3/6/26: Jobs CRATER, Gas SKYROCKETS, Anti-War Vote FAILS

Summary

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Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar

Episode: Jobs CRATER, Gas SKYROCKETS, Anti-War Vote FAILS
Date: March 6, 2026
Hosts: Krystal Ball, Saagar Enjeti, Ryan Grim, Griffin
Guest: Congressman Ro Khanna

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Episode Overview

This episode captures the turbulence of early March 2026, as the hosts dig into three converging crises: plummeting job numbers, a surge in gas prices, and the failure of a House War Powers Resolution aimed at American military action in Iran. Joined by Congressman Ro Khanna, the panel unpacks congressional dysfunction, the economic tailspin, and the alarming consequences of the escalating Iran war for both Americans and global stability.

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Key Topics & Discussion Points

1. War Powers Resolution & Congressional Debate

[04:33 - 18:09]

• Ro Khanna’s Reaction to the Vote Failure

  • Expresses deep disappointment over the War Powers Resolution’s defeat, highlighting both the human (U.S. service members lost) and economic costs.
  • Emphasizes Congress’ constitutional authority and responsibility for decisions of war and peace.
  • Quote:

    "I really was saddened for our nation that after Iraq, after Afghanistan, 20 years after Libya, we still could not get this War Powers Resolution to pass."
    — Ro Khanna [05:17]

• Bipartisan Cooperation & Leadership Tactics

  • Discusses working with Rep. Thomas Massie to bring the issue forward.
  • Notes increased but still limited support among Democratic leadership.
  • Describes pressure campaigns, party persuasion, and public accountability.

• Strategic Implications & Political Calculations

  • Some Democrats remain resistant, either due to conservatism, direct political calculation, or external pressure (e.g., prosecution leverage).
  • Pelosi’s historical skepticism of Middle East wars resurfaces, but with limited influence over final votes.

• Public & Political Pressure

  • Grassroots and activist influence is rising, notably on Middle East policy and Gaza.

Notable Exchange

"War and peace should be one of those issues [where party unity matters]. People should be concerned about being out of touch with their base."
— Ro Khanna [10:04]

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2. The Iran War: Domestic & Global Consequences

[18:09 - 40:03, 43:03 - 65:57]

• Economic Fallout: Gas Prices & U.S. Economy

  • Straight of Hormuz closure is pushing oil prices upward; average gas price noted at $3.30/gal and climbing.
  • White House and Trump seem unprepared, with empty Strategic Petroleum Reserve and minimal policy tools left.
  • Shock at administration’s "optimistic" war duration forecast and apparent failure to foresee economic repercussions.

  "Gas prices matter... This is the visible sign of inflation for many people. Rents and gas prices and grocery prices."
  — Ro Khanna [18:09]

• Trump’s Rhetoric & Administration Strategy

  • Trump dismisses gas price fears:

    "If they rise, they rise. But this is far more important than having gasoline price go up a little bit..." [22:58]

  • His approach described as "cartoon villain behavior" and "freelancing" without strategic policy.

• Security Risks for Americans

  • Risks of Iranian retaliation, both abroad and on U.S. soil, foregrounded.
  • Significant number of American civilians and service members now at risk in the Gulf amid airport closures and escalating hostilities.

  "You're going to your target, you're going to the grocery store and you may face... retaliation from Iran."
  — Ro Khanna [23:31]

• Geopolitical Escalation & War Crimes

  • Analysis of Iranian strategy: attacks on Gulf energy, tankers, and civilian infrastructure.
  • U.S. and Israeli infractions of international law discussed; erosion of international norms for all parties.

  "Once you take international law off the table, it’s off the table for everyone... that’s the world that you have yourself created."
  — Ego Woda [50:32]

• Polling & Public Reaction

  • Initial war support low, but media narrative is rapidly shifting numbers to a 50/50 split.
  • Hosts caution against assuming war unpopularity is permanent; warn of a potential short-term rally effect.

  "It feels like a... ‘yeah, I wish it hadn't happened, but now that it's happening, I'm going to support my country.’"
  — Ryan Grim [58:40]

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3. Economic Catastrophe: Jobs Report Analysis

[34:10 - 40:03]

• Stunning Job Losses

  • 92,000 jobs lost in February, a catastrophic miss vs. expectations (58,000 gain); unemployment rises to 4.4%.
  • Ro Khanna links losses to multiple Trump administration policies: blanket immigration cuts, ongoing tariffs, and tilted tax breaks.
  • AI is accelerating job losses among young people—Stanford data cited shows "16% job loss for young people under 25 in AI-exposed professions."

  "We need an actual economic policy, a jobs policy that's going to hire people, with the federal government getting involved in hiring and preventing mass displacement."
  — Ro Khanna [35:14]

• Policy Prescriptions

  • Advocacy for a federal jobs guarantee, New Deal-style interventions.
  • Discussion of taxing AI enterprise to generate funds for public employment programs.

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4. Tech, AI, and Atrocities in War

[26:58 - 29:11]

• AI’s Role in Iran War Crimes

  • Reports surface that Anthropic’s AI model, Claude, was used in targeting the Iranian school struck by U.S. military action.
  • Ro Khanna calls for strict accountability:

    "I do not think we should be using artificial intelligence to make decisions about killing human beings... every human being has dignity." [27:38]

• Broader Reflection

  • Raises the moral crisis of American foreign policy and questions the erosion of empathy:

    "Do we believe in the dignity of every human life, or has America First become so warped that we actually believe that lives overseas... don’t have the same human dignity?"

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5. Populism, Economic Rhetoric & Policy Substance

[25:12 - 34:10]

• Tax on Billionaires & Progressive Agenda

  • Khanna discusses primary challenge backlash following his support for taxing billionaires and real progressive policies.

  • Warns of the dangers of hollow "populist" branding unattached to actual policy:

    "If you’re not willing to say, ‘Let's tax the billionaires at 5% like Bernie and I want,’… then it's sort of empty rhetoric."
    — Ro Khanna [25:12]

  • Calls for specific mechanisms for taxing “paper billionaires” (illiquid stock value).

• Contrast with ‘America First’ Rhetoric

  • Notes right-wing populist rhetoric is also devoid of substance unless paired with real anti-war or anti-interventionist policies.

  "It’s all rhetoric until the substance is on the T."
  — Crystal [29:05]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Khanna on American Apathy for War:

  “You're asking people to die and you're asking all of this money to go for a cause that you have not even said why you’re there.” [05:17]

• On Use of AI in Warfare:

  “I do not think we should be using artificial intelligence to make decisions about killing human beings. ...That doesn’t mean the life of an Iranian schoolgirl has less dignity.”
  — Ro Khanna [27:38]

• On International Law’s Collapse:

  “Once you take international law off the table, it’s off the table for everyone...that is the world that you have created.”
  — Ego Woda [50:32]

• Trump’s Indifference to Gas Prices:

  "If they rise, they rise. But this is far more important than having gasoline price go up a little bit..."
  — Citing Trump [22:58]

• Cartoon Villain Behavior:

  "That is cartoon villain behavior."
  — Crystal [55:02]

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Key Timestamps

• [04:33] Congressman Ro Khanna joins – War Powers Resolution, Iran war, and jobs numbers.
• [05:17] Ro Khanna on congressional war powers and shocking U.S. war costs.
• [10:04] Party divisions & pressure for antiwar unity.
• [18:09] Ro on the economic consequences of Iran war, gas prices.
• [23:31] Trump’s indifference to economic fallout; risks to Americans.
• [27:38] Congressman Khanna on AI in warfare and human dignity.
• [34:10] Discussion turns to jobs crisis and unemployment data.
• [43:03] Hosts react to Trump & administration’s handling of war and public messaging.
• [50:32] Lawless war, international law’s erosion.
• [58:10] Polling on the war, American public opinion splits.
• [61:21] Disruption to global oil infrastructure and the complexity of shutting down production.
• [65:57] Closing reflections on baffling strategy behind U.S. escalation.

