5/13/26: Trump Says He Doesn't Care About Americans Finances, Male Employment Craters, Israel Most Hated Country On Earth In New Poll

This is an I Heart podcast. Guaranteed human. Hey guys, Sagar and Crystal here. Independent media just played a truly massive role in this election and we are so excited about what that means for the future of this show. This is the only place where you can find honest perspectives from the left and the right that simply does not exist anywhere else. So if that is something that's important to you, please go to breakingpoints.com, become a member today and you'll get access to our full shows, unedited, ad free, and all put together for you every morning in your inbox. We need your help to build the future of independent news media and we hope to see you at breakingpoints.com. Good morning everybody, happy Wednesday. Have an amazing show for everybody today. We'll be at Crystal. Indeed we do. The Iran War is spiking inflation significantly, causing most people to take a pay cut because their wages are not keeping up with that inflation. Men are increasingly losing out in Trump's economy. Some very interesting statistics here that are very much at odds with some of the promises of the Trump campaign. Israel is now, according to polling, according to global polling, the most hated country on the planet. By the way, we are not far behind, so we'll dig into that, as well as a very interesting Eurovision scandal. The rigging complaints were apparently valid. New York Times at a whole investigations, we'll look at that. A new poll has AOC leading Dem 2028 potential contenders. Trump is heading to China amidst the Iran War defeat. We're going to have a reporter in studio to talk about what is expected to come out of their very significant meeting. And Robert Pape is going to join us to talk about how pressure continues to build with regards to the Iran War and what we can all expect next. Yes, that's right. Thank you to everybody who's been subscribing, breakingpoints.com, very well to support the show. If you're watching this on YouTube, please hit subscribe to our YouTube channel. Listen to the podcast, please share an episode with a friend. It really helps other people find the show. But as Crystal said, let's go ahead and start with inflation, some horrible inflation numbers that came out yesterday that were backstopped even more by some, I mean, can we call them shocking comments? I don't know, but you will certainly be hearing many of them in the midterm election cycle. Here is Donald Trump saying, I don't think about Americans financial stability. Let's take a listen. When we're negotiating with Iran, Mr. President, to what extent are Americans financial situations motivating you to make a deal? Not even a little bit. The only thing that matters when I'm talking about Iran, they can't have a nuclear weapon. I don't think about Americans financial situation. I don't think about anybody. I think about one thing. We cannot let Iran have a nuclear weapon. That's all. That's the only thing that matters. That's the only thing that matters. Not even a little bit. I don't think about Americans financial situation. Okay, well, let's check in with Americans financial situation. Let's put this up here on the screen. The Wall Street Journal. Inflation has soared to 3.8% in April, driven by gasoline prices. Investors started the year. We're pricing in federal reserve cuts. Those are all but off the table now. And so not only are you paying higher price for gas, you are also going to be having a higher mortgage. If you're trying to buy a home, you're gonna have higher food. You've got fuel oil, airfare prices that are up by 21%. Apparently in the car community, it's going viral that they expect a shortage of motor oil. So, you know, a PSA, if you need your oil changed in your car, you should go and get that done relatively soon. In a few months, there may not be any motor oil, apparently on the shelves. Literally, they were warning that Walmart and some of the other big buyer Costco, I believe may not even have it on their shelves in a few months. So we not only have outright shortages that are looming, but the highest inflation reading in over three years, inflation obviously was the crippling thing for Joe Biden's presidency, as he also became obsessed with these foreign policy misadventures or bad policy abroad. And so it's literally like a repeat television story, except somehow even worse, because this one was created, Crystal, just to get away from the previous one. Shocking, I guess, you know, in the retrospect, but if you've been paying attention for a year or so, not all that surprising. Yeah, and the Iran war is the most proximate cause, obviously, of the spike in inflation. And you can see that in the particular categories that have gone up, but tariffs continue to be a factor there as well. So this is entirely of Trump's making, which people know. And we're gonna do a segment later on some polling that indicates they're very unhappy with this direction for the country. But just to go back to those comments and pause on them for a moment, I mean, can you imagine what would be said if Joe Biden had said, I don't think about their financial condition at all, if Barack Obama had said, I don't think about their financial condition at all, it is truly unimaginable. This is one of those comments right up there with Trump saying, we can't have healthcare, we can't have Medicare for, you know, we can't have Medicare, we can't have Social Security, we can't have childcare, because we have to fight these wars. It's right up there with him just coming out and saying, the quiet part out loud, yeah, I don't give a shit about you and how much you're struggling to fiddle up the gas tank. I don't give a shit about the fact that the numbers don't add up at the end of the month. I don't give a shit about the fact that now you're taking a net pay cut because inflation is higher than wage gains, I'm not focused on you at all. It doesn't factor into my thinking whatsoever. For him to just say that outright is incredible. And I have to say, soccer or two, like a different iteration of Trump would not have said this. No. I do think that it is a sign of his decline, his, you know, he's an old man and he's not on it the way he was and he doesn't have whatever level of verbal restraint and filter may have once briefly somewhat partially existed, is completely gone. And so now he will just say things like, yeah, America's financial condition, I don't care. I don't think about it whatsoever. It is a good