← Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar
Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar
1/27/26: US Dollar Crash, Zionist TikTok Censorship, Bibi Blocks Gaza Reconstruction
00:42:23
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- [00:00]
Krystal Ball
This is an iHeart podcast.
- [00:02]
Sponsor Announcer
Guaranteed Human support for the show comes from Public, the investing platform for those who take it seriously. On Public you can build a multi asset portfolio of stocks, bonds, options, crypto and now generated assets which allow you to turn any idea into an investable index with AI. It all starts with your prompt. From renewable energy companies with high free cash flow to semiconductor suppliers growing revenue over 20% year over year, you can literally type any prompt and put the AI to work. It's IT screens thousands of stocks, builds a one of a kind index and lets you back test it against the S&P 500. Then you can invest in a few clicks. Generated assets are like EFTs with infinite possibilities, completely customizable and based on your thesis, not someone else's. Go to public.com podcast and earn an uncapped 1% bonus when you transfer your portfolio. That's public.com podcast paid for by Public Investing Brokerage Services by Open to the Public Investing Inc. Member FINRA SIPC Advisory Services by Public Advisors, llc SEC Registered Advisor Generated Assets is an interactive analysis tool. Output is for informational purposes only and is not investment recommendation or advice. Complete disclosures available at public.com disclosures hey.
- [01:15]
Saagar Enjeti
This is US Olympic gold medalist Tara Davis Woodhull and I'm US Paralympic gold medalist Hunter Woodhull. As athletes, our lives are about having a clear path and a team that you can absolutely trust. So when it came to getting the best mortgage, we chose PennyMac. PennyMac is pro proud to be the official mortgage provider of Team USA and you learn more at pennymac.com PennyMac Loan Services, LLC equal housing lender NMLS ID 35953 licensed by the Department of Financial Protection and Innovation under the California Residential Mortgage Lending Act. Conditions and restrictions may apply.
- [01:44]
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- [02:14]
Saagar Enjeti
Hey guys, Sagar and Krystal here.
- [02:15]
Krystal Ball
Independent media just played a truly massive role in this election and we are so excited about what that means for the future of this show.
- [02:23]
Saagar Enjeti
This is the only place where you can find honest perspectives from the left and the right that simply does not exist anywhere else.
- [02:29]
Krystal Ball
So if that is something that's important, 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.
- [02:39]
Saagar Enjeti
We need your help to build the future of independent news media and we hope to see you@breakingpoints.com turning now to the dollar, there's some major movement in the US Economy with major geopolitical implications. Go and put this up here on the screen from the Financial Times. We're going to read a little bit about this. The dollar sinks to a four month low as gold, so scores past $5,000 in the yen leap. So there's a lot of stuff kind of going on behind the scenes. The simultaneous spike in the price of gold to $5,000 an ounce and the dollar sinking to a low combined with some of the things that are happening in the Japanese markets nobody is fully understanding exactly. But I'll just read from what the general consensus on Wall street. They say the dollar, analysts said is suffering from the concerns over a potential government shutdown down 0.6% on Monday against a broader group of major currenc is sparked by the Greenland crisis of last week. US Risks pushed investors out of the dollar and they sought safety in precious metals, sending gold to an all time high. And the surge in yen has come as traders speculate that the US And Japan could be lining up their first coordinated intervention in currency since the G7 acted to weaken it after the 2011 earthquake. So that's kind of explains the broader picture for all of those things. However, if you put D1B guys, the next one up there on the screen for some of the implications. Gold and sil also showed you some interesting, you know, reversals that happened at the end of the day. So it's all just very strange. And I think that the volatility is broadly just part of the instability right now in the global system. So if you put the next one up there on the screen just to look at the several currencies all rising against the US Dollar, what you see is all of these different currencies that have been rising against the dollar at various different percentages. And I think that this is a direct conseque really of several factors. So instability in our current fiscal system. Right. So we have a partial government shutdown which is now looming. Greenland, which had tariff risk, you know, we didn't even get this in the show. I don't know if you saw this. Trump actually raised the tariffs from 15 to 25% on South Korea just yesterday. Again, huge euro bias in our press. Everyone seems to forget South Korea, massively important trading partner to the United States. I don't even think it got a single major headline in any of the newspapers. We're talking about a huge economy with huge levels of bilateral trade between the United States. Take a look at the cars that are out there on the road, not to mention Samsung and all of these other companies with huge footprints here in the US that is in my opinion, like way more of an earthquake than Greenland or any of these. Again, never deserves the attention that it gets. But you put that all together, you got the shutdown, you've got Greenland, general instability here. For the US it's trading related questions about the US and its word for trading relationships. That's what's going to swing your currency. And remember, currency linking with the bond markets, those couple of things all together have the potential always to just slip you in. Not a full blown crisis, but it can just always lead to problems for debt, for our own fiscal picture. And we're seeing all of that in the context also of a slowing US Economy in terms of what we have at home.
