The Majority Report with Sam Seder - 3634 - Iran Sets Negotiation Terms; Trump's War On Disabled People w/ Jeremy Scahill, Eli Hager

Episode Date: April 30, 2026

It's an Emmajority Report Thursday on The Majority Report   On today's program:   Republicans are feeling the heat going into the midterms. Conservative CNBC host Joe Kernen fact checks Steve Scalise on his lie about gas prices and the war on Iran's effect on the economy.   Jeremy Scahill, journalist, author and co-founder of Drop Site News joins Emma to provide updates on the ongoing negotiations between the U.S. and Iran.   Eli Hager, writer at ProPublica joins Emma to discuss his piece: "The Trump Administration Aims to Penalize Disabled Adults Who Live With Their Families".   In the Fun Half:   Brandon Sutton and Matt Binder join the show.   Janet Mills suspends her Senate campaign in Maine, clearing the path for Graham Platner to be the Democratic Nominee to challenge Susan Collins.   Susan Collins refuses to comment on Graham Platner, saying that today is about Janet Mills.   Michigan candidate for Senate Haley Stevens says that Israel comes to her in her dreams, and she can see the future of Israel. Please Haley, on behalf of Abdul El-Sayed, please stay in the race.   A street performer named Crackhead Barney asks Congressional candidate for NY-12 tries to get Jack Schlossberg to say Free Palestine, but he refuses.   Erika Kirk is a lunatic.   All that and more.   To connect and organize with your local ICE rapid response team visit ICERRT.com The Congress switchboard number is [phone]. You can use this number to connect with either the U.S. Senate or the House of Representatives. Follow us on TikTok here: https://www.tiktok.com/@majorityreportfm Check us out on Twitch here: https://www.twitch.tv/themajorityreport Find our Rumble stream here: https://rumble.com/user/majorityreport Check out our alt YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/majorityreportlive Gift a Majority Report subscription here: https://fans.fm/majority/gift Subscribe to the AMQuickie newsletter here: https://am-quickie.ghost.io/ Join the Majority Report Discord! https://majoritydiscord.com/ Get all your MR merch at our store: https://shop.majorityreportradio.com/ Get the free Majority Report App!: https://majority.fm/app Go to https://JustCoffee.coop and use coupon code majority to get 10% off your purchase Check out today's sponsors: BABBEL: Learn a new Language and get up to 60% off your subscription at Babbel.com/MAJORITY AURA FRAMES: Exclusive $25-off Carver Mat at https://on.auraframes.com/MAJORITY. Promo Code MAJORITY ONESKIN: Get 15% off OneSkin with the code MAJORITY at https://www.oneskin.co/majority SUNSET LAKE CBD: Use coupon code "Left Is Best" for 20% off of your entire order at SunsetLakeCBD.com Follow the Majority Report crew on Twitter: @SamSeder @EmmaVigeland @MattLech On Instagram: @MrBryanVokey Check out Matt's show, Left Reckoning, on YouTube, and subscribe on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/leftreckoning Check out Matt Binder's YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/mattbinder Subscribe to Brandon's show The Discourse on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/ExpandTheDiscourse Check out Ava Raiza's music here! https://avaraiza.bandcamp.  

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For a limited time, listeners can get $25 off their best-selling Carver mat frame with code majority. That's a-U-R-A-Frames.com promo code majority. Support the show by mentioning us at checkout terms and conditions. Apply link in the video description and at majority.fm and in the episode description. And now time for the show. Report with Sam Cedar. It is Thursday. April 30th, 2026.

My name is Emma Vigeland in for Sam Cedar, and this is the five-time award-winning majority report. We are broadcasting live steps. From the industrially ravaged Gowanus Canal in the heartland of America, downtown Brooklyn, USA. On the program today, Jeremy Scahill of Dropsite News, will be with us. To give us the latest about Iran's negotiations with the U.S.,

and later in the show, Eli Hager of ProPublica will be with us to talk about the Trump administration's war on disabled people. Also on the program, Louisiana postpones the May 16th primary after the Supreme Court ravages the Voting Rights Act, setting up other southern states, to eliminate blue districts in 2008. Meanwhile, the six conservative justices drop the pretense and attend Trump's state dinner with the king.

Florida's legislature approves pro-Republican gerrymandered maps, sending it to DeSantis' desk. Janet Mills! Sorry, Mills, gang. Meaning users on Blue Sky. suspends her campaign for Senate in Maine, making Graham Platner the presumptive nominee. Honestly, appreciate her not dragging it out and making it ugly. Yeah.

The House passes a three-year reauthorization of FISA's warrantless spy powers without warrant requirements, but Thune favors a 45-day extension. It expires tonight. House Republicans pass $75 billion in ice fund. in a way that sets up the Senate to skirt the filibuster. Oil prices top $126 a barrel as Trump considers resuming combat operations in Iran. He also told Netanyahu apparently that you can bomb Lebanon as long as it's surgical. I mean, that's the metaphor is being used. By the way, Israel's kill.

at least 14 people in the last 24 hours in such a surgical way. But this violates Iran's terms. We'll talk more about that with Jeremy. Israel intercepts the global Samud flutilla attempting to bring aid to Gaza in international waters. Pam Bondi will testify before the House Epstein probe on May 29th. And lastly, the Saudis are out on LiveGolf. They're pulling out funding. after the 2026 season, which is interesting.

Focus on the line. Hopefully boxing is next. The Saudi-U.S. relationship is interesting. Another thing I want to ask A. Hill about, because they're not too thrilled that it seems like the U.S. may be encouraged the UAE to leave OPEC. But all this and more on today's majority report. Welcome to the show, everybody. It's an emmajority report.

Thursday. Juniper J asked 2028 or 2026. This is a good question. If Louisiana is postponing the upcoming primary, it looks like they're going to gerrymander this year. You are correct that Louisiana is going to attempt to gerrymander this year. But that is not the case for many of the other southern states that would be most impacted by this. You have states like Georgia. You have states like Alabama. You have states like Texas and South Carolina. They have already passed. their candidate filing deadlines. So Louisiana is a specific and special case, and it's not a coincidence that the Supreme Court made this decision really right beforehand. It gives the rest of the Republican states, even though they've passed these filing deadlines, time to make sure that minorities in their states have the least representation possible. Although you could see the Democrats respond in other areas and create multiple majority minority districts. That would mean that they would continue to have to fight fire with fire, which is essential.

But there's also, I mean, this, we need to be reinventing our electoral system more broadly and standardizing it. Democrats need to have an ability and a desire to make this kind of change for a positive and as Republicans do just to tear up something like the Voting Rights Act for a negative. There needs to be a positive vision here. It's also really, I think,

neutered the Democratic Party in many ways. I think of all of these Southern Democrats that represent the one blue district in their state, like Jim Clyburn, for example, who's running for re-election in his mid-80s. When you're the only show in town that way, It's really made the party more conservative. It's made them more susceptible to special interests.