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Closing Thoughts

This packed episode is both a dire warning and a reminder of the stakes as the country faces an unpopular war with Iran, domestic economic unraveling, and a political system ill-equipped to restrain disastrous decisions. Khanna repeatedly pushes for substantive action over political “branding,” challenging both parties to face the real costs borne by American and foreign civilians alike. The episode’s tone oscillates between grim realism, dark humor, and open exasperation—a fitting reflection of the moment it chronicles.

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Transcript

[Ego Woda]

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Woda is your host for the 2026 I Heart podcast Awards live at south by Southwest.

[Congressman Ro Khanna]

Hello? Is anybody there?

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Raised by a single mom, Aygo may have a few father related issues.

[Ryan Grim]

Are we supposed to talk about your dad?

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Her podcast, thanks dad, is full of funny, heartfelt conversations with actors, including fellow SNL alums, comedians, musicians and more about life and their wonderfully complicated relationships with their fathers.

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I think and hope that's a good thing.

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Get to know Aygo, follow Thanks dad with Agowodo and start listening on the free iHeartRadio app today.

[Ryan Grim]

Hey, I'm Jay Shetty, host of the On Purpose podcast. I'm joined by Luke Combs, award winning country music artist and one of the

[Congressman Ro Khanna]

most authentic voices in music today.

[Ryan Grim]

The guy that says he's always going to be there and that will do anything to be there is the only guy that's not there. No matter what. I'm going to prioritize my wife and my children. I dread the conversation with my son.

[Congressman Ro Khanna]

Listen to On Purpose with Jay Shetty on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or

[Ryan Grim]

wherever you get your podcasts.

[Jo Winterstein]

Hi, it's Jo Interestine, host of the Spirit Daughter podcast where we talk about astrology, natal charts, and how to step into your most vibrant life. And today I'm talking with my dear friend Krista Williams.

[Ego Woda]

It can change you in the best way possible. Dance with the change, dance with the breakdowns.

[Jo Winterstein]

The embodiment of Pisces intuition with Capricorn power moves.

[Ego Woda]

Just so. I'm like delusionally proud of my chart.

[Jo Winterstein]

Listen to the Spirit Daughter podcast starting on February 24th on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast or wherever you listen to your podcast.

[Crystal]

Hey guys, Sagar and Crystal here.

[Ego Woda]

Independent media just played a truly massive role in this election and we are so excited about what that means for the future of the show.

[Crystal]

This is the only place where you

[Ryan Grim]

can find honest perspectives from the left

[Crystal]

and the right that simply does not exist anywhere else.

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So if that is something that's important to you, Please go to BreakingPoints.com, become a member today and you'll get to our full shows unedited ad free and all put together for you every morning in your inbox.

[Crystal]

We need your help to build the future of independent news media and we

[Ego Woda]

hope to see [e-mail] Morning, everybody. Happy Friday. How's everybody feeling this morning?

[Ryan Grim]

Pretty good. How are you guys?

[Crystal]

Griffin's doing good. What's that, Griffin's? In a jacket.

[Ego Woda]

Yeah. Griffin is looking very fancy. And just in case you were confused, it's not because of any of us. It's because Congressman Ro Khanna is going to be joining us. Sure.

[Ryan Grim]

You dress up for Ro.

[Griffin]

I do, I do. But then, you know, when we're hanging out after we do street wear, you know, hoodies, sweatpants.

[Ego Woda]

That's the vibe. That's a vibe. So Ro Khan is going to join us. Obviously, he was a leader on this war powers resolution that just failed in the House. So we want to talk to him about that. Also, there is a terrible new jobs number that just dropped last month. Reportedly we lost 92,000 jobs. That is a huge miss. It's a massive deal. We're also going to take a look at this New York Times investigation exposing what many of us suspected, that it was in fact the US behind that deadly massacre of little girls at a school in Iran. Just horrifying stuff there. So we'll get into that. The president making all kinds of wild new comments about gas prices, about the possibility of people being attacked here in the US So seems like something we should follow up with there as well.

[Crystal]

Yeah. A lot to talk about today. And by the way, we should say welcome to everybody if this is your first Friday show because we have so many new subscribers. BP free 20 seconds.

[Griffin]

That's a good point.

[Crystal]

But if you, this is your first Friday show, especially if you're a premium member, second half totally pay well just for premium subscribers. But we do this every Friday. It's a little more chill and relaxed and we have a ton of fun. So welcome.

[Ryan Grim]

And what's the code? What's the code for that free month?

[Ego Woda]

BP free 26, right, Griffin?

[Griffin]

That's right. Free em.

[Ego Woda]

Yeah. We wanted to make sure that anyone who wanted access to all of our, I mean most everything is not behind a paywall anyway, but to get access to the whole thing without ads, which is the way that it really is meant to be watched. Wanted to make sure everybody could have access to that, that this month. So BP free 26. And yeah, you'll get that second half of the Friday show, which is kind of the biggest thing that we put behind the paywall. And we typically try to save some of the like, I don't know, a little bit more sugary fun stories. Although it's hard to do lately with so much serious stuff in the news. Those second halves have been pretty heavy as well. Yeah.

[Ryan Grim]

And the idea is you'll be hooked after a month and you won't be able to cancel. You'll just be like, this is, this is too good. This is too important to my news diet. You know, I'm going to support this. So that's, that's the theory.

[Ego Woda]

All right. Well, with that being said, Congressman Khanna is waiting in the lobby, so let's go ahead and welcome him in. All right, guys. Joining us this morning to talk about the War Powers Resolution vote that happened in the House and the Iran war in general. And also we'll get his reaction on those jobs numbers is a Congressman Ro Khanna from California. Great to see you.

[Congressman Ro Khanna]

Congressman, always a pleasure. Thanks for having me back.

[Ego Woda]

Yeah. So first of all, just your reaction to, you know, you and Thomas Massie once again teamed up to push this War Powers Resolution vote, which is not even a vote against the war. It's just literally a vote to say, hey, Congress should have a say in this. To me, that doesn't seem like it should be controversial. Nevertheless, the vote failed both in the Senate and yesterday in the House. So your reaction to that?

[Congressman Ro Khanna]

It was very disappointing. Disappointing because we've already lost six American service members because we're literally spending over a billion dollars a day. I mean, just to put this in perspective, 50 days in Iran could fund free public college education for every American in this country and a thousand trade schools, Right? I mean, so you're asking people to die and you're asking all of this money to go for a cause that you have not even said why you're there. They themselves are saying, well, the IRGC probably will stay in power. They themselves are saying that they could rebuild ballistic missiles or nuclear weapons. So what is the reason? They just want to punch Iran to weaken Iran relative to the other powers in the Middle East? Okay, I get that. That's what Netanyahu wants, but we want Americans dying for that and we want our money going for that. I really was saddened for our nation that after Iraq, after Afghanistan, 20 years after Libya, we still could not get this War Powers Resolution to pass. But we're not giving up. By the way, I've been disappointed by some of the people who, and I'm not going to mention names, but are on TV saying, well, I don't know, procedurally we'll still vote for funding some supplementals if it helps our troops. There should be a consistent now Democratic line. Not a single dollar for funding the Iran supplemental. Not a single dollar. We need to. That's Congress's power.

[Crystal]

Well, I have a question on that note, actually. I was, I interviewed your colleague Thomas Massie the other day, who said he was toying around with the idea, actually introducing a declaration of war, which he would not vote for, but to force, maybe Democrats who are using the War Powers Resolution as cover, and certainly Republicans, to be on the record about where they stand on the war, to actually take a vote. Have the two of you talked about that? Is it something that you would seriously consider going forward?

[Congressman Ro Khanna]

It's a good idea. I actually haven't talked to him about that. We were talking more about the war powers vote yesterday. But people should go on, on, on record on that. You know, I mean, Lindsey Graham's view is we are in war and it doesn't matter because the President can just go to war under Article 2. Right. And, you know, it would be good to put people on the record on that. But I also think it's important for the Democrats now not to, to talk about funding, just like we're talking about no new funding for ice. There should be no funding for the Iran supplemental.

