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Ryan Grim
Good morning and welcome to Breaking Points. We have an amazing show today. Emily joining us from the road. Emily, what do we got for people today?
Krystal Ball
Boy, we got a lot. I'm excited to get your reaction to some of these Trump comments on Iran from yesterday. Ryan, he was speaking, he actually took reporters over to the site of the ballroom construction and answer questions about Iran. We have some updates from the Middle east that we absolutely want to get into. Ryan, tell us about the B block because this is your, this is particularly. I feel like this one's really burning you up right now.
Ryan Grim
I mean, the president reached a quote, unquote settlement with himself. And by the terms of the settlement, $1.776 billion. See, what he did there is going to be set aside of taxpayer money into an unaccountable slush fund that he can dole out to himself, his family and to anybody involved with January 6th. Sorry, not anybody involved. Not the police officers, not anybody on the receiving end of the attacks, but the people who were attacking the Capitol on January 6th or would be eligible to, to get a bunch of compensation from this, from this slush fund, which also comes with provisions that the IRS is never allowed to audit Trump or anybody in his family or any of their businesses. Pretty impressive art of the deal, I guess, you know, very, very impressive negotiation he did with himself there. We'll also talk about Thomas Massie, who, the lead Republican who was able to get the Epstein files released after about $20 million was spent against him. He was defeated in his primary in Kentucky last night. In Philadelphia and in Lehigh Valley, progressive candidates won. Chris Raab in Philadelphia overcame more than $3 million of APAC spending to defeat two establishment candidates there. We'll also have. So we'll have Dave Weigel in to talk about those. We're also gonna be joined by Rob Flaherty, who is a top campaign official with the the 2020 Joe Biden campaign, then the 2024 Joe Biden campaign until that collapsed into the 2024 Kamala Harris campaign. He wrote a viral essay recently for the Bulwarks talking about what he told the DNC autopsy folks. So he said, look, if the people that are putting together this autopsy are going to keep this thing private, let me tell you what I told them. Here, here is my take. You may be here for some of that. I hope you are. I know you have to leave, you know, partway through the program, I think, you know, particularly on the she's with them, not us. I'm curious for your, for your take on kind of his analysis of what the impact was on the campaign and what Democrats can learn from it. Then we're going to talk about some interesting Ashley Sinclair accusations against Elon Musk and some and at least his claims of vote rigging. And then at the end of the program, we'll be joined by Mei Vong, who is taking on who's a Justice Democrats backed Democrat, who's taking on Doris Matsui in California as kind of the left tries to expand its gains, you know, heading into this general election. So let's but let's start with, with President Donald Trump. So according to Amit Segal of Channel 12 News in Israel, Trump and Israel over the last several hours apparently had a, quote, what lengthy and dramatic call. We can put up a zero. And so again, so this is coming from Amit Siegel. Trump and Netanyahu held a phone conversation last night that was described as, quote, lengthy and dramatic, unquote. Recently, Siegel goes on, it's become clear that Netanyahu believes less in the chances of reaching an agreement. That is shocking to me. And he wants a strike. Wow. Netanyahu really breaking with his past demands here, defying all expectations, while Trump wants to turn over every stone to reach an agreement. Oh, I'm sure he absolutely does. Okay. So Amit Segal, for those following this program closely, know that he's, he's very close to Netanyahu, almost kind of a spokesperson of sorts, though he's an Israeli journalist. And so that is the kind of Netanyahu version of this call. We can put up a one before I think we get into this. Trump recently had said on Monday, he had said that he was going to attack Iran on Tuesday. But then I think he quickly realized that if he didn't back off of that quickly, he would have to back off of it on Tuesday. And that would mean another taco Tuesday, which is embarrassing, more embarrassing than a taco Monday. We put up a one here. So he has responded by saying that they have actually, okay, now they have two or three days. We can roll this here.
Donald Trump
Well, I mean, I'm saying two or three days, maybe Friday, Saturday, Sunday, something maybe early next week, a limited period of time because we can't let them have a nuclear weapon. If they had a nuclear weapon, they would start with Israel. They would Blow it up. And they would blow it up fast, but they'd blow it up. And I'll tell you what, they go after Saudi Arabia, they go after Kuwait, they go after uae, they go after Qatar, they go after, I think they go after the entire Middle East. And it would be a whole different negotiation. It would not be. It would be. It would be nuclear holocaust. And there's no question in my mind that they'd use it. There's no question. And I deal with these people. They're extremely radicalized. These are not people like what I deal with.
Ryan Grim
You all right, Emily, So he's giving them a deadline of Friday, Saturday or Sunday or maybe early next week. What do you, what do you make of this lengthy and dramatic phone call between him and Netanyahu? The reporting suggests that there's some type of decision that was nearly made. Are we headed back to a hot conflict here?
Krystal Ball
Well, I think so. I think that's something that we've been watching very closely. And I've also lost track of how many times the president has a deadline that gets shifted. And it's happened in this conflict. It's happened in, obviously, the tariff conversation. Correct me if I'm wrong, but it happened in the Gaza, Gaza, quote, peace negotiations as well. It was always so similar. We would see this, the same kind of pattern unfolding. And in this situation, though, I actually think part of what Trump is doing is he knows that it's bad for him to go back into a hot conflict. He knows that it's bad politics, and he is procrastinating. He's trying. Maybe he doesn't think of it as procrastinating, but he is trying to do absolutely everything that he can within the sort of parameters set for a man who is a staunch ally of Netanyahu to just. He sees the delay, let me put it this way. He sees the delay as being better than going into action, and he's maybe just hoping something pops, but there's really nothing because of the impasse over the Strait of Hormuz and his nuclear enrichment. There's really nothing that he can do. So he's just frozen in time right now. And it just feels like inevitable because nobody's budging, nobody has any reason to budge.
