← Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar
Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar
10/21/25: Josh Shapiro Pressed On AIPAC, Epstein Prosecutor Dined At His House, WH Blows Up On Ukraine Question, AI Bubble
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Democrat Seth Moulton, who's running for Senate in Massachusetts, is now saying he's refusing all AIPAC contributions and will return what he's gotten. Meanwhile, Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro getting pressed on the question. Let's look at how he responded to it. Article in the New York Times about Democrats pulling away from aipac.
- [02:47]
A
So clearly it's having some impact on them politically.
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E
If they feel like they got to.
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A
I don't know, I mean, I think.
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D
It'S become a political issue. You've, you've used it as a political issue. You've questioned federal representatives, when they're on here, on that. I mean, I think if I can say this to you, you know, not trying to offend you here, but I think it's a little bit of a shortcut and a little bit of a lazy question. I think the better question is how do you really feel about Israel, how you feel about a two state solution? How do you feel about the war? How do you feel about the hostages or hungry kids or what have you? I think demanding answers on those questions is more important than, hey, what about this lobbying group or that lobbying group?
- [03:29]
E
Well, what do you say to the critics who argue that U.S. foreign policy on Israel is often shaped not by national interest, but by the lobbying strength of these.
- [03:38]
D
I think that's a fair conversation to have. And I think it should be on any elected official at the federal level to say, hey, I'm listening to this group, but by the way, there's groups on other sides too. I'm listening to that group. But at the end of the day, we want our federal representatives to be able to sit here in this chair and answer the questions about why they voted A or why they voted B, or why they feel a certain way. And I think it's just a little lazy to say, oh, it's gotta be because of that interest group. Maybe someone actually believes those, those views or maybe someone feels strongly about that particular way.
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E
And so the thing he said at the end there, and we'll get into Moulton in a second when we get Sager's take on this thing he said at the end there, we said, okay, well you've got the lobbying group AIPAC on the one side and then you've got the lobbying groups on the other side. That's actually false. There is not a lobbying group on the other side. The only thing that would come remotely close might be CAIR, the Council on American Islamic Relations. CAIR's budget, annual budget is like $10 million. AIPAC spent more than that in one House race last year, double that in one House race. So the entire national budget of the organization that they would say is like on the other side can't even compete with them in a single House race. So it's just not true. And so the problem I Have with Shapiro's response there. This is what I'm curious for your take on is rather than answering the question, too often when people ask this question, they're told you're not asking the right question, you should ask other questions. And it's like, no, you know what, we're adults. Like, this is the question I have and this is the question I want an answer to.
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A
Dude, we will ask whatever we want to say. It's a lazy question is because you're uncomfortable answering it because you're pro Israel. Like, and that, this is what drives me crazy about these politicians is fundamentally. Let's take Charlemagne, all right? Charlemagne is not one of us. He doesn't, as far as I know, he doesn't follow this stuff day in and day out. It's not his full time gig. It's just politics, right? So for him, AIPAC is a proxy for political control and Israel. And he's pissed off about the war in Gaza. That's it. That's the. So answer that question, which Shapiro doesn't want to answer. Why does he not want to answer that? Because he supports it, right? At the end of the day, he's one of those people who's like, yeah, Netanyahu is a real problem, but Israel is a place where gay people can get married. Right? Like, this is the line that's basically baked into them, remember? Also, what was that college op ed that Shapiro wrote about the idf? I don't, I'd have to go back and to check. It was genuinely crazy though. And it's one of those where with Josh Shapiro, this is going to be a political problem for him because I don't know what it is. I don't know why. It could be religious, it could be his own own personal feelings. It could just be genuine. Like not swimming in the world of today's democratic base. But him, Newsome. And who, who am I missing? Who messed up on the AIPAC question? But I mean, these are the two highest profile actual contenders. The fact that they can't. Oh, Corey.
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Booker.
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Booker. That's what it was.
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The three of them. The fact that they have never grappled with this, it's like, I don't know. I'm sorry. Just sheer lack of political talent. Real talent is the ability to thread the needle on that question. I haven't seen a single one of them been able to do that.
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Yeah. Newsom had a similar response.
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He flubbed it all.
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He said, I think it's interesting. Rather than answering the question, he confronted the idea of the question, he said, I find the question interesting. Yeah, I find the question interesting. Trying to make some illusions or something there. And then Booker also was like, you know, I don't get asked about this a lot. And like, you know, what about. And then he really face planted with the why doesn't anybody ask me about Nigeria or Sudan? And if you check his statements over the last five years, there's like one about Nigeria and had nothing to do with what he's talking about. It's like, wait a minute, you don't talk about that either, so get out of here.
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Also, are we funding that? This is what they always do. They're like, Christians are being slaughtered in Nigeria. I'm like, wow, that's horrible. How much are we paying for that? And they're like, yeah, exactly right. And it's like.
- [07:32]
E
And so Moulton is trying to thread an interesting needle here because he's saying he's still very much pro Israel, but he doesn't like the Netanyahu government. And he said AIPAC's problem is that they are too reflexively and unapologetically supportive specifically of the Netanyahu government. Let's roll C2 and then get AIPAC's response and unpack this.
- [07:56]
A
Recent polling has shown that Democrats do not support what has happened in Gaza and that they've pulled away from support for Israel. Or is it that you yourself have seen the images of what's transpired in this war and that it's reshaped the way you see the United States relationship to Israel?
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E
Look, the United States relationship to Israel is incredibly important. But I strongly disagree with the current Israeli government under Bibi Netanyahu. And I've been very outspoken about this for quite some time. I mean, in fact, I wrote an op ed just after October 7, right after those heinous attacks, saying that Bibi Netanyahu needs to have a political plan for the future, for Palestinians and for Israelis to live peacefully side by side. He still doesn't have that plan. So after months and months of pressuring the Israeli government, pressuring AIPAC itself to not just follow the Israeli government, I finally decided that I just cannot accept contributions from an organization whose mission is to support the current government in Israel.
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Congressman, let me just follow up on that really quickly. How do you reconcile rejecting APAC money.
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But still voting for the same policies.
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That AIPAC is advocating for. You have continuously supported sending offensive.
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That's not true.
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I've frequently disagreed with aipac.
