← Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar
Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar
3/3/25: Trump Crypto Bailout, KJP Cries Over Biden Age Backlash, Bill Burr Vs Ben Shapiro, Israel Blows Up Ceasefire
01:14:41
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- [00:00]
Ryan Grim
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- [02:01]
Krystal Ball
Hey guys, Sagar and Krystal here.
- [02:03]
Sagar Enjeti
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.
- [02:10]
Ryan Grim
This is the only place where you can find honest perspectives from the left.
- [02:13]
Krystal Ball
And the right that simply does not exist anywhere else.
- [02:16]
Sagar Enjeti
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.
- [02:27]
Ryan Grim
We need your help to build the.
- [02:28]
Jeremy Scahill
Future of independent news media and we.
- [02:29]
Krystal Ball
Hope to see you@breakingpoints.com.
- [02:35]
Sagar Enjeti
So let's get to some of the details about what Elon is up to and you know, the disasters I think they are according so Trump has repeated I mean, Trump really positioned himself as like a different kind of Republican who's not going to be like the Tea Party austerity obsessed deficit hawk. And he separated himself in the Republican primary, you know, positioning himself as a populist who wouldn't touch Social Security or Medicare in particular. And now you've got Elon Musk, who has been granted by Trump all of this power within the administration. I would say that much more of the direction of the administration has been Elon's ideology than Trump's ideology. And Elon went on Joe Rogan's podcast for a lengthy conversation and as part of that, reiterated his attacks on Social Security. Let's take a listen to that.
- [03:24]
Jeremy Scahill
Well, I mean, the government's one big.
- [03:26]
Ryan Grim
Permit scheme, if you ask me. Yeah, well, you can talk. Social Security is the biggest Ponzi scheme of all time.
- [03:33]
Krystal Ball
Right.
- [03:33]
Jeremy Scahill
Explain that.
- [03:34]
Ryan Grim
Oh, so well, people pay into Social Security and the money goes out of Social Security immediately. But the obligation for Social Security is.
- [03:45]
Sagar Enjeti
Your entire retirement career.
- [03:48]
Ryan Grim
So you're paying with. You're paying. If you look at the future obligations of Social Security, it far exceeds the tax revenue far. Have you ever looked at the debt clock?
- [04:06]
Jeremy Scahill
Yes.
- [04:07]
Ryan Grim
Okay, there's our present day debt, but then there's our future obligations. So when you look at the future obligations of Social Security, the actual national debt is like double what people think it is because of the future obligations. So basically, people are living way longer than expected and there are fewer babies being born. So you have more people who are retired that live for a long time and get retirement payments. So the future obligations. So however bad the financial situation is right now for the federal government, it'll be much worse in the future.
- [04:50]
Sagar Enjeti
Simple fix. You lift the cap so that rich people have to pay more into Social Security and it doesn't just cut off at 125 and then you would be good to go with regard to Social Security. But, you know, I mean, this is Elon's ideology. He, I think it is accurate to say, is an anarcho capitalist. That means that he actually thinks every function of government should be privatized. That's why he talks about things like, I think every government employee should take what he describes as a more productive job in the private sector. As Liz Franzek said on Twitter, though, you have to love the ideology in which Social Security is a Ponzi scheme and meme coins are strategic assets.
- [05:28]
Jeremy Scahill
I mean, that's what's insane about this is you have a multi. Multi billionaire, obviously. I mean, arguably the most powerful person to walk the face of the earth right now. True. In a T shirt on a podcast, laughing at Social Security as a Ponzi scheme. And it gets to what we were just talking about in the last block, but reversed, which is Social Security does have problems. Like, this is a quote from a Cato Institute analysis. So, obviously, Cato Institute is probably much more sympathetic with the anarcho capitalist than Milton Friedman famously had called Social Security a Ponzi scheme for decades. But in 1950, there were about 16 workers paying into Social Security for every retiree. Today, that number has dwindled to just 2.7 workers per retiree, and it's projected to fall further to 2.4 workers per retiree by 2035. So this is from a Cato Institute blog saying Social Security is a legal Ponzi scheme, which is where people like Elon Musk get really comfortable tossing that around because it's an ideological formulation of.
- [06:19]
Sagar Enjeti
The right for decades, since the advent of Social Security.
- [06:23]
Jeremy Scahill
And Milton Friedman, again, was like, he's very much popularized thinking of Social Security in this way, and there are significant structural problems with Social Security. But talking about it on a podcast so flippantly, a multi. Multibillionaire, extremely powerful person talking about it where he's almost giggling, Is not it like, that is not the politics that Donald Trump wants to advance for maga. Like, that's like, if Steve Bannon were here watching this with us.
- [06:50]
Sagar Enjeti
Yeah. Yes, I would think so. I mean, especially they're going to pass a $4 trillion tax cut for people like Elon Musk, who already, you know, Tesla had multiple years where they paid $0 in tax.
- [07:01]
Jeremy Scahill
It's their top priority right now.
- [07:03]
Sagar Enjeti
Yeah.
- [07:03]
Jeremy Scahill
Tax cut is their top priority, as.
- [07:05]
Sagar Enjeti
It was in the first administration. Yes, yes. And I mean, in that way, there's an ideological carryover from the first administration. But, hey, if you just took that $4 trillion and put it into the Social Security trust fund, I think we'd be in good shape. But Bernie made a similar point to what I was making. We'll put this up on the screen just to lay out some of the numbers here. He says wrong, Elon. Social Security has paid every benefit owed to every eligible American for 86 years. We can make it solvent for the next 75 years and expand benefits by scrapping the cap that allows billionaires like you to pay the same amount into Social Security as a truck driver. So, yeah, I mean, the specter of having this man who aspires to be the first trillionaire who, as you said, is probably the most powerful person who ever walked the face of the planet. Staring at the most successful social safety net program and the most popular social safety net program in the history of America that has lifted literally millions and tens of millions of people out of poverty is just. I mean, it is just disgusting. It is just disgusting. And nobody needs me to tell them that. Like, there is a visceral reaction to seeing this oligarch plutocrat who is plundering the government, saying, we don't have money. We've got money for endless wars. We've got money for my $4 trillion tax cut, but we don't have money for grandma's Social Security check. Like, get out of here with that super.
- [08:28]
Jeremy Scahill
I mean, just super bad politics. They're about to, I think, see that more and more show up in polling. And the more that Elon goes out and talks like this, it's going to be genuinely problematic for them because they've actually really tried. We were talking yesterday as we were prepping for the show, like, what did Project 2025 have to say about Social Security? And I went back and looked because I remembered vaguely in my mind being like, they had done something that was sort of new righty, meaning, like, not old school Con Inc. And I went back and looked, and the reason I remembered that is because it basically doesn't talk about Social Security. It talks about Social Security in a couple of different programs, like through the lens of abort and that sort of thing. But there's no big plan for Social Security, which is fascinating, because if this were still Paul Ryan's Republican Party, that would have been a focal point of Project 2025. But the reason that it wasn't is that people on the right have said, you're allowed to still believe this stuff. Let's just turn the volume down. We may have to do all of these tweaks to Social Security at some point. And I'm of the perspective that they're desperately structural changes that have to happen in Social Security. But politically, Trump World has said, like, you guys gotta turn down the volume on that. We cannot be out here talking about it. You can do that in 10 or 15 years. You can't do it right now. And then you have Elon Musk going out on Rogan and being like, it's a Ponzi scheme. And then you can't explain why it's a Ponzi scheme with any persuasive answer that would resonate with average Americans, who, to your point, are gonna see Grandma's Social Security cut or are gonna worry about that. I mean, that's good luck.
- [09:58]
Sagar Enjeti
Well, and the worries are already here. I can put this up on the screen. So Doge is making massive cuts. The Social Security Administration, they're saying they plan to cut some 7,000 jobs. The number I saw was that this was, like, roughly half the workforce that they're planning on cutting. Some of those cuts have already come. Ryan actually tweeted on a list of some of the people who have already been fired, and they have names like regional commissioner for New York, deputy regional commissioner for Kansas City, Assistant deputy commissioner for Ohio. So.
- [10:30]
Jeremy Scahill
And Ryan confirmed that they actually were fired because the administration was saying that we've mutually agreed to, like, sort of part ways.
- [10:36]
Sagar Enjeti
Yeah.
- [10:36]
Jeremy Scahill
But Ryan confirmed with his sources that this was like an actual purge.
