← Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar
Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar
2/19/25: Trump-Musk-Hannity Lovefest, Hamas Open To Stepping Down, Bannon Attacks Musk & MORE!
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- [00:01]
Krystal Ball
Creativity doesn't wait.
- [00:03]
Sagar Enjeti
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- [01:02]
Emily
Easy.
- [01:02]
Ryan Grim
They're from dsw. Because DSW has the exact right shoes for whatever you're into right now. You know, like the sneakers that make office hours feel like happy hour, the boots that turn grocery aisles into runways, and all the styles that show off the many sides of you, from daydreamer to multitasker and everything in between. Because you do it all in really great shoes. Find a shoe for every you every.
- [01:27]
Doha Mekki
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- [02:30]
Emily
Hey guys, ready or not, 2024 is.
- [02:33]
Krystal Ball
Here, and we here at Breaking Points are already thinking of ways we can.
- [02:37]
Emily
Up Our game for this critical election.
- [02:39]
Carl Daikeler
We rely on our premium subs to.
- [02:40]
Ryan Grim
Expand coverage, upgrade the studio, add staff.
- [02:43]
Carl Daikeler
Give you guys the best independent coverage that is possible. If you like what we're all about, it just means the absolute world to have your support.
- [02:50]
Krystal Ball
But enough with that.
- [02:51]
Carl Daikeler
Let's get to the show.
- [02:56]
Emily
Good morning and welcome to Counterpoints. Emily, I don't know if you caught the Bro show on Monday, but one of the segments was Woke or Based. We're gonna have the subject of that segment on the show today, Doha Mekki. Looking forward to that.
- [03:10]
Ryan Grim
This is a great new game show. I'm all for it. We should be pitching this to NBC.
- [03:14]
Emily
We really should. Yeah.
- [03:15]
Ryan Grim
Coming Thursday nights, the NBC Woke or Based, hosted by Ryan Grim and Sagar and Jetty. You'll never know who's woke and who's.
- [03:22]
Emily
Based until the end of the program.
- [03:23]
Ryan Grim
That's right. Well, huge news continues to come in. We're going to start with the very splashy, at least it was billed as being splashy, interview between Sean Hannity, Elon Musk and Donald Trump that happened in primetime last night. We're gonna go through what it all means, what they said. We have lots of good clips, Ryan. We're then pivoting to Israel.
- [03:44]
Emily
Yes. So the hostage exchange went off over the weekend despite the best efforts of Trump and Netanyahu to keep it from happening. And now they are talking about finishing phase one faster than they had before. We're gonna talk about, you know, what's next there. There were also an indictment of five Israeli soldiers for their role in raping a detainee. If you remember, there were those like infamous right to rape protests in Israel after the allegations were first made. So we'll talk about the indictment that was just handed down. We will not get a chance to talk about big news last night. But you guys just go read the story on this. Jair Bolsonaro, former president of Brazil, has been charged along with more than 30 of his alleged co conspirators in trying to do a coup in 2022 to stay in power. Some pretty incredible details coming out of there, including the alleged attempted assassination of a Supreme Court justice who, if I recall correctly, became a Supreme Court justice in a corrupt bargain with Bolsonaro to get him into the presidency in the first place. And an alleged attempted poisoning of Lula da Silva, the actual president. So they're like, so according to the allegations, Bolsonaro was aware of and approved of a plan to kill Lula and a Supreme Court justice in the process of retaining power. He failed to do so. He came at the king and missed. He's now polling even with Lula for the next round. And so we'll see. Did they take too long to do this? Do they really have the goods? I don't know.
- [05:22]
Ryan Grim
They're gonna send Cash Patel to Brazil. I'm calling it right now. Well, Patel actually will be up for basically they got to cloture yesterday, so he'll be up for a vote tomorrow on Thursday.
- [05:32]
Emily
And the labor friendly Republican.
- [05:35]
Ryan Grim
Yeah.
- [05:35]
Emily
Is up in a hearing today too.
- [05:37]
Ryan Grim
That's right. Laurie Chavez De Rimmer is sitting before the Senate Help Committee, so Labor Committee. And that'll be really, really interesting because she's sort of one source tell me recently, quote, she's a leftist in moderate's clothing, which is quite interesting because she's also somebody who could potentially pick up the votes of on the committee at least Bernie Sanders, of someone like Tammy Baldwin. But Doge is becoming kind of a cultural litmus test for Democrats. So we'll pay attention to that. But you'll see the hearing over the course of the day, that is for sure. My colleague James Billow from Unherd interviewed Steve Bannon and ended up on New York Times headlines was sort of everywhere yesterday. So James is going to be on the show to walk through his experience with Steve Bannon. Bannon told him that Elon Musk is a parasitic illegal immigrant. So I guess it makes sense that it ended up in headlines. But James is gonna join the show to walk through what that means and we are then going to dig into the wild Eric Adams saga.
- [06:40]
Emily
Not over yet.
- [06:41]
Ryan Grim
Not over yet. And I think maybe more interesting than some people are giving it credit for being. I mean, obviously the entire indictment is fascinating from top to bottom, has been since it dropped. But the question of how the Trump DOJ came to try it all back is pretty interesting as well. Then Lina Khan got a win from Donald Trump's FTC yesterday.
- [07:05]
Emily
That's right, yes. Yesterday the FTC announced that it would be adopting Lina Khan's framework for evaluating mergers going forward. Lina Khan has taken a much broader approach to antitrust, saying that the way that corporate power broadly is impacted, the way that workers are affected, the way the economy is affected, needs to be taken into account, not just the assertions of corporations about what the effect on prices and quote, unquote, consumer welfare would be. The Wall Street Journal has argued that Lina Khan's approach to this means basically the end of the free world as we know it. And here you have the Trump FTC chair coming in and ratifying it, saying they're going to use the exact same standard. It's the new bipartisan consensus. And so to talk about that, we're going to have Biden's former antitrust chair at the Department of Justice, Doha Meki. She was the deputy antitrust chair for most of Biden's term underneath Jonathan Cantor when he stepped down. Towards the end, she became acting chief for the last couple months of the Biden administration. She's a close ally of Lina Khan. So she'll be on the program to talk about how it is that MAGA and the left antitrust movement are now actually making serious progress in Washington.
- [08:21]
Ryan Grim
That's such a great guess. Let's get to the A block which was dominant Trump and Elon Musk's much hyped interview with Sean Hannity on primetime Fox News Tuesday evening. Now, there are a lot of good clips that we're gonna roll through, so bear with us. It was about an hour long. My top line takeaway from it was that Hannity didn't get much out of them, which we should start by saying is interesting given that some of Trump's most revelatory exchanges with the media have come in Hannity interviews.
- [08:51]
Emily
He's comfy. He just lets it, lets it go.
- [08:53]
Ryan Grim
And I'm curious what the audience thinks about this as we roll through the clips. My sense is that they are both a little bit more guarded in this interview. Hannity keeps trying to get Elon Musk to talk about his personal life and to talk about his background, his career and sort of flex and show people like there's context for Elon Musk coming into Doge and reforming the federal government and all that. So let's roll a one from the interview.
- [09:17]
Emily
The president will make these executive orders, which are very sensible and good for the country, but then they don't get implemented, you know, so if you take for example, all the funding for the migrant hotels, the president issued an executive order, hey, we need to stop taking taxpayer money and paying for luxury hotels for illegal immigrants, which makes no sense. Obviously, people do not want their tax dollars going to fund high end hotels for illegals.
- [09:45]
James Billow
And yet they were still doing that.
- [09:47]
Emily
Even as late as last week. And so, you know, we went in there and we're like, this is in violation of the presidential executive order. It needs to stop. So what we're doing here is one of the biggest functions of the Doge team is just making sure that the presidential executive orders are actually carried Out.
- [10:05]
Ryan Grim
And that's obviously the, let's say, central argument for doge, which is that the federal bureaucracy has become so unaccountable that unless it's radically reformed you. And by radically reformed, they mean sweeping, immediate, rapid trauma. As RUSPA would say to bureaucrats, you never actually will bring them to heel because the agencies are so sprawling. Like it has to be what they did to usaid, rinse and repeat over and over again at these departments. Otherwise you never actually, you still end up having, let's say, an anti, let's say a president who wants to crack down on illegal immigration, being the head of an executive branch that is not doing that, or a president who does not want to crack down on illegal immigration, overseeing an executive branch that does that.
- [10:52]
Emily
Yeah. It is true that a president probably should be able to govern within some reasonable limits, but should be able to govern, which is not exactly always our system. But we have a lot of clips to go through, so I'll try to refrain from popping off until we get through a bunch more of these.
- [11:09]
Ryan Grim
Here's one more. Well, Trump was, he did a big press conference yesterday as well. So that's our next clip. Here's one more from the Hannity interview where Hannity kind of gets into conflicts of interest. Let's, let's, I'll let everyone judge. Let's take a look.
- [11:23]
Emily
Your task now, and I pray to.
- [11:27]
Tom Homan
God this is successful.
- [11:28]
Ryan Grim
I really do.
- [11:28]
Tom Homan
I wish you Godspeed, you know, Godspeed, John Glenn. It's going to be, by the way, I really believe. But there are legitimate areas beside this. This is cutting. We're only talking about cutting. We're also going to make a lot of money. We're going to, we're taking in so much. What about his business? What if there is a contract he would otherwise do? Then we won't let him do it. He won't. He's got a conflict. I mean, look, he's in certain areas. I mean, I see this morning, I didn't know, but I said do the right thing. Where they're cutting way back on the electric vehicle subsidies.
- [12:02]
James Billow
Yes.
- [12:03]
Tom Homan
They're cutting back. You not only cutting back hurt you.
- [12:06]
Emily
Correct.
- [12:06]
Tom Homan
Yeah.
- [12:07]
Emily
Now you don't.
- [12:08]
Tom Homan
I wouldn't tell you. Well, he's probably not that happy with it, but that would have been one thing. He would have come to me and said, listen, you got to do me a favor. This is crazy. But this was in the tax bill. They're cutting back on the subsidies. I didn't, I wasn't involved in it. I said, do what's right and you get. And they're coming up with a tax. But it's just preliminary. But I mean, if he were involved, wouldn't you think he'd probably do that now? Maybe he does better if you cut back on the subsidies. Who knows? Because he figures he does think differently. He thinks he has a better product. And as long as he has a level playing field, he doesn't care what you do. Which is very. He's told me that.
- [12:44]
Emily
Yeah. I mean, I haven't asked the President for anything ever.
- [12:47]
Tom Homan
And if it comes up, how will you handle it?
- [12:50]
Emily
Well, he won't be involved. Yeah. I'll recuse myself if it is.
- [12:54]
Tom Homan
If there's a conflict, he won't be involved. I mean, I wouldn't want that and he won't want it.
- [12:58]
Emily
Right.
- [12:58]
James Billow
And obviously I'm getting sort of a.
- [13:00]
Emily
Daily proctology exam here. You know, it's not like I'll be getting away from something in the dead of night.
- [13:05]
Tom Homan
Welcome to D.C. if you want a.
- [13:06]
Emily
Friend, get a dog.
- [13:07]
Ryan Grim
I mean, if you are the most powerful man in the world who's suddenly working in government, you definitely deserve that daily exam. There's no question about. On that note, what Trump just said about the subsidies is a great example because Elon Musk, as early as last July, he posted on X, take all the subsidies away. It will help Tesla.
- [13:27]
Emily
So, yeah, he's against them.
- [13:29]
Ryan Grim
Right. He's now against Tesla. He's probably right that they would help Tesla to take those subsidies.
- [13:33]
Emily
Catch up. Right.
- [13:34]
Ryan Grim
And so on that note, just to the reason we say this is to point out that people in Congress right now who are coming up with the tax bill and looking at what decisions to make already know that Elon Musk doesn't care about those subsidies. He is. Well, if anything, he encourages removing the subsidies because he said as much. So it's not really what he needs.
- [13:54]
Emily
Is tariffs on China to keep the better, cheaper Chinese EVs out of the.
