6/12/26: Iran Worries Trump Mentally Ill, Hunter Biden Defends Platner, Antonio Reynoso, CAIR Attorney

This is an I Heart podcast. Guaranteed human. Hey guys, Sagar and Crystal here. Independent media just played a truly massive role in this election and we are so excited about what that means for the future of this show. This is the only place where you can find honest perspectives from the left and the right that simply does not exist anywhere else. So if that is something that's important to you, please go to breakingpoints.com, become a member today and you'll get access to our full shows, unedited, ad free, and all put together for you every morning in your inbox. We need your help to build the future of independent news media and we hope to see you at breakingpoints.com. Well, happy Friday everybody and welcome to Breaking Points. We have some breaking news for the breaking points this morning. That was just a terrible pun, but I think the pun is very much intended. Ryan, what do we got going on today? So later in the program, we're gonna be joined by an attorney for care, Amy Ducore, who's representing some of the eight protesters in Michigan who have now been hit with federal indictments. This is after the Ann Arbor prosecutor there just declined to prosecute. Then Michigan AG, Dana Nessel, tried to take it over, but failed. Now the feds are getting involved going after these campus, campus protesters, we'll talk to her later. Halfway through the show, we'll have Antonio Ramoso, who is the Brooklynboro president and is running to replace Nitya Velazquez. He's running against Claire Valdez, who has the support of Zoran Mamdani. So we're gonna get his argument for why he thinks Mamdani should have actually gone with him. We'll also talk about Hunter Biden and Gavin Newsom, which is gonna be fun. But we'll start with my drop site news colleague, Jeremy Skaehl, who's been tracking the kind of on again, off again, announced 39th announcement I think we're at of a deal. However, it is, even though this is the 39th or whatever it is, there is actual reason to be at least somewhat optimistic that this one might actually stick. We'll get into some of the back and forth there. But Jeremy, thanks for taking some time to do this. Am I right? Is it 39? I think it's, it might be a little bit less than that, 38 maybe? Yeah, I mean, it's definitely at least three dozen. So it's somewhere in that range. So let's throw up some Donald Trump here. Really recent Donald Trump too. Really recent Donald Trump. He's surrounded by, I don't know what event he was, he's doing here, but here's Trump announcing that basically he's got the deal. Oh, from the look of the war with Iran. And we're gonna be subject to finalization of documents. We should get done over the next few days. Probably have a signing maybe in Europe. And great thing, stock markets up a thousand points. That means they like the deal. See that means they like, the market goes down. That means they don't like the deal. But it's been up oil, shrubbed, oil will start coming down to, I think even lower than it was before. We had, I said I was in Iowa. It was $1.85 a gallon. Not sure if I'm gonna get there, but we're gonna get pretty close. It's gonna come down and when oil comes down, everything else comes down. And most importantly, we have a deal that Iran will never have from nuclear weapons, which was the whole purpose of what we had to go through to get this. So it was a very big thing. But we have a signing soon and the documents are in pretty final shape. So we'll see. We'll see. Very good. Should be done. That should be done pretty quickly. They want it every bit as much as everybody else wants. And I think a lot of good relationships can ensue from this. I just spoke with the leaders of many of the countries that were mentioned in the release. I just spoke to BB. I spoke to the head of great heads of nations, Qatar, UAE, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait and others. And I'm gonna be talking to Turkey. President Erdogan is great. And it's really a wonderful thing. With a lot of spirit, Pakistan was fantastic. The prime minister, I call him the general. He's a general. He's a great general. He's so great that he's actually a field marshal. Step above. And they're all very happy. The whole Middle East is happy. And along beyond the Middle East, the straight will open as soon as we have a sign. We've been taking out many ships that nobody knew. Even the fake news didn't know it. Over the last month, we've been taking our ships, big ships, quietly at night. You guys didn't know that. Pretty cool, right? As a captain, he knows about more about ships than I do. But it's pretty good. They turned off the lights. We bombed it later. So I get a lobster memory. I couldn't see what was going on. Is that even talking to a lobster? Yeah, I think that's what it was. All right, so that's Trump. Subsequent to that, you have Iranian state media release what they claimed were some details of the term sheet kicking back and forth. And subsequent to that, this morning, you have Donald Trump going on Truth Social. Here, he writes, he's freaking out. The terms that Iran leaked out to the fake news have nothing to do with the terms that were agreed to in writing. What they said, including their weak and pathetic statement on having a deal, there's no relation to the truth. Very dishonorable people to deal with. With them, there's no such thing as dealing in good faith. Amazing. Also, their totally rebuffed drone attack last night against Indian ships leaving the Hormuz Strait is totally unacceptable. They better get their act together and fast. President Donald J. Trump. Okay, Jeremy, what do we make of Trump's statement that we're looking at a signing ceremony very soon? What do you read from the release from Iranian state media and then Trump's tantrum here? And Jeremy, let me also just toss to you with, that was posted at 940 AM. Ryan always, I think, sharply observes the market timing with some of these Trump statements. So I'll toss you with that too. Yeah. I think also it's important to remember that last night Trump was also praising Iranian leaders. He's saying, oh, we really did change the regime and these guys are really smart and they're really good to deal with and we're gonna have a deal. And then the next day, he's saying, you just read it, he's saying, these are the worst people in the world and there's no dealing with them. And I think just at the top level, before I get into some of the background leading up to all this and try to give some context to what I've heard, twice in the past year, Iran thought they were in negotiations with the United States and then the US and Israel launched wars. One happened a year ago this month, the 12 day war in June and then the other began on February 28th. And then there have been more than three dozen times since the two week initial ceasefire was signed on April 7th, that Trump has claimed that a deal is imminent and they often leak stories to Barack Rebid at Axios and a couple of other journalists that are sort of conveyor belts for the kind of official leaks coming out of the administration. And as many observers have pointed out, and you just mentioned Emily, there's often these things are timed to the markets and there clearly is a lot of insider trading going on. And so those are real factors. And it's also must be said that it's possible that there isn't gonna be any deal and that we're gonna see a resumption of either full scale war or what we've been seeing over the past week or so, which is the United States or Israel doing strikes, Iran retaliating, perhaps the Israelis hit Beirut again, which the Iranians have defined as a red line and then Iran in turn strikes Israel. So it's entirely possible that this entire thing just completely falls apart and we go back to that position. But just to say one other thing too, Iranian sources told me a couple of weeks ago that the Iranian side added senior psychologists to their negotiating team to review the communications that they were going to be sending to the mediators to give to Trump. And they did that because the Iranians believe that Trump is legitimately mentally ill and is operating in an impaired mental state. And they didn't say this is a joke. They didn't say this with any lightness. They said, we recognize that we are dealing with a mentally incapacitated individual and we've had senior psychologists work up a psychological profile of what they think is going on with Trump's brain. And so we started to cater our messages by running them past senior psychologists before delivering them to Trump. And they said that we started to then see some progress. They almost talked about it like a clinical sense, like they're dealing with a patient, see some progress in the negotiations. And I've also heard from sources that mediators, right now you have Qatar involved in a very deep way. You have Pakistan remaining involved. You have Turkey, Saudi Arabia, that some of the mediating countries are also starting to become deeply concerned that Trump is totally erratic and that when they have conversations with him that Trump is saying, yes, I'm agreeing to these things. They then double check, so we can take this now back to the Iranians, yes, you can. And then they do it and the Iranians, there's an exchange of ideas. And then things like this happen where Trump says, oh, no, no, no, that's nothing, what I agreed to. And in the best faith way of looking at this, I think part of what has happened is that I was told on May 22nd by Iranian negotiators that they had the basic contours of a memorandum of understanding worked out. And I think one of the big concessions, if you will, that the Iranians were making is a willingness to put forward the most robust language that they could tolerate that explicitly addressed Iran not pursuing a nuclear weapon. And Trump was talking about that yesterday. He was saying, no, the Iranians are agreeing, they won't build a nuclear weapon, they won't import a nuclear weapon, they won't purchase a nuclear weapon. And Iran, from their perspective, this was their longstanding position, so it wasn't that big of an ask, but Trump needed to craft a victory narrative. The Iranians realized that. So my understanding was that the Iranians tried to go as far as they could in allowing that to be in the opening stages of this, this memorandum of understanding. But they weren't going to start negotiating a technical thing about downgrading uranium or export of uranium or anything like that until there were technical negotiations. So in that sense, I think Trump would have been able to say, oh, I got them to do this, even though anyone who really follows this stuff knows that's not a big concession. That was Iran's position before this, the issue of the Strait of Hormuz opening. Well, the Strait of Hormuz was open before this. Trump's thing is victory narrative is based on, we got them to agree to do things that they already were doing before we started this war. And I think that part of what's happened is that there's a secret track here. And this may be, again, my best faith, read of what Trump is doing. There's a secret track here or a separate track, which is that the Iranians and the Americans are kind of talking about