← Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar
Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar
1/30/26: Don Lemon ARRESTED, Tulsi Election Scheme, Nikki Minaj Pivots Right w/ Touré
01:05:05
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- [00:00]
Krystal Ball
This is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed Human.
- [00:04]
Joel
Hey, it's Joel and Matt from how to Money. If your New Year's resolution is to finally get your finances in shape, we've got your back prices, they're still high, and the economy is all over the place. But 2026 is the year for you to get intentional and make real progress. That's right, yeah. Each week we break down what's happening with your money, the most important issues to focus on, and the small moves that make a big difference. Kick off the year with confidence. Listen to How To Money on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [00:36]
Krystal Ball
What if mind control is real?
- [00:37]
Dr. Jesse Mills
If you could control the behavior of anybody around you, what kind of life would you have?
- [00:40]
Krystal Ball
Can you hypnotically persuade someone to buy a car?
- [00:44]
Torre
When you look at your car, you're gonna become overwhelmed with such good feelings.
- [00:48]
Krystal Ball
Can you hypnotize someone into sleeping with you?
- [00:51]
Emily
I gave her some suggestions to be sexually aroused.
- [00:54]
Krystal Ball
Can you get someone to join your cult? NLP was used on me to access my subconscious mind. A new podcast, exploring nlp, AKA Neuro linguistic programming. Is it a self help miracle, a shady hypnosis scam, or both? Listen to mind Games on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [01:16]
Dr. Jesse Mills
This is Dr. Jesse Mills, host of the Mailroom podcast. Each January, men promise to get stronger, work harder, and fix what's broken. But what if the real work isn't physical at all? I sat down with psychologist Dr. Steve Poulter to unpack shame, anxiety and the emotional pain men never taught how to name.
- [01:33]
Torre
Part of the way through the valley of despair is realizing this has happened and you have to make a choice whether you're going to stay in it or move forward.
- [01:40]
Dr. Jesse Mills
Our two part conversation is available now. Listen to the mailroom on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your favorite shows.
- [01:48]
Sagar
Hey guys, Sagar and Krystal here.
- [01:50]
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.
- [01:57]
Sagar
This is the only place where you can find honest perspectives from the left and the right that simply does not exist anywhere else.
- [02:03]
Krystal Ball
So if that is something that's important to you, Please go to BreakingPoints.com, become a member today and you'll get access to our full shows unedited ad, free, and all put together for you every morning in your inbox.
- [02:14]
Sagar
We need your help to build the future of Independent news media, and we hope to see you@breakingpoints.com.
- [02:19]
Krystal Ball
Good morning, everybody. Happy Friday. How's everybody feeling?
- [02:23]
Sagar
Not as cold as you, apparently. Crystal?
- [02:25]
Emily
Yeah, I'm doing the Emily Hands here.
- [02:28]
Krystal Ball
Oh, sorry, I haven't really noticed. Is that like, a thing you do normally? I haven't really noticed that.
- [02:33]
Emily
It's when she. Now, as a viewer, I can confirm it's when she locks in.
- [02:36]
Sagar
Wow.
- [02:37]
Krystal Ball
Oh, really?
- [02:37]
Sagar
I just did it accidentally. Well, on the.
- [02:40]
Krystal Ball
On the lookout for then.
- [02:41]
Sagar
I'm learning about myself today. Thank you, Griffin.
- [02:45]
Emily
Lot to look out for on this Friday show, guys. Should we start just with some quick breaking news that came right across our desk? Hop right into it.
- [02:53]
Krystal Ball
Yeah. This is a big one. So Don Lemon has been arrested in L. A, and I just saw this come across Twitter. I don't know if you guys saw the specifics yet. He was charged with conspiracy to deprive rights. This is in the context of that church protest that he covered on his live stream. Sagar and I talked about this when it happened. Go ahead, put that back up on the screen, Griffin, because I do want to read a bit from this. This is the statement from his lawyer, Abby Lowell, who's very well known. He says Don Lemon was taken into custody by federal agents last night in LA where he was covering the Grammy Awards. Don has been a journalist for 30 years. His constitutionally protected work in Minneapolis was no different than what he has always done. The first amend exists to protect journalists whose role it is to shine light on the truth and hold those in power accountable. There is no more important time for people like Don to be doing this work. Instead of investigating the federal agents who killed two peaceful Minnesota protesters, the Trump Justice Department is devoting its time, attention, and resources to this arrest. And that is the real indictment of wrongdoing in this case. This unprecedented attack on the First Amendment and transparent attempt to distract attention from the many crises facing this administration will not stand. Don will fight these charges vigorously and thoroughly in court. Worth noting here. In addition, that they attempted to charge him to get charges filed against him previously. And the magistrate judge that looked at the charges, you know, against Don Lemon and the charges against, they attempted to charge eight of the protesters who also came into the building. The judge refused to sign off on the charges against Don Lemon because he did not feel that there was sufficient evidence presented. There were only three of the protesters who actually ended up being charged based on that judge's assessment.
- [04:36]
Sagar
So.
- [04:36]
Krystal Ball
So now they've decided to, you know, they impaneled a grand jury and they went through this process. And now you have these charges against Don Lemon. We covered this. Sagar and I had a spirited debate about the protest itself. Although, you know, he. I think more or less agreed with my assessment that Don Lemon, however you feel about him, was there as a journalist. He was not protesting. In fact, I watched a good bit of his coverage. He talked to people who were in the church. He talked to the pastor, he talked to the protesters. He asked them challenging questions. He asked challenging questions of everybody there. It's clear he has a perspective, as do we. That doesn't mean that he wasn't acting as a journalist at that point. Journalists get tip offs all the time of news events that are going to happen. That's what occurred in this case. That's why he was there and everyone. I don't care where you are in the political spectrum. If you care about the First Amendment, if you care about journalism, you have to stand up against this abuse, because this is absolutely an outrageous attack on journalism.
- [05:35]
Sagar
The I'm in the, like, wild minority, I think, on the right now. And when it comes to the Don Lemon thing, because for the part of the reason that Crystal was saying just now is journalists do get tip offs all the time. Tips off. Is it like attorneys general tip offs all of the time where you are being, you know, something's going to happen and then you can see how if you set the precedent of saying, because Don Lemon knew X, Y and Z was going to take place in order to kind of follow it around, he is then an active participant. By the way, the government has informants who do that all the time. That's kind of another question. And if you start setting that precedent, it happened to a guy named Steve Baker from the blaze on January 6, and he had a hell of a fight to get out of that. And I just think that's, you know, it's. As a. Someone who's on the right and goes to protests and stuff, sometimes you just can realize how or you realize how quickly, like, I'm open to evidence that Don Lemon was more of a conspirator, if it exists. I haven't seen it, not convinced by any of it. In his live stream, he says, I'm here as a journalist to document what's going on. As goofy as Don Lemon is, he did make that pretty clear. And so if just getting a tip and following it with a live stream makes you complicit in a protest, I just don't, honestly don't think that's worth it. You can maybe make the like a ham sandwich prosecution where you have this like technical case against Don Lemon. Like he knew this was happening and because there's something in the law, blah, blah, blah. But it's just, it's absolutely not worth it because that's going to be turned around so fast, you know, on Nick Sorter or any of those other people who are bopping around Minneapolis if there's a Democratic president.