[Ryan Grim]

So one of the, if there was any good news for your faction of the party coming out of this, it was that under pressure, Democratic leadership did decide to whip this vote, which was a break from the practice that they've engaged in the past. They would like Lake and Riley right out of the gate. They said, you know what, Vote your conscience if you feel. And what they mean by vote your conscience is vote your. Whatever you think is in your immediate political interest, even if it undermines the party or the country. So in this case, they said, no, no, no, we want all Democrats voting to support this. And you did flip three of the four kind of public members of Democratic members of Congress, two yes votes. Curious how you, you know, what you did to kind of convince them to vote yes. But then ones who had been quieter about where they were going to be, in particular, Henry Cuellar, Jared golden and Juan Vargas, all vote all ended up voting against this. Cuellar seems like kind of just beholden to Trump because of the prosecution that they're kind of holding over his head or like, you know, what, what is your understanding of what happened with those Democrats and how did you flip the ones that you got?

[Congressman Ro Khanna]

Well, first of all, it is a, an achievement that we, we got all but for. Remember, I mean, I was considered on the fringes of the party. I'm the only guy who votes against the Armed Services. NDAA, literally, it's like 67 to 1 and they say kana, Kana, boo every time I vote no. So to have Massey and Massie was seen as a maverick infringe on his party. So to have us lead and now to have the leadership saying, you're gonna get on Khana Massey's bill, no, we're not gonna offer some diluted substitute for it. It's not a credit to me or Massey as much as it's just a. A recognition of reality, of where the Democratic base is and where the American people are. I was trying to be gracious to Josh Gottheimer, and I said, he cast a principled vote. And then he replied saying, yeah, I just want to make it clear I totally disagree with Kadow and the principal or something. I said, well, you did vote for the bill that I and Massey drafted. So it does. It has.

[Ego Woda]

What a prick. Honestly. How dare you? That's for me, not from you.

[Crystal]

But

[Congressman Ro Khanna]

I was like, you can't even praise folks folks anymore or something. They're so afraid to have my praise. But reality is that it was a combination of persuasion and fear. There were groups out there were saying they were going to priory, folks. And one of the things the Democratic Party needs to do is be willing to fight for some of these core principles, which means persuasion, but also means, look, we got to get in line on some big issues we do on women's rights and abortion rights. We do on issues of basic equality, of gay rights. I mean, war and peace should be one of those issues. Like, people should be concerned about being out of touch with their base. Similarly, on Gaza, that should be another issue, and that's what's emerging. So I think it was the combination of that. Now, why did a few of the folks vote against it? I mean, Poiar, putting aside the whole issue with Trump, has always been fairly conservative. I mean, I'd have to look at his record. So that one and golden doesn't surprise me. I mean, I think golden has also been pretty conservative on some of these issues. Vargas, I don't know. I mean, he wasn't even on our list, so that one came as a surprise. And Landsman was fairly vocal about his opposition.

[Ryan Grim]

So, you know, Landsman was getting berated on the House floor by Pelosi. Did you overhear anything that she was saying to him, or did you pick up, like, what arguments she was making? Because Pelosi, including during Iraq, like, was among the Democratic leaders who've pretty consistently been against the war. Now, she didn't go as far as the party wanted her to go in, like, cutting off funding for the Iraq war, et cetera, but when it comes to leadership, she was always the one most willing to entertain the anti war arguments. Did you hear what she was telling him?

[Congressman Ro Khanna]

I did not firsthand, but you're right. I mean, you know, I don't agree with everything with Pelosi, but she did. She was in the minority at the time of Democrats willing to stand up against the, the Iraq war and was, was absolutely right about that. My guess is, you know, Landsman is, cares about Ohio, cares about the politics there. And she was probably just saying that this, this is going to be a historic, consequential vote. You don't want to be on the, on the wrong side of it. I, I thought he was gettable. We had a lot of people working on him. And that one I thought, especially after Godheimer went our way and Suozzi went our way, I thought we would get him. But. But obviously he decided the other way.

[Ego Woda]

Yeah, he had a rough interview with Isaac Chotiner, as many have. So I recommend people go and read that if you want to see how, just how sound or how not sound his logic was on all of this.

[Congressman Ro Khanna]

What about people keep interviewing with Isaac Chapman?

[Ego Woda]

It is one of the great mysteries of our time is one of the, it's got to be some level of ego, arrogance. You think you're going to be the one that comes out looking good morning warning to everyone. Yes, but Congressman, one other thing I wanted to ask you about is we saw, we've seen now a couple of senators in particular who came out and were wavering. So I'm thinking of Mark Kelly, who you actually got asked about you on right after him, where he wasn't sure he was going to vote for the War Powers Resolution. He ultimately did. Democrats in the Senate only lost John Fetterman, who was just a lost cause in like every regard. In any case, he pretty quickly was like, oh no, no, no, I'm going to vote for it. We saw something similar with Ruben Gallego who came out and was like, well, I would support the funding if the Gulf states front fifth 50% of it. So like, I'm not opposed to funding the war that he's actually been very aggressively rhetorically against. And then, you know, he got a lot of public pushback, including from myself and others, and immediately put out into a no, no, no, I oppose the funding, I'm not going to support the funding. Also, you know, on a related similar matter, you've also seen Gavin Newsom really trying to shift on Israel saying, oh, it's an apartheid state, you know, yes, we should look at conditioning aid which is obviously very different from where he's being. But specifically on the Iran war, you know, what is your sense of how many calls people are getting, how much pressure members of Congress are feeling, especially on the Democrat side, Democratic side, over this?

[Congressman Ro Khanna]

They're feeling pressure. I mean, they're feeling pressure on Gaza, they're feeling pressure on getting into another Middle east war. This is much bigger than Venezuela. I mean, I was opposed to what happened with Madero, but that one didn't have the same public residence, partly because it was in our hemisphere, partly because it was a short two day mission. I mean, I was opposed to it. I've been opposed to these boat strikes. But it, but it doesn't resonate as much politically. Iran does because it's a reminder of what happened in Iraq because the casualties were unfortunate and so quick, because people are seeing the stories of these, these families and because they're seeing the, the amount spent. And look, I'm always glad when people come on our side. That's why my tweet about gottheimer was not sarcastic. I was actually trying to be appreciative. And if Kelly and Gallego and Newsom were moving, I'm glad. The only thing I would say in genuineness is when you're in D.C. and we've seen this with people who become chair of the Armed Services Committee or who become vice president or president, the pressure is immense. And it's much more likely that anti war people become pro war than you move in the other direction. So what we really need in this party and in this country are people who are going to have the courage to actually stand up to the generals, to the neocon establishment, to the think tanks, to the editorial boards and to actually shift policy. I mean, Trump, who ran rhetorically against this, has not done that. And so that I think is, yes, we want to build a broad coalition, but we also want to see what are the proof, points of courage that folks have demonstrated.

[Ryan Grim]

The Iran war is a moment where, correct me if you think I'm wrong here, the two issues that you've made most central to kind of who you are as a candidate and as a politician are intersecting. And that's your focus on the economy for regular people and also all your focus on war. The, the war, you know, like you said, the Maduro campaign, that, that, that doesn't really change people's day to day interaction with the, with the world as it exists right around them. It's not. And it's, you know, maybe it'll have some influence on gas prices a tiny bit, but not, it's not, it's not going to be significant in that sense. The war on Iran is going at the kind of foundations of the global economic system right now. It was, it was interesting to hear Gallego say we're going to have the Gulf states fund half of the war effort. As if the Gulf state funding kind of just materializes out of thin air. Like Americans kind of think that everything we have just comes down from the heavens upon us. It's like, no, no. Where do you think the Gulf states get their money? They get their money from pumping fossil fuels out of the ground and then shipping them around the world and turning those into dollars. And they send the dollars into our economy. You may not have noticed a lot of that is not happening right now. So these Gulf states, even if we wanted them to fund half of this war effort with what money like their economy is, is collapsing as we speak. So are, are people recognizing that? Because, because of the intersection that you have of these two issues. I imagine that you're, you're seeing this clearly unfold. But I'm getting the sense that our lawmakers and also our public think this is just another event that is unfolding on their phones, that they are either for or against, but isn't really going to have a huge effect here. Gas prices surging again today. Oil prices are up close to 90 now. Are they recognizing that yet or no?