And it perhaps overall structurally isn't the most small D-democratic. But we need it can't just be Republicans that are trying to disenfranchise black people and Democrats throw their hands up. We need massive electoral reform in addition to campaign finance reform. But let's talk about the economy for a second because Republicans are starting to freak out a little bit. And they don't have any answer for how the oil shortages from Trump's criminal war on Iran that are being felt right now. As I mentioned in the headlines, oil prices have topped $126 a barrel. let's show this chart really quickly from Investopedia just to give people a sense of where we are

because you will hear some Republican lies in just a second that do not act adequately or accurately relay this information. In June 2022, yes, gas prices hit $5.2 at its peak and that was, of course, due to Russia invading Ukraine. And there were also So existing inflationary supply shocks from the pandemic that were continuing through into 2022. And obviously contributed to persistent inflation, even though when you compare the U.S. to other countries, we did moderately better.

But you saw gas prices continue to go down. Biden made a priority of kind of building up U.S. supply because he wanted to. circumvent OPEC, the oil cartel, that the UAE just left. And the UAE doesn't obviously produce in the same way Saudi Arabia does, but the UAE is historically likely to cozy up to the West. That's where Dubai is. They want to be a playground for the West. They were nice to Israel in the way that the U.S. likes. And so them leaving does, I think, undercut OPEC strength.

to a degree, but Biden also attempted to do so by building up U.S. strategic reserves and that had effect, as you can see in that chart, after Russia's invasion of Ukraine. But right now, April 29th, 2026, that's $4.23 that you see there for gas prices. Now, keep that in mind because that's not what you're going to hear from Steve Scalise, one of the top Democrats, I mean, Republicans, sorry, in the House. Joe Kernan is so fed up with this because at a certain point, these financial newspeople who are, yeah, Kernan is a Republican sycophant. I get it. But they are concerned about their portfolios more than anything. That's why Kernan likes Republicans. But when Republicans are starting to get away from, you know, making me richer, Kernan has to balance being a GOP sycophant and also looking out for his body.

them line and the others who watch this show, you know, basically finance people. That's essentially all it is. But here is Kernan talking about the state of the economy and how it impacts the Republicans with Representative Scalise. Prediction markets aren't friendly to the GOP's chances for holding the House. I mean, even the Senate is some of the question. I don't know if you put any stock in that, but there were some developments this week. It seems like negative developments in Virginia.

Can I just say I agree with Scalise on not putting stock in the prediction markets as the way to lead into it? I don't think Scalise would disagree with that, by the way. Developments in Virginia, I think, for for Dramacrats, positive developments for Republicans in Texas. Something happening in Florida now. What is your, you think there's any way that your party holds on in November to the House? Absolutely. And look, it's a pass. that is focused on turnout number one and delivery,

what we've delivered to finally start turning this mess around that we inherited a year and a half ago. People that will remember, you go back two years ago, we were paying almost $6 a gallon for gasoline. Right now it's in the three years. Okay. Do I need to even fact check this again? We already went over this.

Not that's not true. $5.2. But that was, and that's not even the time frame that he's accurately referencing. That's 20, 22. Two years ago, it was actually around $3. Yeah. Obviously, we've seen a jump with the Iran conflict.

When were we paying six? Well, two and a half years ago. That wasn't the average price. We're over 30% below where we were just two years ago. Today, we are 30% below where we were two years ago. It's still going to go lower when Iran gets resolved in the straight of Hormuzk. open, but at the same time, did anybody want a nuclear armed Iran? I think if you ask most normal people, they would say absolutely not when they just slaughtered 30,000 of their own people.

They were about to get a nuclear weapon. And President Trump stopped that, but that's going to get resolved. President Trump's negotiating that right now. When they say like they, you know, regardless of the inflated death numbers, you know, Iran. Less inflated than Trump, who goes 46,000. Yeah, Iran kills, killed protesters. It's a whole. horrible. When they save their own people, they say that to distinguish them from Israel who kill, who don't consider Palestinians their own people despite being on land they occupy, and also like at least double that number officially. But anyway. Now, he's negotiated a number of peace deals. They're trying to get a resolution between Russia

and Ukraine right now, too. So if you look all across the board, we are lowering inflation interest rates have started to come down. They're not where we want to be, by the way. We have a lot of work to do, but do you want to go back to the days where interest rates were in double digits where inflation was 50% higher than it was today? So we're bringing things down

so that we can make life more affordable, but we have more work to do, and that's where we're going to hold the majority. You must have been on vacation in California. I think two years ago in April of 2024, we were at about 365, so we're actually above where we were then. And I'm not...

No, we were. We were well into the fives under Biden. Well into the five. At one point, not two years ago. We were 265. Shut down. Energy in the Gulf of America was shut down. Alaska was shut down.

We opened that up, by the way, in the working families tax. But we have these little things called charts, Steve. They have no compunction about lying, even on a financial news network that is across this kind of thing. I want to finish the clip, though. Everything was production now. Exactly two years ago, the average was 365 to 367. I'm not saying that $4 or whatever it is now, that the long-term goals that we're trying to accomplish in the Middle East,

I'm not saying it's not worth it for a brief time. But it's definitely going to hurt people, obviously, this summer, if you're paying a lot. Andrew is telling me you're going to stay home at this point. Okay, well, I don't know. I do not buy that the wealthy host, co-hosts of Squawk boxes. She was canceling his road trip. Yeah.

You know, I'm not going to be able to fill up the RV. I was going to go cross-country. Holiday road. The almost helicopter ride. So the last time that interest rates were in double digits was during the Reagan administration. It was in the early 1980s. And you know why? It was Iran again.

It was because of the oil shock of 1979, which set off. a chain reaction of inflation caused by, yes, the Iran-Iraq War, but also the Iranian Revolution as well, which resulted in this current government because the Iranian Revolution overthrew the Shah, which the United States and the British installed so we could steal Iranian oil. So it's just fascinating to see history repeat itself in this way. yet another, I mean, really kind of painful economic impact caused by our policy towards Iran. And this time it was an illegal criminal offensive bombing campaign and war that we waged against them. And the reason that we wage this war is because of what I just mentioned,

because the United States still wants the resources and wants dominance over the region, Israel is a big part of that. And they want to overthrow the very government that caused them pain the first time around. It's the same reason that we're starving Cuba right now, and that is such a horrifically sadistic policy. The capitalists that were humiliated decades ago are in there. the final throws of their life and they're trying to

write the wrongs of their inability to exploit parts of the world that they thought were theirs previously by right. Did Manifest Destiny ever go away? Or do we just have cell phones now? In a moment we're going to be talking to Jeremy Scahill but first a word from our sponsors. I would like to thank One Skin for sponsoring today's episode

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Get up to 60% off at babble.com slash majority spelled B-A-B-B-B-E-L.com slash majority rules and restrictions may apply. Link in the video and episode descriptions and at majority.com. Okay, quick break. And when we come back, we'll be joined by Jeremy Scahill. We are back and we are joined once again by friend of the show, the great Jeremy Scahill, journalists, and co-founder of Dropsite News, author of the books, Blackwater, The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army and Dirty Wars.

