← Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar
Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar
6/30/25: Trump 'Beautiful' Bill, Dems Smear Zohran, Gaza Aid Site Massacres, Karen Read Trial & MORE
02:08:34
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- [00:00]
Jenny Garth
This is an iHeart podcast.
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Jenny Garth
Jenny Garth from I Do Part 2. Can't afford Ozempic? Try Wegovy from Future Health. Just $199 and FDA approved for weight loss. No insurance or tricky syringes needed, just results. Visit futurehealth.com that's future without the E and start losing weight this week. Future Health weight loss data based on independent studies sponsored by Future Health. Future Health is not a health care services provider. Meds are prescribed at provide.
- [01:35]
Sagar
Hey guys, Sagar and Krystal here.
- [01:36]
Krystal
Independent media just played a truly massive role in this election and we are so excited about what that means for the future of this show.
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Sagar
This is the only place where you can find honest perspectives from the left and the right that simply does not exist anywhere else.
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Krystal
So if that is something that's important to you, Please go to BreakingPoints.com, become a member today and you'll get access to our full shows unedited ad, free and all put together for you every morning in your inbox.
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Sagar
We need your help to build the future of independent news media and we hope to see you@breaking points.com.
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Krystal
Happy Monday. Welcome to Breaking Points. As you saw, no overhead shot because there's nobody in the studio, although the crew is holding down the fort there. So today I'll be joined later in the program by comedian Dave Smith. We're going to start with Dave Smith and I are going to interview Amir Tabon, a columnist at Haaretz about the recent Haaretz report about the aid site massacres and IDF soldiers being instructed to shoot at or toward civilians who are seeking aid. We're also going to talk about Tabone's new column suggesting that Donald Trump is once again screwing up with Netanyahu by pushing to have the charges dropped against him rather than putting pressure on on him. We're going to start the program with Dave Dayan, editor of the American Prospect, to talk about the big beautiful bill which is hurtling towards passage in the Senate today. We're also going to talk about the reaction over the weekend to Zoran Mamdani's win by Democratic elites Hakeem Jeffries saying he's not willing to endorse him as of yet. And then we're going to finish with Aiden Carney, who many of you may know as Dr. Turtle Boy. Aiden Carney is the local reporter in Massachusetts who really brought the Karen Reed trial to national attention. We'll talk a little bit about the Reid trial itself, but mostly we're going to talk about what is becoming a very important press freedom case. This part has been overlooked by the media that has been focusing on the Karen Reid trial. But Aidan Carney, who the, the reporter who broke, who effectively broke this story, is facing, you know, multiple charges directly related to his journalism in this case. And so we're going to talk about that and why it's so important for us to keep the focus on it even as Karen Reed has been acquitted. And, and people are moving on now to the phase of doing more documentaries and movies about it. But to start the program, we're going to be joined by Dave Dayan to talk about the ongoing debate in the Senate over the big beautiful bill. So the big beautiful bill. Joining me to talk about that is American Prospect editor Dave Dayan. Dave, thank you so much for joining us.
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Dave Dayan
Thanks for having me.
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Krystal
So this thing is barreling through Congress. The House said that they were going to get it done by Memorial Day. People scoffed at that. They got it done by Memorial Day. The Senate said they're going to get it done by July 4th. That's the arbitrary deadline that they set. They had they got it through a procedural vote over the weekend and have now moved into the debate phase. As you and I are speaking, the debate is ongoing and they're going to be moving towards, you know, votes towards eventual final passage. You know, any, any moment now like this is this train is as far left the station is about to pull into the White House unless something calamitous happens between now and then, too calamitous for Republicans. So let's, let's unpack some of the objections to this bill that Republicans are, are putting forward and then talk about what this thing means. So let's start with a six. This is Thom Tillis, who announced right around this time that you're seeing him on the floor that, you know what, he's not going to run for reelection for Senate in North Carolina after Trump got ticked with him and said he was going to recruit a primary challenger to him. So here's Tillis talking about some of his objections to the bill.
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Thom Tillis
Between the state directed payments and the cuts scheduled in this bill, there's a reduction of state directed payments and then there's the reduction of the provider tax. They can't find a hole in my estimate. So what they told me is that, yeah, it's rough, but North Carolina's used the system. They're going to have to make it work. All right, so what do I tell 663,000 people in two years or three years when President Trump breaks his promise by pushing them off of Medicaid because the funding's not there anymore, Guys.
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Katie Britt
When.
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Thom Tillis
The White House advising the president are not telling him that the effect of this bill is to break a promise? And you know, the last time I saw a promise broken around health care with respect to my friends on the other side of the aisle, it's when somebody said, if you like your health care, you could keep it. If you like your doctor, you could keep it. We found out that wasn't true. That made me the second Republican speaker of the House since the Civil War, ladies and gentlemen, because we betrayed the promise to the American people. Two years later, three years later, it actually made me a US senator because in 2010, it had just been proposed and just anticipation of what was going to happen was enough to have a Sea Change election that swept Republicans into the majority for the second time in 100 years. Now Republicans are about to make a mistake on health care and betraying a promise. It is inescapable that this bill in its current form will betray the very promise that Donald J. Trump made in the Oval Office or in the Cabinet Room when I was there with Finance, where he said, we can go after waste, fraud and abuse on any programs.
- [07:56]
Krystal
And we can get into this a moment. The fat. Probably the fastest growing industry in North Carolina is the clean energy industry, which this bill also just takes an absolute sledgehammer to. So it's not just the Medicaid cuts that Tillis is going to is, you know, has a problem with let's roll Hawley quick, because Hawley voted yes, Josh Hawley, but made a passionate argument for why he should have voted no. So let's roll a little bit of Hawley. We can't be cutting health care for working people and for poor people in order to constantly give special tax treatment.
- [08:32]
Josh Hawley
To corporations and other entities.
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Krystal
And we've delayed that in this bill. But unless we take further changes, sort of take steps that will happen in future years.
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Josh Hawley
And I'm opposed to this.
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Krystal
If we're going to be a working class party, we've got to protect working people. And I just the Medicaid stuff in here I think is bad and I think we've delayed the worst of it. And in the short term for my state, you know, it's going to be fine. But we on a going forward basis, we cannot go on like this. I think the party has a lot of thinking to do. Alabama Senator Katie Britt appeared on, I believe it was Jake Tapper's program, was pressed on this as well. Her argument is basically nuh, this is not happening. So let's roll Katie Britt. Talk about them in terms of your constituents because There are about 760,000 Alabamans who rely on Medicaid. The bill will also cut federal funding for food stamps that require states to kick in more and shift a lot of that cost to Alabama. And that's more than 750,000 Alabamans who rely on what we're going to call food stamps, including 330,000 children. So are you guaranteeing that these changes that you were voting for Monday presumably will not hurt recipients in Alabama of Medicaid, of food stamps or SNAP for those who are citizens and for those who truly need it and deserve it?
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Eric Swalwell
Absolutely. So when you look at Medicaid children, obviously we have the children's Health Insurance program. So children are absolutely not touched by this same thing when it comes to SNAP benefits. So we've made sure that that is taken off the table. What you're talking about is able bodied working aged Americans without dependents at home, having them work, train, volunteer in some capacity, 20 hours a week in order to receive those government benefits. This goes back to Bill Clinton era politics when you know that being a part of something bigger than yourselves, helping to contribute is ultimately what we need to do. And it's actually the American people agree with us on this. But when you look at what's happening in Alabama specifically, you know, you think about that. What you mentioned with Regards to snap, what we're doing on that is ensuring that states have some skin in the game. If you have an error rate that is down below 6%, which Alabama is about a percentage point a little bit over that. Above that, we will have time, we have several years to make sure that we get that percentage point down. And I have every faith and belief that we will. We've got to make sure that these overpayments, underpayments that are happening. We've seen it in our own state where people's benefits are being stolen from other states, that that stuff stops. If states, obviously, under the Biden administration, we stopped that accountability during. For the SNAP program. Reinstituting it and ensuring that states have some skin in the game will ultimately help us be able to deliver these resources and services that these people so desperately need.
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Krystal
Yeah, I mean, I've heard your fellow Senator Tuberville talk about. He's worried that your state can't afford it. Your state can't afford to pick up the slack.
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Eric Swalwell
What we can afford to do is get it right.
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Krystal
All right, Dave, so the Medicaid cuts are. The, the debate really zeros in on the work requirement that is being, you know, put into place here. There's a lot more going on than just, just a work requirement. Because I think for the, the Republicans thought that by talking about the work requirement, they would win a public debate. Because people, you know, a lot of people are like, all right, you know, hey, it's not so much to volunteer or to, you know, make sure you're trying to work. If your state's going to give you this benefit, there's a lot more going on until us alluded to a lot of it there. Can you unpack a little bit more of what's going on? Like, why is, why is Tillis so, so convinced that this actually will deal a significant blow to people on Medicaid?
- [12:16]
Dave Dayan
Well, I forgot my bolo tie today, but I'll try.
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Krystal
Maybe we can, like, Photoshop.
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Dave Dayan
You had to be from New Mexico to wear a bolo tie on the Senate floor.
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Krystal
When you're, when you're retiring, you do whatever you. All bets are off.
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Dave Dayan
Okay, so what Tillis is talking about are two things that the Senate bill added. The Senate version of this bill, one is provider taxes, and the other is state directed payments. These are both ways in which states get additional resources to fund their Medicaid programs. You know, Republicans have called them gimmicks. But the reality in the context of this bill is it's just more money for Medicaid. The way the provider tax works is states tax health care providers but then also give them higher reimbursements on Medicaid payments. And so the hospitals and clinics make out even, but the states aren't really kicking in that share. They get the taxes, but they don't kick in everything because there's a state federal match on Medicaid payments. So it's a way to get more federal dollars into the state that pays for the Medicaid program. And if that is capped or actually ramped down. So those tax provider taxes have to be lower over time, starting, I believe in 2028 and moving on through 2032, then there's simply less money for Medicaid. And the state directed payments are a similar thing where Medicaid pays a fairly low reimbursement rate. And what states have done, have appealed to the federal government to top off that reimbursement rate so to ensure that hospitals and doctors actually care for Medicaid patients. And the Senate bill cuts that and limits that to a degree. So both of those things basically stop the states from getting the amount of money they need. Right now. They don't have like extra money sitting around in the states for Medicaid. So what they would have to do is cut the program. And this is the interesting way in which the federal government can say, well, we're not cutting Medicaid, we're just doing this and that and the other thing. But they're forcing states to cut Medicaid. Right. So it's just sort of a one step remove kind of situation.
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Josh Hawley
Yeah.
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Krystal
And I want to try to give the Republicans their, the fairest shake in their, in their argument here. And you mentioned that, you know, they, they say these aren't really cuts, we're just kind of getting rid of, of gimmicks. And there's some, some semantics going on here. But I understand what they're saying. And like, one of the things Katie Britt was referring to there is if, if you move from, you know, Alabama to California, you know, in a lot of situations, the state, Alabama, for instance, will still be getting credit for you living in, you know, you might, you, you don't automatically just leave the rolls necessarily. And so you might still be, Alabama might be getting credit for you being on the rolls in Alabama, while California also gets credit. And so the federal government on, on, on some level is double paying. It's like paying California and paying out Alabama to treat the same person. So what they're saying is we're going to cramp down on that. But what it leads to, well, we don't know how frequent that is, but what then it leads to? It's just less money for Alabama then. So the reason why they're getting less money is almost besides the point because. Right. They've been counting on it for many years.
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Dave Dayan
That's correct.
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Krystal
This is how the system runs.
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Dave Dayan
They've built their Medicaid program around the expectation that this money comes in, that.
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Krystal
It'S going to be pretty stable. Right.
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Dave Dayan
And the other thing in the bill, and it's not just work requirements but changes to Biden era enrollment efficiencies that were put in by rule. The entire idea here is to make it harder to sign up for Medicaid. I mean, once again the idea is, oh no, we're not cutting the program, but we're just going to make it impossible to get it. Yeah. You know, it's, the example is in the pre Obamacare days the insurance office would be on the seventh floor and there would be no working elevator. So no sick people could actually get to the insurance office to enroll for insurance. And it's a similar kind of thing. They're just making it harder to sign up for Medicaid. And the idea is a lot of, I believe it's something like Matt Bruinig had this number. Something like 60% of the eligible population here works and is on Medicaid. But the churn is expected because you have to constantly update and constantly, you know, add forms to make sure. So there's like a strangling of Medicaid through the bureaucracy here. And there are work requirements on SNAP as well that have the same function.
- [17:24]
Krystal
Right. It's like if it's you against the bureaucracy, the bureaucracy is going to win most of those fights. They win those fights against me. Like I, I cannot keep up with the forms and the requirements and like when this is due and like you have to have it in triplicate and you have to, you know, send a notarized copy of your driver's license and like, and if the goal of them is to set up a process that most people will fail, they will succeed at that.
