10/8/25: Jon Stewart Begs Dems On Gov Shutdown, MTG Breaks With Party, Bondi Squirms On Trump Epstein, Cuomo Attacks Zohran

Summary

Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar — October 8, 2025

Episode Theme:
A wide-ranging, fiery dive into the current government shutdown, deep divides in both political parties, major hearings surrounding Pam Bondi and Epstein, and the latest in New York and Middle East politics. The hosts analyze the high-stakes political gamesmanship in Washington, highlight fractures within the GOP, and scrutinize high-profile personalities facing the heat.

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Main Topics Covered

1. Government Shutdown: Jon Stewart’s Plea and the Back Pay Debate
2. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s Break with the GOP on Health Care
3. Pam Bondi’s Painful Testimony: Trump, Epstein, and the Elusive $50k
4. Andrew Cuomo’s Comeback Tour and Donor Admission
5. Zohran Mamdani’s Israel/Gaza Statement and the Political Blowback

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1. Government Shutdown: Jon Stewart’s Plea and the Political Stakes

Theme:
Democratic strategy, Trump administration tactics, and the personal connection and frustrations of average workers are put under the Breaking Points microscope.

Key Discussion Points

• Jon Stewart’s Fiery Critique [07:35]:

  • Stewart blasts Democratic leadership for their timidity and lack of boldness during the shutdown, demanding they fight harder for the millions who voted for them.
  • Quote:

    “Standing up for 75 million Americans in this moment to defend the rights of people to go into a little less medical debt seems like the least they can do.” — Jon Stewart [08:39]

• Trump Administration’s Gamble: No Back Pay? [09:10]:

  • Russ Vought at OMB pushes the narrative that not all furloughed federal workers would get back pay, directly contradicting congressional and historical precedent.
  • Trump’s comments suggest picking and choosing which workers “deserve” pay:

    “There are some people that really don’t deserve to be taken care of and we’ll take care of them in a different way.” — Donald Trump [09:30]

  • Republican Senator John Kennedy insists Congress, not the President, decides pay:

    “We’ve always, we’ve always paid back pay ... Congress has already always appropriated the money, and we will this time.” — John Kennedy [10:14]

• Why This Matters:

  • The threat of no back pay, while considered a bluff by the hosts, instills insecurity in the federal workforce leading to more sick calls and disruptions (e.g., FAA staff, air travel delays).
  • Krystal: “How many people out there watching this, you know, can just miss two or three paychecks without your entire thing coming crashing down?” [12:05]
  • Both parties are accused of playing political chicken with real people’s livelihoods.

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2. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s Shock Break with GOP on Health Care

Theme:
MTG defies the GOP by demanding health insurance support for her constituents, highlighting desperation over doubling premiums as ACA subsidies expire.

Key Discussion Points

• MTG’s Dissent: Policy over Partisanship [23:06]:

  • She challenges GOP orthodoxy, advocating for health insurance affordability and refusing to use shutdown politics as leverage.
  • Quote:

    “I don’t see why the government needs to be shut down. I really don’t... when my own adult children can hardly afford health insurance premiums... We have to talk about it.” — Marjorie Taylor Greene [23:32]

• A Direct Rebuke to Republican Strategy:

  • She openly criticizes foreign spending prioritized over domestic woes and blasts both parties for failing to address rising costs.
  • She ties her political awakening to ACA, sharing her family's struggles with rising premiums.
  • Krystal, critiquing MTG’s logic:

    “People with insurance are crushed by high hospital bills that subsidize uninsured people's hospital bills. Yet her party’s push is to increase the number of people who are uninsured...” [26:17]

• Why It’s Significant:

  • MTG’s statements shatter GOP consensus and reflect the pressure Republicans will feel from their own base if premiums double.
  • The hosts praise her principle, noting this is rare independent thinking within the party.
  • Ryan:

    “You are not fixing the system. You’re just making the system worse by not extending the relief. The politics of it are insane. The substance and the morality of it is completely insane. And Marjorie Taylor Greene is the only person... making this argument for Republicans.” [31:48]

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3. Pam Bondi on the Hot Seat: Trump, Epstein, and Missing Money

Theme:
Pam Bondi, Trump’s new Attorney General, faces grilling in the Senate over Jeffrey Epstein’s files, possible evidence of Trump involvement, Qatari gifts, and the mysterious $50,000 bribe.

Key Discussion Points

• Evading Epstein Questions [41:03]:

  • Bondi dodges and parries questions about the supposed Epstein client list, flight logs, and photographs involving Trump.
  • Durbin and Whitehouse press hard; Bondi responds with counter-accusations or outright non-answers.
  • Sheldon Whitehouse’s question:

    “Do you know if the FBI found those photographs in their search of Jeffrey Epstein’s safe or premises...?” [43:15]

  • Bondi’s response:

    “Senator Whitehouse... you sit here and make salacious remarks... when you’re the one who was taking money from one of Epstein’s closest confidants... Reid Hoffman...” [43:20]

• $50,000 Bribe in a Kava Bag [48:57]:

  • Adam Schiff lists Bondi’s evasions, emphasizing the Department of Justice’s lack of transparency.
  • Bondi repeatedly claims incidents were resolved before her confirmation or refers questions to others.
  • Schiff:

    “This is supposed to be an oversight hearing... and it comes in the wake of revelations that a top administration official took $50,000 in a bag and this department made that investigation go away.” [48:46]

  • Bondi protests, “You’re not going to sit here and slander Tom Homan.” [49:59]

• Host Reactions:

  • The hosts frame the Bondi/Trump crew as the new deep state, defending their own from the kinds of allegations they once used to rail against the establishment.
  • Krystal:

    “Epstein is the best illustration... because they tagged along in MAGA World with this idea of draining the swamp... Now they are the deep state.” [51:07]

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4. Andrew Cuomo’s Comeback: Donors, Denials, and Deflection

Theme:
Former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo’s run for NYC mayor is under fire for donor overlap with Trump and weak answers on past misconduct.

Key Discussion Points

• Trump Donor Double Dip [57:09]:

  • Stephanie Ruhle presses Cuomo on why the same people donate to both him and Trump.
  • Cuomo’s awkward honesty:

    “Of course. Why not? If you are a New Yorker, you know Donald Trump, you know me. Many of them would give money to Donald Trump and give money to me...” [57:33]

• Sexual Misconduct Allegations [59:03]:

  • Cuomo reframes patterns of harassment as “a painful lesson... to be more cautious... Any joke, any comment. I won’t kiss a person on the cheek unless they initiate a kiss.”
  • Krystal’s aside:

    “The other allegations were much more serious than kissing on the cheek.” [60:34]

• Political Strategy:

  • Krystal explains Cuomo’s Tammany Hall-style spoil system:

    “What he is is he’s a very good old school, Tammany Hall, New York-style politician... It was called three men in a room... It didn’t matter what you wanted... What mattered was what these three men in the room wanted.” [61:20, 62:28]

  • Cuomo’s coalition with Republicans and personal relationships with donors are standard spoils politics, not an accident.

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5. Zohran Mamdani’s Israel/Gaza Statement: Backlash and Context

Theme:
NY Assemblymember Zohran Mamdani releases a careful statement for the two-year anniversary of the Oct 7 attack, drawing heat from both sides.

Key Discussion Points

• The Statement [69:26]:

  • Mamdani mourns Israeli victims of Oct 7 (“horrific war crime”), condemns Israel’s response as “genocidal war,” and mourns all lost lives, calling for an end to occupation.
  • Excerpt:

    “Our government has been complicit through it all. This must end. Occupation and apartheid must end. Peace must be pursued through diplomacy, not war crime.” [69:26]

• Critique from the Left and Right:

  • Left critiques: Statement over-attributes Oct 7 deaths to Hamas, omitting Israel’s “Hannibal directive” and other complexities.
  • Right/Democratic establishment: No statement would have sufficed; they want absolute condemnation of Hamas and silence on Israeli actions.

• Hosts' Assessment:

  • Ryan:

    “There’s no version of this statement that would have been acceptable to them. I didn’t think the statement was that bad. I would have just used the first paragraph on 10/7 and all the rest on 10/8.” [73:03]

  • The uproar signals the impossibility of nuance in American political debate on Israel/Palestine, reflecting the powder keg nature of the issue in New York.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the stakes of the shutdown:

  “Republicans are so completely out of touch with their own voters... That's how you end up in a situation where people are desperate and take matters into their own hands.” — Krystal Ball [35:41–36:16]

• On MTG’s health care break:

  “This is a sea change for the last, what, 15 years of Republican politics if this sticks.” — Ryan Grim [23:46]

• On Bondi and Epstein testimony:

  “She was either deflecting to blame Dems for their own connections... or just not answering—just sitting there blank-faced.” — Ryan Grim [46:05]

• On New York machine politics:

  “Three men in a room. And it didn’t matter what you wanted... What mattered was what these three men... wanted. And the way that they enforced discipline was through vengeance and doling out cash.” — Krystal Ball [62:28]

• On the impossibility of Israel/Palestine debate:

  “That this is infuriating so many people... there are a lot of concessions embedded in this statement as well.” — Krystal Ball [74:34]

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Timestamps of Key Segments

| Time | Segment | |-----------|----------------------------------------------------------| | 07:35-08:45 | Jon Stewart unloads on Dems over shutdown | | 09:10-13:35 | Trump, Russ Vought, and the federal worker back pay bluff| | 13:55-16:23 | FAA delays—shutdown’s real-world consequences | | 23:06-26:52 | Marjorie Taylor Greene breaks with GOP on health care | | 41:03-51:21 | Pam Bondi’s testimony: Epstein, Trump, and $50k bribe | | 57:09-65:41 | Andrew Cuomo grilled on donors & comeback campaign | | 69:26-75:55 | Zohran Mamdani’s Israel/Gaza statement controversy |

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Tone and Style

The discussion is sharp, irreverent, and sometimes biting, true to Breaking Points’ anti-establishment brand. The hosts critique both parties and their own ideological alliances, highlighting the failures of both the Democratic and Republican establishments to address core issues facing everyday Americans.