[Congressman Ro Khanna]

It's slowly hitting them, but we've only been there a week. And I don't think they realize with the Strait of Hormuz closing, how much of a impact that can have on global oil prices. I mean, already the average price I was seeing has gone up to $3.30. And gas prices matter. I mean, anyone ask President Biden how much they matter? I mean, this is the visible sign of inflation for many people. Rents and gas prices and grocery prices. So I do think it is hitting, folks, but more delayed. I mean, I think over the next few weeks it'll become more apparent. And then I think the cost of it, I mean, we have to continue to remind people the billions of dollars we're spending. I also find this idea just somewhat offensive, which we're, oh, let the Gulf states, they say this about Palestine. Let them just pay for the development of Palestine. How about we stop the occupation first? You know, I mean, it's not just a resource issue. It is a rights issue. And, you know, I think we have a lot of misconceptions about the Middle East.

[Ego Woda]

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[Jo Winterstein]

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[Ryan Grim]

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[Jo Winterstein]

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[Ryan Grim]

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[Jo Winterstein]

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[Ego Woda]

In 2023, a story gripped the UK evoking horror and disbelief.

[Congressman Ro Khanna]

The nurse who should have been in charge of caring for tiny babies is now the most prolific child killer in modern British history.

[Ego Woda]

Everyone thought they knew how it ended. A verdict. A villain, a nurse named Lucy Letby.

[Crystal]

Lucy Letby has been found guilty.

[Ego Woda]

But what if we didn't get the whole story?

[Crystal]

The moment you look at the whole picture, the case collapses.

[Ego Woda]

I'm Amanda Knox and in the new podcast the Case of Lucy Letby, we follow the evidence and hear from the people that lived it to ask what really happened when the world decided who Lucy Letby was no voicing of any skepticism or doubt it'll cause so much

[Ryan Grim]

harm at every single level of the

[Congressman Ro Khanna]

British establishment of this is wrong.

[Ego Woda]

Listen to Doubt the Case of Lucy Letby on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. Let me get your reaction. And Griffin, if you could pull this up, I'm having trouble sharing my screen, but Trump was asked by Reuters about rising gas prices and he said, quote, I don't have any concern about it. They'll drop very rapidly when this is over. And if they rise, they rise. But this is far more important than having gasoline price go up a little bit and they haven't risen very much. This the person who posted this is the White House correspondent from Reuters. Said, by the way, AAA has national gas average up 27 cents from last week to $3.25 per gallon. There was also a Politico report that they were, they were caught off guard by the impact on oil and on gas prices. And they're trying to figure something out. They have not refilled the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, which had been drawn down during the Biden administration, which means that they don't have, you know, a lot of tools in their toolkit to do anything about this. And meanwhile, you know, the reports are that they're planning for this war to go into September. I would say that that's at this point an optimistic projection that it would only last till September.

[Congressman Ro Khanna]

Well, this is the clearest evidence that Donald Trump may not be thinking of running in 2028 again. I mean, he's, I think, unleashed from any politics. He's out there saying there, there could be threats to Americans retaliation in our homeland. I mean, think about that. You're going to your target, you're going to the grocery store and you may face, or your kids may face retaliation from Iran. And you're thinking, what the hell are we doing getting into this war? And then the gas prices that you're putting out up to almost $3.30. He said, well, that's just the price we would need to pay. And he's in a, in one sense, as a traditional second term president, thinking about, quote, unquote, his legacy. And he's been talked into this view that his legacy is going to be taking out the Iranian regime or changing the Iranian regime. And it's sad and it's dangerous. And the question is, how do we stop him? Especially when he seems not to care as much about the political consequence. I mean, both on Epstein and on Iran, he's acting like someone who cares more about his ideological pursuit of whatever he wants than the American public.

[Ryan Grim]

You've got either a primary challenge threat or the oligarchs in your district actually found somebody to go up. What's the status of the, your competition for a primary? Because I've seen, you know, a bunch of your, your former friends on, on Twitter deeply unhappy with the all in

[Griffin]

POD is very unhappy with all in as well.

[Ego Woda]

They're all out

[Congressman Ro Khanna]

having a freak out over me. You know, it's funny because they, they didn't care when I was for Medicare for all or when I'm voting against these defense budgets or child care, $10 a day or a free public college. But, you know, tax the billionaires. And that's. We found the red line. We found the, the red line. But so they've, they've recruited this candidate who's, who's basically saying that he's running because he believes in a, that the billionaire tax is a tax on the middle class. That's his argument, actually. It's a tax on billionaires and it would go to, to help 2 million Californians not lose insurance. But I guess, you know, here's the broader point I'll make. There are a lot of people who are adopting now, fortunately, the language of economic populism. Let's be not against left and right. Let's be the real challenge is top versus bottom. We need economic working class messaging. We need economic populism. And all that is better, I guess, than just saying we need incremental centrism. But if you're not willing then to say, okay, yeah, let's tax the billionaires at 5% like Bernie and I want to do every year. Or let's have a tax on billionaires so that people don't lose health care, or let's make sure we don't have private health insurance and have Medicare for all, or let's make sure we have free public college, that it's sort of empty rhetoric. And the question is we've won the rhetorical war, the progressive. But are we going to win the programmatic agenda? Because what you saw with Bernie or you see with AOC or you see with Mamdani or real progressives is not rhetorical. They're actually committed to substantive policy change. And that, I think, is the real divide.

[Griffin]

Congressman, I've got a question for you on Big Tech. I got a question for you with Big Tech in this war. There's been some reporting from the New York Times and Washington Post about the strike on the Iranian school that killed somewhat of like 170 plus schoolchildren. And the Washington Post has reported that anthropics, Claude was used in some of those targeting systems. What do you think? Do these AI companies, should they be working with this Pentagon? And should these AI companies face any consequences if their technology is used to commit war crimes?

[Congressman Ro Khanna]

Yes, on the latter and no, if their technology is being used to make decisions about who to kill and who to strike. And I'm surprised Claude was used there, given that Dario said that was a red line for him. So I'd have to look at the reporting because I do not think we should be using artificial intelligence to make decisions about killing human beings. Look, I believe that every human being has dignity and that while as a political matter, we have to care about our nation and America, that doesn't mean that the life of an Iranian schoolgirl has less dignity intrinsically as a human being than the life of an American. That's what we mean by God has created inalienable rights for every human being. And to have Pete Hexad saying it's PC to care about civilians is just such a betrayal of every principle of the founding of this country. And it's sort of the Netanyahu approach in Gaza. And the question, I think, is broader. Yes, there's the question of AI, obviously, which we shouldn't have. But the question is, do we believe in the dignity of every human life, or has America first become so warped that we actually believe that lives overseas, particularly lives in the Middle east, that may be brown, don't have the same human dignity? And that, to me, is what's so tragic about what happened.

[Crystal]

The only point I was going to make wasn't even a question, was just your point about the rhetoric on the left changing and hoping that drags people in, the substance along with it. It's so paralleled by what's happening with, quote, unquote, America first. As you just pointed out right now that there was a lot of excitement among genuine skeptics of interventionism on the right, that Donald Trump was talking this way and that Pete Hegseth was describing himself as a reformed neocon. But it's all rhetoric until the substance is on the T. So not necessarily a question. I don't know if you have a response to it, Ro, but it is. It's how politics work. It's depressing.