- [17:50]
Dave Dayan
Yeah, I, I would just add one more thing that hasn't been talked about a lot with respect to Medicaid, which is there are new cost sharing requirements for individuals who are on the Medicaid program in certain contexts. So that means that people on Medicaid will just have to pay more if they want to do a doctor's visit or a test or anything like that. And the likely result, these are very poor people. When you're talking about the Medicaid population, the likely result is they will not be able to pay and therefore will not try to pay. They won't go to the doctor. So the savings, once again, they can say, we're not cutting Medicaid, but we're making it harder to use. And if you're making it harder to use, that's an effective cut.
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Krystal
And so Elon Musk has been, you know, absolutely melting down over, over this bill. And let's put up the first. You know, there are multiple tweets that people can go find. So here, here's one of his where he says the latest Senate draft bill will destroy millions of jobs in America and cause immense strategic harm to our country. Utterly insane and destructive. It gives handouts to industries of the past while severely damaging industries of the future. So he's talking here about the sledgehammer that the bill takes to not just the clean energy industry, but kind of the energy industry overall, because the energy industry also is going to require the production of more transformers and transmission lines and general federal investment into building the infrastructure that they say we will need for all the cloud storage AI, plus the ramping up of electrification of programming.
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Dave Dayan
Some people would say that this is just a reversal of the Inflation Reduction Act's investments in energy, mostly clean energy, but it was technology neutral, so a lot of things could be subsidized. It doesn't just take away that those tax credits for clean energy. It actually adds a new tax on solar and wind. And the only way to get out of that tax is to ensure not a single speck of your project includes anything that's Chinese made. And this is kind of an impossibility right now. It would require complete change to supply chains, which maybe is something we should do, but is not something we can do in the time period scheduled, because the tax would kick in in 2027 and that's two years away. And so I've heard energy experts describe this as a total kill shot for wind and for solar. In the meantime, there is a new tax incentives, production tax credit for metallurgical coal, the kind of coal that's made, used in steel. There's a tax break on Big Oil that was stuck in by Oklahoma Senator James Lankford. That is for domestic drillers, mostly based in Oklahoma, who would be exempt from the alternative minimum tax for corporations that Elizabeth Warren put into the Inflation Reduction Act. So it would mean that domestic oil drillers might not have to pay any taxes at all. And there's also the only tax that it not only tax credit from the IRA that it not only maintains but expands is a tax credit for biofuels, which is basically ethanol, the use of corn and soy to make fuels, which studies have shown is actually worse for the environment than if you use gasoline because it's such an immense land use. So this completely upends the energy market in the US we already have strains on the grid because of data centers because of increased demand. And not only will this likely raise electricity rates, but there is a very strong likelihood that you will get blackouts more often because of this bill.
- [21:57]
Krystal
Let's put up a four real quickly and I want to dig in on on your point there. This is again another Elon Musk tweet where you know, he's elevating somebody else who said like by 2020 30, China could have the ability to produce enough solar and storage infrastructure each year to match the entire electricity generation capacity of the United States. Context there of course, being, you know, the, the AI race and the, and the tech race between the, the US and and China, and energy being, you know, the most important fundamental input. So you could imagine our strategic decision makers, if given the choice, and they're now forcing the choice upon themselves of powering AI and storage and cloud or powering your home, they're going to choose powering the AI and the cloud storage and you are going to get a blackout. And I don't think people have really internalized the likelihood of this. As somebody from California who's a little closer to the edge of the energy debate, tell us a little bit about why we may wind up in this world where the richest country in the world is going to kind of foist rolling blackouts on itself.
- [23:15]
Dave Dayan
I mean, it's a simple demand situation, right? We currently are at the limits of demand that we have for, for energy. And with this rollout of more data centers, more of the components used in AI, that's going to require a massive amount of electricity, meaning demand is going to go up. And if demand goes up and you don't have the supply available, you know, they're talking about, oh well, we'll build nuclear. There really is no schedule for more than maybe one or two nuclear plants to be built in the next decade. It's just not a quick acting kind of situation. And whereas you could continue the massive increase in solar in particular that we've seen over the last couple years, basically something like 80 to 90% of all the new electricity generation that has been installed over the last several years is from either solar or battery storage. And so if you're taking that away, if you're making that impossible to pencil out, you're making that not cost effective to build. You're relying on natural gas, on nuclear, things that have basically stagnated. And that means you're not going to keep up with demand. And the result is that somebody can't get power. I mean, if you don't have enough power that people want, someone's going to be left holding the bag.
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Krystal
And so paying for all this, what we're paying for is massive tax cuts for the rich.
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Sagar
Right.
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Krystal
Can you talk a little bit about the other side? Like who's getting the benefits of this bill and to what tune?
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Dave Dayan
Sure. So it's an extension of the 2017 Trump tax cuts. Those were certainly tilted toward the wealthy. There are also these new tax cuts, these kind of populist tax cuts that Trump talked about during the campaign.
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Krystal
No tax on tips, no tax on overtime.
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Dave Dayan
No tax on overtime. There's an alleged no tax on Social Security, but it has nothing to do with Social Security. There's a temporary boost to the standard deduction if you're over the age of 65. There is also, and the Senate added this, a number of business tax cuts that are being made permanent in this bill on research and development and business expensing and things like that. So, you know, you put that all together. There's also an increase that effectively repeals the estate tax. I mean, the increase, now the threshold for actually having to pay the federal estate tax is so high that you're effectively eliminating any family or estate from having to pay it.
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Krystal
Do you know what they're putting it at?
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Dave Dayan
It's something like 30 million. I think it's a pretty extreme number, 99.99. You know, there are all kinds, tricks that are done. I mean, if you're, if you're holding this, you know, you still have the step up in basis. So if you're holding all of your assets in stocks and equities and when you die, you step up to the level that it was at and you don't pay an additional tax on that. So, I mean, there's, there's a whole host of ways to game the system. And now it's, it, it's not as hard to game. So, you know, basically you have, you put these all together. And by the way, all of those tax cuts are much more expensive than the spending cuts that have been put in to offset it. Congressional Budget Office came out and said $3.3 trillion, and that's before interest expensing is how much this bill would cost. The way that the Republicans get around this is through a gimmick known as the current policy baseline. And my understanding that may have already been voted on by the time we're talking, because that was going to be the first thing to be voted on in the votorama here on the Senate floor. The current policy baseline says that, oh, if the current policy is these Trump tax cuts, these individual tax cuts, if we extend that, that doesn't cost any money because it's just keeping the same system that we have in place. Now, if you used a current law baseline which says those expire at the end of the year and you have to pay to fund those tax cuts, it would be $3.8 trillion. This is why you'll hear Republicans say, actually this bill saves the federal government $500 billion because they're waving a magic wand around the Trump tax cuts and say those don't cost any money. And it's actually important because the budget reconciliation rules dictate that this bill would be out of compliance and unable to pass under these rules if they didn't use the current policy baseline.
- [28:20]
Krystal
So if you give me $20 today, that costs you $20, but if you give me $20 every day, forever after that, that doesn't actually cost you anything.
- [28:30]
Dave Dayan
I mean, the good analogy is that, the analogy is that Democrats, when they should they get a trifecta again, could pass the Medicare for All for One Day act, which would cost one day's worth of Medicare for all, and then the next bill after that would extend it for 10 years and say, hey, it's just current policy today, so I guess that's okay.
- [28:55]
Krystal
Unfortunately, reality is a thing, but I guess we'll see whether we have to deal with that or not. Dave Dayan, editor of the American Prospect. Thank you so much for joining me on Breaking Points.
- [29:11]
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Krystal
The early 2000s, a legacy investing platform. Please don't touch the exhibit folks, it could crash.
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- [30:11]
Jenny Garth
Jenny Garth from I Do Part Two. Can't afford Ozempic? Try WeGovy from FutureHealth just $199 and FDA approved for weight. No insurance or tricky syringes needed, just results. Visit futurehealth.com that's future without the E and start losing weight this week. Future Health weight loss data based on independent studies sponsored by Future Health. Future Health is not a healthcare services provider. Meds are prescribed at providers discretion.
- [30:41]
Krystal
So the Democratic freakout over Zoran Mamdani's victory in the mayoral primary continues. Who better to talk to us about that than a long time New York City resident? Although I guess expat now in Jersey. You were telling me, Dave Smith.
- [30:57]
Katie Britt
Well, thank you. I'm a refugee of the 2020 lockdowns. I, I escaped over the border.
- [31:04]
Krystal
Yes. I, I, it must have been a harrowing journey. I'm, I'm impressed that you made it. Somebody must have, you know, smuggled you into a, like a horse and drawn carriage and taken you over the bridge.
- [31:13]
Katie Britt
But, well, there's not, listen, it was as far as political refugees go, it's not very common that you end up getting a house for the price of your apartment when you get to the other side. So that it was a happy ending.
- [31:26]
Krystal
So there you go. So, so Mamdani, let's start with Hakeem Jeffries. He's the Democratic leader in the House. Mom. Donnie was on a bunch of Sunday shows, as were a bunch of Democrats all kind of circling around each other. Here's Jeffries getting asked whether he's going to endorse the Democratic nominee for mayor.
- [31:43]
Dave Dayan
Let's start with the big news leader.
- [31:45]
Katie Britt
Jeffries out of your hometown.
- [31:48]
Dave Dayan
Mamdani won a big victory.
- [31:50]
Katie Britt
Have you endorsed him yet?
- [31:54]
Josh Hawley
I have not.
- [31:55]
Katie Britt
We had a conversation on Wednesday morning where I congratulated him on the campaign that he ran, a campaign that clearly was relentlessly focused on on the high cost of living in New York City and the economy. He outworked, he out communicated and he out organized the opposition. And that's clearly why he was successful so what's holding you back from endorsing him right now? Well, we don't really know each other well. Our districts don't overlap. Globalizing the antifada, by way of example, is not an acceptable phrase. And he's going to have to clarify his position on that as he moves forward. With respect to the Jewish communities that I represent, I think our nominee is going to have to convince folks that he is prepared to aggressively address the rise in antisemitism in the city of New York, which has been an unacceptable development.
- [32:50]
Krystal
Before we get into that, let's roll in Eric Swalwell and then. And then talk about some of this. So Swalwell ran. Many people do not know this. He actually ran for president at one point, tied with Kirsten Gillibrand for the most forgettable presidential candidacy in American history. Nonetheless, he did. Here he is on the Sunday show sporting the new. The new democratic thing, trying to look regular with a beard.
- [33:13]
Dave Dayan
And frankly, stylistically, and I'm not a.
- [33:16]
Krystal
Socialist, and I don't associate myself with what he has said about the Jewish people. I think the reference that I had.
- [33:22]
Sagar
Read was global Intifada specifically, which is. Has very serious meanings that are violent and destructive. So which. Which he says, and I pressed him on this on the show on Monday, but which he says are not calls for violence because intifada is a much broader term involving all kinds of uprisings and resistance and things like that. So I just want to be clear about how at least he defines it. But I do also want to be clear that he said he does not support violent intifada. Is that fair? So, Brian, I didn't hear your exchange with him, but if I was speaking.
- [33:55]
Public Advertiser
To him directly, I would simply say.
- [33:57]
Sagar
That is not how the words are received. And it doesn't matter what meaning you have in your brain. It is not how the word is received. And when you use a word like intifada, to many Jewish Americans and Jewish New Yorkers, that means you are permissive for violence against Jews.
- [34:09]
Krystal
What specifically has Mamdani said that you think is anti Semitic?
- [34:14]
Katie Britt
Pro Hamas. Hamas is a dangerous terrorist organization.
- [34:21]
Krystal
When did he praise Hamas? I don't recall him ever praising Hamas.
- [34:28]
Sagar
There's several. There's several videos, even during his days of being a rap artist, praising Hamas and other terrorist groups. And so a little research, you'll be able to find it.
- [34:40]
Public Advertiser
Do you condemn that phrase, globalize the intifada?
- [34:44]
Sagar
That's not language that I use. The language that I use and the language that I will continue to use to lead this city is that which speaks clearly to my intent, which is.
- [34:52]
Katie Britt
An intent grounded in a belief in universal human rights.
- [34:55]
Sagar
And ultimately, that's what is the foundation of so much of my politics. The belief that freedom and justice and.
- [35:01]
Katie Britt
Safety are things that, to have meaning.
- [35:03]
Sagar
Have to be applied to all people. And that includes Israelis and Palestinians as like, but do you actually condemn it?
- [35:09]
Krystal
So Eric Swalwell there probably had the most egregious, an un. Unsourced claim there where he said, you know, I had. I take issue with things that he has said about the Jewish community, which he's never said anything negative about the Jewish community ever. Like, not nobody's. Even until Swalwell accused him of that, he can't point to anything. I reached out to his office to see if they would point to anything, and they haven't gotten back to me yet. The Gillibrand one I wanted to get your take on, because if you take the anti Semitism debate out of this, the language that she was using there feels ripped out of like 2019, 2020. Cancel culture. So, like, it doesn't matter what you think the word means. And what's so crazy is that we're talking about an Arabic word which means resistance. Like, that's not. There's no. No debate. That's what the word means. You can go. Go to Google Translate and put in intifada. It means resistance. But according to Gillibrand, it doesn't matter what it means. What matters is how it makes people feel on the other end, which to me is the very familiar cancel culture language. And she even then says, we have the same thing when it comes to black, brown and LGBTQ communities. We understand. So she's making the argument to the left like, you, look, you guys have adopted this cancel culture rubric. This fits into it, so you should cancel him. What I'm curious about, for people who've been critical of cancel culture, how are they squaring this language policing around Mamdani?
