7/2/25: Senate Passes BBB, Trump Floats Arresting Zohran, Alligator Alcatraz, Gaza Ceasefire & MORE!

Summary

Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar – July 2, 2025

In this episode of Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar, hosts Krystal Ball and Saagar Enjeti delve into a whirlwind of pressing political issues, including the Senate's passage of a significant bipartisan bill, President Trump's provocative actions and statements, escalating tensions in Gaza, and contentious immigration policies. The discussion is enriched with notable quotes and sharp analyses, providing listeners with a comprehensive overview of the current political landscape.

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1. Senate Passes the Big Beautiful Bill (BBB)

The episode kicks off with the Senate's approval of the ambitious Big Beautiful Bill (BBB), which narrowly passed with a tie-breaking vote from J.D. Vance. Krystal highlights the bill's contents and the implications of its passage.

Krystal (05:27): "The yeas are 50, the nays are 50. The Senate being evenly divided, the vice president votes in the affirmative. The bill as amended is passed."

Saagar critiques the bill, emphasizing that while it promises massive tax cuts, most benefits skew towards the wealthy, undermining middle-class relief and exacerbating fiscal challenges.

Saagar (11:33): "These tax cuts are disproportionately benefiting wealthy Americans. It doesn't mean that middle class isn't getting tax cuts, but the majority are favoring the affluent."

2. President Trump's Threats and Alligator Alcatraz

A significant portion of the discussion centers on President Trump's recent tour of the controversial Alligator Alcatraz detention facility and his threatening remarks towards political figures.

Trump (27:55): "We don't need a communist in this country, but if we have one, I'm going to be watching over him very carefully on behalf of the nation."

Krystal and Saagar analyze the symbolism and real implications of Trump's rhetoric, debating whether his threats indicate a genuine move towards authoritarianism or mere political posturing.

Saagar (47:50): "We're dealing with an administration that flirts with authoritarianism. The threat to prosecute CNN is a troubling sign of intimidation."

3. Feud Between Elon Musk and Donald Trump

The hosts explore the escalating tension between Tesla CEO Elon Musk and President Trump, particularly regarding subsidies and the future of clean energy mandates.

Trump (28:50): "Elon can lose a lot more than that. We might have to put Doge on Elon."

Saagar points out Musk's reliance on federal subsidies and his concerns about the administration's stance on clean energy, linking it to broader economic and environmental policies.

Saagar (30:41): "Elon's concerns about subsidy cuts are not just business-related; they're tied to his ventures like SpaceX and the AI race. Cutting subsidies threatens his ambitious projects."

4. Immigration Enforcement and ICE Policies

A heated segment discusses the Trump administration's stringent immigration policies, including the rapid construction of detention facilities and the aggressive actions of ICE agents.

Saagar (43:40): "ICE is actively arresting people at their court dates, turning the process into an expedited removal system, which is deeply problematic."

Krystal emphasizes the human cost of these policies, questioning the morality and practicality of mass deportations and the construction of facilities like Alligator Alcatraz.

Krystal (25:51): "These policies are not just numbers; they're people's lives being torn apart. This is self-destructive legislation."

5. Gaza Ceasefire Negotiations

The conversation shifts to the volatile situation in Gaza, discussing the recent ceasefire agreement brokered by President Trump and its uncertain effectiveness amidst ongoing violence.

Trump (70:54): "Israel has agreed to the necessary conditions to finalize the 60-day ceasefire. We hope Hamas takes this deal because it will not get better, it will only get worse."

Krystal and Saagar scrutinize the ceasefire's viability, noting the lack of confirmation from Israeli officials and the simultaneous escalation of violence in targeted areas.

Saagar (75:14): "The situation in Gaza is deteriorating despite the ceasefire announcement. Attacks on journalist hubs like seaside cafes indicate ongoing instability."

6. Kirsten Gillibrand's Apology to Zoran Mamdani

In a surprising turn, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand issues an apology to mayoral candidate Zoran Mamdani after falsely accusing him of referencing global jihad.

Krystal (59:57): "Gillibrand's apology highlights the deepening divide and the erosion of nuanced political discourse."

Saagar discusses the implications of such mischaracterizations and the broader impact on political integrity and discourse.

Saagar (60:38): "Mislabeling Mamdani's statements as references to global jihad not only undermines honest political debate but also fuels divisiveness."

7. Gavin Newsom and the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA)

Gavin Newsom's recent actions to roll back the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) are examined, linking them to the broader YIMBY (Yes In My Backyard) movement aimed at streamlining infrastructure projects.

Krystal (62:54): "Newsom's remarks indicate a shift towards prioritizing development over environmental safeguards, aligning with the YIMBY mindset."

Saagar critiques the potential consequences of dismantling CEQA, arguing that without addressing the underlying political and economic structures, such reforms offer only temporary relief.

Saagar (64:24): "Streamlining CEQA might expedite projects like solar farms, but without restructuring the political economy, wealthy interests will find new ways to block essential infrastructure."

8. Israel-Gaza Conflict and International Responses

The hosts provide updates on international diplomatic efforts to stabilize the Israel-Gaza conflict, highlighting President Trump's involvement in ceasefire negotiations and the intricate power dynamics at play.

Saagar (75:14): "Trump's involvement in the ceasefire reflects ongoing international efforts, but the lack of concrete results underscores the complexity of the conflict."

Krystal and Saagar emphasize the humanitarian crisis unfolding in Gaza, questioning the effectiveness of political maneuvers that fail to address the core issues.

Krystal (71:49): "The attacks on civilian hubs like cafes are indicative of an escalating humanitarian disaster that political talks have yet to mitigate."

9. Pentagon's Missile Shipments and Defense Prioritization

A segment discusses the Pentagon's decision to halt shipments of Patriot missiles to Ukraine, citing the depletion of U.S. defense stockpiles, and the ensuing debate over defense priorities.

Saagar (75:56): "Halting missile shipments to Ukraine to replenish U.S. defenses raises critical questions about our commitment and strategic priorities."

Krystal critiques the administration's dual approach of supporting international allies while neglecting domestic defense needs.

Krystal (77:08): "Prioritizing foreign aid over our own military readiness is a short-sighted strategy that jeopardizes national security."

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Conclusion

Throughout the episode, Krystal and Saagar offer incisive commentary on the intertwining of domestic policies and international affairs, underscored by their critical examination of political rhetoric and legislative actions. Their discussion sheds light on the complexities of governance, the ethical implications of political decisions, and the ever-evolving landscape of American politics.

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Notable Quotes:

• Krystal (05:27): "The yeas are 50, the nays are 50. The Senate being evenly divided, the vice president votes in the affirmative. The bill as amended is passed."

• Saagar (11:33): "These tax cuts are disproportionately benefiting wealthy Americans. It doesn't mean that middle class isn't getting tax cuts, but the majority are favoring the affluent."

• Trump (27:55): "We don't need a communist in this country, but if we have one, I'm going to be watching over him very carefully on behalf of the nation."

• Krystal (25:51): "These policies are not just numbers; they're people's lives being torn apart. This is self-destructive legislation."

• Saagar (64:24): "Streamlining CEQA might expedite projects like solar farms, but without restructuring the political economy, wealthy interests will find new ways to block essential infrastructure."

• Saagar (75:56): "Halting missile shipments to Ukraine to replenish U.S. defenses raises critical questions about our commitment and strategic priorities."

Transcript

[Sager]

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[Krystal]

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[Sager]

Hey guys, Sager and Krystal here.

[Unknown]

Independent media just played a truly massive role in this election and we are so excited about what that means for the future of this show.

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We need your help to build the future of independent news media and we hope to see you@breaking points.com.

[Unknown]

All right, happy Wednesday. Welcome to Breaking Points, everybody. Emily, how you doing?

[Sager]

We won't bore you with the details of our travel, but Ryan had a literal planes, trains and automobile journey this morning, so if we're a little late, I got in like 1am because flights.

[Unknown]

Were canceled across the storms on the East Coast Tried to keep us out of the studio this morning.

[Sager]

Yeah.

[Unknown]

But like Murkowski, they buckled in the end and here we are.

[Sager]

This was just like Lisa Murkowski and Ryan, you may notice, is what we call on the show raw dogging. He does not have a laptop.

[Unknown]

I did not actually travel with my laptop this time for the first time ever. And I never made it home because I flew straight to Richmond after my flight was canceled, took a train over to D.C. emily picked me up at the station. Here we are.

[Sager]

It's been a wild morning. So our apologies if we're a little late, but we wanted to be here, so. So we have a big show, lots of crazy news. The big beautiful bill passed the senate yesterday and J.D. vance cast the tie breaking vote. So we have some information on what's actually in that bill and what's going to happen now that it heads to the House of Representatives. Donald Trump wants it on his desk by Friday because that's the 4th of July and that is the deadline that he and Republicans set for themselves. So we will break it all down. Trump did a tour of, quote, Alligator Alcatraz, which I was at when I.

[Unknown]

Was down in Florida.

[Sager]

Were you actually? That's right. You covered the protests.

[Unknown]

Yeah, I went down to Alligator Alcatraz before it open and saw the trucks barreling in and there are hundreds of people out there protesting. We'll talk about it in the segment. It's quite something.

[Sager]

Yeah. Gavin Newsom has come out as an abundance bro. And we have news on exactly how that's playing out in California so far. Ryan, you're going to do a breakdown on news out of Gaza?

[Unknown]

Yeah, we've got Trump is saying he's pushing forward with the ceasefire deal. There's no confirmation from the Israeli side yet. We're still, it's all still up in the air and the number of killings is just somehow accelerating, which seems impossible.

[Sager]

Yeah, the news from the cafe that I know we're going to cover.

[Unknown]

Yeah, this is attack on this cafe used by journalists. Also, Trump says he's gonna prosecute and Noem said they're gonna prosecute CNN for hurting the feelings of, of our jet pilots who Trump says came back feeling so proud of themselves after their bombing run. You know, they felt like they had just taped, you know, Top Gun 3 and only to see in CNN that perhaps not all of the centrifuges were destroyed and their uranium may have been moved and it deeply upset the bombers and they should not be hurt like that.

[Sager]

And I don't know if you caught.

[Unknown]

This, these are people.

[Sager]

Pilots are people too.

[Unknown]

Yes, dude, pilots are people.

