6/2/25: Jamie Dimon Dire Warning, Israel Aid Massacre, Ukraine Drone Attack & MORE!

Summary

Podcast Summary: Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar Episode: 6/2/25: Jamie Dimon Dire Warning, Israel Aid Massacre, Ukraine Drone Attack & MORE!
Release Date: June 2, 2025

Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar dives deep into some of the most pressing issues of the day, from economic warnings by Wall Street leaders to tragic events in the Middle East and significant developments in the Ukraine-Russia conflict. This episode is structured into several key segments, each addressing critical topics with insightful analysis and expert commentary.

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1. Israel Aid Massacre in Boulder, Colorado

The episode opens with a harrowing account of a terror attack in Boulder, Colorado, where eight individuals were injured during a peaceful protest advocating for the release of Israeli hostages. The attacker, identified as Mohamed Sabri Solomon, an Egyptian national on a visa overstay, targeted participants in the rally, leading to severe injuries for some, including a Holocaust survivor.

Notable Quote:

"This is directly at odds with any movement to free Palestine or free any human beings around the world."
– Tom Brokaw [08:24]

Krystal and Saagar discuss the broader implications of such attacks, emphasizing the rise in antisemitism fueled by conflating Jewish people with Israeli government actions. They highlight how these events endanger Jewish communities globally and undermine peace efforts.

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2. Impact on Jewish Safety and Antisemitism

The hosts delve into the consequences of conflating Israeli actions with Jewish identity, noting that this rhetoric contributes to a dangerous increase in antisemitic sentiments worldwide. The episode underscores the importance of distinguishing between the Israeli state and Jewish individuals to prevent the escalation of hate and violence.

Notable Quote:

"The genocide that is being committed in Gaza is making Jewish peoples unsafe everywhere."
– Tom Brokaw [08:24]

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3. Economic Concerns: GOP Tax Bill and Bond Market Risks

A significant portion of the episode features an interview with Jeff Stein, Chief Economics Reporter for the Washington Post. Stein discusses Wall Street's apprehensions regarding the GOP's proposed tax bill, which could potentially add $2 to $5 trillion to the national deficit. The primary concern is the strain on the bond market, where increased bond issuances may lead to higher yields and destabilize borrowing costs across the economy.

Notable Quote:

"US Interest rates are already very high and the tax bill could add between estimates vary 2 to $5 trillion to the deficit."
– Jeff Stein [13:16]

Stein explains how higher yields on government bonds can lead to increased costs for mortgages and auto loans, affecting everyday Americans. He also touches on the political challenges Republicans face in attempting to balance tax cuts with necessary spending reductions.

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4. Ukraine's Strategic Drone Attack on Russia

The conversation shifts to a significant military development where Ukraine executed a surprise drone attack deep within Russian territory, targeting Russian warplanes. Named "Spiderweb Operation," this attack is claimed to have neutralized over 40 Russian aircraft and demonstrated Ukraine's growing military capabilities.

Notable Quote:

"Ukraine holds more cards than Trump gave him credit for."
– Tom Yamas [76:25]

The hosts analyze the strategic impact of this operation, discussing how it alters the dynamics of the ongoing Ukraine-Russia conflict and introduces new challenges in modern warfare, especially concerning the use of drones in large-scale attacks.

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5. Elon Musk Controversies

Elon Musk's involvement in political and corporate arenas is scrutinized, particularly concerning his recent interactions within the Trump administration and reports of personal misconduct. The episode covers allegations of drug use and physical altercations, painting a picture of Musk's diminishing influence and the fallout from his political engagements.

Notable Quote:

"He looks like shit. He's totally disconnected from reality here and proving right the various articles."
– Tom Brokaw [89:31]

Krystal and Saagar discuss how Musk's actions have affected his reputation and relationships within political circles, questioning the sustainability of his influence moving forward.

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6. Republican Senator Joni Ernst's Medicaid Cuts Remarks

The episode highlights a contentious moment when Republican Senator Joni Ernst faced backlash for her comments defending proposed Medicaid cuts. During a town hall, Ernst stated, "We are all going to die at some point," which was met with extreme criticism from both sides.

Notable Quote:

"We are all going to die from this earth."
– Senator Joni Ernst [128:32]

Following the incident, Ernst released an apology video, addressing the emotional state that led to her remarks and attempting to calm the situation. The hosts critique the mixed messaging within the Republican Party regarding Medicaid, emphasizing the political challenges this poses.

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7. Conclusion and Membership Promotion

The episode wraps up with Krystal and Saagar encouraging listeners to become premium members to access uncut episodes, live AMAs, and exclusive content. They emphasize the importance of independent media in holding power to account and fostering honest political discourse.

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Final Thoughts:

This episode of Breaking Points offers a comprehensive examination of significant political, economic, and social issues impacting the United States and the world. Through expert interviews and in-depth discussions, Krystal Ball and Saagar Enjeti provide listeners with a critical lens on contemporary events, urging informed and active participation in shaping the future.

Join the Conversation: To support independent journalism and gain access to exclusive content, visit BreakingPoints.com and consider becoming a premium member today.

Transcript

[Tom Brokaw]

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And other VA benefits are available to those who qualify. Hey guys, Sagar and Krystal here.

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[Tom Brokaw]

Good morning everybody. Happy Monday. Welcome to Breaking Points. Emily, Pleasure.

[Tom Yamas]

It's a pleasure to be here and especially today, Crystal, because we have great news.

[Tom Brokaw]

Yes, we have great show news. We have a lot of big news in the show.

[Tom Yamas]

We have a lot of bad news. A lot of bad news about the world in general.

[Tom Brokaw]

But that's kind of typical and to be expected at this point in all of our lives, I would assume.

[Lester Holt]

But.

[Tom Brokaw]

But we do have good news with regard to the show. By popular demand, we are bringing back the monthly membership. Let's go. So that is exciting. And here are the benefits you get as a premium breaking points member. You get full uncut episodes in your inbox every morning. You get ad free shows. You get the live streamed AMAs. You get the second half of the Friday show. You get the full complete Friday show which you definitely don't want to miss. And it says interact with the hosts. Yeah, we do.

[Tom Yamas]

Yeah, sure. I don't.

[Tom Brokaw]

Why not go for it. The Friday show. We also take some free room questions. So. And we're looking for more opportunities to do that sort of engagement. And not only are we bringing back the monthly membership, put the next piece up on the screen. We are doing a free monthly trial promotion right now. The promo code there is BP free. So listen, we realize the economy is on a little bit precarious ground. People are feeling a little leery of putting out the big upfront costs that we get that. So that's why we wanted to do this and do the promotion. And if you guys are able to support us, it has allowed us to expand to five days a week. We've got a lot of ideas for how we want to continue to expand and grow the show. So thank you all so much already for your support. And if you're able to subscribe breakingpoints.com that's where you go. You put in that BP free code, you get a free month. See if you find it worth your money.

[Tom Yamas]

Yeah, just give it a try. Yeah, can't hurt.

[Tom Brokaw]

Yeah, there you go. All right, so go ahead and throw up the show bar. We can go through quickly what is in the show. We've got a bunch of big economic news that we'll go through. Jeff Stein is actually going to join us. Wall street concerned about the bond market. We've got new tariffs, we've got new escalation with China. So a lot to get into there. We also are going to have Jeremy Scahill to join us with the latest with regards to those cease fire talks and also a horrific massacre of Palestinians who were seeking aid in that new mercenary led scheme. So Scahill will break all of that down for us. Also want to get his reaction to some Jake Tapper comments about the college student protests that I think will be interesting.

[Tom Yamas]

Yeah. Which means that we have to watch the video again. We've already watched it once this morning and I don't know that I can do it again.

[Tom Brokaw]

Are you sure? It's a pleasure to be here this morning, Emily.

[Tom Yamas]

No, I changed my mind.

[Tom Brokaw]

Also got to get to news with regard to Ukraine and Russia. They were able to effectuate this quite dramatic attack on Russian warplanes deep inside of Russia. This happens as peace talks are ongoing there. So that is incredibly significant. We've got more Elon news for you. Bunch of news articles coming out about some inside details about his drug use and Trump sort of losing confidence in him asking at one point, wait a second, were the cuts, was this all bullshit? Which is kind of surprising that he didn't know that. It was all bull anyway, so we've got a lot going on there. Joni Ernst, senator, Republican senator, defending the proposed Medicaid cuts by saying, hey, we're all gonna die at some point.

[Tom Yamas]

Incredible. She's fact checked that crystal. I dare you.

[Tom Brokaw]

No lies detected.

[Tom Yamas]

I guess, is she wrong?

[Tom Brokaw]

No lies detected. And we do have the.

[Tom Yamas]

Well, she put an even better apology video out. So stay tuned for that too.

[Tom Brokaw]

Literally walking through a graveyard.

[Tom Yamas]

It's something else. So make sure you stay tuned for that one.

[Tom Brokaw]

Yeah. Before we get to any of that though, we are tracking developments out of Boulder, Colorado. We can put this tear sheet up on the screen. There was an attack that's being described as a terror attack. Eight people injured, set on fire actually in Boulder, Colorado. And they say Afterman allegedly targets rally for Israeli hostages. So this is a group of protesters who's been gathering, my understanding is on a weekly basis calling for the release and the return of Israeli hostages. And, and they have a suspect in custody already, 45 year old man identified as Mohamed Sabri Solomon, alleged to have thrown device into a group of people who had assembled in this pedestrianized zone for a peaceful protest for Israeli hostages. And like I said, eight people injured. I believe two had to be airlifted to a special burn unit. So that was kind of the nature of their injuries. And there's a video coming out from the scene, Emily, obviously is just absolutely horrific. And he was, you know, he seemed frankly quite unwell but was sort of ranting and raped saying free Palestine. And of course this comes on the heels of that horrific attack here in D.C. as well in which the two Israeli embassy staffers were murdered by someone else who also said free Palestine. So this is certainly going to heighten interest in what is going on here.

[Tom Yamas]

Yeah. And local news is reporting that one of the victims actually was a Holocaust survivor.

[Tom Brokaw]

Mostly elderly woman, right?

[Tom Yamas]

Yeah, elderly woman. I think almost everybody who was being burned. So you can see in the videos of the suspect, he's walking around with Molotov cocktails and his shirt off. So reportedly, according to local news, I think it's Channel nine out there in Boulder, at least one of the victims was, and they all are suffering from burns. If you look up the videos. Be careful looking up the videos. They're pretty rough. But if you look up the videos people were burning, it's a really awful scene. I want to add Crystal. Bill Mulugian is reporting that three senior DHS sources have told Fox that the Boulder terror suspect is an Egyptian national in the US Illegally as a visa overstay who entered the US during the Biden administration. Bill says, I'm told He arrived at LAX on August, in August of 2022 on a B1B2 nonimmigrant visa with an authorized stay through 2023. But he overstayed and never left. He filed some sort of claim with USCIS, potentially an asylum claim, back in 2022. But in 2023, under the Biden admin, USCIS gave him work authorization that, though expired in March. So this is coming. It expired March 28th. So it's coming the last couple of months after his work authorization expired.

[Tom Brokaw]

Yeah, so it looks like a visa overstay, Egyptian national. So, yeah, I mean, you have horrific attack here and you have, you know, free Palestine being yelled protests for Israeli hostages. You have someone who's an immigrant, Egyptian national, visa overstay. So there are a lot of obviously incendiary political issues that are swirling inside of this. And, you know, I would just say that similar to the attack that we covered here, this is obviously not going to benefit in any way. If you care about the cause of freedom, humanity, peace and civilization, this is directly at odds with any movement to free Palestine or free any human beings around the world. One other thing that I'll say, and this is a point that Shaile Ben Ephraim was making on Twitter, you know, rather controversially, obviously the attackers in both of these attacks are responsible for their horrific actions. As I said before, this man seemed sort of unwell, but in any case, they're responsible for their actions. But it is also true that if you're concerned about antisemitism and hate and violence around the world, you know, Israel intentionally conflating all Jewish people with their own atrocities that they're committing is going to lead to an increase in anti Semitism. And so if you care about the safety of Jewish people, as you certainly should, the actions that are being taken, the genocide that is being committed in Gaza is making Jewish peoples unsafe everywhere. It is contributing to that horrific climate. Especially as I said, when there is such an overt effort to conflate all Jewish people with the actions of this at this point, completely rogue state. So you know, that's I guess my perspective on some of what is unfolding here.

[Tom Yamas]

Just want to underscore the point you made about peace and this not helping anyone anywhere towards the cause of peace should add Cash Patel has said they are investigating this as a targeted terror attack. So much more details to come from that vantage point. What they turn up in the investigation, we will obviously continue to follow that story.

[Tom Brokaw]

Indeed. All right, let's turn to the latest with regard to economic news and we have Jeff Stein joining us.

[Lester Holt]

Hey, this is Jenny Garth from I Do Part 2, Ozempic In a pill. It's oral Semaglutide and is now available from Future health. Go to futurehealth.com to get affordable access to Oral Semaglutide, Ozempic and zepbound for only $3 a day, no insurance needed. Visit futurehealth.com future without the e to.

[Tom Brokaw]

Start losing this week, Future Health weight.

[Lester Holt]

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Down or NBC News.

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I'm Tom Brokaw. We hope to see you back here.

[Lester Holt]

I'm Lester Holt. It's carried forward. Tom Yamas is there for us. Firefighters are still working around the clock. As the world changes, we look for what endures.

[Tom Brokaw]

We are coming on the air with.

[Tom Yamas]

Breaking news right now.

[Lester Holt]

We look for a constant and from one era to the next.

[Tom Yamas]

Trust is the anchor for NBC Nightly News. I'm Tom Yamas.

[Lester Holt]

A new chapter begins NBC Nightly News with Tom Yamas evenings on NBC. You're great at protecting your own personal information. You probably even use things like two factor authentication, strong passwords and a vpn. But as much as you try to be in control of how your information is protected, there are lots of places that also have it and they might not be as careful as you are. That's why Lifelock monitors millions of data points every second for identity threats. If your identity is stolen, a LifeLock US based restoration specialist will help solve identity theft issues on your behalf, guaranteed or your money back. Plus all Lifelock plans are backed by the million dollar protection package, meaning LifeLock will reimburse you up to the limits of your plan. If you lose money due to identity theft. You might not be able to control how others handle your personal information, but you can help protect it. With LifeLock, save up to 40% your first year. Call 1-800-LIFELOCK and use promo code IHEARTRA or go to lifelock.com iheart for 40% off. Terms apply.

[Tom Brokaw]

We are lucky to be joined this morning by the chief economics reporter for the Washington Post, the one and only Jeff Stein. Great to see you, sir.

[Jeff Stein]

Hey, thanks for having me back.

