10/14/25: Ghislaine Secret Meeting, Kamala Blames Voters For Loss, Foreign Leader Hot Mic Trump Business Offer

Summary

Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar – Episode Summary

Date: October 14, 2025
Main Topics: Ghislaine Maxwell prison privileges & secret meeting, Kamala Harris’s blame game post-election, Foreign leader offering Trump business, Corruption & foreign influence in US politics

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Overview

In this episode, Krystal Ball and Saagar Enjeti discuss three explosive stories illustrating elite privilege, political failure, and the open intertwining of business and politics at the highest levels. They begin by examining the mysterious and preferential treatment of Ghislaine Maxwell in a Texas minimum-security prison. The conversation then pivots to Kamala Harris’s reaction to her electoral loss—specifically her blaming of voters for her defeat and the broader systemic failures of the Democratic Party. Finally, they are joined by journalist Ken Vogel to discuss foreign influence in Washington, highlighted by a hot-mic moment showing a foreign leader openly offering business to Trump’s son, and the much broader issue of bipartisan lobbying on behalf of corrupt interests.

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Detailed Discussion Breakdown

1. Ghislaine Maxwell’s Secret Meeting and Special Treatment

[04:10–12:13]

• Krystal details a Wall Street Journal exposé showing Ghislaine Maxwell getting unusually favorable treatment at the Bryan, Texas, minimum-security prison, despite regulations forbidding such prisoners from lower security facilities.
  • Lockdown mystery: In August, the whole facility went into lockdown so Maxwell could meet privately with unnamed visitors. Reports say she returned “with a smile on her face” ([05:51]).
  • Preferential treatment details: Maxwell housed in her own room, allowed solo showers, and enjoys protections other inmates do not. Krystal:

    "They going to extraordinary lengths right now to make her life comfortable, to get her everything that she needs. She gets to pick and choose who her... the people in her room are." ([09:11])

  • Suppression of whistleblowers: Inmates speaking to the press are swiftly transferred to higher security facilities, which Krystal and Saagar point to as clear suppression of information ([06:44–09:11]).
• Saagar underscores the uniqueness and suspiciousness:

  "There's been an absolute ban on any of the other prisoners talking to the press. And there have been punishments meted out because of them talking to reporters." ([06:44])

  • Adds an incident involving gunshots near the prison further unsettled inmates, with the official story not matching what insiders observed.
• Both hosts remain exasperated by the lack of transparency and struggle to answer, “Why is the government coddling Maxwell?”

  “What is going on there? Why does the government want to coddle this lady?” – Saagar ([06:44])

Key Segment: [04:10–12:13]

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2. New Questions About Epstein’s Death and Institutional Cover-Up

[09:11–12:13]

• CBS News Report: Scott McFarlane summarizes years of investigation into Epstein’s cell, revealing evidence was moved and potential contamination occurred before FBI involvement.

  “The photos show... items having been moved around... the lack of thoroughness with the photo taking itself is an issue... seems to be a failure to follow some basic or traditional forensic tests and exams.” – Scott McFarlane ([10:28])

• The hosts note the “drip, drip, drip” of information, with Krystal maintaining hope for fuller eventual transparency ([12:13]).

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3. Kamala Harris Blaming Voters for Loss, Hillary Clinton Interview, and the Democratic Party’s Accountability Crisis

[14:33–28:34]

• Kamala’s book tour & shifting blame: Clips show Kamala brushing off responsibility ("I'm not president"), while Hillary Clinton repeats a trope of having “beaten Trump four times in debates.” Both are critiqued for missing the point of their electoral defeats.

  “There is no doubt she made some critical errors, one of them being that she refused to separate herself from an ongoing genocide and show even a shredder of moral principle around that.” – Krystal ([18:11])

• Key arguments from the hosts:
  • Kamala failed by not distancing herself from Biden and from controversial administration policies (esp. on Gaza).
  • Ongoing elite Democratic narrative: voters are blamed for not voting, instead of introspecting on campaign failures.
  • Krystal:

    “For her, Hillary did her own version of this after she lost. It's always someone else's fault. It's always the voter's fault. The voters are too stupid or make the wrong choices or immoral. It's never them.” ([17:00])

  • Saagar:

    “There is such a deep psychological helplessness to these people... the upside of that is, if nothing's ever in your control or in your power, then nothing's ever your fault.” ([24:38])

  • Both call out the learned helplessness and lack of real accountability in modern Democratic leadership.
• Obama as a Symbol of Disconnection:
  • Marc Maron podcast cited: Obama admits he's "out of touch," which the hosts see as emblematic of the establishment’s detachment from the real concerns of younger generations ([29:01]).

    “You can’t live in a world where this motherfucker is lecturing at me with his chin up again about how fine things are and about the better angels of our nature while shit just continues to get worse.” – Krystal ([31:24])

Key Segment: [14:33–38:54]

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4. Foreign Influence, Hot Mic with Trump, and the Bipartisan Corruption Game – With Ken Vogel

[41:01–56:27]

• Foreign Leader Offers Trump’s Son a Business Deal ([41:25]):
  • Trump caught on camera with Indonesian president, who asks to “meet with Eric.” Trump responds: “Yeah, sure. Eric’s such a good boy, I'll have him give you a call.” Openly intertwining foreign policy and family business.
  • Vogel:

    “They are openly blurring the line between their foreign policy, US Foreign policy, and their business interests.” ([42:13])

• Broader context from Ken Vogel:
  • Describes how the US political system is not immune to the ‘pay to play’ mindset often attributed to post-Soviet or developing countries—US lobbyists from both parties cash in regardless of whose in power or their ‘principled’ public rhetoric.

    “In Ukraine it's the green team. And that green team unites the red and the blue team and that's the money team.” ([45:53])

  • On Ukraine, Burisma, and Hunter Biden: Outlines the “protection” system where hiring Americans with political connections was viewed as insurance against prosecution—even if the actual efficacy is debated.

    “That's exactly what [Hunter Biden] was doing. And that is the mindset...” ([46:18])

  • On foreign lobbying and the ways countries like Qatar operated in DC:

    “They did... curry favor with, you know, with the administration and managed to get the administration to help resolve that, that boycott in a way that was to their, to their liking.” ([49:39])

  • On the bipartisan and systemic nature of corruption:

    “The place where they tend to come together the most is actually on foreign policy... and Ukraine’s a perfect example. It’s very bipartisan the way that this money flows.” – Saagar ([51:37])

• Crypto’s role in funneling money:

  “The crypto stuff... you are literally putting money in the Trump family’s pocket because you believe in them or you think you can get something out of them.” – Vogel ([55:10])

• Summary: Both hosts and the guest emphasize the continuity of these practices across parties and decades, making genuine reform exceedingly difficult.

