← Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar
Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar
3/11/25: Worst Presidential Market Crash Since 09', Trump War On Massie Over Spending, Israel Freaks As US Says Not A Client State, Judge Blocks Gaza Protester Deportation
01:09:00
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- [00:00]
Matt
Hi, I'm Matt. And I'm Leah and we're from the Grown Up Stuff podcast. And just in time for tax season. On this week's episode, we're chatting with CPA Lisa Green Lewis about how small businesses can tackle their taxes using TurboTax Business.
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Leah
A Forbes study mentioned that a whopping 93% of small businesses overpay their taxes and 17% of Gen Zers believed that you could write off any expense as a business expense.
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Matt
So can't blame them.
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Leah
It's really important to do your taxes.
- [00:33]
Matt
Listen to Grown up stuff on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your favorite podcasts. Grown Up Stuff At Ameca Insurance we know it's more than just a car. It's the two door coupe that was.
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Leah
There for your first drive.
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Matt
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Leah
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Matt
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Leah
Lineup 48 hours prior to the public. Don't miss your chance to make February 2026 unforgettable.
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Matt
Visit topshelfcountrycruise.com that's topshelf countrycruise.com hey guys, Sager and Krystal here.
- [01:46]
Leah
Independent media just played a truly massive role in this election and we are so excited about what that means for the future of the show.
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Matt
This is the only place where you can find honest perspectives from the left and the right that simply does not exist anywhere else.
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Leah
So if that is something that's important to you, Please go to BreakingPoints.com, become a member and you'll get access to our full shows unedited ad free and all put together for you every morning in your inbox.
- [02:10]
Matt
We need your help to build the future of independent news media and we hope to see you@breakingpoints.com Good morning everybody. Happy Tuesday. Have an amazing show for everybody today. What do we have? Crystal?
- [02:22]
Leah
Indeed we do. As per usual, many, many things are happening. Yesterday was the worst day of the year in the stock markets. We will get into what is going on there to the best of our ability and what the fallout could be. Republicans are scrambling to get a SPE bill passed to avoid a shutdown. And Trump is threatening a key holdout with a primary challenge. That would be Thomas Massie. So interesting drama there. Also some drama with our great ally Israel over US Negotiations directly with Hamas. We've also got a bunch of updates for you on that pro Palestine activist green card holder that the Trump administration arrested and starting with deportation. We've got a court update there and lots of news. So we'll break all of that down for you. We also have Elon and Bannon actually told by Trump to make up. So what's going on there in that key relationship? That's an interesting one. And Twitter was down for most of yesterday. Elon is claiming potentially Ukrainians were attacking it.
- [03:16]
Matt
We'll see, we'll explore.
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Leah
Who knows?
- [03:18]
Matt
I wouldn't put it past him. Also would like to see some evidence.
- [03:20]
Leah
Yeah, I don't trust anyone involved in that particular dispute. So we'll look at what we know there. I'm taking a look at Tesla, actually. I had to update my monologue because I woke up to the news that Trump is saying he's going to buy a Tesla to support the great and wonderful Elon Musk. So that's kind of funny. And we had an interview that we recorded yesterday with Brian Tyler Cohen. His channel is just absolutely blowing up as liberals are fleeing MSNBC and cnn. So we really wanted to talk to him about who he thinks his audience is, what they're interested in and you know, to what he attributes his success and the sort of failure of liberal outlets. So really interesting conversation.
- [03:56]
Matt
Yeah, I really enjoy talking to him. I think that Brian Midas Touch and a few others are really at vanguard of where the Democratic Party is right now and just observing, you know, here in Washington, everybody writes profiles about each other, but they're ignoring the actual stars on YouTube right now on the left who are not only exploding, but like leading a lot of the liberal energy. That's not on msnbc, it's not on cnn. So I really wanted to talk to Brian just about like what he thinks about the current moment, what he thinks the Democratic Party should do, his analysis of where things wrong. And he's an interesting guy and I think people will get a lot out of the conversation.
- [04:35]
Leah
Well, and he's also a guy with access. I mean.
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Matt
Yeah, that's right. I mean this guy was on the White House or on the Capitol Hill. Like literally last week he interviewed aoc. They're paying attention in an interesting way where he could be, if he wanted to be, one of the biggest, most important young people so called in the Democratic Party. So it's important to get to know who are these people? What do they want? Policy wise, politics wise, how do they think the last election went? Who are the right, you know, the new stars and all of that will be. So anyway, breaking points. We're trying to be here at the vanguard, literally where politics is. I'm fascinated by it. I really am. All right, Midas touch, guys. Ben, what's that guy's name? I can never say his last name. Whatever. Anybody. Ben, you should come on, too. I'll treat you fairly.
- [05:19]
Leah
We'll invite him.
- [05:20]
Matt
Yeah, I would love to talk to him. I really would. It's purely analytical. I'm just like, who are you? What do you guys want? You and a couple of brothers. You got the top podcast in the entire country. What's up with that? Right? What do you attribute your success to?
- [05:32]
Leah
Change.
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Matt
Absolutely fascinated. All right, let's start with the markets. As you said, it's been a absolutely dizzying 2472 week hours in the markets. Absolutely terrible start right now. It's the worst stock market performance for an American president in their opening days since 2009. And the White House is not exactly offering up quite a bit of confidence. Here is Kevin Hassett. He is the White House economic advisor, previously served in administration, downplaying the stock market drop, saying it's just a blip. Let's take a listen. If you're thinking about, like, what's going to happen to capital formation of the US if you take our cost of capital measures, it goes up 10, 11% over the next year. There are a lot of reasons to be extremely bullish about the economy going forward. But for sure, this quarter there are some blips in the data, including the negative GDP now, which are related both.
- [06:24]
Leah
To the Biden inheritance and to some.
- [06:26]
Matt
You know, timing effects that are happening ahead of tariffs. You don't think Trump owns any of that?
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Leah
I think, you know, even someone that was right in the middle, right in.
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Matt
The middle would not immediately attribute the soft. I'm seeing it on Twitter constantly.
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Leah
You know, how's this guy doing now? How's that feel? How's winning feel with the economy? And they're not tying it to Biden, Kevin. They're tying it to some of the uncertainty from the Trump administration.
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Matt
Well, let's be clear though, Joe, that last year the Biden numbers, we kept.
- [06:54]
Leah
Getting these great jobs numbers and then.
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Matt
By the end of the year, we see that they're revised down by a whole million. And so a Lot of the numbers that looked kind of good at the advance release weren't good in retrospect.
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Leah
Well, they were still pretty good. And that was a technical thing. No, even then.
