8/18/25: Hillary Praises Trump On Ukraine, Top Israeli Official Arrested In Pedo Sting, Trump Tariff Loyalty Scores

Summary

Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar

Episode: August 18, 2025: “Hillary Praises Trump On Ukraine, Top Israeli Official Arrested In Pedo Sting, Trump Tariff Loyalty Scores”
Hosts: Krystal Ball & Saagar Enjeti
Date: August 18, 2025
Podcast Description: Breaking Points delivers independent, anti-establishment political analysis, challenging powerful interests from both left and right perspectives.

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EPISODE OVERVIEW

This episode covers a highly eventful news cycle, digging into:

• The ongoing Ukraine-Russia peace negotiations and complications, including Hillary Clinton's surprising praise for Trump’s Ukraine approach.
• The shocking arrest and swift return to Israel of a top Israeli official in a Las Vegas child predator sting.
• The intersection of US foreign policy, economic consequences—particularly “greedflation,” new tariffs, and alleged corporate loyalty tests under Trump.
• Broader commentary on political accountability, US-Israel relations, the weaponization of anti-semitism accusations, and political fallout, including Medicaid cuts and 2026 electoral implications.

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DETAILED SEGMENT BREAKDOWN

1. Ukraine Peace Talks, Summit, and Surreal US Policy Crossovers

Timestamps: 02:42–32:13

Key Discussion Points:

• Major summit in Washington: Zelensky meets with Trump, NATO, and EU leaders to discuss potential ceasefire and peace deal parameters (04:22).
• Russian demands: Russia seeks not only land it currently holds (~20% of Ukraine) but additional Ukrainian territories, requiring Ukrainian withdrawal from some frontline cities (06:57).
• Stalemate and maneuvering: Putin’s demands remain unchanged since early in the conflict; Zelensky refuses territorial concessions without a national referendum and prioritizes a ceasefire with security guarantees (11:57).
• Security guarantees: US/Europe propose “Article 5-like” protections for Ukraine; skepticism persists over whether Putin/Russia would accept these terms (06:21).
• Hillary Clinton’s intervention: Odd bedfellows emerge as Clinton publicly supports Trump potentially winning the Nobel Peace Prize, should he end the war on “Ukrainian terms,” reflecting elite opinion convergence and attempts to influence Trump (18:44).
• The hawkish media pivot: Fox News, traditionally pro-Trump, becomes aggressively pro-Ukraine, pressuring Trump to act in line with mainstream foreign policy (“Fox's coverage was just nonstop pro Ukraine propaganda…” – Saagar, 17:06).
• Tariff escalation: With hawks pushing for further sanctions and tariffs on Russia, the US risks further economic blowback (“US Tariff policy and trade policy is being used to effectuate these foreign policy goals and that does have real impact on you…” – Krystal, 22:16).

Notable Quotes:

• “If this war ends with the expansion of, call it whatever you want... a bilateral treaty with Ukraine... it’s not gonna change the difference that all of us will be on the hook for a nuclear war for the territorial integrity of Ukraine.” — Saagar (21:21)
• “It honestly is sickening because it is a tragedy of the failures of US foreign policy over decades. You know, we used Ukraine as pawns...” — Krystal (22:16)
• "We're living in a timeline where the Neol left talking point on Ukraine... is that actually the United States should have pursued the tertilian policy of declaring war on the Soviet Union after we won World War II..." — Saagar (24:27)

Memorable Moments:

• Saagar mockingly suggests that European and US leaders are trying to manipulate Trump’s ego by dangling promises of the Nobel, using Hillary Clinton to “box him in” (17:06–19:21).
• Krystal lays out her sympathy for Ukrainians’ sense of betrayal by Western powers (25:05).
• Krystal and Saagar revisit the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, debunking the idea the US gave a binding security guarantee to Ukraine at that time (27:12).
• Saagar laments the missed opportunity for earlier peace talks at Istanbul (30:18).

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2. Israeli Official Arrested in Pedophilia Sting—Diplomatic Fallout & Accountability

Timestamps: 32:14–44:43

Key Discussion Points:

• Arrest details: Tom Alexandrovich, executive director of Israel’s National Cyber Directorate, was caught in a Las Vegas pedophilia sting, charged, but then released and allowed to return to Israel (32:14).
• Intervention dynamics: Speculation that Trump administration figures intervened to secure Alexandrovich’s release, leveraging either diplomatic immunity or political backchannels (35:32–39:42).
• Pattern of evasion: Discussion of systemic problems with extradition, the weaponization of dual citizenship/diplomatic immunity, and historic precedence of American (often Jewish) sex offenders fleeing to Israel to avoid US prosecution (36:41–41:20).
• Broader context: References to Jeffrey Epstein’s time in Israel and systemic problems with accountability in religious and official circles (37:23, 41:03).

Notable Quotes:

• “Who she says in the Trump admin intervened on behalf of him. Was it Kash? Wouldn’t surprise me… since the FBI was part of the sting, we want answers now.” — Krystal (34:16)
• “…not much commentary is really needed here, is it? …But yeah, we need answers to who intervened at what point and at what level, because this is absolutely insane.” — Krystal (36:21, 39:42)
• “In this country, you know, by the way, if you want to live under religious law, there’s a place called Israel. You can go and live there. Apparently you can live with impunity here.” — Saagar (41:20)

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3. Media Censorship, Antisemitism Accusations, and Weaponization of Labels

Timestamps: 44:44–51:32

Key Discussion Points:

• Debate on abuses by Israeli soldiers: Israeli TV hosts shocking “pro and con” debates about the institutional rape of Hamas detainees and glosses over wide-scale abuse, including of children and “military-age” detainees (44:44).
• ADL (Anti-Defamation League) branding and censorship: The ADL updates “America First” as an extremist, antisemitic slogan—Krystal and Saagar argue this is a ploy to discredit anti-war republicans or Israel critics (45:44).
• Popular backlash: The labeling of non-establishment figures—like children’s content creator Ms. Rachel—for Palestinian advocacy, sparks a loss of ADL/media credibility and increased skepticism about hate group claims (46:28–48:43).
• Spiraling effects: Genuine antisemitism rises as dissent is labeled hate speech, driving moderate voices to distrust authorities and pushing some toward real extremists (49:14).

Notable Quotes:

• “They define the terms and make sure all sane discussion is pushed to being branded anti-Semitism. Now, I again think that it’s backfiring spectacularly.” — Saagar (46:28)
• “You have turned that person [Ms. Rachel] into one of the most prominent spokespeople for the children of Gaza by branding them anti Semitic.” — Saagar (48:40)
• “Genuine antisemitism is on the rise and it’s precisely because of the actions of Israel and the insistence that every Jew must be associated with it, which is preposterous and in and of itself anti Semitic.” — Krystal (49:14)

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4. Religious Extremism, US-Israel Politics, and the End-Times Mentality

Timestamps: 51:32–55:58

Key Discussion Points:

• Religious rhetoric in US support for Israel: Clips of Mark Levin (at Christians United for Israel conference) declaring the war “God’s war” (“This is God’s war that we’re fighting right now” – Mark Levin, 51:32).
• Religious extremism at the global stage: Revelation that an International Court of Justice judge (dissenting on Israel’s genocide case) admits her rulings are motivated by biblical prophecy and support for Israel (54:44).
• Cultural implications: Saagar and Krystal discuss the dangers of faith-based foreign policy and critique both left and right for their inconsistent application of secular vs. religious standards (53:35).

Notable Quotes:

• “If you fight God’s war, then nothing is out of the question… and that’s why they frame it.” — Saagar (52:52)
• “She is not evaluating facts. She is coming from this place of religious extremism and her view that the end times are nigh.” — Krystal (54:44)

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5. US Economy: Tariffs, Greedflation, Corporate Profits, and Political Fallout

Timestamps: 58:34–76:00

Key Discussion Points:

• Greedflation explained: Wall Street and corporations have preserved or increased profit margins during inflation, in part by using rising costs (like tariffs) as justifications to hike consumer prices even beyond actual production cost increases (59:39).
• Trump’s tariff and corporate loyalty policies: Reports of a White House “loyalty scorecard” for corporations, ranking which companies trumpet Trump’s policies most vigorously—a subjective, patronage-based system (60:27–62:53).
• Selective applications: Fortune 500 companies are often excluded from the most punishing tariff rates, undermining official economic narratives (65:50).
• Sovereign wealth fund maneuvering: The US administration treats allied nations’ investments as an American sovereign wealth fund, directing factory-building in the US at presidential discretion (67:26).
• Stagflation and economic pain: Indicators of stagflation (high inflation and low growth), falling consumer sentiment, and data on shifting support among Medicaid recipients—support among Medicaid recipients for Trump has sunk 37 points since his first term began, hinting at potential electoral consequences (“The Medicaid thing is the number one thing to watch.” — Saagar, 74:56).