Key Segment: [41:01–56:27]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Ghislaine Maxwell’s treatment:

  "Why does the government want to coddle this lady? Great question. That, you know, I think people can ponder."
  — Saagar ([06:44])

• On Democratic establishment’s learned helplessness:

  “If nothing’s ever in your control or in your power, then nothing’s ever your fault.”
  — Saagar ([24:38])

• On Obama’s cultural detachment:

  “It’s just very jarring to see him still doing like a 2012 style of politics while the world is burning around you.”
  — Saagar ([32:46])

• On bipartisan corruption:

  “In Ukraine it’s the green team. And that green team unites the red and the blue team and that’s the money team.”
  — Ken Vogel ([45:53])

• On foreign influence:

  “You are literally putting money in the Trump family’s pocket because you believe in them or you think you can get something out of them.”
  — Ken Vogel ([55:10])

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Important Timestamps

• Ghislaine Maxwell prison coverage: [04:10–12:13]
• Epstein case/CBS investigation: [10:28–12:13]
• Kamala Harris & Democratic blame-shifting: [14:33–38:54]
• Obama’s Maron podcast, liberal detachment: [29:01–38:54]
• Ken Vogel on foreign influence and Trump business: [41:01–56:27]

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Overall Tone

The episode is combative and urgent, with heavy skepticism toward power, the elite’s self-justifications, and established political parties’ unwillingness to reform or take accountability. Both Krystal and Saagar maintain their iconoclastic, anti-establishment posture, using humor, frustration, and sharp critiques. Their guest, Ken Vogel, provides authoritative details wrapped in a matter-of-fact tone about systemic corruption.

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For listeners seeking a comprehensive, deeply critical, and unsparing examination of current elite dysfunctions, this episode delivers both detail and insight, with just enough memorable moments to make the outrage stick.

Transcript

[Sagar]

This is an iHeart podcast.

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[Sagar]

The.

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[Krystal Ball]

Hey guys, Sagar and Krystal here.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Independent media just played a truly massive role in this election and we are so excited about what that means for the future of this show.

[Krystal Ball]

This is the only place where you can find honest perspectives from the left and the right that simply does not exist and anywhere else.

[Saagar Enjeti]

So if that is something that's important to you, please go to breaking points.com Become a member today and you'll get access to our full shows unedited ad free and all put together for you every morning in your inbox.

[Krystal Ball]

We need your help to build the future of independent news media and we hope to see [e-mail] Turning now to my hometown, Bryan, Texas, literally where I was born. But for our purposes, let's put this up here on the screen. It is the scene of a true mystery where Ghislaine Maxwell is currently being kept in a federal prison camp despite Bureau of Prisons regulations that say sex offenders shouldn't be at minimum security prisons. And in this investigation from the Wall Street Journal, they describe lockdowns in a mysterious meeting. A quiet Texas prison adapts to life with Ghislaine Maxwell. And they say that some two months ago in mid August, hundreds of inmates at a minimum security prison in Bryan were locked down during their usual time for strolling the grassy campus and visiting with family and friends. All but one, Ghislaine Maxwell, while her fellow inmates were confined to their dormitories. After breakfast, Maxwell met with several visitors in the federal prison camp chapel. Less than three weeks earlier, the Justice Department had moved her to the federal prison camp Brian from that higher security facility in Tallahassee. That interview followed that transfer was followed with an interview with the Justice Department senior official Todd Blanche. During that whole transcript that they released from the Department of Justice where we learned absolutely nothing and she actually told multiple verifiable falsehoods. They say her unexpected arrival has upset the camp's usually relaxed atmosphere, leading to more frequent lockdowns, the addition of armed guards. Current and former inmates said in interviews that she appeared to receive, quote, unusually favorable treatment, at times sparking resentment in other inmates. Some prisoners heard that the lockdown was needed to accommodate important visitors, including some, including her lawyers. But what other important visitors were there? And, you know, one inmate recalled seeing her return to the dormitory that day with a smile on her face when they asked her about the meeting. She said it went really well, but shared no other information. So what was so important to lock down the entire prison so that she could have a meeting in club already? This is Club Fed. They're supposed to be able to just do whatever they want. Lockdowns are apparently very rare in these facilities because people aren't stabbing and killing each other. Those people are over at maximum security prison. So what's going on? Well, you get a whole lockdown. She has this meeting with an important figure. She's got a smile on her face. This is around the same time of the interview. What's happening? Yeah, we don't know. We don't know anything.

[Saagar Enjeti]

And remember, this is someone who should not be in this prison to begin with. And there's been upset among the other inmates there. And other sex offenders around the country were like, hey, we aren't supposed to get these perks. So just her being in that facility is already preferential treatment, then? What this article also documents is that she's allowed to go and shower by herself after all the eating. She's got her own room, whereas most of the inmates have to share. She gets, you know, all sorts of special perks. They've stationed additional officers around the facility. She's gotten special treatment. Why? Why? And then you've got this meeting where, you know, they have locked down the entire facility. So none of the other inmates who normally, during that time would be able to, you know, walk around the grounds. This was also the time when they can normally have visitors and visit with family and friends. That all stops so that Ghislaine can have her special little meeting like, what the hell is going on here? They also mentioned that there's been an absolute ban on. On any of the other prisoners talking to the press. And there have been punishments meted out because of them talking to reporters. They've been transferred. You know, it's considered a big perk to be at this facility. So there was one instance that they documented where this individual talked to the press. And then they were moved out of this facility to a higher security prison. So, you know, as a consequence, it appears as punishment for daring to speak to the press about Ghislaine's treatment and. And what life is like on the inside. There was also another incident that they mentioned here, which was sort of sketchy, where there were gunshots right near the facility. And again, you know, they came in in the middle of the night, and, you know, they secured Ghislaine first and foremost. And then what the official story was was, oh, this was some sort of shots fired, like, away from the facility, like in the direction away from the facility, had some sort of gang activity. There were no injuries reported. And the inmates were very skeptical of that story. That story was actually what happened there. So just really insightful about the way she's getting all of this incredible, incredible preferential treatment. Again, why this is a convicted sex offender. Why is she getting all this special treatment? What is going on there? Why does the government want to coddle this lady? Great question. That, you know, I think people can ponder. And then the specifics of this secret meeting and whatever the hell went down there, nobody knows.