- [13:58]
Ryan Grim
US well, that's even complicated with his relationship with China. I can't believe we have to talk about that in the context of a, quote, special government employee.
- [14:05]
Emily
But here we are, as Bannon calls him.
- [14:07]
Ryan Grim
Yeah. So let's go to Donald Trump's press conference. We're going to come back to the interview. But on this point, he was asked by Jonathan Swan of the New York Times to talk about Doge and SpaceX yesterday. Trump put together a press conference yesterday, late in the afternoon. I don't know if he was like Intentionally trying to tease the interview. He kind of did the Fox interview. But let's. Let's rule this one. Mr. President, given your concerns about corruption.
- [14:33]
Emily
You said that if there were any conflicts of interest with Elon Musk, you wouldn't let him anywhere near it.
- [14:39]
Tom Homan
That's right.
- [14:40]
Emily
Doge and SpaceX employees are now working directly at the Federal Aviation Administration and the Defense Department, agencies that have billions.
- [14:48]
Ryan Grim
Of dollars in contracts with Musk's companies.
- [14:50]
Emily
Or that directly regulate his companies. How is that not a conflict of interest?
- [14:55]
Tom Homan
Well, I mean, I'm just hearing about it, and if there is, and he told me before I told him, but obviously I will not let there be any conflict of interest. He's done an amazing job. They've revealed. In fact, he's going to be on tonight, a big show called Sean Hannity at 9 o'clock. And he's on and I'm on, and we talk about a lot of different things. And any conflicts, I told Elon, any conflicts, you can't have anything to do with that. So anything to do with possibly even space, we won't let Elon partake in that.
- [15:24]
Ryan Grim
To the extent they talked about it, it was Hannity saying, what about conflicts of interest? And then Trump saying, we won't let him do it.
- [15:30]
Emily
I like John Swan saying, given your concern about corruption. Wait a minute. Gonna need some evidence. I need some receipts for this alleged concern about corruption. I wish he would have said it was 98 Central. That would have been even funnier.
- [15:44]
Ryan Grim
Oh, yeah, I know, that would have been funny. But I mean, obviously he talks a lot about corruption, which is why Bannon and others. We'll talk about this later in the show. Are so irked by his relationship with Elon Musk. I almost just said Donald Musk. But let's pivot back to the Hannity interview. That was a great interlude with the Jonathan Swan question just IR hours earlier. But here's what they talked about in relation to inflation with Hannity.
- [16:09]
Emily
Yeah.
- [16:09]
Tom Homan
And inflation is back. I'm only here for two and a half weeks.
- [16:13]
Emily
That was January inflation.
- [16:14]
Tom Homan
There was a week. Now think of it. Inflation's back. And they said, oh, Trump, I had nothing to do with it. These people have run the country. They spent money like nobody's ever spent.
- [16:24]
Ryan Grim
If you were listening to this and not just watching it, you missed the great USAID ticker. It looked like a. You know when you're watching TV at three in the morning and they're selling CDs for ELV greatest hits. They were just scrolling through crazy USAID spending while they talked about inflation there. Now we have another clip from the press conference getting to exactly the point Ryan just raised about corruption, Trump's take on corruption. Let's roll this from the press conference again. This was just hours before the Fox interview.
- [16:59]
Tom Homan
We have a very corrupt country, very corrupt country. And it's a sad thing to say, but we're figuring it out. Now, the good thing about Social Security and what I read is if you take all of those numbers off because they're obviously fraudulent or incompetent, but if you take all of those millions of people off Social Security, all of a sudden we have a very powerful Social Security with people that are 80 and 70 and 90, but not 200 years old, you know, so it's a very positive thing.
- [17:34]
Ryan Grim
So finally. Oh, go ahead.
- [17:36]
Emily
Yeah, no, I wish that was true. And hey, if this lets Republicans get away with not cutting it, okay, go ahead, lie to yourself that there's like huge savings to be made from dead people getting Social Security. Just not true. But okay.
- [17:51]
Ryan Grim
In the FOX News interview, he said that's a red line. He said Elon's not going to be touching Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid. And actually, Franco Mercetic has a good essay out in Jacobin that as somebody on the right, I think captures the dynamics of Doge and the right better than anything I've read in a long time. I recommend it for everyone because he goes through Russ Vogt's arc.
- [18:13]
Emily
Oh, yes.
- [18:13]
Ryan Grim
And talks about how austerity used to be seen by many on the right as their flavor of populism in the Obama era. And yes, there's been some substantive shifts by some people away from that American compass. Those people. So on the one hand, there's really been sincere movement by a lot of people to put like policy meat on the bones of Trump's anti elite sentiments and pro worker sentiments. On the other hand, there's still lurking very much an appetite among the people who are around Trump. Elon Musk's libertarian, I guess, urges will certainly egg them on and Vote's in.
- [18:55]
Emily
The key position to implement this revolution.
- [18:58]
Ryan Grim
Right. And obviously, obviously, Donald Trump is more powerful than Russ Vote. He's more powerful than anyone in the Cabinet. And if he doesn't want them to touch Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, which he clearly doesn't, he knows that that would be legacy tarnishing, then he'll probably get his way on that. But if there's a crack in the foundation, you could see significant changes. So let's roll this last clip of Stephen Miller going on CNN yesterday afternoon and getting some questions about a White House filing that actually clarified. Elon Musk is not the administrator of Doge. This was. They said he is an employee of the White House office. And everyone sort of look around being like, what does that mean? We've talked a little bit about his special government employee designation. It's basically impossible for him to be in compliance. It's up to the DOJ to enforce.
- [19:53]
Emily
Well, that's fortunate for him.
- [19:55]
Ryan Grim
Yeah. So all that is to say, though, he goes on and gets Stephen Miller goes on Brianna Keeler show on cnn and this is how he answers questions about basically who, if Elon Musk is not the head of Doge, who is leading Doge? Let's roll this. So who is in charge of Doge?
- [20:17]
Emily
The President of the United States.
- [20:19]
Ryan Grim
He's the administrator of DOGE.
- [20:23]
Emily
No, the DOGE is the. What was formerly U.S. digital Services. It's an agency of the federal government that reports into the office of the Executive Office of the President, which reports to the President of the United States.
- [20:37]
Ryan Grim
Okay.
- [20:37]
Emily
The way that Article 2 works is a president wins an election and then he appoints staff. Staff including myself, including Mike Waltz, including Susie Wiles, including Elon Musk. And those staff report to him.
- [20:49]
Ryan Grim
Okay, well aware. So Elon Musk a week ago answered a question about transparency at doge. This is how he spoke about doge.
- [20:59]
James Billow
Well, we actually are trying to be.
- [21:00]
Emily
As transparent as possible. In fact, our actions, we post our.
- [21:04]
James Billow
Actions to the DOGE handle on X and to the DOGE website.
- [21:09]
Emily
So all of our actions are maximally transparent. You hear him there?
- [21:15]
Ryan Grim
We post our actions, all of our actions are maximally transparent. Does Elon Musk know he's not in charge of Doge?
- [21:25]
Emily
Again, the President runs the government. Then the President appoints advisors, including Elon, including myself, including all the other staff here at the White House. And then those staff in turn execute the President's commands and directions to all the agencies of the federal government. This is how democracy works, something that we treasure in America. The whole American people go to the ballot box. They elect the President. The President appoints staff, the staff that administer his orders and directives across the whole US Government.
- [21:54]
Ryan Grim
Stephen Miller's CNN interviews are actually always pretty entertaining.
- [21:58]
Emily
They're always funny. He's talking about this is how we've always done it. People should realize, though, the reason we have a civil service is from a specific problem that our government had, which was it was too efficient. You would elect a president and you'd elect a Congress, and then they would very efficiently give themselves all the money. For instance, if they wanted to build a transcontinental railroad, the railroads would give free stock to the members of Congress and to the White House. And then instead of going through an administrative process where they had to bid competitively and there would be oversight and IGs and inspections, they would just bribe members of Congress and the administration and they would get the railroad contract. And then they would basically be meme coins that would bubble up and then pop and sent the country into multiple depressions in the 19th century. And at that point, the people are like, you know what? We don't trust you politicians and you oligarchs to do this efficiently because you're just scratching each other's back and ripping us off. So we want a civil service that is transparent and is accountable. And so they built one. And it is annoying sometimes to have to bid for contracts and to have people ask for paperwork to prove that you actually, like, laid down railroad tracks. And so now we're going back to the efficient process, and we'll see how that works out.
- [23:34]
Ryan Grim
Well, the efficient process, the post efficient process, was still sort of a victory for the oligarchs too, because they ended up being able to game the system pretty well. It's not that they didn't lose. They obviously did lose.
- [23:45]
Emily
If you look at the oligarchs in the late 19th century versus from the Progressive Era through the 70s, 1970s, the oligarch's heyday is now. And way back then, 20th century, they were on their heels.
- [24:00]
Ryan Grim
They were able to carve out. All I'm saying is the system. Still, they were able to carve it up because they have just more resources. And that's what happens. It's not an argument against the system.
- [24:09]
Emily
They didn't become poor.
- [24:10]
Ryan Grim
Yeah, not an argument against the system existing at all. Although that is where Elon Musk and some folks in Trump's orbit will say that this has been. Actually, they made this argument about DEI in particular. This has been a boon to these different equity consultants. And there's probably some truth to that for sure.
- [24:29]
Emily
A little industry built up around that.
- [24:31]
Ryan Grim
Yeah, it's not going to be enough, probably to mollify every voter who's doge.
- [24:37]
Emily
Dividend isn't gonna be very big off the backs of gutting dei.
- [24:41]
Ryan Grim
No, not. But Elon Musk actually yesterday tweeted that he would think about the doge dividend, which is quite interesting. But that exchange doge is also noteworthy because DOGE is the usds. As Stephen Miller noted, that was not something people expected. They took over an existing agency. It wasn't just this outside advisory group created DOGE and is now appears to be a series of employees spread across different agencies as opposed to sort of a central DOGE hub. Sort of like DOGE vibes. Like you're just hiring people who have DOGE vibes.
- [25:19]
Emily
Yeah. Yes, it's a little. It's a sell.
- [25:23]
Ryan Grim
Yes, yes.
- [25:24]
Emily
That is infiltrating all over the place.
- [25:27]
Ryan Grim
Well, both Trump and Elon Musk are quite good at selling, so it makes sense that we know the brand DOGE more than we know the organization.
- [25:37]
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- [28:40]
Ryan Grim
All right Ryan, let's pivot to this block on the hostage returns.
- [28:46]
Emily
So phase one of the cease fire agreement between Israel and Hamas may be coming to completion earlier than expected. We could put this Axios element up on the screen. Hamas proposed to Israel and it appears that Israel is close to accepting an agreement by which all of the remaining living prisoners held by held by Hamas who are scheduled to be released in phase one will be released all at once this coming weekend rather than stretching it out over the next two weeks, which means there would be six released. You put this second second element up on the screen as we move to phase two of the negotiations. Hamas is signaling, and we can talk about this more quite strongly, that they are willing to do what Israel has demanding that they do, lay down their arms and surrender basically and hand over governance either to the Palestinian Authority or to some other national unity project. Now, whether they whether Hamas would agree to Palestinian Authority is an open question. What exactly that would look like is an open question. But if you notice there the key stumbling block there isn't actually Hamas, it's Israel, which has said absolutely under no circumstances would it allow the Palestinian Authority to oversee Gaza in a post war scenario, which is very, I think confusing to people who are following this from afar because they're like, wait a minute, isn't the Palestinian Authority the legally recognized representatives of the Palestinian people and. And effectively a subcontractor of Israel carrying out the occupation in the west bank and literally doing battle with resistance fighters in the West Bank? And even they are not good enough for Netanyahu. Now, what Netanyahu has been saying is that Trump has opened the door to possibilities that Israel did not even consider previously, which is the complete ethnic cleansing and depopulation of Gaza. Netanyahu is now saying this will be done voluntarily. They will create mechanisms for the people of Gaza to leave voluntarily, and that they will all leave. It's a fantasy, but it appears that Netanyahu is unwilling to move forward as long as there's at least a possibility that this could happen.
