4/3/26: Iran Shoots Down US Jet, Trump Purges Military, CNN Loses It On Hasan

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We need your help to build the future of independent news media, and we hope to see you at breakingpoints.com. Good morning, everyone. Welcome to Breaking Points. We have some breaking news actually to get to in just one moment, and it's a heavy news cycle. I mean, Pam Bondi was fired yesterday as well, so there's a lot for us to get to. Let's start though just by welcoming Ryan and Griffin. How you guys doing today? Doing good. Got a giant purge of the military underway just as there's a search and rescue operation. Going on in southern Iran, so not great timing for that, but never great timing for a purge, I guess. I think we can say we're all flying high. This is me. I mean, I'm just going to share this clip for everyone. I'm just chilling in Cedar Rapids. This is my life right now. You in Cedar Rapids? I'm not even in Cedar Rapids. I'm in Cedar Falls outside of Cedar Rapids. So that's where I'm coming to everyone from today, and it's dreary, but the news cycle is dreary, so fittingly dreary. Now, Ryan, you were just mentioning before we went to air, which as a reminder, the second half of the Friday show is paywalled for premium subscribers. We have a lot of new premium subscribers, a lot of new people joining us on those premium subscriptions, and the second half of the show is for premium subscribers. So you can head over to breakingpoints.com, grab a premium subscription, help us keep doing this independent journalism. That's the best way to do it. If you can't, no problem. Go ahead, like the video, subscribe. That helps us so much as well. But Ryan, we were talking, speaking of independent journalism, just before we went to air here, you think Jeremy? Jeremy Skahill, your colleague over at Dropsite, might have been the first to get some of this, at least in the Western press, get some of what's happening right now in Iran. Yeah, so this morning, an Iranian official told Jeremy that an F-15E was shot down over Southern Iran and that there was a search and rescue operation underway from the United States. Some of the Iran, the State Affiliated Forest News Agency had already reported some of this. I think Jeremy might have been the first to confirm it in the Western media. Many hours later, the Israeli press has since confirmed it. Clearly the Israelis were briefed on what's going on here, and so are now sharing details as well. I believe the American media outside of Dropsite is now finally starting to follow it. This comes after, within 24 hours of another kind of video that surfaced of a plane that looked to be getting shot down and headed towards the sea, but there was then a lot of pushback around that one saying that no, the fighter pilot actually evaded it and was able to make it back safely. So we still don't know much about that. There was another, it also raises questions about previous about previous claims that the US had denied saying, no, no, no, this actually has not happened. This one clearly has happened. F-15Es have two pilots in them. We know for sure that there are rescue operations underway here, I can share. So on Iranian Telegram, let me see if I can get these going. Stars and stripes, he was reporting this as well. Oh no. Shit, shit, shit. This is a refueling jet flying at an extremely low altitude. You're a bad. And then there were also some footage of Apache, American Apache helicopters. This is the refueling jet as well. Let me see what else we got here. So, okay, so these are the apparently, my understanding is that these are the kind of rare earth stealth Black Hawk helicopters that have been dispatched to, for this search and rescue operation, doing so in broad daylight is extraordinarily dangerous, of course. There's a lot of, I think, intentional misinformation flying around at this point. There's some reporting out of the Iranian media that a lot of people have probably seen by now the kind of image of the pilot's chair that is taken in the southern, the desert in southern Iran with a parachute next to it. There's now Iranian reporting claiming that that was posted to lure the US into a search and rescue operation. And there are further reports that the Iranians already have the pilots, though the status of how they're doing is unknown. But that also might be misinformation. Like, you can't really believe anything coming out of either the US, Israel, or Iran right now, although we do know for sure that this jet was shot down. Like that part is all sides, Kim Sarmann, yeah, there you have a... What's up on the screen is just within the last half an hour, US officials have confirmed this to the New York Times. Yeah, right. So this is ahead of a potential ground operation. This is not even part of the kind of boots on the ground operation that Trump may or may not be planning, but it certainly doesn't bode well for it, especially given that Hegseth has repeatedly said that the US has complete air superiority. Yeah, and this is exactly, I mean, I don't mean this in a papian sense, but this is exactly why when you, even with the best of intentions, say we're doing a two-week bombing run, this is a limited airstrike campaign. This is a Middle Eastern version of the Maduro raid. As much as you can want that to be the case, when events like this happen, it's the escalation trap. Again, not in a papian sense, but in the sense that this is how you end up getting trapped in escalation against your intentions, which is that now you have potentially an on the ground search and rescue mission, which can potentially wrap in even more lives, but it's on the ground. And on top of that, you now have the, what's the right word for this? I don't want to say the pride, but I think that's probably how Donald Trump and Pete Hegseth will see it, the pride of the United States on the line, where a fighter jet has been shot down by enemies and potentially more American deaths. So if we don't think this is going to lead to escalation, that could draw us into a ground campaign. I mean, this is exactly, I was saying yesterday on series 6M, like this is how, we don't know. Trump gives a speech and says two to three more weeks of bombing, bombing back to the Stone Age, but exactly historically, the way that these things can grow and grow and grow and metastasize into conflicts that are bigger than people expect is just by steps like this on the ladder. This is exactly what people were warning about. And Trump himself is out with a new statement on Truth Social that will do nothing to calm anybody's