[Sager]

So I don't know if you caught this news overnight because you had a train situation. But also CBS settled with the Trump administration and we'll cover that in the CNN block. But that is a very interesting suit as well. I was reading some of it.

[Unknown]

$17 million bribe, $16 million.

[Sager]

The exact same as the NBC settlement.

[Unknown]

So that's the price point for a merger.

[Sager]

Yeah, we'll, we'll get into all of it. So let's start with the one big beautiful bill which has passed the Senate. J.D. vance cast the tie breaking vote. Let's go ahead and roll a one.

[Unknown]

The yeas are 50, the nays are 50. The Senate being evenly divided, the vice president votes in the affirmative. The bill as amended is passed.

[Sager]

So they ended up losing Rand Paul, Susan Collins and Thom Tillis. So Lisa Murkowski ultimately got on board with it. And while we're talking about that, I'm going to control room. Skip ahead here to this is Lisa Murkowski being confronted by a reporter in the Capitol who was asking about the process of getting Lisa Murkowski to a yes, which was very difficult but doable for leadership. Senator Paul said that this was, that.

[Unknown]

Your vote was a bailout for Alaska.

[Sager]

At the expense of the rest of the country.

[Unknown]

Oh, my.

[Sager]

That's what Senator Paul said.

[Unknown]

Senator, we've got the.

[Sager]

I didn't say it, ma' am. I'm just asking for your response. My response is I have an obligation to the people of the state of Alaska and I live up to that every single day. I advocated for my state's interests. I will continue to do that and I will make no excuses for doing that. Do I like this bill? No. Because I tried to take care of Alaska's interests. But I know, I know that in many parts of the country there are Americans that are not going to be advantaged by this bill. I don't like that. In flashbacks to the cornhusker kickback debacle of the. What was that, 2009. This is being called the Kodiak kickback by Ruben Gallego because Murkowski did get carve outs in the bill.

[Unknown]

Yeah. She got the legislation changed so that the people who live in the 49 other states will not feel the same, will feel more of a punishment than people in Alaska will.

[Sager]

Yeah.

[Unknown]

Which, and it is true, she is a senator from Alaska. Her title is United States Senator. Yeah. I get representing your state. But to actively do something that you know is going to hurt Alaskans but is going to hurt the rest of the country less. And so you go for it is some weak sauce. And if you notice in that clip, I've followed her around the hall for many, many years. She has an energy press corps because she's so influential when it comes to the energy sector and the energy trade. Reporters love her. She loves them.

[Sager]

Uh huh.

[Unknown]

Like it? I'm sure it's, it's kind of funny to watch.

[Sager]

Well, yes.

[Unknown]

And then so she's not used to getting that in the hallway.

[Sager]

Per Politico, as part of the Senate Republican sweeping final amendment to the bill that was part of the overnight negotiations, they removed a controversial tax on solar and wind energy projects that Murkowski and a handful of other Republicans were agitating to be removed. Another goody bordered on the obscure. If not for the senator, bowhead whaling boat captains recognized by the Alaska Eskimo Whaling Commission will be able to deduct more for whale hunting related expenses up to 50,000 from the current 10,000, which obviously we support here. That's an editorial policy of breaking points. We have a very strong, we always have had a strong position on that deduction Whaling write offs for the Alaska Eskimo Whaling Commission.

[Unknown]

Yeah, got to keep that whale oil flowing.

[Sager]

So this is how JD Vance. We can put a 2 up on the screen. This is how JD Vance was talking about the bill. He says massive tax cuts, especially no tax on tips and overtime and most importantly, big money for border security. This is a big win for the American people. It's true. These are across the board tax cuts. They will disproportionately benefit wealthy Americans. Most of the tax cuts are going to wealthy Americans. It doesn't mean that middle class isn't getting tax cuts. They are getting tax cuts. The no tax on tips, no tax on overtime. Both helpful policies obviously for many, many, many average Americans. Ryan. But we can put Jeff Stein's breakdown of the bill on the screen. This is where things got very hairy for Republicans. In order to pay for those tax cuts to have a bill that doesn't look as egregious as this one ultimately ended up looking. So it didn't really matter too much for them to be honest. They were going for austerity essentially. So Ryan, you can sort of walk through some of this. But major safety net cuts targeting Medicaid, as Jeff reports, and food stamps. So those do add work requirements. They add some cost sharing for the states, some paperwork. They think that'll save about 1.3 trillion. I think that's per the right.

[Unknown]

So it's 1.3, 1.3 trillion in cuts to Medicaid and food stamps, right?

[Sager]

Yep. 0.4 trillion to immigration enforcement and the military budget, which they got through the parliamentarian and then they ended up cutting a ton of the clean energy subsidies. Basically Biden's green industrial policy got cut.

[Unknown]

So they, they put that at about 500 billion. We'll see. I think it'll actually end up being much more because the tax credits weren't necessarily capped in the ira. So that we've had a surprising boom in clean tech manufacturing over the last several years. And so the more you have then the more tax credits there there are going to be, which creates more energy, lowers energy prices and on and on. So could be 500 billion, could be even more. So that's about 2 trillion like that they're cutting out of federal spending by going after food stamps, Medicaid and subsidies for energy production. And then they're spending it. We can go back if you want to put the Jeff Stein post back up. So the way that they're spending it, $2.5 trillion to extend the prior tax cuts. So those are the ones that Trump passed in 2017. This extends them out. And also your childcare benefit goes from 2000 to 2.2. With so many kids, hey, that's gonna be nice for me.

[Sager]

Huge Ryan Grim win.

[Unknown]

Big win for me right there. Then about a trillion dollars in various tax cuts that go to the top 1%, including basically eliminating the estate tax. So think about that. So that's roughly the amount of Medicaid.

[Sager]

And is that $15 million?

[Unknown]

It's at $15 million. But with the stepped up basis loopholes and other loopholes, there are going to be very few people who end up paying estate taxes. Like almost nobody because of.

[Sager]

It's already a pretty small group.

[Unknown]

It's a small group already, but yeah, but if it's going to cost a trillion dollars, that means it's not nobody that's currently paying it. So now they're pushing it very close to nobody. And then, you know, half a billion on his other things, you know, no cash. No, no, no tax on tips. Jeff Stein mentions the car interest deduction. Hey, that'll help me too.

[Sager]

Yes, this is going great for you.

[Unknown]

A couple of car payments. I mean two car payments.

[Sager]

This could not possibly be going better.

[Unknown]

This is amazing. No, genuinely like this will be like for me, except for the fact that I'll live in a worse country. This is gonna be good for Me.

[Sager]

It'S a really, I think the decision making process around this bill has been a very interesting glimpse into how Republicans are struggling immensely with these two disparate wings that became part of the MAGA coalition. On the one hand you have the austerity of Elon Musk who is now threatening a third party, sort of like an American AFD basically that is focused specifically. It's like a Doge party essentially is the way that he's talking about it. On the other hand, you have the Josh Hawley's who are pissed about the cuts to Medicaid but ended up voting for the bill because they either had to look at and this, this is a false choice. I'll explain. But the way that they saw it was they either had to look at tax increases because these tax cuts were expiring. And that was something that Trump didn't think would happen on his watch because he would have when this pass in 2017 been done with two terms. So taxes were expiring. So you either have to let the taxes go up or you have to look at something completely different than how they conceived of this entire reconciliation process. But they don't have enough members. Elon Musk sounds wildly naive because there's nothing that you can do to actually tackle the national debt and the out of control spending while you still have to make Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, Rand Paul like. It's just none of this would have worked. This was their only option other than letting taxes go up. It doesn't mean that that's where I think it's sort of a false choice. And actually Boccia Unger Sargan has pointed this out. They could have actually just let the top rate expire.

[Unknown]

They didn't have to cut it again.

[Sager]

They could have just let the top.

[Unknown]

Rate cut it further.

[Sager]

Or because they don't actually give a damn about spending or the debt, they could have just been honest that they're blowing up the debt and not even bothered to make cuts.

[Unknown]

Yeah.

[Sager]

If they're to pay for the taxes.

[Unknown]

Yes. And so you're going to have to explain to me what it, what's up with this party because JD Vance kept saying in defense of this bill, look, everyone's got criticisms of it, but none of your criticisms could actually get, you know, 51 votes, get a majority in the House. But having watched Trump's campaign, I could design not a bill that I would like, but I could design a bill that would match with like the Bannon MAGA Trump ideology and that would not Raise the deficit like this, you could actually increase instead of spending a trillion dollars on the estate, like estate tax giveaway for just, you know, fail sons and fail daughters like this. Just who is the constituency to like defend the rights of children and grandchildren of billionaires? Like as a populist movement, you could be like, look, you know what, everyone, you know, we're gonna tilt the playing field back towards regular people. Like just because you're born with the last name Gates, just a random name. Yeah. Doesn't mean not anyone in particular and not the Congressman. Doesn't mean that you get to be a billionaire too. Like you didn't do anything so you can be a multimillionaire and never work in your life. The irony also, you ever meet these kids, they're all destroyed. They're not happy. Like it'd be one thing if we were destroying the planet and destroying the working class and the middle class and the 0.1% were having the time of their lives. The 0.1% are miserable, their children are more miserable and their grandchildren are miserable too. No, this isn't making anybody happy. So okay, there's a trillion dollars right there. You could also, as Trump hinted that he would do, you could raise taxes on the super rich. He talked about maybe creating like another bracket for million and up. He could do that. So then you can have tax cuts for 95% of the American public, but it doesn't actually cost you that money. And he also ran promising that he would never cut Medicaid. It was assumed he wouldn't cut food stamps. I don't know if he ever promised that. And then you wouldn't have to cut Medicaid and food stamps and then you can go and bust the deficit to do your mass deportation. You don't need to do this. There are no cops around here. Do whatever you want. But basically, according to J. Vance, they don't have the votes for that. So that's where I need you to explain to me what on earth is going on with the party where what I just laid out like 99% of the country getting a tax cut. You get your mass deportation, you get your populism. No tax on tips, all this stuff. The only thing you'd have to do is not cater to the grandchildren of like billionaires. But they can't do that. Why?

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[Sager]

I think part of it is you're always going to have to give something to the fiscal hawks, because on the House side, you have Chip Roy someone. And people like Chip Roy fiscal hawks.

[Unknown]

Are choking on this.