- [10:39]
Sagar Enjeti
Yeah, yeah, that's exactly right. And, you know, I saw bunch of local newspapers across the country that are covering the fact that their local Social Security offices are being shuttered. And, you know, these are really important resources for if you have some sort of an issue with Social Security and, you know, you need to go to the office, then, you know, that's. That's your local resource that you go to and to see those shuttered. Again, to your point about how these cuts are not just being felt in Washington, D.C. among, like, some, you know, Ukraine flag liberals or whatever, these are really across the country in critical ways that are gonna show up in every community in some way across the country. And, you know, people like to be able to go to their Social Security office. They like that they have a regional commissioner so that things can be taken care of. And I also think you are courting disaster. To think we know when Elon came in and slashed and burned Twitter, things broke. Things still broke. My DMs aren't working on my fricking phone right now. Right now. And when it's Twitter, it's like, oh, well, whatever, I'll just get them later. I'll do it on my laptop, et cetera. When it's your Social Security check, it's a little bit more important. Or when it's airplanes falling out of the sky, it's a little more important. When it's food safety and we don't have the regulators to be able to make sure that the standards are being upheld, or baby formula, where we've already had issues in the past, these things are more consequential, and there is not the same margin for error of like, oh, oops, our Ron DeSantis spaces was a total and complete disaster. But no one's going to die from that.
- [12:12]
Jeremy Scahill
To be fair. Your Twitter DMs, they're probably hacked by Mossad.
- [12:16]
Sagar Enjeti
That is possible.
- [12:16]
Jeremy Scahill
Probably not Elon's fault.
- [12:18]
Sagar Enjeti
Although they are also I read that some Doge staffer is like figuring out ways to download everybody's DMs as well and probably run some AI program through it, et cetera. So it could be that too. Who knows?
- [12:27]
Jeremy Scahill
Seems perfectly legal. What is the very legal, very cool. That's how Trump described something once.
- [12:33]
Sagar Enjeti
That's right. Very legal, very cool. That's exactly right. I was mentioning the faa, some of the air safety pieces. Let's just put this next piece up on the screen to the point of the self dealing that has been going on. So last week I talked about how Elon's SpaceX people had gone in and were like, you know, this $2.1 billion contract that was going to Verizon, it's going to go to Starlink now. Well, they apparently that hasn't been made official yet, but they are already ordering staff to root around to find millions of dollars in funding for Elon's Starlink. So, you know, tens of millions of dollars they say, for a Starlink deal, according to sources here with the, with Rolling Stone. And you know, again, I think people have two ways they can look at billionaires and I wish people just had an auto like negative on billionaires, but they don't. They have two ways they can look at it. One is like, oh, he's so brilliant and he's such, so successful and he's such a genius. We're so lucky to have him and you know, rooting around in the government. The other is that, you know, this is an arrogant prick who is just self interested and is a robber baron and the reason he's so rich is because he steals things for himself. And when you have situations like this unfolding, it is clear the way that people are going to, if they don't already view Elon Musk in the context of all the power he has in our government.
- [13:55]
Jeremy Scahill
Well, I mean you described him earlier in the show as an anarcho capitalist and I think that's how he sees himself. But the better way to describe that is a crony capitalist because he doesn't believe in the anarcho part of that. He still believes that there should be a government to give him contracts. That's coerced to give him content.
- [14:10]
Sagar Enjeti
That is a really important priority. Yeah, yeah.
- [14:12]
Jeremy Scahill
And I mean the thing with, I think two things can be True. He can be brilliant on the one hand and also be a robber baron. And that's the interesting thing about Elon Musk is that Republicans for a long time, I mean, he a decent bit of pop cultural credibility like baked in before he started going full Doge. And we're starting to see that sort of crumble to an extent. And Republicans were not used to having someone from Silicon Valley where they had been really cozy with Democrats since the Obama administration. They were not used to having somebody that had pop cultural cachet and from Silicon Valley and lots and lots of money be so nice to them.
- [14:52]
Sagar Enjeti
Yeah.
- [14:52]
Jeremy Scahill
And that was very exciting. And he could go on Joe Rogan and talk about all these things in the government that are broken. But that has a flip side and that is increasingly becoming very, very clear that there's another side of this coin politically at least. So, I mean, it's similar to what we were saying with Democrats in Doge. And one of the things I feel with Democrats in Doge is that they need to have a better answer. Because if the public is asked to say the government is inefficient, is the government inefficient and are you going to vote based on this? You may have some people genuinely continuing to vote Republican even if they're upset with Doge and feel like some of the stu isn't going well. Because Democrats answer is USAID is wonderful and there's never been any problems with it. And just shut up if you're talking about this like you're wrong. They need to have a better answer. On the other hand, Republicans need to have a better answer. You can't just send Elon Musk out to talk about how Social Security is a Ponzi scheme. You have to. It's like repeal and replace. The politics of repeal and replace fell apart when they didn't have a good replacement.
- [15:53]
Sagar Enjeti
Yeah, that's true. I mean, one of the things Democrats could do is just insist on the return of inspectors general, whoever's job it is to look to waste fraud and abuse and to not cut the gao, which is the government office, and to beef those things up. But you're absolutely. And going beyond the plan for government efficiency or whatever, which I do think the conception of trying to run government like a business is just. It doesn't make ideological sense because the goal of government isn't to turn a profit. The goal of government is to do things like protect our food and protect our children and make sure that airplanes aren't crashing out of the sky and make sure that grandma's able to eat and not be eating cat food or whatever, but I think more broadly they need to have an explanation of the world, of what went wrong, of what led people to feel so stressed and be truly so stressed and how prices have gotten so out of control. They need to be able to point their finger at villains, the oligarchs and billionaires of the world who even before Doge were sort of robbing us all blind, but in perhaps, perhaps more subtle ways. And they can't really do that until they write, until they clean up their own house in that regard. And we'll talk more about that once we get into the block about what the Democrats are up to and what they are thinking and complaining about, etc. Just real quickly through the last few updates with regard to Doge before we get to this crypto mess. So put the next piece up on the screen. We have a new iteration of the what did you do last week TPS report email. This time Hagseth is saying okay no actually I do want everybody to respond to this thing with I guess looming potential firing. If you don't. This has been obviously huge back and forth. Elon put this thing out. A bunch of agency heads including Hagseth resisted and Rubio and RFK sort of said yes respond and then said don't respond. Now this email is supposed to be going out today and DoD civilians, of which there are millions, that's the large largest employer in the workforce. I think you said like 30% of the federal government civilian workforce are under Department of Defense. So this is extremely consequential in terms of that workforce. And then the last piece is a legal update here we have I mentioned the inspectors general that had been fired. Put C6 up on the screen. We had a judge rule that it is constitutional for the Office of Special Counsel to assert independence from the President as legitimate authority to act free of removal by the President without cause rules. Next up, scotus. So this is one of the court battles that's playing out over who can be fired under what circumstances. Cuz there are laws that govern, you know, with some of these individuals there has to be, you know, a time period Congress has to be alerted, it has to be for cause. It can't just be capricious, cuz we feel like it. And so this one is likely headed up to the Supreme Court for a consequential ruling about whether the executive has total and complete control over hirings and firings or whether Congress can say no for things like Inspectors general, you have to give us a reason why you're getting rid of them, because you can see, you know, you can see how this could be used in a bad. Whoa. This person was investigating me in a way I didn't like. Now they're gone, et cetera. So they try to insulate them from those sorts of political pressures.
- [19:17]
Jeremy Scahill
Yeah, just one of those decisions where the Trump administration would say, maybe facially it's against the statute, but the statute is unconstitutional. So they're trying to. We've talked about this. They're trying to push it into the Supreme Court to get decisions that would centralize power essentially with the executive because they don't want bureaucrats to be able to subvert the executive. It's an interesting ideological conversation, but this is a part of that.
- [19:40]
Sagar Enjeti
Yeah, so we'll see. That one's headed up to the Supreme Court, so we'll see what direction they go into with that.