- [31:24]
Ryan Grim
It's leverage, I guess.
- [31:25]
Emily
It's. Who knows? Who knows what it is Part of this agreement. There's supposed to be thousands of mobile homes and new aid that Israel is allowing in. Hamas is in order to, I think, get 300 mobile homes brought into Gaza. That's another thing that's re upping this hostage exchange. Now, two of these, I don't know if you followed this story, are deeply mentally ill people who stumbled into Gaza in 2014 and 2015. You follow this. So these folks have nothing to do with October 7th and to Hamas discredit. They should have released these men years and years and years ago. So what happened in 2014? And a Jewish Ethiopian guy who's from Ethiopia, he came to Israel. He's deeply mentally ill. He had wandered, I think, into the west bank many times. He was a known figure there. One day he just wanders into Gaza and he gets captured, like, immediately. And Hamas is like, what on earth is going on here? And they realize in pretty short order that it's a crazy person. And they had just done the Gilad Shalit deal, which they exchanged a soldier for thousands of Palestinians. So there's still thousands of Palestinians held. So you can see it from Hamas perspective. They're like, oh, well, now we have an Israeli hostage. Let's exchange him for thousands more. And so they tried that for several years. And then another. A Bedouin man who was also deeply mentally ill wanders into Gaza in 2015, and they capture him too. But it quickly became clear that Israel's like this Ethiopian guy and this Bedouin, we're not trading you anything for them. And so you could say that's. You can say that's to Israel's discredit that they were not treating those Citizens with equal dignity. But at that point, if you're Hamas, it's like, let the guys go. You're not getting anything for them. So they've held these poor guys for 10 years at this point. So now they're finally getting let out. Now, the big controversy over the last couple of weeks has been over the Beavis family. This one you followed?
- [33:51]
Ryan Grim
Yes, of course.
- [33:53]
Emily
And we have some news on this from Dropsite, from Jeremy Scahill. So this is Shiri Ariel Kifir Beavas, a mother and her two children. So there was some false hope in Israel that they would be released last week as part of this exchange. However, as Jeremy reports here and notes, back In November of 2023, Hamas announced that they had all been killed in an Israeli airstrike. The Mujahideen Brigades put out their own statement and they said it was one of their factions. That because October 7th wasn't just Hamas. Once the fence was broken, a bunch of other groups disconnected from Hamas broke through. There were a lot of rumors that it was the Mujahideen Brigades that had taken the Bibus family. We now can confirm that that is what happened. They are an offshoot of Fatah, which is the kind of rival of Hamas. So there's some collaboration between all factions, but they're essentially a rival group. And so their spokesperson says, within the framework of the first phase of the prisoner exchange agreement with the resistance, the bodies of the Bibas family who were captured by group of ARM Mujahideen will be handed over tomorrow Thursday. They were preserved and treated well according to the teachings of the true Islam before they were bombed by the Zionist occupation missiles and were killed along with the captor group. The Brigades preserved the family's bodies throughout the stages of the war until the date of handover, unquote. So if you remember in November, there was this week long ceasefire where all children and many women were exchanged. They were supposed to be part of that, but they were killed before that exchange. We talked last week about this 972report. I don't know if you saw this. That was. Of course you saw, you were here. That talked about how Israel had discovered that if they used these bunker buster bombs, they sucked all of the oxygen out of tunnels as well. So even if they didn't know precisely where somebody they were targeting was, as long as they got it within several hundred meters, they could suffocate anybody in that area. And after October 7th, there was a high value placed on revenge against anybody that they believed was involved with October 7th. That's understandable. However, if you were a militant involved in October 7, the chance that you are now with a hostage is pretty high. Israel has since changed its rules of engagement over how they try to assess whether or not there is a risk of killing a hostage in a strike.
- [36:54]
Ryan Grim
According to the New York Times.
- [36:56]
Emily
According to the New York Times, in October and November, there was effectively no concern for that. If there was a high value target and you didn't have affirmative evidence that there were definitely hostages around this high value target, you were able to greenlight the attack. It is in that context that we know that Israel killed these three hostages and also all the people who were their captors around them. You've seen from some commentators the killing of these children and their mother to be evidence of Hamas depravity. And so I just think it's important people have all of the context here.
- [37:42]
Ryan Grim
They kidnapped them.
- [37:43]
Emily
Well, Hamas didn't. It was a Mujahedeen brigade. I see what you're saying, but also, there is no excuse to take children, period. So even if Israel killed them, there is absolutely no excuse under any circumstances.
- [37:57]
Ryan Grim
No, that's barbarism and depravity in and of itself. Yeah.
- [38:00]
Emily
And Hamas should have found some way to pressure the Mujahideen brigades to release them before Israel was able to kill them. But it happened within weeks.
- [38:11]
Ryan Grim
And then the Hamas distinction, to the point you just made, is important because political negotiations. Hamas is saying, October 7th with our operation, this was not us.
- [38:21]
Emily
Right.
- [38:22]
Ryan Grim
And when Jeremy references media reports about the Israeli strike and the mom and children, is that to say, like, this has been, like, Israeli media has said, we have definitive evidence that this was bunker busting. Like, that. It was.
- [38:44]
Emily
So they don't. Israeli media doesn't know because Israel at the time was carpet bombing, you know, major parts of the area.
- [38:53]
Ryan Grim
Fairly.
- [38:54]
Emily
And, you know, it seems like they had identified probably through some type of signals intelligence, like following people's phones. The captors I see say, like, okay, we followed these phones because you can, you know, look, you know, you can just go on your phone, you know, Apple now can follow your location. So they could follow, okay, this crew, these Mujahedeen Brigades, they went into Israel on October 7th. They are now here in this area. That is the most likely scenario that they identified. These are some terrorists who went into Israel on October 7th.
- [39:28]
Ryan Grim
And there's some.
- [39:29]
Emily
And then they. And then they bombed them without thinking. Like, what did they. Okay, we saw they went to a kibbutz. We saw they went back. Did they take Back Israeli hostages back with them, and if so, let's actually not bomb them. As much as we would love, as satisfying as would be to us to kill them, the high likelihood that you're going to kill hostages with them. And so that it is known for certain that a significant number of hostages were killed under those circumstances, and that has been deeply damaging to Netanyahu and to the entire Israeli society. But it took a very long time for them to reassess that policy.
- [40:17]
Ryan Grim
And then the other thing. I don't have an answer. Seems that I remember a little bit that Fatah reportedly coordinated a bit on October 7th with Hamas. And Hamas has said, basically it became a frenzy, that there was like a precise operation planned. But then it kind of started snowballing into something different. But there is reporting that Fatah was coordinating with Hamas.
- [40:43]
Emily
Yeah. There's some indication that they knew that something was going to happen, but they weren't formally part. Right. Because the Qassam Brigades, which led the operation for obvious reasons, wanted utmost secrecy.
- [40:59]
Ryan Grim
Oh, yeah.
- [41:00]
Emily
And they don't trust Fatah because Fatah's. Well, not only are they their rivals, they got links to the PA. PA's got links to Israel. To Israel.
- [41:10]
Ryan Grim
Yeah.
- [41:11]
Emily
So you don't know who, like. So there was. But, you know, they wanted backup, so they wanted it known there's going to be something happening, but they didn't want to let them know. Precisely. I mean, what did happen?
- [41:22]
Ryan Grim
And even more stunning intelligence failure on Israel's behalf. That. Yeah, the last thing I want to say is, I think Jeremy's tweet to the House Foreign Affairs Committee is just important.
- [41:35]
Emily
That's right. Which one was that?
- [41:36]
Ryan Grim
It was one of the early. Yeah, there it is. They're saying Hamas executed a mother and her two children in cold blood in reference to these specific family. And it's a good.
- [41:47]
Emily
And actually, that next line is really important. So if you're just listening along the House Foreign Affairs Committee Republicans say, quote, this is barbarism. And then this is the key point. Israel has every right to finish the job and eradicate these terrorists from the face of the earth. So it is known at this point. This was yesterday. It is known at this point that Hamas did not execute a mother and her two children. Cold blood. This particular family. Yeah. Yet the House Republicans here are using that claim to say, now we need to eradicate. And that's being done in the context of Trump's push to ethnically cleanse the entire area.
- [42:26]
Ryan Grim
So. And the reason, I just think what Jeremy said is an important distinction. Even though to some people, they may say, well, October 7th was barbarism and depravity. Well, it was. And that's sort of the point.
- [42:39]
Emily
And Hamas took civilians.
- [42:41]
Ryan Grim
Oh, gosh.
- [42:42]
Emily
Which is inexcusable.
- [42:42]
Ryan Grim
Absolutely.
- [42:43]
Emily
And killed hundreds.
- [42:44]
Ryan Grim
Absolutely. And that's sort of the point here, is that the House Foreign Affairs Republicans, maybe some social media staffer posted this. But you don't have to go along with misinformation here. You don't have to. And I think there's so much, I mean, we've talked at length about how the Shereen Abu Akla case personally just was an interesting, I guess, gateway to a lot of different things on my end. But you don't have to rely on misinformation. You don't have to build so much of this on the house of cards. That is misinformation. You don't have to build your case on that. And repeatedly, it is built on misinformation. That's just sort of. I don't want to use the phrase too good to check, but too convenient.
- [43:35]
Emily
No, I know what you mean. Yeah.
- [43:36]
Ryan Grim
It's too convenient for the narrative to check.
- [43:38]
Emily
Yeah. And there's no price to pay domestically in the U.S. like, there's no, there's going to be no consequence for the House Foreign Affairs Republicans or any of the. They didn't even delete it. No. They're gonna leave that up. Yeah. Cause anybody who fact checks it like we're doing then gets accused of being apologists for, like, kidnapping the people in the first place.
- [44:03]
Ryan Grim
It's incredibly sensitive to do it without looking callous because otherwise you just look like a fact check, bro. Like you're swooping in to. Well, but actually, it's brutal.
- [44:13]
Emily
But they didn't do that.
- [44:14]
Ryan Grim
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, yes. I mean, but that's how the cycle perpetuates itself.
- [44:18]
Emily
Yeah. Speaking of barbarism, quickly, before we move to this incredible story out of Miami and put up this last Jeremy post, in Israel, five Israeli military reservists have been indicted for the torture of a Palestinian who had been held at state time in prison. This was a case that, that made international headlines because there was video of it and because it then was debated in the Knesset with people in the Knesset arguing that there should not be any prosecution for this, that it is within the Israeli reservists Right. To do whatever it is that they believe they want to do to Palestinian detainees. And the counterargument in the Knesset. And by the way, this led to those Infamous right to rape protests. The counterargument in the Knesset was not, this is wrong and it should be prosecuted because it's wrong. The counterargument was, according to the International Criminal Court, they only have jurisdiction if there is no accountability mechanism within the state itself. And that's Congo, Kenya, Israel, doesn't matter. The ICC does not have jurisdiction if there are prosecutors on the case in a particular state. And so there were people in the Knesset that said, we have to prosecute some people for something or we're all going down. So let's prosecute these guys. They're caught raping a detainee on video. Just basically just throw them under the bus so that we can show the ICC that we're doing something. And then our lawyers at the ICC can show them this indictment, say, look, you don't have jurisdiction here because when people commit crimes here, we prosecute them. But the indictment, which people can find online is just extraordinary. Quote, for 15 minutes, the accused kicked the detainee, stomped on him, stood on his body, hit him and pushed him all over his body, including with clubs, dragged his body along the ground and used a taser gun on him, including on his head. During the assault, the blindfold came off the detainee, and moments later, one of the soldiers stabbed the detainee in his buttock with a sharp object, which caused an internal tear in his rectal wall. They then used a T shirt to try to cover up the bleeding, but after a while, the bleeding became so intense that that he was taken to the hospital. The result of the suffering, according to the indictment, which based on medical records, includes seven broken ribs, a punctured lung tear in his rectum, and injuries all over his body. So they have been indicted. So that is good.
- [47:09]
Ryan Grim
Incredible.