- [06:07]
Krystal Ball
Yeah, no, I mean, I think these are all signs of a reordering of not only the global financial system, but the global system overall. I mean, it's always been the US Dollar, treasury bonds. This was like the flight to safety when things were precarious. This is where investors and central banks, where they would, where they would go. And now instead of that, you see hard metals, you see gold and silver, which are increasingly becoming the flight to safety. Instead of the US Dollar and Treasury bonds, I saw a chart that said that, you know, central banks around the world are holding lower and lower amounts of US Dollars, as, you know, reserves, which again is this sort of like slow but steady shift away from the US as the central bulwark of the global economy and global financial system. Now, none of this happens overnight. I'm not saying that like de dollarization is happening tomorrow or that this is going to be a quicker, instantaneous thing. But these countries, aided by the brazenness and, you know, wild maneuvering of Trump, have realized that the writing is on the wall and the old system is no more and that they need to plan and protect themselves for the future. So I think that's, you know, as you look at these movements in the market, which are sort of slow and steady over time and do have some reversals like we saw gold and silver reverse again. But the overall trend in the Trump administration has been for those precious metals to continue to spike and hit new and new and new record highs.
- [07:33]
Saagar Enjeti
Yeah, I mean it's just gold is one of those where in generally you can always say when it's high things are usually not good. Like it's flight from something. Let's go to the next one please. Mac, this is D3. This is something I always keep my eye on. And this was always a big sign of economic problems under the Obama administration. The US long term unemployment rate has hit a four year high. So one of the big arguments for for the nerds out there who are watching the 2012 Mitt Romney debate, there was this moment where Romney and Obama were arguing about the unemployment rate. And this is something that Romney very clumsily was not able to hit home. But I have always thought was a real precursor to some of the economic dissatisfaction from 2012 to 2016 is this long term unemployment rate where what it means is that people who are unemployed are taking longer to find new jobs than at point in the last four years and that they're staying unemployed longer and longer. So it says it now takes an average of more than 11 weeks for an unemployed person in the US to find a new job. That is the longest since 2021. During the entire Covid insanity when a bunch of people were let go from their jobs as a result of the lockdowns, some 26% of 7.5 million unemployed actively searching for work have been looking for more than six months. So this is a huge problem because you've got unemployment insurance, it doesn't last nearly as long. They say that it sees households under significant stress. People have emergency savings, can stretch them a little bit, but the longer you do, the more likely it is that you don't have the savings to cover very basic bills. Bad for households, bad for the economy, pushes people into debt. Outside of the pandemic, we are now at the highest rate that we have seen in a decade and it is heading in the wrong direction. And these by the way, are from the official BLS statistics. So you can see significant actually increase. One thing I also underestimated was that the government shutdown actually appears to have ticked things up. Same if things have started to tick up after the government shutdown. Can't pinpoint exactly why, but you know, I mean a lot. 40 what? Several million people went 41 days without a paycheck. If some contractors I think I forget exactly what the rules are, but I know some contractors in some cases are not entitled to back pay. That could have been, it could have caused like some immediate retrenchment combined with the tariff policy shut, you know, people. Again, there's multifactorial reasons why all of these that, but in general, it's just not a number that you want to see. And this is where the dollar and the Federal Reserve also comes into play. And interest rates, because that's what matters, you know, for in terms of juicing the economy if you do want to try and do so.
- [10:17]
Krystal Ball
The longer that a person is unemployed, the more difficult it is for them to get back in the job market. You know, their skills atrophy. Employers who are evaluating resumes think that there's something wrong with you and decide to go with someone who, you know, is just switching jobs or who is new out of college. I mean, that's the other thing we've been tracking though is college grads really particular struggling new college grads, particularly struggling. I think the introduction of AI is part of that. Even though it doesn't seem like, you know, the AI promise hasn't really fully come to fruition. But I think companies are kind of putting things on hold to see if they can get away with fewer workers and substituting in AI and shifting more work burden onto the workforce that they already have. They're sort of testing the waters for what they can get away with. And we've also seen an economy which this has been, you know, the trend over decades. There's, there's numbers coming out this morning where the earnings of this company and that company look, you know, pretty strong. But those top line numbers for the companies and the titans of industry and the oligarch class, or the Epstein class, as Rokhana calls them, none of that is trickling down to benefit your average American. It is largely disconnected from the experience of the average person. So, you know, it used to be that there was more of a connection between, okay, there's a productivity increase, the corporate giants are doing well. That means the workers are going to do better. That relationship has totally severed. So that, you know, if you have the company overall doing well, it by and large doesn't really matter for the, you know, your average worker out there. So that's one of the disconnects that's going on in the economy right now and why you have such a tale of, you know, two realities and the, the asset owning class versus the rest of everybody else.