- [07:08]
Matt
So it's just a blip. Just a blip. Don't worry about it. I'm not so sure that's the way that I would read it, especially when you take a look at the indices. Let's go and put this up there on the screen. So we got the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped some six points in the last month and a couple, I think 2 or 3% of that or sorry, 6% just in the last month and a couple of percent just yesterday. Let's go to the next one please. And let's take a look at that. Oh there's the Nasdaq. Nasdaq down 11% on the month, down full 4% yesterday. Nasdaq is a very tech heavy index. So that's another reason why you should pay attention. Let's go to the next one, the s and P500. And what do we see there? That's right, it's down 7.5% there in the last month. Keep in mind, things obviously could change, you know, by the time that we post this, but futures are not looking that great right now. I mean basically a 0.5% increase there in the S&P 500, but not erasing the multiple points that were dropped yesterday in the, in the overall index. And the most worrying part of this is it basically is making a reality of something that we really have been warning about here on this show now for several months, if not years, which is just the way that these indices are so heavily reliant on these so called magnificent seven stocks. And today is a very inauspicious day if you're a technology investor. Let's go and put this up there on the screen. Today is exactly 25 years to the day from when the dot com bubble burst. And if you read this, it's really interesting. What the dot com bus can tell us about today's AI boom is quote, today some investors are worried the same cycle is playing out when it comes to artificial intelligence. Even if that's the case, there is an important lesser for investors. Ultimately the early Internet hype did prove correct, but it took years for that to materialize. The economy was effectively in a recession. I went back and was reading some chapters from John Cassidy. He's a New Yorker reporter book and he wrote a book in 03 called Highly Recommend it and that book just nails the very Similar way that we think about Nvidia, about Google, about Meta, about not only the amount of capital that they were burning as much at the time, but in a similar way of the sky is the limit in the moonshot ideas that people had behind them. Now, not everything is as insane as diapers or priceline.com per se. But remember, even a modest correction of let's say 30, 40% for Nvidia would still leave it massively valuable. That's a huge percentage of the S&P 500. Same for the Nasdaq, for the Dow Jones, for the total market. And it affects everything going forward, just as the dot com bubble did as well. Interest rates, how Americans are thinking about their retirement, consumer spending. Don't forget how many of these dollars are flowing through the economy that are keeping up. Employment statistics, housing. I mean there's so many different downstream effects of what the dot com recession, which we effectively were in a recession for almost two years after that period. It was not a good time. Remember, we also had 9, 11, and even with that, there was a huge public bailout, but the markets did not recover for quite some time. So I am very worried about this situation. No, you know, it's not about the fact that rich people have lost a bunch of money. It's that especially today, America has a social contract. Our social contract is we don't have any social welfare beyond Social Security. We have the number and the number has got to go up because if it doesn't go up, then none of us can retire. And with that, Americans are very, very tuned in right now, just as they were back in 2008. It not only causes a lot of fear at the retirement level, it obviously restricts consumer spending, which is a disaster in an economy with 70%. Now, on top of that, we've got tariff threats, some that are literally supposed to go into effect today. And April 2nd is the big one. Donald Trump's words, reciprocal tariffs. That's right, all of that. Right now. Markets are spooked. Really, with the takeaway that I've seen on Wall street is he's not kidding around and this is bad for us. It could be good in the long run. Could be you need to sell it to us though. I remember the Biden administration saying, actually what you're seeing and hearing is in all that is actually okay, things are good at the fundamentals or look in the future for where things will be. Nobody in American politics has ever won a message with something like that. They need to have a lot of trust and a lot of faith if you're going to put them through a period of pain.
- [11:32]
Leah
Yeah. And certainly Donald Trump has a vastly greater ability to tell a story to the American public than Joe Biden did. But as of right now, there is nothing. And I mean, I think, you know, I have long thought that his policy was sort of insane and made no sense, especially given the economic landscape that we're facing today. But to your point, Sager, for Hassett to say like, oh, this is just a blip, yeah, sure, we got the hangover from the Biden administration. We're dealing with that. And maybe there's a little adjustment period as the tariffs kick in, et cetera. It's hard to imagine. Maybe he's right, but it's hard to imagine that's the case when you have no end in sight of the sort of tumult and chaos. So as Sara mentioned, you've got the imposition of the reciprocal tariffs coming into effect on April 2nd. So, you know, all of the tariffs that were rolled back with regard to Canada and Mexico, those are supposed to be put back on at that point, along with additional tariffs levied against countries around the world. So it's going to be an even larger action than the last one that he flirted with the last time we went through the tariffs. Are they on again, off again, et cetera. And also we should keep in mind, you know, we didn't roll back all of the tariffs on Canada and Mexico. Majority of them, the goods that are subject to USMCA were rolled back, but there's still a significant portion of goods coming in from those that are subject to tariffs. So you already have that. You have, as we're going to talk about in this show, a potential shutdown battle. How is that going to go? It looks like there continue to be some Republican holdouts. Are they going to ultimately buckle? The Democrats say that they are holding the line. So you've got that as well. And you've got Doge and Elon still doing their thing out there imposing austerity at a time when it looks like the economy is in danger of pulling back and even potentially retracting. If you believe what the Atlanta Fed has to say, there's just a lot out there. And consumers are increasingly concerned. Consumer spending is soft and is retreating. You have the reverberating effects of the federal government cuts and freezes that are ongoing. There are quite a lot of reasons to think that this is not, in fact, just a blip. Now. It's hard to know these things in the moment. If you look at that graph of what the market did during the dot com crash we have that, I can.
- [13:52]
Matt
Show it to everyone.
- [13:52]
Leah
It's not like it was straight down. It would go to oh, and then it's recovering. Now it's going back to, oh, it's recovering a little bit more. And so it can be hard to know what the ultimate trajectory is. And there's no guarantees here as well, what direction the market is ultimately going to go in. But while the gains in the stock market are disproportionately consolidated among the rich, everybody suffers when the market crashes because people lose their jobs, consumer spending drops. And there is a theory out there that that's actually kind of a plan from Trump that, you know, he's worried that the tariffs could hike inflation. And one way to deal with inflation is basically to crush regular people so they have no money to spend in the economy so that there's less demand as you know, to combat the other pressures that would cause prices to increase. So that could be what's going on here as well.
- [14:45]
Matt
Yeah. They also call that the Federal Reserve theory of politics. Let's also take a listen to Donald Trump on Air Force One being asked a recession and how he will quote, land the plane. Let's take a listen. We're just about ready to land. Are you worried about a recession? Maria Martiromo asked you and you kind of hesitated. I'll tell you what, of course you hesitate.
- [15:06]
Leah
Who knows? All I know is this.
- [15:08]
Matt
We're going to take in hundreds of.
- [15:09]
Leah
Billions of dollars in tariffs and we're going to become so rich you're not going to know where to spend all that money. I'm telling you, you just watch.
- [15:17]
Matt
We're going to have jobs, we're going.
- [15:18]
Leah
To have open factories. It's going to be great. And the plane is landing.
- [15:21]
Matt
And thank you for a lot of good questions.
- [15:23]
Leah
Okay, thank you very much everybo.
- [15:26]
Matt
So he still won't rule out a recession even though his commerce secretary did. And Fox News having a full blown freak out. Fox Business over at Charles Gasparino is like kind of a what, how would you say it? He's kind of a business whisperer of the Fox business community. But he is definitely somebody who Trump has taken seriously. I know that for sure. Let's take a listen to what he had to say. One thing that people need to do maybe is go back and maybe Scott Bessen should do this. Read his old boss's book, George Soros the Age of Turbulence where he talks about herd, mentality the herd is really negative right now, and it's focused all on tariffs. And I think what Scott Bessen needs to do, that's the treasury secretary. I saw him at the Economic Club, and, you know, it was a very wonky speech where it was all about tariffs and trying to explain it and all this stuff. And at the end, he starts talking about all the good stuff, the candy that's coming. We're getting good stuff coming for this economy and for the markets. And I think some of this is a sales job. They have to go out there and maybe stop talking about tariffs so much and start talking about how we're going to infuse the economy. We're going to. We're going to release the animal spirits. We're going to deregulate stuff which he has said in the past. Yeah, no, I think those are enormously stimulative, positive messages for businesses especially, you know, there have been a number of things in terms of depreciation on equipment, all that kind of stuff that business really, really loves. And also the enticement government to, you know, to open new businesses, which is something they want. They've got a lot of business coming in from overseas and building companies here.
