Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 9/3/25: Trump Threatens Chicago Takeover, Venezuela Ship Blown Up, Tariff Refunds & MORE!
Episode Date: September 3, 2025Ryan and Emily discuss Trump threatens Chicago takeover, Trump blows up ship near Venezuela, judge orders Trump tariff refunds, Israel disappearing Gazans at aid sites, Trump fakes Epstein files relea...se, Southeast Asia erupts in protest, voices of Gaza youth. To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show AD FREE, uncut and 1 hour early visit: www.breakingpoints.comMerch Store: https://shop.breakingpoints.com/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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My boyfriend's professor is way too friendly, and now I'm seriously suspicious.
Wait a minute, Sam.
Maybe her boyfriend's just looking for extra credit.
Well, Dakota, luckily, it's back to school week on the OK Storytime podcast, so we'll find out soon.
This person writes, my boyfriend's been hanging out with his young professor a lot.
He doesn't think it's a problem, but I don't trust her.
Now he's insisting we get to know each other, but I just want her gone.
Hold up.
Isn't that against school policy?
That seems inappropriate.
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All right, good morning, and welcome to Breaking Points.
Happy Wednesday. Emily, how you doing?
Doing great. How about you?
Very good. We've got a packed show today.
We're going to talk to Lieutenant Colonel retired, Anthony Aguilar.
Later today, he's in Washington, D.C.
It's actually going to be disrupting a Senate foreign relationship.
committee. Don't tell anybody, but check that out. That'll be at 10 a.m. That's kind of our secret.
We got him before. He's going to head to Capitol Hill. By the time this airs, it will have already
happened. Right, but he has some really important perspective to share ahead of that about recent
updates. Yes, the enforced disappearances that Israel's accused of effectuating through the Gaza
humanitarian foundation. And also his recent conversations,
With the ICC, he also told me that the USAID and the State Department, internal investigators, have reached out to him.
So, you know, while he is working the, while he's speaking publicly, he's also speaking directly to whatever authorities will listen about the crimes that he's witnessed.
The scrappy remnant of USAID.
Apparently, there's still some people with, like, Wi-Fi access at USAID, and they're probing this.
Interesting. We're also going to start today with some clips. I feel like actually I was thinking about this earlier, Ryan. The amount of times that we have opened up a show by saying the president had a truly wild press conference yesterday has to be in the like dozens at this point. And not wild anymore. It's just called a Trump press conference at this point.
Right. Although it's absolutely accurate that he did have a truly, by other standards, Baner's press conference yesterday, where he was confronted with video evidence that he had died in response.
responded to that. So you're not going to want to miss this block. Also, as usual, he also addressed
some very important questions, whether it's what's happening in Ukraine or what's happening here
at home. So we're going to bring... We're launching a war in the Caribbean against fishing boats.
Yeah. Well, yes, we are... We will discuss all of that, and we have video of the strike that the
government is putting out. So we'll get into that. Also, we will have updates on whether or not
companies are going to get tariff refunds from the United States government, which is an actual
question on the table right now.
So markets reacting a little bit to some of Trump's comments yesterday about those tariffs
and what might be coming.
So we have a lot to get into with that major Jeffrey Epstein victim press conference happening
on Capitol Hill today.
There was a big document dump just yesterday.
We have some details on how legitimate.
or compelling any of that evidence is
and what you can expect to see here in Washington today
as Rokana and Thomas Massey assemble this press conference of victims
to get that discharge petition,
which is right now hanging in the balance.
So whether they'll get enough Republicans, they need six,
whether they'll get enough Republicans to sign that discharge petition
and compel the release of additional documents.
Yeah.
And then we're going to take a look at the unrest in Southeast Asia.
Malaysia, the Philippines, and Indonesia, all seeing significant protest.
Each one of them has their own unique characteristics, but all of them kind of related to corruption.
And people just fed up at the way that their governments and their elites are ripping them off.
And we'll also be joined by Pam Bailey, right, Ryan?
Yeah, I think that, is that an extra?
Is that going to be part of the show?
It's in the last block here.
So Pam Bailey and others put together a book called We Are Not Numbers, which is a collection of essays and poems.
pieces of literature by Palestinians about their experience, not just in the last two years,
but also, you know, leading up to it as well.
And that book rolled out this week.
All right.
Well, looking forward to hearing from Pam Bailey.
Let's dive into our A block, which is this winding press conference that Donald Trump conducted
yesterday, where he made this announcement that Space Force Command Center was being moved
from Colorado to Huntsville, Alabama, and had a collection of senators, cabinet members
assembled behind him and, of course, took many, many questions from the press, including
some questions on whether or not he was actually alive.
If you missed the fevered speculation over Labor Day weekend, then you probably weren't
on TikTok or X or Instagram, because, Ryan, it was absolutely everywhere.
There seemed to be a genuine contingent of, I guess you could say, blew anon that was
pretty convinced there was something odd going on with the president and there was there's always
something odd but that's what i was just going to say in fact uh there have been obvious signs that
don't trump is aging you had the bruises on his hands you have the swollen ankles uh he you know in july
the white house mentioned that he had been diagnosed with the benign condition um that caused the swelling
of the ankles and then for donald trump to not have public events scheduled for three days is always
strange, even if it's the slowest week of the entire year in Washington, D.C., which is Labor
Day week. But granted, that is what it was. And Trump appears to be very much alive, as he
confirmed for everyone in front of the cameras. Yesterday, Ryan, let's put A1. Let's roll A1 here.
How did you find out over the weekend that you were dead? You see that? No, it's sort of crazy.
But last week, I did numerous news conferences, all successful. They went very well. Like, this
going very well. And then I didn't do any for two days. And they said, there must be something
wrong with him. Biden wouldn't do him for months. You wouldn't see him. And nobody ever said
there was ever anything wrong with him. And we know he wasn't in the greatest of shape.
I did numerous shows and also did a number of truths, long truths, I think pretty poignant truths.
Now, I was very active over the weekend. There is a video that is circulating online now
of the White House where a window is over.
to the residence upstairs.
And somebody has thrown a big bag out the window.
Have you seen this?
No, that's probably AI generator.
So actually, you can't open the windows.
You know why?
They're all heavily armored and bulletproof.
So that's a fake video?
Well, it's got to be because I know every window up there.
Number one, they're sealed and number two.
Each window weighs about 600 pounds.
You have to be pretty strong to open them up.
No, that has to be.
Where was the window?
Let me see.
Which is the window?
It looks like this is on the 15th street side, I think.
So right here.
Yeah, those windows are sealed.
Those windows are all.
They're all sealed.
You can't open them.
But also they create things, you know.
It works both ways.
If something happens, it's really bad.
Maybe I'll have to just blame AI.
Okay.
So if you're joining us as a podcast listener,
what you missed was Peter Ducey of Fox News,
within that exchange was happening between the president and Ducey,
walked up to the presidential podium
at Trump's request with his
phone and showed Donald Trump the video
and Trump sort of looked over like your
grandparent at Thanksgiving who you're showing
a very funny meme to and said
it's AI. If anything goes wrong,
blame AI.
Let's add that as
in post as VO so people can see
if they haven't seen it, the like...
The video itself. White House has already
commented on it and said, like, it's not AI.
Like, Trump
is confused on this. He might be because they
are renovating the Lincoln bedroom.
This was part of the reason
the conspiracy theories
should have been halted
by at least Friday
is that he did this long interview
with the Daily Caller
and the reporter there,
Reagan Reese,
who posted pictures with him,
said she talked to him
for an hour,
and in the transcript,
you can hear him.
He gets up at one point
and shows to the renovations
of the Rose Garden
and then says,
we should get her up
to see the Lincoln bedroom
at some point,
which is why he's just so,
I mean,
he's talking there
about the windows
and he says,
I know every window up there, of course he knows every window up there because he seems to be extremely focused on the details of every renovation that's happening at the White House.
And we've seen since some comments from sources and media reports that suggest this is actually Donald Trump's something he sees as his legacy is like the Trumpian renovations to the White House.
So I thought the trash thing was legitimately weird and understand, you know, why people spiraled and went down the rabbit holes, given his bruising and everything else.
But it was obviously pretty, like by Friday.
I think it was obviously a little, a little bit over the edge.
Well, he's alive.
He's alive and he's posting the most poignant truths.
And he's playing, very poignant truths.
He thought they were poignant anyway.
I'm sure they were poignant.
Poignant.
Yes.
I love that he thinks his truths are poignant.
That's amazing.
He also announced that he's going into Chicago.
So he's going to do that.
We can roll that next stop.
Find up on Chicago, though?
Well, we're going in.
I didn't say when.
We're going in.
When you lose, look, I have an obligation.
This isn't a political thing.
Chicago is a hellhole right now.
Baltimore is a hellhole right now.
Parts of Los Angeles are terrible.
If we didn't put out the fires, and I mean the other fires, the bullet fires,
they didn't do a good job with it.
They should have had the water coming down, like I said.
You know, we had to release the water.
We had to go in and release the water to L.A.
It's so badly run.
But everyone asked today in California ruled that your deployment of National Guard troops to Los Angeles was illegal.
Do you have any response to that?
It was a radical left judge.
But very importantly, what did you not tell me in that question or statement that you made pretty much of a statement?
Well, I was asking for a response.
No, no.
You didn't say what?
the judge said, though. The judge said, but you can leave the 300 people that you already have
in place. They can continue to be in place. That's all we need. But why didn't you put that as
part of your statement? So he said he's going into Chicago, but doesn't know when. So presumably
it's going to happen. We don't know when. What can we make of this, the latest legal setback?
Yeah, it's a good question because obviously what's happening in D.C. is different than any
other city, so whether it's Los Angeles, Chicago, New York, completely different across the board
from D.C. And in L.A., the justification is that the National Guard was guarding federal property
and federal agents, so ICE agents and then also federal buildings. And that is what the Trump
administration now, they can declare emergencies of various kinds. That's something that was discussed in
2020 and actually had been used before, if I remember incorrectly, Ryan Wright, in the 1960s that the National Guard had been brought in. And that was what the Tom Cotton, the not infamous Tom Cotton at the New York Times was talking about is that there's some historic precedent for doing that. But of course, those are active riots that were then trumped up to the legal standard of insurrection in order to justify it. And they also brought the military and a bunch to break up strikes in the 19th century.
Oh, that's such an interesting point.
Yes. And so there are all kinds of ways that you can stretch. And that's what was happening in Los Angeles. And it means that the administration has to think about how that would work in a place like Chicago. Are they just deploying around federal buildings? Are they just going to be following ICE agents? I mean, this is a difficult, or is there going to be some type of legal, like, to your point, justification that there's,
an ongoing emergency, obviously that would be part of it, but is there something that's going
to say that the crime, what are they going to use? They have different devices. So it probably
means that they have to look at another tool in the toolkit legally. They have to fight crime
only around federal buildings. Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker responded, thank you, but no thank
you. Here's Pritzker's response. I'm aware that the president of the United States likes to go on
television and beg me to call and ask him for troops. I find this extraordinarily strange,
as Chicago does not want troops on our streets. I also have experience asking the president for
assistance, just to have the rug pulled out from underneath me when execution meets reality.
I refuse to play a reality game show with Donald Trump again. All those events required significant
coordination between all levels of government. Some, like the Democratic National Convention
last year, even required a limited deployment of the Illinois National Guard for broad
security purposes, including especially preventing terrorism. So Illinois lawmakers
might not want it, but morning Joe lawmakers do. Let's roll A3. I actually think that J.B. Pritzker
should do something radical. I think you should pick up the phone, call the president,
and say, you know and I know, you don't have the constitutional authority to deploy the National Guard here and to police my, you can do that in D.C. You can't do that in Chicago.
But let's partner up. These are the most dangerous parts of my state. We would love to figure out how to have a partnership that's constitutional that respects the sort of balance of federalism between the federal government and the state government.
and let's work together to save lives.
Was he proposing a clear-and-hold strategy in Chicago?
I mean, first of all,
the stilted melodramatic delivery of Joe Scarborough
when he says, I'm going to propose something radical
and takes like a 10-second pause.
But, Ryan, let me say something radical.
I know it's not radical at all.
It's actually conventional, probably wisdom
of people like Joe Scarborough,
although in this case I'm not convinced it's entirely wrong.
The Chiron on that Morning Joe segment was 54 people shot at least seven killed in Chicago.
I think there probably is a middle ground.
It's not to say that Donald Trump would be eager to compromise with J.B. Pritzker.