[Sager]

Well, he's. Yeah. I mean, he's furious about the way everything stands. I mean, there's like a Thomas Massie criticism of the bill and Massey basically will never come to a yes on it. But there are people who basically share his perspective on everything. Just see it as impractical to vote for nothing and let taxes go up. And I think you put Chip Roy and a handful of other people in that camp. So Biden's spending actually was like. He exploded federal spending.

[Unknown]

And he would say that it started under Trump with the response to Covid, which gave us the best Trump and Biden gave us the best economic recovery relative to any other country in the world out of COVID By the way, that social democracy thing we tried for a couple years, it actually works.

[Sager]

And this is where they start talking about how Trump, who promised not to touch Medicaid. And to your point about snap, like probably implied, I think in all of that, similar food stamps, similar to gao.

[Unknown]

Do you know who you're going after on food stamps? Like any.

[Sager]

Yeah, well, I mean, as somebody on the right, I do think that. I mean, this was. There's a GAO report. I think this was like 2020. One in four Medicaid dollars were improper payments. So they were either they should never have been made or they were in the wrong amount. It was like $30 billion in 2024. I think they're like, significant problems. By the way, this is what people. Not me, but people were optimistic Doge would start targeting. Is that like there is legitimate fat to be trimmed. We have a problem with workforce participation among men, in particular the Joint Economic Committee at one point. This was under Mike Lee.

[Unknown]

We can't get men to go to a doctor anyway.

[Sager]

To go to a doctor. Right.

[Unknown]

Taking their Medicaid is not actually gonna get them back to work.

[Sager]

Not the problem with that.

[Unknown]

That's your theory of why men are not working.

[Sager]

Yeah. Anyway, so that's actually up significantly since over the last, like, several decades, there's a lot of stuff that you could do with this. But pairing it with a tax cut just politically is a huge giveaway to Democrats. You are quite literally paying for tax cuts on the wealthy with us. And then on the other hand, morally, for a party that is now trying to represent working class Americans, you're actually not putting a dent in the debt.

[Unknown]

Right.

[Sager]

And I know that they dispute the Congressional Budget Office analysis, which is fine because Democrats often take issue with the CBO scores. Everyone has problems with the CBO scores. CBO has absolutely been wrong. I get it. But the idea that this is going to generate enough growth to offset the revenue to the irs, it's, I mean, I think it's highly unlikely. And everyone basically understands that. So you're not putting a dent in spending or the debt basically at this point.

[Unknown]

And let's, and let's also think about how we're saving the money. So, and then think about. It's often not helpful to think about, you know, the country as like, a household or a company. But let's do a little exercise there. Imagine you're a company or a household and your, you know, one of your lieutenants comes to you and says, you know what, the way we're going to cut spending and become profitable, either as a household or as a company, we're going to stop paying our insurance, health insurance, and we're going to stop basically, in this case, whatever the equivalent is of energy production. So we're cutting half a billion dollars in investment towards energy production, and that's going to make us richer. I think the CEO would be like, okay, but we're going to need energy. So where's the energy going to come from? Because if we look at the charts of energy use, the demand is going through the roof. Guys ever hear of AI? Like, it's a thing that's going on now. It's gobbling up a lot of it. It's happening clouds. Everything's becoming electrified. Everything in your house is using more electricity than it did before. Electricity demand is going up relative to what it has been in the past. So we need more electricity production. You can hate wind, solar, batteries ideologically because you hate them. They represent two thirds of the capacity that we've added over the last year and were projected to represent more than that going forward. So now what are you going to, like, do more natural gas, like, more oil? Like, there are limits to what you can do. So what you're actually going to do is get rolling blackouts you're just, you know, demand is going to outstrip the supply that you have. And then you go, you're like, wait a minute, we're going to stop paying our insurance bill. Are our employees or our family members all of a sudden not going to get sick? No, Americans are still going to get sick. Where are they going to go? Oh, they're going to go to the emergency room now. Who's going to pay for that? The hospital is going to pay for that. Oh, also the hospital that is now getting provider tax hit, you know, hit with a provider tax too. This is projected to throw 17 million people off of their health insurance and is likely to bankrupt a ton of hospitals. Like we're already losing hospitals all over rural America. Yeah. And some like struggling urban hospitals and mostly rural hospitals. Hawley was making a huge stink about this.

[Sager]

Yeah. Susan Collins as well.

[Unknown]

They were even like figuring out ways there was an amendment on the floor to, you know, slightly tweak the estate tax to create a fund that would protect rural hospitals from going under. It failed like 80, 20. So people are still going to get sick. People still need energy. So, okay, all of the savings in the bill, quote, unquote savings, actually make us poorer. Meanwhile, the things we're cutting, like you know, cutting taxes, et cetera, also make us poor. It's like it's the most self destructive piece of legislation I think that we've ever done like on purpose. It's like, it's so weird.

[Sager]

Well, Stephen Miller is saying, and you will remember this from like a month or two ago, that it is the most important piece of.

[Unknown]

This is very smart. Yeah. We're going to get, we're going to get millions of people out of the country and that's also going to make us richer. Yeah.

[Sager]

Well, I mean there's a tax definitely on the social safety net because of people who are in the country illegally.

[Unknown]

Or waiting asylum unless they're in their 20s, 30s, 40s, paying in and not getting money out.

[Sager]

That's right.

[Unknown]

Which is the case for a lot of them.

[Sager]

Well, yeah, I mean that's absolutely an argument. So I don't they to the point about it being self destructive. They would say that immigration enforcement is. It's not even about the spending. They would say that immigration enforcement is about like safety and culture. That's the Stephen Miller argument, that immigration.

[Unknown]

Enforcement, as Trump said, if Stephen Miller had his way, there'd be 100 million people in this country and they'd all look like Stephen Miller.

[Sager]

They'd all look like What a country that would be.

[Unknown]

That's Donald Trump. I'm quoting.

[Sager]

What a country that would be.

[Unknown]

100 million school shooters. Yeah, right. I mean, come on, you were thinking it too.

[Sager]

Let's move on to the feud between Elon Musk and Donald Trump, which is actually related to everything that we are talking about. This is a clip of Donald Trump being asked about Elon Musk yesterday on his Alligator Alcatraz tour. Go ahead and roll those.

[Donald Trump]

What happened to Elon Musk? Nothing. Now he's upset. He's. That he's losing his EV mandate and accept he's very upset about things. But, you know, he could lose a lot more than that. I can tell you right now. Hey, Elon, Elon can lose a lot more than that. We might have to put Doge on Elon. You know, you know what Doge is? Doge is the monster that might have to go back and eat Elon. Wouldn't that be terrible? He gets a lot of subsidies, Peter. But Elon's very upset that the EV mandate is going to be terminated. And you know what? When you look at it, who wants, not everybody wants an electric car. I don't want an electric car. I want to have baby gasoline. Maybe electric, maybe a hybrid, maybe someday a hydrogen. You have a hydrogen car, it has one problem. It blows up, you know, so I'm going to give that one to Peter.

[Sager]

So Trump, that was at the White House before he left for the Everglades, he is asked by a reporter, are you going to deport Elon Musk? Trump says, we'll have to take a look. We might have to put Doge on Elon. You know, Doge is the monster that might have to go back and eat Elon. Wouldn't that be terrible? He gets a lot of subsidies. Musk replies on Twitter. This is the next element quote, so tempting to escalate this. So, so tempting. But I will refrain for now. Then Musk also posted Cut it All now in response to Trump saying that Doge might look at Musk's subsidies. Musk's argument, Ryan, is not entirely dissimilar from the point you were just making about some of these or the nature of the cuts being self destructed. But he's coming at it from when he's right.

[Unknown]

He's right.

[Sager]

But he's coming at it from a totally different perspective.

[Unknown]

Not totally like there's some sign significant overlap, which is that he is desperately concerned and it goes back to both his business but also his venture to Mars. He's desperately concerned with electricity production. He keeps posting these various charts of Chinese electricity production versus American electricity production. They're on track to make as much electricity with just wind, solar and battery power as we are total. And if you're in an AI race, which is related to his Mars race, then how do you think that's going to go? Like the country with more juice is going to win this one. So that's where the overlap is. He also wants, he doesn't like the deficit busting stuff because he wants to spend that money going to Mars.

[Sager]

That's where when he's saying cut all of the subsidies, I mean it's just, it's easy to say that when he's on the outside looking in.

[Unknown]

I don't know that is that easy to say. And I'm sure his shareholders are probably.

[Sager]

His shareholders are probably super excited.

[Unknown]

He doesn't mean that. Don't cut all those substances. I mean, you also we. And I blame everyone from Obama up empowered this guy to have this power.

[Sager]

Oh, he wouldn't exist without federal subsidies.

[Unknown]

That Obama with Starlink and SpaceX and all these things. Like this guy has cards to play.

[Sager]

As Trump likes to Trump rescued by Barack Obama.

[Unknown]

Yeah, yeah. So I mean, but now he's got cards.

[Sager]

Easy to say. Yeah, yeah, now he has cards. That's right. So I don't know, the threat to start a third party and all of that. Musk also had a pretty interesting, I thought it was a pretty interesting admission on X yesterday. Ryan, he was like full reply guy. But he, in response to somebody saying that the chainsaw kind of made it harder for Doge to do anything, he basically agreed and said that Milei gave him the chainsaw backstage. But in retrospect, he thinks that it did lack empathy. I believe that's what he said.

[Unknown]

Yeah, he says a fair criticism. He said Milei gave him the chainsaw backstage and he just went with it and. Yeah, exactly. And I, and I always, I kind of wondered, I'm like, how much like the original name for ecstasy was empathy because that's closer to the feeling that it produces in a user. And so I always wonder they didn't go with empathy because it's like that's not very cool marketing. Like ecstasy is going to sell better in the club.

[Sager]

Sounds terrible.

[Unknown]

But I always wondered like, how is this guy eating this much Mali and this callus? Like, how does he not care about the tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions. Tens of millions of people plus who are affected by like the whims of this bender that he's on. And it turns out that, you know, now that he's come back to earth a little bit, he actually does know the word empathy. And he, and he regrets that it. That it lacked empathy in his own. It also accomplished nothing except ruining a whole bunch of people's lives.

