← Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar
Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar
3/5/25: SCOTUS Rejects Aid Cuts, Bernie Crushes Dem Trump Response, Trump Threatens Protests & MORE!
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- [00:00]
Jenny Garth
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Ryan Grim
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- [00:58]
Krystal Ball
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- [01:30]
Sagar Enjeti
Hey guys, Sagar and Krystal here.
- [01:32]
Krystal Ball
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.
- [01:39]
Sagar Enjeti
This is the only place where you can find honest perspectives from the left and the right that simply does not exist anywhere else.
- [01:45]
Krystal Ball
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.
- [01:56]
Sagar Enjeti
We need your help to build the future of independent news media and we hope to see you@breakingpoints.com hello everybody. Welcome to Wednesday Counter Breaking Points. What are we going to call it, Ryan? We'll just say Virtual Bro Show. Counter Break. It's Point Break. Yeah, we'll go with that. It's the Bro Show Virtual. Yes. Here's the pound. There we go. It works out. I like it. People can feel the energy and the love through the screen. So Ryan and I coming off of a hot State of the Union joint address to Congress by President Donald Trump, his fifth while occupying the Oval Office, longest one in the history books, an hour and 40 minutes long. And we felt every second of that, Ryan. Didn't we?
- [02:41]
Ryan Grim
After my eyes were heavy when he started. Oh, and they did. They did not get any lighter by the end. And still Democrats won't applaud for him. And it's so sad.
- [02:52]
Sagar Enjeti
Yeah, that's right. Maybe they weren't applauding because they were tired. We can the median age in there is 70 years old. I was exhausted when we were live at 11. So I can't even imagine being my freaking grandfather, having to sit through all of that.
- [03:07]
Ryan Grim
Yeah. If people miss it, there was this riff that he did where he was just, I've done this five times. I've done such amazing things. And it's just, it's just so sad that the Democrats won't clap for me. It's so sad. It's real tragedy. Yeah.
- [03:19]
Sagar Enjeti
Yeah, that's right. I saw somebody saying yesterday, they were like, man, this is wild. You know, half the, the audience isn't clapping. And I was like, yeah, it's the state of the year, it's called. Unfortunately, Ryan and I are in the business where we cover every single one of these things. People pay attention. We're not really sure why. But let's go ahead and start with the breaking news that has come out as of this morning. This is absolutely the most important thing now so far. And that is. Let's see. We're going to go and put it up here on the screen. A decision from the U.S. supreme Court. The U.S. supreme Court has upheld the lower court order forcing USAID and the State Department to immediately pay $2 billion owed to contractors for work that they have already performed. Justices Alito, Thomas, Gorsuch and Kavanaugh in the dissent, meaning that two of the conservative justices, the Chief Justice, John Roberts and Justice Amy Coney Barrett joining the majority. So what they say here, as you could see in terms of the tax, the US District Court entering a temporary restraining order and joining the government from enforcing directives, pausing disbursements of foreign development Assistance Fund. They say the application is denied. So, Ryan, what do you make of this Supreme Court decision? You know, I actually said here on the show, I was like, you know, you should always remember there are wild cards in terms of jurisprudence. People like Amy Coney Barrett, Justice Gorsuch, Justice Roberts. Roberts cares about the legitimacy of the court. Amy Coney Barrett and Gorsuch, they're wild cards in that they're a little bit more libertarian. Same with Clarence Thomas. And you never really quite know which direction that they're going to go. But nonetheless, I mean, it's significant because they deny the government saying that they want to put a pause on foreign aid spending of approximately $2 billion out the door affirming effectively, the government's affirming effectively, not only the con. The Constitution as it lays out explicitly in terms of Congress's right for the power of the purse, but also that the government must follow through on that regardless of whatever juris.
- [05:31]
Ryan Grim
Right.
- [05:31]
Sagar Enjeti
Exactly. Whatever executive action that they might put into place. So it's an important legal theory the Trump administration was trying to test and it was struck down by five, four.
- [05:42]
Ryan Grim
Right. The, like, the, the, the founders. Choosing the term executive is important. Like, exactly. They, they execute the laws that are passed by the People's House and the Senate like that. It's not, it's not a new body that deliberates on behalf of the people. It is their job is to faithfully execute the laws. And you know, USAID is a separate question. You know, they do, in my opinion, a lot of important and life saving work. They also use that important and life saving work as a cover for a lot of the soft power and sometimes even harder power. You know, you know, moves on behalf of a destructive American empire. So not here to, you know, necessarily defend everything USAID is doing, but on this narrow point, they are looking at, as you said, contracts where the work has already been done. Though this feels pretty basic. Like Congress passed a law saying, here's amount of money to do this thing. The executive then hired somebody to carry out that function. Whatever they did, you know, they, they distributed, you know, food and Nairobi and now they sent the invoice for the thing that they were told to do by this contract and the executive says, actually we're not going to do that. It's pretty hard to see how you can justify that. It's one thing if you say, okay, we don't want to do this in the future, okay, have that fight. They already did it. And so you gotta pay him is what basically what the Supreme Court is saying. And for a bunch of my liberal friends who have worried for many years that Trump is going to become a dictator, one of the things that I've always reminded them is that the Supreme Court doesn't have any interest in Trump becoming a dictator. They jealously guard their own power. Of course, I think the, from the.
- [07:41]
Sagar Enjeti
Very beginning of the Supreme Court and the invention.
- [07:43]
Ryan Grim
Exactly. Of judicial review, they seized power in the very beginning.
- [07:47]
Sagar Enjeti
See, now you and I are cooking, Ryan. Now we're talking about invented powers of the Supreme Court.
- [07:53]
Ryan Grim
Yeah, they do want to jealously guard those invented powers.
- [07:56]
Sagar Enjeti
You're very right. I did want to put up Justice Alito's dissent, which was joined on it Says that today the power grab is blistering. He blasts the court for hubris self in what he calls a stunning and extreme refusal by the Supreme Court to obey the law and its own precedents. Justice Alito dissenting. A federal court has many tools to address a party's supposed nonfeasance. Self aggrandizement of his jurisdiction is not one of them. I would chart a different path than the court does today, so I must respectfully dissent, I guess. So I read this. This is a lot of legality and stuff going on here. Alito did not seem to disagree with the pretense of the order. It was more about the action of ordering the immediate disbursement of the funds from usaid. What he was saying is that there's an extraordinary amount of other options that we could have granted the government instead of deciding to do this now. I think what is probably happening, and I'm guessing you could say this, too, is that the court is coming out hot, at least those who disagree on this and not trying to give any wiggle room or benefit of the doubt for the future, to set a precedent for some of the other future courts. Now, it's important to note, and that's something that the legal analyst Kyle Cheney, who we had up there, he's like, some of this will still get litigated in district court in terms of the timeline, the feasibility to turn this on. But the argument about whether they can turn it off entirely is the one that's effectively been quashed here at the court today.
- [09:32]
Ryan Grim
Right. And that's why you've seen, you know, the, this is classic Trump. You know, they, they came in with a, with an ax and just, they just swung it and just hit everything. And then they're like, oh, by the way, hey, you can't do that. That's illegal. So they started sending notes to every single contractor saying, you know, we have individually decided that your particular contract, you know, there is a form letter, but they can tell the court that it's an, this is an individual decision that the executive made. And so while it might be true that the executive has to broadly follow, you know, the congressional mandates, they obviously have some discretion within that mandate of how they carry out that as long as they're carrying it out faithfully. And so they tried to, like, you know, do a, do an end run around it by kind of, you know, reorganizing it, you know, from the, from the back end, saying, well, this particular contract, we're not against in general doing things, but Specifically this one we're shutting down. And this is the court coming in and now going one by one and being like, well, no, this 2 billion, you have to spend it, which is kind of remarkable. Like, you can't, obviously, they're going through a crisis and this is a fight and they're going to work this out. But you, you couldn't actually govern this way. You know, Congress passing laws and then the executive shutting everything down and then the Supreme Court individually signing off on various contracts that USA Aid has cut with different contractors. Like, that's, that's obviously understandable.
