6/4/25: Elon Rages On Trump Budget, Piers Grills Israel Rep, Schumer Demands Iran War & MORE!

Summary

Podcast Summary: Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar – June 4, 2025

Episode Title: Elon Rages On Trump Budget, Piers Grills Israel Rep, Schumer Demands Iran War & MORE!

Hosts: Krystal Ball and Saagar Enjeti
Release Date: June 4, 2025

---

1. Elon Musk's Rebuke of Trump's Budget Bill [04:33 - 09:26]

Breaking Points opens with a heated discussion on Elon Musk's recent outcry against President Trump's proposed budget bill, colloquially referred to as the "Big Beautiful Bill" (BBB). Over the span of six hours, Musk criticized the bill's projected increase in the national deficit to $2.5 trillion, labeling it as a "disgusting abomination."

• Saagar Enjeti highlights, “Elon Musk is not just pushing back on the bill, he is now adopting the counter-narrative” ([05:12]).

• Krystal Grim supports Musk's stance, explaining the difference between asset inflation and genuine economic growth. She argues, “Cutting taxes for the rich doesn't lead to economic growth because unlike Elon Musk, who might reinvest, billionaires typically don't spend additional funds meaningfully” ([07:18]).

The hosts delve into the nitpicks surrounding the bill, such as the inclusion of "pork" (allocations for specific projects benefiting niche interests), and discuss the internal Republican conflict between moderates and fiscal hawks like Rand Paul and Ron Johnson. This discord is epitomized by Musk's unexpected criticism, aligning him more with libertarian elements within the party.

2. Congressional Budget Debates and Republican Divisions [09:27 - 15:50]

The conversation shifts to the broader implications of the budget bill on congressional dynamics. With Republicans striving to secure the necessary votes to pass the bill, tensions rise between those advocating for significant cuts and moderates willing to compromise.

• Krystal Grim remarks on the precarious situation: “The cuts were never there because they weren't willing to go after power centers like Medicaid and Medicare” ([08:39]).

• Saagar Enjeti adds, “Trump is between a rock and a hard place because moderates say the bill is already cutting too much, while others say it’s not cutting enough” ([12:00]).

As the deadline approaches, the administration pushes to enact the bill by July 4th to avoid midterm complications, yet the internal divisions suggest potential compromises that may dilute the bill's original intent.

3. Gaza Conflict Updates and Media Coverage [17:00 - 38:30]

The hosts provide updates on the escalating violence in Gaza, highlighting a series of massacres at aid distribution centers. They critique mainstream media's handling of these events, particularly focusing on Piers Morgan's interview with Natasha Hasdorff, a UK lawyer representing Israel.

• Ryan Grim states, “The Washington Post didn't give proper weight to Israel's denial and gave improper certitude about what was known” ([37:19]).

• Saagar Enjeti expresses concern over AI-generated misinformation: “Anytime there’ll be a massacre, there will also be some AI-related content that comes out as well” ([38:33]).

The discussion underscores the challenges in verifying real-time reports and the potential for AI to distort narratives, complicating the public’s understanding of the conflict.

4. State Department Controversy: Darren Beatty [68:00 - 75:08]

A significant portion of the episode addresses allegations against Darren Beatty, a State Department official, accused of having ties to the Kremlin through his wife's uncle. The discussion reveals the administration's stance on combating misinformation and defending employees against perceived media attacks.

• Saagar Enjeti critiques the media's approach: “This is loaded with innuendo and probably timed exactly as they're implying it's timed” ([73:35]).

• Ryan Grim questions the vetting process: “What are the policies of that law...?” leading to a broader conversation on the misuse of anti-Semitism accusations to shield political actors from scrutiny ([78:53]).

The State Department issues a statement condemning the allegations as a smear campaign, emphasizing their commitment to combating censorship and defending free speech globally.

5. Joy Reid's Departure from MSNBC [82:37 - 91:18]

Joy Reid, a prominent MSNBC anchor, shares insights into her termination and the broader shifts within the network. Reid reflects on the constraints of corporate media, particularly the disapproval of her active presence on Twitter.

• Joy Reid explains, “Anytime I would tweet anything, I would get calls. We hate it. They don't like that” ([83:26]).

• Saagar Enjeti observes, “Reid was a powerful representation of where MSNBC went wrong during the Trump years” ([84:04]).

The episode critiques MSNBC's response to changing media landscapes and the pressures of maintaining controlled narratives, highlighting Reid's role in bringing diverse perspectives to mainstream media.

6. Latin American Foreign Policy: Venezuela and Cuba [99:04 - 123:53]

In an exclusive segment, Juan David Rojas of Compact discusses the Trump administration's contradictory policies towards Latin America, focusing on Venezuela and Cuba.

• Juan David Rojas explains, “The US is caught in a tug of war between hawks like Rubio and more pragmatic elements within the administration” ([100:16]).

• Emily Jashinsky details the implementation failures: “They sent them to El Salvador instead...[as] at least 200 of the 238 Venezuelans had no criminal records” ([102:32]).

Rojas critiques the ineffectiveness of sanctions and the diplomatic struggles inherent in regime change efforts, drawing parallels to the challenges faced in Cuba. The discussion emphasizes the humanitarian repercussions of stringent immigration policies and the paradoxical outcomes of America’s foreign interventions.

7. Lessons from Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum [116:00 - 123:53]

The conversation concludes with an analysis of Mexico's approach to combating drug cartels under President Claudia Sheinbaum, drawing lessons applicable to U.S. policies.

• Emily Jashinsky praises Sheinbaum’s balanced strategy: “She’s prioritized going after mid-level logistics within cartels and has seen a 20% reduction in homicides” ([121:04]).

• Saagar Enjeti contrasts this with past U.S. strategies: “Previous approaches, like Calderón’s militarized tactics, only escalated violence” ([121:04]).

The hosts suggest that progressive policies emphasizing both security and economic stability, as demonstrated by Sheinbaum, could offer a blueprint for addressing similar issues in the United States, advocating for pragmatic solutions over ideological rigidity.

---

Notable Quotes:

• “Elon Musk is not just pushing back on the bill, he is now adopting the counter-narrative” — Saagar Enjeti ([05:12])

• “Cutting taxes for the rich doesn't lead to economic growth because unlike Elon Musk, who might reinvest, billionaires typically don't spend additional funds meaningfully” — Ryan Grim ([07:18])

• “The cuts were never there because they weren't willing to go after power centers like Medicaid and Medicare” — Krystal Grim ([08:39])

• “Anytime there’ll be a massacre, there will also be some AI-related content that comes out as well” — Saagar Enjeti ([38:33])

• “Reid was a powerful representation of where MSNBC went wrong during the Trump years” — Saagar Enjeti ([84:04])

• “Previous approaches, like Calderón’s militarized tactics, only escalated violence” — Ryan Grim ([121:04])

---

Conclusion:

This episode of Breaking Points offers a multifaceted exploration of pressing national and international issues, from internal Republican discord over budgetary policies to the complexities of foreign interventions in Latin America. Through incisive analysis and critical discussions, hosts Krystal Ball and Saagar Enjeti provide listeners with a comprehensive understanding of the current political landscape, emphasizing the need for pragmatic and balanced approaches in both domestic and foreign policy arenas.

Transcript

[Ryan Grim]

This is an iHeart podcast. You know what's great about your investment account with the big guys? It's actually a time machine. Log in and zoom. Welcome back to 1999. It's time for an upgrade. At public.com you can invest in almost everything. Stocks, bonds, options and more. You could even put your cash to work at an industry leading 4.1% APY. Leave your clunky, outdated platform behind. @Public.com Go to Public.com and fund your account in five minutes or less. Paid for by Public Investing Inc. Member FINRA and SIP. Full [e-mail] disclosures NBC Nightly News Legacy isn't handed down or NBC News. I'm Tom Brokaw. Hope to see you back here.

[Emily Jashinsky]

I'm Lester Holt.

[Ryan Grim]

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

[Sagar Enjeti]

A new chapter begins NBC Nightly News.

[Ryan Grim]

With Tom Yamas evenings on NBC.

[Sagar Enjeti]

Hey, guys, Sagar and Krystal here.

[Ryan Grim]

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. This is the only place where you.

[Emily Jashinsky]

Can find honest perspectives from the left.

[Ryan Grim]

And the right that simply does not exist anywhere else. 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.

[Sagar Enjeti]

We need your help to build the future of independent news media and we hope to see [e-mail].

[Ryan Grim]

Good morning and welcome to Breaking Points. We normally have bad news throughout the entire show, but we actually have good news to start this one, right?

[Sagar Enjeti]

That's right. If you we can put this up on the screen if you want to try Breaking Points for a month, the premium edition of Breaking Points for a month. We're running an amazing special right now. The promo code is BP free. Go over to breakingpoints.com the monthly subscriptions are back. So huge news in and of itself. But also if you just want to try it for a month, the promo code is BP free. So that's exciting. Ryan.

[Ryan Grim]

Yeah. People always ask me, what do you get if you subscribe to the show? Because I can find it on Spotify. I can find it on the podcast, the YouTube. We email it out at around 11. We're supposed to get it to you by 11 every morning, 11 Eastern every morning. And it's just a couple links of the full show. No ads unless YouTube was jamming ads that day into the, into the link. But we have a couple Spotify link and then you can just watch the whole thing. You can just set it, forget it. Listen while you're driving, while you're washing dishes, while you're making your rounds.

[Sagar Enjeti]

Right.

[Ryan Grim]

Whatever you're doing. And then it just comes. People had complained that we got rid of the monthly subscription because 100 bucks at once is, that's a chunk.

[Sagar Enjeti]

Monthly is great.

[Ryan Grim]

So now you can get breaking points.

[Sagar Enjeti]

On Lightway, basically monthly subscription. Fantastic. Also fantastic way to try the show premium edition of the show for a month. You get the second half of our Friday shows. That's another big thing that you get. And you know, we do save a lot of the good stuff for the second half of the Friday shows. Not just the fun stuff, but I think some of our more substantive conversations.

[Ryan Grim]

I'm thinking about material right now that I'm gonna save for the.

[Sagar Enjeti]

You gotta get it.

[Ryan Grim]

I had a good response there. I'm saving it for the Friday show.

[Sagar Enjeti]

And it's free this week if you, this month if you use promo code BP free. So stick around for that. Also, you get the ama, ask me Anything and all that fun stuff. So go ahead. Breaking points.com if you want to try it out. Ryan, we have a big show to start with today. Elon Musk is now on a rampage against the administration he just left. We have updates out of Gaza. We have Chuck Schumer with an incredible.

[Ryan Grim]

Video that urging an attack on Iran.

[Sagar Enjeti]

Basically about Taco Trump. Taco Trump. So stick around for that. We have a little exclusive from the State Department this morning pertaining to a controversy over one of their employees. So we're going to do that and talk about updates from Ukraine. Joy Reid is weighing in more on why she left msnbc. So we have some video of her. And Juan David Rojas from Compact joins us to talk about Trump's the conflicting. What do we say? The conflicting contradictions inherent.

[Ryan Grim]

Yeah.

[Sagar Enjeti]

With the factions in Trump world that seem some people seem to want new policy in Latin America. Other people seem to be clinging to the Cold War mentality. No surprise there. But Juan David has been covering all of it and he's going to join us to talk about that.

[Ryan Grim]

Yes, indeed.

[Sagar Enjeti]

All right, let's dive in, Ryan, with Elon Musk Playbook actually counted that Elon Musk posted 13 times over the course of six hours yesterday, rampaging against Donald Trump's big beautiful bill, which we can now, we can now abbreviate helpfully as bbb, which is why BBB is on the screen if you're watching this. So let's put.

[Ryan Grim]

Are they mimicking Build Back better? Is that what they were trying to do there?

[Sagar Enjeti]

Or the Better Business Bureau? There's too many triple B's.

[Ryan Grim]

This is, that's where our bond rating is going to pass this bill if we're lucky.

[Sagar Enjeti]

So we can put this up on the screen. Elon's tweet here. I guess we have to call it a post on X.

[Ryan Grim]

We don't know. We don't.

[Sagar Enjeti]

He goes, he goes, I'm sorry, but I just can't stand it anymore. This massive, outrageous, pork filled congressional spending bill is a disgusting abomination. Shame on those who voted for it. You know, you did wrong. You know it. He adds, it will massively increase the already gigantic budget deficit to two and a half trillion dollars and burden American citizens with crushingly unsustainable debt. Ryan, there is a lot to talk about here. I just want to start by saying the central premise of Republicans pushing the big beautiful bill is that that two and a half trillion number is wrong. That the Congressional Budget Office is underestimating the growth that that'll come as part of this bill. So Elon Musk is not just pushing back on the bill, he is now adopting the counternarrative. And he's not the only one. You know, people like Ron Johnson and Rand Paul are as well. But this is a man who is like a week out of his special government employee status at the White House and he sounds a whole lot like Rand Paul. And again, Elon Musk was not going anywhere near significant criticisms just a week ago.

[Ryan Grim]

I'm on the Musk side here because there's two, you know, two types of quote unquote growth that people might be referring to. One is asset inflation, which is basically the stock market goes up and we get a housing bubble. And certainly the more debt we circulate and the more like, let's say you start having bitcoin backup treasuries and like, yes, you can get a run up then in asset prices. That's not economic growth though, because the way to get economic growth either expand productivity or invest or you invest in things that, you know, yield back, you know, actual returns for people in, in the real economy and cutting Taxes for the rich doesn't do that. Because unlike, you know, Elon Musk might be the exception among billionaires because apparently he doesn't spend a whole lot of money. You know, he doesn't have, like, 15 different houses.

