2/24/26: Trump Polling Freefall, Dire Warning On Iran, Lord Mandelson Arrested

This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human. You can scroll the headlines all day and still feel empty. I'm Ben Higgins, and If You Can Hear Me is where culture meets the soul. Honest conversations about identity, loss, purpose, peace, faith, and everything in between. Celebrities, thinkers, everyday people, some have answers. Most are still figuring it out. And if you've ever felt like there has to be more to the story, this show is for you. Listen to If You Can Hear Me on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Amanda Knox, and in the new podcast Doubt, The Case of Lucy Letby, we unpack the story of an unimaginable tragedy that gripped the UK in 2023. But what if we didn't get the whole story? How did this have been made to fit? The moment you look at the whole picture, the case collapsed. What if the truth was disguised by a story we chose to believe? Oh my God, I think she might be innocent. Listen to Doubt, The Case of Lucy Letby on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is Special Agent Regal, Special Agent Bradley Hall. In 2018, the FBI took down a ring of spies working for China's Ministry of State Security, one of the most mysterious intelligence agencies in the world. The Sixth Bureau podcast is a story of the inner workings of the MSS and how one man's ambition and mistakes opened its vault of secrets. Listen to The Sixth Bureau on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. 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. We need your help to build the future of independent news media, and we hope to see you at breakingpoints.com. Good morning, everybody. Happy Tuesday. Have an amazing show for everybody today. What do we have, Crystal? Indeed we do. State of the Union tonight. We will be live streaming starting around 8 o'clock. We're going to preview all of that this morning. Take a look at Trump's Approval ratings, how it compares to previous years, look back at the previous speech, all of that good stuff. So definitely join us momentarily, but also join us tonight for that live stream. Lots else going on right now, though. We've got extraordinary leaks coming out of the White House to a wide variety of news outlets warning against war with Iran. So we'll break that down for you as we continue to try to read the tea leaves there. Also, big news out of the U.K. Lord Mandelson has been arrested due to revelations from the Epstein files. In addition, we have some new shocking revelations from those files we will break down as well. Ro Khanna is going to join us to talk to us about a whole variety of subjects. We have this secret DNC Gaza memo. We want him to react to that. State of the Union preview. He is co-sponsoring a war powers resolution on Iran with Thomas Massey and also gave a very significant speech on AI. So we want to get into all those topics with him today. The market crashed, speaking of AI, yesterday based on AI fears. We will dig into that. We're also going to have a guest join us from Control AI, looking at some of the potentially more existential risks. And Trump is promising a UFO reveal. What can we expect from that? Sagar will answer it all. I wish I could answer it. Perhaps they will answer it all, although not holding my breath for that one. Thank you to everybody. We'll see if this goes like the Epstein release. Unfortunately, I've been telling my brothers, UFO community, I go, Guys, I know you guys are singularly focused on one thing. Unfortunately, my broader domain expertise has taught me deep cynicism. Thank you to everybody who's been subscribing. BreakingPoints.com, become a premium subscriber. So as Crystal mentioned, we'll have our State of the Union live stream. For our premium subscribers, that live stream will have no ads. Make sure that you check your email if you want to get more benefits like that, including the AMA, which will happen on Thursday. You can sign up and support our show. If you can't afford it, no worries. Please hit subscribe to our YouTube channel. And if you're listening to this as a podcast, please share an episode with a friend. It really helps other people find the show. You know what a good episode to share would be? Our State of the Union reaction. It'll drop on our podcast feed the day after, sometime around 5, 6 in the morning. So there you go. You can wake up and you can listen if you don't want to watch the entire thing live and you have a reasonable bedtime like somebody like me. Let's go ahead and start then with the State of the Union. Crystal, where are we? What is the State of our Union? Not great in my opinion. In any case, CNN did some polling and Harry Anton did one of his quintessential polling breakdowns of where Trump stands vis-a-vis the American people. This is A2. Let's go ahead and roll that. The lowest that any president has been this century going into a State of the Union at this point in their presidency. It is also the weakest that Donald Trump has ever been with independents. Look at this drop. We've been talking about it the past few months. At this point, a year ago, Donald Trump was at minus 13 points. Look at this. Minus 47 points among independents. The lowest Donald Trump has ever been in either of his two terms. So minus 47 with independents, according to that polling. We pulled some historical polling data. This is based on the RealClear politics average, which actually looks a little bit better for him than some of the other polling coming out. So this is sort of like best case scenario. Let's go and put a one up on the screen. We can see the comparison here this year versus last year. So currently, he is minus 13 in terms of his approval rating. And look, on the one hand, you'll say like, oh, Donald Trump has typically been pretty unpopular. But this is a big contrast with where he sat last year when he gave his joint address to Congress, when he actually was basically 50-50 on his approval rating. He was plus 1.2 percent there. So he actually was a little bit above water in terms of his approval rating. That was really quite a high watermark. Let's go ahead and take a look at the job approval ratings from his first term in office. You can see in 2017, he was similarly situated to where he is now. 2018, you know, about 11 points underwater, 10 points underwater in 2019. Again, about nine points underwater in 2020. So, you know, it's not his first trip to the rodeo in terms of being unpopular. But it does seem like the numbers have dipped pretty close, if not exceeding the lows that we've seen from his first term. Yeah, I think the independent number is the most important one. And you should remember, you know, the 2025 State of the Union was, I think, the apotheosis of Trump. Like, if you were really going to go back the first term, we were deeply divided as a country. Biden came into office. He was supposed to fix it. Everything literally went to shit. Trump gets elected with the first popular vote victory for a Republican since 2004. Or this is the highest of highs for Donald Trump whenever it comes to his approval rating. He won more independents, reshaped the coalition. The independent dip now in the interim has really dramatically changed the story. And then the plus minus not only just resembles the first term, but I do think it's fundamentally different, actually, with the way that the MAGA coalition currently is. Now, I'm not going to say that MAGA itself is not fractured or is not unfractured. Like there's a diehard Trump people who are out there who are never going to ditch Trump. That's exactly like it was in the first term. But there are several different characteristics and treacherous days that lie ahead. We are literally on the brink of a war with – before playing the show, we're like, well, do we start with war with Iran or State of the Union, right? I mean this is at the top of everybody's mind. It could fundamentally change the trajectory of any president. War and peace is the one deciding factor that can destroy the economy. Obviously, we have AI, which we're going to talk about in a little bit. Very treacherous in terms of how that's going to look for the future. A lot of dissatisfaction, inflation, housing. And then really what I would add is the revolutionary spirit of MAGA in 2025 is dead. I mean it actually is dead. Like there is no hope from – I mean let's think – let's break the coalition down. MAGA was various different things. It was, you know, quote-unquote anti-war. You can dispute that, but like there was part of that, right? Well, okay. It's been a year, so we know. There was Maha. I mean, Maha was, they had, they were like, we're going to pull the vaccine. Moderna's dead. Glyphosate's gone. Yeah. How did that work out? All right. Trump literally just gave an executive order giving immunity to the glyphosate manufacturers. And RFK Jr. is