what is the starting point for nuclear negotiations that will come after a memorandum of understanding. And I do think the Iranians, indirectly through the mediators, have talked about some ideas of what they'd be willing to do in terms of suspending enrichment above 3.6%. Possible discussions on even removing some of the highly enriched uranium to a third country. They're not committing to these things, but my understanding is that the Iranians, because of the way this process is played out, have put some skin in the game on that. And have said, okay, we'll talk about it. But they're saying that's not gonna go in this memorandum of understanding because we have to have technical negotiations. What held this whole thing up the past few weeks, I'm told, is multi-fold. One is that Trump kept trying to find a way not to unfreeze Iranian assets. The Iranians have been demanding a minimum of $24 billion in their assets to be unfrozen and repatriated to Iran at the front end of a deal. This isn't about sanctions relief. This is just about the unfreezing of their money. Trump has made a point over and over of talking about how Barack Hussein Obama gave the Iranians billions of dollars. He does not want to be perceived as giving the Iranians billions of dollars, even though it's their own money. Iran has said quite clearly to me and publicly, there will be no memorandum of understanding without a freezing of money. So my understanding is they were trying to thread a needle. Trump was meeting with Qatari officials and others. They may do some of it. Muhammad Ali Shabani from Amwaj Media told us the other day, that there may be some configuration where it's framed kind of as a loan. They're trying to find some way for Trump to be able to say we're not giving them any money. So that was one kind of sticking point, but there apparently was some sort of a breakthrough on that. The other part of it was Lebanon. Benjamin Netanyahu, when he knew in late May, mid to late May, that a deal was kind of moving forward, he ratchet it up the operations in Lebanon. He pushed Israeli forces north of the Latani River. He wanted to get as deep into Lebanon and do as much bombing in Lebanon as he could prior to any deal being signed, because the Iranians set a red line. There has to be a cessation of hostilities that applies to Lebanon as well. So that's why you had this thing where there was the reports of Trump yelling at Netanyahu and saying, I'm keeping you out of jail and all of that stuff. And probably some of it is true and some of it isn't, but the core is there's no fracture in that relationship. It's all just strategic posturing. So the Iranians then respond to that by saying if the Israelis hit Beirut, we're gonna hit Israel, and that's what happened. So then Trump had to kind of figure some of that out. And there was a strategic game there because I think it gave the perception if Trump got them to stop attacking Beirut, they had essentially moved the line of negotiation forward to a point where they say, well, look, they're not gonna attack Beirut, as opposed to it being they need to withdraw all of their forces from southern Lebanon. So all these things were playing out. And then you had this exchange of fire that happened between the US and Iran after a helicopter was downed, a US helicopter that was in Iranian airspace and was participating in this kind of covert operation that Trump then made public by saying, oh, we've been smuggling all of this oil out. It's interesting how that helicopter went down. I think that bears a lot of investigation, what actually happened there, et cetera. But all of this happened, Qatari mediators though were in Tehran when the bombing was happening, when the US was bombing Iran, and they worked late into the night, Wednesday to Thursday. And then we started to hear that there was some sort of a breakthrough. Trump said the deal was done basically. He had talked to all these countries and Israel. Israel says, no, we didn't sign off on anything. Other countries are saying, wait a minute, this is not exactly what we heard. Iran then says, well, no, there isn't a final text. The Supreme Leader of Iran, Mojhaba Chameini, has to actually sign off on this. It has to go through our Supreme National Security Council. But it did seem as though the Iranians were saying, yes, we're getting close to this thing. Then, in a very serious Iranian news organization this morning, published an outline, as Ryan mentioned, of what was contained within the deal. And none of it was surprising to people who watch, breaking points or retrops. We've been talking about all of these terms. And it did include in it, what I mentioned earlier, this thing about Iran making a positive affirmation about pursuit of nuclear weapons. And it also included the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, setting terms for a 60-day initial negotiating period on the nuclear issue. But it didn't include any of the things that Trump and Netanyahu have said about where they're gonna downgrade their uranium. They're not gonna make ballistic missiles. They're gonna stop supporting their quote-unquote proxies in the region. None of that was in this thing. So all of this is a kind of detailed way of making a basic point, which is that the best faith way of reading this, if you don't want to go down the path of like, this is market manipulation or Trump has a serious mental condition going on, or that he and Netanyahu are cooking up another surprise attack. If you want to look at it in the best faith way, probably part of what's happened is that because they're indirect negotiations, Trump is conflating some of the second track discussions that have happened with what's gonna actually be in the MOU. And Iran is not going to allow those things to be in an MOU. They've made that really, really clear. So I guess it's a way of saying war could resume. We could have low-intensity war resume. We could have another breakthrough. Maybe the Iranians go back to their senior psychologists and they figure out a way to send Trump a new message or direct message him on Truth Social or something where they feel like they can calm him down. But regardless of what anyone's politics are, I think it should be clear to all Americans watching this, just looking at what Trump said last night versus today, at a minimum, we're dealing with someone who is highly erratic and doesn't seem to actually know the TikTok of what's actually going on. It's remarkable. Maybe it's an act, maybe he just wants to appear like he's nuts because he thinks it's a better negotiating tactic. That's possible, but I've heard from mediators and the Iranians that it's crazy town in terms of the communications. And I would imagine even American negotiators are a little bit like, wait a minute, but we had an actual good deal or like a framework that would have addressed all this and gotten you the offer amp and you keep blowing it up, you and Netanyahu. Well, Jeremy, I was actually just gonna ask about the Iranian perception because it sounds like what you're hearing is the Iranians are telling you they genuinely perceive him to be crazy, not that they perceive him to be putting on an act that is depicting him as crazy. So either he is Academy Award level acting right now or they're perceiving something. I guess are you getting it from them that they believe that he's actually like off his rocker? Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, it's interesting when you speak to Iranian officials, they don't talk in some radical irrational language. I mean, I've seen a kind of progression to how they perceived it. I heard a more diplomatic way of putting it that they, you know, I think that they were thinking there was a lot and I think this was true that there was Netanyahu constantly, you know, sitting like the devil on his shoulder and his ear telling him what, you know, don't do this, don't do that. Not that Israel's in control of the entire thing, but had a, you know, outside influence on some of the decision-making, especially when it came close to deals. Then it was, you know, sort of the analysis that I was hearing was that he doesn't have the capacity to get this done. Like he, for a combination of factors that have to do with his, he can't find a way to say this was a victory and he is too beholden to certain micro interests on Israel's part, that there's too much influence there. And then it started to become, we're having discussions where we literally are told by the mediators that the Americans have agreed to this and it's just like small terms and things. And then the next day, Trump is posting, I have no idea what anyone is talking about. So they said, we then as responsible, you know, nation-state and negotiators, we started to more robustly enlist psychiatric professionals to help us assess what's going on. And lest this seem like too big of a, you know, salacious story, the CIA does this all the time when they're dealing with adversaries. You get psychiatrists and psychologists to draw up mental profiles, but the entire world is seeing a mental health breakdown happen in front of the cameras of the world on the part of the most powerful man in the world. So, you know, obviously Iran should be fact-checked. Obviously all nation-states lie. They engage in propaganda. They say things that aren't true. They wanna spin things to their advantage. But on a core level, the sense that I get is that the mediators in Iran on one side recognize that they're dealing with, to say the least, an incredibly erratic individual who also has a huge special interests that are at play here, insider trading stuff, Israel stuff. Then there's the midterm elections coming up. You know, there's all these things falling in there. And the umbrella above it all is anyone with eyes to see, ears to hear and a brain in their head can understand he didn't win this war. It's unbelievable what happened. Iran had its supreme leader killed. Much of its political and military echelon wiped out, bombed relentlessly by two nuclear powers for weeks on end and fought the US to a standstill. I'll put this up from the FT while you're talking, our colleague Maz pulled out. The quote, for 40 days, US and Israeli aircraft pounded the mountains around Jizad, trying to silence one of Iran's most important military projects, a buried missile complex, carved deep into the granite above the ancient desert city. Yet, according to residents, the missiles kept firing regardless. US and Israeli forces kept bombing those mountains of one resident and Iran kept launching missiles until the final moments before the ceasefire. This is a new report in the Financial Times talking about the way that their missile factories buried deep under concrete in the mountains were apparently impregnable and continued firings. But just to back up the point that you were making. Yeah, I mean, Trump also, he slipped it in last night and I thought it was really interesting. He was asked by a reporter sort of about the nuclear issue and he was saying, oh, it's buried so deep underneath the mountains that it's like they can't even touch it. That, if you have been following what's been going on in the negotiations, that's quite interesting. Several weeks ago, Emily, I think you and I even talked about this at one