Ryan Grim
Basically, we do seem to be stuck in this really kind of brutal. It's not even an escalation trap at this point. It's just kind of a trap. Yeah, because Trump, Trump knows at this point that if he attacks again, Iran is going to rather mercilessly launch a regional Assault, as they have said that they would, on everybody that he just named in that clip. Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the uae, Bahrain. They've also alluded to cutting the undersea cables, which would disrupt Internet traffic throughout the entire region. And so he knows if he does that, even for just this limited strike that he keeps being urged to do, which is what apparently we were going to do, what, 60, 70 days ago when the war started, just a limited strike. And at the time, Iran said, no, if you do that, we're going to turn this into a regional war. They did. So he kind of knows that if he does that, then he's trapped in this conflict that he can't win. Because we've already shown that with our full capacity of ammo and our, and multiple aircraft carrier fleets and our base is not yet destroyed, we were not able to kind of abuse them into submission. So the idea that we'd be able to do it when we're now in a weaker position is silly. So he knows he can't. He knows it's just that would lead to more conflict. But if he withdraws at this point, then everything was for naught, everything was for nothing, was useless because he has no agreement. They control the Strait of Hormuz. The only thing that he could do, it seems to me, is reach an agreement. And the Iranians have said, we're willing to give you a deal that's better than the JCPOA because they understand his psychology. He needs something better than Obama got. Otherwise, you know, how thoroughly embarrassing is that entire thing? I don't know if Trump has the kind of emotional capacity to work his way through this, but to put some kind of meat on the bones of what's going on back and forth here, we can put up a four here. This is from Amwaj Media. Muhammad Ali Shabani. So this is a very good kind of thorough rundown of what has actually happened. Back and forth. So the Trump team sent the Iranians an 11 point proposal. Iran added three points and sent it back. The 14 points include US military withdrawal from Iran's immediate vicinity, end of the naval blockade, lifting of oil sale restrictions within 30 days of initial agreement, and a governing arrangement for Hormuz, which would mean that Iran would roughly stay in control of it. Iran offered then to downblend some of its stockpile of the enriched uranium, send some of it out of the country, but with a guarantee that if the US Reneges on the deal, it would then come immediately back. Trump wants a 20 year suspension of enrichment. They have agreed to something less than that, but a significant kind of pause. So Iran has agreed to a significant years long pause of enrichment, but Iran is saying that they'll only discuss it once this deal has been reached. Cuz they don't trust Trump. Go ahead, Emily.
Krystal Ball
Well, I was gonna say, but this is exactly where we found ourselves for the last several weeks. Because when Trump seemed like he was on the cusp of a potential deal, was absolutely slammed by Lindsey Graham and the Lindsey Graham world, people in that camp who were furious about the potential absolutely unacceptable to provide any sanctions relief. And this is exactly why I think Ryan, we're seeing right now Trump just my sense is that he's, he's hoping something changes while he waits it out. Maybe that the government falls. That's, this is the only explanation that I can imagine in his mind or in the Situation Room. Not that it's easy to get into his mind, but it's that they believe it's possible, maybe they have some intelligence, whatever, that the government is fragile and there could be a real threat to the regime coming up or just that something changes, that there's some event that changes the negotiation. Because Trump knows how disastrous the politics of going back in are. He's obsessed with polls. He's looking at the polls and he knows that a hot conflict already has been bad and it would be worse if it escalated. But he has no choice. It's either face the scorn of Lindsey Graham, Netanyahu, all of these people who you decided to listen to to get into this war in the first place and have surrounded yourself with Mark Levin was another person who was freaking out about that deal when it was on the table. And so you can choose to confront them, upset them, infuriate them, enrage them, or you can wait it out or you can go back into hot conflict. That also, by the way, is not, I mean, far from our perspective. This is obvious, but it's not a good option even from his perspective, because there's no end in sight with that. There's no guaranteed end in sight with that either. So it's a complete, it's because it's a complete disaster. It's a complete trap that he finds himself in.
Ryan Grim
And what he'd much rather be doing quite clearly is working on, you know, the drapes for the ballroom. Even as he's discussing this, this war. You see the construction site in the background. And the main thing he seemed to want to talk to the reporters about was that, let's roll a two. This is the president of the United States.
Donald Trump
So here's a couple of things you can look at. How are you?
Krystal Ball
All right.
Donald Trump
There will never be another thing like this. I don't believe, Bill, from a court standpoint, this is all my money and donors money. This is tax free. So everyone's talking about they're going to give money, they're going to give money. The money they're going to give is really for the security of that and the whole White House premise. And I guess you probably need that nowadays. We've done the fencing on the outside of the White House. It's all titanium. You see the black fencing? That's been just done recently and it was approved originally by me and it's been completed. And it's very powerful, Very powerful. A tractor, a bulldozer cannot knock it over. It goes down deep. And it's titanium, which is the strongest of all of the metals, much stronger than steel. As an example, the ballroom is all. It's going to be a tremendous, tremendous thing. As an example, what happened a couple of weeks ago at the White House, correspondent said it could not happen here. We're way ahead of speaking schedule here, but we went down six stories. It's actually far more complex than what the easy part is up. But again, we have a drone proof roof. We have all, it's all sealed and all of this that you see is totally sealed. And we use it as a drone for it. You can have unlimited drones up there. And drones are what's happening right now. Thank you all.
