4/10/26: Trump Trashes Tucker, Mearsheimer Calls For Trump Surrender, Slotkin Lashes Out, Melania Epstein

This is an I Heart Podcast. Guaranteed human. 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 Pooja Bhachon on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Come for the honesty, stay for the fire. 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, everyone. Happy Friday. How's everybody doing today? So far, so good. All right, well, let's keep it good. We've got a big show. We've got some war updates surrounding the ceasefire or non-ceasefire in Lebanon, and then we'll be joined by Professor John Mearsheimer to get his take on this next phase of the war. We've also got Melania Trump coming out and talking about Jeffrey Epstein. We're going to be analyzing, theorizing why she chose this moment to talk about Epstein. And then finally, we've got a lot of updates around APAC, Democrats, Alyssa Slotkin doing a town hall that got a little testy, and a little bit from our friends in the Free Press who did a little bit of a reporting on Dr. Abdul El Sayed and Hassan Piker in Michigan. I just can't go out. I'll call reporting. Crystal will call it something else. But first, let's get started with the latest crystal. We've got some new Trump truths here that I'll pull up on screen. Let's start with this first one here about the straight. Why don't you read this one out for us? So we've got Trump here. It's been, I mean, as per usual, sort of crashing out on true social. But anyway, he says, Iran is doing a very poor job dishonorable, some would say, of allowing oil to go through the straight of poor moves. That is not the agreement we have, President Donald J. Trump. This reminds me very much of when my son was three years old and he was playing UNO for the first time and he had his whole plan of like how he was gonna finish it out. And then someone screwed it up and he just completely crashed on and was like, that wasn't the plan. It was not the agreement we had. It was dishonorable. Same energy as my son when he was three years old. Anyway, the context here, of course, is that as part of the original sort of ceasefire understanding, the idea was Iran would allow some oil tankers through the straight. And Ryan, you can speak to whether there was an understanding of is a toll gonna be charged, is it not gonna be charged? It seems to me like those details were left sort of ambiguous. Iran certainly thought we're gonna keep charging this toll because of course we're going to. Meanwhile, what was very clear was the understanding from Iran and the US and the Pakistani government, which helped to facilitate this whole ceasefire so that these talks could occur, that Lebanon was included in this deal. Well, Israel wanting to continue their mass murder and ethnic cleansing in Lebanon and also wanting to undermine any potential deal, not only continued their invasion and bombardment in Lebanon, but they escalated it. So Iran understandably said that was not part of the deal. We've been very clear from the start that the Lebanon would be included. And so as a consequence, we are not opening the Strait of Hormuz. In fact, there was more traffic going through the straight prior to these talks than there is now. So that is the context here for Trump, yelling over true social and thinking that, berating the Iranians this time is going to effectuate some sort of an outcome rather than just being impotent as it has been the whole time. Again, my understanding is they allowed two Iraqi flagged ships to move through the straight in the immediate aftermath of the ceasefire, but then Israel carried out a series of massacres in Lebanon and they closed the straight again. But yes, to your point, they were always clear. Well, they were ambiguous, but clear that they were going to charge a toll for the straight. What they were saying is that they were going to set up a legal mechanism in coordination with Oman to allow passage of ships through the straight. Anybody with any sense, reading them is like, oh, so they're saying they're in control of it, they're probably going to put a toll on it as it's going through. Since they were doing that already and they haven't said that they would lift the toll, but it's open like a lot of other waterways, like the Suez Canal, it's open. We got to pay to get through. And they're like, that's how it's going to go for us. But yes, the Pakistan situation is just comical because the US asked Pakistan to be the mediators. The US helped Pakistan craft the document. The document explicitly includes Lebanon. And then according to the reporting that we have now, from CBS News, I think it is actually, that it was a call from Netanyahu to Trump, where Trump was like, okay, go ahead, you can do Lebanon. So that's what happened. That doesn't change the deal. Like they broke the deal. The deal, as Trump understood it, as Iran understood it, as it was explained publicly, included Lebanon. Well, let's look at this report. And as the tweet drafted by the Americans stated for the Pakistani Prime Minister, Lebanon is included, and Iran has always been very clear about that. And so, yeah, I mean, it's, look, it's yet another example of perplexing behavior from this president in particular of why are you going to potentially blow up? We have new reporting from the Financial Times this morning that Trump has been seeking a ceasefire for weeks at this point, been trying to back channel something to the Iranians. And the Iranians were very resistant. And in fact, even up to this point, that they were having trouble getting the IRGC on board with this, and that was part of the delay. And so they were finally able to kind of get the IRGC to go along with at least some sort of talks here. But in any case, Trump, you know, by letting Netanyahu continue to do whatever he wants to do in Lebanon, potentially from the jump, destroying his possibility of securing a deal. Now, I don't think that the possibilities are completely dead and gone. Obviously, there are diplomatic talks happening in Islamabad this weekend. We'll see what's coming out, come out of that, what will come out of that, but it makes it much more difficult to envision them coming to some sort of terms in the near term. And not, I almost get tired of this, but Jeremy's reporting being validated again. That reporting that you were referring to, whether saying that, you know, in March, they were desperately trying to reach out to get talks going to end this war. Jeremy reported in March 16th, you know, that Whitcoff was relentlessly texting him. Right, being left on red. Trying to get them back to the table, yeah, being left on red. And that had been going on for several days before Jeremy reported it. There were these furious denials, if you remember. Axios reported that, in fact, according to Israeli and American sources, it was the Iranians that were begging for the ceasefire and that it was actually Whitcoff that was not responding to them, because, you know, they were winning. Now, the reporting is crystal clear, that was a lie. The US was begging for the ceasefire, Iran was ignoring them. Again, knowable things for brain point viewers and drop site readers, but apparently not to anybody else. So Emily, I'd like your reaction to this latest Netanyahu clip here, where he talks about the ceasefire in Lebanon. I want to tell you, there is no ceasefire in Lebanon. We are continuing to strike Hezbollah with force and we will not stop until we restore your security. He said, there is no ceasefire in Lebanon. We will continue to strike Lebanon with maximum ferocity or somewhere like that. And he finishes, you know, until your security has been restored. Which is an interesting phrase is what, that he's speaking in Hebrew to the Israeli public, what security? Like, what is the year during which he would point back since 1948 and say, this is the security? Like there has been war and occupation every day since 1948. So like, it's even a fantasy that there's some restoration of security. But what he's saying is we're doing war. We're doing war, don't worry about it. Like we're not, yes, we hear Trump, we hear Iran, Islamabad talks, we're doing war. Well, it's actually sort of perfect that it was a Hebrew language message because the English messages are the ones should be more pro-Trump, obviously. And in this case, there was clearly disagreement then Trump was strong armed once again into accepting the Netanyahu line about what was going to happen during the ceasefire period. And I just think back to yesterday, overnight JD Vance was in Europe, he was in Hungary and he called it, well, this wasn't yesterday, it must have been Tuesday, he called the ceasefire fragile. Like it was first reaction basically we had from the administration because JD Vance was in Hungary and he referred to it as a fragile deal. And not only was it fragile, it was unclear. Like it was fragile because nobody actually knew, I can't think of a precedent for this. I was trying to think this morning when this ever happened in modern history where you have modern technology and we're not sending carrier pigeons back and forth to try to make deals. And I can't think of a precedent for this. Maybe some like Sager out there is going to send me an obscure nerdy example, but. Well, actually, curiously or interestingly, the agreement with Hamas played out in a similar way. Like if you read what Hamas agreed to and you read the phase one, phase two, et cetera, and then you look at the way that Israel and the United States later described it and tried to implement it, it's night and day. So this is actually. It's par for the course of the Trump administration. And also you can look at Oslo where they're like, we're not going to do settlements. And then immediately they're doing settlements. But the other difference. And they go, we didn't say we wouldn't do settlements. Really? That's what everybody understood. Oh, no, you're right. Well, in the difference here. It didn't actually say we were going to do settlements. It was kind of implied, but clearly you're going to just going to do them. The difference here, of course, versus the Hamas agreement is that Iran is vastly more powerful and has incredible leverage. I mean, I was talking to Murtaza yesterday, Ryan, and he was saying, you know, because we were speculating about, will Iran now race to nuclear weapon? What is the logic there? He's like, you know, in a sense, they've demonstrated they already have a nuclear weapon with their ability to close the Strait of Hormuz, which I thought was a fantastic point. I totally agree with that. Yeah. That is there. You know, we think of nuclear weapon as like, okay, that will be deterrence. That is their deterrence that they have now established. And that is a game changer in terms of how every other country has to react to them. And basically, if there was some military option for us to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, we would be doing it that didn't come at some catastrophic level of cost. And even at a catastrophic level of cost, it's not clear to me that you're going to be able to take it and be able to hold it. So that is, you know, a new reality that Iran has now established that they go into these negotiations with. And so, you know, you have a really a landscape where everything for Trump is a terrible, a terrible choice, which is why it's hard to predict exactly how this is going to go and what the timeline is. And I think we, I think just one, sorry, one final thought here, Emily. I think though that we are getting a glimpse of not when this war will come to a close, but what it will look like. Because we now have the outlines of the sorts of demands that Iran is able to make and able to command. So it's possible Trump decides he wants to go back and have some more pain and cause oil prices to go up and disrupt the global economy and cause a global depression and risk more American service members. That is certainly possible. The timeline is unclear. But in terms of the outlines of what our resolution is going to have to look like, I think we're starting to get clarity on what that is. And it involves a new status quo for the Strait of Hormuz. I was actually just going to add exactly on that point that right now reportedly Trump is saying this 900 pounds of a rich enriched uranium, which he referred to as like the nuclear dust. That's what he wants to put on the table. But the Iranians now have the Strait of Hormuz. And Trump wants that to be some type of joint venture. I mean, it is utterly unacceptable for Trump to end the war in a place where the Strait of Hormuz is not the status quo that it was