- [07:24]
Krystal Ball
What do you think, Griff?
- [07:25]
Emily
I mean, listen, a huge Don Lemon fan here. I'm jealous.
- [07:29]
Sagar
Lemon Head is what he calls them.
- [07:31]
Emily
He's about to get a lot of new subscriptions. We should get one of our hosts arrested, maybe get some new traffic to the show. Yeah, obviously it's. I don't know what the justification is. Seems like. Emily, have there always been like this odd sort of Republican hang up over Don Lemon specifically, like, did he do something like what was his original sin against Trump that he can't be gay.
- [07:54]
Krystal Ball
And black other than he was part of it?
- [07:57]
Sagar
He was one of the most egregiously, like just egregiously anti Trump forces at CNN during Trump 1.0. He was doing those Hando with Chris Cuomo at the height of the like CNN effort to do the apples and bananas thing. Like some people will try to tell you that this is a banana, but it's an apple. And they were pretending to be like neutral observers of the whole thing. And so I think that's where he got under everyone's skin most. But Levin is an. Has an interesting history and that Crystal, you'll remember because I think you were at MSNBC at the time during like OG blm. He was a little, a little more conservative.
- [08:41]
Krystal Ball
No, he did a lot of black respectability politics, like pull up your pants type of like in the right. Which would send that viral.
- [08:49]
Sagar
Like.
- [08:49]
Krystal Ball
Yeah, they would make it viral, absolutely. Which is why when he got fired for. From cnn and I think the reason he got fired, if memory serves, was over. Remember those comments he made about Nikki Haley not being in her prime or whatever? Like, I think that was the precipitating event. There might have been some other things that came out anyway that was what facilitate precipitated his exit. And I was like, this is a perfect setup for him to grift to the right. Right. I mean, he has this black, you know, that he could be the, the model minority. He got fired for these like for this crazy PC woke reason. And you know, and there would have been a huge lane available for him. Much easier for him to make it there than to succeed, you know, continuing in the liberal reign. Lane, to his credit, in my opinion, he has stayed in like a. A liberal, you know, political positioning. And I mean, his. I think his channel is doing fairly, fairly well. I think it's been relatively successful. I haven't checked in on, like, all the numbers or whatever. Anyway, all of this is really far afield from the fact that, you know, as Don Lemon is going to be fine. He's a wealthy guy, he's got a great lawyer. This, I think, is an outrageous assault on the First Amendment. The point isn't so much about Don Lemon, but it's about every other journalist and independent journalist in particular, who now has to consider whether covering this protest is going to land them in hot water with the administration. I mean, it's one more example of them using, whether it's the law or the university system or their secret police, the, you know, the mass thugs in the street, all of these mechanisms to crush any sort of dissent. Trump himself has basically come out and said that he thinks it should be illegal to criticize him, and that is the way they're acting here. So Don Lemon getting charged, emerged here. Again, I don't care how you feel about Don Lemon. I don't care whether you agree with his politics or not. Should journalists be able to go and cover protests, even controversial ones? Right. Even ones that may violate the law. For me, watching his live stream, I actually got a lot out of it because, you know, it would be easy for me as a leftist to have a very stereotypical view of the congregants in that. In that church. And instead I had to actually deal with who they were as human beings. Some of them said to him, like, look, I actually might agree with some of the points of the protesters. I just really disagree with them doing this here and now in my church. So it made it more difficult for me to have a very flat and stereotypical view of what unfolded there. And so that is, you know, he added something important to the understanding of that day, frankly. I think he gave.
- [11:26]
Sagar
He.
- [11:26]
Krystal Ball
It was probably more beneficial to the right than it was to the left to have those images and that video from inside the church while they were doing that action on that day. So in any case, you know, I'm. I'm not holding my breath for a lot of people to be principled like you, Emily, on the right. And, you know, all the people who five seconds ago were free speech bros, I am very doubtful that they're going to be out there defending the Honor of Don Lemon. But they should be. They absolutely should be. And not just because there's a possibility that a future AOC is going to go after them in the same way, but just because of the principle of the thing. You either support these rights that were supposedly, you know, make our country so great, or you don't. And that's the bottom line for me.
- [12:09]
Sagar
And this is the Steve Baker case. I'm sharing it. An Associated Press article from the time. So Baker actually ended up pleading guilty, he said, to avoid the shame of a trial and all of that. But this is the Capitol Police. He was actually just like, he went through. You can see here, he went through a broken door and, quote, joined the mob at the barricaded doors to the House chamber. He was documenting it the entire time. He said that the affidavit against him said that he, quote, antagonized police officers, asking, are you going to use that gun on us? Et cetera. But again, he was there, like, covering it. And so it's one of those things where I think, because that happened to someone on the right, there's this idea that it's more acceptable than to go after Don Lemon because the next Democratic administration won't learn not to go after a Steve Baker in the future. Like, you can go back and look at the videos that Baker was taking at the time. I think it's all. It was obviously an over prosecution, but that's just not true. Like the. That it's. You can win in the court of public opinion and you can win in elections, and you can make these issues front and center without, you know, taking the same low road. So, yeah, I mean, I don't like.
- [13:31]
Krystal Ball
I don't like the most basic kindergarten lessons either. Like, two wrongs don't make a right, guys. And guess what? When you normalize this type of behavior, you make it more likely, not less, that you're not like, teaching anyone a lesson. The lesson you're teaching them is, oh, we will do anything. We will use anything lever of power that we possibly can. So maybe you need to think about doing the same.
- [13:53]
Sagar
So I was. When I was on the outside of the Capitol on January6, I had no idea what was about to happen. I followed everyone from the Ellipse and was literally, like, talking to people. What are you doing? Why are you here? Where are you from? And get up to the Capitol and see this melee. And I was like, I wanted to go in the building because I didn't know if reporters were in the building. And yeah, someone Very wise said, like, just don't go in. There are reporters in the building. Don't do it. And I am so, honestly, so grateful for that. Because of what happened to Baker, for example, because he's a conservative. He was, I think, pretty clearly targeted because he was one of the conservatives there. Like the Capitol press corps. They're fine because they're there every day. People know who they are. That's fine. But I am honestly grateful for that. I'm sure my data was like swept up in all of the dragnet that they applied because they were geotagging stuff. But it's, it's something that you actually have to think about now. And I think that sucks. Whether you're Don Lemon or Steve Baker.
- [14:50]
Krystal Ball
Yeah. All right. We had a bunch of red carpet moments last night, Griffin, right? At the, the glitzy Melania movie premiere.
- [14:59]
Emily
Yes, everyone who is anyone was there on the red carpet and it was just a quintessential Trump moment. To not only be promoting a film that is self grandizing about his own family, but to also be dealing with all of the world's issues.
- [15:17]
Joel
New year, new goals, and in this economy, a better money plan is more necessary than ever. I am Matt. And I'm Joel. We are from the how to Money podcast. And every week we help you to spend smarter, save more, and make sense of what's going on out there. If you want 2026 to be the year you finally feel in control of your money, we're here to give you the tools and advice to help you make it happen. Listen to how to Money on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [15:45]
Mind Games Host
What if mind control is real?
- [15:47]
Dr. Jesse Mills
If you could control the behavior of anybody around you, what kind of life would you have?