Notable Quotes:

• “They’re cronies using this loyalty to determine the car mounts.” — Krystal (67:12)
• “Public is paying attention to how they’re feeling economically and to some of the legislation that has been passed by this administration… Trump’s support with people who are on Medicaid… has gone from being quite positive to quite negative.” — Krystal (72:35)
• “Medicaid right now is the number one thing… for the backlash. Similar to 2018… My vote to repeal Obamacare is what nuked me.” — Sagar (73:25)

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FINAL TAKEAWAYS & TONE

• Cynicism and urgency: The hosts’ tone throughout is grim, frustrated, and skeptical of establishment narratives across the spectrum. There is a throughline of tragic inevitability—on Ukraine, on US foreign entanglements, on bipartisan corruption, and the hollowing of public institutions.
• Moral clarity: Krystal and Saagar are explicit: the episodes in the news cycle, from Ukraine to US-Israel relations to domestic economic policy, are not merely technical debates, but have profound stakes for democracy, justice, and ordinary people.

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SELECTED TIMESTAMPS FOR RAPID ACCESS

• Ukraine/Clinton/Peace Summit: 04:22–32:13
• Israeli Official Arrest Story: 32:14–44:43
• Media/ADL/Antisemitism Segment: 44:44–51:32
• Religious Extremism & ICJ: 51:32–55:58
• Economy/Tariffs/Trump Loyalty: 58:34–76:00

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This episode draws together geopolitical power plays, shocking criminal news, cultural warfare, and economic policy—each reinforcing the podcast’s message: establishment power, left or right, is rarely serving the public interest.

Transcript

[Krystal Ball]

This is an iHeart podcast.

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[Sagar Enjeti]

Hey guys, Sagar and Krystal here.

[Krystal Ball]

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.

[Sagar Enjeti]

This is the only place where you can find honest perspectives from the left and the right that simply does not exist anywhere else.

[Krystal Ball]

So if that is something that's important to you, Please go to BreakingPoints.com, become a member today and you'll get access to our full shows unedited ad free and all put together for you every morning in your inbox.

[Sagar Enjeti]

We need your help to build the future of independent news media. And we hope to see [e-mail] Good morning, everybody. Happy Monday. Have an amazing show for everybody today. What do we have, Crystal?

[Krystal Ball]

Yep, lots to get into today. So Zelensky is in town along with a whole bunch of European leaders. So we will see what will come out of that. Also, Hillary Clinton agreeing with Trump on a number of foreign policy issues.

[Sagar Enjeti]

So it's a sell time.

[Krystal Ball]

Looking forward to getting Saga's reaction.

[Sagar Enjeti]

Let's get the hell out of this timeline as soon as we in particular.

[Krystal Ball]

Yes, actually that's what we were just discussing discussing before we went live. In addition, we have lots more to get to this story. I can't even believe this is real. A top Israeli aide to Netanyahu was arrested in Las Vegas in a pedophilia sting. Nevertheless, he was released, allowed to fly back to Israel. So what the hell is going on with that? We've got some economic news in particular. Greedflation is back with a vengeance and we seem to be shifting more and more towards the dreaded side stagflation. So we'll take a look at that. We also have the State Department now at the behest of Laura Loomer, deciding that they are going to block all visas of kids coming from Gaza to seek medical treatment in the U.S. disgusting move, in my opinion. We will break down how all of this happened and what exactly it means. We've got Pete Buttigieg cleaning up his Israel comments from Pod Save America. Pretty interesting sign of where things are within the Democratic Party and how slow Democratic leaders have been to adjust the sentiment within the Democratic base. And today we will be joined by Seth Harp, who just wrote a book exposing the murders and drug trafficking coming out of Fort Bragg. It is an extraordinary read and I really think you guys are gonna find this very interesting. At its core, it's really a book about the blowback from America's foreign endless wars and what it has done to our own society.

[Sagar Enjeti]

Yes, that's right. About the toll on the people who fought it, about the toll on everybody else. And that's why I think it's really worth talking. We always like Seth. I'm happy to have him again on the show. Hoping that all works. Also, we will have the ama if it works, we're trying again. All right, so if you want to go ahead and sign up to become a Premium Member, BreakingPoints.com, monthly and yearly memberships, if you can't afford it, no worries, just go ahead and hit subscribe on this YouTube. On your YouTube button. Is that what it's called right there on the channel and. Or if you're listening to this on a podcast, please just go ahead and send the show or your favorite episode to a friend. Give us a five star rating. It really helps other people find it. So let's go ahead and start with Ukraine. We had Professor John Mearsheimer break down the exact kind of the meaning of the summit. We have some more details now that are coming out. We know, of course, that President Zelensky is already here in Washington. Almost every major leader of NATO from the European Union will be here in Washington as well for a grand meeting between Zelensky, Trump and all of them to kind of set the terms. We did get some interesting new revelations on what we could see in any sort of peace agreement from Steve Wick, the chief negotiator of the President, who was on television giving some of that away. Let's take a listen.

[Steve Wick]

The thesis of a ceasefire is that you'd be discussing all of these issues that we resolved in Alaska. You'd be discussing security guarantees. There's not a person on the European team who didn't acknowledge that we made substantial progress at this meeting. The fundamental issue, which is some sort of land swap, which is obviously ultimately in the control of the Ukrainians, that that could not have been discussed at this meeting. We intend to discuss it on Monday. Hopefully we have some clarity on it and hopefully that ends up in a peace deal very, very soon.

[Sagar Enjeti]

You mentioned the Article 5 guarantee of NATO. An attack on one and is an.

[Mark Levin]

Attack on all Russia would allow that to happen.

[Steve Wick]

No, Jake, that's not what I said. What I said is that we got to an agreement that the United States and other European nations could effectively offer Article 5 like language to cover a security guarantee, which is one of the real reasons why Ukraine wants to be in NATO. We sort of were able to bypass that and get an agreement that the United States could offer Article 5 protection, which was the first time we had ever heard the Russians agree to that.

[Sagar Enjeti]

That is an absolutely extraordinary claim which we really all need to sit with because Steve Witkoff is claiming that Russia has agreed to some sort of Article 5 style guarantee. I find that very difficult to believe for a number of reasons. Whether you have an Article 5 style guarantee outside of NATO or in NATO. If you have all the countries in NATO absent, like Lithuania, actually, no, they'll probably give them one, so it doesn't even matter. Slovakia, I apologize. And the United States give you snapback we will if one of is attacked, if not all. You're in NATO, okay? I mean, it's like, who cares whether you call it NATO or not? Again, I find that very, very difficult to believe, considering Putin's rhetoric about why that started the war. I guess it's theoretically possible that they would have agreed to it if they could keep significant parts of Ukraine. What's come out of the summit now so far is that Putin is demanding not only the parts of Ukraine, approximately 20% that he already, already controls, but actually significant parts of the, of the donb. And that would include Ukrainian withdrawal from areas of the front line, including some cities that they already control. Everyone, please keep in mind the Ukrainian government is like, oh, well, we can't give that up. These cities are rubble no matter where they control it or not. Both for Russia and for Ukraine. It's not like some thriving metropolis that they're just handing over, right? These have been completely emptied and destroyed, ravaged by the war. So that is by far the single most significant thing that has come out. But we should keep in mind, even if that is true, you have to get Zelensky to agree. Zelensky. In the last 48 hours, I have tracked every single one of his public statements. He is not even close to coming towards a peace deal. In fact, his chief aim from the Financial Times and others, which I will return to, is not only a ceasefire, an immediate ceasefire. Why does he want an immediate ceasefire? Cuz they're losing the war and they're expending and losing manpower. An immediate ceasefire. He wants a security guarantee. Before, on top of the ceasefire, he's not ready to agree to a peace deal because he keeps saying, I can't even agree to a peace deal. I have to bring it to a national referendum, which of course he can control the process through which that would happen. Part of the reason he is here in Washington today with all the European leaders is actually to convince Trump to go back to Putin and say, you need to agree to an immediate ceasefire or we're gonna put all of these secondary sanctions on you. I believe this is echoing Mearsheimer, that Trump, it all finally clicked for him to say, no matter what sanctions, I do, no matter what's going on, Putin, what he's demanded, has really not changed all that much since istanbul back in 2022. And it's basically immovable from that point forward. And so you basically have these two almost immovable objects now, considering the Ukrainian, the European Union position, the United States is caught in between for some reason. We have subjugated all of our policy to the EU and to the Ukrainians. And then the Russ, of course, have no compunction about killing thousands of men on the front line every single day if they have to, to continue to grind forward inch by inch in Ukraine. So it's bad all the way around. I see no possible way. ECHOING actually, the Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, on television, he's like, we're not even close to a peace agreement right now. So I believe him. I think he's right. And, you know, with the European Union and the Ukrainians, it's not good right now.