[Tom Brokaw]

Yeah, of course, anytime. Let's go and put your latest reporting up here on the screen about Wall Street's concerns with regard to Trump's big beautiful bill. Your headline is Wall Street Warns Trump Aids the GOP Tax bill could jolt bond markets. And if there's one thing we've seen in this Trump administration, it is the significance and importance and power that the bond markets wield. So tell us what you're hearing here.

[Jeff Stein]

So the core of the problem here is that US Interest rates are already very high and the tax bill could add between estimates vary 2 to $5 trillion to the deficit. And what that means is the U.S. treasury Department will have to go out and auction more bonds, auction more deb debt to cover up the gap between what the US Government spends and what it brings in in revenue. The problem is that we've already seen that there's a question about the demand among investors worldwide for these US Assets. And the big problem potentially, and you know, it's really hard to know exactly what could happen, but what Wall street is concerned about, what they're telling us and what they're telling the Trump administration is that if demand for new treasury debt, these new bond issuances is insufficient, you could see basically the US Government have to increase the premium, the yield, it's called, on what investors recoup in return. So if there's insufficient demand, the price goes up. Basically what the US Government has to pay to get people to buy this debt goes up. And then you can get a really dangerous spike or spiral where borrowing costs rise because the, the, the premium that the government has to offer continues to increase. And so that's the core concern here. And just to, I know it sounds probably not that relevant for people's day to day lives, but mortgages, auto loans, things throughout the economy are tied very fundamentally to the price of the bond. And as the yield prices of the new bond goes up, the prices of Old bonds collapses. So that means if you are someone who has put a lot of money in your portfolio into bonds, that part of your portfolio could significantly lose its value. And that's traditionally considered a very safe investment. Right. Like equity stocks. That's the risky thing. Crypto is the riskiest. Bonds is supposed to be what's safe. And that's the reason that bonds are sort of the core pillar of the global financial system. $30 trillion in US debt is used to borrow against, trade, against, to have, you know, millions of people, retirees, safeguard their retirements and their assets. And so Wall street is very worried about a potential destabilization in that market, in that sector.

[Tom Yamas]

And Jeff, I want to get your reaction to this clip of Jamie Dimon. We can go ahead and roll the second element and we'll get Jeff's reaction on the backside of it, this one.

[Jeff Stein]

Underlying both, that is the enemy within. I'm not as worried about China. China is a potential adversary. They're doing a lot of things well. They have a lot of problems. What I really worry about is us. Can we get our own act together, our own values, our own capability, our own management? What you heard today on stage was the amount of mismanagement is extraordinary by state, by city, for pensions.

[Tom Yamas]

And that stuff is going to kill us.

[Jeff Stein]

And I always get asked this question.

[Tom Yamas]

Are we going to be the reserve currency?

[Tom Brokaw]

No.

[Jeff Stein]

If we are not the preeminent military and the preeminent economy in 40 years, we will not be the reserve currency.

[Lester Holt]

That's a fact. Just read history. I think we will be.

[Jeff Stein]

Warren Buffett here would tell you we're enormously resilient.

[Lester Holt]

I agree with that.

[Jeff Stein]

I think this time is different. This time we have to get our.

[Lester Holt]

Act together and we have to do it very quickly.

[Tom Yamas]

Jeff, I want to actually that last sentence, that last statement he just made where he says this time I think is different. That's really interesting with your reporting. So that was diamond on Friday at the Reagan National Economic Forum. And Jeff, why is it that people like Jamie Dimon still, even after weeks of the taco conversation, feel like this time truly is different? Is it because they see people like Scott Besant and Donald Trump as wanting, continuing to want to remove the dollar as the world currency? Is that what's really going on behind all of this?

[Jeff Stein]

Yes, just. I'll get back to that question in one second. I couldn't go without pausing for a second to comment on Jamie Dimon and someone from Wall street saying, you know, criticizing mismanagement of state and local governments, when it's been, what, you know, a little less than two decades since Wall street literally crashed the global economy in the worst crisis since the Great Depression. I mean, the guy, the guys on Wall street have, you know, their, their, their willingness to say what they think and be heedless of their own reputations.

[Tom Brokaw]

Is kind of speaking of, Speaking of enemies from within.

[Tom Yamas]

Yeah. It takes one to know what he was worried about. Pensions. Yeah. It's.

[Jeff Stein]

To go back to your question, there has been, I think, a very interesting shift from the core locus of concern on Wall street being the tariffs, which are still, I wrote it down here. The effective tariff rate is still eight times what it was before Trump took office. We've seen a huge spike in trade tensions, but he has backed off due to the taco trade. This is the Trump always chickens out joke that's spread on Wall Street. But, you know, despite how big that disruption is, people are now more concerned about the tax bill and what it could mean, especially when coupled with the trade bill. One thing I think is very clear in that clip, or is clear to me at least, there's a lot of people on Wall street who want to tell reporters and tell others that they're very worried about the impact of the taxpayer in the bond market. What they don't want to do is go out in public and say, hey, Trump administration, we have concerns with who are top economic policy priority because they don't want to be in the Trump administration's crosshairs. So you're seeing Dimon and others go around saying, we got to be really careful about the bond market. Also, you know, the tax bill has some good stuff, has some bad stuff. We need to be careful with bonds. But that's, that's kind of how they're trying to square the circle here. They're issuing increasingly vocal warnings about the bond market. As you know, the Senate is taking up this bill, but they're not, they're not out in front of criticizing the Trump administration and the Republican Party about it because, you know, for obvious political reasons.

[Tom Brokaw]

Yeah, well, in the bond market is what got Trump to move off of his most maximalist tariff position. So I think they've also identified, like, a potential weakness, an area where if they just come out and bash Donald Trump. Yeah, I'm not defending these people and their cowardice, but they're thinking, okay, strategically, if we just go out and bash Donald Trump, that's probably not going to get us where we want to go. But he clearly has an interest in what happens with the bond market. So maybe if we can make him nervous about that, maybe that will change the landscape. But I mean, the other irony here, Jeff, is like the $4 trillion that's being added to the deficit is by and large tax cuts for guys like Jamie Dimon. So when they're even like, I don't know, I don't know, this may go a little too far. That also to me is quite stunning. Now, my suspicion is that they would like to still get their tax cut, but just have much more aggressive cuts in the social safety net in order to pay for them. But what do you make of that particular dynamic?

[Jeff Stein]

I think that's really the right question, Crystal. This bill does not have the large sort of, I mean, it has some, it has hundreds of billions of dollars, but in four, in a 4 trillion or $5 trillion bill, unlike the first tax bill in 2017, which really was centered on massively reducing the corporate rate from 35 to 21%, which the first bill did, this bill really showers cash on households primarily or disproportionately, I would argue households with the highest incomes. We have. We did a story recently about 30% of the tax cuts go to those with over. I think it was 3 or $400,000 per year in income. It is slightly a different constituency than, you know, the Jamie Dimon. You know, it's not necessarily for those businesses on Wall street themselves. So I'm not sure that this tax cut is as attractive of a package to them. I mean, they do have the rate cuts in there. There are cuts for, you know, pass through businesses which, you know, these are people who often have over $1 million a year in income. There are, there's a massive reduction in the estate tax. So there are things for very rich people, but it's a little less, I think of a, of a grab bag for Wall street businesses and people like diamond than, than the first round of tax cuts was. I think you really hit the nail on the head that they want more spending cuts. So obviously, right. If we're talking about the debt being too big from the tax bill, there's a few options they can spare. They can reduce the amount of tax cuts, but that would require them to either pare back the amount that people at the top are getting or really try to do even less of the Trump campaign promises on no taxes on tips, no tax on Social Security. I don't think given how much of this is already for upper income people, I think it's very unlikely that they move to pare back what is in there for lower and middle income households.

[Tom Yamas]

And that would also be an admission that their tax cuts aren't going to get the growth that they're now saying. The CBO is underestimating the growth that we.

[Jeff Stein]

That's right. That's a very good point. They now have been saying, like this bill will cut the deficit because it will lead to so much growth in sort of a Lafferian curve way.

[Tom Yamas]

Yes.

[Jeff Stein]

I think on the spending cuts, they do have cuts in there on Medicaid and food stamps, but they're already pretty large. And my sense from talking to Republicans on the Hill is that they, they, they fear the politics of an even bigger cut to health care than they do the politics of the bond market, which could be dicey. But, you know, the US has added trillions and trillions and trillions of dollars to its debt over and over and over again. And there haven't, we haven't seen the bond market freak out that, you know, people like, you know, the deficit hawks have been warning about for a long time. So, you know, maybe there's still more that they can do without without triggering this sort of panic. So, you know, the other thing that, that we've written about is that they've entertained. I mean, Steve Bannon has talked to the president directly. We've reported about raising taxes on millionaires or at least raising us a bit of an overstatement about basically letting the tax cut that they originally approved for the top income bracket to expire in 2025. That would basically really get them out of a lot of this bond market chaos they're dealing with. But they don't want to go there because they don't want to raise taxes on the rich. And Republicans hate that.

[Tom Yamas]

So.

[Tom Brokaw]

Right.

[Jeff Stein]

It is a kind of fascinating thing to look at how they're trying to get out of this box.

[Tom Brokaw]

All right, let's talk a little bit about China because it's the other big thing that's happening. Put guys first a 5 up on the screen. This was Trump's truth social media about China in which he said two weeks ago China was in grave economic danger. The very high tariffs I set made it virtually impossible for China to trade into the US Marketplace, which is by far number one in the world. We went in effect, cold turkey with China and it was devastating for them. Many factories closed. There was, to put it mildly, civil unrest. I saw what was happening and didn't like it for them, not for us. I made a fast deal with China in order to save them from What I thought was going to be a very bad situation, I didn't want to see that happen. Because of this deal, everything quickly stabilized. China got back to business, and as usual, everybody was happy. That was the good news. The bad news is that China, perhaps not surprisingly to some, has totally violated its agreement with us. So much for being Mr. Nice Guy. Can you break down for us, Jeff, what is going on here with Trump and China? What the reality is?

[Jeff Stein]

Yeah. So I had a story about a week ago about what really led Trump to back down on China. And people inside the White House were explaining that basically what happened was it was increasingly clear that the 145% tariffs on China were not just hitting guys on Wall Street. We're not just hitting sort of people who work at the ports and sort of coastal types, but that they were really affecting Trump's base, that truckers and sort of like shippers and people who Trump considers his people were getting sort of clobbered by these tariffs. And that fact, we reported, created the space for White House officials who didn't like these tariffs to go to Trump and say, hey, your own people, your own base is getting hit by this, so you need to figure out a way to get these things lowered. And that was what led to the talks in Geneva that led to the accord agreed to by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessen. The thing that Trump is complaining about is that even beyond the tariffs themselves, China retaliated by restricting what are called rare earth metals, which are confusingly not actually that rare, but they are essential. And basically 80% of production or facilitation, synthesis of these rare earth metals is in China. So basically, most of the vast majority of the world's production is there, and they control that supply chain that's critical for the US Defense industry, for US Health care sector, for all kinds of really critical economic functions. And I don't know enough personally to weigh in on this, but the Trump administration feels that China has not really removed those restrictions that they agreed to in the Switzerland accord and that they're still continuing to restrict those essential metals. And that that, you know, might not show up in the macroeconomic data, but could severely sort of weaken the US Defense industrial capacity for a long time. And, you know, the President thinks that thought that he had an agreement to get that off the books and doesn't feel like that has been violated.

[Tom Yamas]

Yeah. And Jeff, this also gets to this tension that you started by mentioning at the beginning. On the one hand, there's this Trump boys chickens out narrative. On the other Hand, as you said, you wrote down the level of tariff that like the increase of tariffs that we're actually at from the baseline before Donald Trump took over. And, you know, maybe he's chickening out on some of those points, or I'm sure he would just say it was negotiating. But on the other hand, he actually still has a pretty high level of tariffs relative to everything that came before him.

[Jeff Stein]

And that's actually another really big part of the tax bond market discussion, because if spending cuts of a huge magnitude are politically unpalatable and they feel like they can't really reduce the size of the tax cut itself anymore, tariffs, I mean, it's been ridiculed, but it is true that the US Government has quadrupled or more the amount of revenue it's bringing in through tariffs, and that can offset the fears in the bond market. So, you know, we've seen kind of a stalling of the deals that Trump said he was going to make with the Europeans and the Japanese and the Indians, that all that talk has really slowed down. And I think there's a legitimate question about whether part of that is due to the desire to bring in revenue via these high import duties, which, you know, it's kind of an obvious point, but those fall quite heavily on lower income Americans who rely, you know, who a disproportionate share of their spending is on imports of food and, you know, other sort of critical necessities, whereas, you know, the tax bill disproportionately hurts them with the spending cuts. So it's a really potentially getting pinched on both sides here.

[Tom Brokaw]

Jeff, last question for you. We had court last week say, okay, these Liberation Day tariffs, they vastly exceed the authority that you're invoking here. We had another court say, okay. The appeals court said, okay, well, while we're figuring this out, you can still keep the tariffs in place. The Trump administration has been very aggressive in going out and saying that regardless of, first of all, they're really mad about the court's decision. But also, second of all, they're saying it doesn't change anything. We have other powers we can use. So what is your expectation of where we are with regard to Trump and his desire and ability to, you know, to levy massive tariffs in whatever way he chooses to?

[Jeff Stein]

I don't want to bore your listeners any more than I already have, and especially with like a long winded explanation of like, the different laws or here. But to try to give you a quick summary, Trump imposed tariffs immediately under a law called iefo, which is a sort of national security emergency. And that's the one that the courts have targeted as being beyond the ability of the president. That said, there are other tariff authorities, they're called section 301 and section 232 tariffs that basically require at first an administrative investigation. The administration has to go out, do a bunch of work and then say because of that work now we can do these tariffs. And that work is currently ongoing. It just takes a little bit of time. But there's really, I think very, very little doubt that those tariffs can be slowed down by the court. So even if the courts take off the emergency powers tariffs, which they have, you know, slowed down but then were put back in, even if that happens, there's still these other tariff authorities that I don't think really anyone questions their ability to do. And I think those are going to stay and actually could be even bigger in some ways than the national security tariffs because those are tariffs on sectors. So like every car, every bit of steel, every part of computer. So that's kind of where this is heading. It could circumscribe some of the flexibility he has, but it doesn't change sort of like the economic fundamentals of what he wants to do.

[Tom Brokaw]

Gotcha. All right, Justine, thank you so much. And you are never boring, sir. We always appreciate your insights.

[Jeff Stein]

My pleasure. Thanks for having me on.

[Tom Brokaw]

Great to see you.

[Lester Holt]

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[Tom Brokaw]

We are very fortunate to be rejoined this morning with Jeremy Scahill, who of course is co founder of Dropsite News alongside our very own Ryan Grim. Great to see you Jeremy.

[Lester Holt]

Great to be back.