- [47:10]
Emily
It would be better if he was indicted because they believed that this was wrong. And some absolutely do. But the most persuasive argument being made for why they should be indicted is so that other people don't get dragged before the icc.
- [47:25]
Ryan Grim
I mean, I guess that's the idea behind the post World War II reforms. To have some of these international bodies is to create incentives for better behavior.
- [47:37]
Emily
So in that case, okay, there we go.
- [47:39]
Ryan Grim
There you go.
- [47:40]
Emily
Doesn't matter what they're doing.
- [47:40]
Ryan Grim
That's the glass half full.
- [47:42]
Emily
All right.
- [47:42]
Ryan Grim
Yeah. It doesn't matter why.
- [47:44]
Emily
There was a report released last week about that prison 30 page human rights report that barely made a ripple. And you read through it, you're like, one of the things they say that gravel that they mentioned there they make people sit on the sharp gravel for 16 straight hours without being able to move. If you and I had to sit in these chairs for 16 hours, can't do it for 16 seconds, then they're nice cushion. Yeah, these are comfy chairs.
- [48:14]
Ryan Grim
I don't want to move around.
- [48:14]
Emily
Would still be torturous on sharp gravel like anyway, so this is the things that were described in that indictment are happening as you and I speak to people right now and will be happening the rest of today and tomorrow and the day after and the day after that.
- [48:34]
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- [51:34]
Emily
Come, let's move to Miami. This, this incredible story, this incredible story down there. So over the weekend we can put this guardian element up on the screen. This first one, Mordecai Brafman, 27 year old Jewish man, is driving down the highway in Miami and sees what he thinks are two Palestinians. Gets out, stops them for even just stopping there.
- [52:00]
Ryan Grim
That's weird.
- [52:01]
Emily
Yeah. Like, what are you doing? Keep driving. Yes, he gets out, stops them and opens fire with a semiautomatic handgun. If this wasn't, if there wasn't some video evidence of this, plus the direct testimony of Brafman himself, I'd be like, there's no way any of this is true.
- [52:23]
Ryan Grim
Agree, Agree.
- [52:24]
Emily
So Brafman, so the he fails to kill these two people who are 17 shots.
- [52:34]
Ryan Grim
He gets off 17 shots in Miami Beach.
- [52:36]
Emily
They turn out to be Israeli tourists, Mizrahi Jews in Miami, and we're gonna talk about that more. So he was mistaken about their religious identity. They run and we have video of them trying to get into this condo to get some help. One's shot in the shoulder, the other was only grazed. And so that's how they were able to live. Police Come to the scene and they capture Brafman and they arrest him. They bring him in, they interrogate him, and he confesses. He said, I saw two Palestinian men and I killed them both.
- [53:18]
Ryan Grim
I killed two Palestinians.
- [53:20]
Emily
That's what he tells them. Turns out he learns later his two mistakes he made. He didn't actually kill them, and they were not Palestinian.
- [53:32]
Ryan Grim
This is what happens when you mow people down from a car in Miami Beach.
- [53:35]
Emily
It's interesting to say they're not Palestinian, they're from Palestine. We'll talk about that in a moment. After they are shot at, one of them posts on social media. We can put this up on the screen. They tried to murder us in the heart of Miami, but the creator of the world is with us. So he didn't go. He said, my father and I went through a murder attempt against anti Semitic background. So he blames anti Semitism for it. So I want to say thank you to everyone for their support. And it is not taken for granted with Israel. Live Israel. Death to the Arabs. So this is the guy who has a bullet in his shoulder because the Miami guy thought he was Palestinian, but he kind of is Arab. So this is a weird thing. That's what's so complicated about this whole question. And they are considered to be Arab by a lot of Israelis, even though they are Jewish. Israelis put up this VO here. So here these guys are giving an interview describing what happened. And you can see. You can see why, if you're a Miami guy who doesn't live in Israel, you were like, oh, these are Palestinian guys. Although I'm not sure why he didn't think, like, this is Miami exactly. It could have been Colombian, Mexican, 100%, like, Puerto Rican.
- [55:11]
Ryan Grim
The possibilities are endless. In Miami.
- [55:13]
Emily
It's instead how you pick them out.
- [55:15]
Ryan Grim
As Palestinian that you are just driving through Miami beach and you see two dudes that you think might be Palestinian. And start.
- [55:23]
Emily
It's not unusual to see Arab men in Miami either.
- [55:27]
Ryan Grim
Insane. It's insane. None of it really makes sense.
- [55:31]
Emily
This same guy, by the way, Mordecai Local News, interviewed him months ago because there was some vandalism of a Jewish flag at a coffee shop. And he did one of those man on the street interviews where he says, I wish we could all just get along. Why does there have to be so much strife and conflict? So they replayed that interview with him, and then months later, he pulls over and just opens fire on 2 guys because he thinks, extremely weird, that they're Arab. So I don't know if you Guys, follow Alon Mizrahi. He's a Israeli, as his last name on Twitter says Mizrahi Jew from Israeli, from Israel. He has actually since left Israel recently. He now lives in the United States. He's so driven so insane by what was going on in Israel. So he wrote on Twitter a large following here. He says what most people don't get about the incident in Miami where a Jewish man alone is Jewish, where a Jewish man shot two other Israelis whom he thought were Palestinians, is the inter Jewish racism. The shooter is an Ashkenazi, a white European Jew. His victims are Arab Jews. To him, brown Jews look like Arabs, but that's only because they are. If there ever was a more perfect demonstration of the fake and made up idea of a Jewish ethnicity or nation, I never heard about it. His victims, by the way, would rather he shot them again that admit they're Arabs. And I think Alon is almost fair in saying that because after they got shot, yeah, they said death to Arab. Death to the Arabs.
- [57:08]
Ryan Grim
Yeah.
- [57:09]
Emily
And his point here is that these guys are Arabs, that they have lived in Arabia forever for thousands of years. Zionist brainwashing is the strongest propaganda material invented by mankind, he says. And so Arab Jews would rather die than face their Arabness. And white Jews would rather kill Arab Jews than acknowledge the humanity of Arabs. This is from an Arab Jew. So you can imagine what his experience was like as an Israeli citizen that drove him to say this and then to also leave and move to the United States.
- [57:44]
Ryan Grim
I can't wrap my head around this story being true. It's completely wild. The lack of media coverage over it is also absolutely insane. I do think it's true that had this been a case of like, if.
- [57:59]
Emily
The shooter was Arab, it's crazy, it would be wall to wall coverage.
- [58:04]
Ryan Grim
We'd be hearing a lot more about it. But I don't know if media just is confused about what to do with this story. It seems enormously significant to me that somebody fires 17 shots at people they drove by on Miami Beach. I mean, it just, it's just an insane story. But there's so little coverage of it. I mean, I don't know if it's just because people are confused with how to handle. It doesn't fit into any narrative very conveniently, but it's insane.
- [58:30]
Emily
Yeah. And you know, people often make the argument that the Israeli occupation is obviously, you know, the primary victims of the Israeli occupation are those who are occupied, but Israelis themselves are victimized in the sense that the necessity of carrying out or the action of carrying out a brutal occupation of an other produces in your society the kind of thing that alone is describing there. A stratification, a racism, a hatred that then drives a wedge between even Jewish Israeli citizens based on color and ethnic origin. And like he said, it's like the whole idea of Israel was to create this national identity where at least all Jews inside Israel are equal. And what he's saying is that this is another example of how that's just not the case.
- [59:38]
Ryan Grim
Jews inside of Israel, in theory, equal, not based on skin color, but based on Jewishness. And that's incredibly complicated for a society to accomplish when there are distinctions, like literal tribal distinctions.
- [59:59]
Emily
Yeah, yeah. And there's some. And there's some color involved. A little whiter, a little less white.
- [60:06]
Ryan Grim
Right. Crazy story. Crazy story. Not getting nearly enough attention.
- [60:12]
Emily
New York Times, which is something live, blogged the campus protests and had like 15 different editors working on the story in. Where was it? In the Netherlands where the soccer hooligans were fighting each other. That was like an all hands on deck moment for the New York Times. But Miami, they can't. They don't have anybody in Miami.
- [60:36]
Ryan Grim
17 shots fired.
- [60:37]
Emily
I think New York Times might have some readers in Miami. Probably. Yeah, probably.
- [60:41]
Ryan Grim
Well, increasingly. Probably less, but. All right, let's move on to Steve Bannon.
- [60:48]
Carl Daikeler
This message is for you. You want to lose weight and get healthy and you want help to know where to start and what to do day by day. So you absolutely, 100% get. Get fast results, step by step. I'm Carl Daikeler, CEO of BODI. Right now I'm inviting 100,000 people to get the results they want without expensive equipment or the hassle of a gym. It's the annual Love youe Body event. Last year we helped thousands of people succeed. And this year we're helping even more. So it's time for you to join us and really follow through. For just 50 cents a day, we'll help you choose the best fitness program for you. Plus an easy to follow nutrition plan. And if you don't lose up to 10 to 15 pounds in your first month, you get your money back. Do you want to get results? Working out right at home in around a half hour a day for less than a cup of coffee? Join the Love youe Body event. Now, to get this special 50 cents a day offer, go to bodi.com and get signed up.
- [61:45]
Sagar Enjeti
That's bodiwithani.com ready to prioritize yourself in the new year. Your skin is a great place to start Dime Beauty, founded by a master esthetician, is more than just a skincare company. With four skin conscious categories skin Care, Beauty, Body Care and Fragrance. Daim offers simple, spa worthy products that will help you enter 2025 with confidence. Whether you're revitalizing your regimen with nourishing products or building one from scratch, Dime makes it easy. The work system Our all in one best selling routine includes a cleanser of your choice, toner serums and moisturizers. Taking the guesswork out of skincare for your healthiest, happiest sk. Dime's commitment to clean ingredients and sustainable packaging ensures every product is as gentle on your skin as it is on the planet. With thousands of glowing five star reviews and a loyal community, the results speak for themselves. Revive your skin and give yourself the routine refresh you deserve by visiting dimebeautyco.com that's dimebeautyco.com your best skin awaits the New Year's here.
- [62:49]
Doha Mekki
It's the perfect time to refresh those household essentials and score some cash back rewards with Colgate Palmolive. From toothpaste to dish soap, chances are you've got Colgate Palmolive products on your shopping list and in your house. Right now we're talking brands like Colgate Soft Soap, Palmolive, Irish Spring, Fabuloso, and Tom's of Maine. And right now you can get up to a $10 digital Visa prepaid card when you buy up to $30 of Colgate Palmolive products. Here's how it Spend $20 on their products get $5 spend $30 get a $10 reward. All you do is shop your favorite brands, snap a pic of your receipt and upload it to cprewards.com it's so easy. That's cprewards.com so grab what you need or maybe try something new and get rewarded just for doing your usual shopping. And start your year fresh by earning cash back rewards with Colgate Palmolive rewards available while supplies last, limit Supply US Only 1125 through 33125 for full terms and conditions, visit cprewards.com come we're joined.
- [63:51]
Ryan Grim
Now by my colleague at Unherd, James Billow, who had the great pleasure of interviewing Steve Bannon actually in the War Room studio and made headlines all over the place. Ended up in the New York Times Politico because Steve Bannon told James that Elon Musk was, quote, a parasitic illegal immigrant and actually much more so. James, first of all, thank you so much for joining us Today.
- [64:15]
James Billow
Thank you. Pleasure to be on.
- [64:16]
Ryan Grim
Tell us about your meeting with Bannon. What is the war room studio like? What was it like being there talking to him in the flesh after the guilty plea? I think you talked to him just a couple of days after that all happened. How were his spirits?
