5/21/26: Iran Stuns Trump With Red Line, Trump Indicts Cuba's Castro, Bezos Speaks Against Taxes

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. Good morning everybody, happy Thursday. We have an amazing show for everybody today. Bro show, good to see you, Ryan. This is Sagar. Let's do it, let's go. People are so lucky that two subsequent back to back days of Ryan Grimm. What more can you ask for? What more could you possibly ask for? All right, let's come up on me. We are gonna start with Iran. We're gonna talk about this new statement from the Iranian Supreme leaders, declaring that all nuclear material, including the enriched material, must stay in Iran. It throws a real wrench in the White House's plans as initial talks and things looked potentially optimistic with some new 30 day memorandum of understanding for a continued ceasefire before an eventual end to the war. Ryan and I are gonna break all of that down. In addition to some news about Iranian drone production has been increasing. Second is Cuba. Raul Castro, is he 94 or 95? I don't wanna get my facts wrong. I thought 95, but I think people have been saying 94. So 94 year old brother of Fidel Castro. 94 years young. Right, yeah, 94 years old. He has now been indicted by the Department of Justice for an alleged murder plot stemming decades ago. Obviously a pretext for potential invasion. We're gonna be joined by our friend Juan David Rojas to break some of that down and to actually give us not insight, not only into the alleged crimes here of Castro but into the South Florida cabal that continues to run our government. We are gonna talk about Jeff Bezos, new interview he just gave to CNBC in which he says that his taxes could double and it would not help any teacher in Queens. We are also gonna talk about a new incident that happened in Israel where the Minister of National Security, Itmar Ben Gavir was seen harassing flotilla detainees, aid flotilla. Many of them have Western passports. It has ignited a major international incident despite Ryan, they do this literally every day but they do it to Palestinians. This time around they did it to some people with Western passports and they did it on camera which I guess has never really mattered in the past but this time it was both of those things where even the prime minister is like this does not represent our values. It is amusing because it would be like Trump saying Todd Blanche, the attorney general, does not represent the government of the United States. You're like, wait, hold on a second, what? How does that work? Like one guy gets caught insider trading. Trump is like, that does not represent our values. That does not represent our values. We are also going to cover a Tucker Carlson interview on Israeli television, extraordinary interview, something that Israelis have not seen in quite some time. It's called The Truth about what's actually happening in their own country. And then Ryan's got a monologue about Chuck Schumer. I don't even want to give too much away. It is the most Ryan Grimm story of all time. And then finally we have a pre-recorded interview. The Steyer campaign reached out to our very own Griffin, Davis producer Griffin who lives in Los Angeles and he sat down for a pressing interview with the gubernatorial candidate Tom Steyer, the billionaire candidate. He pressed him on a variety of different issues, running the gamut from him being a billionaire himself, why people should trust him, some of the issues that he's currently having. Spencer Pratt, the rise there in Los Angeles, how he would govern the state, how he would handle Donald Trump and he pressed him on the issue of Israel as well. By the way, Steyer is the one who made that into an issue himself and so Griffin really got him on that. I think you guys should check it out. And Griffin looks extra smashing in the suit which he bought after I invited him. Shaved the stash. He looks incredible. Let's just give Griffin his flowers here. The power of the suit can elevate literally anything. I'm joking, Griffin's a very, very handsome man. Okay, please hit subscribe. But more handsome with the suit. He looks more handsome with the suit. As do you, right? As do you. All right, hit subscribe to our YouTube channel please. And if you were listening to some podcasts, please share an episode with a friend. Let's go ahead and start with what's happening in Iran. I'm just gonna put this up here. This is the latest breaking news. Reuters, Iran's supreme leader has now issued a directive that the country's near weapons grade uranium should not be sent abroad. Two senior Iranian sources said hardening Tehran stance on one of the main US demands. So this is a by far Ryan, the biggest sticking point of the entire deal. Not even, potentially even more so than the straight of Hormuz where the Iranians have shown some level of flexibility because effectively what this new directive from the supreme leader says is, number one, this cannot be questioned because it's coming from the supreme leader. So that means this is policy. This is the policy that has been set out to Trump has said actually that all of the weapons grade uranium, in fact, all of the uranium has to not only be taken out of Iran, but they would not even accept it being sent to China and to Russia, which previously had been floated. Here the supreme leader is drawing a complete red line saying it is not leaving the country period, which means that they will retain some level of control over it. They have offered in the past to down blend their uranium under IAEA inspections. And I know this can sound a little bit technical, but the bottom line is this, it is a huge middle finger to probably be number one nuclear demand that Donald Trump has made from the outset in this entire war. Yeah, and just for a little media literacy, Reuters has been very good on its coverage of Iran. They do have sources in the Iranian government. They haven't fallen for all of the different Lucy and the football moves that the US has tried to play here. So, and this is being done publicly. So this is, I think, this is credible reporting that we can talk about as actually bearing out, which is a thing we have to do when it comes to this war. Very good flag. Unfortunately, but yeah, so Trump has repeatedly said that the issue is public relations, that the issue is optics. Like this is directly from Trump. He says that he has said so many times that he's going to get the nuclear dust, as he keeps calling it, that he needs to get the nuclear dust. He has set up his own kind of trap that the only way out is he's got to get it. And he has said just, he has said psychologically, I would feel much better if I got it. That's not a very persuasive kind of argument or motivation from one side of the debate that you have to do it because you said you were going to do it. If the actual goal is to make