6/5/25: Trump Travel Ban, Economy Seizes Amid Trade War, Trump To Explode On Elon, Bibi Gov In Collapse

Summary

Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar – Episode Released June 5, 2025

In this episode of Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar, hosts delve into a tumultuous period marked by significant political and economic upheavals. The discussion encompasses Donald Trump's newly announced travel ban, the deteriorating economy amidst an ongoing trade war with China, Elon Musk's growing antagonism towards the administration's legislative efforts, and the imminent collapse of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government. This comprehensive analysis provides listeners with insightful perspectives on these critical issues.

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1. Trump's New Travel Ban

[05:57]
The episode kicks off with an examination of President Donald Trump's latest travel restrictions. Trump cites the recent terror attack in Boulder, Colorado, as a catalyst for imposing stricter controls on foreign nationals entering the United States. He emphasizes the need for rigorous vetting processes to prevent similar tragedies.

Key Quote:

Tom Yamas: "We cannot have open migration from any country where we cannot safely and reliably vet and screen those who seek to enter the United States." [07:39]

The hosts compare this iteration of the travel ban to Trump's previous attempts, highlighting the administration's strategic inclusion of non-Muslim majority countries such as Afghanistan, Burma, and Yemen to circumvent allegations of religious discrimination. They critique the policy as "slapdash" and question its efficacy and fairness.

Notable Discussion:

• The administration's efforts to make the ban legally defensible by diversifying the list of restricted countries.
• Potential court challenges and the likelihood of the ban withstanding judicial scrutiny.
• The inconsistency in exemptions, notably the allowance for World Cup players from restricted nations but not fans, raising questions about the policy's implementation.

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2. Economic Struggles Amid Trade War

[16:18]
The conversation shifts to the U.S. economy, focusing on the adverse effects of the ongoing trade war with China. The hosts analyze a recent exchange between a Republican senator and a Trump administration official, illustrating the administration's rigid stance against reciprocal trade deals with Vietnam and other nations.

Key Quote:

Tom Yamas: "Vietnam has a $125 billion exports to us and imports from us 12 and a half million dollars. ... It's just a pathway of China to us." [17:30]

Key Points:

• CBO Analysis: The Congressional Budget Office projects that maintaining tariffs could reduce the federal deficit by $2.8 trillion over ten years. However, this comes at the cost of a smaller economy and increased inflation, potentially reaching 0.4 percentage points over the next two years. [22:39]

• Jobs Report: Recent ADP private payrolls indicate a disappointing increase of only 37,000 jobs in May, far below the expected 110,000. Manufacturing and natural resources sectors saw significant job losses. [20:53]

• Trade Deficit Manipulation: Trump officials have delayed and redacted farm trade reports showing an increased trade deficit, undermining transparency and accountability. [25:08]

Notable Discussion:

• Tariff Revenue vs. Economic Growth: The hosts argue that the dual objectives of generating tariff revenue and reshoring manufacturing are inherently conflicting.

• Price Gouging: Companies may exploit tariffs to unjustifiably raise prices, citing increased costs while actually enjoying higher profit margins. This practice mirrors behaviors observed during the COVID-19 pandemic.

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3. Elon Musk vs. the Big Beautiful Bill

[43:25]
Elon Musk emerges as a central figure of contention, vehemently opposing the administration's legislative package known as the "Big Beautiful Bill." Musk criticizes the bill for its perceived detrimental impact on deficit reduction, blaming the administration's policies for inflating federal debt.

Key Quote:

Steve Ratner: "If we left this in place because of the tariff revenue, you would see a reduction in the federal deficit by $2.8 trillion over 10 years. ... but real economic output will fall on net." [22:39]

Key Points:

• Musk's Opposition: Musk derides the bill as a "disgusting abomination," attributing its failure to pressuring politicians who "betrayed the American people."

• Policy Failures: The hosts critique Elon Musk's unrealistic promises to cut taxes by a trillion dollars, labeling them as unfunded and impractical.

• Political Fallout: Speculation arises about Musk potentially shifting his political allegiance due to his fallout with Trump, despite his past alignment with the administration.

Notable Discussion:

• Deficit Concerns: Musk's arguments highlight the administration's mismanagement of fiscal policies, emphasizing the unsustainable increase in national debt.

• Legislative Strategies: The hosts discuss the manipulation of CBO scores and the administration's tactics to portray the bill favorably despite its economic drawbacks.

---

4. Collapse of Netanyahu's Government and Israeli-Gaza Conflict

[84:02]
The episode transitions to international affairs, focusing on the internal turmoil within Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's coalition government and the devastating humanitarian crisis in Gaza.

Key Quote:

Netanyahu (Recorded): "We need to save not only the state of Israel, but also the Torah world. ... We need time to pass the law properly so it cannot be challenged." [85:08]

Key Points:

• Government Instability: Netanyahu's coalition faces potential dissolution as the Haredi Party demands mandatory military service for ultra-Orthodox men, essential for Netanyahu's ambitions to fully control Gaza.

• Humanitarian Crisis: The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation's efforts to distribute aid have been marred by chaos and inefficiency, leading to widespread malnutrition and ongoing violence. Foreign aid distribution is hindered by Israeli military actions, exacerbating the suffering of Palestinians.

• International Response: Protests by French dock workers, Spanish restrictions on military contracts, and Irish legal pressures reflect growing global opposition to Israeli policies.

Notable Discussion:

• Demographic Challenges: Netanyahu's reliance on the ultra-Orthodox population poses long-term demographic and economic issues, as this group maintains large families but largely abstains from military and economic participation.

• Aid Distribution Failures: The hosts critique the inadequate and partisan distribution of aid in Gaza, with reports of expired food supplies and limited access for those in need.

• Political Strategies: Netanyahu's focus on military solutions and internal coalition management distracts from addressing the fundamental issues of Palestinian statehood and human rights.

---

5. Additional Highlights

• NYC Mayoral Race: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's endorsement of Zoran Mandami against Andrew Cuomo signals shifting political alliances and intensifies the competitive landscape of the mayoral race.

• Public Response to Legislative Actions: The hosts emphasize the importance of grassroots activism and public support in shaping independent media and resisting entrenched political interests.

---

Conclusion

This episode of Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar provides a thorough exploration of pressing political and economic issues shaping the United States and the broader international landscape. From Trump's stringent travel policies and the economic strain of a trade war with China to Elon Musk's formidable opposition to legislative measures and the fraught dynamics within Israeli politics, the hosts offer critical insights into the challenges and implications of these developments. Listeners are encouraged to engage with the content, stay informed, and participate in the evolving discourse surrounding these pivotal events.

Transcript

[Katherine Townsend]

This is an iHeart podcast.

[Lester Holt]

NBC Nightly News Legacy isn't handed down or NBC News. I'm Tom Brokaw. We hope to see you back here. I'm Lester Holt. It's carried forward. Tom Yamas is there for us. Firefighters are still working around the clock. As the world changes, we look for what endures. 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.

[Tom Yamas]

For NBC Nightly News, I'm Tom Yamas.

[Lester Holt]

A new chapter begins NBC Nightly News.

[Tom Yamas]

With Tom Yamas evenings on NBC.

[Katherine Townsend]

Over the years of making my true crime podcast Hell n Gone, I've learned no town is too small for murder. I'm Katherine Townsend. I've heard from hundreds of people across the country with an unsolved murder in their community.

[Lester Holt]

I was calling about the murder of my husband.

[Ryan Grimm]

The murder is still out there.

[Katherine Townsend]

Each week I investigate a new case. If there is a case we should Hear about, call 678-744-6145. Listen to Helen Gone Murderline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever. Get your podcast.

[Lester Holt]

I know a lot of cops. 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. This is Absolute Season 1 Taser Incorporated.

[George M. Johnson]

I get right back there and it's bad.

[Lester Holt]

Listen to Absolute Season 1 Taser incorporated on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, guys. Sager and Krystal here.

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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 can find honest perspectives from the left.

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And the right that simply does not exist anywhere else.

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[Tom Yamas]

Hope to see [e-mail].

[Ryan Grimm]

Good morning, everybody. Welcome to Breaking Points. Ryan Grimm, Great to see you, my friend.

[Lester Holt]

Great to see you. I again will be channeling the esteemed Sagar.

[Ryan Grimm]

Excellent.

[Lester Holt]

So I will be making sure that the populist right gets its, you know, its full throated voice.

[Ryan Grimm]

Maybe not full throated. You could lay off the full throated.

[Lester Holt]

I'll give a strawman version of Sager's arguments and then you can dismantle them.

[Ryan Grimm]

Actually, I think we are going to have the one and only esteemed Sagar back next week.

[Lester Holt]

Indeed we will.

[Ryan Grimm]

Yeah. So you won't have to wait much longer for that. When I say today is a jam packed show, there are probably 10 more things that we could have put into this show that got left on the. What is it, the cutting room floor? Is that the expression?

[Lester Holt]

And let's talk about one of those real quick.

[Ryan Grimm]

Yeah.

[Lester Holt]

So Trump and Putin spoke yesterday about Ukraine's attack on Russia, the drone strike.

[Ryan Grimm]

Swarm strike or whatever.

[Lester Holt]

Trump then posted on Truth Social and then deleted immediately and then reposted again on Truth Social. Basically his own readout of the conversation with Putin. And he said, Putin very angry. He's gonna respond very strongly. And Trump was just saying it matter of factly, like this is gonna happen. And he also said that he enlisted Putin's help to get closer to an Iran deal. Now the German chancellor is coming here today and he's having a. And Trump's having a call with XI tomorrow. And the Wall Street Journal this week said that people need to start referring to this period no longer as the post war period, but as now the pre war period.

[Ryan Grimm]

True.

[Lester Holt]

Which is an awfully scary thing to hear from the Wall Street Journal. And they say it aspirationally, like they want this to be the pre war.

[Ryan Grimm]

The pre war period.

[Lester Holt]

Not understanding that the greatest destructions of wealth in human history were World War I and World War II. Like what Wall Street Journal readers like. You're not gonna like a few of you will do well. Most of you will lose your shirts, some of you will lose your lives.

[Ryan Grimm]

Yeah.

[Lester Holt]

So anyway, we're getting very close to a very dark time.

[Ryan Grimm]

Yeah. I mean, I think many people feel that. And didn't I also see Trump said something like the drone swarm attack. He thought it was badass. Something like that.

[Lester Holt]

Yes. He's. Which is kind of. Anyway. Trump. Yes. And maybe he hopes he's flirting with a cod.