Ryan Grim
Thank you, Mr. President. And so, Emily, it's interesting because you actually had a bunch of people being tagged as conspiracy theorists who were saying, you know, I'm looking at the contractors working on this ballroom. I'm looking at the hole that they're digging. I'm looking at where all the dirt is winding up. Like, this is an enormous amount of dirt winding up at the golf course nearby. There is a lot more getting built here than just a ballroom. And I remember looking at it and thinking, well, how is this even a conspiracy? Like, of course, like, of course this is, this is what the White House is doing, like building a gigantic bunker. This whole drone port thing is an interesting little twist that Trump is throwing onto it. But I mean, I would imagine you assumed as well, like, yeah, that they're gonna, that they're building kind of a just massive situation room on steroids underneath this ballroom.
Krystal Ball
Well, I think anytime you're doing significant construction in the White House, there's going to be something weird that the public doesn't really know about going on beneath the surface. But that clip, it's just. I said this about something else a couple of weeks ago and it doesn't even compare to what we just saw from him. He puts now watch this drive like to shame. He is constantly. This is like the now watch this drive presidency. And that's obviously the famous clip of George W. Bush answering questions about the Iraq war and then saying now watch this drive. Just taking a big swing at his golf ball that is. I mean he's in front of his ballroom construction talking about how titanium is as is one of the best metals. And it's just like unbelievable. Like 13American soldiers have died. How many civilians were lost in that original girls school strike. And that's continued into the like it's, it's a life and death situation. People are paying $5 a gallon for gas. This is just, I mean, yes, it's Trump, so we're numb to it and kind of get it. But we're also in a war now. And he's out there just pleased as can be to talk about the construction.
Ryan Grim
And it's almost too over the top. Like the most famous line from somebody out of touch who eventually got beheaded. Let them eat cake. That is less out of touch, I feel like than the amount of focus that he has on a actual ballroom while he's burning the country and its finances to the ground. Like it's, it's truly incredible. Like you. If you tried to write this, people be like stop a ball. A billion dollar ballroom. That. And that's his main focus. Like impossible.
Krystal Ball
He also. It's not even just the concept of the ballroom, the concept of the plan of the ballroom because I actually don't think it's indefensible that you would build a ballroom now this.
Ryan Grim
You know what? I'm actually pro ballroom build a ballroom.
Krystal Ball
This particular ballroom, you know, I think it's. It's might. I'm the parties great. Let's put it that way. It might not look great, but he's so obsessed with the process of the ballroom. And it's, it's not just the ballroom either. Like that's. We're now looking at the arch and all of those other things. So anyway, before I sound too much like blue and on. It is just remarkable to be in a war and watch him fixate even I think Ryan, maybe it's escalated during the war because he's obsessed with legacy building and he knows, you know, he's juggling one real threat to his legacy which he sees as an opportunity for his legacy, but also understands that it's, it's risky and it's a threat. Juggling that alongside his efforts to just physically beautify D.C. and the White House and just put his stamp on American history. It's, it's very, it's, I shouldn't say it's strange because again, you see his logic, but it's, it's weird to watch, it's strange to watch it happen in real time.
Ryan Grim
Yeah, I wish that that's all he was doing. Like, if that's all he was doing, like, just go for it, man. Just do it. Meanwhile, there is legislation on the Hill now that he desperately wants passed to get funding for ICE and CBP that is held up because he is demanding that his party vote for this billion dollars for this ballroom, which they don't want to do because they were told repeatedly, don't worry, I'm doing all of these shakedowns of my donors and they're going to pay for this ballroom. And now all of a sudden it's a billion dollars. They're going to have to put their name to that and they don't want to do that. And so now Trump is holding up. Trump is basically using ICE and CBP as hostages to try to get his ballroom spending well.
Krystal Ball
And I know we're going to talk about the elections, but we should also note that he has two lame duck senators now that are motivated to vote against him in Thom Tillis and Bill Cassidy because they faced threats from maga. And so it's kind of already, I mean, if we assume Dems take over the House and the Senate, we'll look back on this period. Maybe they don't take over the Senate, but we'll look back on this period as the beginning of the lame duck after these primaries. Interestingly enough, because of what's happened in the Senate between. Obviously Thom Tillis was already in that position. He was retiring, but now with Bill Cassidy, that's a, that is a big A blow if he starts voting against the President. He's already indicated that he's trying to extract concessions now that he's been kind of pushed by MAGA out of the Senate.
Ryan Grim
Yeah. And Cassidy just voted for the Iran war resolution. To put a fine point on that.
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Ryan Grim
this other slush fund. Maybe Trump should just fund his ballroom out of the money he just stole from the irs. So Trump for you guys are gonna have to like Google this. Cause I think like nobody would even believe it. Like I can't even believe that I'm saying it. So Trump sued the IRS for $10 billion for because some of his tax returns became public.
Krystal Ball
They leaked to the New York Times. Yeah.
Ryan Grim
Leaked to the New York Times. Yeah. So a judge was about to throw out this lawsuit because the judge was like, hey buddy, like you control the IRS and you control the Doj like, this is like, you're all parties of this. You're the President of the United States. You can't do this. That was about to happen. Trump says, no, no, no, guys, you need to sit in a room and come up with a settlement. So the Trump comes up with a settlement with the irs, where the IRS says, we're going to create a Trump Truth and Justice Fund. We're going to put $1.776 billion of taxpayer money into it that can be distributed by you to anybody you want to go towards people who you believe were wronged by federal prosecution, such as yourself and anybody and your family and anybody involved in January 6th and in the future, neither you nor any of your family or organizations affiliated with your family can be subject to IRS audits. Like, that's the agreement that he forced the IRS to reach. That's actually a pretty big chunk of the IRS budget, by the way. So J.D. vance now is taking incoming from this. So it's always fun to hear kind of JD Vance turn what Trump's doing into, like, eloquent paragraphs. So let's see how he manages some of this. Let's roll B1. I understand that everybody is eligible to
Promo Voice
apply for this one.
Ryan Grim
I mean, you're eligible, but I assume
J.D. Vance
you're not going to apply and you don't think you should get money out of this fund.