- [64:31]
James Billow
He was in a great mood and that's a pretty garrulous chap. I'm sure that will come as no surprise whatsoever. But it was two days that he pled guilty to the Board of Wars. But more importantly, in his eyes there was nomination or confirmation of Robert F. Kennedy, which he was in a very good mood about. I think the thing with Bannon is that although he's red lines with the keys and the he's positive about the likes of Tulsi and Robert Effy joining the movement. He's very big on the Maha stuff in his words. He's like, I'm so glad we got the red pilled mums and the anti vaxxers that were all coming to join forces. I wasn't actually really sure how big this constituent. I asked him how many people do you the Tulsi and Kennedy's world bringing over? And he, he seemed to think it was somewhere between 5 and 10 million. All thanks to the radicalization of COVID which is maybe possible, maybe a bit of a stretch. But as for his studio, it was a complete mess. There was memorabilia all over the place, there was religious, a lot of reminders and signs to fight, fight, fight. I'm sure that pretty familiar to everyone but you know, he's very diligent about what he does. He has markings all over these little newspapers, Wall Street Journal, ft and then has MSNBC on the background because he, he better than anyone else on the right does. So yeah, he's a very interesting chap and it was good to, good to speak with him and spend so long with him him.
- [66:06]
Emily
One of the things you picked up on was his ambivalent relationship with Elon Musk at this point where on the one hand he says Elon Musk is a parasitic illegal immigrant and the tech bros need to be driven out of this coalition. On the other hand he says right now I trust Trump because Trump is using Musk as blunt force instrument to go after the administrative state. Now Bannon is not one for austerity. Now he'll talk about how the deficit and the debt are out of control and the country needs to do something about that. But he does not want to go after Medicaid, Social Security, Medicare. He does not want tax Cuts for the rich. He's fine with the tax cuts, no tax on tips, that sort of thing that he hates the administrative state. Musk and Russ Vote seem much more to be driving towards real austerity, like genuine austerity. What's Bannon's relationship to vote Trump's OMB director? Because like Bannon's anti austerity credit is undermined if he's too close to vote. So how should we think about where Bannon is on this, on this question?
- [67:27]
James Billow
I agree because his, his MAGA worldview coheres in a lot of respect. There's these kind of populist measures that he is in favor of enforcing. You know, the as you mentioned, no taxes on overtime and no tax on tips and that kind of thing while at the same time reduced spending in the defense industry of the Pentagon. The weird thing is he's actually got a very good relationship with Russell even though he is this kind of arch austerian. As you mentioned in the Wall Street Journal piece that before mine when they're doing a tour around his, his studio, he got a call from Russ Vo basically outlining you're the one in charge. No, don't do your job a bit further than that. He was quite keen to show off.
- [68:16]
Emily
I think he broke up, he broke up a little bit there. What was the, what was the call? What was the relationship there?
- [68:22]
James Billow
Oh, sorry. So he, he got a call from Russ folk basically asking for his advice and it was the effect of balance response that you're in charge here, you can decide. And I asked him a bit more about this in our meeting and he said he has a very good relationship with Russ Vote. He says, look, you're the one in charge now. Don't push, push you around. Doge is one that has been elected or appointed. You are the one in charge. Now. What I found strange was as you mentioned, russvo is this kind of ultra austerian tax libertarian type. And I said, well why have you got such a close relationship with this guy? And he's like he's been a part of the alliance for eight plus years. I trust him. It always seems to come down to this trust. And again with Trump, you employing all these measures like are you going to renew the 2017 Jobs and Tax cuts even though that's going to increase the deficits? You know, I just backed Trump to do the rep to make the right decision. I just backed Trump to keep muscle and the other wrangled. So does seem to be this weird paradox prediction and worldview that I can't head around. But yeah, he's a big fan of Russ Boat. He's a big fan of Project 2025. He said he loved the document. The only thing he didn't like were the entitlements and stuff like that. Which again, because that is a big part of what Russville is about.
- [69:36]
Emily
Well, Emily, can you help us with that? Like, how do we disentangle this? Because if Bannon does trust Russ Vote, then I'm out of here. Like, come on, like, what's going on here?
- [69:47]
Ryan Grim
Bannon's no longer.
- [69:48]
Emily
Yeah, I'm off the Bannon train.
- [69:49]
Ryan Grim
The hero. Well, so Russ Vote being trusted by Bannon is a really interesting point, James, because Bannon does sort of see things. You quote him in the story talking about how the enemy of his enemy is his friend. But also he very much has this trench warfare bunker mentality that people who have been around the conservative movement and have been around the Trump movement, you just sort of have. Like, Russ was a populist in the late aughts and early 2010s, when populism on the right looked like austerity. It looked like a lot of people here in D.C. said this is the time to deal with, with Social Security entitlement programs. They said the Tea Party was something to be interpreted as like a referendum on fiscal conservatism as opposed to maybe this sort of like primal cultural shout that I think we understand it to be now. And Russ was around. He was at like Republican Study Committee, around like Jeb Hensarling and Mike Pence actually at the time in those days. So Bannon sort of looks at Vote and says, this man has always had populist instincts. He's always been a part of the so called movement. And if you're around the conservative movement, people really do have this instinctive trust. And it sounds like. James, that's what you picked up on. I'm also curious if you could just tell us a little bit more if on the flip side of that, some of this is Bannon seeing Elon Musk. He's referred to him as somebody who's a convert. So he should be sitting in the back pew before. Was it sort of like volcanic visceral when you were talking to him about Elon Musk? We've used the parasitic illegal immigrant quote that made headlines. But he told you some more about Musk as well.
- [71:35]
James Billow
Yeah, and I just. About Russ Vote. I think that the left is often criticized for these ideological purity tests. And it's almost like the right Far the other way. They'll basically let anyone in the movement because grow and grow, even though it becomes quite difficult to paper over these quite noticeable contradictions between various groups. As for Musk, he was definitely at his most animated way about him. I don't know if you guys remember this when what interview? Bannon did an interview. I don't know if you remember this, but Bannon did an interview with an Italian newspaper just before Anointing day where he was asked about elo and that's when he is a truly evil guy under everything in my power to run him out of office before inauguration. He obviously failed in that. And I brought this up up and I said, well, what do you plan to do now? And again it's this weird paradox because he said, well, I think the last two, two weeks, two, three weeks of administration has confirmed that Musk is indeed evil. The Doge cuts being completely performative. They haven't accomplished thing. Oh, and by the way, he's an agent of Chinese influence. Well then why the hell are you staying office? Why aren't you pushing to get him out? And he said, I just trust Trump. Trump is going to keep an eye on him. He has served a purpose. He's as you mentioned, Ryan, he is this armor piercing shell in this administrative state because let's not forget that was one of the three totems of his 2017 platform. And he still is absolutely desperate to take on this, what he calls Praetorian guard. And if that means wrangling the Tet Bros and the world's richest man, then he's absolutely going to be doing it.
- [73:12]
Ryan Grim
James Billa of Unherd, thank you so much for your time this morning. I know you're probably inundated with people being like, damn. Tell me more about that conversation. So thank you.
- [73:24]
James Billow
Thanks.
- [73:26]
Carl Daikeler
This message is for you. You want to lose weight and get healthy and you want help to know where to start and what to do day by day. So you absolutely 100% get fast results step by step.
- [73:39]
Emily
Step.
- [73:39]
Carl Daikeler
I'm Carl Daikeler, CEO of BODI. Right now I'm inviting 100,000 people to get the results they want without expensive equipment or the hassle of a gym. It's the annual Love youe Body event. Last year we helped thousands of people succeed and this year we're helping even more. So it's time for you to join us and really follow through. For just 50 cents a day, we'll help you choose the best fitness program for you. Plus an easy to follow nutrition plan when and if you don't lose up to 10 to 15 pounds in your first month, you get your money back. Do you want to get results? Working out right at home in around a half hour a day for less than a cup of coffee? Join the Love youe Body event now. To get this special 50 cents a day offer, go to bodi.com and get signed up. That's BODI with an I.com ready to.
- [74:27]
Sagar Enjeti
Prioritize yourself in the new year? Your skin is a great place to start. Daim Beauty, founded by a master esthetician, is more than just a skincare company. With four skin conscious categories skincare, Beauty, Body care and Fragrance, Daim offers simple, spa worthy products that will help you enter 2025 with confidence. Whether you're revitalizing your regimen with nourishing products or building one from scratch, Dime makes it easy. The Work System our all in one best selling routine includes a cleanser of your choice, toner serums and moisturizers. Taking the guesswork out of skincare for your healthiest, happiest sk yet. Dime's commitment to clean ingredients and sustainable packaging ensures every product is as gentle on your skin as it is on the planet. With thousands of glowing five star reviews and a loyal community, the results speak for themselves. Revive your skin and give yourself the routine refresh you deserve by visiting dimebeautyco.com that's dimebeautyco.com your best skin awaits the New Year's here.
- [75:28]
Doha Mekki
It's the perfect time to refresh those household essentials and score some cash back rewards with Colgate Palmolive. From toothpaste to dish soap, chances are you've got Colgate Palmolive products on your shopping list and in your house. Right now we're talking brands like Colgate Soft Soap, Palmolive, Irish Spring, Fabuloso, and Tom's of Maine. And right now you can get up to a $10 digital Visa prepaid card when you buy up to $30 of Colgate Palmolive products, here's how it spend $20 on their products. Get $5 spend $30 get a $10 reward. All you do is shop your favorite brands, snap a pic of your receipt and upload it to cprewards.com it's so easy. That's cprewards.com so grab what you need. Or maybe try something new and get rewarded just for doing your usual shopping. And start your year fresh by earning cash back rewards with Colgate Palmolive rewards available. While supplies last, limit supply us only 1125 through 331 25. For full terms and conditions, visit cprewards.com.
- [76:28]
Ryan Grim
Well, drama continues in New York over Eric Adams, the agreement Eric Adams made with the Trump administration over migrant deportations. Now, Tom Homan, who is Donald Trump's border czar, was asked about some pushback from Alexandria Ocasio Cortez on Fox News and gave quite an answer. Let's roll this clip.
- [76:48]
Emily
Heard you talking about AOC over the weekend.
- [76:50]
Tom Homan
Do you believe she is breaking the law?
- [76:55]
Emily
I'll leave that up to doj. What I find disturbing is that any member of Congress wants to educate people how to evade law enforcement. You can claim you're educating those constitutional rights. Okay, you can keep that claim. What she in fact is doing is telling people, don't open your door, hide in your home, don't talk to ice. We're talking about people who are in the country legally committed a crime. They're a public safety threat. They've been convicted of serious crime and they've been ordered removed by a federal judge. So it's like AOC and others don't want ICE to enforce the laws that they enacted. She's a member of Congress. Let us enforce the laws you enacted. That's what we're supposed to do. You can't go after her. Do you think others should? No, I think I've asked doj, where is that line of impediment, of interference? Now, if someone stands in your way, prevent you from arresting somebody and put your hands on you, that's impediment. But what line is telling people to hide from mice, not open the door? Where do you cross that line on impediment? So I simply ask the Department of Justice, give us that line. You have talked to them about, about this. That's what you're saying? Absolutely. And so that's not an off the cuff response. He had said that multiple times previously and I think Fox there is seeing if he's going to clean that up or if he's actually, if this is where he stands. So what Holman is saying is that aoc, by giving clinics in her district or by talking openly on Instagram Live or whatever and saying, look, they're called know your rights trainings, like here, here are the rights that you have, you know, right to remain silent, blah, blah, blah, you know, the basic rights that we have in this country, which there's nothing in the Constitution that says our rights are restricted to citizens. If you, if you are in this country, you, you have these, you, you have these rights in general. So AOC responded by going after JD Vance and saying, you lied to the world in Munich. If this administration believed in free speech as you claimed, its leaders wouldn't be threatening members of Congress with criminal investigations for educating the public of their constitutional rights. And so the other element here that I think is interesting is that AOC has gotten a lot of mockery for previous suggestions that the Trump administration was going to come after her criminally. Like, don't be ridiculous. You're being hysterical. It's February. Like, they haven't been in office a month and a court. And Homan is talking to the Department of Justice, asking them whether or not she has broken the law.
- [79:34]
Ryan Grim
He's asking for the line between helping criminals evade prosecution or deportation. That's what he said. He's trying to figure out where the line is.
