← Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar
Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar
3/31/26: World Leaders Dire Warning On Iran, Israel Execution Bill Passes, CNN Assaulted By IDF, Trump Ballroom Bunker
00:40:30
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- [00:00]
Sager
This is an iHeart podcast.
- [00:02]
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- [01:41]
Crystal
Wasn't that delicious? So good.
- [01:43]
Sager
Your bill, ladies.
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Crystal
I got it.
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Sager
I got it.
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No, I got it. Seriously, I insist.
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Crystal
I insisted first.
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Sager
Don't be silly. You'll not be silly.
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- [01:59]
Sager
Okay.
- [02:00]
Rock, paper, scissors for it. Rock, paper, scissors.
- [02:02]
Crystal
Shoot.
- [02:03]
Sager
No.
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- [02:11]
Sager
Hey, guys. Sager and Crystal here.
- [02:13]
Crystal
Independent media just played a truly massive role in this election and we are so excited about what that means for the future of this show.
- [02:20]
Sager
This is the only place where you can find honest perspectives from the left and the right that simply does not exist anywhere else.
- [02:26]
Crystal
So if that is something that's important to you, Please go to BreakingPoints.com, become a member today and you'll get access to our full shows unedited ad, free and all put together for you every morning in your inbox.
- [02:37]
Sager
We need your help to build the future of independent news media and we hope to see you@breakingpoints.com now to Rory's point about all of the global impact that this crisis has already created, let's go ahead and start. We've collated a bunch of very ominous comments from heads of state from leaders all across Europe. Here's the Italy's Defense Minister. He says, I am forced to know things about what could happen in the coming week and the effects it will have on the in our daily lives that no longer allow me to sleep. You may easily pair that, let's say with this warning that came out D6 guys, if we could just go and put that one up here next is almost certainly this was an illusion. The energy chief of the European Union, Dan Jorgensen, sent a letter, a confidential letter to member energy ministers where he said national government should consider I love this phrasing voluntary demand saving measures, with particular attention to the transport sector, AKA travel restrictions could be coming to EU citizens very quickly. As in nope, you're not driving your car anymore, you are banned from let's say either train travel or who knows, right in terms of the actual restrictions that could be put into place far and away maybe a crisis for the European Union already it's a crisis in terms of their natural gas prices, their overall energy consumptions. If you think I'm exaggerating, let's look at a country where this is all playing out right now. Let's put D2 up there on the screen. South Korea, their president today, or sorry yesterday, he said the world is in turmoil over the energy crisis. The situation is so serious it has even kept me up at night. The immediate problem is grave enough, but the outlook ahead seems even more unstable. The situation is worse than than expected. That came at the exact same time D5 guys that South Korea is now having to weigh the first driving curbs in 35 years since the Gulf War of 1991. So what they are currently floating is basically what happened here in the oil crisis in the 1970s where depending on your license plate you get to drive that day odd number day you get to drive even number you get to drive. What I was shocked by this policy is already in place for civil servants. So every government employee in South Korea is already on a driving curb restriction they're already voluntarily instituting all of these energy saving policies. I told everyone yesterday, they're telling the citizens, don't shower or take a shorter shower to save heating costs. I mean, that's a crisis. I mean, the vast majority of their oil comes from the natural, comes from the Straits of Hormuz, their natural gas. This is a top economy in the world. Samsung car manufacturer, their stock market is getting. They're down 20% since the start of this crisis. This is a disaster for South Korea. And then think about Italy. You think there's any mystery why the Italians were like, all right, we're done. No more flights over our airspace. This is why. I mean, we have precipitated a real crunch in these countries. And these are just two that I've listed before I move on Crystal. But it is really bad.
- [05:59]
Crystal
Well, and these are wealthy countries, filthy rich countries. Yes. They're already suffering and struggling. You can only imagine in the developing world the type of cuts and the type of pain that they are already experiencing. And I mean, that is part of what is kind of sick about this situation is, look, $4 at the pump is nothing. Just like that's a problem. And we're going to have more problems. And there's issues with the chips and the helium and the fertilizer. All of that is very real. We're going to be a lot. We're going to have a buffer against the worst of these impacts. So we get to go out in the world, create this total global economic catastrophe and then we're relatively, relatively unscathed compared to the rest of the world and again, certainly compared to the developing world, which is by and large, according to the polling, adamantly opposed to this war whatsoever. So it is kind of, you know, it is kind of sick. I mean, it's reflected in Trump with his like, oh, we don't even rely that much on this. You guys, go get your oil. Like, we created this disaster, created this new reality with the Strait of Hormuz. No problems with the Strait of Hormuz before we came in and started doing our thing. And they're like, all right, rest of the world, which is already acutely suffering, go and figure it out.