defending it. You had Tulsi Gabbard who defenstrated herself in public. Now she has to turn herself in to stop the steal, you know, the czar or whatever, just to be able to walk into the Oval Office. You've got people like Cash Patel and Pete Hegseth for them. Again, you know, listen, I was part of this. I go, hey, let's try. Let's blow this shit up. Let's see how. Well, we now work. Now we see how it works out. It works out with Pete, you know, just gallivanting around the world, doing his bench press. And Cash Patel chugging beers with Team USA Hockey, doing podcasts with his girlfriend as a 44-year-old man. And with Don Bonchino. And with Don Bonchino, who left. And then Epstein's, right? We had high hopes for Epstein stuff, remember? So like, I really do, like the past is a different world in a lot of ways from where we are today. I haven't even talked about ICE and all the other shit that's going on. I do think it's important for people to remember like where they were floating on up high and then where we are about a year ago. And yeah, I mean, it has just been a dramatic change compared to Biden. Biden also came in with high hopes. He could have had a 70% approval rating. They had the CARES Act and all of a sudden they were like, oh, we're going to change everything. He's going to be in the new FDR. And then boom, what happens? You have – I mean did they invade? Yeah, so we're around February 24. We had an invasion of Ukraine. We had the collapse in Afghanistan. Inflation was a disaster. Gas prices, very similar dynamic. And I think at that time that's right around not only when Biden's approval went negative, just like with Trump. But that's when a lot of people were like, oh, there's no saving this. There's no saving whatever the hell comes out from this. I feel like that way with Trump. Yeah, it's honestly really pretty hard for me to remember. Not only my sense at the beginning of the Biden presidency, which was probably not the same as the sense of the American people, but more importantly, like what the general feeling was. I know for the core base of the Democratic Party, I don't know if there was like Biden was just like, OK, it's fine, you know, and we're going to try to put some of the pieces back together. I feel like there was more like real excitement in the MAGA base and with the MAGA coalition for this second Trump term. And so I went back and I was I was looking at the speech from last year and it was kind of incredible to me just how different the moment was. You know, it was the anti-woke stuff. We're, you know, getting the boys out of girls sports and he's calling Elizabeth Warren Pocahontas and talking about DEI and saying, you know, oh, we're only going to have merit based selection in the government. Yeah, we see how meritorious these various clowns and fools are in terms of this government. Obviously, you had Doge. You had promises about we're going to end the Ukraine war. You know, promises about at that point, I don't remember where we were with the, you know, potential Gaza peace deal. We were in the ceasefire. We actually were in the ceasefire at this time. That's right. It was a big hope. It was a big hope. So there was a sense of like, OK, you know, not like obviously I've been very negative about them from the beginning. But that's why you saw the approval rating basically at 50-50, a place where he'd never been before. As people were like, OK, maybe this will be genuinely different. Maybe there are going to be some things here. Maybe he's going to be a great businessman. Maybe he is going to, you know, I think people sort of bought into the rhetoric about the government efficiency and doge, blah, blah, blah. Maybe he is going to cut the fat in government. Maybe this is going to all work out. And now a year later, just thinking about all that we've lived through and all of the various catastrophic, you know, mistakes and the ugliness in the country and all of that, whatever hope existed among your sort of like independent swing voter has definitely been crushed. And I think the two biggest things are really the economy. And I would say Epstein, genuinely, because he's his whole brand of being the outsider that was going to come in and slay the sacred cows and sort of like right the previous wrongs and upend the apple cart, do the difficult things that previous, you know, elites were unwilling to do because he was this different kind of guy. Like, you know, many of us saw through that brand, but that was the brand. And once you have the Epstein files cover up, there is no more like you just can't be a remotely honest or sane person and continue to hold on to that view. And that's why I think even though, you know, if you ask people in polls like, what's your number one issue? Epstein is not going to be high at the list. But I think it truly has been devastating. It's been most devastating for, you know, some of his core supporters, especially his core coalition coming into this this past election. So let's go and take a look at A4, you know, indications about how this is all going to go. Apparently, it's going to be a long speech. You have a programming preview for State of the Union tomorrow. It's going to be a long speech because we have so much to talk about. We do have a lot to talk about. Trump loves to give a long speech. So that is something we will be watching for. And then just to give you a sense again of the moment we were in last year at this time, which at least to me feels like a freaking eternity ago. So this was like peak Doge, Elon riding high and his Doge warriors rampaging through the government, etc., etc. Trump louding all of these supposed, which we all learned ended up being like fake and lies and whatever. We ended up spending more money after Doge, not saving money, etc., etc. In any case, Trump went through this whole list of all the supposed savings that Elon was finding and garnering, you know, and clawing back to make better use of our tax dollars, etc. Let's take a listen to A5. And to that end, I have created the brand new Department of Government Efficiency. Goj. Perhaps you've heard of it. Perhaps. Which is headed by Elon Musk, who is in the gallery tonight. Headed up by Elon, and we appreciate it. We found hundreds of billions of dollars of fraud. How are you guys liking all those savings? How are you liking your Doge dividend checks? Did those arrive in the mail for you? I mean, just to, again. Also, government spending didn't change. No, it went up. Yeah, I know it. Yeah, it went up. Yeah, you can even go and look on the Treasury Department website. It just made everything worse. They publish all of this stuff. I don't know. I don't even know if at this point if it was Doge or if it was just like general Trumpianness, but it is worth reflecting back on that moment. You know, I always underestimated the bro support for Doge. I never really got it, maybe because I'm from here and I was like, yeah, good luck. But for a lot of them, they were like deeply enthralled by this idea. Like they actually believed that it would, you know, through the executive stroke of a pen that you could fundamentally like restructure Washington and that, you know, tens, hundreds of billions of dollars actually were being spent on, I don't know, transgender mice or whatever. And you're like – I remember trying to explain it to them before the election. I was like, guys, like unless we're going after the Pentagon or Medicare, like nothing is going to change. They're like, oh, he's a hater and all this. Well, I don't know. Tried to tell you. He did a long bit in the speech about like, oh, all these 110 year olds on Social Security, blah, blah, blah. Again, this all turned out to be total and complete bullshit. And the only thing they did was like destroy the quality of service at the Social Security Administration. So it's so much harder for people who are legitimate Social Security beneficiaries to actually access their benefits. That was the kind of thing they actually did. But, you know, I mean, I understand why someone who is, you know, not super versed in the budget and how this works and where the actual savings would have to come from and the type of, you know, the type of elites that you would have to go after, for example, to deal with like Medicare or Medicaid fraud. You're talking about these are, you know, wealthy people and many one of them is a U.S. senator for the Republican Party. You're talking about people who have significant power. Those are the types you would have to go after. And so I can understand why people who weren't deeply ingrained in that process and understanding those dynamics would think that there was something cool about this energy of like, OK, this guy's this, you know, if you're buying Elon hype, he's this great businessman. He this great tech genius He going to bring in this cadre of like super smart autistic geniuses to like