be something more to this. The president is saying it. So it's easy to see why people have taken some of this stuff much more seriously. I think part of it is that we're unlike most of the country on Twitter. So we see a little bit more of it in the Musk X era at the same time. You've been on Facebook lately, girl? No, I haven't. No, I haven't. But the other thing I was going to say is that when things seem inexplicable,

like the host of Celebrity Apprentice becoming the president of the United States, we turn to like scapegoats. We turn to these more conspiratorial explanations, or some people do. And that's where I think the Russia stuff came out of was just like, there has to be a way to explain this because it doesn't make sense otherwise. Well, I think you have, and we'll table this for now because I'm sure that's a topic we'll come back to again, but you have some really genuine, jarring, elite institutional failures and lies. Rock war, financial collapse being the two most obvious, but I'm sure we could point to many more as well. And then you layer on top of that, yeah,

something inexplicable like, you know, a reality TV show star rising to the top. Democrats, like, this breaks their brain. They can't wrap their head around it. It's got to be Russia. It's got to be something going on. And then because you have this break in any sort of institutional trust, it just opens up a vacuum for whoever's going to fill that in and be the one who's like, but I'm going to tell you the truth. And Donald, like there is more affinity. I mean, it is a cult of personality around Donald Trump at this point, right? And for about 30% of the Republican electorate, which is significant, like extremely significant. Yes. And whatever he says, like evidence-free,

evidence, like whether it has backing or not, like that's gospel. And then if, like I said, if you have these influencers surrounding him that are backing up everything that he says, they become also these like trusted ambassadors. And then whatever they say also goes. And then you have the algorithmic and monetary incentives, which are all in the direction of like, you know, pushing the Soros-Harp Democrat hurricane machine thing. I'm sure you're going to get a lot of clicks and a lot of views if you're willing to float that and like put on some video that purports to show some sort of evidence in that direction. And so then, you know, capitalism takes hold in the people's bottom line and their desire for attention and influence or whatever takes over. And there you go. That's how you get where we

are now. A hundred percent. Yeah. It's been a wild, I mean, when we were even talking about Hofstadter, that was a book written in the mid 1950s. And we sort of think of that, some people think of that as like the archetypical like American dream period, but we think of it as at least like sort of old. But technology was crazy, like advancing at a crazy clip in the 1950s. Like that was really unnerving to people. An atomic weapon had just been developed and then dropped in the span of like, what, 20 years that had all transpired really quickly. So technology really unsettles people, especially in the United States. It just feels, it puts us through the ringer. And we look to new places for explanations

because so much of it, we were living in very odd times. Yeah, I think that's true. And then, yeah, the social media part of this and the AI-fueled part of this, that definitely plays into it as well. I'm sure there are many other things we could say about it. But in any case, we have a really important guest standing by that we wanted to make sure to get into the show today. Mamadou Tal is facing expulsion from Cornell, which would lead to his loss of his foreign student visa, which means he's likely to get deported all over

his pro-Palestine activism. We wanted to hear his side of the story as, you know, this is all unfolding very quickly and very imminently. So let's go ahead and get to that. Over the past six years of making my true crime podcast, Hell and Gone, I've learned one thing. No town is too small for murder. I'm Katherine Townsend. I've received hundreds of messages from people across the country begging for help with unsolved murders. I was calling about the murder of my husband at the cold case. They've never found her, and it haunts me to this day. The murderer is still out there. Every week on Hell and Gone Murder Line, I dig into a new case, bringing the skills I've learned as a journalist and private investigator

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

Listen to Hell and Gone Murder Line on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. She was a decorated veteran, a Marine who saved her comrades, a hero. She was stoic, modest, tough. Someone who inspired people. Everyone thought they knew her. Until they didn't. I remember sitting on her couch and asking her, is this real? Is this real? Is this real? Is this real? I just couldn't wrap my head around what kind of person would do that to another person that was getting treatment, that was, you know, dying.