- [11:02]
Sagar Enjeti
Right. You're talking just in terms of the process. So it does make sense.
- [11:06]
Ryan Grim
Yeah, right.
- [11:07]
Sagar Enjeti
Especially if you're thinking just Justice Barrett and Roberts. They're like, okay, like we're just going to nip this in the bud now. So we'll see what the fallout is. But it's definitely the most significant Supreme Court decision yet of the second Trump.
- [11:20]
Ryan Grim
Right. It shows they're going to be players here.
- [11:22]
Sagar Enjeti
That's right. And also it's going to be why we have not yet heard from the White House on this, on this Supreme Court decision. The press secretary, Caroline Levitt, will be taking the podium later today. So we might be hearing some of that. In terms of other breaking news, I know people may have wanted a tariff update. Unfortunately, Ryan, are not able to offer us one right now. Right now we're told that the White House will be having an afternoon press conference on the tariffs where Trump is expected to announce that at least some are going off. But it's still very, very unclear in terms of the overall markets. Let me see where things stand as you and I are talking. S and P is basically flat. The Dow is flat as of yesterday. The futures and all of that. I mean, yeah, the market is open right now, as you and I are saying. People are basically just in a wait and hold position to see what Trump ends up deciding. Okay, yeah, let's get over to the Supreme. Sorry, the State of the Union and what we had there in terms of the reaction from the public. The first, the top line, which I thought was the most interesting, was this from CBS News. Let's go ahead. Put that on the screen. So what we see here is in speech. Trump was among speech watchers. 74% say presidential, 74% say entertaining, 71% say inspiring, 62% say unifying, 46% say divisive. So actually a pretty good reaction there from Donald Trump. The overall snap poll which we have here, views of Trump's speech among Speech watchers was some 76% approved, 23% disapprove. Let me do give the caveat here, as I do with any and all polling. Apparently the polling was, you know, and this actually makes sense is you literally have a, you know, a Republican president who is giving the, who is giving the State of the Union. So you may have more Republicans. Who are those watching? So I have it in front of me here. 51% of the speech viewers polled identified as Republicans, 27% as independents, and some 20% as Democrats. We have a reaction. Yeah, 20% were Democrats. And I mean, maybe Ryan, that is indicative of the strategy that we saw from some of the Democrats who just kind of walked out. Yes. You know, who walked out of the speech. And so maybe that was what Crystal was saying and she was like, I could see this going either way. We could have a situation where people are like, okay, I've had too much of this guy, I don't even really want to watch. Or people are tuning in. Definitely kind of seems to be the latter. People who don't like Trump are just not going to watch the speech. So what do you make of that?
- [14:09]
Ryan Grim
If I think about all the Democrats in my life, almost none of them would watch this speech.
- [14:14]
Sagar Enjeti
Okay.
- [14:14]
Ryan Grim
Like they just, they just can't stomach the guy. And they, you know, they, they will watch the clips on Colbert and they'll, they'll catch the clips on that YouTube that surface and you can. And, but as for sitting down for an hour and a half and, and hearing directly from the guy, they're just not going to subject themselves to that.
- [14:32]
Sagar Enjeti
I wouldn't.
- [14:32]
Ryan Grim
20% is almost Democratic thing. Yeah, not at all. Yeah.
- [14:35]
Sagar Enjeti
Because Republicans, Republicans do the same thing. You know, even the hate watch.
- [14:39]
Ryan Grim
Some hate watch.
- [14:40]
Sagar Enjeti
Yeah, yeah, some, some do, you're right. But the part of the problem is in our clip economy, our clip attention economy is that this is how the vast majority of people consume everything. I mean, if I saw the ratings were down, I would be shocked. You know, I wouldn't be shocked at all because that's basically how news consumption works these days.
- [14:57]
Ryan Grim
Yeah. And you can easily see how you can get to 70, 75% with if, you know, half of them are Republicans and then 30, you know, 28% are independents and roughly half those independents, probably actually much more than that. Like of Those of that 28%. Plausible. Let's say 20% are like Republican leaning independents. So you add them together, you, you easily get to 75% which can then be misinterpreted. To believe that, like, oh wow, Trump really brought the country together. How about that?
- [15:27]
Sagar Enjeti
I mean, yeah, listen, I don't know. So CNN here apparently did some polling reaction as well. Snap poll reaction. Let's take a listen to some of that. And what we know is that people who tend to be fans or partisans with the president, no matter which party the president is in, tend to tune in more on speeches like this. And that's the case in tonight's survey as well, because we are 21% democrat, 44% republican in this sample, 35% independent. That's about 14 points more republican than the overall general population. So keep that in mind when you see these results of SpeechWatchers. To the results, what was your reaction to Trump's speech? 44% of SpeechWatchers in our instant poll tonight say they had a very positive reaction to Trump's speech. 25% somewhat positive, 31% negative. How does that stack up against Donald Trump's previous addresses to joint sessions of Congress or State of the Union addresses? Look here, for all the years we have data for 44% very positive reaction is actually his low watermark in all our instant polls after his previous addresses. Interesting. You know, that actually kind of makes sense to me because it was just a much more partisan speech than traditionally he would normally give. Actually probably reflects more their theory of governance and how not only theory of governance, their theory of winning. Previously, you know, there was at least some attempt, I think, at least on the part of, you know, the smart people in the room, the John Kelly's and all supposedly those great figures to try and move him in a different direction. Whereas this time, I mean, it was a campaign speech. You know, basically the entire time I saw like Brit Hume kind of on Fox News was kind of concerned. Trolling is like the most partisan state of the Union I've ever seen in my entire lifetime. You know, and these are all, I mean, I think this is really just illustrative of Trump's role in our current system. Like he doesn't care about that and in a lot of ways the population doesn't care about that. A lot of the trappings and the norms, institutions and all of that, especially the Republican Party. But I think even a lot of the Democratic Party now at this point no longer has time for some of these older like theories of how you would present this. And I just think that this just shows you probably what it will always be from now on, you know, a Democrat or a Republican, just in terms of how you win an election, how you capture your own party. So overall, I mean, yeah, I mean, if we're Trump, I'd probably be pretty happy. Overall, it's what? It's March 5th. Still got a decent amount of Runway from the country. There's some troubling signs. We talked a lot about that yesterday, but, you know, people generally are going to give you the benefit of the doubt. Yeah, the Democrats, our mad independents, kind of like, let's see, he's still funny. The entertaining thing is very important. Big reason why I think he's always been able to deflect a lot of the major criticism against him. So, any big thoughts?
- [18:26]
Ryan Grim
Ryan, you're probably right that this will become more of the norm, the more partisan speech. But like, to your point, there was a noticeable dip in how people felt about the speech. So it is still the case that people want at least some significant portion of the public want that the guy to play the role of the president up there, that there's something about that, where we aspire to that sort of thing in our democracy or our republic, whatever you want to call it. And you're right that in Trump's first term, he'd be Mr. Chaos Rip Roaring on Twitter all day long. And then when he would get to the State of the Union, he'd like we buttoned up and he would read off the teleprompter. And remember, Van Jones famously, infamously said he became president tonight. And the liberals were like, all right, thank you for at least for like an hour and an hour. I think that's important. There was only an hour in the past pretending that you are a president rather than that you're Trump who is occupying the role of the president. And now he's like, forget that. I'm just going to be myself all the time.
- [19:40]
Sagar Enjeti
And I mean, he doesn't have to.
- [19:41]
Ryan Grim
Run for numbers are going to dip. Yeah, yeah.
- [19:43]
Sagar Enjeti
So, yeah, I mean, Trump's, Trump's.
