12/15/25: 3 US Personnel Killed In Syria, Candace Owens Vs Erika Kirk, Israel Breaks Ceasefire, Saagar Loses It On Weed Rescheduling

Summary

Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar – Episode Summary

Episode Date: December 15, 2025
Main Hosts: Krystal Ball, Saagar Enjeti (off-air but referenced), Ryan Grim (co-hosting)
Episode Focus:
A fast-paced examination of breaking domestic and foreign stories: U.S. casualties in Syria, fragmentation within right-wing media, Israel breaking the Gaza ceasefire, and outrage over the Biden administration’s (reported) move to reschedule marijuana. The episode is marked by skepticism of establishment narratives, insider political analysis, and the hosts’ signature blend of critiques from both left and right perspectives.

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Episode Overview

This episode digs into several high-stakes stories: the deaths of three U.S. personnel in Syria, escalating drama and fractures on the MAGA right (highlighting the Candace Owens–Erica Kirk “summit”), Israeli military actions breaking a supposed Gaza ceasefire and the White House’s reaction, controversy surrounding U.S. policy towards legal marijuana, and some sharp asides about the U.S. ambassador to Israel and the networks of corruption in cannabis rescheduling. Throughout, the hosts apply intense scrutiny to establishment power and point out contradictions, hypocrisy, and political maneuvering.

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1. Three U.S. Personnel Killed in Syria

[02:09 – 15:50]

Key Points:

• Incident Details: Three Americans (two soldiers, one civilian interpreter) killed during a lone gunman attack while providing security for a meeting in Palmyra, Syria—first U.S. casualties since the fall of Assad.
• Questioning U.S. Role: The hosts repeatedly ask: What are we still doing in Syria? Why are Iowa National Guardsmen deployed in an undeclared war after 11 years?
  • Ryan Grim: “We got a thousand guys in Syria for what exactly? And doing what?... The National Guard should be cleaning up hurricanes. They shouldn’t be deployed in an undeclared war, providing security for God knows what.” [09:33]
  • Crystal Ball: “Why are we calling up people from Iowa in the National Guard to go over to Syria? Like that just seems off.” [06:02]
• Political/Military Dynamics: Discussion of alliances and conflicts: U.S., Syrian regime, SDF (the Kurds), Turkey, and ISIS. The perverse incentives and reliance on proxy forces, with suspicion about who really benefits from U.S. presence.
• Historical Context: Recap of Trump’s 2018 withdrawal announcement and how the Pentagon and establishment resisted. “The military was stonewalling it… and this is ultimately what broke the camel’s back,” says Ryan Grim. [11:28]
  • Memorable Trump quote (2018): “We have won against ISIS. We’ve beaten them, and we’ve beaten them badly… Now it’s time for our troops to come back home.” [10:37]
• Media & Establishment Critique: Outrage at D.C. and media apathy over endless deployments. “Once we establish a place, we can never leave...” [11:35]
• Notable Moment: Crystal Ball points out the “psychedelic” tangle of Syrian geopolitics, with old Al Qaeda figures now in government roles.

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2. Candace Owens vs. Erika Kirk and Right-Wing Fractures

[18:06 – 41:12]

Key Points:

• Ongoing Feud: An in-person “summit” is scheduled to de-escalate hostilities between Candace Owens and Erica Kirk; coverage centers on media spectacle and narrative management.
• Social Media Conspiracy Culture:
  • Wild rumors about Kirk’s husband’s murder, fueled by claims of foreign government plots and social media brain rot.
  • Emily Jashinsky: “The theories themselves are absurd. What matters is… the brain rot that social media is allowing to spread…” [19:58]
• Bari Weiss Town Hall: Examined for its attempts to clamp down on right-wing conspiracism and its ties to billionaire backers worried about anti-Semitism.
  • Critique of Weiss's role, corporate backers (Ellisons), and the alignment between business interests and political agendas.
  • Ryan Grim: “Barry calling for censorship is a little bit too perfect… her benefactor the Ellisons are trying to roll up the entire US media…” [24:21]
• Fractured Right: Hosts analyze how Owens/Kirk and other online drama signal deeper schisms inside the MAGA world, not least over conspiracy culture and institutional distrust.
  • Ryan Grim: “Stop the Steal was the ultimate conspiracy… The truth is, if you normalize and create an environment where stuff like that is just done and dusted and accepted as truth, there will be shocking consequences.” [27:29]
• Institutional Weakness: Discussion on how “low human capital”-led institutions produce fragmented and easily manipulated politics.
• Media Power vs. Profit: Bari Weiss’s CBS town hall—mainstream advertisers staying away, event underwritten instead by ideologically motivated mega-donors. The Ellisons’ business ties loop through all this.

Notable Quotes:

• Crystal Ball: “I get it for Erica Kirk. But from CBS News perspective… it just seems like Barry wants to use the assassination, the aftermath, the cleavages on the right… to assert herself as a controller of right wing discourse.” [39:13]
• Ryan Grim: “If a weed CEO is literally in an Oval Office meeting where you know something’s going to happen… It’s potential for corruption.” [64:04]

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3. Israel and the Gaza Ceasefire

[44:23 – 53:43]

Key Points:

• Ceasefire Violated: Israel launches a drone strike killing a top Hamas commander and several others during a purported ceasefire—provoking international outrage and creative headline gymnastics (“Despite ceasefire…”).
  • Crystal Ball: “There is no identity of a person that justifies firing during what is called a ceasefire.” [45:12]
• Humanitarian Catastrophe: Dozens (including children) continue dying during “ceasefire”—both by violence and by disease, hypothermia, and lack of supplies, with strict Israeli control over aid admissions.
• U.S.-Israel Tensions: White House (under Trump) scolds Netanyahu for the violation, heightened tension ahead of another Mar-a-Lago meeting. (“Secretary of State Wyckoff and Jared Kushner have become very frustrated with Netanyahu…” [49:40])
• Naval Blockade: Israeli Navy abducts Palestinian fishermen amid starvation. “What kind of ceasefire is it?” [50:32]
• AMA Absurdity: U.S. Ambassador to Israel (Mike Huckabee) holds an “Ask Me Anything” online, denying evidence of any Epstein–Israel links and minimizing an Israeli missile strike on Qatar.
  • Crystal Ball: “It was not one missile… not aimed at one person… it killed a Qatari police officer…” [52:28]
  • Ryan Grim, sarcastic: “Oh, okay. Got it. Nevermind for clarifying that, Mr. Ambassador.” [53:21]

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4. Saagar “Loses It” on Marijuana Rescheduling

[55:59 – 71:54]

Key Points:

• Biden Admin to Reschedule Marijuana (move from Schedule 1 to 3) – but Saagar’s take is that it’s almost entirely a sop to the industry.
• Corruption Allegations:
  • The CEO of Trulieve, a major pot company, gets a face-to-face with Trump (via a former Trump chief of staff who was also her lobbyist client) and scores a massive tax break for the industry through rescheduling.
  • “Trump turns the phone over to her in the Oval and it’s like, why don’t you explain why this is a good idea?” [59:03]
  • Regulatory change driven by industry insiders and Wall Street, not reformers or the public.
• Impact on the Public: Little impact for most; instead, corporate profits soar, stocks spike—potential for insider trading.
  • Emotional mini-rant from Saagar: “One of the stupidest conspiracies out there is that big Pharma is trying to suppress weed. You think they don’t want to? They’ll sell you anything to addict you.” [59:45]
• Krystal’s Counter: Acknowledges history of pay-to-play in marijuana legalization; points out current state-level legal weed is highly rationalized for business, not justice.
  • They debate the reality of people in jail for weed, effects on tax, the collapse of early utopian weed culture.
  • Crystal Ball: “If you actually are a supporter of weed, you want to see it more out in the open, and you want to see the harms discussed publicly… Otherwise, you get the hammer instead.” [69:14]
• Cultural Digression: Saagar goes off on “wake and bake,” addiction rates, dismisses most medical claims as “bullshit,” Krystal pushes for more research.
  • “There’s nobody in prison right now for smoking weed. There’s not a single person…” [66:39]
  • “If you pour vodka into a Diet Coke can… you have a problem. You waken bake… it’s not so cool and chill. Call a spade a spade.” [71:19]
• Signature Banter:
  • Crystal: “Shout out to the Breaking Points viewer who came to the reason debate and had me sign his weed pen.” [70:44]
  • Saagar: “That’s disgusting. That’s paraphernalia.” [70:49]
  • Crystal: “Multiple people told me, bong rips for Saagar.”
    Saagar: “They’re lying. That’s a lie. If you were ripping a bong in the morning… there’s something wrong with you.” [70:55]

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Highlighted Quotes & Moments