This is a story all about trust and about a woman named Sarah Kavanaugh. I've always been told I'm a really good listener, right? And I maximized that while I was lying. Listen to Deep Cover The Truth About Sarah on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. I think everything that might have dropped in 95 has been labeled the golden years of hip hop. It's Black Music Month and we Need to Talk is tapping in. I'm Nyla Simone, breaking down lyrics, amplifying voices,

and digging into the culture that shaped the soundtrack of our lives. My favorite line on there was, my son and my daughter gonna be proud when they hear my old tapes. Now I'm curious, do they like rap along now? Yeah, because I bring him on tour with me, and he's getting older now too. So his friends are starting to understand what that type of music is, and they're starting to be like, yo, your dad's like really the GOAT. Like, he's a legend.

So he gets it. What does it mean to leave behind a music legacy for your family? It means a lot to me. Just having a good catalog and just being able to make people feel good. Like, that's what's really important and that's what stands out is that our music changes people's lives for the better. So the fact that my kids get to benefit off of that, I'm really happy or my family in general. Let's talk about the music that moves us to hear this and more on how music and culture collide. Listen to We Need to Talk from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the iHeartRadio app,

Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. So we've been tracking here closely the censorship movement across college campuses, especially with regard to pro-Palestinian activism. And today we're really fortunate to be joined by a student who is facing expulsion not only from Cornell University, but ultimately from the country. Because if he is expelled, he will lose his student visa and will ultimately be deported. Mamadou Tal is a graduate student at Cornell University and joins us now. Great to see you, sir. Nice to meet you. Thanks for having me. Good morning. Yes, of course. We can put this Rolling Stone article up on the screen that explains some of what happened here.

The headline, Cornell grad student who attended pro-Palestine protest could be forced to leave U.S. You told Rolling Stone that they want to make an example out of you. You feel that you were singled out for disciplinary action. Could you just tell us a little bit about how this all started? Yeah, I mean, where do I begin? I mean, fundamentally, since last year, October, we've had a sustained campaign on campus, which is calling for divestment, which is showing solidarity with what's happening in Palestine at the moment, in Gaza specifically. And then the most recent iteration of this kind of, I believe, targeting, because I've become a visible person. I normally give speeches attend the protest. This most recent iteration, we had a rally last week outside an administrative building,

after which the crowd went into the hotel, which is nearby to where the rally was. I spoke at the rally and I followed the crowd. The crowd went inside the hotel wherein there was a recruitment fair in which there was two weapons manufacturers present, Boeing and L3 Harris. We went inside after a brief encounter with the police. From my perspective, it looked like the police just let the people in. I went inside and then I was inside for about five minutes and then I left. When I had left, I had bumped into the chief of police. And he has had it out for me, in my opinion, since last semester because of the encampment stuff. Then he kind of, he made a funny noise at me. He walked past me. Next day, I received an email from him that I had been referred to the student code of conduct.

After that, then Monday, last Monday, 23rd, I received an email. I've been temporarily suspended. I was called into a meeting. And in the meeting, I was told that, okay, I've been temporarily suspended and I should contact the senior immigration officer. And then I was informed that I will have no grace period and I have to leave the country promptly if the suspension is upheld. And oh no, at that point, suspension was, I was in place. And I think due to the pressure, due to the petition, due to the support, I'm going through an appeal process now, which was not offered to me before. Okay, so one interesting

question here is the student code of conduct. So tell us what you're alleged to have violated in the student code of conduct. And then I think a great question for that actually would be with, do you disagree with the student code of conduct? Because that's a real problem at some schools, their student codes of conduct are actually overly restrictive of expression. So tell us your perspective on that in this case. Absolutely. So the official narrative the school's saying, and the school said that people push past the police. People saying, and the police are saying that, you know, people were scared and intimidated.