fears. He says, with a little more time, we can easily open the Hormuz Strait, take the oil and make a fortune. It would be a gusher for the world. But then question mark, sorry, it would be a gusher for the world, three question marks. Okay. I don't know why there are question marks. So by the way, he's posting this, and then he's President Donald Trump, he's posting this after he must have been briefed that he'd lost, that we'd lost an F-15A. And his response is- It's in the New York Times, he's been briefed. Yeah. So he posted this at 8.20 this morning, it says two hours, yeah, he'd been briefed on this. Yeah, when did Jeremy post his? Yeah, Jeremy posted his at 3.09 AM. So Jeremy posted 3.09 AM, let me put this up here. And I just think this is remarkable about who this guy is. So here's Jeremy's post at 3 AM this morning. And Ryan- That's Trump's normal working hours. Warplane hit by Iran went down over Southern Tehran province. Officials said that because of the nature of the strike, the pilot could not evacuate before crashing in tense fire. The scene no remains have been found. Five hours later, Trump is tweeting about how we're gonna make a fortune, it's gonna be a gusher for the world. Like, this is a crazy person. That's a really good point, Ryan. Like- He's just been briefed on two missing, likely, I mean, I don't know, I shouldn't say likely, but potentially deceased service members in a war that he decided to start about a month ago. And they clearly have some intel that they might be alive because they've launched this massive search and rescue operation, right? So amid that, he tweets, this is gonna be a gusher for the world? The world, question mark, yeah. For the world? It was a question mark, I guess, to be fair. A question mark. He's just started out there. He's just asking questions. I also wanted to flag CNN reported last night from their sources that over half of Iran's missiles, launchers remain intact, as well as a ton of one-way attack drones. So interesting bylines on the story, Griffin. I'm glad you brought it up, because I have it right in front of me. And let me just share the screen. It's in Natasha Bertrand, Jim Shudo's story. And Ryan, you could probably tell us more about Jim Shudo because you covered the Obama administration, but he was working at, it was state, right? He was working at state during the Obama administration. Did he work for the state's apartment? Or covering state? No, he worked for the Obama administration. He was in the administration. But anyway, all that is to say, the sourcing is somewhat interesting. Natasha Bertrand, I take everything she says with a heaping grain of salt, because I assume that it's generally often coming from the CIA, but the lead of the story is, that doesn't mean it's always wrong. It's coming from the CIA, but it does mean it's probably trying to manipulate you in one direction or the other. Roughly half of Iran's missile launchers are still intact, and thousands of one-way attack drones remain in Iran's arsenal, despite the daily pounding by US and Israeli strikes against military targets over the past five weeks. According to recent US Intel assessments, three sources familiar with the Intel told CNN, quote, they are still very much poised to wreak absolute havoc throughout the entire region, and quote, one of the sources set of Iran. And finally, the US Intel assessment total may include launchers that are currently inaccessible, such as those buried underground by strikes, but not destroyed. What did you make of this one, Ryan? Yeah, I mean, I think what we don't seem to understand is that we are at war with a real country. Like we have spent the last 20 years fighting insurgents and insurgent groups and the Taliban around the world. What we have now confronted in the case of Iran is a government that has spent nearly 50 years kind of preparing for a defensive war. It spent the first 10 years of its existence in actual war against Iraq, armed heavily by the US and Israel, ironically. But it spent the time after that believing that it was likely that at some point, the US and Israel collectively were going to attack them and try to overthrow the regime. Iran is one of the most kind of just geographically naturally fortified countries you could think of, just surrounded by mountains. And so they've spent decades building these kind of missile cities deep under that mountainous terrain, such that they are trying to make it so that even a tactical nuclear weapon wouldn't be able to hit them. Now, there are a lot of videos that have been circulating of kind of explosions and then secondary explosions, particularly in Isfahan. And it seems like they're hitting a lot of ammo storage and a lot of ammo dump. That kind of ammo is what the Iranians would use to repel a 1980s style Iraq invasion. Like you'd send in a bunch of tanks and troops, then you'd shoot the 155 millimeter shells at them. That's not the artillery that you're gonna be firing at Israel or at Kuwait or any of the Gulf states. Those are the ballistic missiles which are buried much deeper in the mountains and which they've been developing methods of launching that would be able to continue in a lack of air superiority. This is, and they've been planning it for a very, very long time. So they had the time, they had the resources, they, despite the sanctions, oil producing country, and they had the motivation and the capacity to do it. They did it and now we're shocked that we're not just bumping them off like it's Al Shabaab or something. And we should also mention, looking at the, the New York Times live blog right now, their update scroll is overwhelming. This is just as of two hours ago, more infrastructure sites in Gulf countries came under attack. So this is about that Kuwait, the Kuwaiti power and water desalination plant. Yep, absolutely. And then the bridge, was it yesterday? The highway bridge near Tehran that was damaged in a US strike that President Trump celebrated on Thursday, according to the Times, the attack on the B-1 bridge killed eight people and wounded 95, according to a local official cited in state media. We also got Trump's tweet here of the video. He decided to tweet out. He says, the biggest bridge in Iran comes tumbling down, never to be used again, much more to follow. It is time for Iran to make a deal. The fort is too late and there's nothing left of what still could become a great country. So this is like a major attack on a civilian site. There's also some reports that it was a double tap. Ryan, did you hear this? Yeah, yes, that rescue crews were hit. Yes, so not