it so that the surrounding countries, but by which they mean Israel, are safe from any kind of nuclear threat from Iran, down blending under IAEA inspection would be plenty. Iranians agreeing just not to enter the facility, where it's currently kind of under rubble would also satisfy that. Taking it to a third country, Russia, as was done in the 2015 JCPOA would also satisfy it. But President Trump, while that was sort of on the table, like it was kind of floating as a possibility, President Trump never once grasped at that. He never once said, oh, okay, Iran, this is a way out. Iran seems willing to move this to Russia. I can say the Gulf countries want me to end this war. Live golf is struggling. We got to get back to the basics. And we're going to end this. That was on the table. Now the new Supreme Leader, and there was regime change apparently, according to Trump, is saying, no, that's no longer, that's no longer on the table. So now we have to see how Trump handles this kind of humiliation. As of last night, Trump had said that we're right on the borderline. Let's take a listen. After you said yesterday you're about an hour away from making a decision. Where does that stand today? Have you heard anything from them? Very, right on the borderline, believe me, if we don't get the right answers, it goes very quickly. We're all ready to go. We have to get the right answers. It would have to be a complete 100% good answers. And if we do, we save a lot of time, energy, and lives, most importantly. It could go very quickly. It could go very quickly. Or a few days. It could be a few days. But it could go very quickly. Iran is a defeated nation. We're dealing with some people. And we're dealing, actually, I must tell you, we're dealing with some very good people. We're dealing with people that are, I think, far more reasonable than the people that are really no longer with us. We're dealing with some people with talent, with good brain power. And we're pretty impressed by it. So hopefully those people will make a deal that's going to be great for everybody. So at that time he's gassing them up at the same time, though, he says, I'm not in a hurry. I'm not in a hurry at all. Let's take a listen to that. On the Iran deal, would you be open to a limited deal that just covered the Strait of Hormuz? What does that mean? On Iran. It's a limited deal just for a longer sea spire. We'd have to open the Strait. That would open immediately. So we're going to give this one shot. I'm in no hurry. You never think, oh, the midterms, I'm in a hurry. I'm in no hurry. I just, ideally, I'd like to see a few people killed, as opposed to a lot. We can do it either way. But I'd like to see a few people killed. I just wonder whether or not they have the good of the people. Because some of the things they're doing to me means they don't have the good of the people, and they have to have the good of the people. Not in a hurry. Not in a hurry at all. So maybe, maybe not. Again, now, speaking of media literacy, many of you should know this one. Let's put it up here on the screen. New Iran proposal triggers a tense Trump Netanyahu call from Barak Ravid over at Axios, who gets very testy, if you point out his previous IDF military background. But anyways, Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu discussed a new effort to reach a deal with Iran in a difficult call. A three sources said, one source said, Netanyahu's quote, hair was on fire after the call. So at first, I'm like, hey, maybe this is a good thing. So here's what they say. A revised peace memo was drafted by Qatar and Pakistan with the input from the other regional mediators. The outline of the deal is a memorandum of understanding, Ryan. The memorandum of understanding would lead to a 30 day ceasefire, even though this current ceasefire has been longer than 30 days, a gradual reducing of the US naval blockade and allegedly, like, Iranian lack of control over the Straits of Hormuz, some sort of sanctions relief in the immediate term, like a 25% unfreezing. However, it does require the Iranians to make at least some pre-commitments to an eventual deal on the nuclear file. This just doesn't really fit with a lot of what we've seen out of them. I do especially want your analysis here with Pakistan. Let's put the next one up here on the screen because they are the linchpin in this entire thing. This is from the Pakistani media. They say, Pakistan, on behalf of several regional countries, is trying to convince Iran to restore the strait to its pre-war status. At the same time, Trump has told the Gulf countries we're ready to reset ties with Iran if it seizes the current opportunity and signs a deal. Tehran has to make a final call within the next two days. So we do know that that's kind of happening at the current moment. There were some original reports. Pakistan was going to, the Pakistani, who was it? The army chief was going to go fly to Tehran, present this deal, make it into a whole big thing. But then the news of the Supreme Leader announcement that came out this morning kind of throws a wrench into this whole thing. As people have been pointing out, Axios published by Barak Ravid, almost identical stories in June of 2025, right before the 12-day war started. And then again in February of this year, right before this ongoing war started. So when some people saw that article, like, oh wait, I've read this twice before and I know what follows, war resumes. And perhaps the Iranians are tired of this pattern and are kind of throwing in some type of new variable here because otherwise it's like Groundhog Day, like Barak Ravid promises Netanyahu is furious and that Trump is on the brink of reaching a deal with them and then there's a surprise attack. And they kill all the, as many politicians and military figures and middle schoolers as they can in like a short period of time. This new Fahwa about nuclear power, is it even a Fahwa? I don't know, it's a directive. It's just a directive, I don't think it's a Fahwa. I'm not, yeah, I don't know if I'm a Shia religious scholar to tell you the difference. I mean, the bigger difference is it'd be harder to climb down from a Fahwa than a directive. Directive issue, a new directive. It shouldn't logically be that big of a deal because there are so many ways for you to ensure nuclear non-proliferation or make sure that inspections are robust enough, especially because as Trump has repeatedly said, they devastated the entire program. They killed all of the scientists. It's buried, it's literally buried under a rubble right now. As he says, we have seven cameras on it, watching it at all times. That's true, they do. So what are you freaking out about? So a deal should be there, but I don't know. With the way that Trump- Walkly pessimistic, yeah. I think people should be pessimistic because in the way that Trump has talked, Trump