Again, a lot of racialized language, right? I didn't push past any police officer. I can say that categorically. And I was inside for about five minutes. So what my charge seat says, you were a part of a crowd that pushed past the police or you led

or you repeated chants inside the hotel. And I've just said, okay, if anything, let me see the evidence. And I've had no chance to see the evidence. There's been no investigation. There's nothing afforded to me. All I've been told is that my behavior is such a danger to campus that I can't be on campus, which, again, I don't understand that because I mean, I teach, I used to teach a class last week and my kids can testify, my students testify what kind of environment I create in the class. And I've even heard from law professors who don't want to be named have said that when we created the Student Code of Conduct, a temporary suspension was in place for the most egregious acts, for example, not for people just protesting or exercising their First Amendment right. Were there other students who were part of this protest who are facing similar disciplinary action?

So there was about 150 students present, as far as I'm aware. For a whole week, I was the only one that was in trouble. And now I've heard, I think there's three others now who have received a non-academic suspension, which is, again, first and foremost, they're American citizens. And second of all, it doesn't mean, it doesn't have no implication from other than, other than they're unable to be on campus, but they can attend all their classes still. So I want to ask about something that this writer, Steve McGuire, posted on X. He was talking about you and he said, this guy is one of the lead protesters at Cornell. When the student government denied his group's divestment resolution, he and others vowed to repeatedly disrupt the campus, which they did. He was suspended last year, too. Looks like Cornell might be done messing around. That's what McGuire posted. Can you respond to that allegation that you were

vowing to repeatedly disrupt the campus? And then again, in that context of that student code of conduct conversation, should you be allowed to be disruptive in protest when you feel it's appropriate? I think it's very hypocritical of people like Steve McGuire and also the school itself. I'm in Africana Studies. Africana Studies was the first Africana Studies established in the United States of America. In 1969, students took arms. It was an armed takeover by Black students to demand the university to allow an Africana study center at Cornell. After that was established, Cornell, year in and year out, like the good old liberals always do, ad nauseum, talk about the celebration of student protests on campus.

They talk about, oh, how big the Vietnam protest was. They talk about how big anti-apartheid movement was on cornell's campus they celebrate this every year because they can do that retroactively when students exercise the same thing for something one of the biggest uh one of the biggest issues in the world today they are met with um sorts of repression but again i understand because this issue of palestine i keep saying to people you cannot divorce this from palestine palestine is why, is the reason why we're receiving such oppressive tactics against us. So again, a protest is

supposed to be disruptive. And I understand that, okay, people can balance the needs of other students. But again, there's been no violent behavior. There's been no threatening behavior. But maybe at most, you're going to have a 30-minute inconvenience. Mamadou, what happens now? What does the timeline look like for you? And are they giving you any chance to, at this point, appeal this decision? Yeah, I have one more shot at an appeal, which I filed last Friday. And I was emailed back by the provost who told me he's committed to an independent review. And he said that the Student Code of Conduct doesn't give him any guidance as to, or gives him limited guidance when it, in regards to

temporary suspensions and reviewing them. And he told me he'll get back to me next week. So I'm just waiting at the moment. And just to add, Cornell signed a memorandum of agreement with our union, our grad worker union. And Cornell has a legally binding document that says any effects of discipline must go through bargaining. And Cornell is not honoring that legally binding document right now in a haste to get rid of me. That's a very important point. And let me just ask what a lot of detractors on the right or in the sort of Zionist movement would say is, if you hate you know, if you hate America and the West so much, then why do you want to be a student at Cornell? So I was curious how you

would respond to that, Mamadou. Like, what is your, why is it important for you to be at Cornell and to have your voice heard? Yeah, I think, I think regardless of my political views, again, I haven't been threatened and I haven't threatened nobody nobody i should have a right to be here i'm studying here i i made my way to cornell by my by my work i'm in my third year i passed my my q exams for my phd last just two weeks ago so again i'm an educational institution in which i have a right to be here i worked my way to get here um if if people are saying because of your political views, you should not be in a certain place. And I think that's a very slippery slope for not just people with my views, but people with many other views. What can people do if they want to support you? And also, do you

