2/13/26: Epstein Goldman Sachs Lawyer OUT, "Zohran" of North Carolina Primaries Democrat

Summary

Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar – 2/13/26: Epstein Goldman Sachs Lawyer OUT, "Zohran" of North Carolina Primaries Democrat

Date: February 13, 2026
Hosts/Panel: Ryan Grim, Emily Jashinsky, Griffin Davis
Notable Guests: Nida Alam (NC Congressional Candidate)

Episode Overview

This episode of Breaking Points delivers a deep-dive discussion into several major news stories, with a primary focus on new revelations from the Jeffrey Epstein email files, the ousting of Goldman Sachs General Counsel Kathy Rummler over Epstein ties, recent developments in the North Carolina primary featuring progressive candidate Nida Alam, and evolving U.S. policies against Cuba. The show maintains its distinct anti-establishment perspective, questioning mainstream narratives and scrutinizing elite power structures.

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Key Segments and Timelines

1. Introduction and Episode Preview

[02:05]

• The panel (Griffin, Ryan, Emily) sets up the show’s key topics: new Epstein developments, U.S. policy toward Cuba, ICE's Minneapolis incursion wrap-up, and the upcoming interview with candidate Nida Alam.
• Reflections on shifts in political funding, especially AIPAC’s changing support in the North Carolina primary.

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2. North Carolina Primary: Nida Alam vs. Valerie Foushi

[03:14] – [06:39]

• Background: Alam ran against Foushi in 2022, losing after AIPAC and related super PACs spent over $7 million supporting Foushi, largely motivated by anti-Muslim sentiment and concerns about even gentle criticism of Israel.
• 2026 Shift: The district is now more favorable to Alam, and Foushi has lost AIPAC’s backing after mild critiques of Israel’s Gaza actions.
• Interesting twist: New super PAC has now dropped $500k to back Alam, sources unknown; Alam claims no knowledge or coordination.
• Notable quote:
  • Ryan Grim: “After taking $7 million … now she’s saying she won’t take it and she might lose as a result.” [05:03]
• Panel tone: Sarcastic, highlighting establishment hypocrisy and the role of outside money in local races.

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3. Epstein Emails & The Fall of Goldman Sachs’s Kathy Rummler

[06:39] – [21:53]

A. Why Rummler Was Ousted

• Topline: Kathy Rummler (Obama’s former top lawyer) is out at Goldman amid exposures of a deep, years-long friendship with Epstein; emails reveal “lavish gifts” and intimate personal discussions.
• Panel’s investigation:
  • Rummler’s name appears in thousands of Epstein’s emails—the highest for any non-Ghislaine contact in just four years.
  • She played key legal roles bridging Epstein, the Rothschilds, and Goldman Sachs.
• Intelligence Ties: Rummler boasted about a Top CIA award, was dispatched post-Snowden leaks, and had calendar invites referencing “NSA signal intelligence”—panel suspects this was about biohacking and genomics, not surveillance per se.
• Memorable moment:
  • Emily Jashinsky: “She was getting lavish gifts from him and referring to him as Uncle Jeffrey. Very disgusting, by the way...” [11:05]
• Why the delay in her firing?
  • Ryan Grim explains legal world’s reluctance to conflate a lawyer’s ethical responsibility with a client’s criminality:
    • “Lawyers are loathe to ever … blame the lawyers for the client’s behavior.” [12:40]
  • The volume and intimacy of their leaked messages became “untenable.”
• No legal exposure—yet:
  • Panel suspects the relationship was close but have not seen evidence Rummler participated in or was aware of sex trafficking.

B. Cultural and Class Context

• Why Elites Circle the Wagons:
  • Grim and Jashinsky discuss post-#MeToo fatigue among Upper East Side elites, suggesting defense of Epstein was about class solidarity.
    • “If the workers of the country had the level of class solidarity they have, it’d be over for them.” – Ryan Grim [17:27]
• The Epstein Correspondence Map:
  • Analysis of recent data visualizations shows Rummler sent/received 11,000+ emails with Epstein, outpacing even Ghislaine Maxwell in fewer years.

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4. Political Fallout from the Epstein Files

[22:00] – [32:00]

• Redacted Emails Controversy: New drops reveal attempts by DOJ to hide names of political contacts labeled (possibly wrongly) as “victims.”
  • Griffin reads an email most listeners suspect came from Gwendolyn Beck, leading to a digression on DOJ’s redactions and inconsistent rationales.
  • Notable quotes and satire about the dysfunction of trying to make sense of the files.
• Bannon’s Involvement:
  • Steve Bannon’s “War Room” traced in emails as Epstein’s idea to exploit the foreign agent loophole by setting up a media company.
  • Emails also detail Bannon seeking personal and political leverage, including attempts to ingratiate himself with Kushner, highlighting Epstein’s role as a networker/enabler in right-wing politics.
  • Emily Jashinsky: “There are a million pieces of this puzzle ... and none of them look particularly good for Steve Bannon.” [28:36]

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5. Media Coverage and Independent Journalism

[32:00] – [35:33]

• The panel underscores how mainstream media coverage of Epstein remains extremely superficial, with key details and elite connections only aired via independent outlets like Breaking Points and Dropsite.
• Ryan Grim: “If we weren’t doing the work that we’re doing, like what would the media landscape look like when it came to the coverage of Jeffrey Epstein?” [33:23]
• Broader point: Emails and documents are now being scrubbed from government servers, only accessible via independent archivists.

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6. U.S. Squeezing Cuba: Gaza Playbook Redux

[38:09] – [52:41]

• Context: U.S. adopts a Gaza-style chokepoint approach, cutting off most fuel supplies and furthering humanitarian crisis, with a handful of foreign countries (notably China) still willing to send limited aid.
• Motivation: Administration apparently seeking to induce collapse/foster regime change by being the gatekeeper of essential supplies, handing out just enough “to keep people alive.”
• Grim’s comparison:
  • “They are still withholding humanitarian aid … before they now replicate a version of it in Cuba and cut off everything.” [38:38]
• Emily Jashinsky offers conservative perspective:
  • U.S. concern is proximity to hostile powers (China, Russia) but she argues that “decades of blockade hasn’t worked,” and advocates for relationship thaw.
  • “There's actually a better way … to end suffering in Cuba.” [45:15]
• Flotilla parallel: U.S. flotilla being planned to bring supplies echoes past Gaza efforts, but Cuba’s crisis is mostly shortage of fuel—not just food.
• Mexico & China: China continues to send some fuel/solar panels; Mexico limited to non-fuel aid under U.S. pressure.

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7. Interview: Nida Alam, Progressive Candidate in North Carolina

[56:30] – [73:49]

Background and Campaign Issues

• Primary is ongoing; Foushi (incumbent) is down in progressive support after rejecting future AIPAC money.
• Alam highlights community-focused campaign: grassroots, WhatsApp organizing, polling location events tied to religious/cultural gatherings, and broad coalition endorsements.
  • Nida: “Our average contribution is $50 or something and it’s coming from working class folks in this district.”
• Issues: Affordability, immigration, ICE abuses, and deploying “relational organizing”—focusing on shared humanity over party labels.
  • “So much of the policy I’m supporting … is common sense.” [63:36]
• AI Data Centers: Alam supports a moratorium due to energy/water impact, especially in North Carolina’s (Triangle) tech corridor.

Stances on Immigration

• Alam opposes ICE, supports abolition, and criticizes tepid Democratic reforms: “ICE as an agency was created to dehumanize us … I am clear in my stance that ICE needs to be abolished.”
• Sees affordability/quality of life as primary voter motivator, not border-centric rhetoric: “I honestly don’t think immigration has been the issue that has cost us elections.”

Notable Quotes

• “[We have] the opportunity to show not only can progressives win, they can win in the South.” – Nida Alam [73:49]

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8. Florida Update: James Fishback, Meme Candidate for Governor

[74:32] – [84:33]

• Fishback gains notoriety for far-right, meme-ified campaign style: anti-Semitic dog whistles ("goy slop"), threats of violence (“If you threaten our campaign ... We’re gonna shoot you with an AR-15.” [81:09]), and appeals to young, online conservatives.
• Polling remains weak despite social media buzz; most professional polls show him far behind Byron Donalds.
• Panel notes disconnect between viral internet politics and actual electoral progress.

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9. Texas Democratic Primary: Talarico vs. Jasmine Crockett

[84:33] – [91:36]

• Talarico surges with economic populism/anti-oligarch rhetoric: “We already have class warfare in this country—it's the billionaires waging war against the rest of us.” [85:33]
• Polls mixed, with some showing Crockett ahead, others a Talarico surge.
• Talarico faces scrutiny over taking donations linked to Miriam Adelson, clarifies it was gaming-related, not Israel-related.
• Panel raises questions on authenticity and the clash between anti-oligarch talk and fundraising realities.

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10. Listener Q&A and Lighter Moments

[91:36] – end

• Reflections on Piers Morgan appearance, past Michael Tracy debates, and the challenges of mainstreaming “Epstein brain” discussions.
• Griffin suggests (tongue-in-cheek) a regular “good news” segment—panel gently demurs, citing valid news scarcity.
• Brief discussion of the El Paso laser incident and speculation on DHS’s use of new weaponry.
• Final banter on the shifting meaning of “woke” and changing trends in internet discourse.

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Memorable Quotes

• “If the workers of the country had the level of class solidarity they have, it’d be over for them.” – Ryan Grim [17:27]
• "She was getting lavish gifts from him and referring to him as Uncle Jeffrey. Very disgusting, by the way..." – Emily Jashinsky [11:05]
• “So much of the policy I’m supporting … is common sense.” – Nida Alam [63:36]
• “ICE as an agency was created to dehumanize us … I am clear in my stance that ICE needs to be abolished.” – Nida Alam [68:47]
• "We already have class warfare in this country—it's the billionaires waging war against the rest of us." – James Talarico [85:33]
• "If you threaten our campaign ... We’re gonna shoot you with an AR-15." – James Fishback [81:09]

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Tone

• Cynical, anti-elite, irreverent, and highly skeptical of mainstream takes
• Frequent satire and in-jokes among the panel
• Direct questions, not afraid to call out hypocrisy or refuse easy answers

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Summary for Listeners

This episode brings together a revealing set of discussions about the intersection of elite power, establishment politics, and the challenges of independent journalism. Using the Jeffrey Epstein files as a focal point, the Breaking Points crew scrutinizes the enduring connections between finance, law, and state power, while making time to highlight the importance of local progressive political movements—and the obstacles they face from entrenched interests and old tactics. The conversation moves from scandal and elite cover-ups (Epstein, Rummler) to real-world struggles (Cuba sanctions, minimum wage stagnation) and the nature of modern political messaging (Fishback’s meme candidacy, Talarico’s populism). Throughout, listeners are treated to the show’s signature blend of hard-nosed reporting, banter, and a willingness to “call bullshit” on all sides of the spectrum.

Recommended for anyone seeking a comprehensive, unvarnished look at the week’s most controversial news, from elite scandals to grassroots political shifts.

Transcript

[Nita Alam]

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[Ryan Grim]

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[Emily Jashinsky]

Cake batter, to name a few. Find your favorite flavor@premier protein.com hey guys, Sagar and Krystal here. 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. This is the only place where you.

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Can find honest perspectives from the left.

[Emily Jashinsky]

And the right that simply does not exist anywhere else. So if that is something that's important to you, Please go to BreakingPoints.com, become a member today and you'll get access to our full shows unedited ad free and all put together for you every morning in your inbox. We need your help to build the future of independent news media and we.

