Speaker 1: Hey, guys, ready or not, twenty twenty four is here,
Speaker 1: and we here at breaking points, are already thinking of
Speaker 1: ways we can up our game for this critical election.
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Speaker 2: let's get to the show.
Speaker 4: Good morning, and welcome to Counterpoints. Some difficulty traveling around
Speaker 4: Washington today has Emily and I broadcasting from home today. Emily,
Speaker 4: how is it in your neck of the city.
Speaker 5: Well, DC doesn't handle snow very well, so it's about
Speaker 5: as you would expect. But it was a really beautiful,
Speaker 5: like sticky snow, so that's the benefit.
Speaker 3: Indeed, they're a little bit of potential rank coming.
Speaker 4: Otherwise, looking forward to some possible sledding after this.
Speaker 6: Good luck with that, because it's going to freeze up quickly.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I know, get's gonna get ugly.
Speaker 4: But anyway, we're so we're going to We're gonna start,
Speaker 4: of course with Trump and Elon Musk holding a press
Speaker 4: conference with his boy from the Oval Office. We're going
Speaker 4: to move from there into the looming collapse of the
Speaker 4: ceasefire with net Yahoo and Trump threatening to end that
Speaker 4: and let you know, bring all hell back to Gaza
Speaker 4: in an effort to ethnically cleanse the strip and redevelop
Speaker 4: it into condos and produce a riviera of the Middle East.
Speaker 4: We're also speaking of this rather blunt real politic. We'll
Speaker 4: also talk about Donald Trump saying that he has told
Speaker 4: the Ukrainians that he wants to be paid back for
Speaker 4: the US investment in their war effort to the tune
Speaker 4: of five hundred billion dollars in rare earth minerals, and
Speaker 4: that they can reach a deal with Russia or not
Speaker 4: reach a deal with Russia. It's kind of he doesn't
Speaker 4: really care. Meanwhile, Zelenski himself has kind of floated some
Speaker 4: some land for land.
Speaker 3: Peace proposal that could be could be a step forward.
Speaker 3: Tulci Gabbard was supposed.
Speaker 4: To be confirmed last night in the United States Senate,
Speaker 4: but because of the inclement weather here they decided to
Speaker 4: postpone that until this morning. But she probably by the
Speaker 4: time you're watching this, she may have gotten through and
Speaker 4: will be the Director of National Intelligence. Barring some serious surprise.
Speaker 4: And then Emily, you were able to bring in a
Speaker 4: couple of guests today, both of whom I think are
Speaker 4: going to be interesting. One of them, you're doing a
Speaker 4: newsletter with am I.
Speaker 3: Am I right about that.
Speaker 5: Yeah, we have two guests today. The second guest is
Speaker 5: soa Aba Marii's my colleague got Unheard. We did launch
Speaker 5: a newsletter called a new newsletter called Area forty seven
Speaker 5: a couple of weeks ago, so you can go to
Speaker 5: Unheard and look for Area forty seven subscribe and.
Speaker 3: We could put that in the notes here too.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, it's good, like scoopy little details
Speaker 5: from inside Trump World.
Speaker 6: So we're working on that.
Speaker 5: But Sorod is joining us today to talk about a really,
Speaker 5: really interesting story he wrote from the perspective of somebody
Speaker 5: on the right about the era of Elon Musk and
Speaker 5: Mago World embracing Elon Musk and the various pitfalls that
Speaker 5: people don't.
Speaker 6: Seem to want to acknowledge.
Speaker 5: So we are happy to have him here so he
Speaker 5: can talk to us about that. The first guest that
Speaker 5: will be on the show is Lindsey Burke, who wrote
Speaker 5: the Project twenty twenty five chapter on scaling down the
Speaker 5: Department of Education dramatically, which just as we're coming here
Speaker 5: to discuss in this morning show is some of the
Speaker 5: biggest news in DC. Those plans are preceding apace. So
Speaker 5: it's a very timely conversation we will get to have
Speaker 5: with Lindsey. A lot of her ideas are going to
Speaker 5: likely be implemented in the next few I mean with Elon,
Speaker 5: you could say the next few hours honestly, but certainly
Speaker 5: the next Yeah.
Speaker 3: And they started last night.
Speaker 4: They were, you know, sounds like they were rifling through
Speaker 4: contracts at the sixth floor of the Department of Education
Speaker 4: and canceled I think eighty nine of them worth nearly
Speaker 4: a billion dollars. That's on top of another rough one
Speaker 4: hundred million dollars in like DEI contracts they've canceled, And
Speaker 4: they're signaling that the plan is to you know, fully
Speaker 4: destroy the Department of Education.
Speaker 3: And so I'm looking forward to hearing.
Speaker 4: From the author of the this this project twenty five five,
Speaker 4: which you know, the Trump campaign consistently told us had
Speaker 4: nothing to do with what he intended to do, which
Speaker 4: although would you consistently warned people, no, this is what
Speaker 4: they're going to do.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean there's yeah, Well, we'll talk about it
Speaker 5: with Lindsay. But how can you when someone puts, you know,
Speaker 5: years of time into building out a blueprint for you know,
Speaker 5: reform or distruction, not to let.
Speaker 3: That work go to waste?
Speaker 6: Right, yeah, right, So.
Speaker 5: We will make sure to talk to Lindsay about all
Speaker 5: of that and big show. So we might as well
Speaker 5: dive in right here with our a block, which is
Speaker 5: all about the Oval Office conversation that Donald Trump and
Speaker 5: Elon Musk had with reporters late yesterday. We have this
Speaker 5: clip here. I'm going to share my screens that you
Speaker 5: can watch. This is Trump. Actually I forgot one of
Speaker 5: the participants and this was a little Axe and you'll
Speaker 5: see if you're watching this, you're going to see little
Speaker 5: ax on Elon Musk's shoulders.
Speaker 6: He is a very cute kid.
Speaker 5: I don't think Grimes was particularly.
Speaker 6: Happy that he was there, though.
Speaker 5: So we'll roll this clip and you can see Donald
Speaker 5: Trump talking about all kinds of different things and.
Speaker 7: Some of the things that we found, which you're shocking,
Speaker 7: billions and billions of dollars in waste, fraud and abuse,
Speaker 7: and I think it's very important and that's one of
Speaker 7: the reasons I got elected. I say, we're going to
Speaker 7: do that. Nobody had any idea it was that bad,
Speaker 7: that's sick, and that corrupt. And it seems hard to
Speaker 7: believe that judges want to try and stop us from
Speaker 7: looking for corruption, especially when we found hundreds of millions
Speaker 7: of dollars worth much more than that in just a
Speaker 7: short period of time, and we want to weed out
Speaker 7: the corruption. And it seems hard to believe that a
Speaker 7: judge could say, we don't want you to do that. Well,
Speaker 7: so maybe we have to look at the judges because
Speaker 7: that's very serious. I think it's a very serious violation.
Speaker 5: So that's Donald Trump going in on the federal judge. Obviously,
Speaker 5: there's a decent amount of debate right now on the
Speaker 5: right about whether Donald Trump should challenge or just disobey
Speaker 5: orders from the judiciary. And Trump yesterday said something that
Speaker 5: you just heard it there, but some people interpreted him saying, right,
Speaker 5: I don't know if you caught this. At one point
Speaker 5: he said basically like, we'll follow the judge, but we'll appeal.
Speaker 5: In this broader discussion that like the context that he
Speaker 5: just gave could be interpreted a little bit differently.
Speaker 6: Than that too.
Speaker 5: Maybe they want to impeach the judge, which is a
Speaker 5: thing I believe you can do to the Senate. So
Speaker 5: sort of an interesting moment there with Trump.
Speaker 4: Yeah, impeaching a judge over a over a issuing a
Speaker 4: stay would be just an incredible break from two hundred
Speaker 4: plus years of how we've been doing to me. The
Speaker 4: level of dishonesty that's that's flowing from Trump in those
Speaker 4: comments is rather startling. He's not doing an audit, He's
Speaker 4: not just no, no, No judge would stop an executive,
Speaker 4: a Treasury department, anybody from going through your spending, categorizing
Speaker 4: it and trying to figure out whether there's waste, fraud,
Speaker 4: or abuse. No judge would ever stop that. What happened
Speaker 4: here is that they were sued because they were accused
Speaker 4: of giving this guy what's his name LS, one of
Speaker 4: one of Elon Musk's DOJ officials read and write access
Speaker 4: to the Treasury Department's most sensitive data. They initially denied
Speaker 4: that they had done, so the judge issue a stay,
Speaker 4: like okay, stop, Like, you can't be given this guy
Speaker 4: all of this information right now. You need to come
Speaker 4: forward with a with a more reasonable plan that is
Speaker 4: within statutory guidelines because there are laws around the safe
Speaker 4: access and holding of federal records. We now know from
Speaker 4: the federal governments, from Elon Musk and Trump's own filings,
Speaker 4: that they did actually give this guy right access, the
Speaker 4: read and write access. So they're now saying that they're
Speaker 4: doing an examination to figure out whether or not he
Speaker 4: actually did anything with that. But he also had it
Speaker 4: on his own personal on his own laptop that he
Speaker 4: was using. So this this hacker kid had the ability
Speaker 4: to change the code inside the Treasury Department on his laptop.