The World is a battlefield. Jeremy, thanks so much for coming on the show today. Nice to see you, Emma. Nice to see you as well. So I wanted to start here because the Western press kind of largely goes along with this narrative. You hear from the White House that is some version of Orientalism, really, about the Iranian government, that these are these savages. purely motivated by religious fervor. They, you know, they don't have the sophisticated nuance of Pete Hegzeth. Your reporting, though, is very distinct in that it, it's important because you

actually speak to members of the negotiation team. And I think that negotiating team, I should say, and I think that could be a really good place to start. If you could just name who the major players here are on the Iranian side. I think it's important at the onset. to just say that, you know, despite the way that the White House and Trump-aligned media, and actually much of the broader mainstream corporate press in the United States portrays Iran, it is not a country that sort of circles around a cult of personality. Yes, it has a leader called the Supreme Leader, and there's a religious dynamic that is very clearly pronounced in terms of the Iranian

state's identity. But if you actually peel back the layers and you examine it, for the past 47, years, Iran has built institutions. And it is a country that has plans of succession, that has government bureaucracy, that has rules, that has laws, that has structure. And I would challenge anyone to find a historical example that parallels what we've seen over the past seven or so weeks, which is that the United States and Israel open this war by assassinating the Supreme Leader of Iran, much of the political and military and intelligence leadership of Iran, and then Iran proceeds for six weeks to engage in both asymmetric and symmetric warfare

against a far more militarily superior adversary plus Israel, fighting against two nuclear powers, causes the evacuation of 13 American military bases, destroys much of the early warning radar detection systems. These are multi-billion dollar systems, does far more damage to American military aircraft than the U.S. was willing to initially admit, caused a massive global economic crisis, has managed to stand down against the United States in the Strait of Hormuz using asymmetric tactics. I would say that there isn't a historical analog to a country losing that much of its official public-facing leadership and then turning around and fighting off

a far better armed and more powerful adversary. How about the biblical one that would piss off Israel, David and Goliath? Well, I mean, you know, if our ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, might as well be the spokesperson for the Israeli government when he endorsed this notion of a greater Israel stretching all the way to the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. And of course, he tries to invoke theology. And then at the same time, the U.S. tries to say, oh, the Iranians are the ones that are fighting a holy war when the projection of the core mission was articulated by the U.S. ambassador to Israel

as sort of the Israelis have a right to do all of these wars because of texts that were written thousands of years ago. So it's actually the U.S. with its war secretary who quotes pulp fiction instead of the Bible while pretending to know more about theology than the Pope. It's the U.S. that is projecting that it's waging a holy war. And in fact, you know, Iran has handled this in a very strategic way. And, you know, you asked to direct question about who are the major players here. You know, the U.S. wants to focus in on individual people, and they tried to portray Muhammad Bagar Ghalibaf, who's the Speaker of the Iranian Parliament, as sort of the man that they're going to do business with. But when you talk to Iranian officials

and you say sort of what is Ghalibov's mandate when he goes into these meetings with J.D. Vance, for instance. And what they say is he is functioning under the auspices of the Supreme National Security Council of Iran. The new Supreme Leader, who is the son of the assassinated Supreme Leader, Moshtaba Khomeini, does have veto power over that committee. But I've been told over and over that there is nothing that Ghalibov would be able to do in those negotiations that has not already been signed off on. And I'll just note this as a reporter. You know, I've been speaking directly to senior Iranian officials going back to even before this war started about the negotiations that were happening in Oman, and then after that, Geneva, when the U.S. then turned

around in the middle of negotiations and started the war. And what I would say is that consistently, what Iranian officials have said is their position or what is or isn't going to happen, generally speaking, plays out the way that they've claimed it was going to play out. I saw a similar dynamic unfold with the Gaza negotiations where repeatedly the Trump administration was lying about what was happening in the negotiations, and officials from Hamas and Islamic jihad were telling the truth. This isn't an endorsement of anyone. This is just stating a basic fact. What we saw, Emma, over the past two weeks, was Donald Trump utterly humiliate the United States in front of the world. I mean, certainly he humiliated himself for anyone that actually

understood the factual basis of what was happening, but he repeatedly said the Iranians are begging us to negotiate. You know, I reported many, many weeks ago that it was, in fact, Steve Whitcough, his special envoy that had been texting Abbas Arachi and others, starting on the third or fourth day of the war, saying, shouldn't we talk now? Because they had gotten cooked intelligence from Israel. They thought this thing was going to be a cakewalk. They thought they were going to do these assassinations and that everything was going to fall into place. And they've just made fools of themselves to the point where Trump says J.D. Vance is on an airplane. Then he says, So actually Steve Whitkoff is on the airplane with Jared Kushner.

And the Iranians were saying to me, we're not going to meet with them at all. Let them come, but they're going to be humiliated because we've told them we're not speaking to them until they lift the naval blockade, which we consider a violation of international law. And so the position that we're in right now is that the Iranian said from the moment this temporary ceasefire was agreed to on April 7th that went into effect on April 8th, that they believe the most likely scenario is what Trump is threatening now, which is that they're going to resume the war and they're going to start bombing again. But what they said is, short of that, we are not going to capitulate. And we feel that we have the cards in our hand,

despite what Trump says, that we have the time. Trump has the clocks. They've consistently underestimated us. And we're confident in our position right now because we have the three Ms on our side. We have the munitions. They recognize the shortage of the interceptors in Israel. They recognize what's happen in the Gulf countries. We have the markets. You see what's happening to the price of oil and the global economic crisis that's also going to hit food supply because of fertilizer, natural gas supplies. If the Iranians were to sabotage internet undersea cables in the sea, which is an option that has been hinted at in media linked to the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, then you're going to see the pain get even harder. And then there's the midterm elections. This is becoming an utter disaster to the

point where even Trump allies are starting to hint in media that they want this thing wrapped up soon. So the Iranians feel confident where they are. They think that Trump has painted himself into a corner and that all the United States has left is to just say, we're going to bomb their civilization. We're going to continue to bomb. We're going to bomb their civilian infrastructure. Well, they may do that. But what's going to happen in response is that Iran is going to absolutely light up the Persian Gulf and escalate its attacks and it's going to resume very heavy ballistic missile strikes on Israel. So Trump right now keeps listening to the Israeli point of view and pretending that it's intelligence.