only a civilian bridge. I don't have that confirmed. But yeah. Well, we're here, it's unconfirmed, but we've been hearing it. And so, yes, do we think that these civilian attacks are just retribution for our asses getting kicked and that we're gonna keep ramping that stuff up? Well, it seems like it's going to ramp up. Yeah, it fits with the kind of Israeli strategy of we're gonna degrade Iran as much as possible, in the time that we're able to continue waging this. Just blowing up the pharmaceutical industry, blowing up the steel industry, going after medical sites. This can only be aimed at the total destruction of their society, absent being able to do a regime change. And again, when you have... War crime, by the way, which not that anybody cares, but obvious war crimes. When you have then two service members missing on the ground, as of right now, when you have that situation unfolding as well, it just, all of this creates, at least in the minds of wartime leaders, more of a permission structure for escalation. And that's, waking up this morning to this particular slate of news is very bleak. 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But why don't we get into some of the strategic firings happening behind the scenes? There's been a big clearing of house on Trump and Heg-Seth's end. Heg-Seth, I believe, has removed three top generals. Yeah, you can throw those up if you have a memory. Go ahead. Oh yeah, and also Trump has released Pam Bondi into the private sector. But first, why don't we start with the Heg-Seth. Pam Bondi. The Heg-Seth generalist. Pam Bondi has been traded ahead of the deadline. I had another trade deadline to the private sector, and it's a swap that everyone's really pleased with. But no, in all seriousness, obviously the big news yesterday, I have to say it surprised me was that Pam Bondi, Attorney General Pam Bondi, who had just been with Donald Trump at the Supreme Court the day earlier, and who has known Trump for many, many years, is out. So Todd Blanche, who was deputy AG, you may remember Todd Blanche is the person who conducted that Galein Maxwell interview, is now stepping in as Attorney General, remains to be seen whether Trump keeps him there. I will know one interesting angle of this that's a little softer, but it is, I find it interesting. You had Christine Ohman Pam Bondi, both of whom were put in those roles, at least in part, because Donald Trump thought they were strong communicators, that they were strong on television, and that they would take this sort of generational political opportunity, as people on the right saw it, when with no one it was immigration crackdown, with Bondi it was retribution, and communicate it, convey it in a way to the public that would mitigate any fallout and the like. They had both been replaced by men, at least so far. And not, you know, your typical, like, I guess Mark Wayne Mullen counts as somebody who Trump thinks is good on media and is more telegenic, but I don't know that you could necessarily say that at Todd Blanche. Let's read a little bit, because Politico's reporting here, I think it is, this is roughly what I'm hearing as well, quote, Pam Bondi did almost everything Donald Trump asked, it wasn't enough, Bondi's ouster is AG Thursday, continuing to string of unceremonious departures for occupants of Trump's most perilous cabinet post, all have won commonality, failure in Trump's eyes to sufficiently use the Justice Department as a shield from legal scrutiny and a sword against his political enemies. He is now looking at potentially Lee Zeldin, who is EPA administrator, but was looking into, as Politico says, the, quote, cascade of criminal prosecutions Trump has long demanded against his enemies, that truth social post, he accidentally made public, does everyone remember this? He accidentally posted a DM, which is interesting because it means Trump is DMing his own cabinet officials on social media. Right. And that the account is so casually used by the president that you could, it's conceivable to accidentally post something with implications, I mean, he does foreign policy and truth social, implications for the world. So just another interesting part of that, but he was asking her to basically get tougher. And it looks like from all of the reporting, they said nothing to do with Epstein unless, you know, that's not a precipitating factor in this. What Trump wanted from Pam Bondi was more prosecutions of his political enemies, basically. And we should add no tears for Pam Bondi who brought the swamp into the Justice Department, not for the first time. It's obviously very routine, but they oversaw this horrible corrupt process at the FTC that was allowing mergers to go through, cash being exchanged and just yucking it up, not like back alley deals, but like typical lobbyist type exchanges, which, you know, again, Trump administration welcomes Gail Slater and says she's gonna crack down on big tech and then Pam Bondi and Todd Blanche and Chagma Zell and others say, sorry, swamp's more powerful here. Basically, Pam Bondi came, Pam Bondi was a lobbyist. She was a pretty successful lobbyist. So perhaps that's where she's going back to. And then we have, you know, Trump here saying farewell to Pam Bondi. He says, Pam Bondi is a great American patriot and a loyal friend who faithfully served as my attorney general over the past year. Pam did a tremendous job overseeing a massive crackdown and crime across our country with murders plummeting to their lowest level since 1900. Very interesting. We love Pam and she will be transitioning to a much needed and important new job in the private sector. And yeah, I guess there's a lot of other fires to get to, but my final question for both of you is, didn't Pam Bondi kind of do a great job? I mean, she had two jobs, right? Cover up the Epstein files and go after political enemies with the Epstein files thing. She did a terrible job covering up the Epstein files. Well, here's the thing, Ryan. I mean, listen, they're not all released. You still don't have all the files. So that's one point for Pam, right? Yeah, but he had to go to war to stop like the news cycle around it. So that's a loss when it comes to your PR management. If you have to launch a world war to like distract from like what he didn't want to happen at all, then yeah, that's an L. Well, there was a period where she was the center of it in a sense where she was taking all the blame for it in a way that kind of helped Trump because then everyone could say, oh, it's actually Pam Bondi who is befuddling this and messing this up. She did the