run rampant through the federal government And there is something aspirational about the idea of bringing back like the top of the top the cream of the crop into the federal government and taking a look at it making it more efficient I mean, Zoran's trying to do a version of his own version of Doge in New York City of saying, listen, if you're going to, you know, if we're going to ask you to pay taxes, we want you and significant taxes in New York City. We want you to feel like that money is being well used. So I can kind of like empathize with people who thought that this was a great project. Of course, everyone wants to cut the fat in government. And there's definitely places that there is fraud, that there is fat to be cut. But, you know, here we are a year later. And not only is Doge, did Doge completely fail and just sort of like crumble? It made things worse, which I think, frankly, was that. And like data siphoning was the point. And we've also seen like multiple seasons of Elon and Trump's relationship since then. Right. They were besties here. Elon was camped in D.C. prior to Trump's inauguration. He was like hanging out at Mar-a-Lago all the time. Then they have this parting of the ways, but still amicable. Then they have the total falling out. And Elon says the reason the Epstein files aren't getting released is because Trump's in them. I'm not backing any Republicans. I'm done spending money. Eight months ago. Yeah, that's how long ago. And now there's obviously been a rapprochement. Elon's not backing the administration, but he's funding Republicans again. He has, you know, shut up about Trump being in the Epstein files, especially now that he's been revealed to also be significantly in the Epstein files. So even just with that one relationship, you can see how this year has been really been quite a journey. It's been it's been something else, hasn't it? I actually think the war stuff is important as well, because as we're on the brink of the potential war with Iran, you know, we're going to talk about this with Ro Khanna. There were and remember our interviews with some of those AOC Trump voters in the Bronx. So I'm not going to sit here and claim it was everybody. But there was genuine, not just promise, but hope that this person actually meant it on the war in Ukraine. Well, here Trump is a year ago. By the way, it's the four-year anniversary since Russia invaded Ukraine. It's been a year now since Donald Trump spoke. And here he is promising to end the war in Ukraine. And nothing has been ended. Let's take a listen. I'm also working tirelessly to end the savage conflict in Ukraine. Millions of Ukrainians and Russians have been needlessly killed or wounded in this horrific and brutal conflict with no end in sight. The United States has sent hundreds of billions of dollars to support Ukraine's defense with no security, with no anything. So, yeah, where are we now? And it's actually really interesting, you know, even to think. again, I never believed we will solve it before I even get into office. I think I genuinely did underestimate. There are people who do believe stuff like that. You know, whenever I think back to, uh, uh, to the election, I, I have met like five people who actually believed that the IVF thing was going to happen. And I'm like, come on, man, you know, like, what are we, what are we doing here? Uh, but they, they bought it. So, I mean, apparently even in the year 2024, there were a number of voters who were like, oh, okay, I believe you whenever you say X, Y, and Z. Now, again, I don't think that that was realistic, but the Ukraine one is the one I actually did think was more realistic because it wasn't, so I cannot recall a single hawkish thing Trump said on the campaign trail. One of those most viral moments, what was it, 2023, November, whenever he did the CNN town hall with Caitlin Collins, and he's like, I want to stop it. Like everything, pick JD as his vice president. I mean, it was a believable thing. Now, again, I've always been clear and even was at the time, if you thought that the Israel stuff wasn't going, maybe not as much like it has, but it was obviously always going to be pro-Israel. But on Ukraine, I think there really was hope. It has been a disaster. I mean, we have had the failed summit, remember, in Anchorage, in Alaska, and then Zelensky, what, it was about a year ago, right? He was in the Oval and they got into a fight and then he came back and now they're friends. And now it's just like business as usual. We had all the European leaders here. Nothing has changed the entire thing. It's like Afghanistan. It just keeps going on and on and on and on. It'll never end. It's been four years to the day. It'll just keep going. Putin and them are like, as I said at the time, they don't care. They're like, look, we're happy to keep this war going all day long. Fine. No problem. You know, for us, we'll talk about this soon with Iran. One of the reasons the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff says, hey, by the way, it's a bit of a problem if we do a war with Iran. We gave it all to Ukraine and Israel. Shocker. Only been saying that over here for the last four years. So a year is a long time. It also, you know, it's not that long, but it does feel like an eternity, I think, since Donald Trump. And I do think this speech will be much more of a salesman speech about trying to bring people back into the fold. We saw Obama give many of these state of the unions when I remember 2011, right after Obamacare, where his approval rating was very low and he kept trying to sell people a dream to keep it going. Trump is not running for reelection. It's also a very different moment. But Trump has not been in this type of position for a long time. And he also famously likes to go off prompter. So we'll see how that works out. There potentially could be some interruptions from Epstein-related stuff in the gallery. So who knows how that will be. So there's, look, all the norms around politics, like when Joe Wilson shouted at Obama, I'm like, this stuff is gone, right? So we're living in a different universe. It's very 1890s in here. Even though the Supreme Court justices, like Trump is pissed at them right now, even some of the ones that he put on the bench. So, you know. What did he say? He was like, they're barely invited. Yeah. And only nerds like me are like, sir, actually the House of Representatives invites the guests. So yeah. Not really your decision. It's actually not your decision. You're technically invited by the State of the Union, by Congress, because we have co-equal branches of government. But again, only idiots like. Yeah. Co-equal branches of government, LOL. Yeah. One other on the sort of like broken promises list. Remember in the campaign and then even after the campaign, he claimed he wanted to cap credit card interest rates. And this was one of the populist promises. And there are a few Democrats like on the progressive side, Bernie and Elizabeth Warren in particular, who are like, OK, bet. Let's do it. Trump even called Elizabeth Warren at one point because she was like, listen, I'll work with you on this. She just came out and said, you know, after that, nothing, totally ghosted, you know, any efforts to put together some sort of bipartisan proposal, all dead and gone. So, you know, some of those like sort of sexy populist promises, and that would be a significant one. I've just completely fallen by the wayside as one example of how things have shifted over the year. But it'll be interesting to see what he tries to persuade people of tonight. And I know he's going to brag about all of this supposed investment in the US, which is just like the number is just completely invented. I think there'll be a lot of gaslighting about- There'll probably be a lot of tariff talk, if I had to guess. There'll be a lot of gaslighting about how great, you know, America's back and how great the economy is. And people are not going to believe that because as we've said many times in the past, you have your own personal experience of the economy. So you know whether it's going well for you and your family and prospects for your kids or not. And the last thing I'll mention, and we've got a lot more talk about this later in the show, is the AI concerns, which I think last year at this point were pretty – they were pretty niche. It was – we started – we were talking about it some. There was some. But now this has become a really mainstream concern. There has been significant local activism. We talked to one of those local activists yesterday. The there has been a groundswell pushback against the location of these data centers and the politics of that keep turning more and more toxic, even as the Trump administration has made this truly a central push. I mean, this really is the center of their economic policy and their idea for the future of the country. So I