- [16:54]
Leah
In the United States.
- [16:55]
Matt
So all of that very positive. I think this whipsaw effect of the tariffs are in, the tariffs are out. And I see it from, you know, small business owners who are trying to figure out their supply chain. You know, be more on this or less on that. Do I have to stockpile stuff at my factories so that I, you know, don't get over underexcanded? And those things are tough. Yeah. And is he serious or is he using this as a negotiating tool? We don't know. So there was always gonna be turbulence in the Trump economic plan. But again, you gotta lead with your best shot. The best shot here is the tax cuts. I will say this, though. And here's another thing that I'm picking up. You get the impression that the people in the White House say, well, our voters are not being affected by this. That, you know, we had a very good. What percentage of Americans have money in the stock market? Well, you know, they all have 401ks, but what percentage. How much still impacted? Absolutely. How big are their 401ks? And I think they're making calculus that most Americans did not do well over the past four years. They got hit with inflation. The economy was revved up by the government, by Joe Biden. And people could speculate, rich people in the stock market to get around it average Americans, working class couldn't do that. That theory is going to be put to the test. You know, he's actually making a good point there, which is the idea is that the stock market is only paid attention to by rich people. And I would say it's paid attention to the most by people who are rich. But that does not mean that people who don't have 401ks and or retirement are not paying attention. There's also something emotional about the stock market. As you and I know from covering politics, people feel very viscerally whenever they see it go down. I think as a measure of knowing so many times in the past how when that thing starts to go down, that means my job is on the line.
- [18:36]
Leah
Yeah.
- [18:37]
Matt
That means that spending at my company is going to start to restrict. That means, you know, X, Y, Z. There's been so many different periods where the recession, let's say from 2008, wasn't just about housing. Of course it was devastating. But those stock market drops had a real pullback effect. And there was huge problems with consumer sentiment, with unemployment. There were issues with mass layoffs and with firing. And a lot of that was financialization. So even if you don't care, you should pay attention simply because you're gonna be affected by it no matter what. Every American is. It's like the Federal Reserve. There's just the American financial system. This is the bedrock really of our entire social contract. Let's go to a 7 please, because this again just highlights the real danger that we are walking into right now. The seven most valuable stocks on Wall street yesterday lost $750 billion in market cap. The worst day for the NASDAQ since 2002. Now the reason why I think that this is really interesting in a dot com bubble way is again, if you look back to that time, nothing really happened in March of 2001. Nothing. Or in March of 2000. There was no great precipitating event. It was just a confluence of factors. It was the Federal Reserve, it was asking questions. It was this, as you said, there was a bump a little bit later on that definitely happened. So people weren't 100% in that day saying oh, it's all a fugazi. It's just that it took time to evaluate those and it was pushed off a cliff for a variety of reasons. It was almost like the straw that broke the camel's back. That is the problem that we have here with the tariff policy, with the chaos and with everything, is that the pullback, the yo yo from that gives a lack of confidence both to investors and to companies, which was restricting overall consumer sentiment. So across the board, all of the inputs and outputs of the economy are very, very uncertain right now, which means that we are gonna see not only the drop there, but potential ramifications. The White House has got to project confidence and faith with the people, which I don't think that they have done a good job at right now. There's too much uncertainty for both Main street and Wall street. And in both of those, you are not gonna see enough confidence from them to be like, I can make a decision for one month from now, three months from now, or even people who are retiring. There's a lot of old people in this country. A lot of them decide when to retire based on their 401k, you know, so what are they gonna do? I wouldn't be too happy if I was 69 years old right now. I could tell you that. This is Jenny Garth from I do part two. You could have lost 10 pounds already if you started one month ago.
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- [21:36]
Matt
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- [23:38]
Leah
The one thing he could do is if he said definitively we're not doing the tariffs, that's what the markets really want to hear.
- [23:44]
Matt
Or he could say, we're going to do the tariffs and it's because we're going to do them in six months. And in that six month period, companies have X, Y and Z. In the tax bill that's coming up, you will have specific investment credits for taking care of this. I will make that an absolute priority of this White House. Then you actually don't need a market correction at all. We'll give you a tax break if you build stuff here and we won't have to have a sell off and we can have tariff. You can have everything that you want right now, just not this way maybe.
- [24:11]
Leah
I mean, the thing is like that sort of defeats the whole policy of tariffs because if you're like, they're ending in six months, then everyone will go, okay, then we're just waiting the middle like we're not gonna change their policy.
- [24:20]
Matt
But they're going into effect six months. So you have six months. You have to reshore.
- [24:23]
Leah
Figure it out.
- [24:24]
Matt
You have to come to this government and you have to say, here is X, Y and Z. And if you don't do it, you're gonna be severely punished. No Foxconns, no more Foxconns. You know, it's like, but that's what real policymaking looks like.
- [24:34]
Leah
Maybe. I mean, and that's is like so much of his domestic policy has been outsourced to Elon, who's just on this radical austerity Tour yesterday, he said that entitlements need to be eliminated.
- [24:46]
Matt
Yeah, that's right, he did.
- [24:47]
Leah
Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid eliminated because those are, quote, unquote, the big ones. So you've got that going on, which obviously, for average people is just a complete and utter disaster. You've got the government freezes going on. There's just a lot of headwinds at this point that are all directly generated by this administration and their decisions. And I just don't think that people are gonna buy this line from them that, like, if things are going poorly, it's all Joe Biden's fault, because, I mean, Trump's been in charge for 50 days now, and it's quite clear he's doing a lot. We can have differing opinions about whether that a lot is good or bad. You guys know where I stand on that. But he's certainly doing a lot. And he owns what's happening in the economy now. He really has taken control of it, him and Elon, and he owns whatever happens from here on out. So, to go back to Gasparino, I think it was interesting hearing what he was saying because it reminded me of a few things. First of all, it reminded me of all the wish casting that the business world and Wall street did around Trump and what his policies would be. There are a lot of things that have happened in this administration that I did not necessarily anticipate. Tariffs are not one of them. He was really clear repeatedly on the campaign trail. Tariffs is the most beautiful word. I love tariffs. We're doing across the board. Tariff was consistent. And if you didn't listen to that and take that seriously, I don't know what to tell you because the man told you many, many times that that's the direction that he was heading in. So no one should be surprised when he moved forward with the plans that he himself repeatedly announced that he was going to put into place. The other thing it reminded me of is how Democrats would talk about, like, and still do act like their only issue was like a messaging problem. Like, that's what. Oh, they need to just talk about the deregulation and just don't. About the terror. It was like, let's just pretend that is all not happening. No. Especially when it comes to the economy. You have a reality problem. People have their own personal experience with the economy. And yes, they are subject to political narratives and they are subject to changing their mind based on which president is in power or what their leaders that are most trusted have to say about what the economic status is currently. But. But if you are looking at people who are in the center, who are independents, who could go either way in an election, they have their own personal experience with how things are going for them. And I just don't think that you can spin and message your way out of real economic trouble. And it looks like we could very well be headed for real economic trouble. The last thing I would say, because we've made the dot com comparison and there are definitely feels like there are some real echoes here with this technology that has yet to fully arrive, but there's a lot of speculation around it. The one thing that is very different though from this bubble versus that bubble is the fact that our eggs are in many fewer baskets this time around than last time. The story of the dot com bubble was all of these startups that were getting massive investment and part of the pullback starts when the Federal Reserve hikes rates and then their financing becomes more expensive and lo and behold, they're not turning a profit yet, so they're not able to get funding. And then there starts to be this gradual realization that a bunch of these things are just kind of like fake and not ever going to work and not ever going to really have a self sustaining business model here. I would say we have profoundly, actually more risk because we have so much concentrated in these seven giant tech effectively monopolies. And that's what makes me really, really nervous about this particular moment. I think that Trump believes he can sort of control things and put the tariffs on and take them off and let the market drop just enough so that he's comfortable and maybe flirt with the recession but not go full recession or be able to pull back from that. I think he feels like his hands are on the levers in that way. But these things are really unpredictable and can have massive cascading effects that just get totally out of hand. And if you think that ordinary people don't suffer when the stock market drops like I, I would recommend you go back and look at every major stock market crash and how ordinary people fared in the wake of that. Because it ends up the pain does not just stay on Wall Street. The pain does not just stay with wealthy people or even with people who are looking towards retirement and their 401ks has a massive reverberating effect throughout the economy.