- [79:42]
Emily
There is, there is a crime called impeding, which if you are getting in the way of immigration officials, you can be charged with that. In fact, I covered this utterly insane case that was run by a Democratic Attorney general or democratic U.S. attorney under the Obama administration, Carmen Ortiz, who for nakedly political purposes went after this bureaucrat who, whose cleaning lady or nanny came to her, oh, yeah, and said, I think I don't have papers. What should I do? And the woman said something like, well, don't leave the country because if you do, you're not gonna be able to come back in and you should apply for a green card. And here's how you can do this. That which, like very standard, normal, like non criminal behavior. She charged that person with impeding and got a conviction out of it. It became a controversial case and she was criticized for it, but she got that. That was, however, a direct conversation with an in with one individual about a specific case. AOC talking to a community group full of people or talking on Twitter in general about your constitutional rights to me is crazy. If you want to talk about criminal behavior, we should talk about the Holman Eric Adams deal, which is still. The saga of which is still ongoing.
- [81:15]
Ryan Grim
And let's go to a one. We can put that up on the screen. This is a New York Times headline from Monday which reads, 4 Top New York City officials. This is the first paragraph. Said they would resign after the Justice Department moved to dismiss. Dismiss Mayor Eric Adams corruption case in apparent exchange for his help with President Trump's deportation agenda. The four officials oversee much of New York City government, and their departure is poised to blow a devastating hole in the already wounded administration of Mayor Eric Adams. Now, Brian, this is actually starting to wound the administration of Governor Kathy Hochul as she faces increasing calls to get rid of Eric Adams, which is within her power.
- [81:57]
Emily
Yes.
- [81:58]
Ryan Grim
I mean, Democrats are now increasingly calling on Kathy Hochul to get this guy out of there. She has to be careful, obviously, because Eric Adams previous immigration policies were wildly unpopular, not just in the city of New York, but around the entire state. So she doesn't want to look like she's, you know, this is retribution for Eric Adams cracking down on illegal immigration and assisting the Trump administration on one of its most popular policies. On the other hand, he's a huge albatross.
- [82:29]
Emily
Yeah. And the argument for removing him from office is that he ran and claimed that he would be carrying out his duties in the best interests of the voters who put him in office. But instead, in order to stay out of prison, he struck a deal with the Trump administration to be their lackey. The evidence for that claim comes from Tom Holman and Eric Adams. And Eric Adams, who said it on Fox and print. Let's put D2 up this fox and Friends admission. If he doesn't come through, you're up early anyway. If he doesn't come through, I'll be back in New York City and we won't be sitting on the couch. I'll be in his office up his butt saying, where the hell is the agreement we came to? So I want ICE to deliver. We're going to deliver for the safety.
- [83:15]
Ryan Grim
Of the people of this city, up his butt.
- [83:17]
Emily
And then he immediately, you see Eric Adams there? He's like, we're going to deliver for this, the city, the people of New York City. As if we didn't just see him say out loud, we have an agreement and if you break it, yeah, I'm gonna be up your butt.
- [83:30]
Ryan Grim
Yep. Which, anyway, we can put D3 on the screen. Eric Adams. This is another New York Times headline. It's now up to the judge whether to drop charges in the Adams case. So that can is kicked into, let's say, the ball. Keep giving the metaphors. Here goes into the court of the judge because Emil Bove, the acting dep, the attorney general, made that issue last Monday. So now it goes to the courts. Or by the way, Kathy Hochul could get rid of Eric Adams and a lot of this. But obviously it's still going to the Trump administration. Yeah. The Trump administration still has to still be litigated by the Trump administration or will be the backlash to the Trump administration's decision will still be litigated. Now Eric Adams is going to be in court today. That's news we learned yesterday talking about all of this.
- [84:22]
Emily
Now, as viewers of this program know, there is this Steven Donziger alternative.
- [84:28]
Ryan Grim
Go on.
- [84:28]
Emily
So when Donziger, and if you guys followed our program, you've seen Donziger interviewed. He's the Chevron attorney who was prosecuted as part of his successful Ecuadorian civil case against Chevron Chevron and then came after him criminally back here in the United States. The U.S. attorneys saw the evidence that Chevron had compiled and declined to go forward with prosecution. Chevron went to the judge anyway, and the judge decided to hire a private prosecutor who had links to Chevron also and enable that prosecutor, this private one, to prosecute on behalf of the government, a case that the government itself had said that they didn't want to bring. Donziger refused to turn over his documents and his phones and such, was found in contempt and did like a year plus or so in prison. So, of course, like that is a standard that is held for environmental attorneys who win victories against Chevron, not for or in general mayors. But it is a precedent that exists that this judge, if they felt like it could appoint, could go to a law firm and say, look, I think I've looked at this indictment and it's rock solid. Get a private prosecutor. That would be funny. What would the Justice Department do then? Bove is on a firing rampage. Just yesterday asked for what's a prosecutor named Chang? I forget the first.
- [86:13]
Ryan Grim
This is D6. Yeah. If we put D6 up on the screen. This is another senior US prosecutor resigned citing a demand to probe Biden era conduct. This is Denise Chung, who supervised criminal cases at the U.S. attorney's office in Washington. According to Reuters, said she had been ordered to open a probe into a contract that she did not identify and that she believed the request was not supported by evidence.
- [86:34]
Emily
This was about the EPA thing where. Where the EPA on the way out had set up this arrangement where nonprofits were going to be executing the Inflation Reduction Act's mandates. And so they moved the money out. There was a Project Veritas video that came out where some Biden person was saying, we're throwing the gold bars off the Titanic, as we were thinking.
- [87:01]
Ryan Grim
It appears that they actually really were.
- [87:02]
Emily
Yes. However, lawfully. Lawfully. It's like Congress appropriated the money and directed it to be spent. And their fear was that if they didn't spend it, then the next administration would block it from being spent, which would undermine Congress's lawfully executed appropriations. And so they moved them out quickly. And so Chang said, I don't think that you have enough to open a grand jury here. And then Bove said, well then I want your. No, it wasn't Bove. It was Martin who said. Ed Martin said, I want your resignation. So she tendered it, although it did seem like she was willing to work with the FBI to try to go to the banks to get the money back.
- [87:45]
Ryan Grim
It's not impossible to me that there was potentially misconduct and there should be stuff looked into when you have people talking like gold bars off the Titanic. But I think actually this brings us to the point that I wanted to make, which is this is in D5. Some of this I think people on the right are correct to assume is litmus tests for loyalists. They're sort of looking to push for self deportations in the earliest days of Trump's 2.0 DOJ. And Byron York in the Washington examiner had a pretty good piece walking through what substantive argument there may have been for dropping the case against Eric Adams, comparing it to the overzealous prosecution of Bob McDonnell, even Chris Christie. Some of this has been bipartisan, by the way, just cases that end up going nowhere against politicians. And I think this is interesting because Jason Willock in the Washington Post wrote on the quote, underwhelming charges against Eric Adams, but said this was a hugely botched operation by the Trump administration, which was making this sort of thin case about election interference, that you're not allowed to investigate politicians when the voters have the potential to cast ballots about this politician, or that this was just about the illegal immigration deal. You know, it's more valuable. This is what Emil Bove said in a letter that was very widely circulated back in forth with Sassoon, who resigned. We covered this last week with Crystal, that it was more valuable to get Adams cooperation on migrant deportations than it was to prosecute him for this crime. So a lot of people on the right, I think correctly see the DOJ as a place where a lot of career politicians are very hostile to Donald Trump. They're hostile to people who are loyalists to Donald Trump and they want to purge the DOJ of those people. And some of these measures are going to be ways that, that force people to kind of self deport and they have no problem with that whatsoever. On the other hand, there's probably a legitimate case to be made that this is part of a decade plus long pattern of prosecutors at the Justice Department putting politicians in the crosshair. And some of these cases end up falling apart. The Bob McDonald case is a really good example. Eric Adams is clearly corrupt.
- [90:20]
Emily
There's.
- [90:20]
Ryan Grim
There's absolutely no question that Eric Adams is corrupt. There isn't like some Russiagate thing that's going to be unraveled here.
- [90:29]
Emily
So is McDonnell, right?
- [90:31]
Ryan Grim
Yeah. I mean, he's taking. Yes, but the cases suck. And I think that's a legitimate point that then got, I think, unfortunately, because of the Trump administration doesn't mean the media coverage was great, but because of the Trump administration. Administration lost because it was clearly a partisan move. It was clearly about Eric Adams supporting the partisan ends of Donald Trump. So you end up in the death spiral. Once again, if you're trying to clean up this banana republic death spiral in the Justice Department with partisan maneuvers, it doesn't end up working.
- [91:10]
Emily
Right. And what I think is going on here is just more ganglands stuff where the Trump Justice Department is trying to figure out who's going to be unquestionably loyal to Trump. And so they came up with a completely unethical and absurd thing for them to do, which is to drop the charges against this guy in exchange for him doing your policy bid bidding, which to somebody who works at the Justice Department has gone through all the legal brainwashing about their ethics and brainwashing in a good way. I think literal Washington get clean with this stuff. You don't do that. Daniel Sassoon's letter is well said on this, but it's obvious that's not how the Department of Justice sees itself. So to order the Department of Justice to explicitly do that, that is to root out, weed out all of the people who have a conscience and to have left only the ones who are like, yeah, I'll do it in the same way that there's a gang initiation, you have to go out and shoot an innocent civilian.
- [92:26]
Ryan Grim
I'm sure some people inside the DOJ are frustrated with these prosecutions falling apart and appeal and all of that. So maybe there are some people, maybe there's some good attorneys internally. Sassoon actually may have been one of them. Someone who stuck around initially who were sort of frustrated by these processes and are open to changing them. But, yeah, it took what I think is a pretty good opportunity to make a case about bipartisan, overzealous prosecutions. I mean, this goes back to. Goes back a long time. But you can look at Comey and Martha Stewart. Like, there are just all kinds of examples of this stuff going on at the DOJ for the FBI to. For a really long time. So it just, this was a very, very poor partisan way to make the argument. And that just isn't encouraging in terms of the Trump administration's ability to clean up the DOJ in a way that makes it neutral, responsive to the president. But like justice should be blind. This just ended up landing in a very different way. Even though I think one thing that's being missed in the conversation is that there have been been, and this does appear to be a somewhat overzealous prosecution, an underwhelming case on the very narrow, specific legal question. The broader question, is he corrupt? Clearly, he is corrupt. There's plenty of evidence in the indictment that is plain as day on that.
- [93:48]
Emily
And in related news, the Trump administration just announced that they do not plan to follow the Rhode island federal judge's order that they restate start, USAID and Foreign service funding. Their argument is that go f off. Basically the way that they're couching it in their reply is we are going to continue to evaluate on a case by case basis. So now it's kind of up to that judge who's going to say, okay, well I made my order. How am I going to enforce it? We'll, we'll see.
- [94:30]
Carl Daikeler
This message is for you. You want to lose weight and get healthy and you want help to know where to start and what to do day by day. So you absolutely 100% get fast results step by step. I'm Carl Daikler, CEO of BODI. Right now I'm inviting 100,000 people to get the results they want without expensive equipment or the hassle of a gym. It's the annual Love your Body event. Last year we helped thousands of people succeed and this year we're helping even more. So it's time for you to join us and really follow through. For just 50 cents a day, we'll help you choose the best fitness program for you plus an easy to follow nutrition plan. And if you don't lose up to 10 to 15 pounds in your first month, you get your money back. Do you want to get results working out right at home in around a half hour a day for less than a cup of coffee. Coffee. Join the Love youe Body event now. To get this special 50 cents a day offer, go to bodi.com and get signed up. That's body with an I.com ready to.