[Tom Brokaw]

So there's a lot of developments to go through with you. Let's first of all put these horrific images up on the screen of I hate even calling it aid distribution, but whatever you want to call this, what you see here first is the dynamic they've set up where Palestinians are, you know, just running in survival of the fittest Hunger Games style to grab whatever quote, unquote aid is available. But it turns even more horrific as Israelis began firing on this crowd, killing dozens of people. And you can see them fleeing, you can see them taking cover here. Jeremy, what do we know about what exactly unfolded here? Because I know the Israelis are completely denying that any of this actually occurred.

[Lester Holt]

I mean, I think it's important to remember what Netanyahu and other members of his war cabinet said at the beginning when we started to learn about this so called Gaza humanitarian foundation. And that is that it was never meant to be an actual aid distribution program, that this was meant to offer the veneer of giving humanitarian aid to Palestinians to sort of quiet down some of the critics from within the pro Israel camp internationally. Netanyahu specifically said that he had been approached by Republican senators saying that they didn't want the appearance of starvation of the Palestinians of Gaza to affect the ability of the United States to continue funding and arming this war of annihilation. And so we just have to put that out there front and center. From the moment that this launched early last week, there have been dozens of Palestinians killed because Israelis have fired on Them either on their way to get aid or after they've retrieved aid. I personally know a Palestinian family. Four members were killed last week after they had gone to retrieve one of these small boxes that barely has enough food for their family. They were killed by tank ordinance, according to survivors of the hit against them. And what we saw unfold over the weekend, many Palestinians are calling it the Witkoff massacre, named after Steve Witkoff, the special envoy, because anger is mounting inside of Gaza toward Trump and his administration because they feel like they are just completely taking Israel's side and trying to set the Palestinians up with a so called truce or ceasefire deal that would enable Netanyahu to resume the intensity of the full genocide after either seven days or 60 days. So what we witnessed here was the Israelis unleash gunfire and other attacks on this crowd. And as videos and reports start coming out of Gaza depicting this, and we start hearing international doctors that are on the ground there describing the injuries that they're treating, Israel then puts out a video that it says actually shows Hamas was firing on people retrieving aid. Well, that video that the Israelis put out has now been geolocated and it wasn't near Rafah where where this Witkoff massacre, as the Palestinians are calling it, occurred, but actually had occurred at a different time. And it wasn't Hamas that was actually firing on Palestinians. It was a private gang that there's significant evidence to suggest is being bankrolled or backed by the Israelis to operate as kind of an armed thug force that is selling aid to Palestinians. So, you know, and the final thing I'll say on this Crystal, is that David Satterfield, who was President Biden's top humanitarian aid official and a very, very militantly pro Israel guy, recently said on a national interview on CNN that there's no evidence whatsoever that he saw during his entire time when he was a senior Biden administration official, that Hamas is hoarding any significant quantities of aid or is engaged in any of the kinds of activities that the Israelis are accusing them of. So clearly here, what we've seen is a massacre of Palestinians who were lured into this so called aid trap, where the actual point of it ultimately was set out in the open by Netanyahu force Palestinians into an ever small shrinking killing cage, and then forced them to depend on that, on the food inside of that killing cage so that you can either kill more of them or ultimately implement what they keep calling Trump's plan, which is to forcibly deport Palestinians from Gaza.

[Tom Yamas]

And Jeremy, can I get your reaction? Help us parse B2. This is Ryan's tweet. He actually said the statement from the IDF about last night's massacre was distributed to journalists. And because Ryan didn't agree to be off the record, and this wasn't sent directly to him from the idf, he actually just posted what was supposed to what the IDF wanted to remain, quote, unquote, off the record. And their statement says approximately one kilometer away from the humanitarian aid distribution site and outside the operating hours of the humanitarian aid distribution site, IDF troops acted to prevent several suspects from approaching the troops. During the activity, warning shots were fired towards several suspects who advanced toward the troops. There's no connection between this incident and the false claims made against the idf. So, Jeremy, on the one hand, what we're seeing there is an admission of military action from the idf, right? That's, that's part of the statement. So can you help us understand how Israel is explaining what happened?

[Lester Holt]

Well, I'm really glad that Ryan posted this because it sort of opens this window into what happens behind the scenes that most of the public in the world is never allowed access to. And that is that Israel will send out official statements that make a certain claim in a very clear way. And then they'll sort of brief journalists off the record, not on background, off the record record as a way of trying to ensure that this narrative, as false as it may be, penetrates into the coverage. And you see these claims repeated all the time by journalists. I mean, the track record now is a 19 month track record where Palestinians videotape, witness, and then tell the world what has happened. They're smeared as being Hamas. Fake or fabricated videos or out of context videos or mistranslated documents are then presented to the public. And then it sort of seems like it's a, well, Hamas says this and the good guys say that. And you even see Israeli officials saying, who do you want to believe? Hamas or an American run aid organization and the Israeli military? So what Ryan did was sort of allow people to see, just for a moment, the way that the propaganda is manufactured. And the reality is, Emily, that all throughout this genocide, we've seen this repeated over and over and over about massive tunnels under hospitals, Hamas using protected facilities as military bases. Israel has never been able to produce evidence for the most incendiary claims that it's made. And they're relying on the fact that many media outlets will take the testimony of Palestinians and accept that that's Hamas's narrative. You know, many people in Palestine are from different political factions. Hamas did not win 100% of the vote the last time that they had a Democratic election. You know, many of the people that Israel is killing in its war aren't even members of Hamas, not to mention, like, military members. Palestine is a diverse society, and I think it really speaks to the effect of the dehumanization campaign that the Israeli military can put out a video that has nothing to do with a massacre that it could committed. And so many news outlets and just people on social media accept Israel's word for it, when 19 months of context and history indicate that you should never believe the first draft ever of what Israel says unless they provide indisputable evidence, which they never do.

[Tom Brokaw]

Yeah, and the hope is just to push off, to make the conversation and the telling of facts contested. And by the time there's any conclusive investigation, everybody's moved on. I mean, that's really the goal here, is that I don't think that they believe that if there was actually an investigation here by the New York Times or whoever with the limited ability they have to penetrate into Gaza, that they would come to the conclusion that, oh, yes, Israel was correct. I don't think they believe that. They just want to push that reckoning off into the future. And then it's contested. And by the time any sort of actual, definitive conclusion is reached by the sanctioned official outlets, everyone's moved on to the next thing. I wanna go ahead and get you to walk us through what's going on with these ceasefire negotiations and put the tear sheet up on the screen here, guys, of Jeremy's report. Your headline here is how Israel and Wyckoff are trying to strong arm Hamas into a deal that does not end the genocide. And you go point by point through what it was that Witkoff or Hamas and the administration had agreed to, and then what the ISRA Israeli are pushing for in this quote, unquote deal. And it seems like there's a number of things here that are meant to be poison pills. So just walk us through the dynamics and some of the critical differences between these two drafts.

[Lester Holt]

Well, first of all, starting a month or so ago, you had direct talks between Hamas and an unusual envoy for the Trump administration, a Palestinian American academic named Bashar Ababa, who was a lifelong Democrat that broke with the Democratic Party even before Kamala Harris became the nominee and had denounced Joe Biden as Genocide Joe and said that he felt that Palestinians would have a better chance of ending the war under Donald Trump. And he's actually been very critical of Trump publicly, which is unusual in the sort of Trump world. But he started an open channel with Hamas to try to work on the Edan Alexander deal. The American citizens citizen who had been in the Israeli military was taken on October 7 and they successfully did make a deal to release him. And there was supposed to be a lifting of Israel's siege. As a result of that, Trump publicly calling for a ceasefire. That didn't happen, but the discussions continued. And basically what happened is that the Americans worked with Hamas and they said, why don't you lay out for us what your terms would be for a ceasefire, but it has to fit within this category. And Witkoff and Bhabha made clear to Hamas what the kind of bottom lines were. Hamas then delivers a 13 point proposal that fit in line with what the Americans said. This was Last Sunday, on May 25, Hamas then announced that it has made an agreement with the United States for a framework for negotiating a ceasefire. Now, in a mediation process or a negotiation process, this is very common. One side drafts something, the mediators look at it, they say, okay, we're going to go now back to the other side. So they were told, yes, this is acceptable, this fits within the American requirements. Now we're going to go to Israel. And my sources within Hamas have said that the Americans said, we're going to try to push Israel on these terms. So then Hamas waits. Two days later, Donald Trump is in the Oval Office. He summons Steve Witkoff to come up in front of the press. And Wycoff had denounced Hamas, saying that what they had given as a proposal was unacceptable, which, you know, from Hamas's perspective was crazy because. Because this wasn't meant to be an ultimatum. It was sort of a starting point from what Hamas position would be. So Witkoff then says, we're on the precipice of sending out a new term sheet. He called it, to use a business term instead of a framework for a ceasefire. And what then happens two days later is they then come up with what was a draft that was primarily written by Ron Dermer, Netanyahu's top adviser and lead official doing these negotiations. And what they basically did was return to all of Israel's ultimatums. The bottom line on this is that Hamas has made many concessions in this back and forth, but they've identified as minimal red lines, that they want a clear path to an end to the genocide. They've said in their own proposal that the moment a ceasefire agreement is signed, Hamas will totally relinquish governing authority and all power in Gaza. This is extraordinary to see this in the document, because it's Hamas on the record saying we will relinquish power in favor of an independent Palestinian committee of technocrats, when we then obtained all three versions of these proposals that we published in full last week. And what's extraordinary is that the Israeli proposal took that out. It took out of the ceasefire framework Hamas agreeing to immediately relinquish governing authority of Gaza the moment a ceasefire is signed. And there's some theories that have been floating around for some time that Netanyahu wants Hamas to remain in power because he can easily demonize them as a terrorist organization.

[Tom Brokaw]

I mean, hasn't he effectively said exactly that in the past?

[Lester Holt]

It's complicated. Netanyahu has, for certain strategic reasons, said that the only way to thwart a unified Palestinian state is to keep Hamas in power in Gaza. But there are many other layers to the context of what happened at the time that we could go into, if you want. But, yes, there certainly are benefits to having a party in power that you have effectively dehumanized, demonized. That is listed on the State Department list of terrorist organizations, the British designation as a terrorist organization. But I think it's much deeper. They even are saying it's unacceptable for Mahmoud Abbas, the head of the Palestinian Authority, to be in charge in Gaza. And he has basically acted as an agent of the occupation. That's how he's widely seen among Palestinians. So it's not just about Hamas. It's that Israel doesn't want Palestinians in control of Palestine at all. And, you know, that's really what I think the game is here. It's not just about Hamas. It's that we don't want a Palestinian committee. They want probably a puppet sort of coalition of certain Arab nations that have normalized relations with Israel to be the ones that come in as an outside force. They don't want Palestinians in charge of their own political destiny or to continue forward with a path of a national liberation struggle.

[Tom Yamas]

And from the US from the perspective of US Interests, the deal that you just laid out, Jeremy, you know, if you're the Trump administration, if you're Steve Witkoff and you're continuing to get pushed by Israel as they remove the provision that you just mentioned, it seems like US Interests are actually being thwarted. And that's separate from what, all the disagreements that the three of us have with the Trump administration's position throughout this entire process. But it just seems like US Interests are sort of obviously being sidelined or harmed here in this negotiation process.

[Lester Holt]

Yeah, I mean, there were indications going back to Trump's first term and the way he interacted with Mahmoud Abbas from the Palestinian Authority, things that Trump has said also to Arab Americans. There are indications that Trump understands that the Palestinian struggle for liberation or statehood has very clearly not identified the United States as a party it wants to be at war with. It's why Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad are not conducting any attacks outside of the boundaries of historic Palestine. And, you know, I think objectively speaking, it would be in the US Interest to have a stable, independent Palestinian state that has good relations with the United States. As you know, Emily, as well as any journalist covering this, there are multiple camps in Trump world. And I think what we're seeing here is that the most militant, hardline kind of Zionist camp within Trump's political network, his administration and his financiers of his campaign, they don't want any Palestinian state. You know, people like Mariam Adelson and Mike Huckabee don't believe there's a such thing as Palestinians. But, you know, Ryan Grim and I have also heard from sources within the administration that are in a different camp, that are in an anti interventionist camp, that believe that the United States should not be entangled in foreign wars, that are growing increasingly concerned about Witkoff's conduct. The idea that he's morphing into an Antony Blinken type figure, when at the beginning he seemed to have some spine, he seemed to be willing to summon Netanyahu and make him understand America has limits with you. Now, there is still some hope, I think, not just among the Palestinians that are negotiating this, but more broadly that eventually Trump is going to understand that allowing Netanyahu to be in control of agreements that clearly the United States can have the final word on is counter to American interest. It is not actually in the US Interest to have someone setting fires all over the Middle East. I mean, really fascinating. When Trump was asked about Iran at that press conference in the Oval Office last week where he had summoned Witkoff to make the Gaza comments, he was asked by reporters about what did he say to Netanyahu and Trump? Basically, he said it out loud. I told them to back off. So, again, people often attack me and they say, why are you believing what Trump says? Or why are you believing what Wyckoff says? I'm not believing anything. I'm reporting accurately on it. And I'm sorry that you think that reporting factually on Donald Trump and an issue of massive consequence somehow means that I'm getting tricked by the Trump administration. This is called basic journalism. And we're Gonna continue doing it.

[Tom Brokaw]

Speaking of basic journalism, I think that's a good transition to Jake Tapper and his appearance on Bill Maher's show over the weekend. And he got asked about the student protests, the pro Palestine student protests that have been happening on college campuses since the outbreak of this genocide. And he gave an answer that has elicited a lot of interest. So let's go ahead and take a listen to what he had to say.

[Jeff Stein]

It has to do with an academic.

[Tom Brokaw]

Theology of oppressor and oppressed. Yes. If you only look at the world.

[Lester Holt]

As oppressor versus oppressed, you have.

[Jeff Stein]

You then have to choose.

[Tom Yamas]

In a conflict, this group is the oppressor.

[Lester Holt]

This group is the oppressed. It's also why, for example, there have.

[Jeff Stein]

Been conflicts on other college campuses where.

[Lester Holt]

Gay students have protested things that are.

[Jeff Stein]

Going on in Muslim countries having to do with the LGBTQ community in those countries.

[Tom Brokaw]

And the gay students are made to.

[Lester Holt]

Be the oppressor because a lot of them are white.

[Tom Yamas]

And that's also what's going on when.

[Jeff Stein]

It comes to the Israeli Palestinian conflict.

[Lester Holt]

The Israelis are made to be the oppressor, the Palestinians the oppressed, and on.

[Jeff Stein]

And on and on. And that's part of what's going on at Harvard. That theology, that way of looking at the world.

[Tom Brokaw]

What do you make of that explanation for the motivation behind these protests?