- [19:46]
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Sagar Enjeti
All right, let's get to the part of the show that I'm most interested in talking about, which is this frickin crypto reserve. Let's put the Trump truth up here on the screen. He announces a US Crypto reserve that will elevate this critical industry after years of corrupt attacks by the Biden administration. Which is why my executive order on digital assets directed the presidential working group to move forward on a crypto strategic reserve that includes xrp, Sol and Ada. I will make sure the US Is the crypto capital of the world. We are making America great again. He followed that up, Emily, with another one saying oh, obviously Bitcoin and Ethereum, other valuable cryptocurrencies, will be the heart of the reserve. I also love Bitcoin and Ethereum. So we've got five different crypto assets here that so he's this has been floated for a while by Trump and now he's actualizing it and announcing which particular coins are going to benefit benefit from U.S. taxpayer dollars or funding being used to pump up the prices of these things to be held in a crypto asset reserve. Basically the problem for a bunch of crypto billionaires is that they're holding these quote unquote assets and there isn't enough liquidity for them to cash out their bag. And now the US taxpayer will backstop those assets so that these crypto billionaires can cash in. And the guy who is, you know, has been in charge of putting this together is a guy named David Sachs who is a billionaire. He's one of the billionaires who, you know, was involved in Silicon Valley bank and cried to the federal government that they needed bailout when that was on the verge of collapse. And has, you know, definite conflict of interest here in terms of which coins are being selected. So first let's put C8 up on the screen. And you can see the way that these crypto coins have, you know, of course they went through the roof, they soared after Trump revealed which coins were going to be part of this. And then with regard to David Sachs and the reported conflicts of interest here, which is a really fancy way for just saying that he's completely enriching himself. Put this up on the screen. This individual, Derek Martin, I checked all of this out, by the way, it's accurate. Has a massive conflict of interest with this announcement. Folks should be aware of new level of corruption. Put the next piece up on the screen. His company Kraft Ventures has invested in a startup called Bitwise Investor since at least 2017. He's listed as the primary investor. And just so happens that the main crypto coins going into the crypto strategic reserve fund just so happen to match Bitwise's top five crypto holdings. So incredible self dealing here. I mean, corruption really doesn't begin to describe this digital asset reserve. Even putting David Sachs aside, I mean, this is just a heist, it's just theft. It's just robbing the treasury to elevate the price of these. Completely bullshit, meaningless. Like, I mean, talk about a Ponzi scheme. Like crypto is the ultimate Ponzi scheme. There's not even a pretense of these things have value in and of themselves. And yet we're using federal government resources to backstop the price of these tokens so that insiders can cash in, which that already appears like that is happening and so that a bunch of billionaires can cash out their holdings. I mean it is a classic pump and dump. But using federal government resources in order to do that and coming at the same time as they're like, we gotta cut Social Security. It's totally insane. I almost don't have words for it.
- [26:24]
Jeremy Scahill
This is a genuine problem for Sachs and one that he anticipated because he says he divested all of his crypto holdings before taking government office. But what's interesting about that, and Ryan pointed this out and asked him about it on X. And I'm curious what you make of this because, I mean, it seems like if you were someone who's been into crypto for years and you're a major stakeholder in the crypto world, you would probably have the investments that you just outlined. It's not surprising that that's where Trump went with the reserve and that's somebody who isn't like, you know what I mean? It seems to me like that genuinely coincidence wouldn't be the right word. Just sort of, it's a logical place where your money would be parked. And I think that speaks to the bigger problem with having a crypto czar is that his companies. Right. And correct me like this is, I know you're more into this than I am, but he's companies where the companies are invested obviously in crypto. It doesn't matter if you divest, but if your companies are invested in crypto and we don't know that he's divested from those companies, I sort of doubt he's divested from those companies.
- [27:22]
Sagar Enjeti
Correct, yes.
- [27:23]
Jeremy Scahill
That seems like a huge, huge problem.
- [27:25]
Sagar Enjeti
Yeah, that's exactly right. And then, I mean, also the other problem is that who knew in advance which coins were going to be pumped up by this thing? And, you know, someone noted there was a position that was taken 50 times leverage, the tune of $200 million long, and I think it was Ethereum and Bitcoin.
- [27:45]
Jeremy Scahill
Well, to me it seems fairly obvious that the reserves would be Ethereum, Bitcoin, like some of the ones that are in there, which sort of. But it's like the timing.
- [27:52]
Sagar Enjeti
Exactly. So this position was taken a day before the announcement and 50 times leverage, meaning that if there was a 2% drop, all of those millions gone, wiped out, $200 million loss.
- [28:06]
Ryan Grim
Yeah.
- [28:07]
Jeremy Scahill
And we don't know.
- [28:08]
Sagar Enjeti
You're telling me that person didn't know? Like, come on. And it's not just this, like, this is unbelievably naked just theft of the public resources. In my opinion, there's zero strategic reason why we need to hold these important, meaningless Ponzi schemes, quote, unquote, assets. Right. Zero justification for that whatsoever. Nothing that makes sense at all. But you also have a situation where one individual who was being investigated by the SEC bought a bunch of Trump shit coin posted publicly about it. I think it was the largest purchase of these tokens and investment in his crypto scam. And then, oh, lo and behold, the SNC dropped their investigation. The vehicle to just outright bribe Trump through his crypto coin. I mean, this is, Listen, politicians have been corrupt since the beginning of time. Nothing new about that. But this is a world historic level of theft and graft and just brazen pay to play corruption that has been enabled by crypto. And this is just like the latest iteration of that. We can put C10 up on the screen that has the details about this Chinese crypto entrepreneur guy named Justin Sun. So they halted the fraud prosecution of this Chinese national who sent Trump millions and bragged about it to make sure he knew that he had invested $30 million in these crypto tokens. So it's paying off for him. CEO of Coinbase also benefited. The SEC is dismissing their lawsuit. That move came after Coinbase boosted Trump's crypto meme. Coin donated 75 million to a pro Trump super PAC and chipped in a million dollars to Trump's inauguration celebration. So presidency just completely for sale by these robber barons.
- [30:01]
Jeremy Scahill
Well, and I think in the corruption front, I was going to say this earlier about Elon Musk and Starlink. Part of the problem with all of this right now is that there's this. They do have a sincere ideological. Not always sincere like Trump's. I don't think is sincere. I don't think he's sincerely gives a damn about crypto because he said it was a scam and that it could undermine the US dollar. And you have to. It's the same thing with him in TikTok. Right? Like it was, it was pretty nakedly transactional how his opinion on it flipped. Elon Musk has a sincere ideological belief. We were talking about his sort of like anarcho capitalism flirtation before in crypto. Like he really does believe in it. And so then, and David Sacks certainly does legitimately believe in crypto. And so then you have this. You're just sort of being asked to trust that this is all for the good of this like ideological argument and self dealing. And with Starlink, it's interesting because Starlink is a very cool technology, it's an awesome product and it may be the best for the faa. We don't know though that it's because it has the best argument to the FAA for getting this contract. In the same way that like, well, how is anyone supposed to believe that this is genuinely the right move for the strategic reserve and not self dealing? You then just have to put your trust in Trump, Elon, in this case, David Sacks. And David Sacks will have this ideological reasoning and give all these explanations. But it's really hard. You're just asking the public to say, yes, I trust that this was not about your portfolio, even though the public has seen that happen for decades. And that's what Trump is a response to, seeing that happen for. He said, I alone know the system. That's right. I know the system, and I alone can fix it.
- [31:36]
Sagar Enjeti
Yeah. So Trump and Elon have a lot of, like, theoretical ideological divergences. The way that Trump positioned himself, certainly in 2016, but somewhat at this time as well, and the way Elon portrays his ideology, but in just their commitment to theft of the public purse, they are completely united. And I do think that that is one of the most important operating ideological commitments that you can see throughout this administration. Elon's primary goal, I think he wants to be the world's first trillionaire, and he wants to use government money, our public taxpayer dollars, to fund SpaceX so he can get to Mars.
- [32:13]
Jeremy Scahill
Like, yeah, he wants to go to Mars.
- [32:15]
Sagar Enjeti
He wants to plunder the government so he can go to Mars. That's his, like, primary operative goal. And if that means grandma's gonna starve and that means kids in Africa are gonna, like, doesn't matter. That's his goal. Okay. Just brazen theft of the public government, public purse so that he can go to Mars. Trump wants to be wealthy on the tune of, like, an Elon Musk. I mean, Trump is obviously incredibly rich guy, but he's not like Elon Musk's Peter Thiel rich.
- [32:39]
Jeremy Scahill
Well, and that was debated, too. I mean, what Trump's actual net worth was before these coins. As you did a great TikTok on how there's a few whales who are, at least as the time you did that TikTok, were holding the Trump coin. That's another example of we legitimately do not know if he knows who they are. We don't know who they are. We know who one or two of them are, but we don't know who they are. We don't know anything about that, and we don't know if he knows who they are. So then you're just being asked to trust that Trump's net worth was jacked up as he was entering office anonymously by people who were just trying to make money. And it was like a baseball card deal. It was just really good.