influencer photos and she did a few other embarrassing public speeches about it. And then people were able to kind of direct attention away from Trump and onto her and kind of blame it on her, which is kind of what he's looking for, right? Yeah, that was bad, right? Emily, like that was terrible. Like the way that she, I mean, no, it was, no, it did not help him. Like it did not help him. There was no reason for her to say that she had thousands of hours of like pedophile stuff, that she had all of this stuff on her desk. There was no reason for her to give empty binders and humiliate all of those like allies of the White House. That was all own goals. None of that was unforced. That was, those were unforced errors. She made the situation 200 times worse in her efforts to like circle the wagons around the president and protect him, which is extra pathetic. Now I'm reading from the federalist right now. Obviously I used to work there. The federalist is like the, if you're looking for coverage on the right of like where they would be looking to see, or looking for the rights perspective on the kind of retribution, the legal retribution in the Trump administration, this would be the place. And just to characterize some of the conservative backlash to Pam Bondi, they're basically saying the coverage here from Matt Kittle, who's interviewing Mike Howell of the Oversight Project, which I think is connected to the Heritage Foundation, but they're looking for a quote, vicious operator. The headline is Trump needs a quote, vicious operator to bring the Justice Department, to bring justice back to the Justice Department. It cites particularly the Biden auto pen scandal, which is really big on the right, that like Bondi was not able to actually get prosecutions in the auto pen scandal, which we know Trump is obsessed with. And that's kind of a proxy. It's not just about, you know, oh, none of the auto pen people got locked up, or there's been no justice. It's more saying like, if you can't prosecute the auto pen stuff, which the president is obsessed with, then what aren't you doing that should be going, remember when Tulsi Gabbard went and, I was at the, I was the new media seat at this briefing, and just happened that way, where she comes up and talks about this investigation, sprawling investigation into Obama and John Brennan, that the White House and the Justice Department is looking into, well, conservatives are getting impatient and saying, where are the actual charges? Like, why have no charges been brought? So I think that's where Trump probably is personally just obsessed with the auto pen scandal, the auto pen prosecutions, but they're looking for more heads to roll, basically. Or didn't Trump set her off on James Comey? And she sent something off for that. It just was like kind of made up, right? Comey, well, it's a whole, that's such a mess. It was, I don't want to say necessarily thin, but there was a whole thing with the statute of limitations. And it was, if I'm remembering the details correctly, essentially like a perjury charge. So yeah, that's a, maybe also a good example of a prosecution being bungled by Trump's perspective, because that was a hot mess, but I don't know to what extent that was Pam Bondi's fault. I mean, obviously she's the head of the Justice Department, but it just, it sounds like, you know, vicious operator. I don't know who's going to fit that bill. I don't know if it's Lee Zeldin. I don't think Lee Zeldin, vicious operator. So we'll see. Maybe Matt Gaetz comes out of retirement. Oh, that'd be cool. Ryan though, there are more heads potentially to roll. Trump is not just considering, or has not just fired Bondi, but is considering firing others. So who else is on this list? Well, the Pentagon stuff is like, it's extremely intense. Like, the fact that we're doing this like right in the middle of this war. So, he has pushed out General Randy George. And I'm told this is basically a clash between Heg Seth and Driscoll, the Army secretary, and ultimately will kind of evolve into a Heg Seth versus JD Vance clash. I don't know if you've heard anything about that Emily, but this weirdly, like I know a lot of people on the left are like, worried that this is like Heg Seth, like consolidating power and that Trump's going to do some coup or something. It feels like it's actually more related to like Heg Seth's hostility to DEI. And he's gone after a bunch of other, he's tried to block a bunch of promotions of women and minorities and Driscoll has pushed back against him and this is Heg Seth kind of firing back around that. The Washington Post reporting, two other Army generals were removed along with George. They are General David Houdini, who became the head of the services training and transformation command in October. And Major General William Green Jr., the chief of Army chaplains. So it's like, but like, what is this guy doing here? So Ryan, are you saying the Strait of Hormuz is not open yet because of woke? Is that essentially the administration's plan here? They've been way too focused on the gaze of Hormuz. And like this is the problem with DEI is that it's all about the gay of Hormuz and not about the Strait of Hormuz. Gotta focus on the straights. Yeah, and so Heg Seth has been consolidating power from the beginning. They've fired a whole ton of people. Looks like, here's again from the Post, with George's officer, Heg Seth has remade nearly the entire Joint Chiefs of Staff. The only ones remaining from when Heg Seth took office just over a year ago are General Eric Smith of the Marine Corps and General Chance Saltzman, head of the Space Force. Everybody else and the Joint Chiefs of Staff has been replaced, like extremely unusual. Has there been this kind of a head change in past wars, like with Iraq, Afghanistan at the beginning was there a big period? No, period, not in peacetime war in general. Like purges are not really a thing in kind of US military history. Which by the way is the flip side of this. If you're gonna let civil war, when Lincoln's like pissed off at all generals, we can get Sagar on here to run through it, but like it's not a thing. Like it's a much more rootinized, methodical, hierarchical, like orderly system than even in Trump one, but Trump is clearly bringing Trump energy to the Pentagon. Well, the flip side of it is that the Pentagon is a bureaucratic knot of people who are way too comfortable and probably should be purged. I don't know the, it'd be very difficult for me to say the particulars of like who should go, who's worthy and who's unworthy. But that's obviously, I think, it's