think that's another thing that is very different in terms of the sensibility and awareness of the American people now versus last year at this time. Well, it'll be an interesting speech. If you're joining us, you can come torture yourselves by being awake at 11 p.m. for our reaction. No, but if you're in California, you can join us. I guess it'll be 8 o'clock for all of you. All right. Let's go ahead and get to Iran. into sleeping with you? I gave her some suggestions to be sexually aroused. Can you get someone to join your cult? NLP was used on me to access my subconscious. NLP, aka Neuro Linguistic Programming, is a blend of hypnosis, linguistics, and psychology. Fans say it's like finally getting a user manual for your brain. It's about engineering consciousness. Mind Games is the story of NLP, its crazy cast of disciples, and the fake doctor who invented it at a new age commune and sold it to guys in suits. He stood trial for murder and got acquitted. The biggest mind game of all? NLP might actually work. This is wild. Listen to Mind Games on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Ben Higgins. And if you can hear me is where culture meets the soul, a place for real conversation. Each episode, I sit down with people from all walks of life, celebrities, thinkers, and everyday folks. And we go deeper than the polished story. We talk about what drives us, what shapes us, and what gives us hope. We get honest about the big stuff. Identity when you don't recognize yourself anymore. or loss that changes you, purpose when success isn't enough, peace when your mind won't slow down, faith when it's complicated. Some guests have answers. Most are still figuring it out. If you've ever felt like there has to be more to the story, this show is for you. Listen to If You Can Hear Me on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, this is Jo Winterstein, host of the Spirit Daughter podcast, where we talk about astrology, natal charts, and how to step into your most vibrant life. And I just sat down with a mini driver. The Irish traveler said when I was 16, you're going to have a terrible time with men. Actor, storyteller, and unapologetic Aquarian visionary. Aquarius is all about freedom loving and different perspectives. And I find a lot of people with strong placements in Aquarius are misunderstood. A sun and Venus in Aquarius in her seventh house spark her unconventional approach to partnership. He really has taught me to embrace people sleeping in different rooms, on different houses, in different places, but just an embracing of the is-ness of it all. If you're navigating your own transformation or just want a chart-side view into how a leading artist integrates astrology, creativity, and real life, This episode is a must listen. Listen to the Spirit Daughter podcast starting on February 24th on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your podcasts. Turning now to the situation with Iran. Huge leaks coming out of the Pentagon yesterday. This time, if you want to believe this, the Pentagon is leaking about how desperately they don't want to go to war with Iran. That is how bad the current situation is. But Donald Trump is trying to head off all of these leaks. Let's go and put this up here on the screen. Here is Trump's truth yesterday. Numerous stories from the fake news media have been circulating that General Daniel Cain, sometimes referred to as Raisin Cain, is against us going to war with Iran. The story does not attribute his vast wealth of knowledge to anyone and is 100% incorrect. General Cain, like all of us, would like not to see war. But if a decision is made on going against Iran at a military level, it is opinion that everything will be easily won. Bookmark that for history. He knows Iran well in that he was in charge of Midnight Hammer, the attacks on Iranian nuclear development. It is a development no longer, but rather was blown to smithereens by our great B2 bombers. So if that's the case, then why do we even have to go to war? All right, this is why everybody should actually read these things carefully. Raisin Cain is a great fighter. He represents the most powerful military in the world. He has not spoken to of not doing Iran or even the fake limited strikes that I have been reading about. He only knows one thing, how to win. And if he is told to do so, he will be leading the pack. quote, I would rather have a deal than not, but if we don't make a deal, it is a very bad day for that country. And very sadly, it's people because they are great and wonderful and something like this should never have happened to them. So this followed an extraordinary amount of leaks that came out of the Pentagon. Let's go and put these up here on the screen. I want to kind of Washington explain. You hear one story, that's one thing. When you have Axios, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal all write this headline, Trump's top general warns of Iran strike. Trump's top general foresees acute risks in his attack on Iran. Pentagon flags risk of a major operation against Iran. Here is what is happening. These are authorized leaks from the very, very top of the Pentagon. What they want is to get on the record as close as they can without going outside the chain of command to say, this is a really, really bad idea. And if you actually read all of their warnings, it's, if you've been watching this show or if you've been paying attention to the news, none of this will be a shocker to you. They say we have a limited amount of air interceptors. We use 25% in the 12-day war. The Houthis were a huge problem. Because of our four-year support now of Israel and of Ukraine, we are dramatically low on munitions. They point to a CSIS war game from 2023, which said that the United States would last one week in terms of munitions if we were ever to get into a war with China against Taiwan. Yeah, you think I'm joking. This is 2023. The situation's gotten worse. We've actually given more to Israel and Ukraine since that time period, and the amount of spin-up in our defense industrial base has actually gone down. So you can see that for them, they know, look, we can kidnap Maduro all day long. We can midnight hammer six B2s with a place with no real aerial defense or any of that, whatever. But a real war, like ballistic missiles flying around, which we saw in the 12-day war, that alone drained 25% of our THAAD interceptors. The Pentagon is doing everything they can to try and have their Eric Shinseki moment. And look, you know, bear with me. It's a little bit of a trip down memory lane. But back in 2003, February 2003, the Army Chief of Staff, Eric Shinseki, was forced to testify before Congress, before the invasion of Iraq. And the Army Chief of Staff stunned America and the world when he said it would take several hundred thousand troops to invade Iraq successfully. The neocons like Mark Levin and, you know, Bill Kristol and the Bush administration said he's a raving lunatic. It's an absolute lie. And they fired him. They forced him out of office. He was the army chief of staff, but he was trying to warn all of us. And there were multiple other top generals internally, some even who resigned, people who told the president to his face, this is a bad idea. They leaked as much as they could, but our media was very propagandistic, just as it is right now. They were trying their best to do something like this. The professionals, and remember, these are not bleeding-heart liberals. They're not anti-war like me. Dan Cain was one of the foremost proponents of the Maduro raid. He knows the capabilities of the U.S. military. When you have these guys going like, please, get us off. Like, do not make us do this. It is a blaring, like a flashing red light for the whole – because nobody knows our capabilities. more than them. So when they're warning like this, they're doing their best. First of all, they want to survive. They want to be able to have the headline there in the future so that when a Democrat comes into the power, they're like, listen, man, we tried to tell him he ordered us to do it. But more importantly, they're trying to signal for those of you who are close watchers and observers to say this is not going to go like the propaganda is. And it's already happening. Mark Levin, it's been 20 something years. He's doing the same thing. These are Democrat, That deep state isolationist trying to destroy. You have Trump now trying to box the general in. He's going to try and force him to go on the podium and say, actually, it's going to be a cakewalk. I hope he says the word cakewalk. I really do. Just so we can have all the Iraq stuff happen again. I'm not claiming it's going to be the same as Iraq, but it's the same type of playbook. These are very sophisticated actors. This is the biggest warning. And again when the professional warriors tell you this is a big big problem you should listen because