- [33:18]
Sagar Enjeti
Yeah, well, and by having this shitcoin, anyone, whether it's the Chinese crypto dude or anyone else, can just funnel Millions of dollars into it, some portion of which go directly into Trump's pocket to get their way with the government.
- [33:31]
Jeremy Scahill
Right.
- [33:31]
Sagar Enjeti
So he's robbing us, and then the whole foreign policy direction of we're gonna take Greenland, we're gonna take Gaza, we're, you know, we're going to take half of Ukraine or whatever, like, that's all about his, you know, benefit for his family. And Elon Musk as well. But a whole cadre of oligarch billionaires who can, you know, also rob those countries and benefit themselves as well. So it's a pretty consistent commitment across the government and certainly helps us to understand, you know, all this. Why are Trump and Elon able to get along so well? And why hasn't there been a falling out? Like, because they both have a commitment to stripping the government for parts and exploiting whatever they can in order to enrich themselves and pursue their own goals. But I think their common commitment to theft of the public purse is a bond that they share and part of what is keeping that relationship together.
- [34:31]
Jeremy Scahill
Although I think Trump's primary concern right now is his historical legacy. And where those two things depart will be interesting.
- [34:39]
Sagar Enjeti
So when you think he cares.
- [34:41]
Jeremy Scahill
I think he cares that he will be looked at as like, a great walking around, having his people call himself, call him the peacemaker in chief. Like, I think he does, at this point, care about how history sees him. And that's dangerous because it gets to, you know, just posturing, and every president does that. But, like, to what extent is this going to just be a public relations campaign? Like, is the presidency going to be a public relations campaign? I think what he cared about first. First was leaving office with money. So now that he has that covered, he doesn't want to go to prison. So there's that, too. That could factor into the conversation about a potential third term as Bannon, I think, sadly, is pushing. But I think he wants to be perceived as someone who healed the country. I think he desperately wants to be perceived that way. And I think where that departs with Elon Musk is going to be a problem for Trump. But what we've seen so far is that it hasn't been. Yeah, to your point about the market.
- [35:31]
Sagar Enjeti
Yeah.
- [35:31]
Jeremy Scahill
So, I mean, it's a. He really cares about the optics. That's why he's obsessed with polling and obsessed with how he won a mandate in the popular vote and all of that. So Elon could potentially be a problem to that down the road. But, you know, even when we've seen breaks so far in public perception of Elon Musk. Trump has not. This gets to your theory, right? Trump has not departed from him.
- [35:54]
Sagar Enjeti
Yeah. Yep.
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- [38:57]
Jeremy Scahill
Former Biden White House press secretary Karine Jean Pierre, out of that job for only about what, a month now, was at the Harvard Institute of Politics last week and made some comments about the Democratic Party push to oust Joe Biden from the ticket that have gone viral and are well worth getting Crystal's reaction to and diving into some of the problems or how they speak to some of the broader problems that the Democratic Party is facing right now. So let's take a listen to Karine Jean Pierre again. This is from last Wednesday at the Harvard Institute of Politics. It was a firing squad and I had never seen anything like it before. I'd never seen a party do that in the way that they did. And it was hurtful and sad to see that happening. A firing squad around a person who I believe was a true patriot, a person who I believe did everything that he can for this country, a person who I believe, as I mentioned before.
- [39:55]
Ryan Grim
Has done more in one term than.
- [39:58]
Jeremy Scahill
Most presidents had done in two term historical things. And I was shocked, shocked.
- [40:03]
Ryan Grim
But what I was seeing and Karine.
- [40:05]
Jeremy Scahill
Just to clarify, other Democrats and coming out against Biden. Yep. I had never seen anything like that. That was, if you're asking me, the thing that I saw in those three weeks that was shocking, shocking. And instead of coming together to really be unified and trying to figure out how do we save our democracy, how do we fight back? That's what I was seeing. Crystal, I know you have a lot to say about that. I'm gonna toss it to you with just the response of Karine Jean Pierre is that, ma'am, do you know what I've never seen is a president who is basically dead continuing to try and run for president again. So to her saying, I've never seen anything like the firing squad. It was like he fell asleep during a debate practically. He beat Medicaid.
- [40:56]
Sagar Enjeti
He beat Medicaid.
- [40:57]
Jeremy Scahill
He beat Medicaid. I'm sorry, but nobody has Ever seen what precipitated what you say you've never seen. So maybe it's not so crazy that we had never seen that level of firing squad before.
- [41:09]
Sagar Enjeti
I mean, I just. I don't even know what to say. Like, I don't know. You were part of a historic scandal and cover up of this man's decline.
- [41:20]
Jeremy Scahill
Yeah.
- [41:21]
Sagar Enjeti
If you care so much, and I don't think that she really does. I mean, that's part of it. Like, if you actually cared about defeating Donald Trump and righting the ship, you should have been blowing the whistle and letting us in on the fact that this man could not function, that he was unable to put sentences together. I mean, the things that are starting, that have been coming out after the fact, about how oblivious he was to the political reality as well, about how many donors who would just see him at one event and you were with him, you know, day in and day out, donors would see him at one event and be like, holy hell, this is worse than I thought. And so for you to sit here and play the victim and act like the people who were in the wrong were the ones that finally, at long last acknowledged reality and were like, jesus Christ, this cannot go on is just, just insane to me. It's also insane to me. Like, I'm sorry to treat her with such kid gloves, like, to host her and let her, oh, my God, my feelings. And it was so shocking and it was so terrible, blah, blah, blah. Like, she needs to be treated as someone who was part of a conspiracy against the American people.
- [42:33]
Jeremy Scahill
She's being touted out at Harvard.
- [42:34]
Sagar Enjeti
That's right.
- [42:35]
Jeremy Scahill
Yeah.
- [42:36]
Sagar Enjeti
She was part of a conspiracy against the American people. They helped to, you know, block any sort of a democratic primary process from playing out. They hid, they went to great lengths that we are only beginning to scratch the surface of, to hide the nature of his true condition. And that you. You feel no remorse or regret about that. Your only concern, your only criticism is for, again, the people who very belatedly were like, Jesus Christ, we cannot hide from this reality anymore. Like, that is so insane to me. And I do think it speaks to just like a deep lack of seriousness and a deep narcissism within some of these people where it was more important about how her boss felt and the way he was treated and his own ambitions than addressing what she probably would describe and what I certainly describe as a fascist threat to the country. So I just, it's incredible to me that this is still the way that she's sort of like, positioning herself oh, it was so hurtful. It was so shocking. Also, the whitewashing of Biden's record should not be unnoted as well. She says he accomplished historical things. Yeah. Like facilitating a genocide in Gaza as one example of those historical things that he was up to. And I supported very much parts of that domestic agenda, especially in the early days of the Biden administration. But you also have to grapple with the reality that the economy took a turn. People were not happy, people were not satisfied with what you were able to accomplish, even on the domestic front, putting aside foreign affairs. And Biden's core promise that he ran on in 2020 and was planning on running again in 2024 was defeating Donald Trump. And on that measure, you failed. You handed the White House back to him on a silver platter. So you should be hanging your head in shame. And I know it's cliche to say, but with her, I really do feel like, what happened to you, Because I knew her back at msnb, she came out of the, like, move on, activist, anti war world. And every day when I would see her up there justifying these atrocities in Gaza, it was just like, how does this occur? Like, what is the path that you walked that led you to feel that this was not only justified? She thinks she has the moral high ground. She still thinks that she is, like, the more virtuous, morally correct one. And I just, I just can't wrap my head around it, honestly.
- [45:08]
Jeremy Scahill
And it's first and foremost a rebuke of the crowd that she came out of. And that's a really interesting point, actually.
- [45:14]
Sagar Enjeti
Yeah, that's exactly right. Yeah. Because she came out of, like, the activist community.
- [45:19]
Jeremy Scahill
Right.
- [45:20]
Sagar Enjeti
And I think once you start to justify, well, this is just what I have to do for my career, and if it wasn't me, it'd be someone else, blah, blah, blah. Then you end up at the podium justifying war crimes and atrocities, and you end up here after the fact being upset that people pointed out the reality that the President was too old to be functional at this point.