Speaker 4: They're saying they don't think he did anything with that,
Speaker 4: I guess, but they already said that he didn't have
Speaker 4: that access, So now they've changed that story. So for
Speaker 4: a judge to come in and say, look, this is
Speaker 4: on hold until what's Trump Trump's famous phrase, until we
Speaker 4: figure out what's going on, what the hell is going on?
Speaker 3: We figure out what the hell is going on?
Speaker 4: Is not saying that you cannot audit federal spending, that
Speaker 4: you cannot hunt for fraud, and the other the other
Speaker 4: layer of dishonesty here is this like this kind of
Speaker 4: all shucks, like I can't believe what we found, Like
Speaker 4: I'm glad that you know, ninety percent of the stuff
Speaker 4: that they're shutting down in USA ideas being shut down
Speaker 4: when it comes to, you know, trying to intervene in
Speaker 4: foreign countries and basically being a vehicle for kind of
Speaker 4: the US intelligence and US military, Like, okay, you won't
Speaker 4: go the go after that if you want to go
Speaker 4: after that. But like this, this like pretense that they're
Speaker 4: stunned by what they're finding, like they I find I
Speaker 4: find that part difficult to believe, Like we all this
Speaker 4: was all publicly known stuff, right.
Speaker 6: Yes, that's absolutely true.
Speaker 5: Now, Elon obviously got a lot of questions, as people
Speaker 5: can imagine. Some questions are ones that it's been he
Speaker 5: actually this is interesting. He actually really has not talked
Speaker 5: to the press a lot, as he's been like taking
Speaker 5: on the government, wildly taking on the government, and he
Speaker 5: finally actually did some Q and A. And I think
Speaker 5: it is actually pretty important to get some of these
Speaker 5: questions in front of him. So let's take a look
Speaker 5: at one of these moments with Elon to share the
Speaker 5: screen again just so that we can see what he
Speaker 5: how he responded to some of these very important questions.
Speaker 8: That may say it seems like, well, we need a democracy. Well,
Speaker 8: if you don't have a feedback loop, apax, we would.
Speaker 4: Have to if you.
Speaker 8: Sorry, tell you, gravitas can be difficult sometimes. So if
Speaker 8: there's not a good feedback loop from the people to
Speaker 8: the government, and if you have the rule of the bureaucrat,
Speaker 8: if the bureaucracy is in charge, and what meaning does
Speaker 8: democracy actually have?
Speaker 6: Right?
Speaker 5: I want to say, Actually, something interesting here is that
Speaker 5: he is trying to become the bureaucracy. Like it's kind
Speaker 5: of interesting to hear that from him, because he's also
Speaker 5: like he's a special government employee. And bureaucracy is bureaucracy.
Speaker 5: It's not it doesn't change just because it's a conservative bureaucracy.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so he's a bureaucrat, Like that is that, that
Speaker 4: is what he is. And you know what he is
Speaker 4: saying is he is he is the proper bureaucrat, That
Speaker 4: he is the one that because he's there with Trump
Speaker 4: and people elected, that he should be able to carry
Speaker 4: out the mission that people elected Trump to carry out.
Speaker 4: I have an enormous amount of sympathy for that that
Speaker 4: general idea that like people should be able to you know,
Speaker 4: vote for candidates, and those candidates should be able to
Speaker 4: enact policy. Obviously there have to be, you know. So
Speaker 4: the problem here is that that's not the system we have.
Speaker 4: I kind of wish we did have that system, but
Speaker 4: we don't. What he's describing really as a parliamentary system
Speaker 4: where you would elect the kind of the Maga party
Speaker 4: and they would have a majority in Parliament, and that
Speaker 4: they would appoint Trump to be Prime minister and then
Speaker 4: they would be able to carry out their agenda until
Speaker 4: there was a new election called. What we have is
Speaker 4: a system where we elect members of Congress, and we
Speaker 4: separately elect a president, and the members of Congress enact
Speaker 4: laws that the president either signs or vetos, and if
Speaker 4: the president signs those laws, they're in place even after
Speaker 4: that president leaves office. The laws don't go away when
Speaker 4: the president leaves office, and the congressional spending bills that
Speaker 4: have been enacted do not go away. That's why on
Speaker 4: March fourteenth, we will have a government shut down if
Speaker 4: Congress does not agree to a new spending package and
Speaker 4: keep that going. What Musk is sort of suggesting here
Speaker 4: is that that shouldn't be the way it works. That
Speaker 4: the people elected Donald Trump and Donald Trump will decide,
Speaker 4: you know, how how the government operates fully you know
Speaker 4: who you know, which programs get funded, which programs don't
Speaker 4: get funded, and that March fourteenth, whatever, you know, whatever
Speaker 4: Congress does or doesn't do, you know, the government stays open.
Speaker 3: That is a.
Speaker 4: System like that, and I think that there's real virtue
Speaker 4: in a system like that that would actually, I think
Speaker 4: be more democratic.
Speaker 3: In this.
Speaker 4: But at the same time, though, is Congress democratic like?
Speaker 4: Is it part of a democracy or a democratic republic
Speaker 4: to have these two chambers where you know, every two
Speaker 4: years in the House, candidates present ideas that they're going
Speaker 4: to enact when they're in Congress, and then you fight
Speaker 4: them out and then seven hundred thousand people or so
Speaker 4: go and vote for that person to be their representative
Speaker 4: in Washington, and and that chamber passes laws and then
Speaker 4: the Senate passes its laws.
Speaker 3: Like that, that's the system we have.
Speaker 4: And he doesn't like it because it's you know, it's
Speaker 4: it's harder to just go in and just straight up
Speaker 4: do stuff.
Speaker 3: Because if you want to get rid of the Department
Speaker 3: of Education.
Speaker 4: For instance, you have to pass a law that it
Speaker 4: repeals the Department of Education, and he doesn't want to
Speaker 4: do that. As you know, that's what foiled Reagan because
Speaker 4: Reagan had Democrats and yeah, in controlling Congress at the time.
Speaker 6: Well, this is.
Speaker 5: The central argument among people like Russ vote and he
Speaker 5: actually Rust wrote a long essay about this in The
Speaker 5: American Mind in September of twenty twenty two. They during
Speaker 5: the Tea Party years, you'll probably remember Ryan, one of
Speaker 5: the big sources.
Speaker 4: Is oh Trump's omb director, so right man, right at
Speaker 4: the center of this revolution, right.
Speaker 5: And well, so that during the Tea Party years, one
Speaker 5: of the biggest sources of opposition to Barack Obama was
Speaker 5: that he was becoming an imperial president, that he was
Speaker 5: really expanding the powers of the executive. Russ disagrees with
Speaker 5: that common conservative critique and says, actually, the reason that
Speaker 5: we have this jumbled checks and balance off like, why
Speaker 5: is that off kilter? Well, it's because the executive has
Speaker 5: let a lot of his power over these agencies atrophy
Speaker 5: over the course of years, so that we've built up
Speaker 5: layers and layers and layers of bureaucracy. And this is
Speaker 5: something that Elon Musk like definitely is buying into. It
Speaker 5: is something that Don from himself is definitely buying into
Speaker 5: and Chad into. Where did you get that?
Speaker 4: Is my wife's mug amazing, although she didn't even end
Speaker 4: up voting for in the end, but anyone got.
Speaker 5: You just added her. I've got a great Wisconsin mug
Speaker 5: actually right now. But anyway, that's the theory is that
Speaker 5: actually the executive needs to be much more muscular and
Speaker 5: flex over these executive agencies so that what you don't
Speaker 5: have is career bureaucrats or people who've come through the
Speaker 5: revolving door, which is a real problem actually even for
Speaker 5: the left. You and I have talked about how that
Speaker 5: happens at the EPA, where you have, as one of
Speaker 5: many examples, you have people who came from energy companies
Speaker 5: and exon ending up in these jobs and making decisions
Speaker 5: that they weren't elected to make that are helpful to
Speaker 5: their former employees. So all of that there is a
Speaker 5: real argument, but it is from the conservative perspective sort
Speaker 5: of interesting because there is the split over whether the
Speaker 5: executive is too powerful or not powerful enough, and clearly
Speaker 5: that's the position that Musk and everyone in the Trump
Speaker 5: administration is on the same page with. Now, it's just
Speaker 5: really different from where it was ten years ago, so
Speaker 5: we have more and this time, actually Elon Musk was answering.
Speaker 5: I thought this was these were some of the most
Speaker 5: useful questions. He's answering questions here about potential conflicts of interest,
Speaker 5: which is actually great to have him get on the
Speaker 5: record answer these questions.