[Krystal Ball]

Yeah. And just to spell people out for people, and you guys did a great job with Mearsheimer spelling this out over the weekend. The difference between a ceasefire and a peace deal. The Ukrainians want a ceasefire because that means you don't have to actually deal with the reality of the territorial loss. You can just say, okay, we're just taking a pause. Gives them a chance to sort of regroup, reconstitute, reconsider, et cetera. Whereas the Russians, I mean, he has been saying basically the same thing from the beginning of the war about what the conditions are that would need to be met. And fundamentally, they are unacceptable to the Ukrainians, they're unacceptable to the Europeans. I mean, they're unacceptable to a lot of the American leadership as well. So the question is, are you going to end up with a Ukraine that is at all sovereign? The faster this ends, the better it is for Ukraine. And it's going to be incredibly ugly. If it ends now, it's going to be incredibly ugly. The kind of deal that would have to be struck. But if you continue, it is likely to only get even uglier because of the logic of Russia just having so much more manpower and Ukraine really spending so much of their manpower already in this war and being in such a precarious position. You know, things have been like, the Russians continue to make sort of minor advances. They did have a significant breakthrough that we covered last week. However, as time goes on, the Russians are betting that whatever economic strife they're facing from the sanctions, whatever potential societal instability they're facing, which from the surface level doesn't seem like a whole lot, that they can basically outlast the Ukrainians. And I think that's a fairly safe bet to make.

[Sagar Enjeti]

Yeah, I mean, again, it's not on a timeline. Both the Russians and the Ukrainians are living in insane timelines where the Ukrainians are like, look at this micro breakthrough that we made. It's like look at the timescale in 2022, you launched your grand counteroffensive and you made all of this talk about retaking this, this and this. None of it happened. We gave you probably $100 billion. Since that time period, the front line is relatively fr. If there's been any movement, it's been on the Russian side. Now Zelenskyy himself again reiterating those core demands where he wants a security guarantee explicitly ahead of that, he only wants a ceasefire immediately before moving to peace. And then in terms of any territorial concession, he's already ruling that out without a national referendum. The territorial question is one that he's not really willing to get to. Here's what he had to say. Constitution of Ukraine makes it impossible, impossible to give up territory or trade land.

[Mark Levin]

Since the territorial issue is so important.

[Sagar Enjeti]

It should be discussed only by the.

[Mark Levin]

Leaders of Ukraine and Russia at the trilateral Ukraine, United States, Russia, so far, Russia gives no sign that trilateral will happen.

[Sagar Enjeti]

And if Russia refuses, then new sanctions must follow. So you can see there about Ukraine does not even have the ability without some sort of national referendum. By the way, one thing that is interesting compared to the Gallup polling that we've shown here, the Ukrainian people are already mostly broken. I mean, many of them want a negotiated peace to the south. Now maybe what Putin is demanding is too much like quote, negotiated peace can mean a whole lot of different things. But the point remains, like you can see that he's absolutely not willing to even bring it up in this meeting right now with Trump. I want everyone to understand all of this is in the public like what they've said they're gonna do. The European leaders there are there to hammer home only a single point. We need the ceasef and we need it now. They basically wanna box the United States into their own insane position, which is all of these preconditions for peace, as if they are winning the war. The reason Putin is resolute is cuz he's winning the war. He has stood up against the sanctions. He has stood up against obviously the Ukrainian military. The Europeans have thrown everything that they possibly could at him. It doesn't matter if they had the military might, they would do it. I mean, I talked to some military experts in terms of the cards. The Russians have the cards because there's not a single thing not strapped to the ground that we could send Ukraine that was going to make a damn difference because of their own manpower issues. So this is all very important for everybody to understand.

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[Sagar Enjeti]

The problem is right now is that Trump is. You know, everyone talks about how Trump is impressionable and that Putin is gonna Take advantage of that. Well, Putin ain't the only person taking advantage of that. You think all those Europeans flew over here for no reason? Yeah, I mean, of course they know what they're doing too. Okay. And they've been wildly successful. Same with Zelensky over under on whether he's gonna wear a suit today, because apparently that was an annoyance of Donald Trump to try not to repeat the February disaster of his meeting. And the question is all about how they are going to impress upon Trump that it's really them who has the cards, which again, is fake because all the weapons are coming from the United States, whether they're getting bought by the Europeans or not. But stuck within that is now this most recent Hillary Clinton thing, which I know this all sounds crazy, but I didn't appreciate how important it was until. So I was watching all day the coverage of the summit. Bret Baier has 10 minutes on air Force One to interview Trump. What do you think? One of the questions was on Hillary Clinton, and the reason why is if you watch all of Fox coverage, Fox's coverage is the most hawkish I've ever seen. I watched all three networks. Fox's coverage was just nonstop pro Ukraine propaganda. And what I'm realizing is they're appealing to Trump's ego by saying, see, Hillary says you should get the Nobel Peace Prize if you do it the right way, AKA the Ukrainian way. And so they're trying to box him into this by creating public, elite public opinion that says, I agree with you. So here's Hillary Clinton talking about the summit. Let's take a listen. I think all of that is a very good signal that there is beginning.

[Krystal Ball]

To be a better understanding, both by the president and the people around him, as well as by the leaders of.

[Sagar Enjeti]

Our European allies, that there can be.

[Krystal Ball]

Common ground amongst us. And the kind of dismissiveness that we.

[Sagar Enjeti]

Saw in the first Trump administration has.

[Krystal Ball]

Been replaced by a much more obvious.

[Sagar Enjeti]

Working relationship to the good of European.

[Krystal Ball]

Security, transatlantic security, and hopefully Ukrainian security. So I'm actually encouraged.

[Sagar Enjeti]

Nobel Peace Prize for Donald Trump. Yeah, that's what I'm saying.

[Krystal Ball]

Does that warm your heart?

[Sagar Enjeti]

Not good. We need to get out of this timeline. All right, let's go to the next part, please. From the Financial Times, Zelensky and allies will press Trump on security guarantees. This, again, is one of the most singularly important things, because if this war ends with the expansion of, call it whatever you want, I don't care. A bilateral treaty with Ukraine that is signed on by more than half of the NATO Powers and or NATO. It's not gonna change the difference that all of us will be on the hook for a nuclear war, for the territorial integrity of Ukraine, even if whether Russia could live with that. You should ask yourself at a very basic, do you want that as an American taxpayer? They never put it to you in those terms. You know, and this is part of the problem. We can see the history. And everyone says these are Putin talking points. It's ridiculous because this argument's going long before Putin ever came to power. You can go and read George Kennan's own theories on NATO expansion going back all the way to 1991. Bill Burns, very many serious foreign policy realists looked at the situation, said this is untenable and it's gonna create a crisis. John Mearsheimer, who we interviewed on Saturday, said very similar things at a very basic level. The border of NATO has been moving further and further towards the Russian territory. The result of the Ukrainian war was to bring Finland into NATO. Finland, a country which was neutral for 200 years, decided to join NATO. And we switched our fingers like this and immediately brought them in. Now they're asking for 80% of Ukraine to be brought into this as well. And when they say security guarantees from the Europeans, that's fake. Because if Europe could guarantee their security, they would do it. They need America to do it. That's another part which always gets left on the table here. And so this is, you know, look, I think Trump is very open to falling for it. And if that happens, you can't take that back. You cannot take back, you know, a full on Article 5 guarantee. Also because of the reality we live in, I would bet you that that would pass the US Senate 99 to. There may be two people who would be willing to vote against it. I think Hawley and Rand Paul, maybe. Rand Paul, by the way, Rand abstained actually on North Montenegro. So I'm not so sure whether he would even do it. So, like, this is a crisis. In my opinion. No one serious even wants to talk about it. And the real issue is if Trump goes on the record to some sort of security guarantee, Putin has not said, yes, I will accept a security guarantee, at least publicly. We're not taking that back then. That is a statement of U.S. policy under the Trump administration. And what if the Russians are like, okay, well that's evidence for why we just need to keep rolling. That's the problem. What else do we have? We're gonna tariff China 500%. Does everybody wanna shut down our economy because of Ukraine? It's preposterous.