point. Several weeks ago, the Iranians were saying that part of what they were putting forward on that second secret track I talked about, the one that's not gonna appear in the MOU but is dealing with the big issue of nuclear. There had been discussion about Iran agreeing not to clear the rubble of these sites that the US had started bombing last June where the highly enriched uranium stockpile is believed to largely be held. And the point there would have been that they kind of pause it, that they ensure the Iranians aren't gonna be able to access their 60% plus enriched uranium, which is what the US is concerned about being bomb grade or being able to be converted into a nuclear weapon. And Trump slipped that in last night, which indicates to me that there is a quite advanced discussion going on, on that issue of the nuclear stuff. And it's the thing that Trump is most relying on to spin his victory narrative. So I think part of his like fury here is the idea that they're gonna get some statement from Iran saying, we're not gonna do this, but he's not gonna be able to come to the American public and say, the Marines are gonna land and take this highly enriched uranium. Or we're gonna have it transferred to Pakistan or another American ally or even Russia for that matter. So I do think that there was a really advanced discussion going on. I do think that they are down to a very narrow set of issues. And it does seem like the wild card here is Trump thinks that he's gonna at the last second be able to change some terms. The Iranians are saying back off, we've been talking about this for weeks while you've been in Cuckoo land. And your negotiators are all aware of the facts and they're not gonna do it. So at the end of the day, Trump has to find a way to say I won. And he really to the tantrum this morning indicates he's recognizing that he doesn't have that. That's my read. What about the money? What do we know about that at this point in terms of the what's, like what was the Iranian state media claiming? What are you hearing? I mean, the Iranian state media, it could be a possibly phased like a couple billion upfront and then over days and then, but it's a loan that's forgivable or blah, blah, blah. I mean, Iranian state media isn't getting into the details of that structure that you're referring to. What they're saying is the initial on the table offering is $24 billion in frozen assets. They don't indicate where it's gonna come from. Most analysts, I think believe that it will eventually go through Qatar in one way or another. Although Emirati officials, strange enough, have been increasing their communication with Iran and the Emiratis actively participated in the bombing. So that's a, there's a wild card there, but the Qataris were the ones historically involved with this issue and there was supposed to be unfrozen funds in 2024 having to do with an exchange of hostages deal that the U.S. did. And then President Biden blocked the unfreezing of that money that was supposed to be repatriated to Iran. So it's possible that they may try to say, this was money that had to do with a different deal or something, but half of that roughly or $12 billion, Iranian media is saying would be returned to Iran at the front end of this. And then there would be a phasing, which is what you're talking about, a phasing of some of the rest of that. And remember, Iran is demanding a $300 billion reconstruction fund to address the damage that's been done. The other thing that Iranians had told me going back many weeks was that they were also willing to suspend any plans that they had for imposing any sort of fees on ships transiting the Strait of Hormuz. There's been a lot of controversy about this issue of are they gonna impose tolls? The Iranians have talked about kind of an alternative arrangement or framing of it, where it'd be like escort fees or security fees or environmental fees, but they were saying, we'd be willing to pause all of those plans of the new authority that we established as part of this agreement. And then there's the issue of the Iranian request for a $300 billion reconstruction fund. And the U.S. has said it doesn't wanna have anything to do with something like that, it's not gonna do it. There's some discussions I understand with Gulf countries about it. But at the end of the day, the whole name of the game for the Iranians really is comprehensive sanctions relief. And I haven't seen any reporting to indicate that a single sanction, with the exception of some involving kind of oil sales and limited in scope stuff at the beginning of this, is gonna be included. And Iran's economy took a massive hit, not just from these wars, but because of the sanctions in years of this. That's what those protests were about in January. Massive protests from the Bazaari culture. In American terms, this is like working class people, merchants, small business owners, they were the ones engaged in these large scale protests in Iran because of the economic conditions. So the Iranian state needs to address its economic situation as a matter of survival. And no comprehensive sanctions relief is being offered at the front end of this. So that's a victory in a sense for Trump, but the Iranians are saying no deal on nuclear stuff unless there's comprehensive sanctions relief, which is why the Iranians wanted to separate it into two tracks because you're talking about existential issues. I was just gonna say that people who are in Trump's ear, I was toggling through some of the responses in the last 24 hours from Mark Levin, Mark Dubowitz, Mark Teeson, I guess these are like the three Marks. I had never thought of it that way, Mark's cateers, but they were, we know that they will not tolerate, politically they will no longer tolerate sanctions relief period. Like that is just, you can't unfreeze the assets, you can't lift sanctions. And so the people who were so eager to truly Trump and were really putting the wind at his back, he was citing them over and over again and then slamming his critics who weren't sounding the same notes as Mark Levin, for example, they're the ones that will absolutely not tolerate this. And so it's an impossible position that Trump has put himself in between what would end the war and actually accomplish a deal. Jeremy, it sounds like, I think this is obvious, but it sounds like there absolutely is no wiggle room between what Mark Levin, Mark Teeson, Mark Dubowitz will tolerate and what would accomplish an actual deal with the Iranians and other Gulf countries in the region. Unfortunately, it's a good point that people like that have this kind of influence and Trump regularly promotes their views and their posts. So it's not a non-factor, it's a real thing. I think that though that this dynamic you're describing is part of why going way back to before February 28th and the start of this active war, the Iranians were talking about finding ways to appeal to Trump, the businessman and Trump, the president who is using the powers of the Oval Office in a very clear way to enrich his friends and set up his family and they understand, Jared Kushner, they understand the Witkoff family. And so I think part of what the Iranians were looking at was what kind of oil and gas or other concessions can we put on the table to make this appealing to that part of Trump? So I could see a scenario where no deal whatsoever happens that there's some short term thing as I was talking about at the beginning and then it's returned to kind of weeks, if not months of this standoff that we've been watching. But if there is some kind of a deal that involves sanctions relief, I could see Trump going forward with it if he felt that he was cashing in on it or that his family members or that his crony network was cashing in on it, I could see that. But you're gonna have to lift sanctions. And as you mentioned, you have this more neo-con wing of the Trump orbit who have been obsessed for their entire professional lives with Iran as like the purveyor of terrorism all over the world. And they have a lot of influence over Trump. So Trump has to figure out how to spin it for them. He has to figure out a way to declare victory. He also has to figure out a way to actually definitively end this. What I'll say parenthetically at the end too, it's interesting. I was talking to Hassan Ahmadiyan today who's a really well-known Iran analyst and scholar and is very, very well-known in the Islamic world. And I was asking him about the Lebanon situation because yes, Iran showed that it was willing to go to the map and bomb Israel unilaterally outside of the context of the US-Israeli war on Iran because of the attack on Beirut, but it could come to a moment where Iran has to use the leverage that it has to try to get as many concessions that are at its core interests which have to do with its economic situation, its viability going forward as a regional power, et cetera. And would it be the case then that Netanyahu is able to kind of resume the war in Lebanon and that Iran wouldn't really be able to resume this because they're in the middle of very serious negotiations where they're using their leverage to get things that they very much want and prioritize. And what Hassan Ahmadiyan said was, what the next phase of this is that the Israelis and the Americans are trying to decouple Hezbollah and Lebanon from Iran. And that's why there's this whole track going on with President Joseph Aoun, the president of Lebanon and the Israelis and the Americans. And they want to essentially create an American Lebanon government Israeli front against Hezbollah. That's what they're trying to do. Iran, of course, is a long-time ally of Hezbollah and views itself as in this war with Hezbollah together. So what Ahmadiyan was saying is that the Americans are trying to decouple Iran from Lebanon and Hezbollah. What Hezbollah and Iran are gonna do is try to decouple America from Israel. And that he was basically saying there is going to be another war. And that that war is gonna be Iran and Hezbollah against Israel. And the question is, can they drive that wedge between Israel and the United States? And I raised with him the example of the ceasefire deal that Trump signed with Ansarullah in Yemen, often referred to as the Houthis. There is still a ceasefire on the books between the United States of America that was signed by Donald Trump and Ansarullah in Yemen that is just about the United States and Ansarullah and Israel is not a party to it. So there is a precedent for that, but this isn't something that's gonna happen in two weeks or two months. But going forward, we haven't heard the last of a war between Iran and Israel because at the end of the day, Israel didn't really get everything that it wanted. And then the next phase for Israel is gonna be ratchet up the covert operations that they're doing inside of Iran, even if the bombs stop falling. So we may see something happen in the coming days, we may not. What we might see happen would be massive bombing again or tit for tat stuff again, or we could see some deal that falls apart after some weeks, some initial thing, the Strait of Hormuz is open, a bunch of people make money on markets stuff, and then it crumbles apart. These are huge issues. The JCPOA, the 2015 deal, took years to negotiate involving