[Ryan Grim]

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[Griffin Davis]

Good morning, everyone. Happy Friday, Ryan and Emily. We have an amazing show, don't we?

[Ryan Grim]

Indeed we do.

[Griffin Davis]

Indeed we do.

[Emily Jashinsky]

I just stepped on that. I'm so sorry. That was, that was a great, enthusiastic, robust. Indeed we do.

[Griffin Davis]

This is why we're the B team. You know, we're working on it. So we've got more Epstein news, more, more of our, you know, Associates going down today. We've also got us strangling Cuba, Mexico, sending Navy ships. We also have some more ice news with Tom Homan ending the Minneapolis incursion. What are they calling it? What was it, the raid? Operation Metro Surge has completed its mission and is returning.

[Ryan Grim]

The insurgents have been victorious.

[Griffin Davis]

That's right, yes.

[Ryan Grim]

The battle.

[Emily Jashinsky]

The battle has been wonderful.

[Griffin Davis]

We've got a little Maya couple for me on some James Fishback stuff going down in Florida that I'd love to talk to Emily about. And we also have. Don't laugh. And we also have a congressional candidate, Ryan, at 10. Who do we got?

[Ryan Grim]

We got Nita Alam. Who. Who in 2022, I covered this race. It was her against Valerie Fouche. Actually, I think it's Fushi. We'll ask. Well, I snit it. And APAC threw something like seven plus million dollars into this race. She was a county commissioner. And it seemed like basically because she was Muslim, like there was some criticism of Israel, but it seemed like pretty heavily coded, like, let's make sure we don't get any more Muslims in, into the Capitol. And she lost by something like 4,000 votes after that. Fushi, Valerie Fushi was critical of Israel, like gently a couple of times. And so the district has been redrawn. It's actually a little bit more favorable to nida, who is more progressive. And if the election, like unfolded exactly as it did in 2022, Alam actually probably wins this time. But this time it seems like there's no AIPAC support coming for Valerie Fushi because of this very gentle criticism that she had that she had offered. You know, when she, when the political tide turning started turning very heavily against Israel for what it was doing in Gaza. Last night, a super PAC came in in support of NIDA. Alam Drop, apparently dropping $500,000 worth of ads supporting her. We don't know who's funding that alam, you know, probably doesn't either. If she does, maybe she'll tell us. But it's an interesting kind of turn of events because now APAC might end up losing this seat that they spent, you know, $7 million four years ago to win.

[Emily Jashinsky]

It's beautiful. Wow.

[Griffin Davis]

And could you. What's this gentle criticism like? Could you give me an example? Like, we actually even tried to have.

[Ryan Grim]

Her on the show because, I don't know, stop killing children. You know, it was like a little.

[Griffin Davis]

Nudge in the right direction.

[Ryan Grim]

Let's. We can, I can look it up, but it was, it was very mild, but it was, it was it was eyebrow raising enough because I think she might have even cast like a vote against one of the resolutions that AIPAC wanted everybody to support, which I remember was eyebrow raising because she had taken the aipac, you know, she'd taken all this AIPAC money and then she took the AIPAC trip to Israel and then voted on something that didn't change anything, but, you know, didn't vote with them on something. It's like, oh, that's. This is interesting what's going on here. And apparently APAC not, not very forgiving. And, and Fushi has said she will, quote, will not accept AAPAC money in 2026. So I think so. You know, after taking $7 million of it at, through a super PAC four years ago, now she's saying she won't take it and she might lose as a result. Spring 2025, she said, y' all know that I took the money from apac, but check to see how much I've taken since that time and check my voting record to see how I have voted and what I have voted for as it relates to the people of Gaza. And she, that this was in response to somebody saying if she regretted taking all this money from, from APAC and, and taking this APAC trip and so AIPAC not taken kindly to that.

[Emily Jashinsky]

Hmm.

[Griffin Davis]

Well, we'll learn more about that from Nita in just a little bit. Excited to hear that. But once again, we've got a little bit more Epstein news coming down the pike this morning in Goldman Sachs's general counsel. Kathy Rumler, a former top Obama administration lawyer, is out at Goldman Sachs after email showed a friendship with the sex offender Jeffrey Epstein spanning many years. Now, Ryan, has Kath, has she shown up in your investigations at all in your Gmail searches?

[Emily Jashinsky]

She's in like every email. If you search the inbox, it's like, oh, Rumbler's on this one.

[Griffin Davis]

Is she BCC on everything?

[Ryan Grim]

She was. Yeah, she was general counsel for Obama and so she was. And we've reported this. She. So she, the Roth Arianda Rothschild was a client of one of the firms that she was with. She was on the Rothschild account. She then ended up becoming the kind of the middle attorney between Epstein and the Rothschild account.

[Emily Jashinsky]

That's when she was at the house.

[Ryan Grim]

Was known as the. Yeah, Epstein was what was known as the gatekeeper for the Ross for the Arian de Rothschild account and the Edmond de Rothschild Bank. She's the, she's the first Rothschild to run the banking operation who was not born a Rothschild. She's like, born in El Salvador. Is it central? She's from Central America. Married into the family. Husband, I guess, died. And then she became boss of this. And Epstein and her were very close. And so Rummler managed that operation. He also tried to connect her with Gates, Bill Gates. That didn't pan out as a. As a client situation. But Rumler helped to then negotiate the. A settlement between the Rothschild bank and the US over some corruption and money laundering. Helped. He helped negotiate a settlement between the Rothschild bank and Israel over tax. Tax fights. Because the Rothschild banking operation was like, we don't owe you anything. We. We literally financed the creation of the state of Israel. You think, how do we owe you anything? Israel's like, no, you're a nonprofit and you are supposed to live up to your nonprofit obligations to fund these education programs and other initiatives, and you're just not doing it. And so Epstein helped negotiate a settlement around. Around that. We have a couple other stories coming about other things that Epstein and Rumler. Rumler did, which I'll hold for. Hold for later, but I guess it just became too much of a distraction at Goldman with all this, you know, you know, the tightness of the relationship.

[Emily Jashinsky]

I mean, this is. She's the clo. She's a chief legal officer of one of the biggest and most powerful companies, and they stood by her over and over again. She is constantly copied on emails. She's in conversations with Steve Bannon, those conversations that Michael Wolf appears to have leaked. It's Steve Bannon, Jeffrey Epstein, Michael Wolf and Kathy Rumler strategizing about public relations. Essentially, she was a participant in that. We still don't understand exactly what was happening in those conversations. She, in one email, brags to Epstein about getting a top award from the CIA by John Brennan, which is very important because Kathy Rumler was dispatched when she was GC of the Obama White House to deal with the fallout from the Snowden Leaks, Meaning groups like, I would say the Brennan center and the ACLU were concerned about the contents and Rummler was the one then dealing with it. There are calendar invites for Kathy Comma, NSA signal intelligence. Between Epstein and Kathy Rummler. There are mentions which apparently that's related.

[Ryan Grim]

To our story about. Yeah, I think it is biohacking rather than, like people think of signals intelligence as inter intercepts of signals. He's using it in a way I don't quite understand, but it's an. It's a reference to bioengineering and biohacking rather than intercepting anyway.

[Emily Jashinsky]

Well, yeah, no, I think that's he, he's. What it sounds like is he's thinking of code breaking. And he would be asked by one.

[Ryan Grim]

Person of the genome.

[Emily Jashinsky]

Yeah, right, yeah. And someone would say, what are you talking about? Hackers or code breakers? And he would say, code breakers. So anyway, we don't, we, we don't fully understand the complete picture of what Kathy Rummler was doing with Jeffrey Epstein. She was getting lavish gifts from him and referring to him as Uncle Jeffrey. Very disgusting, by the way, referring to him as Uncle Jeffrey when he would shower gifts on her. She did go to the island. He was giving her all kinds of fancy stuff and keeping her around very clearly. They talked about her romantic situation together. He said he wanted to see her DC one day. Her version of DC one day. CIA, nsa. So still don't fully understand what that means. Some people have said it means that Epstein wasn't CIA or wasn't nsa, didn't have any connection with the intelligence agencies. I don't know that you can jump to that because we don't know what he told Kathy Rummeler and what kind of game he was playing overall. But it's. Goldman stood by Kathy Rummeler for years. This has been dogging her for years. And the emails made it untenable because she was clearly so intimately, intimately connected with Jeffrey Epstein, sharing her innermost thoughts and secrets about her romance life. She was a participant in these big picture schemes as Job site has reported and as Ryan has been all over. So it would be absurd to keep Kathy Rummler on. It was already absurd enough, but this took down the clo of one of the most powerful companies in the world.

[Ryan Grim]

So, you know, I think the world, I think the legal world and Sachs in particular stuck by her partly because everything she knows, but also lawyers are loathe to ever and for good reason. Blame the lawyers for the client's behavior. If you do that, every, every defense attorney is then associated with the depravity and criminality of whatever defendant, whether they're a murderer or a pedophile or a, you know, politician. And so they want to draw a bright line that like, look, no, no, no, no. A lawyer is giving legal advice and is not morally and or ethically culpable for the behavior of the client otherwise.

[Griffin Davis]

Even though she was asking for dating advice from Jeffrey Epstein.

[Ryan Grim]

And so these emails getting leaked and like, with that, with that boundary being so heavily blurred with some of those emails, then I think that's why they finally like, okay, we, we gotta, we gotta throw her overboard.

[Griffin Davis]

Why are so many people asking for relationship advice from like a known predator and like, oh, that's the guy who's gonna help me with my date.

[Emily Jashinsky]

It does keep coming up over and over again from women and men.

[Griffin Davis]

So very bizarre.

[Emily Jashinsky]

It's all over. I don't know if, Ryan, you've seen a lot of this, but I just like going through the email, some of it's not newsworthy, but you're looking, you're like, why is it this person pouring out their heart over email? Jeffrey Epstein, Larry Summers. Great example, great example.

[Griffin Davis]

So she's stepping down to her going back to a private life, to her, whatever, five houses or whatever she's got. Is there any, like, legal potential here to, to charge her with anything? Or is this kind of like what you're saying where a. She has that sort of lawyerly defense?

[Ryan Grim]

I mean, so, so far, like, she's just, you know, it sounds like they had a friendship and a, and a business relationship. And if she's not involved with trafficking or aware of it, there's no reason, like, if you're a Jeffrey Epstein, you're not gonna tell your like, Goldman Sachs level lawyer about your trafficking. Like, that's like, you've got shadier people that you're gonna, I think, loop in on that.

[Emily Jashinsky]

Well, in fact, like, what they were working on in those PR sessions, like these PR bull sessions, was he was maintaining this was a witch hunt and they were helping him. So maybe they genuinely believed him or maybe they just wanted the money. But that's a question that Steve Bannon is going to get as well, because he wasn't just documenting Epstein. He was actively, actively participating in a strategy. And this is in their texts as well, in a strategy effort.

[Ryan Grim]

Cultural context is useful to remember too. By 2018, 2019, this is the, the height and the crest and then the downside of, of MeToo. People in the Upper east side, the powerful people in the Upper east side at that point were sick of me too. Like, they were like, they were done with it because they saw it as this mob democratic check on, on their power. Like the, the Upper east side set. Like, they want to call the shots of who gets to be in and who gets to be out. Not public anger, not the shitty media men list, not the not not that media men list. They don't want anything other than themselves to dictate who gets to be in the rooms. And so by this point in time, those elites are completely fed up with this, with this, with this moment in time. And so they were, I think, probably willing to defend like all right, Harvey Weinstein, we threw him overboard. They were starting to circle the wagon.

[Griffin Davis]

Sorry. By Aziz.