very clearly I think a problem at the Pentagon. And then if you don't come up with a sane solution to the problem, you end up getting people who just go and take Leo DiCaprio's blow torch at the end of once upon a time in Hollywood to the entire operation in wartime. So the general, Ryan pointed this out as we were opening the show, George is ousted. We don't know the exact timeline yet, but basically as we have fighter pilots missing or killed in action over Iran, like these things are unfolding simultaneously and that's a horrible look. And we're like, this is pretty new news. This is like fairly recent development. So we'll learn more about what was happening behind the scenes, but that's a, they have a lot to answer for probably when it comes to exactly what was happening behind the scenes. Yeah, and I think Griffin, you were referring to Trump apparently polling his advisors on whether he should fire Tulsi Gabbard. Yes, D and I, or do not invite is as they call her, I believe she's not in. If Tulsi, yeah. No, she doesn't. Go ahead Demi. What I was gonna say, they're also apparently according to a playbook, he's quote, expressed frustrations with commerce secretary Howard Lutnack and labor secretary, Laurie Shavas-Daremer. Laurie Shavas-Daremer has been drowning in scandals over the last so many months. So that's one that you could eat. That's it, head you could easily see rolling quote, rumors also continue circling around FBI. What's her major scandal Emily? I forget. Oh, no, not cash. Like her husband doing a bunch of stuff, right? Yeah, her husband's been kicked out. Well, her too. It's like pretty typical DC type stuff, like misuse of public resources and her husband has a little bit of a problem. Like they're not even letting him back into the labor building because there's a woman who- Because wasn't he like assaulting people or like? Yeah. Also apparently army secretary Dan Driscoll. So in addition to Tulsi and Pam Bondi and Christie Gnome, it's beginning to be Trump one-ish and covering Trump one, it was just Jeff Sessions and James. Like it was just this constant switching of personnel, top key personnel. And that was one of the big differences between Trump one and Trump two is that he came in with this sort of well considered slate, meaning they had thought long and hard about the strategy of who they were putting where and who could get Senate confirmed and the like. And now a year in, it's starting to feel a little bit sort of shakier on the palace intrigue front. And that was always seen as like a good, a lot of conservatives saw that as like, this was Trump 2.0, new and improved. Yeah. And it looks like Tulsi is gonna just let herself get fired. It's just so embarrassing. Her friend Joe Kent went out on top. Like he went out for his viral post, he did the circuit. And so now they're gunning for Tulsi because they know that she kind of agrees with him, but she doesn't have the stones to just like say it. And like what is she staying for? It's for election interference. To get fired than to quit over principle. But okay, whatever. Meanwhile, Trump is asking the Congress for $1.5 trillion for the Pentagon, which is like a doubling. It's like a doubling of the budget over the last couple of years. It included yeah, 41 warships. Which happens to be issues with, right? Anywhere near Iran. Well, that's to fix the laundry rooms on all the feature ships so they don't catch on fire, Ryan. But the one-way drone attacks, we're still gonna have issues with that. How many drones could you buy with 1.5 trillion? You could buy, yes, all the drones. All the drones. All the drones. Yeah, it's crazy. These ships cost billions. And they can't even get close to Iran because of these $20,000 Shahad drones. And so now we're gonna go build a whole bunch more of them. While cutting, spending on healthcare, education, infrastructure, like things that the American people need here at home. Like he's now consciously and explicitly linking. Like he's like making campaign ads against himself on a regular basis. Oh my gosh, the social security thing. Or the- Yeah, you saw us talk about daycare. We can't do daycare. We can't do all the, we can't do medicare, Medicare. We can't do all of these things. We gotta do war. Let the states do those. And then, you know, they can raise their taxes. States can raise their taxes. It's like- I was listening to Sorobu, but Mario was on, making Kelly yesterday. I was listening to it and he was saying, like that is the great point. He was like, that is the one, one of the hardest red line differences that Trump drew intentionally strategically between himself and the old Republican party. Was he said over and over again, because he understood the GOP base better than the GOP politicians. We are not touching your entitlements. He didn't use the word entitlement, but he said, we are not touching this. And we're not gonna do stupid wars. We're gonna, new stupid wars, we're gonna focus here at home. And when you combine those two things, the politics of it is like, to your point, Ryan, about Trump posting on true social, while he's clearly been briefed on two fighter pilots missing in action in Iran, like he's always had a screw or 20 loose, but there's an un-gluing happening right now, the great un-gluing. Right, so Donald Trump is trying to destroy the American empire, destroy the fossil fuel industry, and destroy the Republican party. And somehow people are on the left are mad at him about that. That's the part I don't understand. Like, this is the greatest revolutionary figure the left has ever kind of put into power. Well, it's almost like the Democrats won't have to learn any lessons. The Democrats won't have to learn a single lesson. They're so excited about that. This is a vindication of Susan Sarandon, who went on Chris Hayes, and she said something along the lines, 2016, of she was being challenged on Bernie stuff at the time by Chris Hayes. And he was like, so are you saying that maybe Trump will be better for revolutionary purposes? And I think she said something along the lines of heightening the contradictions. And he said, do you mean that in like a little... She said, he might bring the revolution faster. That was the quote. He said, Chris Hayes goes, do you mean that in like a Leninist way? And she was like, yeah. Yeah, well, I was doing it. Speaking of which, do we have her... And it was a huge controversy. They tried to cancel her. Yes, yes, yes. Sorry to cut you off, Emily. We do have a guest coming in right now and just to flag, this is a long Easter weekend. So we probably expect a lot more