- [11:59]
Saagar Enjeti
Yeah, it's just so Obvious. And you know, the fact that the, the political class just never wakes up. It's like how could you have an economic backlash election to Joe Biden when the S and P was up by 80% or whatever over the course of his presidency? Because it's, the point is, is that those gains do not largely go to the average income and, or household. So for example, let's put this health care one up there. This is a very important story. They say health insurance is now more expensive than the mortgage. For these Americans, monthly health insurance bills are rocketing higher for middle income earners who rely on Obamacare. So they say millions of Americans starting to see their monthly health insur bills rise. Expanded subsidies have now gone. They point to for example a 47 year old couple who paid $255 a month last year for a low end ACA plan. Late last year they learned their bill would be going up to 2,155, a sum nearly triple their monthly mortgage payment of 760. First of all I need to meet these people and find out how they got a 760 mortgage. But you know, second, you could say a two thousand dollar bill when you previously paid 2, 255 is extraordinary. It's craz. So the general principle is regardless of whether it's more than your mortgage or not, $2,000 a month, no matter what income level you are at, is insane for healthcare, specifically for two 47 year olds. You know, you guys know I don't have a ton of sympathy for boomers who are like early retirees and rich, but that's not really the case. Whenever we look at two probably self employed people, probably people like you and I, you know, maybe small business, something like that, which have to rely on the open exchanges.
- [13:38]
Krystal Ball
Yeah.
- [13:38]
Saagar Enjeti
And you know that's right around what.
- [13:40]
Krystal Ball
We pay for our family.
- [13:41]
Saagar Enjeti
Yeah. So there you go.
- [13:43]
Krystal Ball
Right.
- [13:43]
Saagar Enjeti
And you have multiple, you have multiple children. And I think for me, you know, I've been discovered. I know I've read the stories. But to experience it yourself, this is currently. So I talked about, you know, my daughter had to brief stare stay in the NICU immediately after birth. I did not receive a bill this entire time. And my insurance company gave me an explanation of benefits saying, you know, you owe zero for because I hit my deductible, my very high 14,500 deductible. And then this, you know, eight, nine months later, I just got a bill from them for $25,000. And I was like what? I was like, I don't you know, and so now this is the hidden productivity cost. I know the bill is wrong. The insurance company is not going to dispute it on my behalf. I have to call and to be like, oh, you're wrong and you need to read. And they're like, well, you're going to have to do a three way call. I mean, you know, just the, the loss. I'm pretty confident I'm not going to have to pay anything, I really am. But this is opportunity. Costs of time, mental energy, you know, like hostile insurance agents and hospital people who do not care about you at all and who are like, well, you know, that's what the bill says. And I'm like, well that's not what the insurance company says. Right. And then anyway, I'm just pointing out though that this is for, this is just on a micro level, like in terms of how insane this type of system is. And yes, I, I know, it's just, it's just my first foray. I've never had to deal with something like this before, but I've read about many of these types of stories and yeah, it can take, it can literally suck hours of your life dealing with this type of nonsense.
- [15:19]
Krystal Ball
The whole purpose of, I know yours is a little bit different because the bill is coming from the hospital.
- [15:24]
Saagar Enjeti
Right.
- [15:24]
Krystal Ball
And so the problem is actually with them. But I mean the whole purpose of health insurance companies is to deny as much, as much payment as they can and make you on the hook for as much as they possibly can. Like that's how they turn a profit. And it genuinely. Having never lived in any country other than the US it genuinely seems miraculous to me that there are so many other countries around the world where you don't have this absolute nightmare where you literally walk in and get care and walk out. There's no here, where's your health insurance card? Let me call. You're not covered. Let me send them the bill. No, you get the bill. No, you didn't meet your deductible. Like none of that. You just get care and then you leave. That is totally incomprehensible to me. It seems so miraculous that that is the case and yet that is the case in every other developed country in the entire world. And think of all the distortions. I mean, obviously the, the cost burden on people is unbelievable. But then it creates all sorts of weird distortions where maybe someone who would otherwise start a company and be an entrepreneur and be able to, you know, add something additional to the economy, they can't leave their job because they need that health care. Let's put this last one up on the screen because this is a mystery to me and one that we have to continue to track in terms of the economy. You had a record number of home purchase cancellations in December. So people who, you know, they, they thought they had a deal, they signed a contract and then they end up backing out of it, reached a record high. And I genuinely don't know what that's all about. My best guess is that just people get kind of spooked, like they're just not feeling super secure about their financial situation. They're not, you know, there was a whole tariff conversation going on. I don't know what led to this, but it doesn't seem like a good sign, Sagar, of how people are feeling about the economy.
- [17:20]
Saagar Enjeti
Yeah, I, I tried to figure it out too. I couldn't find a single article that actually broke any of it down. So total mystery. Probably, like you said, uncertainty and just general feeling of like, hey, now's not a good time. Maybe, you know, maybe the interest rate changed, something like that. I really have no idea. But yeah, it is. We gotta keep an eye on that.
- [17:42]
Krystal Ball
I looked at the mortgage rates and there was not an obvious this. It was like six, you know, for 30 year mortgage. It was like in the sixes and there was no obvious like, oh, they're really going up fast or they're really going down fast and maybe we wait a little bit and secure a better rate. It was just kind of like, you know, up and down somewhere in the sixes the whole time. So there's not an obvious story to be told from the interest rates. But you know, something is clearly going on there.
- [18:06]
Saagar Enjeti
It hasn't changed much. I mean, it's just dipping up and down. Yeah, I'm looking at the general trend. There's been some shift, but nothing, nothing. World changing in the last 10 months.