[Krystal Ball]

That's all. Like, as you said, there's some very sketchy stuff. They have. She has special protection. She apparently is, you know, guests being ordered to lock down, returning to their bunk. She gets treatment, extra security. You have people who. In the facility who spoke to Wall Street Journal reporters getting transferred within an hour of the phone call, a single hour of phone call to the Wall Street Journal, and they got transferred to a higher security facility for what? For talking to a reporter about the special treatment that Ghislaine Maxwell. So they going to extraordinary lengths right now to make her life comfortable, to get her everything that she needs. She gets to pick and choose who her. You know, the people in her room are. I mean, this is not normal for anybody who's in one of these prisons, even though it's Club Fed, like, it's still prison or it's supposed to be, right? And, yeah, this is as good as it gets. At the same time, we've got CBS News out with a new. Honestly, I want to give them credit. They've been late to it, but give them credit. They showed up big time on the suicide investigation of Epstein Cell. I know you guys talked about it a little bit, but they talked specifically about how this crime scene was not preserved. There was no proper investigation into this in the way that a murder or suicide investigation should be conducted. So here's Scott McFarlane. He's a journalist over there. Let's take a listen.

[Scott McFarlane]

CBS News has spent years investigating what happened in that cell where Epstein died in New York in 2019. And a series of 90 photos from the scene obtained by 60 Minutes in CBS News do raise questions about the initial handling of the scene and the initial wave of the response. The photos show at least they indicate items having been moved around some of the items from the cell, the mattress Jeffrey Epstein's body had been moved before FBI investigators were able to respond. A former NYPD detective, a private investigator who spoke with CBS News, says that does complicate things that it appears this was handled as if it were a suicide scene and not necessarily a possible crime scene or murder scene. Also noted lack of evidence markers in the photos. The former NYPD detective said the not the clumsiness but the lack of thoroughness with the photo taking itself is an issue that there seems to be a failure to follow some basic or traditional forensic tests and exams. All of that can complicate an investigation and raise questions. You know, our investigation does not contradict the official determination of suicide, but it does seem like there were some insufficiencies through the process. And all of that means that now we are six years later, six years after the fact. It's going to add potential fuel as there's more considerations of broadening the investigation of Epstein case files, releasing more documents, and as Maxwell is poised to sit down with congressional investigators soon.

[Krystal Ball]

Props to Scott. Did a good job with that report. They continue not to drop it. And look, there's still a lot more out there and I know it's frustrating. Drip, drip, drip. But I remain hopeful that we'll get there eventually. Let's get to Kamala, shall we?

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[Sagar]

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[Saagar Enjeti]

Failed presidential candidate Kamala Harris has been on her book tour and we got a couple of, I guess we'll call them highlights for you. She had a guest appearance from Hillary Clinton. Also took some protesters on. Let's go ahead and take a listen. You debated him once, he wouldn't debate you again. We beat him four times. Do you think we're the reason he.

[Krystal Ball]

Is so unhinged today?

[Saagar Enjeti]

Oh, they basically say to me, we didn't tell you, but she's been talking.

[Sagar]

About people eating cats and dogs.

[Saagar Enjeti]

I was like what? And they said we think we need.

[Sagar]

To tell you because his propensity is.

[Saagar Enjeti]

To say the last thing he heard. And sure enough on the debate stage he said it.

[Krystal Ball]

Your legacy is genocide, war criminal.

[Sagar]

You know what? I am not president of the United States.

[Krystal Ball]

You want to go to the White.

[Sagar]

House and turn to him, they go.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Out and do that.

[Sagar]

I'm not president.

[Saagar Enjeti]

And if you want to talk about.

[Sagar]

Legacy, let's talk about the legacy of mass deportation. Deportation.

[Krystal Ball]

Of people not voting in Donald Trump.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Mass deportations and people not voting. I mean there's, I guess we'll start with Hillary. You know, the cope of we beat him four times in the debate. Well, you did such a great job. Why didn't neither of y' all end.

[Krystal Ball]

Up president seeing these two ladies who were able to apparently lose to Trump? Yeah, I don't know. I'm curious for your because this is a crystallizing thing amongst the elite Democrats.

[Saagar Enjeti]

I don't know why. So her response there, she's got two parts of her response. Number one, she says, well, I'm not president. Go talk to the guy who is. As if there haven't been protests of the Trump administration for their pro genocide policy. I mean, he was confronted by protesters just down the street here when he was eating dinner, actually in a pretty wild failure of the Secret Service, frankly, in how close these protesters were able to get. But there's this mythology that as soon as Trump came into office, people stopped caring about Palestine. And that's just insane. I mean, I will say, I think for a variety of reasons the protests were not as heightened as they were while she and Biden were in office. I think, number one, because there was a sense like these are people that we may be able to actually influence, we're part of their theoretical coalition. Number two, you have a level of fatigue. And number three, this government has been very authoritarian and cracking down on protesters and increasing the cost of actually going out there and exercising your First Amendment rights. So that's number one, this fiction and this lie and this insinuation that low key people, if you were pro Palestine, you actually wanted Donald Trump to win and then you're happy with the mass deportations which she name checks here, that you know, that she's blaming them for. The other piece here that just of course disgusts me and drives me absolutely batty, is blaming the voters who didn't vote for her and those specifically who had a moral objection and a red line around a literal genocide and could not bring themselves to vote for someone who was actively supporting and complicit in, and refused to separate herself from, even on like this, in the smallest level from the execution of that genocide, she's blaming them rather than taking any responsibility for the active choices she herself made, including, I mean, just there were such small things that people were asking for. Just let someone who's Palestinian American speak at the dnc. Even that was a bridge too far. A glaring problem in her campaign, very clear from the beginning, was Joe Biden's unpopular. How are you gonna separate yourself? This was the obvious place to do it and, and she never, ever did it. So for her, Hillary did her own version of this after she lost. It's always someone else's fault. It's always the voter's fault. The voters are too stupid or make the wrong choices or immoral. It's never them. They never take responsibility for themselves. And last thing, and I'll get you to weigh in. I think Kamala's dealt a very difficult hand here, coming in late and saddled with the unpopular presidency and all of those things. Cost of living being very high. I think it was very difficult for even a great candidate to come into that situation. So I'm not saying everything that happened was on her shoulders, but there is no doubt that she made some critical errors, one of them being that she refused to separate herself from an ongoing genocide and show even a shredder of moral principle around that. So that's my thoughts on this.