- [09:19]
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No, I know you disagreed with apac.
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But you have been Voting for. Wait, wait, slow down, slow down.
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I know, but I didn't finish my question. I didn't finish my question. I was saying you voted for sending.
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Weapons to Israel, which is something AIPAC has advocated for. Okay, so, sure, there. There are some votes that we'll agree on.
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Very interesting, Ryan. I don't know. I mean, it's one of those where it does take some level of political courage to say, no, I won't take a single aipac dollar. Now, I'm not saying he's running for Massachusetts Senate. And he's running for Massachusetts Senate, and he's got a couple of things on his side. Right. So he's young. That's number one. So he's running against an opponent who is much older. That being said, remember Ed Markey survived a primary challenge from one of the Kennedy clan. Yeah.
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First Kennedy to lose.
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Yeah. The first Kennedy to lose in the state of Massachusetts.
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We are not required to remember which one it was because we lost.
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There you go. And what I remember, if I recall again, the race, which I covered extensively with Crystal, was that he really embraced a lot of the youth vote, the Green New Deals, the sunrise movement. This time around, though, this is a very smart thing for Seth Moulton to do by. I mean, it's a big headline no matter what. And it's one of those where regardless of whether he's threading the needle or not, the. The truth is, is that. And I've said this. I think we've all said this here on the show. What you want to do is to make your position politically. Politically convenient. Politicians are soulless scum. They believe in almost. Almost all of them believe in nothing. So what you want is for your position to be the cynical choice. That's how you really win. All right? That's how the neocons won. That's how the Israel lobby won. You think half of these people care about Israel? No. Okay. They just thought, free money, easy way to get elected. Yeah. You got to go and kiss the wall sometimes. It is what it is. Now, you flip that around, and that's really how, in my opinion, you win a sea change in politics.
- [11:08]
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And he's looking over his shoulder a little bit, too, because Ayanna Pressley has been eyeing this.
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Oh, I didn't know that.
- [11:14]
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This Senate seat. And was hoping that Ed Markey would not run for reelection. He frankly shouldn't. I mean, come on, man. There's plenty.
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Go ahead.
- [11:23]
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Like, right.
- [11:23]
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Enjoy your life.
- [11:24]
A
Yes. Like, how old is he? 80 something. Yeah. He's like 80. Yeah, it's too much. Listen, I couldn't agree with you more. Between Janet Mills, between him, I mean, Schumer and the rest of these people. I just. I feel like it's like a movie scene. I'm like, do you have any shame? Yeah, like, have you no shame, sir? Seriously.
- [11:39]
E
And because Presley came in with the squad, you know, she's been critical of Netanyahu in general specifically, but also Israel more broadly. And so if she gets into the race too, that, that'll make it interesting. But let's throw up AIPAC's response.
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Here we have it in front of us.
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AIPAC says Representative Moulton is abandoning his friends to grab a headline capitulating to the extremes rather than standing on conviction. His statement, they should say business. When are people going to start saying in statements rather than standing on business? His statement comes after years of him repeatedly asking for our endorsement and is a clear message to AIPAC members in Massachusetts and millions of pro Israel Democrats nationwide that he rejects their support and will not stand with them. Yeah, that is, I mean, no lies detected throughout that. He definitely has been asking for their support. And then to go back to Eamon Moyeldine's point, he's still voting for weapons for Israel, which is still going to be a significant liability. But I think the public would at least prefer. If you're doing that, at least you're doing it because you really love sending weapons to a genocidal state and not.
- [12:48]
A
Because we should remember, Moulton's whole shit shtick in this town has been the national security Democrats as it came to Washington. I mean, a lot of us, a lot of people, we don't follow this stuff day in and day out. I remember in the old days when he was like, I'm the national security Democrat, right? And immediately after the election, he actually came out. What did he say? He said something about, because this is why this is relevant to our next element. I need to find it. Why don't you put the next element up right now? I'll find exactly what he said.
- [13:15]
E
And he tried to organize a challenge to Pelosi around this kind of thing. So, yeah, put up the Dave Weigel element next. Says Senator Ed Markey, facing a challenge from Moulton, wore a trans rights flag during his no King speech. And Weigel correctly adds the context here, which is that Moulton said after the election he didn't want his daughters, quote, getting run over on a playing field by a male or formerly male athlete, unquote, saying that Democrats need to, you Know, reorganize their position, particularly when it comes to trans athletes and, you know, who plays in which.
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Yeah, I have the full quote. Democrats spend way too much time trying to offend anyone other rather than being brutally honest about the challenges many Americans face. I have two little girls. I don't want them getting run over on a playing field by a male or formerly male athlete. As a Democrat, I'm supposed to be afraid to say that. To be clear, I firmly believe there issue reasonable restrictions on transgender athletes in competitive sports. Now, obviously he's. I'm not a Democrat in Massachusetts, so makes sense to me, but apparently that's, you know, very difficult position for some Democrats to take.
- [14:18]
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It's very interesting because that's. It's like an 8020 issue that. Where you're talking about. If you talk about post puberty.
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A
Yeah.
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Like 80 plus, maybe 90 plus percent of people will say that people should. Kids should play in the sports where they're assigned gender at birth. That, this, that this idea where you're going to have a high school. It was like choose trans and switching. Like when it comes to a general election, they're losing that terribly. It's very interesting that Markey thinks that in a Democratic primary he's gonna win. He's gonna win this 8020 issue. On the other side, I mean, he might be right. He might be and he might be right.
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A
There's been a lot of trans retrenchment, if you ask me. I mean, it's kind of interesting. We haven't been able to cover it, but trans identification is at record lows already, basically proving it's a social contagion.
- [15:08]
F
Sorry.
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A
Yes, that's correct. Always has been. But the point actually, broadly around the transports issue, and this is more my political analyst hat on, is I could see how he would get attacked for. What's the language they always use? Like throwing trans people under the. Even though quite literally he's talking about athletes. I could see how the activist and Democratic class would say that giving an inch in any way to the Republicans on this issue is cowardly. Again, this is not a general election point. This is a Democratic primary and nobody.
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E
Will talk about this. Honestly though, because there are a lot of trans activists who disagree with that and who say it is wrong to die on this hill, because if we die on this hill, then we're all getting swept away. And there are plenty of trans people who are on the 80 side of this 8020 issue. Like, no, stop. Like, Leah Thomas should not be swimming against other women. Like What? Whatever.