[Sager]

I mean, I think he just exists in the strain of libertarianism, which is kind of weird to say from somebody whose businesses are based on subsidies, but he exists in the strain of libertarianism. Libertarianism, where empathy itself is used to. The belief is that empathy itself is used to hurt people and is used to inflict cruelty. I mean, it's just a standard like.

[Unknown]

Milton Friedman argument about how suicidal empathy.

[Sager]

Isn'T that what they say, toxic empathy? But this is more of like how people get trapped in government dependency spirals and it's cruel. And I think he thought in his own way also.

[Unknown]

By the way, if you guys think having humanity is bad, you've took a wrong turn somewhere. Like retrace your steps anyway, go ahead.

[Sager]

It's a Ryan Grim argument for usaid.

[Unknown]

Well, for some programs, yeah.

[Sager]

But I'm not even going to go down that you could make that argument about some of the bad programs that you lack humanity if you strip away this USAID aid.

[Unknown]

Well, I mean, it depends. It very much depends.

[Sager]

Right.

[Unknown]

But Elon's perspective, if you take away somebody a kid's infant formula without a plan to replace it with something else that they can live on, not good, that's bad and lacks empathy.

[Sager]

But yeah, I think whether or not.

[Unknown]

That cutout was also involved in some regime change.

[Sager]

Regime change? Baby formula. It's the tastiest baby formula. But musk is he, I think, felt like he had the wind at his back culturally in a way that he didn't. So that post was really interesting because.

[Unknown]

Yes, exactly. He spent too much time with his own reply, guys.

[Sager]

Yes. Yeah, 100%. All right, let's move on.

[Unknown]

Who would have thought that Cat Turd 2 would lead you astray?

[Sager]

But here we are and he's Elon is like admitting that in this really it's just a post on X, but he's admitting that he had basically terrible political instincts and then demanding the Republican party currently follow his political instincts or.

[Unknown]

Else he's going to start a political party. Sure, that'll go well.

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[Ryan Grim]

Who needs headphones when you have glasses? Ray Ban Meta Glasses where style meets cutting edge tech. With discreet open air speakers and built in microphones, you can play your favorite tunes.

[Emily]

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[Ryan Grim]

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[Emily]

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[Unknown]

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[Ryan Grim]

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[Emily]

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[Ryan Grim]

You can even get Meta AI to make recommendations based on what you're looking at.

[Emily]

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[Unknown]

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[Ryan Grim]

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[Krystal]

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[Sager]

Let's talk about Alligator Alcatraz because Ryan actually took a trip to Alligator Alcatraz while he was in Florida over the last several days. We can roll B1 here. You can see how basically Ron DeSantis and Donald Trump constructed their own sort of little seekot. Brought a little flavor of El Salvador up to the offer garden.

[Unknown]

Does seem like inspired by Scott.

[Sager]

It does. If you're listening to this, what you're seeing is bunk beds behind fencing, and it's being sort of trumpeted as an amazing feat. And it was put up really quickly. Ryan, you said you saw the trucks rolling in over the last several days. They did this in what? I mean, less than a week, right?

[Unknown]

Yeah. Today's Wednesday, so I was there Saturday, and there was a big protest there. There had been a protest, a smaller protest the week before, and I talked to people who'd been the week before, and there was basically nothing then. You could basically drive onto the base at that point. By the time I got there, you couldn't drive on there because there was so much traffic from the dump trucks and propane trucks and generator trucks and food trucks that were just streaming onto this site in a way that was, like, affecting. It was, like, ominous, like, how much energy was being put in this. And most of the trucks had names like Rodriguez Trucking or something like that. And they were planning to put this thing together in days, and they did. And on Tuesday, I'm getting my days mixed up. Yeah. July 1st. Tuesday, Trump and DeSantis, like, inaugurated the thing. They're going to spend. They say these estimates are always low. They say they're going to spend $450 million in the first year of the operation of this site. Meanwhile, it is hurricane season.

[Sager]

Yeah.

[Unknown]

So there is. It took us about an hour, drove from Miami down to the protest there outside.

[Sager]

Did you drag your wife and kids to Alligator Alcatraz?

[Unknown]

Well, we only have one kid with us now because the three are in camp and it was too early in the morning. She refused to go. But a friend's kid did go, okay.

[Krystal]

Get up.

[Sager]

Dad's driving us to Alligator Alcatraz.

[Unknown]

Dads are going to Alligator Alcatraz? Yeah. And it was packed. Maybe in post I can send Mac some of the videos. We can put them in there. Although we're kind of late, so maybe I won't do that. But it's the beginning of the hurricane season. There's one road that takes you there. That's it. Like, this is. You're driving through. You're driving through the Everglades, trying to evacuate all of those people in the event of a hurricane. Plus evacuating there are a lot of Mickey Suka. There's indigenous people that live down there. There's also, I think it's mostly, mostly native people that, that live down there because it's mostly native area. But there's some, you know, and there will always be like Florida residents down there as well, trying to evacuate all of the workers and all of the staff and all of the people in detention and all of the other people on that. This little two lane road would be calamitous. So we just have to, I guess cross our fingers that we don't get a extreme mass casualty event hurricane that forms quickly and hits that area.

[Sager]

Where I thought you were going with us was that some of the news reports included statements from people whose homes had been flattened by hurricanes and saw Desantis really quickly construct this massive.

[Unknown]

With FEMA, Mommy. With FEMA money, yes.

[Sager]

$450 million in, I think it was like eight days, something like that. It wasn't there last week. And now you have this.

[Unknown]

We haven't rebuilt western North Carolina. We haven't rebuilt even like from Hurricane Michael in like the panhandle in Florida. Desantis, it still looks like it went through last week.

[Sager]

So, yeah, they're wanting it to get up to 5,000 beds. I think it's 3,000 right now. Now, in a couple of things that I would just add to this, we have a serious problem with lacking detention capacity for immigrants.

[Unknown]

We don't lack land in Florida, though.

[Sager]

Yeah, that's a totally, totally legitimate point. And if I were someone who was waiting for their house to be rebuilt in Florida, I'm not sure that this would thrill me at all. But we have like 59,000 people detainees because of the ICE enforcement. But the ICE enforcement itself is because the Biden administration at minimum created an influx of 8 million people over the course of a few years. And so the Trump administration enforcing that means that they have a record number, they are running out of room. And so there is absolutely. Unless you are full, and this is probably where Ryan and I disagree, full let people stay. You absolutely do need more room for all of this. And you do need incentives for people to use things like CBP home, which allow you to just very humanely self support and you don't end up getting detained, you don't end up getting arrested. At least that's the theory. So they believe these are disincentives for people to continue staying in the country. If they're, you know, if they have not shown up for court dates or anything like that. If the Process has run out.

[Donald Trump]

Right.

[Unknown]

But they're trying to break the process by arresting people at their court dates.

[Sager]

Like, they're definitely doing that.

[Unknown]

They're doing this loophole where they will dismiss somebody's proceedings at a hearing and then just arrest them at it and say, okay, now you're moved into expedited removal. And so basically, it's incentivizing people not to show up. And let's say, okay, y' all won. You want to deport lots of people. Why not just do, like, ankle bracelets? Like, okay, like, here's the process. We're going to change the law. They just showed they can pass any law they want. We're going to make the laws such that if the expedited removal is actually expedited, there's going to be a little bit of due process. But we won. So it's going to be, you know, fig leaf, but there's going to be some process. And then once your order. Deported, you're deported.

[Sager]

Yeah.

[Unknown]

And in the meantime, you can, you know, you wear an ankle bracelet or whatever. Like. Or like there's other ways. Like, we live in a surveillance society.

[Sager]

We sure do just have Peter Thiel handle.

[Unknown]

Yeah. If, like, this should. This should not be like something that, like, if the right is going to go in this dystopian direction of building, like, mass camps in the Everglades, the Bukele larp. Yeah. Then it's not as if they have something like they would shrink it, like exercising some extreme surveillance authority.

[Sager]

Let's watch how Donald Trump was describing all of this Yesterday. This is B2.

[Donald Trump]

Take care of our farmers and hotel workers and various other people. And we're working on it right now. And Ron's going to be involved and you're involved already. So we have a case where a lot of cases where ICE will go into a farm, and these are guys working there for 10, 15 years. No problem. The farmers know them. We're going to put. It's called farmer responsibility or owner responsibility, where they're going to be largely responsible for these people. And they know these people. They've worked on the farms for 15 years. And all of a sudden. So I have a great. Ron does. Christy does. We have a great feeling for the farmer and for others in the same position. And we're going to give them responsibility for people, and we're going to have a system of signing them up so they don't have to go. They can be here legally. They can pay taxes and everything. They're not getting citizenship. But they get other things, and the farmers need them to do the work. Without those people, you're not going to be able to run your farm.

[Unknown]

President Mr. Governor, what's the message to Governor Gavin Newsom inside of this facility?

[Donald Trump]

Question you should do is come here and learn something. Because they don't do this. They wouldn't know where to begin. And if they did it, it would cost them 100 times more. Hey, Biden wanted me in here. Okay? He wanted me. It didn't work out that way, but he wanted me in here.

[Sager]

Trump saying that Biden wanted him and alligator Alcatraz. We have a couple of more clips because he was on a roll yesterday. This is Trump being asked about what the sort of point of the alligator branding is. And with the alligator alpha track, it's.

[Donald Trump]

The idea that it's done illegal immigrants that, hey, they just get eaten by an alligator or a snake or something. I guess that's the concept. This is not a nice business. I guess that's the concept. If you, you know, snakes are fast, but alligators are big. We're going to teach them how to run away from an alligator.

[Unknown]

Okay.

[Donald Trump]

If they escape prison, how to run away. Don't run in a straight line. Run like this, and you know what? Your chances go up about 1%. Okay. Not a good thing.

[Sager]

He's sort of bragging about his knowledge.

[Unknown]

Of alligator escapes from his golf courses.

[Sager]

Oh, that's a good point. If you're looking closely at the hat, by the way, which I didn't until it was just in front of us. Now there's a subheading on the Gulf of America MAGA hat that says yet another Trump development. That's what it says on the hat.

[Unknown]

I'm glad he's having such a wonderful time bringing, like, abject fascism. Like, this is, like, completely.

[Sager]

It's not fascism.

[Unknown]

Fascism to, like, build a giant concentration camp in the middle of the Everglades where the people are, like, at immediate risk of getting killed if a hurricane comes through and then joking about them getting eaten by alligators and snakes.