- [18:15]
Krystal Ball
Yeah, nothing particularly noteworthy, so I don't know.
- [18:18]
Saagar Enjeti
Well, if you're a housing specialist, let us know. Leave a comment and tell us what happened. Okay, well, let's go to the next one.
- [18:25]
Sponsor Announcer
Support for the show comes from Public, the investing platform for those who take it seriously. On Public, you can build a multi asset portfolio of stocks, bonds, options, crypto and now generated assets which allow you to turn any idea into an investable index. With AI, it all starts with your prompt. From renewable energy companies with high free cash flow to semiconductor suppliers, growing revenue over 20% year over year, you can literally type any prompt and put the AI to work. It screens thousands of stocks, builds a one of a kind index and lets you back test it against the S&P 500. Then you can invest in a few clicks. Generated assets are like EFTs with infinite possibilities, completely customizable and based on your thesis, not someone else's. Go to public.com podcast and earn an uncapped 1% bonus when you transfer your portfolio. That's public.com podcast paid for by Public Investing Brokerage Services by Open to the Public Investing Inc. Member FINRA SIPC Advisory Services by Public Advisors, llc SEC Registered Advisor Generated Assets is an interactive analysis tool. Output is for informational purposes only and is not investment recommendation or advice. Complete disclosures available at public.com disclosures hey.
- [19:35]
Saagar Enjeti
This is US Olympic gold medalist Tara.
- [19:37]
Sponsor Announcer
Davis Woodhull and I'm US Paralympic gold medalist Hunter Woodhull.
- [19:40]
Saagar Enjeti
As athletes, our lives are about having a clear path and a team that you can absolutely trust. So when it came to getting the best mortgage, we chose PennyMac. PennyMac is proud to be the official mortgage provider of Team USA and you learn more at pennymac.com PennyMac Loan Services, LLC equal housing lender NMLS ID 35953 licensed by the Department of Financial Protection and Innovation under the California Residential Mortgage Lending act, conditions and restrictions may apply.
- [20:05]
Home Instead Announcer
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- [20:35]
Krystal Ball
So guys, as of last week the TikTok USA takeover is official and many people are saying they long for the freedom of expression that we received under the Chinese Communist party running of TikTok. There have been a lot of problems. Now I'll just say up front, TikTok is saying that this all Sagar has to do with some sort of power outage at a data center, which I think when we give you the details here of the type of content that people are struggling to get circulating, you're going to be understandably skeptical about their explanations here. So this is one of the wildest one. Let's put this up on the screen and I've tested this personally. I had some friends and family who tested this as well. If you try to send a direct message that has the word Epstein in it. They will not let you send the word Epstein or any other content that includes Epstein. And so you can see that up on the screen. This is what you get. This is the exact same thing that happened when I tried it as well. You get this little exclamation point and then it tells you that this is like a potential violation of community standards and that they're worried about the safety of their community. So that one is for sure. Um, there have also been on Mac, if you go ahead and jump forward to the to E4 some of the reporting that we're getting from different users about the way that their anti ICE posts in particular are being completely suppressed. So you have the Democrats here drop site has seen their reporting on various topics be suppressed. Jessica Burbank is another one who has seen her TikTok views just absolutely fall off a cliff. I know they I've had it ladies have experienced this as well. And it seems if we put E5 up on the screen, it seems specifically to be tied to any sort of post about the shooting of Alex Preddy in Minneapolis. Any criticism of ICE sort of broader Trump criticism as well, seems to be not getting pushed into the algorithm whatsoever so that that type of content from creators with large followings is getting next to no views when they post it. So as I said before, I can put E3 up on the screen. TikTok is claiming this has to do with a power outage. You know, I'm not Sagar a technical wizard here, so perhaps there is some way in which a power outage magically creates, you know, algorithmic suppression of content that just happens to be unfavorable in the eyes of the new, you know, Ellison backed ownership. Perhaps there is some technical explanation for this, but this seems pretty hard to believe given these specific things that are being blocked, suppressed and censored.
- [23:27]
Saagar Enjeti
Yeah, I just don't get it. So here's the statement. They say a A suffered a cascading systems failure that caused multiple bugs such as creators having difficult posting new video. Seeing content showing zero views marked a rocket. But how would that explain the DM's issue?
- [23:44]
Krystal Ball
I did see Epstein thing is, right.
- [23:46]
Saagar Enjeti
The Epstein thing is. I mean that's the craziest one. I'm glad we saw undeniable. But the, I mean I did see some NFL creators who were telling me that they had the same problem with zero view. So it is possible, you know, that the zero view thing, if I had to guess what has happened is that they've a roll out of their so called like political community guidelines and that it's just clunky in terms of the way that they're rolling out their code under new. In, under like the new guidelines or under the new ownership. And they're still trying to figure out like D ranking and all of that or, and, or how to rank, you know, such content under the new regime. That seems to me because notice they're saying the zero views thing was a data center. That's believable. Like I said with the NFL stuff. What's not believable to me is the DMS and the searchability. Some of the stuff that we've seen previously, especially when we know that the, you know, the. You have very like a lot in Zionist, like literally who is in charge now of the platform. We've had multiple people who have come out and have talked about it. Can we play that SOT actually here? This is E2 about the critics of Zionism. Let's go ahead and queue this up just to show you what some of the new standards on the platform are going to look like.