But I think J.B. Pritzker's political instincts here are way off unless what he's doing is just to position himself for a 2028 primary, in which case that's great because you're building up goodwill with the sort of action.
activist base of the Democratic Party who absolutely wants resistance at all costs.
On the other hand, people of Illinois see Chicago as being in like this rolling state of emergency
for decades, and I think not incorrectly so.
And this is, there has to be a way for people like J.B. Pritzker to say, I'm taking this seriously
and, you know, the people of Chicago who are desperate for protection and some order in different
parts of the city that desperately need it, you know, I'm not going to look like I'm blocking
all of that.
I'm not going to look like I'm, because that's what Trump is doing.
Trump is positioning them.
He's like boxing them in so that they look like they're against taking this more seriously.
And that's not exactly what's happening, but on the politics of it, people in Illinois are going
to want to see, like, Chicago be in some state of order.
They might not live Donald Trump, but then you're forcing them to choose between something they don't
like from Donald Trump and something they don't like from J.B. Pritzker. And a lot of people
are going to side with Trump in the Trump Pritzker. If Pritzker looks like he's against
taking crime in Chicago more seriously, and Trump looks like he's for taking crime in Chicago
more seriously. Well, the reason I disagree with that is that I don't think there's
anybody who's persuadable who thinks that Trump's sending the National Guard into Chicago
was actually going to do anything about crime, even necessarily short-term. Like,
If you send a whole bunch of national guardsmen into a block, I think while those guardsmen are on that block, you might have less crime.
You cannot occupy every single block.
And you can't do it indefinitely either.
Or should you?
It's not a short-term solution for the whole city.
It's not a medium or long-term solution, period.
And so what it is is just a photo op and, you know, cool optics for the MAGA guys.
who want ASMR videos of boots stomping through Chicago.
I don't disagree with that.
But I think for a lot of people, I mean, there were here in D.C.
When, you know, local news was going around and asking people about the federal takeover,
there were people in like Ward 7, Ward 8 saying,
I'd love to see the national, like, I don't have Donald Trump,
but I'd love to see the National Guard actually come to this neighborhood
because we haven't seen them yet.
So I don't necessarily agree that maybe that's where we disagree on this.
I don't, whether or not it's successful, I think there's an appetite.
for whether it's a National Guard
or some heightened enforcement
among average people.
That's a different question of whether or not
it'll actually be successful. And that's one of the big problems
here in D.C. that I'm already seeing
is you have National Guard
out and then across the street. I mean, I just saw this this weekend.
You have people who are suffering from
like addiction tweakouts on the street
they're not doing it. That's not what they're there
to do. And so yes, it's
obviously a very Band-Aid type solution
And probably the longer it goes on, Ryan, the more, the less persuasive that is to the average person.
Maybe it actually works against Donald Trump if he deploys the National Guard in Chicago in some way because it becomes sort of D.C. with the federal city status is different than Chicago, Los Angeles.
It becomes more obvious that it's not actually a long-term solution.
Right. If he had, if he even tried to present a solution, like I'm going to send these.
national federal officials, whether it's guard or ICE, whoever it is, into the city and
here's how they're going to actually make the situation better, then I think he might
at least get a hearing from a decent number of people, but he's not even trying that.
He's just like, I'm going to fix it, I'm going to send in the guard.
Right.
And I don't think anybody takes that seriously.
Well, it's, so this was the decision that Trump was referring to there was from actually Stephen
Breyer's brother out in California, who said that deploying to L.A. earlier in the summer,
violated posse comitatis. So Trump then has to say, on the one hand, the National Guard is
restoring order, and that he is not violating posse comitatis. And those two things are really
difficult legally to say are both true at the same time, unless you can find, like we were
talking about earlier, the, like, quote, loophole of, I mean, it's not really a loophole is the
Insurrection Act exists. There are ways that you can do it. But Breyer's ruling,
Breyer's ruling, bars the Pentagon from, quote, ordering, instructing, training, or using
the National Guard currently deployed in California, or in any military troops heretofore
deployed in California from, quote, engaging in arrests, apprehension, searches, seizures, security
patrols, traffic control, crowd control, riot control, evidence collection, interrogation,
or acting as informants, unless they have permission from.
Congress, according to Politico. So obviously, that's narrow. The language is narrow to California,
but looking to Chicago, the administration is not going to be afraid to test that ruling and see
if they can get something like this up to the Supreme Court, probably.
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My boyfriend's professor is way too friendly,
and now I'm seriously suspicious.
Wait a minute, Sam, maybe her boyfriend's just looking for extra credit.
Well, Dakota, it's back to school week on the OK Storytime podcast, so we'll find out soon.
This person writes, my boyfriend has been hanging out with his young professor a lot.
He doesn't think it's a problem, but I don't trust her.
Now, he's insisting we get to know each other, but I just want her gone.
Now, hold up. Isn't that against school policy?
That sounds totally inappropriate.
Well, according to this person, this is her boyfriend's former professor and they're the same age.
And it's even more likely that they're cheating.
insists there's nothing between them. I mean, do you believe him? Well, he's certainly trying to get
this person to believe him because he now wants them both to meet. So, do we find out if this person's
boyfriend really cheated with his professor or not? To hear the explosive finale, listen to the
OK Storytime podcast on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.
Get fired up, y'all. Season two of Good Game with Sarah Spain is underway. We just welcomed one of
my favorite people and an incomparable soccer icon, Megan Rapino, to the show. And we had a
blast. We talked about her recent 40th birthday celebrations, co-hosting a podcast with her fiance
Sue Bird, watching former teammates retire and more. Never a dull moment with Pino. Take a listen.
What do you miss the most about being a pro athlete? The final. The final. And the locker
room. I really, really, like, you just, you can't replicate, you can't get back.
Showing up to locker room every morning just to shit talk. We've got more incredible guests like
the legendary Candace Parker and college superstar A. Z. Fudd.
I mean, seriously, y'all.
The guest list is absolutely stacked for season two.
And, you know, we're always going to keep you up to speed
on all the news and happenings around the women's sports world as well.
So make sure you listen to Good Game with Sarah Spain on the IHeart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Presented by Capital One, founding partner of IHeart Women's Sports.
So let's move here to Venezuela because I think this is actually a good segue
because rather than trying to actually prevent crime,
the Trump administration appears to be just committing crimes.
We sent down this naval armada,
since nuclear-powered submarines to Venezuela,
a saber-rattled at Nicholas Maduro,
Marco Rubio put a $50 million price on his head.
Have you seen your $50 million yet?
I haven't seen my $50 million,
saying that he's the head of a narco-trafficking operation,
then said that he runs Trenda-Aaragua, Venezuela and U.S.-based gang.
Which they designate as a foreign terrorist organization.
So this is how they're bringing Maduro.
This is how they're going to justify it.
We don't know yet.
It's still early, but they designated Trenda-Aragua a foreign terrorist organization,
and then they sanctioned something called the Cartel of the Sons.
And say that Maduro is, they say the Cartel of the Sons is providing material support to Trenda-A-Ragua,
and that Maduro controls Cartel of the Sons, which has been sanctioned.
So this is how they're building the justification.
Yeah, and in order to get to that, they needed the intelligence community to say that this was not a total figment of our imagination.
Intelligence community put out a report saying, sorry, this is a figment of your imagination.
He does not run Trenda, Aragoa. This is false.
Those people were then fired by Tulsi Gabbard for producing a report that did not align with the outcome that the Trump administration wanted.
she then put people in place who would write the report that she wanted written to say that
Trennairag was actually this foreign terrorist organization under the control of Maduro, which
just use your common sense.
If you are a government, do you need gangs?
Like, if Robbie Suave were here, he would tell you, what is a government?
It is a gang that has evolved into having a monopoly over violence.
If you are the government, you are a basically regulated, empowered gang already.
You don't then go and create new gangs.
That's not in general how these things work.
You create paramilitary organizations.
I think it's fair to contrainty.
You create J-SOP.
To the organization, yeah.
So anyway, according to the IC, American intelligence community, this was bogus, fired those people, got a new report, said that actually, yes, Maduro does run Trendor-Iragua.
Now, the other problem for the administration's rationale here is trend of Aragua is not primarily a, or even in the main, a narco-traffing operation.
Like, that's not their thing.
or some of their people involved in it, some ways, sure.
But that's crucial to understanding what they did yesterday.
So let's roll, what's the first one that we have here?
Oh, so this is the...
The administration released this.
A little dingy rolling through the Caribbean.
The laws of the sea here...
Just getting lit up if you're listening to this.
Yeah, would say that if you want to...
There's people getting burned alive.
the laws of the sea here would say that if you believe that this is this ship in international waters
is doing something that you don't like as the Coast Guard, U.S. Navy, you can try to intercept them,
you can try to stop them. You can't blow them out of the water without warning. You can't
blow them out of the water if they're not a threat to you. You're obligated to try to stop them and
board them. And if you think that they're trafficking in drugs, then board the ship and seize the
drugs and interrogate the people. Because again, use some common sense here. If they're serious
about rolling up a drug trafficking operation, what's a better way to do it? Do you seize the drugs,
interrogate the people, ask them, where'd they get the drugs and roll it up that way? Or do you use
a $50 million missile to bomb every fishing boat that you think might have some drugs on it?
It's good business for Lockheed.
That's good business for Lockheed.
Do you, I don't know if we have enough missiles to hit every single fishing boat that may or may not have drugs on it.
Yeah.
Well, I mean, that's a really important point.
Obviously, and Ryan, you've covered this for years, but particularly in the Middle East.
And this is now in our hemisphere.
And obviously, there were Cold War conflicts in some of these very places where there were extrajudicial killings and all of that from the,
sort of fervent anti-communists in America and in some of these countries themselves,
but we're getting support and aid from America.
But this high-tech extrajudicial killing where we're not,
I don't think it's confirmed whether it was a drone or a helicopter,
that type of strike.
And we can put this next element up on the screen.
This is from Representative Kassar,
who introduced an amendment to the NDAA Pentagon Bill requiring Trump to follow the Constitution
and War Powers Act,
as this person of expudence puts it.
The amendment simply says that Congress wants vote
before Trump sends our troops into danger in Venezuela
as required by law.
So getting to the point as to whether it's a drone or helicopter
is actually important because that indicates
if it's a helicopter, you have potentially people in harm's way
these paramilitary cartel organizations.
It didn't look like they were, that was a very dangerous dingy.
No, but you can see how that spirals really quickly
into a protracted conflict in our hemisphere.
And it doesn't really behoove anyone,
least of all the people of these countries,
to have such robust paramilitary organizations
running so much of the land in their countries.
Like the war that's happening right now in Sinaloa
is like that's land that is out of control
of the Mexican government.
And it's not that far from the American border.
This doesn't absolve the U.S. of any of its role
in helping fuel the rise of some of these groups.
One of the least discussed things ever.
is basically that because of the Biden administration's immigration policy,
every single person who crossed the border under Biden was,
like money in the cartels' pockets.
And so they've exploded in terms of their tech capabilities,
not just because of that, also because of fentanyl and other things,
but they've exploded in their capabilities.
And they now do have some, you know,
they have more drone capacity, all of that stuff.
And it's not just hawkish warmongering to say that.
They're just actually pretty well-funded, advanced paramilitary organizations that now run swaths of their respective countries.
And so to then be doing questionable or operations with questionable legitimacy, I mean, we'll take a look at the evidence, but given our track record in the Middle East, I'm not optimistic that this will come out looking like it was a fully constitutional legal use of force.
then you are genuinely risking what seems like the Trump administration wants, which is some type of all-out military conflict with these paramilitary groups, which will mean that Americans die.
Right. And 11 people were killed yesterday on this fishing boat or whatever it was. And here's Trump with A6 announcing this attack.
When you come out and when you leave the room, you'll see that we just, over the last few minutes, literally shot out a
A boat, a drug-carrying boat, a lot of drugs in that boat.
And you'll be seeing that.
And there's more where that came from.
We have a lot of drugs pouring into our country, coming in for a long time.
And we just, these came out of Venezuela.
There's more where that came from.
Yes, there is more drugs where that came from.
You think you're going to blow up every boat that might have drugs on it?
I don't even want to acknowledge that.
Maybe it did.
I don't even want to acknowledge that without some type of evidence.
There's plenty of fishing going on in the Caribbean.