[Ryan Grimm]

Nuclear war. Yeah, that's badass.

[Lester Holt]

Feels great. Yeah. It's gonna be a badass World War iii.

[Ryan Grimm]

So anyway, that didn't make it into the show, but we've got a new travel ban from Trump as well. Some other immigration news in terms of court decisions. We've got new jobs numbers that came in quite low. We've got new Elon Musk fallout. Bibi's coalition appears to be collapsing. Democrats are studying men.

[Lester Holt]

Yeah.

[Ryan Grimm]

My friend Tory is gonna join both to talk.

[Lester Holt]

I want two men to talk about it.

[Ryan Grimm]

Yeah, that's right. I'll just sit back and let you gentlemen tell me what I need to know. But we are gonna let Joy Behar way on that in on that one. She has some great ideas.

[Lester Holt]

She has thoughts.

[Ryan Grimm]

Tori is also gonna give us a Diddy trial roundup cause he's been following closely and posting a bunch of TikToks about it. He blew up on TikTok. He's doing so well there. And also actually has a new show as well that he is involved with. And then we had big news last night. First of all, there's a debate in the New York City mayor's race which has many very interesting moments that I think you guys will be interested in. But then when I woke up this morning, we got the news that AOC did decide to jump in and endorse Zoran Mandami, who is, as you guys probably know, the Democratic Socialist challenger to front runner Andrew Cuomo. There's a bunch of other people in this race too, but really it comes down to is it gonna be Cuomo or is it gonna be Mamdani at the end of the day?

[Lester Holt]

Yeah, it's a two dog hunt at this point.

[Ryan Grimm]

Yeah, there's some. It was. Yeah. Well, we'll get to it, but let's go ahead and start. We don't even have this on the board yet because we added this in yesterday evening as well, but wanted to make sure to make mention of the fact to Trump did announce a new travel ban. He put out a video explaining, you know, his thinking here and why he's imposing this. Now let's go ahead and take a listen to that.

[Tom Yamas]

The recent terror attack in Boulder, Colorado has underscored the extreme dangers posed to our country by the entry of foreign nationals who are not properly vetted, as well as those who come here as temporary visitors and overstay their visas. We don't want them. In the 21st century, we've seen one terror attack after another carried out by foreign visa overstayers from dangerous places all over the world. And thanks to Biden's open door policies, today there are millions and millions of these illegals who should not be in our country. In my first term, my powerful travel restrictions were one of our most successful policies and they were a key part of preventing major foreign terror attacks on American soil. We will not let what happened in Europe happen to America. That's why on my first day back in office, I directed the Secretary of state to perform a security review of high risk regions and make recommendations for where restrictions should be imposed among the national security threats. Their analysis considered are the large scale presence of terrorists, failure to cooperate on visa security and inability to verify travelers identities, inadequate record keeping of criminal histories, and persistently high rates of illegal visa overstays and other things. Very simply, we cannot have open migration from any country where we cannot safely and reliably vet and screen those who seek to enter the United States.

[Lester Holt]

And this is an example of Trump 2 being prepared in a way that Trump 1 wasn't because Trump won, they do the Muslim ban right out of the gate. It's ridiculous. It gets thrown out in court. You can't do a Muslim ban.

[Ryan Grimm]

Right.

[Lester Holt]

So then they look through over the next eight years, look. And they sort of tried a version of it and Trump won, but they look through the regs and the laws and they're like, oh, wait, so a president can say that restriction from a particular country is restricted if we say it's not because we're bigoted against Muslims, but because of reasons.

[Ryan Grimm]

Right.

[Lester Holt]

So on day one, he said state Department, go find reasons for a variety of countries and noticeably they throw in a few non Muslim majority countries so that you can't say that it's a Muslim ban.

[Ryan Grimm]

Yeah, put M2 up on the screen. This has the list of a dozen, I think countries that they have picked here.

[Lester Holt]

Afghanistan, Burma, Chad, Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Yemen. None of this is funny, but I did see one good joke. It's man, Equatorial guinea must have crossed the line. Okay, that's kind of bad, but also kind of good.

[Ryan Grimm]

Ultimate dad joke there.

[Lester Holt]

Right? Again, not funny. Yes, again, not funny. And then there's another seven similar ish countries that are getting restrictions but not a total ban. So yeah, this is just slapdash across the board, but designed to stand up in court.

[Ryan Grimm]

Yeah. And this was the thing is, it's not like they needed much justification last time around. You just can't, you know, like outright be like, we are racist and discriminating against Muslims. Right. You had to give some fig leave. And then, yes, the executive does have, you know, significant amount of discretion. So I still expect this will face court challenges. And you know, I don't want to like predict ultimately where that goes, but it has a much more higher likelihood of standing up in court than it did the first time around. And the other thing people are raising, Ryan, is like, we have the World cup coming here and like there's exemptions in here for players from these countries, but not from fans. For fans from these countries. So this has really obviously significant impact, not to mention being sort of overtly discriminatory and throw it back to Trump 1.0. The other thing that's worth mentioning is he name checks there. The Egyptian national who committed that terror attack in Boulder, Colorado, as justification. I mean, Egypt isn't on this list as he's Egyptian, but he's using this.

[Lester Holt]

Egypt is too important of an ally to do this.

[Ryan Grimm]

Exactly. Yeah. But he's using this as a pretext to say, oh, see, this is the justification.

[Lester Holt]

He's invading Iraq because Al Qaeda in Afghanistan attacked us.

[Ryan Grimm]

Exactly. Yes. Similar to that. Exactly. So in any case, I don't think that that was the reason that he did this. I think it was something that he used to make the rhetorical case. But to your point, Ryan, it looks like they've been working on this effectively from day one to try to do this in a way that may actually stand up in court. There was one other piece of immigration news here that is quite significant. We wanted to get in. The show can put M4 up on the screen that federal court judge Boasberg here in D.C. issued a ruling saying, hey, those people that you just swept up and sent to El Salvador to seekat to rot in a concentration camp for life with zero due process, you gotta figure out some way for them to be able to challenge their removals. So obviously, the Trump administration has done everything they can to defy the courts, especially when it comes to the migrants who were sent to seekot. So I don't expect anything imminent in terms of a process that will enable these men who were sentenced to life in a gulag with no due process to be able to challenge their detention there. But this will begin a process that will play out through the courts, and we'll see where it goes from here. Ryan.

[Lester Holt]

Yes, indeed. We have a programming note. We mentioned this yesterday and the day before. For this month, we're bringing back the monthly. So $10 a month premium subscriptions to Breaking Points. We used to have those. Then it switched to just annual. But sometimes it's tough to plunk down a whole hundred dollars. So this is if you want to be a premium subscriber, but you don't want to lay all that out all at once. You can just do the monthly. And also in order to coax you in there, here's a free month. So you go to brainpoints.com and put the promo code BP free. That is just for people watching this, do not share this with anybody.

[Ryan Grimm]

Exclusive.

[Lester Holt]

This is just between us. And you tell your friends and family. Yeah, don't tell anybody else. Other than that.

[Ryan Grimm]

Yes, Only the best people are allowed to avail themselves of this offer. And you made a great point yesterday, Ryan, when we were talking about this. Have you noticed that we don't subject you to obnoxious, noxious ad reads where we try to, you know, hawk like, occasionally disturbing products to you?

[Lester Holt]

Exactly.

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The reason is because of you guys supporting us. And by the way, there's been a big response to this promotion. So thank you guys so much to those of you who have signed up.

[Lester Holt]

And if we don't have a huge response, then we will start reading ads. That is not a threat. That is a promise. And I will be on air reading hims ads. And it won't be the hair loss ones. So if you don't want to subject yourself to that. BreakingPoints.com the promo code is beefy.

[Ryan Grimm]

Some people might be into that, Ryan. I don't know. I don't know.

[Lester Holt]

Some people might be canceling right now. I don't want to see. I actually wouldn't do that. So don't do that.

[Ryan Grimm]

There's some hardcore grim heads out there. You never know. You never know what they might be into. All right, let's move on from this.

[Katherine Townsend]

Over the past six years of making my true crime podcast Hell and Gone, I've learned one thing. No town is too small for murder. I'm Katherine Townsend. I've received hundreds of messages from people across the country begging for help with unsolved murders.

[Lester Holt]

I was calling about the murder of my husband.

[Ryan Grimm]

It's a cold case. They've never found her. And it haunts me to this day.

[Clayton English]

The murderer is still out there.

[Katherine Townsend]

Every week on Hell and Gone Murder Line, I dig into a new case, bringing the skills I've learned as a journalist and private investigator to ask the questions no one else is asking.

[Ryan Grimm]

Police really didn't care to even try. She was still somebody's mother. She was still somebody's daughter. She was still somebody's sister. There's so many questions that we've never gotten any kind of answers for.

[Katherine Townsend]

If you have a case you'd like me to look into, call the Helen Gone murder line at 678-744-6145. Listen to Helen Gone Murderline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Clayton English]

This Pride Month, we are not just celebrating. We're fighting back. I'm George M. Johnson. And my book All BO was just named the most banned book in America. If the culture wars have taught me anything, it's that pride is protest. And on my podcast, Fighting Words, we talk to people who use their voices to resist, disrupt, and make our community stronger.

[Lester Holt]

This year, we are showing up and showing out. You need people being like, no, you're not going to tell us what to do.

[Greg Lod]

This regime is coming down on us.

[Ryan Grimm]

And I don't want to just survive. I want to thrive.

[Clayton English]

You'll hear from trailblazers like Bob the Drag Queen to freedom Angelica Ross.

[George M. Johnson]

We ready to fight. I'm ready to fight.

[Clayton English]

And Gabrielle Union.

[Lester Holt]

Hi, George.

[Clayton English]

And storytellers with wisdom to spare. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Ryan Grimm]

Your gut, microbiome and those healthy bacteria can actually have positive effects throughout your body. Not just your gut, but your mental health, your metabolism, your immunity, your risk of cancer, heart disease, almost any disease under the sun.

[Greg Lod]

Y. Yep, you heard right. Probiotics might actually impact everything from your brain to your heart. So what's science and what's just really good marketing? On this episode of Dope Labs, me and Zakiya cut through the hype and get into the real deal behind probiotics, with help from gastroenterologist Dr. Roshi Raj.

[Ryan Grimm]

So, yes, bacteria is definitely having a moment, and I'm very excited about that.