- [29:18]
Matt
Yep, absolutely correct. So let's. The last thing, I just want to make this point here, let's put this up there on the screen. This is the changes in the S&P 500 since the Inauguration Day of Trump's first and second term. And you can just see that yellow line going real down in the first 50 days of the Trump administration, as opposed to the first Trump administration, where even the drop that happened, even a modest drops or whatever that happened, were overcome by some pretty overwhelming growth, up to almost 20% in the first 225 days that he was in office. So keep that in mind. And that's certainly something that a lot of people who, if you think back to, to especially the quote, normal voter, like the voter who voted for Trump to restore normalcy, was like, listen, you know, we had a lot of issues, sure it was chaotic, et cetera, but the stock market went up and deregulation and the tax bill, et cetera, much more middle class, suburban type folks. And the big question here now is how working class voters, other populist voters who decided to back Donald Trump in a Hail Mary style for this election, how are they gonna feel about much of, of this, especially if this continues? So we'll see. But I do think it's a significant problem for the White House and if they don't adjust their messaging and policy soon, they could have a big, big problem on their hands. This is Ashley Iconetti from the Ben.
- [30:39]
Leah
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Matt
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- [31:08]
Matt
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- [33:08]
Leah
This sets up the spending bill because we've got more rocky road ahead of us this week. So Republicans planning to vote on what's called a continuing resolution to basically keep the government open. President Trump has been making the pitch like just give me a few more months so we can then tackle this out of control spending and pass our budget. So that's the pitch he's been making because of course you've got some people in the caucus who do not want to continue spending at the current levels. They're into fiscal austerity and they're concerned about the debt and the deficit. People like Thomas Massie, who has been most consistent Republican on this issue. True, let's like dyed in the wool libertarian and Tea Party type. Really concerned about smaller government. He's not my political ideology, but I respect the fact that the man remains quite principled at times when it's very difficult, including on things like free speech in Israel. In any case, Trump is out now threatening Thomas Massie with a primary challenge. Let's go ahead and put this up on the screen. He posted this on Truth Social. He says thank you to the House Freedom Caucus for just delivering a big blow to the radical left Democrats. Their desire to raise taxes and shut our country down. They hate America and all it stands for. That's why they allowed millions of criminals to invade our nation. Sometimes it takes great courage to do the right thing. Congressman Thomas Massie of beautiful Kentucky is an automatic no vote on just about everything. Despite the fact that he has always voted for continuing resolutions in the past. He should be primaried and I will lead the charge against him. He's just another grandstander who's too much trouble and not worth the fight. He reminds me of Liz Cheney before her historic record breaking fault loss. The people of Kentucky won't stand for it. Just watch. Do I have any takers? Anyway, thank you again to the House Freedom Caucus for your very important vote. We need to buy some time in order to make America great again. Greater than ever before. Unite and win. Sagar, you may know more about this than I do. I know Thomas Massie has faced primary challenges before. I don't think that he's faced one that was backed so directly by President Trump or been put on block quite to this extent by President Trump. So you have to take that seriously. I will say I think he has his own support base and people in his district seem to really appreciate him for the principled stances that he's been taking. But when you've got the combination of Trump who has his cult of personality and Elon who has almost limitless money to fund said primary challenges, of course you have to ultimately take this seriously. So what did you make of this move from Trump and does it betray sort of any nervousness about whether or not the CR is gonna pass? Because I did see there were a few other Republicans who may continue to be holding.
- [35:44]
Matt
Yeah, they should be afraid. Cause it's not just about the House. Don't forget they've gotta pass this thing through the Senate as well. And all the Democrats are currently on the record. No, they're gonna have huge problems being able to get this piece of legislation on the Massey front. I mean, look, like you said, I remember five years ago I hated Thomas Massie cuz he voted against a lot of the COVID stimulus checks and he was holding it all up. You could say what you want about the guy, but I think what it has proven out is like you said, he's principle, he's one of the rarest people in Washington. Right. There's like only four or five people like him in the entire United States Congress, including the Senate. So I think people have people having people like him around. It's good, it's good for us to have wild cards. And it's not Massie's fault that the Republicans only have a two or three seat majority. Right. It's like it's. Why are we backing primary challenges against him? As you said, he's been absolutely courageous on foreign aid, on Israel. He stood up to aipac, free speech. I mean, this got Maha. I mean, don't forget, by the way, even on the Elon thing, it would be preposterous for Thomas Massie to speak out against Elon. Thomas Massie was one of the first people in Congress to buy a Tesla. And if you'll all recall, Massie was on that call with Elon Musk When Ron DeSantis did his disastrous campaign launch. Thomas Massie loves Elon Musk and he loves Doge. So this idea is ridiculous that he's not in the camp. It's just that he is a Libertarian and he doesn't wanna vote for CRS and continued spending. He even said he's like, look, according to you, Doge, you found massive fraud in usaid. This CR continues to fully fund usaid. So aren't you guys kind of full of it from the White House? Asking for full funding of an agency you say is corrupt? So what's up with that?
- [37:21]
Leah
Right?
- [37:21]
Matt
None of it makes any sense now. You're right. He has survived multiple primary challenges. I was just looking back here.
- [37:28]
Leah
I know AIPAC came after him. Oh, they came after him and funded a primary challenge. And in 2020, I don't think they even came close.
- [37:35]
Matt
To me, he didn't even break 20%.
- [37:37]
Leah
Yeah.
- [37:37]
Matt
And Massie is, again, he's one of those folks who is genuinely. He's like Bernie. He's one of those people, to me at least, where all the caricatures of him are bs. You know who he is. He's a principled guy in his votes, in the way he talks, in how. I mean, he's made decisions which are some of the most inconvenient in all of Washington because of what he believes. And I think his constituents reward him for that so broadly. I don't think that this will work. You know, people like him, Chip Roy is another example who Trump is currently backing a primary challenge against. These guys are, you know, they actually believe what they say, which is one of the most rare things in the entire city. So I'm behind him 100%. And I do think it's pretty ridiculous to primary him for the problems and the challenges that are a creation of this GOP caucus, not of Thomas Massie. It's not his fault. Also, by the way, you could easily have the CR pass if you had worked with Democrats. Right. But you're not. You don't want to do that. Right. There's a lot of different varieties it's like this is just where they demand fealty to the king. And I think that's just ridiculous.
- [38:43]
Leah
Not to overanalyze this, but also the comparison to Liz Chase.
- [38:47]
Matt
Yeah, right.