- [19:45]
Ryan Grim
So if you're Van Jones, he became unpresident last night.
- [19:48]
Sagar Enjeti
Yeah, that's right. Actually, he's self impeached. Do we know, team? Is there any good Van Jones reaction? I'm looking. I don't see anything good. He's usually got a fan nowadays.
- [19:59]
Ryan Grim
He's still on stage.
- [19:59]
Krystal Ball
Yeah.
- [20:00]
Sagar Enjeti
Where is he? I don't know. I mean, you know, when, when Jeff Bezos gives you $100 million, you don't really need to work anymore, do you? But. All right, let's move on. Yeah, that's right. Just, just the interest alone, that'll, that'll work off. I'm not insinuating he was personally paid. Okay, it was to one of his fake justice nonprofits. But anyway. All right.
- [20:19]
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- [20:51]
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- [21:49]
Krystal Ball
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- [22:49]
Sagar Enjeti
Let'S get over to the Democratic reaction. Ryan, you and I are turning over in our grave at this democratic reaction from Elissa Slotkin. And let's go ahead and Put this one up there on the screen. I'm gonna go ahead and make it big here. And let's take a listen. Alyssa Slotkin, if we all remember, the Democratic senator from Michigan barely won her seat, but significant because Trump did still win the state. So she won some Trump voter. She is a former CIA officer by admission. By admission.
- [23:25]
Ryan Grim
A literal former outinger here. Yeah, yeah.
- [23:28]
Sagar Enjeti
She. She outed herself. She outed herself for political benefit. And she loves to wear her CIA credentials on her sleeve.
- [23:37]
Ryan Grim
And there's no such thing as. Here was former CIA, by the way.
- [23:39]
Sagar Enjeti
That's right. Thank you. There is no such thing as former CIA as you and I know. And here's what she had to say during her State of the Union reaction.
- [23:47]
Krystal Ball
He believes in cozing up to dictators like Vladimir Putin and kicking our friends, like the Canadians in the teeth. He sees American leadership as merely a series of real estate transactions. As a Cold War kid, I'm thankful it was Reagan and not Trump in office in the 1980s. Trump would have lost us the Cold War. Donald Trump's actions suggest that in his heart, he doesn't believe we're an exceptional nation. He clearly doesn't think we should lead the world. Look, America is not perfect, but I stand with the majority of Americans who believe we are still exceptional, unparalleled. And I would rather have American leadership over Chinese or Russian leadership any day of the week.
- [24:30]
Sagar Enjeti
Whew. All right. There's so much there.
- [24:33]
Ryan Grim
And later, she says, I've watched as democracies have flickered out around the globe. It's like, well, that's a rather passive construction. How did some of these democracies flicker out? Like, let's. Let's ask the Indonesians or the Brazilians, Argentinians, Chileans, Guatemalans, others. Did your democracy just flicker out? Or were there some CIA operatives involved.
- [24:55]
Sagar Enjeti
And taking a. I've got some of that, Ryan.
- [24:58]
Ryan Grim
There goes your Democrats.
- [24:59]
Sagar Enjeti
Should we take a listen to it?
- [25:00]
Ryan Grim
Yeah, sure.
- [25:01]
Sagar Enjeti
All right, let's take a listen to it.
- [25:02]
Krystal Ball
I've lived and worked in many countries. I've seen democracies flicker out. I've seen what life is like when a government is rigged. You can't open a business without paying off a corrupt official. You can't criticize the guys in charge without getting a knock at the door in the middle of the night. So as much as we need to make our government more responsive to our lives today, don't for one moment fool yourself that democracy isn't precious and worth saving.
- [25:27]
Sagar Enjeti
So who's doing the Knock in there.
- [25:29]
Ryan Grim
Ryan, you know, well, Kermit Roosevelt. Kermit Roosevelt. Kermit Roosevelt just watched Iran's democracy just flicker out and just shed a gentle tear.
- [25:40]
Sagar Enjeti
Elise, you were the one knocking on the door. You were the woman who knocks when.
- [25:44]
Ryan Grim
She'S saying that she lived. When a CIA officer is like, I lived and worked in countries where the, where the democracy flickered out, it's like, all right, we're going to round up the first suspect. That's you.
- [25:55]
Sagar Enjeti
Yeah, right. It's incredible. And I hate that you were turning me, like into Howard Zinn here. I actually do have some Howard Zinn behind me. So people, I don't discriminate. I still read Howard and James Beard. I actually have a signed James Beard behind me, which is crazy. The thing is that people need to understand is that if you zoom out, I'm really curious to hear what you think about. This is. This is the actual debate, I think, between neoconservatism and restraint, except in a similar framework today. That's not in the Cold War anymore. But back in Cold War times, there was a very important debate between the Kissingerian worldview, which I know you disagree with, that's fine. But the Kissingerian worldview was we cannot get rid of the Soviet Union. We have to live with the Soviet Union. We have to accept bipolarity in terms of the system. We have to. We will not be able to pursue a strategy of what was called rollback, which was a Reagan esque policy where we're going to roll back the borders of the Soviet Union. We are going to pursue a policy of existence and of effectively dividing up the world. Now you can. There's a ton of criticism of human rights and all of that, but the Kissingerian worldview was that democracy in and of itself under Nixon and all of that was not. Was not a end that should be pursued for the United States. Instead, the end that should be pursued is strategic interests, is economics, is balance, is peace, et cetera. And some of that was keeping communism out of, let's say, the Western Hemisphere, but not necessarily because that comports with the Monroe Doctrine, but not necessarily in Hungary, for example. The Reagan esque view, the one that I think Alyssa Slotkin is saying there is that, no, we are endorsing rollback. Effectively. The Communism itself is the evil empire. We cannot live in a world with the Soviet empire. And in our inability to live with that, the pursuit and the policy of the United States should always be to push back against these borders and to call it out complete. Now, the reason Why I think that's important in a, in this Putin Ukraine situation is the Biden previous view. Yeah, we got the cat doing some gymnastics behind me. The previous Biden policy, Putin is a war criminal. We cannot deal with Putin. The Putin regime itself is illegitimate from Biden, which means that there is no settlement with Ukraine, that Ukraine itself is the front line of democracy. Very similarly in the way that Voice of America was continuing to push democracy right in Hungary or any of these so called Soviet occupied states. Well, the point here I think is it comes down to then the Trump view of no, we're just going to sit down and we're going to talk and pursue a peace deal. Now this view is now majorly in contention, but it's flipped where now you have the Democrats who are seen to like to basically embody this previously neoconservative liberal world order view of the world, America, the exceptional nation and all of that. Whereas now Trump, at least not the whole Republican Party is pursuing, at least in this Ukraine instance, more of a realist foreign policy. So I actually think that while it was a small snippet, it does say a lot about your previous view of the Cold War of United States conduct. But like more importantly, how to think about conflict in the future as we approach more multipolarity in the system.
- [29:27]
Ryan Grim
You know, I think that, that Democrats and Democratic elites in particular as plus the Lindsey Graham's though the more hawkish Republicans of the world, yeah, were very energized by being on the right side of history after Russia invaded Ukraine because it's good. That's what they did. They lined up troops on the border, they marched them in. You can talk about what happened before February 2022, but you're blue in the face. But the, the world and the American audience saw troops lining up on a border, 2022 and doing something they didn't think was happening anymore in this world and marching in and you know, heading right for Kyiv. And so they, this was after 50 years of being the bad guys, whether it was Viet, whether it was Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan. And it came not long after the kind of ignoble and kind of chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan. Which good for Biden for doing it. Let me underscore that again. But it was embarrassing to the Lindsey Grahams and the Democratic hawks of the world. They were really loving finally having the ability to speak with moral force. And Democrats never the Democratic base was along for that ride because they saw that, no, this is outrageous. How can you do this? There was never any allowed Any debate within the Democratic Party over how this war would end. And so even as the reality was fundamentally changing on the ground and Ukraine's second counter offensive is fizzling out, and they're running out of men to throw at the front lines anymore because of this lack of debate, the Democratic base is still in February 2022. We need to defend Ukrainian sovereignty and democracy against the evil Putin. And so the whiplash is just full force to then see this. The Republican Party, which has been having these debates about what land should be exchanged for peace and what are the. What are the conditions that should be agreed to, to see. To see that happen. Like, their only. Their only reaction is that must be a traitor, and he must be, you know, an autocrat. Like. Like Putin must be loving Putin. And the whole time, like, Russia's not even that big a deal. Like, China is. The other is the. There are two global powers right now, United States and China. And Democrats really seem very fixated on elevating Russia into that instead. Like, there's some. Like, they have some block.