• On Endless War in Syria:
  • “Once you’re in, you have to have this base… we just never leave.” – Ryan Grim [11:35]
  • “Thousand people there, nobody bats an eye here in Washington. If anything, they’re celebrating it. They should not be there…” – Ryan Grim [05:51]
• On Right-Wing Fractures:
  • “Stop the Steal was the ultimate conspiracy.” – Ryan Grim [27:29]
  • “If you normalize and create an environment where stuff like that is just done and dusted and accepted as truth, there will be shocking consequences…” – Ryan Grim [27:29]
• On Israeli Policy & U.S. Response:
  • “There is no identity of a person that justifies firing during what is called a ceasefire.” – Crystal Ball [45:12]
  • “What kind of ceasefire is it?” – Crystal Ball [50:32]
• On Cannabis Reform:
  • “Trump turns the phone over to her in the Oval and it’s like, why don’t you explain why this is a good idea?” – Ryan Grim [59:03]
  • “If you pour vodka into a Diet Coke can… you have a problem… You waken bake… not so chill.” – Saagar [71:19]

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Timestamps for Major Segments

1. Syria / US Troops Killed: 02:09 – 15:50
2. Candace Owens vs. Erica Kirk / Right-Wing Drama: 18:06 – 41:12
3. Israel/Gaza Ceasefire Broken: 44:23 – 53:43
4. US Ambassador to Israel / AMA Absurdity: 51:33 – 53:43
5. Weed Rescheduling / Corruption and Debate: 55:59 – 71:54

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Tone:

• Fearless, irreverent, anti-establishment
• Empathetic but incisively skeptical
• Heavy on personal and insider stories, with frank language and occasional exasperation

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Conclusion:
This episode of Breaking Points dissects ongoing wars, crackling media feuds, and the shadowy politics behind drug policy with bracing candor and dry humor. Expect no easy answers, plenty of radical skepticism, and side-eye at nearly everyone in power—left, right, and center.

Transcript

[Sophie Cunningham]

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We need your help to build the future of independent news media and we hope to see [e-mail] let's turn now to Syria. Shocking news over the weekend, three Americans killed an ISIS attack in Syria. Let's put this up here on the screen. Two US Soldiers and a civilian interpreter were killed with while quote supporting counterterror operations. The first US Casualties in Syria since the fall of Bashar al Assad. So they said. President Trump vowed Saturday to retaliate against ISIS after this attack in central Syria killed Two US army soldiers and a civilian US Interpreter. Again, I want everybody to stick with me because I think that we need to put a magnifying glass on this. Something about this just seems weird, doesn't seem to add all up. So the soldiers were, quote, supporting counterterrorism operations against ISIS in Palmyra, central Syria when they came under fire from a lone gunman. Syrian security forces subsequently killed the gunman. Three American military personnel, two members of the Syrian security force were also wounded in the attack. So that's a total of five people who we know, sorry, of six US service members and or personnel who were in the area. In addition to two of these Syrian pro regime forces who were wounded in the attack. They say in the aftermath, American helicopters are then deployed to evacuate the wounded to Al Tanf, that's in southern Syria that's come under attack before. So what this quote highlights, as they say, is challenges for the Syrian government. What it highlights to me is what are we doing here? We got a thousand guys in Syria for what exactly? And doing what? You know. And listen, like, like I said, if you read the internal thing, it says the attack unfolded outside a building where Syrian Interior Ministry officials from the capital were meeting with their counterparts in the city. American soldiers and interpreter were providing security outside when a lone gunman opened fire from a nearby building with what appeared to be a machine gun. Syrian security forces open fire, killed the gunman. The American soldiers killed were part of Iowa National Guard contingent assigned to the Syrian mission. Now, a spokesperson for the Syrians said that the Syrian government had warned American counterparts about the possibility of attacks by ISIS on their forces. Quote, the international coalition did not take Syrian warnings, the possibility of an ISIS breach into account. This is what I mean about the circumstances of this is first of all, you've got this meeting that's going on here, right? You've got the SDF apparently, who were still kind of involved. We got the Syrian regime guys. Then you've got US service members providing security for a meeting of what they said, some coalition style group. Why are we there in the first place? Why are we providing security? Right. This is after the president had eight, almost seven, eight years ago, which I literally covered at the time at the White House, said we were withdrawing from Syria. I mean, we've been in Syria for 11 years. We've had troops on the ground there. It's again shocking. And of course thousand people there, nobody bats an eye here in Washington. If anything, they're celebrating it. They should not be there doing what they should not be in this circumstance, you Iowa National Guardsmen providing security outside of a building, you know, for what exactly, without a requisite amount of support. And then you've got the Syrians, at least the Syrians, who knows, it might be covering their ass. They're like, hey, we told them, you know, it was a possibility. Right. So everything around this smells. Something's not right in my opinion, just in terms of why they were there in the first place, the lack of support, why we have a thousand people in Syria at all, especially in the midst of all this. Supposedly the Israelis love the Syrian president. Right. Let them go. Right. And support isis.

[Crystal Ball]

Except they've been bombing him constantly.

[Ryan Grim]

Right. Except that they're bombing them too. Right. But that kind of gets to the whole, like, what are we doing? What exactly are we still doing in Syria? Nobody can answer this question to fight isis.

[Crystal Ball]

And I don't understand the National Guard part. Like there's the 30,000 foot part. That is utterly bizarre. But we have a Delta force, we have infantry, we have Marines. Like we have a trillion dollar plus military. Why are we calling up people from Iowa in the National Guard to go over to Syria? Like that just seems, that just seems off. And Iowa absolutely cannot catch a break. Their economy is in depression, like circumstances.

[Ryan Grim]

Oh, because of the tariffs.

[Crystal Ball]

The tariffs. And like, just in general, like they've got some long term structural problems. They're being propped up by ethanol, basically like this. The mandate that we, that you put basically corn into your car and the like transition towards electric vehicles is not helping there either. You know, lots, lots of other issues going on with Iowa. But so the political context in Syria, you've got the Syrian Democratic Forces, which is basically the Kurds, and the coalition that works with the Kurdish forces in the north, which is allied with the United States. They used to be in conflict with Alshara and those other forces.

[Ryan Grim]

They fight each other for years.

[Guest Commentator]

Yeah.

[Crystal Ball]

They're now murdered each other. And they still have this Rojava area, which is, they consider to be this liberated, which is a liberated zone. The Syrian central government is saying, you've got to integrate, you've got to integrate with the rest of the country. We gotta, gotta have a country. And so then they're negotiating the terms of that. How much autonomy would they have? You know, what would the central government's role be or control over the area?

[Interviewee / Mike Huckabee]

B.

[Crystal Ball]

Meanwhile, Turkey is like, absolutely not like Turkey. Erdogan despises the SDF and basically wants them to not to exist. Turkey is going through its own negotiations with its own Kurdish Forces, the PKK just north of Syria in eastern Turkey. And so as those tenuous negotiations falter and go haltingly forward, you had Turkey threatening to invade just recently. And so into that you have isis, which is a useful kind of mercenary tool for all of these different forces. Basically the understanding of the remnants of ISIS is that you can find different factions of it that you could basically just pay off to do the things that you need done. You see that happening in Pakistan, Afghanistan, maybe Australia. Like, they become this like, kind of useful vehicle. And so who benefits from this attack? Well, we know who could be hurt by it would be the SDF, Kurds. Because the Kurds, they want these,000 or 2,000American troops to stay because that's some protection, right, for them against the Syrian government and the Turkish government. And so driving them out would be to the benefit of Turkey and to a slightly lesser degree to the Syrian central government. So if you're just going by cold calculus of who might have been, who had the incentive to do this, Turkey's probably number one Syria central government, who knows, right?

[Ryan Grim]

By the way, they're saying that he's a former member of the Syrian government who then went isis. So look, I do think to me what it highlights is why we have National Guardsmen there in the first place. They should not be there. The National Guard should be cleaning up hurricanes, whatever. They shouldn't be deployed in an undeclared war, providing security for God knows what and then putting themself in harm's way. And nobody can coherently explain to the American people, here's why there's 1,000 people. Well, they were there to defeat ISIS. Like, well, I thought we defeated ISIS. Now they were killed by ISIS. And now that means we need to stay more so that we can kill even more of them, so that we can put more of our guys in harm's way. We just never leave. I mean, it's an 11 year deployment.

[Crystal Ball]

Now we can coherently explain, you know, why we should leave.

[Ryan Grim]

That's right. That's easy.

[Crystal Ball]

A much younger Trump did exactly that. Let's roll. President Trump. Almost. So this was December 19, 2018.

[Ryan Grim]

So seven years ago.