[Ryan Grim]

Because they, because they aren't they, they look at that and they're like, they can see where this goes. Like wait a minute. Public anger at what we're doing. Okay, right now it's what we're doing to women, but it could evolve into what we're doing to workers. You know, what we're, what we're doing to the country, what we're doing to, you know, children and, and the way that they're, we're producing anxiety and across the board. And if people get anger and that anger can translate into accountability and consequences, that's, that's not good for us. And so they, they started to have some class solidarity. And so I think that their, their defense of him has to be understood also in that, in that growing class solidarity which is like frankly inspiring. Like if, if the workers of the country had the level of class solidarity that they have, it'd be over for them.

[Griffin Davis]

Lesson, lessons to learn for the proletariat. And now speaking of this elite class solidarity, JMail has put together this really handy graphic that I wanted to put up screen right now. They worked with the Economist to analyze one point emails from the latest Epstein file drops. And this kind of shows the different sectors that we've seen so far from top 500 Epstein correspondence. Now if you're just listening on podcast, it's broken out into kind of these squares. We've got, you know, finance, media, entertainment, tech, law, real estate, business, politics, academia and of course girlfriends slash exes and yeah, and just looking at this on a grid is just kind of shocking.

[Ryan Grim]

It is. There's also. And this, this is not shaded JMail. It's more at the Economist because I love JMail. We're working with them on, on building this product. But it goods have some countries in there too, you know. Sure.

[Griffin Davis]

That might be a second grade.

[Ryan Grim]

Russia, Africa. No, not. Or you break it down Ivory Coast, Nigeria, you know, and on like that would be. That would be interesting. I just want to kind of have a heat map of the globe to show that the way that power and wealth are flowing around the globe. But we'll may maybe I'll talk to them. We'll, we'll do that one next.

[Emily Jashinsky]

That's a good drop site thing. Griffin, could you put that back up on the screen actually because there's a really important number while we're talking about Kathy Rumler. If you, if you look at that Graphic girlfriend slash exes. One of them has 41,000 emails. That's crazy. That looks to me like it's the highest number of emails on the chart. But Ghislaine Maxwell is at 10,000, Kathy Rummler is over 11,000. And Kathy Rummler wasn't even introduced to Epstein until later in this time in this timeline. Right. Like a lot of the Ghislaine emails go back to like 2005, but it seems like they didn't meet until 2015, as far as we can tell. So the sheer volume of messages back and forth, I mean look at Deepak Chopra, 5300 as you're going through the inbox, you do see just the patterns of his communication. And I think it's just that number when you're looking at all these other important people that he was talking to all the time and then you see Rummler at 11,000 emails in a matter of like four years. That should tell you something about why Goldman Sachs suddenly got very nervous. The only other thing I wanted to add about Rummler is that clearly if she's getting a behind the scenes CIA medal and has implied to him in some way or the other that she's involved with ns, and we know she was involved with the fallout from the Snowden leaks, so it would make sense. Also she was White House General Counsel. She might have felt confident about some level of immunity, formal or otherwise.

[Ryan Grim]

Yeah, and also. Yes, absolutely. And also, like if I were going to be her, like if I were going to defend her on this. Yes. Epstein is like a world historical villain at this point, as we understand it at Goldman Sachs and at the top law level, everyone you're defending is a world historical villain. Like these are all bad people. So like from her perspective, she's like, wait a minute, all of a sudden, like, I can't work with bad people. Like, do you understand the occupation that I'm in? This is a social scene where you look around and you've got, you know, Henry Kissinger over here, you've got like.

[Emily Jashinsky]

You have Larry Summers.

[Ryan Grim]

Yeah, yeah, in all in the same room, literally in the same, at the same parties. Like, these are all of the villains. And oh, isn't that, isn't that like a current dictator? Oh, that's a former dictator. Like, oh, it's built. He ran death squads financed by us. Like, so you're supposed to look around this room and be like, oh, but that guy is off limits. Like they're all rotten and it's just kind of bad luck that for her that this is the one that got plucked out and was like, oh, actually turns out you're right at the center of this sex global sex trafficking scheme. And so I suppose it's also possible.

[Emily Jashinsky]

She was a handler or something. I don't know. It's hard to. Hard to figure any of that out.

[Griffin Davis]

I like Ryan's defense. Ryan, you have a future at Goldman.

[Ryan Grim]

So it's an opening too.

[Griffin Davis]

There's a big opening. So his days are numbered for the Friday shows. But we have more from Rokana. This came from Rokana yesterday. This is a new email that was redacted. Rokana says, I saw this email at DOJ today. This is a political figure who shouldn't have been redacted. It's a direct violation of Rep. Thomas Massey in my Epstein Files Transparency Act. And I'll read a little bit of the email.

[Emily Jashinsky]

Very interesting one.

[Griffin Davis]

This is a very interesting. So this is to Jeffrey Epstein subject I beat Bush. Hi Jeffrey. I got more votes than Jeb Bush got in Iowa and I only had one congressional district. He had four. It's so funny to me. Totally embarrassing to him still like Trump and might be a delegate to the Republican convention. Was in St. Thomas for a couple days. Did call this island but never heard back when scuba diving off St. Jeff and it was beautiful. Would be totally funny to me at least if you put a big fake shark or statue under the water where the divers go. Love ya. Redacted love ya.

[Ryan Grim]

So the Internet's assessment is that this is Marco Rubio. No, I'm just joking that It's Gwendolyn Beck, 2014 congressional candidate and Todd Blanch is saying that they, that Rokhan is wrong and that the person counts as a victim. But this gets into a very dicey territory because you know they've tried to call, you know they called Scaramucci a victim. Like they, they redacted Scar muches Like what, what was. Tell us about the mooches. Victimization. Like what's going on?

[Emily Jashinsky]

Like fraud. Is that their argument? Fraud?

[Ryan Grim]

I don't think so. So what was what, what was Beck involved with? Like that's that we want to like how is she a victim? Like there's no evidence that she was a victim here. So why are you redacting her name? Like you can't, can't just redact every woman's name. Who's in here? Tell us Brian, what's that?

[Emily Jashinsky]

Tell us who she is.

[Ryan Grim]

Why we're Gwendolyn Beck a this she ran for Congress and she was Close with Epstein, clearly. So what. Like, what. What was her role? Like, what's going on here?

[Emily Jashinsky]

Just a Republican. Because this was. It was sent the day after the. Iowa.

[Griffin Davis]

Yes. February 2016.

[Ryan Grim]

Yeah, yeah.

[Emily Jashinsky]

But okay, so she was a. She was a. Gwendolyn Beck independent. She was an independent.

[Griffin Davis]

Hitting all quadrants here.

[Ryan Grim]

Well, you know, she got 5,420 votes as an independent. Very incredible.

[Emily Jashinsky]

To beat Jeb. That's a huge accomplishment. I, too, would be bragging to all my billionaire friends.

[Ryan Grim]

And she only ran. Yeah, right. Virginia's 8th district.

[Emily Jashinsky]

It was. For a second. It did. Before all of this came to light. It was like, okay, so tried to figure out. I was asking AI, which Republican candidate in 2016 has posted about scuba diving before? Obviously, it wasn't Chris Christie. It wasn't. It didn't seem to me like it would be Ted Cruz. So it was a little bit of a mystery. I felt like Agatha Christie for a while.

[Griffin Davis]

Yeah, yeah. Who left this scuba gear at the Epstein Island. So Epstein clue.

[Ryan Grim]

Ooh, that would.

[Griffin Davis]

Yeah, an Epstein. Yeah, that one. Unfortunately. Now, Emily, you mentioned Steve Bannon earlier, and a new Steve Bannon thing came across my desk. And I don't know if you've seen this one, but I wanted you to react to it here. This person says that Steve Bannon's war room was Jeffrey Epstein's idea so that Steve could avoid registering under Farah Bannon, friend of the pod. So here in this, it says Steve Bannon says, excellent. Then there's redacted name says Georgi Schwartz, real name of George Soros. Was careful not to Register under FARA. NGOs were carefully structured. My reading is that you can form a media company and make the umbrella exemption. Steve Bannon says on it, then redacted, says the media co. Has lots of advantages. Source, privilege, et cetera. So, Emily, what do you make of this?

[Emily Jashinsky]

Well, first of all, this was, like, one of the only times I've looked at an Epstein piece of advice and been like, well, I guess people were actually getting decent guidance from him, because that's quite a loophole that Epstein was steering Steve Bannon to. Now, I don't think that necessarily means War Room itself is the creation. My understanding of Steve Bannon is that he's had a lot of companies over the years and is one of those people that manages different things. Yeah, yeah. Although he didn't create Breitbart and it wasn't like his own thing, but, yeah, he had. I think he had a film company called, like, Victory Films, and He's had. Well, I don't know if he created a separate entity where he was getting, for example, money from his sources and the kind of populist. Right in Europe. And I don't know the date on this. I meant to look it up last night, but maybe he was. He was getting money, and then maybe that's a pass through entity to War, War Room. Maybe it's just a separate entity where he's taking money from these people, and then it goes into War Room. And maybe, potentially, maybe he never created this media company that Jeffrey Epstein was referring to. And War Room is like some. I don't know how it's formally incorporated. It could be different. But Bannon is. Boy, does this man have a lot to answer for. Because these messages are strategies to. To help Epstein, to coordinate with Epstein, to have Epstein help him to infiltrate the Trump circle. There's a point where they're going back and forth over whether Bannon should try to bring Jared Kushner into the kind of populist world. And Bannon and Kushner have always been at each other's throats. So Epstein is, like, encouraging him to get in with Kushner, which is interesting for UAE purposes. So there's just. It's. It's. It's. There are a million pieces of this puzzle. I actually don't even know how many pieces there are to this puzzle. I just know that there's a million of them on the ground, and none of them look particularly good for Steve Bannon.

[Ryan Grim]

Yeah, and it seems like Bannon is using Epstein to try to get leverage over Trump. Like, he feels burned, you know, the Trump world better, but feels burned by getting pushed out of the White House. Um, he wants to kind of be the guy who is the, you know, colonel of the MAGA army on the. You know, on the outside. And he's. There's some. One very revealing message where Bannon says something like, Trump, you know, keeps Trump up at night. You know, knowing. Knowing that we're so close to each other, which is not true, because Trump doesn't sleep. So nothing keeps him up at night. He's just up, up.

[Emily Jashinsky]

It's just tv. Keeps him up at night. True Social keeps him up at night.

[Ryan Grim]

His own broken brain keeps him up. But clearly, what. Like, he's getting insight and information about Trump that. That he feels like he can use as leverage against Trump at that point to, like, solidify his position in the MAGA world. The fact that he's maintained his position in the MAGA world despite that knowledge being out there is kind of wild, like you would think. You get caught doing that. A proper mob boss is like, Bannon, how could you do this to me? Like, you're gone. But no, like. Which I think speaks to his significant grassroots support that remains. He is like, he has an independent power base at this point.

[Emily Jashinsky]

He is somebody who. Ryan, you probably listen to more War Room than I do, but he's somebody who, over the years will. If there's an issue up in the air and people like, I don't know which way MAGA is going to come down on this. Steve Bannon has the pulse of the sort of people who are going to go to Trump rallies or maybe people who don't even have enough money to go to Trump rallies. Like the hardcore grassroots populist maga, Steve Bannon just instinctively understands, and to some extent, I think he understands it better than almost anyone, with the exception of Donald Trump, who has other concerns. You know, he knows he can shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and the base is going to. So, like, when it comes down to economic populism, natsac, foreign policy, all of that, Steve Bannon, because he is from Breitbart Tea Party world, and he's like an ideological. He's ideologically aligned with that world. He's able to be the real, like, MAGA whisperer. And so what it looks like he was trying to do is use other very powerful wealthy people to consolidate the power of the grassroots, to be as powerful as, like, to be a MAGA general in a way where he could direct behind the scenes, no matter what Trump was doing.