point. I mean, it's not just about losing step. And you know, I'm gonna save some of this for the China thing, but it is very important. Donald Trump is on a plane, actually literally just landed as you and I are talking in Beijing. Abored are the world's richest and most powerful oligarchs in the United States. It was put out a true social post as well where Trump says, I want to open up China. This is the person who ran in 2016 against the neoliberal order. And for saying that we made such a great mistake with PNTR, permanent normal trade relations with China back in the 1990s. He blasted Hillary Clinton and others, naffed her. Remember the giant sucking sound that they continued to play over and over again to swing many of these rust belt type voters. Now he's actually recreating the policy on steroids. I mean, it's crazy to have Nvidia and Elon in the news of nearly $1 trillion potential package investment. You're like, wow, so what are we even doing here? And you could couple that with his comments here. Like you said, on a political level, this is just not something that any American president would ever say, including, look, you could deny or you can say, oh, we always knew this about Trump, maybe on a policy level. How can you deny that he wasn't an effective politician, got himself elected to the White House twice? This is just not in the same realm. Is it cognitive decline? Is it just a sign that he really doesn't care anymore? You know, megalomania, I actually think it's the latter, maybe combined with the former. That's what characterizes all of these presidents. Say remember Joe Biden and his obsession with NATO and with leaving like these legacies and these imprints on the globe. Yeah, that's actually a great parallel. It's really important, you know, we talked about this with Emily yesterday, is that when they get really old, what they become obsessed with is changing the globe in their image. And Trump especially wants to put his name, his face on the $100 bill, he wants to put his face on Mount Rushmore, like change the reflecting pool, change the White House. This is about leaving a mark as you depart this earth, except those of us actually have to keep living here for a while. And what's happening on this earth, especially this part of the globe for us, let's put this up here on the screen. Heather Long, she's a phenomenal reporter over at the Washington Post. She always does the best job on inflation. So she points out here, inflation is now eating up all wage gains for the first time in three years, a painful for Americans and a true financial squeeze. So the CPI inflation in the past year was 3.8%. Wage gains in the past year were 3.6%. If you combine that, not only with the wage data, but you take in mind some of the gas prices, which have already eaten up the vast majority of the tax refund, which anybody may have gotten as a result of the big, beautiful bill, you can really consider like you are watching a material, you know, a material being, becoming poorer in the United States over the last three years. This is not like punditry. This is an empirical fact. And when we go to A4, this is another important part, is that Americans are now actually trying to work more hours to keep up as gas and food prices rise. Even so, these real average weekly earnings decreased in April because inflation ate all the wage gains and even the extra hours worked. So it's not completely gone yet in terms of the outpacing, but you are seeing that marginal, you know, basically like making more hours for less pay. And what you're watching in net effect again is making people not only much more poor, but when you compound that with, you know, we had an interesting discussion with Derek Thompson yesterday about the terrible 20s, basically about the 2020s, even though people have gotten richer on paper, at least in the aggregate, that it has been an emissorating, you know, basically last seven years, 2019 and onward. What we're watching here, I think, is more of that effect. And seven years, six years, I guess, is a long time. Actually, if you consider March, 2020 on forward for not only the lockdowns, but just of the sheer economic turmoil that I think that people find themselves in, there really is nothing probably more, I don't think there's nothing more dispiriting than being either in the same place or backwards than where you were six years before, and then still having to work more hours just to be able to afford, not only maybe even the same things at that time, but even the bare minimum or the stuff that you've already scaled back from food and from gas and from everything else. It's just a bad, bad situation. And the worst part is, is we know this is self-inflicted entirely by Trump. You know, I never thought I would say, give Joe Biden a break, but he didn't invade Ukraine. You know, he also did not tell Hamas to go and to do October 7th. He had to deal with it. He did both, he dealt with both terribly. However, you know, Trump actually did just decide for no reason whatsoever to attack Iran because he thought it would be easy. And all of us are the ones who are now paying that price. Yeah, and I mean, and the tariffs too, which there may have been a logical scheme that you and I would have both supported. And Ryan and Emily too, we could all been on board with. That is not remotely what we saw. And quite on the quite cut to the contrary, you know, to your point about the complete reversal on any sort of China hawkishness, you know, he went from a lot of tough talk with regard to China and decoupling and let's bring industry home, et cetera, et cetera, to, you know, this very different approach, which look frankly at this point, I think given our relative weakness in the world, there is some accommodation with China that needs to be made. But that doesn't mean we don't still need to be concerned about having control over our own supply lines and having our ability to manufacture here domestically. That has all fallen off of Cliff under Trump. And we'll talk more about that in the next segment. You know, there's another piece that I've been thinking about, Sagar, which is that part of the Trump economic pitch in the campaign was about immigration. The idea was we'll close the border, we'll ship all these people out, there'll be less competition for jobs, you know, quote unquote heritage Americans or however you want to phrase it, we'll benefit from that. They continue to try to make that point. But you know, they've done their immigration thing. The border is by and large closed. They basically