[Crystal Ball]

Almost exactly seven years ago. Here's the 45th president of the United States.

[Guest Commentator]

We've been fighting for a long time in Syria. I've been president for almost two years. And we've really stepped it up. And we have won against isis. We've beaten them, and we've beaten them badly. We've taken back the land and now it's time for our troops to come back home. I get very saddened when I have to write letters or call parents or wives or husbands of soldiers who have been killed fighting for our country. It's a great honor. We cherish them. But it's heartbreaking. There's no question about it. It's heartbreaking. Now we've won. It's time to come back. They're getting ready. You're going to see them soon. These are great American heroes. These are great heroes of the world because they fought for us.

[Crystal Ball]

So Donald Trump making a lot of sense back then. You covered this.

[Ryan Grim]

I was there.

[Crystal Ball]

So what happened?

[Ryan Grim]

Nothing. Mattis resigned over this, right? Over this policy.

[Crystal Ball]

Mad Dog was furious.

[Ryan Grim]

This, by the way, was. I remember this was a huge brouhaha at the time because people were like, oh, he's abandoning the Kurds. Right? There was that whole Kurdish discourse, and there was all these John McCain types who were like, this is why we need to stay in Syria. Like, you're emboldening them. You are abandoning our allies and you're strengthening the ASS regime. And there was a big nationalist. Right. You know, brouhaha about it as well. They're like, it shouldn't have taken this long. The fact is that the military was stonewalling it, which they were. And what. He would multiple times be like, we need to get out of Syria. And Madison then would be like, yeah, you know, in six months, or something like that. And this is ultimately what broke the camel's back, the straw that broke the camel's back for their relationship. But ultimately, I mean, Mattis won in the end. They all. They all did. Never left. Just never leave. Like, once you're in, you have to have this base. I mean, let's remember the Al Thanif. Remember those multiple soldiers who were killed in Jordan a couple years back, you know, as a result of this Iranian drone. Remember that? I mean, there's all. For some reason, once we establish a place, we can never leave, no matter how many. One death, two death, three deaths, that these people are in harm's way. No one can explain it. No one can ever explain it to anybody.

[Crystal Ball]

The time. The New York Times coverage at the time is indicative of the way that this city and this country's elite kind of view these ongoing occupations. You could put up C4. The lead of the story tells you everything. President Trump has ordered the withdrawal of 2,000American troops from Syria, bringing a sudden end to a military campaign that largely vanquished the Islamic State. But ceding a strategically vital country to Russia and Iran and so it's like. So that's the times telling you, like I told you. Yeah, how can we. We can't lose Syria to Russia. That's what it was like in Iran. And so. And the military was like, actually, you're right. Yeah, we're not going anywhere. We're just gonna. We're just gonna hang out.

[Ryan Grim]

Yeah. And we didn't. And we're still there. I mean, what's really. Look, I'm not saying the lives of guardsmen are more important or anything like that, but this is not what they were designed for. You know, imagine, you know, you respond to the commercial, the National Guard commercial, like, yeah, that's a good way to pay for college.

[Crystal Ball]

One weekend, one weekend a month, two.

[Ryan Grim]

Weeks in a summer way for me to bolster my income. I want to serve my country. And next thing you know, you find yourself on a deployment to freaking Syria in an undeclared war and providing security for what? You know, for what type of who knows who's inside that meeting. You got Al Qaeda. You know, allegedly ISIS is here. Iraq. I mean, you know, the Syrian Democratic. Literally a geopolitical pawn for purposes that nobody can actually explain. I just think it's sickening. By the way, can't let Pete Hexath here off the hook. C2 up here on the screen. His tweet in response to this attack. The savage who perpetrated this attack was killed by partner forces. Let it be known if you target Americans anywhere in the world, you'll spend the rest of your brief, anxious life knowing the United States will hunt you, find you, and ruthlessly kill you.

[Crystal Ball]

It's like, okay, I mean, no, actually that's not what happened.

[Ryan Grim]

Yeah, it's not really what happened.

[Crystal Ball]

Killed immediately, unfortunately, by Syrians.

[Ryan Grim]

Right. And in response to this, lawmakers on Sunday and others when asked for this, were like, yes, this is why we need to stay and continue the fight against isis. It's a self licking ice cream cone. I believe that that's what they used to say in the past. So it's just, you know, we were bonding, Ryan and I, over this, about how you can, you know, when you're in business long enough, you can start. You could see stuff that we thought was all resolved almost a decade ago bubble back up with the same dumb arguments. The same people who are involved and the only people who pay the price are probably the thousands of American service members who have had to be deployed to Syria for no reason. Who knows, maybe probably a dozen or so now that have been killed in this deployment, at least the ones who are fighting isis. You could justify this. This one again, explain that to their parents. About what exactly that they were doing there? Syrian Democratic who? International coalition. You're protecting Al Qaeda. The Al Qaeda government killed the isis. I mean, it makes no sense. It boggles the mind.

[Crystal Ball]

The Syrian story has to be the most psychedelic because you I have a former Al Qaeda, literally guy who was just in the White House and is now running the country. Like what?

[Ryan Grim]

Huh?

[Crystal Ball]

Okay, What?

[Ryan Grim]

Welcome to America. All right, let's get to Barry Weiss.

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[Sophie Cunningham]

This is Sophie Cunningham from Show Me Something. Do you know the symptoms of moderate to severe obstructive sleep apnea, or OSA in adults with obesity? They may be happening to you without you knowing. If anyone has ever said you snore loudly, or if you spend your days fighting off excessive tiredness, irritability and concentration issues, it may be due to osa. OSA is a serious condition where your airway partially or completely collapses during sleep, which may cause breathing interruptions and oxygen deprivation. Learn more at don'tsleep on OSA.com this information is provided by Lilly, a medicine.

[Crystal Ball]

Company the international summit that the world has been waiting for will convene today. Monday, December 15th. Candace Owens will be meeting with Erica Kirk. Put this first element up on the screen. This was announced by Erica Kirk on X. Candace Owens and I are meeting for a private in person discussion on Monday, December 15th. Real Candice O and I have agreed that public discussions, live streams and tweets are on hold until after this meeting. I look forward to a productive conversation. Thank you. And she it was everything in her power not to say thank you for your attention. Thank you for your attention to this matter.

[Ryan Grim]

Candace has responded this morning. I am very much looking forward to this discussion. So there you go, the summit.

[Crystal Ball]

So the context here is that her organization was. TPUSA was planning to release its kind of counter argument to Candace Owens. Many, many arguments. She's putting that on hold. But it comes after a Saturday evening 8pm quote unquote town hall that CBS News under the new direction of Bari Weiss ran. Now Barry makes for an unusual executive in a lot of different ways. She is putting herself in front of the camera as well. And so let's roll D2 here a little bit from this town hall.

[Emily Jashinsky]

He was murdered three months ago. If you go on the Internet and frankly it is leapt beyond the Internet now into real life and you talk to many seemingly sane people, they do not believe that the 22 year old named Tyler Robinson that has been arrested and charged with his murder is the actual murderer.

[Ryan Grim]

What do they think?

[Emily Jashinsky]

They believe any number of theories. They believe that Erica Kirk was his Mossad handler and that he was killed by a foreign government. They believed that she was tracked by Egyptian planes. They believe that the rings on her hand are signs of Illuminati. The theories themselves are absurd. What matters is that because she speaks about this in the interview, the brain rot that social media is allowing to spread the way that it is detaching us from humanity, from our ability to talk to one another and our ability to discern the truth from just out and out lies is something that is incredibly important as a, as a theme. I think there's also a new theory that Egyptian aircraft have been tracking you. What is going on? Why are there so many conspiracies spreading about what seems to be a pretty open and shut case.

[Erica Kirk]

This is the first time that we have seen evil on display where we have social media at our fingertips. Something so evil that happened. People are wanting answers immediately. They are wanting to figure out how to wrap their mind around this. Egyptian planes do.

[Emily Jashinsky]

Let's just.

[Sophie Cunningham]

Yeah.

[Emily Jashinsky]

Do you believe that Tyler Robinson murdered your husband?

[Erica Kirk]

Yes, I do.

[Emily Jashinsky]

Why do you think it is so hard to for so many people to believe that reality?

[Erica Kirk]

Because it's too simple. Again, everyone always has to think there's.

[Ryan Grim]

More to the story.

[Erica Kirk]

Well, sometimes there's not. I've seen the autopsy report. I've seen our case pulled together. I've been in constant contact with our lawyers, our. The prosecuting team. I've seen it all.