And that's, I think, what's being briefed to the president. But deep down, they're in a panic because they know that the Iranians are not going to capitulate. I think that's become very clear. So much I want to follow up with you on. But I want to maybe just pick up with what you were saying towards the end. that you've called the Israeli intelligence cooked. You've basically said that it's essentially their opinion that is being presented to Trump, or I would argue, they're deliberately misleading.

I read the CNN article maybe a month or so ago. And at the top, it has the U.S. intelligence assessment of how much damage has been inflicted to Iranian sites. And then you go down towards the end of the article, and they also cite what the Israel say, and it's essentially double, or they were, it was actually about, you know, the capacity, the capabilities of Iran, not really the damage, rather. And this is a persistent pattern with the Israelis presenting the Americans with intelligence that furthers their objectives of dragging the United States into a war with Iran because they know without U.S. naval and military presence that they're

immensely vulnerable as they have been even with this buildup in the Middle East. So can you just shed light on that dynamic and how frequently the Israelis mislead the Americans from an intelligence perspective and how it keeps happening? You know, I mean, Benjamin Netanyahu basically has been prime minister for life of Israel. Yes, he had some periods when he was out of power, but even when he was in the United States living and was a Fox News commentator. And in fact, at periods, he literally slept in the childhood bed of Jared Kushner. He was a guest of the Kushner family while he was in the United States. And, you know, there are great videos online that you can watch of 30 years of Benjamin Netanyahu

proclaiming that Iran is on the verge of building or acquiring a nuclear weapon. when the U.S. intelligence estimates going back to at least 2003 was that the Iranians had suspended their interest or pursuit of weaponizing nuclear material. And of course, there's also the Iranian history of it, which is that there was a fatwa that was issued that said it was Haram. That would be a sin to possess a weapon of mass destruction. And that's not just rhetoric or some sort of propaganda. That has been a very, very serious debate in Iranian society with some powerful factions, leaving it was a mistake to not pursue a nuclear bomb because you can look at Kim Jong-il sitting very pretty in North Korea in terms of the stability of his grip on the state only because he

has a nuclear weapon. So Netanyahu out in public has been selling this lie for a very, very long time. And the reason that I say it's cooked is that I think they're, and I think you're right to an extent that it's politicized and they're trying to give bad intelligence because they want to achieve an objective by manipulating the United States into doing certain actions. That's certainly true. But what we also know is that in the lead up to February 28th, the Israeli assessment was that the Iranian government was in a state of total chaos and that it was going to collapse and that the protests that had happened in January that were then, by President Trump's own admission, infiltrated by armed individuals who then began attacking police stations, religious sites,

just murdering people that had any affiliation with the state, and also attacking people who were religious. Those of us who pointed that out at the time were tard and feathered for suggesting that Iran's narrative is not entirely lying, that there actually is foreign infiltration here that Mike Pompeo, the former CIA director, came out and said it. that very influential Israeli commentator said it. So Netanyahu, I think, seized on that moment from early January. He put it into the U.S. intelligence stream that the Iranian government was in a severely weakened state, and that by heavily bombing them, by assassinating the Supreme Leader, that they were going to essentially push the final sort of parts of the state off the cliff,

and then it was going to be an uprising, and they're going to have Kurds coming in. I think a lot of that serious U.S. intelligence people knew was very dubious. And yet you have the political dynamic here as well. You have the fact that the Trump administration is just flush with people who have sold their souls to an Israel first agenda, despite their rhetoric about it being America first. And I think you had a perfect combination of just idiocy and nefarious intentional manipulation of intelligence. I say idiocy also because Trump has people around. him who are absolutely obsessed with destroying the Islamic Republic of Iran. You know, neocons, people like John Bolton, even though Trump claims that he was a rat who was going to start World War III,

Trump is basically doing everything that people like John Bolton wanted. And I think it was put into Trump's head that he's going to go down in history as the president who forever destroyed the Islamic of Iran, avenge the 79 revolution, avenge the taking of the U.S. embassy at the onset of the Islamic Revolution, like that combined with the Israeli political influence, combined with the Cookingham Intelligence, and combined with the fact that there are absolutely bona fide imbeciles in this administration, plus financial connections of Jared Kushner to all of these Gulf countries and to Netanyahu and to Israel meant that you had a kind of perfect storm to create this absolutely catastrophic war, even from an American strategic standpoint. This was a total and complete disaster

And as Frederick Mertz, the poodle who poses as the Chancellor of Germany, said, the Iranians have humiliated the United States in the negotiations and by showing that they can prolong this. You mentioned Jared Kushner. And I want to ask you more about that because Whitkoff and Kushner, Tweedl-D and Tweedledummer, have made numerous strutigier or numerous blunders. They don't seem to have the diplomatic, they don't have diplomatic experience that is, that. meets this moment, but also they seem to have not like don't have the technical knowledge about things like uranium enrichment. And, you know, I am curious, I guess, here how Iran is even able to trust these negotiators. And is there any schism between that pair and J.D. Vance? And I believe that you've written about that. But, and if that's the case, why is Trump even continuing to send Whitkoff and Jared Kushner, unless they're just essentially there to be cutouts for the Israeli

government in these negotiations? I would separate Steve Whitkoff and Jared Kushner. I think that Jared Kushner very much knows what he's doing. I think he is very close to Netanyahu. I think that even in Oman and Geneva, before the war when they were negotiating, that Kushner was in regular contact with the Israelis, possibly even behind the back of some White House officials. And I think that you have to view Jared Kushner, not as Trump's representative on behalf of the United States, but representing the Trump crime family. And when you view it through that lens, and you also recognize that Jared Kushner has deep financial, religious, and political ties to Israel, and also to some of the Gulf countries that wrongly and wildly erroneously believe that

this was going to be a sort of swift defeat of Iran, I think you start to understand that Kushner is not actually operating through a lens of American national security. If you look just at the example of the United Arab Emirates, which, you know, of course, just announced that it was leaving OPEC and OPEC Plus, you know, going back to the first Trump administration, MBZ and the rulers of United Arab Emirates were very, very close to Trump. They had these meetings in Trump Tower that also interestingly involved the Saudis. And the collusion that was happening there when everyone was talking about Russia was that they were also, they were looking at regime change in Iran. This goes back to even before President Trump was

sworn in in his first administration, Jared Kushner is bankrolled to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars by the sovereign wealth funds of multiple Gulf countries, primarily the UAE in terms of his political allies. They were the first country and the most prominent country to enter into Jared Kushner's crown jewel, the Abraham Accords. They're viewed by many as the kind of Arab Zionist entity in the Middle East. They have a kind of cold war that's been going on with Saudi Arabia that is centered around the UAE's support for the RSF in Sudan. And let me just add and say that the UAE and Ukraine just entered into a defense pact as well, just another indication of how they're trying to completely align themselves with the West. So what is the UAE play here?