- [36:45]
Katie Britt
Well, Ryan, it's a good question. I've been asking that question for about two years now across huge swaths of the political portion of Americans that are supporting Israel. Nobody seems to have an issue squaring. It's just. We will just pretend that everything we stood for five minutes ago doesn't exist and move on. It's really. It's. I think the worst aspect of. Of wokeism and cancel culture and even political correctness, as it used to be called when. When I was a kid, is that it's this. This Thing where you try to shut down conversation based off a term that someone's using and nobody, it becomes an excuse to never grapple with the point that the person was making. It's like, you know, you just, you used the wrong term and therefore everyone has to freak out about this. But what's really, truly remarkable about this race to me is there's this, it's like there's this denial amongst the, the Democratic establishment of how bad the situation is for them. You know, like it's, it's, you know, going back to 2016, where there was a civil war in the Republican Party and a civil war in the Democrat, in the Democratic Party with the Trump campaign and the Bernie Sanders campaign. And it's almost like, because, you know, the Republicans were, they just surrendered and Donald Trump took over the whole party. But the Republic, but the Democrats cheated Bernie Sanders out of the nomination. And so they were able to pretend that this didn't really happen. And, but now after the humiliation that was, you know, running Joe Biden and then Kamala Harris against Donald Trump and then losing to the man who you said was a threat to democracy and an insurrectionist and a Russian spy or all these things, and then to come back and what the option was Andrew Cuomo, like, that was the alternative that you put up against this guy, the disgraced former senior citizen murderer Andrew Cuomo. And anyway, everybody's ignoring the obvious here, which is that Mamdani ran a campaign about the unaffordability of New York City. It's clearly the number one crisis. And I certainly disagree with a lot of his solutions, but at least he's talking about it. And then it's like they're, they're beating up on him at the debate by saying, but you won't commit to going to visit Israel. Or we're having some debate about whether he favors a two state solution or a democratic one state solution. I mean, who cares? This is a mayoral race for New York City. And so even trying to make the major issue whether he uttered the phrase intifada instead of using a different term, which I've never even heard him use the term. And I just, at this point, I totally tune this out. I hear every single day that I'm a Hamas supporter and which is not true. I've never supported Hamas in my life. I don't hate Jewish people. But this is, as you know, in America, everyone who's critical of the Israeli government gets this stuff labeled. And I just think it's gotten to a point where it's Meaningless. But even if he had said the term, who cares? You know, what's his plan for the city? And every time I've ever heard him asked about Jewish people, which he's asked about all the time, he always gives the right answer and says he's critical of the policies of the Israeli government, but has nothing against Jewish people. So the whole thing just seems, it seems to be this, like, impotent flailing around where they can't take on anything of substance.
- [40:16]
Krystal
Yeah. And the irony to your point is that he didn't actually say that. This scandal, quote, unquote scandal, started from a bulwark interview where Tim Miller asked him, what about a phrase like globalize the intifada, would you condemn that? And his answer was, well, I don't use that phrase because I know that, you know, it rings offensive to some people's ears. He's like, but I'm not going to condemn it outright across the board because there is this demand that we condemn just basic Arabic words. So I'm not, he's like, I'm not going to condemn an Arabic word because that would mean that an Arabic speaker who was using the word intifada is, is condemned by me when I don't know what they're saying. And so it's, it's too much because people hear it differently, and so I don't use it. But people mean different things. A lot of people mean it non, violently, as, you know, like the first intifada was nonviolent intifada, cross. You know, it just means resistance. It's the word for resistance. So therefore, I'm not going to condemn a, an entire word that covers, like, many different things. So that, that's the, that's the context where this arose. And then you have people like Eric Adams saying that he goes around chanting it, or Eric Swalwell saying he says terrible things about Jewish people. But real quickly, Hakeem Jeffries, before we move on, the Democratic leader that we played there, his calling card for why he needed to rise up the ranks. And his establishment supporters argued that this was a man who was going to be an effective communicator for Democrats like he was. He's a, he's the charismatic, articulate guy who's going to deliver the message in a way that like Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid and Chuck Schumer and some of these stumbling older folks can't. He's the young, fresh voice. You're not a Democrat. So I'm curious for your perspective when you saw him there on me, on. On that Sunday show. Did you. Were you moved? Did you feel like, okay, this is a communicator that is finally going to break through to the American public?
- [42:16]
Katie Britt
Yeah, it's just. It really just pulls at your guts and your heart and your. Yeah, it's just all so ridiculous, man. And, you know, it's. I. I think this is one of the things that. Because now, kind of like the media environment is so much less controlled than it used to be and so much more decentralized, and we have shows like this and lots of other ones, and it's just like the overwhelming hypocrisy of all of this. It's almost like they relied on a controlled environment to be able to sell these type of arguments. Because the thing that comes up to me, you know, with Hakeem Jeffries, you're like, okay, so you. You can't endorse this guy because he's said some things that you think might be offensive to the Jewish community. Like, have you ever applied this to the Muslim community? Have you ever. You know what I'm saying? Like, even if the word. Even the word Intifada, if you're going to say, well, that could have violent connotations with it, which is, like, it certainly could, and some people certainly use it to mean violence as well. But, like, how about the term war? I mean, the term war almost always comes with women and children dying, but yet people can advocate for that, and we don't put that term under a microscope and go, you know what I mean? And people could advocate for flattening Gaza in the Democratic Party, you know, and, like, nobody's sitting here and going, well, hey, I got Muslim constituents. I can't endorse this guy. Which, you know, like, if you were to take that position and then also held the same thing for the term intifada, then maybe I could start listening to you. But again, I think it's just. It's so naked and transparent. It's like, no, you're beholden to the War Party, and so obviously you don't wanna support this guy who's outside of that, even though it's just the mayor of New York City. It has absolutely nothing to do with the war and the funny. What was so amazing, so remarkable about this race to me, is that while all the other candidates in the primary debate and the moderators are all trying to get this guy for, like, not supporting Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state, he insists it must be a Democratic state, as if that's unpopular. You know, it's like now somehow you're supposed to convince people that he goes, I support Israel as a state with equal rights for everybody. And then someone's supposed to that's Adolf Hitler talk right there. Like that's evil. Equal rights for everybody is what Nazis say or something. But while you the bottom line in reality is that the war is unpopular and Cuomo and everybody else is insisting that they carry this baggage, they carry this unpopular baggage which Mamdani gets to be free of and say, oh yeah, no, I'm not for that war. Anyway, let's talk about why chicken over rice is $12 instead of $7 or whatever. It's like they just hand him the win. It's fascinating.
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- [46:03]
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- [46:34]
Krystal
Over the weekend at the Glastonbury Festival which is apparently this gigantic cultural event over in England. The the monitors over at BBC were on guard to make sure that what's. What's the Irish band that they are. That they're all scared of the the one that says Free Palestine. Uh, you know they Had a cute. Yeah, they were, they were. They're basically. They accused them of like waving a Hezbollah flag at a previous rally. So they're, they're like, we're going to make sure that these micks do not say the words, you know, free Palestine. They're on guard. They, they kept them from performing live over the airwaves. Said, yeah, you have to get them on demand later. And then they just let their guard down for the top performance by Bob Villain. So he comes on stage, let's roll a little bit of kind of what the centers missed.
- [47:26]
Sagar
Free.
- [47:27]
Katie Britt
Free.
- [47:28]
Sagar
Free.
- [47:29]
Krystal
Free. Free. All right, but have you heard this one, though? Death death to the idf.
- [47:36]
Public Advertiser
Deaf death to the idf.
- [47:38]
Krystal
Deaf death to the idf. Deaf death to the idf.
- [47:45]
Sagar
Deaf death to the idf.
- [47:49]
Krystal
Kind of remarkable visual because you've got the BBC logo up in the corner there and you've got the like the well produced, you know, cameras that are rolling over the crowd while you also hear the crowd chanting along with him, which has led to a predictable out meltdown in, in England and around the world. In response to it, Villain himself came out with a statement which said.
- [48:15]
Josh Hawley
He.
- [48:16]
Krystal
Where he said. I said what I said. That was his statement. And then he had a longer statement about how political change is important and you got to speak from whatever platform. So not, not backing down. They, the English British are saying they're even going to like open an investigation into whether charges ought to be brought. Dave, did you, did you happen to watch the Glastonbury Festival in real time? Is this a cultural event you're tuned into or did you only pick up on it after the meltdown?
- [48:42]
Katie Britt
No, I have, I've never heard of this. I've never heard of the event. I've never heard of the band or this guy, which is, it's funny because that's I think the case for like 99.
- [48:52]
Krystal
I was trying to think of.
- [48:53]
Katie Britt
Yes, yes, I think 99% of. Yes, that's right. I'm sure a huge portion of the Breaking Points audience. But no. So nobody, I think essentially of the people who are outraged about this actually cared about it or knew about it. But again, it is, it's, you know, I've done like, I've done so many of these debates on Israel, Palestine over the last couple years and so many like shows about it. And it's like we were saying earlier, it's the, the double standards and the hypocrisy are just like, what's so overwhelming? You know, it's. It's the idea that after all of these months of just women and children being massacred in the most ruthless ways that we're supposed to be outraged about, like a chant at a concert. And that this is, you know, this is really the threat of our time, not what the IDF is doing to Gaza is just, it's very bizarre. And so, yeah, look, it's fairly predictable that this was a provocative thing to do. And I think the thing that should be a wake up call is just as you pointed out, it's such a huge crowd and they're all in agreement. And I think that's the thing that is, is threatening to people who are supporters of Israel, but should be something that everybody should take a look at, like, hey, look what's going on here. And this is, however you feel about it, this is going to be one of the costs that, that this, that comes with the policy of destroying Gaza. And I have been, I still just cannot believe, 22 months later, whatever we are since October 7th, that the pro Israel crowd doesn't wake up to this, that it's like, hey, look, yes, the, the poor Palestinians cannot stop you. And as we were just discussing, it seems like for whatever reason the Americans, including the Trump administration, are unable or unwilling to put pressure on Israel to stop them. America really is the only, the Americans are the only ones who could stop the Israelis and we're not, we're facilitating it and the poor Palestinians are helpless. However, you are turning the entire world against you. And for a group of people, I say this as a Jewish person myself, I'm well aware of the, the culture of kind of paranoia within Jewish Americans at least. And I think maybe, maybe that's understandable given the history of how Jews have been treated in the world. But if you have that, if you have this concern that there's this rise in anti Semitism, there's this rise in Jew hatred and oh my God, a next authoritarian Hitler esque figure could be right around the corner. Then, my God, read the room. I mean then, then advocate to end this policy because it is coming with this. You're listen, turns out you can only slaughter so many and women and children before you make a lot of people hate you. And the way that that manifests itself is not always going to be, you know, a man in a suit and tie saying, excuse me, good sir, I disagree with this policy decision of slaughtering women and children. It's going to look like this quite often and if you don't want to see more of it, stop slaughtering women and children.
- [52:12]
Krystal
That's that's a really interesting point about the, the crowd response, because you're right, the. They can prosecute Bob villain. Maybe, maybe they can find some laws that he broke in, in England. You could, you can end his career. You could have prevented him from even ever going on stage. You know what, we've looked into your past. You said some things. We're nervous about what you're going to say. We're not going to put you up on stage. What you can't do if you're an Israeli defender is influence how that crowd is going to respond. Because, yeah, if, if Bob Dylan goes up there and chants death, death, the IDF and the crowd looks at him like he's a maniac, then he looks, he looks crazy and he, he looks like a, he looks like a fool and you know, he moves on probably and you know, moves on to some other song where, you know, he had that one where he's attacking British people who want their country back and he moves on to that one instead. But that wasn't the response. You've got hundreds of thousands of people screaming along with him. And yeah, that if, if you are a defender of Israel, that really has to be the problem. And it's been interesting to watch the evolution around the arguing around the language. You know, we started this in October of 2023 with people censuring Rashida Tlaib on this floor of the House of Representatives for using the phrase from the river to the Sea in, in a video that she had posted. And the argument was, if you believe in, you know, one, you know, one person, one vote, you know, everyone with from the river to the Sea is treated with equal rights. That, that is a rejection of the Jewish supremacist nature of Israel. And the people who then will be in control will slaughter everybody. Like who, who's Jewish. From the river to the sea. Some pretty horrifying assumptions to make about people, but that, like, that's the argument for why that is an, that phrase is an attack on civilians. Globalize the intifada. People say, well, the second intifada included bus bombings, cafe bombings. So if you say the word intifada, you're, you're supporting killing people in civil, you know, killing civilians in cafes. Now it almost feels like Bob Villen took that criticism in. I was like, okay, I'm going to tell you exactly who I'm talking about. The idf, the members of the military who just the day before had been exposed as shooting directly at civilians who were getting aid at a Gaza humanitarian foundation distribution site, which hasn't stopped people from saying that he actually is calling for the death of, you know, all Jewish people or also or civilians. But I thought, what did you make of the fact that he zeroed in directly on the military with that chant?