[Ryan Grim]

So, I mean, look, you put those two things together between the Candace Owens. Look, I don't know what's gonna come of summit between Erica and between Candace. I have no idea. Barry calling for censorship is a little bit too perfect, Ryan. Whenever you consider that TikTok literally sponsored that event, right? And that it just so happens that her benefactor the Ellisons are trying to roll up the entire US media industry and that she explicitly at least. You know, according to Dylan Byers over at Puck, one of the reasons that the Free Press was bought and Barry installed as editor in chief was due because of the Ellison family's concern over quote, anti Semitism and because they're strong supporters of the Zionist cause. I mean all of this is out in the open. Like I don't think they would even object to be called. Be called pro Israel billionaires. Right? Like they are almost self described at this point. Ellison is known with his hundreds of billions, you know, donating significant sums to Zionist like causes. Now the Tyler Robinson part of this and the Egyptian, I mean I have been loathe to delve into the whole Egyptian plane discourse, et cetera. I don't think that the evidence is all that compelling. I did see what Tucker Carlson said, that the Egyptian plains was actually true again, I mean based on the open source info that was released that I at least, at the very least took a look at, there's some extrapolation I believe again, whenever it comes to claiming ownership, I will say though she did not deny it out explicitly, she did seem to make a mockery of it. I am not in any way trying to gain credence to this argument. I'm just at this point now you and I know how this is. Every word of this is going to be dissected. And I did think that the answer. I mean she did say I believe Tyler Robinson, et cetera, killed my husband. I believe that too. Now for the record, I've looked at the evidence, et cetera. I know there's concern, but the bullet, I mean ask some ballistic experts and other. You can believe who you want. The people I Spoke to generally are very conspiratorial in their own right. The FBI and all of them have pointed to DNA evidence. It wouldn't necessarily make sense to plant a different gun. Right. Just. Again, based on my perusal, again, I'm not saying the FBI didn't screw up the case massively. I'm not going to say that. But, yeah, just in general, I don't know. I don't think your answers did much, at least in my opinion, to quell any continued kind of fervor about the question around this case.

[Crystal Ball]

Yeah, if you're already in that. If you're already in that skeptic camp, you're going to probably stay there. But, yeah, I actually kind of. I get where Barry Weiss is coming from on this point. And from her perspective, she's like, man, this is so obvious. Like, who did this? And from her perspective, too. Not only do we have the shooter, like, we could try to pin this on the left. Like, there's this, like, trans roommate. And, like, this fits into, like, the thing that she was on for years over at the Free Press and before that at the New York Times. She's like, this is a golden opportunity to, like, exploit these issues that I've been into. And yet instead, all of a sudden, now, like, people are accusing Netanyahu of doing it. And from her perspective. So I actually sympathize. From her perspective, she's like this. She's like, this was perfect for us.

[Ryan Grim]

Yeah.

[Crystal Ball]

And now it's been robbed. Well, that's kind of by the right, interestingly. Yeah. And the reason we're covering this at all. And you can, like, I haven't. It's been hard for me to understand, like, how huge of a cleavage this has created on the right. But Emily was explaining, like, that this is like, this. And the whole Fuentes thing that kind of flows into it is just driving the conversation on the right now in a way that is remarkable. And I think when people look back on it years later, it's like, what did MAGA2 do with its unified control of government? Like, oh, they argued about Candace Owens and Nick Fuentes and Tyler Robinson and Charlie Kirk. While, like, everything burned. What's your sense of how kind of major this is a fracture?

[Ryan Grim]

Oh, it's huge. And I think that. Listen, it's funny. I see people out there. Christopher Ruffo, for example, was like, conspiratorial thinking is dominating. Right?

[Crystal Ball]

He's like, guys, come on.

[Ryan Grim]

Yeah. He's like, we need to stop. We need institutions. And part of the reason my true fracture with magnetic people want to know where it came from and where, you know, I was described as a cuck. It was stop the steal. And it was because at that time I go, guys, you're lying to people. I said, at the end of the day, lying to people is bad. Like playing footsie empirically with a completely bullshit made up claim is going to lead to things that you have no idea. So what people tried to do was rationalize it. And I've had this fight. A lot of these people are my friends. Darryl, for example, my, my martyr maid, right? He had that whole post about, you know, imagine all these things have happened to you and that's why you feel the election was stolen. I mean, I'm pretty sure I said this to him in person. I was like, dude, like, I just don't agree with that at all. Or there was all these books written about high. I call it high iq. Stop the steal, right? And be like, oh, well, actually, Zucker bucks. And I'm sorry, it's not the same thing. Like you're. When you say that, you're talking about influence. A Time magazine piece, remember, fortify the election. That is not the same thing. That's not the same thing as Venezuelan dominions who stole the election. Like, that's what Trump means. And by the way, that's what the people who listen to him mean. I know, I've been, that's why Trump.

[Crystal Ball]

Wants to overthrow Venezuela now.

[Ryan Grim]

I would tell you, man, oh my God, in 2021, I couldn't even get into an Uber without people being like, hey man, the election, like, you really believe, right? Is somebody calling you and telling you, I'm serious. This happened like dozens of times. I know it. I can see it for real. Like the people who believe this stuff, they believe it for real. Like actually. And so that was one of the original sins because the demand is always, you have to listen to what Donald Trump is saying. That's the only empirical truth that exists. And once you kind of create that, well, Trump himself, in a vacuum, has created a place where reality is not reality, where any discussion of facts or of empirical, Any discussion of facts, of reasonable thinking and in general of a systemic belief that somebody is, quote, out to get you. Which is. And by the way, what's difficult about this sometimes it's true a lot of the times, actually it is true a lot of the times about the deep state or conspiracy. And this is what makes your and my job so difficult. For example, about reporting around Epstein Israel is the amount of effort that you and I put into fact checking to making sure that everything that we say is backed up to validate people's real feelings around the world while giving them the facts to be able to color that in. It's so. It's made so much harder by a world where everyone can just color in the lines with whatever they want. They pretend like defamation law and facts just don't exist. And that's a road to getting really, really hot on the Internet. This is not just about Candace Owens. This is like an entire ecosystem. That's why there's crocodile tears around this for people saying indulging conspiracy thinking Stop the steal was the ultimate conspiracy. And everybody tried to justify it by saying, oh, these people feel disinfected. It's not this. Like, no. And look, I may be the guilty of that. Not on stop to steal, but in some other instances and be like, for example, I'll give you one, the Haitian cats thing, right? This is a bullshit story. It is bullshit, right? And you know, at the time I was like, well, you know what this is, is about people in Springfield who are pissed off at the Haitians. And while, yes, what Trump said was a lie, et cetera, that doesn't mean that people there, and to be fair, also all the whole left who Pearl clutched around this was like, actually the people of Springfield love Haitians. And it's like, well, Springfield dramatically voted for Trump. Okay, so let's be honest too, around all of those dynamics. But the truth is, is that if you normalize and create an environment where stuff like that is just done and dusted and is accepted as truth, there will be shocking consequences to all of that in the future. Where TPUSA was a right wing institution. Right. That was led by Charlie Kirk. But Charlie himself was not immune to this. He had to indulge a lot of Stop the steal bullshit. He called constantly. He was constantly. His entire role was like trying to paper over fractures in the MAGA coalition, both from Israel. But I mean, that was just one of many other things. And you know, to give a shout out to Richard Henania where he's just empirically correct is if you're going to have a shift in the dynamics of like, who identifies with different political parties, if one of them is going to lose people who are college educated and to indulge like a vast array of people who have come to politics online and who are not familiar in general with like, I don't know, like reading the news at a most basic level, you are. This is A logical consequence of, like, a low human capital LED environment. So, like, institutions themselves cannot be genuinely representative, or if they are, they're going to look like this.

[Interviewee / Mike Huckabee]

Right.

[Ryan Grim]

They will look like a world where, you know, the Egyptian planes and all that is basically canon for a significant number of people. Again, look, I looked into it, guys. We're talking about foreign registration planes. Not proven. It's based on flight radar data. I'm not saying the planes themselves didn't exist, and there certainly have been claims made, and I don't think her answer was good, but that is not 100% convincing in the light of DNA evidence, which has not yet been contested in court. If Tyler Robinson and his lawyers can prove in court that that was fabricated, I will happily hold my hands up. Right, right. And they would have every incentive in the world to do so. But they have not made that claim as of yet. Perhaps There'll be an O.J. simpson case here.

[Crystal Ball]

The. The other. The other wild part about it is that you would have to believe that. So Charlie Kirk had that summit on Long Island.

[Ryan Grim]

Yeah.

[Crystal Ball]

You know, where it's like a come to Jesus. Bad pun. But, you know, allegedly. Yeah. So they have.

[Ryan Grim]

I'm not even sure I buy that, by the way, that there was a come to Jesus thing. I mean, all the evidence points to he was very pro Israel and he.