before the war. And instead, you have the Iranians collecting tolls that allow them to rebuild their weapons supply, to race to a nuclear weapon, even if, I mean to your point, Crystal, to Maz's point, even if they say they're not going to do that, right now have you incentivized them, of course, to race some of them to want to demand quicker development of nuclear weapons capacity. And so none of the math, like the bartering math makes sense for Trump, none of it. But continuing the war also doesn't make sense for Trump. Right. Yeah, right. And that's the, you know, that's the bind that he got himself into by deciding to pursue this absolutely for the US catastrophic war. And speaking of bartering math, Mack, I wanted to throw this one to you. Apparently the White House has warned their aides about betting on this war. This is White House aides got an email last month telling them not to place bets on prediction markets, multiple sources told CBS News. Press reports had raised concerns about government officials using non-public info to place wagers on Kalshi and Polly markets at the email. The warning reminded staff that it's a criminal offense and is also prohibited by government ethics regulations. All White House employees are reminded the misuse of non-public information by government employees for financial benefit is a very serious offense and will not be tolerated. So Mack, do you have to shelve some of your bets, your insider info? Yeah, well first, Stolen Valley, Wall Street Journal had this first. Oh, sorry, we got it before CBS. We gotta throw it, we gotta give it up to big fill here. Yeah, anyway. Yeah, I mean, it's just, it's wild. Like the levels of just deep rot and corruption that have become baseline, especially when you're talking about like day trading on outcomes of war. This is something we saw not just with Iran. I'm like, oh, is the US gonna use ground troops? But we've seen this in Ukraine on like the specific lines on the territorial gains that Russia or Ukraine might make. Like it's a level of like disgust that I haven't felt in a long time. And these are not small wagers people are making. I'll see every couple of days an account has dropped like hundreds of thousands of dollars in bets on, whether or not we're gonna use ground troops or there'll be a ceasefire or Israel's gonna bomb Lebanon today or whatever else. So I don't know. I mean, it's wild, but this is sort of the new normal that I feel like the Trump administration has set up for us. 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 sub-CD hutchaker, reached the pinnacle, stung by the sneaker and I've fallen down again. 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. Have a podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. Come for the honesty, stay for the fire. Two of the negotiators, Wiccough and Kushner, are deeply invested, like directly invested, in the Middle East and stand a benefit from however, this war is concluded and what that all looks like. And they're just, that's just the norm. Kushner's not even part of the government technically, is he? Has he gotten like some special government employee? No, he's just like a private citizen, relative of Trump who has massive investments and has gotten already effectively bought off by the Saudis through their intervention into his fund. The amounts of money here, the level of corruption is just astonishing. So I mean, in a sense I look at this and they're sending this email out to like low level staffer to stop insider trading. So I guess only if you're at the very top, you get to do your... It's only Kushner who can do it. Your business deals in public and cash in on your position. So I mean, the rot is just so thorough throughout this entire administration, everything is a grift. It's also wild just looking at, like from an Iranian perspective, these are the guys who you were expected to negotiate before this war started. Like Steve Wiccough and Jared Kushner, these corrupt real estate guys who know nothing about like the particulars of nuclear enrichment or any of the other technical details of what Iran was conceding on in the days leading up to this war. Like these are the two clowns who also, as you pointed out, Crystal, have billions and billions of dollars collectively tied up in the Gulf countries and they're both deeply, you know, proud Zionists and tied in with Israel as well. Like the fact that we put these guys forward as some sort of serious negotiators is a joke. Well, Ryan, I did want to just tackle one last thing going on in terms of all the money, you know, money in the Middle East right now. There's an attack that Dropsite reported on on a Saudi Arabian pipeline. I don't know if you saw this, but let me throw this up on the screen here. Confirmed strike on Saudi Arabia's East West pipeline has knocked out 700,000 barrels per day, about 10% of its 7 million BPD maximum capacity hitting the kingdom's only bypass to the Strait of Hormuz. Yeah, what is your reaction to this and what is Saudi Arabia's reaction, Ben? Panic. I mean, they can, you know, you can fix a pipeline, but the East West pipeline is the vehicle that Saudi Arabia has been using to try to up its export capacity to make up for what can't get out through the Strait of Hormuz. And there's been, you know, there have been some oil analysts who have said, yeah, like, okay, this is bad in general for Saudi Arabian in a lot of ways, but they're getting so much more per barrel that despite the fact that they're exporting less, they're actually coming out okay. That was before a lot of their infrastructure got wrecked and also before the 700,000 barrels were taken off line. So it depends on how quickly they can get this back up and moving it also, you know, it also shows how kind of simple it is to sever these arteries. Ryan, I wanted to ask you, obviously, the last several diplomatic, alleged diplomatic efforts from the US resulted in us using that diplomacy as a ruse to start wars and attack Iran. Is it possible that that is the same game that's being played here as well, that it's another ruse to sort of distract them while some other operation unfolds because they have continued to rush more military assets to the region. Obviously, the Iranians are concerned about this. They had to have Pakistani fighter jets escort their diplomats to this meeting. That's how concerned they were about the possibility of either the US or Israel assassinating them when they're en route. So do you think that that's a possibility here that needs to be contemplated as well? Yes, and what's new is that it is being very explicitly an out front contemplated by the Iranians. Like according to Jeremy's reporting, that is their running assumption. Like their baseline assumption is that this is a ruse and that they should not and cannot trust it, but that because they mentioned the 10 point plan that they proposed as the basis for negotiations, they're willing to go through the motions. And that if it turns out that the US is serious, they're willing to reach a permanent deal. But their assumption is that it's a scam, it's a setup. They're gonna try to kill the negotiators, kill the leadership and then relaunch a war. And I think some elements of the Iranian leadership kind of hope that's wrong. I think other elements of it hope that that's correct because there's a significant faction within the IRGC, it appears that wants this to continue because they think they haven't quite extracted enough pain to make this something that the West doesn't wanna do again for decades. And I think Israel continuing to bomb Lebanon is kind of fortifying their position. Yeah. So like, look, obviously we didn't deter them from war in the future because we didn't even deter them from doing war on Wednesday. And that will impact also what the negotiators, the Iranian negotiators are able to agree to because they know they have to be able to justify it, not just to the IRGC, but to a population that is going to have a much more sort of hard line logic at this point as well, since they've been able to achieve more with, through over warfare, aggressive warfare, than they ever were able to achieve through attempts at diplomatic negotiations. And that's just the sad reality. Yeah. And to that same point, we had multiple Trump true social statements over the last couple of days that were keeping troops in the region. He's literally said they're restocking, they're resupplying. So, if they are gonna start this back up again, it could be under that same sort of pretense that we've seen before. I'm also curious, Ryan, maybe you have some insight in terms of from Iran's perspective, like what would have been the incentive for them to enter into these conversations or to continue them right now? Cause the first true social that we got from Donald Trump said the 10 point plan that we received from Iran is going to be the basis for negotiations moving forward. Then the next day, we had Caroline Levitt come out and say, no, no, no, that plan was a complete joke. We threw it in the trash. So like, if you're Iran, are you viewing that as, okay, this is maybe just Trump posturing. This is bluster. He wants to just look like he's succeeding and we know what we're actually negotiating behind the scenes or like, why even entertain these negotiations if the Trump administration is saying, no, no, no, the thing would be based the entirety of this plan on, we actually threw in the trash. Yeah, what Jeremy Sores was telling him was that it was his mentioning of the 10 point plan that got them to agree to it. And that they understand, as you said, that everything after that is just flailing because they also recognize that this is the most powerful country, maybe in the history of the world, negotiating its defeat against a modest power. And that's going to require all sorts of gymnastics to kind of cover up the obvious humiliation of it. And so they're smart cats, like they understand that. They know that there's gonna be contortions between now and, because like Trump's contortions are gonna be more kind of ridiculous than anybody else's. But think about it, like you just can't message that white is black or black is white without looking ridiculous. And so it's gonna be a challenge. Ryan saying smart cats as Crystal's cat. Sailor makes an appearance. Dramatic entrance. Emily, we are about to get to Professor. Zimba Iran and all these Chinese videos too. Maybe an appearance in the next Lego video from Salem. But Emily, we have one last truth to get to before Professor John Mearsheimer here. I of course, I'm speaking about Trump calling out Tucker, Megyn Kelly and Alex Jones. This is, I'm sure, yeah, the whole crew. This is way too long to read. So I'll just read a sentence or two here, but it says, I know why Tucker Carlson, Megyn Kelly, Candace Owens and Alex Jones have all been fighting me for years, especially by the fact, for years, especially by the fact that they think it's wonderful for Iran, the number one state sponsor parent, have a nuclear weapon, because they have one thing in common, low IQs. They're stupid people. They know it, their families know it, and everyone else knows it too. Look at their past, look at their record. They don't have what it takes and they never did. They've all been thrown off my television, lost their shows and aren't even invited on TV because nobody cares about them. They're nutjobs, troublemakers, and will say anything necessary for some free and cheap publicity, your reaction in. It's so funny. You missed the funniest part of it, which is that he corrects Candace Owens on Brigitte Macron, not only being a woman, but being a very beautiful woman. More beautiful, a more beautiful woman than Candace. Then Candace, full Trump, Trump full woke on this one. It's also so funny that his standard for what counts as legitimacy is always television. Whether you are invited on television, just fantastic. I do think on a serious note, it should remind us that those are the obstacles, people who break with the administration over this ridiculous war find themselves up against. And I mean, it's easy to laugh at it because this is exactly what you would expect from Donald Trump, but it's not just Trump. I'm sure it's Trump allies. I know it's Trump allies who privately, publicly, will try to shame anybody who breaks with them on this ridiculous war, because they're insecure about it. They know it's unpopular, and the remixes have been absolute fire if you haven't heard of them. Tell me everything I need to know right there. Stupid people, families know it. I don't care. Throw it on on on television. Love, love, they shows. Well, Ryan's head's on it. We