- [25:03]
Krystal Ball
Yeah, and so this is from TikTok CEO. This is an older clip, but just to give you a sense of some of the codification of their new hate speech rules and the way they're thinking.
- [25:14]
Ahmed Khan
About these things, we made a change to designate the use of the term.
- [25:18]
Saagar Enjeti
Zionist as a proxy for a protected.
- [25:21]
Ahmed Khan
Attribute as hate speech. So if somebody were to use Zionist, of course you can, you can use.
- [25:26]
Saagar Enjeti
It in the sense of you're a proud Zionist, but if you're using it in the context of degrading somebody, calling.
- [25:33]
Ahmed Khan
Somebody a Zionist as a dirty name, then that gets designated as hate speech.
- [25:40]
Saagar Enjeti
To be moderated against. Over the course of 2024, we tripled the amount of accounts that we were banning for hateful activity. We also have, I think over two.
- [25:50]
Ahmed Khan
Dozen Jewish organization that are constantly feeding.
- [25:53]
Saagar Enjeti
Us intelligence and information when they spot violative trends.
- [25:57]
Ahmed Khan
There is no finish line. There's no finish line to moderating hate speech, identifying hateful trends, trying to keep the platform safe.
- [26:07]
Saagar Enjeti
There's no such thing as an end game.
- [26:10]
Krystal Ball
No such thing as an end game.
- [26:13]
Saagar Enjeti
Well, keep in mind this kind of fits with the ADL comments. Remember about the AI lawyers and how they have an army of AI warriors who are auto sending super stuff to lore. I mean this is, this is very, very scary stuff. I mean, look, yes, the war, you know, is winding down and some of the content. But like the point is that this machine being put into place can just be deployed for basically Anything. And they're going to use, you know, their private guidelines. I really think this is the time. I think I've seen some Democrats talk about this. Didn't Gavin Nome say that he was going to announce investigation? And everyone's concerned. You know, you're like, you're talking about the Dem creators and all that. But the thing is, is that this is now been going on for 10 years, you know, ever since 2016 and Facebook. And it's just we have to, like, put this to bed, especially text. TikTok is now under US ownership. We need transparent guidelines that talk specifically about moderation, published standards, and then the public has to be able to weigh in. I've talked previously. I'm curious for your view. I think we should just pass it, take it off of their plate and just be like, from now on, if it's consistent with the First Amendment, it's up there. And then in terms of de ranking and all of that for advertising purposes, you may have the ability, you know, to have some sort of tweak, but even then it gets sketchy because as you and I have seen, you know, on YouTube, like, if you get a video that's demonetized for ad purposes, it may still have tremendous news value. Doesn't get a lot of views or something. Just doesn't appear to pop off. But I think at this point, we need national legislation, just period, end of story, that set, that's like, standards. Otherwise, this is what we're gonna get all. You have Elon, on the one hand, you know, Grok putting like girls in bikinis, and then you've got this nonsense. Like, the point is it cannot, like, you know, literal girls, actual children. Right. We didn't spend enough time on that. I just got lost in the sauce. But yeah, like, literal girls. Like, we need serious federal guidelines and legislation from AI and to social media. Like, my new cause to lab for AI is I think that anything AI picture generation should just be banned for. For people like, for anyone who's alive. I just think there's nothing good that can come of it. All of these image renderers, look, it's sometimes fun for thumbnails and all that, but like, no. The societal cost and the destruction and the ability to trust. Like, any video that you see, it's too much. Same here with Tik Tok. We need published benefits. Like, or, sorry, publish. We need published rules. This is what we do. This is how we D rank. This is exactly how much it's going to go down. That's the very Least. And at a macro level, we just should just pass anything consistent with the First Amendment. It's good to go, period. End of story. The government's taking it off your plate. This is how it has to be because we can't have this. We're living under literal oligarchical fighting control. Depending on the who. Who is in power and who. Who, you know, depends and tends to have like the ear of the ear of the White House, like the Biden administration, which is. It's too much.
- [29:08]
Krystal Ball
Yeah. And I mean there's. That definitely needs to happen. You got to break up. I mean, it's just you can't. The. The Ellison family. How many media properties they control at this point and when you have for whom, like, you know, he. There are a lot of people who are leaving TikTok right now. I don't know the numbers, but. And they're going to this other app shout out to upscrolled as like a TikTok alternative. I myself downloaded and playing around with it to see what it's all about. They are degrading the experience of TikTok for a political agenda. And because he has so much money, like it almost could be like a catch and kill situation where he doesn't really care that much if the platform has the widest reach or is the most financially successful if it is serving a political agenda. And that political agenda does dovetail with their financial interests because they want to, you know, make sure Trump is happy with what's going on there so that whatever business deals they want to effectuate get, you know, get a glide path through this administration. And so those are the kind of dynamics that are controlling these platforms. Not anything that's in any thought of like the public interest or what's appropriate under a speech or First Amendment standard that, that doesn't even enter into the calculation whatsoever. So. So, yeah, I mean, I, I think they genuinely don't care that much whether TikTok is successful as a platform so long as it is serving the ideological interest of Zionists and also of the Trump administration. Very possible. Yeah. I mean that's certainly what it looks like here in the early days.