- [45:43]
Jeremy Scahill
Right. So it's how the. It's very common. It's not just on the left. But you see the ends justify the means, meaning to a certain extent, you start believing in the means. Right. So it's one thing to be like, like, you know, X, Y and Z, but she's. There was never any cracks in the foundation when it came to her, apparently. Like, well, we didn't see anything leaked. She didn't indicate there was any, like, daylight between herself and the president, she was a real loyal foot soldier to the point where seems like she was in the camp of like now agreeing with the means. Not just that the means justified the end, but we have to talk about this sort of glimmer of hope, I think for Democrats governor, Minnesota Governor Tim Waltz, who is a slightly more compelling politician than he was allowed to be.
- [46:25]
Sagar Enjeti
On the campaign trail, significantly more so.
- [46:28]
Jeremy Scahill
He goes on Molly John Fast podcast and starts to talk about man, I'm really eager to talk about this because it reminds me a lot of what Republicans have dealt with over the last 10 years. Crystal, about single payer health care.
- [46:41]
Sagar Enjeti
Yeah.
- [46:42]
Jeremy Scahill
Let's roll this clip of Tim Waltz on Molly Joint Fast podcast. He's it's a full recollection of sort of what went wrong or reconsideration of what went wrong in 2024. But here's what he had to say, particularly about health care.
- [46:53]
Ryan Grim
I hear the thing out there is it's that when we get back, which.
- [46:57]
Krystal Ball
We will, we'll fight, I'll tell you.
- [47:00]
Sagar Enjeti
What people are going to expect is.
- [47:01]
Ryan Grim
They'Re not going to expect us to.
- [47:02]
Krystal Ball
Tinkle around the edge with the aca. They're going to expect universal health care.
- [47:06]
Ryan Grim
And if there's a lesson here, I always said this, we had a one.
- [47:09]
Sagar Enjeti
Vote majority in Minnesota when we moved clean energy, we moved reproductive rights, we moved, we moved a whole slew of.
- [47:16]
Ryan Grim
Progressive, very popular, including things around guns.
- [47:20]
Krystal Ball
And gun safety, very popular thing.
- [47:22]
Ryan Grim
We moved it with a one vote majority. And people ask, well, what do you.
- [47:25]
Sagar Enjeti
Call a one vote majority?
- [47:26]
Ryan Grim
A majority.
- [47:27]
Jeremy Scahill
Exactly what happened with the Tea Party, Crystal, except in reverse. They did not expect Republicans to just tinker around the edges of the aca. They wanted a full repeal. But when Republicans had nothing to replace it with, they lost the permission structure from, as people have pointed out, a lot of populist conservatives who rely on the government for some of their health insurance veterans, et cetera. And so when you have these populist movements spring up for good reason, your response can't be crony capitalism and corporate bullshit. And I think that's the point that Waltz is making here.
- [48:04]
Sagar Enjeti
I think he has better instincts, political instincts than the vast majority of Democratic politicians. And you're absolutely right that he was really sort of stiff, stifled on the campaign. I think there was a fear maybe of him overshadowing Kamala. He did very poorly also in the J.D. vance debate. We have to say he was way too accommodating. I mean it just was not the way to go. In fairness, he did say going in, like, debating is not my thing. So that was apparently a weakness for him. But he auditioned for the campaign on cable news where he was fantastic. He had a real instinct of how to characterize the Trump administration as abnormal, normal, versus reaching for the high moralistic language of their fascists, et cetera, which obviously I agree that they are. But I do think that politically, his way of just saying, these people are strange, they're outside of the mainstream, this is not the direction we should be going in, I think was probably the better direction. And he just was a very effective and relatable messenger when he was allowed to do so. And I think his instinct here is precisely correct. And, and speaks to what you were saying, Emily, which is like, you know, Democrats have always supported, if you ask Democrats, overwhelming majority support single payer. Like, this has always been what Democratic base voters have wanted in that 2020 primary, when in whether it was Mississippi or Nevada. When you ask Democratic primary voters, do you prefer to a public option or some other variation of healthcare reform versus single payer? They backed Bernie Sanders, Medicare for all. And at this point it's like, okay, well, we tried it your way. We did the Joe Biden thing, we did the Kamala Harris thing. And you were wrong that this was the way to defeat Donald Trump. You were wrong that this was the way to stop the country from sliding into oligarchy and authoritarianism. So we're not gonna listen to you anymore. This time. We have our own ideas about how we wanna approach things. And I think his instinct that a more sort of, of passionate and someone who is more of a fighter and who is more willing to embrace those kind of universalist programs that are really popular. Things that are popular among the Democratic base are going to be in a much better position next time around.
- [50:14]
Jeremy Scahill
Now this is where it gets even more interesting because I think Third Way selectively leaked this document to Politico. But Politico got its hands on a document from a Third Way retreat that happened out in Loudoun County. Obviously, if you're not familiar with Third Way, they're openly center left. They're not trying to be the activists, the representation of like the Democratic activist grassroots. In fact, they're openly sort of rejecting the direction of the party of the activist grassroots. But we can put the next element up on the screen. This is a document that was leaked to Politico from that retreat about how Democrats can regain working class trust, quote, and reconnect with voters culturally. They laid out 20 solutions. And Crystal, it's So fascinating because some of this is right on the mark. It was right on the target, like the quote faculty lounge program. But some of it is so incompetent, like their prescriptions on the faculty lounge problem are incoherent with their point about economic concerns. Because you'll have much better thoughts on this than I do. But just as I'm thinking about some of these prescriptions, it's very heavily about the problems with identity politics, which is again funny from the center left which completely encouraged all of the corporate sponsorships of identity politics. If you go back over the last 10 years. So, so it's amusing right now. Now on the other hand though, they are talking about how Democrats need to begin like re emphasize the economy, like tone down the volume on the cultural issues, turn up the volume on the economy. But they're also talking about isolating the far left. And this is the problem as I see it for Democrats, the far left's economics are more appealing than the center left's economics. So if you alienate the quote unquote far left which actually does represent where the public is on a lot of economic issues. Social Security is one really example as we were talking about earlier, healthcare another good example. If you alienate the quote far left because of the cultural messaging, you are left with what like Obama nomics which is also not popular. So like what do you in this document it says reduce far left influence and infrastructure. That's one of the bullet points.
- [52:24]
Sagar Enjeti
Yeah.
- [52:25]
Jeremy Scahill
So you're going to be screwed on your economics if you do that because your center quote center left economics are not positive.
- [52:32]
Sagar Enjeti
Yeah, well I think those are good points. I mean they really give away the game here when they say that the goal should be to move away from the dominance of small dollar donors whose preferences may not align with the broader electorate. You think the big donors preferences are aligned with the broader electorate like tax cuts for the rich and cutting Social Security and, and union busting. Those are the priorities of the big dollar donors or you know, backing Israel's war crimes from here until eternity. You think that's what's aligned with the broader electorate? I mean that's what really gives up the game here because it's all well and good. Oh, we should focus on economic solutions. What economic solutions? Like you know, salt tax type of bullshit?
- [53:22]
Jeremy Scahill
Exactly.
- [53:22]
Sagar Enjeti
Because I promise you they don't mean expanding Social Security and single payer healthcare and, and union jobs and living wages. They don't mean that. So the other piece of this that is just maddening to me is Again, it pretends like the Bernie Sanders left has been in control of this party. They're not. They have very limited power, very limited power in this party. And that is precisely the problem. Like there was a populist left anti answer to Trumpism that made sense to people that appealed to the very bros who have now drifted to the right, that appealed even to Joe Rogan, that appealed massively. I mean, Bernie Sanders was king among working class Latinos. Again, the same groups that have drifted to the right that had a narrative, that the Sanders left populist movement had a narrative and a class focus that made sense to people because it was true and it was real and it offered actual solutions. And your efforts over these years, this group in particular efforts over the years to crush and sideline that movement is one of the key reasons why Democrats find themselves in the place that they are now. So to act like you haven't been in control of this party while you're running Joe Biden and Kamala Harris is to me so utterly insane and dishonest that it's crazy. But like I said, even if you might agree with their sort of vague generalities about like, they need to get out into real communities, which is funny to me that those real communities include gun shows.
- [54:57]
Jeremy Scahill
Like, hell yeah. Also good luck. I mean, seriously, good luck, right?