[Sager]

Well, yeah, that part.

[Unknown]

Oh, and all. Okay.

[Sager]

And also, here's what I'll say. It's fascism. It's him LARPing. It's like fascist LARPing.

[Unknown]

And he's also doing some weird planter class LARPing. In the first clip that you played there, he's like, we're gonna have owner responsibility. That was his. I'm not putting words in his mouth. He said, owner responsibility for migrants who work on farms. I don't even have to, like, say anything else about.

[Sager]

Yeah, you're right.

[Unknown]

I thought we settled this.

[Sager]

And he's also like, we're gonna take care of the hotel workers. Yeah. You know, Stephen Miller. Speaking of Stephen Miller, that his brain is exploding when he hears that.

[Unknown]

Yeah. Because Miller's like. I guess he's torn there. He's like, slavery thought we're really moving the Overton window here.

[Sager]

But he's like, will they assimilate?

[Unknown]

Will the slaves assimilate?

[Sager]

That's a question.

[Unknown]

Well, you know, it's owner responsibility. Like, we literally did a war and we settled this. You're not owning people in this country. We don't do that.

[Sager]

Yeah.

[Unknown]

I mean, everything is apparently up for grabs.

[Sager]

That's where I think the administration is Often it feels like a larp to me. It feels like they're not right.

[Unknown]

But they're also doing stuff.

[Sager]

Half of the stuff that he does, he does some of it and then.

[Unknown]

He doesn't do it. Maybe they never fill this camp.

[Sager]

Hope honestly, not impossible because they're saying they want it to house up to 5,000 people. They want to keep doing more of this. I don't know. I mean, they were doing this. This is actually a really good illustration of the way that I'm thinking about it. Like, they said they were going to use Guantanamo. Trump said he was going to use actual Alcatraz.

[Unknown]

They're using Guantanamo, but it's costing them half a million per detainee. There's like 30 people there.

[Sager]

Yeah, there's like 30 people. He said he was going to send all these people to seekot. To be fair, he sent 300 some people but stopped after that. And it's like, I think part of it is they're trying to create this very visual, vivid sense of fear.

[Unknown]

So people just leave.

[Sager]

Right.

[Unknown]

Which is probably working to some degree.

[Sager]

Probably to some degree. And then they don't go all the way. But it ends up feeling like a big fascist bukele larp. I don't disagree with that at all.

[Unknown]

Yeah. And also in immigrant communities, people are like, kids are told don't open the door for anybody. People don't congregate outside, afraid that if somebody. If somebody there is undocumented and gets picked up, they're just gonna sweep everybody up, even the citizens, which they're doing, you know, which they are doing off, like in LA and elsewhere anyway. Yeah. So there is definitely always larping when it comes to Trump. But sometimes the larping becomes reality.

[Sager]

Yeah.

[Unknown]

You talk it into existence you never know.

[Sager]

And that's where Yes, I think one thing I disagree with a lot of conservatives on is I think you actually always have to take him seriously because sometimes you don't usually know when he's serious and when he's joking. So you can't just be like, oh, this is Trump being Trump in every circumstance. Because then he goes and does stuff.

[Unknown]

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[Ryan Grim]

Who needs headphones when you have glasses? Ray Ban Meta Glasses where style meets cutting edge tech. With discreet open air speakers and built in microphones, you can play your favorite tunes.

[Emily]

Hey Meta.

[Ryan Grim]

Play hip hop music and tune into the world around you. But listening is just the beginning because you can stay in the moment while your phone stays in your pocket as Meta AI provides answers to questions on the fly.

[Emily]

Hey Meta, what's the weather tonight?

[Unknown]

Tonight will be clear with temperatures ranging.

[Ryan Grim]

From capture and share moments.

[Emily]

Hey Meta. Post this video on Instagram.

[Ryan Grim]

You can even get Meta AI to make recommendations based on what you're looking at.

[Emily]

Hey Meta, what can I make for dinner with what's in the fridge?

[Unknown]

You can make a delicious spinach and chicken salad or add the baby spinach to pasta with some garlic shrimp.

[Ryan Grim]

Cool Ray Ban Meta Glasses choose from a variety of classic Ray Ban frames all with Meta [e-mail] AI-glasses and don't forget to say hey Meta. Play iHeartRadio to enjoy your favorite radio stations, artists and podcasts on the iHeart app.

[Krystal]

Every business has an ambition. PayPal open is the platform designed to help you grow into yours with business loans so you can expand and access to hundreds of millions of PayPal customers worldwide. And your customers can pay all the ways they want with PayPal, Venmo, pay later and all major cards so you can focus on scaling up when it's time to get growing. There's one platform for all business PayPal open grow today at paypalopen.com loans subject to approval in available locations.

[Sager]

Let's talk about what he said yesterday regarding Zoran Mamdani. We are going to go ahead and roll this SOT. It is B6 Trump being asked about Zoran Mamdani.

[Unknown]

Your beloved New York City may well be led by a communist soon, Zorhan Mandami, who in his nomination speech said he will defy ICE and will not allow ICE to arrest criminal aliens in New York City. Your message to Communist Zorhan Mandami.

[Donald Trump]

Well, then we'll have to arrest him. Look, we don't need a communist in this country, but if we have one, I'm going to be watching over him very carefully on behalf of the nation. We send him money. We send him all the things that he needs to run a government. And by the way, they get already, they get about three times what you get. Ron, if you look at the per capita, Florida gets one third of what New York gets. In terms of the numbers. Why don't you give us those numbers? Yeah, well, that's what we should send him.

[Unknown]

Yeah.

Like sometimes people say Florida gets more because they count Social Security recipients, but.

That'S not money to the state. Those are seniors that live here.

If they move to North Carolina, you.

Could count it there.

So it has no interaction with the state government.

They get more on the city and state governments than we get substantially.

[Donald Trump]

We're going to be watching that very carefully. And a lot of people are saying he's here illegally. He's, you know, we're going to look at everything.

[Sager]

But so here's B7. This is how Zoran Mamdani responded. And I actually am curious what you make of this, Ryan. I found his response to be quite interesting. He says the president of the US Just threatened to have me arrested, stripped of my citizenship, put in a detention camp and deported, not because I've broken any law, but because I will refuse to let ICE terrorize our city. His statements don't just represent an attack on our democracy, but an attempt to send a message to every New Yorker who refuses to Jesus to hide in the shadows. If you speak up, they will come for you. We will not accept this intimidation. Then he goes on to talk about Eric Adams. Says Trump included praise for Eric Adams and his authoritarian threats is unsurprising, but highlights the urgency of bringing an end to this. Mayor's time in City hall. Goes on to talk about destroying the social safety net, kicking millions of New Yorkers off health care, enriching their billionaire donors, expensive working families. A scandal that Eric Adams echoes this president's division, distraction and hate. Ryan, the reason I found that statement interesting is he pivots to the social safety net and pivots to Eric Adams kicking New Yorkers off of health care, et cetera. Billionaire donors. Yeah, he pivots the class warfare, essentially. And when Trump was asked that question by very MAGA Benny Johnson, he, I think, is, in his own mind, the strategy. Not that he wouldn't have said that anyway, but in the strategy, in the question of strategy, what they're trying to do is get Mamdani to talk about immigration as much as possible. Because as unpop as the way Donald Trump's ICE has approached, this is in a blue city like New York, the immigration policies of the Biden administration and the way Eric Adams handled them at first was deeply unpopular, which is why Eric Adams then pivoted. So I think Republicans see an opportunity to talk about immigration over and over again. Mamdani, in his statement, pivoted. That, I thought was pretty interesting.

[Unknown]

Right. Cause I think that's right, because as Bannon said, Mamdani is the first populist who has connected populism to affordability.

[Sager]

Yes.

[Unknown]

Which is a huge indictment of our political class across the spectrum that this guy's the first one that's been able to do it. And so I think Trump and Bannon recognize that they're vulnerable to him on that issue. And prices are going up and they just, you know, your energy bills are going to be going up pretty soon thanks to this. This big, beautiful bill, et cetera. And so, yes, they think they're on better ground if they can get him back to. They want to be back in, like, 20, 18, 19 20, where they're fighting Democrats on cultural issues.

[Sager]

Yes, absolutely.

[Unknown]

That's where Bannon and Trump feel comfortable.

[Sager]

And when Zoron, by the way, was tweeting things about how defunding the police was queer liberation, which he doesn't talk about anymore.

[Unknown]

They like that. Like, that's where Trump wants to be. Like he wants to bring that Democratic.

[Sager]

Party back, force them into that.

[Unknown]

The problem for Trump is A, Zoran's not really going to take that bait. But B, like their issue of immigration, Trump's losing the public on his own issue by being so over the top. Like if you look at the polling.

[Sager]

Yes, yes.

[Unknown]

Independents are now swinging again. People have very fluid views about immigration policy.

[Sager]

But then he and Stephen Miller are betting on being the lesser of two evils. Right. That even if their popularity dips, Dem's popularity with things like sanctuary cities, for example, which are massive pull factors, although less so.

[Unknown]

What he's letting him do is just is defend. Is what he's letting like Zoron do is like defend against like masked ICE agents just.

[Sager]

Yeah.

[Unknown]

Like scooping people off the street, which the Poe's like, yeah, what are you doing?

[Sager]

Yeah.

[Unknown]

This is not how we do things.

[Sager]

Yeah.

[Unknown]

Especially with all these people now impersonating ICE agents across the country. It's becoming like an actual legitimate like crime problem. It's like a safety issue what ICE is doing. And so if you let them just say we're against zcot, we're against Alligator Alcatraz, we're against the masked agents doing fascism on the streets, then you don't force Democrats to grapple with their unpopular immigration policies.

[Sager]

Right. And I think the Trump bet is that as long as Mamdani is talking about immigration, then Trump and Republicans and probably Eric Adams as well, it's an opportunity for them to talk about sanctuary cities.

[Unknown]

Sanctuary cities, yeah. And for Mamdani, as long as Trump is boosting Eric Adams and attacking Mamdani, Mamdani is just growing in popularity in New York.

[Sager]

That very well may be the case. The poll that came out yesterday which showed. Wasn't there a poll that came out yesterday that showed him hypothetically beating Cuomo? We got the final margin yesterday as well, which was what, 12 points, 12 point rout of Andrew Cuomo. Unbelievable. I thought a general election poll came out yesterday showing if Cuomo would have won anyway. I'll look it up. But it wouldn't be surprising at all if it were the case that Mamdani was winning.