also got word that Tim Poole is still on the good list though. He apparently got a call from Trump before Trump posted this truth to tell him what a good front he is. But did you see what Tim Poole said afterwards? No, what did he say? He's trolling, he's trolling though. Who, Tim Poole? Yeah, he's trying to farm engagement, so he's like pretending to be critical of Trump right now. Yeah, oh, he's not though. You can't trust his Twitter feed. All he has left is Tim Poole who you cannot trust to do anything other than just entertainment. And Mark Levin. Well, oh, I said this is trolling. Where he says that does it, I am done. This was the last straw, I'm so angry. Because it's crass and scenic and he's responding to. Yeah, he does this all the time, yeah. So Emily, like literally though, other than Tim Poole, who, like serious question, who does Trump have left? Fox News. Shapiro. So he's Fox and Shapiro. Shapiro. Who's New Max, right? Fox News, I'm sure News Max has been pretty supportive of it. But yeah, that's the thing. So Shapiro and Daily Wire. What, Walsh? Walsh is out. No, yeah, Walsh is out. He's arguing with his Daily Wire homies. And then Shapiro is apparently bleeding tens of thousands of subscribers from Fox News. And what purchases Fox News have left? It's Trump and Trump. With the boomers? It's huge. Yeah. Still huge. So Trump and the boomers are now 75 plus. But I mean, look, Gen X is actually the most pro-Trump generation. Generation led boys. Unfortunately for him, we don't have much power or we don't have any numbers either. Nobody cares. That's the worst sign for him yet. This is the last generation that's useful to you politically. Is Professor John Meersheimer, is he Gen X or Boomer? He's a Boomer. Well, then we'll see. Well, let's, why don't we bring him in right now and we'll see where he lands with all this stuff. Crystal, why don't you introduce the professor here when I bring him in? 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 in the biggest sound to have great music. I have gone through this sub-CD, Hachakar. Reach the pinnacle, stung by the sneaker, 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. We are very fortunate to be joined this morning by Professor John Meersheimer of the University of Chicago. Great to see you again, sir. Glad to be here. So just off the top, what is your expectations for what might come out of these diplomatic meetings in Islamabad this weekend? Well, I mean, it's important to realize that all we're trying to do at this point is get the ceasefire in place. And once that happens, then we'll have the serious negotiations. And the mere fact that we're having so much trouble getting the ceasefire in place makes one wonder where the negotiations are gonna lead, even if they're gonna get started. It seems clear to me that the Iranians will not engage in serious negotiations regarding the ceasefire. They may talk, but they're not gonna engage in serious negotiations regarding the ceasefire until Iran, excuse me, until Israel stops striking at Hezbollah. It's just that simple. And Israel has, or at least it thinks it has, a vested interest in continuing to target Hezbollah, all for the purposes of undermining the ceasefire. And in turn, undermining negotiations. So I think the $64,000 question is whether the United States, which is desperate to end this war, will be so desperate that it will be willing to lean on Netanyahu in a really big way and get him to stop attacking Hezbollah in Lebanon. But until that happens, this is going nowhere. Now, if the opposite happens, and Netanyahu insists on continuing to attack Hezbollah, and it brings the United States back into war, what are the consequences of that for the US-Israel relationship? And as somebody who's studied the Israel lobby longer than, probably most of us have even been alive, like what would the, what would a breakup between the American people, the American public, and the idea of supporting Israel due to the US-Israel relationship? What is that? Does that matter at all? Sure. I mean, huge damage has already been done because it's very clear. In fact, it becomes clearer by the day that the Israelis bamboozled us into this war, that they led Trump to decide to attack on February 28th. And it's clearly a failed war. I mean, this was a catastrophic blunder on our part. And the Israelis are responsible for that. So what Trump is now trying to do is shut the war down. And what are the Israelis doing? The Israelis are doing everything they can to prevent us from shutting the war down and to make it go on. This is gonna do further damage to Israel's reputation in the United States. And the problem that the Israelis face is that we have this alternative media sphere now. And of course, your show is a perfect example of that, where people talk about what Israel is up to and what the US-Israeli relationship has resulted in. And so forth and so on in ways that do enormous damage to Israel and the US-Israeli relationship because people get to see the basic facts. That didn't used to be the case before we had this alternative media sphere. So this is doing enormous damage to Israel's reputation in the United States. It's making the lobby's job in the United States much more difficult than it ever was. As I like to say, when Steve and I wrote the original article on the lobby in 2006, and then we wrote the book in 2007, I don't think either one of us ever imagined that we would be at the point we are now at today. The lobby has been so badly wounded. The US-Israeli relationship is really in tatters, at least in the public mind. And I think moving forward, the situation only gets worse because Israel will behave in crazier and crazier ways, and more and more Americans will realize that. And they'll be well aware of what this escapade in Iran has led to. I'm curious, sorry Emily. I'm curious what you make of the landscape of leverage going into these talks that the US administration has. Trump obviously claiming that Iran has been completely decimated, defeated, they have no military, et cetera. Iran in the meantime still retains the capacity to strike at Israel, US assets in the region, controlling the Strait of Hormuz. Who do you think has more leverage going into this? Where do you see these talks potentially going in terms of any sort of framework for a possible deal? Yeah, that is an enormously important question that you just asked. And my view has long been that Iran has a vested interest in prolonging the war, or to put it in different terms, prolonging the closing of the Strait. The fact is that what is happening here is that the situation in the international economy is getting worse and worse by the day. And as almost everybody knows, if you project out two or three months where the Strait remains closed, the damage to the world economy will be enormous. This means that the longer the Strait is closed, the more leverage the Iranians have over Donald Trump. Trump, on the other hand, has a profound interest in ending this war as quickly as possible to make sure that the damage is limited. And just to go back to what happened on Monday with Trump's two tweets, the one in the morning where he threatened to wipe Iran off the face of the earth and make it so that Iran could never come back from the dead. I mean, this is a genocidal threat of the first order. As almost everybody knows, the idea that an American president was making a threat of that sort would have been unthinkable before the morning of April 6th. But anyway, that shows his desperation. Then what happens is at the end of the day, at the end of the working day, he issues another tweet and he says that we're gonna not attack and we're gonna start negotiations and there's gonna be a ceasefire. And what's truly remarkable about the second tweet that night is he says that we accept the Iranians 10-point plan. You remember, there are two plans on the table. One is the American plan, which is the 15-point plan. And that has all the maximalist demands of the United States and Israel. And then there's the 10-point plan, which is the Iranian plan, which has their demands, which are maximalist Iranian demands. And he says that it is the 10-point plan. He says in the tweet that evening is a workable basis for negotiation, not the 15-point plan, the 10-point plan. This is remarkable. And then he says furthermore in the tweet that almost all of the points of contention between the two sides have been worked out. If you think about what he said that morning, that's desperation. And then if you think about what he said that evening, the concessions that he's willing to make are really quite remarkable. And what's going on here is that behind closed doors, they're in deep panic mode. They understand full well that the international economy might go off a cliff if they don't shut this one down immediately and then begin to repair the damage and do everything possible to return to something approximating the status quo ante. They understand this. So we're desperate. But of course, if you flip back to the other side, the Iranians, this all tells you the Iranians are in the driver's seat and they have a vested interest in prolonging this. So if I were playing Iran's hand, I might sit down today in Islamabad, but I would say, listen, folks, we're not getting a ceasefire until Israel stops pounding Hezbollah. And it's up to you, the United States, to decide whether or not you wanna take the international economy off a cliff or whether you wanna appease Prime Minister Netanyahu. It's your choice. Or whether you want to do ground troops because that's really the only other option. That's what I was gonna ask professor is Donald Trump now talking about the nuclear dust, as he calls it, the hundreds of pounds of enriched uranium. And the Iranians have, as we were just discussing, leverage in the form of the Strait of Hormuz. So for Israel, as they pressure Trump over the negotiations, Iranians are reportedly considering whether to even show up as the Lebanon bombing continues. But let's say that happens, they do show up. What on earth would an off ramp for Trump look like that also would involve getting Netanyahu on board with it? That doesn't involve either going back to war with ground troops or Iran operating a toll system in the Strait of Hormuz and dealing with the enriched uranium, a quote, nuclear dust that he's talking about. I mean, it just, I can't conceive of what that might look like. And I think this is what you're speaking to. But if they try to push on the hundreds of pounds of enriched uranium, what leverage exists possibly for them to barter? Well, first of all, they have no leverage. We have no leverage. You raise the possibility of ground troops. We have 7,000 combat troops in the region. There's all this talk about 50,000 troops in the region. Almost all those troops are not combat troops. And you can't go to war on the ground against Iran with anything but combat troops. You've got 7,000 combat troops, 5,000 of them are on giant ships that can't get close to the coast of Iran. How are you going to offload those troops? And the 2,000 paratroopers in the 82nd Airborne up against a million man army. This is not a serious option. There is no ground option. I mean, you want to think about where we are militarily in this situation. First of all, we have 13 bases, 13 major bases in the region. According to the New York Times, all 13 of those bases are either destroyed or badly damaged. We have a huge naval armada in the region. That naval armada cannot get close to the coast of Iran, much less the strait of Hormuz. So it's parked way out in the ocean, far away from Iran. Then there's the Air Force. In this rescue mission that just took place where they got the second pilot, we lost more aircraft that day than we have lost in any single day since the Vietnam War. This was just to rescue one down the pilot. We lost more aircraft that one day than we have lost any day since the Vietnam War. Then there's the whole business of our missile inventory. We're running out of defensive missiles. We're running out of high-end munitions. We have interests all around the world, especially in East Asia. We're using up this rather small inventory of boutique weapons that we have. Where does that leave us? Then there's the question of our allies. We can't protect our allies. In fact, we've turned our allies, these are the GCC states, the Gulf states, into giant magnets for Iranian drones and Iranian ballistic missiles. Our military performance here has been abysmal. The idea that we have a military option. So this gets to your question. What's the off-ramp here? There's only one off-ramp here, and that's surrender. And what the actual terms of the surrender are have to be worked out. But this is what President Trump said in his tweet on Monday night. He said, we accept the 10-point plan as a workable basis. Go read the 10-point plan. It's all the maximalist demands. Furthermore, with regard to Netanyahu, Netanyahu doesn't want to let the ceasefire come into place. And he certainly doesn't want to see an end to the war, because this will be a catastrophic defeat for Israel. As big a defeat as it will be for Donald Trump. He will be a far worse defeat for Israel, and especially for Prime Minister Netanyahu. So he's working overtime to undermine the ceasefire and prevent negotiations. And the $64,000 question is whether or not Trump is willing to lean on Netanyahu to get a ceasefire. And then he's going to have to lean on Netanyahu, and he's going to have to work against the lobby to negotiate a settlement. You want to remember, look at all the trouble we're having getting a ceasefire. You can imagine how much difficulty Trump is going to have trying to negotiate a settlement that reflects the fact that we lost this war. But that's where we are. 