- [55:03]
Sagar Enjeti
Like, yeah, I don't think you're going to be winning a lot of voters at the gun show, but whatever, go to the gun show. That's fine if you want to. But even if you agree with these sort of like vague generalities, when they're talking about getting in touch with economic issues, they are not talking about the actual economics that would deliver for people that the quote unquote far left left has been offering for years and years, they're talking about an elite agenda backed by big money politics. Which is precisely why Democrats had no trust with the voters when they claimed to be the party of the working class.
- [55:34]
Jeremy Scahill
It's really disgusting to see how elite Dems and massive corporations that were funding elite Dems got behind the identity politics agenda when it was convenient for them and are now taking these issues and, and just completely discarding them. It's a great example of how people are like toys, right? It's like we're in the Truman show and they're running everything. It's a big experiment on us and they're just like pulling the puppet strings. From my perspective as a conservative, I'm like, okay, so you guys did all this bullshit to girls sports and now you're taking a step back and being like, hey, no, no, no, we gotta get our power back. And it's like, give me a break. You were just your. It's just we're all players in your fun little game.
- [56:19]
Ryan Grim
Yeah.
- [56:19]
Jeremy Scahill
And you'll give all this money and you'll call people bigots and you will. It's like when there's that famous moment at a Bernie Sanders rally in 2016 where a BLM group overtook the stage and started protesting him. And what we saw after that was the Hillary Clinton campaign start weaponizing this as a wedge issue and going after the Bernie Bros and saying people were bigoted for backing Bernie. They were just sexists and just completely weaponizing it. And it became the dominant ideology of the Democratic Party, and now they just wanna get rid of it.
- [56:49]
Sagar Enjeti
Yeah.
- [56:50]
Jeremy Scahill
Like, thanks for throwing us all.
- [56:52]
Sagar Enjeti
You were not the ones who originated this as a way to pretend like Bernie Sanders was a racist and a sexist imposture. Like, you were the real progress and.
- [57:00]
Jeremy Scahill
His supporters were racists and sexists.
- [57:01]
Sagar Enjeti
That's right.
- [57:02]
Jeremy Scahill
And the same thing with Trump. Supporters were necessarily all racists and sexist. They played this game with the country where they poured gasoline on the fire of the culture war. And now they're acting like as it burns, they're like, oh, man, you guys, that was bad. Can you guys deal with putting those flames out?
- [57:17]
Sagar Enjeti
So true.
- [57:18]
Jeremy Scahill
It's such a bul.
- [57:19]
Sagar Enjeti
Yeah. And I mean, you can also see the nakedness of it with the way that all these corporations, whether it's Jeff Bezos or Mark Zuckerberg, like, you know, they adopted the, like, liberal identity framing when that was the power that they thought was ascendant. And now that they feel like the right wing is ascendant, well, they'll just ditch that and they'll adopt the right wing cultural totems to also cover for what is fundamentally a pro oligarch agenda. I mean, that's Marc Andreessen going on with Joe Rogan and being like, the CFPB is canceling conservatives, blah, blah, blah, and just making stuff up to try to use a Trojan horse of these cultural issues to usher in a pro oligarch agenda. And it was groups like Third Way and the Hillary Clinton neoliberals who originated that in the Democratic Party. So, yeah, it's. But just coming out and saying like, we got to get rid of these small dollar donors donors is so insane. I mean, when Bernie ran and he is the most successful and this is the other thing that gives away the game. He is the Most successful small dollar donor candidate probably in history.
- [58:22]
Jeremy Scahill
And Trump is really successful too.
- [58:24]
Sagar Enjeti
But not as successful as Bernie.
- [58:25]
Jeremy Scahill
No.
- [58:26]
Sagar Enjeti
And this time around, actually, Trump didn't do all that well with grassroots donors. But you're right, but with Bernie, you would go and look at the top professions and it was like Walmart workers and Amazon workers and Starbucks workers. And you think those are the people that are out of touch with the priorities of the broader electorate. But you're like Louisiana. Silicon Valley Wall street donors. Those are the ones that are gonna get us back in touch with the working class of America. They can't believe that. They can't actually believe that. It's so dishonest and so insane.
- [59:02]
Jeremy Scahill
But I don't know if they believe it. I mean, some of them probably do. And some of them are probably like, we know this is insane and stupid, but that's their.
- [59:10]
Sagar Enjeti
Yeah, you're right. They're in such a bubble that perhaps they do actually think, because that's all viewpoint that surrounds people, it's a bubble.
- [59:16]
Jeremy Scahill
Right.
- [59:16]
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- [62:25]
Jeremy Scahill
Let's move on to the brewing feud between Bill Burr and Ben Shapiro.
- [62:29]
Sagar Enjeti
This is a fun one.
- [62:30]
Jeremy Scahill
All right, so Ben Shapiro has said that we can put Element one up on the screen. This is the quote he said recently that Bill Burr quote has become woke over time. I think he became embarrassed that many people on the right thought he was very funny so he decided he was going to go woke. Burr openly cheered the murder of the United Healthcare executive because he says CEOs should look live in fear if they don't act in the way that he would have them act in a system that he has no fixes for, by the way. Now let's go to the second one. He called Burr's comments about the killing of the UnitedHealthcare CEO, quote, truly evil and said he's saying you should live in fear. If you're the CEO of a company that does Things that Burr deems to be bad or wrong. Now, Bill Burr did an interview where he was asked by the New York Times because he's doing aactually. This is actually kind of cool. He's doing a Glengarry Glen Ross adaptation, which is interesting because David Mamet has long been sort of affiliated with the right, though Glengarry Glen Ross is a critique of capitalism. So let's put E3 on the screen. Bill Burr responds and says all Shapiro knew is if, if he put, quote, woke on what I said, he would make more money. I don't know who he is, but that guy is jerk off. Now let's go back to how Bill Burr has been talking about Brian Johnson and Luigi. So this is a clip from Bill Burr on December 9th of last year. We can go ahead and roll this element.
- [64:08]
Ryan Grim
You know what's annoying me about this kid who killed this CEO is none of these news programs are talking about the incredible lack of empathy from the general public about this because of how these insurance companies treat people when they are at their most vulnerable after we've all given them our money every month and now we finally need you and all you do is deny us. And then these pussies and all of these things are taking the pictures of their CEOs off their websites. You know, I got to be honest with you, okay, I love that CEOs are afraid right now. You should be. By and large, you're all a bunch of selfish, greedy fucking pieces of shit. And a lot of you are mass murderers. You just don't pull the trigger.
- [64:56]
Sagar Enjeti
That's why it looks clean.
- [64:57]
Ryan Grim
That's why these people look, oh, my God. Oh, he was just, you know, walking into a hotel. It's like, okay, well, what was his job? What did he do? What was the results of it?
- [65:07]
Jeremy Scahill
All right, so there's a lot to say about this, Crystal, because Bill Burr has been on a tear about Brian Johnson and Luigi Mangione essentially since this happened. Happened so for several months. And I think Shapiro wouldn't claim to be a sort of avatar of Trumpism. He has a lot of his own complaints with populism. He's a fairly anti populist pundit. That's kind of what got him in trouble originally with Trump World. He's always sort of been honest about his opposition to anti corporate populism as it's risen on the right. But Bill Burr, I guess I don't understand why Bill Burr is supposed to have a fix to the health care problem if he's going to Spout off about Brian Johnson.
- [65:49]
Sagar Enjeti
He's a comedian. He really is, but one that's actually funny and actually stands up to power. And if Democrats want to win again, take notes from Bill Burr. This is actually the type of energy that you need to. When he says, a lot of these CEOs are mass murderers, they just don't pull the trigger. You want to talk about the kind of populist left energy that could win. This is how people feel. I mean, that's why there was such an outpouring of emotion around Luigi Mangione. And so for Bill Burr to say, like, hey, aren't we gonna talk about where that comes from? And then Shapiro's like, oh, you can. You know, this is truly evil. Blah, blah, blah. I also, I think what was the smartest thing that Bill Burr said in all of this, which speaks to what we were just talking about, about using cultural issues to usher in an oligarch agenda. He said, all Shapiro knows is if he put woke on what I said, he'd make more money. And that is, I mean, again, a lot of oligarchs on the right are using an anti woke, you know, a woke backlash. You know, the energy around anti wokeism using whatever dei, whatever cultural totems exist that are important to conservative conservatives and putting that across whatever their agenda is and trying to usher in Trojan horse in this pro oligarch movement. And it's being very successful. And so I think the way Bill Burr immediately picks up on that, I think is honestly very impressive. It's also hilarious that he's like, I don't know who he is, but he's a jerk off.