- [55:14]
Katie Britt
Yeah, well, I think it was probably a smart decision. I mean, I guess I don't know how much thought was actually put into it.
- [55:22]
Krystal
At the same time, he ramps it up because he's like, death. I'm not leaving any room for ambiguity in what I'm calling for on the death on the violence side, but I'm not leaving any room for ambiguity on the target side, which is the idf.
- [55:38]
Katie Britt
That's right. And it's funny because it's like you watch all of these people, the Israel Defenders, kind of just constantly, as we have for the last couple of years, just twisting themselves into all types of pretzels to somehow, you know, like, try to logically work out that it is somehow it is way over the line to call for death. Death to the idf. Yet calling, because somehow that's anti Semitic. Yet calling for the destruction of Hamas is not anti Palestinian. You see, there's a major difference there. And sure, if we, if as we are actually enacting the policy supposedly of destroying Hamas, innocent Palestinians are being slaughtered in the process, well, that's okay because we're really just targeting Hamas, even though we're shooting into crowds of people trying to get food or destroying the entire Gaza Strip, that's still targeting Hamas. However, just hollering death to the IDF is an attack against all Israelis or all Jews, broadly speaking. I mean, if you can make both of those thoughts, you know, not contradict each other somehow, good luck to you. But it has been, you know, look, when you engage in a war in the manner that, that the IDF has over the last couple of years, I'm sorry that you're, you're, you're indistinguishable from a terrorist organization. And so if you're allowed to chant death to terrorist organizations, which seems to be the justification for this entire destruction of Gaza, then I don't see why you shouldn't be allowed to do it the other way. And obviously this is going to, you know, this is going to upset a lot of people. It's not the way I would, you know, communicate the, the issue. But again, you know, there's something, there's something like profoundly Freudian about what you were saying there where it's like, well, what if, you know, this, this kind of like foundational Freudian insight that if you repress, you know, you repress certain urges, they reemerge in an uglier way. And so I, you know, I've had this thought a lot over the last few years. I remember when there was that major campaign to cancel my buddy Joe Rogan. And I remember just even thinking at the time, you know, when they were getting the artists to like, boycott Spotify because he was having, you know, like, you know, anti lockdown scientists on his show or something like that. And you'd go, so what do you guys think? Like Brian Stelter on CNN every day advocating that Joe Rogan get, you know, get censored? What do you think they're all coming back to CNN? You think his 15 million subscribers are. What, they're just going to, they're going to go, well, Rogan's gone. I guess we got to tune into Don Lemon and Brian Stelter tonight. I mean, come on. They're just. And it's funny because we kind of, we ran this experiment of mass censorship on social media for years. And did that solve any of those problems? Is there, is there no more right wing extremism now or. No, it's, it's worse than it's ever been or from their perspective. So again, it's like, yeah, look, when you got this many people, it's like governments are by their nature their instruments of force and all they can do is repress this stuff. But that doesn't, that doesn't mean it goes away. In fact, that's probably going to mean that it comes, it reemerges in a much more dangerous, uglier form.
- [59:02]
Krystal
Yeah. And I'm curious, as somebody who's been engaged in this, this dialogue and this debate, you know, from the very beginning, what, you know, how you've seen it change over the last, you know, year plus. Like, have you seen. Are people coming up to you who are like, who have changed their minds that. Dave, you're actually right. I wish I had seen this earlier. Or are you seeing people who, like, after a year and a half of this, I think you're, you're crazy and you're obsessed and you're, you've lost your mind about this. Like, what. You've got your. Because you've been in so many different kind of debates on this, on this issue, you've got your finger on the kind of pulse, I think, in a way that a lot of people don't. So what are, what are you sensing about, like, how public attitudes have changed? Because you're right. Like, you can Censor all you want, but if a chant like that is going to resonate with hundreds of thousands of normies at a concert, that's your problem, not the chance.
- [59:55]
Katie Britt
Yeah. Yeah. Well. So, you know, though, it's like all. It's always been the case with every, every war of my lifetime that I can remember is that it's always like when the war first launches, the war propagandists are at their strongest, and then as time goes on, their case just gets weaker and weaker and weaker and the, the justification changes. And the, you know, the, the things they were saying yesterday aren't even the arguments today. You know, there was, if you remember, at the very beginning of this war, whenever you would, you would debate, somebody would always say something like, you know, we can't trust the Gaza Health Ministry. These numbers have been inflated. It's not that many. Those talking points are pretty much all gone now because it's. The death count is, everybody acknowledges is way higher than what they were disputing back then in terms of, like, the, the reaction from people there. There's no question that there are, you know, Israel is a particularly interesting issue, and it is one that is so emotional. Like, there's so much emotion around it, and there are the people who are just dug in, and there's certainly. I've, I've lost some fans and I've lost. I don't even know what to say. It's not even like people necessarily that I'm friends with, but people say, like, in the, you know, in the commentator sphere, who would have had just nothing but great things to say about me, you know, like, if you had asked Dave Rubin his thoughts about me two years ago, he would have just told you what a bright guy I was and, you know, whatever. It would have been nothing but compliments. Now it'll be, he's a moron. He doesn't know what he's talking about. So, like, I've gotten some of that, but overwhelmingly, the response from the people has been like, just totally on the side of that. This is just insane and it's indefensible. And I've heard from so many people. I mean, I've gotten so many messages over the last couple years of people who were like, I was a lifelong supporter of Israel, even a couple months into the war, I thought you were crazy. And I liked your takes on other things. But, but couldn't get on board with this. And now they just look back at it and go, oh, yeah, this is just totally indefensible. And there's many different. It's like, I don't think I've ever seen any war, or I don't like using the word war. Cause it's really not a war. It's just the destruction of a captive people. But, you know, the term genocide is much closer than the term war to what you're seeing over there. But from. So it's the most, like, the defense of the policy is incoherent at every level. And then the most basic one that I think resonates the most with Trump supporters is that however you feel about it, even if you were on Israel's side of the conflict and say, you know, whatever, after October 7th, you have to respond and they have a right to defend themselves or whatever the talking point is. It's so clearly not in America's interest for this thing to continue. It does nothing except engender more hatred against us. And it's a destabilizing force. No matter how you feel about it. People over here are just pitted against each other over a conflict thousands of miles away that has nothing to do with America. It has nothing to do. You know, Hamas is probably Hamas. October 7th is the by far the biggest, you know, violent achievement of the history of Hamas since it started.
- [63:31]
Sagar
They.
- [63:32]
Katie Britt
They probably are no threat to repeat, October 7th. They are certainly no threat to the United States of America. It's just too goofy. I mean, if, you know, somehow they'll try to make it out that Iran is a threat to us, which is still pretty goofy. But Hamas, I mean, come on. This is just. No. So you just, you can't defend the idea that America should be funding something that is against America's interest. And so to me, I've seen, you know, I think it's been pretty overwhelming that, like, the people are opposed to this policy. And then. And so I've, you know, I kind of have had the benefit. It like. The secret, Ryan, that I'll share with you here is that I'm actually not that good of a debater. I'm not the most brilliant guy in the world.
- [64:16]
Krystal
I won't tell you.
- [64:17]
Katie Britt
I'm not reinventing the world. Well, I'm not. I'm not as Douglas Murray thought. This was a real gotcha. I'm not the expert. There are people who know this conflict in the history way better than I do. Norman Finkelstein can recite every UN resolution in his sleep. I can't do that. You know what I mean? But I know enough. And I just take the side. That is the obvious correct side. And then that makes it very difficult to debate against because the truth has this ring to it. You know, when people say something rings true, the truth just has, like, a power that when you're in an argument, it's very easy to win it when you have the truth on your side. And so my experience has been that this has been with the overwhelming majority of people just calling out the insanity of this policy has been resonating.
- [65:02]
Krystal
And I think the podcast and YouTube format has also changed it, because if you're debating somebody for three minutes on cable news, a Douglas Murray talking point and a Dave Smith talking point will both ring true. Like, they're both. You can, you can each go back and forth for a couple minutes and sound reasonable to people who aren't steeped in. In the issue. And that's the point you're trying to reach, Billy. Darn steeped in it. But you have to go beyond three minutes. Once you're in the minute 30 and minute 60 and minute 90, then that's when the truth starts to ring through. And the side that is incoherent just kind of crumbles in the face of those facts. So I think that's probably played a role, too. And your willingness to engage long form makes it so that over the space of the debate, you're like, okay, wait a minute. None of this is making sense.
- [65:56]
Katie Britt
Yes, that's right. Long, long form and, you know, not a less controlled environment is always like that. That is always a benefit to the truth teller, to whoever's telling the truth. That's always going to help more and more. And, And I think you're totally right. I mean, it's, it's. When you really think about it, it's like the cable news in general is such a ridiculous format.
- [66:18]
Krystal
Yeah.
- [66:19]
Katie Britt
I mean, it's, it's crazy that it ever existed.
- [66:21]
Krystal
And, you know, somebody could argue the earth is flat on there and sound reasonable for, you know, two exchanges.
- [66:28]
Katie Britt
There's, I mean, I'm not even exaggerating. I've been on, you know, I used to do these shows. I don't really do them anymore because it's like, there's no point. And there's just. It's the audiences on these Internet shows. And so what's the point in going back and doing cable news? I get, I get asked all the time to do, you know, like, FOX News shows, but I'm just like, I. It's not worth my time, but I've done it. But they would do this thing where it'd Be like, It'd be literally three people on a panel. There's a 10 minute segment. The, the host of the show does, you know, two minutes up front. So now there's eight minutes to be divided amongst three people to discuss the most important topic in the world. And she's like, this is insane. Like, what do you. And so then it is, you know, like, look, it's, it's a good exercise I think sometimes to like, oh, you're like, can I trim the fat and cut my argument down to the most compelling two minute case? But yeah, almost anybody can, can, even propagandas can sound compelling for 90 seconds or two minutes. But it's not until you start being able to push back on them and pull the thread of all of their claims to kind of expose how, you know, it's like in, in my cousin Vinnie when he's, you know, he said you turn the card to the side and then you see how it's paper thin. You know, it's like you have to be able to do that. But now, and this is one of the things that I'm really encouraged by, I just think it's so amazing that we're living through this time. The new norm now is long form shows and that the, the politicians even have to be able to go there. You saw just Bernie Sanders going on Joe Rogan's show the other day and then of course Donald Trump doing all the shows to, to help get his second term. That's the new, that's the new standard now. And I think that one of the things that, you know, people have seen with a lot of this stuff, I think probably the biggest, biggest example of it was Ted Cruz with Tucker Carlson the other day, is that you see that like so much of this war propaganda, they like, they fall apart with like the most basic pushback, the most basic just like kind of like just, just one for one follow up question and their entire case falls apart. And so that is, that is very encouraging to me and I think that that's, that's our best hope moving forward.
- [68:41]
Krystal
Yeah, I had the same experience. I did cable for many years and you know, my colleagues or my wife would say like, don't you have like CNN or MSNBC in like two minutes, don't you, to prepare for this? Like, no, I'm, they're going to give me 35 seconds to talk. Like I have 35 seconds off the top. Like, yeah, on whatever issue you've got, I've got 30 seconds on that. And that's not a value to the viewer. Who who wants my surface 30 seconds. But that's what they do. And then they just do it every hour on repeat.
- [69:14]
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- [70:14]
Jenny Garth
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- [70:45]
Krystal
The Israeli newspaper Haaretz released a startling investigation over the weekend. Or I guess startling to people who didn't believe the many Palestinian eyewitnesses and medics and doctors who had been making the same case. But what the Haaretz and we can put this element up on the screen investigation revealed is that what we have been seeing and what we have been hearing about is the is the result of a policy coming from at least some commanders in the field to deliberately shoot at shoot toward starving Palestinian aid seekers at and around the aid centers related to the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. Amir Thibon is a columnist at rets. Were still joined as well by Dave Smith on Later in this interview we're going to talk about Amir's latest column on Netanyahu and Trump. We want to start here with this Haaretz investigation. Amir, how has it been resonating in in Israel? This this feels like A piece that broke through in a way that some had not in the past. But maybe that's just my, my hope kind of coloring my analysis.