- [32:11]
Sagar Enjeti
I think this is where Russia comes in.
- [32:13]
Ryan Grim
Yeah, Yeah.
- [32:14]
Sagar Enjeti
I think this is where Russia gate comes in. Is that, you know, you went from a situation where Obama had the correct view of Ukraine. Everyone can go and read the Jeffrey Goldberg interview with Obama from 2015, where he was like, if you want to make an argument that Crimea is a vital national security interest that's worth US Troops, he's like, go for it. I don't agree with that. And I think that the Russians will always care way more about it than. Than we do. He was right. Right. He was right not to escalate the conflict in Ukraine. If anything, the worst thing that Trump did on Ukraine was not the perfect phone call, was, uh, it was to ship javelins to the country to escalate the conflict and to increase even more of basically this, like, hawkish approach vis a vis Russia, which basically, like, builds things up to a powder keg and explodes in the Ukraine invasion.
- [33:02]
Ryan Grim
Didn't he ship the javelins in order to get Zelensky to, like, throw Hunter Biden under the bus? Wasn't that whole thing.
- [33:08]
Sagar Enjeti
Yeah, so, no, it was. He was not shipping javelins.
- [33:11]
Ryan Grim
Right.
- [33:12]
Sagar Enjeti
Because he wanted to hold up javelin. So this is the thing is it's baked into the lore of the United States. Actually, I remember. I remember Crystal and I talking about it at the time, because we covered that impeachment live. And it was like, oh, did you know it's written in the constitutions that you have to send javelin missiles to Ukraine. Like it's like this is impeachable offense. What it's like, no, let's return to the Obama policy. I don't care about saying that it was the correct policy. So I do think there's a lot to be said about it. And look, I mean part of the problem is that negative polarization means that after that Trump Zelensky interview, liberals who are already on board with the war in Ukraine, they're never coming back from full Ukrainian victory. Now Zelenskyy is a hero for them because he stood up to Trump or whatever. It doesn't even matter. You can go watch our debate with me and Crystal yesterday about who was default. But negative polarization means like liberals are all in on this war. It's it is now a religion in the same way that Russiagate was a religion is that any piece of any kind itself is unacceptable now especially you've got Michael McCall and you've got Chris Murphy and the MSNBC crowd just absolutely losing it. The choice of Alys Slotkin. I think it's very, very important for people to see that, yes, while all of the rhetoric and all of that is posturing, there are very real world implications for policy that are right behind this. And I'm not saying, you know, Trump, Gaza and all of that isn't a very obvious departure from this. I'm only speaking very narrowly in the Ukraine context.
- [34:57]
Jenny Garth
This is Jenny Garth from I do part two. Everyone's talking about GLP1s like Ozempic semaglutide. With Future Health you can find out if they're right for you too. Just go to try fh.com that's trifh.com and find out if weight loss meds are right for you in just three minutes. Try fh.com future health is not a healthcare services provider. Meds are prescribed at provider's discretion. Results may vary. Special Sponsored by Future Health.
- [35:28]
Krystal Ball
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- [36:28]
Ryan Grim
At Amica Insurance, we know it's more than a life policy. It's about the promise and the responsibility that comes with being a new parent. Being there day and night and building a plan for tomorrow, today for the ones you'll always look out for, trust Amica Life Insurance. Amica empathy is our best policy.
- [36:58]
Sagar Enjeti
The other very telling thing to me, Ryan, was all of the Democratic pundits, the professional pundits, being like, she knocked it out of the park 10 out of 10 in her response. The most perfect response that a person has ever given. And I was like, well, you know, there is that choice right now between how people are going to respond to Donald Trump. Slotkin is someone who's like, yesterday in her response, she's like, yeah, there's waste in the government. We'll help you cut it, but don't do it in such a chaotic way. And then, you know, she voted for the Lake and Riley act, for example. She's been trying to be more hawkish on. Immigration is basically like radical centrism embodied in a candidate. It's all about institutions, it's all about norms. Whereas we also have this Bernie Sanders response, which was not, you know, a sanctioned one. It's kind of one he just decided to do on his own, but nonetheless very different in its tone. So let's take a listen to some of that.
- [37:55]
Ryan Grim
So let's be clear about that. Well over 99% of Social Security checks are going out to people who earned those checks. 70 million Americans. Nobody, nobody who was 150 years old or 200 years old or 300 years old is receiving Social Security checks. And on and on the lives go.
- [38:23]
Sagar Enjeti
So Bernie is standing up there pretty hard for Social Security. And throughout a lot of his speech yesterday, in terms of at least the parts that I've seen that have gone out, you could see that there was a huge difference in the viewership. I actually think one of our producers sent it, so let me go ahead and pull it up. Yeah, here we go. So slotkin speech got 4,500 views at its height, which is insane. I have no. Like, I could pick my nose and I could get more live viewers on breaking points than 4,500. Bernie's ended up at 61,000 views and apparently AOC had some 20,000 on Instagram live in her response. So, you know, look, it's not everything, but we did just come off an election, did we not? Of proving that podcasting and views and YouTube and all of that's pretty important. I would say it's pretty important. The attention economy and all of that. So the only question is, is, is the Democratic base going to demand something different? Or if their leadership gets propelled in, people like Slotkins and all of them are going to try and take the reins and to try and to channel that into their view of how to respond to Trumpism.
- [39:47]
Ryan Grim
Yeah, there just, there isn't much in the way of the material there for the party's kind of faithful opposition to rally against these party leaders. Like there's Bernie, you know, the squad has kind of disintegrated into their own thing, their own individual things. In 2022 and 2024, AIPAC and Democratic majority for Israel spent so much money, like beating back the progressive wing of the party that it really, you know, nipped it in the bud in a significant way. And so there's just like the, the, the conditions are ripe for an insurgency inside the Democratic Party. The insurgents just aren't there. And it's early. You know, there may be people who identify the opening and go for. May have to come from more of an independent approach like you saw in Nebraska. I think there might be candidates trying that elsewhere around the country, coming in with a kind of Bernie style populist. Populism, coupled with being tough on immigration, running as independents. You could see some of that. The party's ripe for getting toppled. Party leadership's ripe for getting toppled. But you. Nancy Pelosi used to say when she was running for speakership, you can't beat somebody with nobody. And, you know, she, she often didn't have serious opponents. So.
- [41:19]
Sagar Enjeti
That's a very good point. You know, she never. Even though there were definitely times. Right. Where she could have easily faced at least some push. But she always.
- [41:27]
Ryan Grim
Joe Crow, Joe Crowley would have been a serious, you know, challenger to her. But that's. AOC took care of that. Yeah. Yeah.
- [41:34]
Sagar Enjeti
I don't know.
- [41:35]
Ryan Grim
And that, that was the cycle where she was, that was her, that was literally her slogan to run again for leader. You can't beat somebody with nobody. Like, can you. Can you concoct something less inspiring than that? Like, you have nothing. You can't beat me because you have nothing.
- [41:54]
Sagar Enjeti
Respect it. I almost have to respect it because.