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 sub-city hutchhucker, reached the pinnacle, stung by the sneer, I've fallen down again. 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. I wanted to add one point real quickly to your observation about the dwindling ballistic missile interceptors. I had a piece yesterday with my colleague, Marta Zouzain, over at Dropsite yesterday. Oh, there it is. Griffin or whoever pulled that up. Can you scroll down a little bit? Because there's a really interesting line in here that is relevant to the US-Israeli relationship. So right there, right there. So the White House referred questions. So what we reported is that they are, according to a Trump administration official, the Israelis are down to double digit ballistic missile interceptors and are now relying almost exclusively on the Navy, US Navy, to prevent ballistic missile attacks and are letting a lot more strikes go through just because they have to. But the White House referred questions about the dwindling stockpile to the Israeli military, quote, refer you to the IDF, said a White House spokesperson. Now, so I went to the IDF and they said, we're looking into it and they kept for hours, we're looking into it, we're looking at it, like they were gonna go count them and come back to me and give me a number. They eventually didn't have a fulsome comment if they provide one, we'll add it to the article. But I thought that was such an interesting dynamic to go to the White House and say, we're told by an official at the White House that the Israelis are almost out of ballistic missile interceptors and they say, go ask the IDF about that. I don't know what to say. It is just kinda hard to believe. But you know, just a couple points, Ryan, and you know this issue better than I do. But the Israelis say in their press that 80% of the ballistic missiles coming from Iran are getting through. This is truly remarkable. 80% of the missiles are getting through and they are running out of defensive missiles. And this is hardly surprising if we go back to last year, you remember the 12 day war. That war ended in good part because Netanyahu asked Trump to stop it because the Israelis there were running out of defensive missiles. And this war has gone on well beyond 12 days and it's hardly surprising that they're running out of defensive missiles. And by the way, we are as well. And to make matters worse, we have pulled THAAD missiles and Patriot missiles, as you well know, out of East Asia. In fact, that Marine Expeditionary Unit, the first one to arrive in the Gulf, came out of Japan. What this means is that the United States, which has been trying to pivot to Asia to contain China, as a result of this war is pivoting away from Asia. Just think about that. We are pivoting away from Asia. Think about what that means for our allies. Furthermore, just think about Trump's behavior. You know, since this war started on February 28th, I guess one could argue his behavior even before the war started. But what is this signal to our allies in East Asia? If you're Taiwan, if you're South Korea, if you're Japan, can you depend on the United States anymore? I mean, it's not only the fact that they're pivoting away, it's just the basic judgment of the Trump administration. This looks like the gang that can't shoot straight. And that's not overstating the case. In fact, if anything, it's understating the case. It's just truly remarkable how incompetent these people are. And just to go back to Monday, here we are, Monday morning, you know, threatening genocide against Iran. And then at the end of the day, doing a 180 degree turn and basically saying, we'll accept most of Iran's demands. Just, it's remarkable where we are. Well, let's talk about the Asian allies for a second. I wanted to throw up from our other host who couldn't be here, Sagar, who had some thoughts on this. He says, meanwhile, actually important US allies, Japan and Australia, worn of a security vacuum in the Indo-Pacific after the Iran War. And then more, South Korea is dispatching a special envoy to Iran immediately to negotiate passage through Hermuse, direct bilateral negotiations outside of US channels, equals more breakdown in the US as a guarantor of the Allied order. What is your reaction to that? And then more specifically to the Taiwan question, does this sort of put the Taiwan question to bed? And are we going to see movement from China and Taiwan into some sort of reunification process as an outcome of this war? Well, just start with South Korea. I was on South Korean public television the other day and I spent a lot of time sort of preparing myself for that conversation. And if you look at the South Korean situation, in a very important way, the fact that we're pivoting away from East Asia matters less than the economic damage that is being done and might be done to South Korea if this war is not shut down. It's very clear that South Korea is being hurt badly by this war. A huge amount of its imported oil, which it's heavily dependent on, doesn't have oil of its own, comes through the Gulf. And they're in desperate straits and the agricultural consequences of this just not to be underestimated. So countries like South Korea and other countries in East Asia, India is another example, Indonesia is another example, Philippines is another example. These are countries that feel like they're close to the precipice, not militarily, economically. And something has to be done to end this war. And again, this in part, maybe in good part, explains why President Trump is in deep panic mode because he understands this as well because he's certainly hearing from these countries. So let's just put aside the whole business of pivoting away from East Asia. The economic consequences of this are being felt in East Asia in a really profound way. And that's what explains the South Koreans talking to the Iranians about getting permission to send ships headed for South Korea through the strait. Then there's the military dimension. And this brings in places like Taiwan as well as South Korea and Japan. First of all, if you're South Korean and Japan, how do you think about getting nuclear weapons at this point in time? Isn't the main lesson of this whole war that you better have a nuclear deterrent of your own whether you were Iran, South Korea or Japan? Certainly seems that way. Or at least a straight up Hormuz deterrent. Yeah, yeah. A waterway deterrent. Well, and I wanted to ask you, so you said earlier that effectively the only off ramp for Trump is surrender. And I agree with that. I don't see any other option. And so whether it's now or a month from now or two months from now or a year from now, we are very likely to end up with something like the Iranian 10 points becoming a new reality, including a new status quo with regard to the straight of Hormuz. How does that change the world? How does that change the US is standing in the world? How does that change the Israeli standing in the world? China, like what does the world look like if we end up with Iran as this now emerging fourth power, tremendously, frankly wealthy from the tolls they'll be able to charge. And having demonstrated this incredible deterrent ability through their control of the straight of Hormuz. And I toss in Russia as well, Professor. Well, the Russians have obviously benefited enormously from this, at least in terms of the war in Ukraine. I mean, the amount of weaponry that we can give to Ukraine is gonna be much less as a risk of this war. And furthermore, Putin has benefited in the short term economically. I would say that I think from China's point of view and from Russia's point of view, the short term effects of this war are all positive for sure. But neither one of those countries has any interest whatsoever in seeing the international economy go off a cliff. And I believe that this is the principal reason that Chinese have been putting pressure on the Iranians to go to Islamabad and try to negotiate a settlement to this war. The Chinese do not want this war to go on and on, nor do the Russians, because it could crash the international economy. We could have a worldwide depression that looks worse than what happened in the 1920s. That's what we're talking about here. So I think in the short term, this is good for the Russians, good for the Chinese, but they understand in the long term, that's not the case. Now, what was your question, Crystal? I was asking about if we have a final settlement along the lines of the Iranian 10 points, including a new status quo in the straight up promos, how does that change the world? Well, let me just say one thing. You do not want to talk about Iran as if it's going to emerge as a new great power from this conflict. We did enormous damage to the Iranian economy before February 28th, and we have done enormous damage to Iran, to its infrastructure, since February 28th, and it's going to take them many, many years and many billions of dollars to begin to recover. So this is a country that is in many ways in terrible shape. They have two great levers, though, that give them huge influence in the region and in the world. One is they control the straight up promos, and number two, they have a huge inventory of ballistic missiles, both short range and long range. They have a huge inventory of cruise missiles and an even bigger inventory of drones, and they can use those weapons very effectively. So there's no question that the Iranians are going to come out of this war having more leverage over politics in the region and around the world once the conflict ends, but it's very difficult to say at this point in time how the war will finally end. In other words, if you look at the 10 point plan and you look at the 10 demands that the Iranians have made, how many of those are the Americans going to accept? For example, the Iranians demand that the United States leave the region, that we get out of the region with our military forces. Are we going to do that? If we don't do that, how do we think about those 13 bases? Do we go back to those 13 bases and rebuild them? Will the Gulf States that hosted those bases allow us to do that? These are all open questions, and they have huge consequences for what the architecture, the security architecture in the region looks like. So I think one thing that is clear is that Iran will be more powerful for sure after February 28th than it was before. I think it's also clear that relations between the GCC countries and the United States will never be the same, and we will not have a close alliance with them in the future the way we have had in the past. And I think as far as Israel is concerned, this is just another major defeat for Israel. One of the most interesting aspects of how the mainstream media reports Israel's actions in these various wars is that they're always portrayed as great victories. Israel is always seen as doing very well. Their situation is seen to be constantly improving and so forth and so on. They're remaking the Middle East. I think this is fundamentally wrong. First of all, with regard to Hezbollah, they have not defeated Hezbollah. Hezbollah has beaten them up badly in southern Lebanon. They were talking about going all the way up to the Lattani River and controlling all of southern Lebanon up to the Lattani River. This is the Israelis. But the IDF has had a devil of a time fighting with Hezbollah, and Hezbollah has actually been winning, and the Israelis have retreated to a narrow buffer zone on the northern border of Israel. And in terms of the bombing, they can bomb Beirut, they can bomb Tehran, but it doesn't ever lead to anything positive. And I believe the principal reason that the Israelis are interested in negotiations now with the Lebanese government is they want the Lebanese government to disarm Hezbollah because they can't, the Israelis can't disarm Hezbollah. So in terms of the war against Hezbollah, they have not won against Iran. This is a colossal defeat for Israel with regard to Gaza. They have not defeated Hamas. Hamas still is there. It is still fighting with regard to the Houthis. They're still there and they'll grow more powerful over time with regard to Iranian nuclear weapons or Iranian nuclear enrichment capability. That, you know, that's all still on the table. So the Israelis are in deep trouble. And furthermore, they've poisoned their relationship with the United States. Where this all ends up, as we were talking about at the beginning of the show, is hard to say. But there's no question that there has been a significant deterioration in U.S.