[Crystal Ball]

Was doing his best and doing his.

[Ryan Grim]

Best to hold back the forces.

[Crystal Ball]

But let's say. And then he comes out of that, and then let's. And now he's, you know, very angry and he's turning on Israel. You would have to believe that they went from inviting him over, having these meetings, having people call him, to being like, you know what? We give up. Kill him. And then within just a matter of short weeks, you've pulled off the assassination and you found some other patsy, like, in Utah to, like, take the. Like does not make any sense.

[Ryan Grim]

Several things can be true. Did the FBI bungle the investigation? Yeah. What did we lead our entire show with here? Did the.

[Crystal Ball]

Run by a boob?

[Ryan Grim]

Right. It's run by a literal moron. All right. Allegedly. Sorry. You know, there.

[Crystal Ball]

Alleged moron.

[Ryan Grim]

Yeah, alleged moron. I mean that in a literal sense. Not in any character way whatsoever there. But that's run by Cash Patel. All right, so, yeah, they messed it up. There was the whole thing about the old man who was initially. I understand. But also, you and I have been in this business for a while. How many chaotic events have we covered?

[Crystal Ball]

Of course.

[Ryan Grim]

Right. There's always reports that comes out of Chaotic. One shooter two. Right. Three initial reports. Half the time, initial reports are totally wrong. Complete bullshit. Eyewitness is notoriously bad. You had multiple people of interest who were taken into custody. I get it, too. In terms of Robinson, he take it into custody and then we hear nothing. The text messages, which we covered here. Weird. I'm gonna fully admit it. Weird. Okay. Definitely needs to be explained in court. What else was weird? Oh, the fact that the FBI freaked out at Joe Kent over foreign assassination tires. That's crazy, too. I agree with you. I agree with all of you. It's not evidence. Now, absence of evidence is not evidence, in the words of the famous Donald Rubsfeld. Okay, but all of that, again, just to me, just me, points much more to incompetence, bureaucratic infighting. Now, that said, I think all of those inquiries absolutely should be explored, especially if you do want to find justice ultimately. But the cold, hard, like, rifle DNA, just the counter case of, like, why it, to me, does not make any sense. Personally, it doesn't make any sense. And I don't think that that's difficult to say. And I don't trust the FBI. I do not trust the FBI at all.

[Crystal Ball]

And so what Bari Weiss is trying to do is create an institution, and she's trying to kind of put this genie back in the bottle. Let's roll a little bit more of. Yeah, we have more of the town hall clip. Play the next one.

[Ryan Grim]

But any good faith effort to stop political violence must hold both parties to the same standard and expectation. So in that spirit, will you condemn the violent rhetoric of Donald Trump, the most powerful and influential person on earth?

[Erica Kirk]

I appreciate your question. You know my heart. Why would I ever say, yes, go murder people? This is so much deeper than just one. I understand your sentiment. I do. But this is also so much deeper than just one person. This starts at the home. Okay? This starts with family. This starts with a seed that grows and grows. You can choose to have evil in your heart, or you can choose to have light. What you consume and what you absorb from the outside world will manifest itself. No, I will never agree with political violence. My husband is a victim of it. I'm a victim of it. But what I'm trying to say here is that we can blame everyone else. We have to look in the mirror. When you become a father, when you become a mother, how are you raising your kids? Are you taking responsibility? Or are you giving them a device and saying, go down that rabbit hole? I'm trying to go to Pilates class. You can just Sit in the corner and look at your iPad or look at your phone and go down that rabbit hole and see what you can learn from that instead of being a parent. So my call to action from that is parents step up.

[Crystal Ball]

I don't understand why Pilates is catching strays here.

[Ryan Grim]

First of all, that was a very odd response.

[Crystal Ball]

I mean, look, and she did not condemn, by the way.

[Ryan Grim]

This is part of the difficulty.

[Crystal Ball]

She walked around and decided not to condemn.

[Ryan Grim]

I was talking about this with Crystal and all, because Crystal, unfortunately, there was some power problems, so she couldn't be here. But, like, this is where I am sympathetic to, you know, to the difficulty of the left, where Erica Kirk is both the grieving widow of Charlie and like, she's the first person I thought about, you know, after Charlie's death and his children, right. So I think that's a normal human reaction. She since has taken over Turning Point usa. Now she's on, you know, she's selling Charlie. I think that's fine, you know, to sell Charlie's book in the memory of your husband and all that, but it is. I mean, you're gonna get into difficult, into dicey territory when you do wanna be an overtly political actor, right? And you can't really have it both ways, at least in my opinion. And this is somebody who understands, like, and is deeply sympathetic to a grieving widow, but who also wants to take up the mantle of her husband's political, you know, force, and then also kind of explicitly be involved in shaping politics and in everything, like, there will be something that wears off. And like, look, I don't know, I mean, with the whole town hall, like, that was kind of the duality of what it was. And I would say for her in particular, the more you are in the latter overtly political, working as an ally of the Trump administration, et cetera, you will remove a lot of at least what I think, you know, the sympathy of the entire country, which I think rightfully exists over the death of your deceased husband. And I mean, this kind of, that kind of like squares the entire thing where Charlie's assassination was a personal, it was a political. And it became an intra coalitional fight where, and I mean, that's where I find it, like, gross, right? We're arguing about the details of the death explicitly in the grounds of trying to make political points. But also, how can you escape that if it is something which was explicitly used? I mean, many people lost their jobs as a result of. As I have said here before, I don't have a Problem, at least in some cases with that. Because the truth is all of us kind of believe in a little bit of cancel culture. It's true. I mean it is true. All of us believe that there are bounds in polite society. We don't necessarily believe the government should be enforcing it, which I don't think either, you and I do. And the government at one point certainly wanted to in the midst of the Charlie Kirk assassination, which I condemn. I think it was bad and obviously backfired dramatically given their coalitional fights. So yeah, the whole though that's why I questioned the decision for this town hall in the first place. I don't get it. I'll be honest. I don't get it. Maybe it was done to help sell the book, which is fine.

[Crystal Ball]

I get it for Erica Kirk.

[Ryan Grim]

I get it for Erica Kirk, of course. Right. But from CBS News perspective. Yeah. I mean to me it just seems like Barry wants to use this is me outsider kind of looking in is use the assassination, the aftermath, like discussion and cleavages in the right to like assert herself as a controller of right wing discourse.

[Crystal Ball]

She's gonna referee this stuff.

[Ryan Grim]

Right. Is to referee and to be the one who's pushing social media and oh, it just so happens to embrace a lot of pro Israel politics. Right. And I think that's increasingly what it looks like.

[Crystal Ball]

And the problem she's going to run into with her own business model is that like one reason that the American news media has been so homogenous for many decades is that advertisers don't really want the controversy. And so we can put up this fourth element here. Major advertisers stayed away from this town hall. She said she's going to do a lot more of them. They basically all of the ads on here were just direct sales type stuff, which is the kind of lowest, cheapest kind of ad you can get on tv. But according to Variety here, among the town hall's sponsors. So she did get some new sponsors, were the Conservative Heritage Foundation Hallow, a mobile app for Christian prayer. I think that's on Tucker and other shows. Wow. Too David, a new animated film from Angel Studios which specializes in faith based content. A small handful of more mainstream advertisers including Spotify and TikTok were also present. So she got TikTok too. So the Ellison's Own one half the Ellison's own TikTok, the other half of Ellison's CBS. And so they are basically just paying each other. So how long. This is not a commercial play. This is obviously a Political and ideological play.

[Ryan Grim]

Yeah.

[Crystal Ball]

Which is a higher purpose. Right. So it's okay if it loses a ton of money.

[Ryan Grim]

Let's all just remember this is not about money. The Ellisons are worth hundreds of millions of dollars. They are not buying anything for commercial purposes.

[Crystal Ball]

They win and lose hundreds of millions of dollars every day.

[Ryan Grim]

Yes.

[Crystal Ball]

As the market.

[Ryan Grim]

Exactly. There are hundreds of billions. Billions of dollars.

[Crystal Ball]

Yes.

[Ryan Grim]

Go and read the story at some point about Larry Ellison and how he owns, like, an entire island in Hawaii. It's nuts.

[Crystal Ball]

One of the biggest islands on Hawaii.

[Ryan Grim]

He owns the entire. I think, like, 99%. He's like their whole landlord of everybody. It's. It's psychotic. It's great. It's literally a US State. A significant portion of a US State controlled by a single individual.

[Crystal Ball]

And CIA helped birth his company.

[Interviewee / Mike Huckabee]

I hate.

[Crystal Ball]

I hate.

[Ryan Grim]

I never actually looked deeply into Oracle. I didn't know that.