hundreds of experts from different sectors. And thus far, we've had Gulf Buddy and Sun in law, and then more recently, JD Vance and Marco Rubio, but they haven't brought the A team in terms of area expertise to the table, and in order to make a real deal with Iran, they're gonna have to do that. And last thing for me, but it does seem like there's a risk to pick up what you were saying for Iran that they may have just gone through this year of war, siege control of the Strait of Hormuz, fended off the US, left a lot of the US bases and ashes, and yet find themselves on the other side of it back where they were, which is hoping to negotiate a nuclear agreement for sanctions relief. Like that's where they were a year ago, two years ago, three years ago. Like feels like groundhog day in that sense. Yes, there's definitely truth to that, but I would say there's two other factors that you should include in that analysis. One is Iran's ability to have not just survived this intact, but to have really fought two nuclear powers off, sent a message to the world. The world sees Iran very, very differently right now. Iran's neighbors see it very differently right now. The stakes of attacking Iran again, particularly for Gulf countries that have any connection to the United States or Israel, they do not want this to keep going. This has been catastrophic for their economic and political situation. So that's one dimension. What's really true about what you're saying though, and I think in some ways this is the biggest challenge facing the Iranian government going forward. The war has unified many sectors of Iranian society. I'm not saying there aren't militant opponents of Iran, both outside and inside, but even prominent critics of the Iranian government, the Islamic Republic government, have come out quite ferociously against this war. And you have massive demonstrations in Iran, including people saying to Iranian state media that they were opponents of the government, that they were protesting against the government, that they're openly saying this even on Iranian state media, and we're against what the US and Israel are doing. When the bombs stop falling, and it becomes this drawn out negotiation process, and you're not getting comprehensive sanctions relief, and the economy is still screaming as Scott Besant put it, the intention of it is to try to strangle the people into a kind of uprising, then you're a new day sets in. Sounds like kissing dead. Right, and I think that that's, Mohammed Bagar-Galabaf, the lead negotiator for Iran, and the speaker of the Iranian parliament, talks about how Iran knows best this language, the language of fighting against the US and Israel in this capacity. And he meant it in a different way, but it was revelatory in a sense, because if they no longer have that active war to rally against, then you have to face, well, what do people now think in this country, or feel in this country now that the dust has settled? And there's huge capital by the United States and Israel being poured in to try to foment internal unrest. So there is a way in which, and I've said this before, I think Israel is not so nervous about the bombs stop falling because they'll move into another phase of this. What Iranians would tell you is, yes, that's a concern, we understand that, but this war above all showed that our institutions are resilient and that the state is resilient, and that these types of actions, even at their height, were unable to bring it down or destroy it, even though they killed our supreme leader, the heads of the IRGC and political echelon. So we'll see, we'll talk in a couple of years and see what happens with this, but it remains a dangerous situation, I would say, a very dangerous situation. All right, well, Jeremy Skaehill, Dropsite News. See you back here in a couple of years, we'll see. A couple minutes. I meant just on that issue. I mean, this is the second time I've been on your casual Fridays and I'm so honored to be hanging out here with you guys. All right, well, thanks so much. Have a good weekend. Hunter Biden made an appearance on Gavin Newsom's podcast. It's a show we obviously had to bring you some of these clips. Let me start with the first one. Of course they touched on Grant Plattner because why wouldn't they? The boys are just riffing here, but let's go with this one, raised a lot of eyebrows. This is from TMZ. I'm joined today by presidential candidate Hunter Biden, 2028. Come on, Hunter. So it's going on. No, no, no, no, no. You got more buzz out there than it. You got the president of the United States. He's so jealous. Your candidacy for president. I had to give you a break for just one day at least. Here's the deal. Here's the deal. I'll run, but only as your VP, because the truth of the matter is, the vice president's residence is a lot cooler. It's a lot easier job too. I think your point was accurate. It sounded a little bit like Gavin Newsom. He immediately jumped to you're running for president because you're getting so much attention. He looked salty. To him at zero sum, he's so angry, but let's give Gavin what he needs, which is a little bit of attention. Yeah, let's do it. So they did touch on Graham Plattner. You make up him in the context of all this that you're describing. He was a combat veteran, and he came back. He had some real issues with PTSD, and that trauma and whatever way that he was working it out, I think has been really, really open about. Is that he wasn't a good person. And here's what I know. Is that it takes a lot of stamina at least. I'm not gonna say, I think courage too. I'll give myself that to get back up and build a better life. And I'm 99.9% certain that Graham Plattner is no Nazi. And I don't think that he's a racist in any way. I hear the way that he talks. I think that his relationship with his wife is his relationship with his wife. The entirety of that controversy is, it's all about leaked consensual stuff. I mean, stupid. Maybe you would have a problem, not you. I mean, anyone would have a problem. No, not you, Gavin. I always say to people, like show me your phone. Give me access to your iCloud. Let me, let's go through it and pull everything that we can that is inappropriate, that is off color, that is, you know, that selfie that you took when you drunk off your ass and, you know, send it to your blah, blah, blah. Like show me your phone. And if that's the standard by which we are going to judge people, particularly people in elected office, then I don't think we're gonna have many people in elected office. And so as it relates to Graham Plattner, I focus on this, is that I have not heard anything in any way that would say to me that he is a abusive, misogynistic or anti-semitic or racist person. And I have heard this from Graham Plattner, though, that he thinks we should all have free healthcare. I have heard this from Graham Plattner also, that he thinks that we have to radically change our politics. I have heard this from Graham Plattner, that working people are getting fucking screwed. I have heard this from Graham Plattner, that they have us at each other's throats and we should be at their throats. I have heard this from Graham Plattner, that he thinks that oligarchs and the tech, our tech overlords and billionaires are really, really, really making it the plain failed unfair for working class people. That's what I've heard from Graham Plattner. And so I hope I'm right about that because I look at somebody and I know you probably have a personal relationship with him, but I watched as Zoran Mondani kind of came up and I thought, holy shit, I like what I'm hearing. And then when he got elected, I thought, I hope he can deliver. So you have Gavin in the background like chuckling like a psychopath. He's so weird. He liked what he was hearing though. Yeah, who knows what's going through that weirdo's mind. Yeah, I mean, hunters make it a lot of sense, right? Nobody knows better than him what it's like to have your entire iCloud leaked. He elaborated on it on Twitter this morning to everyone so eager to cancel someone for a tattoo they got at age 22, a drunk text, a selfie they took in the middle of mental health crisis. Show us your laptop, show us your iCloud. Open your entire digital life to your worst enemy, no context, no filter, no explanation, you won't. And good, he's really got the Twitter forum down now like the long form. Oh, he's crushing. Yeah. And he talks about perseverance and not being judged by the worst. He writes, my mom and baby sister were killed in a car accident when I was just a kid. Cancer took my brother Bo, my best friend in Iraq. I battled alcoholism, addiction. I chose the coward's way out more times than I can count. And then he talks about his own story of redemption. His is as dramatic of highs and lows, well, lows, as you can kind of get. But everybody has some something. They're, you know, he's, you know, Platinum's getting hit again with another New York Post has another ex-girlfriend who's saying that he did actually know what the tattoo was. I tend to think that the tattoo is baked in, that voters in Maine are like, I think the average, tell me what you think. I think the average, and this is probably where I am too, that the average voter in Maine is like, I don't think he knew what it was when he got it. I don't think he's a Nazi. Like there's no evidence he's actually a Nazi. So he didn't know what it was when he got it. I don't think he's a Nazi, but I do think that at some point, probably after this wedding in 2015 where he's taken his shirt off, but I do think at some point, he probably realized what it was. Yeah. And then he didn't get it taken, he didn't get it covered up until the election campaign. And he's fudging when he learned what it was. I think that is what people assume. And I think people are, have just kind of incorporated it into who you think he is. Cause I think like, well, he's lying and that goes to his character. But I think a lot of people are like, yeah, well, of course he's going to lie about that. Well, it's like, it's like, it was Breckhaven all lying about remembering what happened with Christine Blasey Ford, probably, but of course he had to. Like you're just kind of in. Well, right, maybe not. That's a different, yeah, we can do a full show on that. But I was just going to say, I think you're correct. First of all, I think Republicans leaning too hard into the tattoo when Platinum is making the election about like kitchen table, nuts and bolts, healthcare, college affordability is a mistake. They think this is, we talked about this last week actually, that like he is framing the election as something that's explicitly about affordability and not the culture war. He's trying to not talk about the culture war. That's a great job laying out. Oh, and Hunter is meeting the moment so like poetically. It is incredible. Like I don't know who is helping him. If anybody's helping him, I could see it just being him because he's extremely, I think he's like has emotional intelligence. He's a very smart person and you can see all of that. I wrote a whole piece last week about how he's completely, I've watched every single long form interview he has done. He is completely whitewashing the truth about his influence peddling, but that's neither here nor