[Unknown]

But the more. Yeah, it's just the more that Eric Adams gets associated with Trump.

[Sager]

Right.

[Unknown]

Or Cuomo with Trump. Right. Or Mamdani as the anti Trump. And it helps him.

[Sager]

Right? Yes. And finally, did you see, Ryan, this apology from Kirsten Gillibrand. So we put this last element up on the screen. I'm reading from Politico here. Kirsten Gillibrand apologized to Zoram Hamdani on Monday after she falsely claimed in a radio interview that the presumptive Democratic nominee for mayor of New York City had made, quote, references to global jihad. The junior senator and mayoral candidate spoke by phone Monday, and there was a readout of the call that Gillibrand's team gave to Politico that said Gillibrand apologized for mischaracterizing Mamdani's record and for her tone on the call. This is in reference to a Brian Lehrer segment where a caller asked Gillibrand about holding mom Donnie to account for, quote, glorifying Hamas and Ryan. This was like the Brian Lehrer segment heard round the left. This was crazy everywhere. Tell us a little bit about it.

[Unknown]

I mean, it was bonkers. Go listen to it. She sounds completely unhinged and she just. And Brian Lehrer gives her like three or four opportunities to correct herself and to add in a little bit of complexity or humility or uncertainty about the situation. She's like, no, absolutely not. And at one point accuses him of wanting to wage global jihad. Which actually goes to Zoran's point. The reason he said in that initial interview where he gave this long, nuanced answer about why he wouldn't condemn the phrase globalizing intifada. So basically, because you're asking me to condemn a phrase that to some Arabic speakers or to all Arabic speakers means, you know, globalize the resistance.

[Sager]

Right.

[Unknown]

And you can't ask an Arabic speaker to condemn the word resistance.

[Sager]

Right.

[Unknown]

Like, just because some people don't like it. It would be like saying that the Trump administration, whenever they arrest a Palestinian, a pro Palestine protestor, they tweet out shalom. So therefore, when pro Palestine people hear the word shalom, they get in their feelings about this assault on their dignity and their liberty. So therefore, nobody should say shalom anymore.

[Donald Trump]

Anymore.

[Unknown]

Same logic. But it's absurd. No, shalom, that's not what it. Like, I'm sorry, Like Trump is misusing the phrase. Yeah, but that doesn't mean that nobody else can say it. And Gillibrand then makes his point that the whole argument is racist by confusing jihad and intifada because it doesn't matter to her. It's just scary sounding Arabic words. And so the entire political class, the media, all the Sunday shows, everyone tried to get him to condemn this phrase. He wouldn't. And Gillibrand winds up being the one that apologizes. That's. I don't know. It's too much to say. It's a watershed moment, but it's definitely a data point.

[Sager]

They're gonna have to bend the knee. They are Slowly but truly realizing it.

[Unknown]

Even Kathy Hochul told Gillibrand, like, there's no room for this racism in our state. If you lost Kathy Hochul, that's probably when she was like, okay, I need to apologize for this.

[Sager]

Speaking of unlikable and unpopular governors, let's pivot to Gavin Newsom.

[Unknown]

Ryan that was really so mean. Such a, such a likable character.

[Sager]

It was low hanging fruit. We were talking about Kathy okl It just made sense to talk about Gavin Newsom right after that. So Gavin Newsom is now taking aim at the California Environmental Quality act, which if you've read Abundance, if you followed Ezra Klein's work, that is a sort of fixation as there's been writing about it for a matter of years. And Gavin Newsom held a press conference yesterday. Let's take a look at his, his nod to the abundance community in this.

[Unknown]

Clip to the NIMBY movement that's now being replaced by the YIMBY movement. Go YIMBYs. Thank you for your abundant mindset. It's a plug to Ezra.

[Donald Trump]

And it.

[Unknown]

Really is about abundance and to the movement that they represent, which I think was reflected in the comments made a moment ago about getting big stuff done.

[Sager]

Okay, we can put the tear sheet on the screen. You heard him there say he appreciates to the YIMBY community the abundant mindset. They are rolling back that landmark quote environmental law. Quote landmark environmental law, as the New York Times puts it. Ezra Klein has, has written, Ryan, pretty extensively for a long time, as we mentioned earlier, about the California Environmental Quality Act. That sort of become a symbol, not just, you know, obviously their substantive complaints, but it's become kind of a symbol of what abundance, the sort of abundance world is trying to change about blue state governance. This is how Klein put it in an op ed. I want to say this was like a year ago. Quote, laws like the California Environmental Quality act have been used to block countless harmful projects. A faster, more streamlined process could make it easier to build solar farms and rail systems. But streamlining could also make it easier to build infrastructure that communities have reason to oppose. So what's going on with this, Ryan?

[Unknown]

Well, and so Ezra tells a story in his book about the creation of this law being quite a quiet affair. Like it's now understood as this landmark law, but it was not actually. And this is the case for a lot of laws, they pass quietly. Nobody really knows what's going on. And then only later do they take on some significant importance. And this one took on importance because the California Supreme Court interpreted It in a way that the original authors of it did not intend, which gave it enormous amounts of teeth. And then. Yeah, so you did then have a lot of communities and other people that wanted to block projects able to hire lawyers and gum things up. And so I think there is some nuance to this because I think on the one hand the political power of billionaires and incumbent kind of monopolies and power centers are the thing that is their power that blocks a lot of these projects. And their power, if it is unchecked in a what should be a democratic society is going to find different vehicles for it to be exercised. Just like water running downhill, it's going to find a way to get there. Right now it finds ceqa. You get rid of ceqa, but you don't check the power of billionaires. It's not going to solve the problem, does it?

[Sager]

Is it a short term solution?

[Unknown]

But on the other hand, maybe you packed a little bit of dirt there for a while and maybe it does move the flow of the water in a productive direction for a little while. It doesn't solve the underlying problem which is that we're not a democracy. But yeah, maybe it gets some projects going. It might. I don't want to say that it won't because it like. But my point is unless you restructure the political economy, these people are going to continue to mess with you and gum everything up.

[Sager]

No question about that. I think actually that Ezra would agree with that point, don't you?

[Unknown]

I think he might.

[Sager]

You should have him back on.

[Unknown]

Yeah, I think he might. I think the, the centrist groups and the pro corporate groups that have basically adopted all of the messaging, they would not like that. But Ezra might. Yeah, come on, we gotta get him back on. See if he does agree with that.

[Sager]

Big win for abundance.

[Unknown]

It's, I mean, yeah, you get name checked. Your book gets name checked at the signing of the repeal of this major law. I mean that's methods as we're getting results.

[Sager]

Yeah, Poor Derek.

[Unknown]

Co author.

[Sager]

That's right. Within months of the book coming out.

[Unknown]

Yeah, I think it played a role definitely because here Newsom said that he would not sign the budget unless they included this with it. So this was not like a standalone thing that the legislature wanted to pass. Newsom demanded it.

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[Sager]

Let's talk about Israel Ryan. Move on here to a post from Piers Morgan. This is D1. We can put it on the screen Saying huge, great work, President Real Donald Trump, because Trump posted a truth social yesterday saying my representatives had a long and productive meeting with the Israelis today on Gaza. Israel has agreed to the necessary conditions to finalize the 60 day cease fire, during which time we will work with all parties to end the war. The Qataris and Egyptians, who have worked very hard to help bring peace, will deliver this final proposal. I hope for the good of the Middle east, that Hamas takes this deal because it will not get better, it will only get worse. Thank you for your attention to this matter, Ryan. And when he signs the post. Thank you for your attention to this matter. Just gives me any time, every time, even in these awful, awful news cycles, which is what we're talking about here. Because some way, Somehow, this is D2, it's a VO. We can start rolling. This is getting worse. The situation in Gaza is getting worse.

[Unknown]

Right? Yeah. Every time you check the drop site Twitter feed, you're almost, almost seems like you're gonna see Another report of 25, 30, 45, 80 Palestinians killed in the latest strike or attack at an aid center. This was shot by one of our reporters. Yeah, In Gaza. And as you could see there, it's this absolutely beautiful seaside cafe, which is very popular among journalists.

[Sager]

Because it has WI fi.

[Unknown]

Because it has WI fi. And it is very, very. All you have to do is look at it to see that obviously this would not be anywhere that a militant. You're not building. You just, I mean, just physically, you can't build a tunnel right next to the beach like that. You can see the beach from the cafe. This is a place where journalists go, and families too, of course.

[Sager]

And it's known for being a place where journalists.

[Unknown]

Right. And there was a. And this is about a month after they struck a Thai restaurant in Gaza City that was also known before its WI fi. But also just culturally it became known as like a place where all the journalists hung out and they struck that directly, killing, you know, multiple journalists at both times. And in that case, you saw the results. More than 20 people killed. And they go on and on the. Anyway, there's more to that, but you can read about it in the story or don't need to burden people with it here, but it's just an absolutely ongoing genocide. It's unbelievable that this continues to go on. So how serious is this ceasefire? The Israelis finally are. Now, there was a long pause between Trump posting that he had had gotten their agreement to a ceasefire. Very, very long pause. And the Israelis coming out and saying that there's some optimism around it. They didn't even go all the way and confirm it. Kind of like when these long pauses can be disturbing. Like when Peter Douthat or Ross Douthat's like, should humanity survive? It's like Peter Thiel's like, well, you know, so they're now saying, okay. So it's clearly some pressure's being applied, and they're saying, okay, maybe we're going to get there. Hamas is saying that they're open, as always, to any deal that leads to an end to the war. Like, that has long been their position. And they have said that we will turn over authority in Gaza. Somebody else, not the Israelis, they have to withdraw, but they will turn over authority to somebody else. And we could have this deal by now. All the hostages could be out by now. Because the deal that was reached in January was in phases. And phase one went off effectively, and then as phase two was supposed to start, Netanyahu unilaterally broke it. And so the only now, at the end of July, the Knesset goes out of session until the fall. So there's some thinking that Netanyahu wanted to wage war all the way up until the Knesset went out of session, then be pressured into the ceasefire, and then he can't lose his government, because even if Smotrich and Ben GVIR quit at that point, there's no Knesset to overthrow him. And also there was a. There was a vote to oust him, and you can't have a second vote within six months. So he actually should be fine. Like, he could take this and his government shouldn't fall apart, at least for six months or so. Meanwhile, Trump's been trying to get the judges to drop these corruption charges against Netanyahu, thinking that, like, that might be some obstacle to Netanyahu getting a deal. Because if Netanyahu feels this gun to his head that if he loses power, he's going to jail, then he will just continue the genocide indefinitely, just to.