Speaker 6: So here we go with Elon on.
Speaker 9: That if you have received billions of dollars in contracts
Speaker 9: from the Pentagon and the President's directing you to look
Speaker 9: into the Department of Defense.
Speaker 8: Is exactly definitely need to do and are going to
Speaker 8: do at the President's request.
Speaker 9: Does that present a conflict of interest for you?
Speaker 10: Uh?
Speaker 8: No, because you'd have to look at the individual contract
Speaker 8: and say, first of all, I'm not the one, you know,
Speaker 8: filing the contract.
Speaker 3: It's people at SpaceX or someone wild good will be
Speaker 3: putting flee contract.
Speaker 8: And I'd like to say, if you see any contract
Speaker 8: where the where it was ordered to SpaceX and it
Speaker 8: wasn't by far the best value for money for the taxpayer,
Speaker 8: let me know, because every one of them was.
Speaker 5: That may well be true, let's take but it doesn't
Speaker 5: really eliminate the question of conflicts of interest. Sort of
Speaker 5: a non sequorder there. Let's listen to his other answer
Speaker 5: on this topic.
Speaker 9: The White House says that you will identify and excuse
Speaker 9: yourself from any conflicts of interest that you may have.
Speaker 9: Does that mean that you are in effect policing yourself.
Speaker 9: What are the checks and balances that are in place
Speaker 9: to ensure that there's accountability and transparency.
Speaker 8: Well, we actually are trying to be as transparent as possible.
Speaker 8: In fact, our actions we post our actions to the
Speaker 8: DOGE handle on X and to the DOGE website, so
Speaker 8: all of our actions are maximally transparent. In fact, I
Speaker 8: don't think there's been I don't know of a case
Speaker 8: that we're at organization's being more transparent than the DOGE organization.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 4: So yeah, he says there won't be a conflict of
Speaker 4: interests because SpaceX is the best and also that he's
Speaker 4: not the one putting in the requests, it's his employees
Speaker 4: who are doing so it's I mean, I if this
Speaker 4: is what people want, I guess this is what people
Speaker 4: can have.
Speaker 5: Well, but it's also not in compliance with the special
Speaker 5: government Not to sound like a law, the special Government
Speaker 5: employee d just like the way that that position is designed.
Speaker 5: Obviously we know he's submitted this confidential conflict of interest report,
Speaker 5: but you're actually not supposed to have any like any
Speaker 5: relationship or any work that overlaps with your private portfolios
Speaker 5: and the special this is overseen by the Attorney General,
Speaker 5: Department of Justice. So that's on PAMBONDI uh, and I
Speaker 5: you know, I doubt that there will be any attempt
Speaker 5: to like rain musk and at least publicly on that question.
Speaker 5: But he's totally out of compliance with definitely the spirit.
Speaker 6: Of that law. And that law is.
Speaker 5: Just sort of I mean, it's just not designed for
Speaker 5: something like this, So the application of it is uh,
Speaker 5: I don't know, Ryan, it's just so the whole thing
Speaker 5: there's there's there's never been anybody in the history of
Speaker 5: the country. I mean this sincerely, like even JP Morgan,
Speaker 5: nobody has ever had this level of power.
Speaker 4: Right now and certainly like right imagine JP Morgan going
Speaker 4: into the White House but remaining the head of his
Speaker 4: bank and going in and canceling contracts with his competitors.
Speaker 5: I mean, he was kind of the treasurer while he
Speaker 5: was uh, he was sort of the Treasury secretary.
Speaker 3: He was like a fed chair before there was a fed.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, But then you also, in Musk's case,
Speaker 5: it's also tons of defense contracts. Like just the amount
Speaker 5: of contracts that his various businesses have with the government
Speaker 5: is unbelievable.
Speaker 6: So it's not even just.
Speaker 5: Like one, it's not even just one issue area. It's
Speaker 5: like across the board.
Speaker 4: Right, And so while Musk's team is in there just
Speaker 4: unilaterally canceling contracts, The American Prospect reported yesterday that or
Speaker 4: maybe it was the Lever I can't one of those outlets.
Speaker 3: Reported that a brand new.
Speaker 4: SpaceX contract was just paid out this this just this
Speaker 4: last week. So I think from the perspective of people
Speaker 4: who were having all of their contracts cut, to watch
Speaker 4: the guy who's doing the cutting continue to get contracts
Speaker 4: is a huge like wait a minute moment. And then
Speaker 4: if the answer is, well, look, it's a great it's
Speaker 4: a great contract, and the taxpayer is going to be
Speaker 4: very happy that they're funding this was for research and
Speaker 4: development for SpaceX. It's a private company that has made
Speaker 4: him one of the richest, helped help to make him
Speaker 4: one of the richest people on the planet, and we're
Speaker 4: the taxpayer is funding their research and development costs. And
Speaker 4: that's a good and Okay, that's a great deal for
Speaker 4: the country. You could imagine a reverse Elon Musk doing
Speaker 4: a a doing a wow tweet, be like, Wow, this
Speaker 4: private company that has made this man the richest person
Speaker 4: in the world world is having its research and development
Speaker 4: funded by the taxpayer.
Speaker 3: Unbelievable fraud.
Speaker 4: And we found it and you wouldn't have known about
Speaker 4: it without Dojay, and we are canceling that contract right now. Like,
Speaker 4: got sorry, this is actually your contract. He's like, this
Speaker 4: is the best value for the taxpayer that you're ever
Speaker 4: going to get. And if you don't think so, you
Speaker 4: tell me and I'll tell you with it.
Speaker 5: I mean, if Zuckerberg had been doing this under a
Speaker 5: Biden administry.
Speaker 4: As we're paying for Meta's research and development, yeah, he'd
Speaker 4: be like, wow, we're paying for Meta's research and development.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Well, we have one more Elon clip to watch and
Speaker 5: then we have some reaction. Not reaction, but we have
Speaker 5: some of speaker Mike Johnson as well. So let's play
Speaker 5: this final Elon clip and.
Speaker 6: We will see what he had to say when asked
Speaker 6: about this.
Speaker 8: Yours, mister Musk, including a lot of Democrats. I have detractors,
Speaker 8: I don't believe it, say that you're orchestrating a hostile takeover.
Speaker 3: Of government and doing it in a non transparent way.
Speaker 3: What's your response to that criticism.
Speaker 8: Well, first of all, you couldn't ask for a stronger
Speaker 8: mandate from the public. The public voted, We have a
Speaker 8: majority of the public vote voting for President Trump. We've
Speaker 8: won the House, who won the Senate. The people voted
Speaker 8: for major government reform. There should be no doubt about that.
Speaker 8: That was on the campaign. The President spoke about that
Speaker 8: at every rally. The people voted for major government reform.
Speaker 8: And that's what people are going to get. They're going
Speaker 8: to get what they voted for. And a lot of
Speaker 8: times that you know people that don't get what they
Speaker 8: voted for, but in this presidency, they are going to
Speaker 8: get what they voted for. And that's what democracy is
Speaker 8: all about.
Speaker 5: So let's also now listen to Speaker Mike Johnson asked
Speaker 5: about Jadie Vance's recent comment saying that you know it's
Speaker 5: okay not to comply with a judges order. And here's
Speaker 5: how Mike Johnson responded.
Speaker 1: There are more and more courts, federal judges, Republican and
Speaker 1: Democratic appoint of judges have said that some of the
Speaker 1: Trump actions early actions, we put a halt to them.
Speaker 3: Jade Vance said that judges.
Speaker 7: Aren't allowed to control the executive legitimate power.
Speaker 11: You're a constitutional law expert.
Speaker 3: Ultimately, at the end of the courts say.
Speaker 7: That the administration is valuing the law, should they comply
Speaker 7: with the court's demands.
Speaker 10: Well, of course the branches have to respect our constitutional order.
Speaker 10: But there's a lot of game yet to be played.
Speaker 3: Those will be appealed.
Speaker 10: We've got to go through the whole process, and we'll
Speaker 10: get to the final analysis in the interim. I will
Speaker 10: say I agree wholeheartedly with Vice President j. D Vance,
Speaker 10: my friend, because he's right what they're doing in the
Speaker 10: executive branch. I've been asked so many times, aren't you
Speaker 10: uncomfortable with this? No, I'm not because when Congress, for example,
Speaker 10: appropriates dollars for the executive branch to use, we build
Speaker 10: in not only in the spirit of the law, but
Speaker 10: in a letter of all a broad amount of discretion
Speaker 10: for how that is used. There is a presupposition in
Speaker 10: America if the commander in chief is going to be
Speaker 10: a good steward of tax payer dollars, the commander in chief,
Speaker 10: the President of the United States, is going to command
Speaker 10: those within his branch of government to do the right
Speaker 10: thing by the people, to be accountable, to not fund
Speaker 10: drag shows, you know in the Middle Eastern countries or
Speaker 10: South America. Do not waste our tax payer dollars. And
Speaker 10: that's what has been uncovered, and that's why we and
Speaker 10: the people are applauding what's happening right now in the
Speaker 10: new administration because they've taken that seriously.