there. It's clearly tapping into something very real, also very Gen Z. I think it's nailing the lack of institutional trust in a way that's, I think, totally meeting the moment. But that's where Republicans have to recognize that people aren't going to vote on the Nazi tattoo. Like most people in Maine are not going to vote on the Nazi tattoo. Even if they think he lied about when he learned what it was. Yeah, I do think just looking like you're not telling the truth is populous candid is always a big problem. So, but I don't think it's going to end the campaign because I think we've entered a cynical era in American politics somewhere after the recession that Trump crystallized for everyone, which is that nobody is under the illusion that if somebody talks like John Edwards, they're also going to be the person John Edwards is pretending to be because people got fooled by John Edwards or Bill Clinton or whatever. That's where Trump comes in. And it's just nobody believes him when he's talking about Stormy Daniels or whomever else. Like we've, we're in a post character era in our politics. And so to keep leaning into that and insisting on it, instead of talking about policy is a mistake. I think that's right. Yeah. And people can just keep looking at that chart of Trump's net worth climbing to like $6 billion from much, much, much less than that. And then it's like really we're talking about a tattoo. So I do think they're in kind of a trap there. Now, clearly he was a dog for a very long time. As any said, he was. Now I think he was a dog quite longer than he says he was. And in his victory speech, he talks about, and I think he's starting to allude to this, he talks about redemption being a journey. He says, every day I'm trying to be better than I was the day before. Because every time they find something that he did wrong after say 2021 or 2023, it's like, wait, you said you were redeemed. He's like, well, I'm not perfect. Redemption's a journey. But that's true, of course. Yeah, yeah. Now they never found anything with mom Donnie. So there's a contrast. Like they dug up everything they could possibly find. I mean, like character-wise. Right, right, character-wise. All they had was his wife's like Spotify. Or she brushed off. Teenage Spotify. Teenage Spotify, or like some teenage posts that she made. All right, joining us now is Antonio Reno. So he's the Brooklyn Borough President, also a candidate from New York's 7th District, which is most of, much of Brooklyn, vying to replace outgoing kind of legendary Congresswoman, Niddy of Alaska's, and up against Union organizer, Claire Valdez, who has the endorsement of Zora and Mom Donnie, making kind of a, bringing a lot of national attention to this race. Antonio, thank you so much for being here. Happy to be here, I'm happy to be here. So I wanted to start with, just so people can get a sense of what you're running on, the latest ad that your campaign put out. Let me just get this up here. They owned their estimated meat. Attacked me. Stiff armed me. And Antonio Reno was by our side. For all these fights. Because Trump and his crew don't stop. Neither does Antonio. Led the progressive caucus, picked ice off rikers. Not taking a cent from wealthy special interests. He's the best choice to deliver change. I'm fight back. Because he's done it over and over. That's why teachers, nurses, the working families party. We're all on his side. Because he is on ours. So pretty often, you have the working families party, justice, Democrats, even New York City DSA, not always, but pretty often, in a coalition together behind the same candidate going up against somebody who's been in office and has the hardcore support of developers, et cetera. And it's a clear contrast. This one, as the ad shows, a little bit split. You've got New York City DSA, Justice Democrats, Mamedani on Valdez's side. You've got Velazquez and WFP over on your side. So why do you think it is that they made a mistake? What's your case for why you're the more kind of working class progressive candidate here? Yeah, I first wanna say that, I don't think there's necessarily a split. It's the DSA versus the working families party, Leticia James, Nidia Velazquez, Jermany Williams, every, the majority of unions, tenant association, presidents of almost every single NYCHA, the local organizations like Make the Road New York, NYCC and Churches United for Fair Housing. So I just wanna be clear that the progressive movement is a large tent, it has a lot of us in it, and that the majority of the progressive movement is with me. And there's one faction of the progressive movement, which is the DSA that is not, Mamedani is part of the DSA, the Justice Democrats, for all intents and purposes is a 501c4 or IE arm of the DSA and the DSA. So I just wanna put that first in Superstitive. The reason I think that they made a mistake, I would say this, that I've been doing the progressive politics, the hard work for decades now. I founded an organization called New Kings Democrats to fight against the corrupt party politic machine here in Brooklyn. And we beat the party boss when I ran for office, when I was just 29 years old. As a freshman council member, I was the co-chair of the progressive caucus that achieved many things. And I was able to pass tenant legislation to fight against terrible landlords. I was able to pass police reform. Every single time the progressive movement asked me to show up, I didn't just show up, I led from the front. And I think what you're seeing here are a conversation about the rise of Mamedani. And what I think is, Mamedani won with a broad coalition. And moving away from coalition building and thinking that one faction of the progressive movement was what got him elected versus it being just like all of us coming together to make sure that we promote and push progressive politics in New York City. This is really interesting. I mean, Ryan writes a lot about this in his books, especially the squad, but this is actually, you're in the middle of a really interesting, I think, dynamic between DSA and broader progressive movement in New York City and the era of Mamedani or in New York era, in the era of Mamedani. So what are some of the lessons that you think, I mean, you're just talking about needing a broad coalition. But what are some of the lessons you think maybe the DSA world is not learning in this moment right now? Yeah, I would say this. I think that the DSA as an organization, I guess what we learned at a very young age, I guess in the progressive movement, the founding of the Working Families Party and how we were gonna be successful was that we needed to go into like small factions, find all the people that are struggling, that need help come together and make sure that we're solving for their issues. We learned that very young. There were number one question that the WFP used to ask every single elected official before, like 20 years ago was, how good are you at building coalitions? That was a primary foundational, like principle, attendant to being a progressive. You need to build a coalition because we can't do it by ourselves. And I think that what the DSA could look to is just like coalition building is important. Nidia Velazquez was the first Congressperson to endorse Zoramundani. I was a part of the first group of elected officials that are non-DSA to endorse Zoramundani. I did a video for him from Brooklyn. I did a city-wide Latino Spanish-speaking piece for him. Just like the WFP was really important to his growth. All these organizations, every single person you saw in that video for me was with Zoramundani during the primary. Right? And I just think that the perspective here is that the coalition is all of us. And all I'm saying is this, I think that we allow for the DSA to eat at our table, but they don't necessarily allow us to eat at their table. Right? Like if you're not a member, you can't receive support from the DSA in any way, shape, or form. In ours, it's like, no, if you're a DSA member and you're a good elected official and you've done great work or you're a great organizer, we would be more than happy to welcome you in the way we did with Julia Salazar, that is a state senator, Emily Gallagher, Krista Gonzalez. We supported Tiffany Caban and Alexa Abidas. So for us, it's always like big time. Bring everybody in. If you're good, we got you back on their side though. If it's not a DSA member, they just don't put out support. So I just think it's like, hey, the coalition is big. It's all of us. And they are a part of that. And I think it's something that could both well for them long-term in the continuing to build this movement on the left, that they build partnerships. I feel like Israel Palestine has so much to do with what unfolded here. And I'm curious for your take on this. My sense is that the thing that really has given Klaire Valdez an opening and perhaps drew DSA and mom, Donnie in is, and the contrast that she tries to draw publicly consistently is she said, I was out there early calling it a genocide and calling for a ceasefire. And my opponent waited far too long, waited until I was running. So two questions on that. Do you think that's the major opening that she has here? And in hindsight, why didn't you go in earlier? And if you had gone in earlier and say, this genocide needs to stop today, like let's say you did that very early on, what would have happened to you? Like why not do that? Cause I do think if you had done that, we wouldn't even be talking about a race here. I disagree, right? I disagree hard. The two things here, they need to find distinction. Of which there's very little on a policy. Like our policy platforms are practically aligned. You could go to Julie Juan, and Tornary knows, so I'm Klaire Valdez's website, switch the names and you're gonna have a hard time trying to tell us. Right? Like so, but they need to find distinction. And we're not talking about disagreeing on something all three of us, all three of us agree that what happened in Gaza is a genocide that we need a reestablished relationship, a re, I guess negotiate relationships with allies that are not being held to account. And we shouldn't be sending weapons of war to Israel or to any nation that is committing war crimes or breaking international law. We all agree with that. The thing here, the distinction that they're trying to say is the timing of when it happened. But I could have done that October 8th, and it wouldn't have made a difference because I am not a DSA member. They only support DSA members. And that is deeply important that you know that this is not gonna change the game. Then they would have done that. That's true. I just mean the opening, like the opening, they could endorse, but they might not have had the energy behind it. I don't think that the, I don't think any of that stuff matters. I think that what they do is that they find the candidate and they look for every little straw that they can find to build distinction. You know, we said that we're not taking money from big real estate. So we don't talk to revenue members that are building large developments that are making themselves super rich. But I'll take money from a real estate agent, a broker, and they're saying, oh, Antonio takes real estate money. They look for any opera. They're