- [38:48]
Leah
I mean, these are ideologically like wildly different, different people. But to me, it's the perfect emblem of how politics in the Trump era just collapses down to the central divide. Are you with Trump or are you against him? And so if you go against him on anything, even though he's like, completely. I mean, he is probably the biggest Doge supporter. He's all about the project of cutting government that Elon is engaged in that Trump has fully thrown his backing for. At this point, he would be the number one guy in support of that. But because he dares to buck Trump on anything, then you get thrown in the category of Liz Cheney, which for Republicans, that's like the greatest insult you can possibly imagine to be compared to a traitor such as Liz Cheney. So I thought that was interesting and very telling as well. Let me go ahead and get into some of the details of this bill. I think Sagra makes a good point about one of the levels of absurdity about this is of course, all the Republicans are claiming that the government is rife with all of this massive waste, fraud and abuse, that some of these agencies should be destroyed and cut down entirely. Yet here you are whipping your entire caucus to vote to continue what you allege is massively fraudulent spending across the board and all of this government. So this is one of the things that a Thomas Massie would certainly be bucking. But I think. Let's put this up on the screen. They say the 99 page legislation would slightly decrease spending overall from last year's funding levels, but would increase spending for the military. Don't worry. In a nod to the concerns of GOP defense hawks that stopgap measures would hamstring the Pentagon would not include any funds for any earmarks for projects in lawmakers, districts or states. Saving roughly 13 billion, according to congressional aides, also provides a slight funding boost for ice. An additional 485 million gives the administration more flexibility on how the agency can spend. It also increases funding for the federal program that provides free groceries to millions of low income women and children, known as WIC, by about $500 million. The other line from Democrats is who I think are going to hang together and vote in lockstep, certainly in the House. Schumer has been a little bit cagier about the direction there, but I know Hakeem Jeffries is whipping A no vote among the Democratic House members. And I think they're likely to stick with that. And all of them vote against this continuing resolution, basically be like, look, y'all have the majority. Go ahead, do your thing. Republicans did get a little bit of a boost because a Democratic member just died. So their majority has. They now have like a four vote margin instead of a three vote margin. I think I'm correct about the numbers there. But Democrats are also saying because of the nature of a continuing resolution versus versus actual budgeting and specific appropriations and funding bills, it hands more power and discretion to the executive. And amidst their concerns and my concerns and many people's concerns about what Doge is doing and the unaccountable nature of the way that they are grabbing power for the executive. That is one of the concerns that Democrats have with this as well.
- [41:58]
Matt
Yeah, I mean, the problem I, I just see with this is what are we trying to do here? Are you funding USAID or not? Why would you fully fund the government if you don't agree with funding the government? The argument right now from the White House is that, well, we need full range so that we can continue to work. And then maybe in September, after all that Runway, we'll be able to come back and say that we're gonna. It's like, okay, well, I've never seen that ever happen before. Right. This idea that you're supposed to vote for something that funds programs which you yourself, yourself are saying are bad now, that's on the Republican side. On the Democratic side, it's the opposite. It's. Well, why would we vote to authorize funding for these programs if you guys are just gonna decide what to spend money on?
- [42:39]
Leah
Whatever you want anyway?
- [42:40]
Matt
So then if you're gonna shut it down, then no, we're not gonna vote for it. So it's a very ideologically inconsistent position and genuinely could lead to a shutdown. I mean, that's one thing that I think people really should pay attention to. Put B3 back up there. Because it's very important to say, like the House Democrats are whipping no on this plan. There is a razor thin margin right now in the House of Representatives. Massie is a no. How is this going to pass through the House? And even if it did, as we said, they're going to have to have some votes that happen in the Senate and effectively play chicken. And if they do play chicken over this, I'm not sure yet that the Democrats wouldn't want to cause a government shutdown, because, I mean, can you think of Anything that would send the stock markets and all that even more over a cliff, it would be a shutdown. Right. Because of how much public money and services and all that the American public is dependent on. So purely from just a cynical standpoint, you would want to cause as much chaos as possible and just say, like, oh, we're not gonna bail you out in a messaging war. I don't think you win. My general theory of shutdowns has always been that shutdowns always fall on the person who is in charge. And as much as the president, and all them always try and campaign against Congress. Unless somebody like Newt Gingrich literally stands up and is like, I'm shutting down the government specifically for this, this and this, you're gonna have a tough time and you're gonna eat it.
- [44:02]
Leah
I mean, they have a tri. Tact.
- [44:03]
Matt
No, I know they're in control.
- [44:04]
Leah
So, I mean, I think most people just logically conclude you're in charge of the government, so this is probably your fault. And I think they know that. I mean, they're certainly trying to shift the blame to Democrats, but I don't know who could really by that when Democrats don't control the House or the Senate or the White House. In terms of the prospects in the Senate, there was some hope there on the Republican side because Schumer has said things about how Democrats don't wanna be part of shutting down the government, blah, blah, blah. But more and more moderate sort of centristy type Democrats like Mark Warner, like Tim Kaine have come out and said, no, we're not helping Republicans with this. This is all on them. So I think hope is fading in the Senate, too, that anything Democrats would be likely to go along with, maybe you'll get a John Fetterman. You never know. You never know. You could get a John Fetterman. But in any case, it's not looking great for Republicans in terms of Democrats helping them out of the jam that they have created for themselves. Just to get a sense of the Democratic messaging on this, we have a clip. Who is this from? I don't remember. Some congressman that I don't know. McGovern. Congressman McGovern, sort of laying out his case. And, you know, I think this is pretty consistent with overall Democratic messaging on the continuing resolution. Let's take a listen.
- [45:20]
Matt
I think maybe you guys need to get a. Take a refresher course in arithmetic. Last time I checked, you have the majority in the House and in the Senate and you control the White House. The idea that somehow Democrats have the Responsibility to pass a CR or any bill, quite frankly, where we don't have any input on, I think is ridiculous. I mean, you run around bragging about this big mandate. Well, put on your mandate pants and pass whatever you want to do. And I think you probably will have the votes because even the so called principled conservatives who don't like crs, I think they're suffering from a case of Victoria Spark syndrome, where on Monday they're a hard no, and then on Tuesday they're a hard yes, they'll kick. So, but the idea that somehow being in charge means that you don't have to take the responsibility of running this place is absurd.
- [46:14]
Leah
So I think he may be correct there, that at the end of the day, even the Republican hold downs, save for Massie, will probably fall in line in the House. They did last time, but for this they did last time. And I do think a lot of the Tea Party era rebellion is basically over. Of course, the combination of Trump winning again and winning the popular vote and the just like unbreakable cult of personality that he has and then Elon as the enforcer with limitless cash at his disposal, like the party is just whatever Trump wants the party to be at this point. And so I think there is very little appetite even among people like Chip Roy or whoever else would position themselves as Freedom Caucus or Tea Party members, et cetera. I think there's very little willingness to buck what party leadership wants them to do at this point. So I wouldn't be surprised if he's correct that almost everybody, save for maybe Thomas Massie, does end up voting for it.