[Sagar Enjeti]

He has 15 different children, probably.

[Ryan Grim]

Well, that's true. He probably spends on all of his different children the amount that a normal billionaire spends on their houses. He also flies everywhere. It's not like he's living a cheap life.

[Sagar Enjeti]

Yeah, he's not a monk.

[Ryan Grim]

The point is, he's so rich, and these other rich people are so rich, that giving them more money doesn't mean they spend more. If you give a normal person a little extra money, if you give a mouse a cookie, they're going to spend it. Yes. Yeah. I mean, actually, if you give a mouse a cookie is sort of the explanation for how this works. But if you give a regular person money, they're going to spend it because there's things that they want that they can't have because they don't have enough money. If you give a billionaire another $50,000, they don't even notice for the most part. Right. Might see this uptick in the stock market. So that's why I think the. The higher estimate is probably more accurate. Now, if I want to nitpick him, is there pork in this bill? Pork is where you're like, hey, this community center or this bridge in this district in Kentucky is going to get $75 million. Is there some of that in there?

[Sagar Enjeti]

So that is definitely a nitpick because.

[Ryan Grim]

No, what they're going to do is the Trump administration will then do it for them rather than put it in the bill.

[Sagar Enjeti]

Yeah. And that's sort of similar to the Biden infrastructure bill, but that's actually part of the problem that some people like Elon Musk and Rand Paul have with it is that it hasn't fully dismantled. So Republicans are chalking this up to Elon Musk being mad that it gets rid of some of the ev, like Biden's EV support package.

[Ryan Grim]

It's crazy. Like, who spends hundreds of millions of dollars and gets. Well, I mean, he got all his investigations knocked away, but yeah, he's getting absolutely routed when it comes to the government benefits that he was getting.

[Sagar Enjeti]

I just don't know how important that is to him. I mean, it's important to Tesla, but how important is Tesla? How important is Tesla in his portfolio, his leverage?

[Ryan Grim]

He is highly leveraged.

[Sagar Enjeti]

Right.

[Ryan Grim]

His collateral is Tesla stuff.

[Sagar Enjeti]

Yeah.

[Ryan Grim]

So, yeah, that collapses. Then the bankers start calling and the bankers, he does not have the kind of bankers that you want calling. These are people who are like, hey, why don't we meet in the consulate in Istanbul, the Saudi consulate in Istanbul to talk about you're a little bit overdue on your latest payment and then you leave in a bucket.

[Sagar Enjeti]

So he's actually by complaining about pork, asking for pork for Elon, if that's his definition of pork, which is something that's inserted into the bill to please the very particular or niche interest of the donor class. Not really the technical definition of pork, but there is. Some people are upset that there haven't been this is an op ed in the Wall Street Journal. There haven't been there isn't enough dismantling of the Biden agenda in this bill. But that's, of course, what's upsetting to Elon. And this is where Trump right now is between a rock and a hard place because moderates say the bill is already cutting too much. And then people like Rand Paul and Ron Johnson say the bill is not cutting enough. And that includes now, I suppose, Elon Musk. So let's go ahead, roll a three. This is Rand Paul on Fox yesterday.

[Ryan Grim]

FOX Business yesterday, in a separate post, Trump said there's a false narrative about spending in this bill. He said it is, quote, single biggest spending cut in history by far. Kentucky Senator Rand Paul joins me now. Mr. Senator, I know you want more spending cuts included in the bill. Can you tell us what specifically you'd want to cut? Yeah, it's even more than that.

[Emily Jashinsky]

The biggest objection I have to the.

[Ryan Grim]

Bill is adding $5 trillion to the debt ceiling. I'm actually very supportive of the tax cuts. I don't accept the CBO notion that the tax cuts will lead to deficits. The reason I believe there'll be more deficits is they're raising the debt ceiling 5 trillion. We know that this year most of the Republicans, not me, voted to continue the Biden spending levels in March. So we're going to go through September of this year and the deficit for this year is going to be over 2 trillion. If you're borrowing 5 trillion, that makes me think you're going to add over 2 trillion, maybe 2.8 trillion next year. So it doesn't show me that you've turned around. If you look at the spending cuts, it's complicated because it's 1.5 trillion. It sounds like this enormous number, but it's over 10 years. It's 150 billion a year. They're also increasing Spending for the military and for the border.

[Sagar Enjeti]

300 billion.

[Ryan Grim]

That's actually more than all the Doge cuts that we've found so far. So something doesn't really add up here.

[Emily Jashinsky]

And I can't be on record as.

[Ryan Grim]

Being one who supports increasing the debt by 5 trillion. I think that's irresponsible. The bond markets are already starting to show that they're skittish over this. We've got interest rates of over 5% on the 10 year bond. There's, there are real problems we face as a country and we can't just.

[Emily Jashinsky]

Blithely go on the way we have in the past.

[Sagar Enjeti]

So Ron Johnson also specifically said that he's very concerned about how the bill will affect the bond markets, which is a completely reasonable concern.

[Ryan Grim]

Could he be a no?

[Sagar Enjeti]

Yeah, right now he's no. And they say they only need four of them. That's the line that you keep hearing from Rand Paul and others in the Senate. They only need to band together four people. And that could mean an unusual marriage between.

[Ryan Grim]

Right.

[Sagar Enjeti]

Susan Collins.

[Ryan Grim]

So any of these Utah liberals gonna.

[Sagar Enjeti]

We'll see. But they're. I mean, you might not even need that because if you combine the fiscal hawks with the moderates, you're already easily at four. So it's.

[Ryan Grim]

Well, Collins. You need Collins to get the four. Right.

[Sagar Enjeti]

Collins will be wobbly on because of Medicaid.

[Ryan Grim]

Oh my God. She's already indicated it cuts liheap too.

[Sagar Enjeti]

There's a lot.

[Ryan Grim]

So you're asking Maine's senator to cut energy assistance, oil assistance for working people in winter in Maine.

[Sagar Enjeti]

Then also this is where it gets even worse for Republicans. They have to.

[Ryan Grim]

Also Alaska. It gets cold there too.

[Sagar Enjeti]

Yeah, Also Alaska. They then have to kick this back over to the House to approve the changes. And everybody remembers that this only went over to the Senate because Mike Johnson cut a deal with some of the fiscal hawks in the House to basically rubber stamp it and say we trust the President to work with the Senate to get a better deal. But we don't like this bill. We're not voting for this bill. We're voting basically to send it over to the Senate and to get the ball rolling. They want to have this bill done. Donald Trump continues to push, push to have this bill done by a month from today, July 4th. They want the bill to be signed and enacted by the 4th of July.

[Ryan Grim]

Try to get it done fast.

[Sagar Enjeti]

Right. Otherwise you start losing to the recess and you're into the fall and then you're into midterms. So it sounds ridiculous because we're only a few months into the presidency, but it comes up really midterms come up really fast, especially because Congress gets so much time off.

[Ryan Grim]

And so the House hawks, they want the bill to get to add spending cuts in the Senate.

[Sagar Enjeti]

Right.

[Ryan Grim]

Whereas in order to get the senators that are wobbly, to get Rand Paul, you'd have to do more cuts like the hawks in the House want. But to get Murkowski and Collins, you'd have to do fewer cuts, right?

[Sagar Enjeti]

Yeah.

[Ryan Grim]

And is the Pentagon just. You can't like we're doing a trillion dollars for the Pentagon and that's all there is. Like, there's no, Nobody can come in and be like, hey guys, what if we didn't like massively increase the Pentagon budget?

[Sagar Enjeti]

So this is where Elon Musk, while he's siding with Rand Paul here, you also heard Rand Paul throw a little bit, very subtle dig at Doge, saying that the spending is higher than the Doge cuts. And that's because a lot of Republicans, in order to get this bill passed, which by the way is, as we've talked about, a really critical element of the tariff agenda. So they believe that the tariff agenda, this is the sort of necessary supplement to it that creates an industrial policy for onshoring. We could debate whether or not that's the case, but it has things like 100% write offs retroactive to January 20th for factory building, manufacturing building, all that kind of stuff. I think the corporate tax rate going from 21 to 15 is industrial policy. So they feel like this is an absolutely essential part of the tariff agenda. All of that was predicated on the idea that Doge was going to find so many cuts in the government that they could basically do whatever they wanted to with this bill.

[Ryan Grim]

This is where I start to worry about your people.

[Sagar Enjeti]

My people?

[Ryan Grim]

Yeah. That anybody took seriously the claim from Elon Musk that he was going to cut a trillion dollars and at one point he said it was going to be $2 trillion. Makes me worry about them. Makes me. For viewers and for regular people whose media diet has been telling them that there's waste, fraud and abuse shot through the federal government their entire lives. I don't, I don't blame those people who believed that this was going to be possible. I don't even blame Elon Musk. He's just a drug addled like tech guy who just like most tech people, like, doesn't know anything outside of like this very narrow area, but thinks they're experts everywhere. That's Just his personality type. So I don't even blame him. But the people who've spent 10 decades in Washington thinking that Elon Musk was going to come in and identify trillions of dollars in like painless waste, fraud and abuse, that makes me worry about them if they were not just cynically using him. Steve Bannon, friend of the show, was saying from the very beginning this is a fraud. And now he's.

[Sagar Enjeti]

Because they wouldn't go to the Pentagon.

[Ryan Grim]

Right. And now he's been saying, look, all of these people in Washington, these Republicans in Washington didn't want to make the painful cuts. And so they just put their faith in Elon Musk that he was going to find this, this trillion dollars. He didn't find it. He was never going to find it. And so he marched them into this place where now they've got all the tax cuts ready to go and the Pentagon spending, but they don't have the, the cuts.

[Sagar Enjeti]

Right.

[Ryan Grim]

The cuts were never there.

[Sagar Enjeti]

Right.

[Ryan Grim]

Because they weren't willing to go after power centers like Medicaid and Medicare. Fraud is on the provider side. It's the private equity owned doctors. It's the straight up fraudulent. Just, you know, just put bars around Miami, don't let anybody leave until you find every Medicare fraudster.

[Sagar Enjeti]

Generally a good idea.

[Ryan Grim]

Yes. I mean, ask Rick Scott, Medicare fraudster, who's a senator from Florida. Like, ask him like, hey, how'd you do that? And he could tell you in like two minutes, oh, it's really easy. You just claim that you did services that you didn't do and you send that to the federal government. The federal government with no questions asked sends you money. And we're like, oh, well, we have AI now that could maybe detect that stuff. Like maybe you have to send an actual photo of, oh, you say you sell wheelchairs, you say you sell scooters, send us a picture of the scooter and we're going to reverse Google search image of that thing, make sure you didn't just pull it off the web. Yeah, you can stop this stuff. It's not that difficult. But what's difficult is doing it politically because these are white collar criminals who've bought off the system and have gotten themselves elected into the system. So that's why you weren't going to find the trillion dollars.

[Sagar Enjeti]

It's partially a matter of semantics too, because when they say things like widespread fraud and abuse, I actually agree with that. But so what are they looking at right now? Like 160. What is 160 billion in cuts from Doge.

[Ryan Grim]

That's the top line nonsense. The way to actually calculate what they really saved would be how much is Congress, quote, unquote, rescinding. That's money that was spent. But then because you found the fraud and abuse, Congress can just take it back. And that's 9 billion.

[Sagar Enjeti]

That's insane.

[Ryan Grim]

Two of that is NPR and PBS.

[Sagar Enjeti]

Yeah.

[Ryan Grim]

Which you don't need Doge to like defund NPR and PBS. That's an ideological thing that they can just do. So that's seven. And a bunch of that is like leases and. And let's just stuff that. And God help us if any of that actually saves us money. Like, this is probably stuff that you cut that $7 billion, it's going to end up costing the federal government more money down the road. But okay, fine, seven billion. He found seven billion. How do we know that none of it was fraud? Because have you seen a single headline about Doge referring a fraudster to the Department of Justice?

[Sagar Enjeti]

It's a lot of what's going on.

[Ryan Grim]

Would that not be just leading everywhere? Well, on there, we got them, ladies and gentlemen. We got him.

[Sagar Enjeti]

Definitely. Okay, so this is what I mean, semantics, the waste question. Yeah. I mean, but if you're saying widespread to the tune of $2 trillion, which is what he project, what you end up finding, and let me say plenty of waste at the Pentagon that they could have gone after. So, no, I do think there's widespread.

[Ryan Grim]

He could have been like, hey, guys, why are we building another nuclear triad? Like, we don't need it. They're talking about spending a trillion dollars on a new batch of nuclear weapons. You could be like, hey, number one on the agenda. Let's just not do this and make people argue why you should do it. Like, actually, all right, we heard the arguments. We have enough nuclear weapons that we can kill everyone on the planet 175 times over. We're good trillion dollars saved. That you would. That would actually. But guess what? That would mean special interests who are involved in that nuclear program would. Would have to take a haircut and they don't want to do that.