[Ryan Grim]

And speaking of the financial precarity of. Of his audience, have you noticed what kind of ads the Bannon show plays on the War Room? Mostly no gold credit. Plenty of gold credit card debt consolidation. Yeah. You have tax bills that are way overdue. You need to fight the irs.

[Griffin Davis]

Sulfuric acid.

[Ryan Grim]

And then, of course, Getter, which I think to this day is still advertising.

[Emily Jashinsky]

Yeah.

[Ryan Grim]

That you can get Charlie Kirk's thoughts if you download the Getter app. It's like, yeah, put a new ad in there, guys.

[Emily Jashinsky]

Just record another one.

[Ryan Grim]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Emily Jashinsky]

I think you were talking about silver solution, Griffin, not sulfuric acid.

[Griffin Davis]

What did they ship to the island? What do they burn the bodies?

[Ryan Grim]

Sulfuric acid. Yeah.

[Emily Jashinsky]

Oh, they did. Oh, I thought you were talking about, like, cringe ad on.

[Griffin Davis]

I was talking about the gallons they sent. You know, what they. What they put in the tub and, like, Breaking Bad to burn the body. There you go, There you go. Well, I, I just want to say I wanted to move on to Cuba next, but I did just want to say we're going to keep on covering all the intricate details of this and this weekend I really came to appreciate the work that happens on this show and from drop site because we were at a media event over the weekend with people that kind of imbibe a little bit more of the mainstream coverage of Epstein. And when I talk to people at our, at our media table that Epstein potentially was associated with Mossad and former PM Ahubarak, people looked at me like I was fucking insane. Which goes to show you, there's really two, there's kind of two narratives kind of happening. One that's very surface level in the mainstream media and one where you're going to get a lot more of the details and paint a much broader and filled in picture at places like Dropsite and what we try to do here. So I was proud of the show and very embarrassed at dinner because people thought I was crazy.

[Ryan Grim]

I was trying to think this morning, like if, if we weren't doing the work that we're doing, like what the media landscape would look like when it would, when it came to the coverage of Jeffrey Epstein. Not that we are remotely the first one to go down this path. Like Whitney Webb has done like a terrific work on this for, for many years at this point and plenty of, you know, plenty of others in the like, independent space have done it. But among those who are kind of read in the, and viewed with a mass audience because if you wanted to tell your aunt or your uncle. No, no, no, seriously, there's something to this, go read this X News article or go watch this video that, that lays it out without breaking points of drops. I'd be like, what exactly would you send them that they would be able to read and be like, oh, okay, this is credible. And I, and I understand this.

[Emily Jashinsky]

They want Twitter threads. Yeah.

[Ryan Grim]

You know, nobody wants Twitter threads like, because especially Twitter, like the way that they're putting this stuff out.

[Emily Jashinsky]

Yeah, it's not good.

[Ryan Grim]

People screenshot it and that then it's disaggregated from the source and then people make fake ones and like. And now DOJ has taken down like most stuff. Like they've taken down a ton of zip files just in the last like 24 hours. So right now you basically have to go to either JMail or, or distributors in Aisle of Secrets to see to get like the actual files. Like you can't even go to the DOJ for a lot of it anymore to prove that it's real. So it's a mess.

[Griffin Davis]

And, and, and just like offering any of the details from these shows at your, at your dinner table, at your social function, they're almost designed to make you sound like a nut, right?

[Ryan Grim]

Yes.

[Griffin Davis]

Like the way that if you were to talk about these details so, you know, to the audience. We've been considering doing a long form, like three, four hour entire, you know, capsulation of everything we've, we've learned about the Epstein thing. And maybe that can be a resource for you to share to your friends and family so you can look a little less like a kook. So if you think that's a good idea, let us know in the comments. And we're heavily considering that.

[Ryan Grim]

Welcome to the A building. I'm Hans Charles. I'm in alec Lumumba. It's 1969. Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr have both been assassinated, and black America was at a breaking point. Rioting and protest broke out on an unprecedented scale in Atlanta, Georgia, at Martin's alma mater, Morehouse College, the students had their own protest. It featured two prominent figures in black history, Martin Luther King Senior and a young student, Samuel L. Jackson.

[Griffin Davis]

To be in what we really thought.

[Ryan Grim]

Was a revolution, I mean, people were dying. 1968, the murder of Dr. King, which traumatized everyone.

[Griffin Davis]

The FBI had a role in the murder of a Black Panther leader in Chicago.

[Ryan Grim]

This story is about protest. It echoes in today's world far more than it should, and it will blow your mind. Listen to the A building on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. What do you do when the headlines don't explain what's happening inside of you? I'm Ben Higgins, and if you can hear me is where culture meets the soul, a place for real conversation. Each episode, I sit down with people from all walks of life. Celebrities, thinkers, and everyday folks. And we go deeper than the polished story.

[Griffin Davis]

We talk about what drives us, what.

[Ryan Grim]

Shapes us, and what gives us hope. We get honest about the big stuff. Identity when you don't recognize yourself anymore. Loss that changes you Purpose when success isn't enough. Peace when your mind won't slow down.

[Griffin Davis]

Faith when it's complicated.

[Ryan Grim]

Some guests have answers.

[Griffin Davis]

Most are still figuring it out.

[Ryan Grim]

If you've ever felt like there has to be more to the story, this.

[Griffin Davis]

Show is for you.

[Ryan Grim]

Listen to if youf Can Hear me on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Bowen Yang and I'm Matt Rogers. During this season of the Two Five Rings podcast, in the lead up to the Milan Cortina 2026 Winter Olympic Games, we've been joined by some of our friends. Hi, Bud.

[Griffin Davis]

Hi, Matt.

[Ryan Grim]

Hey, Elmo. Hey, Matt. Hey, Bowen.

[Nita Alam]

Hi, Cookie.

[Griffin Davis]

Hi.

[Emily Jashinsky]

And now the Winter Olympic Games are.

[Ryan Grim]

Underway and we are in Italy to.

[Emily Jashinsky]

Give you experiences from our hearts to your ears. Listen to Two Guys Five Rings on.

[Ryan Grim]

The iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Griffin Davis]

But that will bring us to our next topic, Ryan, which is Cuba. What's going on with Cuba right now? I. We're strangling the island and it seems like the administration is kind of panicking a little bit. I wanted to put this up on screen. Several sources tell the Economist the United States is considering sending small quantities of fuel to the island. Gas for cooking and diesel to keep water infrastructure running. Rubio could easily end up as the public face of an induced humanitarian crisis.

[Ryan Grim]

It. It's really eerie how quickly and seamlessly the US moved the Gaza policy over to Cuba. Like, immediate. In fact, they are still withholding the humanitarian aid life essentials from Gaza. Like, they're supposed to be letting in 600 trucks a day into Gaza as part of this quote, unquote ceasefire. And they're also supposed to stop killing Palestinians. They've done neither of those things. They're still restricting aid. They won't even let new tents in. People living in tents that are now two years old and completely destroyed from the weather. The conditions are absolutely unspeakable. There's this fierce, like, respiratory illness that is, like, rocking through the Gaza Strip at this point. And they haven't even ended that before. They now replicate a version of it over in, in Cuba and cut off everything and then become the, the power center that's gonna, like, on. That's gonna loosen the chokehold a little bit. So, like, first, first you choke them completely to the brink of death. Some people to death. If you look at child cancer, cancer fatality rates in Cuba because we're not allowing in the equipment and the supplies that you need to treat cancer. Children are dying of cancer at a much higher rate than they, than they were previously. So we're already killing people in the most torturous, kind of gruesome way. But now what they're suggesting is, oh, because somebody just posted an aerial photo, the island's like, almost completely black. They're like, oh, we are going to induce like a humanitarian crisis for these 9 million people that used to be like 12 or so before Biden and Trump smashed the population down to nine. That is going to be horrific. And we. And like, with the healthy assist from.

[Emily Jashinsky]

The Cuban government that was beating some.

[Ryan Grim]

Yeah. And it's like, okay, Israel was like, October 7, October 7, October 7. What did Cuba do? What on earth are you doing to Cuba for? Why, like, did Cuba do, like, 1959? Like, really, like. And it's also so crazy to be, like, for. To just have finished and we're not even finished. But over in Israel, it's like 1948, they talk about it a lot. And the Israelis will say it's over. Forget about it. 1948, it happened. There's no right of return. Like, we're a state now. Get over it. Like, we're now the state of Israel. We have a right to defend ourselves. We have a right to exist. Anybody who is bringing up 1948 is insane. Now over here, like, no, 1959, 11 years later, that somehow is a reason to starve millions of people in 2026. Like, can we even. Can we get an ounce of consistency in our. In our, like, barbaric behavior toward. Toward people? Apparently not. So putting the US in the position of loosening the chokehold then gives them this power over life and death in Cuba. And the idea is, and you had Mike Hammer, who's a diplomat in Cuba, going around, like, door to door handing out supplies. So, like, you starve everybody and you hand out a little bit of stuff that gives you control over their lives. And then the idea is then you can then replace. You become the government effectively. Like, if you're the one that's keeping people alive, you are the government. So it's like a. It's like a regime replacement, subtle regime replacement, without doing the. Just don't let them. Don't even worry about them collapsing. Like, just completely starve them. And then what are they at that point?

[Griffin Davis]

And, Emily, what's the conservative perspective on this? You know, is. Is there a, like, a threat from the Cuban government? I mean, this is 90 miles off the shore of Americ. Like, what is the conservative perspective on the need to do regime change in Cuba?

[Emily Jashinsky]

I mean, I don't agree with the policy prescription, but one of the places where Ryan and I probably disagree is that the Cold War rationale for taking Cuba extremely seriously as a threat is that it's obviously ripe for the picking of a hostile foreign actor to, you know, launch surveillance operations, potentially nuclear weapons and other types of weapons, like missiles, all those types of things. When you're so close to the United States and there have been incursions or there have been efforts from places like China, obviously still Russia, maybe a little Iran, but who knows what to believe because all of this is from, you know, propaganda. You don't totally know what's propaganda and what's not, but the potential for it to be co opted by a hostile foreign actor is there. And obviously the Cuban government works heavily with other countries that haven't been friendly with the United States for various reasons. I'm not saying it's all just because they're, you know, they're inherently bad people and we, we're just perfectly innocent. But the, Cuba has a government. I think it's a little bit unlike Gaza in that respect that like they do have a government, they have government infrastructure. Yes, it's true the blockade has been very problematic for them, but I think it's also that they bear some of the blame. That said, conservatives in my mind are wrong to continue this policy of just blockading, starving, trying to do what Kissinger said to Nixon about Allende and what 1973 make the economy scream and then you'll be able to do. Your regime change has not worked in Cuba for decades, is not currently working in Iran either. I mean, we'll see what happens. But to keep recycling that playbook when you have, especially a country like Cuba that is right off of your coast and that you now have a significant amount of leverage over and could genuinely try to thaw the relationship with in a way that is better for everyone, is better for the malnourished children who, if you don't want kids, like, let's just say you're the most conservative person in the world and you, you don't want kids starving under socialism, that's what you see happening in Cuba and you don't want that to happen anymore. There's actually a better way. There's actually a better way.

[Ryan Grim]

Don't starve them.