The UAE has developed very close ties to Israel, particularly since the Abraham Accords were signed on an intelligence level, on a defense level, on a political level. The UAE also perceives that it can become the favored Arab nation of the United States. And so, you know, just today, Trump was heaping praise on the decision by the UAE to exit OPEC. The UAE also was very heavily targeted by the Iranians, in part because of its close relationship with Israel, because it has allowed Mossad to operate from within its borders, because it is known across the Arab world as being extremely close to Israel. And so when we look at the whole configuration of what's happening right now, these GCC countries, these Gulf countries were completely caught off guard by the ferocity and sustained nature of

Iran's retaliatory strikes and also by the quality of Iranian intelligence. You know, the Iranians hit the CIA station in Saudi Arabia. They hit some hotels where the Iranians claim, and by the way, I do not believe that anyone should be bombing a hotel when the Israelis have tried to claim that they have a right to bomb hospitals or civilian targets because, quote, unquote, Hamas is inside of them. That's a war crime and it should be denounced. But we should also understand what the Iranians are essentially taking the same position that other actors throughout history have taken when they've hit civilian targets, which is there are military personnel inside of it. And it turned out that they were correct, that the U.S. had actually evacuated soldiers and placed them inside

of civilian targets. So the Iranians were making essentially the argument while they use these civilian targets as human shields. I raised these examples just to say that the level of intelligence, the information that the Iranians had about targets, was so sophisticated, that it sent shockwaves through these Gulf countries. You know, the Iranians managed to penetrate Kuwaiti airspace with a conventional aircraft, with an F5 warplane early on in the war to circumvent the U.S. defenses and U.S. warplanes. They managed to enter Kuwaiti airspace with a conventional warplane. This is for people who are in the military understanding that Iran was able to do this to the

United States, this is a rare occurrence. and they carried out air strikes that actually killed American soldiers. It's not just the drones and the ballistic missiles. The Iranians hit at times on a symmetric level against U.S. targets in these Gulf countries. So when the Iranians go to the negotiating table to bring it full circle with Jared Kushner, they know he's representing the most nefarious strands of politics in the GCC. They know that he's representing Israel, but most importantly, they know that he's representing sort of the Trump family business.

With Whitcough, it's like you might as well be sitting with like a fourth grader because the Iranians put on the table very significant, what they call flexible terms on a wide range of issues. Trump could have taken a huge L and danced all around the world saying he did what Barack Hussein Obama could never do. He could have gotten a deal that he would have been celebrating for like the rest of his time on this earth that he got the Iranians to do X, Y, and Z. And the Iranians were saying, when I spoke to them before this, when the Omanis were mediating, they were saying, our sense is that the Omanis understand how significant it is we're putting on the table. And remember, Emma, what happened? The Omani foreign minister, and remember, the Omanis have been doing this for decades. They are the chief mediator on the nuclear issue between the United States and Iran going back decades. The Omanis fly their

foreign minister to Washington. He meets with J.D. Vance and other. top U.S. officials. He believes we are on the verge of a highly significant historic agreement between the Trump administration and the Iranians. And he comes out and he says that in public. Less than 48 hours later, the United States launches this war against Iran. So what is it, what is it that I'm saying to you? What I'm saying is that the Iranians are saying, on the one hand, they brought no technical experts with them, not a single technical expert from the U.S. governments with Iran. They sent Trump's golf buddy and his son-in-law. That's who the U.S. sent. Iran is there with nuclear experts, with PhDs, with PhDs in

American studies, with people that understand every single bit of minutia about the 2015 JCPOA and the American position on a whole range of issues. And we get Steve Whitkoff and Jared Kushner. So the Iranians are saying, on the one hand, they had no idea what we were talking about. They didn't understand the technical issues. And that led to things like Steve Whitkoff going on Fox News and saying, you know, that they're days away from building a weapons grade, you know, blah, blah, blah, like things that make absolutely no sense, that even Dick Cheney would be blushing at the level of incompetence of the lies. But on the other hand, they said it's so clear to us that none of this was about the nuclear enrichment issue. This was about wanting to set it up to go

to war, buying time to get their assets in place. So that's what the Iranians were dealing with. On the one hand, not a single technical expert, real estate bros at the table, Trump's son-in-law at the And then a political agenda that was clear as day that they wanted to go forward and do this war and they were waiting to get all their assets in place. I mean, it's another pattern of the United States with, yeah, again, this Trump crime family infrastructure lulling the Iranians into a false sense of security via negotiations and then bombing them or at the very least the appearance of negotiations. And this is also... That's why there's no negotiations right now. You know, the Iranians are, they're keenly aware of this. And that's why they're not, you know, when Arachi was in Pakistan, the Iranian foreign minister,

that's why they were saying, we're not meeting with Kushner and Whitkoff again. Oh, you asked something that I think we should not let pass, which is about J.D. Vance. The reason that they wanted J.D. Vance, yes, the Iranians had read the reports that J.D. Vance had been a somewhat of a dissident in the Trump administration. I think those are a bit exaggerating. or the idea that JD Vance is somehow. He wants to set himself up in 2028 and discused himself from this unpopular war. That's true.

But I do think that, you know, part of the role, and in fact, J.D. Vance said this last night or this morning in an interview, you know, part of the – he was responding to the Atlantic magazine story, the Atlantic, of course, edited by a former Israeli prison guard, termed American journalist Jeffrey Goldberg. But the Atlantic, you know, had done this report about J.D. Vance raising these issues. And Vance sort of said, in an interview in response to that report, he was denouncing it and saying it's false, but at the same time then kind of co-signing its sort of main line, which is that he had raised

certain issues. And what he said is, that's my job. Actually, that's true. You know, Joe Biden, when they were talking about Afghanistan policy and he was Barack Obama's vice president, had to play devil's advocate and be the one to ask tough questions. You're supposed to, that is supposed to be the job of the vice president. So I think there's some exaggeration about J.D. Vance's sort of anti-interventionism. But having said that, I think the Iranians recognize that. But on the other hand, they recognize also that J.D. Vance, if the Republicans somehow clean up and he's the nominee and J.D. Vance wins, he could be a guy that they're going to be

dealing with for a long time. So they send someone very serious, Ghalibov, who was the Speaker of the Parliament, but also was in the IRGC and fought in the Iran-Iraq war and has a lot of credibility and a lot of heft behind him. They send him and they say he's going to meet with the sitting vice president of the United States. That was a coup for the Iranians to have that high of a level. You know, Barack Obama never sat down with them. Joe Biden never sat down with them. They sent John Kerry. So from the Iranian perspective, it wasn't just about, oh, they think Vance is going to be better. It has to do with the prestige of it and the fact that Iran felt that this was the best leverage they'd had in a very long time. And what I was told by Iranian sources

is that the divisions between the Kushner-Wittkoff playground and then sort of J.D. Vance sitting at the table were very, very clear. And what they say is, you know, the American media is believing this nonsense from Trump that we're in disarray. Look at them out in public. Trump's telling you that J.D. Vance is having like, you know, a five-star meal on Air Force 2 right now when he's literally sitting in the Naval Observatory Mansion. They say Jared Kushner and Steve Whitkoff are on an airplane coming to meet Arachi. When Arachi just got on a plane to leave Islamabad, they're in disarray.