- [47:08]
Matt
On the Republican Do I think this will go down in the House? Probably not. I still think the Senate is a huge bottleneck for them. I mean, at the end of the day too, let's not think so big of Democrats right in this moment. They're probably too afraid to shut down the government. So will that really happen? I don't think so. It's March 14th. But look, shut down politics and all that, and don't forget, this would reauthorize much of the funding that the government itself says is fraud. So it doesn't make any sense. They should have just cut it. That's actually Massie's point. He goes, you told us you uncovered fraud, so why are you funding it? He's right. Why would you fund it? If the government's position is that this is fraud and an unnecessary program, why would you reauthorize the fund? You're actually wasting money by doing so. According to your logic or it's not. So which is it? I mean, this is the problem with Washington. Just the hypocrisy of it where we're not supposed to just notice these like basic procedural things. And you know, will anybody online who's like pro USAID being shut down and pro Primaring Thomas Massey even pay attention? Probably not. But you know, honestly, you should like if you're gonna try and shut these things down and then also call out the one guy who's just asking you to be idlia logically consistent. The whole thing is ridiculous indeed.
- [48:23]
Leah
All right.
- [48:23]
Matt
I hope Massie makes it. This is Jenny garth from I Do Part 2.
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Leah
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- [50:57]
Leah
So we continue to get recriminations from the Israelis Israelis over the U.S. s decision to negotiate directly with Hamas. Specifically, it was US President Trump's hostage envoy Adam Bowler, who negotiated with Hamas and made some very interesting comments in a recent cable news segment. Let's take a listen to those. Understand why Netanyahu Dermer others might be upset.
- [51:19]
Matt
I do understand.
- [51:21]
Leah
I spoke with Ron and I'm sympathetic.
- [51:24]
Matt
He has someone that he doesn't know.
- [51:26]
Leah
Well making direct contact with Hamas.
- [51:28]
Matt
Maybe I would see them and say.
- [51:30]
Leah
Look, they don't have horns growing out of their head.
- [51:33]
Matt
They're actually guys like us.
- [51:34]
Leah
They're pretty nice guys. So he doesn't know me and there are big stakes. He lives in a country where if.
- [51:41]
Matt
It sets certain precedents, then it will hurt or help a lot of other people.
- [51:46]
Leah
So I understand the consternation and the concern and I wasn't upset. At the same time, we're the United States. We're not an agent of Israel. We have specific interests at play. So there were two comments there that caught a lot of attention. One, him saying what should be just obvious statement of fact, which is we are the United States and not an agent of Israel. Not sure that that also always plays out in practice, as we'll cover in our next segment about what's going on with deportations. But the other one is he said that they're worried. Ron Dermer, who is Bibi's one of his top aides, is worried that he may realize in meeting with Hamas that, quote, they don't have horns growing out of their heads. They're actually pretty nice guys, guys like us. So yeah, this caused a lot of concern. Dermer was upset. Boehler sort of walked back the comments about the maybe we'll find out that they're pretty nice guys. We also have some insight that apparently during a security cabinet meeting on Sunday, Dermer said that he was assured the meetings with Hamas did not represent the Trump administration's position. He also told Ministers, they received assurances from the Trump administration that it, quote, won't happen again and that Witkoff will be the only channel for the negotiations over the hostages. Also, some indications that, I mean, certainly they weren't able to strike a direct deal. But I mean, I think in principle you should be negotiating with the parties who are involved in the negotiations. That seems like it makes sense to me. But Trump administration, after getting a slap on the wrist here from Israel, seems to be pulling back from that a bit.
- [53:23]
Matt
Yeah, exactly. And let's put the Wall Street Journal piece up on the screen because this is actually kind of amazing, as you said, inside of Israel. He actually went Adam Mueller on Israeli television to say his main goal was just the release of the last American hostage. But the Israeli public broadcasters were then basically furious with him because he had told them that they had offered a five to ten year truce under which they would release all of the hostages. And he called it, quote, not, not a bad first offer, which is where people really started to lose it. Now, it's still unclear how much Bowler speaks for the administration. Donald Trump backed him up yesterday. Secretary of State Marco Rubio kind of has downplayed him a little bit. Let's put C3 guys. Can we up on the screen? He said that the US Hostage direct meeting with Hamas was, quote, a one off. They're affirming that Steve Witkoff is the sole like, major representative of the US Government in their talks with Hamas. But Boler still is receiving backup from the administration. One of the reasons why, as I looked into his background, he previously worked on the Abraham Accords. And it does appear as you've got a lot of trust in at least in some of the closer circles. I think he also worked with Jared Kushner. So basically, with all of that together, what we're seeing is there's a split between actual, like Israeli foreign policy goals and at least, least rhetorically in where the Trump administration is. I did see Zed say and suggest it's possible that one reason Trump is ramping up this deportation of these Palestinian students is specifically because he is behind the scenes pursuing a lot of policy where even the Zionist people will admit this. Like, if Biden had direct talks with Hamas, they would lose it. Like, you would find Tom Cotton and all those people screaming from the rooftops here. They're there and they're saying nothing. Cause they can't really. Right. Yeah. So I do think it's fascinating to watch this all play out. And listen, I'm cheering for this more than anybody. Else, like to have a guy like a United States representative to finally just say, we're not an agent of Israel, we have sometimes divergent interests. Just saying that. I mean, you know, the Zionist people online were just absolutely furious with him for stating a basic, basic fact of national interest on behalf of the United States government. Or that negotiating with terrorists, it's like, oh, my God, again, they're the people who are in control. What are we supposed to do? They're holding our people. Of course we would talk to them. We'd be idiots not to. Unless you don't care about the hostages. Oh, okay. All right. It's very interesting, isn't it? So there's a lot going on behind the scenes. Lot of, you know, what are you thinking?
- [56:06]
Leah
I mean, I don't know. There's also a lot of vibes here, too, of sort of like the Biden administration. Netanyahu's really upset with us. The leaked conversations, they're really upset with us. This time, Biden's really pushing Bibi and he's really standing up for American interests. So it does have a little bit of those vibes. Redux for me as well. Rubio ultimately said the full quote was, that was a one off situation in which our special envoy for hostages, whose job it is to get people released, had an opportunity to talk directly to someone who has control over, over these people and was given permission and courage to do so. He did so. So again, emphasize, oh, it's a one off. It didn't bear fruit. We won't do it again. It's just gonna be Witkoff who you deal with going forward, et cetera. I don't know. It feels like they're more or less walking back this approach that they were taking and the reason it made the Israelis so nervous. And Smotrich actually made some comments to this effect. He said that Boller sought to conduct negotiations to free American hostages on his own accord and called it an utter mistake. The issue there is they're concerned that Trump and Boller and Wyckoff and whoever are just going to go be like, okay, we'll make a deal with you for our American hostages, and then good luck with y'all, with the rest of this whole thing. Do I think that's likely what happens? No, but that's their concern. And the other thing is that Bibi has positioned himself like my first paramount concern is the return of the hostages. That has obviously never been the case. But if the Trump administration actually followed through with a policy where the primary goal actually was the return of the hostages. Well, that would move us forward significantly in terms of continuing to phase two of this agreement, trying to actually wrap down this war, et cetera. Because right now Bibi is doing exactly what he promised to do, not moving forward with negotiations and threatening to restart the war. We also know the other piece to add into this is that the Trump administration is backing the new siege on Gaza where humanitarian aid is being blocked and now electricity is being cut off, which is incredibly significant, not just for electricity being important in general and hospitals needing electricity, et cetera, but you also need electricity to be able to purify water. Water. And it would cut off some 70% of access to water in the Gaza Strip. So the Trump administration is backing them in that particular policy, which is obviously collective punishment, a war crime, and abhorrent and counter to the direction of wanting to resolve this issue and move forward. So I don't know, I continue to be not terribly hopeful.