[Krystal Ball]

Yeah, well, let's really break it down. You said it's not entirely her fault, and that's true. It is almost mostly Joe Biden's fault. Let's start with that. He is the chief villain, as Darrell Cooper said, you know, the chief villain of the 2024 election. He is a chief villain. He's one of the great narcissists in American history. However. However. And this is where it starts to fall on Kamala. Nobody forced you to go on the View and say, nobody forced you to listen to Biden. He was a dead. He literally, maybe functionally, like, dead president right at that time. No one forced you to go on the View and listen to his phone call about no daylight kid. All you had to say is, there's a lot of things I would do different from Joe Biden to actually inject some energy. Nobody forced you to repeatedly not distance yourself from the administration. Nobody forced you to listen to him from the point of which you are the candidate. But this also gets to me about the weakness of the process. And in a way, maybe one of her great errors was immediately accepting the nomination and not at least trying to make it seem as if people could jump in and that there would be some process. Because, you know, if we think back to it, do you want to be handed something, or do you want to earn it? Like, you know, there's a lot of theory behind that about the satisfaction and the, you know, you know, the confidence that you get in something. I mean, I could say, you know, even from us starting this business, right, Like, I feel confident in some of my judgment that I would not have previously in the past when we were just W2 employees, because you took a bet and it worked out, and through your own work and all of that, there's success. They're bumpy and stuff along the way, but you could prove your decision making, and it kind of gives you a confidence in your ability to try and sell something, to do something, and to take Risk. She never had that because she was handed it. I think she shouldn't have done that. But on the Gaza thing specifically, and this gets to the voter, I just can't be in a situation where I blame the voters. Now, we can talk to the voters and I will say, if you voted for Trump because you were anti, I mean, against Israel, like, you're honestly a fucking idiot. And I think I said that at the time. I was like, do you remember? I'm pretty sure I did that monologue. I was like, listen, if you're pro, if you're one issue is Israel. I was like, you should vote for Kamala. You honestly should.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Right?

[Krystal Ball]

Well, you were honestly dumb.

[Saagar Enjeti]

People who voted for Trump. She's saying people who just didn't vote.

[Krystal Ball]

Okay, well, see, I'm not, I'm not in that. Because if that was your number one issue, you kind of made the right call. Because at the end of the day, both would have probably kept the war going. To be honest, I'm not sure we get this ceasefire under a comma administration because, you know, I never saw the backbone and all of that behind them. They probably would have been more rhetorical about UN and all that, but, like, I don't. I'm not so sure we end up here without some. Somebody like Trump just going full retard and be like, hey, actually, it's over. I never saw Kamala or Biden with that ability. Maybe, you know, it's unfalsifiable at this point. But the point really gets to this whole, you didn't vote. Let's go back to Hillary. We covered this extensively at the time. If the same number of black people vote in 2016 that voted in 2008 and 2012, Hillary wins the election. And what did the Democrats say instead of, why didn't these people come out to vote? It was, how dare you not come out to vote? It's your fault.

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Well, why.

[Krystal Ball]

Let's do some analysis. Why did they not come out to vote? They thought by voting for Obama for twice that their lives would get a lot better and they didn't. And they didn't think that Hillary would do much about it. Whose fault is that? To me, it's Hillary's fault. For Kamala, it's the same thing. I mean, if you look at some of the stats, if you drive out, let's say you're talking about Israel. If you drive out young people, she lost young men. Remember that? I mean, that's a huge deal. Gen Z, A lot of new voters, they swung To Trump, that is a systematic failure of the Democratic Party and of Kamala Harris, despite all the coconut memes and all this other bullshit turned out to be fake. So I just, you know, we can't absolve these people of responsibility. And like you said about go protest Trump. It's like, first of all, anyone who's like rabidly pro Palestine is not pro Trump at this point. It doesn't exist. So it's like calling out a coalition which is entirely fake. And then also to put this whole legacy of if you think it's so bad, well, I mean, you also didn't give them the path or at the very least make a convincing argument, because the argument and all of this, you know, we debated it here a million times about leading up to Trump, about what the legacy of all that would look like. I think you were a lot more clear eyed than a lot of other shitheads on the left, frankly, who are like, oh, it won't be all that bad. I'm like, no, from your perspective, it's going to be fucking hell, let's be honest. And it is from their perspective, which is kind of what a lot of people on the right voted for. But that's my point though, is that there was an entire ecosystem of people who wanted to convince them that Trump was going to be the one who was going to be anti Israel or pro Palestine or whatever. And I think those people can be condemned. But to say not voting, like, at least from a pro Palestine perspective to say not voting should be condemned is preposterous. It just absolutely absolves all the responsibilities and the systematic failures going back like 30 years inside the Democratic Party. So I need to see somebody grapple with that. And I don't see a single person. That's what I don't get about the Democrats. I'm like, you're so pathetic and weak. You're nothing.

[Saagar Enjeti]

And here's the thing is like a couple things on that there is such a deep psychological helplessness to these people. Like nothing's ever in their control, nothing's ever in their power. And the upside of that is if nothing's ever in your control or in your power, then nothing's ever your fault. And, and so there's always from the Obama administration, all the excuses about why the Affordable Care act really kind of sucks. I mean, the whole fight over. I talked to Corbyn Tron yesterday. He used to work with aoc and he was saying we really need to internalize that, the whole fight that Democrats are picking over the shutdown is like, we can't let normal Obamacare come back. We have to keep these subsidies going. That's actually such a big deal, because normal Obamacare is so insanely unaffordable. Like, it is unacceptable. That's the fight that they pick. So all sorts of excuses around why that was the best thing they couldn't get. A public option was impossible. And the Biden administration, all kinds of excuse, oh, we can't get minimum wage, the parliamentary and this and that. Like, there's always some either villain within the Democratic Party or the Republicans, even when they're out of power. And the opposition, they're just so powerful, can't possibly overcome them. And there's all this learned helplessness. And I genuinely think that the reason why they choose to take that mental tactic of pretending like everything is out of their control and out of their hands, even when you're the President of the United States and you control the Senate or the House or whatever, it's because they don't want to have any responsibility for their actions. And this is to go even one layer deeper. It's kind of a core ideology of neoliberalism, actually, of which both parties have been, were very involved with supporting. Because what neoliberalism is at bottom is outsourcing your thinking to the markets, so you never have to make a decision. It's just, oh, well, the markets did their thing and this is what they want, and that's just how it went. So I think it's very deeply ingrained in the psychology. But I've also been thinking about the other thing that you just said, Tucker, which is part of why Democrats have Even in Trump 2.0, now that they're, you know, they aren't the ones who were sending the bombs directly and many of them are still voting for it. But why they've had such a hard time separating from Israel and calling it a genocide and saying this is unacceptable and we have to stop it. And forcefully resisting it is because they know that they were complicit and they don't want to take responsibility for that.