[Lester Holt]

Yeah, I mean, look, part of the reason why we're seeing such vibrant activism on college campuses, such uncompromising principal positions, is that young people's brains are not contaminated by the likes of people like Jake Tapper, who have just been, you know, conveyor belts for propaganda from the very moment that this genocidal war began. Their brains are not poisoned by this dogmatic adherence to the conventions of imperial foreign policy, which, unfortunately, Jake Tapper has totally morphed in to a spokesperson for the greatest extra excesses of imperialism during the past 19 months. And also, sometimes the truth is just true. No one with a brain in their head can look objectively at what has happened over the past 19 months and come to any conclusion but that Israel is the oppressor. In this case, they are burning children alive. They are tricking people to come to aid to get aid, and then drone striking them, hitting them with tanks, firing bullets upon them. They're bombing hospitals. They're shredding children. This morning, I saw a girl who looked like she was about 6 or 7 years old. Her body was completely severed in half. Every single day, we are watching Palestinian children burned alive with American weapons. And Jake Tapper has the audacity to use the phrase academic theology. The theology that Jake Tapper and people like him subscribe to is this deference to the lie filled agenda of the most powerful and violent forces on earth. It's shameful. But their day is over. Their day is over. Shows like this are spreading because independent news outlets refuse to be conveyor belts for the lies of the powerful. Jake Tapper is grasping at straws because his era is done.

[Tom Yamas]

It's just galling, especially as somebody on the right to listen to Jake Tapper make that argument at this point after years of just horrible, horrible coverage that, I mean, the point of the oppressed oppressor dichotomy, Jeremy, and this is interesting, the problem is that you have these blanket applications of it. And Tapper there, he doesn't quite understand what he's saying because he brings in this idea that the gay students are being condemned as oppressors because they're white and then says that's the same lens that's being applied in Israel, Palestine. And it's like, dude, you don't even understand this idea that you are now condemning as the source of the poison, the source of all bad things happening here. The point is sometimes people actually are oppressors and sometimes people actually are oppressed. Not all of the time, but sometimes. And yes, some people take it too far and apply it universally, but sometimes it's actually true. And he seems to just be unable to understand that. A lot of young people aren't like, this is a great point that you made, Jeremy. A lot of young people aren't even paying attention to cnn. They have no idea what he's saying.

[Lester Holt]

Yeah, and I think, you know, we're in a moment where political alignments have shifted and I think that there's, there's, you know, also the issues around cancel culture and around speech. I think that anyone that genuinely believes in this doesn't believe in censoring the speech of people who are on the far right that they disagree with. I think that people who genuinely believe in free speech aren't against censoring those on the far left. And I think that genuinely people who are in support of free speech should be on the front lines right now of this, this vicious attack on speech related to Palestine. One of the things that I always have held onto, I have many criticisms of the United States. We have what I believe is the best speech laws on the books of any country in the world and they are worth fighting for. The idea that the notion of free speech was not only enshrined in the Constitution, but has been upheld by conservative and liberal justices throughout history. That's worth protecting with everything that we have. And so people like Jake Tapper are actually much more in alignment in many ways with people on the far right or in the Trump administration that are trying to demonize or criminalize the speech of people that are speaking out against Israel's genocidal war. I think people from all factions should realize that the time when your principle is shown is not when speech is being curbed against people you agree with, that it's being curbed or attacked against people with whom you have vehement disagreements. That's what actually shows what your principles are.

[Tom Yamas]

Yes.

[Tom Brokaw]

The other irony here is that, okay, not only if you're applying the oppressor, oppressed lens here and you are pro Palestine, you are applying it correctly, but it's also ironic to me because people like Tapper and Israelis and defenders of Israel, they are the most abusive of the oppressor, oppressed narrative. Because basically, the paradigm that they use to try, especially with, like, you know, to keep liberals on side, is to say, remember what happened to Jews in the Holocaust, which, of course was absolutely atrocious and nobody wants to see rupee, like, never again should be real. But then they just keep this one group of people in the perpetual victim category, no matter how circumstances change, no matter what the reality is, no matter what that group of people is doing. So, you know, and the other piece of this, of course, is that people like Tapper conflate all Jewish people with Israel and all Jewish people with being supportive of Israeli actions, which we also know is completely false and untrue and also plays into actually the very simplistic, like, victim narrative that you it he perpetuates and propagates with his propaganda.

[Tom Yamas]

And Jeremy, before we toss that to you, I just want to add the oppressive oppressed dichotomy, which, you know, he's 10 years late to saying, oh, maybe this is a thing that's happening among young people on college. Like, it's more of a millennial thing than it is a zoomer thing. But anyway, all this to say it's about power, the sort of Marxist, I don't even want to use his term, theology behind it, but it's about power dynamics. And that's where he also is completely clueless as to how this is, is, or is not being applied in that case as well.

[Lester Holt]

Yeah, I mean, to go back also to what, you know, what Crystal just said earlier, you know, you look at the recent protest organized by Jewish anti war activists to occupy Trump Tower. Fox News reported that as an anti Semitic protest in Germany. You've had numerous Jews arrested in Germany on anti Semitic hate speech charges, including Jewish people living in Germany who are Israeli citizens. I mean, this has become such a kind of lethal parody of the notion of what free speech is. And let us never forget that the United States, all of us who grew up in the United States, at every event, et cetera, were reminded of the greatest Generation. We're reminded of the sacrifices of World War II. This is the origin of what we're witnessing now when the United States and European countries decided to impose a European settler colonial state on Palestinian land. That's historical context that matters. And you know, at the end of the day, the position that the supporters of Israel's genocidal war take is that nothing can justify October 7th. But October 7th justifies everything. And this is a massive historical lie that necessitates people believing that history began on October 7th. It's a huge mistake for us not to take into account the 77 years of history that led up to this. Whatever anyone's political position is on this, let's debate based on facts and historical accuracy and not just invent our own paradigm where Israel equals Judaism. Masses of Jews around the world have been at the forefront of opposing this genocide and it's a total insult to the, to the Jewish faith for Netanyahu to pretend that his war of annihilation is somehow being done in the name of a religion.

[Tom Brokaw]

Yeah, that is all so well said. Jeremy Scahill. Always great to have you, sir. Thank you.

[Lester Holt]

Thank you both for all your work. Hey, this is Jenny Garth from I Do Part 2, Ozempic In a pill. It's oral Semaglutide and is now available from Future health. Go to futurehealth.com to get affordable access to oral semaglutide, Ozempic and Zepbound for only only $3 a day. No insurance needed. Visit futurehealth.com future without the e to.

[Tom Brokaw]

Start losing this week, Future Health weight.

[Lester Holt]

Loss data based on independent study sponsored by Future Health.

[Tom Brokaw]

Future Health is not a healthcare services provider.

[Lester Holt]

Meds are prescribed at providers discretion. NBC Nightly News Legacy isn't handed down or NBC News.

[Tom Brokaw]

I'm Tom Brokaw. We hope to see you back here.

[Lester Holt]

I'm Lester Holt. It's carried forward. Tom Yamas is there for firefighters. Fighters are still working around the clock. As the world changes, we look for what endures. We are coming on the air with breaking news. Right now, we look for a constant. And from one era to the next, Trust is the anchor for NBC Nightly News.

[Tom Yamas]

I'm Tom Yamas.

[Lester Holt]

A new chapter begins NBC Nightly News with Tom Yamas evenings on NBC. Let's be honest.

[Tom Yamas]

Most of us have a love hate.

[Tom Brokaw]

Relationship with wired bras.

[Lester Holt]

We love the lift, but hate the digging.

[Tom Brokaw]

We love the support, but hate feeling trapped. Well, Nyx just changed everything with Free Flex, a wired bra actually designed to work with your body, not against it. Freeflex features a revolutionary flexible wire that.

[Tom Yamas]

Moves when you move, bends when you.

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No poking, no stabbing, no constant readjusting, just. Just freedom to move. It also has a demi cup shape for a natural lift with a lower neckline that flatters in everything from V necks to dresses.

[Lester Holt]

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[Tom Brokaw]

For 15% off nyx.com Ukraine was able to pull off quite a stunning surprise drone attack within Russia, deep inside of Russia, on Russian air bases. We can put some of these images up on the screen that have come out. So a swarm of drones that had been smuggled into the country, and I'll give you some more details of the operation in just a moment, were able to attack a bunch of Russian warplanes. Now, the Ukrainians are claiming that over 40 of these Russian warplanes were hit in an operation that is being called Spiderweb. And this is some of the video that they released where you can see these fighter jets that are on fire and had been targeted. This happened at not just one base, but a number of them, even as far away as Siberia. So they were able to penetrate deep inside of Russian territory and strike a significant blow against Russia's offensive air capabilities, including some of these. Warplanes are, you know, critical in terms of the nuclear triad. Here you have. This gets to some of the details of the operations. You can see these drones flying out of these semi trucks that had been positioned in strategic places. The expectation is that the drivers of these trucks may not have even known what they were transferring, transporting. These drones were sealed and they're tiny things. You could see there. They look like. I mean, they look like children's toys. They were sealed inside of the top of these crates. So you had the crate and then, right, there was a false lid on the crate where the drones were inside of there. And then there was an ability for the Ukrainians to remote control open the lids of these crates and release these drones. Again, you can see one of them and how small they are into the air to go and hit their targets. The Ukrainians are saying that this operation was more than 18 months in the making. And obviously context here is you have some negotiations that are ongoing. You also have, the Russians have been able to take a significant amount of territory in recent days. And Putin seems pretty intransigent in terms of bending at all in the context of peace negotiation. So, you know, this could be an attempt to demonstrate, hey, we still have a lot of capability and we can still cause you pain even deep within your own territory. Can put this tear sheet up on the screen. I'll just read a little bit of this and make sure I have all the details right. Ukraine claims massive drone strike on Russian bombers in Spiderweb Operation audacious attack targeted 41 strategic Russian aircraft. Again, this is according to the Ukrainians. The Russians are downplaying the damage. We don't know exactly what the number is, but clearly they were able to commit some damage here to the Russian fleet.

[Tom Yamas]

Yeah. Ukraine claiming $2 billion.

[Tom Brokaw]

Yes, that's right. Ukraine's security service said it struck more than 40 Russian bombers deep inside Russian territory in what would be one of the largest and most audacious attacks on Russian territory in the years long conflict. A source within the security service of Ukraine told NBC News the country targeted 41 strategic Russian aircraft. The source also released dramatic video purportedly showing a drone attack at an air base located in Siberia, nearly 3,000 miles from Ukraine. The video captures bombers under attack with explosions visible and smoke rising from the scene. I think that's one of the videos that we just showed you. And as Emily just said, they are claiming $2 billion in damage. So obviously a very dramatic and sophisticated attack. Also one that has potentially troubling implications when you're talking about a nuclear armed superpower being made to feel very insecure within its own territory. And I know that it's sort of obnoxious to talk this way when Russia is bombing and bombarding Ukraine for years at this point. But we also have to acknowledge the reality of the situation and how dangerous and, and fraught it ultimately is. Something that people like us have been warning about for a long time.

[Tom Yamas]

Yeah, I mean, to your point, people have been making obvious comparisons between the beeper attack and this one. Yes, the Crimea bridge also, that was, people may remember, that was a truck. It was an explosion from a truck. That was years ago at this point. But the, yeah, the infiltration of civilian infrastructure. This was more than 3,000 miles away, I think you already mentioned this, but more than 3,000 miles away as far as Siberia from Kyiv. So incredible from a military perspective. And military experts have looked at that and said this not only is just remarkable technologically, but this changes, literally changes the game. This changes the future of warfare because again, you can remotely detonate things with 3,000 plus miles of distance between you and in this case, a truck and completely change a war that's been going on for years and years. And Russia had been, Crystal noted this, bombarding Ukraine hard in the days before this. A lot of Ukrainian service members had died. So there's peace negotiations happening today actually right now in Istanbul. I want to put this next element on the screen. This is C3 conflicting reports about whether the United States knew. So this is Jennifer Jacobs of CBS saying administration sources told her that the White House was not aware that today's large scale drone attack by Ukraine on the Russian military aircraft was coming. That's also quite an interesting aspect of this happening right before major peace negotiations at the same time. And we can put the next element. This is Arnaud Bertrand saying essentially it's the same type of action as Israel's pager attack, turning civilian supply chains into potential weapon delivery systems and making them inherently suspect. Arnaud goes on to say it should be deeply troubling to anyone thinking through the sheer irresponsibility of the precedent set. And Crystal, you put this really well, that it's, it's not an easy point to make when we're talking about Ukraine defending itself and responding to days of bombardment that had killed its service members. But the precedent being set in the midst of war is troubling because it's in that sort of fog of war. It's in the fog of uncertainty, of war and desperation and going forward, it is really frightening.

[Tom Brokaw]

Well, here's the thing is, I mean, I think in a lot of ways the genie is out of the bottle with, I mean is the drones. We showed you what they look like. Small, inexpensive, off the shelf. This isn't just a superpower that would be able to procure and deploy these killing machines. You have parallels not only to the pager attack, but I also was thinking back to the tech that was used on October 7 by Hamas. They also used low budget, off the shelf drones to destroy and debilitate this multimillion dollar elaborate high tech security fence that Israel had put into place, complete with automatic machine guns. And so they were able to disable the sensors and the cameras. And that was the start of October 7th. So like I said, in some ways I don't think there's any putting this genie back in the bottle. But when you think about non state actors, when you think about terrorists and what they could do with this sort of relatively low tech, relatively inexpensive tech, and then the other piece of this that Arnot was really pointing to there, and this part is a little bit different than the terror networks, et cetera, because of the extensive coordination that would be involved, not to say it's impossible, but the infiltration of civilian supply lines, I mean, this has long been considered completely out of bounds in terms of war fighting. And it appears like that was involved here in this Ukrainian attack with Russia. And so you have not only the troubling context of going after Russia's nuclear triad and Russia being a nuclear power and at a particularly fraught moment in terms of this ongoing horrific war, but then you also have what this spells in terms of the future of warfare. And if you are the global superpower, as we are, with a $1 trillion defense budget as we are about to be, you have to grapple with the fact that nearly any actor around the world could acquire this technology and deploy it for horror, terror, killing and death anywhere in the world.

[Tom Yamas]

Right.

[Tom Brokaw]

So I think that should be really, I think that should be unsettling for everyone here and abroad and in Russia and Ukraine and everywhere else because of what it means in terms of the ability of even small ragtag groups to inflict death and suffering on anyone they want.

[Tom Yamas]

And again, so Jennifer Jacobs of CBS also reported that administration sources told her that there was no intelligence sharing, that the US didn't share any intel. And it's with Zelensky and Ukraine for, quote, Operation Spider's Web. According to admin sources talking to Jennifer Jacobs, Ukraine gathered its own information.

[Tom Brokaw]

So this is, I'm a little skeptical.