Speaker 5: All right, and let's go ahead and take a look
Speaker 5: over here. So the Trump administration, as Kyle Cheney says,
Speaker 5: is asking an appeals court for an emergency order to
Speaker 5: permit it to reinstate limits on federal spending.
Speaker 6: That it says, we're.
Speaker 5: Improperly blocked by a federal judge in Rhode Island, which
Speaker 5: they called quote intolerable judicial overreach and ran we may
Speaker 5: actually disagree on this.
Speaker 3: I thought this just as an update this.
Speaker 4: This circuit court has already rejected this appeal, and it
Speaker 4: was a three judge panel to Biden appointees and an
Speaker 4: Obama pointees, so they kind of ran headlong into some
Speaker 4: partisan opponents.
Speaker 3: But the three judges said no, like.
Speaker 4: Give the district district court time to work this out
Speaker 4: and the state remains in place.
Speaker 3: But go ahead.
Speaker 6: Well no, I was just gonna.
Speaker 5: Say this was what was happening yesterday afternoon, the kind
Speaker 5: of the broader context for what Musk and Trump we're
Speaker 5: talking about. And I think there's a pretty good argument
Speaker 5: that what the judge did was judicial overreach, which kind
Speaker 5: of kicked off this entire debate between Vance World, and
Speaker 5: people were curious how Mike Johnson would approach it, given
Speaker 5: that he is he does have a constitutional law background,
Speaker 5: and conservatives all came down or I guess I should
Speaker 5: say the Trump allies all came down on the side
Speaker 5: of not complying with the order, but then ultimately went
Speaker 5: through the appeals process, So I guess. I mean, I
Speaker 5: don't know if I should say balls in their court,
Speaker 5: but if they want to just be out of compliance
Speaker 5: with that, the ball is in their court. It just
Speaker 5: it looks like they probably won't do that, right.
Speaker 3: I mean, JD.
Speaker 4: Vance comparing it to a general on the battlefield seemed
Speaker 4: to me like a pretty huge stretch, like Congress had
Speaker 4: Congress passes laws that, uh, you know, prescribe what the
Speaker 4: federal government is able to do with with some records
Speaker 4: and and who's able to access them and what precautions
Speaker 4: have to be taken, and you know, the judge argued
Speaker 4: that those laws appeared to be broken here and that
Speaker 4: the executive needed to show cause that it was going
Speaker 4: to comply with the law. So that felt to me
Speaker 4: pretty standard and not kind of wildly outside it did,
Speaker 4: like I understand the point where well, if you're even
Speaker 4: barring the Treasury secretary from going down and like looking
Speaker 4: at these data, then that sounds crazy. But the judge
Speaker 4: did say that if if uh, you know that with
Speaker 4: with pre clear parents, there could be there could be
Speaker 4: access granted to you know, any any government officials that
Speaker 4: were that were in addition needed The reason the preclarance
Speaker 4: was required here is because the judge I think, felt
Speaker 4: like they doje A people were being dishonest that they
Speaker 4: said that this that these kids did not have read
Speaker 4: and write access that turned out to be false. You
Speaker 4: it could be an innocent mistake, which is what they're
Speaker 4: trying to say it is, or it could be a
Speaker 4: lie that they told. But either way, what they said
Speaker 4: was false.
Speaker 3: And so there does and and would.
Speaker 4: Then uh, you know, create the breaking of a law,
Speaker 4: and so for a judge to come in and say
Speaker 4: you got to you gotta pause because you're breaking the law,
Speaker 4: to me doesn't seem like they're the ones creating a
Speaker 4: constitutional crisis.
Speaker 6: Although there is this, I guess.
Speaker 5: The other part of it is that the doge guys
Speaker 5: are now government employees, which makes it more complicated. And
Speaker 5: part of it is like, Okay, so Elon is throwing
Speaker 5: his personal contractors at like I think that's how some
Speaker 5: people are seeing it, But they've I don't want to
Speaker 5: say carefully, but they did go through the process of
Speaker 5: getting them actually employed. So like, for example, I think
Speaker 5: Ella's was actually an employee of the Treasury. Now he's
Speaker 5: at the State Department, right, big balls, He's at the
Speaker 5: State Department now. So they are going through some of
Speaker 5: the official processes, which kind of complicates the question a
Speaker 5: little bit. Obviously, if they're out of compliance with the law,
Speaker 5: they're out of compliance with the law.
Speaker 6: But yeah, and I mean, we talked about this last week.
Speaker 5: Must cause this a revolution, so this is like a
Speaker 5: very legal revolution.
Speaker 6: I don't know.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And so, by the way, the other point that
Speaker 4: must that jd Vance made in this tweet is that
Speaker 4: a judge would never tell a prosecutor, you know, how
Speaker 4: to prosecute a case.
Speaker 3: JD.
Speaker 4: Vance went to Yale Law School, and there's this joke
Speaker 4: about Yale Law School that they don't teach the law
Speaker 4: there because it's all about becoming like a basically a
Speaker 4: corporate CEO or something, or a politician or a member of.
Speaker 3: The deep state.
Speaker 4: The idea that I didn't go to law school, but
Speaker 4: the idea that a judge doesn't tell a prosecutor how
Speaker 4: to prosecute a case is absurd, Like prosecutor, judges are
Speaker 4: constantly throwing cases out, constantly telling a prosecutor that they
Speaker 4: don't have enough evidence to go forward with X, constantly
Speaker 4: telling them discharge actually doesn't fly, it's gone. So like
Speaker 4: his examples there when he gets out of the like
Speaker 4: you can't tell a general how to wage a battle
Speaker 4: like After that, everything is suggests that he did not
Speaker 4: actually go to law school, which is strange because we
Speaker 4: know that he's for a fact, went to a very
Speaker 4: good one and it was a very smart character.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I just put this element up on the screen.
Speaker 5: It was confirmed that Ella's now is at the State Department,
Speaker 5: so we also are keeping an eye on what I
Speaker 5: think Rian might be one of the biggest trends that
Speaker 5: will develop over the next I don't know, like a
Speaker 5: week or so. Probably probably over the course of the
Speaker 5: next year, just depends on how all this happens. But
Speaker 5: CNN read a piece yesterday inside the GOP's careful pushback
Speaker 5: to Musk's Doge effort, or doggy effort, as you refer
Speaker 5: to it. And one of the interesting parts of this is,
Speaker 5: so here's Representative Don Bacon of Nebraska. He's saying, instead
Speaker 5: of getting rid of everything, let's look at it selectively,
Speaker 5: don't throw the baby out with the bathwater. And he
Speaker 5: says he's supports shutting down the CFPV for example, that
Speaker 5: Trump can't ultimately usurp Congress, and obviously Congress established the CFPB,
Speaker 5: which you know creates quite a dynamic for constitutional conservatives.
Speaker 5: But you know, there were years spent kind of developing
Speaker 5: a plan for this muscular executive takeover and running. The
Speaker 5: thing I find very interesting is in the House of
Speaker 5: Representatives particularly, we saw some of this from Katie Britton Alabama.
Speaker 6: The broad like.
Speaker 5: Government reform DOGE mission is very popular with red state voters,
Speaker 5: of course, and so are you going to end up
Speaker 5: looking like, I don't know, I mean, do you end
Speaker 5: up looking sort of silly, foolish, selfish if you're don
Speaker 5: Bacon and maybe for bacon and Nebraska.
Speaker 6: This is USA i D.
Speaker 5: Sending a bunch of American grown farm products to different
Speaker 5: parts of the world.
Speaker 6: That's a did you know you start to you have
Speaker 6: to answer that question.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: A major thing that USA i D does is, as
Speaker 4: Samantha Power you know, said just a couple of days ago,
Speaker 4: the former director of IT, is it is it tries
Speaker 4: to open markets for American corporations like it because it's
Speaker 4: getting so much pressure, like you're finally having people talk
Speaker 4: a little bit more honestly about what it does. And
Speaker 4: you know, moving on from USA at all, you know,
Speaker 4: we're just you know, we're just helping you know, feed
Speaker 4: and you know, give food, medicine to the to the need.
Speaker 4: Is like, no, okay, now we actually have to justify
Speaker 4: what we're doing. Let's be more honest about what we're doing.
Speaker 4: And one of the things they do, yeah, is they
Speaker 4: they work on behalf of American corporations and one and
Speaker 4: agribusiness would be at the very top of that. You know,
Speaker 4: the last Trump administration saw that a trade war lead
Speaker 4: to a collapse in soybean prices for the Midwest, which
Speaker 4: have which have never recovered. And so USAID's one of
Speaker 4: USAID's jobs is to go in and find places where
Speaker 4: the US agri business can sell it's it's product. And
Speaker 4: so I'm sure Bacon part that's part of what Bacon
Speaker 4: is talking about there. Yeah, And otherwise in the other place,
Speaker 4: he says, look, all right, you don't like this spending,
Speaker 4: let's redirect it, but let's do it the constitutional way.