-Israeli relations. So I think that the idea that Israel is gonna come out of this as the dominant force in the region is simply wrong. Israel has been badly damaged and it has no real strategy available for fixing the situation. So I don't know the specifics of how this plays itself out because I don't know what the end of the negotiation process will look like. But I think there's no question that our influence in the region is gonna go down. Israel's influence is gonna go down and Iran's is gonna go up. But again, I don't think you wanna overestimate the position that Iran has in simply because of the huge amount of damage that we've done to that country. Well, professor, this has been illuminating and I did just wanna flag on your way out that the president in a recent truth seems to agree with you, a recent truth posted this morning, world's most powerful reset, president DJ T. So it seems like he agrees with you, professor. I don't know whether I should be happy about that or not. Sign of the times, I guess. Yeah, sign of the times. Well, thank you so much professor for joining us. Any final words before you leave? No, I just hope we get a ceasefire and then I hope they reach a quick conclusion to the negotiations so we can put this war behind us. I mean, when I think about all the damage that's being done around the world. Also, it would be really wonderful if somehow we could lean on the Israelis to stop running around the Middle East murdering people. It's truly amazing, the number of people that the Israelis often in cahoots with us end up destroying huge chunks of countries like Lebanon and Iran and killing huge numbers of people. It would be really wonderful if we could put an end to all this and create some sort of peace in the Middle East for the foreseeable future. All right, well, on that note, thank you so much, professor. I'm sure that we will be asking for more from you very soon. And until then, enjoy the rest of your weekend, thank you. You too, as well. And thank you very much for having me on the show. It's always our pleasure. Thanks, professor. 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 in the biggest sound to have great music. I have gone through this sub-CD, Hachakar. The reach, the pinnacle, stung by the sneaker, 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. All right, welcome to the liberated second half of the Friday show that Ryan liberated. He stormed the steel and has... Set free the second half of the Friday show. Mm-hmm, that's right. So everyone... Nogger sounded so... Ryan posted this clip. Also on Instagram, Ryan, which was impressive, but... Julian told me how to do that. Oh, good, okay. Nogger sounded like gridded teeth. He was announcing this through gridded teeth. Enjoy your Friday joke. Ryan runs this place now. Someone's gotta make decisions around here. And you see, Nogger, if you wanna make decisions on the Friday show, you're welcome to join anytime until then. You got the blank, yeah. I just like how I hadn't even been read in on that this was a possibility before Ryan just announced it on you guys' show. I didn't know this was a flower. It was floated on one of our production calls as a hypothetical and I was like, oh, Ryan already said that this morning, so it's happening. It's done. He's learned, he is like Benjamin Netanyahu. He has learned a dangerous lesson about how to negotiate with Chris on the ground. I think it's a truth, yeah. You just create facts on the ground and then it is. It is what it is. But anyway, we're grateful to be able to, glad to be able to share the entire Friday show with the whole world. So, very good. Absolutely. And on that note, why don't we get to a little bit of Crystal's best friend, Alyssa Slotkin, who has been doing town halls, potentially gearing up for a 2028 run. And there has been a tense town hall between a few people and Alyssa. And I'm gonna play both of these videos back to back to get the full experience and then Crystal's reaction. So why don't we start with the first one here? Going back to what was said over here, you have not taken money from APAC, but pro-Israel lobbies and their donors have spent $4.5 million on your campaigns. But I do have a question unrelated to that. I just wanted to add that. So I'm curious why left-leaning media, why I guess mainstream media and establishment Democrats are spending energy attacking influencers like Hassan Piker, as has been in the news lately, and why the Democratic establishment is just immune to criticizing democratic leadership like Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer, who are some of the main drivers in the reason that the Democratic party is at its lowest approval rating in the mainstream industry? Well, a couple of things. First is to correct the record. I'm not sure what you're referring to on not APAC, but the Israel lobby. If you're equating Israel lobby to Jews, I got a problem with that. And that just like you wouldn't say, the Iranians, whatever happens, the Iranian government does is what Iranian Americans believe. I think it's really important, especially now, to make a distinction between the Israeli government and the choices that they're making and the average Jew. Okay, and you're the only one claiming there's not a distinction in that back and forth. Yes. So that's the first one. And now I'd like to present the follow-up. This was a second questioner that came right after that gentleman there. Let's take a listen. There was no indication that he was conflating those two. No, not at all. Quite the opposite. So first off, I wanted to say, I found your response to the gentleman in front of me, offensively bad faith to conflate support for Israel while they are committing genocide and while they just had a terror attack on Lebanon yesterday, killing almost 300 people. They conflate that with the Jewish identity. That is what anti-Semitism looks like. But my question is, I am so tired of the Democratic Party villainizing the left, villainizing progressives. And we've seen it here where they've tried to push away progressive voices. How can we empower those progressive voices? If you said you want to be a big tent, but right now, you're not growing the tent. You're moving the tent away from its base. Okay, let's start. I'll go round or maybe I'll start with you and come back. So what I take issue with is someone saying that I took $4.5 million from the pro-Israel lobby that's not APAC. I don't know what that is, but if that's counting Jewish donors and saying Jewish donors are somehow the same as pro-Israel lobby, I got a problem with that. And not just as an elected official, as a Jew. So I have no problem standing by that statement. In terms of the progressive wing of the party, look, I don't think there's anyone shoving anyone. Look at the election like in New York City. Wow. I mean, all I can say is good luck with your 2028 round lady. Like if you're already this fragile and lashing out like that at very basic and obvious questions where the democratic base at this point is overwhelmingly anti-Israel, anti-APAC, they are going to be asking you about where you stand on these issues repeatedly. And if all you can do is immediately reach for insinuating that they're anti-Semites for even asking about it. Like this is just, this is not gonna work. This is not gonna work for you whatsoever. And in the most like theatrical sanctimonious way that doesn't even give off like ounce of authenticity or sincerity, that like it's just going to the old talking points without ever appearing to have engaged in the recent discussion. You would think after her breaking points appearance, the senator would have tried to like really understand in good faith where people were coming from on this. And it honestly from that exchange, looks like she's not familiar with the discourse and has just reflexively retreated to the old talking points. No, I think she's familiar with the discourse. I mean, what's interesting to me is when she asked, she wanted to come on breaking points, right? She reached out to us, we're like, great, let's have you on. And we had that whole exchange. My impression in that exchange is she had realized that her lockstep pro-Israel stance was now anathema to the base. And she was trying to workshop some sort of a middle ground thing. And effectively there is no way to either you are, supporting arms to a country that's committing a genocide or you're not, there's really not a middle ground that you can sort of carve out there. And so what I get from it, Ryan, is that she's sort of realized that and has decided, well, I'm gonna be more hard line pro-Zionist. And I don't know how these 2028 contenders are so incredibly delusional to think that there's a lane for that that exists within the democratic base. But there's just not, if you look at the numbers. And one other thing to add to this is there was a resolution being put forward at the DNC to go directly, go after APAC and condemn APAC and say, we shouldn't take APAC money. And that got shut down. And reportedly there were two 2028 contenders who intervened to make sure that that resolution was ultimately spiked. And as I went through the list of like, who could it be? It is shocking to me how many, it's basically like almost any of them with the, except for like, Rokana and AOC, that would be potential suspects for getting involved to spike the anti-APAC resolution at the DNC. So this figure seems to be coming from track APAC. And I've been going back and forth a bunch with track APAC about their methodology because now that they're becoming, it's a significant part of the conversation. I've been telling them, like you need to tighten up and be clear about what you're saying here. And they're telling me that they're actually doing that, they're working on that. And so they delineated some of the money here. So she's 21, 22, 14,000. Now California Jewish Democrats, this they got dunked on, because like this is her exact point and $250. Is that a typo? But California Jewish Democrats, isn't this her point that you're flagging Jewish Democrats and calling them APAC? Turns out no, this organization used to be called something like California Jewish Democrats for APAC or for Israel and just dropped the name, but they should be clear about this, knowing that they're under fire here. DMFI, 4K, joint action committees. So J Street, 280,000. Pro-Israel America is kind of to the right of APAC and NACPAC, I think they're kind of a little bit more to the right of APAC. But that's only a few hundred thousand here. To get to the four million, you need this one down here, lobby donors, four million. So that's a key question. What do they mean by lobby donors? My understanding is they mean people who have donated to J Street or APAC, which will include a lot of evangelical Christians, but can also slot into slot cons argument. So like is it, if it's true that you're saying anybody who donated to J Street at any point is then forever going to be considered Israel lobby, like you gotta be clear about that and let people decide whether or not they wanna factor that in. That's my view. Yeah, well in fairness though, I mean, Ryan, you can tell me if I'm wrong about this, but one of the strategies that APAC has been using since they recognize they're so toxic now in Democratic primary races in particular is rather than having people donate through APAC, they have people donate separately individually who are known APAC donors. So I mean, it is tricky how to characterize that and how to get the right group here identified. And there's a super PAC