[Emily Jashinsky]

There's actually a better way. The United States has relationships with all kinds of different countries that have all kinds of different governments. And if you want to stop suffering in Cuba, you at some point probably can do that. And now is a great time actually to do that because of the amount of leverage that exists. So to just act like this is a stand against socialism is obviously absurd. And right now there's a pathway to ending suffering or alleviating suffering that's better for both the United States and for the people of Cuba. I know a lot of conservatives disagree with that. But if Venezuela Is any example, if you want to take the Trump playbook and you want to recycle that, there might be some way, whatever it looks like, if you're conservative. So that's something to think about.

[Ryan Grim]

Yeah. The Cubans have said they'll. What do you want to negotiate? Democracy, human rights, direct foreign investment, tourism? Like what? Like put it on the table. Let's, let's talk. It is very true of what Emily said that the conservative argument is that Cuba is some sort of a threat. I feel like that's rooted in this like 1960s 70s understanding of Cuba. If you look, if you look at, say, drug interdiction and migration, like the country that is the most helpful to the United States than any other country in the hemisphere is Cuba. When it comes, particularly when it comes to drug interdiction. Like now, it's cut off right now because the US Is trying to, you know, destroy them. But they've said any, any moment that you want to get back to doing drug interdiction in a normal way, like where we go up to the boat and like search it and then if it's not carrying drugs, we let it go rather than execute them from the sky. We're happy, we're happy to do it. They're like, we don't, we don't believe in executing people from the sky on a suspicion. But there's like any moment you want to go back to this drug interdiction and you know, Cuba's well positioned to do this counter narcotics work that they've been doing with the US for, for many years. I think people don't really understand that. That's, but that's like the US Government will say that out loud like, that nobody's been a better partner on encountering drug trafficking than Cuba. So. But then you get this 1970s,'60s era Cuban missile crisis thing. It's like, well, we have to nuke them.

[Emily Jashinsky]

Well, I was going to ask actually, like if there's anybody. So if people are wondering why this seems so mad. It's similarly with Venezuela. It's that you have people who have poured decades of their life since the Cold War into these movements and are sort of stuck.

[Ryan Grim]

They would just be money, like.

[Emily Jashinsky]

Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

[Ryan Grim]

A year building industry toward this and people shouldn't be surprised.

[Emily Jashinsky]

Yeah, you get stuck in this loop, which is that you have dedicated so much to the ideological goal of total and complete regime change that like the Bay of Pigs, at some point there are enough Cubans to rise up. And obviously it didn't work then, but There are enough Cubans, they'll rise up top of the regime and bring back the next Batista and everything will be great and happy. But if ever there was somebody who could break that pattern and shock people out of the loop, it's Trump. I mean, look at what they did in Venezuela. It was a little baby step in a better direction by. Well, I don't know if it'll be better or not, but by keeping Delsey Rodriguez like a direction. That was not what the hardcore hawks wanted to have happen. So if anyone could like shake people out of this loop where Cuba is still 1960, I think on principle it's still very important that you don't have China getting a foothold in Cuba. That's obviously true. But, but if anyone could shake people out of the idea that squeezing their economy and their people is the way to prevent China from getting a foothold in Cuba, it would be Donald Trump. So the time is ripe.

[Griffin Davis]

And what is Rubio's end goal here now? The article seems to state that Rubio's getting nervous that he's going to be the face of a humanitarian crisis. But this does seem to be exactly what he's wanted for a really long time. And maybe you disagree, but is the end stage goal here to strangle the island until it becomes like a US call or, or yeah. What is like the final goal here?

[Ryan Grim]

Yeah, he, he said a couple weeks ago we want to see the regime fall. He's like, that's not exactly our what we're doing, but like, we would love to see that. He would love to see that and he'd love to see it replaced by some Bukele, like right wing figure. Right.

[Griffin Davis]

And now they're just like, just like Gaza history repeating itself. There is a flotilla being planned to break the siege, much like there was a flotilla going to Gaza. Now what are the chances that this flotilla will have a better chance at actually getting to Cuba? Or will it just be like the IDF where, where America swoops in and stops them in the ocean? Like, what is the, what is that going to look like?

[Ryan Grim]

The problem is that like Gaza needed the things that the flotilla was bringing. Now they need a lot more than the flotilla was bringing, but those were the kinds of things they needed. What Cuba needs is fuel. And so unless the flotillas can bring oil tankers, it's good. It's nice to bring lentils and beans and, you know, but you got nothing.

[Griffin Davis]

To cook it with.

[Ryan Grim]

Yeah, it's, yeah, it's an island. Like you're Gonna, like, like people are cooking with wood. Like, you're gonna completely deforest that island in a short amount of time. And deforestation is insanely difficult to overcome. And then you start getting mudslides. And like, like, if you look at Haiti from the air, you know, it's completely deforested on the Haitian side because of this. And it's. And you look at the other side, you know, still green. So good. You know, it's good to raise awareness and like, put political pressure, but they need fuel.

[Griffin Davis]

All right, well, that will lead us to our congressional candidate.

[Ryan Grim]

Last update from news side. Russia has basically said they're not going to challenge the US and, and bring fuel. Mexico has capitulated. China is the only one that is saying they're still going to send as much fuel as they can. So we'll see what kind of conflict that brings. China is also bringing solar panels, and they've tried to accelerate the installation of these solar panels. I think they're now up to 20% of energy from renewables and solar, so wind and solar. So that's nowhere near enough. And you can't do it fast enough. And you need fuel to power this through the transition. But so that's the. That's the state of play. China is like the only one saying they're going to help. We'll see what they actually end up doing.

[Griffin Davis]

I read that the Mexican navy sent two boats with some supplies. I'm not sure if there was any oil.

[Ryan Grim]

Lentils, beans, like. Right. Not oil.

[Emily Jashinsky]

They don't want to be. Yeah, I mean, this is Mexico, Ryan. Correct me if I'm wrong, Mexico is the largest supplier. It is fuel to Cuba. And so that's a really, really significant consequence of the American empire, honestly.

[Ryan Grim]

Yep, yep.

[Griffin Davis]

All right, Ryan, who do we got coming up next?

[Ryan Grim]

Well, I got Anita Alam, candidate for house in North Carolina, running against Valerie Fushi. Is she here?

[Griffin Davis]

I shall be here in just a moment. We'll just wait for her at this point.

[Emily Jashinsky]

And Ryan, maybe you can while we wait. Tee it up. I know we talked about this at the beginning of the episode, but give us some of the backstory in case people are just tuning in for this part about why we're talking to Nita today.

[Ryan Grim]

Yeah, so Nita Lams is from Durham County. She was a Durham county commissioner. The way she got into politics, though, that some of her friends were the victims of very high profile hate crimes in Durham county. And that inspired her to say, I'm good. I want to get into public office. And she Became this Durham County Commissioner and then in 2022 ran for Congress, was very popular locally and was expected to win that race. Instead, AIPAC came in with, through their super PAC, spending more than $2 million to try to tear her down and lift up a rival candidate, Valerie Fushi. Fushi ended up winning by something like 4,000 votes and so has been a member of Congress now for a couple terms. Fushi though, so this is 2022, you know, so it's January of 2023 is when Fushi is sworn in. The combination of anger from her constituents at having gotten in on the back of all this AIPAC money combined with what Israel did after October 7, 2023 led her to be a little bit more, a little bit critical of Israel and probably more critical. And she also took like an APAC funded trip, met Netanyahu, like the whole, did the whole thing. So she was probably more critical of Israel than anybody else elected with at least $2 million of AIPAC money. So it's not as if she was out there joining the squad or joining others in like denouncing in a, in a really, you know, confident way what Israel was doing, but raising real questions about what they were up to. And then in 2025 spring, she said at a town hall, she's like, I'm not taking APAC money and, and that, and implied that she had like, she was asked if she had regrets about it. She said, yes, I took APAC money at the time, but I'm not going to take it again. You know, so I want you to trust me when it on, on that score. And so now Alam is running against her again and so it looks like she's not going to have the APAC support and may end up losing her seat, which, you know, it, we, it creates, you know, complicated politics around it because you, you do want people, right, when they get in office to break with AIPAC so that they, so that they can, you know, present their, their own vision. Like what, whatever they think that you should do and whatever their voters want them to do, like that's what they should be doing, not like what a special interest is telling them to do. You do that's, that's better for democracy than doing what a super PAC tells you to do. And we've got it right here.

[Griffin Davis]

Ryan, by the way.

[Ryan Grim]

Yeah, on, on the other hand, she came in with two plus billion dollars of APAC money and Nidda Lam is, you know, much more progressive candidate in the race, not just when it comes.

[Griffin Davis]

To Israel, Palestine and She's about to get on stage in just a few minutes to a rally with Bernie Sanders. And she so graciously offered to join right before that rally. Let's welcome her to the show.

[Ryan Grim]

Hi, how are you? Welcome to Breaking Points.

[Nita Alam]

Yes, yes, I'm good. Thanks so much for having me.

[Ryan Grim]

So where's the, where's the Bernie rally? Is it going to be live streamed? Can people watch it?

[Nita Alam]

Yes. So it's going to be on the Bernie's live stream. I think we're also going to be cross posting it, but we're having it at the convention center in downtown Durham.

[Ryan Grim]

Yeah. So I don't know if you were able to hear the intro as you're, as you're waiting, but it looks like Valerie Fousci is probably not going to get at least AIPAC outside support. We don't know. We'll see. When does voting start and when is the election?

[Nita Alam]

Early voting started yesterday actually, and it's running through the 28th and then election day is March 3rd. So we are in the thick of it right now.

[Ryan Grim]

Right. Did she get crypto money in 2022? Was it. Because there was a lot of this APAC crypto overlap. Do you remember? Was, was she one of those.

[Nita Alam]

She had Sam Bankman fried. She was one of the Protect Our Future Sam Bankman Fried got like, oh.

[Ryan Grim]

Man, nothing's going right, Congresswoman. So he's not coming to the rescue. What, what are you, what are you seeing, what are you seeing as the contest plays out? Because you're, like you said, we're just weeks away from the election at this point.

[Nita Alam]

Yeah. I mean, we've been the only campaign that's been out knocking on doors, talking to voters, where they're at, and also doing relational community organizing. Because what we're seeing right now is that people across this country, they're feeling let down by our political systems. They're feeling like there's no reason for them to vote. What's the purpose? The systems have just failed them in so many ways. So the way that we're doing things differently this race is we're obviously doing the traditional like radio, mail, TV program, but also we have our aunties and uncles in their WhatsApp chat talking to each other, reminding each other to vote. Because Ramadan is going to overlap with the election, we're organizing the mosques to have iftars to the polls. Holi is right after election day, but we're celebrating a little early and gonna do like a dole to the polls, have some music and Henna and like bringing our community together into this like way that it shows that we're all accepted and we're all fighting for the same like equality and dignity for everyone.

[Ryan Grim]

And last one for me before. And then Emily Griff might have a question. So last night it was reported that there's a super PAC getting in to support you with almost a $500,000 ad buy. It's one of these pop up super PACs where it won't have to disclose kind of who's funding it until, until after the election. I think you've been backed by Justice Democrats, is that right?

[Nita Alam]

Yes.

[Ryan Grim]

You have, you have their endorsements? My first guess, I was like maybe Justice Democrats to organize this. Have you heard any rumors about who? Because you're not supposed to coordinate. You're not allowed to coordinate, I should say. Yeah, with super PACs. Have you heard any rumors about where this money is coming from and were you surprised by it or had you heard, oh, there might be this cavalry coming in?