Mm-hmm. Well, yeah, I mean, there are also people who have followed this have already said it's a very small craft. And there's been some debate of people in that space, you're like former agents, guys like Yo and Grillo, who've covered this really closely as to whether or not that boat, from what we know now looks like something that would be engaged in mass trafficking. Some people say you see the waterproof bags in the middle of it. I think that's hard to see. But we'll obviously learn more, at least from our government's perspective. But very interestingly, in the aftermath of the
Mike, Maduro, this is, I don't know if you saw this, Ryan, because you'll have interesting
thoughts on this. Maduro tried to drive a wedge between Rubio and Trump by saying Marco Rubio,
who obviously has supported Juan Guido and other opponents of Maduro has been a vicious
enemy of Maduro for a long time, saying Marco Rubio is trying to draw you into a war with the
people of Venezuela. But I'm confident, you know, that there's a way that we can work with Donald
Trump, et cetera. That's what Maduro said.
afterwards was a pretty pretty interesting attack no i think it's smart by maduro because i think it's
true i think uh rubio i think rubio is going is taking the opportunity that he sees yes he's boxed out
of a lot of the rest of the world but the thing that he really cares about is fighting the left
in the caribbean and latin and latin america and he's just being allowed to do it stop on that point
Because notice, I think Trump is absolutely itching for a conflict with cartels that he can...
But Mexican cartels.
Not the communist.
And Rubio's like, how about we go after Venezuela?
Exactly.
Yeah.
Because I think Trump is absolutely itching for a war with cartels, which is not like...
I think it's really emotional for people who have lost famine members of fentanyl, which is just staggering number of Americans who do want to see some justice and want to see action.
and I absolutely understand that.
I think we've learned, you know, after 9-11, for example,
that it's very easy after deep tragedy
to be sort of swayed in one direction or another
by politicians who say they have our best interests
and are pursuing justice at hand.
So there's that, but the Mexican cartels,
Trump, I think, is particularly eager
because he feels like they're fairly easy to crush.
And I think he's eager to have, you know, videos of those cartels getting lit up.
But your point, I think, is important, which is that Marco Rubio, who's actually on a sort of swing of Latin America, this happened literally right before he was going on his trip.
Marco Rubio, isn't it interesting, is going after the first strike is on...
Venezuela. How about that?
The communist.
Maybe he'll find some Cuban drug traffickers next.
That probably is coming.
Yeah.
That probably is coming.
Ah, come on, why is this taking so long?
This thing is ancient.
Still using yesterday's tech, upgrade to the ThinkPad X1 Carbon,
ultra-light, ultra-powerful, and built for serious productivity
with Intel core ultra-processors, blazing speed, and AI-powered performance.
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My boyfriend's professor is way
too friendly, and now I'm seriously suspicious.
Wait a minute, Sam, maybe her boyfriend's just
looking for extra credit. Well, Dakota,
it's back to school week on the OK Storytime
podcast, so we'll find out soon.
This person writes, my boyfriend has been
hanging out with his young professor a lot.
He doesn't think it's a problem, but I don't trust her.
Now he's insisting we get to know each other,
but I just want her gone.
Now hold up.
isn't that against school policy?
That sounds totally inappropriate.
Well, according to this person,
this is her boyfriend's former professor
and they're the same age.
It's even more likely that they're cheating.
He insists there's nothing between them.
I mean, do you believe him?
Well, he's certainly trying to get this person to believe him
because he now wants them both to meet.
So, do we find out if this person's boyfriend
really cheated with his professor or not?
To hear the explosive finale,
listen to the OK Storytime podcast
on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast,
or wherever you get your podcast.
Get fired up, y'all.
Season two of Good Game with Sarah Spain is underway.
We just welcomed one of my favorite people and an incomparable soccer icon,
Megan Rapino, to the show, and we had a blast.
We talked about her recent 40th birthday celebrations,
co-hosting a podcast with her fiancé Sue Bird,
watching former teammates retire and more.
Never a dull moment with Pino.
Take a listen.
What do you miss the most about being a pro athlete?
The final.
The final.
And the locker room.
I really, really, like, you just,
You can't replicate.
You can't get back.
Showing up to locker room every morning just to shit talk.
We've got more incredible guests like the legendary Candace Parker and college superstar A.Z. Fudd.
I mean, seriously, y'all.
The guest list is absolutely stacked for season two.
And, you know, we're always going to keep you up to speed on all the news and happenings around the women's sports world as well.
So make sure you listen to Good Game with Sarah Spain on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Presented by Capital One, founding partner of IHeart Women's Sports.
We started this by saying it was a wild press conference that spanned all kinds of different topics, and it was including tariffs.
So, Ryan, let's talk about how the president responded to setbacks, or maybe he doesn't see them as setbacks, but setbacks in his tariff war.
We can go ahead and roll B1 again from this press conference yesterday.
And now it's going to the Supreme Court.
Now, we're going to be asking for early admittance where we're going tomorrow and we're going to ask for expedited and expedited ruling because, you know, when you look at the stock markets down today, the stock market's down because of that, because the stock market needs the tariffs. They want the tariffs. Without the tariffs, we wouldn't have a chance because we wouldn't be able to protect those investments of the companies coming in. So if you took away tariffs, we could end up being a third world country.
That's how big the ruling.
So we're asking for an expedited ruling.
Sir, China's having a massive military parade that President Putin and Kim Jong-un will be attending.
Do you interpret that as a challenge to the U.S.
And are you concerned at all about those countries?
No.
No.
Trying to be some sort of counterweight.
Not at all.
China needs us, and I have a very good relationship with President Xi is, you know.
But China needs us much more than we need them.
No, I don't see that at all, no?
And I had actually a very good meeting with President Putin a couple of weeks ago.
We'll see if anything comes out of it.
If it doesn't, we'll take a different stance.
Okay, so two things going on there.
Not unrelated, of course.
The tariff war and the meeting between Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin, obviously,
Narendra Modi, was in the mix as well over the last couple of days.
Ryan, what was your reaction to Trump's comments there?
So he referenced the stock market plunge.
And so it wasn't huge, but like the market was down,
across the board. This is coming because this appeals court has affirmed the lower court's ruling
that Trump's use of the tariffs is illegal, that the president retains ability to put tariffs in
place in particular instances. But he does not have an across-the-board ability to just
willy-nilly slap tariffs on everybody for any reason. He just doesn't have that power, and he's
clearly doing it that way. Like, India's buying oil from Russia. Well, here's another 25% tax on
a tariff on India. Or the entire formula that he rolled out that hit the entire world. There was
nothing, you know, there was very little attempt to root it in the statutory authority that
delegates to the present, the ability to implement these tariffs. The consequence of that is, think about
that. One reason that the market hasn't gone haywire over the tariffs is because there was significant
revenue coming in and we haven't had a complete calamity economically. And so Wall Street starts
saying, oh, wait, this is actually a decent revenue potential for the United States. And so maybe we'll
keep, maybe that keeps bond prices a little bit flat and interest rates don't go crazy because we're not
as worried about a debt spiral. If the tariffs are illegal, and let's say you,
run a small business that manufactures fishing gear in Ohio, and you paid $200,000 in tariffs
in June for the material that you need to manufacture the goods that you're producing here
in the United States and then selling here. You paid $200 grand. You didn't have that $200 grand.
You went to the bank and you're like, look, I'm going under if I don't pay for these imports.
So you got this $200,000. You paid it.
you're now told that these tariffs are illegal.
You want that $200,000 back.
And you're not alone.
Everyone who paid those tariffs is going to then demand those back.
And so Wall Street is factoring that in.
And that's why Trump was saying the market went down.
And I think he's actually right about that.
The B3 is the appeals court ruling.
We put up that real quickly so people can see it.
but and then quickly move to to B4, which is that, you know, Trump is not crazy here to think
this. This is CNBC headline. Treasury yields jump on prospect of U.S. having to refund
tariff money. 30-year yield tops 4.97%. We saw 50 point swing, 50 point, 50 basis point interest rate swings,
half point like massive jumps in interest rates as a result of this uncertainty. And so that
that means two things. One, the tariffs get approved and we continue to have prices going up
because everybody's paying more for the things that are coming to the country, which is most of the
things. Or the tariffs get shot down and then the U.S. has to spend hundreds of billions of
dollars refunding people, their tariffs that they collected illegally, neither of which the
market or the economy is going to like. So Trump has set himself up for a complete lose-lose
situation here, which goes back to what I was saying at the very beginning. If you remember,
you and I both like the idea of protecting domestic industries where it's necessary.
But you want to have the public on your side and you want to have a strategy for why you're
those industries and how you're going to bolster them in the meantime let's say
it's aluminum here's our aluminum strategy yeah we're going to make sure the
Pentagon and the federal government and the states are buying from American
aluminum makers and we're going to make sure that would they have access to the
global sources that they need in the time over the course of the time that they're
building up the industry we'll do some tax breaks you do whatever you want
and explain it and put it into law and then
that can work. He's just like, we're doing this because you suck. And you've been ripping us
off. And the court's like, well, you can't do that. And the voters and the businesses don't think
you're going to stick with it. So it doesn't actually develop any domestic industry. And then you
wind up in this lose-lose situation. So Trump has also has said a couple of other things worth
One is he told Scott Dennings that the uncertainty was hurting the stock market,
which is what his critics have been saying since we were liberated on April 2nd.
You think, buddy.
But he then also said that the stock markets are upset because they need the tariffs.
That was another, yeah, that is another comment.
They love the tariffs.
So they're bringing, these tariffs have brought in about $30 billion a month.
And so if that goes straight to the Treasury.
So if then that leaves the treasury, this is a huge hole in Trump's talking point about tariffs, which isn't just that we're going to make fairer deals, we're going to protect American industry, but also that it's going to help the deficit.
And so if that goes away, also there are companies, experts who wait in on this, we put the CNBC article up on the screen already, that article talks to some people who are like, it's possible actually that it's not that difficult to do the refunds, that the process.
like logistically is not impossible you can be able to do it it all has they're all coded right
but some companies do their imports through third parties like dhl or other groups which is a nightmare
for those companies right and then who's entitled to that right yeah so we can this is a b4 this is the
the cnbc article that you can you can read if you if you want to but basically the breakdown is that the
logistics of this, you know, they're doable, but then it gets really, really messy for certain
companies, and obviously the markets are going to react to that. Yeah, good point. Think about this.
Let's take your fishing rod company again. Yeah. Like, let's say that fishing rod company,
their costs for the imports went up by $200,000, but they actually paid this importer.
Right. Right. Right. It's the importer, exactly. Right. So the importer now got paid,
by the company itself
because they told the fishing company,
hey, look, sorry, man,
you want to make these fishing rods,
it's going to cost you an extra 200 grand.
Because Trump did this to me.
And then they take the money
from the fishing company,
they pass it on to the treasury.
Now, if they get ruled illegal,
the importer is going to go to the treasury
and say, give me my $200,000 back.
Of course, now the fishing rod company
is going to be like, well,
you owe me that $200K.
Of course.
Because I had to raise my prices, and I had to go into debt.
So now give it back.
They're like, no, legally it's mine.
I'm not giving it back to you.
And then me, who spent an extra $30 on the fishing rod,
it's been like, I want the $30 back.
Yeah, exactly.
And they're going to be like, no, too bad.
Well, maybe you'll get your tariff rebate.
Don't count on it.
What was it called?
So let's put B5 on the screen because some of this actually is probably already priced into things.
So this is a screenshot from NBC.
Package carriers suspending shipments to the U.S.
Lots and lots of carriers from different countries around the world that have already kind of adjusted to this.
And that's why some...
Well, adjusted in a brutal way.
So this is the de minimis rule which says...
Which is awesome.
It used to be under, what, a pound or two?
It started that way.
It evolved in a really egregious way over time with inflation, so it started as like a buck or two, to your point.
And then what was it, 2015 or 2016, they moved it to like $800, something like that.
So basically, you could package a crazy amount of stuff in these little boxes from China and not have to pay.
Right, not have to pay any tariffs.
And so they got rid of that.
And so...
If you've ever wondered why stuff got really cheap in the last 10 years, that's a very good example.
Like why the Amazon prices started tumbling about roughly 10 years ago and you started being able to get crazy stuff really quickly on Prime.
Right. And different LLCs could then be the ones that are buying all these different things. And so, but again, they didn't really figure out a rational replacement to what is going on. So all of these mail carriers are just like, well, we don't really understand what the new rules are for the U.S. So we're not sending any packages, period. So if you need something from.
this list of 30 plus countries here, like, it's not coming.
Yeah.
Or you have to find some other, like, private shipping method that's going to be super
expensive to get it in.
Right.
Yeah.
I mean, this is, we'll see.
I mean, Trump also said this is another thing I wanted to get your take on because I think
it was Obama and Justin Trudeau may have done something similar at some point.