Ryan Grim
So isn't it just as easy to
J.D. Vance
say that people that attacked police officers should not get taxpayer money from this phone? Well, look, John, we're not trying to give money to anybody who attacked a police officer. We're trying to give money, not give money. We're trying to compensate people where the book was thrown at them. They were mistreated by the legal system. Sometimes, you know, we are, we do have, John, in this, in this country, innocent until proven guilty. We do have people who were accused of attacking law enforcement officers.
Ryan Grim
That does that.
J.D. Vance
That doesn't mean that we're going to completely ignore some of the claims that they're going to make. We're going to evaluate these things on a case by case basis. And if we think that somebody, whatever they were accused of, if we think that somebody was unfairly prosecuted and deserves just compensation, then that's what this fund is going to exist to provide. It's just going to correct a wrong. And I think that's a good thing. And I'd encourage everybody, Democrat, Republican, Independent, let's turn the page on this thing that we did under the last administration where we tried to throw people in prison. And because they had the wrong politics, let's throw people in prison who broke the law. I think this fund is a good part of getting justice for the people who are wrongly treated.
Ryan Grim
So Emily, do you want to hear how Trump formulated a response to that or you want do you have any thoughts on J.D. vance's reply there first?
Krystal Ball
Well, no, let's, let's kick to Trump. But also Just note that J.D. vance was, if you're listening to this, that quote was from the White house briefing room. J.D. vance did a press briefing yesterday, which was itself interesting because Marco Rubio did one not long ago. So while they're filling in for Caroline Levitt, Rubio goes. Then not long after, a couple of weeks later, Vance steps in. So I think probably worth noting a little sign of jockeying there too. But let's take a listen to the president. Justice Department has this new fund that was announced today, $1.7 billion. Why should taxpayers pay for the January.
Donald Trump
Well, it's been very well received. I have to tell you. I know very little about it. I wasn't involved in, in the whole creation of it and the negotiation. But this is reimbursing people that were horribly treated. Horribly treated. It's anti weaponization. They've been weaponized. They've been in some cases imprisoned wrongly. They paid legal fees that they didn't have. They've gone bankrupt, their lives have been destroyed and they turn out to be right. I mean, it was a terrible period of time in the history of our country and they worked on it. I know the Justice Department, it's really been working on it very hard. There's been numerous other occasions over the years where things like this have been done. But these were people that were weaponized and really treated brutally by a system that was so corrupt with corrupt people running it and they're getting reimbursed for their legal fees and the other things that they had to suffer.
Krystal Ball
BRIAN I was just going to say both Trump and Vance are correct that people were wronged in the rush to prosecute folks for some serious, obviously serious wrongdoing. On January 6, there was a huge dragnet. There were some wild over prosecutions and political abuses that came afterwards. What you then have to trust them to do and maybe you can help us break down what we know about the mechanics of the slush fund so far. But you have to then put your trust in this slush fund and its managers, which are essentially it's a board of what, like five to six people with allegedly there will be some Congressional representative that is supposed to provide oversight. I think Todd Blanch is on the board. You then have to trust that this is just going to be used for the people who were caught in the dragnet, who were over prosecuted and not for, you know, anything that's political favor related, because we haven't seen any evidence of, of this administration doing anything like that, self dealing, the like. So they're asking for an enormous amount of trust for people that it is really just going to be used to correct some of the legitimate wrongs.
Ryan Grim
Right. And they've done really nothing to earn that trust. When Trump came in and did this, did his blanket pardon of everybody, basically everybody, there was this amazing moment in the White House in the Oval Office where a reporter said, but hey, you know, you didn't pardon just the people who, you know, were nonviolent. And after the Capitol had been sacked and police were like letting people in, you know, they walked in, walked around a little bit and walked back out. And if the police kind of wave you in to me, you actually shouldn't be prosecuted for that. If you didn't have anything to do with the reason that they're now waving you in, which was the violent assault on the Capitol. But what the reporter said to Trump is like, it wasn't just those people and named one guy who, you know, nearly killed a police officer, nearly beat him to death, and was let out as a result of this. And Trump said, oh, did I do that? I'll look into that. And then just moved on. What do you mean you'll look into it? You've already done it. And also we know you're not gonna look into it. Has he looked into it? No, he hasn't looked into it. Now, decent number of these J6ers have been arrested subsequently for other acts of violence. I wonder if that's gonna hinder their ability to cash in on some of this, some of this money. But can you imagine if democrats in the 2024 campaign put out an ad saying that if Trump wins, he's going to create an illegal fund of nearly $2 billion and he's going to pay it out to himself and to January Sixers? Can you imagine if they said that? I would have been like, that's crazy. There's no, there's. How could you, Like, I understand you got some problems with Trump, but on what planet would anybody be that unpatriotic, that insane, like, stop. There's no way he's gonna do that. Clearly, I deeply underestimated what this guy is Capable of. He's coming up with new avenues of depravity that were, like, previously kind of inconceivable. And actually the stock trading is a good one. Vance just getting hammered with all of Trump's stuff. So Donald Trump in the first quarter of this last year traded more stocks than all of Congress combined for, like, the entire year. Think about that. Congress is this hornet's nest of insider trading. And Trump on his own in three months did more trading than them and explicitly did his trade. Go ahead.
Krystal Ball
It's through a broker. Right. And not that that makes it better. It actually is a good reason. I think that some of these.
Ryan Grim
Well, yeah, he's not on Ameritrade, like, execute on the trade, but yeah, like, he's trading, he's buying Nvidia stock and then he's making an announcement about Nvidia. He's buying a Palantir. Whenever he would visit, like a factory and encourage people to invest in that factory, like that day or the day before, he would buy stock there, knowing that his visit there is going to bump up the share price. Just an incredible, like, harvesting of other people's money.