- [15:51]
Mind Games Host
Can you hypnotically persuade someone to buy a car?
- [15:54]
Torre
When you look at your car, you're.
- [15:55]
Krystal Ball
Gonna become overwhelmed with such good feelings.
- [15:58]
Mind Games Host
Can you hypnotize someone into sleeping with you?
- [16:01]
Dr. Jesse Mills
I gave her some suggestions to be sexually aroused.
- [16:05]
Mind Games Host
Can you get someone to join your cult?
- [16:07]
Krystal Ball
NLP was used on me to access my subconscious.
- [16:10]
Mind Games Host
Nlp, AKA Neuro Linguistic programming, is a blend of hypnosis, linguistics, and psychology. Fans say it's like finally getting a user manual for your brain.
- [16:21]
Dr. Jesse Mills
It's about engineering consciousness.
- [16:23]
Mind Games Host
Mind games is the story of nlp, its crazy cast of disciples, and the fake doctor who invented it at a new age commune and sold it to guys in. He stood trial for murder and got acquitted. The biggest mind game of all, nlp, might actually work this is wild. Listen to mind Games on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [16:49]
Dr. Jesse Mills
Hey there. This is Dr. Jesse Mills, director of the Men's Clinic at UCLA Health and host of the Mailroom podcast. Each January, guys everywhere make the same resolutions. Get stronger, work harder, fixed what's broken. But what if the real work isn't physical at all? To kick off the new year, I sat down with Dr. Steve Poulter, a psychologist with over 30 years experience helping men unpack shame, anxiety and emotional pain they were never taught to name. In a powerful two part conversation, we discuss why men aren't emotionally bulletproof, why shame hides in plain sight, and how real strength comes from listening to yourself and to others.
- [17:26]
Torre
Guys who are toxic, they're immature, or they've got something they just haven't resolved. Once that gets resolved, then there comes empathy, as in compassion.
- [17:35]
Dr. Jesse Mills
If you want this to be the year you stop powering through pain and start understanding what's underneath, listen to the mailroom on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your favorite shows.
- [17:49]
Emily
There are a lot of different topics here that he tackled on the red carpet, but I wanted to start with Tulsi Gabbard. He was asked why Tulsi was at an election cent in Georgia.
- [17:58]
Krystal Ball
Actually, what was Tulsi Gabbard doing at an election center in Georgia today?
- [18:03]
Donald Trump
She's working very hard on trying to keep the election safe and she's done a very good job. And they, you know, they got into the votes. You got to sign judge's order in Georgia and you see some interesting things happening. They've been trying to get there for a long time.
- [18:20]
Emily
We're going to start seeing some interesting things happening there now. Tulsi, it's been reported, has been tasked over the last few months with investigating this 2020 election. What do we make of all that?
- [18:32]
Krystal Ball
What do you think, Emily? I got to talk about this some yesterday.
- [18:37]
Sagar
It's the Trump himself. I mean just Tulsi Gabbard aside, Trump has been posting absolutely like bonkers stuff on truth social about 2020. Like going, going deep into the kind of stuff that actually got Fox in such hot water, like Italian voting machines. I don't even know, like the, the conspiracy, the rich that I. Yes, like there you have to.
- [19:00]
Krystal Ball
These were some new ones for me too. I was like, oh, I didn't even know that was something that people.
- [19:04]
Emily
Well, well, to that point before, not to interrupt you, to that point. ABC has reported where some of these election Conspiracies might be coming from. And apparently there's someone known as the Heiress that is dropping some of these conspiracy theories. Over late Wednesday night, the president reposted to his social media platform a claim that Italian military satellites had been used to hack into US Voting ma to flip votes from Trump to Joe Biden. As documented in a 2021 book, Betrayal the Final act of the Trump Show. The conspiracy theory was brought to the White House by a woman who went by several aliases, including the Heiress, and was known at the Pentagon for her claim ties to Somali pirates.
- [19:47]
Krystal Ball
So now we like the Somali, huh? Yes.
- [19:49]
Torre
They're back.
- [19:50]
Krystal Ball
She was on the other foot.
- [19:52]
Emily
I told you guys, don't sell on Somalis. She passed her material off to a National Security Council official at a supermarket park lot in Arlington. So the Heiress is now in charge.
- [20:06]
Krystal Ball
I remember there was some woman who was like, I think sending emails to Tucker Carlson who thought. Who said she was like a spirit ghost or something like that. That was, you know, pushing some of the last. The election conspiracies the first time around, if memory serves. There was something like that that was going on.
- [20:23]
Sagar
Yeah. I mean, I will say, first of all, like, Fulton county in 2020 was an absolute mess. The New York Times described what happened on election night as like a, quote, meltdown in Fulton county at the. Were a total, total disaster, apparently. My understanding of this is that they're looking for these, quote, zero tapes. I guess the search warrant, according to. I think Cleta Mitchell's conservative attorney has been involved in this stuff. That's what part of the search warrant was for. And that's recording early votes. And so there's also. Let me pull up this. Yeah, so. So Fulton county, this is a headline in the Federalist from December, quote, we don't dispute 315,000 votes lacking poll worker signatures were counted in 2020. So they might be looking for. I, I haven't gone deep into it personally, but because even if you like. So if you, if you say Georgia had significant errors, and one thing that did happen is there were more votes counted than the margin. There were more votes counted that were from addresses outside of counties. Like, people had moved that. Than the margin of victory for Biden in Georgia in 2020. But those are legitimate votes, meaning, like, they're real people. It wasn't like fake people. It was just that they hadn't registered properly. So. But even if you give Georgia in the Biden column, he, like, that's a. It's. You still have to like, make up In. In other states, too. So I don't think people have confidence that a Gabbard probe into Fulton county is going to, you know, bear fruit. And I hate the. I hate the 2020 election stuff because Ben Sasse. I know people on the right hate Ben Sasse, but he put it really well in a statement after January 6, which is that Trump had been, quote, playing with fire by. And that's maybe even an understatement, by flirting with the Sidney Powell stuff, promoting the Sidney Powell stuff and all of that, because you're just asking, you're telling people that an election was. Was stolen outright from under their noses. So, of course people are going to storm the Capitol. Like, that's what you're asking for when you. You are so reckless with what you're, as the President of the United States, putting out into the public domain.