[Sagar Enjeti]

So that is to say, the question of how widespread it is versus the just amount of money that we spend on Medicaid, for example, Medicare, Medicaid, it just pales. And the Pentagon budget too. Although you could actually just delete the Pentagon. You could go to the entire defense budget and it would not make a dent in the deficit, which sounds crazy. Or in the debt, I should say, which sounds crazy. But it's true. At the Manhattan Institute they've run the numbers on that. So it's just like the fiscal hawks there have run the numbers on that.

[Ryan Grim]

It's really, really, it would get your lines closer, which is what the market really cares about.

[Sagar Enjeti]

Yeah, it would be helpful for that type of thing.

[Ryan Grim]

It doesn't close everything because you got $30 trillion debt right now roughly.

[Sagar Enjeti]

I mean it's still pale. Like actually defense spending pales in comparison to how much money the expenditures, annual expenditures on Medicaid, Medicare and those things.

[Ryan Grim]

I mean if you took a trillion out, then that 30 trillion dollar debt starts to shrink. However, actually it doesn't, then it is the American military that makes the dollar the reserve currency.

[Sagar Enjeti]

Right.

[Ryan Grim]

So the whole thing collapses without the military.

[Sagar Enjeti]

This is so much fun.

[Ryan Grim]

But maybe you don't need a trillion dollar one.

[Sagar Enjeti]

But that's what gives people like Ron Johnson pause. And this is Ron Johnson from the Tea Party Wave, by the way, who is talking about how now is not the time to be cutting taxes. And he specifically has looked at, said to look at the bond markets. He was just on Tucker Carlson's show actually making this case, making an extended case against the bbb. So the Trump administration has a month to somehow get these dug in factions to the same place. And I mean Rand Paul has said that he is ready to compromise. That he is. He understands he's going to have to compromise. If you are Mike Johnson and you have been giving Elon Musk cover for months, you are just beside yourself and furious about this right now because he didn't find the cuts that he was supposed to find and he has the audacity to criticize your bill because after it's rich. It is, it is. At the same time you also look at someone like Mike Johnson, you say you have the audacity to talk about government spending and then put a bill like this on the table. So just honestly, I don't know where they go. I mean they're desperate, which means that they'll be willing to make significant compromises. I don't know that they even have a good idea of what some of those compromises might look like going forward. And that's pretty important for the way that they see the entire economy, the American economy is sort of hanging on whether or not they're able to get some version of this passed. We will see, Ryan, how that ends up. We will continue to follow the story. Ryan, let's move on to Gaza.

[Ryan Grim]

What's the next thing to watch on that? And then we'll go to so John.

[Sagar Enjeti]

Thune is meeting with Donald Trump at the White House today, and they're huddling on policy and particularly tax policy. So we'll see what comes out of that. It's going to be daily negotiations. I mean, I actually think Trump has had sort of a lighter schedule the last couple of days because he's working the phones and taking meetings. Try to get people into the same pair onto the same page on this, which it's just sort of at this point unfathomable what you can do to build that bridge. But they have a must to try.

[Ryan Grim]

And here we have a specimen from the early 2000s, a legacy investing platform. Please don't touch the exhibit folks. It could crash. Ready to step out of the financial history [e-mail] you can invest in almost everything, stocks, bonds, options and more. You can even put your cash to work at an industry leading 4.1% APY. Leave your clunky, outdated platform behind. Go to public.com and fund your account in five minutes or less. Paid for by Public Investing, Inc. Member FINRA and SIPC. Full [e-mail] disclosures I know a lot of cops and they get asked all the time, have you ever had to shoot your gun? Sometimes the answer is yes. But there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be no. Across the country, cops called this Taser the Revolution. But not everyone was convinced it was that simple. Cops believed everything that Taser told them. From Lava for good and the team that brought you Bone Valley comes a story about what happened when a multi billion dollar company dedicated itself to one visionary mission. This is Absolute Season one, Taser Incorporated.

[Sagar Enjeti]

I get right back there and it's bad. It's really, really, really bad.

[Ryan Grim]

Listen to new episodes of Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Binge episodes 1, 2 and 3 on May 21 and episodes 4, 5 and 6 on June 4 ad free at Lava for Good plus on Apple Podcasts. She was a decorated veteran, a Marine who saved her comrades. A hero. She was stoic, modest, tough, someone who inspired people. Everyone thought they knew her until they didn't.

[Sagar Enjeti]

I remember sitting on her couch and.

[Ryan Grim]

Asking her, is this real?

[Sagar Enjeti]

Is this real? Is this real? Is this real?

[Ryan Grim]

I just couldn't wrap my head around what kind of person would do that to another person that was getting treatment, that was, you know, dying. This is a story all about trust and about a woman named Sarah Kavanaugh.

[Sagar Enjeti]

I've always been told I'm a really good listener.

[Ryan Grim]

Right.

[Sagar Enjeti]

And I maximized that while I was lying.

[Ryan Grim]

Listen to Deep Cover the Truth About Sarah on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Piers Morgan has gotten increasingly fed up with the arguments that he's been hearing from defenders of Israel on his program in a way that I think is symbolic of the broader shift in Western media and politics going on at the moment. There have been a couple of viral moments just from the last 24 hours. One of those we wanted to play here. This is Natasha Hasdorff, who is a UK lawyer who represents Israel and went on with both comic Dave Smith and Piers Morgan. Though you'll see that Dave Smith plays the same role that you're gonna play in this, which is just watching. So let's do that. I was told by the ambassador to UK it was a blood libel for me to suggest that Israel had killed children in this war. No, I don't believe that was the case. It has to do with targeting children. There is a difference. Right? Because we are hearing that Israel is targeting children. And that couldn't be further from the. Well, last week, nine out of 10 children in one home where two doctors reside was killed in an airstrike. What was that? Remarkable. What was that? That has been based only on the basis of hearsay. You don't believe that story. I want these stories. Wait a minute. You don't believe that those children were killed?

[Sagar Enjeti]

I have seen conflicting accounts, and I.

[Ryan Grim]

Want that story to be properly investigated before the international media runs with it.

[Sagar Enjeti]

I have seen.

[Ryan Grim]

You think those two parents, one of whom I think, operated on one of the children. I have a question. Do you think that those two doctors, the parents, they just made it up. Why are they. Nine of their 10 children had been blown to pieces by an Israeli airstrike. If this is true, you don't believe it. Well, there have. Why on earth was artificially generated imagery used to promote this story when it. First. I gotta say, Natasha, I think what you've just said about that family is despicable.

[Sagar Enjeti]

We've seen times.

[Ryan Grim]

I'm sorry, it's despicable. Somebody. You talk about blood libel. Like Dave said, you talk about blood libel, you talk about lies, you talk about promoting propaganda, and here you sit here as a lawyer and you say that you do not believe those nine children were killed. I didn't say that. You're putting words in my mouth. Do you believe it or not? I said that there were conflicting cases. Do you believe it? And it needs to be investigated. Do you believe it? I thought you would be. The parents said nine of their 10 children were killed. Do you believe them or not? Or did those two doctors make it up? They haven't said that directly. As far as I have seen. I have seen secondhand accounts and hearsay. But it's important to ask, why are these civilians still there? Why is it that, you know, it's important to ask whether you believe that family have lost nine of their 10 children. I want to know why the international community. You don't, do you? You don't. And this goes to the point that I would say about Israel generally now, in this war now, Israel says they don't believe anything. Every story that comes out about the deaths of civilians in Gaza because there is a. Someone will pop up representing the Israeli government saying it's propaganda. It's not tr. I've heard. It's not. Right, Emily? The most revealing comment from her. I thought maybe it was accidental, but she said, why are those civilians still there? I think what she's referring to is that, like, six months before these nine children were killed, there was an evacuation order given for that area where they live. The problem with these evacuation orders is that Israel does not. They don't expire. They'll say, okay, we're going to be. The IDF is going to be operating in this area. Everyone from this neighborhood leave. People leave. IDF comes in, and then the IDF leaves. And then everyone from the neighborhood comes back. And then six months later, they bomb it and say, well, we told you to leave. But the underlying quote there, what are these civilians still doing there? I think represents this, like, deep, something deeper. Like, they are very frustrated that there are still civilians in Gaza. Like, 20 months later, I thought, why have we not fully expelled everybody yet? Like, what is going on here? Why are you even still there? And that brings us to this absolute calamity of an effort at aid distribution over this week. It's been a wild week because over the weekend, remember, there was this massacre at, you know, about a kilometer from an aid distribution center. The IDF initially claimed that it had not fired any shots whatsoever. They sent an email out to some reporters that said, off the record, we did fire shots at the direction of suspects because we told them to stop coming at us and they kept coming. So we did shoot, but we don't believe that we shot any. Right?

[Sagar Enjeti]

They said that off the record in an email. That also included the denial, right?

[Ryan Grim]

That also included the denial. And so a reporter sent Me this, like, hey, I can't use this because I've agreed to receive these emails that are off the record. You haven't agreed to this. So I published that. So they're like, okay, yes, we did shoot, but we don't know who was hit. And like, maybe there was Hamas. And then they released this video that they said was Hamas gunman doing the shooting. Turned out that was at a different day at a different location. And were. It was in Khan Yunis and it was gangs that are backed by Israel who had stolen aid and were and were selling it, and people who wouldn't pay them for it, they were shooting them. So that, that fell apart. The Washington Post yesterday issued this like, incredible, like, correction that said, while three eyewitnesses talk. Let's talk about the weekend massacre. While three eyewitnesses told the Washington Post that the gunfire came from the Israelis, Israel denied it. And we did not give proper weight to the Israeli denial in our original article. I can't imagine any other shooter who would get that kind of grace. Even though three people said they saw you do it, you said you didn't. And we should have put it that you said you didn't right in the headlines. While this debate over the level of Israel's culpability of the weekend massacre was ongoing.

[Sagar Enjeti]

I was gonna say, by the way, I don't even object to that because people can make up their own decisions about people are supposed to give weight on their own without necessarily being handheld to the journalists. Anyway.

[Ryan Grim]

Yeah. And so while this debate has been going on about what was Israel's responsibility for the massacre over the weekend, there has been a massacre every single day at a Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, a distribution site, including just recently, including, and again last night. We can roll B1. This is imagery from yesterday evening, Gaza Time, where the Gaza Humanitarian foundation announced that it was going to be pausing distribution because Boston Consulting Group, which was the American consulting firm that basically did all the work to set up ghf, announced that it was leaving. They said this was pro bono work and we're putting on leave the partner who brought us into this debacle and we're not helping them anymore. Conflicting reports came out that they were sending million dollar invoices for the work that they had done here. I'm sure we'll see that sorted out in court. Either way, the word goes out okay, we lost our consultant. We're not, we're not gonna. We're not gonna do distribution. Truck drivers leak to their friends and family in Gaza. Hey there's, gonna be a convoy going through. That was western Gaza City that you see. So a massive crowd convenes in western Gaza City of starving people who are there hoping that they're gonna be able to, like, a truck will stop. And then what happens is when the truck stops, they just unload everything right there. And whoever is close enough to the truck and strong enough to, like, hold on to the bag of flour gets to, like, leave with the bag of flour in this Hunger Games style situation. And so while this chaos is unfolding and what you see in the video, there is people running from gunfire, different reports of where it was coming from, helicopters, quadcopters. Again, you know, you get denials. We can put up this next element, which I think is B6. So as we're going back and forth over, you know, what happened, who did the shooting. Mossa Abu Toha, who you guys may remember, he's the Gaza poet who won a Pulitzer Prize this year. He got this video where he says, I've just found this video posted by Amin's friend. The man's name is Amin Samir Khalifa. He documented the moment when Israeli soldiers opened fire at them yesterday morning. Amin was killed along with over 30 people. The Israeli forces denied their responsibility for the killing, and the media changed their headlines. Can you tell us who killed Amin and the other starved people? And if you go find this on his. On his feed, it's just an absolutely horrifying scene of explosions and gunfire. And then tell yourself, this is billed as an aid distribution site. This is why you don't militarize aid distribution sites like they turn an aid site into a war zone. For the first 16, 17 months of the war, the UN World Food Program, World Central Kitchen, and others, you didn't see images like this. Occasionally you would see the Flower Massacre, which involved the idf. You saw World Central Kitchen trucks getting hit by the idf, but you never saw the World Food Program shooting at hungry people. And you never saw scenes of warehouses getting mobbed or trucks getting mobbed. It's only when this program has taken over that you start to see this. And I think because Piers Morgan is covering this stuff every day, that's what accounts for his turn. What do you think?

[Sagar Enjeti]

I think Piers Morgan, as such a. You just said turn. As such a staunch defender of the Israeli government. The Israeli side of the conflict is representative of something that we've covered in general, which is the public sentiment in places like the UK and the US just shifting over the course of the post October 7th war in ways that just people like the barrister he was interviewing are not at all prepared for. I think it's catching them off guard to some extent. It was a really dark exchange, a really dark exchange in that video. And just watching the last video we watched and hearing, thinking back to her point about why artificially intelligent videos, AI generated videos had initially come out. That is so, so dark when you think about it.

[Ryan Grim]

We're going to see that now.

[Sagar Enjeti]

Exactly.

[Ryan Grim]

Anytime there'll be a massacre going forward, there will also be some AI related content that comes out as well. And the people who carried out the massacre will say, well, look, this part's fake, so maybe all of it's fake.

[Sagar Enjeti]

And they may generate it.

[Ryan Grim]

They might generate it, right? Yeah.