- [41:58]
Ryan Grim
Yeah.
- [41:58]
Sagar Enjeti
It's so naked.
- [41:59]
Ryan Grim
Yeah.
- [42:00]
Sagar Enjeti
It's honestly just too, it's, it's so open. Yeah. On this, on this grand theory. It is really interesting. I want to try and find some More Bernie Sanders reaction. Just because it is so striking to watch how different it is, as opposed to the Slotkin universe of like, respectability of the Cold War, of everything is about the chaos, which she's basically, it's like a suburban strategy to try and win these suburban voters. But, you know, the difference is, is that Ryan, as you and I know, the suburban voters all voted Democrat. They were the faithful for Kamala, it was the working class voters who were the ones who abandoned them. I mean, what is it? For the first time ever, a Republican won voters under a hundred thousand and Democrats, like, you have the people who support this Reagan stuff. That's not who you need to win back right now. Whereas it's, you know, a very, very different view. I think that would have to. You would need to at least even compete from what we.
- [43:06]
Ryan Grim
Yeah, it's like, it's like when, when Republicans, you know, Katie Britt did that weird deer in the headlights, you know, kind of creepy response to buy.
- [43:15]
Sagar Enjeti
That was insane.
- [43:16]
Ryan Grim
But, but the goal, at least you could see was let's put up a suburban looking mom because we're good with the NASCAR crowd. Like, we don't need another. We don't need to like, up our share with them and we've got other ways to reach them. This is our national audience. Let's show that we have normal suburban people who are not chaos agents. You know, she, she happened to like, completely botched that, that moment. But you could see at least the thinking, like, try to put somebody normal up there. And so Democrats do the reverse. Like, what they need is like somebody who's going to reach outside of their tent and instead they got like the, the person from central casting inside their tent.
- [44:00]
Sagar Enjeti
It was very odd. All right, so I've got one here. Let's take a listen to some of Senator Sanders, just give you a very few examples.
- [44:12]
Ryan Grim
Trump claimed that the 2020 election was stolen from him and that he won by a landslide. Remember that? A lie. Trump claimed that the January 6th insurrection was a day of love. A lie. Trump has claimed that millions of undocumented people voted and do vote in American elections. A lie. Trump has claimed that climate change is a hoax originating in China. A lie. Trump has claimed that Ukraine started the horrific war with Russia. A lie. And tonight, just tonight, Trump claimed that millions of dead people between the ages of 100 and 360, I guess, were collecting Social Security checks. And that is an outrageous lie intended to lay the groundwork, the cuts to Social Security and dismantling the most successful and popular government program in history.
- [45:14]
Sagar Enjeti
So what I find fascinating about that response is it's a mix of the greatest hits from msnbc, coupled with a little bit of Social Security, which actually is a good way to describe progressive liberalism. No offense, but it's one of those.
- [45:28]
Ryan Grim
Where, yes, guys, they hate. They hate Trump as much as you do. Why do you hate them so much?
- [45:32]
Sagar Enjeti
Yeah, yeah. It's like, you know, they are just liberals in many respects.
- [45:36]
Ryan Grim
That's really like Social Security. And they want people to be a little bit better off. Yeah. They want life to be a little less hard.
- [45:44]
Sagar Enjeti
I was. I was fascinated by. Yeah, because I saw the summary here in the tweet, and I was like, huh? I was like, you know, in a way that can show you, in a certain. In a better sense, for the Democrats, the reason why it would be more effective is you get all your MSNBC hits. Even Mr. Mr. Sanders is a huge Ukraine, Stan, which is depressing for anybody who's been following for a long time. But, you know, he's come full circle here for aid to Ukraine and all of that. So he's with you on a lot of the box checks, but he's a little bit better, I think, at conveying some of this. Not that they will listen to him at all. All right, let's get to the Trump free speech, the free speech order, or truth, whatever the hell that we're going to call it. It's pretty extraordinary. No matter what you have, no matter what you think. I'm going to go ahead and load some of this up here. All right, so this is what we got from Donald Trump, President of the United States, in a statement yesterday. All federal funding will stop for any college, school or university that allows illegal protests. Agitators will be imprisoned and or permanently sent back to the country from which they came. American students will be permanently expelled or, depending on the crime, arrested. No masks. Thank you for your attention to this matter. The organization fire, who I have great and deep respect for, says here in reaction. Free speech on college campus is a proud American tradition on public campuses protected by the First Amendment. President Trump's message this morning, combined with other recent executive orders, is deeply chilling. Peaceful protest isn't illegal and the government must follow the First Amendment. Misconduct is not free speech and must be punished. The president can't force institutions to expel students. Students are entitled to due process on public college campuses and almost universally on private ones, too, as FIRE knows too well from our work defending student and faculty rights under the Obama Biden administration, threatening schools with the loss of federal funding will result in a crackdown on lawful speech. Schools will censor first and ask questions later. Today's message casts an impermissible chill on student protests about the Israeli Palestinian conflict, paired with Trump's 2019 executive order adopting an unconstitutional definition of anti Semitism. So, I mean, this is one of the craziest things that, I mean, I've seen yet. Yeah, go ahead.
- [48:09]
Ryan Grim
While you're on it, let me add Elise Stefanik, who is now Trump's UN Representative. She says she shared this and says under President Trump, colleges and universities will be held accountable. Antisemitism and anti Israel hate will not be tolerated on American campuses. Promises made, promises kept. And, you know, she's in some ways going even further than. Let's take the counterargument that I've seen a lot from supporters of this initiative. They say, look, universities are not entitled to federal funds, so it is up to the president if he wants to give. So that is just a absolute, complete fundamental misunderstanding and really assault on the First Amendment. Glenn Greenwald was talking about this recently, and he had a really good example that I think will help people understand why that's not the case. And the First Amendment law is very clear. A government doesn't have to offer universities funding, but if they decide to offer funding, they cannot punish individual universities based on speech. And a better way to understand it, the example he came up with was, let's say New York State has an unemployment policy. They are not required to give unemployment benefits to anybody. But if they do give unemployment benefits, it would be wildly unconstitutional for them to condition getting unemployment benefits on your support for the Democratic Party, Right?
- [49:47]
Sagar Enjeti
Or. Or race or. Think about that. Any violation of equal protection of First Amendment of the Constitution, right? The government cannot disperse funds based on a capricious standard. Doesn't. It could. It could just not offer funds to anybody.
- [50:01]
Ryan Grim
Exactly. You're end unemployment. Stop funding universities. Yeah, that you can do. But you can't say, all right, you over here are punished for anti Israel hate. Like who, what's anti and what? And this whole thing, an illegal protest. What's an illegal protest? Like, if you break a law while you're protesting, you can be arrested for that, you can be expelled, you can be jailed. But what is an illegal protest like? The First Amendment doesn't just say free speech. It says the right to assembly and to petition your government for grievances for Redrill.
- [50:40]
Sagar Enjeti
Why? Okay, again, I'm sure this will get clipped out by my Zionist haters. Why should we Care if people are, quote, anti Israel on campus. Right.
- [50:49]
Ryan Grim
Or why can be anti America. You can be anti Peru.
- [50:52]
Sagar Enjeti
Fine.
- [50:52]
Ryan Grim
You can be anti.
- [50:53]
Sagar Enjeti
I don't love it. Yeah. I don't love. You know, if somebody was like, oh, I'm anti America. Okay, whatever. If you're. Yeah. Anti Ukraine, anti Russia. You know how many Russia. Anti Russia protests. Pro Ukraine war protests that I walked by after the war broke out. You know, I totally disagree with these folks. Whatever. It's fine. It's a free country.
- [51:13]
Ryan Grim
Yeah. The First Amendment. The First Amendment means you can be racist, you can be bigoted, you can be homophobic, you can be Islamophobic, you can be an awful person and say awful things. And those are the. That's the speech that the First Amendment is intended to protect. If the First Amendment was only designed to protect thoughtful poetry that aligned with our own values, what use would it be?