[Krystal Ball]

Yeah, I mean, I just see the whole thing as. It honestly is sickening because it is a tragedy of the failures of U.S. foreign policy over decades. You know, we used Ukraine as pawns and that's what has led to this horrifying outcome where, you know, what the hawks are pushing for and is what is possibly going to happen and what the Europeans would want out of this meeting today and what Zelenskyy would want out of this meeting today is to use secondary sanctions like as if we haven't already sanctioned. Russia is the most sanctioned country on the planet already in the world. But we're going to levy now secondary sanct to try to put even more pressure on Russia to try to secure some sort of, you know, immediate cease fire without a larger peace deal. Russia is not going to go for that. But what that means for you is that once again, the US Tariff policy and trade policy is being used to effectuate these foreign policy goals. And that does have real impact on you and what prices you're paying and what, you know, cost of living here is in the US and it's very unlikely to work. I mean, this is the insanity frequently of our foreign policy. I always think about Joe Biden when he was like, you know, we're talking about the Houthi strikes and he's like, we're gonna continue the Houthi strikes. Are they gonna work? No. Are they gonna continue? Yes. So much of our foreign policy is driven that way. Do you think there's any reasonable expectation here in D.C. that if we levy some war sanctions or secondary sanctions against Russia that that's gonna somehow magically.

[Sagar Enjeti]

You know, to be honest, I used to think the way you did. I think they are as dumb as they seem. And as you think they believe it. I mean, okay, I don't know, this is gonna be. This is gonna be a deep cut for everybody. But stick with me. But Michael McFaul, I know, you know the former US ambassad under Obama, I saw him tweet the other day, at least this was not Yalta 2.0. Now this is gonna sound crazy. That was the arch, like anti communist talking point of the Republicans in the 1940s because they criticized Roosevelt for dealing with Stalin. And the theory behind is that Roosevelt should have basically gone to war with the Soviet Union to protect against the expansion of the ussr.

[Krystal Ball]

Right?

[Sagar Enjeti]

So once I saw that, I was like, holy shit. We're living in a timeline where the Neol left talking point on Ukraine. Is that actually The United States should have pursued the tertilian policy of declaring war on the Soviet Union after we won World War II to make sure that we didn't expand into cold. That's why I was like, we are living in a psychology of people who are still litigating the Cold War at its very foundation of Yalta. And so seeing that, that's why I'm like, oh no, the sanction policy and all of that makes sense. Cuz it's not that they think it's gonna work, it's that they want a forever war with the Russian state until it is dissolved and destroy. That's what they want.

[Krystal Ball]

No, that's right. And it has to. And part of it too also does come back to money. Because after the, you know, after the Soviet Union collapses, after we had all of this gigantic expansion of the military industrial complex and the Pentagon spending, the logical thing would be, okay, this superpower rival of ours has now collapsed. We don't have to spend all of these mass amounts of money and fund all of these contractors in the beltway area to the extent that we have been. We could be spending that money, oh, maybe people should have health care, maybe people should have decent wages. Maybe we should invest in some infrastructure for once and really rebuild the country. No, instead those people have every interest in saying no, no, no, you have to continue. They're always a threat, they'll always be a threat. They'll never not be an adversary, they'll never be an ally. You have to always be in this aggressive offensive posture towards them. And so the money fuels it too. So that's why I see the whole thing as just such a tragedy and cautionary tale about the US foreign policy that has been pursued for decades across multiple administrations. And you know, now you end up in this situation, which is truly horrible. There is no good outcome here. There are zero good outcomes in sight. There is not going to be any sort of end that is in any way just for anyone. Right? It is outrageous that Ukraine was invaded by Russia. It's really not their fault. You know, it was more us using them as pawns in our imperial game. And now that we get here, I see why Ukrainians would feel like, well, you're the ones who dragged us into this position, so you should be fully backing us up, right? You should be doing what it takes to make sure that our sovereignty and our territorial integrity is preserved. You should be guaranteeing our security because you're the reason, a big part of the reason that we're in this situation to Begin with so I have endless sympathy for the place that the Ukrainians have been dragged to in this situation. And it's not to say, to take away agency from Zelenskyy, to say that there's, you know, nothing that's gone on there as well, but we're the big players in this game and we have created this endlessly disastrous situation.

[Sagar Enjeti]

Here's again where I need to stick with this. Zelensky today repeated the lie that the United States made a security guarantee to Ukraine in 1994. That is complete bullshit. He's referring to The Budapest Memorandum of 94 where the Ukraine went. Now again, I'm gonna choose my language carefully. Gave up control of the Soviet Union's nuclear weapons. Cause they say it gave us control of our nuclear weapons. No, no, no, no. Gave up control of the Soviet Union's nuclear weapons. Well, here's news for you, Ukraine, that was a non binding agreement made by the Clinton administration. Now when Putin gives one of his long lectures about NATO expansion, what does he cite? He cites how George Shultz and other secretaries of State told him we will never expand NATO beyond the borders of Germany. That by the way, is the exact same logic of Putin who said, the Secretary of State told me that you wouldn't expand and you expanded. Well, as the Russians well know, in this country, nothing is legally binding unless it passes the United States Senate. It's the same thing with the Budapest memorandum. So you know what you should do? You should treat then the Clinton administration making a promise that they could never fulfill for the same timeline with the same weight of the United States telling Putin we would not expand NATO. Neither are legally binding. We have a treaty system ascribed by the Constitution in this country. But yet both sides take the word of some previous administration as law that we're supposed to follow. And yet if I told the Ukrainians, it's like, well, by your own logic, and we never should expand NATO, what would they say? That's a Putin talking point. That's completely non binding. And then Zelenskyy with a straight face says the same thing. I get it, okay? It's unseemly the fact that we signed a memorandum and then didn't end up backing it up later on. It's also unseemly to me that we expanded NATO later on even though we didn't say it. But that's our system. We live in an elected government where different democratic leaders get to make different changes to foreign policy. You have to view it in that context and have to do so Fairly. And if you want it changed, then pass it through the Senate. But that's the unfortunate part of all of this. And this is the structure, the superstructure on top of today's talk. It is the biggest NATO propaganda effort in modern times, basically, since the expansion and the initial start of the war back in 2022. The goal is to set completely ridiculous and out of step parameters for the Trump administration and for the Europeans and the Ukrainians, such that Putin will not agree. They do not want this war to come to a close, period. They are not ready to stomach it. And the net result is probably going to be the Europeans continue to buy our scarce weapons from us, which again, are coming from us. Who pays for it almost doesn't matter. If the stocks are, you know, is what matters the most.

[Krystal Ball]

Yeah. Money's not really the issue.

[Sagar Enjeti]

And the war will continue day after day after day.

[Krystal Ball]

Yeah. And the Ukrainian position will further erode day after day after day. I mean, this has really been. Well, one of the lessons again of this war is we've set all of the conditions for nations to take the lesson of like, keep your nukes or get nukes.

[Sagar Enjeti]

Yeah.

[Krystal Ball]

Number one. And number two, the earlier this conflict was resolved, the better position that Ukraine would have been in. I mean, it still continues to be such a tragedy that we blew up those peace talks that were ongoing in Istanbul because that would have been the moment when you had the best potential possible outcome from Ukraine. And every day that they want to continue this war, the likely position of Ukraine and the likelihood that it's even able to pursue, persist, truly as a sovereign, independent nation, continue to diminish.

[Sagar Enjeti]

Yeah, absolutely right. All right, so that's the context. We'll see how it goes for today. It's gonna be a truly extraordinary day here in Washington. The schedule is an initial meeting first with President Zelensky, then a lunch to follow with the head of NATO, all of the major NATO powers and their heads of state, as well as the European Union, and then some sort of press conference release memorandum or whatever that will be released after that will be the set terms. Then we'll see what the Russians have to say.

[Krystal Ball]

Do we expect them saga to, like, take questions at any point?

[Sagar Enjeti]

So let me take a look at the schedule just very quickly.