excursions and events to occur over this long weekend because I believe markets are not open on Monday, if I'm correct. So expect quite a lot more action. Look today, right? Are they close today? Oh, you're right. It's good Friday. All right, well, on that note, we do have a candidate joining us. Why don't we get to her? No gloss, no filter, just stories, spoken without fear. Addiction is a disease and it should be looked upon as any other disease. How did you cope with a reckless father like me? Join me, Pooja Bhatt, as I sit down every week with directors, actors, musicians, technicians and beyond. You don't need to work with the biggest people and the biggest sound to have great music. I have gone through the Saab Siddhi Khachakar, reached the pinnacle, stung by the snake and I've fallen down again. Yeah, I am not writing actively anymore and when I see my old work, it kind of saddens me. I'm only as good as the last shot that I gave. Mom's gone, but don't shut the theater. The show must go on. Listen to my weekly podcast, the Pooja Bhatt show on the iHeart Radio app. Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Come for the honesty, stay for the fire. Well, we're joined now by Effie Phillips, Staley, candidate for Congress in New York 17th District. This is running against Mike Lawler and kind of like that area, like upstate, just north of Manhattan. Sometimes preferred to have a little bedroom community for people up there. Effie, thanks so much for joining us here. Thanks so much for having me excited beyond. Of course. We wanted to start with a little bit of the kind of Hasan Mania that is kind of gripping CNN and the Democratic establishment, although I repeat myself. Griffin, do you have this latest clip from Jake Tapper where they kind of allow their kind of mental illness to be on kind of full display when it comes to their kind of Hasan derangement syndrome? Thank you, boy. Yes, apologies, Effie. I'm sure you've already gotten enough of these clips, but this is a collab also, which is a third way tweet who's been making quite a lot of noise about Hasan, specifically that's been there. In a time of the Iran war, massive economic job loss, they're decided to focus on Hasan Piker. They say left wing anti-Semitism is often savvier than the brash neo-Nazi rhetoric of the right. Their attacks are loaded with words taught in social justice seminars and are often less blatant. They replaced the word Jew with Zionist while pushing age old tropes about Jewish wealth and influence. Let's take a listen to Jake Tapper here for a second. Ted, then I talked about the think tank third way. They wrote, we're all for a big tent. The Democratic Party needs to draw a line and the Stant hastan Piker and his fellow Jew haters along on the other side. Tony Hussalman asked Piker, hey, Trump people, how people of his ilk do, is they try to inoculate themselves against claims of Jew hatred by pointing it out in places that aren't them. He's been very clear, pointing things out on the right, of that anti-Semitism. These are the tropes they use, and then he'll use the exact same tropes just to sub Jew for Israel, which is the place where all Jews collectively have a connection to and is the homeland where more than 50% of Jews on planet Earth live. So it's not, you would never see Jews control the media, but Israel controls the media. And the Jews didn't pull us into the war with Iran and control the American government, but Israel does. Yeah, just so, we're curious for your reaction to this because Effie, you've been getting criticism as well for campaigning with, or maybe I did an interview with Hassan, something along those lines. First of all, just as a fact check for viewers, Marco Rubio himself said that it was Israel that initiated the attack on Iran and that we went because Israel had done that. I don't believe Hassan Piker has ever said that Israel controls the American media. That's just a completely bizarre thing to say. And relatedly, on the day that this segment was aired, the Israeli Knesset passed a death penalty law that would apply only to Palestinians. And his suggestion there is that anybody who criticized that must be smuggling in, quote unquote, Jew hatred and couldn't possibly have actual genuine criticism of this law that the Knesset had just put into place, which I don't believe was covered at all on that program. So Effie, why are people coming after you about Hassan Piker? Like what's going on in this race? You know, I think you just described the frame that we're in perfectly. It's like the democratic establishment hasn't learned the lesson of say the election of Mamdani. You know, we saw all that was thrown at him, right? By Cuomo and his race. And what that did was further alienate all of the young people, all of the people who had previously felt disenfranchised from politics. And, you know, it's like, it baffles me that we want to sacrifice the participation of all of those young people, so many people who mistrust the party and pursue this bizarre framing that Third Way is doing. I'm to be honest with you, I'm at a complete loss why we would sabotage our own party in this way and allow this type of violent framing of antisemitism of people who in many ways are on the right side of history. I mean, we could all speculate here, but to what end, for me as a candidate, what I see are thousands and thousands of young people who mistrust the Democratic Party because they do not see the violence that the state of Israel is perpetrating and that there is like the Vietnam of this generation. And I don't know, I mean, like, I just feel like our party is blowing itself up over this when it could actually be creating a human rights-centered and people-centered agenda that our nation wants and frankly, the world wants. You know, it's so interesting because I think of this in this almost like media, historic framing where what Hassan Piker does is sit in front of a computer to the point where it would be impossible for him to lie or be inauthentic about what he's feeling because he has a camera on him, like he's on Big Brother or the real world back in the day, at all times. And this was the streaming economy and I'm just curious as a candidate, if you think that's kind of, a lot of people see some of this and actually even Israel policy itself as kind of a proxy for whether you are being honest and like real to paraphrase the real world tagline with voters. Like there's just this expectation that you have to be more kind of, like I hate the word authentic, but there's something to that, like raw almost. I think that, you