that has been getting in to kind of fight against APAC. And what they've been trying to do is develop this algorithm to try to find those donors. Because somebody might just give to J Street and not be part of like a big kind of APAC conspiracy, but you're right, APAC does do that. And so what they've been trying to do is say, okay, if on the same day, and because of like basically AI and Claude and others, like it's easier to start figuring this stuff out. Okay, if you in the same cycle gave to like Steve Scalise, Alyssa Slotkin, or like Haley Stevens, or like any like these like clear people that like APAC is directing money to isn't actually Slotkin, but let's say Haley, he gave to Haley Stevens, some other APAC candidate, and then also Scalise, it's like, and all of your donations are like, all of these top APAC people, it's like, okay, we're tagging you as somebody who is clearly like part of this network. Cause you're right, APAC does this, they have these private links where they will send out an email to like thousands of people saying, here's a private link. We're not endorsing this person publicly, but we suggest that you do so, you that you give them the max donation. And for transparency, you want the public to know that this, that they're trying to evade public disclosure. So you, so you, now a track APAC is like two people, three people or something. They don't have, they don't have that put together yet. I mean, I think they can get there, but until they do, it's gonna be, it's gonna leave some kind of gray area, which then is gonna allow Slotkin to be like, oh, you're just saying that I'm getting money from Jews. Right, right. But you know, for her to say, like if she was talking to the track APAC people and she had that response and disagreeing with them on their methodology, it's one thing, you have, there were I think three different constituents here that asked her similar questions and to take them in the most bad faith and assume that they are intentionally lumping in every Jewish person who's ever donated to her and making this blanket statement. I mean, not only is it, it's really, really gross to throw around claims of bigotry that are unfounded. That is a very aggressive thing to do. And so you're insinuating that, these people who want to know about where you stand and why you stand there to immediately hurl that accusation is just really gross. And also, you know, for her from a political standpoint, I think it's a very bad look because she just comes off super defensive and super fragile about a guy in a question that she has to have anticipated receiving because she's a smart person. She's, you know, I definitely came away from that with from my exchange with her. She's very intelligent person. And she knows where the polls are. She knows what kind of questions she's gonna get. And this is the best that you can come up with. You know, it's not, I don't think politically, it looks very good for her. Well, you know what I'm saying? Real quickly, yeah, I totally agree with that. And in track APAC's defense, it is 100% true that APAC tries very hard to hide its involvement in supporting these candidates. Like that is a fact. And so that if you want to expose their involvement, then you have to go figuring out how they're moving their money through. And if they make one mistake on that, you can't say, oh, the entire thing is, you know, bigoted and can be dismissed. It's like APAC has set up this trap by being so secretive about its money. If APAC would just do what every other lobby does and say, we support this person because they support our values and we're proud to endorse them. If they would just do that, we wouldn't need any of this. Well, they do it after their candidate wins. Actually, this would be a decent place to talk about the polling if you wanna. Well, I just wanna make a quick point about Stockton. I'll pull it up while you talk him. There's something interesting in this that she's trying to be this third way type candidate on culture war issues where she's trying to kind of reject the peak woke Democratic party era. It's time to be normal, yeah. Right, but what's so interesting about that is one of the big lessons, and like we talked about this during that time period, one of the big lessons is that it's very alienating and offensive when you use lump definition, inflation terms of bigotry and assume that somebody who disagrees with you on a policy question is necessarily categorically a bigot. That was a huge problem for Democrats during the like 2020 era. It did alienate a lot of voters. There's polling on that, that was a real thing. And now to see her try to be someone who rejects that framework of the binary, you're either with us or you're a bigot, she's doing it to her own voters once again because they don't agree with her on a policy question. Well, and the Hassan thing fits in with that too, because she would have been one of the, I don't know if she specifically said this, but she would be the type to be able to, Kamala should have gone on a roguin, we need to meet people where they're at, blah, blah, blah. And then it's like, okay, Hassan Piker, absolutely not. Yeah, well, she said on Bill Maher, we need to be alpha again, we need male alpha energy again, but not Hassan. Yeah, well, two quick things that I'll add on that before we get to the polling. Number one, it's incredible to hear from somebody like Alyssa Slotkin, this, you know, attacking the conflation of the Jewish people with the state of Israel when the biggest perpetrator of that conflation has been the Israeli government and the US government by extension of some of the most hardcore pro-Israel politicians in this country constantly conflating the actions of the Israeli government with the Jewish people as, you know, in its entirety. So, you know, I think there has been some element of an increase in antisemitism because of this intentional effort to confuse people as to that. And ironically, it's the left, it is the most hardcore pro-Palestine people, the most hardcore Israel critics who are constantly making an explicit effort to draw that distinction and say, no, no, no, we're not talking about Jewish people as a whole, we're talking about the Israeli government. So I found that to be incredible there. And then point number two that I think it's important for us to keep in mind is like, the Israel lobby stuff is an important litmus test because I think people just get the feeling that if you're willing to openly take this money, you're kind of just admitting this baseline level of corruption that you're going to be engaging in as an elected representative. But the more important thing to me at least is the policy. It's, are you going to cut off weapons shipments to Israel? Are you willing to sanction Israel? What, how do you view the US-Israeli relationship moving forward? Because you may have some pro-Israel Democrats who say, oh, I'm not taking APAC money or I'm not taking any sort of pro-Israel money. And then their position on Israel is still horrendous from any, you know, left-wing perspective. So we gotta like be specific about exactly what they're actually running on. 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 in the biggest sound to have great music. I have gone through the sub-CD, Hachakar. The reach, the pinnacle, it's stung by the snigger 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. So, Ryan, we've got your polling here that I'm going to pull up. And Griffin, let me actually pull it up because I have a separate one that has the cross tabs with ages that I think you'll like. So to Max's point, we actually pulled this specific question. So Zeteo and Dropsite went out into the field in Michigan with a poll. And we did the top lines. I think we'll look at it. We can look at it exactly. But I think it was 22, 22, 21, between the three candidates with El Sayed, like one point behind the other two, or it was 23, 23, 22. Either way, it's like a dead heat. But we asked some interesting questions as we do. We asked about Hassan Piker, but hold that for one second. So to Max's point, I asked this question because I wanted to see where this is Democratic primary voters in Michigan. And I wanted to test Max's proposition here. So we said, so do you agree or disagree with the following statement? If a candidate is not willing to stand up to APAC, I am less likely to trust them to stand up for Michiganders on other issues. And across the board, so if you look down here to agree at the bottom across the board, the minimum is kind of plus 40. And that's moderate. So moderate Democrats, likely voters in the primary, by a 55 to 15 margin, with the rest saying they don't know, say that yes, it is a proxy to them for whether they will stand up for other things. Obviously under 45, people under 45, it's plus 54. Overall, the top line, plus 49. So 62% of Democratic primary voters in Michigan say that how you stand up when it comes to APAC determines for them whether or not you're going to fight for them on other issues. And this is the answer. You know what's the most interesting thing, though, from that crosstab to me, though, Ryan, is where you have you ask people, OK, if it's the El Sayed voter, how do they feel about it versus McMarrow versus Stevens? And I think people mostly know. But El Sayed is the Bernie left candidate. McMarrow, you can kind of think of Elizabeth Warren. She's trying to be the Goldilocks candidate. And then Stevens is like the Chuck Schumer picked backed candidate. And McMarrow has been trying to, again, find this middle ground on Israel and use language that signals she's with the base, but not totally go in there. And she has thrown in on the side of Hasan Piker is the line too far and kind of affiliated herself more with the Stevens Schumer side of the equation. And so if you look at these numbers here, you see for the El Sayed voters, 91. It's plus 91 for, yeah, no, if you are not going to stand up to APAC, like I want nothing to do with you. And McMarrow and Stevens, interestingly, are at the same level of only plus 33. So you can see that already McMarrow is being more associated by the electorate with the more pro Israel, more pro Zionist side, even though she's tried to kind of split the difference here. That's very interesting to see. Yeah. Well, one other thing I was just going to add on to that is I think it's incredible that people like a slot can frame themselves as the moderates on this question when according to their own base of voters, they're actually the extremists on this question. They're in the minority when it comes to this. Yeah. They're the French, absolutely. So here's a related question. The lower actions that a candidate could take for each, please say if the action would make you more or less likely to support the candidate receives political donations from APAC and other pro Israel groups. So you can just see the bloodbath at the bottom there with the more likely negative means they're less. You see some. It's weird like the way it phrases. But the negative means they don't like this. So yeah, if you look at Stevens, people are 26% less likely to support or 49% less like a 26%. 49 to 23, you guys see it. People are less likely to support Stevens. Stevens voters by 49 to 23 if she takes APAC money. So that's Stevens own voters. For McMorro, it's 65 to eight. So if McMorro starts to be seen as the candidate who is taking APAC money or is supported by APAC. Or is more APAC aligned. Yeah. Then now for a side is 86 to one. I like the one. I know exactly imagine being the person who's like, I love APAC and I'm voting for Abdul al-Sahed. That person is not paying attention to the poll and is just like just going through it. Do you want to let's without the Hassan, we got some Hassan questions here. Most people don't know who Hassan is. Like that's the takeaway from this. Now when it comes to people under 45 years old, you've got only 18. Here we go. Under 45, we're like most familiar with him, obviously. So the question, should he do the event with Hassan Piker? Plus 10 is what it comes out to. 40% prove, 30% disapprove. The rest don't know. But when it comes to people under 45, it's plus 18. The only people who really don't like it are Stevens voters. So they disapprove by 27 points. Moderate, destiny viewers. Basically 50-50. Yeah, moderate, destiny viewers. Moderates are 11 points underwater. Mouro, interestingly, who kicked this off, her people approve of it by a plus three margin. You guys all like this and well, we ask people where they get their news. And actually, people are still pretty heavily getting their news who are primary voters, like from CNN. And Kate now. But look at breaking points, Zateo drops it. We said we'd ask them about independent news outlets, like Zateo drops like news and breaking points. For people under 45, where is that one? 24%. 