- [22:33]
Krystal Ball
Yeah. I mean, in terms of Georgia. Right. Every election, because they are run by localities, there are going to be some places where things do not go smoothly. Okay? This is the reality of democracy in America. Georgia at the time and to this day was run by a Republican governor, Republican Secretary of State. There was a recount in Georgia, and guess what? It all turned out fine. There were no problems there that had, you know, that came anywhere close to the margin by which Trump lost. You'll recall he had that infamous phone call with Brad Raffensperger, find me 11,000 votes. Okay, so there's that. You had Rudy Giuliani, who went out and defamed some of these election workers who are just like. I mean, I'm sure I don't. I know the ladies who work my polling place. Right. These are usually, like, elderly women who volunteer their time because they believe in the civic good. And he went out there and attacked them and made them. They, like, they were some, you know, great villains and fraudsters. They won, I think, $186 million defamation claim against him. There were, of course, so many lawsuits that Sagar and I covered extensively at the time from the Trump administration trying to push their claims in court. Not a single one of them was found to have any veracity. I hate that I'm even having to say this at this point, like, really, people can please move the fuck on. But the. The most optimistic or the most hopeful take on what is going on here is that, you know, this is Tulsi Gabbard, who's been sidelined, trying to get back into Trump's good graces by doing some bullshit. And it was the US Attorney in Missouri who signed off on this, who apparently has been given this charge to, like, you know, go back and relitigate the 2020 election everywhere and, as you know, a partisan lackey there in Missouri. So in any case, the most optimistic thing is that this is a stupid Trump boondoggle that is not really going to impact much of anything, and it's just about Tulsi trying to get back in his good graces. The more concerning analysis, which everybody has to be worried about, given the fact that this man already has a track record of trying to steal an election, given that this man just said that he regrets not having the National Guard sees the ballot boxes, is that this is an attempt to take control of state and county election machinery. This is a test run for how much can we get away with? How much sort of like, you know, smoke and mirrors and problems can we cause leading up to 2026 and ultimately 2028? In 2026, Jon Ossoff is the most endangered Democrat running. I think he's got a good shot of, you know, winning reelection if things are free and fair. But apparently that's a big if. There is a Georgia election passed in the wake of 2020 that allows Republicans in the state to take control. It was passed through a Republican legislature to take control of county election boards if there are some sort of, like, investigations or some claims of malfeasance and fraud that are made. So there's a Atlanta Journal Constitution piece out that's arguing that this is all about trying to seize control of the Fulton county election board by Trump loyalists, and God only knows what that could mean. So, again, Georgia being a key state and that being a key Senate race coming up, those are the things that people should be very, very concerned about as they watch this all unfold.
- [26:00]
Emily
To that point, Crystal, we've got from the Washington Street Journal here. Wall Street Journal, sorry. Gabbard has consulted with others in the intelligence community about claims of foreign interference in the 2020 election, the official said, though she hasn't provided the public with new evidence of it, she's expected to repair a report on her work. The people said the administration has discussed executive orders on voting ahead of the midterm elections, two of the officials said. So, yes, it seems to be not only a sort of humiliation tour for Tulsi, but a test run for all that good stuff coming up in the future. Emily, how far do you think they'll go for the midterms as opposed to a 2028?
- [26:40]
Sagar
Well, yeah, I mean, so this is why, you know, I can't dismiss What Crystal is saying about potential interference coming up, like what. What this could grow into because Trump is himself a wild card. And let me just read here from Margo Cleveland, who's a conservative attorney who's followed the Georgia stuff very, very closely. She wrote, In 2020, Joe Biden won the Georgia general election by 11,779 votes out of nearly 5 million ballots cast. Following the election, Trump filed suit in a Fulton county state court arguing approximately 35, 000 Georgians may have illegally voted in a county in. Which goes on to then say after the November 2020 election. Mark Davis, the president of Data Productions, Inc. And an expert in voter data analytics and residency issues, pulled from the US Postal Service's national change of address database and cross referenced that information with records from the Georgia Secretary of State's office. His analysis showed that nearly 35,000 Georgia voters who had moved from one Georgia county to another voted in the 2020 general election in the county from which they have moved. So all that is to say there's a. There's a world in which the Fulton county probe is restricted to gen. Like this type of, like, clerical question about what happened and where, you know, they may have aired. It's a lot for the federal government to get involved and raid the offices and all of that. So maybe, maybe you have a totally responsible targeted investigation. But I don't think that's. If I'm looking at how Donald Trump reacted in 2020 to the election with the Sidney Powellism and all of that. And by the way, Ryan and I talked about this Maduro. Trump has since said that they're not talking to Maduro about potential Dominion voting machine stuff. But yeah, some of this goes directly back to Maduro. And it's possible that they could be. I mean, Trump has said no, but it's possible that some of this is coming from, that they're trying to follow, like, foreign interference. Is it because they've been talking to Maduro about certain things? There was, this is a funny story. When I was on the floor of the RNC, actually the media area of the RNC in 2024, someone came up to Rudy Giuliani and introduced themselves and he could not, like, process the information for whatever reason. And they said they were from Pennsylvania. And he was like, like, I was just overhearing this, and he was like, oh, Venezuela, you guys are responsible for all the voting. And the guy was like, Pennsylvania? And he was like, yes, Venezuela. Anyway, so now they have Maduro have.
- [29:30]
Krystal Ball
To be dealt with. Yeah, yeah, I thought about the Maduro thing too. I mean, the, the fact that Tulsi is involved is a signal that it's not going to be some responsible, narrow look at potential clerical issues from the 2020. I mean, everything argues against that. But Tulsi's involvement, given that she is the Director of National Intelligence, tells you that they are exploring some sort of bonkers Venezuela, Italian, Chinese, whatever, conspiracy theory, which again, as Griffin started the segment by saying Trump is posting, or maybe you said it, Emily. Trump is posting these insane things, insane stuff on True Social right now. So we know where his mind is at and what he's looking to get on a farm.
- [30:12]
Sagar
This, and this is part of the problem with like the Trump era in general is that the Dominion voting situation in Venezuela, like, it is legitimate. Like, why the story of the voting machines is just like, it's so stupid and ridiculous. The story of Fulton county in 2020 is so stupid and ridiculous. But then it gets built into this crazy, like, conspiracy theory about foreign actors and a concerted effort to steal the election from Donald Trump with, you're counting mismatched county residencies and all of that. And you just put the picture together in the way that Trump talks about it or Sidney Powell was talking about it, and you're like, holy smokes. But because there are these origin stories that if you pull up the thread, you're like, why are we doing. Because we did so many stupid things, it makes it more powerful with people who want to believe that there was some grand conspiracy to have, have people in Georgia, like, vote where they shouldn't be because they moved six months ago or something like that. So not great.
- [31:14]
Emily
The 2020 stuff is going to look cute when we go to 2028. And every cat, you know, every county clerk is on poly market betting for the election. So.
- [31:23]
Sagar
That's a really good point. That's a really good point.
- [31:26]
Emily
Every election is going to be the most trusted election of all time compared to 2028. So get excited for that, everybody. So I, we want to move on to a little more ICE stuff. So Trump was asked about Springfield, Ohio. Now Springfield, Ohio, for those who don't remember, was the eating the cats and dogs topic during the 2024 election. JD Vance announcing directional truth as sort of a strategy for the Trump administration that I thought was, was quite honest. But now Trump was asked if ICE is going to be going into Springfield to, I guess, start deporting the Haitian population that lives there. Let's take a listen.
- [32:19]
Donald Trump
See what's happening. Springfield is not a Happy place with what they did. So Springfield. I love Springfield, Ohio. I won Springfield, Ohio. But during the Biden administration, they did great damage to Springfield.
- [32:33]
Emily
So we've got that here. And before we react to that, I also wanted to pull up the House Democrats have released a new set of demands for what they want DHS to change if they're going to fund them and the government. Some of the bullet point list here, if you can't see it on screen. Ensure ICE and CBP immediately leave Minneapolis and stop terrorizing citizens. End arrests without judicial warrants. Ensure full, independent, transparent investigations into DHS related shootings. End detention and deportation of US Citizens. What a big ask. End the anonymity of federal agents. Ensure robust minimum standards at detention facilities. Those are the main ones here. What are we to expect with what seems to be the upcoming Springfield raid?