[Greg Lod]

From probiotic drinks and gummies to face creams and pillows. Yep, we said pillows. The probiotic boom is everywhere. But how much of it actually works? And what does it all mean for your gut, your skin, and even your mood? Join us on Dope Labs, where we break it all down in the lab like only we can listen to Dope Labs on iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Ryan Grimm]

Some big news with regard to the economy. An interesting exchange between a Republican senator and Howard Lutnick asking about, hey, okay, so what does Vietnam, as one example, actually need to do to be able to come to some sort of a beneficial trade deal with this administration? Let's go ahead and take a listen to this exchange.

[Tom Yamas]

If Vietnam, for example, came to you tomorrow and said, okay, Mr. Secretary, you win, we're going to remove all tariffs.

[Ryan Grimm]

And all trade barriers.

[Tom Yamas]

Would the United States please do the same? Would you accept that deal? Absolutely not. Absolutely not. That would be the silliest thing we could do.

[Ryan Grimm]

Why is that?

[Tom Yamas]

Vietnam has a $125 billion exports to us and imports from us 12 and a half million dollars. And you're thinking Vietnam exports 125 billion. I'm aware of the figures, but tell me, but where do they get it from? They buy 90 billion from China, then they mark it up and send it to us. It's just a pathway of China to us.

[Ryan Grimm]

You wouldn't accept that deal? No, it's a terrible deal.

[Tom Yamas]

We're the one with money, we're the one with the store. Of course they want us to take that.

[Ryan Grimm]

What's the purpose of reciprocity then? Is reciprocity not one of your goals? Are you telling the President that we shouldn't seek reciprocity?

[Tom Yamas]

If that's what you're telling him, why.

[Ryan Grimm]

Are you trying to do these trade deals?

[Tom Yamas]

So you, are you or are you.

[Ryan Grimm]

Not seeking reciprocity in these trade deals?

[Tom Yamas]

We are thinking we are absolutely seeking reciprocity with respect to things that can be reciprocal. You just said when they're importing from China and sending it to us, a.

[Ryan Grimm]

Country came to you and offered you the ultimate reciprocity.

[Tom Yamas]

No tariffs, no trade barriers in return.

[Ryan Grimm]

For us doing the same.

[Tom Yamas]

You would reject that?

[Lester Holt]

Of course.

[Tom Yamas]

Cuz they buy from China and send it to us. Don't you agree with that?

[Ryan Grimm]

Suppose they said we won't buy from China. Now we're talking and there's actually a lot to say about this with regard to Vietnam specifically, what he's referring to there is the issue of they call it trans shipping, where it's like, okay, well we've got tariffs on China, but maybe some companies will just ship their goods from China. This is illegal, by the way, but it still happens. Will ship their goods from China to Vietnam to avoid the tariff. There has been also an effort in subsequent US Administrations to actually try to relocate manufacturing from China to Vietnam to sort of, since we have a close relationship with them, friendly relationship with them at this point. But this is exactly the problem. And why they have zero trade deals effectively at this point is because if you say to a country, even if you lower your tariff barrier to zero, that is still a terrible deal that we won't take. Like what, what can you do?

[Lester Holt]

Right. And to channel Sagar and also like Matt Stoller here, they would point out that the Commerce Department, even under Biden did an investigation into this was in particular with the renewable, renewable energy, clean energy industry, that China was basically shipping a whole bunch of stuff, producing the things in China, moving them to Vietnam and then getting around kind of bans on. Yeah, monopoly.

[Ryan Grimm]

Because there's also another thing you can do to try to sell, skirt the rules is you have it all but assembled and then ship it to Vietnam. And then there's just a building where they just sort of put the pieces together and then claim, okay, this is made in Vietnam instead of China.

[Lester Holt]

Right. And so he says, hey, look, what if they say they won't take the stuff from China anymore? He says, now we're talking. But again, the problem here is that they're talking as if this trade war is still going on as a strategic thing that may result in some useful outcome for the United States when it seems like the world has decided that we don't have cards that Trump just kind of popped off with these tariffs and is going to have to climb down. And so they're just kind of waiting them out. And then after that, maybe they're making the top of it, be able to sit down and create some new global trade regime that we're all satisfied with. But this, this is not getting us there.

[Ryan Grimm]

Yeah. And of course, significant that it's a Republican senator who was going that aggressive at a Trump administration official is rather noteworthy. Had some really bad jobs numbers yesterday that came out in the ADP private payrolls report. This isn't the big one that gets the most attention, but it also, you know, significant.

[Lester Holt]

Big Boy's Friday.

[Ryan Grimm]

The Big Boy is Friday. And oftentimes, you know, this one sort of front runs now, sometimes they're totally disconnected and they show different numbers, but sometimes this is also indicative of what we could expect on Friday. So put this up on the screen. Wanted to make sure to highlight this. Private sector hiring rose by just 37,000 in May. So, I mean, nearly flat. The expectation was that it would be 110,000. That was the forecast. And it is below the previous jobs report number in April, which was Revised down to 60,000. And in particular noteworthy here, Ryan, that one of the industries that actually lost jobs was manufacturing.

[Lester Holt]

Yeah, I have that here. Goods Producing industries down 2,000 jobs. Manufacturing down 3,000. Natural resources and mining down 5,000. If the tariffs were creating investment here in the United States to produce goods here to mine our own natural resources and to manufacture, you would not see the numbers going down. We were not prepared to go into this trade war, which is incredible because it's not as if anybody sprung this on us. We chose the time and the place for this trade war, but had nothing ready.

[Ryan Grimm]

We caught ourselves unawares.

[Lester Holt]

We caught ourselves unawares. We had nothing ready for this. And China's like, hey, all those things you need for your manufacturing Industry, we're also going to restrict those. And we're like, that's deeply unfair. How could you do that to us? How rude.

[Ryan Grimm]

Incredible.

[Lester Holt]

This is utterly outrageous.

[Ryan Grimm]

Incredible. And actually let's go ahead and put the next piece up on the screen cuz this is interesting. This is a CBO estimate which I don't even know how you estimate the impact of these tariffs and see who the hell.

[Lester Holt]

Right. This assumes that they're going to be.

[Ryan Grimm]

What they're going to be. Right. But anyway, the Congressional Budget Office, which we're going to talk more about in the big beautiful bill block, they did an analysis and they found, okay, if we left this in place because of the tariff revenue, you would see a reduction in the federal deficit by $2.8 trillion over 10 years. But the double edged sword of that is on the other hand, they say real economic output will fall on net, meaning that you're going to have a smaller economy. And if you are collecting a high level of tariff revenue, that means, Ryan, you have not actually been successful at reshoring those industries. So this is why we talk about when Trump talks about two goals. One is reshoring manufacturing, reindustrializing the country, the other being getting a whole bunch of tariff revenue in. Those two things are actually at odds. The more that you reshore production, the lower the tariff revenue is ultimately going to be because obviously you'd be buying those goods domestically rather than importing them from abroad.

[Lester Holt]

And the 0.4 percentage point inflation over each of the next two years that the CBO includes in that analysis is quite significant. Like if your target for inflation annually is 2%, that's 20% higher than your target just for that. And again, this assumes that they stay flat or that the policy doesn't change, which the policy has changed. I can't even count the number of times just since Liberation Day.

[Ryan Grimm]

There had already been policy vacillation before.

[Lester Holt]

Liberation Day, so doesn't make any sense to think that they would. They'll stay this way for 10 years.

[Ryan Grimm]

Yeah, especially when you consider another administration coming. I mean all of it is incredibly uncertain. It's almost worthless to do an analysis. But anyway, that's what they're saying if you left the tariffs in place. Couple of things we wanted to highlight here in terms of fallout already, early indications of where things could be heading. This was interesting. Put a 4 up on the screen. So Trump officials delayed this report on farm trade because they didn't like what it was said. Effectively the report indicated that the trade deficit in farm goods had actually increased. And Republicans had made a bunch of hay over a increase in the farm trade deficit during the Biden administration. So rather than just going ahead as scheduled, putting out the report on time, revealing these numbers that are uncomfortable and inconvenient for the Trump administration policy, they just pushed the report off. And then some of the numbers, they're just like, yeah, we're just not going to put that part out.

[Lester Holt]

And the written analysis, they haven't put out yet, and they're not even sure if they're going to. Now the analysts are saying that the redacted version does match the original version. So, like, they didn't actually, in the end, monkey with the numbers. But this goes to what Trump keeps doing, which is cutting off at the knees the real US Advantages that we have globally. And I agree with Trump that we need to rearrange our economic relationships and that the way that global trade is set up is damaging to everybody and should be rethought. But if you're going to rethink it, you have to build on what you have. And then you go from there to transform into something better. What he's doing without building to something better, he's wiping out what we do have. And one of the things going after all the universities is one, making it impossible to build a manufacturing base is another. But what this does is it goes right to the heart of our hub as the financial services sector for the global economy. And this is crazy to think, but people trust American banks and people trust American financial analysts. We have all sorts of macro corruption, but on a micro level, people trust that if you give your money to JP Morgan Chase, you give your money to bank of America, you get a loan from them, your pension is, whatever it is, it's going to stay there. It's going to be there and it's going to be. And the terms are going, the activity is going to match the terms that you're offered and so on. That trust is very hard to win back. And part of the trust comes from the government data being considered reliable by everybody across the board. And you're already seeing, I think we'll talk about this in a second, people questioning the BLS data, because the Bureau of Labor Statistics has said that there's this hiring freeze and they had to do a bunch of layoffs. And so they couldn't do the same analysis that they could do before. So they're like, we're not sure about these numbers. And what's so scary now, the commodities traders have waiting for this report this is like, every quarter this report comes out, people trade. It's a big event for it not to be there, and then for people to be whispering, are they messing with the numbers?

[Ryan Grimm]

Right.

[Lester Holt]

Then you might as well be investing in China. China's big problem is people don't trust the stock market. People don't trust the numbers coming out of the companies or the government. They think they're fudging the GDP rate, all this stuff. Sometimes they are, sometimes they're not, but the trust isn't there. We have the trust, and we're just going to just let it drain right out.

[Ryan Grimm]

There was discussion early on in this administration, too. I can't remember if it was Lutnick or Besant, but I covered it at the time of changing the way GDP is calculated because they, you know, this was at the height of Doge and the chainsaw and all this stuff. And they're like, government activity shouldn't count in gdp.

[Lester Holt]

Right.