[Congressman Ro Khanna]

Well, I think it's why our politics for the last few decades hasn't been as serious and why there's so much cynicism about the country because we've been such a marketing, branding, let's have the change candidate, generational change, new change, outsider. But the presidents and leaders who made a real mark were substantive. Like we study fdr, not because he had great speeches, but because he had programs that fundamentally changed people's lives. And of course, you know, I was a co chair of Bernie's campaign, but what drew me to Bernie was the, was not. I mean, he can rally people and he had more people at Stanford when we were together than even President Obama did. But what drew me to him is the substantive ideas, the programmatic agenda that he was offering. And that I think is the challenge for the progressive movement. Now we're winning. I actually think we're ascendant on the rhetoric, on the diagnosis of the problem. But we can't be co opted into just the branding without the fight. Right? I mean, I could say, look, I'm against, I think the problem in Silicon Valley is the top versus the bottom. And we need to hold billionaires accountable. And billionaires need to pay their fair share and avoid a primary challenge and still be like, okay, he's right, or no, like, no, I actually am going to support an initiative to raise their tax right. And if you don't have that substance, then there's going to be no change.

[Ryan Grim]

Now you hear from the billionaires, some of the billionaires just hate it and will openly admit that they hate it on the principle that don't take any of my stuff. It's all my stuff, I worked for it. You can't have any of it. A lot of the billionaires, though, will say we're only talking about a thousand people. So I don't want to pretend there's a whole lot of people, roughly a thousand people, but a lot of them will say, we should pay our fair share, we should give back. But this isn't workable because you're going to hurt, you know, founders and you're going to hurt, you know, you're going to, you know, harm the economy. So they've set up this system where, you know, they, they just accumulate assets and then they borrow against those assets and they use that borrowing to fund their extremely lavish lifestyle. And then when they die, they pass it all down to the next generation without paying any, any taxes. And they never had any income then because it's just all asset growth and borrowing against the asset growth. So if you had any of these billionaires who claim that they agree with the principle that they should pay their fair share come to you and Say, talk to my accountant and let's figure out a way that it actually is workable, you know, so that we're not, you know, punishing, you know, startup startups, and we're not, you know, undermining innovation. As if they care about innovation. They've spent the last 15 years, you know, gobbling up company, you know, startups and destroying them. But let's pretend they do care about innovation. Has anybody come to you and said, okay, you're wrong about this, I don't like the way you're doing it, but I agree with the principle. So here's, here's a way you could actually do the thing that you're trying to do without, you know, squelching innovation.

[Congressman Ro Khanna]

Yes, and you're right. Look, I think there are more, more than a thousand billionaires. There's, there are certainly more billionaires on paper and some of the fol doing incredibly innovative things. Now. They're benefiting from public investment and things that happened at Dartmouth and MIT and Stanford at Berkeley, which they don't often acknowledge. But yeah, a lot of people are hardworking and entrepreneurial and innovative and they're right. On an issue of paper billionaires and illiquid stock, you don't want to tax that, but there are provisions that can be worked out by the IRS or the California Franchise Board. Let me give you a, a simple one. You could get a non recourse loan on your pledged stock. What does that mean? Let's say your company is worth a billion dollars and you have to pay a 5% tax. So you say, okay, I will give you this 5% in stock as collateral. You give me a loan to pay the tax. You can't come after me personally, so it's non recourse. And if the stock goes down, then I'm not liable for it, but the stock could also go up. Right. So any of these problems have simple workarounds and they're using them because they're opposed to the tax, not because they're looking for a creative solution. If they are, you know, I'm offered one on the issue of illiquid stocks. That would, that would solve a lot of those concerns.

[Ego Woda]

Congressman, finally, I did want to get your reaction to the jobs report that we just got out this morning. Griffin, I don't know if you have those numbers to pull, but according to the, the official government numbers, we lost 92,000 jobs last month. That was a huge miss from what had been expected. The unemployment rate also ticked up. The previous months have also been revised downward so there was very little job creation overall in the entire year of 2025, and I believe it was in the month of December. There was actually a net loss here. So here you can see the numbers. 92,000 jobs lost below expectations of a 58,000 job G gain. Unemployment rate is 4.4% above expectations of 4.3%. And this is just the second monthly job loss we have seen since the 2020 pandemic. You know, what is your reaction to these numbers and your sense of where the country is economically right now? Do you think that AI also is playing a role in this job loss?

[Congressman Ro Khanna]

I do. I mean, I'm obviously saddened and concerned by it, but I'm not surprised. As someone who taught economics as a visiting lecturer at Stanford before getting into politics, I was probably going to be an academic. I've always been surprised that we haven't seen these numbers yet for a number of reasons. Look, when you blanket restrict immigration as this president has, and you have blanket tariffs as this president has, and you skew an economy where you're just going to provide tax breaks to the very wealthy and not invest in consumer spending for working and middle class, as this president has, you're going to have an impact on slowing down the economy and causing unemployment. And you know, he's been skirting by. But anecdotally, I mean, talk to people who are graduating school, as all of you have, or even not just high school, even college, even prestigious colleges, and they're saying they're having a hard time in the job market. And then I think AI is adding to that, not just anecdotally, but there's a paper at Stanford that shows that there's a 16% job loss for young people under 25 in AI exposed professions, in coding, in customer support. And you know, you have to still disaggregate the data, but that's adding to it as well. So all of this says is that we need an actual economic policy, a jobs policy that's going to hire people. With the federal government getting involved, in my view, in hiring and preventing mass displacement, we need a policy that's going to actually focus on the working and middle class again to have consumer spending. We need a policy that's actually going to have industrial investments across this country. And you have, unfortunately, a president who has the exact opposite view. And I really believe it's like the 1920s where you had Mellon, who was the Treasury Secretary, basically saying only a few elites really drive the economy to Hoover and the rest are just a waste and we need to skew all of our policy to them. And they did and they caused a Great Depression. I'm not saying that we're going to have a Great Depression, but we've got mismanagement. And the opportunity for the Democrats in 26 and 28 is to have a real New Deal moment that helps rebuild the economy of this nation.

[Ryan Grim]

Have you been tooling around with any new policies to address this? And Shoikat Chakrabarti, who I think, you know, the, you know, co founder, he's

[Congressman Ro Khanna]

running a great campaign up in San Francisco and as a real shot.

[Ryan Grim]

Yeah, so, and so he was on Hasan Piker's show this week and was saying that, you know, for instance, one of the, one of the ideas that he threw out was there needs to be more thought about the public's involvement in the economy. And that if AI is able to drive the cost of providing something to the public down to basically zero, that that should no longer be controlled privately by oligarchs, that the government then if it is really zero, that the government should be able to then just provide it for people like that. That's just one like, kind of new idea about how you have to reorient your thinking about an economy that you know, is going to be, you know, cost free for a lot of the services, just aside from, you know, if you can solve the, you know, the compute and the energy problem, of course. But although it wouldn't cost as much as the oligarchs are kind of extracting from the economy, in other words. So is there anything you're kicking around, like because we're entering a new kind of series of social relations and to the economy?

[Congressman Ro Khanna]

No, no. I mean, I called for a new tech social contract and I laid out seven principles at a speech recently with Bernie Sanders at Stanford. But one of the ideas that I believe is that we should have like a Civilian Conservation Corps, a federal Future Workforce Administration that hires people right out of high school, right out of college, both to go into their community to rebuild those communities, do childcare jobs, elder care jobs, counseling jobs, and or to work in the federal government to do renewable energy or moonshot projects or improve customer service. And it should be paid for it by both a wealth tax, a tax on billionaires, and a tax on token on AI use on enterprise AI use that would generate a public return for employment from the automation that may be caused by AI. We can go to other policies, but the other thing I believe is that we need to be protecting human beings and make sure truck drivers aren't losing their jobs, make sure that there's not mass displacement in industries that you need a human being in the loop. So I certainly think that there's this opportunity now for a strong economic jobs agenda because the impact is not just on blue collar workers, it's also on white collar workers.