[Krystal Ball]

It's true.

[Saagar Enjeti]

They don't want to have to go back and say, you know what? We fucked up. And you guys, like you guys who were protesting us, you were actually right, you were correct. That I think would go so far. I actually think it would be so powerful for people to see genuine accountability, genuine reckoning with what they were complicit in. I think it would do so much to see that. And they're just Thoroughly incapable of acknowledging that there was any error there. And so now you have a situation where we're in a ceasefire. We'll see whether it lasts or not. A lot of questions about that, Pat. There was, you know, hostage exchange, which all the Israeli hostages are now released. Palestinians got 2,000 of their hostages back from the Israelis. And you've missed your moment really to be able to have that reckoning. You've missed your moment to be able to really take a moral high ground over, you know, what the Trump administration has done here. Maybe it would have been concluded more quickly under Kamala. Maybe it would have been. Maybe they wouldn't have had the complete starvation. We know the Biden administration did push and, you know, maintain some higher level of aid than was maintained under the Trump administration where he'd, we didn't have the total and complete starvation. We'll never know. And you never took the time. You, Kamala Harris and others in the Democratic Party, but specifically you never came out and said, I object to this thing that the Trump administration is doing in Gaza. Here's what I, if I was president, here's what I would have done differently. You never did that. So we have nothing to go on that you would have been different or better in any way.

[Krystal Ball]

Yeah. And you know, if you want perfect proof of all this, Obama and Marc Maron, from Marc Maron's last podcast. Let's take a listen. You know, as you get older, Michelle and I joke about this. No matter how much you want to pretend otherwise, you're starting to get a little out of touch. You're not completely plugged into the Zeitgeist.

[Sagar]

And it happens naturally.

[Krystal Ball]

It just happens. Yeah. I mean, look, look, my brain doesn't register, TikTok.

[Sagar]

Yeah, mine either.

[Krystal Ball]

The same way that it does my 16 year old niece.

[Sagar]

Right, right. You gotta get a guy to do it for you.

[Krystal Ball]

It's not just the technology itself. It's that I'm not plugged in, I'm not relating to. Yeah. The cultural, you know, stream in the.

[Sagar]

Same way that somebody who, who's 20.

[Krystal Ball]

Or 25 or even 35 is.

[Sagar]

But the brains have been, you know, broken, you know, through exploiting grievance and anger and, you know, in talking about the left, that the fact that so many decided to not vote at a protest because they didn't feel that the, you know, the situation in Israel, the ethnic cleansing of Gaza and whatnot was not going to be dealt with by Kamala or however that goes. So you get this protest vote of people not Willing to make a compromise for what you used to talk about as the incremental progress.

[Krystal Ball]

Yeah, the incremental. I got an email recently that said you seem very worried about the destruction of norms, yet you always talk about how during that time period you talked about how those norms were bad. And that's why cuz I lived through this shit. George W. Bush and Obama who lectured me about oh, the norms of the whole. Meanwhile what was happening? The entire apparatus of American life collapsed around us. We sacrificed our empire abroad for what? For Iraq. We sacrificed our economy in 2008 for the bankers. And through that entire time we kept giving. We said, please save us, we're gonna vote for you. They said, oh don't worry, we're gonna pass the Affordable Care Act. I love your point. We can't let Obamacare return to normal Obamacare cuz that will fuck people over. What does that tell you about Obamacare? You know, we voted for the homeowners. What happened? We voted for prosecution. What happened? We voted for more regulation. We got fucking Dodd Frank and now look at our economy right now. Same with getting out of Iraq. So their high minded liberalism or their high minded conservatism destroyed this country. And that's why I'm like as bad. Yes. I've become an acceleration as scary and all these things may seem, I don't know, for me, I still have some faith that will turn on the other side. Cuz I lived 25 years under their regime. I was born under Bill Clinton. Consider the progress of the United States economy and of US foreign policy since that time that I was born in 1992. How can you still worship at the altar of these norms? You cannot. And so we can argue about what the norms and new norms and all that should be, but I cannot live in a world where I have this motherfucker lecturing at me with his chin up again about how fine things are and about the better angels of our nature while shit just continues to get worse every single year.

[Saagar Enjeti]

That is the thing that is very jarring. I listen to this whole conversation and I wanted to pull that, that TikTok point he made about how he sounded touch because I thought it was very. I mean it was one of the more honest parts of the podcast. He's like, I don't really get it today. Like I'm kind of out of touch. So that's why I don't say that much about politics because I don't really, I'm not really in touch with what people are thinking anymore. And I Was like, wow, that. That's actually interesting level of self awareness. But I also want to say, I think being out of touch, like, that's a choice, you know, like, you could go. It's not like TikTok is not that hard to understand. You could go on TikTok, you would understand.

[Krystal Ball]

I'm not on TikTok and I fully am understanding what's going on. It's not hard.

[Sagar]

Yeah.