Krystal Ball
Well, also just a really great illustration of why some of these efforts. The only reason I brought that up is some of the efforts to, like, quote, ban congressional stock trading. You can't. It has to be banned completely for public servants because they'll just say, oh, I put it in a blind, blind thing, or I'm doing it through a broker. I've got nothing to do with the broker. And that's almost never. I mean, it's such a, that excuse never has much credibility. And this is, I think he posted on True Social. That caught people's eye. What was this a couple months ago, the Palantir. He posted Palantir, but then in parentheses, the stock abbreviation for it. Did you see this?
Ryan Grim
Yes.
Krystal Ball
People were like, why did he do that? And then it turns out around the same time he was buying Palantir.
Ryan Grim
Yes. Truly incredible. So let's hear how J.D. vance responds to this one. The question, sir, is how can you and your administration argue to Americans that you're cleaning up corruption, you're preventing fraud, you're fighting the sorts of, of things that harm people and people's financial situations when the President seems to be talking up stocks that he owns, selling them and enriching himself.
J.D. Vance
Okay, so here, let me, let me, let me answer your question here. That was a doozy. Before I answer your question, I want to just observe. There are different ways to ask a Question. Okay? You can just ask a question, try to get your answer. Or you could do, like, a speech where you say, you know, Mr. Vice President, every. You know, you're. You're a terrible human being, and so is the president, so is the entire Cabinet. And then I'm like, what's your question? And then your question is, how dare you. Come on, man, have a little bit of objectivity in the way that you ask these questions. Because there were a lot of things in that speech masquerading as a question that didn't actually get asked. Okay, Number one, the President doesn't sit at the Oval Office on his computer on his, like, Robinhood account, buying and selling stocks. That's absurd. And he has independent wealth advisors who manage his money. He is a wealthy person. He has had success in business. He's not making these stock trades himself. And your question imputes that. It sort of. It doesn't say it exactly. But a reasonable person listening to that question would assume the President is sitting around and doing that. He's not. Second of all, you're right. I am a big fan of banning members of Congress from trading stocks. So is the President of the United States. All of us believe that nobody should be taking proprietary information gained from public service and buying and selling stocks. We want to ban that process. And I think the way to lead by example is banning that process, banning that approach and making it illegal, which is exactly what the President has proposed doing.
Ryan Grim
I mean, having a broker doesn't mean you can't call the broker and say, buy a million dollars worth of Nvidia. Like, it's just a coincidence that the broker is buying these stocks of these companies that he's visiting that day or the day, or he's buying them the day before. If so, he has the best broker on the planet. If he's not taking direction from Trump and he just keeps nailing, like, the timing of these trades, then this broker needs his own, you know, CNBC show. Because guy's got incredible foresight.
Krystal Ball
He can compete with Kramer. He may actually be better. Yeah, it's the way Vance responded is also. I don't know if it's a tell, but it's so frustrating nonetheless, because, yes, this is. I mean, drain the swamp is other than build the wall, like the most memorable tagline of the last 10 years of MAGA. And they made these really flamboyant promises to voters in 2024, also in 2020 and in 2016, but particularly the 2024 campaign, which J.D. vance was a Part of they made these really flamboyant promises to voters about draining the swamp and ending corruption. And as we've been discussing this morning, it has been like paddle to the metal on self dealing from Trump himself. You know, Kristen Sager talked about that great Isaac Saul piece that kind of wrapped up all of the not even hidden or like investigated investigative journalism type stories, but like actual, just like they're just coming out and saying it type corruption stories in the last several months. But just the first year and what, almost a year and a half of the second Trump administration. It's, there's no plausible, no, like Doge was their drain the swamp mechanism. They didn't, as Steve Bannon said, cross the river and go to the Pentagon. They never did that. They're in fact asking for a bigger Pentagon budget. So it's, it's a stark contrast. And I think, you know, Vance is aware of the contradictions and was trying to be pretty smooth there to get around it, but it's something you just can't get around.
Ryan Grim
All right, let's finish with a J.D. vance hat trick. So Trump has also said multiple times in the last week that when it comes to the Iran war, he doesn't think even a little bit about the American people's financial situation. You may say to yourself, that doesn't sound like somebody who cares about the American people's financial situation. So let's see how J.D. vance responded to this one. Just to follow up on the war,
Krystal Ball
you last week denied that the president
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said he was not taking Americans financially
Krystal Ball
situations into consideration when he's making decisions
Ryan Grim
on the Iran war.
Krystal Ball
He was asked about that again. He stood by it, called it a perfect statement and said he would make it again. Do you believe that Americans financial situations
Ryan Grim
should be taken into consideration when you're making decisions as an administration?
J.D. Vance
Caitlin, what you did is you misrepresented the question that I was asked and then you misrepresented the answer that I gave. What I said, is that a question that was asked where the president allegedly, he allegedly said that he didn't care about Americans financial situations. He never said that. What he said is that when he, it was totally taken out of context. What he said is that when he is negotiating with the Iranians, he's focused on the national security objectives that he's trying to achieve. Of course, the president has a mandate to be focused on a number of things. And I guarantee you every single day I have conversations with him about it. Every single day he's worried about his fellow Americans. He wants to them to be prosperous, he wants them to thrive. He wants them to have good jobs. That's why we've done the things and taken the steps that we've taken in order to create record job growth, in order to create record wage growth, in order to induce trillions of dollars of new investment into our country. That's because he cares about that stuff. What he also said is that when he's talking to the Iranians, he's talking to the Iranians about questions, of course, of national security, like their nuclear program. You could hold 2 thoughts in your head that the same time that the president cares about financial security for Americans, but also when he's negotiating with the Iranians, he's talking about the issues that are germane to the concerns of that particular conflict.