[Sagar Enjeti]

And that's really, really. You may generate it as a shield. So it's just quite frightening to hear that line. It does, I think, grind smack of desperation. And the only other point I wanted to make, I think Piers Morgan is wrong. I think she actually does believe that the family was killed. I think that's probably why she didn't want to really answer the question. And that's to your point about the more interesting or the most interesting line being that why were they still there? Why were they still in Gaza? I think she probably does believe that they were killed and just doesn't feel the need to, or doesn't feel like it would be advantageous for her to defend it. And so it's easier to say from the sort of public relations cynical perspective, well, we don't really know what happened. I think the answer is that they believe the government believes that's the collateral damage.

[Ryan Grim]

Here's the exact line from the Washington Post. The Post didn't give proper weight to Israel's denial and gave improper certitude about what was known about any Israeli role in the shootings. The early versions fell short of Post standards of fairness and should not have been published in that form. This is after Bill Ackman, like Snitch, tagged Jeff Bezos on Twitter. I was like. And saying that, like, this is the kind of thing that is producing anti Semitism around the country. It's like, no, the Washington Post reporting on these massacres is not what is driving anti Semitism. And to me, none of it should be driving anti Semitism either way, because Israel is a state. And I refuse to allow Israel to claim that it represents an entire religion that is thousands of years old. Like that, to me, is what. What everyone should be drawing a line at, that these actions do not represent Judaism. Like how anti Semitic. Would it be to say that they do?

[Sagar Enjeti]

The Bill Ackman snitch tweet is. It's a way to use that. Expand the definition of anti Semitism to use as a shield that. That protects a political actor, a state actor from scrutiny, due scrutiny that would apply to any political or state actor in a conflict.

[Ryan Grim]

So their new version, written to satisfy Bill Ackman, says while three witnesses said the gunfire came from Israeli military positions, the Israel Defense Forces denied the allegations, saying in a statement that an initial inquiry indicated that its soldiers did not fire at civilians while they were near or within the distribution site. Then they add, an Israeli military official later said that troops had, quote, acted to prevent several suspects from approaching, unquote them overnight and fired warning shots at the group. Well, wait a minute. Which is it? But that there was, quote, no connection between this incident and the false claims made against the idf. Okay, yes, so we did shoot at those people at the time that this is said to have happened, but there's no connection between that. I have never seen a line that is closer to these are not the droids you're looking for than that one. Okay, yes, we did it, but there's no connection between this incident and the false claims made against the idf. These are not the droids we're looking for.

[Sagar Enjeti]

It's dark. Really, really dark stuff.

[Ryan Grim]

Meanwhile, the Gaza flotilla, I believe it's called the Maldine, is getting closer. We can put up this next element, getting closer to Gaza. This borderline suicidal mission, which includes Greta Thunberg and roughly, what, a dozen or so international activists. I'm trying to think, if I see any Americans on here. I do not see any Americans on board this ship. We can put up before they posted this image or this audio of a drone flying over top of them. This rolled B4.

[Sagar Enjeti]

Hey, everyone, this is Thiago Avila.

[Ryan Grim]

I'm here on board the Madeleine.

[Sagar Enjeti]

We are on our mission to break.

[Ryan Grim]

The siege of Gaza. This is the 39th and there's a.

[Sagar Enjeti]

Drone on top of our ship.

[Ryan Grim]

We need your support right now. Right now. Please tell everyone, demand a safe passage. If this is an attack, we need your support right now. This, of course, is after Lindsey Graham effectively called for Israel to sink the ship. What did he say? I hope that Greta can swim. And a bunch of other kind of pro Israel influencers were making the same remarks that wouldn't it be great if Israel would just solve our Greta problem here and just sink this ship. After the 2011 flotilla was raided by Israeli troops, and I think 11 were killed.

[Sagar Enjeti]

So they're trying to distribute aid is my understanding. So what do you think practically happens when they get. So they, I think set sail from Italy. So when they get. I mean, it can't be at this point too far away. What happens when they get there practically would be your prediction.

[Ryan Grim]

I mean, they could just let them. It'd be wild if they just got out of their way and just let them land and let them distribute everything on the ship. Like there's no way there's weapons on that ship. There's just no way. Like how suicidal would that be to have weapons on the ship? And so just let them give the food and medicine that's on the ship and let them just unload it and then go back, go away. Like that is an option that is available to the Israelis at this moment. That that is not even being discussed in meetings about how to handle this is indicative of the tenor of the approach towards humanitarian aid. The best case scenario is that there's some Israeli naval ships that kind of stop the ship and turn it around within what Israel is considering. The worst case scenario would be what happened in 2011 where they attack the ship and board it and kill a bunch of people. And let's pray that that doesn't happen.

[Sagar Enjeti]

Yeah.

[Ryan Grim]

And here we have a specimen from the early 2000s, a legacy investing platform. Please don't touch the exhibit, folks. It could crash. Ready to step out of the financial history [e-mail] you can invest in almost everything, stocks, bonds, options and more. You could even put your cash to work at an industry leading 4.1% APY. Leave your clunky outdated platform behind. Go to public.com and fund account in five minutes or less Paid for by Public Investing Inc. Member FINRA and SIPC. Full [e-mail] disclosures. I know a lot of cops and they get asked all the time, have you ever had to shoot your gun? Sometimes the answer is yes. But there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be no. Across the country, cops call this Taser the revolution. But not everyone was convinced it was that simple. Cops believed everything that Taser told them from Lava for good and the team that brought you Bone Valley comes a story about what happened when a multi billion dollar company dedicated itself to one visionary mission. This is Absolute season one, Taser Incorporated.

[Sagar Enjeti]

I get right back there and it's bad. It's really, really bad. Really bad.

[Ryan Grim]

Listen to new episodes of absolute season one taser incorporated on the iHeartRadio app Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Binge episodes 1, 2, and 3 on May 21 and episodes 4, 5, and 6 on June 4 ad free at Lava for Good. Plus on Apple Podcasts. She was a decorated veteran, a Marine who saved her comrades, a hero. She was stoic, modest, tough, someone who inspired people. Everyone thought they knew her until they didn't.

[Sagar Enjeti]

I remember sitting on her couch and asking her, is this real? Is this real? Is this real? Is this real?

[Ryan Grim]

I just couldn't wrap my head around what kind of person would do that to another person that was getting treatment, that was, you know, dying. This is a story all about trust and about a woman named Sarah Kavanaugh.

[Sagar Enjeti]

I've always been told I'm a really good listener, right? And I maximized that while I was lying.

[Ryan Grim]

Listen to Deep Cover the Truth About Sarah on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And what do we got next? Oh, Chuck Schumer.

[Sagar Enjeti]

We can talk about Iran, which is actually sadly, a decent segue from this block to the next block, because we've seen the connection many times over the course of the last couple of weeks. But we do have a really incredible clip of Chuck Schumer, the most talented politician of his generation.

[Ryan Grim]

That's right. And so let's set up the context here. So Steve Witkoff, who is managing both the Ukraine file, the Iran file, and the Gaza file for Trump, same day he's dealing with negotiations between Hamas and Israel over a ceasefire, he sent a proposal to Iran around their reentering the nuclear deal, in which Barack Ravid at Axios reported the US Conceded that Iran would be able to enrich at a civilian level. So there'd be tight inspections. They'd have to blow up a bunch of their kind of weaponized program. No new centrifuges, but they would be able to pursue a civilian program that gets leaked to Ravid Donald Trump, then about five hours later goes on Truth Social and says, absolutely no enrichment happening. Forget it, Mullahs. Which then led to Chuck Schumer injecting himself into the negotiations. This way, when it comes to negotiating with the terrorist government of Iran, Trump's all over the lot. One day he sounds tough, the next day he's backing off. And now all of a sudden, we find out that Wyckoff and Rubio are negotiating a secret side deal with Iran. What kind of bull is this? They're going to sound tough in public and then have a side deal that lets Iran get away with everything? That's outrageous. We need to make that side deal public. Any side deal should be before Congress and most importantly, the American people. If Taco Trump is already folding, the American public should know about it. No side deals.

[Sagar Enjeti]

Taco Trump.

[Ryan Grim]

So Taco Trump, that's. Trump always chickens out. It's the Wall street phrase for it's okay to, you know, go long on, because Trump is going to back off of his tariffs. And now there's Schumer trying to use it to egg on a war with Iran. So it leads to this open question of what's actually in the proposal. Is there enrichment or is there not enrichment? And we'll roll Samuel Aria in just one second, who's a Palestinian, who is very well connected and has connections to people who are familiar with the negotiations. We interviewed him yesterday at dropsite. We can. And roll what he says about the enrichment, what's in it regarding enrichment? But think about this. What are the chances, 0% to 100%, that Donald Trump has read Witkoff's proposal that he delivered to Iran? Because we're making news based off of what Trump says about the proposal. So we should know. Do you think he read it?

[Sagar Enjeti]

Did you see the report last week that Tulsi Gabbard had been preparing to shift the daily intelligence briefing to look like a cable news segment? So it's not in. You didn't see this? It's not. You don't have to read it.

[Ryan Grim]

Have pegseth read it.

[Sagar Enjeti]

Right. You don't have to read it. But that.

[Ryan Grim]

Have pegseth do the like. Do it as a standup from a couch.

[Sagar Enjeti]

Trump is famously not super interested in written text. And so that's. It seems to me that through word of mouth, he could be getting different versions of what's in the Wyckoff proposal. Different spin and framing.

[Ryan Grim]

Exactly. What Trump knows about that proposal is what he was told about it. No way he read it. I'll bet my life that he did not read this proposal. So, Samuel Arian, we asked him if he had any sense of what was in it. And this is C5. Let's jump to that one. What can we understand about what the actual offer is from the US to the Iranians, Right? Yeah.

[Sagar Enjeti]

I mean, it's incredible that you have.

[Ryan Grim]

One person who's acting like the effective Secretary of State. That's Steve Wykoff, someone who's never been confirmed by anybody, has never been accountable to anybody except to Trump. I think that's the first probably in America's history when it comes to one Person, one envoy, having all these very crucial files. You have the Gaza file, the Iran file, and the Ukraine file. Leaving that aside, my information which is confirmed through what has been reported by officials in Iran is that indeed the letter that was sent by the Americans does concede, and this is very much confirmed, concedes the right of Iran to enrich uranium. So that point's already been conceded by the United States, which opened the possibility of reaching an agreement. The second point, they wanted to freeze that enrichment. The Americans wanted to freeze that enrichment and offered that there could be a regional hub by which there could be enrichment activities in which Iran can participate. Now, the details are not very clear, but the Iranians are very much encouraged by the fact that the Americans have already conceded the point that Iran was not willing to walk away. It was willing to walk away if that was never conceded. So the fact that the Americans have really conceded this point, that opens the possibility of an agreement. The Americans offered the 3.67%. I think whether it's 3.67% or more or less, obviously it's going to be less than 20%, depending on the application, is something probably that is subject to negotiations. But the Americans never talked about the ballistic program, the rocket program, or the.

[Sagar Enjeti]

Support of other non state actors, particularly.

[Ryan Grim]

When it comes to Israel, Palestine. So having the fact that the Americans are not tying or linking these subjects and that the Americans conceded the point, the possibility of reaching an agreement now is much, much higher than it was a week or 10 days ago or even month ago. Will the Israelis accept this? Will they sabotage? They will definitely do everything in their power to sabotage this. But again, because this is a state actor and the implications of any military strike on Iran is going to be catastrophic, not only against US Interests, but globally, it will be felt, I think the Americans will be very, very careful not to allow the Israelis to sabotage. So you can imagine why the Israelis are upset about this. Not only as far as our sources and Ravid understand it, it does allow some low level of enrichment and does not stop them from supporting Hamas, Ansar Allah, Iraqi militias, the whole set of proxies, Hezbollah and the ballistic missile program is something that is dear to the hearts of the Israeli government as well, because that is the delivery mechanism for the most part, this is so you can imagine why they're upset and Schumer is channeling that right.

[Sagar Enjeti]

New York Times this morning, the Trump administration is proposing an arrangement that would allow Iran to continue enriching uranium at low levels while the US and other countries work out A more detailed plan intended to block Iran's path to a nuclear weapon. The proposal amounts to a diplomatic bridge intended to maneuver beyond the current situation. But the details remain vague and the two sides remain far apart on some elements. So potentially what's emerging here is a pitch from Wyckoff for a bridge to say we'll allow low levels, but that's not the final deal. That's our bridge deal. And who knows if the other deal actually ever comes. But that seems to be potentially what the administration is landing on as an effort to sell this to the Lindsey Graham's of the world.

[Ryan Grim]

Yeah. Which they don't seem interested because also they don't want to. They don't want it to work because they don't want sanctions lifted. And that's another thing that Samuel Arian talked about is that the key thing that isn't getting a lot of focus here in the US Is that Iran's major interest here is not just the economic sanctions which are increasingly less important than the various terror designations. Because if you as Cuba has found out, the fact that Cuba is listed as this state sponsor of terrorists makes it so that they can't bank with anybody anywhere. And they're like what terrorism? Like we're not doing any terrorism like setting Cuba aside.

[Sagar Enjeti]

So we'll talk about that with Juan Rojas.

[Ryan Grim]

Yeah, exactly. But Iran, you can make a stronger case if you believe that all of these organizations are terror groups which the US Designates them. They know Iran does support them. But so Iran wants those things lifted. And if they don't get that lift, they're like what's the point? We're not going to give up our deterrent if we don't get economic advantage out of it.