[Nita Alam]

No, I mean I proud to have the endorsements of so many national progressive organizations and we're actually the first campaign of this cycle to have this coalition of progressive groups all endorse one race of Sunrise Working Families Party, Justice Democrats, so many more. And then also Senator Bernie Sanders himself. And I mean for me I'm looking at it, I'm like, I highly, highly doubt there's any sort of right wing billionaire or corporation behind this because I'm not going to be any benefit to them.

[Ryan Grim]

Yeah, yeah. I wonder. I'll see if I can do some digging and, and figure it out. I would suspect that it is the coalition of. Because that, that coalition, Justice Democrats, Working Families Party. It's like they've done independent expenditures in the past. Usually they put their name on it because they're not embarrassed. Like it's not, it's not kind of harmful to be supported by them. So I don't, so I don't know. There's also this kind of pro Palestine super PAC that launched. Maybe they're trying to copy aipac. I don't know.

[Nita Alam]

Yeah, I think there's, we're seeing a lot of progressive energy and excitement especially like post Sauron's victory. Folks have felt like we were able to overcome 10 million over, yeah, over $10 million of corporate spending in that race and then now even more excited from Analilia Mejia's election. And I'm proud that with our campaign we've been running a grassroots race or our average contribution is $50 or something and it's coming from working class folks in this district and across this country who understand that I'm running for the 4th congressional district. But I'm going to be a champion for everyone across this country who wants to be live with dignity, which is everyone.

[Emily Jashinsky]

You know, that's interesting because one of the things that divides the populace left and right, when there's a lot of overlap, because I remember when we were talking to Zoran when he was really early, like, right, this was before the election had really taken off. He had just been out talking to Trump voters, and one of the things they were agreeing on was sort of obvious, like, paying your bills, health care costs, all of that. But one of the things that does divide populists left and right is immigration. And, and I'm curious because to me, it feels like what Obamacare did for the Tea Party movement, those of us on the right, ice, is doing to the progressive movement right now, that it's become this real, like the fuel that is just driving people to organize and get active. So I'm curious how you're thinking about all of that right now.

[Nita Alam]

Yeah, And I think, I mean, even in North Carolina, we are seeing, like, obviously there's going to be folks who are just deeply xenophobic, who don't want immigrants and don't want people who look like me to be in this country. But if you look at, there's a lot of people also in this, this district, this state, this country that consider themselves Republicans, but are also deeply disturbed by the actions of ICE and cbp because they're not just just going out and actually enforcing immigration of what their agency's title is. They're going out and terrorizing our neighbors and they're targeting everyone. The folks that they've been killing in January have been U.S. citizens. They've been innocent civilians who are protesting or documenting and have been murdered. And that's using our taxpayer dollars. And I think folks across party lines should be and are enraged by that.

[Ryan Grim]

What is the issue that you're finding resonate the most? What are you leaning into?

[Nita Alam]

I mean, I think one of the overarching issues that we're seeing in this district and across the country is the issue of affordability. And immigration is really deep and top of mind for everyone also right now in this moment. And it's personal to me as a naturalized citizen myself, the daughter of immigrants from India, Pakistan. And when it comes down to the affordability issue, though, that's something to Emily, what you were saying, like being able to talk to Republican Voters, unaffiliated Democratic voters. Like, I'm a county commissioner in the Blues District, Blues county in North Carolina. But I've built relationships with Republican county commissioners across our state because when we talk about building our budgets at the county level and the challenges we face of the state not doing their jobs to fund public education and how that creates a greater load on our counties and how we have to balance picking up that load, but also taking care of our residents and making sure that they're able to have their SNAP benefits, their social welfare programs, all of those things actually reaching them. And so I've built relationships with Republicans by taking away the labels. Because so much of the policy that what I'm supporting and folks across this country, working class folks, want, is common sense that I'll sit with a Republican commissioner. I was actually appointed to the North Carolina association of County Commissioners, which is our board of all 100 counties across the state. I was appointed by a Republican commissioner to the board of directors because I talked to him about. He's in the western North Carolina. And we found common ground that I want my residents to be able to put food on the table. You want your residents to be able to put food on their tables. You want your residents to keep a roof over their heads. I want that for my residents. And if we talk about these issues at that human level of taking care of one another, the national noise that we hear, it's clouding those conversations, and that's what's hurting our families. And we're able to build relationships and actually lobby for change at the state level together, at the federal level, when we're advocating for the dignity of working class folks.

[Griffin Davis]

So how's the go for.

[Ryan Grim]

Yeah, real quick, how's the AI, the advent of AI impacting politics in. In North Carolina? Because you've got the research triangle. So I imagine it's like, you know, really shaking things up on that front. But what. And what about the kind of production of the, you know, the power behind it? Like, are. Are the data centers becoming a political issue?

[Nita Alam]

Yeah, they absolutely are. They. We actually have an AI data center that's being considered at the local level in Apex, which is in this district. And residents have been coming out strongly against it because it's going to be built basically, like right outside their neighborhoods. And Duke Energy, which essentially has a monopoly on our electricity grid here in North Carolina, they are already negotiating renegotiating their energy rates with the town of Apex and basically increasing the rates for residents to take account for the fact that they're going to need an increased load for these AI data centers and infrastructure needs. And so we're already seeing the bill being passed on to our families and neighbors. And that's why I'm actually the only candidate. And this came up in a town hall meeting and I'm the only candidate that's called to support Senator Sanders national moratorium on AI data centers. And it's not about hindering AI. AI is going to exist in our world. It's not going to go away. But how do we make sure there are proper regulations in place that things like what we're seeing right now with the energy, electricity costs being passed on down to the residents, millions of gallons of water being consumed and folks across the country just to run a data center for one day. And folks across the country are starting to see their taps run dry. And we can't have that happen in our district because again, who is going to pay for those infrastructure costs? Where are we going to get alternate resources of water? The town of Apex gets their water from Jordan Lake, which is that in indefinite bottomless lake of water called.

[Ryan Grim]

It's a lake. Yeah.

[Emily Jashinsky]

Yeah.

[Ryan Grim]

It's got to be nerve wracking. Go ahead, Griffin.

[Griffin Davis]

Sorry, I had one more, one more ICE related question for you. Now I did some research on some of your haters online that are calling you the Zoran Mamdani of North Carolina, which I don't know if that's a great attack, seems like people like that guy, but they were simply saying because you have helped citizens in North Carolina with ICE Watch, alerting people to ICE presence and things like that. And there's currently this funding battle in Congress over the DHS over how they're going to fund it. If you were in Congress, what are like the clear demands that you would make to say we're not funding DHS until these things happen?

[Nita Alam]

Well, look, ICE as an agency was created in the Bush era in 2003 in a post 911 world to target my community, the Muslim community. It was an agency that was created to dehumanize us, to target us, to surveil us. And now we're seeing it pushed to another level of extreme under Trump's administration to murder innocent civilians in broad daylight. And I'm seeing even in our incumbent in this seat is saying that she's calling for reform of ICE as an agency, that body cameras and unasking them will somehow keep them in check. They're already being live streamed murdering innocent people in broad daylight. A body camera is not going to Save our neighbors. And so I am clear in my stance that ICE needs to be abolished. It's not an agency that's actually making our community safer. That the way that we tackle and address the issue of immigration is through investment in safe and clear legal passageways for immigration, opening up our visa programs and green cards. I'm a naturalized citizen myself. Most people who come to this country are either refugees who are seeking refuge from, honestly, most of the times, disasters that, that we, the United States government, has funded and created, or they're coming here like my parents did, to achieve the American dream, to raise me and my sisters to be able to seek opportunity and to have to dream big.

[Ryan Grim]

Last. Last one for me. I've started to see a lot of Democrats when it comes to the question of immigration say, you know what, we actually, we made a mistake by letting ourselves be labeled as open border Democrat, Democrats, that we, that we don't care. I mean, come. Everybody can come in. It led to Trump getting elected and it led to then this draconian kind of reaction to it. We need to focus on beating back ICE, abolishing ICE, rolling, rolling back, you know, CBP's abuses and focusing on the way that immigration enforcement is done internally. But we have to kind of concede some ground on the, on the border. Are you seeing that? And where do you fall down on that compromise, I guess you would call it, that Democrats seem to be making. Or is it like, no, no, actually Biden's border policy is something that should be supported.

[Nita Alam]

I honestly don't think that immigration has been the issue that has cost us elections. I do sincerely believe that it is issues around affordability. And it's not just the issue of affordability in this district, it's across the country, is that working class folks want to hear what their elected officials are going to do for them. Most people in this country are unaffiliated voters. And so they just want to see how are you going to fight for them, how are you going to lower their cost of living? And I think that as Democrats, we haven't done a good job of talking to every demographic and talking to every voter, because even in states like North Carolina, where we're labeled red, but we're truly purple, we're a pretty 50, 50 state. Trump may have won the presidential here, but we've elected a Democratic governor in the past three elections. And so what we need to be doing is going into these areas and these congressional districts that we take for granted and say that they're red and talking to the everyday folks and having conversations with them at that human level of like, we know that you're struggling to make ends meet, that your wages have stayed stagnant. North Carolina's minimum wage has not changed in over 20 years. It's been stuck at $7.25. The cost of living here is $24 an hour. And this is how we, as Democrats, or just we as your elected leaders, are going to fight for you to raise the minimum wage so that you can, that you'll only have to work one job to take care of your family. This is how passing Medicare for all is going to guarantee healthcare for you so that you don't have to worry about going to the doctor or paying your rent. And having those conversations with folks face to face through community town halls, through relational organizing. That's what we've struggled and failed with, I believe, as a Democratic Party, is that we've taken these votes for granted, that they're red, they're gonna vote red. There's no point in us reaching out. But these aren't. We can't label our counties and our districts as red or blue when it's all working class folks.

[Griffin Davis]

Awesome. Well, we got anything else before we let her go on to her very busy day with that rally?

[Emily Jashinsky]

Big day.

[Griffin Davis]

Big day.

[Ryan Grim]

We'll be watching.

[Griffin Davis]

Yeah, we'll be watching. We'll be tuning in. We'll include a link to your website in the description. Any final words before we send you off?

[Nita Alam]

No, just thank you, Ryan, Griffin, Emily, so much for this opportunity. I think this election, you know, it's the first primary alongside Texas, and we have the opportunity to show that not only can progressives win, they can win in the South. And we're going to be able to prove that come March 3rd.

[Ryan Grim]

Yeah.

[Griffin Davis]

All right, thanks so much for. Yeah, thank you so much.

[Nita Alam]

Thanks.

[Griffin Davis]

Talk to you soon. All right, that'll do it for the first half of the show. And we'll see you back here in just a moment. All right, we are back in the second half of the show here. We're going to release the full show all together publicly for everyone today. And, you know, we just talked about.

[Emily Jashinsky]

It'S a little tease to see what you get with the premium subscription. Sometimes we act as, as business people and we have business strategies.

[Griffin Davis]

Oh, that's so adorable. Wow. So we were looking at a certain race in the south of North Carolina, but I had to turn our attention momentarily to another race in the South. I'm talking, of course, about the Florida governor race with one James Fishback. Have y' all been keeping track of the Fishback news?

[Ryan Grim]

The guy got suspended from Twitter. Is that what happened?

[Griffin Davis]

He got suspended from Twitter. He got suspended from Twitter.

[Ryan Grim]

What do you have to do to get suspended from Twitter? My God.

[Griffin Davis]

Well, even worse, he got suspended. Suspended from Tinder, which is even more challenging. That's far, far more challenging. Let me. Let me tell you.

[Ryan Grim]

Didn't he say he was harvesting votes on Tinder? I guess that could be a term service violation, right?

[Griffin Davis]

He was reaching out to women. Yeah, he was reaching out to female voters on Tinder, is what he said.