[Krystal Ball]

Of course, we'll cover whatever.

[Sagar Enjeti]

Yeah, we're gonna talk everything that comes.

[Krystal Ball]

Out, I'm sure be leading tomorrow.

[Sagar Enjeti]

Knowing Trump, there's gonna be something. So, yeah, on his public schedule. There is not currently any public press conference, but there is a press spray. What that Means is when Trump is like in the Oval Office and the cameras all come in to ask questions. We have two of those scheduled, one with Zelenskyy and one actually with the European leaders. So Most likely that 3pm press pool in the East Room where they're gonna have some sort of big meeting. That is where we will probably see the most significant tape out of today. But we'll see. And as we saw with the Putin summit, things move around, get canceled and stuff all the time. It moves at a very rapid pace. So who knows what's actually going to happen? But that's the context. Text.

[Krystal Ball]

Let's go ahead and get to this situation that unfolded in Las Vegas. I can scarcely believe that the details of this are correct, but we have double and triple checked. And yes, in fact, this all really did unfold. Let's put this up on the screen and shout out to. I'm actually not sure her full name, Mel. Her handle on Twitter is Village Crazy Lady. She's done some really important reporting, not just here. So shout out to her for really breaking this down and bringing, highlighting this, bringing it to the forefront. So she tweets. The executive director of Israel's National Cyber Directorate was arrested this week in Las Vegas in a child predator ring sting. There were a number of other people who were arrested as well, I think seven different individuals. So he gets arrested in this sting of trying to lure a child on a computer for sex acts and then, then he's released and allowed to go back to Israel. Keep this up on the screen for just one moment so you can see she has screenshots here. One from YNET News, which is an Israeli publication, says US Detains worker from Israel's top cyber defense agency for questioning. The Prime Minister's office says the incident resolved quickly, ending with brief questioning of National Cyber Directorate Stafford before his release. So that's the way to. They're spinning it as like he was just questioning. It was all fine. You've got the local news saying that all of these individuals. By the way, one of the other dudes in here was a pastor, a minister, so that's cool too. But he actually was arrested, apparently facing charges. They all face felony charges of luring a child with a computer for a sex act and were booked into the Henderson Detention center, with the exception of one of the individuals who's booked into a different, different detention center. So again, all of them arrested and booked. You can see she also has this guy, Tom Alexandrovich, who was the executive director of Israel, still is Israel's national cyber director, which very important position by the way. There you can see his Twitter profile. So you can see sort of, you know, what his whole deal is. Let's put the next piece up on the screen with some more details reported out here by Mel. She said, just to clarify, she's got the arrest record here on the right. Okay, so again, rebutting the line of the Israeli Prime Minister's office saying he's just questioning his release. No, no, no, here he is. The arrest record right there on the right of your screen. She says, number one, Tom Alexandrovich was 100% charged. It's on the county website. His next hearing is supposed to be 8, 27, 2025. I'm sure that's not happening. Number two, Tom was charged with luring a child with a computer to engage in sexual conduct. Number three, in order to be charged with this specific offense, Tom had to seek out a child under the age of 16 with the explicit purpose of luring them from their parents to engage in sexual conduct. Who she says in the Trump admin intervened on behalf of him. Was it cash? Wouldn't surprise me. Since the FBI was part of the sting, we want answers. Now. Sean King does have some reporting. Now his quote, unquote reporting should be taken with a grain of salt. He claims to have sources with within the police department who said, yes, this was our sting and the Trump administration intervened and forced him to be released so that he could fly back to Israel in order to escape any sort of charges or accountability for this. I don't even know what to say. I mean, again, the details of this you could not even make up. But it appears that he was caught dead to rights as part of this broader child pedophilia sting in Las Vegas. And then the federal government, the Trump administration, very likely we don't have that totally locked down, but very likely. Cuz how else would this happen? Intervened, said, no, you gotta let this guy go and he's allowed to fly back to Israel. Unbelievable saga.

[Sagar Enjeti]

Very interesting, isn't it? Well, I think, I think a lot of it speaks for itself, so I'll just leave some of it.

[Krystal Ball]

Not much commentary is really needed here, is it? I mean, we could talk about also what's going on with Epstein kind of connection. Yeah, we can think about that. You could make that connection if you'd like to, but you could talk about whose interests are being protected here. Yeah. Just so you know that this isn't.

[Sagar Enjeti]

The first time how Jewish American pedophiles hide from justice in Israel. In a tense stakeout, they talk about having to look at, quote, the widespread problem of many accused American pedophiles flee to Israel. Bringing them to justice can be very difficult. In fact, an entire watchdog organization has to track pedophiles inside of Israel because they flee there and they seek. They use their dual citizenship basically to seek, you know, legal. Legal escape the legal system here of the United States. I'll recall, everyone will recall that Epstein at one point fled to Israel. It was open talk in US Society. Return from Israel to the United States for his sweetheart plea agreement in April of 2008.

[Krystal Ball]

He was negotiating that deal from Israel, correct?

[Sagar Enjeti]

Yes, that's right. And what they say actually inside of is at least more than 60 have fled the US to Israel. Given its limited resources to identify these individuals, they say the actual number is probably much higher. Again, basically a weaponization of dual citizenship. But in here, you know, it could actually be a weaponization of diplomatic immunity. Now, you and I have lived here in Washington and. Or you lived in New York too, so the diplomatic immunity thing is always a source of tension. We have a ton of diplomats here in D.C. they have diplomatic plates. They often ignore traffic signs or whatever. But that doesn't absolve you, as it says very specifically, of felony charges. It's limited. But in many cases, if you commit murder or something, it's not like you just get diplomatic immunity. That's not how it works. And so one of the things, there are a lot of questions here is how exactly did you escape from a questioning standpoint, especially because all of the other people, from what we can see, have been arrested right, in this sting. And by the way, there were some initial questions around this, but other organizations, news organizations, including the Guardian, have confirmed his identity. So we're going off of their reporting. But it is still extraordinary because the very fact that he was released, whether it was state, local or federal, is outrageous. Right, because you have somebody came to our soil. I mean, he did the worst thing he can do. In my opinion, the absolute worst crime of all is trying to exploit a small child. Right. I mean, as far as I'm concerned, like, that's where we get the death penalty, and then you get. Not you get to flee the country and go back. There's just so much about, you know, the actual crime itself, the way that our government is willing to look the other way. Again, we don't know if the feds were totally involved. I don't really see how they couldn't be.

[Krystal Ball]

How could they not be.

[Sagar Enjeti]

Because how do you just let somebody go like that? Or, you know, maybe they got scared because he was a diplomat, that he flashed the diplomatic passport. That's possible.

[Krystal Ball]

I mean, does he even qualify for diplomatic immunity? Because, I mean, he's not like an ambassador. I mean, he's an Israeli official. But not every, every government official is entitled to diplomatic immunity. It's supposed to be ambassadors, high commissioners, other senior diplomatic officials. So, no, I mean, I think it almost has to be that. You know, probably the Israelis, Israelis, look.

[Sagar Enjeti]

Somebody somewhere did something.

[Krystal Ball]

Israelis caught wind. They called up the FBI account. Maybe it's cash. Who knows? Someone in the Trump administration was like, this can't happen. And I'm sure this will be a scandal and this will be a big deal and you don't wanna have to deal with this. And hoped that it would just fly under the radar. And it may well have if you didn't have a few people, a few Twitter, Twitter sleuths and journalists who looked into this and were like, hey guys, this is kind of a big deal. But yeah, we need answers to who intervened at what point and at what level, because this is absolutely insane. To go back to the piece that Sagra was citing before, was that CBS News that did the reporting there? This was a few years back, what like 2018 or so that that report came out. But in any case, they talk about it and compare it to the scandal in the Catholic Church where you had, you know, you had a mass cover up. And within the Jewish community, oftentimes it's in these, you know, more, you know, Orthodox, Orthodox, Hasidic, where they don't want, you know, shame on the community. And so it's okay, well, you can flee to Israel and, you know, there'll be people there that will take you in and protect you.

[Sagar Enjeti]

The Hasidic stuff is even crazy, crazier. I've read number there's a New Yorker story from back in the day about inside the Hasidic community, how they protected.

[Krystal Ball]

Yeah, I remember those.

[Sagar Enjeti]

You know, and he was like, they're like, oh, you just pay them off. Like you pay them $20,000 or whatever and everybody makes it go away and nobody goes to nypd. I was like, this is disgusting. Because it was just a serial predator protected over and over and over again.