what they talking about this isn ideology This is about logistics This is about munitions This is about defense industrial base Nobody knows this better than them. This is the most worrying thing that I've seen yet. Yeah. Because this means it's happening, in my opinion. Yeah. This is like a desperate cry for help, a last ditch Hail Mary pass to try to persuade Trump and whoever that this is going to be a terrible idea. This is a warning to the American public. It's all of those things. And, you know, I think why the neocons are pushing so hard right now is a few reasons. I mean, the Iranian government is genuinely weakened at this point from the 12-day war, also from the protests and the opposition movement, from the economic warfare that we've waged against them has been quite successful. So they are weakened in this moment. But are they weak enough where, you know, an airstrike will take out, take down the government? Because that's their fantasy is, let's put aside, oh, nuclear, ballistic, blah, blah, blah. What they really are after is regime change. And at the same time, the Israelis, who are obviously, you know, constantly pushing for war with Iran, and Netanyahu has been pushing for war with Iran, like before you were literally born. Literally, you can go back and watch the literally from the 80s. Anyway, you know, they have their own sort of looming crises internally. You know, even though there was a lot of unity around the Gaza genocide, the reality is they have major demographic and major economic issues. And they've had a lot of brain drain from their country. You know, the fastest growing part of the Jewish population in Israel are, you know, the type that don't want to serve in the military and don't want to work and just rely on the social safety net. So they have their own timeline here of like, we've got to act now or else we're not going to be able to cement our grander ambitions of the Greater Israel Project and having total regional hegemony, which is their ultimate goal. So they're pushing very hard right now as well. And that's why you see the Mark Levins of the world, the Lindsey Graham's of the world, etc., sort of freaking out and aggressively pushing in this direction. But I think the reason there's been hesitation at this point is because there's no, I mean, the whole thing is insane and it's going to be bad. But even from their perspective, like there's no Delce Rodriguez type option that's available in Iran. The thing we covered previously, this idea of, oh, we'll do a limited strike and then that's going to force them to buckle to our demands. What even are our fucking demands, right? I mean, they're constantly changing. The American people has not been bought into any sort of, you know, rationale for why we need this war with Iran right now. So, you know, and the reality is a limited strike is likely to have the exact opposite impact. It's going to harden the Iranian government against any sort of deal. What, you're going to bomb somebody and you think that's going to make them come to you? That's going to, you know, open them up to further talks? I don't think so. So, yeah, I don't know. It's looking pretty grim. It seems very unlikely that you amass this level of military power in the region to just to have fun, to spend money as a threat and don't do any of it. Venezuela is the playbook. Oh, we're negotiating. Maybe, maybe not. Listen, all right? You don't just bring carrier strike groups and all this naval armada for the biggest buildup of force in the Caribbean since the Cuban Missile Crisis just not to use it. Same with Iran. You've got two carrier strike groups. You've got all the bases. You had the evacuation just yesterday. of non-essential personnel from Lebanon. You've got all this diplomacy, diplomacy theater that's going on. I mean, basically what they're trying to do, it's very Iraq-like. We give Saddam 90 days to resign, to let in the inspectors or hell will reign. It's not gonna happen, right? Like, you know eventually how the story is going to end. This diplomacy is fake. This entire thing was allegedly about the nuclear deal. The Iranians have said, fine, we'll do a nuclear deal. They're like, well, it also has to deal with ballistic missiles and your regional terror threat. And they're like, no, we're not giving up our ballistic missiles so that Israel can attack us at will at any time that they want and regime change us at will sometime in the future. It's why would they do that's effectively surrender. We might as well fight and actually try to convince the Americans that we have some sort of credible deterrent. I mean, this is where to highlight the Israeli problem here. It is immense Because if it was just up to the United States, I do believe that we could probably reach some sort of nuclear deal. But the Israel angle here is that you have this rogue state, which has now built up years where they have been bombing every – seven different countries with total impunity, with diplomatic cover by the United States, with a population with its blood boiling, ready and believing that they can do anything, not to mention Gaza. and they're like, look, we're going to do it no matter what. And so if they go in and attack Iran, kind of like in the 12-day war, what happens? We're going to get sucked in. And this is an argument, by the way, from the neocons because they're like, oh, well, that's why we should just go ahead and do it and defend Israel in the process. But the point around it is if we actually dealt with the Israel problem, we wouldn't even have as much of an Iranian problem. But we can't get away from it. And I was telling you this morning, it's like World War I. Does anybody just sit for a second and just be like, do we have to defend Belgium? Do we have to decimate our youth and kill millions of people just because of a piece of paper or because we've always done things that way? But this is how it happens. You read about it, but nobody sits for a second and says, maybe we just tell the Israelis you're done if you do this. That will actually cut you off. Nobody in the White House can even think this way. Nobody in the previous White House could think this way either. Nobody in Congress is even doing anything. I talked about the Eric Shinseki. At least he testified before Congress. Raisin Cain is leaking this shit to the Wall Street Journal and to Axios. We have no opposition. We have nothing. Like, if anything, this is 10 times worse. We're sleepwalking, just like the book, The Sleepwalkers, right into this disaster. And, you know, even though it's all out in the open, 99% of Americans have no idea that this is going on. They're living their lives. You know, they're vaguely, oh, Iran, something. You know, didn't we bomb them before? But they have no idea. They're going to wake up, though, you know, when something like this happens. It could all go south like this. And you have to layer on that the mentality of they just did this Venezuela thing that they see as this grand success. They see the 12-day war. Last year as this grand success, there's nothing Trump loves more than, you know, his glorious soldiers going into battle and him being able to, like, feel like a real man based on what other people, actions that other people took. And, you know, he's itching for that. I think that's, you know, an important part of this mentality is they feel like, oh, the naysayers like us previously who were warning about all these dire consequences. They're just a bunch of panic hands. You know, they were wrong. Everything turned out fine. This was all great. And, you know, this will be another glorious success for us to be able to talk about and, you know, take the focus off of Epstein and the poor economic numbers and everything else that's going on. the ice killings, all of that stuff, and be able to have this win and assert our dominance heading into the midterm elections. Kyle always brings up, and I think it's worth pointing out, Trump during the Obama era used to talk constantly about how Obama was going to start a war with Iran to save his political prospects. And I think that's worth pausing on because it does give you a window into how he thinks about these things. He thinks it will be a benefit. He thinks there will be that rally around the flag effect and it will help to bolster him and bolster his party. I think that's insane. But based on his past comments, I genuinely think he views it that way, especially when you pile on top of that, the Venezuela thing and the previous Iran war. Bad sides coming out of the White House. Trump is truthing out Mark Levin videos about why we got to attack Iran. Take a listen. The problem isn't negotiations. The problem isn't they won't agree to this or that, or we can get the best deal in world history. The problem is them. The West needs to understand what we're dealing with for 47 years. I don't know what it's