- [67:27]
Jeremy Scahill
Yeah. And this is probably not popular with a lot of our viewers, but I personally really like Bill been. But what I would say if he was sitting here is that wokeness is not anti corporatism. That's. There's nothing woke about Bill Burr. I mean, it might. It might be coded as left, but it's the opposite of woke to be anti corporate. And I mean, obviously corporations were pushing wokeism for a really long time. It did become the language of corporate America. But wokeism and like, being mad at CEOs shouldn't be conflated. That's a really dangerous, I think conflation on the right because it pegs pegs. And Ben, to his credit, would be against both of these. He would be against populism and wokeism. But most of the right is not against populism like most Republican voters are not against what Bill Burr is saying here.
- [68:13]
Sagar Enjeti
Well, And Ben Spiro isn't against wokeism when it comes to like, different.
- [68:17]
Jeremy Scahill
Yeah, that's. That's.
- [68:18]
Sagar Enjeti
He's very in favor of affirmative action when it comes to his pet issue.
- [68:23]
Jeremy Scahill
Totally different like that. He would. He would obviously argue if he were here that it's all like. I think he would conflate anti Israel sentiments with anti.
- [68:34]
Sagar Enjeti
Of course.
- [68:35]
Jeremy Scahill
Yeah. And that's. Yeah. So that's a whole.
- [68:39]
Sagar Enjeti
I mean, but the whole thing of like wokeism was. I mean, it's not that.
- [68:43]
Jeremy Scahill
I agree.
- [68:43]
Sagar Enjeti
It's broadening. Anti black racism doesn't exist.
- [68:46]
Jeremy Scahill
Yep. It's over. It's overstretching the terms.
- [68:49]
Sagar Enjeti
Yes, exactly. And so, you know, when it comes to anti Semitism, suddenly he's the snowflake who's like, you know, these college kids had experienced a microaggression. So he has his own flavor of wokeism. But I think your point is a really important one, Emily, which is that the way that Bill Burr does left populism is actually the opposite of the woke liberal virtue signaling that people were justifiably upset about. So, yeah, I think this energy, the Bill Burr energy, is the real winning third way. Should take some notes from this. They actually care about winning, but they don't. They care about their agenda.
- [69:30]
Jeremy Scahill
He talks like a real person. Like, he talks like a real guy. Talks like a real. It's actually sort of Trumpian or Rogan and Roganian in a way, because he just talks like. This is why he's popular. He talks like a guy that you'd be talking to in real life at a, like at a bar, at a barbecue or whatever. He's just a normal person. He's not trying to. He wasn't endorsing people killing CEOs. He was saying he's been really deeply upset with the media coverage. This has been his big thing about the killing of Brian Johnson is that the media has martyrized Brian Johnson and not talked about the broader problems of the industry. And we could have a debate about that or whatever, but it's driving Bill Burr crazy. I think he has a point. He's only this pure, innocent victim. And it just doesn't mean that he deserved to be killed. But again, it's sort of precious to conflate those two things. True. And to ignore. I mean, there are all of these people, and this isn't actually really Ben. Cuz he would say he actually does have principled positions on what the healthcare system could be, even if we disagree with them. There's all of These people that are in love with Luigi Mangione because they hate the health care system, it's not just because he's a funny meme.
- [70:48]
Sagar Enjeti
Right.
- [70:49]
Jeremy Scahill
They're viscerally furious. And we've talked about this like many, many times. They're viscerally angry at the healthcare system because it is screwing them over and people are getting rich off of it. And so you cannot just wave that away as wokeness.
- [71:01]
Sagar Enjeti
Yeah.
- [71:02]
Jeremy Scahill
It isn't. He represents a very significant chunk of the public that will. That is an intense. It's an intense sentiment. It's not just people disagreeing with the healthcare system. They're viscerally angry about it.
- [71:12]
Sagar Enjeti
Yeah. And I don't even think it's just the healthcare system. It's like this sense that this whole corporate America structure is growing and robbing us.
- [71:21]
Jeremy Scahill
Totally true.
- [71:21]
Sagar Enjeti
And so it's energy. I mean, it is very like Occupy Wall street kind of an energy.
- [71:28]
Jeremy Scahill
I think more potent.
- [71:29]
Sagar Enjeti
Yeah. And the last thing I'll say about Bill Burr is like, I think comedy at its best is like cultural critique and punching up at the powerful.
- [71:38]
Jeremy Scahill
Yeah.
- [71:38]
Sagar Enjeti
And I think Bill Burr does that very well. And I mean, he's the polar opposite of being like a woke snuffle. Oh, my God, you can't say that. Like, he's says it. He goes there. And it's funny to see someone who claims to stand in opposition of that sort of like snowflake cancel culture thing having a little bit of his own meltdown about all of this.
- [71:58]
Jeremy Scahill
Yeah. I mean, if comedians have to have policy prescriptions for every political thing they joke about, we are in trouble.
- [72:06]
Sagar Enjeti
All right, let's go ahead and get to. There's a bunch of developments with regard to Israel. They're completely out of the ceasefire deal. They are planning to completely block humanitarian aid. They're even threatening to cut off the water to Gaza Trump administration playing into this as well. Jeremy Scahill is going to join us to talk about all of that. Very fortunate to be joined this morning by Jeremy Scahill, who is co founder of Dropsite News, alongside our very own Ryan Grimm. Great to see you, Jeremy.
- [72:33]
Krystal Ball
Thank you, Crystal, Emily.
- [72:34]
Sagar Enjeti
Yeah, of course. So a lot of developments here. Let's go ahead and put the tweet up on the screen. So you talk about here how Netanyahu is announcing he's blocking once again all humanitarian aid from entering the Gaza Strip after Hamas refused to alter the previous deal and release its Israeli hostages. Bibi is saying his decision was made in coordination with the Trump administration and in addition, the Israelis have just completely backed away from even a pretense of continuing into phase two of the ceasefire deal to the extent that they even ever had such a pretense, since Netanyahu was always promising some of his coalition partners that it would never go beyond phase one. So just if you could, Jeremy, just bring us up to speed here a bit.
- [73:16]
Krystal Ball
Yeah, Just to rewind a little bit. First of all, on February 3rd, there was supposed to be the start of negotiations over the implementation of phase two. Netanyahu refused to ever send any negotiators. Instead, he goes to Washington D.C. and becomes the first foreign leader to meet with President Donald Trump and sits that meeting where Trump floated the Trump Gaza Riviera idea. Netanyahu has just been systematically violating the ceasefire. They've killed, killed upwards of 120 Palestinians inside of Gaza. They've refused to allow almost any of the mobile homes. There were supposed to be 60,000 mobile homes sent into Gaza. Almost none of them have entered 200,000 tents. While there has been food aid and other forms of humanitarian aid going in, it's been far less than was stipulated under the agreement. And so, you know, when we look at what happened over the weekend, basically this is how it went down. Netanyahu and Israel took what was sort of a proposal paper from the American side. And everything I'm telling you is based on talking to sources involved with the negotiations. This happens where Egypt or Qatar or the United States, they kind of float proposals as a starting point for discussions. And as the Israelis did repeatedly throughout the Biden Harris administration, they don't even give Hamas a chance to review the proposal or give a formal answer. Israel then announced announces Hamas has rejected an American proposal for extending phase one of the ceasefire deal. What's interesting too, I spoke to a senior Hamas official who said we hadn't even been given a chance to review the whole thing before we even read in the papers, basically that Israel said that we had rejected the deal. What's interesting though is Brian Hughes, Trump's National Security Council spokesperson, he was asked directly whether or not the Israeli version of events was true. Is this actually an American proposal proposal? He ignored that question and then just kind of paid lip service to the idea. Israel has been negotiating in good faith for 15 months. So what we're seeing here is Israel has violated the ceasefire agreement repeatedly. Israel refused to send negotiators as stipulated under the contract. Israel is continuing to kill Palestinians inside of Gaza. And then Israel is continuing its multi decade arc of front running ceasefire negotiations. With the Palestinians and then making announcements that make it appear that it is, in fact, the other side that's hindering the deal, when in fact, anyone that's read the agreement that Trump promoted as kind of the beginning of the end of this war and peace in the Middle east, the Israelis are the ones violating it. What's gonna be interesting is to see how Steve Witkoff, Trump's special envoy, responds to this. He's an interesting guy. He's very different from Antony Blinken. The way that Blinken handled these situations where the Israelis just blatantly lied about something that happened in the negotiation was to openly co sign Israel's lie. I'm not sure Witkoff's gonna go that path. He could. My guess would be that he's gonna sort of thread the needle, issue some kind of vague statement that defends Israel and calls on Hamas to come to the negotiating table. But everyone involved with this knows that Israel has been violating the ceasefire and now is blaming Hamas for something that actually Israel has done quite openly.