- [07:12]
Sager
And good luck here to your point, literally, while you were talking, flashed from the afp, Indonesia announces fuel rationing, orders civil servants to work from home one day a week, Price hikes due to the Middle Eastern war. I mean, you got full blown rationing now in the developed world, let's continue on down the line. For example, let's put D4 up there on the screen. This will be no surprise considering what Trump has been truthing about. The UK just got its last tanker of jet fuel from the Middle east, the this week. So now what? They are floating. This is unthinkable. They are floating. Having air airports, just saying no fuel here to air. I mean, imagine that we're London, Heathrow, one of the, probably one of the most busy. They'll probably be fine. But I don't know what, it's a smaller airport. What's the other one? Gatwick or whatever like? All these smaller airports throughout the uk, they're like, yeah, we're just, we don't have any jet fuel. You can't, you can't fuel here. Yeah, that's the end of global commerce, of global travel if you have no jet fuel. They're saying that the European buyers will have to now seek additional jet fuel supplies from refineries in West Africa and the United States. However, they will take weeks to get there. Even in the interim, there could be a shortage. And when they arrive, there will still be a dramatic increase in the overall price. Now, connecting it to what Rory just talked about, if you take jet fuel from the United States, it's a finite, relatively amount of supply. So that just means if you don't have a jet fuel shortage in the uk, you could have one in Mexico, in Guatemala or anywhere in the, in Latin America. So somewhere somebody's going to get shafted. Let's continue down the line, shall we?
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Crystal
And the era of, you know, plane tickets and jet travel being, like, relatively affordable for middle class people, that era is going to be at a. At least for some time and.
- [08:58]
Sager
Oh, I told you.
- [08:59]
Crystal
Yeah, yeah. And I mean, it does just fit with this sense of, you know, things that we sort of took for granted, quality of life getting measurably worse and noticeably worse over the course of a lifetime. And, you know, I think you can see that already with, like, how fricking expensive steak is and with no one in sight, and that's probably only gonna get worse. And I think you could see the same thing with air travel where it just becomes, you know, this is something that beast can do and that's it.
- [09:22]
Sager
Ultra luxury. Good. So I look, like I said I was thinking about going to India and so I look at the prices, the only cheap way is to go through Qatar. And you're like, you know, it's like, maybe we don't want to risk getting hit by a ballistic missile while we're in a plane. So okay, so what's it gonna cost otherwise? Literally over $2,500 for economy tickets. I mean that's insanity. That's like in my head it should be like 1200 maybe I'm extremely naive, but like, I mean 5000 bucks for basic economy tickets just to be able to fly to India. Who speaking of India, let's put D7 up there on the screen. They're just, I mean they're having a currency crisis. The Indian rupee plunged 10% and is now in the worst annual decline in 14 years. And let me explain something about this too, cause this is a big Asian problem. So what's happening right now is that Japan yesterday had the lowest, I think yen to USD. Not all time low, but extremely low. Also you had the Indian rupee. What they're currently doing is to afford the high dollar price of crude oil, they are having to sell off vast amounts of its own currency that is deflating, depreciating their own currency. So what they're having, it's actually a dual crisis. To afford very expensive oil, they are basically having to sell off their own currency which is creating problems for import, export relative to all of these other goods that are around the world. There's some advantages to being devalued, but not a ton. And at the same time these foreign exchange traders and others are like, you know, going after the Indian rupee or going after the Japanese yen. This also has major impact for US Treasuries, for gold as well, for other people have to sell off in those to be able to buy dollars. So all of Asia, from South Korea, Japan, now the Indian rupee, all of their currencies are getting hammered. And I think the point of this whole thing, let's put D8 up there as well. Just to underscore what you said, Africa is already in a full blown energy crisis. They're rationing, they're having to just straight up cut from various different sectors or telling others that they won't be able to fulfill orders, they're just not going to have gas at the pump. If this continues now for some time, especially some of the poorer nations, you will see full blown like zero supply. In Africa, Asia, the rich countries like South Korea, Japan and others, they have strategic reserves, they're very rich, they'll be able to go out and buy, but it'll be crippling. India is right on the fence, they've got enough money but they're really going to have to struggle. Bangladesh, they're dead. Like you know, Pakistan, I'm Thinking about some of the other Indonesia we talked about like the right in the middle area where they have some money but not a ton of money. They still have some poverty, they're really going to struggle. Sri Lanka already having, you know, shortages and then outright poor countries are just, it's decimation. Yeah, right. And then here in the west we have, I mean a literal, probably the most inflationary environment since the 1970s or at very least with 2022, especially because we already have the existing inflation baked in from 2022. It's a nightmare.