- [51:38]
Sagar Enjeti
Yeah. And the problem here was also saying that American students will be permanently expelled. I mean, the only part where I differ is, you know, everyone's like, oh, it's not free speech to say that foreign students will get deported. It's like, well, like, yeah, they have right to free speech, but, like, we also have the right to revoke their visa literally at any time. Like, in terms of how we're allowed to do this, I just think it's. That one's different. But saying American students will get expelled, as in an American citizen will lose their access to a publicly funded university based upon their views of Israel, is outrageous to me. If you are a taxpayer, if you're a United States taxpayer, you live wherever you live, and you have paid ungodly amounts, you know, into the University of. I live in Virginia. Into the University of Virginia system. And you're going to police. What are you going to decide? My admission or my attendance at your university based upon my constitutionally protected right to free speech? That is one of the most outrageous things that I could think of. I mean, Ryan, did they even go this far during Vietnam? Like, I really don't think so.
- [52:50]
Ryan Grim
No. No. Like, yeah, I don't even think they were, like, burning his stuff.
- [52:52]
Sagar Enjeti
But no, that's not the same. Yeah. And actually, that was even decided at.
- [52:56]
Ryan Grim
The Supreme Court, and they got rid of that. They couldn't do that. And we don't point. We don't connect this that much either. But as we speak, Israel is cutting off electricity to Gaza, which is destroying the sanitation plants, threatening to cut off water, and in some places, cutting off water, and has completely blocked all entry of Food for days now into Gaza in an explicit attempt to get them to get Hamas to abrogate the ceasefire deal and reach a new deal. They are actively using and admitting that they are using starvation of a civilian population for their negotiating purposes. What is an American student supposed to say about that? That is. That is within the bounds of accepted speech, according to Elise Stefanik and Donald Trump.
- [53:48]
Sagar Enjeti
Right. And even in the, you know, everyone's like, oh, anti Zionism is anti Semitism. That's the part where it just drives me insane trying to think, what's a disputed territory? Like, what's like a disputed country? Yugoslavia.
- [54:00]
Ryan Grim
Nagorno Karabakh.
- [54:01]
Sagar Enjeti
Nagorno Karabakh. Great. Yeah, great one. Because they actually resolved that question, right, with ethnic cleansing. Yeah, yeah, Literally. Right. It was resolved with Israeli support, just so you're all aware. But it's one of those where, if there were pro. Actually, you and I live here in the DMV area, if you ever take a drive out in Embassy Row, you will see protests over the most shit you can imagine. Darfur, you know, over here you've got. Yeah, you said Nagorno Karabakh. Over here you've got some Kurds outside the Turkish embassy. Okay, whatever. Right? It's America. Let it be. Trust me. Those embassies, they hate it, but there's nothing they can do about it.
- [54:43]
Ryan Grim
They're out there with their video cameras, trying to figure out who they are and punishing, punish, punish their relative.
- [54:48]
Sagar Enjeti
Yeah, it's horrible. Remember when Erdogan visited D.C. and sent his bodyguards out to beat the shit out of a bunch of protesters? But, like, that's an example, right? Where actually the government and the D.C. government actually stood up to him and we're like, no, no, no, no. That does not happen here. So we can have protests around Nagorno Karabakh, around Kurdistan, around all of these other places. That's not considered hate. It's just a protest. Ok, whatever. And you don't even have to like it. You know, you can find it annoying. You could find. You know, I remember Rohingya protests right here in D.C. over the whole Burma, Myanmar thing. All of that is fine. And nobody at a national level is legislating, trying to define or to outlaw it. It's literally only here, where they're basically asking for the same snowflake treatment that so many of these DEI BLM demands that happened, you know, over the last eight years, that these guys like Shapiro and then became filthy rich decrying and now have nothing to say about it. If not Actively cheering it. Cheering it whenever it happens now.
- [55:56]
Ryan Grim
Yeah. And Yuval Abraham, the Israeli journalist who won an Oscar the other day for the film no Other Land, in his speech said that we need an end to ethnic supremacy in Israel. He called for an end to ethnic supremacy. So Yuval Abraham would have been guilty at an American university of anti Semitism according to this. According to this definition. And I guess, you know, he's an Israeli citizen, so we're not going to deport him, but maybe he would be. Maybe if Colombia invited him to speak, they would then lose their. They would lose their federal funding for having an Israeli who called for an end to ethnic supremacy in Israel. Like, that's not America.
- [56:40]
Sagar Enjeti
It's one of those. It is so insane. And a friend of the show, Michael Tracy, Emily kept. Emily kept sharing this yesterday.
- [56:50]
Ryan Grim
He has a banger every now and then.
- [56:51]
Sagar Enjeti
Yeah, it's true. It's true. GOP free speech. You can say retarded again, but you can't protest Israel. So, yeah, that's where we're at right now. And, you know, we also got to. We can't left ol RFK Jr. Off the hook.
- [57:09]
Ryan Grim
Yeah.
- [57:09]
Sagar Enjeti
Either. Yeah. I mean, and this is why credit you're got.
- [57:14]
Ryan Grim
You guys hammered him pretty good in this when you guys had him on during the campaign. So our viewers would have. Yeah, right. But at least. At least people who watch this show are not surprised by what he just did.
- [57:25]
Sagar Enjeti
No, anyone who pays attention should not be surprised literally at all. But, yeah, you know, that's where we are. So he. Tracy, again with a banger. You have to reread this statement a few times to appreciate how insane it is RFK has accepted. He has to give up on combating greenhouse gas emissions. So the new greenhouse gas is anti Semitism. And he's going to rid America of this pestilence by building communities of trust that are based on speech freedom, as he is announcing an intergovernmental initiative to regulate and punish the political speech that he writes. So here's what RFK writes.
- [57:59]
Ryan Grim
Well, shouldn't. Shouldn't we cap it? Shouldn't we cap. Shouldn't we cap it and allow people to trade credits?
- [58:04]
Sagar Enjeti
Yeah, Anti Semitism credits.
- [58:06]
Ryan Grim
Yeah, that's a good.
- [58:07]
Sagar Enjeti
That's good. Anti Semitism, like racism, is a spiritual and immoral malady that sickens societies and kills people with lethalities comparable to history's deadliest plagues. In recent years, the censorship and false narratives of woke cancel culture have transformed our great universities into greenhouses for this deadly and virtual pestilence. Making America healthy again means building communities of trust and mutual respect based on speech, freedom and open debate. And the task force review is the first major action announced from the multi agency task force to combat antisemitism created by President Trump. So yeah, I mean obviously, by the.
- [58:46]
Ryan Grim
Way, I'm joking a little bit about the, the trading credits, but we actually already do have a market for anti Semitism in this country and, and the trade works like this. You've seen it happen a couple of times. Elon Musk has said straight up anti Semitic stuff and then you have spoken the actual truth. Yeah. Yeah or no? Yeah. Have you spoken the actual truth? I'm a great replacement. Yes, like straight up unvarnished anti Semitism. And the credit that you have to do then is you have to take your support for Israel up a couple higher notches and you have to suppress Palestinian voices. So Musk got on the call with Jonathan Greenblatt of ADL after he did this unvarnished anti Semitism and he agreed to de platform a decent number of pro Palestine voices. And Greenblatt said, all right, we have a deal. You're, you're exonerated. He went to the Holocaust Museum. He visited Israel when he did his.
- [59:50]
Sagar Enjeti
Auschwitz with Ben Shapiro.
- [59:52]
Ryan Grim
Remember that? When he did his quote unquote Roman salute. I forget exactly what he did to get grace from Netanyahu, but it was, you know, he ratcheted up his support for Israel. So that's the trade that you do like and so on the right you're seeing this like you can do more anti Semitism but you just have to support Israel that much harder.