know, and I'm speaking as a person who is Gen X, right? Like, so this Big Brother sort of world of showing authenticity is entirely new to me. And I can tell you, it is entirely new to the Democratic chairs who came after me was on Hassan Piker. I think that they, we joke internally because it's like, it's like they hit a hornet's nest the size of a house and they had no idea because they had no idea of Hassan Piker. They perceive him to just be a person, not a media outlet, he is both. And that media is taking this form now of this authenticity to the degree where you see all the warts, all the misstatements, all the angry things that people would typically blip out, that people would screen. And so it's almost like there's a generational difference in the reaction, right? And so, and so for example, all of the young people on my team and all of the young people who they talk to, they all follow Hassan Piker. They all thought it was extraordinary that I was on Hassan Piker. One of them actually asked if they could come along and he did because he wanted to meet Hassan Piker versus establishment, which is like, I mean, they literally had no idea that the AI generated complaints that they wrote, which is frankly what it looks like, would be viewed and interrogated by millions and millions of people. And maybe this is part of the problem that they don't see the opportunity to speak to the very people at every indivisible protest I go to, where they say, where are the young people? Where are the young people? Well, I'll tell you where they are. They're on Hassan Piker. That's why I went on the stream. Hmm. Since then there's been this kind of weird contradictory bifurcated response. So David from, I think it was David from, said he asked an AI agent to tell him about Hassan Piker and his audience. And that the AI agent told him that Piker has 20,000 to 30,000 concurrent viewers. You know, he streams for eight to 12 hours a day. And then David from looked up the number of viewers that like, you know, MSNBC has in prime time or something. And I think was very confused about the way that viewership stats are analyzed and understood. And so was his agent. He posted something and then that became like a thing that, well, actually Hassan Piker doesn't have an audience. It's just a tiny little rounding error. So, you then left with the question of, well, then why is there, why are you freaking out? Why is this multimillion dollar Schumer connected, you know, think tank doing op-eds and an entire campaign around a guy who that nobody watches? But I'm curious from your perspective, what was the fallout, not the fallout, what was the kind of reaction to you going on? How did it affect your campaign or not affect your campaign? Because if it did, if it's true that nobody actually watches this program, then, well, first of all, you wouldn't be here and we wouldn't be talking about it. So, for example, then it would be no effect. What was the effect? The effect was there were two sides of it. The first was the immediate and frankly, I think surprising response by the chairs of the Democratic committees of New York, 17 district. It was within an hour that this response that they put out was generated. And I will say that the very first thing they quoted as evidence against Hassan Piker was Fox News. And that just blew my mind because to complain about, all the things that people are saying about Hassan Piker in this moment from a news organization that, has advanced some of the most hateful rhetoric about immigrants, about Hispanics, about Muslims, about Jews, without looking at that critically in relation to what they were saying to me, which is to say that they were flamed. They were flamed, like ratioed is the word that me as Gen X has just learned. And I don't know that they actually expected that. I don't know that they expected so many people to see their statement as evidence of bias within the Democratic party as evidence of the kind of attacks that we're seeing right now from Third Wave. And that further disenfranchises people. So the effect has been thousands of new followers, so many comments, a major uptick in contributions. And people saying to me, what they often say to me, because I've been very transparent about my position on Israel and Palestine, like keep going, like don't stop. Like you are saying the things that people want to hear. And what I hope in the end, because I'm a Democrat, I'm a progressive Democrat, is that the party learns the lesson, right? That our job is to listen to the public, listen to the public, hear what they're saying, represent the positions through a moral lens. And when I say a moral lens, that means we have to fight anti-Semitism, which is on the rise. We have to fight Islamophobia, which is on the rise. My goodness, when you think about the kind of violence that's happening in our country with eyes, the kinds of discrimination, the bias, all these things. Like these are the things that we have to fight. And frankly, when people reach out to me and they say, keep going, this is what they're saying. And the party need hear it. They seem to be very far from it at this point right now, though, which is very baffling. Yeah, and it seems like the big thing from the 2024 election was that the modicum was, we need a bigger tent for the Democratic Party. We need to bring in young people or what have you. And I just wanted to pull up this article from the Bulwark where they interviewed Jonathan Cohen, who's the founder of Third Way. And he says, if people are really arguing that the price of winning is becoming like a bigoted misogynist like a son piker, then I'll take not winning. So it seems the Third Way position is actually to lose with grace. Now, what do you make of that? It seems like they're upset about Israel, but he says misogynist there as well. Is there other reasons that they could potentially be trying to sequester or demean Hassan because Hassan has been going around and I think he's spoken to, interviewed about 20 different Democratic candidates across the country. And some people accuse him of being a purity test, litmus test, wants to wreck the Democratic Party, doesn't want it to win. Yet we see him on the road with candidates all over the country. What do you make of this big tent strategy? You know, it's a great question. What I think is, and I believe firmly, is that Hassan piker speaks for the young people who have been disenfranchised, right? And in a way, what we're seeing between Midway and their framing, which I think is awful, and Hassan piker, you know, and the people who follow him, is