[Saagar Enjeti]

And also, you know, you choose who you interact with. Like, you surrounded yourself with a bunch of, like, celebrities and rich people. And so, yeah, you're gonna be out of touch. I mean, that is a choice that you have made. So that was one piece and then the other part. But it's very jarring to see him still doing like a 2012 style of politics while the world is burning around you. You said his vibe is like, oh, everything's fine, and we'll all compromise and we'll take the high road when they take the low road. It's like, that shit is so far. We are so far past that. So, yeah, it felt like listening to him talk, it really did feel like a relic from another era. And I know we joke about, like, let's say they got rid of term limits and you get the Trump Obama matchup. And, you know, we've always said, oh, like, Obama would crush him. And I think Obama would have beat him in 2016. I'm not so sure anymore. Because watching that, he just felt so, so far removed from the actual energy and the concern that people have. You know, this thing that he's always been accused of, which has always been true of sort of like, standing aloof, that's one thing. And observing society from afar and not really feeling like he has a stake in it, that was one thing in 2012. It's another one right now. Like, when the shit is hitting the fan and, you know, kids are being autistic, kids are being stolen from their parents on the streets of Chicago, an apartment building raided, and we just oversaw a genocide. Like, in the moment of right now to do your. Just remove. I'm above it all, and I'm just gonna tell you from on high where things have gone astray, especially when you are a significant part of the reason that things went on this track, because you promised a hopeful, a different politics, and you didn't deliver for people in the way that people thought that you would. Yeah, I don't know how that would go over with the American people at this point. I'm not so sure.

[Krystal Ball]

Look, that was from a Left perspective from the right. It's like, who flooded this country? Obama? You all right, you're the one who chose basically cultural politics. He is literally the everything that went wrong. He was elected on a class anti war message and he turned it to become the culture of war president. That's who he was. That's ultimately his only real legacy is like daca, the Affordable Care Act. Oh, fantastic little contribution that you did there. And the woke era, it began under him in 2014. It was a disaster. Now again, there's a lot of blame and all that stuff to go around, but. But you did not fulfill those core promises. And so the latter stage of your administration that set up the Trump victory is ultimate. Like, those problems were not solved under your administration. You could have headed off a lot of this. And so I think you're right. I don't think he would beat Trump today in 2024. I don't think there's a chance that he could actually come because.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Because Trump is a creature of the moment.

[Krystal Ball]

Exactly. And you're not.

[Saagar Enjeti]

He's a monster, in my opinion. Monster of the moment. But he is. He is a creature of the moment. And Obama is a relic of the past.

[Krystal Ball]

Obama is a symptom and a relic of a time when we still had hope. If you're young, you actually don't remember that. You know, I was talking to a journalism class recently. These kids are like 19, right. They didn't know what the Mueller investigation was, Crystal. They literally didn't even remember Mueller. So that was eight years ago. Wow. So imagine trying to talk to them about Obama in 2008. Literally ancient history. They have no memory of a time when we still had actual faith in our political institutions. And it's because of him that I don't personally, between Bush and him, I said this shit is rigged. It is fake. There is nothing redeeming left inside of these people, the Washington establishment or any of that. Now, yeah, I think there's a lot of criticism and stuff to go around, but you really have to remember how much faith everybody put in withdrawing from Iraq and 2008, and how things would go to where we ended up in, what is it, January of 2017, when Obama left office. If you didn't live through that, you can't understand how we actually got to where we are right now.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Well, and this is again where the, the neoliberal impulse towards zero responsibility and helplessness comes in. Because, like, you can't help but look, your two terms in office were followed by Donald Trump. So you did you know you were somewhat now part of it. I do think there was like a, you know, mass racial backlash to him. Like, I do think that was part of what fueled the fire. And Trump was part of that. Right. With the birtherism conspiracy and all of that. But that doesn't absolve you of like there was clearly there were a lot of exits off the highway of where we were headed to now. And one of the biggest ones was 2008. And then also he, you know, he has stuck his hands back in our politics at strategic points to also make sure that the Democratic Party doesn't become a party of the now, like creatures of the now, to make sure that the specifically the Bernie wing of the party is blocked. Whether it was his intervention in the DNC race obviously intervened extraordinarily in 2020. I mean, he also is a big part of the reason why. He's the one who anointed Hillary Clinton for 2016 like she was his choice. So his fingerprints are all over the present day Democratic Party, which is such a failure. And there's no reckoning who presided over.

[Krystal Ball]

The largest loss in black wealth ever. First black president. I mean, nobody ever grapples with that one. You know, you talked about racial backlash. Sure. A lot of white people in 2012 voted for him in Ohio. A lot of white people all over America in a lot of red states today put their faith in Barack Hussein Obama after four years. Okay, no one forced you to do the election.

[Saagar Enjeti]

This man wanted Ohio, 1, North Carolina.

[Krystal Ball]

That's why everyone always talks about that race thing. I go, yeah, maybe in Alabama. And all these places is still won a lot of red states Today, even in 2012, you know, before all this happened. So like let's like these people have agency and they could have done a lot of stuff if they wanted to to actually fix the country. So anyway, this is a long way of saying a lot of it is Obama's fault. And you can see why I hate him so much. All right, let's get to Ken Vogel.

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[Sagar]

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[Saagar Enjeti]

Very lucky to be joined in studio this morning by Ken Vogel, who's a phenomenal reporter for the New York Times and also author of this new book right here. It is called Devil's Advocate the Hidden Story of Rudy Giuliani, Hunter Biden and the Washington Insiders on the payrolls of corrupt foreign interests. So something that we are certainly very interested in here, Ken. We've relied on your reporting so much on this show over the course of the year. So thank you so much. It's great to have you in studio.

[Sagar]

Yeah, it's great to be with you. I'm a big fan of the show. Thanks, man.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Thank you. It means a lot. Well, we had an abundance of examples of foreign influence just sort of out in the open. I mean, this is one thing about Trump 2.0. We already covered the comments he made about Miriam Adelson. Like, hey, this lady gave me a bunch of money and then I did the stuff that she wanted me to do. So he tends to wear it on his sleeve a bit more. And we have another example of this. We can put this up on the screen. So this was from his recent trip in Egypt. And you can see him here with the Indonesian president, who asked him if he can meet with his son Eric in particular. Now, Eric is not a member of the administration. Eric is running the Trump Organization or is among those running the Trump Organization. Trump says, yeah, sure. Eric's such a good boy, I'll have him give you a call. What did you make of this particular moment and the import here?

[Sagar]

Yeah, I mean, it really shows the degree to which Trump and the folks around him have kind of dropped the pretense. They are openly blurring the line between their foreign policy, US Foreign policy, and their business interests. And there was a telling quote that Eric Trump gave one of my colleagues, Ben, protest at the beginning of the administration. He said, in the first term we did everything imaginable to avoid any appearance of impropriety. And frankly, we got crushed anyway. Said that we had lost an absolute fortune. Quote, we can't just sit out in perpetuity. And I won't. I'm not in government. I'm in private industry.