- [12:30]
Crystal
Kiss your rate cuts goodbye for sure.
- [12:33]
Sager
Rate cut rates are the least of our problems. Like we're actually talking about like genuine demand destruction, quality of life destroyed now for years in the post Covid environment. So look, I mean we could be wrong like with the taco we could just settle around 350 a gallon. Although I mean that's still high. Right. Compared to where things were. It was 290 before the war started and probably going down. That's where things headed. Rate cut was coming.
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Crystal
Yeah.
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Sager
As of February 28th, the day before the war, they were talking about three successive rate cuts. It's over now.
- [13:05]
Crystal
Put D9 up on the screen because it's also very significant. This is India. Adam Tooze was highlighting this chart and said that it was one of the most significant that you could take a look at. So this is, this chart shows where fertilizer plants in India have closed because of this, actually across South Asia because of LNG supply disruption. So again you can see the ripple effects here. And then fertilizer becomes more expensive and then it's costs a lot more to grow food and then food becomes more expensive and your diesel is more expensive. So everything that has to be trucked to a store is more expensive. That's the way this ripples throughout the entire economy. And remember in the early days of the war there was this like 5D chess style cope of like oh, this is really going to hurt. It's really going to hurt China. Not true. I saw an analysis that actually our GDP is projected to take double the hit that China's GDP is that they're actually better. Not that they're going to feel no pain either, but they are actually better positioned to weather this disruption than we are. And so you know, in some senses, like the biggest winners of this war are exactly the people we position as our geopolitical adversaries, certainly Russia, China. And if Iran ends up controlling this vital strategic asset of the Strait of Hormuz, Iran comes out Much stronger.
- [14:24]
Sager
Yeah. I just think when you look at the way that things are now around the globe and you know. Cause what we're trying to show everybody is it's. And this is the framework that I was laying out yesterday was February 2020. Covid. Right. And one of the reasons I was panicking in February, I have all these friends in Asia and I follow all of these accounts, and I would just look at the daily toll in Wuhan and I was like, oh, that's really not bad. And then you would see the first case in South Korea or in Japan or in, you know, anywhere in the Philippines, and you would. I would watch the exponential factor grow. And eventually you're like, oh, we're just gonna shut down air travel. It's over. And you knew that a month before the lockdown ever hit in the US Oil is kind of the same way. You have the heavily reliant countries which immediately have the shortage. Then you see the price roll through all of that and you know what's coming here. I'm not saying it's gonna be as bad as a lockdown, but to me, just knowing the pocketbook effect of 450A gallon gas, that's a disaster, right. For a lot of people, especially going into summer, like Rory was talking about with the driving season, very similar, you know, to the July invade or to the February invasion of Ukraine with the July 2022 crisis. Does everybody remember that people really like, shut down in terms of their spending. You also created the whole K shape phenomenon where the only people who could afford to travel and fly at that time were the top 10%, and then the bottom 90 actually just became a lot poorer the entire time. So if you look and put all this stuff together, you can very clearly see the global crisis, the effect that it will leave now, the effect of even the single unilateral taco now of the mess they will have to clean up, the absolute abject mess. And then alternatively, if we do have to escalate in Iran, what that would continue to create and to escalate in terms of we really just have no good options right now.