- [95:30]
Sagar Enjeti
Prioritize yourself in the new year. Your skin is a great place to start. Dime Beauty, founded by a master esthetician, is more than just a skincare company. With four skin conscious categories, Skincare, beauty, body care and fragrance. DAIM offers simple, spa worthy products that will help you enter 2025 with confidence. Whether you're revitalizing your regimen with nourishing products or building one from scratch, Dime makes it easy. The work system our all in one best selling routine includes a cleanser of your choice, toners, serums and moisturizers. Taking the guesswork out of skincare for your healthiest, happiest skin. Yet. Dime's commitment to clean ingredients and sustainable packaging ensures every product is as gentle on your skin as it is on the planet. With thousands of glowing five star reviews and a loyal community, the results speak for themselves. Revive your skin and give yourself the routine refresh you deserve by visiting dimebeautyco.com that's dimebeauty co.com your best skin awaits.
- [96:30]
Doha Mekki
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- [97:32]
Ryan Grim
Let'S move on to Lina Khan and other news about justice and Trump 2.0. We have a great guest and we're excited to talk about the big win for Lina Khan yesterday.
- [97:45]
Emily
All right, stick around for that. Yesterday, Trump's FTC chair put out a major new announcement that he was going to keep in place the merger guidelines that had controversially been put into place originally by Biden's FTC chair Lina Khan. And put this first element up on the screen. This is Andrew Ferguson saying, look, today I informed the FTC staff that the 23 merger guidelines are in effect and will serve as the framework for our agency's merger review analysis. These guidelines build on previous guidelines and many decades of case law. That stability is important for enforcement Agencies in the business community can roll the rest of that so people can read it, pause it, and read it if they're watching. But one of get reaction from Doha Meki, who served as the Biden administration's chief in the antitrust division towards the end and as the deputy chief in the antitrust division through, I guess, most of his tenure. And you've been working with Lina Khan for a long time towards this day, towards this idea that there would be a new bipartisan consensus around antitrust and how the government ought to approach mergers. So, first of all, were you surprised that Ferguson said, okay, you know what? We're sticking with what Lina Khan outlined and then tell us why it matters.
- [99:16]
Ryan Grim
Sure.
- [99:16]
Krystal Ball
So this was not hugely surprising for those of us who have worked in and around the antitrust agencies.
- [99:22]
Emily
Once Ferguson became chairman, it was a.
- [99:23]
Krystal Ball
Signal that I think it was a great. So let me just back up and say, you know, I worked in the antitrust division of the DOJ under Barack Obama as a career public servant, and I actually worked for Donald Trump's first head of the antitrust division, a guy named Macon Delrahim, and then had a great honor to serve as principal deputy to Jonathan Kanter and then ultimately lead the antitrust division myself at the end of the Biden administration. And so I have seen for a very long time this bipartisan role towards an antitrust consensus that really prizes going back to first principles. And I think that Donald Trump has made a really important down payment in designating Andrew Ferguson chair of the FTC and nominating a woman named Gail Slater to lead the narrative antitrust division of the DoJ. And what I know of both of them is that they are fiercely conservative. They have a deep fidelity to law. And that means going back to statutes. Right. The text of statutes, going back to Supreme Court and appellate precedent. And that's good news for the American people. When we drafted the merger guidelines, which is a process that started in 2022, we undertook a deep review of all of the Supreme Court and appellate cases that had ever been decided on merger antitrust challenges and attempted to write out a document that gave transparency to the business community about how it was that we were going to undertake merger analysis. And for the first time ever, ever since 1968, those guidelines actually cited case law and so on that telling.
- [101:09]
Emily
What'd they cite for Vibes? Just vibes, basically, from the University of Chicago or something.
- [101:15]
Krystal Ball
There is no citation to case law. Even though other guidance documents, such as the now withdrawn 2000 Competitor Collaboration Guidelines, cited law, the merger guidelines never did. And so this is a deeply conservative principle that there's no antitrust exception to statutory interpretation or, you know, judicial precedent in antitrust. And so again, this is not hugely surprising. And I won't necessarily agree with every decision that the new administration makes, but I think this is a really important one and a good one.
- [101:51]
Ryan Grim
Well, even the Federalist Society, people associated with Federalist Society just this week were looking at the con merger guidelines and saying this. These are pretty reasonable. So maybe if you could tell us just a little bit about some context. What were these merger guidelines? What did they do? And the second tag along part of that question I have is does this send a real chill to the consumer welfare standard people on the right? I mean, I'm sure you're friends with many of the people in legal circles who have for years been using consumer welfare standard. It's fallen out of fashion in a lot last decade. Ish. But now when you have a Republican president's FTC starting to look at things this way, it seems like a pretty big shift.
- [102:35]
Krystal Ball
Well, let me go give you some history about merger guidelines. So the first merger guidelines were promulgated in 1968. A guy named Don Turner, who led the antitrust division then under lbj, gave a guidance document that attempted to distill how it was that the antitrust agencies review mergers. For your listeners, there's a certain number of mergers, the biggest mergers, highest dollar value, that have to be notified to the antitrust agencies every year. And so there's a long tradition of providing transparency to the public about how it is that the agencies decide the legality of mergers. And they've been updated continually. Nearly every project has updated the merger guidelines, at least at one point in their administration. And that was true of the Reagan administration, the Clinton administration, you know, even the first Trump administration updated something called vertical merger guidelines that have since been superseded.
- [103:37]
Ryan Grim
Yes.
- [103:38]
Emily
And that meant. Yeah, lay out for people what that meant because it is important.
- [103:42]
Krystal Ball
Yeah, it's very, very important. So you, you know, making clear that when a merger combines two companies and reduces the number of available options for consumers or employers, for workers, or any number of ways that mergers can really threaten competition. You know, the guidance documents help the public and the business community in particular, kind of gauge for themselves how it is that the agencies are likely to look at that merger. And so insofar as the Business community was using guidance documents as a sort of litmus test for what kinds of mergers would be permissible. I think this is likely a very important development for the business community. I remember in 2023 when they were released, there were the sort of usuals who heavily criticized the document and attempted to frame them as radical, which is unusual considering that it was very clear what kind of case law the agencies.
- [104:54]
Emily
How did they change? So, like for decades, it seems like the merger guideline, including from Obama, was cool, do it, we don't care.
- [105:04]
Krystal Ball
I'm sure those folks would dispute that.
- [105:07]
Emily
You were there though. I mean, I mean, what was it like to try to flag a merger back then?
- [105:13]
Krystal Ball
You know, there are ways in which there has been a creep and an increased permissiveness about the kinds of mergers that are lawful. And what we saw when we came in was that, you know, there were routinely mergers bound up by something called consent decrees, right? Settlements that ultimately offered no real protection to the public.
- [105:37]
Emily
So we'll allow this merger if you agree to do this thing.
- [105:40]
Krystal Ball
Correct.
- [105:40]
Emily
And then they wouldn't do the thing Correct.
- [105:42]
Krystal Ball
And facially you would have illegal mergers being notified to the agencies. And, you know, it raised real questions about why these mergers were being proposed in the first place. But in these merger guidelines, we tried our best to be very clear. Again, always summoning the law and going back to first principles about when a merger might harm workers, when a merger.
- [106:06]
Emily
And that was new to care about.
- [106:07]
Ryan Grim
Workers in a rather than consumer.
- [106:10]
Krystal Ball
They were contemplated in the prior version of the merger guidelines. But these made it very, very clear, right? There was no ambiguity about the 2023 merger guidelines. There are also problems in digital markets, right? Big tech mergers, mergers, something called killer acquisitions, platform mergers, killer acquisitions.
- [106:34]
Emily
That's where a tech company or something goes out and buys a competitor and.
- [106:37]
Krystal Ball
Just kills it and then shelves it or mothballs it or folds it into their existing offerings and kills maybe something that they had in development. So there's all kinds of ways that you can have problematic mergers and digital market. And there was really no framework for thinking about those kinds, or no clear framework rather for thinking about how those kinds of mergers can harm real people.
- [107:05]
Ryan Grim
Harm innovators, especially things like Facebook. It's not exactly the same thing as a monopoly with a hard product.
- [107:11]
Krystal Ball
Exactly. And that, I think was the absurdity of these really old paradigms that haven't existed for a long time. I mean, if you're thinking about every merger as a widget manufacturer acquiring something or merging with another widget manufacturer, I Mean, it's ridiculous to think that every merger is horizontal or vertical, which are these, again, technocratic terms that just don't mean anything in the modern economy. And so I think that these guidelines, again rooted in law, which should make everybody happy, really attempted to take on market reality in the modern market. Right. The way ordinary people participate in our market economy was really reflected in these merger guidelines.
- [108:03]
Emily
And so when you were chief of the antitrust division, you put out a number of orders and blocked some mergers that pissed off a lot of powerful people. And one of the reactions to that, we talked about this on Monday. We can put this next element up the screen. Want to get your take on it? Was, was this really wild Breitbart article, Biden antitrust holdover Doha Mekhi continued woke agenda Instead of taking on big tech, people can go back and look at our Monday piece where we dissect the evidence laid out in this Breitbart piece. So without getting too much into it to go over it again, curious, where do you think this came from? What, how, like, what's going on here?
- [108:51]
Krystal Ball
You know, it's hard to speculate where these kinds of things come from. But I'll say that, you know, when I was at the antitrust division, we took on powerful interests and made clear that they too had to obey the law. And it's not at all surprising for anyone who's been in our line of work that sometimes it can get vitriolic, that sometimes companies can take it personally. And so I'll leave others to speculate about the exact origins. I'll just say that this sort of thing is not surprising, right, because big entrenched, powerful interests often say things that aren't true, attack you personally. And we always took the view when we were running the antitrust division that it was our job to absorb that kind of blowback, unpleasant as it might be because we were insulating a career staff prosecutors, economists, statisticians, paralegals who were doing the really difficult work of holding lawbreakers accountable.
- [110:00]
Ryan Grim
Well, and what's interesting about this? Well, there are many things interesting about this Breitbart article, but what I find interesting is, is the point I think Ryan was alluding to. It sounds like some comm shop for a really powerful business interest pitched this to Breitbart. Because you dissect the story as a journalist, you're looking at this. This is very thin. It's not a well substantiated story. It says at one point, quote, none of Mackey's actions have anything to do with countering big tech. And it singles one decision that you made a lawsuit just before Trump took office. But it looks like a really thin piece of oppo that was pitched to Breitbart, which sort of a lot of conservative media outlets, speaking to somebody who's been in conservative media for a long time, have that sort of reflex to publish that oppo from certain comm shops that represent business interests. And I guess I'm curious if you think that this wedge the business community continues to try and drive between, like an Andrew Ferguson camp and your camp, is it getting more powerful now that Elon Musk and other massive CEOs have so much sway in the Trump administration and the Republican Party more broadly? Or is what Ferguson did just yesterday, just this week, early signs about antitrust from the Trump administration? Is that a really positive indication, actually, that this new ideological commitment to rethinking prior standards is real and here to stay on the right?
- [111:32]
Krystal Ball
You know, I think there's, I've heard sometimes that there's a realignment of a kind happening in antitrust, and I feel like I've really had a front row seat to some of that because, again, I was counsel to Donald Trump's first head of the antitrust division and principal deputy to Biden's head of the antitrust trust division before leading the institution myself. And this is not at all surprising, but it's hugely interesting. I think both parties have a sort of factionalism that is playing out, and so many people have observed, myself included, that when Donald Trump ran For President in 2016, there was an element of populism that was real. Right. It was very interesting.
- [112:18]
Emily
Did you see it evolving in the first Trump administration?
- [112:21]
Krystal Ball
Absolutely, absolutely.
- [112:22]
Emily
As somebody who was working in it, yeah, absolutely.
- [112:25]
Krystal Ball
The Google suit, exactly.
- [112:27]
Emily
How did your wokeness slip past that?
- [112:31]
Krystal Ball
I saw really bold actions that really started to take hold at the end of Obama and really started to manifest as departures from traditional kind of libertarian orthodoxy. And so that's the Visa Plaid merger challenge, the AT&T time Warner merger challenge, the filing of the Google search lawsuit, which is the Most significant Section 2 monopolization tech lawsuit since Microsoft in 1998. And so even in the Democratic Party, there are these forces where you, you know, it's not really like center left, you know, liberal progressive. I mean, there are interests that really prize big powerful corporations and folks who really want to return power to the people. And I see elements of that on the right as well. I was listening to a podcast, Ross Douthat and Steve Bannon on his podcast.