[Krystal Ball]

Okay.

[Sagar]

And he is again, he's wearing it on his sleeve. He's admitting, like, this is what we're doing. And you can see why someone like the president of Indonesia or any other foreign leader or interest would want to do business with the Trump, you know, with the Trump family, with the various crypto interests, the real estate business. Because there is this thinking that it is going to get you at the front of the line in terms of your asks on foreign policy. That is being able to shape the US Government by doing business with Trump or the people around him.

[Krystal Ball]

If anything. This is a language they speak. Well, they're like, pay off the guy's son, easy. We do that here all the time. We set up shell companies or any of that. That's a natural way. But one of the things I've always appreciated about your reporting is that you dive into the way that it sneaks into its way through Washington. So some of the examples that you find here in the book are paying off of these various lobbyists, shell companies and other things that will funnel around in order to obfuscate possibly what that influence is throughout your reporting. What did you find as the countries which are the best at their foreign influence operations?

[Sagar]

I mean, it is to your point, Sagar, it is like this mindset that you see in the developing world and parts of like the post communist world in the Middle east where they have this, you know, this is the way that politics works. If you want something from government, you pay the people in the government. Or the people around them, they're gatekeepers. And so we've always sort of had this conceit in the US that oh no, no, no, we're different, we don't do that. We have all these ethics rules and disclosure rules and campaign finance rules and lobbying disclosure requirements that essentially are the firewall that prevents that type of activity from happening here. And what I found is I reported the book that no, actually we're not that different. And it's not just the Trump administration and the Trump family. It goes back to Democratic administrations passed and Republican administrations past. And the places in the world that are best at it are those that have that mindset. So they're the Ukraine's of the world, where it's this post Soviet country where like, how do you get what you want? How do you become super rich? You're an oligarch who's able to like cozy up to the state and essentially privatize state assets and make them your own. And so how do you get that in the US if you're a Ukrainian oligarch, you pay Rudy Giuliani or you pay Hunter Biden or you pay Paul Manafort, you pay someone like that. And the thing that surprised me, particularly in Ukraine, but in a lot of these other countries is the bipartisan nature of this. It's not just that like you would pay a campaign aide for John McCain or for Bob Dole or for John Kerry, you would pay them all at the same time. They would be all on the same team working for Viktor Yanukovych. In the case of Ukraine, where he had Paul Manafort and Tony Podesta and Tad Devine, who were in the US they're like taking these principal stands and posturing about how they have all these, how their involvement in politics is guided and shaped by some overarching set of principles that align them with the red team or the blue team. Well, no, in Ukraine it's the green team. And that green team unites the red and the blue team and that's the money team.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Yeah. So talk a little bit more about the Ukraine example, because this one obviously is very big in the public consciousness. Hunter Biden, Burisma, all of that he claims. Oh, I was just on the board, cuz I have this expertise had nothing to do with my father. I didn't give him any favors. I mean, what do you actually find in the book about the way that these relationships work in particular when you have someone who is just selling basically their proximity to an administration?

[Sagar]

Yeah, I mean, that's exactly what he was doing. And that is the mindset. There was this oligarch, Mykola Zulchevsky, who was the head of Burisma. And it's the quintessential oligarchic fact pattern where, like, he was in the administration of this corrupt strongman president that the US Wanted gone, Viktor Yanukovych, who, by the way, is the guy who was represented by Paul Manafort and Tad Devine and Tony Podesta. And they, as a result of this fact pattern where he's essentially privatized these state assets and made a fortune off of them, the us, The UK and the Ukrainian prosecutors were, like, looking at this guy and identifying him as, like, a poster child for the type of corruption that they were trying to root out under the new government. And so he hired a bunch of people, not just Hunter Biden, but former Polish President Kwasniewski, I think, is how you say his name, to try to signal to prosecutors and international officials that, like, hey, like, don't mess with me because I've got protection. You know, again, thinking in the way that, like, you think in Ukraine that this is gonna away the government officials from coming after you. And we do see examples. The question is, like, what did Hunter Biden actually do? We do see examples where he did recruit a lobbying firm that was going to do the lobbying, and they did meet with people, and he actually met with people in his father's government in the Obama Biden administration. What did he actually deliver? It's questionable. I mean, the prosecutor who they did want gone, and this is sort of getting in the weeds a little bit. But there's this prosecutor who has been at the center of the Burisma stories, a guy by the name of Victor Shokin. And like the Democrats have suggested. Oh, no, no, they didn't want, you know, Burisma was okay with this guy because he wasn't actually investigating him. Well, no, that's not actually accurate. He wasn't really investigating him in the traditional sense, but in the Ukrainian sense, he held open the possibility of investigations and used that to elicit bribes from Zolchewski. The oligarchy owned Burisma, so they did want him gone. And whether it was Hunter Biden or the people who he recruited, they were certainly helpful in effectuating that end result. And he was fired. And ultimately the investigations into Burisma were dropped by the subsequent prosecutor before he ended up flipping sides and going into bed with Rudy Giuliani.

[Krystal Ball]

It's been years since I've dealt, even hearing his Name again. I'm like, oh, man, it's been a long time since we've come in on that.

[Sagar]

When I used to write about it, my editors would be like, can we write a story that doesn't read like it's like a game recap of the Polish national hockey?

[Krystal Ball]

I'm like, no, it is. Yeah, it is what it is. Yeah. One of the things we talk a lot about here on the show is pro Israel influence. But one of the things that they will often say is, well, you never cover Qatari influence. And so you are quite literally one of the experts on this. We pulled one here. Older stories. Let's put F2.

[Saagar Enjeti]

It's not fair, by the way, up on the screen. Literally covered Qatari.

[Krystal Ball]

We have yesterday.

[Saagar Enjeti]

But anyway, whatever.

[Krystal Ball]

All right, so you, you wrote this story after Pam Bondi was selected as the Attorney General. You said as lobbyists, Bondi had clients including Amazon, gm, Uber and Qatar. In the book, you also dictate some of the Qatari influence you've watched here in Washington. Tell us a little bit about that. How sophisticated is it? What is the money and to what end are they trying to buy? What type of influence do they want?