- [16:16]
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- [17:03]
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- [17:14]
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- [18:48]
Crystal
So we wanted to turn our attention to this new law that just passed in Israel, which is really first of its kind, which applies effectively the death penalty to one ethnic group over the other. So Palestinians will be slated for death by hanging and it does not apply with, you know, effectively no exceptions to Jewish Israelis. So let's put this up on the screen from Haaretz. This is something that Ben gvir, you can see a picture there, has been pushing. He was celebrating with champagne yesterday after this monstrous ghoulish bill passed through the Israeli Knesset. So Israel passes bill mandating death penalty for Palestinians convicted of lethal acts of terrorism. The bill's wording creates a distinction designated almost exclusively for Palestinian terror, while the ideological burden of proof it sets is expected to make its application to Jewish nationalist terror difficult to impossible. So let me give you guys a little bit of background because even that headline is a bit misleading. So they say, okay, this is going to apply to Palestinians convicted of lethal acts of terrorism. That makes it sound like there's like a real judicial process where people get to go and they get to prove their innocence, and that it's only by and large gonna be people who are definitely guilty of these horrific crimes who are going to be subjected to the death penalty. Even if that was the case, the fact that you have this blatantly apartheid law that only applies to Palestinians and not to Jewish Israelis, that is unacceptable to begin with. But we also have to keep in mind the people that this would apply to. These are West Bank Palestinians, by and large, who are convicted, tried in military courts that are effectively kangaroo courts. The conviction rate is, I've seen estimates anywhere from 96% to 99.6%. So it's effectively show trials. We know the way that Israelis not only sweep up Palestinians just because they're military age males, but then they use torture to coerce them confessions, and they put them through these show trials, and those are the people who would be slated for execution. So it's incredibly, incredibly disturbing. You can put E2 up on the screen. This is, as I said before, this is Ben GVIR wearing here a pin that has a picture of the hangman's noose there on his lapel, along with his acolytes, all of them drinking champagne and cheering about this mass death. So this is one of the other sponsors and pushers of this legislation, dressed up, you know, excited about the ability to hang Palestinians to death. You can see here some of the conditions that these, I mean, they rightfully should be called hostages, not prisoners of Palestinians, the way that they are treated. And I even saw one person who had been through these torture camps. You know, these are the type of places where, of course, we had the right to rape protests and the horrific abuse that's been documented by many human rights organizations. In any case, I saw a Palestinian former hostage of the Israelis, saying, you know, don't be sad about this because many days the torture was so bad that we actually wished for death. So Sager, further codifying here a new way to mass murder Palestinians and further entrench and codify what is just undeniably at this point, an apartheid state.
- [22:12]
Sager
Yeah, again, the new law can only apply the death penalty for homicides intended to negate the existence of the State of Israel. Which means it explicitly would rule out, like settlers and others who were convicted in the 1990s of gunning down Palestinians. So this is, I mean, look, let's call it the way that it is. And even in Israel, you know, the so called, like secular left, they're like, oh, this goes too far. Like this makes it seem very explicit the way that we're applying the law. And we're like, yeah, that's kind of the problem, by the way, you know, with the entire system of the way that it's all working out. But I mean, I just think it just what we need to demonstrate. My goal, I guess, with all of this is just to show the people that we've empowered and the society which is supposedly so Western normal that we're protecting, that we are protecting, coddling and helping expand. That's the part which actually galls the most because a state like this, as you know, I'm not a moralist. If they want to exist, fine, whatever, that's your business. But don't be asking me for my money and your free health care and your defense and to fight your war. And now it's to expand. Like just this morning the Israeli defense minister said we're declaring a security buffer zone for the entire one third of Lebanon. That's 1 million people displaced. And when he says that they're never leaving, they even said we're gonna demolish all homes on the border just unilaterally. In invasion and annexation a control, I mean, effectively security control, which is, you know, possession is 9/10 of the law of this entire region. The world says nothing. So we take this society we're copying and pasting it onto west bank, onto Gaza, onto Syria, portions of northern Syria and now onto Lebanon. Empowering and paying for this Israeli empire to, I mean, think, think about the land grabs that these people have made since October 7th. That's the craziest part.
- [24:06]
Crystal
I mean, I know people get uncomfortable when you throw this around, but it truly is a Nazi state and a Nazi ideology. I mean, from the, you know, expansionist vision, the Greater Israel Project, the, you know, repeated invasions and annexations to the ETHNO supremacist ideology and outright the entrenchment codification, like from a state level of mass death. And then the celebration like that even is next level. The celebration, the wearing that noose and celebrating mass death, mass murder in that way, is truly something that is sick beyond belief. I mean, words fail to describe just how sick that is. But this comes from a blanket dehumanization of Palestinians where they are the ultimate evil, they are inherently bad. We are inherently good. That's what the ethno supremacist ideology means. We are inherently good. So anything we do is inherently good. Anything we do to you is inherently good. And you know, this thing passed without a problem. Without a problem. Netanyahu changed it a little bit to have some like, little bit of ass covering, slight differences that make no essential change to the actual functioning of the law. And so here we are. And just to underscore the point I was making before, put E3 up on the screen. These are kangaroo courts. These are military tribunals that Palestinians are subjected to. The judges come right at their IDF judges. And the conviction rate, according to 972 Magazine, and this is from a number of years ago, other estimates I've seen are 96%, but what they found is 99.74%. Okay, torture, which is used to coerce confessions, Palestinians swept up for minor infractions, children held in these prisons as well. And then just blanket across the board a mandate, a mandate that if you are convicted in these kangaroo courts of these certain crimes, that you will be hung to death within 90 days of your conviction. Let's go ahead and put E4 up on the screen. We've got a little bit of polling here about the support for the war, which continues to be extremely high. Very different political landscape in Israel for the war with Iran than here. You still have 78% of Jewish Israelis who support continuing the war. Now that is down from the 93% who supported it a month ago. I guess you have some small percentage that are getting tired of living in bomb shelters, but, you know, you still have overwhelming support. And then meanwhile, what they call Arab Israelis, which are Palestinians who live in Israel, 19% support the war. I guess originally it was about 26%. So you can see the way the society is completely divided here. We also wanted to get to this incident that unfolded with CNN's Jeremy diamond and his team on the ground. So his photojournalist was actually assaulted by IDF soldiers. And then he was. Jeremy was able to speak to these IDF soldiers and ask Them basically like, what are you doing? And their responses were incredibly, incredibly revealing about the way that the settlement movement works and the way that they are supported by the IDF and by the state and the way this whole thing is designed. Let's go ahead and take a listen. This is E6 to that.