Your memory is better than me on this.
But Trump was talking about how these AIPA tariffs.
So the emergency tariffs are actually, it's great that they go through the president and not Congress because it gives the president the ability to make deals.
And the implication of what he was saying, and paraphrasing him, of course, is that it gives the president the ability to make deals for national security and for prosperity and do sort of all of that rolled up into one negotiator, not trying to go through this Byzantine legislative system just to negotiate with other world leaders.
And it sounds, it reminds me a little bit of,
do you remember when Obama was, he got hammered really hard
for almost sounding like he yearned to have the power of Xi Jinping at one point?
I'm sure you remember this.
It sounds exactly like that,
that, you know, the president should be able to kind of wave the wand
and do these emergency deals,
even though that also sort of undercuts the legal emergency justification
doing these deals by saying,
well, it's just better this way anyway.
But yeah, that's a, I think a worthwhile distinction is we may, we don't know, I mean,
but we may look back on this five to ten years from now and say the emergency tariff authority
of the executive pursuing these tariffs with that vehicle was actually the downfall of the
Trump tariff policy ultimately, because while there was some, in some ways, he does have more
leverage just as a sole negotiator because he's able to say, ah, I don't know, I don't like
this. I'm not getting along with you right now, whatever. But then on the other hand,
that creates such enormous uncertainty that everyone just bets on bricks or just stops doing
as much business with the United States. And again, like I'm saying that's a possibility that
we look back 10 years from now and that's the problem because that's actually not the way
the system is designed to avoid that problem. Yeah. It's exactly how it's designed.
saw somebody jokingly suggesting that Trump actually is on track to win his Nobel peace fries
because the achievement of bringing together the historic rivals of China, Russia, and India,
which represent billions of people around the world into coalition together.
Like, that's a peace deal that he deserves great credit for.
People didn't think it was possible.
Hey.
And yet he's pulling it off.
So, amazing.
Yeah, I mean, the theme of this show so far, we started with,
you know, Chicago, then we talked about Venezuela, and now we're talking about tariffs.
The theme of the show so far is the theme of the administration, which is testing the legal
limits, both as norms and as legal precedents, some of these constraints, particularly
on executive branch power, which is the same in the case of Chicago, is the same in the case of
Venezuela, and it's right now the same in the case of tariffs.
And let me just say, on tariffs, and, well, tariffs in particular, if Barack Obama had been doing this, the anti-Obama right would have been up in arms about Obama wanting to be a king, which was the case with DACA and I think correctly the case with DACA.
But now that Trump is in this position, it's possible he leaves office and the executive branch is not in any way less powerful to the point that some conservatives,
a battle internally in the conservative movement, whether the executives would be more or less
powerful or powerful in different ways, but that the executive, the executive's power is
massively expanded and then wielded by a Democratic president in ways where their emergency
power is punishing countries that don't go along with like the LGBT agenda or something like
that, and conservatives then find themselves in that position.
Somehow, I suspect the Supreme Court will find a way to distinguish between Democratic and
Republican presidents, though.
We'll see.
T B, D.
Because actually, that very internal debate in the conservative movement, these justices
are federal society justices that are not, in every case, MAGA justices.
And so they have been involved in this debate about executive power over the course of the
last several decades.
And it is not a given whether they side with the kind of originalist branch that they came
up in or MAGAWorld.
And that's a actually very, MAGA World, which is sort of critical.
being from Nixon in this case. That's, if they think they're just going to get rubber stamped at
the Supreme Court, my guess would be that that's not the case. We'll see, though.
We'll see. Let's move on to Anthony Aguilar, who is joining us in studio this morning on his way
to disrupt a hearing over on Capitol Hill. We'll bring him in just now.
Ah, come on. Why is this taking so long? This thing is ancient.
Still using yesterday's tech, upgrade to the ThinkPad X-1 Carbon, ultra-light, ultra-powerful,
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My boyfriend's professor is way too friendly.
and now I'm seriously suspicious.
Oh, wait a minute, Sam.
Maybe her boyfriend's just looking for extra credit.
Well, Dakota, it's back to school week on the OK Storytime podcast,
so we'll find out soon.
This person writes,
My boyfriend has been hanging out with his young professor a lot.
He doesn't think it's a problem, but I don't trust her.
Now, he's insisting we get to know each other,
but I just want her gone.
Now, hold up.
Isn't that against school policy?
That sounds totally inappropriate.
Well, according to this person,
this is her boyfriend's former professor,
and they're the same age.
And it's even more likely that they're cheating.
He insists there's nothing between them.
I mean, do you believe him?
Well, he's certainly trying to get this person to believe him
because he now wants them both to meet.
So, do we find out if this person's boyfriend really cheated with his professor or not?
To hear the explosive finale, listen to the OK Storytime podcast
on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.
Get fired up, y'all.
Season two of Good Game with Sarah Spain is underway.
We just welcomed one of my favorite people and an incomparable soccer icon,
Megan Rapino, to the show.
and we had a blast.
We talked about her recent 40th birthday celebrations,
co-hosting a podcast with her fiancé Sue Bird,
watching former teammates retire and more.
Never a dull moment with Pino.
Take a listen.
What do you miss the most about being a pro athlete?
The final.
The final.
And the locker room.
I really, really, like, you just,
you can't replicate,
you can't get back.
Showing up to locker room every morning
just to shit talk.
We've got more incredible guests
like the legendary Candace Parker and college superstar AZ Fudd.
I mean, seriously, y'all.
The guest list is absolutely stacked for season two.
And, you know, we're always going to keep you up to speed
on all the news and happenings around the women's sports world as well.
So make sure you listen to Good Game with Sarah Spain
on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Presented by Capital One, founding partner of IHeart Women's Sports.
We are joined once again by retired lieutenant colonel, Anthony Aguilar,
Ryan, we have a lot to get into.
So, first of all, thank you so much for being here and coming back on the show.
We appreciate it.
Thank you.
I appreciate it.
You can come back and having the opportunity.
Yeah.
So welcome back to Washington, D.C.
We're recording this early in the morning on Wednesday.
You're headed from here down to the United States Senate.
And by the time this show airs, the hearing that you're going to will have already begun.
What's your plan there?
Can you tell us anything about what, what, what, what, what, what, what,
brought you to Washington. So today, Senate is back in session. They returned for the 119th
second Congress on Monday, administrative work yesterday. Today, the Senate in the House are
back into sessions. Today, at 10 o'clock, will be the Foreign Affairs Committee discussing
nominations to be presented moving forward. So kind of somewhat business work, but also kind of
the start of business for the Foreign Affairs Committee.
And the Foreign Affairs Committee in my particular interest is crucial in how the United States
continues to back fund, support what's going on in Gaza.
So my goal is to ensure that our lawmakers, our representatives, the Congress that works for us,
the people, is unquestionably aware of what the truth is in Gaza.
And that there can't be any confusion as to, well, we didn't know or we thought this or we thought that.
And hopefully, by being there through, you know, I will disrupt the hearing and that there is an acknowledgement or at least going back because the next, the rest of this week and next week is all,
matters in the House, so they're not actually having committee hearing meetings, so they'll take back and do work.
So I'm hoping that by addressing this now in a more elevated way, that it'll be discussed, and lawmakers will actually put some serious effort into what we're going to do.
Is it a strange position to find yourself in right now being so upset about what you see, that you're willing to disrupt congressional hearings?
Is this a position you ever thought you'd find yourself in?
And also, I assumed, by the way, that everybody watching this is familiar with your work,
we'll just let people know who are just tuning in.
You were a contractor at the so-called Gaza Humanitarian Foundation
and so-called aid distribution sites.
And I've been speaking out about the killings and the starvation policy
that you've seen unfolding there.
So if you're new, that's what we're talking about here.
Go click on the interview with Sager and Crystal.
Catch yourself up and then come right back here.
Pause this, Google, go watch that.
Yeah.
So it's, I wouldn't say it's a strange situation.
It's a situation that I did not necessarily think I'd find myself in in terms of standing up for what's right, standing up for the values and the ideals of humanity.
But a weird position I find myself in that what's happening in Gaza is happening.
It's mind-blowing to me that the world has stood by for so long and has done nothing but write stern letters or made statements on media.
But, you know, the great nations of the world have the ability to do something, and we haven't.
And when I first went to Gaza, I was aware of the ongoing conflict.
I was aware of both sides of the position in terms of, well, this is what, this is what Hamas has done.
This is what Israel is doing.
There's a lot of narrative.
There's a lot of rhetoric.
It's very difficult, as it was for myself and for the average American, to cut through what's truth and what's not.
And you were generally favorable to Israel when you went over, right?
In all honesty, yes.
As a military officer in the United States Army, we are trained and somewhat brought up in our,
officer education that that that that israel is a is an army that we should emulate um they're
they're they're an army that we should you know that that that is as professional as we are and and
there are these partners that we should strive to work with and and so yes when i went to
israel i kind of had that initial perception of you know that okay what israel's fighting a war
war is complex and complicated there's a problem with starvation
They didn't let the UN because UN go in anymore because they're giving food to Hamas.
What's true? What's not?
Right.
And so me going there, I really was focused on I can't control the political aspects of food going in or not.
But what I can be a part of is providing aid to a desperate and in need population, regardless of the politics.
The people of the Palestinians are dying.
So that was my premise for going in.
I was, I was lied to, we were lied to, all the contractors that went there.
It was, it was not a mechanism to provide aid to the population.
So, yes, I kind of, I first went in kind of, if you were to put me in a camp on day one, the 24th of May going into Gaza,
I probably would have fallen to that, fall into the side of the, the pro-Israel side.
And that's just, that's just me being completely transparent and honest, that that's just,
That's the military culture that I spent my career in.
And you and I were talking just before you came on here about meetings that you've been having outside of this Senate one, but more above board meetings.
You said you had some interviews with the ICC.
Can you tell us a little bit about what they're curious about and what are they looking into that relates to your work there?
So when you particularly look at the ICC, and there are numerous entities, offices, and organizations that are now taking a deeper look into this cloak and dagger organization of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, the ICC particularly is looking at the aspects of the violations of international humanitarian law. The core of the international humanitarian law that Israel is a signature to are the protocols of the Geneva Convention.
That's the, so if you have this large body of law that is the international humanitarian law, you know, the, the meat of it in terms of how we fight wars is the protocols of the Geneva Convention.
And the ICC, like many, many who are informed and aware of these conventions and these laws and these protocols is that there are clear violations, clear violations of this in terms of forced displacement, starvation.
not providing water.
And these things are all articles of the protocols
that are identified by specifically,
like you have to give civilians water.
You have to feed civilians.
You have to safeguard civilians.
You can't displace civilians.
You can't do A, B, and C.
So it's very rational in its approach.
Now, where the investigations come to,
which will take the voice of the world,
is that how do you then establish intent?
So if I, if I, if I, if I, if I'm in an unfortunate situation where someone is, is someone's killed, just say, you know, in my everyday life, the, I don't immediately get charged with first degree murder and go to jail. There's, there's a trial. There's an investigation. You know, what was the intent? What was the situation, right? But I think at this point, it's very, very, very clear that Israel's involvement in Gaza and how this war is being.
fought, it's no longer a war. This is not a war. This is an annihilation. This is a genocide.
And that the body of evidence that now looks to the reality that we see every day, we are
seeing a genocide occur every day in front of our eyes on the world stage, is that it was planned
from the beginning. This has always been the plan. It's premeditated. It's designed.
And unfortunately, the United States is a part of it.
I want to ask, we can put this element up on the screen.
If you saw anything related to these new allegations about forced disappearances,
actually the word they're using is, quote, enforced disappearances of Palestinians at aid distribution sites in Gaza.
As the Times of Israel reports, the allegations are that the military lawfully detains individuals
who approach aid compounds after hours or in ways that endanger its forces.
Now, unlawfully is probably the best way to frame the allegation.
Now, Israel is saying the claim of the forced disappearance of Gaza residents and aid compounds
is baseless and entirely unfounded, according to a statement.
But these are particularly about those Gaza Humanitarian Foundation aid sites.
So did you see anything that would lead you to believe that these allegations of enforced
disappearances of Palestinians are actually happening?
Without question.
Not only did I witness it, but you can, they're on the ground in terms of the plan and how things are enacted.
Two data points, I would say, that give me a clear understanding of that.
One, the response from Israel and the IDF, very similar in parallel to the GHF's response, to any and every allegation is always that's baseless.