- [30:45]
Saagar Enjeti
And look, and it can serve other ends, you know, for their business empire. Sometimes it's like you can hurt TikTok. But right now, you know, Paramount Skydance needs a merger acquisition or whatever go through. So it's. Everything is like an interconnected web completely.
- [30:58]
Krystal Ball
And TikTok is probably nothing profit wise compared to that broader enterprise. Like that is the, the bigger picture which is why corporate consolidation and corporate ownership of all of these media entities is such an incredible, you know, issue and such a pernicious issue as well. So I don't know, it's certainly looking like TikTok is not going to be the same, at least for political content. And they may just turn it into like I saw someone saying, they're effectively turning it into threads where, where political content is de ranked where it's essentially, you know, pushed to the sidelines in favor of just like, you know, the most anodyne, like sports, cooking things. That's where you make all the money neutral and safe.
- [31:37]
Saagar Enjeti
Yeah, that's where all the money is made. Remember, you know, there are channels that do 1 probably 1/5 the amount of views that you and I will get who will make probably either the same or even sometimes more money because they cover very blase thing and the advertisers don't want to be connected. Like advertisers don't like political content. They never have, have unfortunately can't kill the democratic want of a lot of people to like, want to know what the hell is going on. And it's so, it's always been inconsistent. YouTube, all these other platforms, they would kill political content if they could. Or like in their ideal world, they don't want it there. It's really not, it's much more a pain in the ass for them than it is in terms of a money maker. And yeah, I think it's really unfortunate. This is why again, I think we need federal legislation. People need to come in, set a clear standard and just be like, this is it, this is how we can go from here on out. Because every four years, I mean watching Zuckerberg go from, you know, from being a Biden suck up to standing behind Trump at the inauguration and then now here with the tick tock, it's, it's just too much to constantly be swinging and like sucking up to the people in power. From COVID censorship to denouncing it. It's just like it's been such a whirlwind over the last 10 years that at a point I'm like this, this needs to be a settled question. We need to put down something and just go from there. And like you said too, these people can't be allowed to control, control everything because there's danger, there's danger to it for us as consumers, for, for, for you in terms of the information that you're literally getting there. And then also, yeah, at a major like more democratic question, this is just basic antitrust law. It just needs to go well.
- [33:09]
Krystal Ball
And the last thing I'll say is just really important to keep in mind why this you know ownership ban and shift to the US leadership of the company. Why it happens. And you know the, the, the, the rationale that actually pushed this over the finish line was all about Palestine. You know there may have been some other ideas to begin with and people who wanted it like yourself, Sagar, for different reasons push it for years. But yeah, but the, the stated reason people like Mitt Romney said this outright that this actually got over the finish line under a Democratic administration, let's keep in mind was because they didn't like that people were speaking out with regard to the genocide in guys Gaza. They did not like the pro Palestine sentiment. Remember Nikki Haley talking about like that for every minute people spend on TikTok they become 30% more anti semitic or whatever. Like that is actually the argument that led to this. And so no one should be surprised by the, you know, by the consequences that we are seeing and by the, the crackdown on you know, a variety of types of political speech. So we'll see what happens when they get their power outage short figured out out and what the, you know, what the, the state of TikTok is after they get all of that worked out. But so far it's looking pretty grim.
- [34:25]
Saagar Enjeti
Yeah, that's right. All right, let's get to Amit Khan. Standing by.
- [34:29]
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- [35:40]
Saagar Enjeti
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- [36:40]
Krystal Ball
All right guys, we've got a bunch of updates for you on Gaza on the quote unquote Board of Peace on the latest with regard to to Netanyahu and Israel. And we're very fortunate to be joined this morning by the frontline humanitarian and philanthropist and also executive producer of the Voice of Hindra Job, the Academy Award nominated voice of Hindra Job. Ahmed Khan. Great to see you sir.
- [37:01]
Saagar Enjeti
Good to see you.
- [37:02]
Ahmed Khan
Hey Sagar, how are you guys?
- [37:03]
Saagar Enjeti
Good to see you.
- [37:04]
Krystal Ball
Very good, very good. So Mac, if you could put these first images up on the screen. Just this is what it looks like in Gaza now. You can see just continued absolute misery. People living in these flimsy churches, intense winds. We've seen of course, rainstorms. There's also Ahmed bin and you, you can speak to this. Israel has now blocked a huge number of international aid organizations from continuing to work in Gaza. Can you just talk to us about that piece and also what the conditions on the ground are like today.