Ryan Grim
Sure, J.D.
Jacob Goldstein
okay.
Ryan Grim
Now let's move on to something that Trump does actually care about, and that was enacting revenge on Thomas Massie. That's up next.
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Ryan Grim
That's innerbalance.com Republican Thomas Massie has lost his primary in Kentucky after getting some $20 million dropped on him by pro Israel and pro Trump groups and put up C1 here. It looks like in the end, we're going to be staring at roughly, what, a 10,000 vote margin? A guy named what, Ed Gowering?
Donald Trump
Who?
Ryan Grim
Don't anybody you know commit this guy's name to memory because I don't think we're going to hear much about him going forward. His, his role was to put his name on the ballot, be a Navy SEAL and have tens of millions of dollars in commercials. Attack, attack Massie and boost him. I think he skipped basically every debate, did very little campaigning. But this wasn't about that sort of election. This was about knocking him out of office. Massie conceded last night. Let's roll C2 here. I would have come out sooner, but I had to call my opponent and
Jacob Goldstein
concede and it took a while to
Ryan Grim
find Ed Gowran in Tel Aviv. I did get to call through, though. I have, I have called and conceded the race. We've been honorable the whole time and we're going to stay that way. What, what happens in 2028? You want. Oh, you, oh, you want me to run for Congress again? I don't know what you're talking. All right. Well, you made, you made a compelling argument. You spoke your piece.
Donald Trump
But I need a medical margarita right now.
Ryan Grim
And we'll. And we'll talk about it later. So of the two leading Republicans who pushed for the opening of the Epstein files, Marjorie Taylor Greene and Thomas Massie, they're both now out. Emily, what. You know, what happened here? What's going on?
Krystal Ball
Well, can we put the APAC tweet up? This is, I want to say this is development. Yep, this is. This tells you what happened. APAC says Ed Gal Ryan's victory in Kentucky and Clay Fuller's one in Georgia ensures two outspoken pro Israel voices are positioned to fill seats previously held by outspoken detractors Thomas Bassey and Marjorie Taylor Greene. And then here's the important part of this tweet. Quote, our community was proud to help pro Israel candidates win these races. Now, this is the big difference between every other primary that Thomas Massie has run in and the primary this year. Thomas Massie, of course, did vote against the one big beautiful bill last year. But Thomas Massie has bucked Trump on other big bills. Before. Trump first came out against Massie when he was bucking Trump on Covid. The COVID relief package. Huge, big ticket, part of the Trump presidency. Massie goes up against him, and Trump says, this guy basically was insulting Massie. Massie gets a primary challenge. But over and over again, I just pulled some of the results in his primaries. This is 2024, 76%. So after that happened, he wins his primary by 76%. This is 2022, 75%. He wins his primary. 75%. This is 2020. June 23, 2020, 81%. He won his primary by 81%. So $32 million goes into Kentucky's fourth district. This is, according to the Wall Street Journal, to a primary in Kentucky's fourth district. Thirteen and a half million for Massey, 18.6 million for Gal Ryan. And again, reading from the Journal here, quote, the super PAC led by Trump strategist Chris Lacivita and pollster Tony Fabrizio released an ad this month accusing Massey of being in a throuple with Alexandria Ocasio, Cortez, Ilhan Omar. The super PAC receives funding from hawkish pro Israel hedge fund billionaires Paul Singer, John Paulson and a group funded by wealthy donor Miriam Adelson, according to campaign finance filings. And then again, you see APAC claiming that they help. Well, yes, Ryan, you've been reporting on this happening to the left for a long time. But without this money, this primary, like all things being constant, Trump has criticized Massey before and very, very sharply. Massey has gone against Trump before on a big picture piece of legislation or big ticket piece of legislation with COVID relief. Yes, again, I get it. I actually think they're totally. It makes sense that there are people in Massey world who are Trump voters. I wouldn't agree with them. But Kentucky's 4th district, to say you voted against that bill that secured the border or provided immigration enforcement, whatever, I get it. He's been on a lot of podcasts. They see him as somebody who's like, leaning into media appearances and that sort of thing. So I see where people are coming From. But the big difference here, Money, money, money, money. That's it. And Ryan, you can tell us when that money comes in from these sources that the money is coming in from. It was about one issue, right?
Ryan Grim
It was about one issue. But as you said, that wasn't the issue that played out on the airwaves. The ad about the throuple is incredible. Like, a lot of these ads that they were running were AI generated. And one of them has, like, cctv, fake CCTV footage in a hotel room showing Thomas Massie going to the hotel clerk, holding hands with, like, AOC and Ilhan Omar, and then shows them, like, walking into a hotel room. And I think they would, if they were forced to defend it, they would say, well, we mean, metaphorically, he's in bed with Democrats because he votes on the same way with them sometimes. But I, you know, he lost by like, 30, 40 points among people 65 and up. People 65 and up sitting at home watching that, watching that ad, would not believe, I don't think, that. That it was AI generated Like they thought they were being told what they were actually being told. So I think it's a really good point. So just put a fine point on it, because I know you got to run Trump. Let's say Trump comes against Massie, but there isn't $20 million spent against him because of his criticism of Israel, because of his release of the Epstein files. Does Massie hold on in your counterfactual world where it's only Trump and not Adelson and Paul Singer and the rest of the APAC world?