- [16:05]
A
Yeah, but I don't see a lot of those people speaking up, Brian.
- [16:07]
C
They don't.
- [16:08]
E
No, they're not. That's. That's the point. But if you talk to them either privately or. Yes, like. But you're right, like. Well, listen, I hope he wins, have this conversation. They would find that it is. That there is not a monolithic kind of trans position on this.
- [16:25]
A
Well, it doesn't seem that way with the activist class again. We'll see. I don't know. I mean, I'm not speaking because their conversations. I'm being had. I'm fairly certain that there. I know. I don't remember exactly who. There was somebody in the. I think it was Emma Vigiland who attacked him over this, if I recall. Right. So there's going to be some activist pressure. Moulton. Because this was at the very days of election. He got hit by everybody. But that's my question is politically in the Democratic base. Listen, I get it. Because a lot of Republicans are like this. They don't want to give the enemy a single inch. Right. They're like, no, we fight together. We don't concede a single point of what we got wrong or of what is unpopular. We just continue to fight. I could see Markey making that into an issue. But this is the other thing where issue. And all of that aside, shouldn't it just be Presley versus Malta? I mean, dude, you're 80 years old. You need to leave. You're going to be 80. Let me get his age exactly correctly. But I mean, this should be Presley completely. He's 79. Right. He's running for reelection. Or at least for right now. He would be 86, 87 when he ended his term. Why are we okay with that? I'm sorry. Like, how are you gonna beat the Kennedys and say we don't have dynasties in this country and then nearly put yourself in a position where statistically you're gonna die in office.
- [17:42]
E
Right.
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A
It's. So it's the height of selfishness for all these people.
- [17:45]
E
Yeah. And I think Ayanna Pressley, if you're watching, you should just jump in. Yeah.
- [17:48]
A
You run and you can take the trans Leah Thomas position. All right. And then we can actually have a real debate.
- [17:55]
E
And that might push Ed Monkey out.
- [17:56]
F
Yeah, maybe.
- [17:57]
A
Right. That would actually. That's when I can't stand more than the trans thing. I would. I would rather it like. God, like, I'm so sick of these people who are hanging on the office. It's disgusting. It actually is and it's so disrespectful, I think, to the people of Massachusetts. It's a blue. It's a hard blue state. They deserve to actually like have a raucous, interesting primary new generation, actual representation in their state. That's who they are. Right? I mean, it's a very productive state. A lot of history and all that. And to have somebody who's that old, like, I'm sorry, I know how the Senate works. They don't work that hard for you. They just don't. They have to nap all the time.
- [18:31]
E
They don't.
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A
They are basically like, you know, even for travel and everything, they just will not have the same amount of viga, in the words of John F. Kennedy, that any younger person will. It's just, it's simple. Your time is up.
- [18:42]
E
Dude.
- [18:43]
A
Like, yeah, he's been, he has served 20 terms in the US Congress. That's insane. And he still wants to keep going.
- [18:51]
E
Was he class of 72?
- [18:53]
A
Let me find 76.
- [18:55]
E
Oh, 76. Oh, he's an old. He's a newcomer.
- [18:58]
A
Springtime. Here's the thing. Here's what you got. Here's how old Ed Markey is as the US representative for Massachusetts from 1976 to 2013. He entered the year after the helicopter left the US embassy of Saigon, which is black and white photo. That is how old this man is. That's how. Like the way that I think about a Ken Burns documentary. He was literally watching that on TV and served in the US Congress the year after that. I'm sorry, like, if you can, if you can remember that, you gotta go.
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B
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- [22:00]
A
Turning now to Epstein. We didn't have time to get into this and it actually is worth fully going through all of the new information. Let's go ahead and put this up here on the screen. This was from a new release by the House Oversight Committee which detailed a bunch of new Epstein files as well as an interview with Alex Acosta, who was the prosecutor who ended up giving Epstein his sweetheart deal. Julie K. Brown. Huge shout out to her from the Miami Herald. She's been covering this stuff from day one and I look to her always for some of her information. She has even more detailed knowledge of the case than I do. What she was able to uncover is that Matthew Menschel, who was the chief of the Criminal division of the Miami U.S. attorney Office and helped negotiate Epstein's sweetheart deal which allowed him to be released in 2009, is listed multiple times as having dinner and meetings with Epstein after leaving the U.S. attorney's office. So this is a huge bombshell because this is years after his release. Oh, before we go onto that one.
- [22:55]
E
Yeah, go ahead. Just this is for context, for later notice on that one 11:30 appointment with Leon Black.
- [23:02]
A
Oh, yeah. Oh, I'll get back to you.
- [23:04]
E
Put that one in your pocket.
- [23:04]
A
Don't worry.
- [23:05]
E
Same day.
- [23:06]
A
I'm coming back to Leon.
- [23:07]
E
Same day.
- [23:07]
A
All right. All right, Leon. Yes. But on the same day, having dinner with Matt Mengel, the very same prosecutor who was part of the office. In what world is that appropriate? You helped lock somebody away. Allegedly. Even with the sweetheart deal for a registered sex offender. Right. And then you're having dinner with that person three years later. It's like, do you have any, you know, semblance of. Of making sure. No conflict of interest? And it's Amanda Knox stuff right here. Yeah. Or even at a human level. At a human level, if you. Ryan, would you ever knowingly go into the house of somebody who was a registered sex offender? No. Yeah, exactly. All right. And this is my thing. Like.
- [23:45]
E
And he knows because he prosecuted him.
- [23:46]
A
I always think about this with guys like George Stephanopoulos and others who are like, yeah, I had dinner with him. I go, you know, maybe it's just me. I Google everybody who asked me to have dinner, okay? And if you're even remotely sketchy, I'm like, yeah, it's not happening. And I tell you, I've been invited to some sketchy stuff around here. Usually it has to do with arms dealers and stuff. Like, I'm like, even then I'm like, yeah, I don't know. You know who's paying for this? Right. It's one of those where there's some blood money here on the table. I don't want to have anything to do with that. Or I'll split the bill with you if I think it's interesting. That's the thing where apparently I'm a YouTuber and I hold myself to that standard. And these guys are like, oh, yeah, I prosecuted you, and even though you are a registered sex offender, I'm just gonna go ahead and I helped lock you away. I'm gonna go over to your house for dinner.