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This summary omits advertisements and non-content podcast promotions, focusing on the episode’s main discussions and political analysis.

Transcript

[Podcast Announcer]

This is an iHeart podcast.

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The murder of an 18 year old girl in Graves County, Kentucky went unsolved for years until a local housewife, a journalist and a handful of girls came forward with a story.

[Krystal Ball]

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Listen to Graves county on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts and to binge the entire season ad free. Subscribe to Lava for Good plus on Apple Podcasts.

[Jonathan Goldstein]

I'm Jonathan Goldstein and on the new season of Heavyweight. And so I pointed the gun at him and said, this isn't a joke. A man who robbed a bank when he was 14 years old and a centenarian rediscovers a lost 80 years ago.

[Ryan Grim]

How can one 1 year old woman fall in love again?

[Jonathan Goldstein]

Listen to heavyweight on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Krystal Ball]

Hey, I'm Jay Shetty, host of the On Purpose podcast. I had the incredible opportunity to sit.

[Ryan Grim]

Down with the one, the only cardi b my marriage. I felt the love dying. I was crying every day. I fell in the deepest depression that I had ever had. This was not given to me. I worked my ass off for me.

[Jonathan Goldstein]

Listen to On Purpose with Jay Shetty on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Ryan Grim]

Hey guys, Sagar and Krystal here.

[Podcast Promo Narrator]

Independent media just played a truly massive role in this election and we are.

[Ryan Grim]

So excited about what that means for the future of this show. This is the only place where you.

[Krystal Ball]

Can find honest perspectives from the left.

[Ryan Grim]

And the right that simply does not anywhere else. So if that is something that's important to you, Please go to BreakingPoints.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. We need your help to build the future of independent news media and we hope to see you@breaking points.com.

[Krystal Ball]

Good morning and welcome to Breaking Points. Emily, how you doing?

[Ryan Grim]

Doing great. As a reminder, everyone get a premium subscription. Yes.

[Krystal Ball]

That's what makes this show work.

[Ryan Grim]

That's right.

[Krystal Ball]

There's going to be a lot of fascinating stuff on today's program and some of it will make you furious at some other elements of the media and hopefully will make you grateful for outlets like Breaking Points, like Dropsite. And as that gratitude washes over you, remember that you can go to breakingpoints.com and become a premium subscriber to help this thing go along so that we don't have to moonlight as speechwriters for powerful political figures. You don't want us to have to do that.

[Ryan Grim]

That's a little teaser of what's to come. Ryan has some really great original reporting to share later in the show and.

[Krystal Ball]

A couple things that we don't have time to get to.

[Ryan Grim]

Yes.

[Krystal Ball]

If you missed the Katie Porter interview, it's going viral. Go find it. Incredible. She's like, let me see if I can torpedo my campaign in one interview. Yes, it's really incredible.

[Ryan Grim]

Mission accomplished.

[Krystal Ball]

The background on her, the knock on her in the House was always that she was cruel to staff and also to some other members. Her defenders said, no, no, no, that's sexist. She's just tough.

[Ryan Grim]

Oh, my God.

[Krystal Ball]

You go ahead and watch this clip. You tell me who was right about that. We also maybe we'll get to cover this, the Virginia election at some point, but there's this wild AG scandal going on.

[Ryan Grim]

It's a disaster.

[Krystal Ball]

And a guy apparently was quoting Michael Scott from the office, but took four days to say that and got painted as somebody sending out death threats or something.

[Ryan Grim]

I don't know.

[Krystal Ball]

Whole thing is incredible. Might cost Democrats everything in Virginia. We'll see. As it was mentioned on the show yesterday, Alex Colson, our job site Journal colleague, and more than 100 others were released from Israeli prison. But overnight, nine more ships were illegally seized by Israel in international waters, including the conscience and like eight other ships, more than 150 doctors, journalists, nurses on their way to deliver said they had about $115,000 worth of aid to deliver. So that's now in the hands of the Israelis.

[Ryan Grim]

And Pam Bondi was testifying in the Senate yesterday. So a lot of highlights from her very contagious testimony. And it really ran the gamut, as you would expect it to, from a lot of questions about Epstein, but also some questions about that Qatari jet, some questions about the National Guard, the uses of the National Guard and much more. So stay tuned for the highlights and lowlights of Pam Bu testimony, Andrew Cuomo making the rounds, talking to Stephanie Ruhl, talking to the View. It's really something. And we'll talk a bit about Zoram Mamdani's controversial, I guess we can say 107 host. We'll break down the controversy, the nontroversy, whatever you want to call it, and get to that. There's also we're going to be talking to one of the journalists who broke a story wide open about the Argentinian bailout that we covered last week in the soybean conference. Tax is what we talked about last week. But actually, how did that money from the United States end up going to Argentina? Why is probably the better way to put it. Why did that money end up going? There are many explanations, but I think he landed on a pretty good one. Ryan.

[Krystal Ball]

Yep. Yeah. Eugenio. Eugenia Muzio will be joining us from Argentina, who's done a lot of the reporting that exposed which, which particular hedge fund executives were lobbying our hedge fund executive who now serves as secretary of treasury, to give me a whole bunch of money to bail them out and screw our farmers along the way.

[Ryan Grim]

It's good for everyone. Yeah, yeah. Win, win, win.

[Krystal Ball]

And some L's here at home. But that's okay.

[Ryan Grim]

Yeah, whatever. Don't worry about it. Okay. So should we get to the shutdown?

[Krystal Ball]

Yeah. And then we'll talk about some David Frumman, Douglas Murray stuff at the very end.

[Ryan Grim]

That's right. Because you. Yeah, that's. This is the tease. Let's bring this intro full circle. Ryan teased support breakingpoints.com, premium memberships. If you can't like and subscribe. It helps us so much and leave comments. That helps us so much. But Ryan has a piece of original reporting that I was going to say dropped at drop site last night, but I felt really bad saying that. But it's, it's something else.

[Krystal Ball]

Yeah. And then we'll also have Israel also got caught with a, running a basically a bot campaign trying to prop up a new shah in Iran. We'll talk to Negro Motuzavi about that later in the program. It's just like, how do you even keep your head around any of this stuff?

[Ryan Grim]

I don't know. But I'm glad that at least it's just bots at this point.

[Krystal Ball]

Yeah, it's bots all the way down.

[Ryan Grim]

Yeah. All right, let's get to the shutdown. So yesterday, Donald Trump took questions in the Oval Office. We're going to bring you some of those comments basically centered around federal workers. And a roll a clip of Jon Stewart for his insight into how Democrats should be handling this. But before for a do, that's what Trump is going to be talking about. It's what the conversation was about on Capitol Hill. It's this question of back pay for furloughed workers. The Trump administration is actually insisting that it can just get rid of a lot of workers and then not pay a lot of workers as a way to sort of up the ante. For Democrats. So with that in mind, let's go ahead and roll this clip of Jon Stewart talking about how Democrats should be handling the shutdown fight.

[Adam Schiff]

75 million Americans voted for a Democrat in this last round of presidential elections. And at this moment, they have zero power at the federal level. Not in the House, not in the Senate, not in the executive and not in the courts. There has not been a moment of conciliation or concern about the issues and policies that drove those 75 million votes. Not a moment. At present, the Democrats largest victory over these past eight months is getting a guy who may or may not be a criminal back from El Salvador so Trump could send him to Uganda. That was the big win. And then suddenly a small ask for people's preservation of health care is a Molotov cocktail. Look, I've given Democrats an enormous amount of shit for their poor leadership, lack of specific and actionable plans, terrible messaging, abysmal wordplay. Did I mention poor leadership? But standing up for 75 million Americans in this moment to defend the rights of people to go into a little less medical debt seems like the least they can do.

[Ryan Grim]

So Donald Trump and Russ Vogt over at the Office of Management and Budget are trying to change the calculus for Democrats away from even what Jon Stewart is saying there and complicate the shutdown conversation. Let's go ahead and roll this clip of Donald Trump in the Oval Office getting questions about whether federal workers should be entitled to back pay. There was a memo from Russ Vote that suggested otherwise. Here's here's Donald Trump.

[Krystal Ball]

Is it the White House's position that.

[Podcast Promo Narrator]

Workers should be paid for their back pay?

[Adam Schiff]

I would say it depends on who we're talking about. I can tell you this.

[Krystal Ball]

The Democrats have put a lot of.

[Adam Schiff]

People in great risk and jeopardy.

[Krystal Ball]

But it really depends on who you're talking about. But for the most part, we're going to take care of our people. There are some people that really don't.

[Adam Schiff]

Deserve to be taken care of and.

[Krystal Ball]

We'Ll take care of them in a different way.