have any regrets, you know, if you ultimately are deported back or self-deport, I guess, back to the UK? Do you have any regrets about your activism? Would you do anything differently? I think people can help me by, you know, writing into the school, to the provost. I know there's a petition still going around, which I believe you'll post in the link description. And as for regrets, then no. I think whatever happens to me, I think it's a unfortunate experience. It will mean significant harm and damage to my own life. But I also think to myself, there's nothing in comparison to what Palestinians are going through. And I can never imagine myself, if I do have the fortunate experience to reach my old age, I will never imagine thinking to myself, oh, I did too much for Palestine.

Because this is just, I mean, I think anyone of good moral conscience cannot see the daily images of what's happening in Palestine and not be moved. So I can never think a day will come when I say to myself, oh, I think I went too hard for Palestine because I don't regret it. Mamadou Tal, thank you so much for explaining your story to our viewers this morning. And as you said, we're going to have the petition linked in the description. So if people want to support you, they'll have the opportunity. Thank you again. Thank you so much.

Yeah, it's a pleasure. Over the past six years of making my true crime podcast, Hell and Gone, I've learned one thing. No town is too small for murder. I'm Katherine Townsend. I've received hundreds of messages

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

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

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

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Our own Emily Trishinsky was a guest on Ezra Klein's podcast, which I've been listening to his show a lot recently. In part, I gave him a lot of credit for like being early to the, hey, Democrats, like you really need to move on from Joe Biden. Like you get a lot of credit in my book if you're in a mainstream space and you have that. And you get even more credit if you're willing to have Emily on. So tell us a little bit about, you know, what you were booked to talk about, what your experience was like. Yeah. You know, I actually met his producer at the National Conservatism Conference where I was talking back in June about online pornography, oddly enough. Okay. As one does. As one does. It was kind of like the conversation we were just having about conspiracy theories

a couple of blocks ago because it's come about really quickly and sort of a younger perspective on how that changed people's lives, modernity and all of that stuff. So Ezra wanted to talk about that kind of in the context of realignment stuff. So sort of where this new right national conservatism movement is to some extent rooted in discomfort with modernity and how it's actually like working, like how it's manifesting, how plausible it is as a political movement, and how the sort of Trump of it all affects the future of the right. So we had a really interesting conversation. And honestly, I was a little unsure because not everybody is Crystal and Ryan. Not everybody is. And I remember on Kyle, Crystal, and Friends, we had a great conversation. And it's always, you never know what you're going to get. Yeah, definitely.

But Ezra's been, he's a good faith. He operates in good faith. Yeah. And he pushed you in a number of areas. Absolutely. But it led to that, you know, that led to a really interesting exchange. There was one portion we wanted to play for you guys where he asked about Project 2025 and like, okay, obviously Trump doesn't want to talk about this and wants to distance himself from this. But are liberals really wrong to feel like, okay, this is the plan that's laying around in the sort of like, you know, conservative Washington state. So isn't this very, aren't they, isn't it reasonable to say this is probably a lot of what is actually going to happen in a Trump administration? Let's take a listen to what Emily had to say.

So let's ground this a little bit in Donald Trump. So if he wins in 2024, which seems very possible, he's got to govern with some kind of coalition. And I think one of the problems he's had this year is that sort of Project 2025 stepped in to try to describe what that would look like for him. And he's, I think, wishes they had not. But he's not identified an alternative way he would govern. If it's not going to be these groups who are vetting all these people to work with him and all these people who already did work with him, like, who's it going to be? So when you think about a next Trump administration and when you report on it, how do you think it would differ in its coalition or its priorities than the first Trump