[Emily Jashinsky]

Doesn't he have a girlfriend that he brings around with him?

[Ryan Grim]

Well, he. Well, he wasn't trying to, you know, he was just trying to get their votes, that's all.

[Griffin Davis]

I have seen people on dating apps, like, now post that. They're like plumbers and stuff. Like, people are just posting jobs, like, on them now being like, hey, I fix your. I can fix your sink or whatever. Literally.

[Emily Jashinsky]

Oh, they're doing. They're combining like TaskRabbit with Tinder.

[Griffin Davis]

Yeah, it's. It's so. Yeah. So look, if you're looking for love, well, maybe. Well, you have a plumber.

[Nita Alam]

So.

[Griffin Davis]

In Florida, and I did want to offer a mea culpa because a few episodes ago, I said that James Fishback had no motion, and I was wrong. And I'm here admitting it here on the show, there is some type of motion happening. And now I'm not sure if this adds up to a successful political campaign, but I did want to play a few clips here where James Fishback seems to be generating some level of an organic movement of young men down in Florida. And I specifically wanted to highlight this clip where he referred to cafeteria food as goy slop. So let's. Let's. Let's take a. Let's take a listen to that.

[Ryan Grim]

My view is our high school cafeterias should be run by grade. Great. Local businesses, small business restaurants that have local labor, that use Florida cattle, Florida produce, Florida fruit, and, yes, Florida orange juice. They should take over our cafeterias. What's with the Pop Tarts in the Broward County Public Schools in the cafeterias? I'm not saying that the test scores are result of the Pop Tarts, but if you wanted kids to fail, if you wanted to set up our kids for failure, you would feed them the absolute goy slop in our cafeteria.

[Griffin Davis]

And for those just listening, he put his hand over his heart at the end of that there. Emotional.

[Ryan Grim]

All right, as an old person like what, what on earth does he mean by goy slop?

[Griffin Davis]

It also implies the existence of Michelin Stargoy like a high class goy food as well you know, it me.

[Ryan Grim]

It.

[Griffin Davis]

Well it means, it's like, I mean is, isn't, isn't. You never heard. This is not part of your vernacular, Ryan.

[Ryan Grim]

I'm not, I need, I need a little bit of education on this. Okay, Reddit confused about goy slop. I'm read a thread while you guys discuss.

[Griffin Davis]

No, no, no, please, please elucidate the entire audience. I want the, I want the Webster definition.

[Ryan Grim]

Let's see for. Well it's like dog food. The food made for a dog. Goy slop. Slop for a goy.

[Griffin Davis]

For the Goya us.

[Ryan Grim]

And okay, so this it. I see. So it's, it's, it's like playing into anti Semitic tropes that like they're saying that the Jewish people only feed non Jewish people dog food. Is that, is that what the.

[Griffin Davis]

Essentially, yes, essentially. And that's what got the pop from these young Republican kids here. Now listen, I mean outside of the, the vernacular usage, it is hard to debate the fact that we do feed absolute dog food garbage to our children and we do not invest in.

[Ryan Grim]

We do. And when, when Michelle Obama tried to change that, she was like presented as like this was like ma Dung coming back from the grave. Right. So forgive me if like I, I don't have the most amount of patience for this argument coming from, from the right. Like, like why. What was wrong with Michelle saying it? Except did Michelle needed more anti Semitism in, in her presentation in order for it to be acceptable to universalist and non bigoted potential. Okay. So we can get good food for the kids, but only if we like lace it with bigotry.

[Griffin Davis]

Yes. Right now it's laced with preservatives and.

[Ryan Grim]

Right.

[Griffin Davis]

And additives. But it could use a little bit more of the anti Semitism and you.

[Ryan Grim]

Know, I mean you gotta raise taxes like property taxes.

[Griffin Davis]

You have to have income tax in Florida. And I don't think he's suggested that.

[Ryan Grim]

Right. It's more expensive to have a local business make the food with than it is to have Cisco come in and feed them slop. Like that's, that's just a fact. I think that that'd be a good thing. I'm for it, but I'd like to hear how Fishback is going to pay for that. I guess he'd say he's going to use the Israeli bonds.

[Griffin Davis]

Yeah, potentially. And you know it seems illiterate, but whatever the. Outside of the specifics of the cafeteria food, which, you know, Ryan, I know you have kids. I'm not sure what the food's like at their schools, but just pizza day. Pizza day, sure. Chocolate milk day. But the chili is good, they said.

[Ryan Grim]

Which is kind of disturbing.

[Griffin Davis]

Like, okay, all right, so the chili's not goy slop, but everything else is. But, you know, outside of the specific vernacular, it. The larger picture here seems to be that James Fishback is a new type of young Republican that is activating young Republican voters by becoming the far right meme come to life. I've got more footage here of just.

[Ryan Grim]

Being straight up anti Semitic.

[Griffin Davis]

Yes. And. But, but, but he's memeing in all sorts of ways. You know, it's not just the anti Semitism stuff. He claimed that someone tried to burn down his home, so he came out with an AR15 gun.

[Ryan Grim]

If you threaten our campaign, if you lay hands on a single one of our volunteers, if you come back to this home and our staff, our volunteers are working hard. We're not waiting for the police. We're gonna shoot you with an AR15 sight on scene 556. Yeah, that's what we're.

[Griffin Davis]

So he does that. And he also got into a very heated debate over Don Lemon recently with Tara Palmeri that I just wanted to share a quick moment of as well, to give you a full flavor of this guy.

[Emily Jashinsky]

If I had to go into a cave to interview the Taliban, am I co conspirator to interview them? If there's a fire inside of a church and I'm in there covering it, am I a co conspirator? Am I the arsonist? Because I'm in there.

[Nita Alam]

There.

[Griffin Davis]

Tara, if the 911 hijackers gave you.

[Ryan Grim]

A heads up and you boarded the plane to cover the 911 hijacking. Yes. You and anyone else involved should be publicly executed.

[Emily Jashinsky]

Oh, my gosh. Why would I get into a plane that's about to.

[Griffin Davis]

So listen, it's not just anti Semitism. It's a little bit of everything. Ryan.

[Ryan Grim]

Her point is a fair one, that she's got bigger problems if she gets onto the.

[Griffin Davis]

The, onto the 911 plan.

[Ryan Grim]

Yeah, yeah, I think sort those charges out later. You know, he's. He's polling in the double digits now. He was at like 2%. Yeah.

[Griffin Davis]

And he's. I saw a poll that's had him at like 20% with his opponent Byron at like 35 or what have you.

[Ryan Grim]

So the latest Latest poll is Donald's up 15. I don't think it's a very reputable poll. But previous polls, the Mason, there's a Mason Dixon poll, which is more credible. That has Donald's at 37 and fish back at 3. And that's a January poll. So I like that's much more credible than this Patriot polling that people are, people are circulating. It's like a.

[Griffin Davis]

And Ryan. I've also heard rumors and I haven't been able to confirm this yet, but there are rumors that he's not even eligible to run in Florida because he has not lived in a Florida residence for seven years. There are apparently allegedly some records that show that he had a D.C. based home up to 2025, which wouldn't even make him eligible technically.

[Ryan Grim]

But I'm looking at these other. These are Byron Donald's internal polls, but still that like they have them, you know, 40, Donald's 47, fishback five.

[Griffin Davis]

I think ultimately what I am seeing from this Fishback thing, whether this is a real race or not, is is I guess the question, the larger question for me is is this a lens into the future of activating young Republican voters to pull the memes?

[Ryan Grim]

No. It's interesting.

[Griffin Davis]

In real life. Yeah.

[Ryan Grim]

So far it's not translating on the ground into votes.

[Griffin Davis]

But it is translated into these viral videos.

[Ryan Grim]

These, these crowd clips disconnect there. Yeah. Which I think Republicans should pay close attention to. Like this isn't doing it for you unless you're just trying to grow an audience on the Internet, which a lot of people are. But if you're trying to win elections, win over the, the electorate, it's not happening.

[Griffin Davis]

Yeah. Well, that was my James Fishback update. Just wanted to keep everyone ahead of what's going on over there. There is another race that we've been looking at for a little bit. Mr. James Talarico versus Jasmine Crockett. Ryan, what is going on with this Tallerico Crockett race? We've talked a little bit behind the scenes about it, but. But what do you make of. And who would you say has the better chance here between the two if you were voting in Texas?

[Ryan Grim]

You want to pull some polling up? Let's see what we got in the polling.

[Griffin Davis]

I'll play this video while we look for some polling here because Talarico does seem to be imbibing some of the new Democratic energy around the oligarchy. He's been talking a lot about class warfare and the such. Let's take a listen.

[Ryan Grim]

And how is that not just like pushing for class warfare. We already have class warfare in this country. It's the billionaires waging war against the rest of us. And right now, the billionaires are winning. They've been winning for 50 years. Trickle down economic is not a theory. It is theft. For 50 years. For 50 years, the billionaires have been stealing from the American people, stealing the wealth that we created. It's why everyone is so angry right now. It's why no matter how hard you work, you can't seem to get ahead. The American people are not asking for a lot. A job we don't hate. A house big enough to raise a family in, and a little leftover so we can go on vacation every once in a while. That is a lot harder than it should be, harder than it should be in America. So I'm not fighting for class warfare. I'm fighting for the American dream.

[Griffin Davis]

So that is Talarico fighting for the American dream. And that does seem to be like what he has been kind of pushing over and over again. Whereas the Jasmine Crockett side seems to be. Be solely around. I'm gonna fight Donald Trump. I pissed. I triggered Donald Trump. And I am. I'm the one that triggers Donald Trump the most.

[Ryan Grim]

Yeah, that was the first clip of his I saw circulating where I'm like, okay. This guy's like, all right, I'm listening now. Okay, let's. Let's hear what else you got. I still think he's got the problem that he kind of looks like he's 17. Not to be shallow, but like, you know, vote. That matters to voters. So I'm looking here at the. The time summary. There's been three polls that are not internal polls in January. Two of them have Crockett up. University of Houston, the School of Public Policy there has Crockett up 8. Slingshot Strategies Poll, Texas Public Opinion Research. That's Crockettup1. And then Emerson College is a good pollster. Sponsored by nexar, which is the news nation and local news. You know, Conglomerate has Talarico up nine over Crockett. So it's. It feels like the polling is basically tilting Crockett's way a little bit, but not in a way that you would say that this race is any. Anywhere near over.

[Griffin Davis]

And this is after there was, you know, two weeks ago, and we cover on the show here, what was supposed to be sort of like an identity politics kill shot on Talarico, where they said, oh, he called, called Colin Allred a mediocre black man or whatever, you know, which potentially, Maybe back in 2018, that might have been it, but it doesn't really seem to have fully put the, you know, the holes in his tires.

[Ryan Grim]

I think he also denied it. You know, he denied it and then Allred and Crockett, you know, came in for some significant criticism from national Democrats for kind of. Of going in on it. So, yeah, that, that, that is a different state of affairs than would have existed a couple years ago.

[Griffin Davis]

And, you know, Talarico seems to be, you know, he's catching the wave of the anti oligarchy. People are mad at the billionaires or what have you. And. And he says the billionaires are. Are what's wrong. But I just had. Did a little bit of research and I had to flag this political article. Dem darling Talarico showered with Miriam Adelson linked money, A group funded by Adelson was the biggest donor to James Talarico's campaign last year.

[Ryan Grim]

His. His, like, state legislative campaign. His. And so his defense of this has been. It's kind of a funny defense. It's like, this was not about Israel. This was about gambling.

[Emily Jashinsky]

Perfect.