[Tom Yamas]

But and I'm wondering, and I wonder if that's so she's citing Trump administration sources.

[Tom Brokaw]

Right.

[Tom Yamas]

Curious. Also if there are Ukrainian sources that are making this sound like it was completely Ukrainian or on the other hand, is this the US Saying that this is Ukraine so that it can continue the negotiations with sort of the, I mean, neutrality is not the right word, but that sense of diplomacy that's being brought to the negotiations. So no idea about that. But it does raise the question, similarly to what's happened in Israel about actors who could not be prosecuting these wars without massive funding and resources from the United States acting independently in ways that if you're Ukraine and you have different goals for how this war should end from the person who's funding the war or the country, I should say who's funding the war to the tune of billions and billions of dollars. That and you're not on the same page about it, maybe you're going to do things and keep them private. That can escalate during peace negotiations.

[Tom Brokaw]

Yeah, I think that's, I think it's a possibility. I wouldn't take it face value the administration's claims that they had no idea. And I advance because to your point, both the Trump administration and the Ukrainians have an incentive to make it look like we, we had no involvement because for the Ukrainians it's a projection of strength. Yeah, like look, we don't even need the US look what we're able to do on our own. This, you know, highly complex and it certainly was required long term planning, you know, did require some, you know, tech in terms of being able to deploy these things from the trucks where they were stored potentially for months and months. We don't exactly know. So the Ukrainians want to be able to say, like, look what we can do and we don't even need our big brother and our greatest ally, the U.S. the U.S. wants to keep their hands clean. So they both have an incentive, even if there was US Involvement to say that there wasn't. However, it is also possible that the Ukrainians are acting independently in a sort of, I mean, actually rogue way, which is also a disturbing possibility in and of itself. It didn't give it as much attention. But there were also two Ukrainian attacks recently within Russia that targeted bridges and caused actually some civilian deaths within Russia as well. And that hasn't been, I think the reason it hasn't been reported as much is because the Ukrainians haven't, I believe, claimed responsibility for those attacks. So it's still somewhat disputed. But the understanding, you know, if you read the global press and if you, you read the Russian press, is they believe that these were both targeted by Ukraine, which does follow and does make sense based on other operations from the Ukrainian security services within the state of Russia. I mentioned this before, but I do think that this is important just to underscore, put C5 up on the screen. This also did not get a lot of attention in the Western press, but Russia has just seized somewhere around 200 km, made significant advances in Ukrainian territory in, in recent days and looks like they're setting up for a, what they're describing as a fresh ground offensive. So, you know, there's been a massive Russian bombardment throughout Ukraine and there has been evacuations. The reason they think it looks like it's, you know, setting up for a new Russian ground invasion. There have been evacuations of some of these villages near the front lines in preparation for, you know, potential escalation in terms of the ground invasion. So again, plays into the context here. You've got Zelensky going into these peace negotiations does not have a particularly strong hand because of wariness among the American public and among the Republican Party and potentially in the Trump administration, although it kind of depends on the day of continuing to fund and arm them to the hilt, as has been done. Although so far the, the Trump administration has basically continued the Biden era policy, but that is not certain in the way that it was under Joe Biden whatsoever. So you have that then you have the fact that the Russians just have so much more state industrial capacity and just so many more bodies to throw at this conflict. You have some will within the Ukrainian people waning just because of the brutal toll that this war has taken on Ukrainian men in particular and their difficulty being able to get new recruits and actually unconscionable tactics that have been used to round up Ukrainian men and send them to the front lines here. So you have Zelenskyy going to these negotiations with a relatively weak hand. And I think it's pretty obvious this is an attempt to try to demonstrate, listen, we can still cause you pain, even if, if you think that time is on your side and capacity is on your side.

[Tom Yamas]

Yeah, Playbook. Actually, there's a direct line from the Playbook author this morning. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, it seems holds more cards than Trump gave him credit for. Their headline in Playbook this morning.

[Tom Brokaw]

That was the point of this Operation Pearl harbor.

[Tom Yamas]

That's the headline. And Playbook this morning.

[Tom Brokaw]

I mean, that seems a little.

[Tom Yamas]

No, it's taking the Ukrainian spin really far.

[Tom Brokaw]

Well, it's. And I also saw people pointing out like, okay, so if you're the Japanese in this scenario doing the Pearl harbor, what happens. Great work that happens next is not really that great for you. So I don't know, Great work team.

[Tom Yamas]

No, I mean, it's like what's happening right now, it's actually directly related to the negotiations. Everyone trying to get the cards on the table in order to make it look like they have cards and to not look like they're hiding any cards as the negotiations, negotiations are ongoing. So it's really awful to see escalation right now. But if you're, if you're Ukraine, and I don't mean that about this particular Ukrainian attack, although the precedent I do find very frightening, but they've been getting bombarded over the last several days. So you understand the timing of it? Absolutely. We will see if the toothpaste can ever be put back in the tube, but I'm deeply skeptical of that. Crystal?

[Tom Brokaw]

Yeah, it's a very difficult situation at this point to try to imagine how this is going to, to be resolved. I mean, however, it's possible we just continue in this kind of like endless back and forth with Russia continuing to eke out gains slowly over time, and you end up with basically a failed Ukrainian state. I mean, that's kind of what it looks like it's heading towards right now, unless there is some sort of a dramatic development. But you know, I also have to say a lot of war analysts, military analysts, have been quite wrong about this conflict at every turn. And while, you know, if you look at the industrial might of Russia versus Ukraine, if you look at just the MANpower of Russia versus Ukraine, you come to a pretty clear conclusion about who has the upper hand. But I mean, with this type ability to commit this type of attack, and with the modern warfare dynamics that Emily and I were just talking about, where you can use low budget, off the shelf tech, those things can help to level the playing field, especially when you're talking about a group of people who are fighting for where it's truly existential and where you are fighting for your homeland. I mean, the US has learned this lesson many times before. Come in with all the military might in the world, but it's no simple thing to dislodge people's sense of pride and nationalism and commitment to the homeland. So I think everyone should be very cautious about making any sort of predictions about what the military future of this conflict ultimately looks like, because there are more variables here than just the. Okay, you add up, the Russian industrial mind, the manpower, X plus Y equals Z. There are more complex factors going in here and in some ways that that's precisely what this Ukrainian attack really demonstrates.

[Tom Yamas]

Yes. So we'll see what happens over the course of today with negotiations set to continue in Istanbul. Another, you know, thing to feel less than optimistic about, unfortunately.

[Tom Brokaw]

Yeah, unfortunately. So. All right, let's get to the latest with Elon.

[Lester Holt]

Hey, this is Jenny Garth from I Do Part 2. Ozempic in a pill.

[Tom Brokaw]

It's oral Semaglutide and is now available.

[Lester Holt]

From Future Health health. Go to futurehealth.com to get affordable access to oral Semaglutide, Ozempic and zepbound for only $3 a day. No insurance needed. Visit futurehealth.com future without the e to.

[Tom Brokaw]

Start losing this week, Future Health weight.

[Lester Holt]

Loss data based on independent study sponsored by Future Health.

[Tom Brokaw]

Future Health is not a health care services provider.

[Lester Holt]

Meds are prescribed at providers discretion.

[Tom Yamas]

NBC Nightly News Legacy isn't handed down or NBC News.

[Jeff Stein]

I'm Tom Brokaw.

[Tom Brokaw]

We hope to see you back here.

[Lester Holt]

I'm Lester Holt. It's carried forward. Tom Yamas is there for us. Firefighters are still working around the clock. As the world changes, we look for what endures.

[Tom Brokaw]

We are coming on the air with.

[Lester Holt]

Breaking news right now. We look for a constant and from one era to the next, trust is the anchor.

[Tom Yamas]

For NBC Nightly News, I'm Tom Yamas.

[Lester Holt]

A new chapter begins NBC Nightly News with Tom Yamas evenings on NBC. Let's be honest. Most of us have a love hate.

[Tom Brokaw]

Relationship with wired bras.

[Lester Holt]

We love the lift, but hate the digging.

[Tom Yamas]

We love the support, but hate feeling trapped.

[Tom Brokaw]

Well, NYX just changed everything with Free Flex, a wired bra actually designed to work with your body, not against it. Free Flex features a revolutionary flexible wire.

[Lester Holt]

That moves when you move, bends when you bend, and keeps everything exactly where you want it.

[Tom Brokaw]

No poking, no stabbing, no constant readjusting, just freedom to move. It also has a demi cup shape for a natural lift with a lower neckline that flatters in everything from V necks to dresses.

[Lester Holt]

And because it's from Nyx, it's available.

[Tom Brokaw]

In sizes for every body experience the first wired bra you'll actually want to wear all day. Visit nyx.com for 15% off your order with free Flex 15.

[Lester Holt]

That's K nix.com code free Flex 15 for 15% off.

[Tom Yamas]

Nick stock on his way out the door, Elon Musk stopped by CBS Sunday morning. This is just a couple of days. The interview aired just a couple of days after Elon Musk did a joint press conference, I guess if you could call it that, in the Oval Office with Donald Trump. We have clips from that as well. But just yesterday he sat down with CBS News and want to play some clips from that interview. And then we'll get to some clips from the Oval Office as well. This is D1.

[Jeff Stein]

I noticed that all of your businesses.

[Tom Yamas]

Involve a lot of components, a lot of parts.

[Tom Brokaw]

Do the Tariffs and the trade wars.

[Lester Holt]

Affect any of this.

[Tom Brokaw]

You know, tariffs always affect things a little bit.

[Jeff Stein]

Wondering what your thought is on the.

[Lester Holt]

Ban on foreign students, the proposal?

[Jeff Stein]

I mean, you were one of those kids, right?

[Tom Yamas]

Yeah. I mean, I think we want to.

[Tom Brokaw]

Stick to, you know, the subject of the day, which is, like, spaceships as opposed to, you know, presidential policy.

[Lester Holt]

Oh, okay.

[Tom Brokaw]

I was told anything's good.

[Tom Yamas]

But no. Well, no, you know, it's not like.

[Tom Brokaw]

I agree with everything the administration does. So it's like there's. I mean, I agree with. With much of what the administration does, but we have differences of opinion, you know, things that I don't entirely agree with.

[Tom Yamas]

But it's difficult for me to bring.

[Tom Brokaw]

That up in an interview because then it creates a bone of contention. So then I'm a little stuck in.

[Tom Yamas]

A bind where I'm like, well, I.

[Lester Holt]

Don'T want to speak up against the.

[Tom Brokaw]

Administration, but I don't want to. I also don't want to take responsibility.

[Tom Yamas]

For everything the administration is doing. So. Really interesting, actually. Set of questions to Elon Musk there, Crystal. And in the defense of the reporter, the CBS reporter, which is not a sentence I thought I would ever say, but in defense of the CBS reporter there, basically, even if you want to talk about spaceships with Elon Musk, you're still going to be talking about, of course, and the combination of Elon's. Even people talk about Tesla a lot. But even. I mean, the combination, particularly of a space business, it is so coupled, it is so intertwined with the United States government that it's. You wouldn't be able to do that interview. I mean, what Elon Musk ended up saying there, and this is what I'm curious to get your thought on, is essentially that he just shouldn't have sat down for the interview because he's saying there's no way for me to talk about any of this without looking like I'm weighing in on the politics of it. And I wonder, Crystal, if this is something that he's realizing increasingly is a problem after getting involved with politics six plus months ago, seeing his businesses take a hit, and then realizing, hey, I should probably go focus back over here. It's interesting to see that happening as he's stepping back from D.C. completely.

[Tom Brokaw]

And the funny thing about the second part of that. So the first part of that is just so awkward. Like, how could you sit for an interview with anyone and think you're not gonna get questions about the Trump administration is wild.

[Tom Yamas]

But even if they said they're just gonna talk about space. You still have to talk about the administration.

[Tom Brokaw]

But D7 up on the screen like, Trump just yanked this NASA nominee who was a close Elon ally. And I mean, he basically was installed by Elon in this position. And now that Elon's on his way out, Trump is using this excuse of like, oh, I found out he gave to Democrats. I'm sure, like that information was widely available before. He's using it as an excuse to now that Elon's gone. Like, okay, you don't get your dude in at NASA. But like, obviously that is deeply political. The SpaceX mission does require and already depends in substantial part on government money. So there is no way to disentangle Elon Musk, his companies, his spaceships and what is going on in the Trump administration. But even putting that piece aside, the second part of that clip where he starts talking about, well, I don't agree with everything they do. And so I'm in this bind and I don't want it to look like I'm co signing everything. But then again, I don't wanna look like I'm a critic, which is fair, by the way. He actually brings that up himself. That wasn't even at the prodding of the reporter. So even without the reporter then explicitly asking questions about the Trump administration, Elon himself can't disentangle who he is, what he's doing, his businesses and what's going on in terms of politics.

[Tom Yamas]

It makes me wonder genuinely how much he thought that he was going to steer the ship of the Trump administration. Because Trump, if you were listening to, if you listened to a single Trump rally, If you listen 10 seconds of any Trump rally, you would realize the man was close, completely deadly serious about tariffs the entire time, always has been. And so it genuinely makes me wonder if Elon Musk thought that by putting so much money into the election and coming into D.C. and being coronated as the king of Doge, that Trump would maybe give some deference to Elon Musk on a lot of these priorities that are just totally out of line with the crypto libertarian ethos that Musk and I should say ideology that Musk wants the Republican Party to look more like. And now that he's sort of on his way out, there's this very obvious conflict in what he's saying. Like it's actually fair that when you start to talk about these things, first of all, you move markets, you look like you have inside information, because you do. You look like maybe you're trying to Put your thumb on the scale. Like all of those frustrations are perfectly accurate. But that's the obvious reason that people don't get too involved in politics to the point where they become a special government employee, because those problems, like even from a business perspective, are so obvious.

[Tom Brokaw]

I mean, he put in 250/million dollars into Trump's campaign and was critical potentially in Trump winning that election and focused a lot of his efforts in Pennsylvania, which was the critical swing state. And so I think he believed that he could basically do what he wanted. And for a while he could. For a while he did come in. And this is also someone who sees himself as the only main character and this sort of like great civilizational figure. I mean, it's truly how he views himself. And he views his project of getting to Mars via SpaceX and the need to marshal vast government resources in order to do that, I think is a central driving desire. I think also something he did accomplish during his time in Washington, a central driving desire is to get all of these various regulatory agencies off of his back and make it so that he's not facing labor violation complaints and Tesla doesn't have to be regulated. And if he goes forward with Visa over at X, that the CFPB isn't going to be sniffing around what they're up to, et cetera. And that part he is able to ultimately accomplish. But now there is a. So it's one of those weird things where Elon is not in D.C. anymore. The work of Doge does continue. It's not over. Wired is out with a report saying like, don't believe the hype that Elon is done. He just has is saying he needs to take some pressure off of his businesses. So he wants to be less visible.