24%. So a quarter of. That's pretty good. That's pretty good. It's creeping up. So 13% overall of Democratic primary voters answered yes to independent news. Now it's. And it's third of LCI voters. Yeah, which makes sense. And 3% of Stevens voters are watching this show. Wow. That's got to be what Stevens. Hi, ladies. Sitting there, sleeping. Now if you add in YouTube, YouTube is 27%, interestingly tied with Facebook. And podcasts, 22%. Instagram 19. Blue Sky, not doing so great down here at 7%. And did you find that did you find LCI voters tended to be the youngest of the three candidates? Let's see. That would also correlate with the more independent media watchers. Yeah, let's see. OK, Abdul Al-Said. So favorable or unfavorable. So under 45 plus 41. So certainly his highest favorability rating is among those. Stevens is just plus four with people under 45. Wow. Let's see how McMorris doing. Memorial is plus two with people under 45. Oh, here's a Sondpiker. Here's a Sondpiker. Haven't heard enough to say. OK, yeah, here's the number. So for people under 45, 58% don't really have an opinion on Piker. So 42% do, which is the highest number. Overall, 80% of primary voters are just like, I don't know. So with all this focus on this, most people are basically like, I don't even know who you're talking about right now. Right, yes. Even LCI voters, 54% of LCI voters are like, what are you talking about? I don't know. So I think we can pull out of this, Ryan. But one final question that I had. I noticed on the far right with the initial undecideds on most of these questions, it seems like it's very aggressively splitting in the I don't want to vote for somebody who takes Israel lobby money. With the election being as close as it is, where do you think it's going to go into the future? Do you think that'll have a major impact or it's side thing? Before I pull out last thing. So yeah, it's 22-22. So Stevens 23, McMorrow 22, LCI 22 is what our polling is showing. But this is really interesting. And don't tell Schumer this. But this is why Schumer is now signaling that he wants Stevens to drop out. That's how I'm perceiving the signals coming out of DC. Who's your second choice? McMorrow is the second choice of 38% of people, whereas El Cide is only the second choice, 13%. And Stevens is 22. And so a head to head against El Cide and McMorrow, McMorrow is up eight points over El Cide. And so you started to see Schumer. And Schumer is so unpopular that he can't even say this publicly. But there's been like reporting that Schumer is OK with McMorrow now. Recognizing that Steven, the only way El Cide can win is if Steven stays in. That seems to be Schumer's view. That's probably why McMorrow has decided to take this stance on Hassan Piker, et cetera, et cetera, to make herself palatable to the Chuck Schumer's of the world. So, you know, sort of playing this game. She sees her path. She has to knock Steven's out. Steven's out. Yeah. Well, let's see a clip from this infamous Abdul El Cide and Hassan Piker town hall meetup, where one free press enterprising journalist known as Olivia Reingold asked Abdul a question, let's take a listen. We're going to take two more questions. I'm sorry, we're going to have to move on to the next person. Is this Israel? I'm sorry, Olivia. As a Jewish state. Olivia, we're going to have to move on. So I'd love to take the question. I'd love to take the question. Actually, what do you mean by Jewish state? I feel like this is a storyboard. If you can't define their question, I'm not going to answer your question. We're going to move on to the next person. All right. So that was the video that went around the world. And then Olivia. And then Olivia. It's like the most boring video ever. Yes. But then Olivia went on to do a write up of her experience there. She says, Abdul al-Sayed, who is Muslim, walks a fine line on the Jewish state. On Tuesday night, he told the crowd, as he does often, that his problem is not with Jews. So then later that night, in a makeshift spin room, assembled by the campaign, he rebuffed my question or whether he believes in Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state. What do you mean by a Jewish state? He retorted, narrowing his eyes. If you can't answer that question, I'm not going to answer it. For someone who often waves around his respect for Judaism, he seemed unaware of something elementary. Judaism is not only a religion, but a people with a longstanding connection to Israel that runs through its prayers, traditions, and histories, which some people said was not the quote. Well, OK. So first of all, it's not the quote. That's not what he said. I do think they ultimately, under pressure, corrected it to at least say the correct quote. But there were many zoom-ins of Abdul's eyes at that moment. And the eyes did not back narrow. I think he may have blinked, but we don't typically call that narrowing of the eyes. But anyway, narrowing of the eyes stayed in. And I mean, can you imagine if someone wrote an article about Olivia Reingold? Or we started this segment. Olivia Reingold, who is a Jew, blah, blah, blah. I don't think she's a Jew. No, she's an October 8th Jew. She's an October 8th, yes. But did she actually convert? Or what's going on? She's working on it. There's a lot of paperwork. Well, then you get my point. Well, it's not when the paperwork's in. So we can properly characterize your religions, and that's apparently an important part of understanding the context here. That her dad was Jewish and her mom isn't, so she's not Jewish. That's her. Well, it's a bit. I mean, some reform congregations would say she isn't. Whatever. Anyway. She's in the process. Yes, I believe she sees herself as Jewish, and I would like to honor that. But can you imagine the freak out if we started the segment by saying, you know, Olivia Reingold, a Jew, did X or Y or Z? It's very obviously racist. It's also weird. Imagine if someone talked about me and was like, Crystal Ball, who is agnostic, says, et cetera, et cetera. Like, why do we do it? Why do we need to know that? A woman. Right. I mean, it's very obvious what she's doing here. She wants to make him sound sinister. She wants to make him sound anti-Semitic, even though he did nothing wrong. And in fact, that question that he asked her, that's a great question. What do you mean by a Jewish state? And she fumbles around before he says, okay, well, if you can't define it, then I'm not gonna answer the question. It's giving very much Tucker when he was interviewed by I think the lady at the Economist. And she said, do you believe Israel has a right to exist? And he said, well, what do you mean by that? And she couldn't answer the question of what she meant by that. And the problem for someone like Olivia, answering that question, is that if you answer it honestly, what you're laying out is an ethno-supremacist, apartheid state. And it clashes very obviously with liberal values. This is why Zoran's answer of I support Israel as a state with equal rights is so brilliant and devastating because it shows, like how can you object to that? If you object to that, you're rejecting like the most obvious basic principles of liberalism. So that's why it was such an intelligent question on his part to say, okay, well, clarify, what do you mean by a Jewish state? Because if you just mean a state where, you know, Jewish people have the same rights as Muslim people or anyone else, then sure, fine. But the problem is that's not what she means. And she has never explained what she actually means by that. It's like if we were doing a segment on driving and identified Crystal as a woman, Crystal Ball a woman. No, but really, like it's just like nobody. Yes. Yes. But no, I agree. I think that her response in the piece to what appears to be not even the accurate quote is so patronizing. And it's patronizing to the point where it's out of touch with the reality that again, if you engaged in good faith with Abdul-as-Sayed, you would obviously not think that about him because he's, she even says in the piece, see like, what does she say, hand waves about how he understands Judaism and respects Judaism. Obviously he understands all of that. So either you're not understanding his position or you're taking a cheap shot. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And Olivia also seems to be sort of like a Hassan Piker stalker, which is weird. And I think like in a broader sense, like they're making, and this goes for like Dana Bash on CNN and Jake Tapper and all these other people who have been doing relentless segments on Hassan recently. It's like, as Griffin pointed out, the Google searches for Hassan Piker are skyrocketing. He's probably gaining more subs now than he has in a long time. Like they're making him to be a king maker when he really just like wasn't before. Like maybe some influence with, you know, some degree of young people around the fringes. But I think at the end of the day, for a huge bulk of the Democratic Party that is critical of Israel, that is against the Israel lobby and whatever else. It's like, you're kind of just showing them, oh, hey, look, here's a political commentator over here. Here's a candidate who agrees with you on these questions. So they're just gonna end up like, it's gonna backfire and they're just gonna end up pushing more and more people, you know, towards these spaces they want them to avoid. Yeah, and Olivia, like if she is desperate to find people running for office that are anti-Semitic, there's plenty of options for her to find those people. One that I actually just searched her Twitter for, James Fishback running in Florida. I did a quick search on Olivia's Twitter to see what she said about James Fishback. And I was only able to find a few positive replies to James Fishback, including this one, where she says, December 31st, 2024. Aw, thank you for sharing. You're the incredible one. That's back before James Fishback had his transformation, which happened in like the last six months out of absolutely nowhere. He was a free press contributor. He was praising Barry. Yeah, before you realized he was being fed Goiselopp. That's when he was prior to that, him realizing that. Yes, so anyways, I'd love an update or like a follow-up on the Fishback campaign if we're rooting out anti-Semitism and the candidates for an anti-Semitism. I promise you that is almost certainly coming. All right, well, we got a big final segment that we have to get to that crossed all of our desks late afternoon yesterday. And of course, I'm speaking about Melania Trump, who came out to speak about Epstein. Why don't we take a listen? The lies linking me with the disgraceful Jeffrey Epstein need to end today. The individuals lying about me are devoid of ethical standards, humility and respect. I do not object to their ignorance, but rather I reject their mean-spirited attempts to defame my reputation. I never been friends with Epstein. Donald and I were invited to the same parties as Epstein from time to time, since overlapping in social circles is common in New York City and Palm Beach. To be clear, I never had a relationship with Epstein or his accomplice Maxwell. My email reply to Maxwell cannot be cataraced as anything more than casual correspondence. My polite reply to her email doesn't amount to anything more than a tribal note. I am not Epstein's victim. Epstein did not introduce me to Donald Trump. I met my husband by chance at the New York City Party in 1998. It's the best part. This initial encounter with my husband is documented in a detail in my book, Melania. For which we all have signed copies of. Also referring to your husband is Donald Trump. Crystal's like, you can read about my initial meeting with my husband, Kyle Kalinsky, in my book, Crystal. Crystal. Yes. I mean, it's literally the meme where it's like, no one, absolutely no one in Melania. I was not friends with Epstein. I barely knew the guy. Can I see my theory? Yeah, tell me. Okay, because they're competing theories and I'm not like 100% sure of this, but Trump told MS now that he did not know this was going to happen. So a debate whether or not that's true. My theory is that Melania Trump spent January and February seething over the allegations that she, because she is in emails with Gillian Maxwell, she has this, what she characterized as a reply, appears to actually have been an email to Gillian Maxwell, which I have pulled up here, where she says something like looking forward