like a battle for the soul of the Democratic Party. In the way that I see that the fight between Cuomo and Mamdani in New York City was a battle sort of for the soul of the Democratic Party. What young people want is authenticity. They want people to recognize that our tax dollars are going to fund military aid for the very nation that created this horrendous death penalty in an apartheid form. Like, there is no escaping that. And frankly, a lot of people who I speak to, or question me, I get emails every day questioning me, saying, I agree with you on the Palestine issue. But why Hassan piker, right? And in that respect, they agree with Hassan piker on the Palestine issue. And what I am furious about with the Democratic Party is that we actually have a capacity to build consensus around this. And yet the framing that Third Way puts out, and focusing on misogyny, the way Cuomo's team focused on antisemitism when dealing with Mamdani, is completely blowing up our party. To what end? You know, that's the answer that I don't, I can speculate, but I don't yet have. But we're doing it again. We're handing it over to the Republicans. And it is completely appalling and is outrageous. But what I'm hopeful for is that young people, people under 44 is really what I say. And people see through it and they're gonna come out and they're gonna vote, they're gonna vote. They're conscious. And so we'll see, in New York 17, is supposedly a purple district. I've taken a very, what I hope that people perceive to be an authentic and progressive human rights-focused platform. And we're gonna test it here too. You know, I'm making it on the ballot. We're gonna take it to the primary. We're gonna debate with the other candidates who take no position at all on this and are very quiet about a lot of things, like ICE. Like what our tax system should be, how to make it more fair by taxing the ultra-wealthy, all of these things. So, you know, yeah, why they, yeah, what can I say? It's fascinating. There's almost been a louder, yeah, there's been a louder retribution against the song from Democrats than the Iran war. People are being louder about a streamer than this disastrous war that's putting our global economy into peril. Any final questions, Ryan and Emily? All right, I think you're muted, Ryan. So, no, Effie, that does it for me. You really appreciate you joining. It must have been an interesting ride. I imagine that you didn't quite expect, you didn't quite know what you were getting into, or at least you wouldn't have before. I wouldn't have before. As a fellow Gen Xer, we don't know what Twitter is. It's just a fact. I'm trying to keep up because Gen X, you know, we think we're the coolest in the room, but... No, no. No, we're not. And... Not for a long time. Yeah, I mean, thank you for all you do in your time. You know, it's... I did expect this to a degree, you know, because I've seen the way the left is starting to be framed in this way as advancing in that... But I want to say this, I think it's really important. When I was in Israel, what I learned was that so many people, so many Israelis, this was my time in Israel and in the Occupied West Bank, are fighting so hard for justice because they recognize that their own government is becoming what they describe in their words as a fascist government and the government that can do the most horrendous things like this... Like this death penalty that's within an apartheid frame. I mean, that is staggering. And Israelis are fighting hard against this in partnership with Palestinians. And to me, that gives me an immense amount of hope because as dark and awful as the trajectory of this nation, there are lots of people out there who understand that the key is that we have to stop attacking each other. We have to come together around our shared values which is people deserve justice and they deserve the opportunity to thrive. And through all of this, and in despite of some of the very awful things that Son Piker has said in the past, in my meeting with him, I believe that that is what he wants. And I think that his millions of followers believe that that is what he wants. And that is the direction that our nation needs to be going in, not the further splitting accusations, attacks, and own goals as I see that we see coming from Midway and this appalling campaign that they're putting forward. It's staggeringly destructive. So thank you. So I think it's a third way, I believe. I don't know if Midway is catching strays there. Is it the same thing, Ryan? No, I meant to say third way. I meant to say third way. Third way. For everyone tapping to Midway. Midway works too. Same thing. Yeah, Mid. Okay, Effie, you mentioned Zoran. Can you give us a quick, just quick bullet point list and some proposals or policies you want to bring to your district and where can people find and support your campaign if they so choose? So thank you so much. So the most critical things I think in New York 17 are housing. So housing affordability, like increasing the number of housing in the district by 66,000 at least is critical. Medicare for all, we have to just get this done. Like too many people are suffering and in a nation as wealthy as ours, we can do it. Universal childcare, the state of Arizona has already done it. And these are critical things to the people of New York 17. Of course, just immigration reform. We have to stop giving governments like our current one an opportunity to weaponize immigrants for their political gain. We need a clear, fair immigration system. And my goodness, it just keeps going on. And this is the thing, of course, the one that I hear about the most, justice at home and justice abroad. We have to take care of the problem with ICE. We have to take care of human rights within our nation. And we cannot fund nations that violate human rights, particularly against our own laws and against international laws. That absolutely has to stop. All right, and Effie, where do people find you? You can find me at Effieforcongress.com, E-F-F-I-E-F-O-R-Congress.com, and on Instagram, all the places. That'll do it for this half. We'll do some fun stories, a quick little AMA in the second half. And if you want to get access to that, breakingpoints.com. And we'll see you there. No gloss, no filter, just stories, spoken without fear. A person who is not generous cannot be an artist. The world will be at peace only when it is ruled by poets and philosophers. Listen to my weekly podcast, the Puja Bhachon on the iHeart radio app. Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Come for the honesty, stay for the fire.