[Ryan Grim]

Okay, so that didn't sit well, actually, even with some Republicans. We'll put a three on the screen. This is Mike Johnson's website still saying that you actually have to pay back pay to federal workers. Sam Stein picked up on that. Although Mike Johnson is of course supportive of everything Trump says for the most part at this moment, John Kennedy of Louisiana is not. We could go ahead here and roll a four. The president. It's not up to the president. I mean, his opinion matters. But Congress has got to appropriate the, read the Constitution. Do you think it's legal for federal workers? We've always, we've always paid back pay.

[Andrew Cuomo]

To the military and federal workers. And Congress has already always appropriated the money, and we will this time, in my opinion.

[Ryan Grim]

So this comes down to a dispute over whether Russ Vote is or is not correctly interpreting what kind of powers he has during a shutdown. I'm going to read during, from NPR here, quote, the shutdown does not give Vote or the White House any extra powers, according to Bridget Dueling, a law professor at the Ohio State University who worked at OMB for over a decade. She argues it's a clear misunderstanding of the differences between temporary lapses in appropriations, which is what a shutdown is, versus permanently laying off workers. She says, quote, this is a bluff. The White House, meanwhile, says Democrats have left them no choice but to look for savings across the federal government. But they have not explained why permanent layoffs would be necessary and not just temporary furloughs. So, Ryan, this is yet another debate about executive power and how the Trump administration is challenging norms. Not just norms, but also interpretations that have become norms as it relates to the power of the purse strings and the power of the executive branch. All that is to say, I think some of this is a bluff. I also think it goes into that bigger picture conversation about executive power they're forcing right now.

[Krystal Ball]

Right. And people say, well, it's federal law. Well, federal law is what is literally what Congress says is federal law. Congress writes the federal law. So theoretically, they could come in and say, you know what? We're not. Well, there's minimum wages that you have to pay to people. Kennedy is right. Congress appropriates money. If you appropriate it, then you have to give it to them. So the president can't just come in and say, well, I didn't like these workers, but I did like these workers. And federal workers are all over the country. There's this idea that they're really only here in Washington and Virginia and Maryland. But that's not at all the case.

[Ryan Grim]

Oh, yeah, it's like 80% of federal workers are outside the D.C. area.

[Krystal Ball]

Right. And so, and they all like Kennedy. It's just wrong. Like, because it's not their fault. Like, these are, I think Kennedy just gets it on a basic level. These are people who have, who have jobs. They did their jobs. They were told they cannot come to work. They're now going to be asked to miss multiple paychecks, probably, which. How many people out there watching this, you know, can Just miss two or three paychecks.

[Ryan Grim]

Yeah.

[Krystal Ball]

And without your entire thing coming crashing down and getting in the letters that you start getting sort of red lines under them and red, you know, they're printed on red paper. So he gets that it's just untenable ethically to not pay them when it's no fault of their own. And also, as he has pointed out, every single time they have paid the.

[Ryan Grim]

Workers.

[Krystal Ball]

In whatever deal they come up with. So I don't, I can't imagine a world in which Democrats do this whole thing because they're ready to fight, fight, fight, fight, fight, but then at the very end, they cave on paying their work, the workers. Like, I just. You Republicans would have to nuke the filibuster made to, like, get around paying the workers. And they don't have the votes for that because Kennedy and others are not with them on it.

[Ryan Grim]

Unless. Yeah, I mean, they would. They would have to nuke the filibuster. I'm trying to think if there's another, like, legislative maneuver, if they could tag it into something.

[Krystal Ball]

No. And also, it's not just Kennedy, like, Susan Collins is not voting for that. Murkowski would not vote for that. So now, now you're down to 50 without. And the, you know, these Utah guys done like, you don't have the votes to not pay the federal workers.

[Ryan Grim]

Ross, vote. So, so while we're on the topic of Republicans and their leverage, or lack thereof, to continue the shutdown going. Let's roll this clip. Actually, about FAA delays. It's a complicated question as to how FAA ends up with delays during the. Or how air travel ends up with delays during a shutdown. We'll break it down, but let's roll this clip.

[Krystal Ball]

The air traffic control facility responsible for flights approaching and departing Nashville International Airport are set to close for five hours tonight because of short staffing. The Federal Aviation Administration says that flights will still be allowed to continue flying during the closure, but pilots are going.

[Adam Schiff]

To have to contact the Regional Air.

[Krystal Ball]

Traffic Control center for permission to enter the airspace.

[Podcast Announcer]

So the reason being given for the.

[Krystal Ball]

Staff shortage, that's not immediately clear. Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy, though, did say on Monday an increased number of controllers have been calling out sick since.

[Podcast Announcer]

The start of the shutdown.

[Ryan Grim]

So if there's this idea that workers might not even get their back pay, we saw in a 2019 shutdown, and this is the New York Times noted that this morning, quote, controllers at important facilities began calling in sick at high rates, contributing to widespread flight delays and bringing a swift end to that shutdown. On Monday, Sean Duffy said he had seen a slight tick up in sick calls from controllers since the current shutdown began last week. Ryan, I don't know about you, I would expect that to go up when you start talking about potentially taking away the back pay.

[Krystal Ball]

Right. And as we said, they're going like they don't have the votes to not pay them. So it's just a bluff. But the bluff gets heard around the world, especially if you're a federal worker, you're following this news very closely. So then you're like, all right, well, I'm sick. I'm not. If I'm not getting paid for this, then I'm not coming in.

[Ryan Grim]

Yeah, you're asking people to like, risk just having volunteered as an air traffic controller in these conditions of which they're already completely understood, understood staff. Now to your point, I think they're, they're going to get paid. I do think that it's a bluff, but I think it's a bluff in the context of this big picture reorganization that Rustboat is architecting to consolidate powers he believes should be in the executive branch. In the executive branch.

[Krystal Ball]

All of them.

[Ryan Grim]

Many of them. And I actually don't think he's wrong about some of them. We've debated that before. But in this case, they are trying to take away, they're trying to blame Democrats, get Democrats to be blamed. Like the Jon Stewart argument. They're trying to undercut for Democrats by saying, well, look at what you're doing to federal workers. We have no choice. That was the line from Mike Johnson is like, Russ has no choice. Democrats have left him with this choice. I don't know how well that's actually going to work when you are making the decisions in the executive branch for what's happening. It's not necessarily part of the government shutdown. So that you have to nobody, everybody knows this hasn't happened before during government shutdown. So I think the politics of that argument aren't super easy.

[Adam Schiff]

Right.

[Krystal Ball]

And the way that this should end is that frankly, Republicans should just cave on the substance here. Because think about it, what do Democrats want? They want to save Republicans from a massively damaging political hit where 20 million people will see their health insurance premiums double in an election year and Democrats are trying to save them from that. And who agrees with me? None other than Marjorie Taylor Greene.

[Ryan Grim]

Well, we'll get to that in one second. What did you make of the Jon Stewart argument?

[Krystal Ball]

Well, that, that is the argument. That's the thing that like they have no plan, they've got no vision, they got no message. But they have to do try something like that. Like that's, that's all that boils down to.

[Ryan Grim]

So how long, I mean, do you think Democrats, the politics of it, how long does it make sense for them to avoid coming to the table? I expect eventually they will come to the table on the question of health care. And again we went through the specifics.

[Krystal Ball]

And I thought they'll have to give something on it.

[Ryan Grim]

Right. So probably non citizen ACA enrollment or federal subsidies.

[Krystal Ball]

And Democrats keep saying we are not providing health insurance to illegal immigrants.

[Ryan Grim]

Right.

[Krystal Ball]

So then just figure out a way to write that.

[Ryan Grim]

Well, I mean they would have to come to the table on the federal hospital reimbursements, Medicaid reimbursements and ACA enrollments for asylum seekers and probably all of that.

[Krystal Ball]

I mean, if Republicans keep trying to just undermine their own hospitals, like so people who are undocumented come into hospitals.

[Ryan Grim]

Right.

[Krystal Ball]

So what, what, what would Republicans want done to a hospital who is required to treat somebody?

[Ryan Grim]

Well, even the Republican plan includes reimbursements. It's just a level of reimbursements which.

[Krystal Ball]

Is, you know, a lot of that is rural hospitals.

[Ryan Grim]

Yeah, yeah. Anyway, but that's where I think that.

[Krystal Ball]

They probably will have lower level. Why lower levels like are the hospital is like rural hospitals are too rich. Like what are they trying to do?

[Ryan Grim]

I mean, I'm sure it has something to do with the influx of the last several years that federal reimbursements have skyrocketed for those hospitals.

[Adam Schiff]

Right.

[Krystal Ball]

And we should. But okay. And there's a point in the Marjorie on the MTG post that actually goes directly to that.

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[Krystal Ball]

All I know is what I've been.

[Adam Schiff]

Told, and that's a half truth is a whole lie.

[Podcast Promo Narrator]

For almost a decade, the murder of an 18 year old girl from a small town in Graves County, Kentucky went unsolved until a local homemaker, a journalist and a handful of girls came forward with a story.

[Krystal Ball]

I'm telling you, we know Quincy killed her.

[Podcast Promo Narrator]

We know a story that law enforcement used to convict six people and that got the citizen investigator on national tv.

[Krystal Ball]

Through sheer persistence and nerve, this Kentucky housewife helped give justice to Jessica Curran.

[Podcast Promo Narrator]

My name is Maggie Freeling. I'm a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist producer and I wouldn't be here if the truth were that easy to find.

[Krystal Ball]

I did not know her and I did not kill her or rape or burn or any of that other stuff.