- [37:36]
Ahmed Khan
The conditions are horrendous. The suffering has not been mitigated at all. You know, sure there's not 24 hours airstrikes anymore, but it's a different kind of suffering. Suffering like a slow genocide. So people are still malnourished. People don't have homes. 90% of the homes have been destroyed. People are living in tents and the Tents get destroyed by the wind, the wind and the rain. And so there's a shortage of tents and tarps, which is nuts, because there are millions and millions of tents and tarps around the world sitting in warehouses. And, you know, it's done by design. It's all by design. Sort of. The Israelis don't necessarily want everyone to die at once, but they wouldn't mind if they sort of die slowly. And that's happening. Children are still dying of hypothermia, which is crazy. There's supposedly a ceasefire. How do you let children die of hypothermia? It's a very simple thing to mitigate.
- [38:31]
Saagar Enjeti
Ahmed, there's been a development with the, you know, with a hostage remains. The very last remains of a hostage have now been returned. Matt, can you just go and queue up the next part of. Netanyahu, speaking yesterday in the Knesset, said, quote, that the next stage is not reconstruction. It is the disarmament of Hamas and the demilitarization of the Gaza Strip. We have an interest in advancing this stage, not delaying it. Ahmed, how do you see this in the context of what you're saying is this allegedly was supposed to begin some new part of a ceasefire opening up, you know, some of the pathways into Gaza. However, they're saying, actually, no, we're still continuing disarmament and that means that they're going to continue to blockade. Is that how you understand. Understand it?
- [39:17]
Ahmed Khan
Yeah, no, it's. There's nothing new. It's totally in line with the end game that's existed since October 8th of 2023, which is essentially the ethnic cleansing of Gaza. And so this is totally in line with that because they don't want, you know, people to have their homes back. They don't want the 36 hospitals to be rebuilt. They destroyed almost all of them. You know, they don't want any way or semblance of way to, you know, sort of re restart your life. So when they talk about reconstruction, we're talking about building materials. I can't get building materials in. Nobody can get building materials in. That's why people are stuck with tents and tarps, even if they're lucky enough to get them. So, yeah, this is totally in line with what the Prime Minister has been saying and what various members of the Knesset have been saying, and ministers like Smotrich and Benvir, they've been very clear, we want people out, out of. We want people out of Gaza. We don't want them to restart their lives.
- [40:16]
Krystal Ball
How does this connect with Trump's whole board of Peace thing. Kushner showed up at Davos with his whole PowerPoint presentation showing this, you know, very sort of, like, I don't know, Doha or Dubai looking rendering of what Gaza is going to look like after their reconstruction efforts. You've got got on the Board of Peace, you've got characters like Kushner, you've got characters like Tony Blair, of course, no Palestinians represented at that top level on the Gaza Board of Peace. How are you understanding what the actual plan is here?
- [40:52]
Ahmed Khan
Well, you never really know until it sort of happens with these kind of characters. Right? Like, because it's easy to sort of say, we're going to do this and we're going to do that, but until it actually happens, you never know, because Gaza, the people of Gaza, just in this century alone have been lied to over and over and over, over again. 2005-2008-2014-2018, 2021. So no one's very optimistic about some kind of bright future. And the reality is, look at the Board of Peace. I mean, none of the. No member of that Board of Peace has ever made anyone's life better, except probably their own. There are no great humanitarians there. There's nobody who's ever showed any human empathy, you know, so. So it's not something to be. I mean, what do we have? We have a few real estate agents, some finance people, basically the type of people that have sucked the life out of the US Economy and sort of crashed the middle class. The reason we don't have good hospitals and healthcare and infrastructure in the United States. And so these people are going to rebuild Gaza. You know, it's sort of hard to believe.
- [41:55]
Saagar Enjeti
Ahmed, while we have you. You were talking to us beforehand about Sudan. The audience has taken a lot of interest in this. You're saying it's getting no international press coverage. Why don't you tell us about what you. You saw? You were just there.
- [42:06]
Ahmed Khan
The situation is horrendous. It's almost beyond belief. The suffering is next level. It sort of reminded me I worked in Rwanda in the refugee camps, and it's kind of like that. And there's no end in sight. You know, there's theoretically a ceasefire, but that doesn't exist.
- [42:29]
Krystal Ball
Incredible. And, Ahmed, last question for you. You know, what do you think is going to happen next in Gaz, Gaza? And also, do you see this Board of Peace, as many do, as an attempt to sort of supplant the. The UN with an entity that has Trump at the head? Because now they're talking not just about the Gaza Board of Peace. They're talking about using this in a variety of international contexts and conflicts around the world. So how do you see these pieces fitting together?