has actually trapped himself twice ironically. So he did the escalation trap where he didn't defeat Iran. And so now he has only two options, surrender and or basically escalation. The other trap that he made is he basically left himself no negotiating room whenever it came to the nuclear issue where he said, no, we're going to take it all. And so those two things is way past the JCPOA. And actually Iran in a stronger position now because of their drone threat, their ability to sustain and survive an onslaught of the full force and might of the United States empire. Well, you also have the neocon faction here in the United States. Let's put A6 up here on the screen. Here's Lindsey Graham in only the way that Lindsey Graham can. It's a subtweet with a belligerent praise here at the top. I believe President Trump has done a brilliant job in weakening the Iranian terrorist regime to the lowest they've been since 1979. Hats off to our commander in chief, to all who serve under his command. Like everyone, I hope for a diplomatic solution. Yes, he does. But it must be comprehensive to ensure Iran is no longer the largest state boxer of terror. It must be real, negotiations must be reliable. I appreciate everyone's efforts. And now he says, I'm hearing the Pakistan's field marshal may travel to Iran. What could go wrong? Maybe he'll report the status of Iranian military aircraft being housed on Pakistani air bases. Like so many, I'm watching very closely what unfolds. Yet again, another effort to reach a deal with the Iranian regime. I wish all involved success that it is real. Very obviously thinly veiled subtweet in this entire thing. And I think what it demonstrates to everybody is that Netanyahu, BB, the Iran War lobby, Mark Levin and others, if you just watch all of their communications over the last 72 hours, they are freaking out as if the deal is real, but they also are laying the ground to make it so that when he resumes the war, they can claim that this was the correct policy. And also it demonstrates they'll say, oh well, by Trump drawing the lines where he has, they can say, oh Iran's not negotiating good faith. When in reality, this was never on the table from the beginning, after the war, before the war, it's just literally never existed. If you want to go and take the nuclear dust, if you will, then you're gonna have to go and get it. The consequences us for here at home are remain immense. Let's put the next one up here. You actually flagged this one, Ryan. 30 year treasury yields have now topped 5.19%. The highest since before the financial crisis. Is that good? Anyone want to tell me? Is that a good thing? Who's that good for? Trying to think who that's before. So they said rates following a string of reports suggested inflationary pressures were re-accelerating as rising oil prices tied the conflict with Iran pushed across higher. The development has spooked fixed income investors and caused traders to bet that the next move by the Fed could actually be a rate hike instead of a reduction. What that means is that this is elevated borrowing costs for the government and for everyone. So this is gonna affect credit card rates, mortgage rates, the bond market, remember, is what originally forced Trump's hand whenever it came to the tariffs. This time around, it's a little bit different. He doesn't have unilateral control except for a total surrender. So you have the financial markets where they are, kind of ignore the stock market at this point, which is basically just all open AI and SpaceX, Mania and AI, literal AI and Mania in the stock market. But if you look at the bond market, you look at the oil market, let me see, where's gas at as of today, 456 a gallon, that's like 3 cents higher than when I checked it a couple of days ago. Diesel, 565 a gallon, I mean, it's just, it's hovering there. Bloomberg analysis came out this morning. The median base case on Wall Street is that oil will remain over $100 a barrel for at least the next year. So what's that, about four bucks a gallon, something like that. So yeah, good luck. We're all gonna be paying that for quite a long time. So I'm just gonna be a blip or a short excursion as Trump continues to say. And Brent is down over the last couple of weeks as the ceasefire has kind of held. So that flies right back up if he starts shooting again. Imagine if the United States government with the world's most powerful military and a very powerful economy is paying five point, almost 2% for a 30 year note, what are you gonna pay when you go to the bank trying to get a mortgage? You don't have a military unless you have something, I don't know, you got going on over there. You don't have the world's most powerful economy behind you. You can't print money to pay it back. So you're gonna be paying well into the sixes, five, six, pushing seven, which completely ceases up our real estate market because you can't afford your mortgage then. If you go out, the house that you're gonna wanna go out to buy, it's gonna cost you a lot more per month and then you're gonna be stuck in your apartment. Well, it's extremely ironic too because Trump just appointed this new Fed chair whose entire directive was to lower rates and now the traders are like, no, he's actually gonna have to increase rates based on where things are right now. Which is, well, things even more chaos. Right, so we're headed to a stagflation and basically just 1970s nonsense. And then finally, wanted to get this in here, just came out this morning, let's put a eight up here on the screen. Iran is now actually rebuilding the military industrial base faster than expected and is already producing new drones according to US intelligence. This is just the latest in a slew of, well, they've dug out all their missiles. Actually, they're very resilient. Actually, they still have all this. Actually, they still have the capacity. Like if we go back to it, it's actually, it's gonna be the exact same thing, maybe worse actually because this time around, they know how things went the first time. They've studied it all. The US aircraft would be more at risk based on the new tactics that they've used. I mean, the US has studied it too. There's gonna be some changes that they've made. I actually, interestingly enough, I don't know if you've seen this, have you seen all these drone cages going up all over the UAE? So, I mean, this is gonna be the new world that we live in, is that every critical piece of infrastructure will have a hideous cage, a hideous metal cage that surrounds it just to block a drone from being able to smash it. Obviously, a missile still would be able to, but those are much easier to hit than a $20,000 drone. I did wanna flag that just in case hostilities. Five-star hotel with this little cage around it. Imagine that, right. And so, that's kind of where... Beautiful fountain with a cage around