[Krystal Ball]

And they don't want scrutiny.

[Sagar Enjeti]

Yeah, they don't want scrutiny of their community, which is crazy. I mean, sorry, you live in this country, you know, by the way, if you want to live under religious law, there's a place called Israel. You can go and live there. Apparently you can live with impunity here. Apparently to these Jewish American pedophiles in the story, they talk about how some of the people who prey on children here go there, flee and actually continue to, you know, do it while they're in Israel.

[Krystal Ball]

Of course.

[Sagar Enjeti]

Yeah. So they're going after Israeli children too. Sick.

[Krystal Ball]

Absolutely sick. Speaking of sick, you guys will recall there was a right to rape procurement protest in Israel because there were IDF soldiers who were caught on camera raping and abusing Palestinian detainee. And you know, for once there was an attempt to intervene, arrest these guys and there was a mass protest against just the most basic level of accountability for these actions which were again caught on camera.

[Sagar Enjeti]

And apparently this a treasure trove of.

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[Krystal Ball]

This debate over whether or not Israeli soldiers should be raping prisoners continues to this day. Let's go and put this up on the screen. This is a VO this channel 12 news. This person says it's one of the most popular news channels in Israel and they host a debate for and against institutional rape of Hamas detainees as a policy, Remember also, I mean, not that it would be okay even if they actually were quote unquote, Hamas detainees, but they also arrest, they arrest children, they arrest any man who is quote unquote of military age. The level of abuse that has been documented by multiple human rights organizations is just absolutely sickening. So they're having a little pro and con, you know, little crossfire style debate there on Israeli Channel 12 news. Let's go and put this next one up on the screen, Sagar, because I know you're gonna enjoy this one. The ADL has updated, updated their glossary of extremism and hate because they're really credible, a really credible source now of extremism. And they say that America first is now considered to be an extremist term used by extremists in anti Semitic, racist and xenophobic ways. Now, let me be honest. There is a certain way in which you could define this that maybe you could get me to go along and agree. But we all know what's going on here. We all know what's going on here. It's that there are any Republicans who used the America first label to say, hey, maybe we shouldn't be supporting this genocide in Gaza. Maybe we should be focused on what is actually in the interest of our country and not participate in this barbarism that is going on with our tax dollars in our name. That's the part that they truly object to, of course.

[Sagar Enjeti]

And they did this before. I mean, remember the interracial marriage, intermarriage thing that we talked about recently. And the reason why all of this is important, important is that it's about defining the terms and making sure that all discussion, sane discussion, is pushed to the realm of being branded anti Semitism. Now I again think that it's backfiring spectacularly. And that's part of the reason why I don't quite get it. Popular culture has long moved now against Israel. Mainstream media is the last bastion of any pro Israeli support. And most people who are like us, who don't have any, any ties, funding ties, right to the establishment, can say what they want. When they're confronted with this level of smearing, they just say, screw you. I'm not gonna deal with it anymore. Ms. Rachel is actually the perfect example. She just shared this. I'll go ahead and read it. She says the group the Stop Anti Semitism is calling me evil for wanting starving children to have food. They called for me to be investigated by the DOJ because I care about Palestinian children along with all children. It's led to me getting threats, needing security, and they have tried to ruin my career. It has been incredibly painful. But the pain does not compare in the slightest to what the children have got experience. My dedication to children and their human rights is stronger than any of it. So that's what you've done. You actually turned the most popular children's influencer in the world with what built the most streamed show on all of Netflix ever for children on top of YouTube. I mean, I was recently looking at her. I didn't even know views like that were possible, like 1.1 billion outside of Gangnam Style or whatever. I was like, I did not know this existed. And so. And she's only been doing this for five, six years. She's a multi million dollar, honest, maybe a billion dollar brand here in the US they sell stuff of hers at Target. So you have turned that person into one of the most prominent spokespeople for the children of Gaza by branding them anti Semitic. We are just news commentators and others, but the more that this comes for other people inside of the system, you just make it so that you look at the ADL thing and you just laugh. And then next time they're gonna come and talk to me about anti Semitism, even if it's genuinely anti Semitic. I'm like, I need six other sources. I need, I need to. Or let me check it out for myself.

[Krystal Ball]

Any credibility.

[Sagar Enjeti]

That's what I do.

[Krystal Ball]

Any credibility.

[Sagar Enjeti]

It's like when someone calls something racist. I'm like, all right, show it to Me, let me see, you know, let me scrutinize it for myself. I don't believe you. That's my number. If the media is saying it, I'm like, let me check it out. Hate crime attack, I gotta see all the details. If it didn't happen on camera, don't believe it. Same thing here. You know, it's one of those where they have turned it into a social wall against everybody. And we are now, I think collectively at a point where we're like, if you are not outwardly denying the Holocaust or whatever, and if it's about Israel, I'm not going there.

[Krystal Ball]

Well, and guess what? Genuine antisemitism is on the rise and it's precisely because of the actions of Israel and the insistence that every Jew must be associated with it, which is preposterous and in and of itself anti Semitic. I mean, just think about the discourse around Zoran winning a New York, which continues to this day about, oh, he needs to do more to appeal to the Jewish community, blah, blah, blah. Then you actually look at the numbers. You're like, wait a second, he has overwhelming support. He has more support than any of the rest of these people with the Jewish community in New York. So maybe stop being so one dimensional and caricature ish and stereotyping people and what they care about and their position on this issue. Because no, turns out not every Jewish American wants to be associated with a genocide being perpetrated in their names in Gaza. It is utterly and completely disgusting. And so then when you have this intense censorship and when it's so clearly weaponized to just completely crush any sort of legitimate dissent on our nation's policy, by the way, vis a vis a foreign country, vis a vis the country of Israel and opposition. Horror at what is being done there. When you have that, then, yeah, I mean, this is part of why people like Nick Fuentes, who are genuine white nationalists and genuinely antisemitism, guess what? You have a lot of people who are, oh well, what he's saying is making sense. No, he has a disgusting ideology. What is he saying does not make sense. But should you be surprised? Are you remotely surprised that those are the types of people who will gain traction in this moment? You certainly shouldn't be surprised by that. And the ADL is probably part and parcel of sparking more anti Semitism than any other group in America outside of the US Federal government. Government. Let's go ahead and play this next part. So obviously there's this disgusting alliance between, you know, the absolute psychos In Israel, the psychos in our national government and the evangelical Christian base, some of whom, you know, believe, and certainly some of the leaders of whom believe that it is their God, you know, that it is their duty to God to support Israel no matter how many babies they massacre. So as emblematic of that, here is Mark Levin talking about how this is God's war that we're fighting. Take a listen.

[Mark Levin]

This is good versus evil. This is civilization, as the ambassador said, versus the barbarians. We're fighting the seventh century and we just beat the crap out of them. This is a righteous war we're fighting. And let me say this, this is God's war that we're fighting right now. And if Europe is too stupid to understand, that's their problem. I will remind you that's where Hitler was born.

[Krystal Ball]

CUFI conference there. Christians United for Israel. And he's saying, oh, this is good versus evil. Really? The good side is the one that's massacring and starving the babies, starving the entire population. The good side is the one that just announced complete and authorized complete ethnic cleansing displacement plan into concentration camps, which is currently in talks with different nations to permanently displace Palestinians from the Gaza Strip. That's what your religion is telling you. That is utterly absurd and disgusting. But it's also counter to any basic sense of morality.

[Sagar Enjeti]

It's also so inarguable because if they're fighting, I mean, people have always made this term, but it's like if you fight God's war, then nothing is out of the question.

[Krystal Ball]

Of course.

[Sagar Enjeti]

Yeah, and that's why they frame it.

[Krystal Ball]

That's what makes it so stupid.

[Sagar Enjeti]

This is God's war that we're fighting. If Europe is too stupid to understand, that's their problem. I will remind you that's where Hitler was born. It's like, where does this shit come, you know? And look, that is the perfect view into Republican support for Israel. You know, a quasi, you know, either pre diabetic or diabetic man who could barely breathe whenever he's giving his speech in front of a bunch of, bunch of evangelical boomers, you know, who have been like, I guess brainwashed into the specific type of Christian dispensationalism for support of the political state of Israel. Look, I'm not Christian. It's not my job to sit here and to, you know, to litigate these intra Christian debates.

[Krystal Ball]

You can be a human with a view.