going to take, but we need to comprehend what we're dealing with. That regime needs to be eliminated. Oh my God. Yeah, that's what we're dealing with. Meanwhile, before, let's put this up here on the screen. Tucker Carlson was spotted at the White House yesterday after his explosive interview with the ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee. By the way, very funny from that one. Mike Huckabee's interview, full-blown diplomatic crisis and even a problem for the Iran situation because, as you pointed out yesterday, if you want to attack Iran, you got to use all these bases and you got to make sure that all the Gulf Arab allies are on your side. Well, guess what? the U.S. ambassador to Israel just said, actually, all of that land and all of your countries, that belongs to Israel if they want it. And they have been calling the White House and they're like, is this a statement of official government policy? Are you going to repudiate this? Yeah. What's happening here? Oh, and you think you're going to use my bases? No, no, no, no. That's not going to be happening here. So that's been some of the fallout. But look, I mean, we have to be honest here. The Tucker faction thought and all of that, it's not ascendant right now, at least from what I can tell from the outside. Put the next one up here. Laura Loomer immediately attacking Tucker Carlson. Everybody needs to be pressuring the White House to condemn Tucker. His effort to derail the GOP and sabotage must end. He thinks he can just walk into the White House like he owns the place because his son works there. Everyone with moral clarity needs to pressure the White House to end this insanity once and for all. President Trump must condemn Tucker Carlson. Not Mike Huckabee, by the way. Not the guy who literally started a full-blown diplomatic crisis because of his insane Christian, because of his insane dispensationalist psychotic beliefs. It's the guy who revealed those beliefs that is a problem. I want to continue on the munitions side. I'll just point you to some experts. Here's Tyler Rogway. He runs a great outlet, by the way, TWZ.com. They do amazing, in-depth, real logistical nerd stuff. And here's what he says. If this Iran thing really pops off, our stocks of critical interceptors, which take years and huge sums of money to build will be really depleted. The stockpile is already an emergency. If Iran goes full send, SM3, THAAD interceptors, PAC-3s will ran through. Once again, it takes years to restock. He says it is a dangerous game with the state of China's military activity. And then there is Russia. That is beyond North Korea. We have never built enough, lots of smoke and mirrors. Now it is critical. This will send it into another realm of crisis. Just watch. You know, one of the dangers with open source is that you actually start to learn, you know, how – like you start to learn if you read enough. You're like, wait, oh my god. We're really not prepared for this. You have the CSIS war game from a couple of years ago. You have multiple generals on the record. You have the fat stockpile numbers. And you're like, what a disaster. 25% just spent on a 12-day war which didn't even involve us? And then not to mention all the short-range stuff, which the Iranians could use. Look, the US military is good, but is it that good? It's one of those where would you really risk it? And originally I thought, OK, well, we're pretty good at taking these things out and the CIA and from all of that. But once the top general starts to speak out, I'm like, oh, this is bad. Clearly they see some – I don't have all the information. They do. And for them to come out and to leak this, I really – I urge everyone to take this very, very seriously. Like these people, like I said, the guy who literally supported the kidnap operation against Maduro, if he says it's a bad idea, you should listen. These are not liberals or, you know, some they're not like bleeding heart liberal code pink activists or anti interventionist or anti interventionist. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. And listen, I think the Iranian government is weak. I don't know what the capabilities they have, but we also shouldn't underestimate their will to fight because for us, this is an existential. This is like a stupid luxury war of choice for the president's ego that almost no one wants. OK, it's 80 percent of the U.S. population that is like, no, we don't want this at all. In spite of, you know, whatever war propaganda is constantly fed to us about, you know, how terrible Iran is, what a threat it is. Like Mark Levin said to our children and our grandchildren, blah, blah, blah. Like we don't have the will to fight this thing. And Iran, you know, it's in a very strategic position. They know the cards that they have, and they also will be looking and understanding this information about the drawdown of our stockpiles and understanding where some of our vulnerabilities are and where some of Israel's vulnerabilities are as well. So, and, you know, things are not going too great, I guess, in terms of mechanics in the buildup to this potential work of a B7 up on the screen. You know, we are already taxing our sailors incredibly. You have people who are potentially going to be deployed for 11 months. It would be the longest deployment for sailors on this USS Gerald Ford in years. And you also have issues on the ship. Apparently, some of the toilets are clogged and there's raw sewage. Apparently, they've gotten some of this under control, but it's been a mess. and a bunch of people who recorded in this piece in the wall street journal are like after this i'm done like i have kids and this is i i don't want to be away from them for years at a time this is not my understanding of what we were going to be up to so even putting aside the you know the stockpiles like there's been a human cost already for the all the various adventurism from the trump administration yeah look i mean you know oh it's so funny ha ha ha oh you signed up for this. It's not funny. You put these guys on a carrier. Look, it's not fun. You've ever been on a carrier? I've only been on the decommissioned ones. It's small. You've got to sleep in these barracks and if the toilet breaks, that's life or death, man. That sounds like a disaster. And you're gone for 11 months, shuttling yourself across the globe for a bunch of nonsense. Now you've been there and you might be getting into a war for nonstop operations. And these are what, like 19, 20-year-olds and all that who signed up? Had no idea potentially they were getting into this is why it's not a game, right? To play around with their lives and just shuttle them back and forth all to put pressure or potentially just put them into war for Israel. It's crazy. I mean, everyone is always like, oh, you know, it's, it's almost like a low IQ conspiracy. Like, oh, America's always getting into a war on Israel's behalf. Like guys, this one actually is it. Like, this is the big one. This is the big one. And unfortunately, like I said, Washington, everybody's going along. The Democrats, there's nobody out there. Silence, War Powers Act, Shout out to Massey and Ro Khanna. But like that's going to be like a Barba Lee situation in terms of we can look back on in history. But at the time, they're complete – they're jokes. That's how people look at them. A bipartisan elite is – they're either silent because they want it to go wrong or they support it. So there you go. Yeah. And just one note on the impact of that morale and fatigue. Remember when those like fighter jets slid into the sea when the Houthi operation? Yes. The after-action report, the analysis there was that fatigue basically played into that. That's the reason why they were making whatever errors were causing these fighter jets to be lost at sea. So it can have real operational impacts as we head into whatever we're heading into. Yep. There you go. All right. Let's get to Epstein. What if mind control is real? If you could control the behavior of anybody around you, what kind of life would you have? Can you hypnotically persuade someone to buy a car? When you look at your car, you're going to become overwhelmed with such good feelings. Can you hypnotize someone into sleeping with you? I gave her some suggestions to be sexually aroused. Can you get someone to join your cult? NLP was used on me to access my subconscious. NLP, aka Neuro Linguistic Programming, is a blend of hypnosis, linguistics, and psychology. Fans say it's like finally getting a user manual for your brain. It's about engineering consciousness. Mind Games is the story of NLP. It's crazy cast of disciples and the fake doctor who invented it at a New Age commune and sold it to guys in suits. He stood trial for murder and got acquitted. The biggest mind game of all? NLP might actually work. This is wild. Listen to Mind Games on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. happening