[Sagar Enjeti]

I mean Chuck Schumer, actually I'm curious how you make of the way that Chuck Schumer is framing this because there's the, it's oppositional Trump framing. But and we can put C2 on the screen. This is polling from the Brookings Institution. Most respondents prefer a deal limiting Iran to a peaceful one nuclear program. Only 14% of Americans back military action to destroy Iran's nuclear program. So thinking back and how the Republican Party framed the Obama nuclear, the Obama Iran nuclear deal. The politics of this for Chuck Schumer going after Taco Trump are also kind of interesting. I don't know what they're quite what they're thinking with this. Ryan.

[Ryan Grim]

Well, the either the utility or the futility of Taco Trump is demonstrated in this moment because I actually use the exact same Phrase on TikTok, just. Chuck Schumer and I are both TikTok natives.

[Sagar Enjeti]

Right. Digital natives.

[Ryan Grim]

Digital natives. And we both went after Trump over this. I went after him from the opposite side for undermining Witkoff's offer. I called him Taco Trump for his truth Social where he said there can be no enrichment because he's chickening out against Schumer and Netanyahu and the rest who are pushing on him. Schumer's calling him Taco Trump for the original Witkoff proposal.

[Sagar Enjeti]

Right, Right.

[Ryan Grim]

So Taco Trump, it might fall apart because it might just be too useful. You can just use it constantly. And anything that is that vague then ends up getting drained of meaning and it loses its population.

[Sagar Enjeti]

Well, it also sounds just kind of whimsical. It makes everyone think of tacos, which they love. So putting something you love.

[Ryan Grim]

So he keeps being bothered by it, then it will. It will maintain its resonance. Well, and he seems to not like it.

[Sagar Enjeti]

I was gonna say. So C3 we can put on the screen. This is Axis reporting that the DNC rented a taco truck to mop to mock Trump.

[Ryan Grim]

Chicken costumes are. Yeah, he's not gonna like that.

[Sagar Enjeti]

He's really not gonna like that. But at a certain point, if it gets. If it becomes like Dem leadership cringe, then it probably does lose its power with Trump. It probably becomes a meme of how pathetic it is to see Chuck Schumer looking like he's literally in a nursing home, which I suppose literally he is, cuz he's in the Senate in that video that we played, like saying Taco Trump to egg Trump into a nuclear.

[Ryan Grim]

Conflict and also putting tariffs on the entire world. Like, this is what Democrats are daring him to say. Start a war with Iran and put tariffs, high tariffs on everybody, everywhere around the world.

[Sagar Enjeti]

Right, Right. Things are going great. Could not possibly be going better. So all is well. But Chuck Schumer is a star.

[Ryan Grim]

He is a star. You scroll back and see the star power just pops off the screen.

[Sagar Enjeti]

It jumps right out.

[Ryan Grim]

I wonder how many takes that was. What do you think?

[Sagar Enjeti]

That's a good question, because is he reading off a prompter? Did he have to memorize lines? Do they have cue car? We should get to the bottom.

[Ryan Grim]

I think that. I think he didn't. I think it was off the cuff.

[Sagar Enjeti]

Yeah, you should be able to do that.

[Ryan Grim]

I bet it was third. Third or fourth take.

[Sagar Enjeti]

Yeah.

[Ryan Grim]

And here we have a specimen from the early 2000s, a legacy investing platform. Please don't touch the exhibit, folks. It could crash. Ready to step out of the financial history [e-mail] you can invest in almost everything. Stocks, bonds, options and more. You could even put your cash to work at an industry leading 4.1% APY. Leave your clunky, outdated platform behind. Go to public.com and fund your account in five minutes or less. Paid for by Public Investing, Inc. Member FINRA and SIPC. Full [e-mail] disclosures I know a lot of cops, and they get asked all the time, have you ever had to shoot your gun? Sometimes the answer is yes. But there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be no. Across the country, cops called this Taser the revolution. But not everyone was convinced it was that simple. Cops believed everything that Taser told them. From Lava for good and the team that brought you Bone Valley comes a story about what happened when a multi billion dollar company dedicated itself to one visionary mission. This is Absolut Season 1 Taser Incorporated.

[Sagar Enjeti]

I get right back there and it's bad. It's really, really, really bad.

[Ryan Grim]

Listen to new episodes of Absolute Season 1 Taser Incorporated on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Binge episodes 1, 2 and 3 on May 21 and episodes 4, 5 and 6 on June 4 ad free at Lava for Good plus on Apple Podcasts. She was a decorated veteran, a Marine who saved her comrades, a hero. She was stoic, modest, tough, someone who inspired people. Everyone thought they knew her until they didn't.

[Sagar Enjeti]

I remember sitting on her couch and asking her, is this real? Is this real? Is this real? Is this real?

[Ryan Grim]

I just couldn't wrap my head around what kind of person would do that to another person that was getting treatment, that was, you know, dying? This is a story all about trust and about a woman named Sarah Kavanaugh.

[Sagar Enjeti]

I've always been told I'm a really good listener, right? And I maximized that while I was lying.

[Ryan Grim]

Listen to Deep Cover the Truth about Sarah on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Sagar Enjeti]

Let's move on to Ukraine. Ryan.

[Ryan Grim]

Yes. So we're on the brink of nuclear annihilation right here in Washington, everywhere around the world as the escalatory ladder continues to be climbed by by Ukraine. We put this VO up here. This is footage of the Crimea bridge boom going boom. This was many months of planning. According to Ukraine, they strapped enormous amounts of explosives, as you can see there, to the base of the bridge. Apparently it's back up, up and running. So maybe we can take a step.

[Sagar Enjeti]

Down one of the more important bridges. If you're Russia.

[Ryan Grim]

Yes. The Crimea bridge. It's not just a prized infrastructure project of Putin, but economically and culturally, it's extremely important for connecting Crimea with, say, the rest of Russia at this point. This comes after this wild drone attack that went deep into Syria, going after the Russian bombers that are used that the Ukrainians will say we hit them because they're used for bombing targets deep inside Ukraine. Critics of the operation say they're a central part of Russia's nuclear arsenal. And you are playing with nuclear fire by going there. One of those is retired Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, who was asked about what he sees as the risks of this Ukrainian attack. And he had a rather chilling response. We can roll that, sort of set up an analogy. Mexico or Canada or any third party, but particularly one that was proximate to our borders, launching missiles that hit Clyteman Air Force base and destroyed B2 bombers or hit Barstow in Louisiana or Minot and destroyed B52 bombers or came in on Groton, Connecticut, where a ballistic missile submarine was being serviced and hit it. These are things that during the Cold War, we swore to each other, Moscow and Washington, that we would never do. These are things that are so destabilizing that Putin would be in his every right with regard to all the lessons we have learned. And there are many to attack and to attack with nuclear weapons and to say to the rest of the world, they provoked me, they surely did. And I'm not losing my devices for responding. Should I be really provoked by a first strike? And that's what you're talking about. Never, never hit the assets that your nuclear armed enemy needs to assess whether or not you're attacking them. That's a no, no. Always been a no. No. No one disputed that in Moscow or Washington or for that matter in the other capitals in the world. See, Emily, I don't think that this justifies a nuclear response from Putin, but I don't like the idea that we're even in the area.

[Sagar Enjeti]

Yeah, of course.

[Ryan Grim]

Where? It's an open question.

[Sagar Enjeti]

Yeah, it's insane.

[Ryan Grim]

We should try to avoid being in the area. The gray zone of nuclear response.

[Sagar Enjeti]

It's completely insane. Just slept. Walked directly into it. And right now on the Hill today, Richard Blumenthal, Lindsey Graham are meeting.

[Ryan Grim]

They're back in the U.S. they're back.

[Sagar Enjeti]

Here and meeting with a top adviser to Zelensky actually today and pushing the sanctions package and who knows what else. The other Thing I.

[Ryan Grim]

They were just in Ukraine. They were just in Ukraine cheering them on.

[Sagar Enjeti]

And you're demanding more support from Trump, who's obviously frustrated with Putin and not without reason in the peace process, of course. But, Ryan, the ease with which, I mean, Ukraine said that operation took several months, according to cnn. It's crazy to me that when you watch the video, you realize, I mean, it just, it seems like that should be a much harder target to hit, given its importance, not underwater.

[Ryan Grim]

And, you know, they also hit it, you know, several months ago. You remember there was a footage of the car like you're just driving along and boom, all of a sudden.

[Sagar Enjeti]

Which is why it's kind of wild that they're able to pull it off after several months. I mean, that's one of the most obvious targets. But I think part of what's, I mean, it's so obviously provocative to do that to the bridge. To do that to that bridge. It's so obviously provocative. So.

[Ryan Grim]

Yes, it's wild. This is while peace talks are going on, Sea Star talks are going on.

[Sagar Enjeti]

Yep. Well, and that operation that we covered on Monday, that went, you know, more than 3,000 miles from Kyiv into Russia, that was, of course, literally the day before peace talks in Istanbul. So it's a message, obviously, and they'd been getting hit really hard in the days leading up to it. But, Ryan, we, we're hearing from Donald Trump for however long that he would broker a peace deal within 24 hours. We are now pushing into the six month of his presidency and it's getting worse. It's not getting closer at all.

[Ryan Grim]

Yeah. And meanwhile, there seems to be some operation happening against Darren Beatty, who's a top State Department official and one of the, one of the key guys in pushing back against one of the key guys in what you would call the peace camp.

[Sagar Enjeti]

The non interventionist.

[Ryan Grim]

Yeah, yeah.

[Sagar Enjeti]

He'd be sort of decried as an isolationist from the Lindsey Graham faction. Yes.

[Ryan Grim]

And so he's getting hit in the Telegraph with this article. The headline is, a Trump official who shut down counter Russia Agency has links to Kremlin. Darren Beatty, who alarmed the State Department with his pro Moscow views, is married to a woman whose uncle has ties to Vladimir Putin. By the way, as a former tabloid reporter, when I was at HuffPost, the word tie, anytime you see the word ties or links, that is what's called a kind of get out of defamation jail free card. Because think about the word link.

[Sagar Enjeti]

Yep.

[Ryan Grim]

You're linked to everything.

[Sagar Enjeti]

We are linked to Putin by doing this segment we're linked.

[Ryan Grim]

Yes. Breaking Point is linked to Putin.

[Sagar Enjeti]

Yes.

[Ryan Grim]

Or anti to Putin. Linked and tied.

[Sagar Enjeti]

Linked and tied, yes.

[Ryan Grim]

So we have a statement from the State Department here.

[Sagar Enjeti]

Yeah. This is an exclusive statement to Breaking Points from the State Department that says it isn't a coincidence that these attacks on Darren Beatty are surfacing as the administration is working to fight censorship domestic and champion free speech around the world. We will get back to that in just a moment. These fake news outlets are so desperate to keep these censorship tactics alive and discredit the transparency initiative, they are publishing false smears on a respected and effective employee at the State Department. Now, Derrick Beatty is an enormously controversial person who was working in the sort of media punditry space before being plucked into the State Department in this administration. He had worked in the White House.

[Ryan Grim]

Got fired for speaking at like a white nationalist conference.

[Sagar Enjeti]

Right. From the first Trump White House. Right? Yeah, exactly. And then it is brought in the second administration ruffles feathers for sure, but especially among the interventionist crowd because they are probably more offended by his questioning.

[Ryan Grim]

Of interventionism than they are the white nationalism stuff. Whatever. It's coalition.

[Sagar Enjeti]

Yeah, it's coalition. So anyway, Dharambieti, we confirmed the State Department says, passed all of his background checks. So this innuendo about his wife and her uncle, it's interesting, Ryan, because to work in a key position in the State Department. Actually, the Biden State Department went through this with what's his name, Rob, on Iran stuff.

[Ryan Grim]

Porter.

[Sagar Enjeti]

No, no, that was Trump.

[Ryan Grim]

Oh, Rob Malley.

[Sagar Enjeti]

Yeah, Rob Malley on Iran stuff stuff. And it did eventually come out that he had some interesting links and ties. But you'd obviously, by the way. Oh, interesting. You'd obviously be vetted. So Darren Beatty's wife gave a statement to the Times, the UK Times, quote, far from being Kremlin aligned, Putin publicly denounced my uncle and his ownership stake in Bosh Kirsota, whereupon the Putin government stole his company from him. He has lived in exile for Russia for five years. I'm deeply disappointed that the Telegraph would omit these material and publicly discussed discoverable facts that completely undermine the suggestion that my uncle or I am Kremlin linked, which is the narrative backbone of the entire piece.

[Ryan Grim]

Links linked to the Kremlin by being adversaries. So we'll find out if this is get out of defamation jail or not, because I met. You know, this is the uk. It's much easier to get sued, it's much easier to win a claim than it is here in the us so. Yeah, so Right. The point is, yeah, there is a connection between her uncle, which is like, come on, uncle. Now you're responsible not just for what you do, not just for what your wife does, but for what your wife's uncle does. And it turns out the wife's uncle was actually beefing with Putin over some oligarch stuff.

[Sagar Enjeti]

And that's not really in the article, is it? Yeah, so. So, Ryan, it is amusing to see the State Department and Boehn himself in his post on X, said, for anyone who passionately supports President Trump in fights to advance his agenda for the American people, media hit pieces come with the territory. Interestingly, that echoes the exclusive statement that we got from the State Department, which is suggesting that this is a hit piece timed specifically because of what's happening in Ukraine right now. And you read the piece of, and can even take issue with Darren Beatty, working in the State Department, can take issue with his views. I actually think that it is laden with innuendo and probably timed exactly as they're implying it's timed.