That's categorically false.
last week when we saw
you know a hospital
struck and then
there's irrefutable evidence
from what occurred
but up until
the Israelis were faced with irrefutable
evidence and they apologized it as a mishap
what did they say
that's categorically false
that didn't happen
you're lying we don't do that
and the world saw it
so when the IDF says
they didn't do
it or they didn't do something.
That's like asking a criminal to adjourn their own trial.
Like, oh, nothing to see here.
It's like you did it.
So let's take that with a grain of salt that when Israel or the GHF say,
this is categorically false or this is not true.
So what is true is that the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation through Safe Reach Solutions and
UG solutions, Safe Reach Solutions and UG solutions in Israel and Gaza, from day one, from the very
beginning, they implemented biometric facial recognition data collection from day one
and began building out these extensive POIs, persons of interest databases of anyone that looked
like Hamas.
And were you as a contractor at GHF expected to sort of
have a recollection of who might be a POI or be aware of who might be a POI?
We were, yes. So in the first few days of distribution, we were told very clearly by the safe
reach solutions, intelligence analysts. Why does a humanitarian assistance operation have an
intelligence analyst? We were told, kind of give us in this briefing of, of a, look for these
things, look for these things, be aware of this. What do you look for? Like, what do they say
makes a person Hamas at an AIDS? You know, I, I, I,
feel like uh i feel like i'm reliving lessons that we learned long ago when i was in iraq afghanistan
the early days let's look for the maims military aged males which also comes the catchall right
if you look at the videos and if you also just use your common sense these sites are you tell me
five to 15 kilometers away from where people are staying yes the person in the family who's going to
able to make that journey and then make it back is going to be the ma'am the military-aged male
person typically someone in the family that's that's that's capable and so if you look at the
videos most and I'm curious from your perspective you had actually eyes on the ground
the videos most of the people are military-aged males which makes sense because those are the
ones that can hike all the way through the desert in the middle of night wait for it's very
difficult to get there yeah so almost everybody then fits the category that they're
describing as potentially Hamas it sounds like and what you will see now and again the the proof is in
the reality of what we're seeing in the beginning days of distribution what GHF under the umbrella
in coordination with the IDF called phase one phase one establish the sites run the sites and begin
collecting data it's never about humanitarian aid start building these persons of interest mugshots
They even call them that mug shots.
So when they get a package, take a photo.
So if you're, you know, so facial recognition software, cameras on site that are doing that,
they're set up to look for certain characteristics, right?
Now what you will see in the distribution that's happening now with people that are coming down to the south
to this large 2.7 kilometer area concentration camp that GHF is running, they call it a humanitarian village.
But when you displace a population and you concentrate them in.
an area and you put them on a camp that has a name it's a concentration camp so when you look at how
that was being done now the majority of of Palestinians coming to the sites are women and children are
elderly because that's all that's left because what what wasn't advertised and wasn't told is that
if you leave your house and you're going to site one two or three sites one two and three are
all south of the morog corridor which is a militarized corridor that bisects the southern port
from the central. Well, if you want to go to site one, two, or three to get food, you have to
cross that corridor. Once you cross that corridor, you don't go home. You're, you cross the corridor,
you go to get your food on your way back and you hit the intersection of a site in the Marag
corridor. You're assigned to one of the encampments, Eunice Camp, Mawasi Camp. You never go
home. So then your family... This is the trap that my colleague Jeremy
Scarhill described. It's a trap. It's a trap. And then it's a one-way trap. And then
your family that's back home or already in a UN encampment, a lot of the people that came
to get food from these sites were already in UN encampments. UN encampments that, oh,
by the way, are not being run managed by the UN. So, because the UN is out. So it was
designed that way and it will continue. And did you see people detained and interrogated? And
could that be related to these enforced disappearances? That's what the claim from the IDF is if the
initial field questioning, people come in after hours and are around the compound, they say
if the initial field questioning raises suspicion that a detainee has engaged in activity against
our forces, the suspect is transferred for further interrogation in Israel detainees for whom
there is no justification for detention or release into the Gaza Strip,
while those for whom grounds exist for continued detention in accordance with the law
are brought before a judge and are entitled to legal representation as provided by law.
That's the claim.
And to this, can you add the context of, they say after hours,
but how do people know when the hours are and how consistent are these hours?
That's a, that is a great question because the truth is they don't.
It's all left to obscurity and confusion to, you know, kind of like a,
I equate it to like if you were trying to get your taxes done at the DMV.
Like, which line do I go to?
Like, where does this exist?
How do I, how do I do this?
What are the hours?
That building's over there.
What are the hours?
Oh, we're only open every fourth Sunday.
Right?
You're like, and sometimes every third.
Sometimes we close for lunch eight days a week.
And we'll let you know when we close.
We'll let you know.
So it's like it's so, it's intentionally designed to be confusing and and
cryptic and how it's being done.
Now, to the point of the actual.
detention one anecdote i witnessed one i did not witness but i'm intimately familiar with i'll
start with the latest the latter middle eastern i they have a reporter that was recently killed
who was in nasser hospital that reporter that did the story about amir the story that was
broke about my my um interaction with amir the person that then followed through on that story because
GHF came out and said, oh, he's fine.
Here he is and showed a different boy altogether.
So Middle Eastern I, who's in Gaza, followed that up and I'd done it and found his mother
and talked to his mother.
And days later, last week, that individual, that reporter, the person that wrote that
story who was further looking into the disappearance of Amir, where's his body, was detained
and questioned on site number three, the con unisoned.
site, then further detained, and then a few days later, yes, sir, that is a crime, yes, sir.
Mohamed Salama, look up his, he did, and he did some great reporting on the 16 medics that
were killed in the, in Rafa.
Yes, that's right.
He was killed in the Nasser Hospital hit.
Right.
So then they detained a source of his, right?
So go ahead with the story.
They detained a source of his specifically trying to find out where he was.
Right. And then days later, he as well as others are hit in Nasser Hospital, which is directly north of Khan Yunus.
So when you put these pieces together, it seems awfully convenient.
Yeah.
And the, now, I did not witness that, but it's reported.
And the individual that was his source is dead.
What I did witness was in early June, an individual who worked at the site, site number two, distribution.
site two, which is in southern Rafa. The Kogat, the organization out of the Ministry of Defense
of Israel that covers governance and the territories, they had aligned Palestinian workers,
Palestinians that live in Gaza that got vetted through them to then work for us at these
sites. And in that time, within like the first couple days of distribution, one of their
their buses was hit.
And apparently that was blamed on Hamas.
There's no,
Hamas cannot operate
in the area that far south of the Maraq corridor
unless the Israelis let them.
There's just, you can't.
Right, because you're talking about
five to 15 kilometers through the desert
with total drone surveillance.
Total drone surveillance.
And no tunnel network.
Tanks.
Right.
Infantry.
Tunnels have been destroyed.
Full coverage and everything is flattened.
You're not looking at a city.
Right.
So for Hamas to openly have operated and shot up this bus of 25 Palestinian workers in late May, early June, the only way that could have happened is if the idea of let it or it didn't happen and they were killed another way. Because how do we know? So on this particular incident on this day in early June at site number two, I cannot recall the exact date. But we got a we got a call from Kogat, a radio phone call.
from Kogat to our operation center that said,
one of the local Palestinian workers on site too is Hamas.
And our position on it was like,
you're the ones that vetted them.
Like, what are you talking about?
Like, hey, I brought a guest to your house and man, he's a jerk.
You brought him.
He's your guest.
So these people that were here that were working on the site,
Kogat says, oh, one of them is Hamas.
Okay, well, how do you do that?
Like, does he, if I pat him down,
does he have his Hamas membership card?
if I take off his shirt, is he wearing a Hamas t-shirt?
How do you know that?
Well, he has connections.
Really.
So, GHF, UG Solutions, American contractors who, mind you are in Israel, in Gaza on a tourist visa.
Detained this man and would not let him leave until the IDF said he could leave.
Took his passport, took any of his identification, would not let him leave.
and he was under the control of UG solutions until the IDF told us that that he could either leave
or he was going to be taken away by the IDF and this prolonged to the point to where it's
almost as if the IDF wanted to tire us out or wait us out to say like oh we'll just come
and get him but then later in the later at the night two o'clock in the morning remember in
two o'clock in the morning it's hunting season if you will for the
IDF out there. It gives them the perfect excuse that anybody out moving around, well, they must be
bad. So this man gets released. Go back home. And he begged, cried and begged not to be put off
the site and just put, he was like, I live all the way in Berish, which is north by the Netsirim
corridor. How I can't get home from here. I'm going to get killed. Right. Either, you know,
by Hamas for supporting this effort or by the IDF.
And this man was released and set out from the site to his own, to his own device, to his own devices.
And moments later, north of the site, now I didn't see a drone strike or a missile strike hit this individual, but moments later, as he left the site in the area that he was walking, there was a strike.
So is it any doubt to me that the UG solutions under Ghazi humanitarian fund are part of this detention and extra questioning tactic, gestapo tactics, if you will?
They absolutely are.
Americans on tourist visas are detaining people on behalf of the IDF.
That should be very concerning to any American that is paying their tax dollars towards this effort.
yeah and and also for the the men or women who it's all men is any women there oh of the
palestine workers i mean any of the contractors oh from u g solutions um during my time there it was
it was all men there weren't i i can't say what there is now these men went there on a tourist visa
and you know participated in murdering somebody most likely participated in murder
participated as
elements, as
tools of a planned
genocide and a planned forced displacement.
The bait,
the anecdote you gave over the analogy you gave of the bait,
well, if you think about a bait
in a mousetrap,
well, the
people guarding that bait to bring everybody in
are American contractors.
Right.
Now, we could put up this second element
on the screen.
the Washington Post has finally followed the Financial Times and some of its reporting on the
Boston Consulting Group and others who have put together plans that they say are circulating
among administration officials that would see basically the population of Gaza expelled.
There would be some opportunity.
Some Gazans would get a token and they could use a token to come back and buy like
an apartment in a future gulfified Gaza that would be the Riviera that Trump has talked about.
This plan even included from north to south what they called an MBS highway, east to west,
like an Mbz highway named after Muhammad bin Salman of Saudi Arabia and Mohammed bin Zayat of the UAE
trying to get their buy-in by naming streets after them.
So the plans are advanced for a post.
Palestinian Gaza, as you witness what's going on on the ground unfold, do you think that it is
past the point of no return, or do you think that the clock is still ticking on whatever the
strategy is?
The clock is still ticking, but we are seconds away from that clock striking midnight.
We, we, there is time for the world to make a humane decision.
But there's also time to do nothing, as we've been doing, as a world community.
The final solution, if you will, in this greater plan, this plan for a post-war gaza and what that would look like with this real estate venture, the Riviera, tech parks, and all these things, you know, things that you're voluntary Palestinian would not want.
They want to live in their land.
So, one, this notion of we're going to kill everybody, consolidate them, move them out, rebuild their homeland, and then give them a token to come back in.
That's laughable.
And then this aspect of the plan has always been, from before we even open the sites, the Boston Confident, BCG Boston Consulting Group had already developed this plan for this post-war real estate venture.
That was already planned.
That's not something that came about in the last week's like, oh, we did this.
It was the plan from the beginning.
So what that will look like in Gaza is the forced displacement of the entire population.
And we don't have much time left because the final phase of that, the final solution to rid Gaza of all Palestinians, is already happening.
Operation Gideon's Chariots 2 in the north
to clear Gaza City to Jabalya to Arez
that was not supposed to begin
operationally until the end of September
because the IDF has to call up 60,000 reserves
They have people that aren't wanting to fight
They don't have the forces to execute that offensive
In an actual military way
They're just going to use bombing
Last night they were bombing dropping incendiary devices on tents
Yes.
Burning tent.
So is...
That is the UN tent in the north.
Do you suspect that that's happening because they don't have the manpower?
Absolutely.
But they can drop bombs.
They are critically short on manpower, especially in the north for an offensive.
And calling up 60,000 reserves that you don't have time to train or prepare.
Israel knows that putting Israelis, I think yesterday or the day before, there was the article
about the ultra-Orthodox that have been forced into service.
if they go into the offensive on the ground and try to fight this in a way that a that a moral
army would fight this war a lot of people will die a lot of Israelis will die and israeli is
not going to stand for that so they're going to bomb the reason i feel that that we have time
but not much as in within the next 19 days 20 days the question of a of a Palestinian state or the
question of the Palestinian's existence and the right to exist won't even be a question if we don't
do something now because Operation Gideon's chariots too they started it a month early the 60,000
reserve call-up they're they're bringing them in but they've already started the bombing campaign
and they're not only coming from the south they're coming from the north they're halving the
time and how long it would have taken them so before the Palestinian question comes to the
UN General Assembly on the 22nd of September, it's likely that if the world doesn't condemn
this displacement and the starvation and stop the war, it is highly likely that there will not
even be a question of a Palestinian state come the 22nd of September. We won't be discussing
when the UN meets and the UN, when the UN General Assembly meets. We won't be discussing a future
of Palestine, we will be discussing the memoriam of millions that have died.