[Ryan Grim]

That y' all said. They literally made me say that I.

[Podcast Promo Narrator]

Took a match and struck and threw it on her. They made me say that I poured gas on her from Lava for Good. This is Graves County, a show about just how far our legal system will go in order to find someone to blame.

[Krystal Ball]

America, y' all better wake the hell up. Bad things happens to good people in small towns.

[Podcast Promo Narrator]

Listen to Graves county in the Bone Valley feed on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And to binge the entire season ad free. Subscribe to Lava for Good plus on Apple Podcast.

[Jonathan Goldstein]

I'm Jonathan Goldstein, and on the new season of Heavyweight, I help a centenarian mend a broken heart.

[Ryan Grim]

How can a 101-year-old woman fall in love again?

[Jonathan Goldstein]

And I help a man atone for an armed robbery he committed at 14 years old. And so I pointed the gun at him and said, this isn't a joke. And he got down.

[Krystal Ball]

And I remember feeling kind of a.

[Jonathan Goldstein]

Surge of like, okay, this is power. Plus, my old friend Gregor and his brother try to solve my problems through hypnotism.

[Krystal Ball]

We could give you a whole brand new thing where you're like super charming.

[Ryan Grim]

All the time, being more able to.

[Krystal Ball]

Look people in the eye, not always hide behind a microphone.

[Jonathan Goldstein]

Listen to heavyweight on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Ryan Grim]

Marjorie Taylor Greene, Republican Obviously, Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene is breaking with her party on this question of subsidies. And honestly, in a very smart and principled way, if I may say so, let's put this this is a video of Marjorie Taylor Greene talking about her stance. She put a couple of tweets out over the course of the last couple of days, breaking with the GOP on whether or not or how they should negotiate during the shutdown. And it is a sea change for the last, what, 15 years of Republican politics if this sticks. And it's not just Marjorie Taylor Greene, I'll say it is a sea change in and of itself given the popularity of Marjorie Taylor Greene with average MAGA and Republican voters. So here she is talking about her stance on health care and to allow.

[Podcast Announcer]

Democrats to have some sort of moral high ground on this issue because they're only one. The only ones talking about it, I think is a major failure from the Republican Party. And I'm not going to stand there and just keep talking the talking points when my own adult children can hardly afford health insurance premiums, when everyone in my district. It's the number one issue that I hear about day in and day out. Not just people on the aca, but people that have private insurance as well. And I think it's something that we have to talk about. And I don't see why the government needs to be shut down. I really don't. I believe that if Republicans learn to govern and weld power, they can use the nuclear option in the Senate, they can open up the government, we can get back to work for the American people and Republicans can solve this problem. That is a very big problem that we can't ignore.

[Ryan Grim]

So I co signed basically all of that. Right. We can put her original post up. She like shattered the Republican consensus on X by a couple of really long posts. But she said I was not in Congress until this Obamacare Affordable Care act bullshit started. I got here in 2021. And she goes on to say the ACA made health insurance unaffordable for her family. And this is actually she talked in the Megyn Kelly interview. She did what, like a month or more ago now that the Affordable Care act fight was completely formative to her political journey. That's part of what got her into politics. Many such cases on the right. And she says I'm not toeing the party line on this. I'm going to go against everyone on this issue because when the tax credits expire this year, my own adult children's insurance premiums for 2026 are going to double along with all the wonderful families and hardworking people in my district. We can go ahead and put her next this is a hold on before.

[Krystal Ball]

Some good other good stuff here cooking. Yeah. All our country does is fund foreign countries and foreign wars and never does anything Never does anything to help the American people. Lots of exclamation points. It is true. It is absolutely shameful, disgusting and traitorous that our laws and policies screw the American people so much that the government is shut down right now fighting over basic issues like this. Again, no. And this is this key point that I want to bring up later. Again, no funding for illegals and any benefits for them. But we have to do something about the absolutely insane cost of insurance for Americans. You don't hate your government enough. I'm here in Washington D.C. this week to meet with anyone who is America only and will work with me on a plan for Americans only. And then she has a kind of a chatgpt but a bunch of stats about how absolutely brutal it is for health insurance. She picks up on the illegals point again in the next one.

[Ryan Grim]

If you want to do.

[Krystal Ball]

The toothpaste is out of the tube.

[Ryan Grim]

She says the toothpaste is out of the tube on Obamacare. And the argument she's making here is she says, trying to make clear that I think the entire system is messed up. She goes on to say, and this is. Brian, is this what you were looking for? We are importing doctors from foreign countries because we don't have enough American doctors who are being strangled by health insurance companies and regulations. People with insurance are crushed by high hospital bills that subsidize uninsured people's hospital bills. The list of problems goes on and on.

[Krystal Ball]

Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. So that's where I would stop her.

[Ryan Grim]

Yeah.

[Krystal Ball]

All right. People with insurance are crushed by high hospital bills that subsidize uninsured people's hospital bills. Yet her party's push is to increase the number of people who are uninsured, which, according to her own logic, and she is absolutely correct, only increases the costs for hospitals, which are passed on to people with insurance.

[Ryan Grim]

Yeah.

[Krystal Ball]

So what are you doing here? So stop. What I would say is separate out your immigration policy and your healthcare policy. Stop trying to do them together. There's nobody coming across the border. Like zero. Actually less than zero. We have a net outflow of people. Probably at this point. You're rounding up everybody that's a little bit darker than me. You're doing your immigration policy. If you believe that uninsured people getting emergency treatment at hospitals because they can't afford to go to. They don't have insurance. To just go to a doctor and do it the right way drives up the cost for all of us, everybody else. Why you want to do that? Like, if you Think that's bad, don't do it. I know that's a crazy idea, but if you think it has a bad policy outcome for Americans, you're American only, right? You guys are all American only. So hunting people who are actually here legally, but you don't like their status because you think that Biden shouldn't have given them the status that they currently have. Although, even though it is legal status and they're in legal, like they're in legal proceedings.

[Ryan Grim]

Although the hospital reimbursements do cover people who are not here legally.

[Krystal Ball]

Right? So do you want the government to do that, or do you want the hospitals to charge Americans more when they come in? Like, what are you doing if you think that prices are too high for your adult children? Are you serious about that? If you're serious about that, then enact a policy that makes the prices come down, not something that just needlessly goes after undocumented people. You don't like undocumented people. You're showing us that there's no mystery. You don't like them. You're rounding them up. You're chasing them everywhere. You're throwing them into paddy wagons, you're putting them in tents. The alligator Alcatraz is still going. You're. You're making things as miserable for them so that they sell to port like you're. You're doing it. All right, but then why also, just for pettiness, drive up Americans health. I'm trying to speak their language here. Americans, Americans, Americans, right? You're driving up the health insurance costs for Americans just out of some sense of bitterness now, I guess the argument. Well, it's, if somebody from El Salvador understands that they can get free medical care at a hospital when they have a fever in America, then they're going to run through the daring gap and pay all this money that it's some poll thing. Stop. That's not serious.

[Ryan Grim]

It does make it significantly easier to live here when you don't have.

[Krystal Ball]

But the only other possibility is not happening, which would be when you show up at a hospital, you have to show your papers, and if you don't have the proper papers, you are denied care. And that's never gonna happen. So we're gonna treat people who are here who are sick and dying. We're gonna do it.

[Ryan Grim]

Yeah.

[Krystal Ball]

So the question is, how are we gonna do it?

[Ryan Grim]

Well, this is what I like about her argument is that she's tapping out of this stupid, stupid notion from Republicans that they should have their constituents and American taxpayers who are already Paying crazy amounts in their health insurance. They should just expect them to trust that Republicans at some point will fix this broken system and in the meantime hold them hostage to a hike. All because Biden is the one that put the subsidies in place. Like it is completely stupid. It's a ridiculous argument.

[Krystal Ball]

Didn't the Cares act have some subsidies?

[Ryan Grim]

It may have, which is true.

[Krystal Ball]

That was Trump.

[Ryan Grim]

Yeah, it absolutely may have. So 2021 comes from Biden. And that's where you explain you broke this down in detail last week. That's where a lot of the, that's where a lot of the premiums which would be affected because those are expiring at the end of the year. And so the Republican plan to fund the government would strip away those credit or doesn't extend them after they expire at the end of the year. And this is where Marjorie Taylor Greene is tapping into no care. You're wrong. Okay, no cares on substance. But this is where Marjorie Taylor Greene is actually tapping into something that it should be conventional wisdom, it should be completely obvious to people who are paid stupid amounts of money as lobbyists and consultants to these idiot politicians or Republicans. Seriously, people's premiums are going to become, they're already insane. They're going to become more insane. It's going to be on your watch and you're doing all of it just with this vague promise that at some point Republicans are going to fix the entire health care system when they had all of the momentum in the world behind repeal and replace. Could not land on a consensus replace part of repeal and replace precisely because of this. And what I like about what Marjorie Taylor Greene is saying is that, like, listen, I think it's true that those Biden era subsidies in the long term actually are, and some parts of Obamacare actually are causing health care to get more expensive and have over time. I get that. And that's what she's saying too is like, it's true, but you are not fixing the system. You're just making the system worse by not extending the premiums, the relief. And so yes, I get it that in the long term all of these subsidies are making a bad system worse, but you're not fixing this system and you're asking people to suffer and pay even more money into a bad system that you are not doing shit about in the process. It's completely, it's like the politics of it are insane. The substance and the morality of it is completely insane. And Marjorie Taylor Greene is the only person, the only person out here making this Argument for Republicans. We hinted at it last week, or at least I did. From the right. Hinted at it last week. But you hear absolutely nothing else about it from the right, essentially. Even though it seems, Ryan, like a very, very obvious point.