- [27:37]
Jeremy Diamond
Producer Abir Salman identifies us as journalists before translating the soldiers commands.
- [27:43]
Abir Salman
Sit down, sit down, sit down.
- [27:45]
Unnamed Reporter
So the soldiers just immediately came up and started pointing their weapons directly at us, telling everyone to sit down immediately. Obviously, we're not posing any threat here.
- [27:54]
Jeremy Diamond
The commander comes straight for our camera, and within seconds, A soldier has just put photojournalist Cyril Theophilus in a chokehold, forcing him to the ground. The soldier who assaulted Theophilus continues to demand he turn off his camera before another smacks my phone.
- [28:21]
Unnamed Reporter
So, as you can see, what we have seen happen in the last 24 hours is that settlers came to this area, they settled that hilltop, and now you have a lot of soldiers coming to this area with the Palestinians in this area. They're on top of the home of Imad, the man that we were just speaking to. And we're seeing the soldiers treat the Palestinians in the area as a threat. When really what started this problem was obviously the settlers who came in the middle of the night and took over land that's not theirs.
- [28:48]
Jeremy Diamond
The Palestinians here are detained and questioned. Soldiers detain us too, and walk us back to our vehicle. They say they're trying to establish order between settlers and Palestinians.
- [29:00]
Crystal
So then let's put the next piece up on the screen. And this is a vo. I'll read you what happens here. This is an exchange between Jeremy and one of the soldiers. Soldiers who is, you know, so they're having this interaction, and Jeremy says they don't have permission to be here, even under Israeli law. He's talking about the illegal settler outpost. He says, even under Israeli law, this is not a legal settlement. This is one of these outposts that they strike up. The soldier says, but it will be a legal settlement. It will be. Jeremy says, how do you know this? Slowly, slowly. Thanks to your help, right? Jeremy says, of course I help my people, says this IDF soldier. He goes on to talk about how the reason that they're doing what they're doing and helping these settlers is because of, quote, unquote, revenge because of one of the settlers who was killed in some sort of car incident. The details are very murky, but in any case, they explicitly say that they are doing what they're doing because they are seeking revenge. And you know, this is something that Jasper Nathaniel has talked to us about. So you have these sort of designated quote unquote by Israeli law, legal settlements, they're illegal under international law, but Israeli law says these, you know, settlements, okay, these are officially sanctioned. And then what settlers will do is they'll create these outposts. They'll just go in and steal Palestinian land and set up a tent, you know, put a car there. And then gradually those outposts, which are illegal again even under Israeli law, let alone under international law, those settlements will grow. And then eventually the state will come in and say, okay, it's legal now. And so that's what the soldier is talking about there. He says, well, it's illegal now, but it's going to be legal in the future. And Jeremy says, oh, with your help. And he's like, yeah, of course I help my people. And it just shows you exactly what's going on.
- [30:45]
Sager
What's really crazy about this is that I don't really know why. I don't pretend to understand, like, the Zionist community in the us but every once in a while they just like, pay attention. And so, you know, that pogrom that we covered a few weeks ago, for some reason they were all like, wow, Bibi really needs to do something about this. With this one though, it's pretty clear they just messed up. They messed with the wrong journalists. They happened to mess with the United States citizen from cnn. That's it. By the way, does anybody remember they just murdered those two guys in Lebanon and they photoshopped his body onto a Hezbollah military uniform? They even admitted it. They're like, yeah, we photoshopped it, right?