[Ryan Grim]

Yeah, it probably is. But we shouldn't move on without just taking a moment to dwell on the ability of the State Department and Marco Rubio's people to apparently hold two completely contradictory things in their head at the exact same time. One is that their administration, quote, is working to fight censorship domestically and champion free speech around the world. You're like, I'm sorry, you're doing what? You're fighting censorship domestically by going through the social media of every college student and then trying to find anybody who's here on a visa of every non.

[Sagar Enjeti]

Citizen college student, apparently.

[Ryan Grim]

And yeah, so you've got a permanent resident who protested Israel's actions at Columbia, Mahmoud Khalil, a green card holder, married to an American citizen who has an American citizen daughter who he has never seen because he is behind bars for his speech. And you every day are fighting censorship like, okay, anyway, just that they could say the fact that they could type that up and nobody's like, this is going to come off weird to like the whole world who sees what we're doing every day.

[Sagar Enjeti]

Well, it's important from their perspective, messaging wise, that they actually do lean into that. Because their contention, it's not, from their perspective, morally inconsistent. Because their contention is that it's speech for U.S. citizens. And so they've done things like get rid of State Department contracts with the Global Engagement center and groups that have designed these like censorship apparatus. And they, what was it just last week said that they were no longer giving visas to people who had sought to interfere with the free speech rights of Americans. So again, I disagree, obviously, with the Austurk and Khalil cases and the way the State Department has handled those. We've said that we've covered that many times. But I think from their perspective, you have to lean all the way into saying that we just totally brazenly are champions of free speech, because otherwise it would imply that they think they actually are curtailing free speech.

[Ryan Grim]

And what's amazing, though, is if you think about that, let's take their explanation at face value and pretend it is on the up and up. They're saying, yeah, okay, what we are concerned about is the speech of American citizens. If you're a foreigner here in our country, that is a privilege and shut up. We don't want to hear any criticism from you. At the same time, they're telling other countries, if an American citizen is in your country, the First Amendment applies to them in your country, and they are not subject to your censorship laws. Your people, if they come to our country, cannot criticize Israel and they are subject to our censorship rules. But when our people come to your country, they cannot be censored. Not that they would try to make anything consistent, but, like, what's the principle there under which their citizens are not entitled to speech rights in our country, but we, who are the free speech champions of the world insist that ours are entitled to it in your country.

[Sagar Enjeti]

I was going to say the really important point is about that principle, period. Because the argument that Mahmoud Khalil Ramesa Ozturk are undermining the US Foreign policy goals, which is the provision that Marco Rubio has used to justify revoking the visas. The principle of their speech, which in Ostrich's case was a pro BDS op ed about the college student government and the administration at Tufts, that that is somehow undermining the foreign policy of the United States, interfering with the foreign policy of the United States, United States. Now, the powers of that law are broad and actually probably should be reconsidered, period.

[Ryan Grim]

As Judge Trump said. Yeah.

[Sagar Enjeti]

Let alone used. But all that is to say the principle is that it is beyond the pale to be critical of Israel because it's hurting the foreign policy goals of the United States. And I think what you're getting into there is criticism of Israel being anti Semitic, which is something, of course, that has been passed in bills in Congress before, that anti Zionism is anti Semitism and is a common refrain. And that's not free speech for Americans either, even though it's being applied in this case to people who aren't American citizens. The implications down the line are setting the stage for more censorship of American citizens.

[Ryan Grim]

And if we can tell other countries what their speech codes and laws need to be with regard to American citizens, can we tell other countries that they must ban criticism of Israel within their countries too? Not to give ideas to anybody, but like, just did. I mean, most of them don't need that idea. It's already, they've already gone down that road.

[Sagar Enjeti]

If they end up getting rid of Darren Beatty, they can bring you in. There'll be a job open. You can come in.

[Ryan Grim]

Well, Beatty and I have both interviewed Imran Khan.

[Sagar Enjeti]

Oh, really?

[Ryan Grim]

He did the last interview with Imran Khan before he was jailed.

[Sagar Enjeti]

No way.

[Ryan Grim]

He's very good on Pakistan.

[Sagar Enjeti]

Oh, that's, that's quite interesting. He's, he's a eccentric thinker.

[Ryan Grim]

This is undoubtedly a true statement.

[Sagar Enjeti]

I have to say, I was surprised when they brought even I was surprised when they brought him into the State Department. As the kids say based.

[Ryan Grim]

Yeah. And it's not, I don't think that Rubio was, was involved in bringing him in, to put it gently. Right.

[Sagar Enjeti]

Likely not. Maybe Michael Anton and those guys. I don't know. That's a good question. We'll see. All right, let's move on to Joy Reed.

[Ryan Grim]

Ryan, you know what's great about your investment account with the big guys, it's actually a time machine. Log in and zoom. Welcome back to 1999. It's time for an upgrade. At public.com, you can invest in almost everything. Stocks, bonds, options and more. You could even put your cash to work at an industry leading 4.1% APY. Leave your clunky, outdated platform behind. At public.com, go to public.com and fund your account in five minutes or less. Pay for by Public Investing Inc. Member FINRA and SIPC. Full [e-mail] disclosures. I know a lot of cops and they get asked all the time, have you ever had to shoot your gun? Sometimes the answer is yes. But there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be no. Across the country, cops called this Taser the revolution. But not everyone was convinced it was that simple. Cops believed everything that Taser told them. From Lava for good and the team that brought you Bone Valley comes a story about what happened when a multi billion dollar company dedicated itself to one visionary mission. This is absolute season one, Taylor Taser Incorporated.

[Sagar Enjeti]

I get right back there and it's bad. It's really, really, really bad.

[Ryan Grim]

Listen to new episodes of Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Binge episodes 1, 2 and 3 on May 21 and episodes 4, 5 and 6 on June 4 ad free at Lava for Good. Plus on Apple Podcasts. She was a decorated veteran, a Marine who saved her comrades, a hero. She was stoic, modest, tough, someone who inspired people. Everyone thought they knew her until they didn't.

[Sagar Enjeti]

I remember sitting on her couch and asking her, is this real? Is this real? Is this real? Is this real?

[Ryan Grim]

I just couldn't wrap my head around what kind of person would do that to another person that was getting treatment, that was, you know, dying. This is a story all about trust and about a woman named Sarah Kavanaugh.

[Sagar Enjeti]

I've always been told I'm a really good listener, Right? And I maximized that while I was lying.

[Ryan Grim]

Listen to Deep Cover the Truth About Sarah on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Sagar Enjeti]

Ousted MSNBC anchor Joy Reid is sharing more of her thoughts about why she ended up getting the ax just a couple of months ago. Let's roll this first clip of Joy Reid in conversation with Katie Kirk.

[Ryan Grim]

I got to NBC and I Twitter back in 2000. I think I joined in 08 or.

[Sagar Enjeti]

09 and the bosses were horrified.

[Ryan Grim]

And anytime I would tweet anything, I would get calls. I would get, please get off Twitter. We hate it. They don't like that. It pulls their talent and their reporters out of their control. Because now you're not running what you're tweeting through standards and practices. It's giving your personality directly to the audience, which they don't like. Cause it's not managed and curated by them. And they don't want people breaking news.

[Sagar Enjeti]

I'm just now realizing that Katie Couric has that famous picture of Joan Didion framed behind her on her podcast set. Which is just to be fair, I have a Joan Didion book on our set back here. But that just Katie Couric with the Joan Didion portrait is something just really getting under my skin this morning, Ryan. But that's neither here nor there. Joining.

[Ryan Grim]

We need guest hosts. Right. While Sager's out. Katie Couric or Joy Reid? Right.

[Sagar Enjeti]

Hey, bring him in. See what happens. It's a fine line between, I've always said this, between Katie Couric and Sager and Jetty. They share many similarities. Yeah. So it's something to think about now.

[Ryan Grim]

Joy Reid makes Katie and Sager would be fun together.

[Sagar Enjeti]

Yes, yes. Something to think about. Producers, I know you're listening, but Joy Reid makes a fairly interesting case in this clip, by the way. And I will not be rescinding any of my criticisms of Joy Reid whatsoever. But she, she makes an interesting case about MSNBC in this clip, which is that she didn't have the worst ratings at msnbc, which is a low bar, by the way. She says to Katie Couric, I wasn't told the ratings were terrible. It's something you did. You tweeted a terrible thing. She said she had been being, quote, extra careful on social media at the time because there was a real anxiety she said about it. And that's kind of interesting. She says it wasn't the ratings because we had just a ratings meeting a couple of weeks before that, talking about the fact that our show, other than Rachel Maddow, we were down the lead after Trump's election win. So being down the least. But it's actually an interesting point because it's not as though now that we have a few months, in hindsight, it's not as though MSNBC is actually trying to change its brand. It's not as though. So when I saw the firing of Joy Reid, I was like, this is interesting because Joy Reid was, I think, symbolically a very powerful representation of. And maybe we disagree on this, but where MSNBC went wrong during the Trump years, which was this kind of sanctimonious doubling down on being the voice of truth and facts and nobody else could possibly, or nobody who disagrees with me is on the side of truth or facts. I'm on the side of truth or facts, and I will tell you what's right and what's wrong. And I thought maybe they were getting rid of Joy Reid because they were trying to, you know, however, ham fistedly to go in a different direction. But they're definitely not really doing that. They haven't really made any significant changes.

[Ryan Grim]

Yeah, I don't see Joy as being differentiating herself in that crowd of people during the first Trump years. I think she had the same kind of approach as almost all of them did. The thing that did differentiate her from the PAC was that she was consistently critical of Israel's assault on Gaza. If you try to think about the things that make her different than other hosts, either on CNN or msnbc, that's the only one that I can think of.

[Sagar Enjeti]

So she doesn't cite that. She says, quote, I'm a black Woman doing the thing. You know what I mean? And so I'm not different from Maddow or Nicole Wallace. But quote, I think that there's a difference for Trump in hearing the kinds of criticism specifically out of a black woman.

[Ryan Grim]

I think that is true.

[Sagar Enjeti]

It bothers him in a way. It doesn't bother him like anything else. She says there's a fear of him implying at msnbc. We're seeing it everywhere now.

[Ryan Grim]

I think she's right about that. Like, sorry, Trump people.

[Sagar Enjeti]

I think she is really, that Trump has some issue.

[Ryan Grim]

Black women being critical of him hits harder for him than like a Rachel Maddow or certainly hits harder than like a white guy.

[Sagar Enjeti]

Hmm.

[Ryan Grim]

Especially a good looking white guy.

[Sagar Enjeti]

The man, he's fine with that. Well, I guess this is a little bit different. But the man he hates more than anyone else is Chuck Todd. Chuck Todd seems to be. Gets under his skin more than just about anyone.

[Ryan Grim]

But he likes some of the other guys. Like who wrote the Enemy of the people book? The enemy of the people book? The CNN guy.

[Sagar Enjeti]

Oh, Jim Acosta.

[Ryan Grim]

Yeah. Yeah. Like he loves, you can tell he loves.

[Sagar Enjeti]

He loves going back and forth with Jim Acosta.

[Ryan Grim]

Yeah. Because that's a handsome newsman right there. You're fake news.

[Sagar Enjeti]

Yeah. Trick Todd isn't exactly out of central casting, as Trump would say.

[Ryan Grim]

He wants them out of central casting. He wants his enemies to be good looking white guys.

[Sagar Enjeti]

Now remind me. So I'm looking at this right now because MSNBC was spun off. So Comcast spun off its portfolio of cable news networks and that includes msnbc. This was announced back in November. Reid was let go. That was what, earlier this spring, roughly around March. Ish. So that's why at the time I thought maybe MSNBC was just going in a different direction. Which, by the way, would mean, it actually would mean getting rid of Nicole Wallace or at least like turning down the volume on Nicole Wallace.

[Ryan Grim]

It'd be the entire.

[Sagar Enjeti]

The Scarborough Brzezinski disaster, which is Hayes Maddow.

[Ryan Grim]

Like they all have to go, right?

[Sagar Enjeti]

Yeah. I mean, if they're trying to brand differently, at least you would. So she's saying she's basically lumping in the CBS settlement and other settlements, ABC's Stephanopoulos settlement, and implying that MSI, MSNBC might have a similar fear now, which.

[Ryan Grim]

I think is also true.

[Sagar Enjeti]

It's interesting because it's a question of whether Comcast still has. So where they are in the process of actually spinning MSNBC off is Comcast. Is there an implication that Comcast is Afraid or is it that msnbc, because MSNBC is a left of center network, I don't think would be particularly afraid unless they're trying to get sold. Because that was another thing Elon Musk was flirting with the, the possibility that maybe he would buy msnbc. But you could easily see another right wing billionaire. Doesn't have to be Elon Musk swooping in and buying msnbc. And then at the time, if they were trying to ready it as a property for an acquisition, maybe that's what's going on. Or maybe she's just hard to work with.

[Ryan Grim]

Yeah, I think it was the Comcast stuff. Comcast is a terrible business whose entire existence depends on largesse for. From the government regulatory for the most part. And so that is like the most vulnerable kind of company.