- [71:59]
Josh Hawley
So, first of all, this is an investigation by three of my colleagues, Nir Hassan, Yaniv Kubovich and Bar Peleg. And I want to give them the due credit for the hard work that they did here. And it's mostly based on interviews with soldiers with people on the ground who are eyewitnesses to the very disturbing reality that has developed around the question of the aid distribution in Gaza and all these incidents where you have people being killed from gunfire. Now, the investigation doesn't say that this is exclusively the idf. It doesn't rule out the claim that we've heard from the Israeli side that also Hamas has targeted people near the aid centers or some of the workers. But it definitely includes testimonies from soldiers who say that they were given orders to fire live ammunition, say, at least in the vicinity of the aid distribution centers. And I really think it's just worth reading. It's a very, very strong article. There's been strong pushback against it. But what's interesting to note is that at least I've seen one reporter, one military reporter for, I think it's channel 14, which is a very right leaning, pro Netanyahu media outlet, who basically, after denouncing the investigation in Haaretz, said that some of the orders and some of the rules of engagement, you know, when soldiers can open fire around the distribution centers, was changed after the publication of the story, which, you know, it's a weird way to try to debunk something if you're saying it's not true. But by the way, it has led to changes in the policy. And from my point of view, I think what it really shows is that from speaking now from an Israeli perspective, this is a war that has exhausted itself. I don't understand, as somebody who, you know, Ryan knows this, lived on the border with Gaza before October 7, still plans to go back and live in that part of Israel when the war is over. I don't see how this actually makes my family safer. There are other elements of this war, and war is always a terrible thing, but there are elements of it where I would read a story and say, you know, this is terrible, but we were attacked and this is war, and this is difficult. I think we're at a point today where it seems like the war really has exhausted itself. And these incidents are one glaring example of it, if you will.
- [74:37]
Katie Britt
Do you have a sense of the motivation behind giving orders like this. It's one of the things that's really dumbfounding to me is, you know, you have so much pushback internationally on the, you know, the destruction of Gaza and the treatment of the Palestinian people. What is the benefit of ordering IDF soldiers to shoot live ammunition into a group of civilians looking for food?
- [75:05]
Josh Hawley
So, first of all, I want to be very, very kind of cautious here with the wording, because I think what we know is that soldiers were given orders to fire, let's say, in that direction. We don't necessarily know that they were told go and kill people. But the thing here is that we are at a point where you have this war of attrition in Gaza. From the Israeli perspective, we are losing a lot of soldiers there, and a lot of them young people who have been in this endless war situation since they joined the army. Really, their life is in danger. And when you are in a situation like that, a lot of times you're saying, okay, I'm going to take extra precaution as a commander to try to protect my soldiers. And if the soldiers are in this kind of stalemate situation, there is very little movement. They see danger everywhere because Gaza today is basically tons of rubble and destroyed buildings, and they are being faced with explosives and landmines and RPGs and things like that. So there's this heightened sense of danger. And that a lot of times will lead to decisions that, for me as a civilian, I look at it and I say, this is not leading us anywhere. But for a soldier in the field, on the ground, you're like, I guess, much more, you know, considering, first of all, your survival. And so. And I think this is one of the issues at hand here, that when I look at it, I say, okay, this is, first of all terrible. And second of all, I take it up to the government, not to the soldiers on the ground. Again, this is, from my perspective, I take it to the government and say, what are you sending these people to do at this point? What is this achieving for us, for Israel as a country?
- [77:04]
Krystal
The. The tank shells, to me, add a layer of complexity, not complexity, like depravity to. To the order. Because I think no aid organization thinks that using live ammunition and firing warning shots at aid seekers is like an effective way to do aid distribution. Like, you've never heard of World Central Kitchen saying, no, we apologize for the 37, you know, people that were killed at the World Central Kitchen. We were firing warning shots, and it turned out that we, you know, killed 37 and wounded 72 like that. Never in the history of aid distribution has that happened. But even setting aside the live ammunition, warning shots, firing shells towards civilian crowds is guaranteed to lead to, I mean, unless there's some miraculous situation where it lands nowhere near the they, they fired, it's guaranteed to lead to casualties, at least, you know, significant amounts of people wounded. But I take your point that I imagine the soldiers are saying, who cares? Like we're, we're, there's a risk to us, or we, we perceive a risk to us, and we might as might as well fire. And so, yeah, I, I think, I.
- [78:18]
Josh Hawley
Think, I think again, you know, you can look at the tactical question, Ryan, why did this specific tank fire? And honestly, I wouldn't have the answer. I would assume it was because they felt in danger. But I think the bigger question is, what is happening with this entire experiment of changing the mechanism of the aid distribution, which I remind you, about 100 days ago when the war in Gaza was renewed after the Trump Witkoff ceasefire collapsed because Netanyahu chose to renew the war. This was presented at least domestically to people in Israel, but I think also on the international scene as the big game changer. You would have this supposedly neutral, but in fact very much aligned with the Israeli and American government's aid organization, you know, the Gaza Humanitarian foundation, take over the aid distribution. Hamas would no longer be able to control it. They wouldn't be able to loot and steal the aid. Everything would be run through these encampments. It would all be very professional. And a lot of aid organizations that have more experience working in Gaza and elsewhere in the world said, this doesn't make any sense. This is going to turn out into a disaster. And they gave several reasons for their warnings. One of it was, again, you would have Hamas on the one hand trying to stop it, and on the other hand, the Israeli soldiers were supposed to bring some layer of protection to these centers. And if you have any situation where they start firing at one another, this becomes a bloodbath. And I think after 100 days since the war was renewed, I don't see the big change on the ground. I see still people dying every day. I see the hostages still held by Hamas. And Hamas hasn't budged in their position that the war must end in order to have the release of all the hostages. And we are still seeing, by the way, apart from these aid distribution centers and everything that's happening around them, trucks coming into Gaza and being looted and people stealing. One of the explanations you're reading now in the Israeli media is that it's not Hamas doing the looting, it's local clans or, you know, sometimes clan can be a nice word for a crime organization. I'm not sure how that's better, honestly, but it's become a dystopian nightmare, really. And again, to me, it all comes back to the fundamental question, why is this war continuing? Why aren't we getting to a deal that would bring back the hostages and end this insanity and to the point.
- [80:49]
Krystal
Of the war ending. Let's, let's move on to your piece that you wrote in Haaretz yesterday. Again, we're joined here by Amir Tabone, columnist for the Israeli newspaper, as well as Dave Smith. So we can put up D1. This is your column yesterday where you and in the past, when we've had you on and you've made predictions that Trump or Witkoff were making particular strategic mistakes, your predictions have very unfortunately borne out and been accurate. And so now you're warning again here that, that Trump is misunderstanding Netanyahu and making a mistake in if people have seen it, Dave, I'm sure you've seen these Trump sending these long love letters to Netanyahu and basically berating the Israeli judiciary, threatening to withhold us, you know, implicitly threatening to withhold US Funding if the judges don't drop all of these different corruption charges against Netanyahu, which presumably Trump thinks is some, they are some obstacle to Netanyahu reaching a deal, which maybe in his mind they are. Let's. So tell us, like, what is, what is Trump thinking and why do you think this is wrong?
- [81:59]
Josh Hawley
So, first of all, Ryan, I can't say with 100% certainty what is Trump thinking, but I can look at his actions and maybe try to understand. So he got the Iran war done, right? After those 12 days, he got a ceasefire between Israel and Iran. There was that moment where Netanyahu wanted to send more planes over there and he stopped them mid level. I don't know, maybe now the pilots need to have Truth Social installed in those F35 so they know what they're doing. And then everybody expected him to move to Gaza. Because I want to remind you a month and a half ago when we had that separate US Hamas, Qatar deal to release Idan Alexander, the Israeli American hostage, the soldier, lone soldier, who was taken by Hamas at the time, Trump already wrote on Truth Social that it's time to end this brutal war. That's the quote that he used. That was a month and a half ago. But suddenly now, instead of putting everything On Gaza, we're seeing him pushing instead to cancel Netanyahu's criminal trial. You angry posts on this issue within 48 hours. So what some people are saying is, well, there's an obvious linkage here. He wants the Netanyahu trial to be canceled, or at least to show Netanyahu that he's batting hard for him, and then in return, Netanyahu will give him what he wants on Gaza. But again, there are several problems with this. First of all, the mechanism for ending the Netanyahu trial runs through some kind of a plea agreement between him and the prosecution. And up until now, the prosecution has said, okay, we can erase all the charges against Netanyahu, but he needs to admit that he did something wrong, because that's usually part of a plea agreement. And he needs to be retiring from his position of power so that he cannot do corrupt actions again in the future. And Netanyahu refuses completely. I don't see how Trump's intervention can change that. And he can put threats. And by the way, I understood his threat not specifically to take military aid from Israel, but maybe to put sanctions on the prosecution in Israel and on the judges and basically do something that would hurt them personally. But even that I don't think would help, because you would see strong pushback against that in Israel. Trump is very popular in Israel after what happened in Iran especially. He's seen as the savior who came to help Israel against the Iranian nuclear threat. But you can throw a lot of appreciation and goodwill away if you're seen as someone who's meddling in the internal affairs of the country and trying to impose judicial outcomes on something that's really none of any other country's business. The second issue is that the real obstacle to a deal in Gaza, a deal to bring back all the hostages and end the war, is not the Netanyahu trial. There's just no connection between the two things. The real obstacle has been all along that Netanyahu doesn't agree to end the war. And that's fundamentally what Hamas are saying they will demand in order to release all the hostages. And a lot of military pressure and a lot of death and destruction in Gaza so far has not changed their demand words. 632 days into this nightmare, and we already had an agreement in place, right? The agreement in January that Trump and Wyckoff together with the last breath of the Biden administration, they brought together. But I give most of the credit to Trump and Wyckoff because the Biden team was working on this for months. And they got nothing, really. Suddenly, Wyckoff emerged and boom, it was done. That deal had everything spelled out already. You know, first phase, 33 hostages, thousand Palestinian prisoners, partial Israeli withdrawal, more aid coming into Gaza. All of that was successfully implemented in February and the beginning of March. But then Netanyahu invented new parameters for the agreement, walked away from what he signed, and he said, no, I want a partial ceasefire, partial withdrawal, only some of the hostages come back. And that's when it all fell apart. Oh, it's going to be four months soon, because time is passing and people are dying and the suffering is continuing. And that's the fundamental problem. It's not about Netanyahu's trial. It's not about Iran. It's about one question. Can Trump convince Netanyahu to stop the war? That's it. And so far, with all the talk and all the grandeur, and there was a Trump tweet the other day about, take the Gaza deal, get the hostages. The real question is, will there be any pressure from Trump to make this happen? And it's binary. One or zero, that's what it will take.
- [87:06]
Katie Britt
Did you feel like you mentioned the Witkoff deal that he got through during Joe Biden's lame duck, which I agree with you, certainly seems that, yes, the Biden administration had this deal on the table, I think, since May of 2020, 2024. And then it doesn't happen until Witkoff comes in. From all the reporting that I read about that, it does seem like they were putting some pressure on the Netanyahu government. And it seems one of the things that's kind of bizarre about this, this whole thing from the American perspective, is that Donald Trump, you know, if any country was imposing this albatross around his neck that Israel is, and he politically wanted to get this thing done and he was funding the thing. You know, we'd see him insulting them, threatening to pull the funding. It seems like very easy, theoretically, for America to put pressure on Israel since they are funding and arming this campaign. And yet in this case, it just seems like that there was a little bit of pressure that Witkoff put on, on Netanyahu at the very beginning, and now there is this inability to do that. It's something that's kind of fascinating to me, and I think a lot of other Americans, of course, we've seen Benjamin Netanyahu on secret recordings bragging about how he can move America in the past. What's your perspective on that? Is Netanyahu, is his administration concerned about this pressure, or do they feel like they can get what they want.
- [88:32]
Josh Hawley
I think that when Wyckoff came to the region right before Trump's inauguration, everybody had one mission on their mind, which was, don't get this guy's boss angry at you. And Witkoff played that card very smartly. He played it with Qatar, he played it with Egypt, he played it with Israel. And from Hamas's perspective, I think they were willing to go along with Trump and not with Biden because they said, okay, there's a risk here because the mechanism of the agreement always included a loophole through which Netanyahu could break the deal and renew the war. But they said if we do it with Biden in a few months, we get Trump and then who knows what happens? But Witkoff, this is Trump's guy. So if this is an agreement that he is responsible for, there's a bigger likelihood that this won't happen. And then it did happen. And now the question again is, does Trump want this war to end enough to use his leverage? And by the way, I don't think he needs to put any kind of threats like the ones that you hinted at. I think his popularity in Israel, especially now at this moment, just a public call to do it, would pretty much be enough. And it would actually help Netanyahu in a sense, because Netanyahu could come and say, well, you know what, we didn't achieve all of the goals in the war supposedly, but President Trump is asking us, and look what he just did for us in Iran. So it wouldn't even take a lot because there is a political price to pay. If Trump said, I'm going to go to a great length to get the ceasefire and have a full on confrontation with Netanyahu, and I think he will emerge victorious from a confrontation like that, I really do. But right now it would even require less than that. So why isn't he doing. Honestly, I don't have the answer. And maybe in the next few days we'll see something change, right? Ron Dermer, Netanyahu's closest Aiden, is in Washington right now. He's going to have meetings in the White House. There was a meeting over the weekend between Marco Rubio and the families of some of the Israeli hostages. And the families are pushing for this. The families are basically saying, we want the war over. We don't want another partial deal. Five hostages there, three hostages in three months, we want everybody released. The war is over, it's done. But the question again is, what is Trump going to do? And I guess that's, you know, always the unknown territory.
- [91:04]
Krystal
So the the war is over if Trump wants it is the bottom line. Amir Gabon, a columnist at Howaretz thank thanks so much for joining us. Really appreciate it.