gonna comb through everything they possibly can to find distinction because their only value here is that their record doesn't exist. Here's your opponent just hitting you with that right here. Yeah. Exactly. So right. So it wouldn't have been, it would have not been genocide. It would have been real estate. It would have not been real estate. They would have said, oh, Antonio is, you know, talks too much about being a native New Yorker or Antonio does, they would have tried to find something because they need a build distinction. I have, right, I have a record. I've been able to help black maternal health from Brooklyn and making it the safest place for black women to have babies as a federal president. I always did the police reform that we talked about. We kicked ice out of Rikers. We did outdoor dining in the city of New York exists because I passed legislation to do that work. Every single part of the progressive movement I've been a part of, every union, the majority of unions are with me, right? But they have to find distinction because once you can no longer, once you can no longer build up your candidate, the only action that you can then take is to destroy the person that you're going against, right? So I feel like my record hasn't been challenged one time in this entire race. None of them can say I wasn't a progressive champion. And I think that what they do is throw these negative things out there just because they're grasping a straw. So try to tear me down. I think it's real. I think it's connected to the kind of collapse in faith that people have in politicians and also institutions. We did a survey in Michigan for the Senate primary there. And one of the questions we asked, I'm sure you've seen questions that you frame them like this. You say, here's a statement. Do you agree or disagree with the statement? And the statement was, if a candidate won't stand up to APAC, I don't trust them to fight for me on other issues. And even moderates overwhelmingly were like, I agree with that statement. And I think I feel like there's so much distrust in the system broadly that people are now identifying this question as a proxy for as a stand in for whether or not they're gonna fight on other issues. So they might not know your whole record of fighting for me. But nobody in this camp, but nobody takes APAC money in this district. Ryan, this district is, we're all progressives. Like that's the, you see, like it's already happening here. The narrative here. The manning of these fires. Right. Ryan, like we're not, no one in this district takes APAC money. Everyone has been clear on their position in Gaza. And that is like a moral center that is absolutely necessary in this district. Like it's just not something that we're gonna be negotiating here at all. I think that distinction, go ahead Ryan. What I was gonna say to Ryan's point, I think it means the purity politics. Because you all share that baseline, it means to distinguish each other from, distinguish yourselves from one another. The purity politics gets kind of increasingly ridiculous. Exactly. Cause now we're talking, you know, the three of us, the Julie Wan and myself and Claire, all agreed to not take super PAC money in the beginning of the campaign. And Claire Valdez was the first one to put up a red box and show super PACs exactly how she would want them to spend money and has received, I think she has seven or eight super PACs now that are supporting her. And it's just like this. And then it comes down to this idea that the purity only falls to me because I'm the candidate that did the attacks. So only I have to fall in line with purity politics and everything needs to be perfect. But on their side, they make excuses every single time. She did a video in Zoramundani in a, I'm sorry, she did a video in, what is that place called, where he lives in Gracie Mansion, a political video in Gracie Mansion. It's just like little things that are happening. If I would have done any of those things, I would have been attacked. But you know why? And I'm gonna say it again, because I passed safety, the police reform, I did the outdoor dining, I kicked ice out of Rikers. I have a record and they can't attack me on my record because my record is one that is staunchly progressive and has done real work. So they're gonna go after nonsensical things and hold me to account to a level that they won't hold their own capital. AOC hasn't weighed in on this race. And I know she's been under a lot of pressure in both directions. She's close with Nidia Velazquez, who's retiring and has really wanted, is powerfully behind you and has urged her either to not get in or to get behind you. Of course, she's very close with Mamdani as well. We'd love to see her. Have you spoken with her and what's your sense of whether or not she's gonna weigh in on this race? I believe that Alexander Kosser-Critaz sees that anybody that wins this district would be good for the progressive movement in New York City. And this is just one where folks like her might not be seeing too much daylight and might not wanna put resources into a district that's very safe. It's not a red to blue or purple seat opportunity here. It's like, okay, this is the most progressive district in this country. We're gonna get a very progressive person in there. But also, I think that she respects Nidia Velazquez and her history. She knows it, and she knows that she was the only Puerto Rican woman elected to office, the first Puerto Rican woman elected to office, that she was fighting against the Democratic machine for 20 years before somebody got elected to assist her and for her not to be alone. What she's done for Puerto Rico and being its representative, not technically or legally, but just being one of the few Congress people that stand up for Puerto Rico. I think she understands all that and is probably gonna stay out of this race. You make sense. Last question for me is what are the basic things that you hear from voters when you're campaigning? Like what are they telling you they're concerned about? It's all affordability right now. Well, mostly affordability and ICE are the two major issues. And the thing here is that I've done a lot of work on affordability with housing development and a pros and cons candidate. So I've been somebody that thinks that we need to build a lot more housing to be able to get us out of this hole. So it's been resonating. And then ICE, I went to, on the ICE front, of course, we already kicked ICE out of Rikers when I was a council member 12 years ago before it was a centrist talking points with Democrats. We were already doing that work. But on top of that, there was an issue here in Wycov Hospital. We had ICE coordinate with the NYPD when there was a detainee that was injured and the NYPD was supporting them. I was out there the next day. We had a rally with all of our neighbors to make sure that NYPD knew that we weren't gonna accept, in this sanctuary city, any coordination of NYPD and ICE. And those are two things that people really are grateful that I was able to stand up for them, able to show up when the community needed it. They don't wait four or five days the way Claire Valdez waited before she made a statement because she was waiting for the mayor to make a statement before she was gonna say anything about NYPD. It's an example of the things that, the double standard that exists in this race where we fight, we do what we need to do, but our record is gonna get led through a fine-tube comb while the other side is just gonna ignore any lack of commitments or honesty or just like waiting game that I don't think we can afford in this time when it comes to ICE. So I'm gonna abolish ICE and I'm gonna help with the affordability crisis by unlocking opportunities to build housing. And those are the two things at the doors that people have been looking for that I think are deeply mentioned. And I'm sure as people can tell, last one for me, just watching this interview, it's on the ground, it's become a contentious fight within, among allies. What has the result, like what are you seeing on the ground as particularly as you have DSA and Justice Democrats going hard and Mamdani going hard? And what is the kind of class and cultural divide and how is that playing out in the neighborhoods among people who are newer, more educated versus people who've been there a very long time? Yeah, Ryan, look, I wanna be careful here because I wanna represent the entire district. And I believe that I have the broadest coalition. I have Muslims from City Line, every tenant association president supporting me. I have the Hasidic Jewish community in South Winisburg supporting me. I have a really diverse coalition, absolute diverse coalition. And I think that's how you win elections. But there is a distinction between the two campaigns and who we're targeting and having conversations with. I would say this, that my Claire Valdez's website in which she tells a super PAC to spend money, she has zip codes that are exclusively in the richest parts of the district. And I'm not saying that we shouldn't be reaching out to those residents, we should, but to send your super PAC almost exclusively to the places that are more affluent and white is a reflection of where she thinks at her basis. Mine is going to be one where we're reaching out to those folks as well, but I am in East New York, I am in Cyprus Hills, I'm in Woodhaven, I'm in Mass Befriend Ridgewood, like I'm everywhere in Glendale. I'm just making sure that I show up everywhere because we're gonna win this by building the broadest coalition. So I do think there's a divide there, but at the end of the day, when we get elected, we're gonna wanna represent everyone, but there's obviously, I think a distinction here between who's voters are who and just turning out our basis. I thought this was interesting too, and I know you guys talked about this in the debate for people who don't know, so this is what's called a red box, which is a way that candidates signal to, you're not allowed to legally coordinate with a super pack. And so the way that they coordinate without coordinating is they make it public. So everybody can see it, it's not a private message, it's a public message, and they put it inside this red box. And they'll say voters need to both read and see on the go. Read and see on the go would mean like, Antonio, you know this better, but I feel like that's digital ads. But like, is there all this code, there's all this coded language that goes in, because you don't wanna write, please buy digital ads, but they basically say it. But then so down, this is what you were talking about down here. They even, they even get into like, when this needs to happen, the key targets, and here's what you were talking about. 