[Tom Yamas]

Right.

[Tom Brokaw]

However, I think two things do indicate that he is genuinely on the ounce with this administration. One of them is what I just showed you. Them pulling his guy at NASA. That's a big blow to Elon because he wants to be able to get whatever this government can offer to SpaceX. So I think that is a blow. And the other thing is that there is just a flood of leaks going to the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times and all kinds of other outlets about how much everybody in the administration hated him and about how he was doing all sorts of drugs all the time while he was here. And I believe during that Oval Office meeting, we can put this image up on the screen. You can see some evidence of that cocktail. This is wild of drug use.

[Tom Yamas]

Towards the end it gets Especially wild. Yeah.

[Tom Brokaw]

I mean, here he is just totally tweaking out. And by the way, with a black eye, which, brother, if you want to cover that up, I can give you some makeup tips.

[Tom Yamas]

Look at that, though.

[Tom Brokaw]

It's not that hard. So he looks like shit. He's totally disconnected from reality here and proving right the various articles. But he denies that he's using these drugs. Blah, blah, blah, lawyers. That's what he says. He denies that he's using them. But totally validating the reporting from the New York Times. Well, yes.

[Tom Yamas]

So the.

[Tom Brokaw]

About what's going on behind the scenes.

[Tom Yamas]

The New York Times. And this is skipping ahead a little bit. So this is D4. The New York Times dropped this really splashy deep dive with like a Maggie Haberman. Oh, I'm sorry. It was Megan to byline Kirsten Grind and Megan Towhohe on Friday before that Oval Offense press press conference. And so speculation ensues throughout the day. On Friday, you know, D.C. is having fun with the story that Elon Musk has been abusing drugs like ketamine. And this is a story sourced from people who were spending time with Elon Musk on the campaign trail in particular, which is when they say it was, quote, more intense than previously known. His drug use was more intense than previously known. Just several hours later, after all the denials are happening, he's literally standing next to the President in the Oval Office. And I mean, I would assume that what we just watched on screen was drugs. I think anybody would assume that that's drugs. If it's not drugs, it's a problem. That was completely abnormal. Now, Trump in that press conference also said that Elon's not really leaving. This is what the Wired story focused on. And that Doge is his baby. He's going to be back and forth, but at the same time it was like an exit. So let's also get part of that Oval Office conversation where a reporter asked Elon Musk about his black eye. This comes amid speculation that he had a physical altercation with Scott Bessant, which we will get to in just a moment as well. So this is D3. I wanted to ask quickly, Mr. Musk.

[Lester Holt]

Is your eye okay?

[Tom Brokaw]

What happened to your eye?

[Tom Yamas]

I noticed there's a bruise there.

[Lester Holt]

Well, it wasn't.

[Tom Brokaw]

I wasn't anywhere near France, so.

[Tom Yamas]

But.

[Lester Holt]

Was that new? I didn't notice.

[Tom Brokaw]

The first lady of France. I didn't notice. So, yeah, no, I was just horsing around with Lex and I said, go ahead, punch me in the face.

[Lester Holt]

And he did.

[Tom Brokaw]

Turns out even a five year old punching you in the, in the face actually does. That was X. I did X. X could do it.

[Tom Yamas]

If you knew X I his mom.

[Tom Brokaw]

Right now, but I didn't really feel.

[Tom Yamas]

Much at the time and then I.

[Tom Brokaw]

Guess it bruises up. But I just watched him around with the. I didn't notice it actually.

[Tom Yamas]

I love Trump bragging about knowing like a toddler. Yeah, if you know X, you know he could do it. But anyway, so that's Trump humble bragging that he does. He does know X.

[Tom Brokaw]

They are, they're, they're buddies. Some of his lovers may still be on that test.

[Tom Yamas]

So let's put. Now skipping ahead again, D6 on the screen because this became a really sort of ugly meme. But Bannon said that there was a physical altercation between Scott Bessant and Elon Musk, that he, quote, literally got physical with him. Basically that Musk shoved Scott Besant.

[Tom Brokaw]

These are the messiest people on.

[Tom Yamas]

Well, no, I honestly think that Elon Musk is the messiest person on the planet. Do you think Scott Bessen is around there shoving people?

[Tom Brokaw]

Doesn't really seem like the type.

[Tom Yamas]

Nope. He never knows that.

[Tom Brokaw]

Don't judge a book by his cover, but you never know.

[Tom Yamas]

I guess he was the one who got shoved. According to Steve Bannon, who's now spilling the tea about all of this, he said that in comments to the Daily Mail, Scott Besant called him out and said, quote, you promised us a trillion dollars in cuts and now you're at like 100 billion and nobody can find anything. What are you doing? And that's when Elon got physical. It's a sore subject with him. It wasn't an argument, it was a physical confrontation. Elon basically shoved him. Now, now, the White House responded to this and said, quote, it's no secret. President Trump has put together a team of people who are incredibly passionate about.

[Tom Brokaw]

It's basically a validation. Right?

[Tom Yamas]

They did not deny it.

[Tom Brokaw]

Yeah.

[Tom Yamas]

Yes. So that's Caroline Levitt.

[Tom Brokaw]

And just to be clear, that altercation happened back in April, so that would not be the cause of the black eye. Just so people understand. It just speaks to Elon's, I guess, willingness to get into physical confrontations as a middle aged man. Like, what the hell are you doing? In any case? So, I mean, it adds credence to the idea that little X punching him in the eye may not have been what happened here. The other, like blue Anon conspiracy going on with this one is, I wasn't.

[Tom Yamas]

Gonna bring it Up, Crystal.

[Tom Brokaw]

I mean, we had to give the viewers all of the information. Emily. Okay. People are saying Stephen Miller and his wife, Katie Miller apparently were close with Elon while he was in town, and they socialized outside of the office.

[Tom Yamas]

Katie Miller was working with Elon very closely on Doge. She does communications.

[Tom Brokaw]

Okay. And she is leaving the Trump administration to work with Elon, So leaving, you know, Steven and the Trump administration to go work with Elon. So this also stoked some speculation about just how closely, I guess they were working together. And there were. There was some analysis of, you know, Stephen Miller being a lefty in which I. That likely would have impacted if, in the theoretical world where there was some sort of an altercation there over Miller's wife. But in any case, I mean, the.

[Tom Yamas]

Much more likely scenario is that Elon Musk can pay an absolute F ton of money to the people that he sees as trusted advisors. And now Katie Miller should be able to make a ton of money while her husband works in the government making, by billionaire, massive corporation standards, not that much money. So I think that's probably the likeliest case, but interesting nonetheless. To see what the drama is behind the scenes on all of this, there's also a Wall Street Journal story. This is D5. We can put on the screen getting into the relationship between Trump and Musk as well. They described it as a, quote, unquote, complicated relationship. And the Journal story starts with an interesting anecdote that administration officials, sources in the administration gave to the Journal, where Trump asks to his advisors about dogecoin. Was it all bullshit? And I think the answer to that question, Krystal, is pretty much, yes.

[Tom Brokaw]

It's one of these. Yeah. Okay. If you're talking about cutting costs and efficiency, if you're talking about I'm gonna cut 2 trillion. No, 1 trillion from the budget. Yes.

[Tom Yamas]

Which is what they're.

[Tom Brokaw]

Yes, it was all bullshit. But how did you not know that? Like, that's the thing that's crazy to me is, like, if you just know the very basics of government accounting, math, you knew from the beginning that it was all bullshit when it came to the cost cutting. Because if you want to cut cost, significant costs in the federal government, you are not going to do it by finding some, like, mice study you don't like or even. And we'll get to this in just a moment. By completely decimating USAID to the vast detriment of millions of. Of sick children and other innocents around the world, that is a drop in the bucket in terms of the vast federal government budget. So if you did not know that, I just think it's astonishing to me that he would not have realized that the project with regard to Doge was never really about cost cutting. Elon had other ideological goals, some of which he did accomplish during his time. I'm gonna talk more tomorrow about the scooping up of all this data and giving it to Palantir. Being one of Elon's allies within the tech right, and possibly we don't know what sort of federal government data was scooped up to use to further Elon's AI ambitions, because we have very little actual transparency into what Doge was even up to and continues to be up to within all of these organizations. As I said before, in terms of the goal of getting the regulators off his back, certainly mission accomplished there. So there was a lot that was done and a lot that was incredibly destructive and is going to continue to have huge consequences. But I just, I think it's so insane that anyone took seriously the idea that this was going to be a real cost cutting and efficiency effort from the beginning in the way that they approached it.

[Tom Yamas]

Well, I think the $2 trillion number to take that seriously is, I mean, without touching Medicare, Social Security, Medicaid, that's.

[Tom Brokaw]

Or the Pentagon.

[Tom Yamas]

Or the Pentagon. Right. I mean, the Pentagon's the big one there. Because you could plausibly, if you found a lot of waste in other agencies, and you basically scuttle usaid. I mean, USAID is not gone. It's been absorbed in the State Department. A lot of those costs have been eliminated. It's completely shrunk to a shell of its former self. No question about that. I suspect Marco Rubio will still use it as like a long arm of soft power, but just in a very different way. So there's all kinds of, like, there's all kinds of waste that you can find in the federal government budget, of course, but the idea that that would, without touching the Pentagon, or without touching Medicaid, Social Security, and not just looking for quote, unquote, waste, fraud and abuse, that that would amount to $2 trillion is an enormous stretch. Especially when the process by which they are going about these cutscrystol was so wildly inefficient because Musk's idea was you cut a bunch and then you learn by the cut cuts what you need to bring back, which is, I guess, a much more defensible philosophy in a corporate environment, when it's not the government that taxpayers pay into and rely on the services for, who then get that stuff cut after paying for it.

[Tom Brokaw]

Right.

[Tom Yamas]

And have all the disruptions only for the government to be like, whoops, our bad. We are bringing it back. Sorry about the last month of your life, Mr. Veteran, who was affected by this. So I mean, it was just, just the process was a disaster. And now the line is that Doge is a lifestyle. I forget whether it was Trump or Elon Musk who said that Doge is.

[Tom Brokaw]

Oh, I missed that.

[Tom Yamas]

Doge isn't going anywhere. It's a lifestyle. And to some extent though, it's true because there are Musk lieutenants, people who are brought on board, who are now, they are actually employees in managerial positions throughout the federal government. I would be all for things like the REINS act, where you have to. Which should be in this bill, where you have to kick over a certain number. If you're spending a certain number of money, it has to be kicked over to Congress and has to be signed off on by Congress because that way you don't have agencies just green lighting massive contracts and stuff like that. They haven't shown any willingness to, as you said, Bannon has said this many times, go after these Pentagon contracts to seriously take on, quote, unquote, waste, fraud and abuse at the Pentagon. They never really went in that direction. And dojanel lifestyle. Okay, let's see, let's see. Crystal.

[Tom Brokaw]

I mean, there is one agency that has never been able to pass an audit. And as Bannon always say, you gotta cross the river. I mean, I'm very hesitant to ascribe actual like belief to him and whatever. He has his own agenda. But he's 100% correct about that if you actually want to go after waste, fraud and abuse. But that again is why I never took seriously the idea that this would be any sort of a real cost cutting mission. In fact, it's going to lead to more expense, specifically because of the gutting, you know, the cuts to the irs, which mean you can collect less tax revenue, specifically less tax revenue from rich people. So it's going to cost more. You have degraded the efficiency and quality of the services. If you're someone who's trying to resolve some issue with your Social Security check, it is now going to take take vastly longer and be effectively mission impossible with the closed field offices and the longer wait times on the telephones, et cetera. But to your point, Emily, it's all well and good. It's one thing if your Twitter DMs don't work for a little while.

[Tom Yamas]

Yeah, exactly.

[Tom Brokaw]

It's another thing when Air traffic controllers are being pressured to reside at a time when we have a massive crisis in terms of air travel safety. It's another thing when you are are a veteran who's enrolled in a cancer research trial that has a chance of curing what you have and that funding is stripped. You are not going to eliminate the deficit by gutting scientific research for a generation as an example. That's just not where the bulk of federal spending is even. I looked up the numbers. If you look at how much we spend on the entire federal government workforce, right, they pushed out some 250,000 federal government workers. Like it was a massive number of people that they cut. If you cut everybody, it is a very small proportion of the over federal government budget. So it's just to me, to take at face value that Trump didn't know what's going on here. I don't know. That raises some other questions for me about how engaged he is in his own administration beyond like his Liberation Day chart making exercises.

[Tom Yamas]

Well, it was hard for anyone to keep up with Doge at first because the cuts were head spinning and they were coming fast and furious and that was all part of the Flood the Zone plan. So there were a lot of cuts by the relative standards of how quickly they came. They just didn't end up adding up to anything near what was being projected. I mean, there are some agencies that right now are utterly unrecognizable. The cfpb, usaid. Those are significant cuts. Yeah, yeah, exactly. But, but in the scope of the federal budget, it's amazing how big cuts like that still don't make a dent in things. And Reins is in the reconciliation bill. We'll see if it survives. But I mean, you had to cross the river if you wanted to. You certainly had to cross the river. And you would have had to do a lot more than just quote, unquote, waste, fraud and abuse.

[Tom Brokaw]

And they didn't find any fraud. What fraud did they find?

[Tom Yamas]

I'm sure they did, but that's also hard to know because the Doge website is full of random shit that you have no idea whether or not it's real. Sometimes people have tried to track it down and you don't know. I'm sure they found some bits and pieces of fraud.

[Tom Brokaw]

I know they found things they didn't like.

[Tom Yamas]

They definitely found that. Yes.

[Tom Brokaw]

That's different from fraud, right? I mean, fraud is like there is fraud in the federal government. Although to be honest with you, after the Doge exercise, I think it must be less than what I was assuming you're like, yeah, this is great. They didn't find any of it. You know, as we always joke, like. Like Ryan Grim found more actual fraud in the federal government budget by identifying this fraudulent $400 million that was set to go hunt the door to Tesla than Doge did.

[Tom Yamas]

Yeah.

[Tom Brokaw]

So tell me what's going on there. Tell me what's really going on there. Ultimately, the other piece of the Wall Street Journal article about some of the internal dynamics that was interesting to me is apparently he really got crosswise with Susie Wiles, among others. I mean, Elon is notoriously, like, he's a raging asshole people don't like to work with. I think he would say that himself. He does not deal well with people. He just doesn't. And that is the history of his dynamics within his companies. He usually has someone else who is working alongside with him who can deal with the human beings involved. So not only did he have this physical altercation with Scott Besant, I think he and Rubio were significantly at odds. Some of the tension with Sean Duffy played out in public, but they also got upset because they were learning about some of the chainsaw that was being taken to various parts of the federal government. Susie Wiles and company were learning about that the same way that we were where he just went in and did his thing. And so there were increasing efforts to try to reign him in, coordinate with him, et cetera. But I think that was part of the underlying dynamic as well, is just people did not like him. And so when there were, after the Wisconsin Supreme Court debacle, when there was a real display of political weakness and Trump apparently had talked to. I can't remember, what was that guy's name? Schimmel or something like that. Brad Schaimel. Is that the name of the candidate?