- [33:23]
Krystal Ball
Well, I think it's worth noting, you know, most of most of the migrants in Springfield, Ohio are Haitian. Most of them had temporary protected status, although there'd be a variety of different, you know, time periods when people move there, etc. And you know, the legal framework would be different for different people. But that is the vast majority. There was just an appeals court ruling saying that when Kristi Noam ended temporary protected status for Venezuelans and for Haitians, that that was done unlawfully. However, that policy may still be, may still be enforced while those appeals play out. So this was an appeals court ruling. So you're already at sort of like a higher level. I suspect this will ultimately go to the Supreme Court. But I believe their status, if you, you know, buy that Noem did this lawfully end something like February 3rd. And that's why the expectation is that they're going to move in quickly to Springfield, Ohio to make good on what were effectively their like campaign threats against this migrant population. And I, you know, full expect, given how slow and impotent the courts have been in many cases and how much this administration just routinely, routinely, routinely, routinely flouts whatever the court's rule that, you know, this is a very real possibility that they begin sweeping people up and trying to deport them while this continues to make its way through the court process.
- [34:46]
Sagar
The. Yeah, so the TPS ruling is really important here and that's why Trump even remembers probably the name Springfield, Ohio. It's almost like that question, I don't know who, who asked that question, but that's sounds like one of those questions people sometimes like someone's like, hey, you should ask about Springfield. Like someone in the admin is like, hey, you should ask about Springfield, but Springfield's local press is covering this. Like, here's a headline from the Springfield News sun that says, fear grip Springfield's Haitians on the cusp of losing legal status to live work in the city that they love. And people probably remember this was kind of vaulted into the public's attention by a New York Times story originally that was fairly nuanced about how this relative, relatively small community of Springfield had been absolutely swamped with a influx that I think it was like a tandem for like. Or it was equivalent to like, 25% of the population of Springfield had come in a really short period of time. There was a school bus accident where people were killed. Haitian driver. And the community was super, super divided over what had happened. And also, at the same time, you had business owners being like, the Haitians are great workers. They're filling these jobs. And it was, you know, that's. That's what originally had Everybody talking about S.P. field, Ohio. And then Rufo went in and what, There was like, a cat babe barbecued 10 miles away. Like that. Is that. Am I remembering correctly?
- [36:09]
Krystal Ball
It was like, yeah, but it wasn't a cat, but he claimed it was. And. Yeah, and then there was like, a picture of someone holding a goose. I mean, it was just the.
- [36:19]
Sagar
Oh, yeah, the goose.
- [36:20]
Emily
That's an average day for. That's an average RFK Jr. Story. I thought we. I thought we liked that stuff.
- [36:26]
Sagar
I mean, but the bottom line is the community had genuinely been like, there was a serious problem in Springfield, Ohio. I think that is. It's. It's fair to say the community was divided over it. There was a huge. Anytime you have a huge influx of people who are coming in a short period of time, not native speakers. Like, it's just going to be a tough process. And Springfield was undergoing that, obviously. And this. This TPS thing is super interesting because a lot of the Haitians were coming from Chile or Argentina or Brazil because after 2010, they'd already moved out of Haiti. Like, there's mass displacement after 2010. And under normal circumstances, Cubans, Haitians, Venezuelans had pretty good asylum claims and refugee claims when they were crossing into the U.S. but in the Biden administration, you had a lot of, like, economic migrants. Like, I talked to Haitians who had spent months in the streets in Reynosa, like a cartel town, because they were so desperate to come into the US that they were literally, like, camping outside, picking up odd jobs. And people around town were like, those Haitians are such hard workers. And the reason is that they wanted come into the US and so that created these new pathways. And it's just going to suck because there's people like, you think about Cubans and Venezuelans, that people. Another kid I met, he showed me his scar. He was Cuban from being beat during the July 11 protests. That's what he said happened, and that's when he left Cuba. And it's like, there are people with legitimate asylum claims who are going to be kicked out of the country, probably.
- [38:02]
Krystal Ball
Well.
- [38:03]
Sagar
Or legitimate. Like.
- [38:05]
Krystal Ball
Yeah, I mean, there's also. And no one has done a better job of explaining this than our own Ryan Graham. There's also the fact that, like, in all three of those instances, Haiti, Cuba and Venezuela, a good part of the reason why those countries are so fucked up is because of us. Yeah, I mean, we, you know, Haiti, we have never stopped messing around with their politics and screwing them. I mean, from the founding, from the original slave revolt through to the present day, we've never stopped. Stopped screwing them over. So it's like, okay, if you don't want refugees to come to our country, why don't you stop creating refugee crises that force people to leave? Like, most people want to stay in their home country. They're not excited about moving to, you know, like, America's great country. But people like to stay where they're from. It's easier. Their family's there. Like, they do know the culture. They don't get attacked by a president who's racist and hateful on from the stage and have all of this shit happen to them. So, I mean, that's the thing that I get so disgusted with. And, you know, that, you see, you know, now we're. We're taking over Venezuela, and it's like, okay, and if this doesn't work out, you're going to have another flood of Venezuela migrants that you're all going to fucking demonize, and you're going to forget that 10 seconds ago, you know, we were the ones causing that problem. So the whole thing just utterly disgusts me, from the lies and the blatant racism around it to the, you know, complete erasure and ignorance around our country's own repeated interventions there that help to create the chaos that these people are fleeing because Haiti has become. I mean, it is, you know, there are massive, massive problems and violence and poverty and all of that. So in any case, you know, I. I think probably the, you know, the assumption that they're going into Springfield next is correct. And Griffin, let's. Before Torre jumps in here, let's Just real quick play the one where Trump says that they're not backing down, whatever whatsoever in terms of Minneapolis. So we can just react to that quickly as well.
- [39:59]
Donald Trump
So to keep our country safe, we'll do whatever we can to keep our country safe.
- [40:02]
Torre
Say so.
- [40:03]
Joel
Yeah.
- [40:03]
Sagar
Pulling back.
- [40:04]
Donald Trump
No, no, not at all.
- [40:06]
Emily
Not at all.
- [40:07]
Krystal Ball
Not at all. And that dovetails with. He just posted on True Social some like unhinged greed about Alex Pretty being an insurrectionist and blah, blah, blah. So, you know, I think there was a moment of Susie Wiles or Trump himself recognizing Democrats had a bit of leverage when it came to the government funding. Democrats, Democrats have all but already given up that leverage. And so now Trump can just go back to like, no, it's all systems go. We're not doing anything different. You know, it's, we're going to continue in this in the same direction. We're not changing course whatsoever.
- [40:43]
Torre
Yeah.
- [40:43]
Emily
And I noticed from those demands, like, it's like the, the going back to the House Democrat demands, they're basically saying, please follow the rules, but they're way past that. Like, they, the, the base wants you to say, we're going to start prosecuting you guys.