Krystal Ball
I think absolutely, yes. And this is. I just want to put up on the screen before we run C4. The first time I interviewed Massie was back when I was with the Washington examiner in 2017. And this quote that he gave us, it wasn't even response to a question I asked. I was just the one who wrote up the piece. It was, he said, basically, when he had been campaigning in 2012 with Ron Paul and Rand Paul, he made the mistake of thinking, wow, all these people are just really excited about libertarian values and realized ultimately that they were. When Trump came around, this was the same people supporting Trump, and they were just looking for, quote, the craziest son of a bitch in the race. And this quote made it into books and the like. It's become somewhat famous as for people who study the MAGA movement. And I think what it says at the end of the day is that for a lot of those people, Trump is still the craziest son of a bitch in the race and they still have that like trust in him above others. And that is one of the big takeaways. It's like the Trump loyalty test is still what those AIPAC groups or that AIPAC and the pro Israel groups used ultimately to get at Massey. It wasn't. You've covered this many times. It wasn't about Israel and the airwaves.
Ryan Grim
All right, well Emily, thanks for thanks for being here and happy travels.
Krystal Ball
Thank you.
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Jacob Goldstein
is Jacob Goldstein from what's yous Problem? When you buy business software from lots of vendors, the costs add up and it gets complicated and confusing. Odoo solves this. It's a single company that sells a suite of enterprise apps that handles everything from accounting to inventory to sales. Odoo is all connected on a single platform in a simple and affordable way. You can save money without missing out on the features you need. Check out odoo@odoo.com that's o d o
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Ryan Grim
so in two competitive congressional races in Pennsylvania, Bob Brooks in the Lehigh Valley overcame, I think, more than a million dollars in kind of fake Republican spending where they were trying to kind of uplift an unelectable Democrat. They're doing the same thing in Texas with this lunatic lady who's calling for concentration camps. And they failed. Bob Bro, firefighter, union guy from Allentown, Pennsylvania, comfortably won his election. So he'll be facing Mackenzie, the Republican incumbent in the primary there. But more importantly, probably to the national conversation down in Philadelphia, in an open race, Chris Raab, and we can put this element up on the screen, emerged victorious. Not even that close. By the end of it, almost 45% of the vote for Chris Raab, democratic socialist, against 29.5% for Sharif Street. And then Alice Stanford, a physician who had been the front runner, down at 24%. And so this is a rather stunning victory. Two months ago, you would not have, you know, we were covering Chris Raab two months ago, but you would not have said that he was, you know, kind of remotely even in contention. A lot had to come together for him to be able to win. I think primarily Summer Lee deserves an enormous amount of credit in this election. She was, she's the kind of DSA backed, although she's had some complicated relationship with DSA Pittsburgh, a candidate for, you know, she's the member of Congress from Pittsburgh away across the other, other side of the state. She came over. She was the first member of Congress to endorse Chris Raab and really, and did a lot of kind of recruiting and organizing on his behalf. And to really say, no, this is a winnable race, we need to get in here. You then had the Working Families Party and DSA Philadelphia getting behind rab. Both DSA Philly or Philly DSA and Working Families Party have done a lot of work in previous cycles in down ballot races, in city council races and elsewhere that built a lot of foundation for Chris Raab to then run on rab, a state representative who himself ran a great campaign and is an impressive candidate and had built relationships kind of in the populist, progressive and DSA world over the years, so that when the moment came, he was able to capitalize it, capitalize on it in a way that he might not otherwise have been. You also had this new Pro Palestine PAC, which is capitalized with something like 10 million bucks, which is, you know, largely Kind of Muslim donors around the country saying we need to get politically active in a way that can counteract aipac. And the PAC is called American Priorities. They came in and spent about 500, a little less than $500,000 getting behind him. That type of money in a race like this can really put you over the top. WFP also kicked in about $500,000. The Congressional Progressive Caucus PAC. There was a lot of people kind of flooded in to try to match AIPAC here. So on the other side, you had this candidate ala Stanford, who rose to prominence in Philadelphia because of her kind of heroic work on the front lines during the COVID pandemic. She then had the support of this group called 314 Action, which supports doctors and scientists. But as we had reported Here back in 2024, AIPAC used 314Action to secretly funnel a lot of money against Sushila Jayapal in this Portland, Oregon race, also at the time backing a pediatrician. It turned out, and we reported at the time, and it was later confirmed that through a variety of different kind of shady blind vehicles, they had been funding Pro Israel and AIPAC money into 314Action. They were able to beat Sushila Jayapal, who was Representative Pramila Jayapal's sister in this race. This 314Action spent more than $3 million. And you can go read our story over at Dropsite to explain the intricacies of, of how this kind of Pro Israel money was funneled through 314 action. AIPAC continues to deny it. They'll continue to have to release different reports. Some of the money came from this. They move it from a foundation into then another thing called EDW Action, which has previously been used as an APAC front group. And then EDW Action then gives it to 314 Action. The other reason that you can know that this is AIPAC is that they're the only organization that does this crypto, AI and say big oil tech, any of these other packs, super PACs or industries that are spending in these races. When they do it so far, they do it with their chest. Like crypto and AI, for instance, are the only ones that can kind of match AIPAC and Pro Israel money when it comes to spending in these primaries. But so far their brands are not so toxic. I think they should be. But their brands are not so toxic that they have to hide where the money is coming from. So the crypto packs will be crypto packs. The AI packs will be AI super PACs. And so even though they don't kind of run ads on the issue of crypto or on the issue of AI. They will do negative ads about whatever they think will destroy their opponent or they'll do positive ads on whatever they think will uplift the person that they're supporting. They will stay at the bottom, like who they are. And so the only super pacs at this point that are hiding the source, the actual kind of issue area behind them at this point is apac. They did this a bunch in Illinois, in those races that we covered there, and they did it again here. The three plus million dollars that they spent on behalf of Ala Stanford that they continue to deny having spent makes up something like 50% of all the money that 314 Action spent across the country. 314 Action spent. They normally spend nothing or, and just endorse or they'll spend 10,000 or they'll spend maybe up to like $100,000. That's typically how they do it. The only time they've really ever come in and done millions is when AIPAC is behind it. Now you may remember that Alice Stanford completely fell apart. Not because she was exposed for taking AIPAC money, but because she did this interview on a local Fox channel where she was asked, okay, if you want to abolish ice, who then should do immigration enforcement? And let's roll that again because it precipitated one of the most incredible campaign implosions I think I've ever seen. You also said you're running to abolish ice.