Absolutely. And this whole, I mean, Trump's attempt to puff out his chair. The other day, he's truiting out AI-generated images of him saying, no more, Mr. Nice Guy. Like, this is a humiliation, and just to bring it back full circle to what we were talking about earlier. I mean, Iran can wait this out, and they can punish the United States, one, for this criminal offensive war, but two, for their really duplicitous tactics in talks, because they can make them. be sincere by inflicting damage. And that's the other part of this that I just can't wrap my head around. We play this clip yesterday of Marco Rubio saying that Iran's closure of the Strait of Hormuz is the equivalent of an economic nuclear weapon. Well, if that's the case, then you were able to

really easily identify that they were in possession of said economic nuclear weapon by, you know, looking at a map. Like, this whole thing has been so obvious. I mean, the way that Iran has been able to use their geographic advantage to make the Westfield pain, there is historical precedent for it too, but it should have been known by this administration as it had been known by previous ones. So I guess my real question is, how much is Iran winning? And what are there key demands that you think are most likely to bring the Trump administration to heal? I mean, the Iranians said from the very beginning before the first bombs fell on February 28th, that they were going to conduct ferocious retaliatory strikes across the Persian Gulf and Israel, and that they were going to block the U.S. and any allied ships from transiting the Strait of Hormuz. You didn't need a classified intelligence briefing to know this. In fact, we did multiple stories speaking to Iranian officials describing,

prior to the war starting exactly what they were going to do, and then they did that. And if we, you know, a small independent news outlet, were able to understand that the Iranians said that they were going to implement a mosaic defense, they were going to put command authority further down the chain, that they weren't going to do back channel choreography of what targets they were going to hit, that they were going to intentionally try to inflict pain on the United States military and on the U.S.-led global economy, all of these things. things Trump keeps saying no one knew this was going to happen. And everyone knew it was going to happen who actually was paying attention. But when you cartoonize the quote-unquote enemy to such a degree

that you cease to believe that there's any logic behind their actions or that they're not rational actors, you do a disservice to your own cause. And so it's this combination of ignorance, hubris, and then a very sophisticated Israeli psychological and intelligence operation targeting the highest lovers of power in the United States, both openly and clandestinely through the contamination of the intelligence presentation process to the president of the United States, who, by the way, has just cast aside all of the subject matter experts that the United States had at its disposal. But I don't think that we should get too far down the line of overstating the stability of Iran's economy or the overall situation. Iran has been very severely bombed. Iran's civilian

infrastructure has taken a very severe hit. You know, more than 3,000 Iranians have been killed. This, you know, the first major massacre we knew of was at the girls school where more than 165 people, most of them young girls, were murdered in a U.S. attack in the opening moments of this strike. And the Iranian political situation prior to this was in a very uncertain state because the sanctions had really punished Iranian society. Their currency was in massive depreciation. Inflation was off the charts. The protests that were happening were overwhelmingly on economic issues. And so what the U.S. war has done is unified almost every sector of Iranian society against the United States and Israel. And it's going to be for the Iranian people to decide when the dust settles

what they want their future to look like. But I think that what has happened is that the U.S. war has brought Iranians together in opposition to this. And so right now, it does seem like there is broad consensus in Iran that regardless of who the power structure is, the sovereignty of the country is not up for negotiation. And I think that that is a very powerful weapon. in the hands of the Iranian negotiators. They understand that regardless of what Iranians think about the state, generally speaking, Iran is behind them in the stance that they're taking with the United States right now. Jeremy Scahill, Dropside News is essential reading on this very topic and more if you want to

understand our foreign policy in a way that isn't so severely slanted towards the United States. perspective, it's important to continue to read DropSight. Thanks so much for your time today. I really appreciate it. Thanks, Emma. Quick break, folks. And when we come back, we're going to be speaking with Eli Hager of ProPublica on the Trump administration, basically targeting disabled adults with cuts. Be right back. We are back and we are joined now by Eli Hager, writer at ProPublica, here to discuss his piece, the Trump administration aims to penalize disabled adults who live with their families. Eli, thanks so much for coming on the show today.

Thank you for having me. Of course. So Trump is now essentially via the supplemental social security income, moving to, at least the administration is according to multiple sources who spoke to you at ProPublica. They're moving to really, severely cut or even eliminate these important benefits for hundreds of thousands of people with disabilities. And this is targeting people who live in the same home as their families. Could you explain what they are moving towards and how this works?

Right. So the system that already exists is that people who have disabilities who choose or need to live with family members or with friends have their SSI benefits reduced by a certain amount, because the idea is that you're getting that help from your family or friends, so you don't need as much of the federal benefit. But there's always been an exception to that rule, which is that if you live in a, quote-unquote, I mean, if other public assistance household,

so like if the family is lower income and they're receiving SNAP or TANF benefits or these other programs, then it's understood that the family can't just support you. It's a lower-income family. The Trump rule would reverse this approach specifically with SNAP households. So essentially, if you live in a household that receives SNAP, you're going to have your SSI benefit reduced by a third, which could be hundreds of dollars a month,

just for the fact of living with your family. It wouldn't be reduced by a third if you lived on your own. And which disabilities, adults that are going to be impacted by this, and children, I guess, what kinds of disabilities are we talking about here that are going to be targeted because they still live at home? Right. So a lot of the most common situations would be young adults and middle-aged adults with intellectual disabilities who still live at home. So a common example would be a young adult from age 18 to 30 or 35 who's still living with their parents because they have Down syndrome or autism that causes them to be nonverbal and other things that prevent them from being able to support themselves and make a full living. So that would be one common situation. Another common situation would be older people who would essentially be death. without the help of the SSI program and have to move back in with their adult children

because they have no other place to live and no other way to survive. So both of those groups of people would have their SSI disability benefits cut by a third, again, hundreds of dollars a month just for the fact of continuing to or having to live with their families. Tell us a bit about supplemental security income when we're talking about SSI. I was reading your piece, not shocked, but dismayed, to see that despite the fact that millions of people are disabled or unable to work because of disabilities or the old age, which you're speaking about there, that a very small fraction of people who even apply to this to supplemental security income are even approved. Right. It's a very rigorous process. is what makes it somewhat misleading when the current administration talks so much about fraud and so on in some of these programs. Fraud does exist in safety net programs, but in the SSI program specifically, the process is incredibly complicated,

and the steps you have to go to can often take years. You have to not only demonstrate that you have a severe disability or that you're essentially indigent in old age, You also have to provide extensive financial records showing everything about the household where you live and your income and assets. You also can't have assets over $2,000 so people can't save more than $2,000 or more than $2,000. So it's – I remember that horrible story. We've covered that before, yes. Right.