- [58:50]
Matt
Yeah, I mean, I'm not hopeful in the sense of my ideal. I am somewhat hopeful for having a envoy he says were not your client state. And while, yes, they may support this if they were able to get some sort of five to ten year truce, which clearly the Israelis are freaking out about because they're wondering if that's even a remote possibility. We went from basically zero chance, I think under Biden to I don't know what 15%. That's high enough. Phase two right now is still up in the air. I wouldn't bet on it per se, but Wyckoff is still dedicated to it. Trump has not yet mentioned we're going to take over Gaza in what, the last like 10, 15 days or so. I'm hopeful that he didn't say anything in the state of the Union. All right. Ever since that stupid video of bearded women and woke Gaza gone woke. Haven't heard anything from the guy. So maybe, you know, there's something there. Right now, actually, Secretary of Rubio is in Saudi Arabia meeting with the Ukrainians. But importantly, the readout from his meeting with MBS was that they discussed the reconstruction of Gaza. Don't forget that the dream of the Trump administration is the Saudi, Israel, Israeli normalization deal of which the Saudis say they will not sign unless there is a free or at least a different Gaza under either the Palestinian Authority or some sort of separate political entity. So they have a lot of different things that are pressing against them from the UAE emir who is also very close with the Trump administration. And the Saudis, of course, have a ton of money that they very easily can deploy not only in our politics, but they can affect the Ukraine situation as well. Part of the reason that these talks are happening in Riyadh, literally as we speak. Yeah, I'm not discounting all that just yet.
- [60:27]
Leah
You know, just to go back to Buller's comments about like, oh, they're worried that we're going to realize there are good guys, they don't have horns coming out of their heads or whatever. I actually think that comment is really revealing and I think it does speak exactly to why there is such a prohibition on. They were very upset when Wycoff went to Gaza, obviously very upset about the direct talks with Hamas. Hamas, because Netanyahu has built his political career on making Hamas the ultimate boogeyman that you can never talk to, you can never negotiate. As long as they're there, there's no partner for peace. They're just the epitome of absolute evil. And I'm not here to whitewash or sanitize Hamas and what they're all about and the things that they've done or whatever, but when you're actually sitting face to face with members of that group and you're talking to them and they're explaining their reasoning and they're staking out positions and negotiating with you like they are human beings, because they are, it makes it much more difficult to maintain that caricature and have it stick. And it's such an important part both of Bibi's power and of overall hasbara propaganda campaigns that I think that really does speak to why there's such a freakout at the mere idea of any American representative meeting face to face with Hamas.
- [61:49]
Matt
Yeah. So we'll see. I'm definitely enjoying some of the freakout that's going on over there. And if Trump wants to go more in this direction, be my guest. The problem, as you know, is that there is a major political force here in this town where even the mere suggestion of this, the light up, you know, the phone, Marco Rubio, can you imagine, you know, all of the people calling people like Miriam Adelson and others and their pressure points over there. So there is a massive pressure campaign in Washington, outside of Washington, trying to basically derail any of this. Their dream is basically just blank check to Israel and basically an abandonment of a lot of this hostage negotiation period. Right?
- [62:33]
Leah
Yeah.
- [62:33]
Matt
And so for them, watching them, them go from their wildest dream of America is going to take over Gaza to. No, we're talking about hamas in a 5, 10 year truce, it must be dizzying and they're trying everything they possibly can to push back against it. This is Jenny Garth from I do part two.
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- [65:17]
Leah
The next segment cuts against the idea that we aren't an agent of Israel, since we are apparently crushing people's free speech rights in service of making sure they can never criticize a foreign government. Yesterday we covered the story of Mahmoud Khalil. He's a Columbia University graduate student who is a green card holder. So a permanent resident of the United States who was a leader in the pro Palestine protests on Columbia's campus. He was arrested reportedly without a warrant and put into a DHS facility and slated for deportation based on his protest activities. Now, we actually haven't gotten really any specifics from the administration about exactly why they targeted this guy, although we'll get to that in a minute of why he ended up probably being at the top of their list. But we did get some what I consider to be encouraging news here, which is that yesterday a judge weighed in on this case. I was concerned that we weren't even going to get to an immigration, immigration judge or going through normal due process, which if you are a green card holder, you have most of the rights of a US Citizen, including certainly rights to due process. So we can put this important update on the screen here. Ryan has been following this closely. So he says a federal judge has temporarily blocked the deportation of Mahmoud Khalil, the Columbia protester detained by the Trump administration. And they also ordered that Counter Council for all Parties appear for a conference with the court on March 12th at 11:30am in New York. And they said counsel must confer in advance of the conference to submit a joint letter no later than today, March 11th. So, you know, they are intervening here swiftly. They also said they needed to preserve the court's jurisdiction pending a ruling on the petition. The petitioner shall not be removed from the United States unless an until the court orders otherwise. So there seems to have been some concern here, Sagra, that the administration was just going to deport him before the justice system. The immigration courts had a chance to weigh in on whether or not this was a lawful revocation of his green card holder status. Trump administration, though, certainly doubling down, tripling down, quadrupling down, whatever. We've got a couple of messages here from both Trump directly and from the White House account as well. I can put this up on the screen. Trump posted this on Truth following my previously signed executive orders. ICE proudly apprehended and detained Mahmoud Khalil, a radical foreign pro Hamas student on the campus of Columbia University. By the way, it was also revealed that the DHS agent who arrested him was One of the guests, special guests that Trump honored at the State of the Union. Union. So you've got that as well. He goes on to say, this is the first arrest of many to come. We know there are more students at Columbia and other universities across the country who have engaged in pro terrorist, anti Semitic, anti American activity. And the Trump administration will not tolerate it. Many are not students. They are paid agitators. We will find apprehended. Deport these terrorist sympathizers from our country, never to return again. If you support terrorism, including the slaughtering of innocent men, women and children, you're. Your presence is contrary to our national and foreign policy interests. You are not welcome here. We expect every one of America's colleges and universities to comply. Thank you. And then put the next one up on the screen specifically targeting Mahmoud. The White House account put out this image of him that says, shalom, Mahmoud, and then has a quote from Trump that says, we will find, apprehend and deport these terrorist sympathizers from our country, never to return again.
- [68:54]
Matt
PRESIDENT DONALD jr. White House of the United States, using a Hebrew term. Interesting. Okay. All right. Got it.
- [69:00]
Leah
But we're not agents of Israel. Don't worry.
- [69:02]
Matt
Like, this whole thing is preposterous. And just looking, you know, why don't we play his words? I think that's important because everybody's talking about him, characterizing, et cetera. Here. This was from an oppo account. I want to make everybody clear on that. This was posted by somebody who was making the case for why he should be deported.
- [69:24]
Leah
So this isn't cherry pick us. They cherry pick. Oh, see how reasonable? No, this is the people who want to deport him compiling online dossiers of what they consider to be the worst things that they could find. So let's find it that he did. So this is C10, guys. Let's go ahead and play it.
- [69:41]
Matt
Are you guys going to listen to the university and leave the encampment here? Of course not. The university is the one who should listen to us. They should listen to their student body who are demanding to end their. Their investment in the war that's happening in Palestine. Our demands are clear. Our demands are regarding divestment from, from the Israeli occupation, the companies that are profiting and contributing to the genocide of our people. Again, the university, once again, they are so stubborn and listening to their students. They. They're treating this matter as a disciplinary matter. They're not treating this as an anti war movement. An anti war movement that actually gathered thousands of students here that actually sparked thousands of students across the United States. How far are you all willing to.
- [70:30]
Leah
Go here on campus?