- [31:19]
Crystal
Yeah.
- [31:19]
Sager
I mean, these people, they don't care whatsoever. It's basically in their training, in their IDF response. They're like, we have instituted, we've called back, what, the entire reservist brigade and we are going to retrain them.
- [31:32]
Crystal
Yeah.
- [31:33]
Sager
And you're like, well, this behavior's been happening this whole time. The same brigade is responsible. Didn't they kill a citizen, a US citizen? I believe they're responsible at least in some way, not to mention, you know, for all of their behavior. This is part and parcel, I think, for what they are. It also, I think demonstrates the serious problems for the idf, which the IDF chief even warned about. They're stretched to the brink. They've got these like reservist 19 year olds. You know, five of them got killed yesterday in Lebanon. So that's a real disaster, I think, for a society which is not very big and then they're stretched all across the brink. And then you've probably just got the same phenomenon of, you know, putting people in various different places, no oversight. This same culture where you've encouraged this with Gaza, this is what it creates.
- [32:18]
Crystal
So this particular battalion is called the Netsa Yehuda 97th Battalion, and it's an ultra orthodox Israeli military unit and has come under scrutiny before. In fact, the Biden administration considered sanctioning them because they have done all sorts of wild things in the past as well. I don't want to make it sound like they're out of line with official government policy. They're not. But they are a bit of an outlier in terms of their aggressive tactics and I guess how brazen they are about it. And so this is this ultra orthodox unit that set up to basically comes from a bunch of the settlers and set up because they have religious restrictions on men and women serving together, et cetera. So that's what this particular battalion is. And worth noting that the Biden administration considered sanctioning them, but didn't. And apparently Tony Blinken himself intervened and convinced them, like, no, no, the Israelis will handle it. They're on it. Most moral army in the universe, blah, blah, blah. And so now they're doing this PR thing of pulling them from the field and sending them for quote, unquote, retraining, as you. I mean, it reminds a little bit of, like, you know, the ice, like, rampaging. Like, the training was really not the issue. The problem was the mission that they were set on, the problems, what leadership wanted them to do. That's the problem here as well, where it's not just this battalion. It's the IDF in general, is there by and large, to protect settlers and help push forward the settlement movement. And they understand that to be the mission. They understand that to be what they're doing. And they are a force for the Israeli government's project of continually expanding settlements and stealing Palestinian land. So Jeremy, actually, to his credit, who I think handled this all very admirably, he spoke to this in response to the Israelis saying, oh, we're so sorry, and we're gonna pull them, we're gonna retrain them, et cetera. Let's take a listen to E8.
- [34:13]
Jeremy Diamond
The Israeli military has indeed taken what appears to be unprecedented action in the result of this, both in of search speed and in scope, with the Israeli military's chief of staff suspending the entire battalion from operations in the west bank, sending them back for training. All of that happening within 48 hours of our report airing. In addition, Meir, that soldier that you saw speaking about revenge, about helping illegal settler outposts become legal, he has been dismissed from the Israeli military altogether. The soldier who assaulted my cameraman, Cyril Theophilus, he has been. He is under investigation now by Israel's military police. We will follow, of course, the results of that investigation. But I do think it's important to note that the swiftness and the scale of this response is only really happening in large part because of who we are, because we are journalists working for an American news network. We have seen incidents similar to this before involving Palestinian journalists where there is no accountability. We have also continued to watch as settler violence in the west bank has continued to increase at a dramatic pace. And on that count as well, we have not yet heard a sufficient response from the Israeli military about what they are going to do to counter that growing settler violence against Palestinians. And that is also an issue that we will continue to cover extensively.
- [35:31]
Crystal
Yeah, I really appreciate him highlighting the fact that, yeah, if this was a Palestinian journalist, they wouldn't have done anything whatsoever. If anything, they would have arrested or criminalized Palestinian journalists. And that's the flip side of the conversation we were having earlier about how Palestinians are put through this military, quote, unquote, military court system where they're all convicted with almost no exception. And then on the flip side of that is when settlers steal land, brutalize Palestinians, even murder Palestinians, they almost never face any sort of criminal conviction or accountability. Which is what makes it even more remarkable that Ben GVIR is actually convicted terrorists even within Israel. That shows you what an absolute maniac and racist monster that guy is.