- [91:14]
Josh Hawley
Thank you guys. Let's hope for good news.
- [91:16]
Krystal
Yeah, let's and here we have a.
- [91:20]
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Krystal
Please don't touch the exhibit folks. It could crash.
- [91:27]
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- [92:19]
Jenny Garth
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- [92:50]
Krystal
So on June 18, Karen Reed was finally, after a multi year saga, acquitted of a murder in Canton, Massachusetts. Is that right Aiden?
- [93:03]
Sagar
Canton, Massachusetts is correct.
- [93:05]
Krystal
Canton, Massachusetts and it was a a case that captured international attention will be the subject of many doc. It has been the subject of documentaries, will be the subject of movies and documentaries and books and so on. And one of the reporters or the maybe the reporter who helped bring it to national international attention. Aidan Carney, who known online as Dr. Turtle Boy is here on Breaking Points. We're very excited to be joined by Dr. Turtle Boy, Aidan Carney. Aiden, thank you so much for joining us.
- [93:42]
Sagar
Thank you for having me, Ryan. I really appreciate it being here.
- [93:45]
Krystal
Yeah. And so we want to talk a little bit about the case but mostly I actually want to talk about your case because I think it's a a fascinating, important and Overlooked case of, of press freedom because as a result, as a direct result of your coverage of this case, you have gone up against the same kind of system of, of law enforcement that you accused of, you know, of corruptly mishandling at best, the, the case of Karen Reed. And they have retaliated against you in an extraordinary way. You've already been behind bars as a result of it and you continue to face down charges. But for people who don't know the case, let's, let me try to give them a quick thumbnail sketch and, and you can, you can tell people, you know, the important parts that I'm, I'm missing. But essentially Karen Reed was dating a police officer named John o' Keefe in, in Canton, Massachusetts. They, they go out to a bar drinking with a whole bunch of other cops. There's a, there's one cop there who she's got some kind of a flirty text relationship with. She and John drive to an after party at, at, you know, one of the cops houses who was at the bar with them. She just doesn't go into the house. He says he's gonna go and she tells him go in, tell me if it's cool or not. She waits about, he goes, he goes in. Well, this is the debate. She waits about 10 minutes and she leaves. He is then found the next morning on the front lawn of the cops house. The cops charge her with hitting him, knocking him into the ground, and then he dies of hypothermia overnight. They never go into the, you know, they don't go into the officer's house.
- [95:35]
Sagar
He didn't die of hypothermia, but.
- [95:37]
Krystal
Right. So what am I, is there, is there any important piece I'm missing there? Because I don't want to spend too much time on the case itself. But tell us like what attracted your attention to it?
- [95:48]
Sagar
So what attracted my attention to it initially? You know, it makes headlines when a police officer is killed. And that's kind of story that I write about. So you know, I, I'm conservative.
- [95:58]
Katie Britt
Right.
- [95:58]
Sagar
And so.
- [95:59]
Krystal
Right.
- [95:59]
Sagar
Like during the whole like summer of 2020, like I took the back, the blue position, if you will, on that. And, and that's kind of like my bread and butter. And you know, when police officer kill are killed in the line of duty around here in Massachusetts, it's always like the same theme. The profile of a cop killer is like always the same. It's somebody who has a long and documented history of violence, arrests. You could have seen it coming a mile away. And they never should have been out roaming the streets in the first place. But that. So I, when I saw a police officers killed, you know, I look into it and I see it's this, it's the girlfriend who did it. And I'm like, well, does she have a history of violence? Let's look into her. And I looked into her and she's like some, you know, number cruncher at Fidelity, working as a financial analyst, and no history of violence whatsoever. And it appeared to all be a horrible accident. It sounded like, like I didn't look into it much. It's. There was a blizzard that night. And I'm like, well, it sounded like there was like a foot of snow and she accidentally backed into him without realizing it after dropping him off. And wow, what a horrible, horrible way to die. Like the tragedy for everyone. So I really had little interest in the story because it just, what, it just sounded like a horrib, sad tragedy that I wasn't that into. And so I honestly forgot the name Karen Reed. And she was indicted. And I didn't even pay attention to it because the original arrest gets a lot of attention, but not the indictment. I didn't even know what an indictment was until I was indicted. Like, it's just move your case to a more important courtroom where, you know, you can face more years in jail. Essentially. That's what it means. And so I, you know, forgot about it. And then In April of 2023, I saw a couple headlines about something about a Google search at 2:27, someone inside the house where John O' Keefe was found on the lawn of had Googled how long to die in cold at 2:27am and that this was suspicious. And I hadn't really taken in the full implication of what that meant. And so then I got, you know, I. I put it on my to do list of things to look into. It was busy that week. And then five days later, April 17, I got a message from a Duxbury police officer, a retired Duxbury cop by the name of Brian Johnson, who generally has the same position with me on policing, back to blue, etc. And he tells me that, like, you need to look into this case. It appears as if this woman is being framed. John used to work with me at Duxbury Police. I actually trained him because John used to be a Duxbury police officer, a small town on the South Shore. And, you know, he's like, something doesn't add up about this. And the homeowner is a Boston cop named Brian Albert, who has a notorious record as being a hothead, you know, a boxer, a fighter, and he's not really well liked in Boston police. So, like, I think this woman has apparently been framed. So that means more to you coming from a police officer who's telling you that like, this woman appears to have been framed. And so I do a deep dive. I read Alan Jackson had filed a 94 page affidavit a couple days prior that explained all of this stuff. And it was like reading a movie script when you're reading this. Like, this can't be real, like this is crazy, like this doesn't happen in real life. Something so brazen. And, you know, I'm a receipts guy. I like evidence. I don't just take people at their word for it. And Alan Jackson had cell bright reports from Jennifer McCabe's cell phone, from John O' Keefe's cell phone showing that he was going up and down three flights of stairs. Karen Reed doesn't have a flight of stairs. And her Lexus, as nice as it is, you know. And so everything came back with data and evidence. And when it finally hits you, what happened here, you're like, holy cow, this is the story of the century. So I made a post on April 17 that I was writing a story about what appears to be a Boston police officer who was killed inside the home of another Boston police officer. And a girlfriend was being framed for it. And a lot of people were commenting saying, is this a story out of Canton? Oh, I remember this. And so people were really anticipating it. I spent all night writing my story on this. I published it at like 3:30am and it kind of blew up. And I did a show about it and it got a lot. You know, my audience grew greatly as a result of my first coverage of this. And I really thought that it was going to be the end of it. I'm like, well, they have to drop the charges now, right? Like, it's quite obvious this woman didn't do this and that somebody else did. And because, silly me, I was operating under the impression that our institutions actually wanted justice for people like John o' Keefe and were actually interested in finding who actually killed him. And I thought that anyone with a brain looking at this knows that she didn't do this. And these people over here quite clearly are suspicious and at the very least they should be looked into. But when they didn't, when they released a press release a couple of days after my first story and they kind of put their pedal to the Metal. And they're like, no, we're doubling down. Like, we're going harder at her now. That's when I realized that, oh, wow, this is much worse than I thought. These are. It's the. It's the DA's office itself that is. Is particip. That is okay with this, and our institutions are okay with this. And so that's when, you know, the harder they push, the harder I push back. And what kind of got me into hot water was, you know, I'm a. I say I wear three hats. I'm a journalist, I'm a satirist, and I'm. And I'm an activist, right? When I'm. When I'm a journalist, it's when I'm writing the stories and researching and doing all that stuff. When I'm a satirist, it's when I'm on my show and I'm cracking jokes and I'm being a little bit outrageous. When I'm an activist, it's when I'm showing up and I'm protesting and I'm urging people to write letters and emails and stuff like that and become involved. And so I put on my activist hat that. And I, you know, I went up to. I said, Jennifer McCabe. I saw her at a. A John O' Keefe hearing on May 24, about a month after I started writing it. And the woman who Googled how long to die in cold at 227 was there with her, you know, her husband. And she's wearing a justice for J.J. button. And that just really offended me because she Googled how long to die in cold in order to decide how long it would take for John to die in the cold. And then she shows up wearing that button. So I just, you know, I have a phone, I go outside, and I start interviewing her. And I'm like, why are you wearing a Justice for JJ button when you helped, you know, cover up his murder? Like, are you at all remorseful of that? Why did you delete all these phone calls? It's this thing called journalism that people used to do. You just go up to people and you ask them questions, and at the end, they walked away. And that's when my, you know, my wild side came out. I'm like, oh, these people are cop killers, ladies and gentlemen. They killed a Boston police officer, and they're getting away with it, and blah, blah, blah, blah. So she went and tried to get a harassment prevention order on me after that. And the judge told her, sorry, like, that's protected speech. He's allowed to do that. But she told the judge that, is there anything you can do to get him to stop blogging about me? And I thought that was pretty telling about things to come. Anything you can do. She's asking the government, can you do something to silence this person's First Amendment rights? Because they're. I don't like what they're doing to me. I don't. It's making me uncomfortable. I don't like them asking questions, etc. And the judge said, no, he has a First Amendment right to do it. So then about two weeks later, she. I knew that her daughter had a lacrosse game at a town called Billerica. And, you know, I knew that she'd be there. And I'm like, well, this is a public event. I have a right to go there if I want to and ask her questions. So I went there, bought a ticket, and I went right up to her in the stands and I. She had my camera out, and I. Her husband was there, and he goes, hey, tough guy, how you been? Oh, you're a lot smaller in person. Like, kind of mocking me, whatever. And so I go over to her and I'm like, jen, why did you Google how long to die in cold at 2:27am and she's laughing. She's, like, smiling about this. This is all, like a big joke to her. I'm like, is this funny to you? Like, a Boston police officer been killed and you're laughing about it. And, you know, I. Cause it's. A scene is being caused. Security comes over from the school, and they're like, this is not here. Not okay. And I leave, and I called our cop killer on the way out, and I left. And I have been indicted for felony witness intimidation for that. Because Massachusetts has a really broad, to say the least, witness intimidation statute. Every state has one. And they're. They're necessary, obviously, because you can't have witnesses and cases who are afraid to testify out of fear of. Of violence from mobs or gangsters or whoever. Right. That's. The traditional witness intimidation is supposed to be in spirit, but in Massachusetts, it's much broader. And it says that you can't cause physical violence to a witness or emotional harm, whatever that means, which is the most subjective term ever. And so all. So that's part one of the witness intimidation statute. Part two is you can't cause emotional harm with the intent to. Or reckless disregard for the fact that it may interfere or obstruct an ongoing court proceeding. And so they get all These people to go in front of the Grand Jury, Jennifer McCabe and many others who I had done similar things with. And they all went in front of the grand jury and they testified that they were, you know, sad, scared, fearful, not a physical harm because I've never physically, you know, threatened to. But they're just emotionally scarred from this. All right, so that's part of part one. They've covered of the statute. Part two is to obstruct in a criminal proceeding. And so the prosecutors would ask them these kind of leading questions at the grand jury where there's no judge, there's no defense. You just hear one side of this, and the bar for probable cause is very low. And they ask these witnesses, well, why did you, you know, why do you, why do you think he's doing this? And they would all say, like it was a script. I think he is doing this because I am a witness in the Karen Re case and he does not want me to testify. Like, they all said the exact thing. And so it's just very obvious that, like, they found this kind statute and they're like, this is how we're going to get him. This is how we're going to shut them up. And so, you know, I, I was doing this for like 6 months. I held a protest in Canton that was actually inspired by like, I went. So I, we called it a rolling rally. We met in a stop and shop in Norwood, a neighboring town of Canton, where Brian Albert lived. And we went to his new house in Norwood and I, I, I announced we were coming ahead of time. So if they didn't want to be there, they didn't have to be there. And for seven minutes, I stood outside of his residence with a megaphone and I just explained his involvement in the murder of John o' Keefe. I said, he's the homeowner. He didn't come outside, blah, blah, blah. And, and, and then we left and nothing happened. We went to the next house. We went to Michael Proctor's house Next, then Jennifer McCabe's, then Julie Nagles. It was a nice Sunday afternoon. Women, children, the elderly were there. There were no calls to the police, no disturbing the peace calls, anything like that. It was a nice, it was as peaceful a protest as you get. And honestly, what made me do something like that was, you know, I had seen, I think it was a summer before, two summers before, when Roe versus Wade was overturned. A lot of people went outside the homes of Supreme Court justices like Justice Kavanaugh and others, and they protested and that was controversial because it's like, you know, should they be allowed to do this? Should they not be allowed to do this? And ultimately they were allowed to do it. And I said, well, if you're allowed to do it to a Supreme Court justice, you're certainly allowed to do it to Brian Albert. And so, and, and I didn't really have any goal. I wasn't trying to get them to change. I know they're not going to change their testimony or anything like that, but I just want to make my voice heard. Like I just have the right and so do others. And because I'm outraged about this, I, I take the position that John o' Keefe was murdered inside Brian Albert's house and that these people are framing an innocent person. And that really upsets me. So I do the most American thing I can do and I take to the streets and I, I peacefully protest. And I did, I didn't threaten anyone. I've never hurt anyone. I haven't like caused a bruise. All I've done is hurt feelings. And so I was on October 11, I dropped my kids, my bus, my kids bus stop is like right across the street from her house. They were 6 and 8 at the time. And get them on the bus and then across the street and you know, their bus stops at the next house a couple, couple houses away. And so they could definitely see this happening. A truck pulls up, whereas I'm trying to go into my driveway, walk up the driveway and a guy gets out and he's got a vest on and he's like, hey, I'm like, can I help you? And he's like, yeah, you're under arrest. We got a bunch of warrants and put your hands. And he starts putting me in cuffs. And I'm like, what is happening? What is going on right now? What? And then all of a sudden six other unmarked cars pull up and one of them gut pops out and starts reading my rights. And it's this guy named Brian Tully.