[Interviewee / Mike Huckabee]

That's interesting.

[Crystal Ball]

I hate when the government makes these companies and then the billionaires get to get the money. Why can't we be the billionaires? We made the company. Like, it's terrible and we don't like it. But, like, at least we can get rich from it.

[Ryan Grim]

No. Well, whatever. I won't say anything.

[Sophie Cunningham]

All right.

[Ryan Grim]

Okay. All right. Let's get on to Israel, shall we?

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[Sophie Cunningham]

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[Ryan Grim]

Over.

[Crystal Ball]

The weekend in Gaza, Israel launched an attack that killed Rayad Saad, who was a top Al Qassam commander, with a drone strike on a vehicle which also killed a handful of other Hamas officials that were riding along with him, creating more gymnastics in the headlines around the world. The Times went with Israel says it killed senior Hamas commander Despite ceasefire. You had a lot of defenders of Israel saying that this. Wait until you see the identity of the person who was killed. You will see that this was a justified attack. You're like, wait a minute, what are you talking about? There is no identity of a person that justifies firing during what is called a ceasefire.

[Ryan Grim]

I love the headline here.

[Crystal Ball]

Despite ceasefire, despite ceasefire. Utterly incredible. There was some speculation that Abu Muath as top commander, they said he was instrumental in the October 7th attacks and that he's one of the kind of leading logistics experts, particularly when it comes to explosives. There's argument that he was taking stock of armament supplies and also trying to figure out the best way to take unexploded Israeli ordinance and transform it into ammunition for Hamas in the future. Let's pretend that all of that is actually true. There's a ceasefire in place.

[Ryan Grim]

Like under this logic, this would mean that Hamas could try to shoot at the idf. Oh well, there's a IDF general who was instrumental. I'm not justifying, I don't think they should do that. But right, they could do that if they wanted to and they could say the same thing.

[Crystal Ball]

Yeah. So there have been hundreds of people, hundreds of Palestinians killed since the quote unquote, ceasefire has been implemented. There really hasn't been a day, I don't think that has gone by that hasn't seen some Palestinians killed. An average of roughly two children a day have been killed during the ceasefire and oftentimes we'll get questions about why do you even care so much. And if you think about how much you cared when you heard about what happened at Bondi beach where at least 15 people were killed, and then imagine that you see all human life as valuable, that most days you're getting 10 to 15 Palestinians killed in the middle of this ceasefire. And that does not count the ravages of the lack of life essentials getting into Gaza. Jump to E4 real quick and then we can go back to some of these other things. The inclement weather that has hit Gaza is an absolute nightmare. So the headline here, 13 Gazans, including three children killed by hypothermia or building collapses amidst storm. Byron. One man dies in Israel. The number of hypothermia deaths has, has climbed significantly above that since then. You've had flooding and cold weather for people who are entering their third winter living in tarps and tents. The tents are, you know, crap to begin with. By the third winter, you know, they're, they're offering, you know, very little like the, they're offering very little protection against the elements. And so when you have this storm surge through, people are just left completely defenseless. Tens of thousands of tents have been completely destroyed. And Israel considers tent poles to be a, quote, dual use item. So they will not allow tent poles into Gaza because they say its dual use could be military. Pencils and paper are restricted. Like the amount of things that are blocked from going in is utterly just absurd. And it would be comical if it wasn't. There was an article about, I think it was in the New York Times about the Trump administration sent some logistics, its top logistics efforts to this kind of center where they are working with the Israeli military to get aid into Gaza. Because the thinking from the Trump administration was this seems like a massive logistical challenge. So let's get our top folks over there and send them in and they'll figure this out. They all left pretty quickly back to the United States and gave up. They said there is no logistical challenge. It's just Israel won't let things in. Like, here's the list of things they won't let in. If you change that list, you can send things in. It's like there are checkpoints, there are crossings, there are trucks filled with life essentials. Drive them in and distribute them. You don't need, you know, my big brain logistical take here. And so they just, so they just head.

[Ryan Grim]

I do have some news for you, Ryan, that just broke here. We can put it up here on the screen. We have the obligatory Barack Ravid Axios report. The White House has scolded Netanyahu for violating the Gaza ceasefire with the strike President Trump. The White House sent a stern message to Prime Minister Netanyahu. The killing over the weekend constituted a violation to US Officials held Axios. The angry message from the White House comes amid growing tensions between the Trump administration and Netanyahu government around the next phase of the agreement to end the war in Gaza and over Israel's broader regional policy. Secretary of State Steve Wyckoff and Trump advisor Jared Kushner, quote, have become very frustrated with Netanyahu. Netanyahu is expected to meet Trump in Mar? A Lago on December 29th. Oh, I didn't know that we were gonna kick off the New Year or. Sorry, bring in the New Year. With what will that.

[Crystal Ball]

Where else would you want to be then?

[Ryan Grim]

How many visits will that be?

[Crystal Ball]

Six, maybe seven.

[Ryan Grim]

Six, seven, six, seven.

[Crystal Ball]

It's got to be a record, no? And the bombing continues. They also. And we have this in dropsite daily, our morning newsletter. The Israeli Navy abducted four Palestinian fishermen. What are you doing? There's no food. You're not letting anything in. So you got people out there fishing and you just abducted them off their boats. Like, what is this? What kind of ceasefire is it? The fact that they're doing this in Lebanon is kind of the precedent for it. Like, they agreed to a ceasefire with Hezbollah and just have not withdrawn and have just consistently attacked Lebanon on a near daily basis. It's like, what? Like, what are we doing here?

[Ryan Grim]

Absolutely crazy stuff. But, yes, that is the full summary, I guess we have so far.

[Crystal Ball]

We got. We got.

[Ryan Grim]

Oh, sorry, yeah, I forgot this.

[Crystal Ball]

Huckabee did an ama, which is like, what is going on? Like, I don't know.

[Ryan Grim]

They're too online.

[Crystal Ball]

What are we doing here?

[Ryan Grim]

US US Ambassadors should not be doing ama. They shouldn't even know what AMA is.

[Crystal Ball]

Right?

[Ryan Grim]

In my opinion.

[Crystal Ball]

So utterly ridiculous. AMA from Israeli. US Ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee. Let's roll one of these.

[Interviewee / Mike Huckabee]

There's been some talk that Israel attacked.

[Crystal Ball]

The country of Qatar.

[Interviewee / Mike Huckabee]

It did not.

[Crystal Ball]

It did, in fact, send a missile to attack a terrorist who had been.

[Interviewee / Mike Huckabee]

Partly responsible for the murder of Israeli citizens.

[Crystal Ball]

But it did not attack the country.

[Interviewee / Mike Huckabee]

There was one missile. It was aimed at one person. Now, unfortunately, there were some people who.

[Crystal Ball]

Were near that missile strike that were injured or killed from it, but that.

[Interviewee / Mike Huckabee]

Was not an attack on the nation of Qatar.

[Crystal Ball]

I mean, first of all, it's about as absurd a thing as you can Say also not true. It was not one missile. I think Jeremy reported It was like nine or 12 missiles. It's far more than one. It was not aimed at one person.

[Ryan Grim]

Also, it doesn't even matter because it killed a Qatari police officer. The intended target was.

[Crystal Ball]

And it was aimed at the entire peace negotiation delegation, like, not just one person. So aside from the structural absurdity of the whole claim that you did not attack a country, you just shot a missile at them that exploded and killed people, happened. Unfortunately, there were people near the missile, so that happens. But also none of that was true. On top of the absurdity of the claim, he also elsewhere in the AMA says there's just no evidence that there's any relationship between Epstein and Israel. Okay.

[Ryan Grim]

Oh, okay, got it. Nevermind for clarifying that, Mr. Ambassador.

[Crystal Ball]

Next time he does an AMA. I wonder if that's for premium donors.

[Ryan Grim]

Yeah, that's a good question. Who is this organization?

[Crystal Ball]

Like, can we throw in questions?

[Ryan Grim]

Yeah, yeah, Honestly, I would just love to do an interview with the guy, but. Yeah, I heard nothing on that front.

[Crystal Ball]

We'll just do. We'll have to like work our way into the AMA next ama.

[Ryan Grim]

Or we'll get our. Our listeners to do so for us. All right, let's get to weed.

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[Sophie Cunningham]

This is Sophie Cunningham from Show Me Something. Do you know the symptoms of moderate to severe obstructive sleep apnea, or OSA in adults with obesity? They may be happening to you without you knowing. If anyone has ever said you snored loudly, or if you spend your days fighting off excessive tiredness, irritability and concentration issues, it may be due to osa. OSA is a serious condition where your airway partially or completely collapses during sleep, which may cause breathing interruptions and oxygen deprivation. Learn more at don'tsleep on OSA.com this information is provided by Lilly, a medicine company.