[Sager]

Stay out of jail and drop set. Had a report on the cafe attack. This is D3.

[Unknown]

Yeah, you can put up D3. This is. Yeah, check this one out. Because this piece also includes lots of details about the ongoing negotiations.

[Sager]

Yeah. And in the meantime, Ryan, D4. This is from HuffPost. A couple of interesting developments out of the Pentagon. Yes, well, I shouldn't say out of the Pentagon, but out of the Trump foreign policy. So I think this was what, Patriot missiles. They're halting some shipments of air defense missiles to Ukraine amid concerns that its own stockpiles of Such supplies have declined too much, officials said, according to HuffPost. And Brit Colby was getting tons of heat from hawks on X yesterday who were saying, this is just shameful. People like David French, just absolutely shameful. I don't think Bridge has said anything yet. He's undersecretary for defense. But the argument, according to his defenders on X, and it is a very legitimate argument, by the way, is that the United States supply is running low for our own defense. Dan Caldwell had a good post that I'm pulling up right now about all of this. It's just incredible that you can be treated. Yes. So Dan says the choice was either this, was this. Either prioritize equipping our own troops with ammunition in short supply and which was used to defend US Troops last week, or provide them to a country where there are limited US Interests. So does David support supplying Ukraine over our own troops? He asked in response to David French saying terrible halting patriots in particular is viral, vile.

[Unknown]

Yeah. David French and these others want to live in a world of no limits. I would like. That'd be great. I mean, not necessarily what I'm missing.

[Sager]

Hatred missiles for everyone.

[Unknown]

Yeah.

[Sager]

Abundance times. Yeah.

[Unknown]

Yeah. Get the environmental rules out of the way and you can. And you'll just have endless amounts of shells and Patriot missiles and all the other things that you need to wage.

[Sager]

The high speed rail.

[Unknown]

Yeah. You can wage war basically anywhere you want all the time and shoot as many rockets off as you want and you will never run out. That is the world that David French would like to live in. It's not the world that we live in. We instead have just been emptying all of our warehouses, putting them on planes, flying them to Ukraine and Israel for whatever they're doing over there. And yeah, now we're running low. Right. And like, who are you going to get mad at? Like physics.

[Sager]

Yeah.

[Unknown]

Math. Like you're not mad at yourself for exhausting all of your supplies.

[Sager]

Yeah.

[Unknown]

Killing how many people? Good Lord. I mean, if you combine the number of people killed in Gaza and the number of people killed in Ukraine, Russia, like you haven't killed enough people yet. I mean, and you're sat and you're. And you're upset that you exhausted all your supplies, killing many hundreds of thousands of people, maybe over a million. For what? Like how, like it's since it's now 2025 doing this since 2022. Is the world better today because we killed those million people?

[Sager]

Well, here is a connection between what we were just talking about, Gaza and Ukraine and we're going to get to Syria in a moment as well. So that's one of the other interesting developments of the Trump foreign policy just in the last couple of days. But when the Ukraine war broke out, correct me if I'm wrong, Ryan, but that I believe Israel did not send weapons per Zelensky's request.

[Unknown]

We were asking them to, and Zelensky was begging them to like, send us some of these patriots. Look at these poor people in Kyiv getting attacked. Like, send the missiles. Help, help, help. And the whole world is standing with Ukraine. And Israel's like, nah, I don't think so. We have enough.

[Sager]

In a sense, they're recognizing they have not an infinite supply of Patriot missiles.

[Unknown]

Yeah, right. And they cost enormous amounts of money.

[Sager]

Yeah. Oh, incredibly.

[Unknown]

And then we make like 90 a year or whatever of the Thames or whatever they are.

[Sager]

Yeah. Actually there's probably an abundance argument for the price of Patriot missiles being wildly high because of.

[Unknown]

Yeah. And it's probably actually more of a strategic argument because if you can't get the cost of those down, you can't win a war of attrition. This was a 12 day war with Iran and they were basically out.

[Sager]

Yeah.

[Unknown]

Okay, so your whole strategy is you're going to win every war in 12 days. Yeah, that's it. Okay, good luck.

[Sager]

And let's talk about Syria for a bit as well, because, Ryan, I don't know if you've caught this Reuters report. This is the next tear sheet that we can put on the screen. Insanely horrifying report. And you always have to be skeptical of journalism in the region, I guess is maybe one broad way to put it.

[Unknown]

But it's such a chaotic place, though, that the journalism actually is actually more doable because people are freer to speak than they would have been under Assad.

[Sager]

Yes.

[Unknown]

You know, you have to obviously take everything with a grain of salt, but.

[Sager]

Well, also you have to be careful with the claims of competing, you know, like sometimes literally tribal factions and all of that. But this, this report is incredibly well detailed. What Reuters did basically was put together names of like 1500 people that were slaughtered by. No, they make a connection to the government forces. People can dispute that. But the Reuters report is that with knowledge, complicity and probably direction from the new administration, the Trump administration, meanwhile, has just lifted sanctions on the new government.

[Unknown]

No. Yeah. And particularly on the guys who were singled out for these massacres.

[Sager]

Right. But I don't know. So here, go on.

[Unknown]

Yeah, so the backstory here is in March there were some moves by regime Remnants to try to reassert authority in certain areas they had become. And Maaz has been on the show talking about this. Assad wasn't. His forces were not totally routed. Some of the regime elements became like, gangs that controlled particular areas and were still involved in, like, the Captagon drug trade and were going to hold on to these territories. And actually, you know, in some respects, depending on how you count it, they still do. And so there was some sense that they were making a move to. To kind of actually take back power. Because Jelani's hold on power is extremely tenuous. Like, you know, he swept in with, like, you know, a couple hundred, couple thousand guys on, like, pickup trucks and motorbikes, trying to hold a massive country. And how much he actually controls Syria is exaggerated. Like, he.

[Donald Trump]

There's.

[Unknown]

Like, Maz was there. It's been several weeks since he was there. But he was saying from suburb to suburb, there's different controlling authorities with various levels of allegiance or rivalry with the, quote, unquote, central government. So he's like a fake it till you make it leader. He acts like one, but he can't really do much in the way of direction. So these.

[Sager]

Although the sanctions are now lifted after he had a apparently good meeting with Donald Trump, this guy was in the Middle East.

[Unknown]

That's the make it part. Yeah, yeah. So he might end up making it.

[Sager]

Put that suit on until you get those sanctions lifted.

[Unknown]

That's right. And so these two guys. I don't have my laptop. One of them's Noam Daghair is Abu Bakr. Another is like, was it Hamza? These guys are directly tied to Turkey. These are. But Turkey has sponsors, the entire thing. But they directly sponsor particular factions. And this massacre was carried out by this faction that was directly sponsored and takes direct orders from Turkey. And so, yeah, and it became like, a complete massacre that roped in many, many civilians.

[Sager]

The Reuters story starts with a man's heart being literally cut out of his chest and placed on top of his body. Yeah, just medieval.

[Unknown]

It was a dark, dark several days. And then, interestingly, it was, quote, unquote, central government that sent in. Sent in troops, quote, unquote, because we're watching state formation take place. So I'm putting all these things in quotes to tamp this down. And then you had Israel come in and, like, bomb the Druze or whatever in, like, a totally bizarre way, because you're like, what are you doing? Like, why are you attacking the Druze like this? Yeah, stop. Like, not. Not helpful here. And so the central government did put a stop to it after this, like, extreme level of violence, like, absolutely horrifying level of violence. And then so now Trump has lifted all these sanctions across the board, which is a separate policy from specifically lifting sanctions on these two guys who are known to be, or understood to be like the main culprits who are tight with Erdogan. So that feels like that was an Erdogan ask. Because you could lift sanctions on Syria and say, all right, you want to do reconstruction, that's fine. Energy infrastructure, it's fine. Telecoms, American companies can work there. We're lifting all of those sanctions. But these butchers who carried out this massacre, they're still sanctioned. Those are different kinds of sanctions you could do. To lift those is a choice. Then I'd be curious. Hopefully we'll get some reporting of what role Erdogan played and why the Trump administration was like, yeah, we'll do that.

[Sager]

Well, yeah. Especially because Israel was not in favor of the United States lifting all of the sanctions. Jelani now goes by Al Sharah, says that they want to start talks over a deal with Israel potentially.

[Unknown]

Right. It shows you can be like former Al Qaeda.

[Sager]

Yeah.

[Unknown]

And as long as you're cool with Israel.

[Sager]

It's inspiring, really. Anybody can make it.

[Unknown]

Anybody can make it. Just one condition. Just one condition.

[Sager]

All right. Well.

[Unknown]

And they can still bomb you whenever they want. Like Israel continues to just bomb Syria at will.

[Sager]

Like I said, just a true heartwarming story. It is of. Yes, of redemption and peace. Maybe someday.

[Unknown]

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[Unknown]

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[Ryan Grim]

Cool Ray Ban metaglasses choose from a variety of classes, classic Ray Ban frames all with Meta [e-mail] AI-glasses and don't forget to say hey Meta. Play iHeartRadio to enjoy your favorite radio stations, artists and podcasts on the iHeart app.

[Krystal]

Every business has an ambition. PayPal open is the platform designed to help you grow into yours with business loans so you can expand and access to hundreds of millions of PayPal customers worldwide. And your customers can pay all the way ways they want with PayPal, Venmo, pay later and all major cards so you can focus on scaling up when it's time to get growing. There's one platform for all business PayPal open grow today at paypalopen.com loans subject to approval in available locations let's talk.