[Ego Woda]

All right. Well, Congressman, thank you for your time this morning. I think I speak for our audience when I say thank you for your leadership on the War Powers Resolution and any number of other issues. We're always grateful for a chance to get to speak with you. So thank you.

[Congressman Ro Khanna]

Always enjoyed. Thanks for having me.

[Ego Woda]

All right, thank you, Ro.

[Congressman Ro Khanna]

Thanks. Thanks.

[Ego Woda]

Great.

[Congressman Ro Khanna]

Thank you.

[Jo Winterstein]

Hi, this is Jo Winterstein, host of the Spirit Daughter Podcast where we talk about astrology, natal charts and how to step into your most vibrant life. And I just sat down with a mini driver.

[Ryan Grim]

The Irish traveler said when I was 16. You're going to have a terrible time with men.

[Jo Winterstein]

Actor, storyteller and unapologetic Aquarian visionary. Aquarius is all about freedom loving and different perspectives. And I find a lot of people with strong placements in Aquarius like are misunderstood. A sun and Venus in Aquarius in her seventh house spark her unconventional approach to partnership.

[Ryan Grim]

He really has taught me to embrace

[Jo Winterstein]

people sleeping in different rooms, on different houses, in different places, but just an embracing of the isness of it all. If you're navigating your own transformation or just want a chart side view into how a leading artist integrates astrology, creativity and real life, this episode is a must. Listen Listen to the Spirit Daughter podcast starting on February 24th on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to your podcast.

[Ego Woda]

In 2023, a story gripped the UK evoking horror and disbelief.

[Congressman Ro Khanna]

The nurse who should have been in

[Ryan Grim]

charge of caring for tiny babies is

[Congressman Ro Khanna]

now the most prolific child killer in modern British history.

[Ego Woda]

Everyone thought they knew how it ended. A verdict. A villain. A nurse named Lucy Letby.

[Crystal]

Lucy Letby has been found guilty.

[Ego Woda]

But what if we didn't get the whole story?

[Crystal]

The moment you look at the whole picture, the case collapses.

[Ego Woda]

I'm Amanda Knox and in the new podcast the Case of Lucy Letby, we follow the evidence and hear from the people that lived it to ask what really happened when the world decided who Lucy Letby was.

[Jo Winterstein]

No voicing of any skepticism or doubt.

[Congressman Ro Khanna]

It'll cause so much harm at every single level of the British establishment of this is wrong.

[Ego Woda]

Listen to doubt the Case of Lucy letby on the iHeartRadio app. Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Ego Woda is your host for the 2026 I Heart podcast Awards live at south by Southwest.

[Crystal]

Hello, is anybody there?

[Ego Woda]

Raised by a single mom, Aygo may have a few father related issues.

[Ryan Grim]

Are we supposed to talk about your dad?

[Ego Woda]

Her podcast, thanks dad, is full of funny, heartfelt conversations with actors, including fellow SNL alums, comedians, musicians, and more about life and their wonder, wonderfully complicated relationships with their fathers.

[Ryan Grim]

I think and hope that's a good thing.

[Ego Woda]

Get to know Aygo, follow Thanks dad with Ego Wodom and start listening on the free iHeartRadio app today.

[Griffin]

All right, well, I think we should pick up with some more updates on the Iran war. Why don't we start with a little bit of new comments from our president here.

[Congressman Ro Khanna]

So what's left? But they're tough and they want to fight and they're calling, they're saying, how do we make a deal? I said, you're being a little bit late and we want to fight now more than they do. We've had 47 years, depending on the way you count it.

[Griffin]

All right, we want to fight now more than they do.

[Ryan Grim]

Who's the we?

[Ego Woda]

Yeah, great question, great question. Certainly not the vast majority of the country. Certainly he's not sending Barron over to fight. So apparently the we doesn't include him.

[Congressman Ro Khanna]

I mean, I also.

[Ego Woda]

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Send Lindsey Graham in. You know, he's not too old, judging by the Ukrainian military standards. Get him on the front lines now. I mean, Brian, I'm curious. Based on, you know, the reporting you guys have been doing over at drop site, I don't think this is accurate. It seems to me that the Iranians have decided they don't want a ceasefire yet. They feel that they need to exact some more pain and punish the US and Israel and the Gulf allies to try to deter them from going down this path again. So I think this is just a flat out lie, as far as I can tell from the president of like, oh, they totally wanna talk, but we're not interested. We really wanna keep fighting. When in actuality he was thinking he'd be able to go in and have some sort of glorious mission accomplished moment and then the Iranians would come back to say, please, sir, please can we go back and, you know, more diplomacy. Yeah, it'. Etc. And obviously that didn't work out because that was idiotic from the jump and now they're having to scramble and figure out what comes next.

[Ryan Grim]

Yes, I think that is a, a lie. Now there could always be back channel, you know, communications that we don't know

[Crystal]

about and that Trump is just alluding to.

[Ryan Grim]

Right. I, I think it's made up. Jeremy. My colleague over at job site spoke with the deputy Foreign Minister of Iran on Wednesday afternoon local time and asked him that directly. And they, and he said absolutely not. There, there's he, and he said like, how stupid, close to a direct quote, but he's like, how stupid would we have to be to immediately enter into negotiations with this, with this country that has shown that it is not willing to abide by any of the norms of negotiations? You know, they were scheduled to meet in Geneva on Monday when the US And Israel launched the war on Saturday and you know, right out of the gate bombing the school down in Manob in southern Iran. And back in June, they were also scheduled to meet in Muscat like a day later or something to go over technical details like a lot of the hard things had allegedly been worked out. And so he said no. And he also asked him, do you see this as kind of a war for positioning and negotiations or more of an existential war? And he said, we see this as an existential war. So from their perspective, they believe that the US Is trying to wipe them off the map. And so if you believe that, then you have to, then hit back and you have to take a huge chunk out of the US And Israel to make it costly to them. And they, they very clearly seem aimed at the, at the global economy and in particular the, the Western economy as it orients itself around like Dubai and Qatar and, and the kind of flows of natural gas and, and oil. There was some reporting where they said, where they, they, they commented that, you know, they want to turn Dubai into Kuwait. Basically they said, you know, Kuwait in 1991 was like the Dubai of the region and never quite recovered from the, from the Iraq war. Kuwait is very wealthy country. They're doing extremely well, but they're not Dubai. And their argument is that it's because of that, you know, that experience of violence. It's very difficult to create this, like, Western expat culture if people think that their apartment building is going to be knocked down at any moment. And so they're trying to, it sounds like, inflict that kind of pain on these Gulf states. They've knocked out significant elements of the American radar and early warning systems. They themselves have had a lot of their launch capacity obliterated by the United States, but they've continued to be able to launch, launch drones. And they're now moving into their more expensive and more sophisticated and newer ballistic missiles, which is terrible news for, for Israel because at the same time that Israel is, you know, has less early warning capacity and has drained their, you know, their defense capacity, Iran is now shifting to its, you know, more sophisticated more and you know, these missiles that have much more kind of maneuverability and are much more difficult for the Patriot and Thad systems to, to intercept. You know, the, you know, natural gas production is shut down in Qatar. The, you know, the straits are closed. The oil prices are surging. Asia is like choking from, you know, Asia is choking more than we are because like, you know, goes from the Strait of Hormuz through the Indian Ocean and over to, over to Asia first. But our supply chains are directly linked. Like, you know, whether it's copper or chlorine or anything else like it, it all relies on these, these global supplies continuing to move. They, you know, Iran in what you'd have to have to call it war crime, they had, they hit another tanker with, you know, which was an unarmed civilian piece of infrastructure. They, but they've promised that they're going to do that. Like that's, they've said their strait is closed and if ships try to go through it, we're going to attack them. That's against international law. But both, you know, neither side has shown any respect for it. The you have a lot of last, last point you have, I saw, I've seen a lot of Israelis, Israeli officials complaining about what they're calling cluster munitions that Iran is using to try to get around. I've got video of it here, defense missiles. Israel. Neither Israel nor Iran ever signed the Convention on Cluster Munitions. Israel has spent the last, you know, many decades actively mocking the idea of international law, pushing sanctions on the people who are on judges who are on International Criminal Court and the ijc. So to now kind of reach for international law as you know, when you're getting attacked, I think probably going to strike a lot of people as hypocritical and inconsistent. So yes, our cluster munitions against international law only for the countries that signed on to it. Israel never signed on to it.