[Tom Yamas]

Oh, Brad Schimmel.

[Tom Brokaw]

Schimmel, yeah. Anyway, Trump was not impressed with that guy, thought he was going to lose. Thought that Elon displayed very poor political instincts by going all in on that. And I do think that that was a real blow to him with regard to his standing vis a vis Trump and others. I'm sure with the administration. This part I'm just speculating about. Use that loss as a way to make the case to Trump of like, okay, this guy's bad for your agenda. He's making you look bad. He's causing you all kinds of problems. Let's try to get him out the door.

[Tom Yamas]

Because it all comes down to this central cost benefit analysis. Does the cost of being associated with Elon Musk outweigh the benefit of having particularly his political donations. And so when Elon Musk notice the timing here, this was all happening as Elon Musk said, by the way, he's going to stop his political donations, then suddenly he's out at Doge. Well, Wisconsin showed that the cost of association with Elon Musk actually in that case outweighed the benefits of him pouring millions of dollars into a state Supreme Court election. Even his millions of dollars couldn't buy that election. Because in the micro example that we're talking about, the microcosmic example we're talking about, is it really motivated normally Dem voters to come out and vote for the liberal Supreme Court justice in that case. So I think what that showed is that he's less valuable than it looked like when he came into Pennsylvania in the waning days of a very, very, very, very, very close presidential election, at least in the sense of when you are within a margin in Pennsylvania, all the Electoral college votes are on the line. He comes in, puts tons of money into swing states, but particularly Pennsylvania sort of looks like he buys Trump those states because is he the sort of deciding factor is that money, what tips it over the edge for Donald Trump? Republicans say, wow, we have the deepest pockets we could ever conceive of having. And he's just giving freely and doing it kind of for the hell of it. And we don't have to really do anything to beg him. He's just like having fun. So what does that mean for us? What does that mean for the party in the midterms? What does it mean for the party for the next 10 years with a massive cash infusion potentially on the table? And as soon as that dream kind of fades for Republicans, he becomes to them less of a benefit than the trouble he causes. And I think that's probably part of what just everyone's exasperated with him. He's exasperated with them because they have less patience for him. They have less patience for his eccentricities and his process, which is very anathema in Washington. So it just, it fizzled. We'll see how much he's still here. I have a hard time believing, Kristol, that he doesn't want to still be pulling some of the puppet strings, no doubt about it, and that he probably will still be pulling some of the puppet strings.

[Tom Brokaw]

Some of them, yeah. But, you know, not without as much power as he previously wielded, which, you know, at times rivaled Trump at least especially with Trump pre tariff Trump, where he seemed like he was happy to just like play golf and outsource immigration and foreign policy. Apparently Steven Miller outsource whatever is going on with Doge to Elon. And now I think the part of the Trump administration that Trump does take control over is the tariffs, which is kind of a. And maybe he's involved somewhat with the top line ideological underpinnings of the big beautiful bill. But other pieces, he's been happy to really just kind of hand into various corners of his administration. I wanted to ask you, Emily, an important part of the MAGA Trump 2.0 coalition is the tech right and Elon being the figurehead, right? And so you had all the all in guys excited about Trump, and Emma and I actually covered last year, last week, all of them, including David Sacks, although he was like, well, this is the best we could get. But all of the all in guys very critical of the big beautiful bill. And so what do you think the exit of Elon and the fraying of that relationship means for the broader tech right alignment with the Trump administration?

[Tom Yamas]

I think the illusion is fading that there was and, you know, people who are in, like, D.C. republican circles, I don't think anybody said it aloud, but I think everybody looked at those guys as almost inspiringly naive, that they had these huge visions and the will, like the political will to, like, Elon Musk was out there with a chainsaw, right? Like, this is a dream that the, say, anarcho libertarian world, which not all of them are. I mean, some of them are more robber barons than anarcho libertarians, but that they have had for a long time, is this idea that there would be the political will to go out there and dance on stage with a chainsaw, like a good, true ideological libertarian. And so what that meant was, wow, this is basically Elon Musk coming in with all of these Silicon Valley nerds and waving magic wands and just dissolving parts of the government. And I think what we're seeing right now is that, and I say this, this with some judgment, but not with much judgment, but the fading of that naivete, that there was this idea that if you came into Washington with the will to take the arrows for cutting pepfar, to take the arrows for cutting usaid, the cfpb, in ways that no Republican ever would have had the courage to do pre Trump, then, man, like, this can finally be done. And that was, again, I think a lot of people in D.C. identified that as naive. Maybe they didn't want to say it because it felt hopeful, but I think that it's finally that idea, that dream is dead. I think. I think that's what's really happened here.

[Lester Holt]

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[Tom Brokaw]

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[Lester Holt]

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[Tom Brokaw]

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[Lester Holt]

Meds are prescribed at providers discretion. The NBC Nightly News legacy isn't handed.

[Tom Yamas]

Down or NBC News.

[Tom Brokaw]

I'm Tom Brokaw. We hope to see you back here.

[Lester Holt]

I'm Lester Holt. It's carried forward. Tom Yamas is there force Firefighters are still working around the clock. As the world changes, we look for what endures. We are coming on the air with.

[Tom Yamas]

Breaking news right now.

[Lester Holt]

We look for a constant and from one era to the next, trust is the anchor.

[Tom Yamas]

For NBC Nightly News, I'm Tom Yamas.

[Lester Holt]

A new chapter begins NBC Nightly News with Tom Yamas evenings on NBC. Let's be honest.

[Tom Brokaw]

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[Lester Holt]

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[Lester Holt]

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[Tom Brokaw]

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[Lester Holt]

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[Lester Holt]

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[Lester Holt]

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[Tom Brokaw]

That is a good transition to talking about this Rogan appearance. Bono talking to Rogan about USAID in particular. And I told you I cut a longer thought of this because there was a portion of this one exchange that the right was sharing of. Like Rogan really showed him who's boss and USAID exposes the money laundering operation. And there was another part that that Democratic Wins account, which used to be Kamala Wins Account. There was another part that that account shared. So I thought let's give you the whole context and then we can talk about this on the other side. But interesting exchange nonetheless. Let's take a look.

[Lester Holt]

You went to Boston University.

[Tom Yamas]

You taught at Boston University. I taught martial arts there, yeah.

[Tom Brokaw]

So just recent report.

[Tom Yamas]

It'S not proven.

[Lester Holt]

But the surveillance enough suggests 300,000 people have already died from just this cutoff.

[Jeff Stein]

This hard cut of usaid.

[Lester Holt]

So there's food rotting in boats, in warehouses. There is this, this, this will will you off.

[Jeff Stein]

This will not.

[Tom Brokaw]

You will not be happy.

[Tom Yamas]

No American will.

[Jeff Stein]

But there is, I think it's 50, 000 tons of food that are stored in Djibouti, South Africa, Dubai, and wait.

[Tom Brokaw]

For it, Houston, Texas.

[Jeff Stein]

And that is rotting rather than going to Gaza, rather than going to Sudan.

[Lester Holt]

Because the people who know the codes.

[Jeff Stein]

Are for the warehouse are fired.

[Tom Yamas]

They're gone.

[Jeff Stein]

And so this, I don't know, I just.

[Lester Holt]

It's.

[Tom Brokaw]

What do you think?

[Lester Holt]

What is that?

[Tom Yamas]

That's not America, is it? Well, they're throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Right? Right.

[Tom Brokaw]

This is the problem.

[Lester Holt]

The problem is, for sure, there have.

[Tom Yamas]

Been a lot of organizations that do tremendous good all throughout the world. Also for sure, it was a money laundering operation.

[Lester Holt]

For sure.

[Tom Yamas]

There was no oversight.

[Lester Holt]

For sure.

[Tom Yamas]

Billions of dollars are missing, in fact, trillions that are unaccounted for that were sent off into various.

[Lester Holt]

They don't even know where because there's no receipts. The way Elon Musk described it, he.

[Tom Yamas]

Said if any of this was done by a public company, the company would.

[Lester Holt]

Be delisted and the executives would be in prison. But in the United States, this is standard. When Biden left office, when it was.

[Tom Yamas]

Clear that Trump won in the 73.

[Lester Holt]

Days they spent $93 billion from the Department of Energy on just radical loans, just throwing money into places.

[Tom Yamas]

And there's no oversight, no receipts.

[Lester Holt]

Like, the whole thing is, it's, there's a lot of fraud, a lot of money laundering, but also we help the world. And when you're talking about making wells.

[Tom Yamas]

For people in the Congo to get.

[Lester Holt]

Fresh water, when you're talking about food.

[Tom Yamas]

And medicine to places that don't have access, like, no way, that should have.

[Lester Holt]

Been cut out and that should have been clear before they make these radical cuts. Like, there's gotta be a way to keep aid and not have fraud.

[Tom Yamas]

And you can't say we're gonna kill.

[Lester Holt]

Everything so that there's no fraud, but.

[Tom Yamas]

Then you're killing all the Good.

[Lester Holt]

And you're doing it without letting anybody.

[Tom Yamas]

Know it's gonna happen. So no one's.

[Lester Holt]

It's not like they had three years to prepare. Let's build a new infrastructure. Let's make sure that everything's set up. They wanted change and they wanted change quickly. And due to the nature of American politics, they have about two years before the midterms.

[Tom Yamas]

Right.

[Tom Brokaw]

What did you make of that exchange, Emily?

[Tom Yamas]

Super interesting. And Krista, you were pointing out as we were watching it, the different parts that were clipped, where they cut it left and right. Yeah. Where they had cut that clip up. And I think what Rogan just made at the end was a really compelling point about not creating any time period for off ramps. Because if you're somebody like me who looks at USAID and says this is actually in some sense creating this exploitive dependency system based on where US Soft power interests are. And I think that's a critique.

[Tom Brokaw]

I share that critique. Yeah.

[Tom Yamas]

And so if you think that you're like, okay, so it's really unfair that we are holding these people basically hostage with our aid to our foreign policy interests and then you just pull the rug out from under them after making commitments for years and years and years, then, yes, people are going to die and people are going to suffer. There's another way which would involve saying, you have five years to get off of this dependency. We're changing fundamentally the way. And then the Gates foundation steps in and the Rockefeller foundation steps in and they fill the gaps, which is just not what happened. And I think it was really interesting to see Rogan reacting particularly to that and as an ally of Elon Musk.

[Tom Brokaw]

Yeah, I mean, some of the things Rogan says, like, about, about the quote, unquote, radical loans and the, you know, oh, there's so much fraud. Again, what was the fraud? Because I share, you know, the, like the left has a critique of USAID and is the one that Emily explained of like holding people hostage to, to U.S. imperial Foreign Policy interests. And this administration, they don't believe in soft power. I mean, by and large they just believe in hard power. That's why USAID is being gutted. That's why the State Department is being gutted. They have this throwback imperial. If we see something and we want it, we're gonna take it. That is their ideology. That's why Trump loves the McKinley era. That's why they, Greenland, Panama, Gaza, Canada, like they have this mentality of an old school. We are just going to use our might to take it and we're not going to wrap it in, like, you know, we'll give you some HIV medication and then you're gonna help us out with our rare earth mineral supply. They don't wanna wrap it in the gauzy language. They just wanna come in with the guns and force our will upon the world. So that's the, you know, that's the ideology that is surrounding this. But again, they didn't actually identify any fraud. I'm not saying there wasn't any. I'm saying there was none identified. What Rogan's referring to there in terms of the end of the Biden administration. It is true that at the end of the Biden administration, when there was a recognition of. Oh, shit, Kamala lost to Trump. The Trump administration is coming in. We have all of these funds appropriated through, you know, whether it's the IRA or the CHIPS act or whatever that has already been authorized by Congress. We need to speed up the process to get these funds out the door. And that's what Rogan calls radical loans. That's the.

[Tom Yamas]

I love that phrase.

[Tom Brokaw]

Great term. I do love that term. So that's what he's referring to ultimately there. But the other thing that drives me crazy, Emily, is like, you just acknowledge people have already died because of the consequences of these actions, of just pulling all the funding out from under many of these programs. And. And we have estimates from. Bono is referencing this study. You can put some of these estimates up on the screen from Boston University School of Public Health. This is called the impact counter. This Twitter account was just sharing some of the top lines here. So within one year, these are all projected out. And again, you can quibble with what the numbers are, but there is. We know already, factually speaking, that people have died as a result of these cuts. And we know that more people will die as a result. A result of these cuts. The estimates here, 1.65 million die without HIV prevention and treatment. 500,000 die without vaccine funding. 500,000 die without food aid. That's what Bono is talking about, is just rotting at the ports right now. 310,000 die without tuberculosis prevention. He's saying at zero deaths so far. 300,000 is a low estimate, is the opinion of this Twitter account. And 300,000 is the estimate that they give right now. The number of people who have died already. And again, there is a Elon and others claim no one has died. That's impossible, et cetera. And it's like, I don't know how you can. I don't know how you can live in reality and think that there's just no consequence for cutting this funding for critical life saving treatments around the world without anything to replace it. And you know, I'm sure there will be organizations over time that come in and try to fill the gap. I have no doubt about that. But so that has not happened yet. And so there is a critical hole that the US used to fill that has just been. The rug has been pulled out and children, people who need this treatment and care that they were relying on the US for, they have died and they will continue to die. And that is just the reality of Elon's impact here. And so I think that's the other piece Emily is part of. Why I wanted to highlight this clip is because. Because there is a sense that Doge utterly and completely failed. And it did. But we need to pair that with the understanding that Doge also did tremendous, tremendous damage that is literally costing people's lives and will continue to have generational fallout for years and years to come.

[Tom Yamas]

So, and this is something that people on the right feel as well, is that Elon Musk may have done lasting damage to the idea of, like you said by the Doge website, having so many holes that, like when you're trying to look up the instances of fraud that are being cited, you go to the website and you can't track it down, or it appears to be a total stretch, or it appears to be. There are actually a lot of examples of journalists trying to chase down the fraud that Doge had caught or eliminated, whatever it was, and going down rabbit trails, going down things that led them to repetition, something like that. And does that end up doing lasting damage to the really predicate of a lot of conservative ideology about quote unquote, limited government. And I'm someone who's in this camp, people say limited, not small government. Small government is libertarian. Limited government is conservative, limited relative to what it's become over the last 100 years. Does that idea ever recover, you know, in this generation from Doge, when you have such a. I don't know if. Yeah, I mean, this is the right way to say it. When you have such an unserious approach where you end up, I mean, you pledge huge numbers, you come up with very little. It's all done with a billionaire dancing with a chainsaw. Does it ever recover? On the other hand, would anyone have ever done it? You sort of have a catch 22 other than eccentric Elon Musk, maybe not. But does it ever recover from Doge? I don't know. It's a question actually, that might even go to Democrats. Crystal having this conversation about abundance and about Doge, where when Doge first started, you saw a lot of Democrats frustrated with the fact that it was Republicans who were capitalizing on this idea of efficiency in government, saying, well, we can certainly stand for efficiency in government because from our perspective, the more efficient the government looks, the more that we can actually make the case for funding, the more that we can make the case that some of these agencies are good if they're efficient. So I don't know, I mean, maybe Democrats are able to co opt that idea.