[Ryan Grimm]

Which is, like, so silly if you actually think it through. Not to mention there actually already is a metric that I can't remember what it's called, but it is a measurement GDP without the government and public sector spending. So if you want that metric, it already exists. They just didn't like the potential consequences of what they were doing with Doge on what it could mean with gdp. And so at that point, there were a bunch of experts and analysts who raised red flags about them potentially monkeying with that data behind the scenes or trying to fudge the numbers so that they are beneficial. And, I mean, could you put that past this administrator? Of course you could.

[Lester Holt]

Right?

[Ryan Grimm]

Of course you couldn't. They will lie to you straight to your face every day. They will be confronted with directly contradictory, like, definitive proof that what they're saying is blatant, complete lies, and it does not move them at all.

[Lester Holt]

Like Caroline Levitt saying that the bill actually decreases the deficit.

[Ryan Grimm]

Exactly. And, yeah, and we're supposed to trust that they're not gonna, like, monkey with the GDP or the jobs or the farm trade numbers. Of course people are gonna be like, I don't know if something that looked kind of bad was set to come out, could definitely see them just kind of, let's round it this way, let's round it that way, let's push it off. Let's just not let these numbers get down to the public.

[Lester Holt]

And the other. The advantage China does have is that when their government wants to do things, they are broadly in strategic control of the direction that they're going to take. And the companies have to then feed off of that and follow along here. Not the case. So you can put up this next element. Axios reporting. Same thing we saw in the Biden administration during COVID but now in supply chains. But now this time companies may be using the new tariffs as an excuse to raise prices across the board. Again. So we saw this during COVID You started seeing inflation kick in and all of these companies who have market power, in other words, you can't go somewhere else to get the thing started raising their prices and blaming Covid or blaming supply chains. And then when you looked into it, oh wow, their profits are way up and their profits are significantly up over what the input costs are. And so what they did here with this report is they looked at companies that do not have tariff related implications. Right. And saw significant increases there as well.

[Ryan Grimm]

Well, some of them admit it. So you have a heavy construction equipment supplier told the New York Fed they were raising prices on goods unaffected by tariffs, quote, to enjoy the extra margin before tariffs did increase their costs.

[Lester Holt]

I like extra margins are very enjoyable.

[Ryan Grimm]

Of course, like to enjoy those extra margins. What company wouldn't want to enjoy those extra margins? Some of what is being done is somewhat justifiable because rather than putting the entire cost of one tariff on one good, they're like spreading it across. But there's, I didn't really, I just learned this recently. There's an industry term called taking price which effectively is when your competitor or when you have the opportunity to raise prices and you have some sort of an excuse, you're going to do it, you're going to take price. And we also know from the COVID shocks that once those prices go up, guess what? They're not rushing to even after if they had real cost increases. Once those costs go back down, your prices do not go back down.

[Lester Holt]

You ain't gonna give up price.

[Ryan Grimm]

No, once you've taken that price, you're not gonna give up that price. So yeah.

[Lester Holt]

And so meanwhile Trump is finding that, yeah, things with negotiating with China not as easy as he thought it was going to be. He's talking to Xi tomorrow. He's been pining for this. We put this next element from the New York Times up on the screen. He's been pining for this call for a very long time. Crazy headline for the Times. Trump bemoans hell, quote hard it is to strike a China deal with Hardiman.

[Ryan Grimm]

It looks like one of our headlines.

[Lester Holt]

Yes, it does. New York times is on YouTube now. All caps H A, R D there and so it looks at this true social where Trump said, I like President Xi of China, always have and always will. But he is, and this is all caps, very tough and extremely hard to make a deal with. 3 exclamation points with the Times saying Politico had reported that Trump has grown, quote, obsessed with holding a call with Xi. But as they report, Xi is showing no interest in making a deal because he doesn't have to. Yes, China needs the United States as a market, but we need China more. That is very clearly the sense. And they note that Bloomberg reported that China's now talking to Airbus about buying a whole bunch of planes from there. China's doing everything it can to try to reduce its dependency on either American exports. The last time he tried this, China was like, let's stop buying so many soybeans from the US and went to Brazil. And now they have this locked in relationship with Brazil which is leading to enormous amounts of rainforest getting, getting whacked. And it has also like very much hurt Iowa and other soybean producing parts of the country because it just never came back. So they're figuring out how can we find other markets for our goods and also how can we find other places where we can buy what we need.

[Ryan Grimm]

Yeah, and this were adjustments that they made prior to this trade war. So unlike us, they actually, they've been.

[Lester Holt]

Thinking about it, we haven't.

[Ryan Grimm]

And their largest trading partner is no longer the U.S. if you count the ASEAN countries as a bloc, that actually is their largest trading partner now. And our share now, we're still a gigantic customer, still very important to them. I don't want to diminish it, but our share of their exports has significantly declined over the years. So it's not the same dynamic that it was even five years ago.

[Lester Holt]

And we talked about this briefly yesterday, but the, the hard line kind of anti China president in Korea, you know, tried to do a, a self coup to get more power lost. Six months later the election comes around and the more pro China center left candidate wins, the more pro US anti China conservative candidate loses. And so that area of the world, their area of the world gets more friendly to them again. Everything Trump is doing is systematically turning the world against us.

[Ryan Grimm]

Well, and check this next one out. In terms of unintended consequences and the policy having exactly the opposite impact of what this administration has claimed to be their goals. Put this up on the screen. Number of U.S. automakers now are considering moving some of their auto parts manufacturing to China. Why? Because China's put into place very Predictably, these rare earth magnet export controls, they are absolutely necessary for the completion of automobiles. And so you have several, both EV and traditional automakers who are like, maybe we got to do part of this in China. And maybe, by the way, long term, maybe if the tariff regime stays in place, yes, we manufacture cars here for the domestic US Market, but for the rest of the world, maybe we relocate some of this into China. And again, this is incredibly predictable. I think anyone with a baseline knowledge of the way China's been operating around the world to try to shore up these supply lines and how far behind we are in terms of that race to secure those minerals, those materials could have predicted that this would be one of the ways that they would retaliate against us. And the automakers purportedly were going to Trump and saying, hey, we're going to be in trouble, like really soon if we don't get this thing figured out.

[Lester Holt]

Right. It feels like we have a few years and this is setting aside whether or not some massive war breaks out. It feels like we have a couple of years where we can reach some kind of detente with China and do a China. Everybody thinks China's, like trying to here in the US thinks they want to rule the world or something. I don't think that's quite accurate. Like if, if we proposed a G2, basically, all right, there's a huge world. You're all the way over there, we're all the way over here. We're going to do a G2, we're going to share the world. We're going to cooperate where we can. We're not going to be in direct conflict. We'll compete, but we'll compete like, we'll compete fairly. And a rising tide lifts all boats. Otherwise, a US that doesn't have its, doesn't have some sort of soft power projection. It's basically Brazil. That's what will be long term. A lot of similarities geographically and resource and demographically and historically between us and Brazil. But we became much more of a global power. They didn't. So they have the same amount of runaway inequality, but they don't have as much wealth. So they've got favelas, whereas we have, you know, you'd much rather live in our favelas than theirs. Yeah, but that's where we're headed if we don't reach some kind of detente, is my take.

[Ryan Grimm]

Yeah, there's a world in which that the Trump administration is rushing towards, which is just zero sum and based on hard military conflict. I mean, they're you know, getting rid of all the soft power and obviously the bill and this would be a good transition to the beautiful bill increases our hard military power. Like that's, that seems to be the only type of power that they're interested in. There's a world that's zero sum where we are directly at odds in a way that is both dangerous and also economically terrible for us. And there's a world in which we care about mutual cooperation, coexistence. And I would say that world has never been more important given the fact that many of the challenges that face the globe truly are global existential challenges in which you will need to work with China and other countries around the world. And instead they have this sort of like bunker prepper mentality, something Naomi Klein's been talking about. Just take the prepper mentality and extrapolate it out to a national basis. That's effectively the mentality they have.

[Lester Holt]

Right. And on the hard war side. And we should do a segment on this, get somebody on, maybe even Maaz, my colleague Maaz Hussein has been studying this a lot. It's not obvious that we would win. Like we have a corrupt backwards western kind of military industrial complex.

[Ryan Grimm]

When is the last time one of our military adventures went well?

[Lester Holt]

And here's some bad news in India, Pakistan. The US asked Pakistan not to use airplanes that we had provided to them for geopolitical reasons. You don't want a US made bomb and a US made jet killing Indians. So they're like so stand down on that. So Pakistan said okay, we're going to use a bunch of these next gen Chinese weapons that we have miss both anti aircraft, both air to air surface air and warplanes as well. And India is much, much richer and bigger now than Pakistan economically. And Pakistan outperformed the Chinese weapons that people in the military industrial complex world called it kind of China's deep sea military moment. These Chinese airplanes knocked a bunch of western airplanes out of of the sky and cheaper and more effective. So it's like so Pakistan's which was in that case a proxy against India for China, showed that this is not already, this would not necessarily go well for us.

[Ryan Grimm]

90% of all drones are produced in China, right? So how and when you think about the future of warfare which is already arriving, if you look at Ukraine versus Russia and what they were just able to pull off, even though they're much smaller country, much smaller population, much smaller industrial base, what they were able to pull off inside of Russia and I mean a lot of that war is like drone versus drone at this point. And, yeah, we are dramatically behind. Dramatically behind.

[Katherine Townsend]

Over the past six years of making my true crime podcast Hell and Gone, I've learned one thing. No town is too small for murder. I'm Katherine Townsend. I've received hundreds of messages from people across the country begging for help with unsolved murders.

[Lester Holt]

I was calling about the murder of my husband.

[Ryan Grimm]

It's a cold case. They've never found her. And it haunts me to this day.

[Clayton English]

The murder is still out there.

[Katherine Townsend]

Every week on Hell and Gone Murder line, I dig into a new case, bringing the skills I've learned as a journalist and private investigator to ask the questions no one else is asking.

[Ryan Grimm]

Police really didn't care to even try. She was still somebody's mother. She was still somebody's daughter. She was still somebody's sister. There's so many questions that we've never gotten any kind of answers for.

[Katherine Townsend]

If you have a case you'd like me to look into, call the Hell and Gone murder line at 678-744-6145. Listen to Hell and Gone Murderline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Clayton English]

This Pride Month, we are not just celebrating, we're fighting back. I'm George M. Johnson, and my book All Boys Aren't Blue was just named the most banned book in America. If the culture wars have taught me anything, it's that pride is protest. And on my podcast, Fighting Words, we talk to people who use their voices to resist, disrupt, and make our community stronger.