Yeah.
Well, retired Lieutenant Colonel Anthony Aguilar, you're heading to Capitol Hill.
Thank you for stopping by our show once again on your way.
Love what y'all do, and thank you for having me.
Always welcome here.
Thanks for coming.
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My boyfriend's professor is way too
friendly and now I'm seriously suspicious.
Wait a minute, Sam, maybe her boyfriend's just looking for extra credit.
Well, Dakota, it's back to school week on the OK Storytime podcast, so we'll find out soon.
This person writes, my boyfriend has been hanging out with his young professor a lot.
He doesn't think it's a problem, but I don't trust her.
Now, he's insisting we get to know each other, but I just want her gone.
Now, hold up.
Isn't that against school policy?
That sounds totally inappropriate.
Well, according to this person, this is her boyfriend's former professor and they're the same age.
And it's even more likely that they're cheating.
He insists there's nothing between them.
I mean, do you believe him?
Well, he's certainly trying to get this person to believe him
because he now wants them both to meet.
So, do we find out if this person's boyfriend really cheated with his professor or not?
To hear the explosive finale, listen to the OK Storytime podcast on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.
Get fired up, y'all.
Season two of Good Game with Sarah Spain is underway.
We just welcomed one of my favorite people and an incomparable soccer icon,
Megan Rapino to the show, and we had a blast.
We talked about her recent 40th birthday celebrations,
co-hosting a podcast with her fiancé Sue Bird,
watching former teammates retire and more.
Never a dull moment with Pino.
Take a listen.
What do you miss the most about being a pro athlete?
The final. The final.
And the locker room.
I really, really, like, you just can't replicate,
you can't get back.
Showing up to locker room every morning just to shit talk.
We've got more incredible guests like the legendary Candace Parker and college superstar A. Z. Fudd.
I mean, seriously, y'all. The guest list is absolutely stacked for season two.
And, you know, we're always going to keep you up to speed on all the news and happenings around the women's sports world as well.
So make sure you listen to Good Game with Sarah Spain on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Presented by Capital One, founding partner of IHeart Women's Sports.
The House Oversight Committee yesterday released documents that the Justice Department turned
over to the committee about the investigations into Jeffrey Epstein and Galane Maxwell.
That said, Representative Rokana tells us that we can quote him, less than 1% of those documents.
Less than 1% of those documents are new.
So much of what was released yesterday was already public, but Rokana and Thomas Massey are
right now, actually, as a recording, assembling a press conference of people who say
there survived abuse at the hands of Jeffrey Epstein and Galane Maxwell on Capitol Hill
as they rally support for a discharge petition that would force a vote on releasing more Epstein
files on Capitol Hill, so they believe they can pressure, they need to get enough
Republicans, if they get every Democrat, they need to get six Republicans, so five, not
including Massey, to support forcing that vote with a discharge petition, and they believe
rallying and having House Republicans hear from people who say they survived abuse at the hands
of Epstein and Maxwell will help compel members to join the cause and force that vote.
So after House Republicans met with some of those people who say they were abused by Epstein
and Maxwell just last night, here's what Representative Anna Paulina Luna or Republican had to say.
The biggest thing that stands at to me is the victims themselves have stated that this is a lot bigger
than I think anyone anticipated.
We are obviously going to be requesting the SARS reports from Treasury
and also, too, following up on that.
There are some very rich and powerful people that need to go to jail.
I think everyone's been frustrated as to why that hasn't happened before.
But it is very much so possibility that Jeffrey Epstein was a intelligence asset
working for our adversaries.
But also, too, I think the questions that we have is how much they are government know about it.
Some of these people actually told NBC News just on Tuesday night, so last night, that they're compiling basically their own client list of people that they know were in the Epstein orbit and are implicated by all of this.
And also, I think one of the interesting things happening now, Ryan, is some of these people who say they were abused are not the high profile folks who have been on the scene for years.
sharing their experiences. Some of these people have not been in the press with the same level
of exposure. And that's, I think, a pretty interesting development that Rokana and Thomas Massey
are bringing to the table right now. Yeah. And I thought it was interesting that Representative Luna,
if you notice in the very end of the clip there, she said it's possible that Epstein was a foreign
intelligence asset for one of our adversaries, which seems directed at debunking the claim
that he was an asset for Israel.
Even though in the emails that we've gotten so far,
one of his biggest interlocutors is Ehud Barak.
Ajov Barak is not just a former prime minister.
Perhaps more importantly,
Barack is a key player in the advancement of Israel's cyber technology
over the last 20 decades.
He sits on a bunch of those boards.
He's involved with a bunch of these companies.
And one of the most significant kind of, I think, developments historically in the last 10, 20 years, is the growth of Israel's cyber warfare capacity, which changed its power balance with regard to Iran, Hezbollah, the Pager attack, et cetera.
Like, its ability to get inside the communications devices of its allies and adversaries is almost unrivaled.
And Ejo-Berach is a key part of that.
And so Aahe-Berach being a key friend of Jeffrey Epstein flies in the face of this claim that he was.
But maybe he was also a foreign intelligence asset for an adversary.
Like just because he was, let's say he was an asset for the U.S.
And Israel, it doesn't mean he wasn't also one for Russia or.
Yeah, exactly.
Yeah, I think that's an important point.
He could have been basically a freelancer that was a.
quote, asset, however you want to define that, whether it was a formal arrangement or not,
that was basically just selling his service is the highest bidder.
And Israel has a lot of relationships with Russia as well.
And Epstein, if you go through the files that are already public, there's a lot of Victor Vexelberg
and all.
Like, there's a bunch of Russians that are, you know, in the mix constantly.
And you were referencing these emails that were posted by distributed denial of secrets
back in May of Ehud Barak, which is sort of ironic that Ehud Barak's
inbox ends up on this WikiLeaks like website. And actually, Ryan, this is very, I'm curious
how you respond to this because you've covered things like Pegasus in the past. You, if you have
Pegasus, you don't necessarily need to get people on a plane into an island. It's like the
shortcut. You can jump into their device, right? It's easier. Well, and that's Israeli. Right. There's
still, right. So Pegasus is this no-click.
penetration of your phone like basically they'll send you a link link unfurals and if you don't
have your phone say on apple it's called lockdown mode when the link unfurls it sends a virus into
the phone and they're in like you didn't you didn't have to be a john pedesta and like
accidentally put your or have your right assistant put the password in to change your password and
give it to the russians or whoever right like it just boom they've got you right on the other hand
taking getting people to the island like getting people to do that
island is helpful too, or in his mansion that is completely filled with cameras.
And Barack and Epstein were going back and forth, actually, on whether or not Barack would
bring his security to the island. That's one of the leaked emails.
This is him saying, like, well, I'm trying to do it without the security.
Yeah. And also, for people who are good at operational security, your phone should not actually
have much on it at any given time. So even if they do manage to hack, they shouldn't be able to get
much. And at least up until recently, if you turn your phone off and back on, it kicks
Pegasus out. They may have fixed that. I don't know, but that's part of the security device
that phones have. And every Pegasus hack is expensive. It's not like they can, it's not like
sending, let's say they want to hack Emily over here. It's not like they can just constantly
be sending her links. Every time they do it, for whatever reason, it's like pretty expensive to
to do it. So if you keep kicking them back out and there's nothing in the phone at in the six
hours they're in there for them to get, then they didn't get anything. So if you can get somebody
in a compromise position on an island or mansion, go for that. For now, the old-fashioned methods
are still the best. I don't think you can take these shortcuts like modern kids. You get lazy.
Intel kids today. I just want to click and get you. So I got to put the time in.
Was Ahud Barak involved in Pegasus?
I could, we can Google that one.
He may, he may, he was in, he's got his...
But that's his business, basically.
Yeah. Like, that type of thing.
He's got his fingers in like so many different intel.
So let's roll this clip.
He's co-founder of Paragon Solutions.
Oh.
Yes.
Which is Paragon is, is kind of a rival that the Trump administration is actually just lifting
some obstacles to bring them in and use them to try to hack immigrants around the country,
which is, like, not legal.
So they're a rival to NSO, which is in charge of Pegasus.
So, yeah.
So Ehud Barak, co-founder of Paragon.
There you go.
All right.
And tight with Epstein.
Right.
So that space in the industry, let's roll this clip of Thomas Massey after the document dump yesterday.
Massey's obviously working with Rocana on the discharged position.
Here's what he had to say.
It's like only 1% of what they possess.
And 97% of it's already been released.
I'm afraid, is this going to be like Pam Bondi's binders?
People are going to dig into it and say there's nothing new here.
They haven't given us anything.
They've given us the sleeves off their vest.
So he compared what happened yesterday.
So those are documents from the Justice Department to the Oversight Committee
as potentially being like Pam Bond.
Bondi's binders all over again.
We can roll D3 as we keep talking here.
This is Nancy Mace leaving that meeting with people who say they experienced that abuse in tears.
So I think Ryan, whatever.
She later said that it triggered her, like hearing that because within the last two years she was a victim of abuse.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So I was going to say, whatever, we don't even need to get in to open up the Nancy Mace.
candle worms here, but we can just say that the stages being set for a very, very high
pressure campaign on House Speaker Mike Johnson. The White House is not wanting any Republicans
to go along with this discharge petition pressure. So what does Marjorie Taylor Green do? What does
Nancy Mace do? What does Tim Burchett do? What happens in the future now, or actually like
literally now, when these Republicans just came back from their August recess, definitely hearing
for people who want information on the Epstein files in their own districts. What decision do they
make here? Because just to be clear, all of this additional pushing for information, it's all in
the hands of a select group of people at the Justice Department. There's absolutely nothing no one can do
or anyone can do to make sure that, you know, 0.01% of the documents in existence that actually are
potentially smoking gun documents. We've seen this with the JFK files. You can get 99% of the
documents, and the 1% of the documents that's actually important will always stay behind closed
doors. Now, that may ever not be the case with the JFK files. It may just be, and this is
potentially the case of the Epstein files that 50 years from now, we're in the situation with the
Epstein files that we're in now with JFK files, or 6070 years from now, where we start getting
that maybe that last 1% of documents. But just to
be clear, like, people can push for as much transparency, and they should push for as much
transparency as they want. But, right, nobody should be optimistic at all that the government
is actually complying with these requests for the relevant information. Maybe that's the one
thing we'll get when Trump dies. Potentially. Potentially. Or Bill Clinton, or both.
Bill Clinton, it's amazing that Democrats are still defending Bill Clinton and protecting
him guys he's been out of office for 25 years but you know it's the same let him go but with the
the Kennedy files is such a I think instructive parallel here because it's the same thing with this
and that people who might be implicated can die and Mike Pompeo will still say there's a national
security reason you know there are people who will be in danger if the JFK files are released in
2020 he can still make that claim but what they're actually protecting in all likelihood is
allied, quote, allied intelligence services and countries.
So, and the institution of the CIA itself or whatever, and that doesn't go away just because
people die.
I suppose it gets easier to say that you've improved and reformed with time, but it's just
that's, we're not getting any, I think we're not getting any, like, smoking gun information
in the near future, unfortunately.
Yeah.
All right, Ryan, let's move on to Asia, where we're not.
We have actually a lot of video here.
You're going to walk us through what's happening in Southeast Asia and Indonesia and the Philippines
because it's not getting a ton of play in American media.
So, yes, we're seeing unrest all over Southeast Asia, particularly in Indonesia,
but also in the Philippines and Malaysia.
We can put up E1 here.
All of these are corruption-related and also related to people's sense that they're, you know,
working harder and falling farther behind.
prices are getting out of control, and that the elites, and in particular the lawmakers,
are enriching themselves while not doing what they're supposed to be doing.
In some cases, through some flagrant corruption where they're taking millions of dollars
or millions of whatever to build things, not building them, and then people are catching their
kids going out and buying fancy cars and other cases in Indonesia, the Philippines, lots of foreign
travel and like lavish stipends for these lawmakers while people are are suffering in in indonesia
protests you know began about the uh these like these like ridiculous stipends and travel that
indonesian lawmakers were getting and some corruption and then um it really exploded and
put up um e4 here uh when a police vehicle uh you can see it here smashes into a delivery driver
who was not involved in the protests, who was just doing his job as a delivery driver,
and then the crowds surround the vehicle, and the police vehicle keeps going and kills the man.