[Sagar Enjeti]

Yeah, that's right. I'm just like, I mean, seems pretty crazy to me, but you know, it's not my beef, but it's just one of those where. Where I just feel that you can't help but look at that and see the psychopathy of what it takes at this point to be so rabidly pro Israel. That's who they are. They look down on you, by the way, completely, you know, and they have nothing but contempt. Unfortunately for all of us.

[Krystal Ball]

It used to be the right that was more aggressive in the, like, you know, you should be actually judgmental of extremist religious views. And the left, that was more like morally, relatively relativist.

[Sagar Enjeti]

I mean, I still think that's true on. On Islam, but anyway.

[Krystal Ball]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I. You should. I. I think if you. Your religious belief is leading you to support horrors that are morally atrocious. Yes, I think that should be subject to judgment. I think in a society, I think that should be absolutely subject to.

[Sagar Enjeti]

You're talking to an OG Richard Dawkins guy.

[Mark Levin]

All right.

[Sagar Enjeti]

I've been. I've been there from day one. But I. I did come to find that it does turn you into a little bit of a debate, bro. And a little bit, you know, it doesn't accomplish necessarily the goal.

[Krystal Ball]

I don'. We may need to bring it back, but.

[Sagar Enjeti]

Yeah, maybe we need to bring it back.

[Krystal Ball]

Let me just one more piece here. We don't have an element for it, but it fits in with the Mark Levin piece, and it's very important. I don't know if you guys remember. There was a judge at the International Court of Justice. Of course, they're the ones hearing South Africa's claim, along with others who have now joined the case that Israel is committing genocide. And there was one judge there, the Ugandan vice president of the icj, who had put out a dissenting opinion that was just pure Israeli Hezbollah. And it was. I mean, it sounded like it was literally written, and it may have been by the Israeli Israelis. I was like, what is going on with this lady? Well, now she has come out sager and said that, quote, God is counting on me to stand on the side of Israel, that the signs of the end times are being shown in the Middle east right now. So now we understand why she was so out of step with all of the rest of the. Including the American one, by the way, all of the rest of the judges at the icj in this dissenting opinion. She is not evaluating facts. She is coming from this place of religious extremism and her view that the end times are nigh. And so she has to do whatever she can to back up Israel no matter what. So not only are the consequences here domestically in the us, but the consequences of these viewpoints are global as well.

[Sagar Enjeti]

Yep, absolutely. Very well said. All right, let's get to the economy.

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[Sagar Enjeti]

We've talked a lot here on the show about inflation, about tariffs and what the overall effect will be. But one of the things that we may have discounted is greedflation. You will remember there was a huge deb about the sources of inflation back in the day from 2021 onwards as to whether it was corporations raising prices, inputs, prices going up. It turned out to be a part of both. But part of the reason why the stock market actually did quite well during the Biden years despite horrible inflation, was that corporate profits were able to be maintained. How do you do that exactly? Well, you eat some of the costs, but you pass some of it on also to the consumer. And so we are seeing some of that with tariffs as well. Well, let's take a listen to this report from cnbc.

[Mark Levin]

I don't quite understand why the government is saying that profit margins increased when we're not seeing the essentially a lot of inflation in the consumer prices, but we're seeing prices higher on the wholesale prices. That should compress margins. And we've had a whole bunch of companies come on and say we're taking big hits because of these tariffs. So this number should be going the other way.

[Sagar Enjeti]

Way.

[Mark Levin]

I'm not sure what's happening here.

[I]

I'm actually not surprised that we didn't see compression of corporate profits. That's something that's characterized the inflationary period since the beginning of the pandemic, that corporations are actually able to protect their profit margins and actually even increase their profit margins at times using inflation and uncertainty as cover for price hikes, even if their costs aren't going up. And so, so one of the things we're going to be looking for in the CPI as consumer prices are starting to rise is are corporations actually taking hits or are they able to use this moment of supply constraint created by tariffs and uncertainty created by the Trump administration to pass on higher prices even above their increased costs?

[Sagar Enjeti]

Mm. All right, so there it is, straight from cnbc. You know, they were killing themselves for that one because they hated greedflation narratives back in 2021 and 2022. But what it does generally fit with the pattern of is that the companies are broadly okay right now. And you know, that's one of the things I've emphasized about this tariff policy. If the tariffs were working, then the S and P should be down by 20% because if a company had to actually increase its costs, capex costs here in the US Why would their stock go up. You know, it'd be like, okay, well we have to massively eat all of this new policy. The only way to offset that would be a shit ton of federal debt or a tax break. Not happening because I can read what the tax code is. And that's why The S&P 500 is doing pretty well now. One of the ways that they're doing well is basically this like weird pay for play system inside of the White House. Let's go and put this up there on the screen. The West Wing has now apparently created a loyalty scorecard for 553 companies and trade associations on how hard they work to support and promote President Trump. So Trump, apparently the unusual spreadsheet fits the administration's proclivity for micromanaging and administering loyalty tests. Factors in the rating include social media posts, press releases, video testimonials, ads, attendance to the White House and other engagement related to OB3, the one big beautiful bill. The organization's support is then ranked as strong, moderate or low. Examples of good Partners include Uber, DoorDash, United, Delta, AT&T, Cisco, Airlines for America, and the Steel Manufacturers Association. Apparently other companies have not been able to rate on the list. One of the ways that you do is to cheer on things like no tax on tips if you're Uber, or being a doordash person who is promoting some of the policy. But this gets to the heart of that Nvidia deal. I think I covered it with Emily, which is still so crazy. It's like, yeah, you can do business in China, but you have to literally pay us a cut of the profit. Nothing to do with strategy, nothing to do with anything. And again, there are plenty of good arguments for letting Nvidia send the H20. I went through all of them during the segment. Us getting a quote, cut of it is not on the list of what that is. Now apparently we're doing the same thing with intel, which by the way is a US company, which is even, because it's not even about that.

[Krystal Ball]

C3 up on the screen about this.

[Sagar Enjeti]

C3 please. From Intel. Considering, quote, buying a stake in Intel, I am not even fundamentally opposed to sovereign wealth funds. I don't think they're always a bad idea as long as they're actually done properly or any of that. That's not what's happening here.

[Krystal Ball]

That's right.

[Sagar Enjeti]

And that's the opposition that I have to so much of this. If we want to have a full on strategy the way that China does it, where they have stakes and they control Things for the overall national interest, which is actually benefiting the people. Has a track record. I'm all in. Okay. But this is not what we're seeing right now, which is basically like some loyalty fealty thing to Donald Trump so he can get a solid bar of gold, which I'm still not over that in the Oval Office.

[Krystal Ball]

We should never be over that.

[Sagar Enjeti]

It's pretty wild. Here's your. Literally, yeah, it's like, you know, when Amazon, when Amazon explorers would go into the jungle, they would come with beads and other things to exchange for goods. It's like, that's how primitive that is to present the leader with a bar of gold to the chieftain.

[Krystal Ball]

That's why the loyalty score story and the intel stake story tied together so importantly, because it would be one thing if, yeah, if you were pursuing something like, you know, a China policy, which is very long term driven and very much in the industry interest of, hey, what do we want life to be like in China for Chinese? What do we want to invest in? What are the industries of the future? Like this very intentional strategy that instead what we have here is just, did you tweet about the one big beautiful bill? You know, did you show up with your bar of gold at the White House? Like, how slavish and devoted have you been to the person of Donald Trump? Donald Trump. Okay, then we're gonna look upon you favorably. And if not, then not. So all of this involvement in the economy, which, yes, if done in a different way, I would support too. And in fact, I'm hoping that some candidate on the left picks up this road that has been mapped up by Trump and does it in an actually intelligent way to actually benefit the manufacturing economy here and benefit jobs and wages and all those sorts of things and invest in critical industries and industries that the future. But no, this is not that. This is about just what's gonna be good for Trump. Who paid the best tribute, who had the best gold bars in the Oval Office? The doordash example, they had. They had a delivery driver who wore a red doordash mom T shirt as she stood behind Trump at a White House event promoting no tax on tips. Also in a Fox News digital interview. And that's what earned them their great loyalty score. And now they'll be able to reap the benefits of that. It's also why Walt street hasn't been that upset about the tariffs, because they know that they have the money to be able to get in those rooms and they know how to work his ego, go massage his ego and be able to get whatever they want.