administration? The genesis of Project 2025, and you've probably picked up on this, Ezra, but even just talking to people who are involved in it journalistically, you hear them. And it was this idea that Donald Trump just, he's not a man of the conservative movement. He doesn't come in with the infrastructure that was part of the conservative movement. He doesn't come in with the infrastructure that was part of the reason that conservatives pushed him to pick Mike Pence, because Mike Pence, as VP, knew all of the heads of the conservative movement groups where you would tap personnel and staff from, where you would tap the white papers from. He kind of knew where to look to get people and policies. And because Trump's orbit hadn't become substantially more cohesive or policy-centric, people really started to say, all right, we need something like a Project 2025. This ultimately became Project 2025 because this isn't organized. And that's why Project 2025 and Heritage also have something called, I think it's called like the 100-day agenda that hasn't been made public yet. It's internal. I've never seen it, but it's the executive orders that should be ready to go on day one.

It was this idea that there's nothing, like we're having all of these debates, but we're not putting any of it into sort of a hard agenda. A lot of Project 2025, this is something that hasn't been reported, but a lot of it is like debates internally. There's one policy that's outlined about a child tax credit and then another policy that's outlined about a child tax credit. He was like, none of this is even being facilitated. And that because Project 2025 has become such a lightning rod, the ball has not moved further down the field on that question. The Trump campaign sort of haphazardly tried to put out its own policy agenda.

Trump still is Trump though and goes back and forth. And this is probably the central problem of the new right that we keep coming back to time and again, is that he doesn't have a cohesive ideology. And in a way, he's more similar to a lot of average Americans. Ezra floated an idea, I think after this in the podcast, that I hadn't contemplated before. The assumption in liberal circles is like Trump is going to be worse this time because he's going to have a shit together, basically. And so like all the craziest stuff that he wanted to do last time, but he couldn't really get his act together to do this time. They got their ducks in a row. They've got their loyalists. They're going to,

you know, fire the deep state. They're going to install the Trump loyalists. And if there was to be a January 6th style event this time around, they would have the, you know, the people at the State Department and wherever to actually seize the ballot boxes, et cetera, et cetera. And he says, you know, but there is an alternative possibility, which is that he's actually, it's actually more chaotic and less competent because now you have all of these different factions that have developed that are fighting for control of what the Trump agenda is going to be. And I was, I was curious if you could elaborate more on your thoughts on that. Yeah. I mean, I don't want to rule out either possibility, but I also think, and we talked about this a little bit, there are not enough

people in the world, let alone sort of professional Republican political spaces, to staff an agenda like what a sort of extreme Trump agenda would look like, or I should even say like an extreme conservative agenda. Yeah. Because you need to fill the so-called like deep state spaces. Not only do you need to like fire everybody that's in them now, you then need to bring new people in to at least staff some of them. And the Trump administration we saw last time, this was part of Project 2025 too, they just had a really hard time, A, getting certain things past the bureaucracy, which as a conservative I look at, and I'm like, that tells you the president is not ultimately in charge. That's a legitimate problem. And you've seen it even play out, Ryan and I have talked about this

before, in ways that really are shocking from the left. You have a left policy that the EPA doesn't want to actually fulfill because you have a bunch of careers who have been there and have been through the revolving door with special interests and all of that stuff. I think that's a legitimate problem. But that aside, if you can't at least replace some of those people, you can't really do much because you're just going to be hampered. Now, on the other hand, at the executive level, that's a huge question because Donald Trump learned a big lesson from his side with Mike Pence. And he thinks that J.D. Vance will not be a Mike Pence if we have another January 6th. And that was part of like creating these new loyalty litmus tests. And I just don't, I don't know that we have the answer

to that question, actually, because politicians are ultimately self-interested creatures. And if J.D. Vance is sort of reading the tea leaves on a potential January 6th, I don't know. I think you have to stress test. And on the other hand, though, at the executive level, Donald Trump will not make the mistake, as he sees it, of putting more Mike Pence's around him. But there aren't that many people in professional Republican spaces that are hardcore MAGA. And they might be publicly, but privately, they don't want to be roped into those situations because they still don't know what happens after Trump. Right, which sort of illuminates the fact that there are two types of true believers.