It's extremely rigorous. And so for that reason, less than a third of applicants of the program are approved. and even after they're approved, they undergo near constant supervision of their finances. As often as every month, they have their finances and household arrangements double-checked to make sure that they essentially still qualify for the program. And this would create wildly, you know, this wildly increased the paperwork requirements, so they're already as burdensome as you describe. Right, exactly.

So that's what happens for a lot of SSI recipients. but one, the paperwork requirements are reduced if you're in a lower-income household because it's understood that they sort of use how, like, say, the SNAP program or another one of these programs has already demonstrated that this is a lower-income household. The Social Security Administration accepts that and understands it to be a lower-income household, and they don't make those households do all of the same paperwork and check-ins. what this rule would affect is those precise households, the lowest income households. They would now have to do all of those check-ins as often as every month.

If anything changes with their living circumstance, like they split up utility bills slightly differently with the people they're living with, or somebody, say, one of their siblings is there for a while and helps them with one of their living expenses. They're supposed to report that every month, or else they potentially be billed for being overpaid by social security. Can you talk about the alternatives that are suggested here for where these Americans can live and get the care that they need? Because what essentially this seems like it's incentivizing people to do is to be forced institutionalize these or forcing these disabled people. into institutions.

And you've heard some rhetoric about this from the Trump administration. They're, you know, piloting certain programs where they're, I believe it was in Utah, we covered this. They want to essentially intern a bunch of homeless people there. The administration has talked before about, you know, how we need to bring back these kinds of institutions. And I guess my reading. of this is that perhaps there's some financial incentive here for institutions that would take

on these people with disabilities? There could be. I haven't done the reporting to support that, but a lot of the costs of housing people in institutional facilities then goes, it becomes a Medicaid cost. So it continues to be a taxpayer cost. We actually did a comparison, like for one of the young people. This would affect in Philadelphia, who we wrote about. Cutting her benefits would essentially save taxpayers $11 a month. If that means that her family, without that income for the household, if that means that her family can no longer support her there in the household, she would instead have to move into a group home or nursing facility, and that would cost taxpayers hundreds of dollars a day. So it's increasing the cost to tax.

taxpayers by hundreds of dollars to not support them at home and rather have them live in institutional facilities. We have a question from a viewer, Frank Fistow. Would this affect an adult that has disabilities that lives with a senior collecting social security? It would if anybody in the household receives SNAP. I don't know if this person, if anybody receives SNAP, but it's particularly, it's a change particularly affecting these SNAP households. which is just, I mean, Snap is food stamps. Yeah, it's just for food. I mean, yeah, there's an SSI.

It's supposed to be an income that you can use for. I mean, like if you have a severe disability, you have Down syndrome, you're completely, you've been demonstrated by medical experts and a judge not to be able to work and make a living. It's supposed to be a very basic income to be able to support yourself. And Snap only covers, obviously, food. The viewer writes in and clarify saying they both receive SNAP in this household. So this would obviously be impacted then.

I believe so, yes. And it's just how are they, how is this rule change happening within the context of a SNAP program? I mean, this is obviously quite different when we're talking about SSI and disability. The ability to feed oneself is, is, is, is, is, is, is, is, is, is, is, is, is, is, is, is, is, And also, it's even more critical for if you have disabilities and maybe have difficulty leaving the home, for example, or you can't shop for yourself. Right. I think your question is about, like, how does it interact with the SNAP program? Yeah, yeah. I mean, or even how they are justifying the connection. Yeah, well, so historically, the connection has been that, you know, the Social Security Administration has understood that,

that families and households that receive public assistance, it's sort of a metric for that family being lower income. So if a person with a disability moves into that household because they can't support themselves on their own, it's understood that the household can't just support them and that their SSI benefit is going to need to be their complete benefit. It shouldn't be cut just because there's other people living in the home. And this rule change would specifically know,

longer use SNAP as that sort of metric. And so just say like, you know, it doesn't matter if the SNAP program has already determined your household to be very low income. We're going to reduce your SSI benefit anyway and no longer have that exception. Last thing here, we do have some people writing in because I think they're concerned about their situation. A socialist speech says, what about folks who live on their own and rely on SSI and Medicaid waivers? Perhaps I could answer that for this is about a disabled adults that live with their parents or with another family member right right this is a penalty for living with others so if you live alone it wouldn't be you wouldn't be affected i mean yeah and can you just speak about you you talk to to people in your

peace and it's just abundantly clear that living if you have a a mental disability some of them mean and make it so that living at home is often much more preferable. There's a familiarity, there's a comfort, there is obviously if you're living with a parent as well, you're going to be saving and not have to put yourself into one of these institutions or be put in one of these institutions. But like just the psychological safety that is often present. for people with intellectual or mental disabilities and their ability to live at home. Yeah, it's very true. I mean, actually, there's an interesting coalition building around this issue.

So I spoke with some evangelical groups who care a lot about this. And essentially, they see it as a family issue, a family values issue in the sense of keeping families together and it being better for people to be able to be with their families rather than separated into institutions or potentially living on their own. with little support. So the SSI program helps families stay together in their view. And as you say, we also spoke to people who have, say, adult children with Down syndrome and autism to where they're non-verbal and things like that.

But it gives people sort of a sense of pride to be able to be a part of their household and contribute to their household a little bit, help pay for the utilities. that sort of thing. So it definitely made, I think anybody watching this knows the value of family. So it definitely has those benefits. Lastly, the one really silver lining here is this has not been implemented yet. It's just you have multiple sources that are saying that this is the direction that it's going in. Can you just give people a sense of what the timeline is for this potential change to happen? Right. So as with any executive branch regulation, it has to go through a whole process. So we have the reporting to show that they've announced that they're doing this rule,

that they're working on it. It's currently at the Office of Management and Budget, which is essentially the White House Budget Office, where they edit their regulation and they sort of consider it against all the priorities of the White House and the administration. And so it's at that stage, they have to consider whether to formally publish it as a notice of proposed rulemaking, which is the wonky term. And then once that happens, there will be an opportunity for public comments. So anybody watching this can write in, once that happens, they can write in with their comments about what they think about the rule. And then the Social Security Administration is supposed to take into account those comments before formally, finally publishing the new rule.