[Krystal Ball]

I think that's right. And I don't wanna sound too harsh on MTG here, because I'm with her on almost all of this, and I think she's getting to the right place. I think what she's shown herself as willing to do is to be an independent thinker who follows her own logical train to its conclusion, whether or not that conclusion aligns with what she's supposed to think as a partisan. Right, because she's supposed to think as a partisan that you're against these subsidies.

[Ryan Grim]

Yes.

[Krystal Ball]

And. But she worked it out independently and she's like, wait a minute. No, I'm sorry. Like, this is not good. Like, we actually should be for this. So I think that if she's able to. This is a giant. If get past this whole illegals thing, she'll figure out that, oh, yes, uninsured people coming to hospitals causes huge problems to the system, which are then born by Americans who have health insurance. We need to do something about that. Whether it's some government subsidy for hospitals which exists, and we just buff that up so that it doesn't get passed on to Americans or whatever it is. Just figure out something. Because it shouldn't be the failures of the American government, should not be the responsibility of these insured American people.

[Ryan Grim]

If.

[Krystal Ball]

We'Re not actually a democracy. Like, you know, if you're a real democracy and you screw up your policy, then, yeah, that's on you. But we're not really one, so we should be held a little bit more blameless.

[Ryan Grim]

And already there's a story here in NBC News. Trump has called senior Republicans to ask, quote, what's going on with Marjorie? The answer. MTG has become disillusioned with her party, especially after the White House talked her out of her Senate bid. Well, I would add to that, I think it's pretty obvious the pushback she's gotten on Israel as, again, she emphasizes, an ardent supporter of Israel, has been completely transformative for her in the way she looks at her own party. She's never been sort of lockstep supporter of the Republican Party, but I just think this is the bigger point that I'll finish on. Ryan is just like, the blinking red lights should be freaking Republicans out right now, and they're not listening to any of it. You have normie responses like, the new Zach Brian song about ice coming and knocking down on your door. And Republicans are ready to, like, Dixie Chicks 2.0. I think, in the words of John Rich, Joe Rogan has said, what are you doing? Like, cut this stuff out. And whatever we may or may not disagree with these guys on, like, that is these are flashing red lights for Republicans that they feel like they have all of this cultural momentum after 2024 in a way that they thought they never could. They had Silicon Valley on their side, some people from Hollywood, some celebrities. Trump wins the popular vote and now their grand project. I think they're wildly overconfident in their ability to sell it to the American people. It's not just that they feel like they have this generational opportunity to kind of reorganize the government, because obviously they think that they question of then what's part of that project and then how do you sell it? And right now, they're so completely out of touch with their own voters, people who are like independent swing voters, people who are rural voters. That's not to say Democrats are in touch, because they aren't either. And that's a sad statement on the system, that basically nobody is in touch with voters. And that's, by the way, how you end up up in a situation where people are desperate and take matters into their own hands and do vigilante more and more in the future and because they feel like the system isn't working anymore.

[Krystal Ball]

Right. And Trump was elected because prices are too high. Life is too hard.

[Ryan Grim]

Yeah.

[Krystal Ball]

And everything he's doing is making things more expensive. And now Democrats are trying to save him from doubling health insurance premiums. And Marjorie Taylor Greene is trying to save him from the doubling health insurance premiums. And Trump thinks that Democrats are communists and that, what's wrong with Marjorie Taylor Greene? Here's an idea. Just don't double health insurance premiums. What do I know?

[Ryan Grim]

It might actually work with your own voters. Yeah.

[Krystal Ball]

Who don't want to pay double for crappy insurance.

[Ryan Grim]

Yeah. It's the instincts that, like, Steve Bannon has, not to keep going on about this, but on maga, not wanting entitlements to touch. Trump has always had that instinct, too. But here, I mean, it should again, be flashing red lights. Abundantly obvious that just because these are Biden subsidies, that in the long term are making a bad system worse. You don't double people's premiums. It's insane.

[Krystal Ball]

And meanwhile, let's definitely also not do anything about Epstein.

[Ryan Grim]

Yes, of course. Because that's also something nobody cares about.

[Krystal Ball]

Giant Hoax.

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[Krystal Ball]

All I know is what I've been.

[Adam Schiff]

Told and that's a half truth is a whole lie.

[Podcast Promo Narrator]

For almost a decade, the murder of an 18 year old girl from a small town in Graves County, Kentucky went unsolved until a local homemaker, a journalist and a handful of girls came forward with a story.

[Krystal Ball]

I'm telling you, we know Quincy killed her.

[Podcast Promo Narrator]

We know a story that law enforcement used to convict six people and that got the citizen investigator on national tv.

[Krystal Ball]

Through sheer persistence and nerve, this Kentucky housewife helped give justice to Jessica Curran.

[Podcast Promo Narrator]

My name is Maggie Freeling. I'm a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist producer and I wouldn't be here if the truth were that easy to find.

[Krystal Ball]

I did not know her and I did not kill her or rape or burn or any of that other stuff.

[Ryan Grim]

That y' all said.

[Podcast Promo Narrator]

They literally made me say that I took a match and struck and threw it on her. They made me say that I poured gas on her from Lava For Good. This is Graves County, a show about just how far our legal system will go in order to find someone to blame.

[Krystal Ball]

America, y' all better wake the hell up. Bad things happens to good people and small towns.

[Podcast Promo Narrator]

Listen to Graves county in the Bone Valley feed on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. And to binge the entire season ad free. Subscribe to Lava for Good plus on Apple Podcast.

[Jonathan Goldstein]

I'm Jonathan Goldstein and on the new season of Heavyweight, I help a centenarian mend a broken heart.

[Ryan Grim]

How can a 101-year-old woman fall in Love again.

[Jonathan Goldstein]

And I help a man atone for an armed robbery he committed at 14 years old. And so I pointed the gun at him and said, this isn't a joke. And he got down.

[Krystal Ball]

And I remember feeling kind of a.

[Jonathan Goldstein]

Surge of like, okay, this is power. Plus, my old friend Gregor and his brother try to solve my problems through hypnotism.

[Krystal Ball]

We could give you a whole brand new thing where you're like super charming.

[Ryan Grim]

All the time, being more able to.

[Krystal Ball]

Look people in the eye, not always hide behind a microphone.

[Jonathan Goldstein]

Listen to heavyweight on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Krystal Ball]

Attorney General Pam Bondi wandered over to the upper chamber for a little bit of Epstein question and no answer. Session with with the senators. Let's roll B1 here, retiring Dick Durbin.

[Adam Schiff]

Attorney General Bondi, why did you publicly claim to have the Epstein client list waiting for your review and then produce nothing relevant to that claim?

[Podcast Announcer]

Senator Durbin, Senator Durbin, if you listen to my entire clip on that, I said I had not reviewed it yet, that it was sitting on my desk along with the JFK files, the Martin Luther King files. And I said I had not yet reviewed it.

[Adam Schiff]

Why was the July 7 memo unsigned?

[Podcast Announcer]

The July 7 memo came from the FBI and the Department of Justice. Director Patel answered those questions very clear. And, and you know, Senator Durbin, I find it very interesting that you refused repeated Republican requests to release the Epstein flight logs in 2023 and 2024. You fought that. Did you take money from Reid Hoffman campaign donations?

[Adam Schiff]

I will quarrel with you as to Reid. Somebody that you mentioned. I never heard of Reid Hoffman. So who gave the order to flag records related to President Trump?

[Podcast Announcer]

To flag records for President Trump to.

[Adam Schiff]

Flag any records which included his name.

[Podcast Announcer]

I'm not going to discuss anything about that with you, Senator.

[Adam Schiff]

Eventually you're going to have to answer for your conduct in this. You won't do it today, but eventually you will.

[Krystal Ball]

Can't imagine who would have given that order, can you?

[Ryan Grim]

I mean, it's hard to say. There's so many possibilities. Actually, you know what's funny is there. There are really so many possibilities. It could have been anyone who wanted to protect the president other than the president, or. You don't even need to anything.

[Krystal Ball]

Yeah, right. That's true. Sheldon Whitehouse, also a little bit of back and forth as well. B2, there's been public reporting that Jeffrey Epstein showed people photos of President Trump.

[Adam Schiff]

With half naked young women.

[Andrew Cuomo]

Do you know if the FBI found.

[Krystal Ball]

Those photographs in their search of Jeffrey.

[Andrew Cuomo]

Epstein, safe or premises or otherwise.

[Krystal Ball]

Have you seen any such thing?

[Podcast Announcer]

You know, Senator Whitehouse, you sit here and make salacious remarks, once again trying to slander President Trump left and right, when you're the one who was taking money from one of Epstein's closest confidants. I believe I could be wrong. Correct me, Reid Hoffman, who was with Jeffrey Epstein on multiple occasions, and the senator sitting right next to you tried to block the flight log from being released. Yet you're grilling me on President Trump and some photograph with Epstein.

[Adam Schiff]

Come on.

[Andrew Cuomo]

The question is, did the FBI find.

[Krystal Ball]

Those photographs that have been discussed publicly by a witness who claimed Jeffrey Epstein.