[Ego Woda]

Yeah, well, and I mean this is something of course, you know, we've been warning about obviously with Gaza, but you know, going back longer to the war on terror, et cetera and the, you know, war crimes prior to the Gaza genocide era. But you know, once you take international law off the table, it's off the table for everyone. You know, and that means right now we have not only our Service members in the region. We have, you know, a million Americans who are basically stuck because the airports are all closed and the government didn't give them any warning. And now lo and behold, oopsies, you're all at risk. Risk. And so you know, that law of the jungle, that barbarism, that Pandora's box that you've opened up that is already putting, you know, not just the, the, the bad guys that you don't like if you're Donald Trump or Benjamin Netanyahu, but that's putting your own people at risk as well. That is the world that you have yourself created. So yeah, I mean, I don't even like, yes, it's, it's a war crime to attack those, you know, those tankers. The attacks on the like luxury hotels where they seem to think that U.S. service personnel are staying. Now the, you know what the Israelis would argue there though? Oh, you know, they're using those, yeah, those people's human shields because they shouldn't be there in that civilian infrastructure. So that gives us the right to be able to bomb the hell out of it. Yeah, well, that's true too. Yeah. So, you know, I just, I, I think it will fall on deaf ears if they try to complain about, you know, a tanker being struck when meanwhile, you know, you've just bombed a girl's school and murdered some 170 little girls.

[Ryan Grim]

Yeah, they hit Ray Fat Alarier in a second floor apartment. A poet with a, with a precision strike. Yeah, like they. No, and that's just, that's just one, that's just one strike.

[Ego Woda]

Right. Well, and I mean, we assassinated their head of state. Like we murdered their head of state. That's, that is not, that is not consistent with international law. So yeah, I mean that this is the world they have created. Don't be surprised when your adversaries also then ignore, you know, the, the rules that protect civilians and protect civilian infrastructure.

[Crystal]

Also they like to wax poetic about fanaticism in the Iranian government. And we got in a little bit with Sagar yesterday, Crystal, to some of that element of this you just mentioned. We killed their leader who was saying it was his greatest wish to be martyred and not die basically a normal death. And that discussion was specifically, it wasn't about Shia Islam or Islam in general, specifically about the IRGC's theology. And the neocons love to bang that drum over and over again as an excuse not to go to war. And then you realize, yes, the IRGC had a lot of its command taken out. It's still, it's still functioning right now. What's potentially on the table is Khamenei's son taking over. And now you have people who watched what happened at the girls school and see their leader being, as he would have said, martyred. Why is this a better situation? By your own logic, borrowing their own argument here, why are you now in a better situation in the long term when, to Ryan's point, these drones are so cheap to produce. You can't bomb the knowledge away of how to make the drones, you can't bomb the knowledge away of how to make the missiles. And you certainly aren't going to bomb away the ideology by your own argument. So I don't know why anybody would feel safer right now.

[Ego Woda]

They reduced Gaza to rubble and, you know, did not get rid of Hamas.

[Crystal]

No.

[Ego Woda]

So you think in a large country, 90 million people, that this is, that this is going to work out this time when literally in all of aviation history, it has not succeeded to create regime change using air power alone. Now can they, you know, can they collapse the country? Can they create chaos, civil war? That's obviously the goal at this point and, you know, maybe, maybe they'll be able to accomplish that.

[Griffin]

Well, speaking of chaos and Emily, I wanted to get your reaction to this comment from Trump from Time. Asked whether Americans should be worried about retaliatory attacks at home, Trump acknowledges the possibility. I guess he says, like I said, some people will die when you go to war, some people will die.

[Crystal]

Now, what is a cartoon villain?

[Congressman Ro Khanna]

What do you make of that?

[Crystal]

That is cartoon villain behavior.

[Griffin]

And what would this retaliatory.

[Ryan Grim]

It's a cartoon that some of you may die. And that's a sacrifice I'm willing to make.

[Ego Woda]

Yeah.

[Griffin]

Lord, that's the Farquad.

[Crystal]

Oh, that is a Shrek quote. That's.

[Griffin]

Yeah, we're doing the Shrek philosophy on the world stage. But what would that mean, ret attack attacks at home?

[Crystal]

Well, I mean, there's a, a serious problem of, I mean, we saw in, in Austin doesn't appear to have been connected to some broader network or anything like that yet. But yeah, there could be like intelligence. I don't know to what extent we can believe it, but obviously US Intelligence does believe they're like, quote, unquote, sleeper cell of Iranian, like agents in the country who would absolutely do what we have seen terrorists do for decades, which is infiltrate the country and, you know, attack civilians at bars, wherever. It's. We've seen it in Europe, we've seen it here. And so that the, the cavalier attitude that the President expressed right there. If you see another Austin situation, especially one that is connected to some obvious broader operation that comes back to haunt him, it's a remarkable, it's not surprising. But his, his messaging, the administration's messaging, it's completely all over the place. He's saying wild stuff. Republicans in support, in polling have very high levels of support right now. And you know, I take calls on the SiriusXM show that I do every day and it's, it reminds me a lot of Iraq in that people are saying, you don't criticize troops while we are at war. So that's, that's kind of the, the sentiment that's building and Trump probably knows that. But independent voters, Democrat voters certainly, but independent voters who Republicans need, they will be furious. I mean, that doesn't fly. That saying, that type of stuff doesn't fly with independent voters. That's a, that's a truly crazy thing to say. And what's definitely not going to fly is if you attack Iran and then you see, you see bursts of potentially, I hope not. But if there is terrorism. And Trump said, well, yes, is what happens in war, great, that's, Republicans will be answering for that for 10 years.

[Griffin]

Ryan, is he almost hoping for that to happen to sort of improve the war morale? I mean, this war is insanely unpopular. Is this the like false flag attack they're hoping gins up support back home?

[Ryan Grim]

I don't think so. I don't think he, No, I think he's very sensitive to, to like American service member casualties as well. I also would caution on the insanely unpopular, I don't know, like what are the, the, you know, the polling, like

[Crystal]

they're now showing more of a 50, 50 split.

[Ryan Grim]

Right? Yeah. So we need to like understand that this is, this is the United States of America and it's, you can get people to rally around military assaults around the world.

[Ego Woda]

So have the polls shifted? Because the initial polls that came out had it like 25% support, 30% support.

[Ryan Grim]

Yeah, yeah.

[Crystal]

I saw two polls. One was a Fox News poll and one was a outright Republican poll, if I remember correctly, that had it more like 50, 50, but it was like 49, 48 somewhere around there.

[Ryan Grim]

It feels like a. Yeah, I wish it hadn't happened. I'm, I was against it, it, the idea of it, but now that it's happening, I'm going to support, I'm going to support my country.

[Griffin]

The Alyssa Slotkin approach. We're in it.

[Ryan Grim]

We're in it. We actually have a survey out in the field right now, so we'll see what it, see what that, see what ours comes back with.

[Congressman Ro Khanna]

But.

[Ryan Grim]

So I know. I don't think, I don't think he wants to see that type of things. I think that, like, I think that hurts him because I don't think this isn't 2001, where I think if we start getting hit at home or American servicemen where casualties continue to climb, then I don't think that creates a rally around the flag. I think that creates a. I didn't like this in the first place. Yeah, I was willing to give this the benefit of the doubt that maybe it would turn out wonderfully and beautifully, like with Maduro, but it's not. It's awful. The world's falling apart and people are dying and we, we need to end this. So I think it goes the opposite direction.