- [24:28]
E
And it's probably not with people. I don't know about him specifically, but it's probably not even though. Or despite. It's because.
- [24:35]
A
There you go.
- [24:36]
E
Because he knows the details of what Epstein is into.
- [24:39]
A
Yes.
- [24:40]
E
He wants to hang out with him.
- [24:41]
A
Because he wants to hang out, because he probably investigated. He probably added some of his tax returns and stuff in front of him. He goes, yo, I need to get in on this. He's like, this is a good deal right here, by the way. Speaking of that, as Ryan said, hold for Leon Black. Leon, I've Talked about Leon from day one in the Epstein case. It remains one of the most mystified. This is one of the titans of Wall Street. $9 billion net worth $150 million payment to the Jeffrey Epstein estate that has been revealed for quote, tax advice. Nobody knows why. He's been friends with him for decades. Everybody he's defended his relationship with. Epstein said he had no idea put him on the board of his charities. Decades long friendship. Well, Leon's emails with Jeffrey Epstein came out and they're pretty interesting, aren't they? They say Epstein was furious. For years he had relied on Leon Black as his primary source of income, advising him on everything from taxes to his world class art collection. By 2016, Black seemed reluctant to keep paying him tens of millions of dollars per year. So Epstein threw a tantrum. Epstein wrote in an email to Mr. Black, quote, he was another waste of money and space. Attacked Mr. Black's children as retarded for supposedly making his. That's relatable for making men of his estate. The typo ridden tirade was one of dozens of previously unreported emails reviewed by the New York Times in which Epstein hectored Mr. Black demanding tens of millions of dollars beyond the 150 million he had already been paid. The pressure campaign Ryan appeared to work Mr. Black for decades, who was one of the richest and most high profile figures on Wall street, forked tens of millions of dollars in fees and loans, albeit less than Mr. Epstein had been seeking. Of all the relationships his friendship with Mr. Black is the most important. He served jail time for soliciting prostitution. Mr. Black kept him afloat for many years. The new emails provide the most complete picture yet of their relationship. Now to be clear, you know, for legal purposes and with Mr. Black, I am simply noting how shocking it is for a titan of Wall Street, a private equity giant, one of the most well known billionaires in the city of New York. How completely opposite it is to the way that the Apollo Group and others would conduct business to seemingly constantly just caving to demands for tens of millions of dollars from Jeffrey. That's all I am noting. You can draw your own conclusion very specifically as to why anybody would ever act like that who made $9 billion and doesn't conduct business that way in any other way.
- [27:15]
E
Similar tone, similar tone and Black denies all things. Yeah, he Blacks vehemently denies similar tone from the New York Times article that Sager just put up. They write and this is one of those delightful sentences in the New York Times echoing Sager and quote and for reasons that are unknown, Mr. Black wired hundreds of thousands of dollars to at least who were associated with Mr. Epstein. According to court documents and notes taken by congressional investigators that were shared with The Times representatives, Mr. Black did not respond to questions about those payments to women. So in other words, he was. Representatives responded to a bunch of other questions that the Times sent but ignored those questions. So I like this phrase. For reasons that are unknown, Mr. Black wired hundreds of thousands of dollars to. At least we don't know why. Yeah, they are just good, good friends.
- [28:04]
A
Remain unknown to this day.
- [28:05]
E
Good, Good friends with these women. You know, they were. They were, you know, they needed a little help get through the weekend or something.
- [28:11]
A
It happens. It happens. You know, who amongst us has not floated our friends. Girlfriends. Right.
- [28:16]
E
I mean, with hundreds of thousands.
- [28:17]
A
With hundreds of thousands. I do it every day. Right, of course.
- [28:21]
E
And we're going to insinuate something about that. That's not rich.
- [28:23]
A
Exactly. I'm sure my wife would be cool with it.
- [28:26]
E
Right?
- [28:26]
A
She'd be totally cool with it. So here we have. Here's my other personal favorite from Mr. Black's lawyer. To imply Mr. Epstein somehow had influence over Mr. Black is false and patently absurd.
- [28:37]
E
Okay.
- [28:37]
A
To imply Mr. Epstein, who demanded tens of millions of dollars and received tens of millions of dollars and called his children retarded and also hectored and berated him, to imply he had any influence over Mr. Black is false and patently absurd. That's from Leon Black. Again, these guys, you think you just get $9 billion. You think somebody just hands it to you? No, you get it by being a swashbuckling dealmaker. What if. If I was running the Apollo, by the way, these guys are legends on Wall street, right? Apollo. Does Apollo just let somebody who. They're doing a leverage buyout of demand certain terms of conditions. Is that how you got $9 billion in net worth? No, you would be a bankrupt. Right. So we know he knows how to do business. And to say no, how to say fuck you, that's literally part of being a Wall street financer. And he did event. Well, yeah, we can get to that. Yeah. Ish. But the point remains, something. For some unknown, for reasons that remain unknown, that he continued to hand him tens of millions of dollars. Okay, all right, let's go to the next part here. This gets to the interview with Alex Acosta. I read the entire thing. Several hundred pages. Kind of boring, to be honest. They didn't do a very good job. But. Guys, please, put D3, please, up on the screen. Just to show you the signature claim from Alex Acosta is that any trial of Jeffrey Epstein, quote, would have been a crapshoot. Now this, this is a central issue because remember, Alex Acosta is a Labor Secretary under Trump. He was the prosecutor who did the sweetheart deal with Epstein. After he resigns as a Labor Secretary, the Office of Professional Review over the Justice Department does an internal investigation of the Epstein non prosecution agreement. They find that Alex Acosta and his office acted improperly. Now Acosta contends throughout this entire interview that he did nothing wrong and that he got the best possible deal. Now remember, the retroactive review by the DOJ specifically says that is not true. So they find fault with the actions of his office. Acosta stands up for the actions of his office, saying, effectively blaming the victim, saying, oh well, they weren't credible enough to be able to bring them to trial. By the way, remember that is in direct controversial of what some of the agents and the other people on the case said. So this is not, not 100% the view of the entire U.S. attorney's office. It is the view of Mr. Acosta, I will say, because there have been some sketchy questions here around the claim previously that he had said he belonged to intelligence. He claims that he never said that. He says, I never said it. So I want to make that very clear, cuz that's a quote I've relied on in the past.