[Lester Holt]

This year, we are showing up and showing out. You need people being like, no, you're not going to tell us what to do.

[Greg Lod]

This regime is coming down on us.

[Ryan Grimm]

And I don't want to just survive.

[Clayton English]

I want to thrive. You'll hear from trailblazers like Bob the drag Queen to freedom Angelica Ross.

[George M. Johnson]

We ready to fight? I'm ready to fight.

[Clayton English]

And Gabrielle Union.

[Lester Holt]

Hi, George.

[Clayton English]

And storytellers with wisdom to spare. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Ryan Grimm]

Your gut, microbiome and those healthy bacteria can actually have positive effects throughout your body. Not just your gut, but your mental health, your metabolism, your immunity, your risk of cancer, heart dise, any disease under the sun.

[Greg Lod]

Yep, you heard right. Probiotics might actually impact everything from your brain to your heart. So what's science and what's just really good marketing? On this episode of Dope Labs, me and Zakiya cut through the hype and get into the real deal behind probiotics, with help from gastroenterologist Dr. Roshi Raj.

[Ryan Grimm]

So, yes, bacteria is definitely having a moment and I'm very excited about that.

[Greg Lod]

From probiotic drinks and gummies to face creams and pillows. Yep, we said pillows. The probiotic boom is, is everywhere. But how much of it actually works and what does it all mean for your gut, your skin and even your mood? Join us on Dope Labs where we break it all down in the lab like only we can listen to Dope Labs on iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Ryan Grimm]

Let's go ahead and transition to the latest with regard to the beautiful bill lot going on here. So Steve Bannon making some interesting comments about the nature of what you would actually need to do if you cared about deficit reduction. And he has been saying for a while now you really need to lift taxes on the rich. Let's take a listen to that.

[Tom Yamas]

Want to stop the dead bomb? Elon and the guys on Capitol Hill, you're going to have to raise taxes. The wealthy can't get an extension of the tax cut. That's got to go the middle class and the working class. That has to be extended and has to be made permanent at 40% the top bracket or 40%, you pick them. That's got to go to 39. Go back to 30, snap back to 39 and a half percent and go to 40%. The math simply doesn't work. There are no doge cuts. Let me repeat this, and this is not USAID. Those are programmatic things. I'm talking about waste, fraud. Where's the fraud in Medicaid, which is where I'm. Where is it? Haven't showed up with any. Has anybody been turned over to DOJ for fraud? The problem with Musk and I said this from the beginning. He gave false hope to this political class who doesn't want to cut anything. The reason if the big beautiful Bill's got all these problems and it has some issues. He drove it because he promised a trillion dollars, ladies and gentlemen, $1 trillion. That got him off the hook. It's time for everybody to grow up, run around. Oh, it's show me where it is. The rescission next week is $9 billion and 2 billion folks is PBS and NPR. Give me a break. Didn't need Doge for that. Been fighting for that one forever. There's $7 billion in there supposedly of, I don't know, fraud on a $7 trillion. He committed to what? Committed to the president states $1 trillion.

[Ryan Grimm]

So, Ryan, his position is basically like, oh, well, the reason the big beautiful bill blows up the deficit is because of Elon. Because they actually took seriously, Trump included, apparently, this idea he was gonna cut 2 trillion or a trillion dollars, which I just. I just can't believe that they were. I just can't accept that they are really that dumb. Like, do you accept that, like, if you just look at the government spend and where it is and what you would need to do were they really. They really thought he was gonna cut a trillion dollars?

[Lester Holt]

I have, as you know, covered Congress for a very long time.

[Ryan Grimm]

Yeah. Tell me. I believe you think they're really, really that dumb.

[Lester Holt]

We are not sending our best.

[Ryan Grimm]

I mean, and he's trying to. So part of it obviously, like, you know, I agree that they should lift the taxes on the rich. And also, by the way, when they say lift taxes, they just mean, like, don't cut taxes as much as is planned to in this bill. But in any case, it is.

[Lester Holt]

I'll say this every time I speak with a member of Congress whose lights are on. It is a revelation to me. It's like, oh, awesome, I found one.

[Ryan Grimm]

You have a working brain.

[Lester Holt]

A Republican, Democrat does. Like, this is somebody who has an idea of what they're talking about.

[Ryan Grimm]

Yeah.

[Lester Holt]

And that is very unusual. That is not the normal member of Congress.

[Ryan Grimm]

And so he's saying effectively, like, that Trump, too, bought this idea that there would be a trillion dollars in cuts, cuts made by Doge, and then they could just go wild in this bill and spend whatever they want, most of which is gigantic tax cut for people who really don't need that tax cut. And that it would be a. Okay. And that they were caught unawares, again, that this wasn't gonna happen. But I mean, also, this also doesn't really hold up to any level of scrutiny either, because by the time this bill is being crafted, it is already abundantly clear that Doge is an utter and complete failure. And he points the thing that you've been pointing to basically, like, okay, if there was fraud, where are the indictments? Give me one instance of one. A single one. Not things you didn't like. Not things that were dei, not departments like USAID that you just don't think should exist. Actual fraud, of which I am quite sure exists within the federal government budget. Not a single instance. Not one.

[Lester Holt]

Right, Right. They would be frog marched in.

[Ryan Grimm]

We would all know every detail.

[Lester Holt]

We'd know their name, we'd know their middle name. It'd be One of those people.

[Ryan Grimm]

Yes.

[Lester Holt]

Like a presidential assassin. And so Elon Musk going all in. It reminded me in the book where there's an anecdote, this Elon biography. I'm sure you remember this, where he plays poker and he has no idea how to play poker. And, and, but he wins, like his first night, he wins a decent amount of money and somebody's like, how did you do that? You don't even know how to play poker. He's like, I just kept going all in constantly. And then when I would lose, I would just buy back in and go all in again. And if you do that and you have unlimited funds and you outlast everyone at the table, you will eventually take all their money. He's right about that. I feel like that's has been his approach to politics. He clearly doesn't know how politics works, but he just keeps going all in. He went all in taking on Boeing and the rest of the kind of rocket companies. And it worked. Huge credit to him. Taking on those incumbent industries and staking a position and then becoming kind of a dominant player. Incredible. And huge risk. Went all in. Then he went all in with Trump putting so much on the line because if he lost, Democrats were like coming for him on a lot of different levels. Went all in. But then he loses because he went all in on Doge. So he's like, oh. And he had no cards, so he loses the whole pile. Now put up this next element. He's going all in against Trump in November next year, we fire all politicians who betrayed the American people. And he's talking about voting for this bill.

[Ryan Grimm]

What is it?

[Lester Holt]

It was a party line vote in the House.

[Ryan Grimm]

I was gonna say all but what? Five Republicans voted for the bill, so be my guest, brother.

[Lester Holt]

Yeah. So now he's saying he's going after all politicians. Now will he do it? I don't know. But saying it is pushing all your chips in.

[Ryan Grimm]

Yeah. And I mean, from my reading of him and his history, biographies, whatever, this is just how he operates. He's one of these, I'm sure you guys probably know people like this who don't feel like they're living unless it's all on the line.

[Lester Holt]

Yes.

[Ryan Grimm]

And he's one of these people, like, if he's not risking everything, complete collapse, humiliation, bankruptcy, then he doesn't feel like. He doesn't feel like he's really alive. And so I've been saying for a few weeks now, I could totally see him doing another face turn, because remember, Elon was Elon and Obama had a great relationship. Obama basically saved both SpaceX and Tesla during his administration. Elon was much more on the sort of Democratic liberal side of the equation, which just shows you these guys, even in his complaints about this bill, it's all about his own interests. He doesn't like that the EV credits were stripped down. I don't like that the EV credits were stripped down either. But he's mad about that. He's mad about the fact that Trump pills pulled his NASA pick, which obviously very important to him with regard to SpaceX. But I could totally see him trying to do a face turn and go back to the other side of the political party. And there would be plenty of people in the Democratic side who would be happy to welcome him back in, at least at the elite level. I think at the grassroots level, once you've done your Roman salute and all the things that he's done and all the things that he said and the way that he has just completely made himself the most toxic figure on the planet to your average normie Democratic voter, I think that is going to be very hard to forgive and forget among the base.

[Lester Holt]

And I think he's also genuinely very concerned about the deficit impact of the bill, the debt impact, because if the United States enters a period of high interest rate service on our debt, that means that both private companies and the federal government are gonna have less money to spend on his Mars mission.

[Ryan Grimm]

Yeah.

[Lester Holt]

So this is in direct competition with his life's mission.

[Ryan Grimm]

And I do think my reading of Elon is that that is the life mission, the making humans interplanetary and like going to Mars, as like ridiculous and absurd as it seems. I do think that that is his life mission and that's why he jumped into government, because he realized it's not something you can do as a private company on your own. You basically need that mission to be backstopped by the treasury of the United States of America. But we have to be like a functioning wealthy nation with the ability to borrow and spend on something like a fantasy mission to Mars. And so I think you're right about that aspect.

[Lester Holt]

I think if he spent. Curious for your take on this, imagine this. Let's say he spends $4 million against, against Mike Lawler, Republican in upstate New York, who is one of the key targets. And he spends 4 million on handful.

[Ryan Grimm]

I mean, Mike Lawler's gonna lose anyway, isn't he?

[Lester Holt]

I don't know. It's gonna be very close. He could hold on, we'll see what the world looks like in a year. But let's say he spends $4 million on 20 different races, 80 million bucks, and helps Democrats win back the House. I think most activist Democrats are instrumental enough. They'd be like, welcome back. But I mean, the level of destruction he did and gleeful destruction with the chainsaw on the stage, just demonstrating such cruelty. The Roman salute, elevating all of these freaks on Twitter, I don't know. Those are in competition. What do you think they. Where do you think they land?

[Ryan Grimm]

I think it depends very much on the kind of intra party fight in 2028, whether you have. Because right now there is so much energy among the base and among the American people more broadly for fighting oligarchy. And he is the symbol of that. And so, I mean, he made himself the symbol. He's the richest man on the planet and he has spent his time in government destroying Social Security, killing kids in Africa. I mean, it really is grotesque. Not to mention the carnival level imagery of him on the stage with the chainsaw and the glee that he took in destroying people's lives. So while I think the elite leaders of the Democratic Party would be happy to welcome him back in and happy to take his money, I think that the Democratic Party base is headed in a more radical, anti billionaire direction. And that is not gonna be something that he would be able to coexist with.