[Sager]

About this CNN Threat from Donald Trump the latest CNN threat from Donald Trump and also pair it with breaking news. This happened actually not long before we came into the studio that cbs, which has a pending merger, which by the way is with a company owned by Larry Ellison's son, run by Larry Ellison's son. Larry Ellison is obviously Oracle founder, very close to the Trump administration pending merger between Skydance and cbs. CBS settled for the exact same amount of money that ABC settled the Trump suit over. And that was a much more serious lawsuit, by the way, because ABC had actually misreported information about Trump's liability and I think it was the E. Jean Carroll case $16 million settlement for CBS. That's a small price to pay to potentially get their merger through. And we'll talk about that in a second. Before we circle back around to that play this point that Trump Made or play this clip that Trump made about potentially prosecuting CNN over its coverage of the Iran bombing. This is E1. CNN yesterday pushed an app that lets you track where ICE agents are. Tom Homan was saying that perhaps he.

[Unknown]

Eventually prosecuted for that enforcement.

[Sager]

Yeah, we're working with the department just to see if we can prosecute them for that. Because what they're doing is actively encouraging people to avoid law enforcement activities, operations. And we're going to actually go after them, prosecute them with verge of a famine if we can, because what they're doing they believe is illegal.

[Donald Trump]

And they may be prosecuted also for having given false reports on the attack in Iran. Totally false reports, coding obliterated.

[Sager]

And our people have to be celebrating.

[Donald Trump]

I come home and say, what do.

[Sager]

You mean we didn't hit the target?

[Donald Trump]

We hit the target first. You know, the pilots came home and they said, we hit the target. So they may be very well prosecuted.

[Sager]

What they did there, we think is, oh, boy. Ryan, we were talking about this earlier in the show. We were sort of debating it earlier in the show about fascism and Trump's seriousness about fascism or not serious about fascism, because I tend to think a lot of it is a larp, not all of it. ICE agents pulling Ramessa Azturk off the street over an anti Israel op ed is a good example of them very much not larping and making good on their sort of flirtation with authoritarianism. This. How serious do we think this is? I don't think this one's serious, I guess.

[Unknown]

I don't know. I think what presidents say matters. So it is direct intimidation of the press to threaten to put them in jail for reporting something that they don't like. Like, we also, speaking of Maaz over at Dropsite, we have a piece today at Dropsite which is an interview with a Iranian nuclear scientist saying, oh, he saw that. Yeah, they didn't actually, like, according to his information, they moved a bunch of the stuff and like, the fordo was not, you know, totally destroyed, like Trump is saying, which matches with what the intel is that's been leaked so far. And so are they gonna prosecute us too? Like just the. Like.

[Sager]

That's what I'm saying. Actually intimidated by this, though.

[Unknown]

I wasn't. Yeah, we published.

[Sager]

That's true.

[Unknown]

Good point.

[Sager]

We're making fun of it here, so.

[Unknown]

Yeah, I guess not afraid of that. The funniest part to me remains Trump's fixation on the feelings of the pilots.

[Sager]

He does like that.

[Unknown]

They were so brave and they were so Proud of what they did.

[Sager]

Don't you think that works with the public though? Don't you think the public hears that and they're like, yeah, no, because these.

[Unknown]

Are fighter pilots, not nine year olds playing soccer. They don't need a participation trophy. Like it matter. Like, yeah, like, sorry, we keep score. Like we're not doing this thing. We're like, what was the score, dad? Oh, we don't keep score. Doesn't matter if the ball went in the net or missed the net. Like, that's the like new American approach to it.

[Sager]

I mean, I also feel like there was.

[Unknown]

If you're doing war, it matters if the ball goes in the net. Like, did you hit the target or not? It's not. I'm sorry that your feelings are hurt if you missed it.

[Sager]

Well, per usual. Well, you just did. Everyone gets a trophy, right? Gotta get rid of that mentality.

[Unknown]

No, but you don't get a trophy just for pressing the button on your bomb. It's gotta actually hit the target.

[Sager]

The media, I feel like, actually was pretty celebratory about.

[Unknown]

They were.

[Sager]

The media loves usually about. Yeah. Military action.

[Unknown]

And also I'm happy to pretend that the nuclear program was absolutely annihilated. If it's not, let's just say it here. No need for any more war. The beautiful pilots courageously struck all of their targets, took it out, especially the ones way underneath the mountain. It's completely obliterated.

[Sager]

And nothing was moved either.

[Unknown]

Nothing was moved. And we need no more war. And give them all a trophy. Give them like four foot tall trophies that they need both hands to carry them home.

[Sager]

Just to continue. The point about whether this is actually intimidating or not, as I recover from the double handed trophy illustration.

[Unknown]

How do you take a selfie like you don't want to drop your trophy?

[Sager]

Yeah, that's a good point. And you can't pop the shit. Payne, if you have two hands on a trophy or take a selfie.

[Unknown]

So maybe a little smaller. A dignified sized trophy.

[Sager]

It could be a beautiful medal. Cause then you have both.

[Unknown]

I participated in the 12 day war.

[Sager]

Okay. Recovery, the seriousness of the threat. But a great example of this is the CBS lawsuit that was just settled at the recommendation of Sherry Redstone because they want to get the Skydance merger through. This was not a serious lawsuit. I was reading through the lawsuit this morning, actually, while I was waiting to pick ryan up. Stationary DC it refers to like Kamala. Not Ms. Harris, Senator, Vice President Harris, Kamala. Throughout it sites like Breitbart articles. It wasn't it wasn't a serious lawsuit. And it just speaks to the fact that CBS was not at all intimidated that they were going to be found in violation at all.

[Unknown]

They won an Emmy for that interview, by the way.

[Sager]

I will say they deceptively edited the Kamala Harris interview. Every network does that every single day. What they aired on Face the Nation was different than what they aired on 60 Minutes, and I think it was materially different. I think you got a different version of the answer. A significantly different version of the answer. She was being. Kamala Harris was being pressed on Gaza, basically on Israel, and whether the Biden administration was being taken seriously by Netanyahu, basically. And they aired a very different version of it on both shows. And that speaks to the power of the media. Everyone kind of knows that the media is doing that. This was a good example of it. It is not, and it should not be something that you can actually be found liable of defamation, whatever, by a politician for doing. It's wrong.

[Unknown]

Can you imagine, though, if the precedent was set, that everybody who doesn't give full context to a clip of an interview has to pay $17 million to Trump? Seriously, like, how many Twitter accounts are out there clipping, like, 25 seconds of an interview where Trump would be, like, the whole two and a half minutes? Gives a slightly different context.

[Sager]

Yep.

[Unknown]

So that'll be $17 million. Or you don't get your merger.

[Sager]

Yeah, or you don't get your merger.

[Unknown]

This is not about what it's about. What it's actually about is this merger he is doing. It is a way to give money directly to the President so that he will sign off on a corporate merger that's worth much more than $17 million.

[Sager]

Right. And CBS is not admitting wrongdoing in the settlement. It is money that is going to his presidential library, which I think was the same thing in the ABC case. Both $16 million settlements. I think when ABC settles, people who at the time were worried about the precedent that they set by settling are being vindicated because Trump has realized that he can essentially extort money for his presidential library. If that's what is going on behind the scenes of this, it looks like Redstone saw that and realized that you can sort of come to the table and look like you're making a deal with the administration in a way that. That actually grants favor with the President and we'll see what happens with their merger. I mean, that's a.

[Unknown]

The other tin cup.

[Sager]

Zuckerberg tried to do that. Sorry. Zuckerberg tried to do that with the ftc and it did not work. Zuckerberg tried to give a ton of money to Donald Trump into the inaugural fund and all of that. And the FTC is continuing its suit, its meta suit.

[Unknown]

Yeah, the other tin cup that they put out. And I wonder if you've heard this around town. And so people should look to see whether or not ABC or CBS end up becoming like investors in Melania's documentary.

[Sager]

Like Amazon.

[Unknown]

That's the word around town. Another way that you need another. Basically it's coin operated and you have to find the different buckets. And one of the buckets you're supposed to put coins into is this Melania documentary. We'll see if it ever gets made. But you can imagine how the scheme would work, that, that the thing will raise a billion dollars in investment capital and then it'll make 100 million and you'll go back to the investors and be like, real shame that investment didn't pan out. But you got your merger.

[Sager]

You don't even know how much it makes though, because it's going to be on Prime. So it's not like there are tickets.

[Unknown]

Right. And then prime can overpay them for it.

[Sager]

Yeah, 100%. So as dumb as the CBS editing was, it's also just like we're. I don't even think Trump would deny this. We are in Roy Cohn territory once again.

[Unknown]

Oh, yes. Yeah. He's loving it.

[Sager]

Yeah. All right, well, thanks everyone for sticking with us on this wild travel 24 hour period as we made our way into the studio. Ryan doing a literal planes, trains and automobile journey from Miami to Washington.

[Unknown]

Also, the show would have been on time if this were in China. Like it took like four. It took like three and a half hours in the end to get from Richmond to D.C. that's a 30 minute train ride in China.

[Sager]

Yeah. The Richmond leg of your trip was especially egregious. I had.

[Unknown]

It was supposed to start at 4:52am didn't start till 6:05, didn't get in until 9.

[Sager]

And here you are. I had two delayed flights and one canceled flight yesterday. It was trying to get back was also wild, but not quite as wild as yours was. Stick around for the Ask me anything if you are a premium subscriber. If you aren't a Premium subscriber. BreakingPoints.com monthly subscriptions are back. Good deal. Yep, absolutely. So head on over there. Otherwise, Ryan, I think both of us are back here tomorrow.

[Unknown]

That's right. We will be an easy one. Just coming in from inside the city.

[Sager]

Yeah, yeah, compare. It'll be very easy. All right, we will see you back here tomorrow everyone.

[Krystal]

Every business has an ambition. PayPal open is the platform designed to help you grow into yours with business loans so you can expand and access to hundreds of millions of PayPal customers worldwide. And your customers can pay all the ways they they want with PayPal, Venmo pay later and all major cards so you can focus on scaling up when it's time to get growing. There's one platform for all business PayPal open grow today at paypalopen.com loans subject to approval in available locations.

[Ryan Grim]

Who needs headphones when you have glasses? Ray Ban Meta Glasses with discreet open ear speakers and built in microphones, you can play your favorite tunes.

[Emily]

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[Ryan Grim]

Staying in tune with the world around you. Ray Ban Metaglass choose from a variety of classic Ray Ban frames, all with meta [e-mail] AI classes and don't forget to say hey meta play iheartradio to enjoy your favorite radio stations, artists and podcasts on the iHeart app.

[Unknown]

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[Krystal]

This is an iHeart podcast.