- [108:38]
Public Advertiser
Tully.
- [108:38]
Sagar
And Brian Tully is the lead, the head detective lieutenant at the State Police Norfolk county unit. And so he's like the head honcho of the Carol Reed investigation. He signs all the paperwork, etc. So I'm like, I've been extremely critical of this guy and accused him of being involved in the COVID up of John o' Keefe's murder. And so the guy that I'm accusing of being involved in the police cover up of a murder is now at my house arresting me for accusing, for doing exactly what I did. Accusing this guy of being nefarious. Thus proving my point here. Like they're like the guy that's accusing them of COVID up and having all this influence and getting people outraged about this. You're now at his house arresting him. They had a search warrant for my house and which I thought was ironic because they didn't get a search warrant.
- [109:29]
Krystal
For Brian Albert for the house where the dead body was found out.
- [109:33]
Sagar
Yeah, I, I, I, I jokingly say this, but it's, it's absurd. I should a if I threw a dead cop on my yard, they would leave me alone because that's like kryptonite to the Massachusetts State Police. They will just not they will just leave you alone if there's a dead cop on the yard and blame someone else.
- [109:48]
Krystal
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Krystal
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Sagar
But a better trend would be going.
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Krystal
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Sagar
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Krystal
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Sagar
Casino style games all absolutely free. It's the most fun you can have.
- [111:08]
Krystal
Online and on a plane. So grab your free welcome bonus now@chumbacasino.com sponsored by Chumba Casino. No purchase necessary VGW Group Void. We're prohibited by law 21 + terms and conditions apply. I'm glad you mentioned your conservative politics because like out it goes to the the role of the the importance of the principle of press freedom. Our Viewers will know I'm not on the right. But your viewers, if they're watching this, may not know that. But you know, press freedom should not just apply to your, to your political allies. And, and also I think it's important to know that people need to understand that press freedom applies to everybody in the country. It is not limited just to journalists. Because think about that. If you had had to limit it to journalists, then some government agency would then have to credential, yes, who's a journalist and would say, okay, well, you're a journalist and you're not. So you get First Amendment and you don't. So for people who would say, well, he's, he's doing satire here, or he's an activist because he's got a bullhorn in front of this cop's house and it actually doesn't matter. Like freedom of the press applies to all people who are here in, in the United States. States. And so it is. And it's not just whether you agree with someone or not. It's particularly important. If you don't agree with them, you stand up for their, their press freedom rights. I would. Most of the things that you talked about here are covered in this, you know, 45 minute roughly video that you have posted on your Twitter feed, which is, is it Dr. Turtle Boy? What, it's. What's your Twitter handle?
- [112:43]
Sagar
Yeah, at Dr. Turtle Boy.
- [112:45]
Krystal
So people should go check that out. But I wanted to play just one, one, one little clip of it here so people can get a flavor of the, the, the actual language that prosecutors have been using and compare that to, you know, the reality of what you were doing. So let's, let's roll this clip here.
- [113:06]
Sagar
Actual video shows I was talking about returning to Canton to see a DPW worker who was giving me the runaround. 94 Turtle Boy returns to camp. This is a video posted shortly after.
- [113:16]
Public Advertiser
Carrying visited homes and witnesses.
- [113:18]
Sagar
This is not my last trip to Canton.
- [113:20]
Krystal
I will be back.
- [113:21]
Dave Dayan
I'll be back. Get used to this.
- [113:23]
Sagar
These people think. Pardon me. These people think I'm fucking around. You haven't seen the last of you.
- [113:26]
Krystal
Get used to it.
- [113:27]
Sagar
Get used to it. 119 they combine sentences from two different clips. I will be back was encouraging people not to be afraid of the McAlberts. This is not my last trip to Canton. I will be back. And more and more I think people are getting, like a year or so ago, people didn't want to cooperate with Karen Reed defense team because like, yeah, it's easy to keep my head down and, you know, whatever and keep a low profile. But now, you know, now they're like it. You know, we've made people realize, like, you don't have nothing to be afraid of. The big, bad monster's not gonna bite you. We neutered their ass. They can't do anything. They're not so tough anymore, are they?
- [114:04]
Dave Dayan
This is not my last trip to Canada.
- [114:05]
Krystal
I will be back.
- [114:07]
Sagar
I'll be back.
- [114:08]
Dave Dayan
Get used to this.
- [114:08]
Sagar
These people think.
- [114:09]
Josh Hawley
Think.
- [114:09]
Public Advertiser
Pardon me?
- [114:10]
Sagar
These people think I'm fucking around.
- [114:11]
Public Advertiser
You haven't seen the last of you.
- [114:12]
Krystal
Get used to it.
- [114:13]
Sagar
Get used to it. 119. These people think I'm fucking around. You haven't seen the last of me. Get used to it. Get used to it. But the Commonwealth makes it seem like I'm talking about harassing the McAlberts, which obviously sounds bad, but this was intentionally deceptive. I was actually referring to a DPW employee who was giving me the runaround. And I said. Said that I will be back to get information on who plowed Fairview Road the night that John o' Keefe was killed. I can leave the message. I can leave a message and I'll.
- [114:45]
Josh Hawley
Get it to him.
- [114:45]
Sagar
Now watch it. Right now. Watch this. She goes, how do I spell the last name, sir? She had already written out my first name and spelled it correctly. She knows who I am. She didn't have to ask my first name. She didn't even have to ask what my last name was. She just asked how to spell it. She'd already spelled my name, so she knows who I am at this point, People are messaging me now, and they're saying that she is. Is a. She is a friend. She lives in Tim Albert's neighborhood, and she is best friends with the weeks girls. That is McCabe sisters. So this is what we're dealing with here. This is the home cooking. So I'll be back. Miss. Miss Boys Regular. I'll be back. You haven't seen the last of me. Because he never called while she never called me today. Try to never call me. If you think you're going to get rid of me that easily, you're badly mistaken. I will literally sit there all day. All that day. We'll order Chinese. I'll make a. I'll make a day of it. I'll just sit there all freaking day because he's got to come back sometime. I'll be like, I've unfinished business. We didn't see Michael Morrissey today. I'll be back. Like, get used to this. Like, these people think I'm around. Like, I missed the Internet guy. Like, I'm gonna sit here and I'm gonna write blogs all day, and it's okay. It's just writing blogs and just ignoring whatever. No, no, I live an hour away. It's not. I got Alexis now. It's not a problem.
- [115:50]
Katie Britt
It's.
- [115:51]
Sagar
We got good. It's got great mileage and a good engine. I'll be there in an hour. No problem.
- [115:54]
Krystal
Problem.
- [115:55]
Sagar
Like, I'll get used to it.
- [115:57]
Krystal
So bring us up to speed on where these various cases are. So we just played this clip of this clerk who kind of blew you off. And. And you said on your live stream, you know, I'll be back because I want. I need these documents, which is the essence of journalism. Like, if journalism was asking for a document and being blown off and then moving on, none of us would ever get to the bottom of any. Anything. So you. You ask after the document, you're told, forget it. You're like, I'll be back for this document. Like, that's the essence of investigative journalism. Everything else that you were describing, asking people questions, you know, having a hunch, like, you believed X about this person, you're asking them about that. Like, this is. This is the basics of journalism. So I. I know that you were recently acquitted of one set of charges. Talk about those. But then also, like, how did you wind up. I understand you did, what, 60 days.
- [116:52]
Sagar
It is 60 days.
- [116:53]
Katie Britt
That's right.
- [116:53]
Krystal
Behind bars. Yep. For your reporting on this case. So what was that for? And what. Talk about the charges that you're still facing.
- [117:03]
Sagar
So I've had six of them. We had a motion to dismiss in March, and six of them ended up getting dismissed against the two cops, Buchenic and Proctor. They were both dismissed just because. It's absolutely absurd, absolutely absurd that police officers have the audacity, who have guns and badges and all the power in the world to say that they're intimidated by a journalist. I mean, it's. It looks ridiculous. So I had. I had two of those taken away. There was three conspiracy charges that were taken away because I had reported that Jennifer McCabe was at the Proctor's house. I posted a picture of her car parked outside there. When the district attorney had said that she didn't know the Proctor family. And the way I was able to prove it was her car was. I asked my followers, can somebody run a license plate for me? And just kind of run. I wanted to make sure it was her car. It looked like her Car. I was pretty sure it was her car. But being a journalist and all, I want to make, I want to double check. I don't want to defame anyone. So I. Somebody volunteered to run a license plate for me and they did. And they came back McCabe. And I said, okay, thank you. And I wrote a story about it. And they called that conspiracy to commit witness intimidation. And both the. The person who ran the license plate and me were charged with conspiracy to commit witness intimidation. Three charges of it, which each carry 10 years in jail. So luckily those three were dismissed because they were just outrageous. But I still had the six. I have six more felony witness intimidation charges, which are 10 years each, four picketing charges. And I have since picked up two more charges of witness intimidation, or what we call window intimidation. I was outside Chris Albert's pizza shop and I didn't know that I was being audio recorded. And we had. I had about five sangrias that night. And there was a. There's a camera in the window that was, you know, obviously picking up what was happening outside. At least the video. You can't intercept audio in Massachusetts because it's a two party consent state. So I was with a buddy and we started doing like an act. It was like a comedy act. And they called it witness intimidation. He wasn't there and it was literally in front of a empty window. So I picked up two more charges for that. And then I also picked up the thing that sent me to jail. So on October 11, I'm arrested for the first time and they set bail. And if you are charged with a new crime while you're out on bail, you can have your bail revoked and go to jail without ever being convicted of a crime. And so it's very scary. You're just constantly on thin ice. And. And so I, I was seeing some woman, not even seeing her. Like, I was just in a sexual relationship with some woman who was a Free Karen Reed supporter who had just, you know, kind of fangirled me. And I went along with it. I would go over there Fridays. It was nothing serious. Long story short, she turned out to be a psychopath. She pretended to be pregnant, pretended to have a couple abortions a couple times just to kind of mess with me. And. And I finally on after I realized there was no baby, I. I ended things with her. We have since gotten her phone extraction, and I've seen that on December 9, she immediately got. She was so upset about this breakup or whatever that she contacted enemies, people who are dedicated to just destroying me who got her in touch with Brian Tully from the state police and the special prosecutor, Ken Mello. And within days, she was speaking with them. And unbeknownst to me, Brian Tully and her, according to her phone data, kind of conspired to. He sent her a grand jury summons, a fake grand jury summons, on December 22, we now know that there was no grand jury being held in regard to this. And he told her to send me the grand jury summons and say, we need to talk about this. And she did. And so on December 22, she sent it to me. Me. And I'm like, how does Brian Tully know who you are? Like, what.
- [121:01]
Katie Britt
How.
- [121:01]
Sagar
What is happening? And she kind of confessed to me that I was so mad, and I was mad at you, and I just was. I wanted to get back at you, and now it's gone too far, and now I have to testify, and I don't know what to do, and I need help, and I need a lawyer and this and that, and I felt bad for her, and I'm like, okay, even though you've, like, betrayed me, I still feel bad for you, and I still. I'd like to help you out, get you out of this jam. And against the advice of my attorney, I went to her House on December 23rd because she said she wanted to, like, show me all of her communications with the police and. And show how they were setting me up. And I thought this could help me, you know, So I went to her, but I didn't want to go in her apartment. And she's got, like, a common area in her apartment building. So we met there for an hour or two. And unbeknownst to me now, now that we have her phone data and we've seen the police report, she went into the bathroom in the common area, and she called them, and she said that I have him here. And she kept her phone on, and she attempted to record our conversation in this common area. And they urged her to get him back. There's cameras in the common area, and so she can't lie about me in there. So she's. They're like, get him back in. In your apartment. And so she had her son call her and say, mom, come back. Her son was, like, 12 at the time. I need you to come back in here. She's like, okay, I have to go back in there. Can we just go in my apartment? And I said, sure. And the second I walked into her apartment, I was going to jail. Like, I now know that. And so she showed me everything in there. And then around 2:00am, I'm like, I have to go home. It's Christmas Eve morning, now I have to leave. And she's like, you can't leave me. And I said, oh, I have to go home, it's Christmas Eve. And she then took the abortion pill in front of me and she's like, now you can't leave. I'm going to be in pain and you can't leave me. I said, you're not pregnant, stop it. And she was just using it as a way to keep me there. And then she Woke up her four kids, who are 2, 3, 5 and 12 and start like 3 in the morning and starts taking their jackets out of the closet and said, if you leave, I'm taking my kids and I'm driving to your house in Holden, an hour away and I'm gonna bleed out in your driveway and you can't leave me, you can't do this. And the five year old comes out and he looked horrified. And I'm now taping this. I tell her I'm taping this for my own safety. This is getting out of control. And I said, okay, I will put the boy back to bed, please. I'm gonna sit here and I don't want to endanger these kids. I'm gonna sit here and wait for her to fall asleep.