- [31:11]
E
Yeah, it's probably one of the most famous claims.
- [31:12]
A
Yeah. So I want to be clear that he now emphatically denies he said, I never heard that from anybody. I didn't tell it to Steve Bannon. I have no idea where that comes from. So let's be clear, that's what he said. Now I've laid out my other case for why I do think he was at the very least involved with multiple foreign intelligence agencies. But nonetheless, Alex Acosta says there was nothing untoward. I never had any indication he was intelligence or whatever. Nobody told me what to do. Which by the way, again, that doesn't fit with some of the past timeline. The previous timeline was that Washington actually made a phone call around this from the doj. But you know, you have to get very dark and into the weeds on this. I think the fundamental premise though is even if we take all the intel stuff out of it and we just keep it focused on the victims, he basically was victim blaming throughout the entire thing. He said, yeah, they were incredible. They made stuff up MySpace page, they were sketchy. And so that's why the sweetheart deal is the Best that we could possibly get. Again, that's totally disputed. So his mindset around it does not seem conciliatory at all. He still continues to defend his conduct, Ryan, which I personally find disgusting intelligence. If anything, it's worse. I'm like, oh, so you just, you know, didn't believe them. He even says in there, he goes. He goes, well, the times were different. People didn't believe women at that time. I was like, so you're blaming the culture at the time. What is this? It was crazy.
- [32:32]
E
And the. If you look through his emails and the different appointments that he had, what you realize is that Jeffrey Epstein knew everybody. He had pull with Russian oligarchs, Russian top Russians, the Israelis, Europeans, Americans in both parties, and also Wall street and the banking world. He was at the middle of all. All of this stuff, and he had people who owed him and who he was willing to berate at the top levels everywhere. And so the idea that, at minimum, he didn't call in favors and that his powerful friends and do anything for him just is not remotely credible.
- [33:19]
A
Yep.
- [33:19]
E
Like that. Like, even if you don't think. Even if you dismiss the intel part, but also, to me, the intel part is a bit of a red herring because what we found going through all of these emails, he was absolutely doing work for people that are in the orbits of this intel world.
- [33:36]
A
Which only backs up everything that we've said. Yeah. Is no one has said he was an agent for this.
- [33:42]
E
That's not how the world works.
- [33:43]
A
Yeah, exactly. That's what we kept trying to explain. There are these fixers. There are these shady characters. If you live here in dc, you're familiar with them. They do contracts for Russia. They do contracts for Qatar, for the ua. They're hired guns. They have nexuses. They have foreign bank accounts. They have a special knowledge. What's the taken language? It's like a very specific set of skills that they have. And so, yeah, you guys released that report at dropsite about the Israel deal with Mongolia. They're convenient actors who can just insert themselves in the process.
- [34:10]
E
Epstein started out working with Adan Khashoggi.
- [34:13]
A
Exactly. Khashoggi is a literal CIA cutout. Like, it's like, this is a. It's trying to explain this to people who deny it is. They are relying on willful ignorance and the definition of terms which are fake. Like, no one has ever said he was anti card.
- [34:29]
E
Yeah.
- [34:29]
A
Here's his literal ID Bank.
- [34:32]
E
Wait, Actually, didn't the head of Mossad tell Barry Weiss that he wasn't oh, sorry, I forgot. Nevermind. Sorry.
- [34:37]
A
Thank you.
- [34:37]
E
We apologize.
- [34:38]
A
Shout out to the editor in chief of CBS News for her great, her great journalism.
- [34:43]
E
She settled this one.
- [34:44]
A
She settled the question. Settled question. Finally, let's put this one up here on the screen with the appropriate caveat. This is a new book, a memoir come out from Virginia Giuffre, remember one of the most prominent victims of Jeffrey Epstein. She did unfortunately take her own life recently. She'd lived a very troubled life. She famously was pictured in that photo with Prince Andrew. And in her new memoir, which was post homage release, she says she was quote, beaten, raped by a well known prime minister in attack. That broke the Epstein spell, her memoir reveals. Now, Ryan, you will be shocked to learn that the New York Post said well known prime minister and did not name the country.
- [35:21]
E
Oh, New York Post. Its journalistic skills failed it finally, what happened with that?
- [35:27]
A
Right. Which prime minister? Who was it? And in fact, it doesn't even appear in the lead paragraph. You have to go all the way down past three different advertisements to say that in past, however, she had pointed to Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak. Now, to be clear, Mr. Barak denies it. And also to be clear, yes, Virginia Giuffre was a very troubled woman and she did certainly say some things in the past which did not turn out to be true.
- [35:53]
E
Or that she's retracted.
- [35:54]
A
Or that she has retracted. Yeah, yeah. Which she personally has retracted. So all appropriate caveats and all of that said you should not necessarily take it to the bank. But the one thing nobody can ever get away from is the photo exists of her as a very young girl with her arm around Prince Andrew. And that photo, I'm sorry, you can't make it disappear. You just can't. And it was enough that Mr. Andrew, Prince Andrew. Sorry, I apologize to the Prince Randy Andy. Yeah, Prince Andrew, His Royal Highness, Prince Randy Andy has still remained out completely of public life and had a complete meltdown of it. What was his defense? He said, I don't sweat. He's like, I'm not a sweater. You remember that? I mean, if that's all you got, brother, I don't know, man.
- [36:37]
E
I'm sure he sweats.
- [36:38]
A
Yeah, it's like for sure human. He's like, really? The British don't sweat even in heat. Really? That doesn't fit with my experience. But.
- [36:44]
E
And going through Epstein's emails with Barack because Barack also got his emails hacked, of course.
- [36:49]
A
Yeah, you guys.
- [36:50]
E
And so there's some in there where he's like, hey, where Barack's like, can't wait to see you on the island. Maybe the security won't be there this time.
- [36:57]
A
Yes, I remember that.