- [113:38]
Ryan Grim
Neil Brandeisian, Steve Brann, you know, certainly.
- [113:42]
Krystal Ball
That was not on my bingo card. He called himself. He called himself a neobrandeisian. But I mean, really, I think even that doesn't do enough to really surface how interesting his commentary was about the techno feudalists. And again, I sort of. I see this potential factionalism in their own party. I see it in conservative organizations. I see it in the conservative legal movement. And so I think that. I think it remains to be seen how that will play out. But I know that there are certain good appointments and decisions that we are likely to see, even if they are in contradiction with other decisions that the new administration makes.
- [114:29]
Emily
And Lina Khan herself commented on this also. She said the 2023 merger guidelines emphasize fidelity to law, reflect modern market realities, and are increasingly being adopted by courts. Good to see. Bipartisan commitment to rigorous analysis for policing mergers and bipartisan commitment, I think, is the key term there. When we talked about this on Monday with Sager, one of the points he made is like, look, if you think that the right is going to credit the left here, then you're being naive here. It's not gonna happen. On the other hand, you do have people like Hawley, Ted Cruz, even, to some extent, J.D. vance saying nice things about Lina Khan. So I'm curious and how much you can tell us about this, how much bipartisan work is being done to forge a coalition? Because for 40 years or so, so there was a bipartisan consensus whereby no matter which party won, whether it was Reagan or Clinton or whoever, Bush, Obama, the approach to antitrust and labor, to some degree, was going to be roughly the same. You'd have three Democrats on the panel and two on two Republicans. They'd switch. You'd have three Republicans and two Democrats. But the decisions that would come through the various commissions, FTC and others would be basically the same. And I know that there's been some effort to make that the case, but in reverse, that there'll be a bipartisan consensus that actually, no, the populist approach is the one we're gonna do then, whether it's Hawley or Warren or Sanders or whoever. So how much actual coordination is there? Are you guys. Do you agree and you kind of are moving in your separate lanes forward, or are you guys talking?
- [116:21]
Krystal Ball
You know, when I was at the antitrust division, I made it a point to go into explicitly conservative spaces to talk about why antitrust matters for people of all stripes. And I always felt like I had a warm welcome in those places. You know, whether folks on the right, old credit, you know, Democrats, liberals, others for, you know, intellectual contributions to that movement. I just think that misses the point. Right. It's not really about credit. Right. The American people are suffering. I saw that firsthand. And when I went out and talked to farmers, right. Or invited in ranchers from South Dakota, I wasn't thinking about, oh, well, this is a red state. I was thinking about these are my, my fellow Americans and they're being screwed over by powerful corporate interests, by the oligarchs of whatever industry, including agriculture. And so that really means something to people. And I think that's the important thing. Right. Working towards a new consensus. Again, I think it remains to be seen whether we ultimately get there, but I think we're seeing movement and progress. And this is a really exciting, exciting thing to watch.
- [117:38]
Emily
Well, Doha, thanks for joining us.
- [117:40]
Ryan Grim
Seriously, thank you.
- [117:40]
Emily
You do an impressive job covering up your WOKE agenda.
- [117:43]
Ryan Grim
Yes. I couldn't even tell.
- [117:45]
Emily
Can't even see it, but it's in there somewhere.
- [117:47]
Ryan Grim
Said that you quoted Dubois and this is your WOKE agendas. You were approvingly quoting one of the preeminent black intellectuals.
- [117:56]
Emily
They described him as black Marxist thinker.
- [117:59]
Ryan Grim
I think is what they said.
- [118:00]
Krystal Ball
All very absurd. Very, very absurd.
- [118:02]
Ryan Grim
Well, we appreciate him.
- [118:04]
Krystal Ball
Thank you.
- [118:04]
Emily
All right, up next, speaking of wokeness, we got a little Dave Chappelle segment. Stick around for that.
- [118:09]
Ryan Grim
Well, Dave Chappelle is putting Saturday Night Live on blast, actually, during the big 50th anniversary celebration week of all times. We can go ahead and put this element up on the screen. He alleged in a recent comedy set, according to a journalist who was there, that SNL producers told him he could not talk about Gaza and he could not talk about transgenderism when he hosted the show. I think it was last fall, somewhere around the election. And Dave Chappelle, this is described in the Deadline article that's up on the screen as sort of a quote, shocking instance of potential censorship. I believe he ended up, and I think Deadline notes this talking about Palestine in that show and went fairly viral for it. But the idea is that he wasn't supposed to wade into those controversial topics. It is a pretty interesting allegation against Saturday Night Live Live. Ryan Chappelle has obviously become really popular on the right. I mean, he's always been popular with, actually everyone, probably more popular with the left than the right in the past, but he's always been popular. Everyone likes Dave. He's the man. But he's gotten a lot of traction on the right because he's been willing, over the last half decade plus to, from a position of the left, say some things about, like, trans ideology, whether it's like, locker rooms, bathrooms that the right really approves of. So now he's saying SNL didn't want him to talk about Gaza from the left or trans issues from the right. Sort of interesting.
- [119:39]
Emily
It's funny, you remember we used to have a deal that if I made you talk about an Israel bloc.
- [119:45]
Sagar Enjeti
Yes.
- [119:45]
Emily
Then you would make me talk about a trans bloc, because that was several years ago. Whenever we launched this program, those were the two most, most difficult issues for each of us to talk about.
- [119:59]
Ryan Grim
To navigate.
- [120:00]
Emily
Right. To navigate in a way that is sensitive. Yeah. So he talks about. He's speaking directly to Trump, and he's like, look, you need to take this seriously. The whole world's counting on you. Even the people that hate you are counting on you. And he said, whether it's the people in the Palisades or the people in Palestine, you gotta treat them with dignity. And you're also clearly making a reference to Trump's musing about ethnically cleansing the entire region, saying, come on, man, what are you doing? Ridiculous.
- [120:37]
Ryan Grim
Well, when he said that wasn't it. It was. Before Trump rolled out the Gaza plan.
- [120:42]
Emily
I thought it was. What was it?
- [120:44]
Ryan Grim
I thought it was back around the fall.
- [120:46]
Emily
Oh, that's right. That's right. Yeah. Yeah, that's right. Right.
- [120:48]
Ryan Grim
Either way, that's something that. On the table. But yes. So did you catch, by the way, any of Saturday Night Live's 50th anniversary?
- [120:56]
Emily
Not much.
- [120:57]
Ryan Grim
Did you watch? I did watch. Some of it was pretty good. They did a great, shockingly good In Memoriam for all of their politically incorrect sketches over the years. They had to blur out. One of the jokes was they had to blur out every time someone in SNL to like, a version of blackface rolled the clip.
- [121:18]
Emily
Is that, like, pretty often Jimmy Fallon on there or was his somewhere else?
- [121:22]
Ryan Grim
I thought Jimmy Kimmel.
- [121:24]
Emily
Oh, is it Jimmy Kimmel?
- [121:25]
Ryan Grim
Jimmy Kimmel is the. Yeah.
- [121:26]
Emily
I don't want to libel anybody. I don't want to slander anybody.
- [121:28]
Ryan Grim
What you just did was offensive to the Irish, even though you are Irish.
- [121:32]
Emily
Yeah, that's right. I can say it.
- [121:33]
Krystal Ball
I'm Irish.
- [121:34]
Ryan Grim
But anyway, I think the. I guess from Saturday Night Live's perspective, if I'm Saturday Night Live and I bring Dave Chappelle on the show, the benefit of Dave Chappelle is just letting Dave Chappelle do Dave Chappelle.
- [121:46]
Emily
Yeah. If you Invite Dave Chappelle. Just let him rip. Literally.
- [121:50]
Ryan Grim
Don't edit anything, just give him a microphone on the stage.
- [121:53]
Emily
I'm not gonna listen to you anything.
- [121:54]
Ryan Grim
Say your prayers and let it go.
- [121:56]
Emily
Yeah, and he's just. And he's gonna narc you out anyway.
- [121:58]
Ryan Grim
Which appears to be exactly what happened. So, I mean, listen, it's interesting that, to me, it's interesting that, that Chappelle's SNL appearance, I think at this point is a couple of months ago. Cuz to me it just seems like the culture has shifted so much in the last couple of months. Like the last month in particular, that, like, vibe shift that people sensed when Trump, I think especially after Donald Trump was almost assassinated and you started to see different figures in pop culture come out and say they were pro Trump and you started to see his campaign doing really well. It looked like there was something under the surface where culture was about to just kind of accept Trump and a lot of people were going to be just more open to him. Joe Rogan comes out and endorses him. Dana White starts campaigning with him and all of that. It's just interesting to see how SNL was thinking of it even just not that long ago, because I'm not sure, I don't know how different that would be if he were to come back and host like next week.
- [122:55]
Emily
But yeah, you're right, that was a pretty bit that I was thinking of.
- [122:59]
Ryan Grim
It's a good bit.
- [123:00]
Emily
It is a very good bit.
- [123:01]
Krystal Ball
Yeah.
- [123:01]
Ryan Grim
This must have been January. Yeah, yeah, because it was.
- [123:05]
Emily
Yeah.
- [123:06]
Ryan Grim
I think he hosted right in the.
- [123:07]
Emily
New year and he was. Yes. And because he's from Ohio, you know, and hangs out around there, he always seemed to have his finger on the pulse a little bit more than, you know, probably a lot of the other people over at Saturday Night Live.
- [123:24]
Ryan Grim
Yeah, he was referring to his. When he hosted the show in January. So, yeah, he really said, well, this is how he ended the San Francisco set, by the way. He said, give the Jews a break, free Palestine, before literally dropping the mic, according to the reporter at San Francisco Gate who was actually there. And this is where he said to Trump in the monologue back in January, quote, please do better next time. Do not forget your humanity, and please have empathy for displaced people, whether they're in Palestine, AIDS or in Palestine. He also said, I'm tired of being controversial. I'm trying to turn over a new leaf. It was way too soon to try to joke about a catastrophe like that. This one hits close to home. So it was a I mean, it was a really good monologue. But he's now accusing SNL of censoring it. Literally of censoring it.
- [124:15]
Emily
Although it's live, he could do whatever he wants. What are they gonna do?
- [124:18]
Ryan Grim
He probably wants to get paid.
- [124:20]
Emily
Did you get paid for that?
- [124:21]
Ryan Grim
I'm sure.
- [124:22]
Emily
What do you think?
- [124:23]
Ryan Grim
It's a good one.
- [124:23]
Emily
I thought it was one of those things you just do because it's like an honor.
- [124:25]
Ryan Grim
It's a promotion. Yeah. Who knows?
- [124:27]
Emily
Like the Super Bowl. Do you get paid for the super bowl halftime show?
- [124:30]
Ryan Grim
No idea. I'm sure you get something other than publicity.
- [124:34]
Emily
You gotta pay your dancers at least.
- [124:36]
Ryan Grim
Yeah, we should be entertainment lawyers next career. Anyway, interesting tidbit from Dave Chappelle that we talked earlier about how little coverage there was of this wild Miami beach shooting. It's just. I'm just wondering, Ryan, with the democratization of media, like Dropsite, for example, Dropsite's doing so well. How much longer media gets away with sort of being able to own the narrative on these topics? Because Dave Chappelle's gonna put you on blast. He feels comfortable. He feels like there's a permission structure culturally now, where he looks lived. Yeah, he's okay. He made it.
- [125:17]
Emily
Yes. You have a T shirt. Yeah.
- [125:20]
Ryan Grim
Well, anyway, on that note, thank you so much for tuning in to today's edition of Counterpoints. Reminder, go to breakingpoints.com to subscribe for a premium membership of the show. You get the whole thing right to your inbox every day without any commercial breaks, ad breaks on YouTube or podcast platforms. So we appreciate everybody for tuning in. Appreciate you for subscribing. Thanks for tuning in.
- [125:41]
Emily
All right, see you guys soon.
- [125:42]
Ryan Grim
See you soon.
- [125:49]
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