[Ryan Grim]

All right, last but not least, weed. Had to get it in here, especially with my man Ryan here to throw down with over the subject of marijuana. President Donald Trump will allegedly or reportedly be rescheduling marijuana from Schedule 1 to a Schedule 3 substance. This has no bearing on your life whatsoever. But it does have the bearing on a few corrupt Wall Streeters and venture capitalists who have been lobbying for this in the White House so that their stocks can go boom, so they can get big tax breaks and access to the banking system. Let's take a listen cnbc.

[Interviewee / Mike Huckabee]

This is an administrative order. Trump's been very clear all along. The question was could we get this in front of Trump and could it be something that has enough of a priority? It's very clear that the industry has engaged Washington in a way, way that I think is much more sensible, been much more focused. I think there's no question that top CEOs have been in Mar a Lago, have been in D.C. have been working with the president's team. The implications for this are incredible for the industry. And I do think that this is the kind of a domino to fall that would get other things going that don't necessarily have to be legislative follow through either, including exchange listings, which I think is the holy grail here, because that really would bring in institutional capital. If you're investing in cannabis here, there's not institutional capital.

[Ryan Grim]

So he said it. All right. The corrupt Wall Streeters are in on the deal.

[Crystal Ball]

Ryan.

[Ryan Grim]

And Ryan, even though I know that you support this, you have to agree with me that the way that this shit down is insane. Okay, Put this Washington Post piece up on the screen. They beat me to it. To their credit, I was hearing some rumblings. I called Ryan. Actually, I was trying to report it out for drop site, but they got in front of it for me. Trump, quote, seeks to cut restrictions on marijuana through planned order. Again, to be very clear, if you live in a state where weed is legal, this doesn't affect you at all. All this does is grant massive tax breaks and banking access to a bunch of weed companies who are being invested in by Wall street and by venture capitalists as well as the pharmaceutical industry. And in fact, the behind the scenes story, this is pure corruption, pure unadulterated corruption. Here's how this all went down. Donald Trump was visited by a woman named Kim Rivers. Okay, now for Kim Rivers, who is the CEO, is the CEO of a company called Trulieve. Trulieve is the Florida based weed company, is the one that sponsored that amendment on the ballot in Florida that, thank God, was rejected by the people of Florida. That multi billion dollar pot company also hired a woman named Susie Wiles while she was not the White House chief of staff. Okay, so what ended up happening is that the White House chief of staff brought in her former paying client Rivers to the Oval Office who convinced his Trump miraculously to grant her a gigantic tax break through schedule three, which would then mean it since stocks flying, truly stock itself. Yeah, by the way, we saw that there in cnc.

[Crystal Ball]

How nice is it, by the way? Let's linger on the fact that they're green for the arrow up. Oh, right, like got a little better.

[Ryan Grim]

Great. Yeah. At least something's going up. Certainly not. Certainly not aggregate IQ of the United States. So what ends up happening is Trump calls Mike Johnson, the Speaker, and informs him of his decision. Johnson's like, I think this is a bad idea. Trump turns the phone over to her in the Oval and it's like, why don't you explain why this is a good idea? You can go do all the research for yourself if you guys want to. Schedule 1 of Schedule 3 has no bearing on criminality, on legal enforcement, nothing. It has one reason is to make these companies wildly profitable. And in fact, as they showed on cnbc, institutional capital, Big pharma and venture capital, one of the stupidest conspiracies out there is that big Pharma is trying to suppress weed. You think they don't want to? They'll sell you anything to addict you. Most of you losers are out there smoking every single day. You think they don't want to sell that to you? They only don't because it's illegal. The moment it's illegal, they'll happily do it.

[Crystal Ball]

On that point, I have looked, you know I wrote a book about this many years ago. I have looked for evidence around Big Pharma's kind of relationship with weed and illegal drugs, along those lines that there's some self interest here and blah blah, blah, going back to the 30s and the evidence is just not there. Like pharma is more of a wait.

[Ryan Grim]

And see.

[Crystal Ball]

And then we'll move into it and figure out a way to profit when they can. It's like this idea that it's a miracle drug that is going to make other pharmaceuticals less profitable. There's just actually no evidence to it. Now the current system to me is completely indefensible where you have a multi billion dollar above board market where you can go into shops, buy things. And then the companies have two problems. Well, they have multiple problems, but they stem from two different things. One is lack of consistent access to banking because It's a Schedule 1 drug. And so a bank is not supposed to actually work with you if you're dealing with Schedule 1 drugs. And the second, as you said, is on the tax side, you're not really supposed to be able to write off expenses associated with an illegal, a federally illegal enterprise.

[Ryan Grim]

Yes.

[Crystal Ball]

Although there's some debate about this and most companies do, because imagine if you, if you're a business, you know, these are small margin businesses, even these, even these weed shops. So let's say you do $10 million in revenue in a month, but it cost you $9.9 million to buy your product, to pay wages, to do your rent, all, all of that. So you made $100,000 of profit in that month. You would then owe the federal government and the state, and the state government taxes on that $100,000. Yes, but if you can't deduct the costs of your illegal business, you actually technically should owe on all $10 million. So now you have a, let's say $3 million tax bill on $100,000 worth of operating profit. Obviously you're bankrupt immediately. So this tries to rationalize that. I was saying on the Friday show that 20 years ago you could see a mentality among the early marijuana business people who were getting into the medical world that they thought the whole system was corrupt. It's all pay to play that you need the right lobbyists, you need to hire the right people. And they went about doing that as soon as they could have had, as soon as they had a little bit of money, they'd hire some former member of Congress and their vision.

[Ryan Grim]

JOHN BOEHNER FORMER SPEAKER Right.

[Crystal Ball]

And then they got more Money. And they do. John Boehner. Their vision was, we need to be as corrupt as the rest of American industries are. They've succeeded, and they're there. I think they've wildly succeeded. You look at them from 20 years ago and you looked at this today, they'd be like, yes, that's exactly how we saw this was going to get over the Hill. We didn't know it was going to be Donald freaking Trump, but we knew we were going to where we were going to try to hire somebody who would then become a powerful government official. The fact that she became chief of staff is, like, even better. Like, that's like hitting the industrial lottery. Lottery, boom. We're in. So go. Go long on your weed stocks.

[Ryan Grim]

Well, by the way, that's another insider trading thing. So if a weed CEO is literally in an Oval Office meeting where you know something's going to happen. I checked the weed ETF, MSAS or whatever was up by 50% after this Washington Post prose, bro, so. Oh, maybe you just put out a little taste for your friends. I'm not alleging that. I'm just saying it's potential for corruption. I'm not in this specific instance, but.

[Crystal Ball]

And did it go up right before the story, or did it go up.

[Ryan Grim]

After it came up? It went up after. So beforehand there was like. Well, I mean, there was some movement throughout the day. As you know, I had the. I had the rumor. I was waiting, trying to get it confirmed.

[Crystal Ball]

So a lot of people knew.

[Ryan Grim]

A lot of people in Washington knew, like, like, hours before the Washington Post story broke.

[Crystal Ball]

Yeah, Yeah.

[Ryan Grim]

I mean, I guess I'm an idiot because I didn't buy it. Right. It's like, I had it when the market was open. I'm just not corrupt enough to do anything.

[Crystal Ball]

We don't.

[Ryan Grim]

Yeah, we don't do that. Yeah, exactly. That's not. That's not my mentality, but apparently that's a mentality of some people, because you could immediately see movement there in the hours beforehand. I just want to. Again, whether you agree, disagree, this is not how stuff should be happening. All right? And I get it. This is a small ball, and most of the people who watch the show probably support it anyways, and that's fine. That's your right as an American. That said, this is an absurd way to be making. To be doing business as a country. As you explained perfectly, around the tax implications and all of that. They're like, well, it's unfair. I'm like, no, it's not, because we are living in an absurd system where it's technically state legal and not like. No, you have to change the law. If you want access to the United States tax code, you have to change the law, period. I just get to decide because of vibes based on schedule status, which is an executive order that's gone through. Also on the polling, what that guy said in CNBC was total Bullshit. There's a 13% drop just this year for legalization of weed amongst Republicans. I hope I can take some credit for that. And actually there's a drop amongst independents and even amongst Democrats because of the system that's completely run amok. You have like big tobacco era style corruption and capitalism preying on young minds. The entire system is built around addiction. That's what I was saying earlier. 20 something percent of people who smoke weed use it every single day. Addicted, okay? You're addicted, period. There's no getting around that. And all the medical benefits are bullshit. Sorry, just came out. Jama new study. Almost every single widespread claim when it was analyzed showed no statistical benefit for so called medical marijuana.