- [60:13]
Sagar Enjeti
Right? Smart. Yeah. And guess what? They, when, when you're, when you're sufficiently pro Israel, they let you do it.
- [60:23]
Ryan Grim
In the words of a wise man.
- [60:25]
Sagar Enjeti
Oh, the words of a wise man.
- [60:28]
Jenny Garth
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- [61:58]
Ryan Grim
At Ameca Insurance, we know it's more than a life policy. It's about the promise and the responsibility that comes with being a new parent, being there day and night and building a plan for tomorrow, today for the ones you'll always look out for. Trust Amica Life insurance. Amica empathy is our best policy.
- [62:29]
Sagar Enjeti
All right, Ryan, last thing here, you've got a CFPB update. What do you got for us?
- [62:34]
Ryan Grim
Oh, this. So this, this one is extra outrageous. So it combines the, the debate over the CFPB and the, the controversy around debanking. And maybe I'll play it in a minute, but probably everybody who's watching this has already seen the Zuckerberg clip on Rogan, the Mark Andreessen clip on Rogan, where Marc Andreessen explains to him that the, you know, the problem with the Biden administration and the CFPB in particular is that it goes around, you know, debanking conservatives for their ideological views. And the audience is just aghast that they would do this. Therefore, we need to get rid of the cfpb. They subsequently do get rid of the cfpb. Now, what people probably know is that in December and put this up, the CFPB passed a rule, finalized a rule that they've been working on for many years and had been getting pushback from big banks on finalized a rule that would bar debanking and not just from big banks, but also from these digital payment apps. And they set the threshold at you have at least 50 million transactions. So the companies that this would pick up would be Venmo, PayPal, Google Pay, Apple Pay, Zelle, you know those types. Okay, so that rule, because the banks had fought it, didn't really get pa, didn't really get implemented until the end of the Biden era. What that means is that it can be attacked through what's called a CRA resolution to basically disapprove it. And so what, what do we have now? Let me, let me put this up. Today at 4:00 in the United States Senate, Republicans will be pushing forward a bill to specifically repeal this debanking rule. So the argument was. And it also doesn't need. It doesn't need 60 votes.
- [64:42]
Sagar Enjeti
It only needs 51.
- [64:44]
Ryan Grim
It only needs 50. Yeah. Because. Well, this rule would also apply to Twitter and WhatsApp. It would allow. If they start trading coin, like right now, Twitter doesn't. Doesn't count because small businesses and other businesses are exempted. So, like, you know, Twitter does, you know, work with what stripe to, like, pay its. Its creators, but that doesn't get you under this rubric. But if Twitter starts allowing you to make payments person to person, they would be subject to this CFPB oversight. These companies, Zelle, PayPal, all of these, they don't, they don't want. They don't want this oversight cash app. And so they've gone to Republicans and they have asked to have this, this rule repealed. And the rule does two things. It's. It's debanking is. Is one, and the other is dispute resolution. Because there are laws in the books that say if you're a financial institution, you have to easily let customers dispute transactions. Yep. For obvious reasons, that's what we, it's what we, as a public want. Like, you look at something, you're like, that's fraud. I didn't do that.
- [65:58]
Sagar Enjeti
Yeah.
- [65:59]
Ryan Grim
I want to be able to challenge it. And that is the law. But it's. There's a gray area around whether or not these, you know, PayPal has to abide by that law. And so this rule would be saying, no PayPal, all these others, Venmo, et cetera. Like, you have to abide by these rules. You can't debank people, and you have to have a dispute resolution for fraud. And Obviously, Venmo and PayPal, Zelle and these others, that's not in their interests. They want to be able to debunk.
- [66:33]
Sagar Enjeti
Well, because for them, it's not just about debanking.
- [66:35]
Ryan Grim
It's. Don't they want the free. They want the freedom. Yeah, yeah, right.
- [66:39]
Sagar Enjeti
Also, I get to do whatever I want to do. It's like, we don't need you knocking around in our code or whatever. You know, just tell us what our reporting requirements are. We'll send you your 1099 at the end of the year. But we don't need you looking around in our internal processes. And I mean, there's been so many scammed.
- [66:56]
Ryan Grim
Yeah, right.
- [66:57]
Sagar Enjeti
Yeah. Hope you don't get scammed. Hope it. Hope it works out for you. In terms of that. I mean. Yeah. I mean, I Can't be the only person who's had just terrible experiences Both with Venmo, PayPal or any of these other places. Whenever you actually are either trying to dispute a transaction or my. My personal favorite is it was like buying something and they were like, oh, you got to turn off. It's a business purchase. You need to turn on friends and family. Right. Because this is the type of stuff which applies to it. But now it would be making it easier for them to not even have to offer oversight to make sure that their customers and their users not only get scammed, but most importantly that they have sovereign ability to decide your ability to transact. And that's very important in a digital ecosystem and payment system. That the government has an absolute standard that nobody, no matter your political beliefs or whatever is allowed to trans. Is not. Is going to be banned from being able to transact unless they are explicitly violating the law. That's the most important thing.
- [68:02]
Ryan Grim
And just for fun, let's do a little bit of Mark Andreessen posit.
- [68:05]
Sagar Enjeti
You can't get insurance.
- [68:07]
Ryan Grim
Like none of that stuff is. You've been sanctioned.
- [68:09]
Sagar Enjeti
Right.
- [68:09]
Ryan Grim
None of that stuff is available. And then this administration extended that concept. Apply it to tech founders, crypto founders, and then just generally political opponents. Yeah, so that's. That's been like super pernicious.
- [68:21]
Sagar Enjeti
I wasn't aware of that.
- [68:22]
Ryan Grim
Oh, 100%. And this is called. So it's Operation Choke Point. 1.0 was 15 years ago against the pot and the guns. 2.0 is primarily political enemies and then to their disfavored tech startups. And it's hit the tech world like we've hard. We've had like 30 founders debanked in.
- [68:37]
Sagar Enjeti
The last four years.
- [68:38]
Ryan Grim
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So here's Mark Andreessen and tech founders who have gotten debanked. Usually that's around some type of cartel activity or some weird crypto like scam that they were involved in and has nothing to do with the cfpb. But they. But Andreessen and Zuckerberg and these others very cleverly used this like legitimate anger at the idea that conservatives could be debanked for ideological reasons and channeled it at somebody that they hate for their own reasons and successfully so far nuke this agency. And meanwhile, the debanking rule is going to get repealed I think this afternoon by Senate Republicans.
- [69:24]
Sagar Enjeti
Well, keep us updated. Ryan, this is why you're the goat. You're the person who tracks all of these things. Thank you to everybody. This was fun. I enjoy doing the virtual bro show. Let's give another pound for the camera and all of that. We will have a full Breaking Point show for everybody tomorrow. So we will see you all then.
- [69:43]
Ryan Grim
Joining us this morning is Dr. Adam Hamowy and Representative Bonnie Watson Coleman, the Democrat from New Jersey. Dr. Hamill was, was Representative Watson Coleman's guest at last night's State of the Union. He also returned from believe your second trip to Gaza, your second recent trip to on a Gaza medical mission about three weeks ago. So I wanted to start by asking you, Dr. Hammawi, just kind of what it was like to go from three weeks ago being and I believe you were having a difficult time, as is common for medical professionals who go on missions to Gaza. Getting back out, what it was like going from there and being kind of on the receiving end of US Power and the unpleasant end of US Power to being in the in the hall of that power. What was the experience like for you last night?
- [70:35]
Dr. Adam Hamowy
Well, last night was interesting. I mean it was, it was disappointing to kind of see our democracy being like in a situation where we are the pinnacle basically of we're supposed to be the leaders of this world. And I felt I was in a room filled with schoolchildren and you know, just a bunch of psychophans just clapping at everything that's to be said, whether it makes sense or not. I mean, you know, there's a lot of things that are good and there's a lot of things that are bad and if we can't discern between either one of them, then everything begins to fall apart. And it was very disappointing to see that.