Speaker 4: Feels feel quaint, like, like let's like pass.
Speaker 3: The law and do it.
Speaker 4: He's like, his argument is that there's still a law.
Speaker 4: And yes, I feel silly, like in the face of
Speaker 4: a revolution, right, talking about process, right, because this is
Speaker 4: what's going on. It's a revolution. And where's these home
Speaker 4: monitors talking about the law. We happen to have had
Speaker 4: this constitution in place for it like two hundred and
Speaker 4: fifty years. So it's it's kind of a big deal.
Speaker 4: And I've been told my whole life that it's a
Speaker 4: big deal, and I I apparently it's not.
Speaker 5: Well, but this is the thing with the don Beacons
Speaker 5: of the world is it's going to become a challenge
Speaker 5: to stay consistent on wanting this quote revolution, and then
Speaker 5: when the revolution hits your district, you say, well, we
Speaker 5: don't have to throw the baby out with the bathwater.
Speaker 6: Give us carve outs that make sense.
Speaker 5: And I say carve outs in a pejorative sense, because
Speaker 5: I think you know in that case, it's easy to
Speaker 5: support revolution when it doesn't affect your distract.
Speaker 6: Or your constituents.
Speaker 5: But it's really going to test the commitment to the
Speaker 5: quote unquote revolution when it does like actually come home.
Speaker 5: So one more point before we take off here for
Speaker 5: this this block, it.
Speaker 6: Looks like Big Balls.
Speaker 5: He launched, as this reporter says, a privacy focused image
Speaker 5: sharing site in twenty twenty one that allowed you just
Speaker 5: to create custom URLs. The URLs that redirected to corsetine site.
Speaker 5: That's Edward big Ball's corsotine reference the sale of child
Speaker 5: sexual abuse material, racial slurs.
Speaker 6: And rape.
Speaker 5: Ran I didn't quite know what to make about the story,
Speaker 5: to be honest, because I don't necessarily oppose creating different
Speaker 5: tools like this, and we're reading into possible motives here
Speaker 5: in a way that I'm as crazy as the whole
Speaker 5: Big balls thing is, I don't want to jump to conclusions,
Speaker 5: but what did you make of this?
Speaker 4: So what makes this to me so shocking is that
Speaker 4: it is specifically focused on encrypting images. It's specifically has
Speaker 4: been used to have abused used by people who've abused
Speaker 4: that in the way that you would expect, you know,
Speaker 4: a site like that to be abused, and it goes
Speaker 4: I do a lot of work that requires, you know,
Speaker 4: encrypting our communications so that you know sources are able
Speaker 4: to communicate with journalists and not be discovered by authoritarian
Speaker 4: regimes who who would you know then torture and kill them.
Speaker 4: And so encryption and privacy are very valuable things. If
Speaker 4: you have a document that you were trying to encrypt
Speaker 4: and keep secret from these authoritarian regimes, you have multiple options.
Speaker 4: You can put it on an encrypted thumb drive, you
Speaker 4: can put it on a laptop that is disconnected from
Speaker 4: from the Internet and that and as long or you
Speaker 4: can put it in and you can put that in
Speaker 4: a safe like There are pretty solid things you can
Speaker 4: do to protect your documents and keep them encrypted and
Speaker 4: safe from those kinds of prying eyes. But notice the
Speaker 4: characteristic that you still have when you're doing that you
Speaker 4: are in possession of those document slash images. At that point,
Speaker 4: I don't mind that because I'm not doing anything illegal.
Speaker 4: A journalist is allowed to be in possession of classified
Speaker 4: or secret documents that is well within the law. You
Speaker 4: are not allowed to be in possession of other certain images,
Speaker 4: which we're not even going to talk about here. Therefore,
Speaker 4: the regime that I just laid out of protecting the
Speaker 4: documents would not actually be sufficient. If your motivation was
Speaker 4: to protect you from the legal implications of possessing those
Speaker 4: kinds of images. What you would need is some encrypted
Speaker 4: way to hold them somewhere else, on a different server
Speaker 4: that you would still have access to, but that could
Speaker 4: then not be connected back to you. And that is
Speaker 4: precisely what mister Balls has designed here. And if he
Speaker 4: did it, it's accidentally and just happened to be the
Speaker 4: perfect vehicle for this type of exploitative imagery to be possessed,
Speaker 4: but not possessed by perverts who should be in prison.
Speaker 4: Then somebody should have told him, hey, you know, what
Speaker 4: looks like what you're designing is going to is specifically
Speaker 4: to be used for these types of people, and it's
Speaker 4: a crime and you should be in prison for it,
Speaker 4: or he designed it this way on purpose, like those
Speaker 4: are those are the only two options.
Speaker 5: Well, and what's crazy is so he's nineteen now, I believe,
Speaker 5: and if this was twenty twenty one, you.
Speaker 6: Do the math.
Speaker 5: This kid was in his like smack in the middle
Speaker 5: of his teenage years, creating which I'm sure defenders will say,
Speaker 5: he's a brilliant young mind. And you know, that's the
Speaker 5: type of person you want to bring into the government.
Speaker 5: But obviously that's it's insane that you even have that
Speaker 5: level of power on our current Internet when you're that
Speaker 5: age potentially, so lots of news to talk about in
Speaker 5: the Middle East, so let's move on to that. So
Speaker 5: we learned more about how Donald Trump plans to approach
Speaker 5: a potential peace in the Middle East. Ryan as yesterday
Speaker 5: went along, this is just a very busy space. But
Speaker 5: in the Oval Office press conference that we discussed earlier
Speaker 5: in the show, he was obviously, unsurprisingly asked some questions
Speaker 5: about this. Let's hear how he responded. This is after,
Speaker 5: by the way, he met with King Abdullah of Jordan.
Speaker 5: You can see this is the usual setup in front
Speaker 5: of the fireplace at the White house. So he got
Speaker 5: a question on that. Let's take a listen.
Speaker 7: We think we're making some very good progress.
Speaker 1: You've said before that the US would buy Gaza, and
Speaker 1: today you just said, we're not going to buy Gadza.
Speaker 12: We're not going to have to buy.
Speaker 7: We're going to We're going to have guys that would
Speaker 7: have to buy. There's nothing to buy. We will have
Speaker 7: Gaza that no reason to buy. There is nothing to buy.
Speaker 7: It's Gaza. It's a war torn area. We're going to
Speaker 7: take it. We're going to hold it, We're going to
Speaker 7: cherish it. We're going to get it going eventually where
Speaker 7: a lot of jobs are going to be created for
Speaker 7: the people in the Middle East. It's going to be
Speaker 7: for the people in the Middle East. But I think
Speaker 7: it can be a diamond. It can be an absolute
Speaker 7: tremendous asset for the Middle East. And you're gonna have peace.
Speaker 12: It's going to bring peace in the Middle East.
Speaker 5: Okay, And so here's another response, just quickly. It's similar,
Speaker 5: but he was asked a similar question and gave a
Speaker 5: similar response to what we've heard. Still worth listening to, though,
Speaker 5: for sure.
Speaker 12: Only thing I can say is this is going to
Speaker 12: bring stability and peace to the Middle East, and ultimately,
Speaker 12: when it's developed, which will be in quite a while
Speaker 12: from now, we want to the things calm down. But
Speaker 12: when it's developed, it's going to bring tremendous numbers of
Speaker 12: jobs to Middle East and including the people of your country.
Speaker 6: Ryan a lot to work with there.
Speaker 5: Again, similar to what Donald Trump has been saying for
Speaker 5: the last week plus. But when he's confronted on some
Speaker 5: really obvious questions about this, that's what he has to say.
Speaker 6: What did you make of it?
Speaker 3: Yeah, every time.
Speaker 4: And Trump also was asked multiple times in here whether
Speaker 4: or not Palestinians would be able to return to Gaza
Speaker 4: once this was redeveloped, which is the main objection that.
Speaker 3: Palatinians would have to the plan. I think.
Speaker 4: If there is a guaranteed right of return and there's
Speaker 4: going to be reconstruction, there are negotiations around how that
Speaker 4: can be accomplished that could easily reach agreement on all sides.
Speaker 4: Every time Trump has been asked whether Palestinians would be
Speaker 4: able to return, he has said no, and he has
Speaker 4: used this strange formulation that they won't want to come back,
Speaker 4: which is just confusing at best to anybody and just not.