Well, we always have the Capitol switchboard number in the description wherever you're watching this. If you want to call your member of Congress or your senator, it doesn't hurt to get this on their radar. And you can look at ProPublica and Eli's reporting. It's called the Trump administration aims to penalize disabled adults who live with their families. And you can read that article, get informed about it, and call your representative or your senator and tell them to object to this. Eli Hager, a writer at ProPublica. You can read his piece that I just mentioned at ProPublica. Thanks so much for your time today. I really appreciate it. Thank you. Of course, with that, folks, we're going to wrap up the free part of this program. We'll head

into the fun half. We've got some fun for you. I mean, it is fun that Janet Mills has dropped out. We'll talk about that a bit. That's fun. I'd just like to make a point on the recent interview we just got over with is this brings us back to our world fed and Bill Clinton and the the welfare reforms he did in the 90s this is from the Guardian in 1996 when welfare reforms were introduced in a coalition between President Bill Clinton and Republican 60% of families in the US living below the poverty line received cash assistance that has since fallen to just 23% nationally and even lower in many southern states without alternative forms of welfare field in the gap. In Georgia, the proportion dropped from 98% to just 7%.

And people talk about welfare queens and that sort of thing. The truth is that that was a fixation, a fixture of racist imaginations. And that who was actually being benefited from that was people who were caring for people. Like in large part, it was keeping people together with members of their family who needed more assistance. And we said, actually, what you need to do is go apply for Walmart or one of those and leave and whatever happens to the family member that you care for with government assistance just screw them just a heinous I mean attack on our society that again came from the left of center with you know Republican so that's a bipartisan attack on America exactly right Brandon hello hello hello hello what's happened

happening on the discourse. Oh, well, it's been a banner week for the discourse. Obviously last week we hit 20,000. So we've been celebrating this week by delving into the various conspiracies related to Donald Trump's newest shooting incident that he's trying to sell to the public. I mean, so we've been doing that. Erica Kirk has a new video out. Candice has a new video out about Erica Kirk's new video.

And we've also been watching, I don't know if you've seen this, but Russell Brand's incredibly incriminating interview, yes, Pierce Morgan. Some are saying the most incriminating interview anyone's ever done. Many are saying that. Well, except for that one with that guy literally admitted to murder, like in the interview, he was just like, yeah, no, I did it. But besides that, like. Wait, which one is that? Robert Derser's are you talking about? Yeah, we kept the hot mic on it and burped, and he's like, I killed them all, didn't I? Yeah.

Crazy. Yeah, besides incidents like that, it was incriminating. So, yeah, we've been having a really good time, but we're 100 away from 8,000 on Twitch. We are 100 away from 21,000 on YouTube. So definitely a good day to join the discourse. Always a good day to join the discourse. Always a good day. Matt, what's happening on Left Reckoning with the Jacobin Show?

Yeah, tomorrow, May Day, Jacobin Show. doing a live stream. We'll be live at 3 o'clock Eastern time, so I won't be here for the fun half. But check out David and I. We'll have a bunch of fun Jacobin guests and some activist-type folks. And we'll just talk about the workers' holiday.

All right. Check that out, folks. Also follow me on Instagram. I'm like 1,200 away from 10,000, which is the big money on Instagram. Oh, yeah, I'm 100 away from 20. So let's follow that first, though. Yeah, thank you, Brian.

Well, when you follow Brian, you get stand-up clips and little sketches and things like that. When you follow that, you get hot selfies. Which is way more valuable. I did get a lapel a lapel mic, and so I might be doing some of those videos where I clip it onto like a book or something like that. All right. Oh, we got Binder in that. Stepping up your game. Yeah, while we bring in Binder, we will all read some IMs here, Skidmark Twink.

Can we see a picture of Emma in her tomboy era? No. Just look at Kristen Wig in the Michael Jordan jersey on. Fallon or whatever. That's what it looks like. It really was. It was, I mean, I think I scrubbed a lot of those pictures with the short haircut at one point. But yes, I did dress in boys clothes for a while in like fourth and fifth grade. The people's eyebrow.

My God is the U.S. A Cruel Place. Yes, exactly. Oh, we have Binder. Hello, Matt Binder. Hello. What's happening on your, um, shows? YouTube.com

slash Matt Binder tonight at 8.30 p.m. Eastern time. Join me and the rest of the leftist mafia crew for leftist mafia. Do it. All right, guys. We will head... We're pounding a certain area. Jesus Christ.

That pairs quite nicely with the Michigan fist. That Michigan fist. I want that Michigan fist! It still maintained that that just somehow makes it so much hornier. Because I've gotten the taste of the Michigan Fiss and now I want that Michigan Fiss.

It feels like something you should see on HBO at like 3 o'clock in the morning. All right guys, we are heading into the fun half. See you there. Okay, Emma, please. Well, I just, I feel that my voice is sorely lacking on the majority report. Wait, look, Samma's unpopular. I do deserve a vacation at Disney World.

So, ladies and gentlemen, it is my pleasure to Welcome Emma to the show. It is Thursday. Yeah, I think you need to take over for Sam. That's cool. Sir, I'm gonna, I'm gonna pause you right there. Wait, what? You can't encourage Emma to live like this.

And I'll tell you why. So it's offered a twerk, sushi, and poker with the boys. Oh, so it's offered a twerk? Yeah. Sushi and sushi and pol. Ah, that's what we call biz. I think that what you did to Tim Poole was mean. Free speech.

That's not what we're about here. Look at how sad. he's become now. You shouldn't even talk about it because I think you're responsible. I probably am in a certain way, but let's get to the meltdown here. Twirp, oh, sushi, and poker with the boys. Oh my God. Twerp. Wow. Sushi. I'm sorry, I'm losing my fucking mind. Someone's offered a twerk. Yeah. Sushi and poker with the boys. Logic. Twerp. Sushi and just... I'm not trying to be a dick right now, but like, I absolutely think the U.S. should be providing me with a life and kids. That's not what we're talking about here. It's not a fun job.

That's a real thing. That's a real thing. Willie Walker. That's a real thing. It has like the weight of the world on the shoulders. It was so much easier. When the majority report was just you, you were happy. Let's change the subject.

I want people saying reckless things on your program. That's one of the most difficult parts about this show. This is a pro-killing podcast. I'm thinking maybe it's time we bury the hatchet. Left is best. Violet twirp. How many fun is real. Incredible theme song.

I Bumbler. Emma Viglin, absolutely one of my favorite people. Actually, not just in the game, like, period.