- [36:14]
Sager
Everybody go and follow Jeremy because don't forget who's about to buy cnn. And so I wouldn't be so sure that David Ellison and crew are gonna allow any reports like that anytime soon. The preview of the real future was last night when Jake Tapper spent eight minutes on a segment about Hasan Piker's anti Semitic.
- [36:34]
Crystal
Oh my God, what a fucking joke. And the one of the guys, Sorry, one of the guys that he had on his panel about bigotry too, was out all day defending the racist.
- [36:43]
Sager
No, I know that the racist law
- [36:46]
Crystal
mandating that Palestinians be mass murdered in, you know, through this new system. I mean, it's just insane.
- [36:53]
Sager
Do you know how long Eternity 8 Minutes is on cable television? So 44 minutes in a one hour show and they're just going to dedicate eight. Missed this. Yeah, yeah. First of all, yeah, you could have done a segment on the Israeli thing, even that. I mean, If I had 44 minutes, I think our first block today was 38 minutes. I could guarantee you that's not what I'm talking about. And yeah, I just, I'm still gobsmacked by the entire thing, you know, Look, Hasan and I have our differences, but for fuck's sake, I mean, can we take this thing like a little bit seriously?
- [37:20]
Crystal
Yeah.
- [37:21]
Sager
So crazy.
- [37:21]
Crystal
Yeah, that same dude too, by the way, was one of the ones who was like attacking Ms. Rachel as being anti Semitic for standing up for kids in Gaza. That's who they brought on for this panel about bigotry, where he instantly said that every Jew in the world is associated with Israel and, you know, loves them. I mean, that's which was actually anti Semitic and offered on that panel.
- [37:38]
Sager
It's really funny. Anyway, you come for some people and it's just like for me, like if when you come for Ms. Rachel, like, I'm ready to go, like I'm ready to fight as hard as I can. I just, I can't deal with these people.
- [37:52]
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- [39:51]
Crystal
All right, we've got one more rather dystopian story here. So Trump's been very excited about his big, ugly new ballroom. Kyle calls it the Jeffrey Epstein Memorial Ballroom that he's constructing. He let slip a little interesting nugget about some of the facets of this ballroom yesterday. Let's take a listen to that.
- [40:11]
Donald Trump
Now, the military is building a big complex under the ballroom, which has come out recently because of a stupid lawsuit that was filed. But the military is building a massive complex under the ballroom and that's under construction and we're doing very well. So we're ahead of schedule. That's part of it. The ballroom essentially becomes a shed for what's being built under the military, including from drones and including from any other thing. The glass on the windows, you see the big windows, the glass is extremely thick. It's high grade bulletproof glass. So all of the windows are bulletproof. I think the Times wrote, gee, some of the windows are fake. We have no fake windows. They said they talked about a stairway on the south. We don't have a stairway. That was replaced a long time ago. But this is a view of it from the north and that's if you see it, it fits in with the White House. It's almost a twin to the White House. It's something we just wanted to pay tribute to the White House.
- [41:18]
Crystal
So there you go admitting the military is building a massive complex to do something underneath of this ballroom. And Sagar, you and I were getting questions yesterday in the AMA about this and we hadn't seen this news yet. And we're like, oh, there was some YouTube thing about a data center. I haven't seen any proof for it. And then Trump just, just, I mean,
- [41:34]
Sager
I've had people Come up to me.
- [41:36]
Crystal
I have been proven right.
- [41:37]
Sager
Come up to me on the street and beg me to cover the ballroom data center. I'm not gonna. This happened like three times.
- [41:43]
Crystal
Yeah.
- [41:43]
Sager
And I'm always like, what the fuck are you talking about? But I mean, listen. All right, let's put the hat on first. Let's give the innocent explanation. Here's the innocent explanation. The piac, the Presidential Emergency Operations center, is a piece of shit. If you read. Let's say. I'm trying to think. There's a good book. Days of Fire. There you go. Peter Baker, A history of the Bush presidency. Bush is stunned the first time he has to go down there. He's woken up in the middle of the night, like, after 9, 11. They're like, sir, you have to go to the emergency bunker. And he goes down there and it's like 1960s technology. He's literally sleeping on a cot, like him and his wife. And he's like, this is untenable. Apparently, it's basically not been upgraded since that time. There's been minor cosmetic improvements, but it's a 1960s bunker. At the end of the day, it's really not that great.
- [42:26]
Crystal
We want our presidents to ride on the nuclear apocalypse in style.