Speaker 4: It's not that confusing because it just makes completely clear
Speaker 4: to everybody involved that this is an explicit plan to
Speaker 4: get everybody out to ethnically cleanse the entire region. And
Speaker 4: therefore the obvious Trump is not a moron. The obvious
Speaker 4: response from Palestinians is going to be Okay, well, then
Speaker 4: we're not leaving and and and you have blown up
Speaker 4: the ceasefire deal because the ceasefire Deal says that more
Speaker 4: than a week ago, negotiations around Phase two are supposed
Speaker 4: to have already started. And negotiations around phase two mean
Speaker 4: that Israel will leave the Philadelpha Quarter which is down
Speaker 4: there by Rapha and Egypt, and will fully withdraw from Gaza.
Speaker 4: All of the hostages will be exchanged, and reconstruction will begin.
Speaker 4: That's that's what phase two is supposed to mean. If
Speaker 4: and that is and that is a redevelopment, that is,
Speaker 4: you know, for the people who live there. Egypt has
Speaker 4: come out and put out a statement saying that they
Speaker 4: support the general idea of reconstructing Gaza and that they're
Speaker 4: willing to work with the United States to do this.
Speaker 4: But of course the Palestinians have to be able to
Speaker 4: stay the idea that that is where we're having some
Speaker 4: level of argument is just nuts like there, because there
Speaker 4: is no you know, you're you're getting no Arab buy in,
Speaker 4: You're getting no Palestinian buy in without that, and the
Speaker 4: US and Israel, absent a nuclear weapon, don't really have
Speaker 4: the capacity to clear out all.
Speaker 5: Of these people or the will you know, like you said,
Speaker 5: like a nuclear weapon or yeah, like tunnel warfare, right,
Speaker 5: good luck, it's on the ground tunnel warfare.
Speaker 7: Right.
Speaker 5: This was Dropsite pulled this video of King Abdullah of
Speaker 5: Jordan a comment that he made along these lines, which
Speaker 5: was also rather interesting. Let's take a listen to what
Speaker 5: he said in this presser with President.
Speaker 11: I truly believe that with all the challenges that we
Speaker 11: have in the Middle East, that I finally see somebody
Speaker 11: that could take us across the finish line to bring stability,
Speaker 11: peace and prosperity to all of us in the region.
Speaker 11: And it is I think our collective responsibility in the
Speaker 11: Middle East to continue to work with you to support you.
Speaker 5: Meanwhile, we also have this video of Netanyahu talking about
Speaker 5: a lot of what Ryan was was just mentioning the
Speaker 5: collapse of the ceasefire deal.
Speaker 6: Let's take a listen to what he said.
Speaker 4: Right, So this is Netanyahu speaking in Hebrew to the
Speaker 4: Israeli public after the Security Council briefing and basically saying
Speaker 4: that because of what Donald Trump has offered to Israel,
Speaker 4: they are demand they're they're uppering their demands, and they're
Speaker 4: willing to go back to war starting on Saturday if
Speaker 4: if all of the Israeli.
Speaker 3: Demands are are are not met.
Speaker 4: And you know, Jeremy Scalhe over at Dropsite reported some
Speaker 4: of Nenyah Who's comments inside the security briefing, which I
Speaker 4: think are really tell you exactly you know how this unfolded.
Speaker 4: Net Yah who said to his to his council here
Speaker 4: he said, quote, you wanted a day after plan, you
Speaker 4: got one. It just it just doesn't match the Oslo narrative.
Speaker 4: We won't repeat that mistake. So he's talking about Donald
Speaker 4: Trump has now you know, forever ended Oslo and has
Speaker 4: given them a day after plan that they did not
Speaker 4: have before. So he said, quote, I've come back with
Speaker 4: a vision without Hamas and without the Palestinian authority. We
Speaker 4: know what complete victory is and we will not give
Speaker 4: up on it. So what net Yah, who is saying
Speaker 4: here is very clear Trump has opened the possibility of
Speaker 4: complete victory, as he calls it, by which he means
Speaker 4: the complete eradication of the Palestinian population in Gaza. And therefore,
Speaker 4: whatever ceasefire agreement they reached before hand, it's pointless to
Speaker 4: pursue when this revolutionary potential is in front of them.
Speaker 4: So they are they are declaring their their intention to
Speaker 4: go forward with this starting on Saturday.
Speaker 5: So that brings us to this next post from your
Speaker 5: colleague at dropsite, Jeremy Scahill.
Speaker 6: Put this up on the screen.
Speaker 5: He says, nine paragraphs into Today's New York Times store,
Speaker 5: in the situation with the Gazza seaes fire, readers are
Speaker 5: informed that israelly officials and international mediators quote said that
Speaker 5: Hamas's claims.
Speaker 6: Were act here.
Speaker 4: This is an incredible moment because what Hamas has said
Speaker 4: is that Israel, after a couple of days of letting
Speaker 4: in some food in medicine, choked off AID again. And
Speaker 4: also that Israel is a more than a week overdue
Speaker 4: in sending negotiators as required to Dohat to negotiate phase
Speaker 4: two of the agreement. And when they finally did send
Speaker 4: negotiators they were who specifically forbid them from discussing phase
Speaker 4: two and instead of just talking about some some loose
Speaker 4: ends around phase one.
Speaker 5: Uh.
Speaker 4: That that is Hamas's claim. According to the mediators and
Speaker 4: Israeli officials, Hamas's claim is accurate. It's kind of a
Speaker 4: remarkable line from the New York Times and not remarkable
Speaker 4: for them to bury it. You know, you read you
Speaker 4: famously should read the New York Times from the bottom up,
Speaker 4: and that's the that's the way to get you know,
Speaker 4: the most accurate to the least accurate in information.
Speaker 3: But so that's that's clearly what's going on.
Speaker 4: And Hamas has put put out a statement last night
Speaker 4: saying we continue to be willing to abide by the
Speaker 4: ceasefire as long as the occupation is willing to abide
Speaker 4: by the ceasefire, which they pointed out is guaranteed by
Speaker 4: the United States.
Speaker 3: So it is Hamas who.
Speaker 4: Is standing up for the rules, the process, fairness, the
Speaker 4: international rules based order. It's it's quite an ironic situation
Speaker 4: if you're somebody that thinks that Hamas is a you know, barbaric,
Speaker 4: lawless terrorist organization, when it is Israel in the United
Speaker 4: States that cut a deal set and is now very
Speaker 4: explicitly abrogating the deal in favor of complete eradication of
Speaker 4: a population.
Speaker 5: I mean, Hamas can still be a barbaric terrorist organization
Speaker 5: and when its interests are to comply, to look compliant,
Speaker 5: to come to the negotiations and say we're we have
Speaker 5: all of our teas crossed and ice dotted.
Speaker 3: We're all we're all barbaric. It's just what we do.
Speaker 4: And Hamas here is trying to abide by the rules
Speaker 4: that and trying to abide by their agreement.
Speaker 5: So rhen you guys had drop site had a PDF
Speaker 5: that we were going to go through as slides.
Speaker 4: This document was published at drop site over by my
Speaker 4: colleagues Jeremy's Cahill and Shreef del Caduce. This is this
Speaker 4: is a Hamas document that they that they circulated among
Speaker 4: the among the negotiators and those who were supposed to
Speaker 4: be guaranteeing that the ceasefire agreement is is actually you know,
Speaker 4: carried out, and so they you know, they argue here
Speaker 4: and I'll go through this soul. You can actually just
Speaker 4: find it at drop sidews dot com.
Speaker 5: Uh.
Speaker 3: They continued flying drones. Israel continued flying drones.
Speaker 4: They continued, you know, military vehicles remained in places where
Speaker 4: they had agreed to remove military vehicles. They demolished homes
Speaker 4: where they had agreed that they would stop demolishing homes.
Speaker 4: They killed civilians after saying that there would be a ceasefire.
Speaker 4: The release of prisoners was was delayed, delay in sending
Speaker 4: lists of prisoners, and then you know some of the
Speaker 4: things we've seen. Number nine here, families of the deported
Speaker 4: prisoners were prohibited from joining them and from leaving the
Speaker 4: West Bank human and this is the point they made
Speaker 4: about humanitarian that the humanitarian aid was not getting in.
Speaker 4: You can see how precise and detailed their complaints are.
Speaker 4: Their fourth complaint, the denial of essential supplies. You can
Speaker 4: see that there, as well as finally, the fact that
Speaker 4: they have refused this is the key one political violations.
Speaker 3: They've refused to abide.
Speaker 4: By the terms that say it's time now to start
Speaker 4: negotiating a phase two, and instead they have been publicly
Speaker 4: saying that they will not in fact move on to
Speaker 4: phase two. So just you know, as flagrant a series
Speaker 4: of violations as you could have to an agreement, and
Speaker 4: one that, as The New York Times reports, the mediators
Speaker 4: and Israeli officials agree is accurate. So that's all like everything,
Speaker 4: Like you don't have to trust to mass but if
Speaker 4: you trust anybody else involved in this, everyone agrees that
Speaker 4: that document that we just showed you is accurate.