[Lester Holt]

Let's hope. It would be very funny to go, it's already funny that he's going from, we must elect all these guys to save Western civilization.

[Ryan Grimm]

Right.

[Lester Holt]

Two years later, we must throw them all out of office.

[Ryan Grimm]

Right, right. To save Western civilization.

[Lester Holt]

Western civilization was overrated anyway. So Trump is, unsurprisingly, a little bit annoyed by this. Let's roll B3, because it's kind of funny. I think the Elon Musk thing really caught the President by surprise.

[Tom Yamas]

And I hear he is furious. But I think he's so smart to keep his powder dry because it just plays into what critics would have to say. The right can't get out of their own way.

[Lester Holt]

Instead, just, you have a goal. Pass it.

[Tom Yamas]

Elon Musk is not in the Senate or the House. Don't worry about it.

[Lester Holt]

Can I offer a different perspective, Ainsley, as someone who is supportive of the President's agenda, I am upset with Congress right now. I don't blame the President for the big, beautiful bill. I blame Congress because they go to their constituents every single election and they say they're gonna cut spending. Cut, cut, cut, cut, cut, cut, cut. And it doesn't seem like, there's a willingness to do that. But I don't think Elon is anti Maga now or anti the president now.

[Tom Yamas]

He worked so hard, put a lot.

[Lester Holt]

Of stuff on the line to get a lot of wasteful stuff cut, and it doesn't seem like Congress is showing that same.

[Ryan Grimm]

I thought Elon was very respectful in.

[Katherine Townsend]

Some of the original interviews.

[Ryan Grimm]

Just saying, look, we have differences.

[Katherine Townsend]

I don't agree with him on everything.

[Lester Holt]

But this latest comment about calling the.

[Ryan Grimm]

Big, beautiful bill a disgusting abomination. I was shocked to hear him say that. I can understand why the president would not be happy about that. This is someone who worked on his team.

[Lester Holt]

You know, I want to die and come back as. As Donald Trump. This guy, he. If he comes out hard against Elon Musk, the base loves that he did that. If he's mad at Elon Musk but is too afraid to say a word, he's savvy and sophisticated.

[Ryan Grimm]

That's right. Art of the deal.

[Lester Holt]

If he writes a good, big, beautiful bill, then he's a genius for writing a great piece of legislation. If he writes a bad, big, beautiful bill, then it's not his fault. It's actually the people in the House.

[Ryan Grimm]

He was betrayed.

[Lester Holt]

He was betrayed. There is nothing that he could do that would warrant even a second of criticism on that network. It's truly just absolutely phenomenal.

[Ryan Grimm]

I mean, that was Steve Bannon, too, of like, well, it's not Trump's fault.

[Lester Holt]

Bannon still has not come out and said, vote this bill down. Which he, despite the fact that Bannon is important to know, enormously critical of it. And I love hearing him rip it apart. But he has so far stopped short of the logical conclusion, which is, then don't do it.

[Ryan Grimm]

Bannon is a politician. He realizes that he needs his best chance of getting whatever things he wants and having access to power is by being on Trump's good side. He knows what that means.

[Lester Holt]

That's why he's so good at never criticizing it.

[Ryan Grimm]

It's always somebody else's fault. It's never. Elon promised these things and didn't deliver, and it's his fault. And you relied on his ability to find these cuts, and he didn't do it. So it's ultimately his fault. And you see the same kind of game going on there with the Fox and Friends. People are trying to make sense of this new world where Elon and Trump are at odds with one another.

[Lester Holt]

He did criticize Trump on the H1B. Bannon did criticize Trump on the H1B front directly. And every time he would say, we love you, you're the greatest. We've disagreed with you on this for a long time. And I remember there was this Bannon interview that Bannon did when he was just a radio host in 2015 with Trump, and they were arguing about H1BS.

[Ryan Grimm]

Well, it looks like Bannon ultimately won that fight because at the time, Trump rhetorically backed the. Yes, we saw support H1B side of things. But in practice, in terms of the policy, it's been Stephen Miller's policy agenda. And obviously they're going aggressively after foreign students and visa holders. So ultimately.

[Lester Holt]

So he was savvy enough to know he could criticize Trump. Not personally, just like on the policy.

[Ryan Grimm]

Yeah.

[Lester Holt]

And that he would probably win. Cuz he had Stephen Miller, who Trump told, I think it was NBZ and uae. He told some Emirates, some leader, and he's like, this is the guy who runs my administration. That's how he introduced Stephen Miller.

[Ryan Grimm]

That's right. I think there's a lot to that.

[Lester Holt]

Yeah. Take the man at his work.

[Ryan Grimm]

Yeah. You see who was calling the shots in terms of speaking for the boss. There's some weirdness around the deficit conversation that's going on on the Republican side because you have people like Rand Paul, Ron Johnson who are upset about the amount that the bill blows up the deficit. But the reason the bill blows up the deficit is because of these gigantic tax cuts for the rich that they ideologically support. And so there's. We can put the numbers up on the screen here. This is a chart that they assembled, Steve Ratner actually assembled, but I think is useful to look at that shows how much this does blow up the deficit compared to other large packages in recent years. I mean, the bipartisan infrastructure bill is nowhere close. But even if you look at the American rescue plan, which is the first Covid package, the Cares. Sorry, which was the second one, the CARES act, which was the first one, the original Tax Cuts and Jobs act, which was the original giant giveaway to the rich. This blows these out of the water. But they can't really say that because they're supposed to be really ideologically committed to the tax cuts and also because they're supposed to be really ideologically opposed to the CBO and scoring the tax cuts in anything approaching a reasonable way and not just pretending tax cuts are fairy dust and they make deficits magically go away. Instead, they've been honing in on, well, it increases the debt ceiling. And that's what we really are opposed to. So what do you make of some of those dynamics there?

[Lester Holt]

Yeah. It's cowardly because the debt ceiling is not a real thing. It's a manufactured product of an old, very old way of thinking about financing the government. And it's ridiculous. And I've said I gotta be consistent here. It's a ridiculous thing.

[Ryan Grimm]

Yes. It should go away.

[Lester Holt]

The Congress appropriates money and authorizes the Fed or the government to borrow certain amounts of money to pay for particular programs and to do particular spending. They do that. And then we throw in this extra step where you have to then also authorize the limit on which the debt can be generated.

[Ryan Grimm]

And no other country does this.

[Lester Holt]

Right. You already did all those things. You passed all those things. Get rid of this thing. And so.

[Ryan Grimm]

So.

[Lester Holt]

But it lands for voters. Cuz it's one thing and it's one number. Like you wanna borrow $5 trillion. That's crazy. That's an insane number. And so for a politician it's easier for them. I think. Yeah. To just. To just latch onto that. Did we just have the Russ vote?

[Ryan Grimm]

Yeah. Put B6 up on the screen. No, we haven't talked about this yet. We've got a Russ vote tweet here. His spin.

[Lester Holt]

OMB director. This is the brains of this operation. Like this is the real revolutionary.

[Ryan Grimm]

This is the Project 2025 guy.

[Lester Holt]

Yeah.

[Ryan Grimm]

You know he's the one. What did he say? He thinks federal government workers need to be put through trauma or something like that.

[Lester Holt]

Yes. Like he is. This guy is hardcore. He and Stephen Miller together being basically the two most powerful people in this government is just a startling turn of events over the last hundred years. Like these are absolutely revolutionary. Gentleman. So he writes here. OMB just reviewed the new CBO score of the one big beautiful bill. It confirms what we knew about the bill at House passage. The bill reduces deficits by 1.4 trillion over 10 years. When you adjust for CBO's one big gimmick not using a realistic current policy baseline. It includes $1.7 trillion in mandatory savings, the most in history. If you care about deficits and debt. This bill dramatically improves the fiscal picture. And so he does two things here. One is he says it's not fair to use the CBO's approach. These tax cuts were never going to expire. So we should not assume they were going to expire and then count that against us. Except the problem is Wall street and the bond markets. They think about it much more closely to the CBO that the CBO and the Bond markets agree. Therefore, the bond market has a say in this, and that's where the movements in interest rates are going to come from. The second thing he does is he bullies OMB into giving him the numbers that he wants, like he runs the omb, and he's going to start with a conclusion and demand that they generate it. And this I know from sources inside omb, and there's been plenty of reporting about this. And so what he told them basically is you need to conclude that cutting all of these taxes is going to produce X amount of economic growth, which will then lead to more tax revenue, which will then cut the deficit.

[Ryan Grimm]

Right?

[Lester Holt]

Maybe it will. But there's no reason to think over all of the years that this has been tried that that is what will actually happen in practice.

[Ryan Grimm]

No, of course not. Because they'll just like, you know, rich people will not. You said this. Well, it certainly will not increase the real economy. There'll be more share buybacks and things of that nature, more financial engineering, you know, more wealth inequality. There'll be all of that for sure. But yeah, I mean, it's. And the other thing is here, in terms of the gimmick, what he's saying with the Tax Cuts and Jobs act and what he's talking about with the policy baseline is when they passed that bill, part of what they did to monkey around with the numbers and make sure that it didn't say an even more gigantic number that was being added to the debt and the deficit was that they had a technical sunsetting of these rates. And now you say, oh, we never intended those rates to go away. So you shouldn't now, you shouldn't count it in. So they didn't want to count it in the first time, and now they don't want to count it in now either. That's the fuzzy math that they're engaged in here, Ryan.

[Lester Holt]

Right. And so Russ Vogt testified yesterday in Congress about the dire consequences of not passing the big beautiful bill. Let's roll this. If HR1 fails, if whatever comes back from the Senate fails to get to the desk of the president and signed into law, what happens at the end of this year? I think we'll have a recession. I think we will be economic storm clouds will be very dark. I think we'll have a 60% tax increase on the American people. And just to, if I could answer Congressman Hoyer's question or statement, the notion that this bill, we've been actually criticized unfairly for, on, on the reconciliation bill for the fact that it is all mandatory savers. I mean, you said, look, we need to address the mandatory side of the House. There's $1.7 trillion in mandatory savers on the reconciliation bill. Do we need to do things on the appropriation side, the discretionary side? Yes, that's what we're here to talk about with rescissions and the, the bill that we've, the budget that we've sent up to you. But we have to get back to what we did in 1997, where we had for the first time, substantial mandatory reforms around not just cutting people and just getting people off programs, but reforms, a work requirement. We're using the same model that Bill Clinton signed into law, and we think it will have incredible impact on not just these programs, but giving people dignity of work. And we're not going to be ashamed by that mandatory means. Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, those types of projects. When Bill Clinton and the Republican House and Senate did this last time, the way that they saved money was by kicking people off programs. So he's saying right there, we should do it like Bill Clinton did. And Bill Clinton also did work requirements in order to kick people off the. Off the programs.