- [36:58]
E
And there's another one where he's like, why don't, you know, why don't you talk to these particular women that they're doing a business deal with? He's like, because you really have a way with women. Like, so, like Barack. And this is post conviction and sentence. So Barack. And also everybody who talks about Epstein is like, the thing about him, even Leon Black said this. The thing about him is that he was always surrounded by beautiful women and girls.
- [37:22]
A
Guys, it's in the birthday book. Are we not. Are we stupid?
- [37:25]
E
Do you remember he signed the birthday book?
- [37:26]
A
He signed the book.
- [37:27]
E
Did Barack.
- [37:28]
A
Look at the cartoon where they have. They have Jeffrey Epstein, 20 years. It's like a cartoon drawing of him hanging out with young girls and them all in scantily clad bikinis giving a massage on the Virgin Islands. Twenty years later, it was out.
- [37:44]
E
Six years later, Something gross.
- [37:46]
A
So gross. So, yes, that's your update. I. I don't even have words. The Leon Black stuff, man. I. I just wish. This is the problem with these, you know, the house and all of this is get these guys Wexner. Wexner is like 90. He needs to testify while his mind is still there, okay? Before he can claim dementia or something like that. Get his ass on the record and, you know, under sworn testimony. Same with Leon Black. Same with, I mean, all of the top financiers. Because to date, all we have are the bullshit denials of Ghislaine Maxwell.
- [38:21]
E
I don't think we mentioned this yet. His fee to leon black was 40 million a year. He said, I want 25 up front. Other times he would say, I want 20 up front. 20 in January, 20 in July. That's what he was getting cranky about. Like, where is my $40 million? This is a guy who has no tax licenses. He's not even allowed to give tax advice without saying, I can't give tax advice. Charging $40 million to give tax advice.
- [38:49]
A
Yeah. And estate planning and art and all this. Yeah. It's such great taste, right? Like the photo of Bill Clinton in a fucking dress. Like, come on. What a joke.
- [39:02]
B
If you're waiting for your AI to turn into ROI and wondering how long you have to wait, maybe you need to do more than wait. Any business can use AI. IBM helps you use AI to change how you do business. Let's create smarter business. IBM.
- [39:29]
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- [41:31]
A
Turning now to Ukraine. We wanted to make sure we gave everyone an update. Still some major developments here. President Trump reverting back to his original position. UKRA has to give up some land in a peace deal. Let's take a listen. Friday, you said you had a cordial meeting with President Zelensky. During that. During that meeting, did you tell him he needed to cede all of the Donbas region to Russia?
- [41:52]
E
No, we never discussed it. We think that what they should do is just stop at the lines where they are, the battle lines. You have a battle line right now the rest is very tough to negotiate. If you're going to say, you take this, we take that. You know, there's so many different permutations. So what I say is they should stop right now at the battle lines, go home, stop killing people, and be done.
- [42:11]
A
What do you think should happen with the Donbas region?
- [42:14]
E
Let it be cut the way it is. It's cut up right now. I think 78% of the land is already taken by Russia. You leave it the way it is right now, they can, they can negotiate something later on down the line. But I said cut and stop. Stop at the battle. I go home, stop fighting, stop killing people.
- [42:33]
A
So that's the position today. A couple weeks ago, Ryan, he said that they could take back all of Crimea. So I don't know, nobody knows what's going on here. Let's put this up here on the screen from recent. You know this, by the way, very interesting. Not only that Zelensky and Trump met, but did anyone notice there was no joint press conference, There was no joint meeting. There was no statement afterwards by the president. Zelensky slunk in and he slunk out. And the reasons why is from the Financial Times. Quote, donald Trump urged Zelensky to accept Putin's term or, quote, be destroyed by Russia. The meeting descended many times, quote, into a shouting match, with Trump cursing all the time. They added that the president tossed aside maps of the front line, insisted Zelensky surrender the Donbas to Putin, and repeatedly echoed talking points that the Russian leader had made in their call a day earlier. Now, you know, obviously, that is coming straight out of Zelensky's mouth to the Financial Times, and we don't really know which way it's going to go, but it's just pretty obvious this is the only way this was ever going to end. You have the military power. I mean, the current US Intelligence estimate, apparently. I don't know if I believe this, but let's say it's directionally correct, is 100,000 people have been killed since January of 2025. Do you see a single crack in Russian society? They don't care. Now, I don't get it, all right? If 100,000 of my guys were killed for some bullshit like this, yeah, I would riot. I don't know. For some reason, they have a different society over there. Be it propaganda, maybe they believe in it, who knows? But the point is, their economy's doing well. I don't see a single crack in their society. Putin seems humming along more than ever before. They can throw as many bodies into this as we want. And Zelenskyy's like, oh, we need long range missiles. That's gonna make up the manpower deficit. You guys have 60 year olds on the front line. It's not gonna happen right from day one. So. So we're back to this. And yet even this morning, this is what I love about covering this administration. What do I see? Marco Rubio's call did not go well with Sergei Lavrov. And the potential meeting with Budapest, in Budapest with Putin may not happen because Russia has not backed off its maximalist position. So Trump says they need to surrender, but Russia hasn't backed off its maximalist position. So we're stuck right back from where we came from. They can't get their hands around this. Some something like Israel, Gaza needs to happen where they're like, yeah, we just gotta have to talk to Hamas. Like you just have to accept the unacceptable. And when that happens, yeah, you can actually get something done.
- [44:51]
E
Yeah. And Trump also said on Putin and Zelensky, they hate each other and it makes it a little bit difficult. And then he also added, but it doesn't affect us. Right.
- [45:02]
A
I agree with that.
- [45:03]
E
He really thought this was gonna be extremely easy. You know, it wouldn't happen if he was president. According to him, therefore, once he becomes president, it's going to end. That hasn't happened. And he's just flailing at this point as he told as Politico says, Trump. So Trump says he's going to meet again with Putin to discuss it. He's going to go back to that. The Budapest location is interesting. And it flows into this funny exchange between svdate huffpost reporter and is Caroline Levitt or.
- [45:38]
A
Yes, Caroline Levitt.
- [45:39]
E
I'll read the text first. So SV reaches out. Is the president aware of the significance of Budapest? In 1994, Russia promised in Budapest not to invade Ukraine if it gave up the nuclear weapons it inherited when the Soviet Union dissolved. Does he not see why Ukraine might object to that site? Who suggested Budapest? Thanks. Your mom did.