it. Yeah, a gorgeous fountain. Yeah, imagine the guests at the Dubai Fairmont or whatever their ship hotel is, the Seven-Star Hotel. I forget the name of it, or the Bourge Khalifa, but with the, the Bourge Khalifa looks a little different, doesn't it, whatever, you've got a cage that runs up the entire side of it. A cage on your balcony. Yeah, don't think it's gonna help the Dubai cratering real estate market or the hotel occupancy rate, or Dubai International Airport. Look, flagging all this because hostilities could resume at any moment. If they were to resume, in Trump's mind, it would be a limited strike. Now, in Iran's mind, that wouldn't be. But in Trump's mind, it would be a limited strike. And so, if he were to do it, it would happen over the weekend, I think, because the oil markets and the stock market couldn't react and he would want some chance of being able to go in and then stop before markets were able to open on Monday. But look, that's where things are right now. And in a very strange deja vu, we can now turn to Cuba to talk. It feels like only yesterday we were talking about the kidnapping of a Latin American dictator and the potential conflicts coming with Iran. So, yeah, wow. Three months later, and we're exactly the same. We've got our good friend, Juan David Rojas, standing by, let's get to it. Very excited now to be joined by our friend, Juan David Rojas. He is a independent journalist. He's got his own sub-stack. Social democracy with populist characteristics are resident Latin America expert. So Juan, you're here to talk about what's going on between the United States government and Cuba. The White House released this propaganda video yesterday inditing Raul Castro, an age 94 years old. Let's take a listen. Today, we are announcing an indictment, charging Raul Castro and several others with conspiracy to kill US nationals. Just... This is a story all too familiar. On February 24th, 1996, two civilian aircraft operated by Brothers to the Rescue were shot down over international waters by military aircraft from Cuba. Four men were killed. Carlos Costa, Armando Alejandro Jr., Mario de la Pena, and Pablo Morales. They were unarmed civilians and were flying humanitarian missions for the rescue and protection of people fleeing oppression across the Florida Straits. As alleged in the indictment, Raul Castro and five co-defendants participated in a conspiracy that ended with Cuban military aircraft firing missiles at those civilian planes and killing four Americans. All right, Juan, that's the story. What's actually going on here? So some important context, and that announcement was made in Miami in Freedom Tower, which was an icon down here. We're really pushing the limits of hypocrisy in the region now. I mean, by this logic, we've extrjudicially killed like 200 alleged narco terrorists, a lot of which they've not given us any evidence for that. By the same logic, basically, how many countries could indict Trump for these killings? Beyond that, as far as the incident itself in 1996 with Brothers to the Rescue, Brothers to the Rescue, the head of it, Joseba Sulto, was a self-professed former CIA operative who participated in acts of terrorism on the island. Up until the 90s, there were bombings conducted by Cuban exiles on the island. Horrible, horrible stuff. There's a long history of exile terrorism here in South Florida, including of other exiles that were viewed as like not sufficiently anti-communist enough. But so Brothers to the Rescue, however, was a humanitarian organization. They would like try to find banseros, people fleeing the island on like these small rafts or whatever. The issue was that they had violated systematically like 20 times Cuba's airspace. And so finally, the Cuban government decided they'd given them multiple warnings. And they'd also been warned by the Clinton administration. But ultimately, yeah, the Cuban government took those planes down. They were technically in international waters when it happened, but that's all the context. Got it. And Cubas to this day disputes that they were in international waters. What do we know about like exactly where they were at that point? Because some of the planes had actually flown over the Cuba's land mass. These do seem to have certainly been flying over water and not land mass. So that's not in question. What do we know for sure about where they were? The reporting I've seen is that at the time when they were struck down, they were in international waters. I mean, you know, there's oftentimes dispute of as different countries say that no, actually, these are all waters. What is international water, right? That's international waters. But it's also true, however, that in the same flights they had violated Cuban airspace. So just because they were shot down, when in the specific moment when they were shot down, doesn't mean they hadn't that same day violated Cuban airspace. Zooming out a little bit here, Juan, what are we doing? We're indicting Raul Costray is 94 years old. This alleged incident took place, what year was it, 96 or 98? 96. So I was four years old. I'm now 34, so is that 30 years ago whenever this allegedly happened? So why do it now? Is this the Venezuela playbook? What is the impetus for trying to do this? How does it fit with the broader Trump administration approach to Cuba? I mean, it's, you know, we can only speculate, but presumably they're trying a similar kind of playbook to Maduro. You have these charges against the head of state. Maybe, you know, they're negotiating with the regime. They might try to get to some sort of arrangement where they hand over, where they ask for them to hand over a Raul Castro that seems unlikely. But most of this, it's symbolic. It's just meant to appease people here in South Florida. I mean, you heard the applause. And I've said this for a while. I think a lot of this is an electoral strategy because Trump's approval has cratered with Latinos, even a lot of Trump Latino voters. Latinos have voted for Trump. He's lost like half a third of his Latino voters since then. So in this way, I mean, even in South Florida, we talked about this, I think last year, even among Cuban Americans, the immigration, especially the deportation policy is extremely controversial. There was this insane case of this Trump supporting Cuban national who was deported to a maximum security prison in Eswatini. He did have a criminal history, but you know, this is, you know, for Cubans, the thought of like being deported to a third country, that's insane to a maximum security prison. So, yeah, I see this as them trying to salvage support among a key voting base here in South Florida. And you talk to a lot of, you know, rank and file of what I call Miami Neocons down here. And yeah, they'll say that they're not fans of the immigration policy. And, you know, there's been a lot of back and forth between