- [40:58]
Krystal Ball
Like, well, and that's, I mean, it has to be, it has to be funding. Like, you have to deal with the funding because. Yeah, I mean, one of the demands is literally don't deport U.S. citizens. But that's already illegal. Like where how are we negotiating over this? Or even the warrant thing. It's like, that's already a violation of the Fourth Amendment. So what are we doing here? But, you know, I mean, they're, whatever. So I think I said from the beginning, I thought that the posture and the switching of Greg Bevino out. Tom Homan in. Tom Homan is no softy or sweetheart either. He architected the child separation policy during the original Trump administration. That this would be more for show. That doesn't mean that the reality on the ground and maybe Minneapolis might not change because they realize they're getting some court decisions against them. Maybe they go to a different place. Maybe it's Springfield, Ohio. The overall thrust is baked in. I mean, I think this is a core, like part and parcel of what this administration is up to, not only with regard to immigration, but with regard to this sort of like show of force against their, and, and, and warfare that they, they see it as like warfare being waged against their political opponents.
- [42:07]
Sagar
Just what's up on the screen right now is this was, I was at a, like a migrant detention, not Detention, a migrant like nonprofit place. It was like a Catholic nonprofit in Texas. And what they're showing on the screen, these Haitian men who haven't lived in Haiti for a long time since like 2010 are showing their asylum, asylum papers. And they were years and years into the future. And so that's just. This is just to say like three years. I think in some of these cases, one of them might have had a five year court date into the future. And all that is just to say, like, there was a real expectation that people could build lives here. And here's. That's why, you know, there are a lot of people who don't. Those communities were just thrust into such weird positions. Here's a group of Haitians in Reynosa. People can go watch this if they want, but it's, it's people saying they were trying to explain in English, like why they were sleeping outside. I think that was the question. And at one point it was clear that they were like struggling to come up with the words. And I said, oh, the American dream. And then they all lit up and they were like, yes, the American dream. And so this is where you're going to see communities like Springfield once again be absolutely like divided and chaotic because a lot of people have had. Had great Haitian workers in their communities and they have been there for a very, very long time now, like several years. And other people are going to say get them all out. And it's just going to be, yeah, it's about to get. It's not. It's not de escalating, it's about to get worse.
- [43:37]
Krystal Ball
Well, one last note with regard to that, Emily, because that's a genuine problem, you know, that there was such a backlog in the system so people could come in and whether their asylum claim was legit or not, they could claim asylum and then have the confidence. It's going to take years before I ever. This ever gets really worked out. By that time, I'm estab. Established I've made some money and been able to send it whatever. The one big beautiful bill that, sir, flooded ICE with ungodly amounts of money, making it the best funded law enforcement agency in history. Making an immigration enforcement budget larger than the military budgets of every country except our own and China. Okay. That bill explicitly limits the number of immigration judges that are allowed to exist. So if your goal is to like speed up that process and make that streamline and run more efficiently, that's something I'm for. Like, I support that. I think that is a smart and sense something that it seems like everyone should get on board with, but they go in the opposite direction and say, no. We want to limit the legal pathways for people to be able to have their asylum claims adjudicated. And instead we want to explore all of the ways that we can avoid due process, process and mass ship people out or scare them out with our cruelty. That's the direction that we want to go in. And so I think it's important for people to understand that is built in, that is like at the beating heart of their approach. And again, it's not just about immigration. It's about this show of force in the streets. It's about them truly believing their like, left of center opponents as being some like, network of domestic terrorists, terrorists that must be quashed and assaulted and defeated and arrested and scared, etc. Which, you know, I mean, the Don Lemon thing that we started with fits in with that whole, that whole conception of, of how they're approaching things as well.
- [45:35]
Emily
Well, speaking of legal status, that leads us nicely to Nicki Minaj and her new trump gold card, which will lead us also nicely to our guest.
- [45:47]
Krystal Ball
So Tori Nicki Minaj has been doing this whole MAGA MAGA tour. She, she did the whole Erica Kirk moment. She now just had like a big trump moment. He gave her the gold card to settle her immigration status. I think a lot of people's assumption is that her husband and her brother are in some legal trouble and perhaps this is like an attempt to get in his good graces for a possible pardon or something of that nature. Um, what is your assessment here? Does this MAGA turn from Nikki come out of nowhere to you, or does this seem like something that makes sense given the way that she's positioned herself?
- [46:28]
Torre
The turn does come out of nowhere, except that we know that she's a long term green card holder who clearly wanted to change that status and saw and knew that in this administration you can kiss the ring and, and get almost anything. So while, so we get this bizarre split screen of poor immigrants are running for their lives and getting deported and beaten and shot in the streets, while a rich immigrant gets a pathway to citizenship in an administration where you can be at the courthouse going through the proper steps and they arrest you and detain you, but she has had a green card and now she just gets a pathway. I don't believe that citizenship should be sold as a luxury good, especially as a personal choice of the leader that he happens to like you. You have kissed the ring. You have shown sufficient deference to his political perspective. So you get to be a citizen. I think becoming an American citizen should be much more egalitarian, should be much more of a broader opportunity for a widespread of American. Widespread of non Americans who don't necessarily have to suggest that they love personally the president to get a citizenship.
- [47:49]
Emily
Well, I'd like to stop you right there, because there are questions if this gold card is even real. As reporting from the New York Times, this actually may not have conferred any legal status for her administrations. Trump administration officials have said it's more of a token. Like, it was more of like, just kind of like a symbolic gift.
- [48:08]
Sagar
It's like a souvenir.
- [48:09]
Emily
A souvenir and does not actually confer any legal status. Now, the gold card cost $1 million and an additional 15 grand for a processing fee on top of that. And so Nikki, yes, has had some sort of legal status. She's not like a full citizen, and she remains not a full citizen after this token green card. Yeah. We also have a video I want you to react to here, Toure, to show just a little bit of flavor of the. Of the meeting here.
- [48:45]
Torre
Hello, guys.
- [48:46]
Krystal Ball
I'm with my favorite president, the best.
- [48:50]
Torre
President of all time, and I'm with the queen of rap.
- [48:58]
Emily
Now, is she still. Is she still the queen of rap?
- [49:02]
Torre
That. No, no, not at all. I mean, you know, part of the thing is that a large portion of her fans are black and brown, a large portion of them are lgbtq, especially trans. She has been a trans and gay icon for a while. So, you know, we keep talking about how she has betrayed a large swath of her fan base by doing this, and we don't really. I. I don't believe that she actually agrees with any of the policies of the Trump administration. I don't think she knows any of the policies. We do know there are people who are, like, attracted to the personality of Trump, and I guess, you know, you could get to your political side whatever way you want, but I don't believe she actually knows or cares about any political ideal at all.
- [49:50]
Sagar
Well, this is what I want to ask about, because she did during. People probably remember this because, I mean, honestly, it was hilarious. During COVID she had this infamous post on X where she said, or Twitter at the time, my cousin in Trinidad won't get the vaccine because his friend got it and became impotent. His testicles became swollen. His friend was weeks away from getting married. Now, the girl called off the wedding. So just pray on it. Make sure you're comfortable with your decision. Not bullied. And there was this like, oh, zing.
- [50:14]
Krystal Ball
Retweets. Oh, my God.
- [50:15]
Sagar
There was, there was this like sort of. You saw flashes of this from Nicki Minaj. She says that or she's. It seems like her claim, the, the charitable claim is that watching the plight of Nigerian Christians and seeing Trump's reaction to that has part of what motivated her here. But I also wanted to bring up the Amber Rose of it all because. Yeah, so this is Amber Rose. It was on a sneako stream, apparently, and said that she's the one who introduced Nicki Minaj to Alex Brucewicz, the Trump appointee, or not appointee, a Trump advisor outside of the administration, technically, I think, who then connected Nicki Minaj to Donald Trump. And it does seem like there's this interesting, interesting thing happening to Raya. Maybe it's, it started happening after Butler. I don't know where there's, there is like this rap community interest in Trump. Maybe that's after Butler, like, is tell us how Amber Rose fits into all of this.