- [46:01]
A
I mean, it's funny, but it's not that funny.
- [46:02]
E
Yeah, and I'm gonna laugh at any mom joke.
- [46:05]
A
Yeah, mom joke is joke.
- [46:07]
E
He says, is this funny to you? And she said it's funny to me that you actually consider yourself a journalist. You're a far left hack who nobody takes seriously, including your colleagues in the media. They just don't tell you that to your face. Stop texting me your disingenuous, biased and BS questions. As far as I know, that's not the press corps understanding of my former colleague at sv. So then Caroline herself posted it for context. SV of the Huffington Post is not a journalist interested in the facts. He's a left wing hack, which she already said in there. Just take a look at his feed. It reads like an anti Trump personal diary. He is pretty anti Trump, no doubt about that.
- [46:42]
A
Okay, let's be honest. He has tds. I cover the White. I cover the White House.
- [46:46]
E
He's pretty.
- [46:47]
A
He's TDS prone. Listen, I don't care, all right? He's allowed to do whatever he wants.
- [46:50]
E
He's anti Trump.
- [46:51]
A
Yeah, he's full blown. I remember him in the press corps.
- [46:55]
E
I got nothing.
- [46:56]
A
Listen, I respect the dogged guys. Anybody who wants to sit there and fire off questions to the press secretary, that's your job. Your mom jokes. Yeah. Pretty immature. Not a good look for you, in my opinion. So, yeah, I mean, I don't know what else to say. You could just ignore it. Nobody said that you had to respond to the question. It is a legitimate question. I would tell SV to his face, but the premise itself is retarded. Based on this whole idea of the Budapest memories, is that they deserve it.
- [47:21]
E
Is that why Zelensky doesn't want to do Budapest? Because.
- [47:24]
A
No, he doesn't want to do Budapest because Orban is the only person in the EU who has a very different view of the Ukraine conflict. Right. And actually, I mean, a lot of people forget this. There are ethnic Hungarians who lived in Ukraine. I saw many of them who are Ukrainian citizens, because when I visited Budapest, they're all living in Budapest now, and they don't want to fight in the war, which is very instructive, isn't it? But the point just broadly around Budapest as the site, as the location is because Trump has a great relationship with Orban and Orban has a good relationship with Putin. So it would be neutral, ish territory for the two of them to meet. I do understand the prospect, but also, what do they expect Putin to meet in Berlin? Like, what are you guys. Are we joking? Like, yes. Where other than Alaska, which was actually good because it was halfway, it's still on U.S. territory. Or they could go meet in Vladivostok or something like that, I guess. I don't know. For some reason, Trump doesn't want to go to Russia. Yeah, Beijing. Well, that would be a real statement, actually, if that would be the brokering ground. Budapest seems as good as any other place to me.
- [48:25]
E
Lovely this time of year.
- [48:27]
A
Hey, beautiful city. I recommend everybody go. Gorgeous.
- [48:33]
B
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- [51:03]
A
Joining us now is David Dayan. He is the executive editor of the American Prospect and a great friend of the show. It's good to see you David. Thank you so much for joining us.
- [51:10]
C
Thanks for having me on.
- [51:11]
A
So, David, I have been fascinated by this term of vendor finance. I didn't realize, you know, I'm too young to actually remember.com, but luckily we have experts like you who can go through and can write all about how we're just living through the exact same crazy scenario. But before we actually even get to that, we wanted to get your reaction to the Amazon web service crash that just happened, which highlights this architecture which runs our entire economy, our entire digital life, and a single point of failure, literally a prospect of what it's like to live under monopoly. Let's put this up here on the screen. You know, everybody especially here on the east coast, woke up immediately. Multiple apps are not working, huge outage. You had banks, you had music services. So many different things where you had the single point of failure from a single server here in Northern Virginia in our area. And I mean just from a monopoly point of view, David, and especially the fact that their stock went up even after the crash. What does that tell you about this world that we live in?
- [52:13]
C
Well, I'm painfully aware of it because we couldn't get our newsletters out yesterday. They've run on with a company that was involved in the mess. Yeah, I mean, I'd go back to a different recession, which is the Great Recession of 2008, which was characterized by what is known as tight coupling. In other words, the banks were all tied in with one another. And so when there was a failure in the mortgage, back mortgages, sorry, mortgage backed securities market, that cascaded throughout the rest of the economy. And you see similar couplings here with respect to the cloud service and the Internet. And it's a really dangerous situation obviously because it's not just my newsletter and Netflix and things like that that are on there, but actually really important things on the cloud that people need to, to have every day.
- [53:17]
E
You were like, healthcare technology would be the first that I would think of as the kind of thing you don't want to go down. Transportation as well. And then we'll get into this other reporting because it very much is related. How do you think AI and crypto and blockchain played into this crash? And it was concentrated in Virginia that apparently the DSN finishes like right in here in Virginia, which also happens, I don't know if it's coincidence, also happens to be where the CIA and a lot of the other infrastructure around surveillance and back doors is as well. So you've got surveillance, AI, blockchain and then monopoly. What do you think is the driving factor here that, that produced this cascading collapse.
- [54:09]
C
Well, Virginia is maybe the data center head of the entire country. There is a tremendous amount of data centers there. And it stands to reason because there's so much compute needs. I just think that when you layer on and layer onto these systems and AWS is the biggest cloud infrastructure that we have in the world and when you just keep adding and adding and adding to it, you do create these single points of failure. You do create the ability for things to break down and they have bigger consequences when that happens. You see this in airlines where one glitch creates thousands of delays on flights. It's the same kind of.
- [55:01]
A
Yeah. And one of the. This really gets to the heart of what I wanted to talk to you about. Can we go ahead and put G3 up on the screen and you write about these circular finance deals that continue to see in the economy, this prospect of vendor finance where basically what happens is you sign a deal with a company, they give you a part of that company, the stock goes up, which effectively erases the so called price that you pay. Billions of dollars in so called value have been created but nothing has actually happened, been produced and or been paid. It doesn't seem to make any sense, but it's fueling the rise of all of these different companies. And it's even more importantly we talk about single point of failure. It's the only reason our stock market is up at all. Without it we would be in a recession.