Mike Pence was a true believer in a certain way, but not a true believer when it came down to it, right? So he was a true believer in, I mean, all the policies. He was on board. He was the one in the meeting when they said, tell us something great about Donald Trump. He's the first thing, he's the best president, he's so amazing, and I'm on board. He hung in there with him on the election stuff. That's right. Yeah. Until January 6th. He wouldn't do the Claremont Institute John Eastman plan, but he hung in there until January 6th. He was willing to give credence to like, oh, maybe these lawsuits, you know, maybe this was rigged. And so, I mean, he got to his breaking point.

So in Trump's view, he ends up not being a true believer. He's hoping J.D. Vance, like I think the critical threshold for J.D. isn't about his policy views, of which Trump seems relatively uninterested. It's his belief that when it came down to January 6th, he would do what Mike Pence was unwilling to do. So there's two types of true believers. There's like the people who would be like, yeah, I believe in a 10% tariff across the board. And I'm willing to make waves and piss people off and like, you know, use my agency's powers

to effectuate that outcome. And then, and that's one type of true believer. And then there's the type of true believer that will say, yes, sir, I will throw the country into a constitutional crisis based on literally nothing and, you know, be okay with this violence at the Capitol and whatever. And I think it's harder to vet for that second type. Totally. A true believer, because I think he probably believed that Mike Pence was that second type of true believer. Yep. Right up until that day. I mean, he was reportedly pressuring him all the way up

and still thinking. He said, I think, at his infamous speech, like, well, let's hope Mike Pence does the right thing. So he still thought up until that moment that Mike Pence potentially was that type of just, you know, throw out the Constitution and do whatever I tell you to, true believer. And what's interesting about J.D. Vance, and this is the conversation, you guys have talked to him, so you've picked up on this, I'm sure, but he's like a sincere post-liberal. I think one of the mistakes the left makes about J.D. Vance is that he's just pro-Trump for opportunistic purposes, but he really, when he converted to Catholicism, he has like a multi-thousand word essay on this in the Catholic

publication, The Lamp. It's a very fully fleshed out, sincere post-liberal worldview. And what post-liberal in that context means is that sometimes you sort of, this is a simplification, of course, but sometimes the Constitution has limits, right? Sometimes there are sort of illiberal ends that are just. And so that is a sincerely held belief that J.D. Vance has. Now, how that pertains to the Constitution in any sort of different context is an open question, but it does tell you that he comes from the sort of Patrick Deneen orbit where the Constitution isn't the sort of sacred, almost like holy text that a lot of the conservative movement thought that it was, that there are these arguments that can be made that it can sort of be stretched in emergency circumstances, etc.

So that could mean there's a difference on January 6th between Mike Pence or J.D. Vance, but it also couldn't. So it's like a fascinating question. The way you articulated it, I think, is not particularly different from how I view J.D. Vance. I think his embrace of Trump is in that, like, it's very convenient for him that at the moment when he wants to run for senator and has national political ambitions, suddenly he's, you know, a big Trump fan. I think that's opportunistic because of he does believe, you put this more diplomatically, but in some sense, he believes like the ends justify the means.

And if the means are cozying up to this guy that I once said might be America's Hitler, then I'll do it. If the means are like, you know, lying about Haitians eating pets in a town that I represent, I'll do that. If the means are potentially like,

you know, doing what Mike Pence wouldn't do on January 6th, if it's going to help me accomplish the ends that I genuinely believe are better, superior, etc. Yeah, I'll do that too. And so that's, so in that sense, I believe, I think he's a true believer about the ideological view that he holds. Do I think he's a true believer in all the like, you know, how much he loves Trump now and thinks Trump's so great, et cetera, et cetera? No, because it's very, it was very politically convenient the way that that all went down. But do I think that he views Trump as the- The tool.