Speaker 5: I'm really interested to see how Steve Whitcough's, assuming his
Speaker 5: role is ongoing in all of this. I'm actually pretty
Speaker 5: curious to see how he deals with some of these
Speaker 5: questions because I think one of the strange things, and honestly,
Speaker 5: I would say so far like good things about wit
Speaker 5: Coough rolling in as a businessman has been he looks
Speaker 5: at some of the leverage on both sides and just like,
Speaker 5: what the heck is going on? Like this is completely
Speaker 5: we've been you know, obviously the United States has just
Speaker 5: been approaching approaching this in a way that makes very
Speaker 5: little sense. So Ryan in this case, it may be
Speaker 5: very interesting to see how how Witcough handles these questions.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I'll see if he could pull some rabbit out
Speaker 4: of a hat here. But you know, I think the
Speaker 4: you know, you know who smells blood in the water here,
Speaker 4: you know, Trump has opened up to him a possibility
Speaker 4: that is too tantalizing not not to at least, you know,
Speaker 4: take take a shot.
Speaker 5: At let's not take a look at this clip of
Speaker 5: Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro talking to Steven A. Smith, who
Speaker 5: was shouting us out a bit yesterday. Crystalin Sager was
Speaker 5: shouting breaking points out a bit yesterday on x But
Speaker 5: here's his question and answer with Josh Shapiro on his podcast.
Speaker 13: But the first order of business is his position that
Speaker 13: essentially the US wants to take over to Gaza.
Speaker 14: Yeah, what was your reaction.
Speaker 13: When you heard that and when you saw him standing
Speaker 13: next to Benjamin NETANYAHUO, the Prime Minister of Israel whistling.
Speaker 14: So I thought it was an unseerious proposal. I thought
Speaker 14: it was a proposal that if he actually carried it
Speaker 14: out the way he said he was, violates international law.
Speaker 14: I thought it was deeply disrespectful to the Palestinian people.
Speaker 14: I think it doesn't take into account Jordan and Egypt
Speaker 14: and how they're going to feel about it. I thought
Speaker 14: it was wrong. Look, I want these hostillies and I
Speaker 14: want all these hostages home. I'm someone who believes that
Speaker 14: there should be a two state solution. I want the
Speaker 14: Palestinians to have a state that they can call their own.
Speaker 14: I want them to live peacefully side by side with Israel.
Speaker 14: I think what Donald Trump did was make that harder.
Speaker 14: And again I thought it was really un serious and unhelpful.
Speaker 14: At this time, you still got about one hundred ish
Speaker 14: hostages that aren't home. Why would you do anything to
Speaker 14: upset that process?
Speaker 13: Now?
Speaker 5: So, Ryan, what did you make of Shapiro's answer to
Speaker 5: that question?
Speaker 3: I couldn't agree more. Trump is condemning.
Speaker 4: These hostages to death with this plan, you know, Shapiro
Speaker 4: is you know, Shapiro has been pretty has actually been
Speaker 4: probably more critical of Israel than the standard than your
Speaker 4: standard bog democrat. Like if you take the Median dem
Speaker 4: and their position on Israel in general and also Israel
Speaker 4: post October seventh, you will find that that Shapiro has
Speaker 4: been more willing to criticize Israel than the average Democrat.
Speaker 4: And so I wasn't surprised at all that that that's
Speaker 4: a that and and what he's saying there is very
Speaker 4: very much in line with kind of a liberal zion
Speaker 4: Is two state solution kind of democrat, which is which
Speaker 4: is I think what he proudly is.
Speaker 5: Which is interesting because he's also seen as one of
Speaker 5: the few Democrats who's been to your point, Yeah, like
Speaker 5: a liberal. Zion is very outspoken in support of Israel.
Speaker 4: So it's like some some of that, I think it's
Speaker 4: just that he's Jewish, and so people kind of just
Speaker 4: assume that there's a little more like allegiance there or something,
Speaker 4: which probably you know, there's there's a little bit of
Speaker 4: bigotry there in that kind of assumption.
Speaker 6: Well, he was.
Speaker 5: Pretty tough after October seventh, and like I protest.
Speaker 6: Yeah, and he went he went to a lot of signaling.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he went.
Speaker 4: He went to war against protesters on on campuses. Like
Speaker 4: people have to understand where the Median Democrat is to
Speaker 4: understand that to be slightly a tick to the left
Speaker 4: of that doesn't actually mean you're not a very passionate
Speaker 4: Zionis supporter of Israel. It's just it's all on a
Speaker 4: kind of meaningless spectrum from the Palestinians perspective, you.
Speaker 5: Know, as somebody who's really seen right now is the
Speaker 5: future or the potential future, maybe a potential future leader
Speaker 5: of the Democratic Party. And you can hear him doing
Speaker 5: his like Obama impression slash Southern drawl for everyone in
Speaker 5: like what like southwestern PA.
Speaker 6: I don't even know.
Speaker 5: He, I guess is handling the question in a way
Speaker 5: that makes sense given that he wants a position himself
Speaker 5: as a leader of the Democratic Party going forward.
Speaker 3: Yeah, twenty twenty eight, I guess I was told we
Speaker 3: weren't going to have any more elections. We'll see if
Speaker 3: we do.
Speaker 5: All right, let's move on to news now in Eastern Europe. Well,
Speaker 5: there's a lot going on when it comes to Donald
Speaker 5: Trump's plans.
Speaker 6: For how to end the war in Ukraine.
Speaker 5: It's almost as though he started his administration working on
Speaker 5: Israel and is now turning his attention to winding down
Speaker 5: the war in Ukraine. And he had some interesting comments
Speaker 5: yesterday at the White House about the minerals, the mineral
Speaker 5: situation in Ukraine.
Speaker 6: Ryan. This was an interesting line from Trump.
Speaker 15: I want to have our money secured because we're spending
Speaker 15: hundreds of billions of dollars. And you know, they may
Speaker 15: make a deal, they may not make a deal. They
Speaker 15: may be Russian someday, or they may not be Russian someday.
Speaker 15: But we're going to have all this money in there.
Speaker 15: And I say, I want it back. And I told
Speaker 15: them that I want the equivalent like five hundred billion
Speaker 15: dollars worth of rare earth, and they've essentially agreed to
Speaker 15: do that. So at least we don't feel stupid. Otherwise
Speaker 15: we're stupid. I said to them, we have to think,
Speaker 15: we have to get something. We can't continue to pay
Speaker 15: this money.
Speaker 6: What did you make of that?
Speaker 4: Right, Well, it's it's interesting also in the context of
Speaker 4: Zelenski saying that the claims that we've sent one hundred
Speaker 4: and seventy seven billion worth of aid a military aid
Speaker 4: are false and that he's short one hundred billion. Unclear
Speaker 4: what exactly to make of that. You know, all of
Speaker 4: this is kind of pencil whipped together by us saying, well,
Speaker 4: these missiles are worth this, and we're going to send that,
Speaker 4: and we're going to count that towards the figure. But
Speaker 4: you know, more broadly speaking, this is this is the
Speaker 4: kind of bald Trumpian kind of truth telling around what
Speaker 4: imperialism and what it is and what it means to
Speaker 4: be a client state of the unit of the United States.
Speaker 6: Transactly.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yes, when he as you know, when he said,
Speaker 4: you know, my troops are in Syria to take the oil,
Speaker 4: like he said, if we were going to go in
Speaker 4: and invade a rack. It's it's we should, we should
Speaker 4: get the oil. It also kind of misunderstands Themerican Empire
Speaker 4: that just it assumes that because the American Empire doesn't
Speaker 4: say out loud that the reason everything it does is
Speaker 4: for the purpose of corporate profits and resource extraction, that
Speaker 4: therefore that's not what it's about, which is idiotic and
Speaker 4: naive in the extreme of course, like that's what we're doing. Why, Like,
Speaker 4: we didn't bring democracy to Iraq, justc and it just
Speaker 4: coincidentally happened to be sitting on a whole bunch of
Speaker 4: of oil. You know, we didn't. We didn't, We're not.
Speaker 4: It's just it's just so obvious to anybody who is
Speaker 4: paying like the most amount attention. So it's almost, I
Speaker 4: guess heartening to have it. It is spoken out loud. Okay,
Speaker 4: now you understand. This is why we are this is
Speaker 4: a reason we are supporting Ukraine. It's more about geostrategic
Speaker 4: I think, military confrontation with with Russia less than it
Speaker 4: is resource extraction.
Speaker 3: But it is it is also that well, it's kind.
Speaker 5: Of interesting because we're in this like weird reckoning where
Speaker 5: because Trump is taking this wrecking ball to the pretense.
Speaker 5: You also then hear people like Sam Powers coming out
Speaker 5: and responding by saying, well, okay, you know, she's not
Speaker 5: as direct as Trump, of course, but from Chris Murphy
Speaker 5: to her, you have people being like, yeah, this is
Speaker 5: all about empire and or research or extraction, and they
Speaker 5: say it in these terms that are still not you know,
Speaker 5: Trumpian transactionality, but they are being more honest about it
Speaker 5: because Trump is threatening the programs, yeah, and the ie.