[Sagar Enjeti]

Yeah.

[Ryan Grim]

So you don't want to anger the king if you depend on the king.

[Sagar Enjeti]

I don't know, I just. Joey Reed. Yeah, I guess we probably disagree on this, but I found her to be one of the more difficult or one of the representations of a lot of the stuff that went wrong during Trump era journalism. And to her credit, one of the more interesting things she did, she would have conservatives, right wingers and MAGA people on and she made compelling television because she fought. And that's something that I think people like Rachel Maddow and Chris Hayes and Nicole Wallace I suppose should do more of. So I definitely give her credit for that.

[Ryan Grim]

Yeah, I agree. Actually. I think the Blue MAGA stuff is totally fine to do as, as content if you're going to have people arguing with you on there.

[Sagar Enjeti]

Right?

[Ryan Grim]

No, it's not my kind of thing. It's not what I would want to watch. But like, if you're going to debate it out with people and then fine, it's the Blue MAGA echo chamber stuff that becomes really corrosive.

[Sagar Enjeti]

Yeah, I agree with that. Rachel Maddow, I think, has sadly fallen prey to that. I just think Rachel Maddow is really smart and talented journalist and has.

[Ryan Grim]

Her monologues are always the long, like 10 minute long thing she does at the top. Those are always fun.

[Sagar Enjeti]

Well, they were also like masterfully crafted and the writing was extremely compelling. If you were watching some of those.

[Ryan Grim]

Where is this going? Where is this going?

[Sagar Enjeti]

Right. The Trump won monologues that Rachel Maddow would do, which became kind of famous or infamous, but probably infamous after she claimed to have Trump's tax returns and all of Washington was watching.

[Ryan Grim]

I haven't watched that one.

[Sagar Enjeti]

Yeah, me too. So the opening of Maddow that night. And it was like Geraldo at the Vault by the end of it, like she had her scoop, was like way overhyped what she actually had. But the writing was just masterful. So it's sad when people get kind of sucked into the universe where they just have purged anyone who might disagree. I think the best segment on the debate between porn, the debate over whether there's porn in schools and the library controversies is between Joy Reid and Tiffany justice on Joy Reid's MSNBC show. And I recommend everybody watch that.

[Ryan Grim]

It's good because it forces them both to learn what the other side knows and understands and thinks before you can rebut it.

[Sagar Enjeti]

Yeah.

[Ryan Grim]

So up next, we've got Juan David Rojas, who's conservative, but kind of a heterodox conservative. I don't even know writer when it comes to Latin American politics.

[Sagar Enjeti]

Roughly. I mean, he's conservative on immigration policies. I wonder, maybe we should ask him how he sees himself. But he does fantastically interesting and heterodox coverage of Latin American politics from Ecuador to Venezuela to Cuba and to Mexico as well. And has been on a tear recently with some interesting coverage of Claudia Sheinbaum, friend of the show and friend of the world, Venezuela. We particularly want to dive into a story he's written on Venezuela because happening under the surface, percolating under the surface of this administration is a divide over how to approach Venezuela between like the Rick Grinnell, Laura Loomer camp and the old school cold warriors. So we're going to dive into all that with Juan David Ross right after.

[Ryan Grim]

The US and here we have a specimen from the early 2000s, a legacy investing platform. Please don't touch the exhibit, folks. It could crash. Ready to step out of the financial history [e-mail] you can invest in almost everything, stocks, bonds, options and more. You can even put your cash to work at an industry leading 4.1% APY. Leave your clunky, outdated platform behind. Go to public.com and fund your account in five minutes or less. Paid for by Public Investing Inc. Member FINRA and SIPC. Full [e-mail] disclosures. I know a lot of cops and they get asked all the time, have you ever had to shoot your gun? Sometimes the answer is yes. But there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be no. Across the country, cops call this Taser the Revolution. But not everyone was convinced it was that simple. Cops believed everything that Taser told them from lava for good. And the team that Brought you Bone Valley comes a story about what happened when a multi billion dollar company dedicated itself to one visionary mission. This is Absolute season one, Taser Incorporated.

[Sagar Enjeti]

I get right back there and it's bad.

[Ryan Grim]

It's really bad.

[Sagar Enjeti]

Really, really bad.

[Ryan Grim]

Listen to new episodes of Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Binge episodes 1, 2, and 3 on May 21 and episodes 4, 5, and 6 on June 4 ad free at Lava for Good. Plus on Apple Podcasts. She was a decorated veteran, a marine who saved her comrades, a hero. She was stoic, modest, tough, someone who inspired people.

[Emily Jashinsky]

Everyone thought they knew her until they didn't.

[Sagar Enjeti]

I remember sitting on her couch and asking her, is this real? Is this real? Is this real?

[Ryan Grim]

Is this real? I just couldn't wrap my head around what kind of person would do that to another person that was getting treatment, that was, you know, dying. This is a story all about trust and about a woman named Sarah Kavanaugh.

[Sagar Enjeti]

I've always been told I'm a really good listener, right? And I maximized that while I was lying.

[Ryan Grim]

Listen to Deep Cover the Truth about Sarah on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Sagar Enjeti]

As promised, we're joined now by Juan David Rojas, who writes at Compact. Juan, thank you for joining us.

[Emily Jashinsky]

Thanks for having me, guys.

[Sagar Enjeti]

Well, let's start with F2, which is a recent piece that you wrote for Compaq that both Ryan and I found really interesting. The headline is Laura Loomer is right about Venezuela. But the story behind that, and what exactly Laura Loomer is right about is really important because just last week there was significant controversy over whether Chevron should get a reauthorization to continue doing drilling in Venezuela, basically. And that pitted Rick Grenell against the Marco Rubio kind of cold warrior camp. And in a really interesting way, because we hear from Rubio. Actually, I literally just heard from Rubio last night at the American Compass gala saying that people are still clinging to the Cold War, that we had these Cold War policies meant to prevent uprisings, and then we kept those Cold War policies going forward. And you can you sort of assume in that context he was speaking generally, but that he was thinking about Ukraine in particular. But Venezuela and Cuba, which we're going to talk about as well, are good examples of this too. So, Juan, can you tell us a bit about what's percolating under the surface of the Trump administration as it relates to Venezuela and Maybe more broadly Latin America, because this is, I think, a really, really important and underappreciated part of what's happening over at State.

[Emily Jashinsky]

Yeah, that's a great point, Emily. Now that I think about it, I saw that comment elsewhere from Rubio as well. But yeah, that definitely doesn't apply to Latin America for him. You know, he's an older, old school Miami hawk and his former constituents here in the state of Florida, I live in Fort Lauderdale. A lot of them, the only thing they care about is regime change in Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua. And so you have this tug of war within the administration that's really interesting between, you know, hawks like him. And then like in Congress, there's the three Republican representatives for South Florida, Mario Diaz Balar, Maria Salazar and Carlos Jimenez. And yet all, like I said, all they care about is regime change. And so any, like new sanctions, any like, you know, sort of favors or benefits that Venezuela, Cuba could get in this case. Since 2022, Biden has allowed Chevron to pump oil built in Venezuela. They have a license which allows them, you know, to explore in Venezuelan waters. And the administrator, both administrations like to get around the sanctions for a long time.

[Sagar Enjeti]

Right.

[Emily Jashinsky]

And when Trump got in, I just assumed that he, you know, they would just, you know, go maximum pressure again on Venezuela. But what we saw is that the immigration hawks actually were open to dialogue because they wanted to be able to, to poor people.

[Sagar Enjeti]

Right.

[Emily Jashinsky]

Direct directly to Venezuela, which, you know, they, they weren't authorizing.

[Sagar Enjeti]

They're revoking back and forth. Well, I was going to say one, just quickly, the, the TPS revocation of that status. Temporary. Yeah, yeah, yeah, of course, 350,000 Venezuelans. So the number of deportations that they require, cooperation with Venezuela or otherwise, they need to find other countries to send literally tens of thousands of people to. That's how high stakes it is for them.

[Emily Jashinsky]

Exactly. Yeah. It's super urgent. And so you've had this tug of war between the, because there's these slim margins in the House of Representatives. They just have a two seat majority. So those three congressmen can sink basically anything that they want. So in, in February, they threatened to not vote for what was the continuing resolution, the like February budget.

[Ryan Grim]

Yeah. When there's going to be a shutdown.

[Emily Jashinsky]

So the administration said, oh, okay, we're not going to renew Chevron's license. Then they backpedaled and actually did. And then so the hawks got upset. And you know, we could talk about that more in depth.

[Ryan Grim]

Well, the key moment comes when they do Pull the license, I guess, however briefly, Venezuela then pauses, taking deportation flights, and then the Trump administration sends them to El Salvador instead. So walk through how this pivotal moment in the Trump administration's immigration and foreign policy ends up getting decided by these kind of three counter revolutionary, like South Florida Republicans, who could not be more the kind of counter to America first, if you tried to design it in a lab, like, they are very explicit that their most important priority is Cuba. And then Venezuela. Yeah. And then Nicaragua. And then eventually at some point, you get down to the North American country of the United States of America.

[Emily Jashinsky]

Yeah, it's horrible because it was definitely a contributing factor. I mean, you know, Stephen Miller doesn't need all that much help to do his own psycho stuff. But, but, you know, they, they were for like a brief period, a few weeks, because in days after Trump assumed office, they cut this deal with Maduro. Okay, you know, we'll renew the license if you agree to take deportees. And they did for a time. Then they reneged. And so, okay, we can't send people to Venezuela. All right, well, let's send them to El Salvador. And what's really horrible is that at least according to multiple investigations, one from the New York Times, another from ABC, at least 200 of the 238 Venezuelans that they sent to a maximum security gang prison in El Salvador had no criminal records in the US And Colombia, Chile, Peru, a ton of different countries. They were really thorough. You know, the administration denies this, but they also have refused to release the names or the, you know, supposedly heinous crimes that these people committed. To be fair, around like two dozen actually had credible, you know, associations as being gang members and committed crimes.

[Ryan Grim]

About 10%.

[Emily Jashinsky]

Yeah. But I mean, this is just completely incompetent. And it's like, why would they do this if, you know, I would dispute the use of the Alien Enemies act because, you know, they said that, you know, they were terrorists and that Venezuela is conducting this invasion of the US through. So I think that, you know, using the Alien Enemies act is wrong, but at least if they sent actual criminals, you could say, okay, all right, well, why are we going to cry over criminals? And you also, it just completely undermines their case. And it's also been a huge boon to Maduro. Like, you know, he just goes out on tv. It's like, look at this, these forced disappearances to El Salvador. Look at how complicit the Venezuelan opposition is. And he's right, because the Venezuelan opposition can't criticize Trump because he's their chief political and financial backer. So it's been a colossal debacle where rumor comes in that's really funny is that her and this Florida businessman wanted to renew the Chevron's license because they're saying, hey, you know, Trump has this agenda of energy abundance. We should be exploiting Venezuela's oil, not and not China, because most of Venezuela's oil exports go to China. Obviously she doesn't really care about, you know, the deportations of El Salvador or anything like that. But, you know, in a very narrow sense, she's, you know, completely right. I mean, on its own terms, sanctions have not achieved their intended goal of regime change, and it's just not going to happen. So why, why are we doing this? It just makes Venezuela more miserable. And yet, if anything, improving conditions there by allowing more economic activity would deter migration.

[Ryan Grim]

And meanwhile, there's something similar going on in Cuba. And we can put up F1 here, which is this political article about how where they say Cuba tried to improve its relations with the US by cooperating with Trump's deportation flights. It didn't work. Cuba is facing sanctions and terror designations that make what the US Is doing to Venezuela seem almost friendly. You've had an unspeakably large exodus of people from Cuba to the United States and to other countries in the hemisphere. People are reporting losing enormous amounts of weight. There isn't enough food to go around. Healthcare is completely collapsing because the sanctions and the terror designation means you can't get spare parts even from Europe or anywhere else. Nobody wants to bank or do business with Cuba. So they thought, okay, let's, so let's cooperate on these deportation flights and that will end up benefiting us. It has not. The same hardline approach is still being taken to Cuba, I actually think, and it's become kind of a mantra that it's been 60 years almost and we've been doing the same policy and we haven't gotten regime change. I think it's actually possible, given the absolute dire state of, of the situation in Cuba, that they may actually accomplish their goal. In the near term, there could be complete collapse of the Cuban regime, I don't know. But there isn't much left holding it up. That being a long term goal of the United States and now maybe even being in sight, what on earth would happen? Let's say they get their wish. I would imagine that, that creating another Haiti, creating a failed state on that island, does not have the kind of immigration consequences that the United States immigration hawks would want. So let's talk a little bit about this weird contradiction at the heart of the rights approach to immigration where on the one hand they want no migration or very little legal migration, on the other hand, and they want these hard line policies toward Latin America that cut off development and create failed states and plummeting economies that then produce mass exoduses of migrants toward the United States.

[Emily Jashinsky]

Yeah. And you know, historically, and when we're talking about like what I call Miami neocons, they actually supported an open door policy with regards to Cubans and you know, they've had to backpedal more so with Venezuelans. But you know, this makes perfect sense. I mean, most people of Cuban descent, Venezuelan descent, of Paraguan descent, are extremely hard line with regards to foreign policy towards their home countries. They're extremely neoconservative and you know, you have what's called the Cuban Adjustment act, which is basically any Cuban who manages to stay here for more than a year and a day is automatically granted residency. And this is, you know, just electorally it's great for Florida Republicans and something.