[Ryan Grimm]

CBO says that if this bill goes into law, 10 million fewer Americans will have health insurance coverage, mostly from getting kicked off of Medicaid. But there are also some changes to the Affordable Care act and Medicare that will lead to losses in coverage. So you're talking about 10 million more Americans losing their health insurance coverage in order to fund giant tax cut for the rich, not to mention cuts to SNAP and food stamps as well.

[Lester Holt]

And unfortunately for all of us, those people don't stop getting sick, having heart attacks, having diabetes, having health complications that need to be treated. So you don't actually save money out of the entire economy.

[Ryan Grimm]

Right.

[Lester Holt]

You're just moving it around. And it's cheaper to give people Medicaid as a society.

[Ryan Grimm]

Yes.

[Lester Holt]

Than it is to treat them.

[Ryan Grimm]

Yeah, that's in the emergency room. Why we have the most expensive health care, you know, regime in the, you know, in the developing world. In the world. Because we have these little piecemeal and you gotta pay and, you know, millions of people don't get coverage at all. And it ends up being incredibly pennywise and pound foolish because at the end of the day, what you end up paying for is the most expensive type of care where people don't go to the doctor, they don't take preventative measures because they can't afford to. And then you're at the emergency room in crisis, which is obviously terrible for human beings and also, you know, terrible for the budget.

[Lester Holt]

And also because as the Supreme Court struck down the Medicaid expansion in Obamacare, that left it up to each individual state for whether or not they would expand Medicaid. Most of those red states had to be pushed by the people in the states. So a bunch of red states only expanded Medicaid via constitutional amendment. They would put it on the ballot. The people went out and voted for it. We thought, okay, this is over. Like, everybody's fought for this, and now the Medicaid expansion is in there. But you get a revolutionary, like, vote in there, and he's going to then cut the Medicaid federal match that goes to these red states. But look what happened. They put it in their constitutions. So the red states don't actually have the option of dialing it back. Like, they have to spend this because they agreed to do it in their constitution. So now the red state has to either raise taxes or they have to cut spending somewhere else to meet their constitutional obligations. So who's he screwing here, right?

[Ryan Grimm]

A lot of red states. A lot of. A lot of maga. Steve Bannon would say yes. All right, let's go ahead and turn to Israel.

[Katherine Townsend]

Over the past six years of making my true crime podcast Hell and Gone, I've learned one thing. No town is too small for murder. I'm Katherine Townsend. I've received hundreds of messages from people across the country begging for help with unsolved murders.

[Lester Holt]

I was calling about the murder of my husband.

[Ryan Grimm]

It's a cold case. They've never found her. And it haunts me to this day.

[Lester Holt]

The murderer is still out there.

[Katherine Townsend]

Every week on Hell and Gone Murder Line, I dig into a new case, bringing the skills I've learned as a journalist and private investigator to ask the questions no one else is asking.

[Ryan Grimm]

Police really didn't care to even try. She was still somebody's mother. She was still somebody's daughter. She was still somebody's sister. There's so many questions that we've never gotten any kind of answers for.

[Katherine Townsend]

If you have a case you'd like me to look into, call the Helen Gone murder line at 678-744-6-145. Listen to Helen Gone Murder line on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Ryan Grimm]

Your gut microbiome and those healthy bacteria can actually have positive effects throughout your body. Not just your gut, but your mental health, your metabolism, your immunity, your risk of cancer, heart disease, almost any Disease under the sun.

[Greg Lod]

Yep, you heard right. Probiotics might actually impact everything from your brain to your heart. So what science and what's just really good marketing? On this episode of Dope Labs, me and Zakiya cut through the hype and get into the real deal behind probiotics, with help from gastroenterologist Dr. Roshi Raj.

[Ryan Grimm]

So, yes, bacteria is definitely having a moment, and I'm very excited about that.

[Greg Lod]

From probiotic drinks and gummies to face creams and pillows. Yep, we said pillows. The probiotic boom is everywhere. But how much of it actually works? And what does it all mean for your gut, your skin, and even your mood? Join us on Dope Labs, where we break it all down in the lab like only we can listen to Dope Labs on iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Clayton English]

This Pride Month, we are not just celebrating, we're fighting back. I'm George M. Johnson, and my book All Boys aren't Blue was just named the most banned book in America. If the culture wars have taught me anything, it's that pride is protest. And on my podcast, Fighting Words, we talk to people who use their voices to resist, disrupt, and make our community stronger.

[Lester Holt]

This year, we are showing up and showing out. You need people being like, no, you're not going to tell us what to do.

[Greg Lod]

This regime is coming down on us.

[Ryan Grimm]

And I don't want to just survive. I want to thrive.

[Clayton English]

You'll hear hear from trailblazers like Bob the drag queen to freedom Angelica Ross.

[George M. Johnson]

We ready to fight? I'm ready to fight.

[Clayton English]

And Gabrielle Union.

[Lester Holt]

Hi, George.

[Clayton English]

And storytellers with wisdom to spare. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Lester Holt]

So NBC's Andrea Mitchell has been attending the State Department press briefings frequently since the Trump administration began and has been pressing Tammy Bruce particularly on Israel's genocidal campaign in Gaza as well as its starvation campaign and the collapse of its aid distribution project. Here's an example, just from yesterday, of the way that she's been going back and forth with Tammy Bruce.

[George M. Johnson]

Andrea, let me just follow up on that because no one should jump to conclusions. We all have reporters on the ground. Israel has not let U. S Based reporters in, but we have partners there and staff members there who have been courageously there since October 7th doing this job. And unlike other war zones in Ukraine, in Iraq and elsewhere where US Reporters have always been in Vietnam, this is the first conflict where we have not been able to go in except with IDF escorts. What he said was not just misleading reports in the fog of war. We all know what happens in some instances, and we're not sure of these cases. But to suggest that the press reports fostered anti Semitism which led to the death of the two embassy people here in Washington and to other anti Semitic attacks in this country is a hyperbole beyond what is normal diplomatic practice. And as a journalist and as a member of this press corps, I think it's deeply offensive for someone who has. Well, I don't speak for Ambassador Huckbee. I understand, Andrea, I know, I understand. And I understand the depth of your work and the work. Andrea, I understand your work, the depth of your work, the work of people who cover war and the dangers that exist. I don't speak for Ambassador Huckabee. I'm not going to parse what he has said, but what I can tell you is that inevitably, as we have all watched, the kind of Jew hatred and anti Semitic desperatism that has been promulgated through media has been nonstop even after October 7th, and that if you weren't involved in that and others who are not involved in that, that's not who he's speaking about. I would argue that it would be naive to suggest that the Jew hatred that whether it's through social media, through fake news, through the rhetoric regarding Israel through the years has not developed or, or perpetuated anti Semitism. Distribution of food because certainly I'm just saying that there is widespread criticism and actual self criticism, the consulting group that was supporting the foundation, which is backed out of it, that the distribution system was not as professional as either the U.N. excuse me, or there was a program and other people who are used to working in this area and that there should have been more distribution points where people would not have been told to line up. Andrea, again, no, no, you know what? But these questions now, these are, these are critiques of an environment that we've talked about regularly, every day, every time I'm up here, it is, it is this critique of, I say 7 million meals have been distributed, but you know, it would have been, but not for you. It should have been those guys over there or these people over here. Over the last three years with the UN or the World Food Program, no one has distributed 7 million meals to Gaza. Many, many hundreds of thousands of people in Israel, as well as the Hamas, the families of the people being held by Hamas are protesting this food decision. The former defense minister criticized these decisions. There's plenty of internal, well I'm sorry, Andrea. Andrea. I understand. I understand.

[Lester Holt]

So two different avenues there to unpack. The first one, she's standing up for journalists saying it's unfair to say that the media is responsible for the embassy staffers getting killed.

[Ryan Grimm]

Yeah.

[Lester Holt]

What do you make of that? Back and forth?

[Ryan Grimm]

I mean, first of all, it's just extraordinary that it's Andrea Mitchell in there. And, you know, even this administration, like, is much more deferential to her than they would be, like, maybe to you, for example.

[Lester Holt]

We appreciate the depth of your work.

[Ryan Grimm]

Yeah, we appreciate.

[Lester Holt]

It's 79.

[Ryan Grimm]

I mean, like, God bless her for being in there. She doesn't have to be doing any of this. So it's kind of wild to see that. And I think it's emblematic of. You see her, you see Piers Morgan, you see German and French and other leaders who have gotten to a point where, okay, this is ridiculous. And the media point, Andrea Mitchell, obviously, is like a mainstream media institution. The idea that they have not been sufficiently pro Israel is so utterly preposterous as to not even be worth, like, dignifying arguing. Like, it's just so absurd. Even to this day, the type of headlines you cover, the Washington Post thing, where they put out this obsequious apology because they only had three witnesses to this massacre. And oh, how dare we not give enough credence to Israel's complaint.

[Lester Holt]

CNN came out last night with 17 witnesses. Wow, 17 eyewitnesses that saying that it was Israel. And the Washington Post still, we're so sorry we didn't give proper weight to this. This Israeli denial of the thing that everybody saw happen.

[Ryan Grimm]

Yeah, So, I mean, so I think the fact that you have even an Andrea Mitchell who's in there, like, this is ridiculous bullshit and going back and forth. I think that is very indicative of the moment that we're in right now.

[Lester Holt]

And the second set of questions goes to the first point. It's not the media that has created this Gaza Humanitarian foundation crisis. It's Israel that produced this. It's not the messenger that you need to shoot. It's the IDF that is defending God's humanitarian foundation that is shooting all the people who are coming to get aid. And you keep seeing the administration and Israeli supporters saying that they delivered 7 million meals. She says, what do you want from us? Nobody had figured out how to get aid in. And now all of a sudden we've gotten 7 million meals in this week. And it's like, well, first of all, that's not true. That nobody had figured out how to get aid.

[Ryan Grimm]

Yeah, they had quite an effective distribution system.

[Lester Holt]

Yeah, the aid agencies were getting aid in. It was hard for them.

[Ryan Grimm]

They weren't getting shot.