Speaker 4: From Ukraine's perspective, it must be so galling and offensive
Speaker 4: because like Ukraine has lost hundreds and hundreds of thousands
Speaker 4: of its people to this war. Ukraine did that, you know,
Speaker 4: on behalf of you know, they were invaded, but they've
Speaker 4: been you know, they did it at the at the
Speaker 4: urging of the United States. There was a there were
Speaker 4: peace talks underway in March of twenty twenty two that
Speaker 4: the United States basically directed them to scuttle and continue
Speaker 4: the war. So the idea that Ukraine would do what
Speaker 4: we asked them to do, and we owe the and
Speaker 4: Ukraine owes us all of their rare earths because we
Speaker 4: sent our surplus weapons to Ukraine for the Ukraine to
Speaker 4: fire them at Russia so we could test test our
Speaker 4: weapons out and then replenish our stock has got to
Speaker 4: be deeply offensive, Like what do I mean we owe
Speaker 4: you like we're like Ukraine is the one that has
Speaker 4: suffered deeply as a result of this, the idea that
Speaker 4: they owe us.
Speaker 5: I mean, they had a lot of agency and willingly
Speaker 5: extracting their own resources to there's so much. I mean,
Speaker 5: obviously people know the corruption in Ukraine.
Speaker 4: You know, well, yes they had they had some agency,
Speaker 4: but when you know, the US came in in the
Speaker 4: post Soviet totally era and created this created an oligarchy,
Speaker 4: Like we are the ones that built that oligarchy. So
Speaker 4: did the you know what, what did an individual Ukrainian
Speaker 4: have his or her disposal to do anything again?
Speaker 3: You know about those oligarchs.
Speaker 5: So let's even as we've been talking, Defense Secretary Pete
Speaker 5: Hegseth was weighing in on this conflict. He's on his
Speaker 5: first trip abroad, and he said basically that a return
Speaker 5: to Ukraine's pre war borders is quote unrealistic, as the
Speaker 5: New York Times has it here, really interesting, not surprising,
Speaker 5: but quite an interesting comment there from Pete Hegseth on
Speaker 5: his first trip abroad. He's at a NATO meeting in Brussels. Ryan,
Speaker 5: it's pretty interesting.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean this is this is it like like
Speaker 4: once you have the Secretary of Defense telling the Ukrainians
Speaker 4: that it is an unrealistic object of an illusionary goal
Speaker 4: and it's not going to happen, that you're going to
Speaker 4: give up territory, then they have to give up territory
Speaker 4: because that that means that that is the US negotiating
Speaker 4: starting point. So obviously zero chance Russia comes back with
Speaker 4: a proposal that restores all of Ukrainian sovereigny, so that
Speaker 4: this is a this is a huge step for heg
Speaker 4: Seth to say this out loud, and it comes as
Speaker 4: let me see if you have this handy or should
Speaker 4: I say.
Speaker 3: Yes, yes, go ahead and.
Speaker 6: Share that right now.
Speaker 5: And it's also interesting just as I'm pulling it up
Speaker 5: to think about there there were some actual questions about
Speaker 5: Pete Hegseth and whether he was really like new Right
Speaker 5: Maga or old right Maga, because he does come with
Speaker 5: you know a lot of he said so many different
Speaker 5: things over the years, like it's just an interesting kind
Speaker 5: of question and people didn't know if he was like
Speaker 5: just still kind of a neocon with America First style.
Speaker 5: But this is a pretty strong indication of where his
Speaker 5: his foreign policy is headed.
Speaker 4: Yes, and from all the sources that I've spoken to
Speaker 4: who who are close to heg Seth, they have been
Speaker 4: they have been very clear and explicit to me that
Speaker 4: this is a America First guy, like this is he is.
Speaker 4: That that's who he is, whatever his politics may have
Speaker 4: been in the past, Like there are a lot been a
Speaker 4: lot of Republicans who have of you know, have evolved
Speaker 4: into this America First thing, and some of some of
Speaker 4: the conversions have been real, some of them haven't.
Speaker 3: In some ways, it doesn't.
Speaker 4: Matter, because whether he meant what he just said or
Speaker 4: whether he didn't mean it doesn't matter.
Speaker 3: He said it.
Speaker 4: And here let me add this this Hill articles. Basically
Speaker 4: this this these comments.
Speaker 3: From heg Seth comes after Zelensky has.
Speaker 4: You know, open the door toward these negotiations in the
Speaker 4: sense of, you know, there's some Russian territory in the
Speaker 4: Curse region that that Ukrainian's control. He is saying that
Speaker 4: they will swap some of that land for some of
Speaker 4: the territory that Russia controls, and key in this in
Speaker 4: his comments is that he said they're not prioritizing which
Speaker 4: territory would be swapped. You know, there's all of it
Speaker 4: is a high priority, which means that they're not talking
Speaker 4: about demanding all of it. That there's that this this
Speaker 4: is a implicit concession that Ukraine is going to have
Speaker 4: to turn over some territory now at the same time,
Speaker 4: Russia is demanding not just the territory that they currently control,
Speaker 4: but additional territory that they claim they ought to have
Speaker 4: some legal right to.
Speaker 5: And we can say, also, we'll find out oh sorry, Renna,
Speaker 5: didn't mean interrupt Oz and say, well, we'll also sort
Speaker 5: of find out what Scott Besson's apparsonal all this is
Speaker 5: too because Donald Trump posts country social yesterday that he's
Speaker 5: like dispatching Bess in to Ukraine to end the war.
Speaker 6: So similar kind of dynamic.
Speaker 5: At play with Pete Hegseth and Scott Besson's or kind
Speaker 5: of a litmus test.
Speaker 4: I would say, yeah, and the cost to Ukraine of
Speaker 4: following the US direction in continuing to wage this war.
Speaker 3: Is going to be absolutely enormous.
Speaker 4: It looks like there will there will be a much
Speaker 4: worse deal on the table than than may have been achievable.
Speaker 4: Whether or whether it was achieval or not, we don't know.
Speaker 4: But the Ukrainians were basically blocked from from going for it.
Speaker 4: And it is a very very blunt signal to other
Speaker 4: countries around the world of what the price is for
Speaker 4: following the directions of the United States. It's that there
Speaker 4: was that famous Kissinger quote where he says, it's it's
Speaker 4: dangerous to be an adversary of the United States, but
Speaker 4: to be a friend is deadly, and that was the
Speaker 4: case for Ukraine. You're now you've just today you've had
Speaker 4: multiple kind of European leaders bucking bucking the Trump administration
Speaker 4: and saying that what they need to do in the
Speaker 4: future is pivot towards China, a much more reliable partner
Speaker 4: and one that they see on the upswing. So the
Speaker 4: idea that like we're even losing Europe over at this
Speaker 4: critical moment looks like it's going to be the US
Speaker 4: against the world.
Speaker 5: And let's actually watch this clip of Pete Hegseth because
Speaker 5: we actually have the video.
Speaker 6: So I'll rolle now, like you.
Speaker 1: A sovereign and prosperous Ukraine, but We must start by
Speaker 1: recognizing that returning to Ukraine's pre twenty fourteen borders is
Speaker 1: an unrealistic objective. The United States does not believe that
Speaker 1: NATO membership for Ukraine is a realistic outcome of a
Speaker 1: negotiated settlement. Instead, any security guarantee must be backed by
Speaker 1: capable European and non European troops.
Speaker 6: Right.
Speaker 5: The benefit I think of watching that clip is you
Speaker 5: see that's scripted. It's not a slip of the tongue.
Speaker 5: It's not a offhanded comment. That was a really intentional
Speaker 5: statement from the new Defense secretary. As by the way,
Speaker 5: what you can see on your screen now is a
Speaker 5: picture of a dead Ukrainian soldier's search history, which includes
Speaker 5: if you're listening to this Ukraine Russian negotiations, Zelensky negotiations,
Speaker 5: it goes on Putent talks Trump, when will the war end?
Speaker 6: Is absolutely gut wrenching to see that.
Speaker 4: It's just a poignant set of search results, because it
Speaker 4: shows how desperate this soldier was for an end to this,
Speaker 4: to this awful war it and it didn't come, and
Speaker 4: it didn't come in time for him and for hundreds
Speaker 4: and hundreds of thousands of others.
Speaker 5: I mean, it's it's insane that we have so little
Speaker 5: talk about the volume of casualties is in death like
Speaker 5: it is completely insane on both sides of this war.
Speaker 5: And you can understand why, I think Ryan. Another interesting
Speaker 5: thing is there's Zelensky is now speaking the way that
Speaker 5: he's speaking. There's a certain amount of pressure that he
Speaker 5: has to be responsive to at at this point as well,
Speaker 5: and in a way, Hagxeth and the Trump administration coming
Speaker 5: down so strongly in their position on NATO and territory
Speaker 5: is I'm sure welcome news to a lot of Ukrainians.