inside of you. I'm Ben Higgins, and if you can hear me, it's where culture meets the soul, a place for real conversation. Each episode, I sit down with people from all walks of life, celebrities, thinkers, and everyday folks, and we go deeper than the polished story. We talk about what drives us, what shapes us, and what gives us hope. We get honest about the big stuff, identity when you don't recognize yourself anymore, loss that changes you, purpose when success isn't enough, peace when your mind won't slow down, faith when it's complicated. Some guests have answers. Most are still figuring it out. If you've ever felt like there has to be more to the story, this show is for you. Listen to If You Can Hear Me on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. China's Ministry of State Security is one of the most mysterious and powerful spy agencies in the world. But in 2017, the FBI got inside. This is Special Agent Regal, Special Agent Bradley Hall. This MSS officer has no idea the U.S. government is on to him. But the FBI has his chats, texts, emails, even his personal diary. Hear how they got it on the Sixth Bureau podcast. I now have several terabytes of an MSS officer, no doubt, no question, of his life. And that's a unicorn. No one had ever seen anything like that. It was unbelievable. This is a story of the inner workings of the MSS and how one man's ambition and mistakes opened its vault of secrets. Listen to The Sixth Bureau on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Turning now to the fallout from the Epstein files, Lord Mandelson in the UK has been arrested. Let's go and put this video up here on the screen. You can see the perp walk of him being led from his brick mansion in his stately outfit there of what befits a British lord being led by the Metropolitan Police into a waiting car. Now, remember, the British system is weird, and for some reason, they don't just say so-and-so has been arrested. But we do know, see one, let's put that up here on the screen. You can see right here, Lord Mandelson was arrested on suspicion of conduct in public office. A short while ago, the former minister being led from his London home to an unmarked car by police officers, the ex-U.S. ambassador, is under investigation. Over allegations, he shared market-sensitive government information with Jeffrey Epstein while a government minister. He has not yet publicly commented on the matter. But, you know, to say allegedly shared is not even true. Like, he shared it. It's in the file. So the only thing— We see the email. Right. The only defense is, is it—were you hacked in 2000? Can he pull a Joy Reid and say Russian hackers in 2010 actually sent the email on my behalf of privileged non-public information? Or did you send it, bro? Because I'm pretty sure you sent it. Now, what's even crazier is that's only the tip of the iceberg. Gordon Brown has said he's already shared more information with the current authorities. There could be all kinds. Think about it. Epstein Files is just Epstein and his emails. They have access to his real email. So they could subpoena and look at all of their stuff and share it over with the authorities. It could be the tip of the iceberg. If a person is willing to share non-public market information with one person, you really think they've never done it before? Or is this maybe a ring where this happened one time and we just so happened to get the email in this one point? Again, for the British authorities, I don't have any proof of that. I'm only speculating, not even necessarily impugning the character of the great lord. But when you think about how this has exploded across the world and comparing it here, it's unbelievable. You have now Lord Mandelson and Prince Andrew. Prince Andrew is gonna literally lose his line in the British succession, which that's the prince shit that I'm talking about. That's what I wanna see. Is if we're gonna have the institution, then we got to be like, declare his blood unworthy of sitting on the throne. But now you have Lord Mandelson. He might get getting his title stripped. He's going to jail, potentially getting arrested. You have the former Norwegian prime minister. He just tried to commit suicide. Apparently there's just a report out this morning. I mean, you've got multiple of these of Slovakia. You've had that official here in the U S former governor is just got some professional consequence. Peter Atiyah, by the way, we can give an update and see six. Let's put that on the screen. He has, uh, he either resigned or he's no longer at CBS News over this correspondence. We have the leaders of Apollo Group, of that major law firm here in Washington. All of these people have stepped down. But all of the accountability in America is in the private sector. And over there, it's the official governments who are, the French authorities, they're reopening the investigation into the suicide of Jean-Luc Brunel and his suspicious death, in addition to raiding the offices of file of people named in the files, the Macron government being mentioned in the Epstein files actually caused like kind of a political earthquake over here, over over there. But here it's like business as usual. And I think that's just what I want to highlight. Yeah. There's two points to make about this. Number one, all these various investigations that now have been launched around the world are going to be really important because not just in the case of Mandelson, but in France and other countries around the world where they've actually taken this seriously, you are going to have some sort of discovery process where you're going to to see more where you're going to learn more. So in effect, you'll have more Epstein files that are released as a result of the actions in these various countries. The other thing that I was thinking about is like, it makes me a little bit more sympathetic towards cancel culture, because that's literally the only elite accountability that we apparently have in this country. And that's the only mechanism we have. That's the only reason Kathy Rumler, the Pritzker guy, or Peter Attia, or any of these people are having to face anything, because there's not, we've already been told from the government, we're not going to do any criminal investigation. This is done. We're, you know, closed. We're not releasing any more files. We don't want to talk about it anymore. We don't think there's anything to investigate here. We don't think there's anything to prosecute here, you know, within our own government, let alone, you know, among any other business leaders. We are moving on nothing to see here. So essentially, our only real recourse is through shame and pressure of various corporate entities to try to make people who are implicated lose their jobs. That's all this public has. So you can see why there has been in the past, you know, and I think currently within the context of Epstein files, why there has been such a frenzy around these type of pressure campaigns, because there's no hope that there's going to be any sort of like criminal justice accountability. That's the problem though, right? And this was always the criticism of cancel culture is like, look, you're literally going after like a podcast host or a comedian while people who are in power are facing nothing. It's like literally an inversion of the way that democracy is supposed to work. Well, here you go. This is the same problem. You've got Peter Atiyah, who's, look, I mean, yeah, it's creepy emails, all right? And like I said, I'm sketched out by it. Gonna take everything he says from now on with a grain of salt. It's really disgusting. But it's not the same as former governors and presidents and all of these people. Or like Howard Lutnant. Yeah, right. The Commerce Secretary. Or the President of the United States. So if the guy who's talking to me about Metformin, you know, sent a really disgusting, creepy email to Epstein faces some professional consequences like, OK, but the guy who sets the tariff policy of the United States of America lied about his relationship. That's kind of a whole other story, you know, and for him. And then not just that. He said, oh, well, I never. What do you say? I visited the island and I had lunch with him years after I said I was never going to see him again. That's pretty different in terms of accountability. But for some reason, because we know that we can't have any accountability at the top that we try to search for it with all of these former governors. I'm like, sorry, I don't care about the former. I mean, I do, but not in the same way as what's happening or some head of a law firm or something like that. Sure, it's good, fine, but it's not the same as actually looking at the top. And that's the problem I have. Yeah. Well, cancel culture is a form of like digital vigilante justice, basically. And you can understand why in