[Ryan Grim]

He was for this casino that the Adelson empire wanted to build in Texas. So it's like, okay, all right, well, it's the best we can do, I guess.

[Griffin Davis]

One's got to go. Israel or gambling, it's your pick, Ryan. You can't have both.

[Ryan Grim]

Well, I mean, one of them is committing a genocide. The other is, you know, utterly cutting, like, entire, like, finances of country. I. I would get rid of the one doing the genocide. Well, not get rid of, but, like, have them end their genocide.

[Griffin Davis]

Okay, so that's us. We're pro gambling now. As long as we can end the genocide. I feel really good about that.

[Ryan Grim]

He could also just say, I'm not taking any super PAC money or any Adelson money, no matter what the cause is.

[Griffin Davis]

I do think it's a sign that they're. They're obviously.

[Ryan Grim]

She's not giving him money for a Senate campaign either.

[Griffin Davis]

Right. But this is kind of a sign that there's going to be a lot more centrist Dems that are like, I get it, yo, like, whatever Bernie's saying. Anti oligarchy. Sure, whatever. Just don't look into, like, any of my past and, like, we're good. So we'll see how that strategy works. And if the Dem base is. Is cognizant enough or shrewd enough to pick apart the, I don't know, the conflict or the hypocrisies laden within Some of these candidates. I think that leads us nicely to the end where we'll answer just a few of your AMA questions from the audience. And Emily did not. I just want to tell. Emily left. She didn't leave because she was. Yeah, but she didn't leave because she was scared of the fishback conversation. She tells me. She says her power went out. Coincidence, huh? I was hoping for a. A ver. Virulent defense of fishback from Emily. I guess we'll never know.

[Ryan Grim]

Don't think we're gonna get that.

[Griffin Davis]

Yeah, I guess we'll never know what she would have said there. But let's get to some of these AMA questions. First off, someone asked, what was your experience on the Piers Morgan show yesterday, Ryan? Uh, how did that go?

[Ryan Grim]

Well, it was usually when Piers Morgan's reaching out, you're like, oh, God. Like, so, like, it's going to be some, you know, shout fest. Whoever can shout earliest and loudest. But they were like, no, no. Like, we just want you to come on and, like, talk about your reporting. When it comes to Epstein and also Netanyahu's visit to D.C. we didn't end up having time for the Netanyahu visit to D.C. and then I left. I did my. Did my piece, and then Dershowitz and Basma Yousef just kind of go at each other for half, however long they went at each other. So that's actually kind of a nice, ideal situation to be in. I like sharing the reporting and then the other folks can hash it out. I was in the trailer listening to Dershowitz. As I'm leaving, I'm like, oh, I kind of wish I was on for some of these. Some of this nonsense, but I also don't want to be there for that either. Like, it's. I'm. I'm very much torn in both directions.

[Griffin Davis]

Yeah, they gotta institute some sort of mute button or something, but they like the crosstalk, so I'm not sure. Listen, I'm. I'm not gonna tell the. I'm not gonna tell the professionals what to do over there. They seem to have a good thing going. This next one is from Jack V. Becky. He says, would you guys bring on Michael Tracy to debate Epstein stuff. I always liked him and thought he was a good faith actor, even when I disagree with him. But his takes on Epstein have been absolutely batshit. And I would like to, before Ryan responds, say, we did do this already about four months ago, before this new tranche of emails came out between Sager and Tracy. So we've Already had one struggle session over this. But is it time for a Michael Tracy return?

[Ryan Grim]

Definitely not. We also had him on what didn't we have him on a Friday show? Probably he was arguing with.

[Griffin Davis]

No, maybe it was a counterpoints, like debate show back in the day.

[Ryan Grim]

Yeah, counterpoints. Friday we had him on arguing something now. Yeah, did last night. He was also defending Jean Luc Brunel, like a notorious sex trafficker who was getting accused of rap going all the way back to 1980s. Like a documentary about it, 1988. And then he continued abusing women for decades. And. And like now you're also defending him. This is associate of Epstein's, like. No.

[Griffin Davis]

So, yeah, I. I don't know. It's. It's. It's a lot to. A lot to unpack with that gentleman. I'll. I'll say that as well. Someone here asks SWZ says, can we get a good news by Griffin weekly roundup? I think it'd be a great addition to the Friday show. And he's the one silly enough to deliver the endorphin boost amidst his bleak weekly gestures at everything. It is kind of tough. Like there was that show that John Krasinski did during COVID that was like some good news. And I don't it. Those always came off as like a little. A little, I don't know, unnecessary. I'm not sure, like, should we fit in a nugget of optimism? I mean, we try to. I mean, sometimes it's candidates that come on here, they give a little bit of optimism. Like we had one on today. I mean, but I mean, what do you, what do you make, Ryan? Should we be doing more good news on the show?

[Ryan Grim]

If you want to do it, you go for it. I think we're covering the news. If it's good, we'll cover it. Unfortunately, there isn't much of it.

[Griffin Davis]

Ryan, what do you make of the El Paso shooting? There's multiple people asking here about that, the El Paso air shutdown. And what is now the official story, that CBP has laser beams and shot down a birthday balloon alone.

[Ryan Grim]

I know Sagar is pretty suspicious of that and his UFO radar is going off. The idea that you DHS would be given a laser gun and immediately deploy it in a deeply irresponsible way. It sounds something I find very credible. And maybe they're like exploiting CBP and DHS's like, low brand among the public that like the whole public right now is like, oh, these idiots were acting recklessly. Yeah, that, that tracks. So maybe Maybe we're like the victims of a, of a psyop because they know that we have the lowest possible opinion of, of the goons at CBP and ice. So we'll believe anything.

[Griffin Davis]

Oh, nice. I like that theory. Kind of like, oh, blame it all on them.

[Ryan Grim]

But I also just totally believe it. Yeah.

[Griffin Davis]

Yeah. And it is, I mean, I believe it too, that, that there was a misuse of a weapon by CBP is the daily story. But I think what is scarier about that to me is guys that could not get a job being the mall security cop have laser beams.

[Ryan Grim]

Yeah, that's not ideal.

[Griffin Davis]

Not, not, not ideal at all.

[Ryan Grim]

Powerful. Like, powerful enough to, to panic the FAA into shutting down the airspace for 10 freaking days.

[Griffin Davis]

Yeah, and, and honestly I, I like, I was talking to Crystal about this. Like the people that from the ffa, they probably just had to scramble like, what the hell is going on over here? And, and okay, screw it. We're shutting down the airspace for 10 days. So I, I, I, I believe they were the adults in the room on this one actually. But yeah, so look forward to more laser related incidents in the future, I guess, with these laser beams now. Do you, What's a laser beam weapon? Is this like, do you, have you, have you ever heard of this before?

[Ryan Grim]

Yeah, they exist.

[Griffin Davis]

Yeah, it's just like Star wars. Or is this something a little bit more.

[Ryan Grim]

Yeah. Cool. You can, you can find, you can find demonstration videos of them like on YouTube or something from different companies that trying to sell them.

[Griffin Davis]

So I can get a laser gun as a system.

[Ryan Grim]

I think you would need a serious license.

[Griffin Davis]

A license for that?

[Ryan Grim]

Yeah. Israel is talking about, you know, moving to these laser defenses because the, the current like missile defense system costs them, you know, or sorry, costs us, you know, billions. And so every time they get into a conflict with Iran, they have to spend billions launching these missiles to, to knock down the Iranian missiles. And so they're trying to develop and claim that they have made serious strides in developing a laser system that costs very little for each, each shot.

[Griffin Davis]

Incredible, incredible things happening over there. All right, well, I now, now I want to shoot it later. If the CBP guys are getting to do it, I want to do it. Our final question is from Le mvp. They ask breaking points. Kyle Kalinsky is the Dark Woke Commander. Hassan Piker, the Ayatollah of Woke. What are the titles of Crystal Ball and Ryan Grimm in the Reawokening.

[Ryan Grim]

Still? I'm still asleep. Crystal's what, what kind of woke is she? Just, I don't know. Let's. I don't know. What do you think? Think?

[Griffin Davis]

Well, I think you're. I think you're Professor Woke, perhaps. Or and for her, I mean, something, maybe Queen Chancellor. We have to come up with it. I've had it. Ladies are obviously their own chairwoman. Dark Woke as well. So, yeah, I mean, people really liked when Kyle went on the Piers Morgan show and was very rude to one Daily Wire correspondent. And people seem to get a lot out of that.

[Ryan Grim]

And sunglasses on. Right.

[Griffin Davis]

He did have sunglasses on, which is more conservative coded, I think, using some of their visual language and aesthetic. Taking that back from them, which I like. But do you, do you think that Dark Woke is the future to be, to be rude and crude on the side of, on the side of woke? Is that an effective measure?

[Ryan Grim]

Maybe for a little while. I don't know. I think things are changing rapidly. Nothing is stable. So it does seem like Woke down might not work later.

[Griffin Davis]

I do already sense that in the entertainment industry and beyond, there are podcasters and others who are starting to put their fingers into the wind and feel things changing. So it seems like Woke was dead for about eight months and now we've got Piers Morgan debating Megyn Kelly about the bad bunny thing and Piers Morgan is taking the bad bunny side. So it does seem like they had a very, very quick run on the Woke is dead thing and Woke may be returning very soon. So is that some good news? I don't know. Previous questioner there's your good news. Woke returns.

[Ryan Grim]

There wasn't as much latent bigotry as the MAGA world that that wing of the mega world expected there would be because we have now, we now have permission to be bigoted. Everyone's going to be bigoted. And they look around like, oh, a lot of people are just not don't want to do that.

[Griffin Davis]

And I think that buying Elon, buying Twitter was actually a like a poison pill for the sort of reality distortion of the, of the cultural conservatism. Because conservatives went on to X now and they see, oh, everyone agrees with me. Everyone thinks it's hilarious when the DHS gov posts an ASMR of an immigrant in chains.

[Ryan Grim]

And that's something that everyone likes heard. Love it. So this is, this is really going to resonate with the public.

[Griffin Davis]

And they're at the top of the feed and they're getting tons of quote unquote engagement and views. So surely this must be the feeling of the nation. And so we're going to stack our White House communications with that energy. And most people have found that kind of revolting, including many of my young MAGA friends. You know, I've talked to many of my young MAGA friends that voted for Trump and they go, man, like, I didn't think I was voting for like, you know, ripping a mom out of her car. Like, I don't know what they thought they were voting for, but it wasn't that.

[Ryan Grim]

That. Right? Yeah, no, I think that's right. So that's something.

[Griffin Davis]

All right. And that's, hey, another good news story. We'll do them all in the ama. That's going to do it for us this week. Again, thank you so much everyone for supporting us@breaking points.com with a membership. Just to peek a little bit behind the curtains here, these have been some of the biggest weeks on the show with our very intensive breakdowns of Epstein news. And you'll see our clips are getting way bigger views than normal. But I'll also let you know there many of them are getting demonetized. So we are not able to survive off of doing the News off of YouTube ad revenue. The only way that we are able to get these stories out on drop site and for Ryan to come on here, for Sagar to come on here and have the time to break all of that down, that's because of our [e-mail] and the membership. And we really can't thank you enough. As we said earlier, if you were to just watch the mainstream media on these issues, you would be getting such a fractional surface view at what's going on here. And the reason that we can do more is because of you guys. So thank you so much. And if you can afford a membership, we've got monthly [e-mail] and on that note, that'll do it for us here Friday. We all hope you have a great weekend and we'll see you back in the studio on Monday day.

[Ryan Grim]

See ya.

[Nita Alam]

This is an iHeart podcast.

[Ryan Grim]

Guaranteed Human.