2025 mayoral primary electorate needs to receive our message and turn out this election persuasion, women, white and Latino voters, high propensity, dem voters, voters under 50 still need to learn more about Claire. So what they're saying here is, the name ID isn't high enough there. Mobilization, so this is what she considers her base. So it's Bushwick, Williamsburg, Green Point, Ridgewood, Sunnyside, Long Island City, and priority neighborhoods of Fort Green, Clinton Hill, Historia, East Williamsburg, the more gentrified areas. And then here, priority zip codes. Wow. Lincolnous spreadsheet. So, and so these are the key zip codes. Yeah, so what you're telling me about these zip codes is, I don't, these are the more gentrified areas of New York City, is that how you would describe them? You could put a C tab on that and put average AMI in that, and you'll see exactly what it looks like. So my thing is, it's not that, we all have to go after our bases, and I have no problem for her going after her base, but we are the working class candidate. We are the working class campaign, and we're gonna keep pushing for the brilliant agenda and making sure people know that I'm the only one that has a legislative record. Claire Valdez has not passed one piece of legislation at the time that she's been in the state assembly. So when we talk about the hard fights that we need to take when we get to Congress, I'm the only one that has shown that I can do the difficult things, and I think we have too many performative elected officials in Congress right now that like to make a lot of noise, but don't bring resources to that community. That's just not somebody that I am or what I do. So I'm looking forward to be able to represent this district and show them that effective leadership is possible and that we can make this country work, we can make government work for the people of this country. So yeah, you saw the red box there, and that was done after we specifically said that we weren't gonna take Super PAC money. So now Super PAC are in, she's got almost a half a million dollars worth of Super PAC funding from people that have given to Marjorie Taylor Greene, the same people that gave to Greg Abbott, and you know, so those are the people that are giving her money. And now at this point, we are gotta be very careful because we committed to not allowing for millionaires and billionaires to control this race or to choose this race or to be the outcome or the decider of who wins this race. But now there's Super PAC money. And now there are campaign that was about policy, policy and issues and distinctions about campaigns. I've turned into who can spend the most money at the end of this, you know, in the last week. And it's unfortunate that we got there, but the clear about this campaign began this nonsensical, you know, like going back on her word on Super PACs. And I think that this campaign is gonna descend into a nasty place that I don't think we are any of us wanted to be. Yeah. Did she specifically promise not to take Super PAC money? I'd be surprised because part of her kind of path to victory was the kind of the pro-Palestine or anti-genocide Super PAC that's out there and justice Democrats. Yeah, that was it. Yeah, yeah, she said that we had our first, one of our first, like not our first public debate was the New York League of Conservation Voters. You could look at it. And we all committed on that stage that we would not take Super PAC funding. The thing here is that it's one thing for us to say we're not gonna take Super PAC funding and then Super PACs come out because that's what they do. We can't control that. But to put up a red box clearly states that you are interested in directing any potential Super PAC money to specific places and so forth. If we all committed to not take Super PAC money, the least we could have done is not have our red boxes up. But once she put hers up, I fall obligated to put mine up. Like I said, I don't want to have this campaign be chosen by Super PACs. But once Claire showed that she was going to allow for that to happen, even after she specifically said she would not take it, it changed the game with this campaign and muddied the waters. And it's unfortunate thing, but she did say that Ryan. Word to word, if you look at the New York League of Conservation Voters video, you can see it. Yeah, yeah, I'm looking at some of the coverage from back then. Well, Borough President Antonio Reynoso, candidate for New York's 7th District. The race is what, 11 days? 11 days, Ryan, 11 days. And we need these days to come, let me tell you. My kids, my kids, I have two boys, one of them is in Little League. The other one is in this kindergarten prom today. And I need to be, I want to be there with my kids right now. You all know that campaign is especially for Congress is in that house. So, you know, really looking forward to being back with my family, but excited, excited about the future, what's going to happen on June 23rd. And I think we're going to show people that building coalitions and being together and building true solidarity is what people want. Should I kindergarten prom? Did I hear that right? It's a kindergarten prom. I wish I could send you a picture. I have them in a three-piece suit. He looks so cute. Yes, it is. I'm going to put it up on Instagram. So if anybody wants to see it, they can see it. Yeah, my five-year-old son is in a prom. So he's a special needs kid. He has autism. So it's a class of only five students. So I don't know what they're going to be doing, but the five kids are doing a prom. It's going to be awesome. I can't wait to see the videos. That's fantastic. That is, it's cool. All right, and good luck in Little League as well. Yes, yeah, so a lot of work to do, Ryan. My kid has to go to at least a D1 college baseball team, so I don't need to pay for these high, expensive tuition for these colleges. So that's what I'm working on, but the coaches think I'm crazy. Yeah, they kick me out of the field all the time. They're like, hey, there's no scouts here yet. You can go sit down. But I'm one of those crazy parents with baseball. I am. I love it. Excellent. Well, thank you so much for joining us. Really appreciate it. Absolutely. Appreciate you. Take care, Ryan. Joining us now is Amy Ducoura, who is an attorney with Care Michigan to discuss the latest indictments. The federal government has handed down sweeping indictments against eight people who participated in campus protests or participated in the protest movement in Michigan against Israel's genocide in Gaza back in 2024. Amy, thanks so much for walking us through these charges and what they mean. Thank you for being here. Sure, no problem. I'm happy that you guys are covering such an important topic. Yeah, it's totally crazy. And we've been following this story for quite some time. And the timeline as I remember it, and you correct me where I'm wrong here, is that as the campus cracked down, unfolded, there was pressure on Eli Savit, who was the Ann Arbor, at the time was the Ann Arbor prosecutor, to really throw a whole bunch of felonies at these students who were protesting the Michigan's complicity in Israel's genocide. He declines to do so effectively. Attorney General Dana Nessel then under pressure from the Michigan Regents, the Board of Regents, and also pro-Israel forces both in the state and nationally. She then tries to go forward with serious charges. And it feels like a lot of them got tossed or dropped. Like it feels like those fizzled as well. And now, two years later, we have federal charges, felonies, like major charges coming from Trump's Department of Justice. And in the meantime, you had one of the most vocal Board of Regents members lose his primary to an anti-genocide candidate. And you had Savit himself, who had declined to go forward with these charges, become the nominee for Attorney General in Michigan. And you've had Abdul El Sayed, kind of as Israel has become central to the Michigan Senate primary, vault into the lead as the front runner. And then separately, you have these efforts in the Michigan legislature to say, actually, maybe this whole idea of having people vote on who's in the Board of Regents is bad. And we shouldn't even let people vote. The whole like, if voting mattered, they would make it illegal. So now they're actually, it does matter. And so they're trying to make it legal. So it's a real kind of clash. And Tom Perkins and I have a piece that will be up later today over a drop site. I think we'll see what headline we go with, but right now we're thinking of the issue of Israel's ending democracy in Michigan. But so in my timeline there, kind of what did I miss? What did I get wrong? Like what is unfolded the last couple of years as it relates to these protests? Sure. So I think your timeline is quite frankly right on. What I'd like to add to your timeline though, is that it's actually interesting to see that right after the encampment happened, or maybe at the time the encampment was happening, the University of Michigan through its Board of Regents hired a private surveillance company. And that private surveillance company is now accused of stalking and harassing a UMish student. That's a lawsuit that's pending right now. What also is missing is the fact that, yeah, the Attorney General brought 11 charges. Two of them were for misdemeanor trespassing, a charge that she has never charged outside the context of the casinos before from what we understand. And at the time that these charges were brought, there was some real questions about why she was prosecuting these charges, when really they should have went to Eli Sabat, and he refused. When a judge indicated that he was gonna require her office to turn over information about how these charges came to her and why she brought them, that's when she dropped all of the charges. So under pressure of having to declare how she got them. What also is missing is that over a year ago at this point, the Attorney General's office raided the homes of these eight individuals. At that time, she invited the FBI into those raids. At that time, the FBI indicated that they had no part in the raid other than a supporting role. They were not investigating them. And those raids were intended to produce evidence about who may have vandalized personal property. Those charges regarding vandalism have never came to fruition, not at all. But instead, more than a year later, we have federal charges for some kind of conspiracy to commit threats using a telecommunication device. And what the government is saying is that the federal government is saying that these individuals use Twitter to engage in a conspiring to commit a threat. Like they had a DM group or something on Twitter, and that's there. No, that they were DMing each other and that whatever they posted on Twitter, in light of all of the other rhetoric that was being said about their free speech, those have to be considered to be threats and that they were conspiring to use those Twitter posts to indicate that they were a threat to the regents and some other people. So yeah, so what did they do and what are the charges? Like let's get specific here, because it's like reading through it, it seems rather absurd. Seems like a real stretch. So what would be the steel man case for like that these kids committed federal crimes? To be honest with you, I would challenge anybody who actually read the indictment to try to pick out what the crime is and try to pick out what... Yeah, so they're charged with conspiracy to make a threat using a telecommunication device. That means they got together as a group and they conspired to use the internet or social media to threaten certain people and those are like victims one through six, right? And, but when you read what the Twitter feed says, it seems like purely