[Crystal Ball]

Well, what about the appetite enhancement?

[Ryan Grim]

Okay, Ryan, again, whenever it comes to solely just on marijuana itself, in comparison to the other miracle drug which you just said, it doesn't exist. You can go read the study for yourself now. I'm not saying that people don't use it for said benefit. Fine. And I'm not even saying people should be locked up for using it. I've never believed that. I still don't believe it even though it is bullshit. There's nobody in prison right now for smoking weed. There's not a single person who's in prison for smoking weed. Nobody goes to jail for smoking weed.

[Crystal Ball]

Some people.

[Ryan Grim]

No, they don't, Ryan. It's been proven. I can show you the statistics. It's completely false.

[Crystal Ball]

I had a friend from the Eastern Shore who went to jail for weed in the 90s, 90s, early 90s, right.

[Ryan Grim]

So there you. I'm talking about today. It doesn't exist. People don't go to jail for smoking weed. Did they go to jail?

[Crystal Ball]

It might have been 2010 even.

[Ryan Grim]

Actually, no, even then it'd be difficult. The federal statistics on this are ironclad.

[Crystal Ball]

Arianna Huffington introduced me to Bill o'. Malley, what's his name? O', Malley, the Maryland governor.

[Ryan Grim]

Oh, Martin o'. Malley.

[Crystal Ball]

Martin o'.

[Ryan Grim]

Malley.

[Crystal Ball]

And we were talking about Maryland and I was telling him like he was governor at the time. I was like, you know, I've got a friend doing weekends now.

[Ryan Grim]

Oh, really?

[Crystal Ball]

Weed? He's like That's. That's impossible. Like, nobody's in jail for weed. Where does he live?

[Ryan Grim]

Yeah.

[Crystal Ball]

And I was like, eastern Shore. He's like, oh, okay. Actually, that. That could.

[Ryan Grim]

Something up with the cops there.

[Crystal Ball]

It's just a heart. It's just much harsher.

[Ryan Grim]

Okay. I don't. I don't know much about Maryland.

[Crystal Ball]

It's. It's a. These rural areas in general, they are. They're just much harsher towards maybe defendants. But then, like Baltimore, for instance.

[Ryan Grim]

Okay, okay, fair.

[Crystal Ball]

Like, you go to a Baltimore judge over weed, he's gonna yell at the cop, like, what are you doing wasting my time?

[Ryan Grim]

Right, Right.

[Crystal Ball]

Weed in a more rural area.

[Ryan Grim]

But even today, I don't think that that's the case.

[Crystal Ball]

Probably not.

[Ryan Grim]

I mean, I've looked at the federal and the state stats, which are all like, there is nobody in jail, especially federal prison. Nobody is in jail for smoking weed. Bullshit claim. Just so everybody understands. That said, I don't think it should have existed in the past. I don't think it should existed today.

[Crystal Ball]

Now. One thing you might like about this is that moving it to schedule three.

[Ryan Grim]

Yeah. Now they have to justify it.

[Crystal Ball]

It also moves it to. It opens up more research possibilities.

[Ryan Grim]

We don't need any research. We know everything we need to know. Right.

[Crystal Ball]

You can always have more research.

[Ryan Grim]

There are tens of millions of people use this drug every single day. We know everything we need to know. That's like me saying we need to study alcohol.

[Crystal Ball]

What?

[Ryan Grim]

I need to tell you that it gets drunk and it ruins your sleep. I don't need to prove that to you.

[Crystal Ball]

It makes you dizzy.

[Ryan Grim]

Yeah. Oh, shy. Yeah. Come on. All right.

[Crystal Ball]

More research is good, though.

[IBM Advertiser]

No.

[Ryan Grim]

For what? For what we just went through. The medical claims are bs. It could be.

[Crystal Ball]

So. The other thing I learned from studying the history of all different drugs is that when you get a wild west situation, you, as a supporter of that situation, might like it for a year or two. It never stays that way. The fact that there's now a little bit of a backlash that you're pointing to is completely historically in line with all of the trends. Remember, cocaine was, like, popular in the 1890s.

[Ryan Grim]

Yeah. Which was insane.

[Crystal Ball]

And then it's everywhere. And then people are like, ah, we don't like this everywhere, actually.

[Ryan Grim]

Well, we had literal coke fiends who were robbing pharmacies. It was wild.

[Crystal Ball]

Yeah. So then they cracked down on it. So you get this pendulum swinging back and forth. So if you actually are a supporter of weed, you want to see it More out in the open. And you want to see the harms discussed publicly in a way that allows the society to get it under control a little bit. Otherwise, you get the hammer instead. So I'm the hammer? Yeah. It's socialism or barbarism. You're gonna get the barbarism here. Yeah.

[Ryan Grim]

I mean, it would be better than widespread weed use literally everywhere you go. But look, I'm being wildly hyperbolic. I always enjoy talking to about it with you. And just as a tease, Griffin and I have filmed our review of Reefer Madness. It clocked in at 90 minutes. We enjoyed the hell out of it. Just. We enjoyed the hell out of just watching the film, reviewing the film. It's one of the most important films of the.

[Crystal Ball]

Is this going to be one of the holiday episodes?

[Ryan Grim]

It's going to be one of.

[Crystal Ball]

I can't wait for that.

[Ryan Grim]

We have all the clips. We have clips. It's a real movie review. Griffin was actually. Because Griffin went to film school, so he actually really knows, like, how to dissect and do a film review. And then I insert. I give some color commentary on the film. But we also delve into some of the claims of everything.

[Crystal Ball]

Yeah, I'm watching this one.

[Ryan Grim]

It's a good. It's a look. Very few people probably will watch it, but I enjoyed the hell out of doing it, so I hope that you do so. All right. That's one of our many benefits. In addition to much more compelling content by Crystal, Ryan and Emily, which I'm sure will be much more highly rated.

[Crystal Ball]

Also, shout out to the breaking points viewer who came to the reason debate had me sign his weed pen.

[Ryan Grim]

That's disgusting. That's disgusting. That's paraphernalia.

[Crystal Ball]

That's right. As I told Sagar, multiple people told me, bong rips for Saga.

[Ryan Grim]

They're lying. That's a lie. Okay, anyone? If you were ripping a bong in the morning. In the morning, there's something wrong with you. I'm just saying it's empirically true. Who's doing it? What do you call somebody who drinks in the morning? An alcoholic. Yeah. All right, let's be honest. Call a spade a spade.

[Crystal Ball]

Yeah. Wake and bake.

[Ryan Grim]

If you have a drink when you.

[Crystal Ball]

Wake up in the morning, stigma as.

[Ryan Grim]

Yeah, it's just. This is my whole thing. Is this like, oh, if you pour in vodka into a Diet Coke can or like that, it's always sunny episode and you're drinking red wine, you are a disgusting alcoholic. You have a problem, bro. You have a problem. You waken me. I was like, oh, it's so chill. So cool and chill. It's not like.

[Crystal Ball]

No, there are people exhaling watching this right now. No, they're not.

[Ryan Grim]

And if you are, put it down. All right. Throw the bong. Break it. Break it. I forget what I said. Something. I said bong tears or something like that. Apparently bong tears are real. That's what a weed smoker informed me is that sometimes you hit it so hard.

[Sophie Cunningham]

Oh, cry.

[Ryan Grim]

Absolutely. I wouldn't know.

[Interviewee / Mike Huckabee]

All right.

[Ryan Grim]

I don't want to know. You shouldn't know either. All right. Okay, we'll see you later.

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[Ryan Grim]

O this is Julian Edelman from Dudes on Dudes with Gronk and Jewels. Sunday mornings I've got my game day ritual. Coffee, lucky socks, and now new Morning Uncrustable sandwiches.

[Crystal Ball]

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[Ryan Grim]

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[Crystal Ball]

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[Ryan Grim]

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[Crystal Ball]

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[Ryan Grim]

Your new Sunday kickoff ritual starts here with new Morning Uncrustable sandwiches packed with 12 grams of protein.

[Sophie Cunningham]

This is Sophie Cunningham from Show Me Something. Do you know the symptoms of moderate to severe obstructive sleep apnea, or OSA in adults with obesity? They may be happening to you without you knowing. If anyone has ever said you snored loudly, or if you spend your days fighting off excessive tiredness, irritability and concentration issues, it may be due to osa. OSA is a serious condition where your airway partially or completely collapses during sleep, which may cause breathing interruptions and oxygen deprivation. Learn more at don'tsleep on OSA.com this information is provided by Lily, A medicine company. This is an iHeart podcast.

[Ryan Grim]

Guaranteed Human.