- [76:25]
Jeremy Scahill
Yeah, Jeremy, I was gonna ask if you could talk to us a little bit more about that, actually. Such an interesting dynamic you mentioned, Brian Hughes, but how has the Trump administration navigated this over the last several days? I mean, we were talking about, obviously, Ukraine earlier in the show, and Zelenskyy has tried to sort of invoke Hamas, interestingly enough. But so much attention has been on Ukraine in the last few days, despite all of this unraveling in the Middle East. So what is the Trump administration? How have they been responding to the developments?
- [76:56]
Krystal Ball
Well, you know, a week ago, Steve Witkoff made the rounds on the Sunday talk shows, and at the time, he was doing those interviews for from Miami beach in Florida. And he also, for part of that visit was with Jared Kushner, who, even though he's not in an official position right now in the Trump administration, holds tremendous sway over the events that are gonna play out in the Middle East. Witkoff said that he was optimistic that we're gonna make it into a formal phase two of the agreement, but he did say that there's gonna have to be an extension of phase one. There's another significant event happening this week, which is that the Arab summit is continuing convening, and they're going to be discussing an Egyptian proposal that is seen as a counter proposal to Trump's Gaza Riviera. And what's interesting about that, I've been talking to Palestinian analysts, and they didn't have a kind of apocalyptic response to Trump's announcement when he was alongside Bibi about taking over Gaza as a US Property and building hotels. Some Palestinians I've talked to sort of saw it also as a jab toward Netanyahu. Netanyahu, Trump didn't say, we're going to turn it into the Israeli Riviera. Trump said the American Riviera. That was, you know, for people that are following this closely, felt a bit like maybe a pushback on Netanyahu and something he wasn't entirely excited about. But the benefit for Netanyahu, and this happens with Trump all the time, he wants to talk about the border wall. He wants to talk about, you know, Hillary Clinton, Hunter Biden's laptop. That sets the agenda. What was the agenda that was set there? That Netanyahu liked the idea that Palestinians should be removed from Gaza. So it was a mixed sort of message. That is certainly genocidal in its kind of overarching intent. But we're in the middle of negotiations here. Wyckoff himself has shown that he's willing to poke Netanyahu. He certainly is a militant supporter of Israel. He certainly is a Zionist. He certainly is very anti homo Hamas. But he also has spoken with a diplomatic language that you didn't often hear from Antony Blinken. And, you know, Witkoff also visited Gaza and saw the vast devastation that was there. That narrative was not actually all that great for Netanyahu. Maybe some of the really rabid, kind of bloodthirsty people within Israeli societies were happy about it. But Wyckoff also managed to give a fairly accurate assessment of just how horrifying the destruction was in Gaza. So while I'm not like, like, you know, beaming with hope that Wycoff is going to save the day and that the Palestinians are going to get liberation, I do think that we're in a strange situation where potentially Trump could accidentally do something that would have been better than if things were left to Biden and Harris. And just one. I'm not really a political journalist, but one political note. I find it disgusting to watch these kind of blue MAGA partisan Democrats who never made a peep about Joe Biden and Kamala Harris facilitating a genocide, now up in arms about Trump's AI video when they had nothing to say, when their candidates were actually the ones creating the situation that now Donald Trump is presiding over as president. I mean, it just shows the rot at the center of some of our politics that partisan considerations are more important than what are your principles.
- [80:08]
Sagar Enjeti
Yeah, of course, on the other side, you had people who were claiming to be anti war who are now perfectly fine with the hey, let's just go ahead and ethnically cleanse the whole thing and take it for ourselves for sure.
- [80:21]
Krystal Ball
I mean, there's a deep sickness on the other side of this as well. And my favorite people are the ones that have both the Ukrainian and the Israeli flags in their sort of Twitter bios. But absolutely. And that extends crystal to the free speech thing. Like J.D. vance when he went to the Munich Security Conference, he said things that are absolutely true about Europe's approach to free speech. But perhaps the most pervasive and serious violation of free speech in Germany, for instance, is the criminalization of speech opposing Israel's genocidal war where you have not just Arabs in Germany being hit with criminal violations, but Israeli Jews who live in Israel are being given criminal violations for using the term genocide to describe what Israel is doing. And you don't hear the Bari Weiss's of the world rallying for the free speech protection of people in Europe who are opposing Israel's war. It just shows how kind of opportunistic and non principled so many of these voices are, both among partisan Democrats and among many people within the MAGA movement or the so called anti cancel culture movement.
- [81:27]
Sagar Enjeti
Yeah, well of course he wouldn't want to bring that up because they're bringing that same criminalization organization right here domestically investigating Columbia University and these other places and threatening pro Palestine protesters with deportation. So I think that would be a little uncomfortable for them to bring those pieces up. Not to mention that they're aligned with that particular censorship. They're just opposed to censorship that happens to go against their own political ideological valence. Jeremy, just to go back to the this deal, like what are the moving pieces now? What do you think is going to happen next? And also you guys have been doing such a great job covering what's happening in the occupied West Bank, Israel bombing Damascus and just being like, hey, we're just going to take over parts of Syria. Oh, and by the way, I know we said as part of our ceasefire deal, we're going to withdraw from Lebanon. We're not going to do that, we're just going to occupy Lebanon as well. It really looks like if you had listened to the most hardcore left lefties or the most insane Zionist settlers at the beginning of this conflict of what was likely to happen and what their ultimate goals were, you would be much better served and have a much clearer understanding of the direction things were heading in versus trying to glean these things from certainly the mainstream press.
- [82:45]
Krystal Ball
Yeah, I mean Look, Benjamin Netanyahu is without a doubt a U. S backed arsonist running around the Middle East. And in the case of Syria, we're talking about Israel saying that the Syrian military cannot have any presence just south of Damascus, the capital of the country. And then when you look at the broader picture, 90% of the, not just the refugee camp of Jenin, but the broader Jenin area have been forcibly removed from their homes. Israel is going through systematically knocking down houses, bulldozing up the roads, causing a sort of sense of terror to just emanate all throughout the West Bank. At a time when then Secretary of State Marco Rubio bypasses Congress, issues an emergency authorization to transfer 4 billion, roughly $4 billion worth of American bombs, guidance systems, armored bulldozers to go to Israel. At a time when Netanyahu is contemplating possibly ratcheting up military attacks on Iran again, when Israel is continuing to occupy five positions within Lebanon, Lebanon, when Israel is threatening all out war on parts of Syria, when Israel is trying to formally annex and terrorize the Palestinians of the west bank, when Israel is threatening to cut off electricity and water supplies right now to the Palestinians of Gaza just as Ramadan is beginning. And while Netanyahu and his people are continuing to try to use the stamp of legitimacy of the United States to lie about who's actually violating the cease fire. The question is going to be called very, very soon on what Donald Trump's agenda actually looks like for the Middle East. And it's pathetic that we sort of have to hope that he accidentally stumbles into something less than a continuation of the genocidal war. Such is the reality that we find because of a failure to stop this war when Joe Biden and Kamala Harris were president.
- [84:37]
Sagar Enjeti
Jeremy, so great to have you. And I was saying to Emily earlier, it's just incredible what you and Ryan have done at dropsite and how indispensable you've become so quickly. Not that any of us are surprised by that, but kudos to you for your work because it's been so important.
- [84:52]
Krystal Ball
But the breaking points, counterpoints community has been just an incredible boost for us and we'll always remain deeply grateful for the work that you all do.
- [85:00]
Sagar Enjeti
That's really kind of you to say. Thank you so much, Jeremy, great to see you.
- [85:04]
Krystal Ball
You too.
- [85:05]
Sagar Enjeti
All right, guys, thank you so much for hanging out with us today. As a reminder, we will not have a regular show tomorrow. They are doing the joint address to Congress or whatever it's called, the State of the Union that is happening tomorrow evening. We will be here at 8pm all four of us at the desk so we can assess things that happen during the day and also give you live coverage of that event. So have a great day guys. We'll see you back here tomorrow evening.
- [85:38]
Ryan Grim
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