[Sagar]

Yeah, I mean, they threw around huge sums of money, as you guys have noted, particularly in the first Trump administration when they were locked in this regional imbroglio with Saudi Arabia and with the UAE over this boycott. Boycott, Right. And so, and it was multi pronged. I mean, they had sort of set the seeds, sort of laid the foundation by cultivating a business relationship with Jared Kushner, who was the point person on sort of Middle east policy during the first Trump administration, now arguably again in the second Trump administration. But then that wasn't enough for them. That was sort of the, you know, the approach that I was talking about before with the Indonesian president, where they're going straight to the top. But they also did a very trad influence campaign where they threw around a ton of money to lobbyists on both sides of the aisle and including Brian Ballard's firm, which was where Pam Bondi was employed before she was tapped as Attorney General. And, you know, they, they did, they did sort of curry favor with, you know, with the administration and managed to get the administration to help resolve that, that boycott in a way that was to their, to their liking. And, you know, there were a number of cases that came out of that where there was this. It's sort of ironic now, but there was a clampdown on this type of foreign lobbying during the first Trump administration as a result of the Mueller investigation and some of the spillover investigations. And it ended up leading to a deferred prosecution agreement in the case of a prominent Trump connected lobbyist, Barry Bennett, where he didn't exactly plead guilty, but he admitted that he had violated Farah while he was representing the Qataris. And so it's ironic now that Pam Bondi, as attorney general, one of the first things that she did was decriminalize the prosecution of the Foreign Agents Registration act and say, we're not gonna be allocating prosecutorial resources to going after these types of cases. So it's really.

[Saagar Enjeti]

I'll take note of that.

[Sagar]

Actually, it's a free for all right now.

[Krystal Ball]

So I need people like you.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Yeah, exactly.

[Krystal Ball]

There's so much stuff going on.

[Saagar Enjeti]

I think oftentimes there's definitely a lot of division between the two parties in Washington. The place where they tend to come together the most is actually on foreign policy. And oftentimes in a way that the American people not particularly pleased about how much of that owes to this wash, this amount of foreign cash that this city is awash in. And Ukraine's a perfect example. You talk about Tad Devine and Paul Manafort. This is a Democratic strategist and a Republican strategist. It's very bipartisan the way that this money flows.

[Sagar]

Yeah, I think a lot of it, a lot of what you're talking about, where we're making these bargains with the devil, where it's like this particular country or leader or interest is not really aligned with our ideals about democracy and human rights and free speech and religious freedom, but they're kind of our best friend in the region. And a lot of the sort of casting of these entities as aligned with US Foreign policy is because of these lobbyists. You go back to Paul Manafort, who was really like the godfather of this industry, and what he would do during the Reagan and Bush administrations was go around the world and find, you know, sometimes really blood soaked, brutal, you know, opposition leaders, guerrilla leaders, or, you know, dictators, and take them to Washington and say, like, this person can be your bulwark against communism in whatever part of the world, whether it's in, you know, Marcos in the Philippines or Jonas Civimbi, the bloody guerrilla leader in Angola. Paul Manafort helped them win U.S. support, bipartisan U.S. support and funding by taking them to Washington and casting them as like a bulwark against communism. Well, fast forward till now. We have a very similar thing happening, but it's not about any particular ideological alignment. Rather, it's about, like, casting these people as, like, this person is the Trump of the Balkans and this person is the Trump of the Balkans because. Yeah, because they have been prosecuted by prosecutors in their home country or they've been sanctioned by the Biden administration, and they've been. Therefore, you, President Trump should take their side and give them US Government funding and remove sanctions, because they are a great example.

[Krystal Ball]

$20 billion bailout, a great example. Huge amount of Silicon Valley guys were friends with him, pushed his administration, now he needs a bailout. They're the same people who back Trump, and he gets this sweetheart deal from the US Government. I mean, actually, I'm curious, have you heard anything about that? How exactly did all that come about?

[Sagar]

Yeah, we're doing some reporting on that that I'm not quite ready to reveal. But. But, I mean, there are lots of examples. Yeah, South America's a good one because certainly Bolsonaro, they tried to help Bolsonaro, like, you know, overturn the election results, and then they tried to. Trump tried to back off the Supreme Court. And Bolsonaro has a lot of these Trump allies, including Donald Trump Jr. Who he's cultivated. And there was. There were reports about Bolsonaro's son being in the White House early in the. Early in this term. So it's another example where, like, like, some of the framing has changed, like the way that these lobbyists and others try to cast these people as allied with the U.S. it's not like a Cold War type of framing. It's really like a cult of personality that they are aligned with Trump and therefore they deserve US Government support and funding.

[Saagar Enjeti]

And then the other piece, as you mentioned before, is just like, direct cash infusions. And how much has his crypto coin and, you know, crypto holdings and the company associated with that, like, like, how much has that fueled just inflows of potentially corrupt cash influence this administration?

[Sagar]

Yeah, hugely. I mean, you know, Democrats and critics. I'm not like, dismissing this criticism during the first administration, made a huge deal of, like, foreign interests staying at the Trump Hotel. That was a violation of the emoluments. Cause, you know, maybe it was, maybe it wasn't. Courts ultimately decided that it wasn't. But, you know, but at least there. There was, like, some service. There was some pretense they were actually getting something. They were getting a night in the hotel or whatever. Now it's like, just feels money compared to this. I mean, the crypto stuff, it's. I mean, I don't know where you guys stand. I know a little bit about where you stand on crypto for listening, but, like, where your audience stands. Like, but like, it's arguable that, like, there's, there's some value there, the values in the eye of the beholder. But certainly, like, you're not getting, so you're not getting a physical service or something like that. You are literally putting money in the Trump family's pocket because you believe in them or you think you can get something out of them. And we saw this most acutely with World Liberty Financial, where binance and the UAE financed a $2 billion deal using World Liberty Financial. And like, what do they get out of that? They certainly get on Trump's good side. I mean, we'll see maybe if the deal goes through and is a great success. But there's, there's an open question as to whether they're actually getting something other than the favor of the president for that $2 billion investment.

[Krystal Ball]

Ken, please keep it up. Everybody go and buy the book. We will have a link down in the description for you to purchase it. Thank you very much, sir. We rely on you and we thank you.

[Sagar]

It's a pleasure.

[Krystal Ball]

Thank you so much for watching. We appreciate you guys. I'll be on with Ryan tomorrow bro show and then I'll see you all on Thursday.

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[Sagar]

This is an iHeart podcast.