- [71:18]
Ryan Grim
And Congressman, can I get your kind of inside take a little bit on how Democrats decided that they were going to approach his speech was there. Did, did, did Al Green say in a meeting, you know what, I'm going to stand up and shake my cane and let him know or like did leadership talk about protests? Like how did that sort out and what was your thinking about it?
- [71:40]
Dr. Adam Hamowy
Yeah.
- [71:40]
Bonnie Watson Coleman
So not in my presence did Al Green say that he was going to do what he did. Leadership just wanted us to be respectful, that is our house, and to listen. Leadership knew that there would be some level of protest in some way shape or form asked that it not be terribly disruptive. And I think that with the exception of the Al Green situation, which kind of got out of hand, but I certainly understand his emotion behind it. I think that things were pretty orderly. We decided we were just going to sit quietly, listen. Some of us had signs that spoke to either fixing something like Medicaid or saying false, because the statement that the president was making rather frequently actually his statements were not accurate. But all in all, I think that given this moment, given the severity of the things that this administration has done and has proposed to do, I think Democrats did just fine.
- [72:59]
Ryan Grim
Dr. When you get written about occasionally in the press sometimes for being unable to leave Gaza, you'll often be referred to as having kind of been the doctor that saved or worked on Senator Tammy Duckworth when she, when she had her helicopter crash in Iraq. And I'm curious if that, if a, you were able to speak with her all last night, do you stay in pretty close touch with her? And has that given you the ability to speak more directly to members of Congress about, you know, what you've, what you've seen on the ground? And does that just not matter now that Democrats are out of power and Trump is the one calling the shots?
- [73:41]
Dr. Adam Hamowy
I mean, I wasn't able to see her yesterday. I think the, I mean, I'm proud of what I did, and it's great that we have that relationship, but my ability really to speak with anyone in Congress is their willingness to listen. So I've been back and forth here now many times over the last year, and I'll talk to anyone who'll sit down and have a conversation. So if they open their doors and they want to listen, whether they agree or not, I'll sit down and talk. And unfortunately, what I've been finding is that more and more doors are just closed. You don't want to heat and hear. And that's unfortunate because that's not how we're going to learn or change or move forward if we're not able to listen to each other.
- [74:30]
Ryan Grim
What do you mean by the doors are closed? Like, people are just, they want to move past this entire situation.
- [74:37]
Dr. Adam Hamowy
Like, what's the, they don't want to listen to what I have to say. They don't want to listen to my experience. They don't want to hear another opinion or thought about what's happening in Gaza or Israel?
- [74:48]
Ryan Grim
So what is, what is the difference under this, this quote, unquote, ceasefire under which we've seen hundreds of people killed? But what, what is, how would you describe the difference in your visit, your most recent mission, compared to the one while the hot war, so to speak, was, was on?
- [75:06]
Dr. Adam Hamowy
It was night and day. I mean, it was night and day. I went in about a week after the ceasefire started, and it, you know, it was, it was such a low bar to clear is to stop dropping bombs on, on everyone. You know, still there's a lot of destruction there. There's a lot of shortages, there's a lack of resources, there's no electricity, there's no clean water. So conditions are relatively horrible. But completely compared to last year, it was, you know, like the sun just finally, like, shone on the place. And it's unfortunate that now, as we speak, is that, you know, already Israel is breaking the ceasefire. And for the last two or three days, there's been no humanitarian aid allowed to go in. And even since before this last two days, it's been even more difficult for doctors and nurses and healthcare workers to get into Israel and into Gaza to be able to provide that aid. They're making it more and more difficult. They're turning more people away and they're giving even more restrictions. So this is, you know, you know, this has been ongoing now for the last six weeks, even, you know, to a higher degree than, than before.
- [76:17]
Ryan Grim
And Israel had let in some additional supplies, you know, medical and, and food and others. At the beginning of the quote, unquote, ceasefire, did that have a noticeable impact on your working conditions in the hospital?
- [76:35]
Dr. Adam Hamowy
Yes. I mean, there was food that came in, prices dropped tremendously, like 10 times. For example, one of the nurses was showing me a bag of tomatoes and said that this bag of tomatoes last week cost US$50, and now it's five, and five is still a lot, but now it's at least affordable. And that's just food to be able to put on the table. So the, you know, that aid that comes in is critical and it affects our care. I mean, for people to be able to heal, they need to be able to eat and have nutrition. And it's important. I mean, I got people who are literally starving. You can see people that have lost like £40, £50. You see their pictures and you can't recognize what they used to look like. And the children, they're just like, you know, you know, you could see the malnutrition everywhere you look. And now with Ramadan, it's even especially important because, you know, people are having just one meal a day. And I'm sure with these new restrictions, those prices just jump right back up. And people, again, can't, even if there's food available, they can't buy what's on the market because the prices are so high.
- [77:46]
Ryan Grim
Did you treat any Palestinian captives who were released as part of the, the exchange? And what kind of patients were you seeing this time versus versus last time?
- [77:57]
Dr. Adam Hamowy
So I was, I was not at a hospital that received the captives, but I did take care of a lot of patients that had, you know, backup, you know, were backed up from the last year and a half. A lot of children that were born with congenital deformities, cleft lifts and cleft pain palates over the last two years that hadn't received any care. A lot of the war injuries that, you know, people received from shrapnel contractures, scarring that needed revision, surgeries to take care of. So it was more of a normal experience than what I had last year, when it was just one trauma after the other, but still a tremendous amount of work that needed to be done.
- [78:34]
Ryan Grim
And Representative Watson Coleman, when you see this, you know, you see Israel now breaking the, the ceasefire is threatening, you know, cutting off electricity, you know, using starvation as a, as a, as a weapon to try to extract additional concessions beyond what was originally agreed to. And you see Trump talking about building Trump Riviera in Gaza. Are you sensing any regret among your colleagues in Congress that they didn't do anything to stop this while they had the opportunity? And do they think it cost them politically? In other words, do they care or are they just moving past this?
- [79:13]
Bonnie Watson Coleman
You know, one of the reasons that I wanted the doctor to come and be my guest is because with so many distractions, with all the sort of evil eos and things like that that Trump was putting out and the Doge mess and the lies and all, and even the Ukraine stuff, all of a sudden we weren't hearing anything. After he talked about making Palestine the Riviera of the Middle east, we weren't hearing anything. Kind of doubled down on that, which is ridiculous. I thought it was really important to bring the doctor here again so that he could really talk about what's happening in real time there. I don't know what you mean when you say we could have made a difference. I, you know, obviously it wasn't, we weren't being assertive enough, from my perspective, to get Israel to back down at some point. Israel had a right to protect itself when this first went down. But we saw the kind of harshness that didn't seem to be necessary and didn't seem to move towards a two state solution or a peaceful solution. So that was very disappointing to me. Do I wish we had done more in that regard? Yes, but it's a very complicated issue. We had very stubborn leadership there in Netanyahu who didn't think he had to answer to anyone. And at the same time, I don't think that the United States was tough enough on him to make him sort of change course a bit and be more willing to meet and to create some pathway to safety and security. However, I don't believe that Hamas was legitimately willing to do that either. So I think that there was distraction and dishonesty on both parts.
- [81:22]
Ryan Grim
Well, we've got to leave it there. We were going to talk a little bit longer just to let the let the viewers in on it. Democracy now wanted to speak with you and Dr. Hamowi as well. And we in independent media, we'd like to be a little more collaborative than competitive. So I want to let you go so you can get over and we're happy to have you on again and we can talk more at length about all of this. So thank thank you Dr. Hamway, and thank you Dr. Watson Coleman. Thank you, Congresswoman Watson Coleman.
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