[Andrew Cuomo]

Showed them to him? You don't know anything about that.

[Ryan Grim]

Okay, if you weren't watching that, her face at the end, did you see that? She looked like she was in physical pain.

[Krystal Ball]

This also underscores why it would be cool to have an actual opposition party, because. So Reid Hoffman, for people who don't know, he's the LinkedIn billionaire and has spent ungodly amounts of money trying to smash the left wing, the populist wing of the Democratic Party. So just figuring out ways to go after specifically Bernie Sanders, aoc, Rashida Tlaib, Cori Bush, Jamaal Bowman, the whole squad, and anybody who's remotely adjacent to them. So that was Reid Hoffman's project. His whole idea is we're gonna beat Trump by first smashing the populist wing of the Democratic Party. Because in his theory. Well, I think two theories. One is that he doesn't like the populist wings. They want to tax people. They don't like oligarchs. But his actual surface argument was those are unpopular people, and Democrats would be more popular if it's just like the Dick Durbins and the White Houses of the world who don't really say anything offensive to anybody, and then they will win just by not being Trump. So that's this billionaire who became deeply involved in Democratic politics and was also tight with this creep Epstein. So, again, believe it or not, imagine if you had just an opposition party that could cleanly say, we don't have anything to do with Jeffrey Epstein because he represents the oligarch class and we're not with them. You're not going to find Mamdani on a plane with Epstein. And it doesn't have anything to do with personal morality. It's just they're not floating around with the oligarchs. So it kind of allows this tap dance that Bondi's doing, yet it's still completely unconvincing. It's like, where are the photos? Where's the photos? Just photos. Where are the photos? You said you've got them on your desk, right? Like, where are they?

[Ryan Grim]

Right. No, I mean, actually, I think that point is important, that even with that ammunition, Pam Bondi comes into this hearing knowing that White House, for example, is connected with Reed Epstein and that actually Dick Durbin has fought Marsha Blackburn in the past when Democrats were in power over the flight logs. All that's true, but Pam Bondi still had this complete. She was doing one of two things. She was either deflecting to blame Dems for their own connections or for their own corruption, which, as Ryan points out, there's plenty to work with, but it looks like a deflection. Or as we saw at the end of that clip, she's just not answering. She just standing there or sitting there blank faced or saying, I don't know, I don't know. Adam Schiff, of all people, speaking of the shifty Schiff, speaking of corrupt Democrats, let's go ahead and roll. Adam Schiff. Schiff. What I would say, actually, I can't believe I'm even saying this, like getting the better of Pam Bondi in this exchange.

[Krystal Ball]

Shifty Schiff is good in these hearings.

[Ryan Grim]

For the most part, even if he's.

[Krystal Ball]

Not always on the up and up.

[Ryan Grim]

Theater kid. Maybe. Maybe that's what this is. All right, B3.

[Adam Schiff]

You were asked whether you consulted with career ethics lawyers as you promised you would do during your nomination hearing when you approve the president receiving a $400 million gift from the Qataris. You refuse to answer that question. You were asked who or what role you may have played or who played the role in asking that Trump's name be flagged in any of the Epstein documents gathered by the FBI. You refused to answer that question. You were asked whether Homan kept the $50,000 bribe money. You refused to answer that question. You were asked whether Homan paid taxes and on the $50,000 bribe money. You refused to answer that question. You were asked, did career prosecutors find insufficient evidence to charge James Comey? You refused to answer that question. This is supposed to be an oversight hearing. Oversight, Excuse me. You can attack me after my time is over.

[Podcast Announcer]

Oh, you've attacked all of us, including President Trump for your incident.

[Adam Schiff]

You can attack me later. And I know you've got plenty of canned attacks. We've heard them all day to day.

[Podcast Announcer]

Canned attacks on you.

[Adam Schiff]

This is supposed.

[Podcast Announcer]

No one needs a canned attack on you.

[Adam Schiff]

Regular order Madam Chair, I'm trying to speak. This is supposed to be an oversight hearing of the Justice Department, and it comes in the wake of an indictment called for by the President of one of his enemies. This is supposed to be an oversight hearing, and it comes in the wake of revelations that a top administration official took $50,000 in a bag and this department made that investigation go away.

[Ryan Grim]

Oversight. It's like we're talking practice.

[Podcast Announcer]

Oversight.

[Ryan Grim]

We're talking practice. So she got more questions about Tom Hellman. This is what Adam Schiff was alluding to. We can go ahead and roll B4.

[Adam Schiff]

Is there a tape that has audio and video of the transfer of the 50,000?

[Podcast Announcer]

You would have to talk to Director Patel about that.

[Jonathan Goldstein]

No, I'm talking to you.

[Podcast Announcer]

I don't know the answer, Senator.

[Jonathan Goldstein]

Yeah, you do know the answer.

[Podcast Announcer]

Don't call me a liar.

[Adam Schiff]

I didn't call you a liar.

[Podcast Announcer]

You just said, I know the answ. I said, I don't know the answer.

[Krystal Ball]

You have to talk to Director Patel.

[Podcast Announcer]

What I said is that investigation.

[Adam Schiff]

If you don't know, why don't you know whether there was a tape and video?

[Podcast Announcer]

Senator, I believe that was resolved prior to my confirmation as Attorney General.

[Adam Schiff]

Do you think that it is of public interest for the people to know what happened to the 50 grand that the FBI turned over to Homan?

[Podcast Announcer]

Did you hear what I just said? That was resolved prior to my confirmation as Attorney General. That's why I said I would not go.

[Adam Schiff]

It's not resolved. There's $50,000. Homan has it or somebody has it. Do you have no interest in knowing where it is?

[Podcast Announcer]

You're not going to sit here and slander Tom Homan.

[Krystal Ball]

Well, Tom Homan did nothing wrong.

[Ryan Grim]

They did indeed continue to ask questions about Tom Homan, and she will continue to get asked questions about Tom Homan. There's no doubt about that. Ryan. And I mean, the Epstein story is really the best illustration of the situation that people like Pam Bondi, Cash Patel, Dan Bongino, and others find themselves in, because they tagged along in MAGA World with this idea of draining the swamp and dismantling the deep state. And whether or not they were ever sincere or they ever thought Trump was truly sincere about that, they now find themselves in this position. And Epstein is the best illustration of it, of being the deep state and being defensive of their actions as part of the deep state. And so not only does it allow Democrats to have this new. I don't know if I can call it moral high ground. I don't really think anyone has the moral high ground here. But this ability to sort of claim the populist mantle and say we're trying to get questions about or we're trying to get answers about all of this different corruption, whether it's Epstein, whether it's a bribe in a kava bag, which is, is the allegation around Tom Holman. And Bondi's doing her best to undercut it by pointing out, hey, you guys have problems too, but she's the one in power now.

[Krystal Ball]

Right. And Also, where's the $50,000 that was in the kava bag?

[Ryan Grim]

It's still in the kava bag.

[Krystal Ball]

It's a very hard question to what to what about.

[Ryan Grim]

Like, haven't you taken 50 grand in a kava bag?

[Krystal Ball]

Let me just, let me just start over because this one apparently is too confusing for you to just answer directly. Where is the $50,000 that was in the kava bag that he took in order to steer contracts?

[Ryan Grim]

Well, and are they even saying that he did take it? Like this is. We don't have a lot of ideas about.

[Krystal Ball]

I mean, the reporting was that he took it.

[Ryan Grim]

Right. But is the DOJ right now saying that he actually took it or that he didn't? Because.

[Krystal Ball]

Right. They're not saying, although the White House at one point said that's misinformation.

[Ryan Grim]

Right, right, right.

[Krystal Ball]

But it's like, okay, well that's your opinion, man.

[Ryan Grim]

And Holman has said, I did nothing criminal, I did nothing illegal. So it sounds like Homan probably accepted a bag.

[Krystal Ball]

I will say $50,000.

[Ryan Grim]

Right, right, right. I will say there some stuff in this story you could potentially, potentially. I don't know what percentage chance this is, but you could potentially look at entrapment. But they're not saying enough to. I mean, if it was a cut and dry entrapment case, they would be out there talking about how Tom Homan was by the deep state.

[Krystal Ball]

So they should have asked if he wanted to like blow up a bridge with his paintball buddies, then he'd be doing life in prison.

[Ryan Grim]

Crazy times. Crazy times. So, yeah, not an easy day for Pam Bondi. Nor will it be as she continues. She will continue to have to sit for at these hearings.

[Podcast Promo Narrator]

So, yep, time for a sofa upgrade.

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[Krystal Ball]

All I know is what I've been.

[Adam Schiff]

Told and that to have Truth is.

[Podcast Promo Narrator]

A whole lie for almost a decade, the murder of an 18 year old girl from a small town in Graves County, Kentucky went unsolved until a local homemaker, a journalist and a handful of girls came forward with a story.

[Krystal Ball]

I'm telling you, we know Quincy killed her.

[Podcast Promo Narrator]

We know a story that law enforcement used to convict six people and that got the citizen investigator on national tv.

[Krystal Ball]

Through sheer persistence and nerve, this Kentucky housewife helped give justice to Jessica Curran.

[Podcast Promo Narrator]

My name is Maggie Freeling. I'm a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist producer and I wouldn't be here if the truth were that easy to find.

[Krystal Ball]

I did not know her and I did not kill her or rape or burn or any of that other stuff.

[Ryan Grim]

That y' all said. They literally made me say that I.