And so this then took what were modest protests and took them, you know, and put them on steroids.
Proboa, who is the Indonesian
former death squad guy.
You know, a U.S. Death Squad guy
who's now kind of a little hostile
to the U.S.
Kind of funny.
Our own Death Squad guys.
Can't even keep them happy.
Can't even keep those in our orbit.
Has said he's going to prosecute
these police officers.
They said they're going to roll back
some of these lavish treats
and bonuses that these
different lawmakers have,
but also said he's going to crack down
if people, you know,
continue pushing hard.
But the protests are getting quite serious.
You can roll some of this VO from E2.
The parliamentary building, not the, not the main one, but one elsewhere.
It was burned by protesters, killing some people inside of it.
You know, you've got, you know, troops in the street.
You've got people pushing back pretty aggressively.
in the Philippines you have one of the big scandals being these what they call ghost projects
Emily where it's like the government will say all right we're going to build a seawall
because there's so much flooding and we're going to appropriate money and then the politician's
buddy gets the contract throws a couple stones and calls it a day and the president recently
went up there and looked at the seawall and was like, wait, there's no seawall here.
And it's still flooding constantly.
We could jump out of this and go to E8, which is a bit of a mashup about what I was just
explaining.
Since July, there's been massive flooding over there with over 25 people dead, hundreds
of thousands more displaced, schools and offices, air travel, all suspended.
And what's come to light from all this is the catastrophic failure of the Philippines
flood control systems, which,
Which is weird because they've spent a lot of money on this.
Around 5 billion USD this year alone.
But it doesn't seem to be working at all.
So, where did all that money go?
Well, it turns out it's going right into the pockets of the politicians and their families.
The whole thing is corrupt.
Tons of flood control projects were found to be poorly documented or unfinished, and there's been huge outrage from the public.
For instance, the other week, the Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., to this town of Baliwag, which is just north of Manila.
And you can see that there's this river that flows through it that dumps into the Manila Bay.
And it floods all the time, so much so that the government decided to invest $55 million,
which is an equivalent to about $1.24 million U.S. dollars, to build a 220-meter river wall,
which would have stopped the flooding.
An official paperwork from the public works stated that at the end of June that the project was completed.
And when President Marcus arrived into town in August 20th, he found that there was no wall
and there was nothing but a field where the water was getting dangerously close to the houses made of wood.
Or this other flood wall in Lucina City that just cracked and collapsed earlier this month
after it costs the government over 100 million pesos
or roughly about $2 million to build.
So when you have people like Sarah and her husband,
Curley Descaya,
who own a couple of these construction companies,
one of which that had a 96 million peso contracts
or roughly about $1.96 million U.S. dollars
to build one of these flood mitigation structures.
And when the president of the country goes to Bulacan
to visit this project that was allegedly completed earlier this year
and finds a wall that is barely started and clearly abandoned,
right after Sarah Deskai just made a vlog,
showing off her brand new Mercedes Maybach, Rolls-Royce, Bentley, and Porsche, where she basically
states, oh my God, I bought this Rolls Royce because it has an umbrella in the door.
Or people like Claudine Co., whose father also owns construction companies who also receive those
flood contracts, is making videos flaunting her brand-new Mercedes G-Wagon with custom interior
having such a hard time trying to figure out which one of Daddy's credit cards to pay for gas
with. Just a quick reminder, G-Wagon's base cost is almost $150,000. Or Jamie Cruz loves to flaunt her
Chanel bags, when her father has secured over 3.5 billion pesos or roughly 71 million U.S.
dollars worth of flood contracts. Again, while the rest of the country is literally drowning
underwater. So in Malaysia, we can put up E9 here, they went through this 1MDB crisis, which
if you guys haven't seen, what's it, man on the run, documentary. You were watching it right
and saw me all of a sudden. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. It's this documentary. It's so wild. It's just
documentary about this guy, Jolo, who was a Malaysian official, who basically teamed up with
the UAE and some others, to figure out how to move money around and steal more than a billion
dollars. The book about it called The Billion Dollar Whale, I've done some reporting on it over
the years, which is why I was in that documentary. And then this guy becomes friends with
like all these like Hollywood celebrities and he funded the Wolf of Wall Street with the stolen money.
And as far as we know, he's living on like a yacht in China somewhere.
Like, he still haven't caught him.
Nobody knows where the guy is.
So Malaysia is like, okay, we're going to not do this anymore, figure out how to not get ripped off again.
Prime Minister went to jail for that.
And they rushed through this, like, ethics bill that everybody said, wait, don't rush this through.
Like, we want to take this seriously.
And so they did this slapdash thing that now people are protesting as well.
meanwhile the
symbol for all of this
all three countries are using
protesters are using the one piece flag
which if you're an anime fan
you're like well good for these dudes
this is amazing
producer mac was very excited
to see the one piece flag standing in
for these rebels
I am not that much into anime
so I can't tell you much about it
your kids are in anime for sure
every kid nowadays
is deep into anime
I'll take your word for it.
We need producer Mac to explain to us why the One Piece flag is so appropriate, though.
Producer Mac just sent over his thought, quote, everyone loves anime.
And I see he's typing now, so I think we're about to get comments.
I mean, yes, everyone does love anime.
It's not just...
Oh my gosh, producer Griffin's typing too.
He says, big true.
And Mac says, quote, it's a symbol of liberation and freedom.
Okay.
So take that to the bank.
I trust Mac as a source on this.
All right.
Get them, guys.
Right.
I don't know if you've caught this, but there's a debate happening on the
sort of, I don't know what you could say, like nationalist right about whether or not it's
cringe to say civil war is potentially coming to America. But as you were breaking down
these protests, it reminded me of this massive piece the Wall Street Journal published yesterday.
Soger sent it to us. The headline was Americans lose faith that hard work leads to economic
gains. America's becoming a nation of economic pessimists. They write a new Wall Street
Journal. Nork Poll finds that the chair of people say they have a good chance of improving
their standard of living fell to 25%, a record low in surveys dating back to 1987,
more than three quarters said they lack confidence that life for the next generation will be
better than their own, the poll found. And what's interesting about that is, you know,
I think there's a non-zero possibility that we look back on 2020 protests, January 6th on
2021, as the beginning of something, and Luigi Mangione and what happened in Midtown not long ago
as a build-up, not as the peak, but as somebody that was building up to a much more violent
time that does more resemble the violence of the late 1960s. And that's obviously something
that we want to avoid very much. But when you look at what's happening here, it's the sense of
injustice. You can just, you know, go through the Batman movies, if you want to see how that
plays out, that, you know, they're getting cheated by people who are bringing the system for
themselves. And that just creates such a powder keg. And we always think that it feels far off
and distant. But I think we've had some indications that it might not be. Right. And we also have
to understand the way that the U.S. really kind of outsourced its violence in the 20th century.
as we think about violence here in the United States
like we know the names of a lot of the people who were killed
in the say the civil rights
during the civil rights movement
whereas in Indonesia
you know the the US back death squads there killed
half a million to a million people
and we're talking 1960s 70s
like
within our lifetime.
Philippines and Malaysia, within our lifetimes
have seen enormous amounts of U.S. sponsored violence
as well.
And so that leaves a mark on a society.
And so I think that could be one reason
you see more aggressive protests as well,
that that memory is there.
The Proboa, the Indonesia guy, like literally oversaw a massacre, for instance, that nearly killed Amy Goodman.
Like she famously, infamously, she was covering the movement there, covering the kind of civil war, whatever you want to call it, and was very nearly killed in a massacre that killed enormous numbers of people.
you can just go look up for Boa and Amy Goodman on that
and now he's president
yeah well thanks for breaking all of this down
it's definitely not getting the play it deserves American media
all right up next we're going to talk about a new book
from writers in Gaza called We Are Not Numbers
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My boyfriend's professor is way too friendly, and now I'm seriously suspicious.
Oh, wait a minute, Sam.
Maybe her boyfriend's just looking for extra credit.
Well, Dakota, it's back to school week on the OK Storytime podcast, so we'll find out soon.
This person writes, my boyfriend has been hanging out with his young professor a lot.
He doesn't think it's a problem, but I don't trust her.
Now, he's insisting we get to know each other, but I just want her gone.
Now, hold up.
Isn't that against school policy?
That sounds totally inappropriate.
Well, according to this person, this is her boyfriend's former professor.
and they're the same age.
And it's even more likely that they're cheating.
He insists there's nothing between them.
I mean, do you believe him?
Well, he's certainly trying to get this person to believe him
because he now wants them both to meet.
So, do we find out if this person's boyfriend
really cheated with his professor or not?
To hear the explosive finale,
listen to the OK Storytime podcast
on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast,
or wherever you get your podcast.
Get fired up, y'all.
Season two of Good Game with Sarah Spain is underway.
We just welcomed one of my favorite people
and an incomparable soccer icon,
Megan Rapino to the show, and we had a blast.
We talked about her recent 40th birthday celebrations,
co-hosting a podcast with her fiancé Sue Bird,
watching former teammates retire and more.
Never a dull moment with Pino.
Take a listen.
What do you miss the most about being a pro athlete?
The final. The final.
And the locker room.
I really, really, like, you just can't replicate,
you can't get back.
Showing up to the locker room every morning,
just to shit talk.
We've got more incredible guests
like the legendary Candice Parker
and college superstar AZ Fudd.
I mean, seriously, y'all.
The guest list is absolutely stacked for season two.
And, you know, we're always going to keep you up to speed
on all the news and happenings around the women's sports world as well.
So make sure you listen to Good Game with Sarah Spain
on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you get your podcasts.
Presented by Capital One, founding partner of IHeart Women's Sports.
book is out in the United States, and it's called We Are Not Numbers, the Voices of Gaza's Youth, co-edited
by Ahmed Al-Nuke and Pam Bailey, and part of the project, We Are Not Numbers, that was founded
in 2014, to give voice to young people in Gaza. Pam Bailey is joining us today to discuss
this project and this book. We encouraged Pam over the last several months that people go
and buy
Rafat Alarir's book
If I Must Die
not just because
it was a terrific
collection of poetry,
prose and interviews
but also
as an act of resistance
to annihilation
that just the very act
of reading the poetry
of reading these stories
is a way
to stand against the elimination
of a people
and I would encourage
everybody to do the same
with We Are Not Numbers
which is this
which is a let's back let's back up tell us about the project um we are not numbers first of all
thank you so much for being here thank you yeah it was uh we're not numbers uh founded it in um
right in the aftermath of the 2014 israeli war on gaza which at the time i thought would be
like the worst in history i i could never imagine at the time that we'd be going through
something like this um but it was it was the worst of the wars at that point in time
And I was living in Gaza at the time, and I met this young man.
I had met this young man in Gaza at a party, and I sort of followed up with him on Facebook.
I noticed that his Facebook profile had gone dark.
He wasn't posting like he usually did.
He was a prolific poster.
And so I just reached out to him and said, you know, how are you?
And he said, fine.
And I said, no, no, no, tell me something real.
clearly something's wrong.
It turned out his elder brother, who he idolized, had been killed, had been murdered in that war.
And because I'm a writer by background and because I knew that he had been struggling to improve his English,
instead of avoiding the topic like people tend to do when a tragedy happens, I leaned into it.
And I encouraged him to write a story about his brother to honor him, honor his memory,
and help other people know who he really was.
And so over the course of like three months,
we passed this story back and forth.
The young man is Ahmed, who now heads the project.
And what was really, really important,
and I think what this whole book tries to do
is that I learned in the course of that essay that he wrote
that his brother had been killed
because he was a member of the resistance.
And he was afraid to tell me that at first.
He thought he assumed that once I knew that, I would no longer feel sympathy with his brother.
But of course, that wasn't true because by the time he told me that, he had told me all about his brother growing up.
And I knew what kind of a kid he was.
I knew what was going on in the life of the family, what he endured, what he saw, that no child should ever see.
And I realized, you know, that's the story we don't hear here.
We still don't hear here, right?
We hear about Hamas and the people who fight for Hamas and we think of them as terrorists.
We don't think of them as humans as individuals with stories.
And we don't think about, gee, why did they get to the point where they felt like they had to do that?
Same with October 7th.
We don't question, too many people don't question about why did that happen.
You know, it doesn't happen in a vacuum.
People don't get to that point in a vacuum.