- [51:17]
Torre
I mean, I don't know. This is more of the loving as a personality. I don't believe, I don't believe either of them could talk about any Trump policy or any Trump philosophy or any idea of Trump. I don't believe that they interact with the political spectrum in the way that we do. As far as ideas, I think they hover over it. As far as personality, as far as he seems like a cool, strong man, so then he must be the guy for the job.
- [51:50]
Krystal Ball
Tori also talk. So, I mean, Trump was a fixture in like hip hop songs before he was a political figure. Right. And there is in mainstream hip hop, there is this like veneration of money and power and wealth and capitalism that. So there is, you know, I don't know if this necessarily applies with Nikki. So there, there is a thing there that does make a sort of sense because his whole brand is being the unvarnished BR capitalist billionaire boss man. And with Nikki specifically, I was watching the bit fruity podcast with Matt Bernstein. I don't know if you, if you know him or watch him, but he's a gay guy and he did a breakdown with, I can't remember who his guest was about Nikki's pivot. And they were also pointing to the fact that she has been very jealous of the other women who have come up in the rap game and has very, been like, at times very hostile towards them. And so for them it was yes, and Megan the Stallion. And, you know, I don't know if there are others as well. But it's like, rather than having this sort of like, you know, feminist view of. I help to be the trailblazer here and I'm so glad to see these other women followed my footsteps. Instead, it's like fudge, y'. All bitches. Like, this is my domain. So I wonder if you see any connection there too with it, you know, that not being that surprised that she would have this right wing turn, you know, at a time when the movement is explicitly. The right wing movement is explicitly sort of like anti feminist, certainly anti queer, et cetera.
- [53:29]
Torre
I mean, she is, as you note, a sort of pivotal figure in modern hip hop history in that she is the one who sort of emerges and reminds the labels and the industry that women can be commercially successful and the people who come after her as, as far. As far as Cardi, who Emily mentioned, and Megan and Glorilla, we're actually having a huge moment for a lot of black female rappers. There's also Latto, there's also Saweetie, there's a lot Sexyy Red. Somebody will say there's a lot of black female rappers at this moment. It's a huge moment for that demographic.
- [54:06]
Krystal Ball
And who don't have to be attached, like to a larger male artist for their success. They are the thing on them. They're.
- [54:15]
Torre
Yeah, yeah. So it's an interesting moment for that, you know. Yes. She has not been welcoming to the others. She has been super competitive and trying to eat up all the space. I think she's part of this sliver. It's been like 16, 17, 18% of black people who are willing to vote for Trump. But that's about the percentage that have been willing to go Republican for a long time. It's like 3, 4% more. But like, it's not a statistically massive. There was this sort of media drumbeat about black men's especially going over to the right. It happened in a very, very small, statistically insignificant amount. But there is a small group of black people who are willing to go over there and Nikki's one of them. I mean, like, I just, you know, I grew up in a time when Republicans could articulate their position and I disagreed with them. But they had an idea when they talked about, you know, limited government and taxation. This group is just reactionary. They're just evil. They're just hateful toward people who are not them. So the appeal from a Nicki Minaj I don't understand except a personal, transactional. I will get you a citizenship or Maybe an honorary citizenship. Lil Wayne has citizenship, young money he's talked about.
- [55:42]
Emily
Is it citizenship or is it pardons? Do you know much about her husband or her brother to her family? Like they're experiencing some level of criminal charges or what have you. Could the pardon be the real thing here?
- [55:58]
Torre
I mean, it could, you know, I mean, that also has been controlled under Trump as this sort of personal thing that he gives to you if he likes you, not if he believes in your case and believes from a jurisprudential perspective that you deserve relief. But if he likes you and he personally likes your story or so. Yeah, I mean, perhaps we'll see that if she kisses the ring sufficiently, then her husband, who has, you know, horrific charges from many years ago, if he will get, you know, magically pardoned or expunged. You know, it's a pay for play sort of system. And she didn't even, she didn't even have to pay to get into it. It seems that she got this for free. Like, like, what are we doing here?
- [56:42]
Sagar
Well, when you're talking about how it's a lot of this vibe based.
- [56:47]
Torre
Based.
- [56:47]
Sagar
I was thinking of how in Hollywood for a long time there was a sort of vibe base. I don't know if conformity is the right word. Maybe it is the right word where it was like, okay, Obama, we're back in Obama, or we're backing John Kerry and like you keep going back. But it's interesting to me that it's kind of flipped in a sense where you have now people vibe based going to Trump. And I don't think that ever will translate into another Republican. I feel like that's just a Trump phenomenon. It's not going to go to JD Vance or Marco Rubio. Like you're not going to see the Nicki Minaj. I don't know, maybe you disagree to. Right, like going. Because it, to me, it just speaks to Trump having this like countercultural, whatever we think of, of whether it's legitimate or not, he has this like countercultural reputation as like someone who undermines the system, he's going to drain the swamp, etc. And that's never going to, like, it's never going to transfer to another Republic Republican.
- [57:42]
Torre
Yeah, I largely agree with that. I think of Trump as an extremely unintelligent person. As in there's a very small ability to analyze and integrate new information. There's a very small amount of information in his memory. Like there's no subject where you say he is a national or a global expert on this subject, but he is, is an interpersonal genius as far as getting a certain kind of person to like him. He can speak to their fears, he can motivate them and inspire them to follow him. It works on a certain swath of America. It's that solid 35% of America that sticks with him no matter what. But he is that. And I think you see that on the campaign trail much more than in the Oval Office. But, but like, he does have a genius for getting on the mic and getting a certain sort of person, mostly male, mostly poor, but also rich, mostly white, to really, really like him and to think he's the guy. So there is a genius, there is an interpersonal genius that works for him. But I think in any other area of intelligence, he is completely bereft.
- [58:58]
Krystal Ball
I mean, I also see like Emily put up that infamous Covid tweet where of course it's mostly like liberals and people left of center that are like, what the is wrong with you? What is this? Like, what are you talking about? And then, you know, you have also, and you could speak to this much more so than I could. This is someone who's not at the top of her career, right? And so there's, you know, that as well, where it's sort of like grasping for relevance, then you have filtered into that, this very variety, basket of self interested reading reasons why you want to take this track. And so to me, you know, I've seen a lot like Joe Rogan comes to mind also as someone who felt like really demonized over things he said around Covid. And then it's like, I'm just a right winger now, right? And you know, I've seen other people who basically made that similar turn of, you know, I feel attacked by the left, therefore I'm going to flip all of my politics to the right. I don't know that we ever really knew that much about Nikki's politics to start with that, like, to your point, I don't think she had like a lot of ideological grounding to really upend to begin with. But it seems to me when you put all of those pieces together, I feel attacked by the left. I am, you know, sort of grasping for relevance. I have these basket of legal and immigration problems I want dealt with. I, you know, like being the center of attention and on the stage, et cetera, that it kind of like you can see how she ends up traveling this traditional.