- [42:29]
Sager
Right? Exactly. I mean, yeah. Anyone else watching Paradise? Not to give away too much, but yeah. So, like, that's the existing situation with the Presidential Emergency operations center. In 2025. They had already reported that they wanted to completely think about it. Trump, he's not going to be in a unstylish bunker, Right. So he needs a nicer bunker to survive a nuclear apocalypse that he's bringing upon us. So what is he going to do? So he's going to build a new one. Well, the new one is. Well, the current one is under the existing White House complex. So if you're going to build this giant ballroom, you might as well put a new PIAC underneath the ball. So that's the innocent explanation. At the same time, everybody else who's freaking out and is like, well, if you have all these billionaires building these bunkers in New Zealand and then the President himself wants to build a new. But you're like, what does he know? That I don't know, which is entirely rational. Again, for anybody who's watching the show Paradise, Again, not to give away too many spoilers, but it's actually, like, unironically something that would happen. Secret knowledge, people with means building bunkers, especially in the middle of this Iran crisis, maybe they know something that we don't. It's scary.
- [43:36]
Crystal
I mean here's the thing, like the President can't tell the future any more than we can. He has access to additional information that we don't. Although I'm not even sure that's true because apparently he has less information by his own choice because he decides to just get these 2 minute hype real briefings instead of consuming actual information. But in any case, he can't tell the future. But he knows I'm courting. We are a nuclear armed superpower. Our buddy Israel is also nuclear armed, increasingly superpower. We are courting this confrontation both with Russia and China. And oh by the way, Iran may be pursuing nuclear weapon as well. Do we put it out of the realm of possibility that Israel drops a nuke? No, we don't. And then off to the races. Who the fuck knows what happens next? So I'm gonna get a bunker, I'm gonna make sure I'm good so I can play these end times apocalypse games. Because it'll be fine. Me and my family and my aides, we'll be good. Good luck, rest of the world. Not to mention this again gets into the mentality of these old men who are running the world who have no long term interest in survival of human civilization. Apparently Caroline Levitt was asked about this yesterday. Let's go ahead and take a listen to what she had to say.
- [44:48]
Public Ad Announcer
Can you tell us more about this massive military complex underneath the President's new ballroom?
- [44:53]
Abir Salman
I cannot tell you more about that actually, as a matter of fact. However, the military is making some upgrades to their facilities here at the White House and I'm not privy to provide any more details on that.
- [45:07]
Crystal
So military making some upgrades. So it's not just trump freelancing. And also I just have to comment on, he's holding up the board and whatever. Like this is what he actually cares about. This frickin ballroom. This is the passion project, right? He's sick of the Iran. The Iran war has become tedious to him. That's his issue with it. And he wants out of the air. And he's looking at the markets not going too good. I'm sick of doing this. He just wants to focus on like his gold trimmings that are going into nuclear bunker so he can survive the apocalypse that he himself is creating.
- [45:35]
Sager
Yeah, this is, look, I don't know, this entire thing is the bunker. Okay, but then let's have fun with it. Aliens, right?
- [45:45]
Crystal
Wait, what?
- [45:45]
Sager
Huh?
- [45:46]
Crystal
How?
- [45:46]
Sager
With the bunker. He needs to survive. They're gonna, they're coming to kill us all. They can't do anything about it. It's instead of a nuclear apocalypse, he's gonna go down there. He's gonna save himself. Him and his friends. It's possible.
- [45:57]
Crystal
What in the.
- [45:58]
Sager
Can't rule it out.
- [45:59]
Crystal
What is the data center theory of why they're building a data center under
- [46:03]
Sager
the White House secret data?
- [46:05]
Crystal
Look, I'm not ruling it out.
- [46:06]
Sager
I have not. I have not fully delved into it.
- [46:09]
Crystal
Okay.
- [46:09]
Sager
Like some secret.
- [46:10]
Crystal
I need to go to these videos
- [46:12]
Sager
installation and it would be a large data center to I think to collect information on all America. Like some sort of supercomputer Palantir. Yes. Substate that would exist on. I mean a bunker to survive a nuclear or alien apocalypse. Makes a lot more sense to me. That's just me. So I don't know. Keep. Tell us your own theories. Tell us your own theories and maybe why it fits with the data centers. All right. Thank you guys so much for watching. We appreciate you. Wednesday so Ryan and Emily on tomorrow. I think Professor Pape is on tomorrow, right?
- [46:47]
Crystal
Yeah.
- [46:47]
Sager
So, yeah. Enjoy, enjoy. A shake up and the Professor Pape interview. So you had to change his schedule. They'll see you then.
- [47:09]
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- [48:35]
Sager
This is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed Human.