political speech. It says we want divestment, we're gonna organize, we're gonna mobilize, we're gonna escalate for divestment. None of that seems like a threat. When you're talking about First Amendment law, you're really talking about the threat has to be a really real threat. It has to be very specific. And I would charge anybody to go through that document and figure out what the really real threat was from Twitter because that's what they're charged with. And to, yeah, so I remember as an aside, when I was a bureau chief of a news organization and previously, one of our reporters got a pretty nasty threat that was effectively like, they told her, I'm going to kill you basically. And we went to the FBI and we said, here's the communication that we got, here's the person that said this. And I remember them saying, this is not specific enough. Like it was specific in that they were gonna kill you, but it didn't have a, when they were gonna do it, didn't have where they were gonna do it, didn't have how they were going to do it. And so there was a, it was just a general, I'm gonna kill you. And they said, that's just speech. That does not cross the bar into something actionable. If she wants to apply for a temporary restraining order or a permanent restraining, she can certainly go for that. But as far as something that we can enforce, that doesn't rise to the level of what we consider to be an illegal threat. So I was thinking about that in the context of this indictment, where what they're saying, we're gonna elevate pressure on the regents, like so that they, we're gonna protest so that we can have these demands met. Like what is the closest thing that they might have said that could be construed as an actual threat? I don't think, so after reading the indictment, I don't think that any of their actual words would constitute a threat outside of all of the hyperbolic other allegations that the Department of Justice has made and the FBI have made. Like if you look at what was put on Twitter and the realm of what was just put on Twitter, I don't think any of that would actually amount to a threat falling within the scope of that law, right? Which is why you see this indictment having references to things that are happening overseas, geopolitical conflicts. It's why you see them talking about designated terrorist organizations overseas. What does that really have to do with anything going on with these students who are asking to divest from a genocide, asking their university where they pay their tax dollars, where they pay their tuition money to divest from the instrumentality of genocide. It doesn't have anything to do with it. But by adding all this loaded language, all of these allegations about things that they've never been charged with, never been convicted of, they're trying to turn what looks like purely political speech into something that's criminal. And that's the real concern with this indictment. And that's what this administration has been trying to do since they took office, quite frankly. And just to read from some of it, and here's from local news, they quote the indictment. Their criminal activity included spray painting threats, breaking windows and throwing glass jars filled with noxious chemicals into family homes. They marked their victims with threatening symbols used by Hamas, I assume that's the red triangle they're referring to. Oh, including red inverted triangles and red handprints. They used the internet and social media to broadcast their message, to ensure their threats and commitment to continuing criminal activity were heard by their victims and others who support Israel. So what do we know about this noxious chemicals into family homes and breaking windows and throwing glass jars and such? We don't know anything about it. And quite frankly, the reason we don't know anything about it is because nobody was charged with that. Nobody's been charged with that, nobody's been convicted of that. But it's here, as if it's like a steadfast statement that they've done that, that this activity happened. And if there is criminality, let the criminality be charged, right? That would be a crime. Right, let that have its day in court. But instead, we're taking these loaded allegations of criminality that have never been charged, nobody's been convicted of, and we're throwing them in here as if there's some steadfast rule. And my guess is if they had enough evidence to charge those crimes, they would have charged those crimes, but they didn't. So what they did is they charged their speech. And let's be frank, like saying, like trying to tie red handprints to something that Hamas did is really kind of absurd. Like there is a general understanding that red handprints across all movements have meant that you have blood on your hands. It's a general symbol of killing. And to say that it's exclusively tied to Hamas is ludicrous and it's done solely for a political purpose. And the red triangle, for people who don't know that, like that often appeared in Qassam videos where they would be putting out battle footage between them and the Israelis. And the red triangle would mark Israelis that they were targeting. But our language, and I'm curious how this holds up in court, like our language in general is very violent in the United States. Like we're always talking about, like all of our political language uses war metaphors. Just watch any debate for a city council even. And they're gonna use metaphors from war to describe what they're doing in the campaign to their opponent or with their tactics or their strategy. It's just, this is a country that's been at war for most of its history. And that's just what we're kind of soaked in. And so when you're talking about beating someone politically, if it is illegal to use language related to battles or war, pretty much every politician, I think would be guilty of it. So I would think that the red triangle seems to be obviously protected speech. If it's not, what does that do? If like that's criminal, what does, where do you end up drawing then the boundaries over what can be said online? I mean, that's a great point, isn't it? Symbolism is considered to be pure speech, right? Even symbols are pure speech and they are protected under the First Amendment. And when you have one administration using the arm of law enforcement to determine what can and cannot be said, what is legitimate and what is not legitimate, within the bounds of a viewpoint, we are running on a slippery slope where anybody who's coming after them can say, you know what, we don't like this. We find it to be inherently violent. We're not gonna allow it to be used. And that's just not the standard of First Amendment that we have. The First Amendment protects all speech, even if you don't like it, even if it's ugly, except for really real threats. Like that's clear and the threats have to be specific. They have to be actually capable of being carried out and saying, hey, we're targeting you because you won't divest when divest is one of the most peaceful forms of protest, right? It's the use of your dollars to commit to cause or to decommit from a cause. It's like the most peaceful kind of speech. And we don't want our tax dollars to be used for this. So we're gonna target you until you divest. Like that's not inherently violent. They're trying to draw a line to say it's violent because they don't like the viewpoint that we're trying to divest from. And that's a real big problem. And I think more Americans should frankly be very, very worried that we're challenging the constitution in this way. Yeah, and the, people have been saying for a couple of years now that the phrase from the river to the sea is violent. They say, which I think to most people, they're like, what, no, that's ridiculous. But what they will say is what they mean is that from the river to the sea will be kind of one state and it will no longer be a Jewish state. And that will unleash than a genocide of the Jewish Israeli people inside those borders. So therefore I perceive that as a call to violence. You had Mark Dubowitz this week. I just went to find his tweet. I just noticed he'd deleted it. You may have seen this viral post where he said that Peter Beiner who was a anti-Zionist Jewish writer, they said, now that Ayatollah Khamenei is dead, now that Sinwar is dead, Peter Beiner is the biggest threat to the state of Israel because Peter Beiner supports one state solution with equal rights for all people within the state. According to Dubowitz, like he's as violent as Yaga Sinwar because he's calling for that. If his, now it read actually as a threat against Peter Beiner and apparently Dubowitz finally conceded to that and has deleted it. But ironically what he seems to be saying is that calling for one state is a call for violence. Because it would lead to violence. That from the river to the sea is violent because it would lead to violence. And so it does seem like it is a way that it would start to criminalize all manner of speech that is dissenting from whatever the hegemonic viewpoint is at the moment by saying that it's, well, three steps later somebody might, there might be some violence down the road. Is there any chance that this prevails under the current court system that we have now? What is your sense of what the next step is? So, just first to remark about your comment from the river to the sea. That requires an inference upon an inference. And it's ironic that calling for equal rights is seen as violent. But also don't we have something similar here in the US where we, it's like it's in one of the songs that were taught as children from sea to shining sea. Is that inherently a call to violence against indigenous people of America? Because that's what they're saying that it is for Israel. And I think that more people should kind of critique that criticism of that language more in depth. But with regards to like what's gonna happen, we have a criminal justice system for a reason. The government is required to prove their case. They are going to have to show that these Twitter posts that say we're going to mobilize, organize and escalate seeking divestment are somehow really real threats that they carried real weight and that they intended them to be threats. Like that's their burden, quite frankly, to prove. And I have faith in the criminal justice system. I have faith in our judiciary still, even though we've seen some, you know, not so great political decisions coming out of certain courts. So the hope is that, you know, the court will look at this, they'll get it right. And, you know, we will be free from having to worry about the politicization of the Department of Justice in a manner that's intended to stop the free flow of information on college campuses, which is where we want the free flow of information to be quite frankly. All right, well, we'll keep following this. I think this is an extraordinarily important case, which could wind up pushing us much closer to the UK and some other more restrictive places if they prevail in saying that these very vague claims of pursuing your political goals actually amount to violence. So Amy, thanks for joining us and we look forward to having you back on us to keep us updated as this unfolds. Thank you. This is an I Heart podcast. Guaranteed human.