The nearest vessel- Yep. For his own ideological ambitions? Yeah. Yes, I believe that. And that was the critical distinction. I mean, I think that's what happened to a lot of people on the right, especially after Michael Anton, he was anonymous at the time, but wrote the Flight 93 election, I think this was October of 2016. Yeah. That was the beginning of this conversion for a lot of sort of the intellectual conservative world who said, we are in illiberal times, so we can't use liberalism as the tool to return to, and this is like classical liberalism,

so small l, we can't use liberal means to get back to this like classical liberal utopia that we want to return to. We have to sometimes say Donald Trump may be a liberal, but Hillary Clinton is more liberal, or Joe Biden or Kamala Harris is worse because they want to do X, Y, and Z. So you have to stick with this person. The plane's going down. You have to take the risk. And J.D. Vance is very much in that camp. And there are a lot of sort of intellectual conservatives in that camp right now. But what that doesn't mean is that they make a very particular decision come another January 6th. And that's a stand-in for other potential constitutional emergencies and other things

that Donald Trump could pursue from an executive level as president. But really, he, after the 2020 election, lacked people around him who would go through with what he wanted. I mean, a lot of people actually ended up quitting, have since spilled a lot of dirt on him. And he was left with Sidney Powell, Rudy Giuliani, and whatever the other guy, Lin Wood, Mike Lindell. And they're just—J.D. Vance is not going to go full Sidney Powell. So who knows what happens? But it was—I think it's helpful to kind of talk some of that stuff out because you just—we don't know. There's still just so much uncertainty about what happens. Would you describe that new strain in thinking, which, you know, is amplified by Anton, embraced by J.D. Vance, et cetera? I mean, would you describe that as anti-democratic? Basically,

like, listen, if we have to, like, not be a democracy for a little while to accomplish our ends, then that's what we're going to do. Well, Anton has actually written about how we need a red Caesar, like a quote, red Caesar. And so, yeah, absolutely. And Curtis Yarburn, for example, is basically like a monarchist. I don't know where J.D. probably wouldn't fall into that category, but that was the sort of- He's somewhere on that spectrum, though. Yeah, and it's what's frustrating because sometimes I signed the National Conservatism Statement when it came out because it was pretty boilerplate conservatism as I saw it. But at the same time, I really, really, really empathize with and understand post-liberalism and think that it has a lot of better points than the sort of old fusionist conservative order when it comes to identifying problems.

But I fundamentally am not on board with the post-liberal solutions to the problems of contemporary liberalism. And that's what's sort of frustrating sometimes because you get lumped in with one or the other and the people are like, well, what do you actually think? And it's like, well, I think these problems are real. I just think this is, we don't need a red Caesar. Like, please don't tell me that we need a red Caesar. So it's such a crazy time on the right. Crazy. Well, this has been very interesting. Back to you, Emily. I actually feel like I understand your political ideology perhaps better than I ever had. And I really recommend to people that you listen to the full episode of Emily with Ezra, because I'm at least really fascinated by what J.D. Vance represents and what is after Trumpism

and what are the rising intellectual currents on the right and what they mean for all of us and they dig into a lot of that. So we'll have the link in the description. You guys can check all of that out. Thank you so much for hanging with us on Whirlwind Day here. Reminder, we are going to do a livestream,

coverage of the debate will be here like, I don't know, an hour early, hour and a half early, something like that. So we can all speculate and then see. So we can get Crystal to have a drink. Maybe. She won't do it. Maybe I will. I don't know.

We'll bring you some ghosts. I don't really drink at all now. So when I even have one drink, it gets sloppy real fast. It gets sloppy real fast. So anyway, we'll see if that happens. But, you know, I love for us to do an hour beforehand where we can all make predictions that immediately get

just like demolished in real time. It's the best. Yeah. So that's what we'll all be here doing tomorrow night. And we hope to see you guys there.

Over the years of making my true crime podcast, Helen Gone, I've learned no town is too small for murder. I'm Catherine Townsend. I've heard from hundreds of people across the country with an unsolved murder in their community. I was calling about the murder of my husband. The murderer is still out there. Each week, I investigate a new case.

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