- [123:39]
Katie Britt
Asleep.
- [123:39]
Sagar
So she falls asleep at 5am I leave. I'm so tired that I fall asleep behind the wheel of my car on the way home. And I crash on the highway. I'm woken up after crashing into a guardrail. Luckily I'm able to make it home on Christmas Eve, but I'm all messed up from this and I'm like, I'm on no sleep and we go to my sister's house on Christmas Eve for like lunch. And then I get a call from the Holden police and they say, we just visited your house. We have something for you, we need to give you. You. Unbeknownst to me, I'm tipped off an hour later by a Holden firefighter who says, don't go home. The police just came to your house with a warrant for your arrest. I said, what for? And they said, an assault and battery in Medfield. There's a warrant out for your arrest. And I'm like, oh my God. She said that I hit her. Holy. And you know that's automatic arrest in Massachusetts, like whenever there's a domestic violence. And basically whoever gets to the cops first, first gets to have the other person arrested. And no marks, no nothing like that as it Turns out she has done this to four other men, including her father. She had her father arrested for assault and battery. This is what she does. She gets people arrested, then she gets orders on them and then she has them arrested for violating the order. So I am, I, I'm a fugitive on Christmas and I make plans with my attorney on December 26th, which is my birthday to. We're going to go to the courthouse quietly get in there and get out. That's the goal. No media, nothing. Just get in and get out. So we go to the courthouse at 9am on Dec. 26. Brian Tully Standing on the stairs of the courthouse with the Medfield police there's waiting to arrest me when I go in there. So that's not an option. My lawyer says, go turn yourself into Medfield pd. I do. There's a big hubba blue media all comes down there and you know, I am just kind of praying like, please don't let my bail get revoked. We play the tape that I recorded of her like threatening to take her kids, but there's no context to it and quite frankly it sounds like a woman in distress at least how the, that's how the judge must have taken it because I am. He revokes my bail for 90 days. We later get that reduced to 60 because it turns out he's not allowed to do that. And I am shell shock. I'm like literally in shock because here I am going to jail, jail and no warning. Like I'm like I, I could, I've never, I'm a home former high school teacher. I don't go to jail like this is. And because I'm kind of a high profile person around here, they don't put me in general population, which is actually much worse because you're in isolation the whole time and there's no one to pass the time with. There's no one to play chess with, to have a conversation with. And I'm, I'm just in shock and I'm sad and I'm depressed and you know, I do the 60 days, I develop a routine that kind of helps me get through it mentally, physically. And when I got out of jail.
- [126:30]
Krystal
In isolation, the whole time, the whole.
- [126:32]
Sagar
Time we actually had my lawyer had meetings with the jail guard asking, like I said, I'd rather get the kicked out of me. Like if I get beat up, I get beat up. Like I'd rather do that than sit here all day. This is torture. Like this is. And I'm in medical.
- [126:45]
Krystal
Yeah. The UN calls it tort. Defines it as torture.
- [126:48]
Josh Hawley
Sure, yeah.
- [126:48]
Sagar
Yeah. And, like, I'm sitting in the medical unit, which is where they send people who are having freakouts. You know, there's a lot of people in jail who should be in mental institutions, and they all send them to the medical unit, and they're yelling and screaming all night, and you can't sleep. One guy had just come into jail, and he had swallowed a bunch of heroin packets beforehand. And I guess that's what they do. And they it out and that you can get high in jail that way. And so. But it comes up in the X ray. And so they sent him to medical, and it was a CEO's job to sit there outside of his cell and wait for him to take a shit. And just. That was his. I mean, worst job ever. And. But it smelled so bad in the whole unit. And, like, that's where I was living for 60 days. It was literal hell. And so I got out of there on February 23rd. Three days later, Cameron Reed has a hearing. Right? And I go to that hearing, because I don't. I never miss a Camera Reed hearing. And it's my job. And I'm back.
- [127:42]
Krystal
Back.
- [127:43]
Sagar
And who shows up to the hearing with the. Jennifer McCabe and Chris Albert, but Lindsay Gatani, the. The person that sent me to jail in the first place and lied. And they. She has never come to a hearing before. They have since befriended this woman while I was in jail, and they know she has a restraining order on me because of the arrest, and they bring her like a toy. And I am forced to leave the courtroom, which I do because I can't be within 100 yards of her. I leave. I stand across the street where a police officer told me to go, and 10 minutes later, the hearing's over and everybody leaves. I didn't see her. She didn't see me. And a few hours later, she calls. She must have heard that I was still outside the courthouse at the Registry of deeds across the street. So she calls the police, and she says he was within 100 yards of me, and he was yelling liar, liar at me, which is. Is completely untrue. And there's video to prove this. And so I am charged once again, three days after getting out of jail with the misdemeanor of violating a restraining order. I had also been indicted since then with witness intimidation against her in wiretapping her for recording our conversation, which she said I didn't give her permission to do. And just like that, I'm facing another 120 days in jail. This time at a March 14 hearing. So I didn't really feel free at all. Luckily, the judge kind of saw through this one and didn't revoke my bail this time. But it was still very scary. And that's what I had the trial for a couple weeks ago was violating the restraining order against her. And I was acquitted.
- [129:22]
Krystal
So have you gone. What about the original charges of salt and battery?
- [129:28]
Sagar
They dropped that the day I got out of jail. So they made it obvious that they had no intention whatsoever of pursuing this. They didn't believe her, and they were just using this as a way to have your bail revoked. I mean, I learned a lot about. I didn't know. I didn't know anything about bail revocation. I'm not a criminal and I've never violated the law before. This is all very new territory to me. And that's one thing I've learned about this, is that there are a lot of people in jail bail temporary, like 90 day stints for bail revocations for crimes that they have never been convicted of and probably will never get convicted of. And they just. You and. And some of them loophole.
- [130:07]
Krystal
Yeah, yeah.
- [130:08]
Sagar
Some of them, while they're in jail for 90 days to get out earlier, will plea out to whatever misdemeanor. And it's like, that's how they get their stats. That's how they get their, you know, their convictions or whatever is. They just throw you in jail bail for something you haven't been convicted of and you want to get out. So you just like, whatever, okay, I'll take up a plea. What do I have to do? I have to do community service for 10 hours. Okay, whatever. Just get me out of here. And that's what they do. And so it's re. I think it's a huge problem. I think bail revocation in general seems unconstitutional to put people in jail for crimes that they have never been convicted of because you don't get that time back.
- [130:45]
Krystal
Right. So you went into this as a, you know, conservative back the blue guy who'd been publicly oppositional to Black Lives Matter. I'm just curious, has it. Have you rethought some of your politics along, along the way or. Or do you have a different understanding of policing and law enforcement than you did when you went into this?
- [131:05]
Sagar
Yeah, I certainly. I view police as just like any other line of work, potentially flawed, like people are people. I'm sure there's great cops, but I'm sure there's bad cops. There's a teacher, like, there's a lot of great teachers and then there's some teachers who mess around with students.
- [131:21]
Krystal
Right.
- [131:21]
Sagar
Like, there's bad, like every possession, every, every profession has their bad apples. But yeah, I mean, I, I certainly think it's changed my, you know, opinions on the accused. Like, I all I was this person who, like many just viewed the person sitting in the defendant chair must have done something because how else did they get there?
- [131:40]
Katie Britt
Like.
- [131:41]
Sagar
But now I know with Karen Reed and myself that actually anyone can be there. They could put any. It means not like being indicted or charged with a crime does not mean you're guilty of a crime. That is one big thing I've taken out of this. I, I always now will give the defendants the assumption of innocence in any crime. And it is up to the state to prove they have the burden of proving beyond a reasonable doubt that this person did that. So I don't know if that's a political thing because I do think that, you know, kind of cuts bit a little. Well, there's people on the right and the left that, you know, agree with me on this issue, like for. And there's also people on the left that won't get on board with me with this and people on the right who won't. Like. So for instance, like people like, you know, Glenn Greenwald and Tucker Carlson who, you know, one is liberal and the other is conservative. But I think it's, I find them interesting because they, they both are very big advocates for free speech and being able to say what you want and just kind of against the weaponization of the government in order to, you know, punish people who have spoken out.
- [132:47]
Krystal
So what's, what's next for you? I saw some news that you're involved with a movie that's going to be produced. Can you talk a little bit about that? And also what does your lawyer say about the likelihood of these charges like sticking and going forward?
- [133:02]
Sagar
Yeah, so with the charges I had, like I said, I still have, I'm facing 105 years in jail and we're going to try to knock out like the Lindsay witness intimidation ones. We're going to file a motion to dismiss. I think we can win that one. Same with the window intimidation one. So hopefully I'm looking at six charges still of felony witness intimidation. So at that point, a number of things can happen. Worst case scenario is we bring it to trial. And that's a very scary prospect because you're putting your faith in the hands of 12 strangers or a judge if you go bench trial. And so that's something we'd like to avoid if possible. And I'm kind of hoping that cooler heads will prevail in all this and now that Karen Reed has been acquitted, that they'll take a step back and say, why don't we just end this Karen Reed saga? This has been embarrassing for us. We lost. He was kind of vindicated with the acquittal. And, and, you know, because if Karen Reed didn't do it, someone else did. And he's accusing these people of doing it. And so apparently 12 jurors believe that they did it. So, you know, maybe, maybe it's best to take a step back. So that's, that's one thing I'm hoping for. There's also a D A election coming up in 2026, and the people who are looking at primary because it's a very liberal county, a Republican can't win that seat. So the only way he can be booted is with. Is if he's primaried and one of the women running against him now is taking the kind of pro free speech, pro camera reposition. And so, like, maybe there will be political change that will save me. Who knows? But I can't count on that. So that's how we're dealing with those charges. But day by day. But as far as the movie goes, yeah, I signed a deal with Compelling Pictures, a production company out of Los Angeles in last year, and they have the rights to a book, my book, my movie, and the documentary, which we've been working on for several months now. And we got a lot of great footage during the week of Karen Reed's acquittal. And that should be coming out on four to six months. I don't know what streaming platform it will be on.
- [135:03]
Krystal
It's a documentary.
- [135:04]
Sagar
Yeah, the documentary. I don't. There's a competitive, a competitor documentary that's kind of coming out with a company called Sandpaper Films. It's a British company, and they have a deal with Netflix, but they don't, you know, I won't be in that documentary. I refuse to participate. They have kind of taken a turtle boy is the villain approach to their documentary. That's at least what I understand. So it's not going to be a very popular documentary because there's no market for Karen Reed is guilty. The vast majority of the public believes Karen Reed is innocent. So I think that because they're a British company, they don't really understand the vibe over here in Massachusetts that actually the woman accused of murder is the protagonist in the story. And Turtle Boy is kind of the person jumping in and helping her. And so I don't think that's going to go well for them.
- [135:52]
Krystal
Them.
- [135:53]
Sagar
But we're using the documentary to kind of build up the, the Hollywood movie. That's, that's what they're big into. And he's talking to directors, screenwriters, actors. Everybody's in the process of that. And he hopes that to have the dock out in four to six months and the movie within 18 months.
- [136:10]
Krystal
Last question for you. Where's Dr. Turtle Boy come from? Where's that, where's that nickname?
- [136:16]
Sagar
Well, I ran out of. I've, I've been kicked off of Twitter so many times that I ran out of handles. And I was honestly inspired to do it by Jill Biden. Like my, my old, my slogan used to be, well, if Jill Biden's a doctor, then so am I. And so that's how it started. And I have since transformed that into if Judd Welcher is a doctor. Judd Welcher was the guy, the crash reconstructionist for the commonwealth, then so am I. But I kind of dig it. Like, it's cool being called doctor. Like, I get why people like being called doctor. It makes you feel important. And you know, I'm not actually a doctor. Like, if you're dying, don't call me. But you know, I like the sound of it. So I just stuck with it.
- [136:54]
Krystal
Well, doctor, thank you for joining us. I really, really appreciate this. And we'll, we'll continue to follow this, this story too.
- [137:01]
Sagar
Well, thanks for having me, Ryan. I really appreciate it.
- [137:04]
Krystal
All right, that was the good Dr. Turtle Boy. And that'll do it for the program today. Thank you to Dave Smith for holding down the fort with me. Thank you to Dave, Dan for joining to talk about out the big beautiful bill and of course also thank you to Aiden Carney. Thanks everybody for joining us. And the regular crew will be back on Tuesday. See you there.
- [137:40]
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- [138:10]
Jenny Garth
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- [138:40]
Krystal
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- [139:10]
Jenny Garth
This is an iHeart podcast.