Krystal Ball
This is something that we've heard other
Ryan Grim
Democrats and activists talk about from an immigration enforcement perspective. Who do you think should be in charge of enforcing immigration laws?
Krystal Ball
That's a good question. And you can pause because I just want to think about it for a minute. Yeah, go ahead.
Ryan Grim
We need to continue though. Okay, who do I think should be
Krystal Ball
in charge of enforcing immigration laws?
Ryan Grim
Not the executive branch. So not the president.
Krystal Ball
So it belongs with Congress. It belongs with Congress.
Ryan Grim
After that, it was basically the end of the campaign for her. She stopped showing up for forums, she stopped campaigning, but there were still ads on TV for her. And Chris Raab's campaign started to worry that she might actually just straight up drop out of the race because if she dropped out, then they were afraid all of her support would then or a lot of her support would go over to Shareeve street, who was the son of the former mayor and a kind of well known guy in Philadelphia. He had his own problems though. Back in 2022, Sharif street worked directly with Republicans in the state of Pennsylvania to reduce the number of Democratic seats in the state, but to draw himself a seat. So now the courts came in and blocked this from happening. But it was one of the most like, kind of outrageous examples of selfishness where you're going against your party, working with Republicans simply so that you can have a more comfortable seat. And so the Working Families party put almost $100,000 behind ads attacking Schreif over that scandal as he started to rise. And the mail in voting among kind of which is elderly voters, more conservative types that had Alice Stanford winning, you had to get your ballots in, I think, by May 12. But because she was, she imploded around that time and after there wasn't enough time for Sharif street to come together. And the kind of establishment and AIPAC could never consolidate behind a single candidate, which allowed then Chris Raab to win with less than 50% of the vote. At his campaign rally last night, his supporters were very confident about who they had defeated. Let's roll this. Now. If you can hear that chanting, that was a pack lost. Now, the other group that lost was Third Way. Third Way is this kind of corporate, centrist Democratic organization that decided over the last month to make Hasan Piker the biggest issue in Democratic Party politics. Hasan Piker came out to Philadelphia and campaigned with Chris Raab. After that, AOC also endorsed him as well. Let's roll a little bit of Hasan Piker at his rally in Philadelphia. But the Democrats, some of them also love the very same things. They don't love you. They don't care about you. They don't care about your interests. And that's precisely the reason why letting your voice be heard in the primary system is almost as important, if not more important, because the Democratic Party's primary is what determines the trajectory of the Democratic Party. If you're angry because there's people like Joe Manchin, Kyrsten Sinema, people like John Fetterman, don't say the F word. Not a lot of. Not a lot of Fetterman fans in here. He's no fan of mine either. He's always on Fox News yapping. And I want you to understand, I identify as a Democratic socialist, but I'm running as a Democrat because the system creates this narrowness. But there's a bunch of Democrats running. And we are not all the same. We are very different. We may share this label in this moment in this system, but we are very different. So if you choose to register as a Democrat, you are not pledging allegiance to that party. You are using your power in that moment to vote for the person who you believe reflects your interests, your interests, and the interests of the communities that you hold most dear, some of whose members cannot vote because they may be too young or they may not be citizens, or they may be incarcerated. There are a number of people who will not vote for any number of reasons. So when you're voting, you're voting for them as well. So Third Way put the spotlight on this race by putting the spotlight on Hassan Piker. The result? Chris Raab with a resounding victory. Hasan Piker also then went out, much to the chagrin of Third Way, and campaigned also, AIPAC campaigned with Abdul El Sayed, the Senate candidate in Michigan. El Sayed was in third place when that started to happen. Al Said is now in first place. So just a spectacular collapse on the part of both APAC and Third Way here.
Jacob Goldstein
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Krystal Ball
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Ryan Grim
Guaranteed human.
Episode: 5/20/26: Bibi Begs Trump For Iran War, JD Savaged Over Slush Fund, Massie Defeated, AIPAC Blown Out In PA
Release Date: May 20, 2026
In this episode, Krystal Ball and Ryan Grim (with Emily joining from the road) deliver a packed show dissecting the unfolding crises and political drama in the US and abroad. They cover Trump and Netanyahu's Iran war brinkmanship, the creation of a controversial slush fund to benefit Trump allies (and himself), Thomas Massie's defeat after heavy pro-Israel spending in a Kentucky primary, and a rare progressive upset over AIPAC-backed candidates in Pennsylvania. The hosts maintain their trademark left-right dialogue, sharp skepticism, and unvarnished anti-establishment analysis throughout.
[02:48–22:59]
[25:13–39:42]
[27:12–41:47]
[43:59–52:25]
[54:40–68:01]
This episode showcases Breaking Points’ signature blend of sharp, iconoclastic analysis and lively, plugged-in reporting. The Iran war standoff exposes how foreign policy and personal legacy obsessions intertwine for Trump and Netanyahu—while at home, anti-establishment candidates thrash and claw (sometimes successfully) against the onslaught of dark money and political machines, with AIPAC’s historic defeat in Philadelphia as a rare bright spot for the left. Meanwhile, the Trump administration’s self-dealing, lack of shame, and “drain the swamp” hypocrisy reach new heights, as detailed in the slush fund and stock trading scandals. With lively banter and pointed quotes, Krystal, Ryan, and guests break down the real forces reshaping American politics—reminding listeners that the show is, in their words, “the only place with honest perspectives from the left and the right.”