[Ryan Grim]

Like the iron, isn't it?

[Emily Jashinsky]

Yeah, exactly, exactly. I've argued against it. It's. It is a magnet for a ton of people on the island and conditions are very dire. As you've said, something like 2 million at least have left since 2021. And you know, in the case of Venezuela, this is something I push back on some of my anti imperialist friends who say that, you know, the country's collapse was just due to sanctions. Well, that's not entirely true because Venezuela is an oil state and their economy collapsed before we imposed sanctions on the royal sector in 2017. In 2014, the price of oil dropped massively and millions of people had already lost left before we impose sanctions. That said, imposing sanctions obviously will make things worse. Worse. I'm against sanctions. Whole scale. The case of Cuba is another story. The current crisis has definitely been caused by sanctions, specifically putting them on the state sponsors of terrorism list, which is something that went back and forth. Trump put them on the list in the last days of his presidency, like January 2021. Biden took them off days before leaving office and then Trump put them back on the first day. Their economy is completely dependent on tourism and putting them on that list means that basically no one can do business with them, cruise ships and all the like. And, and actually Biden imposed further rules like that European tourists would have to report that they've been to Cuba. This is something that Dropsite reported on. Yeah, that they traveled to Cuba and Obviously that's going to be a deterrent to tourism.

[Sagar Enjeti]

One, this is so interesting because the Trump administration and kind of seems like 2009 era Obama is on this like, reset tour of the Cold War. At least some people in the Trump administration would love to reset American foreign policy from the pattern that we were stuck in for decades during the Cold War. And that applies to Ukraine policy, it applies to NATO policy, it applies to certainly Eastern Europe. But when it comes to Cuba, very, very close to our own backyard, Cuba does have some measure of cooperation with China. Venezuela has some measure of cooperation with Iran and China as well. So it's not all on the US Side. Although we could go back into the tit for tat who pushed them into the arms of Iran and all of that. But all I'm saying is it does seem like the time is ripe for the Rick Grinnells and Laura Loomers to make an argument that a Cuba reset or a Venezuela reset would be in the American interest. Think about like, Mara Gaza. Like, what about Mara Havana? It just seems like there's an argument sitting there to be made to Trump about what could happen going forward. But I guess as long as you have mariavairo Salazar and others, it seems like maybe there's just no path to that.

[Emily Jashinsky]

Yeah, funny story. I actually found an article that quoted Trump in the 1980s and he said, yeah, something along the lines, oh, I'd love to build a hotel in Havana. So, yeah, there's an opening there. But unfortunately, yeah, the, the, the Miami lobby is extremely powerful. I'm all for pragmatism. I think that.

[Sagar Enjeti]

What are the politics of that in South Florida, by the way? So just since you're there, talk a little bit about that too as well.

[Emily Jashinsky]

Yeah, it's, you know, these people are my neighbors and I understand where they're coming from. Actually, some of them, you know, actually lived through really horrible things. They were persecuted by these governor government, government, some of them were tortured. All these regimes. One thing that they'll do is that they'll withhold food to families in order to coerce them, you know, to vote for them or, you know, attend rallies and stuff like that. So I, I genuinely get where they're coming from in the same way that I completely understand where a lot of the anti imperialists, both internationally and like in, you know, in the governments of these countries, like, you know, Cuba for a long time was basically a vassal of the US Mob interests were huge. They had, didn't have control of their own trading policy until trade policy until like 1934 through the Platt Amendment. I mean, really horrible stuff. It's kind of obvious that the revolution in 59 happened. But you know, and through a lot of it also there was just like dictators, there were just of stooges of the US So I get it, but because like the each side is so like maximalist on the one hand, you know, like the Cuban or Venezuelan regime is like, oh, because there's sanctions that gives us free reign to just, you know, kill people on the streets, imprison or torture them. And then the neocons just say, oh well look, they're killing and torturing people so we need to impose sanctions. This is just the circular loop that's pointless.

[Ryan Grim]

And I wanted to pick up on something you said earlier about the way that this has really been a drag on the Venezuelan opposition because it feels like systematically across the globe, Trump is hurting his allies and boosting his adversaries. We just saw in South Korea, the left center left winning the presidential election there, which, you know, the Bannons of the world are calling, you know, Korea, having fallen to the ccp, but certainly the tariff, you know, Trump's tariff threats to that region dragged down the Trump aligned conservative candidate. Australia saw, you know, lefties win there. Canada saw its conservative movement just completely collapse. And now, yeah, in Venezuela you've got got Machado who is being pushed on this question of are you with Venezuela's sovereignty or are you actually an agent of a foreign government? And what has been her response and what's been the kind of response of the public to that?

[Emily Jashinsky]

So the day, I think the day after, days after those seekot deportations, she issued a statement on f text saying that so something along the lines of the Venezuelans should not be treated all as criminals. But she didn't actually, you know, verbalize any sort of opposition, you know, put into words that like, okay, you know, like the seacot episode was not a good thing. So it just kind of up in the air. And she has since still just told the line of the administration that oh, Maduro is the head of of and is directing an invasion is just completely insane. There's been protests in Venezuela, rightfully so, from the family members of people that are, you know, like now condemned to life in prison inside the secot against Bukele and against Trump. You actually had this. Bukele said that he'd be willing to do a prisoner swap of the Sikhat prisoners for if Maduro released a bunch of an equivalent number of political prisoners. And so that was just kind of a spectacle for the two leaders. Maduro actually a few weeks ago paraded this like little kid, the child of one of the sea cot deportees who they didn't send to Venezuela because of they were worried for her safety. But then they send the mom and then they sent the kid. And so Maduro was saying, thank you, Donald Trump. You're an impute of this. But we brought back so and so and it's just, it's something else.

[Ryan Grim]

Yeah. So she, so while we, while we have you, I did want to ask you about another really good piece you had. This was for the Liberal Patriot. If we can put up just the final element here, what Democrats can learn from arena, which is the party of AMLO and Claudia Sheinbaum. And you had a Let me see if I can find the deck to this article too. The subtitle this sounded like it's written for Breaking Points. The Mexican left combined ideological diversity on cultural issues with a shared populist vision on material concerns, which it sort of of what Breaking Point has been screaming for years would be an effective policy from either party. Ideological diversity on cultural issues, a big tent there and populist vision on material concerns. So what can you tell us beyond the headline for people who are just like, hey, yay, go Claudia. But what beyond that that did AMLO and Claudia do effectively that Democrats could learn from and also frankly, that Trump could learn from because he seems to have his own odd set of admiration for both of those figures.

[Emily Jashinsky]

Yeah, funny story. Last night I got a notification from a pro morena outlet saying that Caroline Levitt defended shame. But the, the Washington Post ran some sort of I, I, I meant to send you this, actually. The, the Washington Post ran some sort of article that fentanyl seizures at the border had mysteriously declined. And so Caroline Levitt was asked about that and she said it's not mysterious. It's because of our tough stance on the border and our strong relationship with President Claudia Chainbaum. So that was kind of funny.

[Ryan Grim]

That is. But let's be real, that's probably true. The state does have more control. Both states have more control over fentanyl flows than I think that they let on.

[Emily Jashinsky]

Yeah. Yeah. Well, and this is actually a really good segue into that article. Shane Bomb has done something really interesting. It's not entirely a U turn, but it's been framed that way. Well, it is kind of a U turn. She has taken a way tougher stance on security than AMLO ever did. And I think this is a lesson for progressives. I'm a big critic of progressive crime policy. And amlo what he did, he actually, it's not entirely correct to say that it was like soft on crime. It was kind of soft on the cartels. But in public security, for instance, if you go to Mexico, security is very militarized and you see like a of lot of troops. You'll see like these trucks with like soldiers standing on the back with these machine guns. But with regards to the cartels, he took a more hands off policy. His view was that the previous governments had, you know, they declared a war on the narcos and this just exploded violence. Before 2007, when Felipe Calderon, a former president, came in, in Mexico actually had a pretty low homicide rate equivalent to the US at like 7 per 100,000. And he came in and within months he said, we're going to bring out the military, we're going to go after the cartels. And this just exploded violence. And it hasn't really improved much since. When Lopez Odor came in, he said, okay, we're going to shift the strategy. We're going to deprioritize seizing drugs and going after Kingpin. We're kind of going to do damage control. So when there's an outbreak of violence with the cartels, we're just going to send these huge deployments of soldiers to try to quell the violence. According to official figures, homicides went down like 10% during his government, but disappearances were still huge. And this was a huge criticism against his government also. The critique was that it allowed cartels to, you know, expand their control over parts of the country.

[Ryan Grim]

Country.

[Emily Jashinsky]

What Shane Bomb has done is that she's taken a more, she's taken a tougher approach, but also more strategic one. So she's prioritizing going after like the mid level guys in charge of like logistics within cartels. And it really prioritized drug seizures because one of the problems was that AMLO got rid of the federales, which a lot of people might be familiar with from the movies, replaced it with the National Guard. The National Guard was a military, not a police entity. And so they didn't really have like the training to do like investigative work and like, like seizing drugs was a problem. So she looked to professionalize the National Guard and is also looking to create an investigative police. In Mexico things are a bit different. You have the police don't investigate crimes, it's the prosecutors that do. So she's created this. Her security minister announced a few weeks ago the creation of an investigative Police. And so far the results have been pretty good. Drug seizures on the Mexican side have really gone up and homicides have gone down around 20%. So that's extremely promising.

[Ryan Grim]

Well, it's all happening pretty out in the open, so I'd imagine if, you know, there'd be a lot of gains to make out of the gate. Yeah, yeah.

[Emily Jashinsky]

And to be fair, yeah, a lot of this is due to pressure from the Trump administration through tariffs and the like, whatnot. But going back to the point of the piece as to, like, what Democrats can learn from Morena. Yeah, that article is kind of a 10 year history of the party. It was founded in 2014 and in 10 years, wow. They managed to basically take over the whole country. And Lopez, he, you know, some people, like, would dispute this. I like to say that he was a traditionalist and he didn't really care a lot about social issues. I think that personally he was kind of, yeah, conservative on some of the LGBT issues and stuff, but it wasn't really the focus of his politics. And the focus of his politics was all material. Raising the minimum wage, backing unions, securing Mexico's energy sovereignty. And that's a good lesson that I like to critique progressives on. I think that climate change is very important, but working class people have a very different view of the energy transition. They think that, yeah, we should invest in renewables and that's great, but low prices are really the priority. You want to have an all of the above approach. And that's something that the liberal patriot really hammers home all the time. It's better in the long run if we just invest in renewables, don't generate a backlash among workers and bring down energy prices. Instead of trying to go full speed ahead and go in on renewables which are unreliable. The sun isn't always shining, the wind isn't always blowing, and unless you're in South Florida. Exactly, exactly. So what Morena has, the policy of Morena was, you know, we need to secure the needs of workers. Amlo he prioritized refining after previous administrations had decided, you know, they were just going to import oil from the US and this brought down prices. You know, he built this huge oil refinery in his home state of Tabasco. And Shane bomb. Well, she's a climate scientist. She cares about renewables. But so far she's been very practical and especially because of the tariffs that's forced her to prioritize energy sovereignty. So her government is promoting partnerships and renewables and public private partnerships and renewables and in fossil fuels. Carlos Slim is actually a significant backer of Bamex, the state oil company which has had huge problems.

[Ryan Grim]

Juan David Rojas, writer for Compact and other outlets. Thank you so much for joining us. Welcome back anytime.

[Emily Jashinsky]

Thanks, guys.

[Sagar Enjeti]

Ren, that was great. Super interesting.

[Ryan Grim]

Yeah. Big Juan David Rojas fan. Even though we don't agree on everything, he's always got something interesting to say, right? Yeah.

[Sagar Enjeti]

Something interesting. Something different. Some interesting and different things percolating under the surface of the Trump administration. And. And we'll see where they go. It sounds like none of us are particularly optimistic that there'll be a true reset.

[Ryan Grim]

Yes. There's a lot of entrenched, a lot of incumbent interest groups to deal with.

[Sagar Enjeti]

Yeah. Well, as a reminder, the monthly subscriptions are back. So BP free is the code if you want to try it out for a month. BreakingPoints.com, the promo code is just BP free. You can get a free monthly trial. We will be back here on Friday with the Friday show. You here tomorrow as well, right?

[Ryan Grim]

I am.

[Sagar Enjeti]

Okay, so Ryan's in tomorrow, then the three of us will be in on Friday. And the second half of that show is for the premium subs. So if you want to see, you just want to try out. Want to be like, are they saying things that are that interesting? Is it worth my money? You could do that [e-mail] and Ryan will be back tomorrow and we'll. Otherwise I'll see you guys Friday.

[Ryan Grim]

See you then.

[Sagar Enjeti]

See ya.

[Ryan Grim]

And here we have a specimen from the early 2000s, a legacy investing platform. Please don't touch the exhibit, folks. It could crash. Ready to step out of the financial history [e-mail] you can invest. Invest in almost everything. Stocks, bonds, options and more. You could even put your cash to work at an industry leading 4.1% APY. Leave your clunky outdated platform behind. Go to public.com and fund your account in five minutes or less. Paid for by Public Investing Inc. Member FINRA and SIPC. Full [e-mail] disclosures this is an iHeart podcast.