- [70:32]
Matt
We're going to go as far as we need to pressure the university, to pressure the university to divest from the occupation. This is up to the group, to the leadership of the group to decide how far they will go. But now it's clear that the students will remain here. They will stay here until they achieve their demands. Okay, I didn't hear anything that bad there. I mean, you can disagree with the guy, that's okay. You could deport him. If he committed a crime, I'd be okay with that fine too. But he didn't commit a crime. He actually has not violated both New York State law, New York City law, and or US Government. Now, according to them, what they're saying is that they can make a case for deportation based on any alien present in the United States who poses a direct threat to our foreign policy. Now that's a very interesting justification because what threat would it make make to our foreign policy? So are we saying that his presence in the United States would be detrimental to the US Relationship with Israel? Because if we're saying that, we're basically acknowledging that these campus protests are now a leverage point for the Israeli government in its relations with us. Now, they're not even supposed to have opinions about protests on our soil. I should. You know, look, if the US Government was openly supporting or not, not those protests happening in Tel Aviv, like, shut up, all right? Let them deal with it. But even that's a little different since we do pay for most of the stuff that's going on in their country. I just think the whole thing is the most preposterous overreach I've ever seen. And that's another thing. I wanna speak directly to a lot of these forces that are cheering this on. You have no idea what's coming your way when you break the seal. Something like this, you wanna openly set the standard that people who protest on a foreign government are gonna be violated of their due process rights and revok permanent residency in the United States of America, that is like an antisemitic caricature of how people are saying, but it's reality now. And so when you then simultaneously speak out against the Ian Carrolls of the world on Joe Rogan or Candace Owens or any of these other folks who are noticing things, even if oftentimes they may say things that are incorrect or whatever, good luck to you trying to police the opinion because I think that Americans have very, very open Eyes. And especially if you're somebody like me who wants to see a lot less immigration here in the United States. It's absolutely insane that the United States government has actually paused military deportation flights because of the cost. They got dosed. So the cost of apprehending people who are present here illegally in the United States is something that we can't. The deportation numbers are basically where they were with Biden. Not particularly all that great. And the full force of the White House of the United States of America is focused on some campus protester. Give me a break. If you think that's anywhere even close to America first. So for all those people out there, for all the people who are supporting, cheering all of us on, good luck to you in the future. You have the can of worms, the Pandora's box that you're opening. You bear total responsibility for it.
- [73:52]
Leah
I mean, this truly is. It truly is a new red scare. I mean, it truly is. Like, it justifies the term McCarthyist because they're saying openly. It's not just. There's nothing special about this particular guy. We have a whole list. There are gonna be many more to come. They sent letters to 60 different universities accusing them and saying that they're gonna be. You know, there's gonna be enforcement actions for them, not upholding the civil rights rights of Jewish students. And if you read what they put out, it would be impossible for anyone to really prove that they complied with what they want to. Your point, Sagar? We were all chuckling yesterday. Ann Coulter put on a tweet that said, there's almost no one I don't want to deport, but unless they've committed a crime, isn't this a violation of the First Amendment? So even Ann Coulter is like, yeah, this particular deportation, I'm not really sure that I'm on board with this one. And so it is preposterous. It is naked, and yes, it is dangerous. I mean, it is a dangerous assault. The intent is a witch hunt to create an example so that people shut up about an issue that the administration does not want to hear about, that they find to be politically inconvenient, that some significant of their allies and donors find to be politically inconvenient and disagreeable. And everyone. I don't care where you stand on this issue, like you should. In fact, if you disagree with these protesters, it's even more important for you to stand up for these First Amendment rights, because that's when it counts, when it is difficult, when it is potentially unpopular. Although I have to Say, the other thing that has been really noteworthy is how has this whole approach gone for you guys in terms of maintaining support for Israel? I can tell you if you look at numbers across the board in terms of when they ask who do you sympathize more with, Israelis or Palestinians, Those numbers have shifted dramatically towards Palestinians. In the Democratic Party specifically, it's completely switched. Completely switched. So now many more Democrats say they are more sympathetic to Palestinians than Israelis. I cannot tell you what a sea change that is in terms of American public opinion. And so for a country that is so dependent on the United States of America to provide a diplomatic shield and funding and military resources and all sorts of other things besides, to be gambling with public opinion like this, you are one president away from someone who actually represents those shifts in the country from things being completely and totally different. Not to mention when you have the whole United States government government cracking down on college student protesters for protesting Israel foreign government. And you are you. The Zionists conflict all the time Jews with Israel. Something that the left is very careful. And people who object to these policies are very careful to not conflate those two and say these are two very separate things. But the Zionist supporters frequently conflate Israel and all Jewish people. Yeah. Do you think you're going to cause an increase in antisemitism? Do you think that you're going to cause an increased spread in these sorts of tropes when it does seem like the US Government is more interested in policing speech of Americans on behalf of this foreign country? Of course. Like, of course that's going to happen, and it is happening. So this is an insane violation of First Amendment rights. These sorts of things never stay with people who are over there who you don't really care about or issues that you are really particularly keen on. This is an aggressive crushing of dissent. And every American who cares about their own rights needs to care about what is happening with Makamu Khalil.
- [77:44]
Matt
Yeah. Well, there you go. All right. Oh, why don't we play put C11 up there from fire. We gotta show them some love.
- [77:50]
Leah
Yeah. Gotta give them some love.
- [77:51]
Matt
They are a great organization. FIRE has written now to the Department of Homeland Security, the Justice Department, requesting answers. This is America. The administration must not use it Immigration enforcement to punish and filter out ideas disfavored by the government or denied due process to anyone facing arrest and detention. They ask a series of questions. What is a specific legal and factual basis for Khalil's arrest for his detention for which you are seeking revocation of the green card for he'll be afforded due process protections required by US Law. And is it your intention to seek the revocation of lawful immigration status on the basis of speech protected by the First Amendment? So we'll find out some answers to that question. Certainly will.
- [78:28]
Leah
One last thing I wanted to note on this is they were passing all these definitions of antisemitism and we were covering it here and some of the pushback was like, ah, this is just kind of meaningless. Like it's no big deal. They're just doing their own.
- [78:41]
Matt
People say that.
- [78:41]
Leah
Yeah, yes. People were like downplaying that this mattered. Well, Rubio is asserting that Mahmoud Khalil is damaging our foreign policy on the basis that part of our foreign policy is to combat antisemitism around the world. And so those definitions that were passed come directly into play as far as I can tell. And as we covered here, and as you guys likely know, they very clearly conflate criticism of Israel with antisemitism. So those. That's why it mattered that these official definitions were being adopted by the White House and pass through Congress, etc. Because now you have a situation where they could say, oh, well, he said, you know, he criticized Israel. He said there should be a one state solution. He said, from the river to the sea, Palestine should be free. So this is a problem for our foreign policy of combating anti Semitism as defined by these, you know, this resolution that we adopted. So that's why these things ultimately end up really mattering a lot. And, you know, we'll see what happens. Happens. One other thing that I read is that a lot of times administrations will go like judge shopping for the immigration, particular immigration judge that they want. We know we can put C9 up on the screen. We know now that Mahmoud has been moved all the way to Louisiana. And so the suspicion is that they are going to attempt to judge shop and get a Louisiana job that they think will be more favorable to their arguments versus the judge that immediately jumped in here to say, you can't deport this guy, we're gonna have a hearing, etc. That's a new York judge. So we'll see how all this plays out in the legal system too.
- [80:29]
Matt
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