[Lester Holt]

It was hard for them to get through the crossings because Israelis would sometimes allow no trucks, sometimes 10, sometimes 100. But once they got in, you know, aid was getting distributed and you weren't seeing chaotic scenes, but now you are. And so she keeps highlighting this 7 million figure, but if you do the math that, there's 2 million people plus in Gaza. That means that's. And they're talking about over a week. You know, seven million for a week, that's three and a half meals per week per person. And there is no aid coming from anywhere else. So it's not as if this is just supplementing what people are already getting. Yeah, like that's what people are getting.

[Ryan Grimm]

And that's on average, if you take their numbers at face value.

[Lester Holt]

If you take your numbers at face.

[Ryan Grimm]

Value, that's being the most charitable to them as you possibly could be.

[Lester Holt]

Eight agencies say you shouldn't. And because of the way they're chaotically delivering it, the strong are getting most of it. So maybe some people are getting 20 meals a week and most everybody else is getting zero, and they're not the kind of nutritious meals. Jeremy Lofredo for Dropsite News just went to an UNRWA warehouse in Jordan. We should. Maybe we can play that clip next week. And he tours it and there's all this food expiring, but it's very precisely regimented for people who are facing malnutrition and for people who are only getting this in their diet. And so it's very precisely formulated to have to get all of the calories you need, all of the balanced diet you need. If you look at what Gaza Humanitarian foundation is bringing in, it's like pasta, right? It's not what aid organizations who've been doing this for a very long time would put together if it was up to them. So meanwhile, the isolation and the political problems facing the Netanyahu government, both internationally and domestically, continue. We can put this next next element up on the screen. French dock workers are refusing to load machine gun ammo destined for Israel's army. This comes as Spain is cutting military contracts, as there's a lot of pressure on the government of Ireland to abide by its own laws, which say that weapons are not supposed to be shipped through their airspace. And so. So at every kink in the system, increasingly there's going to be pressure.

[Ryan Grimm]

I mean, here's what I would say. I think Chris Hedges was saying this to Hasan this week. The leaders are not going to do like we're this far along. The leaders are not going to end this genocide. So it is up to actions like this to cut off the supply. And so to see these French dock workers standing in solidarity, it's quite significant. And we need much more action like that around the world.

[Lester Holt]

Meanwhile, a very interesting coalition of bedfellows is coming together to put pressure on Netanyahu. So the Haredi Party is threatening to kind of dissolve the Netanyahu coalition. This is, you know, the leading party for the ultra Orthodox section of the Israeli public. And it's all over whether or not kind of Heredi men and women, you know, ultra Orthodox men and women would have to serve just like everybody else. Every other Jewish citizen of Israel, you know, has to serve in the idf. And what's fascinating about this, and Amir Tabon and also in Haaretz has a very useful kind of analysis that can explain how this, how the politics of this are all shaking up. But basically there's a fundamental contradiction that can't be resolved. One is that Netanyahu Smoticz Ben GVIR want a never ending war to realize what they see as a once in several generations opportunity to fully expel the Palestinians from Gaza. That's on the one hand. On the other hand is the material problem of not enough soldiers to carry out this genocidal task. Reconciling those two requires the ultra Orthodox. There's no other way to get there. Yeah, requires the ultra Orthodox to participate in the military and they don't want to do that. So what they are now, they're not saying out loud that this is what they're doing, but there is a belief among some in the ultra Orthodox community that if the war ends, the pressure on them to participate in the military goes away. Because the pressure is being driven by the war.

[Ryan Grimm]

Right.

[Lester Holt]

And so a lot of people are in Israel saying this is an act. Netanyahu is not falling because of the Gaza war. He's falling because of this internal dispute within Israeli society, an internal religious dispute. And that's true on a surface level, but it's only true because the war is making it something that can't be avoided.

[Ryan Grimm]

That's right. And we can put Shailel's tweet here up on the screen he's talking about. Netanyahu was apparently recorded saying that the reason he fired Defense Minister Yoav Galant and Chief of Staff Hirsi Halevi were because they were obstacles to allowing Haredi men that exemption from the army. This was a recording appeared on Channel 13, Netanyahu saying, We need to save not only the state of Israel, but also the Torah world. That is what I believe in. God willing, that is what will be done to do this. We need time to pass the law properly so it cannot be challenged. The law allowing this exemption, we had huge obstacles that we removed. You know, when the Defense Minister is against you, the Chief of Staff is against you, you can't move forward. Now we can. So, you know, exposing sort of how critical this fault line within Israeli society is. And the particular issue right now obviously is military service. But there is a broader demographic, significant longer term demographic issue, which the ultra Orthodox have the largest families. So much of the demographics of the state are shifting towards being ultra Orthodox but don't participate in the military.

[Lester Holt]

They basically don't work.

[Ryan Grimm]

Don't work. Yeah. And so the state really supports them in the US lingo, they're the ultimate welfare queens. And if you have a shrinking population that is of the more liberal, in Israeli context, secular variety to support this growing ultra Orthodox population, you're going to have long term, very significant demographic issues, so long as you continue to deny basic rights to Palestinians who also have large families and perfectly willing to work. But that's off the table as a solution, apparently.

[Lester Holt]

Right. And right. Which before October 7, Palestinians made up a huge portion of the labor force in Israel, crossing mostly west bank, but also Gaza as well. And there have been efforts to bring in Indian workers and so on that haven't worked remotely. Haven't worked remotely as well. The end of the Lebanon conflict in the sense of having manpower in Lebanon bought Netanyahu some time. It is classic Netanyahu that he doesn't have a solution to this irreconcilable problem. And so he's just trying to punt.

[Ryan Grimm]

It forward, just trying to push it.

[Lester Holt]

Off just one more week, one more day, one more week.

[Ryan Grimm]

I mean, that's worked for him so far.

[Lester Holt]

So far.

[Ryan Grimm]

Last thing, let's go ahead and show this extraordinary footage, Ryan, and maybe you can explain what we're seeing here. Posted by drop site news of these two men who recorded themselves trying to obtain food and coming under fire from the IDF machine guns firing over their heads here.

[Lester Holt]

Yeah. As you can hear in the, in the background, this is. These are Israel, these are gunshots. Let's be very careful here in our wording because we don't want to say anything that gets the IDF upset. These are Gunshots coming from the Israeli positions. Bullets are emerging from Israeli weapons, but we can't know.

[Ryan Grimm]

Let's allow an investigation to play out before we figure out what really happened.

[Lester Holt]

Here, we need an investigation to figure out how it is that the bullet exited the Israeli weapons.

[Ryan Grimm]

I bet Hamas tricked him into it.

[Lester Holt]

Yeah. And forwarded itself towards Palestinians who were seeking this aid. Yeah. This is just another massacre, another debacle at an aid distribution site where they tell everybody come at this time, and, you know, basically, first come, first serve.

[Ryan Grimm]

Yeah.

[Lester Holt]

So, of course, when you have millions of people starving, you get chaos and then they shoot at people.

[Ryan Grimm]

And I believe they have, what, four distribution sites set up previously, during times when there was a more fully operational aid distribution network. You're talking about hundreds of sites scattered throughout the Gaza Strip. Now you have four sites in particular locations. It's a literal Hunger Game situation where if you were strong enough to trek the miles and miles, you need to make it to one of those distribution sites and then to basically fight your fellow Palestinian. Fellow Palestinians in order to grab a box of this not at all nutritious stuff and brave being fired upon. Those bullets exiting Israeli weapons, however that occurred, that's what they've set up here. And it is such a brutal and horrific and unconscionable system that even the Boston Consulting Group has decided this is too much for them. And we, of course, originally had the American mercenary who was at the head of this thing. He dropped out before it even was put into place, because he was like, jesus, this is beyond. This is bad. This is beyond what I am even willing to do. And now you have this completely soulless group of consultants who have also said, okay, we can't be involved with the quote, unquote, Gaza Humanitarian Foundation.

[Lester Holt]

Yeah. And they claim that they were doing it pro bono. Then there's. It's like. Actually, there's reporting that, no, they're. They're getting millions of dollars a month or million dollars a week or whatever it was. We'll see. But, yeah, so it's. Yeah, it's an absolute hell on Earth. It's like Squid games. It's like.

[Ryan Grimm]

Yeah.

[Lester Holt]

I mean, you go back and listen to what these guys are putting up with to try to get, you know, a little bit of pasta in a box.

[Ryan Grimm]

The video of the American mercenaries who were there, who were like, oh, here they come. And it's so disturbing. I was saying this to you before the show. There is no way that this policy unfolds of complete genocide and humiliation and dehumanization can unfold without all of the players involved just fundamentally not really believing Palestinians are human beings, which is why they get so mad at Ms. Rachel for humanizing them.

[Lester Holt]

And then for the people who win the squid game and get one box, they smile, they take a picture of them and post it on Twitter and all these pro Israel accounts share it. Be like, look at what other adversary is feeding their enemies.

[Ryan Grimm]

And Tammy Bruce goes up and brags.

[Lester Holt]

Oh, look at all the 7 million meals.

[Ryan Grimm]

How can you complain about this?

[Lester Holt]

Yeah, you complain we're not giving them food now. You complain that we're giving them food. We can't do anything right.

[Katherine Townsend]

Over the years of making my true crime podcast Hell and Gone, I've learned no town is too small for murder. I'm Katherine Townsend. I've heard from hundreds of people across the country with an unsolved murder in their community.

[Ryan Grimm]

I was calling about the murder of my husband.

[Clayton English]

The murder is still out there.

[Katherine Townsend]

Each week I investigate a new case. If there is a case we should hear about. Call 678-744-6145. Listen to Hell and Gone Murderline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Lester Holt]

I know a lot of cops. 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. This is Absolute Season one, Taser Incorporated.

[George M. Johnson]

I get right back there and it's bad.

[Lester Holt]

Listen to Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Clayton English.

[Ryan Grimm]

I'm Greg Lod.

[Lester Holt]

And this is season two of the War on Drugs podcast. Last year, a lot of the problems of the drug war. This year, a lot of the biggest names in music and sports. This kind of star studded a little bit, man.

[Tom Yamas]

We met them at their home homes.

[Lester Holt]

We met them at the recording studios.

[Ryan Grimm]

Stories matter, and it brings a face to them.

[Clayton English]

It makes it real.

[Tom Yamas]

It really does.

[Ryan Grimm]

It makes it real.

[Lester Holt]

Listen to new episodes of the War on Drugs Podcast, Season 2 on the.

[Greg Lod]

Iheartradio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.

[Katherine Townsend]

This is an iHeart podcast.