Maria Villasalasar representative down here who's pushed for the Dignity Act that MAGA is called amnesty. But she's obviously very hawkish against Cuba, Venezuela, et cetera. So, you know, a lot of people will tell you, it's like, yeah, I don't really like the immigration stuff, but he's gonna liberate Cuba, so that's great. And while he's talking about liberating Cuba, at least two Cubans have died in immigrant detention centers since his roundup. But let's hear from Trump directly on his latest about his interest in freeing Cuba. Let's play B3 here. I have so many Cuban friends in my mostly in Miami and Florida, and they're unbelievable people. They're unbelievable entrepreneurs. And they'd like to go back. I think hopefully they're gonna wanna live here, but they wanna go back, maybe they'll invest, we'll see what happens, but we're freeing up Cuba. And he said, hey, and my secretary of state, he's even from there, which is sort of true. But he was born here. He put up before Marco Rubio directly appealed to the Cuban people in a kind of Spanish language address, kind of urging them to overthrow their government. What was the message that Rubio sent to kind of the people of Cuba through that Spanish language address? Yeah, that was a stunning bit of propaganda. Yeah, he gave the whole speech in Spanish. And look, I'm a fervent critic of both Neoconservatives and the Cuban regime. And I think there are things we can blame both of these factions for. Like any good propaganda, Rubio mixes truth with lies. And so, it is true, a lot of the Cuban elite, they lived extremely comfortably in Madrid, Gaiasa, like it's this conglomerate that controls a lot of enterprises on the island. It's basically this regime slush fund. They like pocketed the billions that they got from Venezuela during the 2000s and just have used it. Like I've been in Cuba three times. I was last there in 2024. And even in 2024, they were like still building hotels. Knowing full well that no tourists were coming in. And it's just a form of cronyism. So, some of that is true. On the other hand, he says, it's not our fault that you're suffering. They talk about an oil embargo, sanctions, whatever. No, it's all the Cuban regime. They're the reason why you're suffering. They're the reason why the power's going on. That's completely ridiculous. Obviously, the blackouts have to do with the fact that we're not even letting third countries, Russia, Mexico, send oil to the island. Their energy grid, sure, you could argue that decades ago they could have improved it. And now supposedly they're getting help from China building solar panels. But the reality is that, and he talks about the Bahamas, if we were doing this to the Bahamas, obviously they would have to do this to any island country in the world and they would not survive. Yeah, Juan, there's some latest news I actually want your reaction to. We can put this in post-production. The Nimitz aircraft carrier has actually just entered the Caribbean, as you and I are speaking. They say the carrier arrives in the South Caribbean on the same day the Justice Department announced charges against Raul Castro. One of the general rules, Juan, that we have at this point is when the carriers go, we usually military action of some kind follows. At first it was there to pressure Maduro, then we ended up using it. Then it was there to pressure Iran. Then we ended up using it. Now we've got the Nimitz there. They say, well, it may not engage in direct combat operations, but, of course, that same aircraft carrier, US naval assets were used as a staging grounds for the kidnapping raid of Nicholas Maduro. Now, how do you expect the Cuban government to respond? Would it be a Venezuela style thing? They accept it. Basically, they have some successor, Raul Castro is 94, you want to put him on trial. Whatever. All right, give us oil relief, and then we can all sail off into the sunset. Or do you think that they would resist? It's hard to say. I mean, we can look at Venezuela. It's clear that a lot of the people in charge, it's only lip service for the ideology. They're really willing to do whatever to stay in power. Maybe in Cuba, a lot of the more radical sectors would not be willing to give in. I mean, here's another thing. Rubio talks about, oh, you guys have rejected reform. That's true in the sense that Russia, China, and Cuba's own economists have been telling them to follow the Chinese and Vietnamese models for a long time. And what the Escaneros say, it's like, oh, they weren't subjected to the same kind of embargo that we were. But so yeah, guys sign all that there are entrenched sectors, like in any other country that are just vehemently opposed to change. But as far as military action is concerned, the reporting drop side has done a lot on this that in the government, they are willing to negotiate exactly what concessions they're willing to give. It's hard to say. Now, as far as the Nimitz is concerned, which UFO fans, we know about the Nimitz. But in this case, yeah, like you said, with Iran and with Venezuela, honestly, I'm going to be real. We could seriously expect to see some sort of military action in the future. The problem is once you've dedicated so many resources and pushed so far rhetorically, I mean, especially down here, if they don't end up doing something, they're going to face some backlash. Interesting. And I wonder what it means because in Venezuela, Maduro was the undisputed kind of leader of the country. Whereas in Cuba, power is a lot more kind of diffuse. Like Diaz Canal is technically in charge. He's fairly weak and unpopular leader. I think the pressure that he's come under has paradoxically kind of increased his stature a little bit, at least among the kind of cadre of the rest of the leadership of the Cuban government. But there are plenty of people who have their own fiefdoms there that report to Diaz Canal, but not really. And then you've got Raul Castro, this aging, he's no longer in power, but kind of everything still can sort of run through him. And so it doesn't leave you the same button to push like you had in Venezuela. Like, OK, let's say you grabbed Diaz Canal. What has that actually achieved? Let's say you grabbed Castro, but you leave Diaz Canal. You would grab them both. Like, but you left all the various committees in place. Or does none of it matter? And Trump just needs some sort of something. Yeah, that's a great point. And I think that Trump would be more willing to come to some sort of arrangement with the regime. And like I said, Rubio's saying, oh, you know, we want you guys to open up. He's full of crap. Like, but he wants his regime change. And that's a fundamental problem. I wrote a recent piece for New Lines where there's a part where I compare the Israel lobby to the Miami lobby. The Israel lobby, they don't really care what happens in Iran. They'd