And so I realized we have an important story and I tried to get it published.
It was the first time that, you know, a resistance fighter had been depicted as just an ordinary person.
And also at the same time, Ahmed came out of his depression.
What's interesting is at that time, too, he was thinking that he should join the resistance, that he should become a fighter.
He saw no other future for him.
All he saw was a bleak future.
So the act of writing and telling the story and actually seeing it get public.
convinced him that perhaps it was another way to resist.
Now, what breaks my heart today is that I really did think when I started the project
that, you know, this would give young writers, young people another way to resist and express
themselves, and I thought it might make a difference.
So, you know, when I went through all the stories that we had mentored over the years
since the project got started in 2015, I just cried because.
was, you look at where we're at today.
And I felt like I'd broken a promise to them.
You know, I told them that this could make a difference.
You know, this is another way.
And if, you know, this war, what we're going through now was worse, so much worse.
And all the, yeah, so it's a heartbreak for me.
Yeah.
Well, I was going to say, I mean, even what you just explained was not a conversation.
I mean, in many corners of the American media.
It's still not a conversation that you're allowed to have.
You can't talk about people who commit acts of terrorism as human beings.
Even if we take the most hardened, reprehensible terrorist, asking questions about how they got from point A to point B, from being a baby to point B is forbidden.
You're absolutely not allowed to have that conversation because you get lumped into a category as empathizing with acts of terrorism itself.
So, Pam, can you tell us a little bit about when you spend time actually diving into these stories,
what patterns maybe emerge, what are people missing by not digging into those particular stories?
And I think what makes this book unique, there's been a lot of books about Gaza and Palestine that come out recently,
which is wonderful to see.
But what makes this book unique is that it's a collection of very real stories.
these are not professional writers, which is the beauty of it, I think.
Very real snippets of, you know, vignettes of life in Gaza over 10 years.
And this book answers the question why October 7th happened.
Because if you look, you know, going back from 2015, month after month, year after year,
not only were there constant attacks in terms of Israeli forces, you know, coming in every year.
We shouldn't hear about it all the time.
But it's the everyday structural violence, the lack of water, just potable water, the astronomically high unemployment rate.
Youth, you know, they have a very high rate of education there.
You know, they go through college and everything and then they come out to no hope of a job.
They can't leave, you know, Gaza to pursue that.
They can't even travel for a vacation.
You know, so it's like that's what I think comes out of the book and the lesson I want people to take.
it was a grinding oppression in both the big ways, the attacks, and the small ways
every day, 24-7, for this case it was 10 years.
You can't go through that kind of oppression and not have something happen.
And the other thing is that they also write about all the forms of nonviolent resistance
that they tried.
There's a number of the stories.
You'll probably remember there was the Great March of Return.
You know, there was a nonviolent protest along the border with Israel.
They called it for return because it was like their desire to go back to their original land that they'd been kicked off of.
But it was nonviolent, you know, and they write about all the other ways.
They've gone to the ISIS, you know, the initial criminal court.
They've really tried everything and it didn't work.
And to me, the sad part is, I also want everybody to take home from this is that the only time they got attention, serious attention, is when there was violence.
I mean, if we didn't want this to happen, maybe we didn't want October 7th to happen,
then the international community should have responded and heard them,
what all those other things were going on.
If you don't want people to resist, then show them that some other technique works.
You know, when people have no future, when people have,
they can't envision themselves living past the age of 30, what do you think?
Some people are going to react, and this is true in our own country.
Look at the American Revolution.
this is not a non-violent country.
But yeah, so I think, and the other thing I think is I hope people get from the book
is that you also have glimpses of just ordinary kids struggling with weight and with migraines
and going to the beach, you know, woven in and all the tragedy, you know, is everyday life.
And you start to recognize that there's no difference between them and us.
And to the point about nonviolence, the Palestinian,
authority, you know, with, you know, the PLO put down arms and entered into negotiations
with Israel in the hopes that it would, you know, lead to some two-state solution and a
slowdown in settlements. Instead, the settlements expanded. And just as last week,
the U.S. even said that members of the Palestinian Authority, not Hamas, Palestinian Authority,
would be denied the opportunity to even travel to New York to attend the United Nations
this upcoming assembly, which when the U.S. agreed to take the United Nations or asked if it
could host the United Nations, one of the deals was we are going to allow even our worst
enemies to come here to New York. Doesn't mean they can go around the entire country, but they can
come to New York and they can go to the U.N. because it would give us an immense amount of power
if we're going to have the U.N. and we can just keep people out of the country and not let them
attend the United Nations. And the one group of people we do that too is the official
with the Palestinian Authority, who, you know, did everything that they were supposed to do,
but lay down their arms, entering negotiations and so on. I'm curious for what you've been hearing
about this, because there's a paradox at play in the sense that October 7th led to where we
are today, which is utter absolute catastrophic annihilation of Gaza. On the other hand,
a lot of people who, like you said, committed to nonviolent forms of resistance over the last
decades have told me they question that decision. And I say it's a paradox because the violent
path led to this utter complete catastrophe. Yet still, internally they're feeling like,
well, perhaps that was all there was. So how are the people that you're talking to sorting through
that question.
Well, you know, there's sort of a, I guess, a split between, you know, the activist community
outside and our Gaza and writers who are still trapped there.
At this point, the people in Gaza, they just want it all to stop.
You know, what breaks my heart is that, you know, this is a very proud people who,
rightfully so, are very proud of their culture.
And they're reduced to the point now of being willing to accept anything.
You know, you want them to all leave and go to Uganda, you know, then, okay, then we will.
But just stop the killing.
Stop the killing.
And they're reduced to that.
And the conundrum here is, like, from the outside from an activist point of view, I mean, of course, this is probably the point in time that we've seen the largest growth in supporters of,
of Gaza and Palestine.
You know, I mean, there's a, you know, a huge change.
I mean, to see even the number of Democrats we have in Congress, you know,
proposing a bill to stop arms sales to Israel is, you know, we've never been there before.
And isn't it a shame that this is what it took?
This really is what it took?
You know, where were they when, you know, all those years of just, like, not being able to live, you know?
I mean, you know, not having power.
I mean, when I live there, we had electricity for three hours a day.
Every day.
Americans complain if they're without a power for like a couple of days.
I mean, I often say, you put an American over there for say, I give them three months.
Some of them will be throwing rockets.
I mean, some of them will.
You know, it's human nature.
That's how we respond to oppression, you know.
So it's a little bit, to me, I have this sort of like dueling thing is like we've gotten
the cause for Palestine to a point, you know, in terms of broad base of public support
and even some politicians who are always way behind, you know, is at a point we've never
been before, but this is what it took.
A little bit of a follow up on Ryan's question, you know, it was less than a year ago.
We were being told by Anthony Blinken that, Anthony Blinken, that how much?
Hamas had already reconstituted, and we know this, in different parts of Gaza.
And the entire purpose of the war from Netanyahu's perspective was to return the hostages
and eradicate Hamas.
Does any of what's happened over the course of the last several years, has that made
Hamas from your perspective having talked to people in these places, has this fueled
what future violent conflicts, has this made them more powerful, less powerful, is this going to
create a generation of Gazans who are more attracted to the cause of Hamas? What do you make of
what happens now? I see, I think there's a mistake in focusing on Hamas. We should talk about
the resistance. Because one thing that was really important that was said earlier is that I don't
believe it's really about Hamas at all. Israel has never supported
any Palestinian movement that had any kind of power. They were against Yasser Arafat.
They actually helped create Hamas in the very beginning as a counterweight to the Palestinian
authority. They will not like anybody who is in power over the Palestinian that they don't
control. So I don't think this is about Hamas at all. And the question should be not so much
whether Hamas will continue, but will the resistance continue? And I believe that
Despite the fact that you do have a – the people overall are at a point now
when many of them would just give everything up, the resistance will come back.
You can pound it for a while into the underground into submission, but it will come back.
I mean, that's what history I think has shown us.
Tell me, you tell me one country where you haven't had this kind of oppression
and resistance totally went away.
It doesn't happen.
Anything else you'd like to say about the book before we wrap?
I do think what you said earlier, but buying this book is an act of resistance that
Americans can do.
What's going on in the U.S. with President Trump's latest action suspending or threatening
not to give visas to anybody at the Palestinian passport holder is trying to keep this narrative
from coming out.
So one way you can fight those kinds of actions is to buy the book and give it to people, talk about it.
And again, what I think is really important about this book is these are not.
There's a few Palestinians that have become like really prominent, but there are so many more that talent is so broad.
And that's what to me is also the beauty of the book.
It's not just one person who manages somehow to get above the fray and get like in the New York or whatever all the time.
There's all these others and visible Palestinians.
And this book is a collection of those stories.
There is important.
So I would say, please buy it because if we can make it a bestseller in the U.S.,
this sort of sends a message to the administration.
No, we want to hear these voices and we value them.
And it sends a message to the writers, too.
It tells them that we're hearing you.
We can't control our government, but we are hearing you.
And we value your voices.
And I think people will also want to know where the proceeds are going.
It's all going to rear not numbers.
Right.
the project and we're desperately trying to help our, I say about half of our writers are still
there and we're really trying to help them. It's difficult to get money in right now. You have
these sort of bolchers that take half of the moment. No, I can confirm that. But we're trying
desperately to support them and any money we get from the book is going to help do that.
Great. Well, Pam Bailey, thank you so much for taking the time and best of luck on the rollout of the book.
so much for having me. You got it. I was lucky enough to get an early copy of the book is very
good. It's rare to get, you know, these ground level insights from people who have been
become quite good writers. Yeah, I'll have to check it out. I mean, I can't say I agreed with
with everything there, but what is remarkable is that it's a conversation you are not allowed to
have still. This conversation you are not allowed to have to, because if you answer some of those
questions, they go into a very uncomfortable place for the United States and for Israel as to whether
Israel has actually made its own people more safe in the way this war has been waged. And I think,
you know, that has been greatly to our detriment. Yeah, in Ahmed's case is instructive in the sense
that, you know, we all understand that when you, we understood in Afghanistan, you drone strike a
family you might kill one member of the Taliban you probably created three more and so you know killing
his brother who was in the resistance killed him but then his brother wanted to join but was then
persuaded in a nonviolent direction instead through the hope that the the sword the pen would be
mightier than the sword turned out neither were a match at this point and I wish I wish I had
the exact quote. Actually, here it is. This is from Anthony Blinken. Again, this was as the Biden
administration was leaving office, he said each time Israel completes its military operations and
pulls back Hamas, militants regroup and reemerge because there's nothing else to fill the void.
Indeed, we assess that Hamas has recruited almost as many new militants as it has lost. This is a
recipe for an enduring insurgency and perpetual war. That is from Anthony Blinken,
saying that, and that's where one of the things I disagreed with Pam on is that it's, I think it is
very worthwhile, the focus on Hamas narrowly, as opposed to the resistance broadly, as she said,
because not that we don't have to get into the debate or anything, but I mean, if Hamas itself
is recruiting by the U.S.'s estimate, almost as many new people who had been lost by last year,
the end of 2024, what is all of this death, actually? What purpose is it serving at that point?
So that's why full extermination seems to be on the docket, as Anthony Aguilar talked about today.
Crazy show. This was jam-packed. So thank you to everybody. If you want to get a premium
subscription, which means you get the show early right in your inbox and you get access to the
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the paywall. You can head over to breakingpoints.com. Subscribe there. No problem if you can't.
Most important thing is subscribing on YouTube. That helps us so much. Yep. And Emily and I
will see you on Friday. See you guys.
Oh, come on.
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My boyfriend's professor is way too friendly, and now I'm seriously suspicious.
Wait a minute, Sam. Maybe her boyfriend's just looking for extra credit.
Well, Dakota, luckily, it's back to school week on the OK Storytime podcast, so we'll find out soon.
This person writes, my boyfriend's been hanging out.
with his young professor a lot.
He doesn't think it's a problem, but I don't trust her.
Now he's insisting we get to know each other,
but I just want her gone.
Hold up.
Isn't that against school policy?
That seems inappropriate.
Maybe find out how it ends by listening to the OK Storytime podcast
and the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you get your podcasts.
I always have to be so good, no one could ignore me.
Carve my path with data and drive.
But some people only see who I am on paper.
the paper ceiling the limitations from degree screens to stereotypes that are holding back over 70 million stars workers skilled through alternative routes rather than a bachelor's degree it's time for skills to speak for themselves find resources for breaking through barriers at taylorpaperceiling.org brought to you by opportunity at work and the ad council this is an iHeart podcast