a time when you feel like the justice system, why there's clearly different rules for different people, depending on, you know, whether you're part of the Epstein class or whether you're not. And, you know, and that's how you end up with a mass system of vigilante justice. And I continue to maintain that one of the major problems in this country has to be dealt with going forward is the total elite impunity that has been enjoyed over decades. You know, if you go back to the Iraq war lies, if you go back to the financial crisis and the fact that, these bankers destroyed the entire economy, ruined millions of people's lives, people who still haven't recovered from what happened to them in that crisis, and there's no accountability there. And then you get this little window into a completely depraved network that operated above the reach of any sort of nation state, any sort of system of laws. If you don't grapple with that, you are going to continue to have societal breakdown. There has to be some sense that even elites are subject to some sort of accountability for their malfeasance. And so I think Americans are looking at the Brits with jealousy right now. You know, you've got literal royals facing more accountability than our supposed, you know, democratic administration here. Like, we're supposed to be the no kings people, right? And yet the actual royals facing more accountability and justice than, you know, our representatives. See, I've been defending the monarchy for a long time, Crystal. This is mine. Yeah, I'm coming around on that one. When you have hundreds of years and a culture of accountability, this is what happened. Oh, the Brits are going to be furious. And the Indians are going to be mad at me about that one too. But look, fundamentally, I love separation, you know, of the head of state and the head of government. I just think it's an amazing system. Works out well for a lot of people. I just want the free healthcare. Well, you know, that one's a little more complicated for there. Let's go to the next one, shall we? Just to show you, fall from grace from the great Lord of Lord Mandelson. This one is C2. Here he is just nine months ago in the Oval Office presenting his credentials to Donald Trump. He was the Lord. He was the ambassador. If you've never seen it, the British residence ambassador here in Washington is like a country estate with a little garden lawn. And it's a palatial mansion. and they whine and dine the Washington elite. And that's where he was not that long time ago. And here he is now being led away, literally into a waiting police car. We also did want to update a few emails which have come across our desk. Let's put this one up here on the screen. This is a pretty crazy one. Perhaps a slip of the tongue. 2020, one year after Epstein died, an assistant US attorney for the Eastern District discusses a confidentiality agreement, quote, in connection with the investigation into the murder of Jeffrey Epstein. Perhaps a slip of the tongue. He says, into the death of an inmate at Brooklyn MDC. The OCME, I'm assuming that's a medical examiner, told me it signed a confidentiality agreement in connection with the investigation into the murder of Jeffrey Epstein. We were hoping to extend a similar agreement and I wanted to see if you could share the agreement or a boilerplate version of it. I'm happy to speak over the phone if that's easier. My cell is X. So basically, he says, we're gonna give this deal to another inmate, but this is about the investigation into the murder of Jeffrey Epstein, hoping if there's some similar agreement, it's in place. Here's why it's a little bit suspicious. It's not just the word murder. Clearly, this is an investigation into the death, which they think is a murder, and he's referring to the death of Epstein as a murder, which maybe it was considered that at some time. Now, remember, the official conclusion is suicide, but they never even claimed that they investigated a murder. They ruled suicide from day one, basically from the very first announcement. From the press release that was drafted the day before. Which was drafted the day before. So you're like, okay, man. I mean, this is pretty crazy. I mean, it could be that when they drafted that press release announcing his death, they just messed up on the date. Right. Which is actually believable. Just happened to mess up here as well and call it a murder, even though it was totally, definitely a suicide. And it just happened. The cameras didn't work. going to just happen when they put out the video that supposedly proved that there was nothing to see there. There was, you know, not to mention one person in the video that they claimed that they pretended wasn't there and there were minutes missing and the guards happened to be asleep and et cetera, et cetera. And, you know, people who look at the body say this couldn't. Plus the cameras. Yeah. And we never found the news, but yeah, that all makes a lot of sense. That all just really, just a comedy of errors. That's all it is. It's just nothing to see here, Sagar. Yeah, that's right. Let's go to C4. This is another interesting story. This one came out yesterday from Ryan Goodman over at Just Security. They're like a legal blog, and they look into some of this. They say, the FBI issued a stand-down directive to the NYPD on Jeffrey Epstein investigation and more. Five days after Epstein's arrest in the summer of 2019, federal authorities directed the New York Police Department to stand down its investigations related to Epstein. New documents released show. The directive applied to the NYPD Special Victims Unit, the group that was specially trained and equipped to handle sex crimes. At the time, the Manhattan DA had an ongoing investigation with the Epstein victims, but the FBI assumed that would come to a halt as well following the Bureau's directive. Revelations are part of the chronology, which spans 1996 to 2005. The timeline amounts to the most comprehensive record to date of the publicly available information of New York law enforcement authorities' actions and inaction whenever it regards Epstein and is provided below. You can read very specifically not only the origination of the claim about Maria Farmer, but then the NYPD stand-down order. And sometime around 2012, Epstein and one of his victims' assistants actually discussed NYPD contacting her. And so you have this years-long kind of investigation and discussion with Epstein, the NYPD, who's constantly kind of monitoring this case and potentially getting involved until they get this federal stand down directive now again we always got to present the innocent explanation anybody ever watched a cop show there's always turf war they don't want them to get involved it's but yeah it's possible it's possible uh but like you said with the murder investigation you're like well you know if you look at it as a one-off sure but if you put the totality of it all it's a little bit it's a bit sketchy right and so that's why i think this is worth highlighting as well yeah and this was you know during the first trump administration. Bill Barr is AG. His dad is the one who hires Jeffrey Epstein when he's wildly unqualified for his first job at the elite Dalton school. So he's put in contact with the children of Manhattan's elites. And, you know, that's the era that we're talking about here in terms of AG Bill Barr being in place and Trump being the president at the time that this stand down order is ultimately issued. Exactly. You can scroll the headlines all day and still feel empty. I'm Ben Higgins, and if you can hear me, is where culture meets the soul. Honest conversations about identity, loss, purpose, peace, faith, and everything in between. Celebrities, thinkers, everyday people, some have answers, most are still figuring it out. And if you've ever felt like there has to be more to the story, this show is for you. Listen to If You Can Hear Me on my iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Amanda Knox, and in the new podcast, Doubt, The Case of Lucy Let Be, we unpack the story of an unimaginable tragedy that gripped the UK in 2023. But what if we didn't get the whole story? Everything's been made to fit. The moment you look at the whole picture, the case collapsed. What if the truth was disguised by a story we chose to believe? Oh my God, I think she might be innocent. Listen to Doubt, The Case of Lucy Letby on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is Special Agent Regal, Special Agent Bradley Hall. In 2018, the FBI took down a ring of spies working for China's Ministry of State Security, one of the most mysterious intelligence agencies in the world. The Sixth Bureau podcast is a story of the inner workings of the MSS and how one man's ambition and mistakes opened its vault of secrets. Listen to The Sixth Bureau on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed human.