- [55:48]
C
Yeah, something like 80% of the stock gains this year are related to AI linked companies. And something I've heard another stat, that data center infrastructure buildout is responsible for maybe 50% of the gains in GDP. So obviously we've put a big bet on AI and companies like Nvidia in particular. But there are others, these big companies that sell things. They sell, in the case of Nvidia GPUs which are the high end chips that run these AI data centers, they need customers. So what they're doing is actually creating their own demand. They sell or they invest in companies, startup companies, whether they are companies that make data centers like Core Weave or even companies that make AI models. Because Nvidia just did a huge deal with OpenAI or $100 billion. So they invest in these companies and then these companies turn around and use that money to build data centers which need GPUs which in video makes. So it's really circular. I've heard it called round tripping as well. And our contributor at the prospect, Brian McMahon referred to it as the Ouroboros, the snake eating its own tail.
- [57:15]
E
So help me understand how this keeps going, because I want to try to, but it's very hard for me to get my head around this. So let's say I run an apple orchard, right? And I make a ton of apples, but nobody wants to buy my apples. So I take money that I have and I give it to my neighbor and my neighbor uses the money to buy my apples. So now I have the same amount of money that I started with, but I don't have my apples anymore, right? Explain to me how this doesn't just all end in tears.
- [57:51]
C
There are all these people on the sidelines that say, oh, you have. You created another demand for your apples. And so we're going to give you more money because you're obviously running a very good business where you have a lot.
- [58:05]
E
So I've doubled my money and more money's coming in.
- [58:08]
C
That's the stock market, that's investors on the sidelines saying, this sounds good. Nvidia, you're creating your own demand. And so it doesn't stop until the music stops. And we've seen this before. As Segara alluded to, in the 1990s, there was an infrastructure build out of fiber infrastructure that was needed for the web. And Cisco was really the company at the center of it. And they were engaging in this vendor financing for these startups that were creating fiber optic layout. And it was all great until it turned out that Nobody really needed pets.com anymore. And at that point Cisco lost 80% of its value. So we have been here before. It sounds great and it works great until it doesn't. We don't know when that time's going to be. If I knew that, I would be a very rich man. But. But what we know is that it doesn't feel like it can last forever.
- [59:11]
A
So that's my last question. David. One way I've been kind of coping on why it won't is the economy, in my opinion, was a lot more real in 1999. In 2000, we actually did build stuff. It wasn't great, it was still financialized, but there was something actually happening in the US economy. Now this is it. If 80% of stock gains and 50% of data center is GDP, the system cannot afford a crash. Now that hasn't necessarily stopped it before, but why wouldn't they just pull out all the stops to say, actually no, the crash is not happening because our entire economic livelihood depends on it.
- [59:51]
C
It's certainly possible that's only operative if you believe in a they. If you believe that there's no other force that can thrust reality into being. I mean the similarities, people are making a lot of connections to 1990, the 1990s and the dot com build out. And by the way, you can have a build out of a physical good but still have it end with a financial crash. I mean railroads had bubbles when they were being built out the transcontinental railroad and led to the panic of 1873 and things like this that were really terrible depressions. So technologies can be useful but the financing behind them can still be really, really bad. And so I relate this as much to the financial crisis as I do to the dot com build out. And there are even some of the same players. Ryan might remember the name Magnetar. They were a hedge fund that they would basically build these mortgage backed securities and then bet against them. This is like right at the end of the bubble. Magnetar is the leading institutional investor in CoreWeave, one of these companies that builds data centers.
- [61:08]
E
Magnetar is still around?
- [61:10]
C
Yes, they never went away. And so here we are 20 years later, close to 20 years later. And Coreweave is at the heart. This is one of these companies that they've never made any money, but they have a lot of investment and it's kind of Wile E. Coyote not looking down at the ground and seeing nothing situation. And so when I heard Magnetar was involved, I got heart palpitations a little bit.
- [61:40]
E
And Zuckerberg actually I'm sure you noticed this, he brought up the railroad example himself. He said just like in the railroad example, this was infrastructure that was needed. And there was a huge bubble and a lot of rail lines got built that went to nowhere because the companies went bankrupt. And there was just money to be made in saying that you were going to build a railroad and then money would come in, you'd pay off the politicians who would then give you the easements and you pay the politicians off it in stock in the railroad. That was some of those big scandals at the time. And then the bubble popped and as Zuckerberg said and a lot of companies got wiped out. But we had some rail lines laid down and then the oligarchs could come in and buy up cheap assets, which also Zuckerberg said. So what's going to happen? From Zuckerberg's perspective, there will be a bust. I don't know if it'll be as bad as 1873 or the 1890s. But then the oligarchs that survive come in and buy up everything for very cheap and then kind of do it all again. And you know, it took us until the Progressive Era and then the New Deal to sort that out. I don't know if we're on a shortened time frame or what this time around.
- [62:55]
C
Well, I mean, certainly if you think about what would happen in the aftermath of something like this popping and the pop can come from any, any way, whether it's China coming up with models that turns out they don't need a ton of infrastructure to be built to do, or, you know, we find out that AI has a plateau and it's, you know, cat videos aren't, you know, God in the machine, whatever it is. What do we think if it happens under this administration? We're pretty sure that there's probably going to be a bailout of some sort because, you know, we're seeing it right now in farming. I mean, if you have a connection or a closeness to this administration, they're going to take care of you. And so that scenario that you just put out there where the oligarchs, tech lords come in and they're kind of, it's almost that they're incubating themselves or isolating themselves from the pain by engaging in these financial games because ultimately it's going to be retail investors and these small companies like Cora Weave that can be sort of jettisoned off and then the oligarchs that are throwing off their own cash flow can come in and take over.
- [64:27]
A
Yeah, thank you so much for your insight, David. Really rely on the work that you guys do and I think that this is genuinely one of the most important issues in the US economy. So thank you for breaking it down. We'll see you later, man. Thank you so much for being here, Ryan. We appreciate you very much, brother. And Ryan and Emily will be on tomorrow with counterpoints. So we'll see you all then.
- [64:50]
D
Foreign.
- [65:01]
G
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A
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- [66:10]
E
The holidays are overwhelming, but I'm tackling.
- [66:13]
A
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- [66:26]
E
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