be fine with a failed state collapse, any kind of stuff like that. In Miami, they want full-on regime change, and they will not settle for anything else. So you have some sort of the El Siro-Odriguez type situation in Cuba. Maybe that would work for Trump, but it's not going to work for people down here. They're not going to. And a lot of Trump's government, especially with regards to hemispheric policy, is staffed by these Miami neocons, a lot of the ambassadors, and close friends of Rubio that are in charge. So last week. And it's hard to say that the difference between Cuba and Venezuela is that Cuba is a one-party state. They don't have a formal opposition. Like, Venezuela has the trappings of democratic institutions. In Cuba, the government controls everything. So yeah. So speaking of drop-site reporting, one little funny piece to leave you guys with. We can put up B5 here. There's been all this talk about this $100 million offer of humanitarian aid that Rubio has made to Cuba. He has said they're not willing to take it. We looked into it, stores has told us the aid effectively amounts to about $100 million worth of star links that they want to send on to the island. Rubio has at times referred to this as, quote, food and medicine, but in other statements has acknowledged that it's actually about fast and free internet. So we'll see whether or not Musk's SpaceX ends up becoming a player in this as well. Do you have any final thoughts on this bizarre $100 million offer of humanitarian aid that is coming at the same time that we have a blockade around the island? Yeah. I mean, it's clear. Yeah. Who knows what's exactly in their head, but they're probably thinking, oh, if we can get more internet to people on the island, especially if it's not controlled by the government, we can spur some sort of uprising. But one last thing, actually, I sent this to both of you guys. Bloomberg reported yesterday, hours before the indictment, that what was the name of it? This is a Canadian mining company, which is like the last one. It has like a cobalt mine on the island. They were going to pull out. Last week, they announced they were leaving Cuba because of additional sanctions we put on the Cuban government. And they reversed yesterday, saying that they were going to give a stake to a Trump ally. So yeah, it looks like Trump. And there's been this big push, the recent meeting between Trump and Lula for critical or rare arts and all the critical minerals. So amazing. Yeah, you just got to get Trump cronies in there, and we're good. Love it. Yeah, we'll see how the Florida guys like that one. I won't lie. I'm going to laugh my ass off one. If they end up having Raul Castro, but then the regime becomes like filthy rich, and we basically strike some sort of a deal. And they're like, wait, but that's not what we wanted. I'm like, oh, oops, no takesie backsies. Don Trump, he's getting your get to casino. Until you have Trump, the Cuban government will issue an exclusive casino license to Donald Trump Jr. And that will be how this entire thing ends. Could be, could be. The lobby would have to stand for it. Right, all right. Thank you very much for your time. We appreciate your analysis. Thanks, guys. Jeff Bezos sat down with CNBC, which usually gives us some pretty good content. Let's take a look at just a little bit. And Elizabeth Warren has made this point repeatedly. I think she's made a reference to you and others. Are able to pay a lower tax rate, even though you're paying an enormous sum in taxes, a lower tax rate than maybe I am. These people sometimes say that I don't pay taxes. That's not true. I pay billions of dollars in taxes. And it's a perfect, again, if people want me to pay more billions, then let's have that debate. But don't pretend that that's going to solve the problem. You could double the taxes I pay, and it's not going to help that teacher in Queens. I promise you. So you can't connect those two things, not logically. There are more examples. Why is rent expensive? Why is rent so expensive? I recently saw somebody blame it on Airbnb. OK, Airbnb is not the cost of expensive rent. In fact, it's been almost no longer than a second. It's already been outlawed in New York City, and rents are still very high. So we know Airbnb is causing high rents. What's really causing high rent is government intervention. So Mayor Mamdani shot back at that. He said, I know a few teachers in Queens who would beg to differ. But yeah, more to the point, Sagan, then we can get to some more of his comments. I hate finding out how average these guys are. 100%. I want them to be brilliant. Because then I live in a slightly fair world. Yeah. Still unfair, but at least slightly more. They are brilliant, but they're brilliant in a way that is not all that interesting, as in optimizing Amazon Prime and delivery service. Right. If you want to read the book, you should. The Everything Story is quite good. 2013, the actual history of Amazon. But what we often find out is that being extraordinarily good at one thing often doesn't make you particularly good at everything, and may in fact be inverse in terms of variability to be a good citizen. So let's break this down. Jeff Bezos says raising his taxes will not help anyone. You could double the taxes I pay, and it's not going to help that teacher in Queens. I promise you. Under the current system, he may not be wrong. Under a different system, he may not be entirely wrong. And what's really funny about this is that they're all counting this. I don't have noticed. Chamath and all these others are celebrating, where their new idea is that the bottom 50% of Americans should pay zero income tax. Because they're like, well, they only make up 3% of total taxes, so they should pay nothing. First of all, that's a terrible idea. But second of all, because A, it's a terrible idea, and let's just kind of go through why, even though, quote, it only is 3%. Well, we've talked a lot about this. One of the reasons why having property tax or income tax or any of these things is that you actually literally have a stake in the system. Now, I agree that the percentage that they're paying is not in any way semi-meaningful, let's say, to federal revenue. But in this case, the problem, and by the way, at the same time, when saying that we should cut those three, he's also like, you shouldn't tax me more. So if we were gonna make a trade, I'd be like, all right, fine, but that's not really what he's talking about. What they're really talking about is they're trying to effectively say that paying taxes of any kind for the poor and for the rich is not actually inherently good and or doing anything for society. This is a broad-scale war, and you've seen this now with all of Bezos' individual actions. So since he formed Amazon and exited as the CEO, what has he done? He moved to Miami. Why? Because he's from