- [42:57]
Ahmed Khan
Yeah, and I assume that's their purpose, to supplant the un but the membership is some dictators. Dictators and want to be dictators. Right. Like, so I don't know how that represents the entire world, but. Well, it remains to be seen, people, we have no other alternative at this moment and then to rely on them. Right. And so the way I read it is President Trump is actually in charge of everything in Gaza. And which is probably, I mean, it's not the worst thing because he's probably better than everyone else on that Board of Peace in terms of human empathy, in which, you know, not saying lot, but there's nobody on there that has any interest in humanitarian affairs, humanitarian support. There's nobody who's mentioned, like, when Jared Kushner was in Davos, he didn't talk about way, we have 1.2 million kids that have been subjected to trauma that no one's ever seen before. We have 20,000 kids that are in need of prosthetics. We need to surge medical devices, we need to surge medical machines, all the hospitals. There's no pediatric monitors, there's no, no pediatric ventilators, there's no CT machines, no X ray machines. They didn't talk anything about that. Right. Like, they talked about the vision of these Dubai type buildings on rubble and dead bodies. And that's kind of the part that I think all of us, if we have any connections or can get ahold of anyone, just let's remember the people, as you pointed out, there are no Palestinians anywhere near the decision making process. Right. They're in the technocratic process. But they can't say, you know, we have 36 hospitals that have been destroyed. We have thousands and thousands of people that either need to be evacuated or we need thousands of doctors and nurses here. And, you know, surely there's thousands of doctors and nurses around the world that would love to come to Gaza and help out, but they're not allowed anymore. So the lack of attention to the humanitarian situation is very disconcerting.
- [44:42]
Krystal Ball
Do you think that Trump and Netanyahu are aligned at this point or do you think they're, excuse me, misaligned in terms of what they want to see next? Because it certainly seems like Netanyahu wants to use the, you know, the question of disarmament government as a pretext to bar any sort of construction materials and any sort of reconstruction efforts, including the, like, predatory Jared Kushner led ones from, from proceedings. So how do you see that?
- [45:08]
Ahmed Khan
Well, it's hard to say whether it's theater and they're just doing this, like, for show or they really have different ideas because President Trump has said, you know, nobody's leaving unless they want to. And, you know, Netanyahu has basically said, everybody's out. So it's really hard to tell until it happens. So when Roth Rafah border crossing opens, we'll see. For example, I evacuated little kids who were almost near death, but the Israelis didn't allow the mother. The father is out. And so can I reunite that family? Do I have to pay somebody? Who do I have to pay? It's all very, very up in the air until it happens. And we just sort of react to the situation on the ground as it's happening, and then we act. But there's nothing, really nothing to be optimistic about today at this very moment.
- [45:56]
Krystal Ball
Yeah. And lastly, you know, a cultural question here. As I mentioned, Voice of Henry Job, which you are executive producer of, was nominated for an Academy Award. How significant do you think that is in terms of, you know, Hollywood even recognizing this film? And, you know, why did you decide to get involved with it? Why did you think that it was important that people see this movie?
- [46:20]
Ahmed Khan
Well, as you know, I've done these sort of evacuations of rescuing little kids from war zones and, you know, trying to save their lives. And this is a little kid that wasn't able to be saved. And so I thought it was important to tell her story because there are thousands and thousands of these stories in Gaza and around the world. We just happen to have the tapes of the call from her to emergency services and back and forth and, and, and, you know, and basically explaining the situation. We don't have that for the thousands of other little kids that have been killed in Gaza. So I thought it was important to be a part of that. And I don't know, I hope people will respond. And the movie's not going to feed anybody. It's not going to put a roof over anybody's head, but it will tell a story of a little girl clinging to life and then losing her life. Right. And so I think the director, Kauther Ben Hania, does an amazing job, job of, of telling this story. But it's, there's nothing, there's nothing good about it. Whether, you know, Hollywood embraces it and says, look, this is important and maybe we win, I don't know. I don't know. What happens. But I think the people have responded, regular people, and it's always regular people that are the key to all this. But now we need to, you know, sort of move into action and say, what kind of world is this where we allow this to happen, Happen where no one comes and rescues her? You know, the paramedics tried to come and rescue her, and they were killed. Right. And so this is. It was. It's. It's a harrowing story, but the entire situation is a harrowing.
- [47:54]
Saagar Enjeti
Well, thank you so much for joining us, Amin. We always appreciate you.
- [47:56]
Ahmed Khan
Thanks for making the time. I really appreciate it. Because this humanitarian situation all around the world is obviously not covered by anyone else except for you and a few others. Keep up the great word.
- [48:07]
Saagar Enjeti
Thanks, man.
- [48:08]
Krystal Ball
Thank you.
- [48:09]
Saagar Enjeti
All right, guys, thank you so much for watching. We appreciate it. Thank you for your patience as we're buried, literally, under an unending kingdom of ice that apparently will never melt and will just continue to crush my hopes and dreams. You could tell I'm starting to get a little bit of cabin fever. We will do our best to get back in the studio as soon as is safely as possible possible. Remember, not just for us, but also for the crew and for many of the other people that make it happen. So bear with us as we can. But, Crystal, you and Emily are gonna have a great show tomorrow, so they'll see you then.
- [48:56]
Krystal Ball
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Saagar Enjeti
Just in your community, but that we're of part.
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Krystal Ball
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Saagar Enjeti
And we want everyone to feel welcomed and rewarded.
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Krystal Ball
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Krystal Ball
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Saagar Enjeti
We can't wait to meet you. Store hours vary by location.
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