[Podcast Promo Narrator]

Took a match and struck and threw it on her. They made me say that I poured gas on her from Lava for good. This is Graves County, a show about just how far our legal system will go in order to find someone to blame.

[Krystal Ball]

America, y' all better wake the hell up. Bad things happens to good people and small towns.

[Podcast Promo Narrator]

Listen to Graves county in the Bone Valley feed on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts and to binge the entire season ad free. Subscribe to Lava for Good plus on Apple Podcast.

[Jonathan Goldstein]

I'm Jonathan Goldstein, and on the new season of Heavyweight, I help a centenarian mend a broken heart.

[Ryan Grim]

How can a 101-year-old woman fall in love again?

[Jonathan Goldstein]

And I help a man atone for an armed robbery he committed at 14 years old. And so I pointed the gun at him and said, this isn't a joke. And he got down and I remember feeling kind of a surge of like, okay, this is power. Plus, my old friend Gregor and his brother try to solve my problems through hypnotism.

[Krystal Ball]

We could give you a whole brand new thing where you're, like, super charming.

[Ryan Grim]

All the time, being more able to.

[Krystal Ball]

Look people in the eye, not always hide behind a microphone.

[Jonathan Goldstein]

Listen to heavyweight on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Krystal Ball]

Speaking of Justice Department targets, Andrew Cuomo is.

[Ryan Grim]

Yeah. The theme today is corruption.

[Krystal Ball]

Yes. So Andrew Cuomo still running for mayor of New York City. Eric Adams has dropped out. I saw Bill Ackman begging the beret wearing Curtis Sliwa, who people keep finding, like, archival clips of Curtis Sliwa being a real one. Like, this guy's fun. Who's not fun? Andrew Cuomo. Here he is on Stephanie Rule.

[Andrew Cuomo]

There is no governor in the United States of America, no elected official who fought more with Donald Trump than I did. None.

[Ryan Grim]

You share a lot of his same donors right now. There are a lot of New Yorkers who are very excited about your campaign.

[Podcast Promo Narrator]

Who are also very excited about Donald Trump.

[Ryan Grim]

Don't tell me that's not true.

[Andrew Cuomo]

Are there New Yorkers who gave money to me and gave money to Donald Trump?

[Adam Schiff]

Of course.

[Ryan Grim]

Of course. Why is that an of course?

[Andrew Cuomo]

Well, why not? If you are a New Yorker, you know Donald Trump, you know me. Many of them would give money to Donald Trump and give money to me and money.

[Ryan Grim]

Why? What do you and Donald Trump share in common?

[Andrew Cuomo]

We're New Yorkers. They know me. They know him.

[Ryan Grim]

But let's just stay on this.

[Podcast Promo Narrator]

And I don't want to take too.

[Ryan Grim]

Much more of your time, because I'm surprised by this. You think that something about Donald Trump.

[Podcast Promo Narrator]

Makes someone give Donald Trump a check.

[Ryan Grim]

And Andrew Cuomo a check. What is that thing that the two of you both share?

[Andrew Cuomo]

I think that people who know him and people who know me, I think there's.

[Ryan Grim]

And what are those things?

[Andrew Cuomo]

The personal knowledge. He lived here, I live here. You may be a friend of Donald Trump. You may know me, you may contribute to him, you may contribute to me. But are there no similarity?

[Krystal Ball]

So there's. I mean, what are you gonna. It's ridiculous. His idea that he's. That Cuomo is the last one that Trump wants to be mayor. Like, Trump is publicly actively campaigning for him. Basically, like, who are you lying to?

[Ryan Grim]

I love it when. And the politician is so bad that Stephanie Rule looks like Walter Cronkite. That's incredible stuff.

[Krystal Ball]

I mean, she spotted that. She's like, hold on a second here.

[Ryan Grim]

This is perfect.

[Krystal Ball]

Yeah, let's roll C2, also, you were.

[Ryan Grim]

Not criminally charged, but investigators in the DOJ have found the claims credible.

[WashablesOfAs.com Advertiser]

So what do you say to voters.

[Ryan Grim]

Who have a hard time looking past this?

[Andrew Cuomo]

Yeah, it's a good question. When the report was issued, I said I believed it was politically motivated and it was. I didn't even know the allegations at that time. Right. It was done in a report. I didn't even know who the individuals were. We then spent five years. That report went to five district attorneys all over the state. No one found anything. It was then civilly litigated in court. The individual actions for five years, that came to nothing. I was dropped from the cases. So nothing came from those allegations. I did say if I offended anyone in any way, I didn't mean it. And I learned a lesson, a painful lesson, which is to be much more cautious about everything you say. Any joke, any comment. I won't kiss a person on the cheek unless they initiate a kiss. So it taught me a lesson just to be super cautious because there is a sensitivity that has evolved that is real. If people feel it, it's true, and it has to be respected.

[Krystal Ball]

I mean, the other allegations were much more serious than kissing on the cheek.

[Ryan Grim]

It's an incredible clip. Yeah.

[Krystal Ball]

Anyway, that was on the View, by the way.

[Ryan Grim]

First reception, next one was on the View. I mean, Ryan, I don't. Has anyone ever considered him. Because my memory is. Yes. To be a talented politician in his own right and not someone who coasted off his father's name and his family's connections. Because. Because back in Covid, obviously there were a million different stories at first about how brilliantly he was handling it in New York. But you. It just seems like so obvious that he's not a good politician. He's bad at this, and he thinks he's good at it because he's coasted again off of his name and his family connections for so long.

[Krystal Ball]

Not exactly. What he is is he's a very good old school, Tammany Hall, New York.

[Ryan Grim]

Style politician, which doesn't necessarily work in this media climate.

[Andrew Cuomo]

Right.

[Krystal Ball]

He's not somebody who appeals to people. He very deliberately prevented New York from being a place where you could have mass democracy. I don't know if people know this story, but there was this thing called the Independent Democratic Conference that existed in the New York Senate, which Cuomo created and organized to caucus with Republicans so that Republicans would control, without having won the votes, would control the New York Senate. Why? You're like, wait a minute, hold on a second. That's the wildest thing I've ever heard. Why would a Democrat actively elevate the Republicans to control the Senate? Well, because then voters can't do anything and demand anything, because all the demands then have to funnel through a divided all Albany. And the system that he created was called three men in a room. And it was the leader of the Senate, leader of the assembly, and the governor.

[Ryan Grim]

Three men, one room.

[Krystal Ball]

Three men, one room. And it didn't matter what you wanted, like, it didn't matter what you campaigned on. It didn't matter what voters said were their preferences out of New York. What mattered was what these three men in the room wanted. And the way that they enforced discipline was through vengeance and also through doling out cash. You sign up with us, you're on Team Cuomo, you're going to get the spoils. You don't, you will never work in this town again. And so he was very good at that, at that kind of Albany knife wielding and very good at setting up a structure that kept the public at bay. It was in 2018. So after Trump was elected in 2016, I cover this in my book, the New Yorkers started paying attention to politics for the first time. You would have turnout in these elections in the thousands.

[Ryan Grim]

DSA is like, shot in the army.

[Krystal Ball]

But also importantly, indivisible. And these suburban women and women in the city who. And men, but driven by women who were like, who were like, wait a minute, what's the Independent Democratic Conference? But it caucuses with Republicans. That doesn't sound right. And they're like, oh, no, this is right. This is a thing. And they're like, wait, Cuomo did this? So they recruited a bunch of challengers to these fake Democrats. And along with the Mamdani wave, they beat and the AOC wave, they beat these, these IDC people. They knocked them out. And then they finally made it actually Democrat in the Senate and Democrat in the House Assembly. And then they no longer had an excuse of why they couldn't pass anything. And so then they started passing a lot of clean energy stuff. All sorts of prison reform, like genuinely progressive stuff started getting done in New York. And that was an absolute nightmare for Cuomo. And he started to unravel. He then got saved for a little while by Covid because he kind of looked authoritative compared to Trump when he was doing little TV things, right? But then people found out that he was like, killing old people in the nursing homes and covering up the stats. And so that, and then the, all the sexual harassment stuff came out. And for some reason, the story did not end there.

[Ryan Grim]

No.

[Krystal Ball]

Here we are in 2025 mentioning the brother's name. Go away, dude.

[Ryan Grim]

Again, the story didn't end when he lost an election. He's sticking around. Yeah. Actually, everything you just explained about his mastery of the spoil system in Albany explains why he's also sort of like stone faced, deadpanning to Stephanie Rule, why do I share donors with Donald Trump? They know us.

[Krystal Ball]

They know us. Right? My coalition is with Republicans, literally.

[Ryan Grim]

But also what we trade in is trust, like in this personal knowledge system that, duh, this is what we do in New York. Of course, people who know us know that they can get stuff out of both of us. That's what he's saying. That's the unsaid part of it.

[Krystal Ball]

He's basically rephrasing George Carlin. He's like, why would they support me and Trump, Stephanie? Because it's a big club and we're in it.

[Ryan Grim]

Yeah, right. It's perfect. Yeah, it's perfect. And it's. I mean, it's so true that if you pull the FEC records of most very successful people, whether they're in New York or elsewhere, you find some donations to ours, some donations to these.

[Krystal Ball]

They know what they're up to. We're all friends here.

[Ryan Grim]

Let's roll. C3. This is another exchange that Cuomo had on the View.