there? No, okay? It's because of the Seattle Wealth Tax. That's the reason. So he's like, well, I gotta cling to this. Also, what has he done in his post-CEO age? He's injecting testosterone. He's marrying this woman, Lauren Sanchez, partying at St. Bart's, yachts, which, okay, like everyone- He gave $100 million to Vanjie. Right. He's giving $100 million to Vanjie and the Obama Foundation or whatever. It's like, dude, you are doing absolutely nothing. And the poll ethos is he just doesn't wanna pay any more taxes. It really is that simple. When you look at the Washington Post and their whole, what do they call it, free markets or free expression? It's bullshit. Look at what the stuff that they actually care about. And some of their more recent hires. It's like libertarians who are talking about why privatizing social security would have been a good thing. I'm not even joking. That's like one of the more recent hit columns that they've had over there. That's all it cares about. He just doesn't wanna pay any more taxes with some $224 billion. And it's a cynical move that they're adopting where they're saying they're trying to tie their taxation status to that of the bottom 50% of Americans, right? That's what this whole thing is actually about. And the notice he talks there about government control. You and I are not nimbies. We probably don't even disagree about that Airbnb thing. But look at the slide of hand where he's like, taxing me will do nothing more for you. And it's like, yeah, maybe under the current system, but that's not really what we're talking about, is it? Yeah, and it was just checking. It would cost about $200 billion to double every teacher's salary for a year. And he's worth way more than that. So we're 224 something, whatever the Amazon market cap is as of today. No, you're absolutely right in terms of teacher pay or salary. But part of the reason that this really makes me angry is that what they fund, by the way, he just moved to a state which wants to do what? Eliminate property tax. Oh, what? What was that? The thing that actually pays for the school? Oh, right. Oh, yeah. And by the way, how much did this house cost down there? Like $100 million? Some ridiculous, some of money. That's the whole scheme. They just don't want to pay anything. Because if you were to say, all right, Jeff, you don't have to pay any more income tax, we're just going to quadruple your private budget. Oh, we can't do that. We can't have any of that. And the reason, they're right that there's an increasing amount of the tax burden that has gone to the very richest by percentage. The reason for that over the last 40, 50 years is that all of the wealth and income are flowing to the very top. So they're the ones that have it. So it sucks that 3% or whatever of the revenue comes from the bottom half. But why it sucks is that we want the bottom half to have more wealth and income. Also, it is a sleight of hand in the sense of the bottom 50 making up three. Because what does it ignore? FICA, right? Everybody has to pay FICA, especially at the lower. In fact, FICA is in terms of the percent chunk, whenever you're bottom 50, it's pretty high. Right, because you stop paying after 160. Because of the cap. So of course, everybody ignores all of that one. So in terms of the cap, they're paying percent wise, and even dollar wise, like a much more meaningfully amount than let's say Amazon CEO or somebody else, whose W2 income might be, I don't know, 500, 600,000, not to even mention all the capital gains breaks that they get at the 15 and 20% for where they are. And I think that, look, it's all just so naked and disgustingly cynical when you pair it with this next clip of him just like fawning over Donald Trump. Let's take a listen. When I last interviewed you, yeah, it was about two years ago, President Trump had just won, he was not the president yet. And I had asked you what you thought of him at the time. And you said that you thought that he had mellow, that he was calmer. And I'm curious now, here we are. I still think that. Two years later, we've had lots of wars and tariffs and all sorts of things that have happened since then. What do you think? I think he has, I mean, I'm comparing him to his first term. And I think he is a more mature, more disciplined version of himself than he was in his first term. And so again, I've worked with all the presidents. I will work with all the presidents. And I hope to do that going forward if they'll have me. But we need our business leaders to provide input into the administration, regardless of who the president is. I'm not on the side. I'm on the side of America. And that is so important. Like, and that's where business leaders should be. It's just, I think we are, but we get perceived as being like partisan or whatever. Like I was helping Obama every chance I could. I was helping Biden every chance I could. I still call Obama for advice. He was a very smart guy. And by the way, people that are, Trump has lots of good ideas and he's done a lot of, he's been right about a lot of things. You have to give him credit where credit is due. First of all, he was closer to Obama because he didn't want to pay more tax. Are you guys seeing the, there's a through line here. A hundred million dollar to the Obama Foundation in 2018. What a bunch of money to Van Jones. What was it like the genius prize, the Bezos genius prize or something? It's just ridiculous. Yeah, exactly. It was used to produce Instagram shorts by why Hassan Beiger is a threat to the United States. And you need dialogue with the Beiger and then he uses the talk to him. It's so foolish, the whole thing. I don't know, Ryan, it's like you said, just the sheer mediocrity also of their thought process and then the nakedness of what it's all about. And he even said, I think we have this, that line about corporate welfare. Too much corporate welfare. Oh, that's C3. Okay, let's take a listen. We'll talk about it. We have way too much corporate welfare, way too much corporate subsidies. We have, there's way too much influence in politics from business, in some cases, wealthy people who really focus on that, unions. There's a bunch of people interfering in the political process. And if we can make that better, we should do that too. That would be another root cause. We go back and figure out what is happening there. There's too much corporate welfare. Too much government interference yet. Unions, what? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. What was that? Dang union. They're so, they're so naked. How many corporate subsidies does Amazon get? Yeah, but dude, here's the other thing too. They're so big that they actually don't, it's like Tesla, remember with the EV credits? They didn't want them anymore because they're so big that they don't want the thriving industry. So in the beginning, sure they were happy to take them, but I also was just thinking about this too. Whenever we talk about taxes and all this, like I'm on pro America and more recently, one of the reasons why a lot of these billionaires have taken an explicit, even more libertarian turn is because what they want more than anything is to replace their entire workforce with humanoid robots and with AI. That's it, that's literally the entire project because it will massively enrich them. And they won't organize. They don't, yeah, that's what, unions are a huge problem for them. But beyond even humans, human beings are a huge problem for Amazon. Like for real, like they do not want guys in blue vests driving all across America. They want drones and yeah, they either want drones or robots. And then in the factory, humanoid pickers are very inefficient because they have to go to the bathroom once in a while. And so they want all of it to be automated as much as humanly possible. They don't even like hide this stuff. They say it out loud. They celebrate firing people. Like they don't want more humans to actually work for them. And they want all of that wealth to accumulate into their pocket. That's why it's not an accident that he's sitting there in a space factory because for them, the earth is a play thing in and of itself. Going up to space with Katy Perry is like the top achievement of their life. It's no longer about what actually happens down here. And according to more Perfect Union over the years, Amazon has received about $15 billion in government subsidies. So maybe the deal for basis could be this, okay, you become a multi-decker or sent a billionaire. At that point, you got to pay back the billions that you got in subsidies. You're worth $225 billion. You got $15 billion in subsidies to help you get to becoming worth more than $200 billion. Give us the $15 billion back. There you go. And then we'll give it to teachers and we'll see if the teachers actually appreciate having more money or not. He thinks they won't. I think they will. Let's find out. Right. And yeah, I just wanted to give a little shout out there to all my friends in Florida who are still, you know, basically advocating for this boomer tax break of no property tax. This is who you're working for, okay? So this is the reality about what you're actually trying to give a break to. Are people who are only using your state as a tax address in South Beach and making it impossible for any, like any normal family or any of that who would ever, or even a young college spring breaker. I hope your dad has $5,000 because otherwise it's not happening for right now because of this, not that they will care because they'll be scammed by Ron DeSantis into thinking it's somehow a good thing for them. It also, let's pair this with this meta story, put this up here on the screen. Meta, as I was talking about human beings are very inconvenient for all of them. Meta lays off 8,000 employees as AI casualties mount. Employees have signed petitions against being tracked by AI and we're trying to figure out who had let them go on Wednesday as the Silicon Valley giant tries to transform into an AI first company. So they said 8,000 of them, 10% of the entire workforce will be laid off by May 20th as Meta remade itself in the AI era. They learned that 7,000 employees that got to stay will be reassigned Ryan to new AI initiatives. And it seems that the emails were automated and just kinda went out willy nilly. And all of the others were sitting there trying to update their internal software or whatever just to find out whether they've been canned or not. And so this new internal AI team, they're saying, it's so crazy, internally they're calling it a draft. So you get drafted, it's not up to you, to go into this AI unit, which is in charge of basically getting rid of all of the employees, the dystopian deal that they're making with the people who get drafted into this AI unit to execute all of their colleagues is that they will not be laid off. Of course, they doesn't mean permanently but they won't be the first to be laid off. Meanwhile, Zuckerberg told his employees that he's very lucky to have such high IQ people there so that he can train his AI on their brains before getting rid of them. Let's roll this leaked audio. I think it was more perfect union that got this again. Good credit credit to those guys, they're killing it. So let's listen to Zuckerberg talking to his employees or soon to be former employees. We're in a phase where basically the AI models learn from watching really smart people do things. And if you're trying to get it to be able to be able to do certain capabilities, having it be able to observe really smart people doing those things is very important. So there are a few examples of what we're trying to do this across the company because one basic insight and hypothesis that we have is that a lot of data generation across the field is done by these like contract companies. And Alex knows a bunch about this because he ran one before coming here. But in general, the average intelligence of the people who are at this company is significantly higher than the average set of people that you can get to do tasks if you're working through these contractors. So if we're trying to teach the models coding, for example, then having people internally build tools that or solve tasks that help teach the model how to code, we think is going to dramatically increase our models coding ability faster than what others in the industry have the capability to do who don't have thousands and thousands of extremely strong engineers at their company. All right. Meanwhile, there's an internal petition. Employees are circulating against this. What are you gonna do? This is who you work for now, you know? And I'm not saying I don't support any of that, but like guys, this is what you're trying to help. Like it's coming. He says it out loud. I'm gonna keep my best employees so the AI can learn from them. And then eventually, why do we even need you anymore? So if you stay there, that's basically what you're working for. I hope the interim dollars are worth it. Genuinely, I do because you're not, you're gonna need the money because I hope it continues to compound forever because you're not gonna have a job anymore. They said one person had been there for less than a month that got laid off. And then got 16 weeks of severance. So at least, okay. I mean, it's not horrible. Two weeks of work? Yeah. It paid anyway. Two weeks of work to get laid off. How long is 16 weeks? Four months almost. Four months. Okay. It's not horrible. It's not horrible at all. The problem though is that every other type of job that we're gonna get is also probably gonna be laid off and or. That person is not doing well. Learn to code. Actually, no. Crystal's is learn to nurse. Learn to nurse. There you go. There you go. This is an I Heart podcast.