[Tom Brokaw]

Well, maybe we can put this in in post, guys. And by the way, Marshall Kosloff is going to co host with me tomorrow.

[Tom Yamas]

Yes, Abundance.

[Tom Brokaw]

Abundance guy.

[Tom Yamas]

Marshall.

[Tom Brokaw]

Abundance Koslopo. So I'm trying to avoid saying, bro, in any case, I'm really looking forward. He has some really smart insights into the interaction of the left, et cetera. But I want to talk to him more about this poll tomorrow. But CNN just did a poll that found for the first time in decades, basically unprecedented in the neoliberal era. A majority of Americans say government should do more to solve problems versus the number who say government is trying to do too many things. And I think that is directly attributable to Doge, directly, where it's like, you don't know what you got until it's gone. Kind of a dynamic where it's like, oh, I liked it when I had a Social Security field office in my town and I didn't have to wait on a phone for four hours in order to get someone to answer my basic question. That was a good thing the government was doing and I wish it would do it again.

[Tom Yamas]

It's a socialist op. Now that you say Elon Musk, you couldn't come up with a better socialist op. Like if Bernie Sanders was doing covert operations and planting a libertarian in the federal government to make the entire project.

[Tom Brokaw]

Look absurd to prove the importance of what the government actually does. Oh yeah, you know what? I actually liked it when I could get weather data and there was a FEMA disaster relief response that maybe it wasn't ideal, but it was better than not having one. So, I mean, it's an extraordinary surge in the number of people who say, no, actually, I believe in government and I want government to do, do more and I want it to do well. Now the challenge on the other side is that there's not a lot of trust for either party to be able to accomplish those things. Effectively. And so obviously that's a big reality and political challenge. But I do think your point about the fears that Elon has somehow managed to destroy even the concept of like, we need to cut the fat and we need to make government more quote, unquote, efficient. It's pretty remarkable that, because that has always been a winning political proposition for my entire lifetime.

[Tom Yamas]

Yeah. That's so interesting. We'll see where it goes going forward. But low hanging fruit here for Democrats.

[Tom Brokaw]

Yeah. Should we talk about your favorite senator?

[Tom Yamas]

Let's talk about Joni Ernst. Why not? Why shouldn't we be talking about Jonah? She came to under the so Jonah Ernst got hit with a tough town hall the other day, as many Republicans have. And in fact, at one point, Republicans stopped doing town halls. So amazing that Joni Ernst actually was out there talking to the people. But before we get into the reaction to this, let's just roll this clip of Joni Ernst being heckled by people in the audience. This is people in Iowa reacting to Joni Ernst talking about Medicaid cuts. So go ahead and take a look at this clip.

[Lester Holt]

People are not well.

[Tom Brokaw]

We all are going to die.

[Lester Holt]

Hello everyone.

[Tom Yamas]

I would like to take this opportunity.

[Tom Brokaw]

To sincerely apologize for a statement that I made yesterday at my town hall.

[Lester Holt]

See, I was in the process of answering a question that had been asked by an audience member when a woman who was extremely distraught screamed out from the back corner of the auditorium, people.

[Tom Yamas]

Are going to die.

[Lester Holt]

And I made an incorrect assumption that everyone in the auditorium understood that, yes.

[Tom Brokaw]

We are all going to perish from this earth.

[Lester Holt]

So I apologize and I'm really, really.

[Tom Brokaw]

Glad that I did not have to.

[Lester Holt]

Bring up the subject of the tooth fairy as well.

[Tom Yamas]

Hello, fellow flesh and blood mortals. It's just if you're listening to this, what you miss is it was just her face, like chin up and she actually people pointed out, is walking in front of a cemetery. Like to the point about Washington not being West Wing but being Veep. This is the best illustration that I've seen in months. Actually, there's always a good illustration every single week. But this is one of the best ones I've ever seen. Crystal, she's a Polish apologizing for saying, quote, we're all going to die at a town hall. It was in Butler County, Iowa, on Friday. She makes an apology video. First of all, why are you making the apology video roll with it? Secondly, she does it in front of a cemetery.

[Tom Brokaw]

Yeah.

[Tom Yamas]

And then she pivoted to evangelism, by the way, towards the End of the video. You didn't see this, but I'm pretty sure, yeah. She ended up saying, quote, for those that would like to see eternal and everlasting life, I encourage you to embrace my Lord and savior, Jesus Christ.

[Tom Brokaw]

Guys, I'm telling you, as an evangelical.

[Tom Yamas]

Christian, this is the worst evangelism I've ever seen.

[Tom Brokaw]

Yeah, I mean, yes, we are all going to die. It kind of matters to me when, you know, I would rather. I think most people, including the millions who are set to lose health insurance coverage because of the Medicaid cuts in the big, beautiful bill, they would like to forestall that possibility into the future. But the meme of Republicans is the idea that their health care plan is don't get sick or don't be poor. And so she just goes all in with basically, yeah, I mean, I guess if you get sick, you're gonna die, but, eh, whatever, we're all gonna die anyway. And just find your salvation in God. It's fine.

[Tom Yamas]

I was venting about this first of all, just from like, a comms perspective. God forbid I put that hat on, like the idea of doing communications for a senator. But if you're even, like, thinking about this, you just. All you have to do is say, yeah, this is the Trump era. All she has to do is say, yeah, I stood up to the liberal heckler in the audience who is defending waste and fraud in Medicaid. Yeah, I'm defending Medicaid from the people who want to undermine Medicaid with waste and fraud and abuse. But why would you ever go out there and apologize for making, like, a glib, offhanded comment? And then, because she was clearly frustrated in the clip. She was, like, just reaching for straws. And Joni Ernst is not the most talented politician in the world, you will be shocked to learn, and ends up grasping at we're all going to die films an apology video in front of a cemetery, then jokes about the tooth fairy and pivots to evangelism. I mean, you just. Every item on the bingo card is checked off.

[Tom Brokaw]

Well, and the funny thing, too, I'm interested in your take on this is I am normally very impressed with Republican message discipline. Usually there's like a. Okay, here's what we're saying about the Medicaid cuts. We're saying, these aren't cuts. This is we're cutting out the waste. Right? And some Republicans are on that talking point. Other Republicans are on the, like, actually, you know, they're not cuts at all. Why don't I even know what you're talking about there are no cuts. People are gonna keep their insurance.

[Tom Yamas]

Right.

[Tom Brokaw]

Some people are just like they're in the denying of reality. And then some people, apparently Joni Ernst is in the well, we're all gonna die anyway, so whatever. If 8 million people are slated to lose their health insurance coverage, which is the estimate under this bill. So in some ways, I think it displays the victory of Obamacare's expansion of Medicaid that this has become a difficult subject for Republicans because it never was in the past. It also is indicative of the realignment that, as Bannon points out, you now have a lot of Magas on Medicaid. And so this is going to have an impact on your voting coalition. Will be among many of the 8 million who lose their health insurance. Like Trump won narrowly, but won voters making under $50,000. And that is the first time for a Republican, I don't know since when in the modern era. So in any case, I think the schizophrenic nature of the Medicaid messaging within the Republican coalition is indicative of the fact, like, they realize this is a big political problem for them, but they also realize they have this ideological commitment to cutting Medicaid. And also the bill blows up the deficit and we've got to do something and we've got to appeal the fiscal hawks and the libertarians and the Cox and whatever. So they are kind of a mess on this issue because it's not really it is dramatically you poll cuts to Medicaid dramatically politically unpopular. And so they just don't really know what to do with that when they're out trying to talk to regular people.

[Tom Yamas]

So let's actually, he wasn't talking to regular people, but went on he was doing Sunday show messaging to Crystal's point about GOP messaging discipline. And actually a lot of people on the right were passing around this clip as kind of a masterclass. But people on the left. This reminds me of the Bono clip we played in the Elon block. Crystal. People on the left are passing this around as examples of Doge Republican cruelty, basically. So let's go ahead and roll Office of Management Budget Director Russ Vogt, who is now basically seen as the policy mind that's driving Doge. The administration is saying there's really no one person now that Elon's kind of checked out. There's no one person that's like the leader of Doge. But people generally see Russ as being the intellectual policy mind of Doge. And he's at omb, so he's kind of managing the purse strings. He's very supportive of the unitary executive theory. He's a extremely consequential person in this administration. So let's watch Russ vote yesterday.

[Lester Holt]

It's more about the nih.

[Tom Brokaw]

And the NIH has been a bureaucracy.

[Lester Holt]

That we believe has been weaponized against the American people. We saw that in Covid.

[Tom Brokaw]

The extent to which it doesn't even.

[Lester Holt]

Know or is willing to grapple with.

[Tom Brokaw]

The extent to which it funded the Wuhan Institute through the Eco Health alliance, and the fact that they pay far.

[Lester Holt]

More than even Bill Gates does for indirect costs at the, at all of the bureaucracy. So this is something that is vitally important to be able to get a handle on.

[Tom Brokaw]

And we're still going to give $28.

[Lester Holt]

Billion to the NIH.

[Tom Yamas]

So that's him with Dana Bash on CNN's State of the Union Sunday show. Crystal so interesting, in the context of the point you made about generally being impressed with Republican messaging discipline, what did you make of Russ? As the people like Joni Ernst are struggling with town halls, at one point there was the directive from Trump on down like, just don't do town halls. The bill's on the table right now. Doge is kind of over. So how do you think the way Russ is talking is playing with the public?

[Tom Brokaw]

Well, I think that the way Russ is talking is the reason why there was some general public receptivity to the project of doge. Because you can point at things at USAID that people are like, eh, I don't know that we really need to do that. You can, obviously, NIH is a good example where you can point and the abundance guys have critiques of like, oh, we should be organizing our federal research and our science funding this way. But now that you're on cleanup crew and people have seen, oh, you're not just targeting like the Wuhan Lab, you are gutting scientific research across the board in a way that is gonna have generational impacts. No, those are not things that the public supported. So if there was, you know, if this was before the fact and a justification of, okay, why we're gonna come in and here's how we're gonna do it and this is what it's gonna look like. Yeah, maybe you could have gotten some public support for that. But now the bloom is off the rose. People have already seen the chainsaw. They're not going to unsee the chainsaw and think that you're doing some limited, targeted, effective cutting of just the pieces of the federal government that they may have some sort of issue with.

[Tom Yamas]

It's going to be tough. And I wonder when the history of this first administration is written in 10 plus years from now, not like the next couple of years, but 10 plus years from now, how people see the cause of actually shrinking the conservative movement's almost central animating principle of cutting government. Because cutting government, and this is again the conservative argument that always brings more freedom. So any cut to the government is more that abstract principle of freedom. You're feeding human freedom every time you cut the government. I just wonder how this period changes that going forward. And if the Republican Party looks more like the Bannon Republican Party or the ELON Republican Party 10 years from now based on all of this. Because right now what they're trying to do, people like Russ Boat are trying to marry the two.

[Tom Brokaw]

Right.

[Tom Yamas]

And that is what feels like is slipping.

[Tom Brokaw]

And it isn't just the Republicans who've been bought into the. I mean Bill Clinton is the one who said the era of big government is over. This is really starts with Carter dabbles in it. Reagan is obviously the real ideological full realization of that ideology in government. Bill Clinton consolidates it as a bipartisan project. And this is the central question of the political moment we're living in right now is like that consensus is dead, dead. What comes next is contested. And that's where the abundance conversation fits in of what does the post neoliberal left offering look like? That's where the. I mean, personally I think a lot of abundance is neoliberal, but I'll talk about it tomorrow. But that's their conception is like, okay, you've got this, you've got the oligarchy framing, you've got the breaking up, the antitrust and corporate power framing. And then there's this question of what is the role of government. The priorities and values that are embodied in the Trump big beautiful budget are basically a gutting of the social safety net, a funding of the oligarchs and the wealthy and a massive expansion of the police state, of the military industrial complex with a huge Pentagon budget and then a massive expansion of ICE and the private prison detention centers that go along with that. So that is the. As embodied by the Trump movement. That is really their conception of government power is that it does little in terms of providing social services and does a lot in terms of, you know, the sort of like surveillance and projecting power and fighting wars and those sorts of things. I think the Democrats and the left more broadly are really grappling right now with what their conception of the federal government is ultimately going to be. But I do think you're right to focus in on that is one of the key questions that is being grappled with right now, sort of across the board politically in terms of arriving at whatever the new political era and consensus is going to be.

[Tom Yamas]

I actually think it's been a great few months for democratic socialism. In all seriousness, the pitch that Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio Cortez are making.

[Tom Brokaw]

You see the receptivity with Zoran Mandani, who had no challenging Cuomo in the way that he's been able to, whether he's able to pull it off or not for New York City mayor.

[Tom Yamas]

I think it's a great point. Crystal. I was so proud of us because we almost wrapped the show on a timely basis and then we didn't.

[Lester Holt]

We just started talking.

[Tom Brokaw]

We had to wax poetic about neoliberalism and the waning era. Let girls be girls era of big government. There you go. All right guys, Premium subscribers are going to get that AMA live today. If you guys guys want to take part in that, avail yourself of our free trial offer month. Free monthly subscriber offer is back. So you know, we'd love to see you guys sign up and become part of that so we can get your questions and interact with. That was one of the promising of the premium subscribers is interact with the hosts. So you will get to do that more if you are a premium subscriber. The promo code for the free monthly trial is BP Free over at Breaking Point Points dot com. Let's see, today is Monday. Tomorrow I'm in with Marshall.

[Tom Yamas]

Hell yeah.

[Tom Brokaw]

That's going to be super fun. I'm looking forward to that. Such a smart guy. Always enjoy his insights. So that'll be good.

[Tom Yamas]

He's in person too, right?

[Tom Brokaw]

He's in person.

[Tom Yamas]

Amazing.

[Tom Brokaw]

It's awesome. Yeah. And you and Ryan on Wednesday, me and Ryan on Thursday, Friday show. That's the plan for the week.

[Tom Yamas]

So gang's all here.

[Tom Brokaw]

We'll see you guys tomorrow. Career changers including veterans and active duty.

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