[Ego Woda]

It's crazy, the media propaganda doing its work there to get it to 50. 50. I just saw the Fox News poll. That's wild. I also wanted to flag. You know, we talked a little bit about the oil, but I mean, I think this is really, honestly, if anything, undersold in terms of the impact and, and again, insane that the administration apparently didn't think this through in terms of how it would impact people's daily lives. But the Financial Times had an exclusive with the Qatari energy minister and he warned that war in the Middle east could, quote, bring down the economies of the world, predicting all Gulf energy exporters will shut down production within weeks and drive oil to $150 a barrel. And basically what they said is if they hadn't declared force majeure, which is like, you know, act of God, yet they're going to, like, between the risk to the energy infrastructure which Iran has been. Has been hitting. They sort of deny this. But in any case, there has been impacts on some of the energy infrastructure in the oil fields directly and then the closing of the Strait of Hormuz between all of these risks. Yeah, you're going to have continually spiking oil prices and it is going, already having an impact at the pump. You can go and watch them changing the price of gas per gallon. And of course, you know, we've done next to no work to. In fact, this administration is adamantly opposed any sort of renewable energy or electric vehicles. So you're completely screwed if that's, you know, if those are the costs that are going into, like, literally everything and certainly into transportation and they, they don't

[Ryan Grim]

actually have to hit the infrastructure itself. Because if you can, and people probably know this, but if you can block the ships, then the production, the, the oil and the gas that you produce has nowhere to go. You don't, you can't put it anywhere. There's only so much kind of storage capacity. Storage is full. Ships aren't getting in, ships aren't getting out. And so you. Even if you have a functional production facility, you have to shut it down. Otherwise, where's it go? Venezuela had the same problem because they couldn't. They couldn't unload all of the stuff that they had offshore. So Trump really, actually, genuinely helped out their industry by moving a lot of that offshore, and then they could start producing again. But so they had to shut down. And it causes huge problems. Like, like, it's not as simple as being like, all right, you know what? We don't have anywhere to put the oil or the gas, like, shut this down. It's like, it's a very expensive and complex process to safely shut it down. And then it's a very complex and expensive process to start it up again. And all the money that the Gulf countries were going to give to Barry Weiss to take over Paramount and CNN and all these other things, oh, that could be a force majeure. It could be like, that's. That's under threat right now. Yeah, they were funding, what, 50% of it, 25 to 50%, a massive amount.

[Ego Woda]

And they also, some of the Gulf states, I think, also to the Financial Times were like, like, yeah, they made all these promises to Trump, like, oh, we're going to invest fifty bajillion dollars in your economy now. They're like, yeah, I don't think so. We're going to need this money now. We're going to. We're clawing that back. We're going to need this to be able to, you know, to try to beg you for more interceptors that we can buy or, you know, whatever we can do to protect our people. And you don't continue to fund our. Our economies, fund our societies.

[Crystal]

Yeah, I don't even know that It's. It had to have occurred to Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff that a lot of these downstream effects would indeed happen. And when you look at Trump, the way he's described his own thinking and his own strategy over the last week, I mean, if you're Marco Rubio or you're Pete Hegseth and you have to go out and describe. Or Caroline Levitt, you have to go out and describe the objectives as Caroline put out A list of the objectives after the first few days of the war, because nobody knew what it actually was. You're getting so many different. It was the nukes, it was the missiles. Well, it was the Iranian, it was for the freedom of the Iranian people. It just honestly, it sounds crazy to say, but it honestly looks like Trump has been freelancing the strategy and that there wasn't. He just, he said, we're going to do it, we're going to do it now, time is right, we'll figure the rest of it out. Because I can make deals. That's my best description.

[Ryan Grim]

And it's so strikingly against his own personal self interest. Like, he is aware that he has become a billionaire by extracting golf wealth and taking it personally. He also is aware, yeah, the Trump

[Crystal]

Golf, there's the Trump Organization is building a golf resort in the uae, isn't it?

[Ryan Grim]

Right, of course. And he's also aware that the American economy is propped up by an AI bubble that is funded by Gulf investment. So, like, just from a cynical personal perspective, when it comes to either his stewardship over the economy or his own personal wealth, like taking a hatchet to the leg, that is on which this, like, rickety economy and his own rickety wealth is rested is insane. Like, what are you doing? But here we are.

[Crystal]

Well, Ro mentioned immigration, but yeah, again, like, think it from Trump's perspective. He's doing mass deportations, he's doing blanket tariffs, and there's lots of uncertainty over the tariffs. Now you're adding artificial intelligence, massive effects potentially to the job market very soon. And then war on top of all of that. Maybe the explanations, he thought the war could be the catch. All blame, scapegoat for problems in the economy. It's possible to me that he says, well, you know, this is a wartime economy, so these are the problems, you know, that we have to sacrifice in war. I have no idea if that's the thinking, but to add war onto the. Like you said, Ryan, rickety, shaky economy is a move.

[Griffin]

Crystal, I know you have to jump in a second if you want any final words here.

[Ego Woda]

Well, I was just gonna say, I, I, I hate to fall back on the analysis of like, well, he's just dumb. Because that seems lazy, right? It seems lazy. It seems like underestimating, you know, your adversaries. And yet I can't really come up with an explanation that makes sense for why he decided to do this right now, other than, you know, not necessarily he's dumb, but that he has this particular psychology where he doesn't believe the generals when they're like, this is a bad idea. Doesn't believe the economists when they're like, this is a bad idea. Doesn't believe the political people when they're like, this is a bad idea. Is on this sugar high from Venezuela thinks it's gonna look cool and awesome. You know, maybe you guys will play later the like, utterly embarrassing, like movie trailer style video that they just put out on Twitter. So he feels like more of a man when he's sending our sons and daughters over to like risk their lives and some of them get killed in action, you know, in some new war, military conflict. And so whatever, you know, he heard what he wanted to hear from Netanyahu or who else was interested in this outcome. Like, I think it, I can't. I mean, and I mean, you have to factor the Epstein vows into it too. Maybe that's part of it. And whatever Israel knows about him, like, I can never put that off the table because we know that's how they operate and we also know how weird he's been around the Epstein files. But the thing does not add up and make sense without attributing some aspect of it to either blackmail or his own particular bizarre psychology or some combination of the two.

[Griffin]

That seems to be the big question that normies ask me all the time is like, why is this happening?

[Ego Woda]

Why?

[Griffin]

And I think that there's like a complex. Yeah. Web of mysteries there still to unpack. Crystal, thank you for joining us on this Friday show. Enjoy the rest of your day.

[Jo Winterstein]

Thanks.

[Griffin]

Any final words, Crystal?

[Ego Woda]

Nope, no final words. I'll see everybody Monday, but probably before then if there's breaking news.

[Crystal]

So.

[Ego Woda]

So see you soon.

[Griffin]

All right, we got a jam packed second half of the show if you want to check that out. BreakingPoints.com Get a free trial for the limited time only available for another week. You can go to breakingpoints.com and use the promo code BP FREE26. We are doing this because we want to provide a resource during these times. I mean, if you look at what Ryan said, the polls are up for this war. And if you're watching CNN and Fox News, that makes sense because it is a disgusting display over there. And we want to provide a resource to people to really understand what's going on and the intricacies. And we are all working overtime and getting a lot less sleep to bring that to you. So thank you everyone who has supported us and we'll keep doing that and we'll see you on the second half.

[Ryan Grim]

Hey, if you like that video, hit the like button or leave a comment below. It really helps get the show to more people.

[Ego Woda]

And if you'd like to get the full show ad free and in your inbox every morning, you can sign [e-mail]

[Ryan Grim]

that's right, get the full show.

[Crystal]

Help support the future of industry independent [e-mail].

[Ego Woda]

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