[Andrew Cuomo]

I am the last person President Trump wants as mayor of New York City because he dealt with me as governor. New Yorkers wife, the movie, every day during COVID I was the governor, he was the president. We fought on a daily basis. He came with all his threats and all his power and might, threatened to put me in jail, had me investigated twice by the Department of Justice, threatened to cut off federal funds so he.

[Ryan Grim]

Would like Mandani to win.

[Andrew Cuomo]

Mandami is a gift for him.

[Ryan Grim]

He gifts.

[Andrew Cuomo]

He wants Mandami. Two reasons. One, going into the midterms, he will take a picture of Mandami, run around the country and say, here's what happened to the Democrats. They are now communists. They hate the police. They legalize prostitution, legalize drugs. They want to elect this Democrat, no experience whatsoever. Being mayor of New York would be his first real job. It's good for Donald Trump because it's the excuse he needs to take over New York, which he said he will do.

[Ryan Grim]

Mom dummy. They keep calling him mom, dummy. But Ryan, in that exchange, when Cuomo says, Donald Trump, he's Donald Trump's worst nightmare. Andrew Cuomo is Donald Trump's worst Nightmare. Just incredible. Incredible point, because I think actually it's true. Republicans to some extent know that they'll be able to run just like they did with aoc and they did this with Nancy Pelosi forever. But run the picture of Mamdani in ads and talk about him all the time and try to make him look like he's representative of where the Democratic Party is. That's all true, but Donald Trump does not want a Dem socialist running his favorite city in the world. Just also, the idea that he's afraid of Andrew Cuomo is completely insane, too.

[Krystal Ball]

What do you think Trump's actual nightmares are? What's a Trump nightmare?

[Ryan Grim]

Does he dream? These are the questions.

[Krystal Ball]

I imagine him dreaming that there's somebody counting his golf stroke.

[Ryan Grim]

I was just gonna say that. I was just gonna say that.

[Krystal Ball]

They're like, you didn't have a four there, calling him on it? Yeah, that would be. I had a four. It's like, you were four still in the fairway. What are you talking about?

[Ryan Grim]

That probably is to the extent. I mean, if he dreams, he finds.

[Krystal Ball]

Out, and then there's all this footage, and they're counting his strokes on the footage.

[Ryan Grim]

In order to have nightmares, one must sleep, and Don Trump does not sleep. So I'm skeptical of any of this.

[Krystal Ball]

Probably why he doesn't sleep. He's probably scared of nightmares.

[Ryan Grim]

Wow, it's going really deep here. So Zoran Mamdani posted his Oct. 7 statement, and it became. This is the most predictable news cycle in the world, a lightning rod for the broader Israel debate. We can put C4 on the screen. This is some coverage of it from Mediaite and Ryan. This is one of your beats. One thing I would say just right off the bat is, well, here you get into it and then have the statement. The statement is, if you scroll down, there'll be some tweets with it. But yeah, here you.

[Krystal Ball]

Two years ago today, Hamas carried out a horrific war crime, killing more than 1,100 Israelis and kidnapping 250 more. I mourn these lives and pray for the safe return of every hostage still held and for every family whose lives were torn apart part by these atrocities. In the aftermath of that day, Prime Minister Netanyahu and the Israeli government launched a genocidal war, a death toll that now far exceeds 67,000. With the Israeli military bombing homes, hospitals and schools into rubble, every day in Gaza has become a place where grief itself has run out of language. I mourn these lives and pray for the families that have been shattered. Our government has been complicit through it all. This must end. Occupation and apartheid must end. Peace must be pursued through diplomacy, not war crime. And our government must act to end these atrocities and hold those responsible to account. These last two years have demonstrated the very worst of humanity. We must answer it by modeling the very best. A relentless pursuit of our higher ideals and an unwavering commitment to universal human rights. The Atlantic's David Frum shared the statement added, this is a genuinely useful statement. The Chile formulaic language about the 107 atrocity, the intense angry passion of the denunciation of Israel's self defense. Together they arrestingly reveal what the author cares about and what who he does not care about, unquote. So that's David Frum, who we will talk about later in the program. More to come. We just busted him writing speeches for the Israeli ambassador while also profiling the Israeli ambassador. But back to the Mamdani statement and you notice at the top it says he got blasted by both sides. The left really did blast him over this. What the left did say is that this line Hamas carried out a horrific war crime, killing more than 1,100 Israelis is not factually true. There more than 1,100 Israelis and some foreigners were killed. I don't think they're quibbling over the foreigners were killed on October 7, but we know for an absolute fact that a non trivial number were killed by Israel. Like that's like that. Israeli media has reported that as a fact. We don't yet know the number of May take it under 1100. Like that was what the left was saying. Yeah, but I wouldn't say that the left was like piling on the state.

[Ryan Grim]

No.

[Krystal Ball]

Well, unless you consider the left would also acknowledge like if Hamas did not launch the attack, Israel would not have been, you know, enacted the Hannibal Directive to kill the. Because it's this thing called the Hannibal Directive where Israel has a doctrine whereby it's better to stop the hostages from becoming hostages by killing them in some cases because then you don't have to negotiate over them, you just kill them. It's like, you're like, well that's insane. Yeah, that is insane. But that's like a thing that is done. It was done in some kibbutzim. It was done, it appears to have been done on the beach where I think 17 Israelis were killed. So there's, it's, it's a. We don't know the number yet, but it may be enough to take it under 1,100 anyway. That's, that's the quibbling from the left. But the right.

[Ryan Grim]

Well, but I mean they're right wing Democrats that were upset with the statement too. That's.

[Krystal Ball]

Oh, I see. So they're saying that right wing Democrats. Yeah, so. And what's their argument? That you shouldn't talk about that you should only talk about what happened on October 7th and not since.

[Ryan Grim]

So here's not that anyone needs my very, very unsolicited political advice seriously, but the way that I would look at it, I actually didn't see. I mean, I think the right wing Democrats and the right wing right wingers, they just don't want any part. Like nothing would have been good enough from Mamdani. And there's no version of this statement that would have been acceptable to them. I also, like, I didn't think the statement was that bad. I would have just used the first paragraph on 107 and then used all the rest of it on 10 8. Because I think it's perfectly reasonable on 107 to focus on the attack on the Israelis. And then 108 go all in on the like, slaughter of civilians in Gaza. 107 and 108 are different days. 107 is the day that Israeli civilians in many cases were attacked. 108 is the day that this disgusting, awful war began. And I would just separate it into two. But once again, I'm aware nobody needs that political advice from me, but that's kind of how I was looking at it.

[Krystal Ball]

Yeah. And it also shows where we are in our politics that this is infuriating so many people because there are. So it's not just the 1100 thing that people picked up on, but there are a lot of other things that I don't think anybody expects a public figure like Maldani to take the kind of maximalist position, but there are a lot of concessions embedded in this statement as well.

[Ryan Grim]

Yes.

[Krystal Ball]

He refers to the hostages still held.

[Ryan Grim]

Right.

[Krystal Ball]

And you know, the people still held were military. So people said, well those are, those are prisoners. Like when you, if you're captured in battle, you're a prisoner. Not, not a hostage or you're at least a captive. What, like what, what else would you.

[Ryan Grim]

I'm sure that people don't love that. He referred to it as a war crime. Crime in the first sentence.

[Krystal Ball]

Well, there were definitely war crimes carried out. But right. You know, you. Right, exactly. You could say that work. War crimes were included in this, in the act of resistance.

[Ryan Grim]

Right.

[Krystal Ball]

So yes, like, right. There are, there are significant concessions being made in here. That's, that's a good point. There on that one, too.

[Ryan Grim]

He's in a. I mean, yeah, he's in a very, very, very tough spot, there's no question about it. And New York is. I mean, the concentration of the Jewish population in New York is like higher than it is it the highest outside of Israel of any major city.

[Krystal Ball]

I think it's second to Tel Aviv. Yeah, but like, huge numbers of those, if not a majority, voted for Mamdani.

[Ryan Grim]

Right? Yeah. I mean, this is. I've seen a bunch of people pull out polls saying, like, New York, Jews don't support Mamdani. Mamdani. But it's a pretty significant portion, actually.

[Krystal Ball]

Under 40. Definitely.

[Ryan Grim]

Yeah.

[Krystal Ball]

Yeah, absolutely.

[Podcast Promo Narrator]

The murder of an 18 year old girl in Graves County, Kentucky, went unsolved for years until a local housewife, a journalist, and a handful of girls came forward with a story.

[Krystal Ball]

America, y' all better wake the hell up. Bad things happens to good people in small towns.

[Podcast Promo Narrator]

Listen to Graves county on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts and to binge the entire season ad free. Subscribe to Lava for good plus on Apple podcasts.

[Jonathan Goldstein]

I'm Jonathan Goldstein and on the new season of Heavyweight. And so I pointed the gun at him and said, this isn't a joke. A man who robbed a bank when he was 14 years old and a centenarian rediscovers a love lost 80 years ago.

[Ryan Grim]

How can a 101-year-old woman fall in love again?

[Jonathan Goldstein]

Listen to heavyweight on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Krystal Ball]

Hey, I'm Jay Shetty, host of the on purpose podcast. I had the incredible opportunity to sit down with the one, the only cardi b my marriage.

[Ryan Grim]

I felt the love dying. I was crying every day. I fell in the deepest depression that I had ever had. This was not given to me. I worked my ass off for me.

[Jonathan Goldstein]

Listen to on purpose with Jay Shetty on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Podcast Announcer]

This is an I heart podcast.