to, yeah, here's the email. She says something to the extent of like G, addresses her as G. It's almost certainly Gillian Maxwell. It's someone based in New York named Gillian, says nice story about J.E. in NY Mag. You look great on the picture. I know you are very busy flying all over the world. How is Palm Beach? I cannot wait to go down. Give me a call when you are back in NY. Have a great time. Love Melania. And then Maxwell replies, sweet P, thanks for your message. Actually plans changed again and now I'm on my way back to NY. I leave again on Friday, so I still do not think I have time to see you sadly. I will try and call though. The implication here is that they had a close enough relationship where Maxwell is referring to her sweet P. She's referring to Ghislaine as G. The dates do match that New York Mag story on Jeffrey Epstein and they have a relationship where they call each other. So that's what was revealed. I think Melania spent January and February being upset because her reputation is getting dragged through the mud, but reasonably so given these emails back and forth with Maxwell and then her husband launched a war before she could launch a response to Epstein. She was told there's no way that you can address this when we're at war, but as soon as there's a ceasefire you can, literally like the next day she comes out out of nowhere and gets it done as quickly as possible in case the ceasefire falls apart. This is my theory. It's just so weird because no one was thinking about her. Like Epstein coverage was successfully buried by the war. And then you just come out. I'll show you what the sort of dominant internet theory is right now. So this requires a little bit of backstory, of course. Obviously Melania is from Eastern Europe. She was brought to the US. She came as a model. And so, and this very close Trump friend who's a formal modeling agent named Paolo Zampoli is the guy who helped her secure her visa to be able to come and stay in the US. Well, this guy is actually now in the administration and he asked ICE to arrest his former Brazilian girl friend who also was a model and potentially also underage, potentially when she was first in this whole network. But anyway, she's the father of their teenage son and he asked ICE to arrest her. Well, she is now apparently, she's out on Twitter like, I will, I know everything about Donald and Melania. I wouldn't get a spill. I'm gonna ruin everything. I have nothing left to lose. And it just came out that she apparently recorded an interview with a Spanish language channel that is set to air this weekend. So maybe that's what is going on here because she certainly has been going out there and saying that she has the goods, that she's gonna spill the tea, et cetera. Because of course what people think when they see this thing from Melania is like, what is she trying to get ahead of here because none of us were thinking about you or talking about you in this way at all, girl. So what is up with this? And you know, I mean, that's the most obvious explanation is that there's some story or some development that's about to happen that she wanted to get out there in front of. Possibly. I guess everyone agrees. Yeah, it's just like nobody knows because it's out of absolutely left field. I'm just loving this like circular, like little spiral that we're in of like distract from the Epstein files by going to war with Iran and then distract from the war with Iran with by bringing back up the Epstein files. Who knows where are we gonna go to war next? But we're back with Iran again. We'll be back with Iran. We can just always get back in that one. Any second that could happen. That could be happening right now as we're speaking. So I don't know. I mean, it does just remind, I guess too, of what, I mean, the Trump administration is just a mess. Trump is truly, it's disaster on all fronts because even it, okay, let's say that he agrees to the Iranian surrender conditions. I mean, that is a devastating, he's gonna have a very hard time selling that as victory to anyone, including his own base, let alone the world. So you've got that mess. And then it frees everybody up, you know, Ryan and Co to get back on the Epstein files reporting, which was already an utter disaster for him. And we just had numbers that came out this morning, a very hot inflation reading. So prices going back up, of course gas prices are extremely high. The economy is very shaky, shaky. The AI bubble seems on the verge of collapse and, you know, midterm elections around the corner that are likely to deal a devastating blow. So little reminder of just how bad the whole landscape is for this administration at this point. It's a golden age. That's what it really feels like. Do we wanna play that video you sent me, Crystal? It's a little long, I'm not really sure. That's okay. I think it was that guy, Paulo, the modeling agent, saying that, you know, talking about that relationship and saying that he was the one who introduced Melania to Trump because, you know, I mean, people obviously- That's not why I read Melania. Well, and here's the other thing is, that's right, exactly. And then the other thing is there's allegations that have been made by Michael Wolf that Melania has threatened to sue him over, including that Epstein had had a relationship with Melania prior to Trump. And that Trump and Melania, this again, is his allegations and she's threatened to sue over it. So I'm not saying that this is what happened, but he claims that they had sex for the first time on his plane and that there was obviously like deep entanglement there. And this whole modeling world is so incredibly disgusting and was rampantly used for human trafficking and that's well documented. And so the, you know, the Trump and Epstein and John Casablanca and this Paulo guy, like all in that cesspool of a world is, you know, is obviously very noteworthy as well. Yep. Well, on that note, it's been a jam-packed show, but I will not do some AMA questions here at the end. Let's hit a few right off the bat. Rapid fire here to take us out on this Friday. This one is to Emily from Nelso. Oh, sorry, this is from Emily from Sabas 101. For Emily with the rise of Catholicism in younger generations and the growing dissatisfaction with the Iran war, will Zionist evangelicals' denominations decline in membership and power in politics? I mean, I think actually it's sort of the inverse in that what would be called dispensationalism. So this idea that biblical Israel and the modern nation-state of Israel are interchangeable, that you have to read that into prophecies and scripture, I think that's actually just declining among evangelical voters who previously had been attached to that and a very particular political Zionism because of it. I think, you know, it's just like younger people, Gen Z evangelicals have, I think, really moved away from it. So it's not so much that the denominations are declining. Catholicism is actually continuing to decline. They're more younger Catholics. Like there's obviously something going on, but it's declining in the United States. So actually I think what's really happening is it's not so much the denomination or it's not so much that the evangelical churches are losing members or anything like that. So much as it is the members are less likely to be dispensationalists the younger they are. Gotcha. This next one is for Crystal from Jacob RP 273. Crystal, do you think if Israel does deploy a nuclear bomb that Trump will have the guts to do anything about it? Do you think his need to protect himself from getting exposed will outweigh the ethical obligation to permanently restrain Israel? I don't see any evidence of Trump reining in Israel at this point. So not very, not very hopeful in that regard. I mean, but look, his options, you know, whether a nuclear weapon is deployed or not are all impossible for him. So, you know, it's hard to see him standing up to Israel. It's also hard for to see him staying in a war that's destroying the entire economy and entire global economy. It's hard to see him accepting the Iranian surrender demands. It's just all of these things are going to be very painful for him. So, you know, your guess is as good as mine, which of the extremely painful for Donald Trump options he's going to choose at this point. All right, this next one is for Ryan. More of a statement, but you can still react to it. From Nick Strickland, you guys should start a new segment called Ryan's Message to the White House, where Ryan directly addresses Trump plus his admin and maybe offers advice. We will all pretend like it doesn't have an effect. Start. My start was already working. I'm here to serve the country. Yeah. Very nice, very nice. And I'll throw this one to Mac, the final one today. This is from Hamsterwheel, AMA question. Are you aware, either through your own analysis or via told top down, when a news story seems to be a limited hangout, could the fine BP crew speak to the concept of limited hangout? Do all breaking stories go through this process or is it just Epstein? Usually when I see the byline Natasha Bertrand. Emily, you have takes on this. Mac, do you have any, do you? Go for it, Emily. No, no, no, I just often the byline and the sourcing, but that's probably what you were gonna say, Mac. Yeah. I'm just a whole Mac's question. I mean, we got to tell people what the concept is if they don't know. Everyone's at a different stage of their life's journey. Limited hangout means you have an enormous amount of stuff that you're hiding and you put a tiny piece out of it to try to kind of settle the issue and get people to move on. So like the Epstein file release is kind of the definition of a limited hangout. And we know that it is because there's some millions more, we don't even know how much files that are being hidden, but they're like, here, public, we released the files. Are we done here yet? Stop talking about it. That is like, definitionally limited hangout. And but that's a common technique that's used like information, operation kind of technique. And a feature of it is to put people in the wrong direction. Like you put a little bit of it out, that seems to implicate somebody over here when actually the real thing is over here. So you get some of the information, but you get everybody chasing the wrong laser. Or it's like, you take a little bit of damage, but to avoid the more significant damage. You ask them if something's going on. Yeah, right. And that gives credibility to the idea that people have gotten the truth when really the thing that would be more devastating is still being hidden. Right. Trump's attempt to be like, yeah, this was actually all just Bill Clinton and Democrats is a good example. Like, all right, fine, you got me. I'll give you the information on Epstein. It was the Democrats. Okay. You didn't want to share that, but you forced it out of me. Gotcha. All right, Mac, maybe this will be one that you have something more to say about. Patrick Mulligan says, hello, everyone. It is good to be able to criticize friends and allies. In that spirit, what is your most serious criticism of Hassan? Do you have any Hassan Piker criticisms? I mean, yeah, I don't think they were like perfectly in line on everything. I don't know. I mean, nothing crazy. I feel like he can have some cringe take sometimes. I feel like he gets involved in some of the drama stuff and some of the sort of like slop stuff a lot more than I would personally, but maybe that's more his wheelhouse. Like he has a lot of people who find him through those kinds of avenues and he does a lot of content outside of just like strict news coverage or political commentary or whatever, but yeah. Yeah, when you stream for eight hours a day, you're probably gonna say some things you regret. And get into some delving to some drama. And yeah, you got a lot of time in that eight hours to explore all facets of our universe. We get in enough trouble in two hours. So I can't imagine eight. That's gonna do it for us this Friday. Thank you, everyone. Welcome to the new rang of the freedom. Freedom rings, freedom, free Friday show. Tom Red Ryan. Welcome to all the Haley Stevens Motors who absolutely hated watching this, but did it anyway. Love it. We tip our hat to you. And of course, if anything major breaking happens over the weekend, we will be unlike Abdul Al Sayed keeping our eyes wide open for anything that occurs over the weekend. And if not, we'll see you on Monday. Goodbye, everybody. 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, Pooja Bhat Show on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Come for the honesty, stay for the fire.