[Sagar Enjeti]

I actually read a fascinating analysis which is that economists have undercounted the actual tariff. Part of the reason why people are shocked right now about the S and P and everything is because the official tariff rate is like 15% or whatever on average. But what these piece dug into is that economists took the government too literally. Literally, as in they took it for what it is and thought it was being applied across the board. That's not what actually they're paying. If you look at the corporate profit and the reported costs of tariffs, it doesn't line up with the government figures. And the actual tariff rate is much lower, indicating a ton of exclusions which are not public. Which it turns out that the Fortune 500 is probably paying about half of what the government actually says they are paying. And that is the only thing that you can possibly recognize style, the profit numbers and where things are today, the lack of effect and then the government published number. There's no other way to do it. And it was a long more economic analysis. But translating it to others is basically saying like, yeah, what they say they're charging is not what they actually are because there's all these corporate exclusions that are being cut at the Fortune 500 level that you and I know nothing about. But this is all deeply legalistic. You know, it's all with the Commerce Department, et cetera. But it results in the fact that the tariff being paid are actually much lower than they say. So it makes, you know, that's again.

[Krystal Ball]

I mean, they're cronies using this loyalty.

[Sagar Enjeti]

That's what I'm saying.

[Krystal Ball]

To determine the car mounts.

[Sagar Enjeti]

Exactly right. And that's why I think it's very important, you know, for actually understanding some of this. And that actually gets to the Scott Bessant point with a very extraordinary comment about sovereign wealth fund. Let's take a listen.

[Mark Levin]

We have these agreements in place where. Where the Japanese, the Koreans, and to some extent the Europeans will invest in companies and industries that we direct them largely at the President's discretion. And how does that work? I mean, it's almost like an offshore appropriation. I'm not sure we've ever had anything like that in the States before. Have you consulted with, I don't know, the Senate Finance Committee or the House Ways and Means Committee or. Or what? Well, Larry, I think a good framing of that is other countries, in essence are providing us with a sovereign wealth fund. They're going to build our factories, they're going to help us to build new factories, which Mr. Trump loves. Exactly. So the way to think about it is these huge surpluses accumulated offshore. Let's take Japan. We're going to have 550 billion. And they will be reinvesting that back into the U.S. economy. And we will be able to direct them as we reshore these critical industries.

[Sagar Enjeti]

Okay, so translating that a little bit. And our friend Arnaud put it this way, quote, this is without exaggerating one of the most extraordinary things the Treasury Secretary said. He says what he is saying is that the US Will now treat US Allies wealth as an American sovereign wealth fund and direct them at the property president's discretion how to use their money in order to build American factories and reshore American industries. As even Larry Kudlow says. He's like what? He's like, have you run this by the Senate or any of that? I mean, Arnaud and I probably have more of a difference because I think in terms of our trading relationship or other, I don't really see the point of being an empire if you're not going to tell your imperial outposts how exactly to pay their tribute. I would say that's part of the problem with the global American empire right now in terms of who's better benefiting from it or not. But the overall problem I really have with the way that this is all being done is that it's stupid and it's not really to the benefit of anyone. Because if you take like the Norwegian sovereign wealth fund or frankly even the Saudi one or many of these others, they have been to the tremendous benefit of their actual countries and of the people who participate. There's a lot of democratic input. I'm not sure if you saw they just divested from Israel as well more recently, which was a huge deal just because one of the largest sovereign wealth funds in the the world. But the point is, is that it's being actually used and has a lot of democratic input by the people because they see it as a way not only to ensure their own security, their financial status, et cetera, but part of the problem for the country. We have not had any of that get put on the table. It's being used entirely by the administration and setting a precedent where if you think about it in the future, if you can just have this discretionary funding completely available, then President Biden or President Newsom or whoever is going to come come next can also use it to their end, which of course people would freak out about by saying that these are the public dollars within the government treasury. That's What I would say is you're setting it up in such a capricious and a stupid way. Not only setting a bad standard going forward, but you're not even accomplishing what you allegedly set out to do.

[Krystal Ball]

Yeah, no scrutiny, no accountability. And we know the way that Donald Trump operates. It's all about what's gonna be good for him and his bottom line. So don't be surprised if that wealth that's supposed to build American factories is going to his shit coin or whatever Trump hotels or some sort of deal that benefits him or just whatever CEO happens to be the most embarrassing and willing to humiliate themselves and grovel at his feet. So that will be the criteria by which those investments are judged. At the same time, we've got a few different indicators of economic turmoil. We can put this up on the screen. They say the jaws of stagflation are wide open. This is from Bloomberg. You've got employment shrinking, you've got prices paid rising. So what? Stagflation is wage. When you have low growth or no growth or negative growth and you have inflation. And the reason why this is such a terrible thing to happen, I mean, first of all, it just causes a lot of pain. Second of all, it's very difficult to deal with because if you are trying to control the economy using the Fed and you hike interest rates to get the inflation under control, well, then you're going to further crush growth. If you lower interest rates to help to trigger growth and deal with unemployment sentiment, well, then you're going to get inflation. So that's why stagflation is such an incredible concern. And we can put the next piece up on the screen as well from Joe Wiesenthal. We just got new consumer sentiment numbers. Overall sentiment down, inflation expectations much higher. This comes from University of Michigan. I think this is kind of the preeminent consumer sentiment index and it's fallen to 58.6 when it was estimated at 62. And long term inflation expectations rising to 3.9% when they had been estimated at 3.4%. So, and it turns out saga, the public is paying attention to how they're feeling economically and to some of the legislation that has been passed by this administration. This is extraordinary. Put this next chart up on the screen. C7, Trump's support with people who are on Medicaid. And of course Medicaid, you know, significantly cut by the quote, unquote, one big beautiful bill has gone from being quite positive to quite negative. So you can see if you track this at the beginning of Trump's term, 52% of those on Medicaid approved of Trump. So he was above water. 52% and only 34% disapproved. Now it's completely reversed. Now you have 55% of those on Medicaid who disapprove and 36% who approve. This person tweets his support is down 37 points among those who are on Medicaid since his first week in office. So, as Steve Bannon famously said, a lot of MAGA on Medicaid.

[Sagar Enjeti]

Sagar, that's exactly. I mean, look, we're gonna find out some of this stuff. There were a lot of contraindications going into 2022 and more. I'm really just desperate for the 2026 midterm data to see who over performs and who doesn't. Who doesn't come out to vote overall Republican support. And if there are any hidden surprises, because Medicaid right now is the number one thing that you would put your money on for the backlash. Similar to 2018, there was a lot of crediting of the resistance and stuff in 2018 for the midterms. I guess I wouldn't downplay that, but it really wasn't the driving force. If you talk to many of the Republican candidates, they all said, my vote to repeal Obamacare is what nuked me. Right? That was like the story of the 2018 midterms. For a lot of the anti Trump backlash, it kind of came together. And a lot of the Republican senators. What Was her name? McSally. I think that's what it was down in Arizona. She was like me voting on Obamacare. She's like, that's. It killed me. She lost by 13 points.

[Krystal Ball]

It was a disaster.

[Sagar Enjeti]

So my point is just that, broadly, this could be the sleeper issue.

[Krystal Ball]

I think it is.

[Sagar Enjeti]

I think so, too. I'd be willing to bet, just given some of the previous. Just the way that things went with 2018 and with more. I'm still not quite sure. I guess I could, you know, what would it take for Trump and the Republicans to declare victory? It'd probably be keeping the House, which, you know, the gerrymandering and all that doesn't help. But the actual, like, demographic data on this and the extent to which people are either demoralized or not enthusiastic to come out to vote is gonna be a very important story. The Medicaid thing is the number one thing to watch.

[Krystal Ball]

The fact they're doing this whole thing with the maps and the census and whatever tells you they think they're worried.

[Sagar Enjeti]

No, they're worried, yes.

[Krystal Ball]

They're trying to rig it as best they can to try to prevent massive losses. Because, listen, I mean, if Democrats have the House, the Senate is a longer shot. But if they have the House, there are things they can do, right? They will have subpoena power. It will be the end of a lot of what's going on in the Trump presidency. Although Trump has done a lot with just executive power without even using Congress. That's been most of what he's done. But I think they're worried about scrutiny over things like the Epstein files. They're worried about scrutiny over all these masked ICE agents and other federal agents that you know who have their identities completely shielded. I think there are a lot of questions too, to be revealed about what exactly is going on there and who is doing what within some of these various agencies. So I think they are concerned about that and that's why they're pulling the fire alarm.

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[Krystal Ball]

This is an iHeart podcast.