- [60:26]
Torre
One thing about hip hop in general is you are supposed to get on the mic and tell us about who you are and tell us about where you're from. And so we should walk away feeling like we know you and what your world is all about. In rock and roll and R and B, you may or may not ever know what the person is really about. And a lot of the songs are fictional. When somebody says I love you in R and B or rock and roll, like they're talking to a fictional you. In hip hop, we. If somebody says I love you, they are talking to a specific person. Or I hate you, they're talking to a specific person. Nikki, in particular has always bothered me because she never talks about herself. I listen to Nikki's music. I don't know anything about her. She's always playing a character. And so are you saying she doesn't have the Barbie sort of character?
- [61:15]
Sagar
She doesn't.
- [61:16]
Krystal Ball
Well, she does. She has, like, a variety of. Of alter egos, right?
- [61:20]
Sagar
Yeah.
- [61:20]
Torre
She has different characters that she plays over time. And, like, Beyonce has different eras, but I feel like they are rooted in who she is. Nikki, I feel like she's an actor and she's a theater kid who. She's doing different roles. So I'm like, this is the new chapter of Nicki, which is MAGA Barbie, as opposed to previously she was Harajuku Barbie. It's. None of it is real. It's not a genuine desire to relate to Trump or Trumpism. It's just, this is the new character that is valuable. It gets her attention. It gets her potentially, possibly citizenship, possibly a pardon for, you know, her husband. And so there's value in it. Right. She's not really making records at this point that are charting, that are hitting the culture. But here's a way to get everybody to look at you, which is similar to what Kanye did in a. I think. I'm sure Kanye's like, well, at least I did it at the beginning of Trump and not near the, you know, near the end or the middle. I mean, like, I don't know how you can look at, you know, Rene and Alex and say, yeah, I still want to be on that team. Like, I joined that team now. Like, their stock is incredibly low. The approval rating is incredibly low. Surely they are moving toward the end. So you're joining the party party now. Like, I don't understand that.
- [62:45]
Emily
Yeah. And now to the. To the. To the Barb's point, Will. What? Is there going to be a Barb's backlash now? I'm not so sure, because, as you. You know, you mentioned yourself on this episode, she has a lot of gay Fans, and I know a lot of, you know, gay guys that stan a toxic woman. They say, you know what? You're being toxic. Go off, girl. You know, like, some people like that now. So will she have a backlash in the barbs, or will the barbs stand valiantly with her?
- [63:17]
Torre
I think she has already seen a significant barb backlash. If I recall, she quit Instagram over this not long ago that the. That people started attacking her online over this MAGA turn. And she quit Instagram because she couldn't handle the comment flow and she didn't want that to become part of the. So I do think that the barbs are definitely already responding in an aggressive way. And I think that the toxicity point you mentioned, there's a fun way for someone to be toxic, and there's a truly virulent way for someone to be toxic. And somebody sort of listen, we know this with soxico. A woman who's sort of domineering and humiliated is a good toxic. And like, a woman who's like, maga is like, no, that's not fun toxic. That's just bad toxic.
- [64:13]
Krystal Ball
That's different flavors of toxic. Lastly, Tore wanted to get your reaction to the big news that broke this morning that Don Lemon's been arrested in LA over his coverage of this church protest. You know Don, don't you?
- [64:25]
Torre
I do, I do. I texted with him about this issue and supported him on. This is what 60 Minutes used to do. That recoverage out of that church situation. That's what 60 Minutes used to do. That's real journalism. The notion that he was leading a mob into a church is completely backwards. He was covering a situation that was happening on the ground. This is a politically motivated arrest meant to silence people like us. And the conversation keeps going to whether or not they could or should have protested in the church. Don was not protesting in the church. He was media. In the church in general, generally, we protect that. This whole story, the whole arrest, is protecting against the notion of we have a pastor, a Christian pastor, who is in ice. So all of this is protecting that man. And if we cannot talk about the hypocrisy of the Christian pastor, of being in ICE on Sunday, talking about, love thy neighbor, help the stranger, would Jesus have joined ice? Of course not. Like Jesus was flipping the tables. He put God over the state. And being in ICE reverses every Christian principle. So what those protesters were doing was righteous in calling attention to his hypocrisy as a Christian. And the right and the administration has tried to turn this around about you can't protest inside a church. That is not the crux of this issue at.
- [66:00]
Joel
At all.
- [66:02]
Krystal Ball
Yeah, I. I would also note they. They haven't treated churches as sort of like sanctified spaces because they've done immigration raids and, you know, explicitly overturned previous policy to do immigration raids during church services as well.
- [66:15]
Torre
We are not investigating the man who shot Renee, the man who shot Alex, but we are investigating Don Le Lemon, a journalist with a microphone who interviewed people on the scene of an ongoing story like, well, and anyone can watch.
- [66:35]
Krystal Ball
The live stream, you know, it's I believe, still posted on his channel. If you are concerned that he was taking part in the pro, that he was leading them into the building that he was serving, you know, just as an activist and not as a journalist, like, you can go watch it for yourself and make your own determinations because it's. It actually was quite helpful having him there and interviewing the people that were there and getting, you know, all of their perspectives, including the pastor who was there, not the ICE pastor, a different pastor who was there leading services and obviously was very upset by the protest. Tori, tell people where they can find you and support all of your great.
- [67:08]
Torre
Work all over the place. I'm on TikTok at Torre Show. I'm on YouTube.
- [67:13]
Krystal Ball
Have you been. You noticed any censorship over at TikTok last week? You had problems?
- [67:19]
Torre
I haven't. There was a couple days when they. They told us not to post cause the app was not working. I do see an influx in these text only posts that are like pro ICE and sort of mocking liberals and that sort of thing. I haven't seen that. Although, you know, somebody I really like, I believe Hawkeye was his name, who was a great liberal creator and quite often spent his time platforming other people. If he liked a post of mine or a video of somebody else's, as always, liberals, he would like, you know, throw them up so give them more visibility. They banned him permanently. And you know, this is just, you know, a guy just, you know, fighting the good fight and just spreading good common sense messages and it's frightening to see him get banned permanently. So that's been the biggest change that I've noticed in the recent days.
- [68:13]
Krystal Ball
Gotcha. But in any case, I interrupted your pitch. TikTok, where else?
- [68:17]
Torre
No, TikTok and YouTube for now. Tik Tok for now. And on substack as well.
- [68:27]
Krystal Ball
All right, Tori, thank you so much. Great to see you, my friend.
- [68:29]
Torre
Nice to see you.
- [68:31]
Emily
All right, that is going to do it for the public half of the Friday show. Please subscribe@breaking points.com to join us. We have some huge AMA questions to answer from our audience. I have an incredible video from Rep. Marie Goose and Clamp Perez and some interesting backstory on her personal history that might trigger one saga. And Jetty, we have Hasan Piker banned from Twitch. We have a inter a CBS Barry Weiss internal town hall meeting with some interesting comments and plenty more. If you want to check all that out again, breakingpoints.com you can become a monthly or yearly member. That'll be in the video description or@breakingpoints.com anything else before we leave everybody?
- [69:22]
Krystal Ball
Nope.
- [69:23]
Emily
See you there.
- [69:23]
Krystal Ball
On the other side this is an I Heart podcast. Guaranteed human.