ended asylum for everybody, except white South Africans. They've had very splashy deportation raids and you know, encouraged a lot of people to leave just through the spectacle of that cruelty. So they did the thing on immigration more or less and people can look around and go, okay, well that didn't actually deliver the economic utopia that you promised it would. Now, you know, you could argue that some of them and others who are still in favor of that policy could say, well, if it wasn't for the Iran War, it wasn't for tariffs. But I think by and large, people will look at this as another reason why justification for this very owners, very expensive by the way, immigration authoritarian state, why this ended up not jelling with the promises of the campaign trail. It's a totally fair point. And you know what is the argument is basically, anybody who told you it was the only reason that was bullshit. I don't think I even ever said it was the only reason. What the point was is it was supposed to be paired not only with good trade policy, but also lack of foreign adventurism and a general focus here at home. So if you were to look at it in totality of let's say, like a whole of government approach, I actually think you can make a pretty good case for how it could have worked. Now, if we're gonna live in the opposite, you know, basically the upside down where you have one piece, which now seems to be have done not even of its own accord, but and really for the sake of basically like the sake of its own in terms of either immigration policy and or like you said, you know, expanding ice, while at the very same time, having a large increase in the amount of tariff with no general increase in manufacturing on top of massive foreign adventurers. And then of course, I mean, it's not only that even in and of itself that the policy was carried out in such a way that turned a lot of Americans against it, but it also wasn't even paired with all of the things that you need to have a thriving domestic population. It's not, you know, again, not to tease some of our future segments, but I'll bring it up in the future. Our next block is about the economy and about what's really propelling it. And it's all healthcare jobs, which look, no offense to anybody in healthcare, especially the doctors and the nurses, you guys work very, very hard. But the vast majority of the increase in the healthcare is like billing, you know, for like home healthcare aids for boomers and for septuagenarians. Like that's really what it's all about. And a lot of those jobs are actually not, not only not manufacturing, they're highly tailored to an immigrant class, largely female. So okay, like in terms of what's actually back stopping the U.S. economy for the domestic American worker and male in particular, you have not really had any sort of increase or modest job prospect as a result of the direct policy of the U.S. government. So that's the net effect really of what we've seen. Sammy, we're talking about home buyers. In fact, let's put A6 up here on the screen. This is another important policy. So you were, you talked there about the immigration policy. Well, one of the things that you would need to see not only in terms of an increase in housing supply, because that was one of the key pieces that people made, say we have all these millions of illegals who are living here in the country. And it's like, well, if we kick them all out, then we'll have more housing. It's like, yeah, but you know, you also need to build some more housing, even more so on top of that. What we're watching here is the number of home buyers in the market has fallen to a historic low. Almost all of this has nothing to do either with the supply or anything else. What it actually is, is just interest rates. That's it, period. Is you have a lot of people who are in home, like especially the homeowner class, boomers and others, people who are older, wealthier. What they are doing is they're sitting on these states, which appreciate it in value. On top of that, they have maybe a two, 3% mortgage, or they have the entire thing paid off already. They don't want to sell because even though that they could net a large amount of money, the market increase in wherever they might move is also very, very high. And the interest rate, if they're gonna take a mortgage, is high as well. And so that creates a very constrained market. And buyers, sorry, I mean for buyers, because for buyers, the amount of leverage that they're having to take out for many of these homes, and then in terms of what they're getting for what they're paying is just so far out of step from what's normal, that it just seems like they would rather just wait it out. But the price of waiting it out is easy when you're 60. It is not easy when you're 25 or 30, and you have a kid, maybe a couple of kids, in the interim years and still living in a two bedroom home. I'm not saying it can't be done. There's a lot of people who do it, but is that the way that they would prefer to live? And I think that's what it means. The American dream fundamentally is like, look, work hard, not only just be able to buy a house, but buy a decent one. And it's not like any of the ones that even are for sale, let's say, especially like here, I'll take the market around here. In Northern Virginia, you have 1960s ranchers, which are modestly renovated in decent school, just going for 1.2, 1.5 million. You need to be making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year for the two of you, and you go, oh, God forbid if one of you doesn't want to work, because there's no way you're keeping up with that mortgage payment on top of all of the other inflationary things that have happened in your day-to-day life, like the grocery store. I'm even thinking about some of the other, okay, so you don't want to travel, and oh, you're gonna have a summer barbecue. Well, let's do A7, so July 4th, let's take a look at this. The price of a pound of beef, ground beef, is now $7 a pound. It's like a meme, actually. Whenever you go and you look at steaks, or something like even in Costco, I mean, I can't be the only guy. I'll see people, I see people going through the entire bin, just trying to find the one, which is maybe a little, which might fit the budget. And maybe I've just been paying more attention, but I don't think it's always been that way, especially whenever you look at the chart like that. And so between gas, summer barbecue, summer driving season, travel season, airfare up by 20%, it's just becoming crazy. And when people, when things feel crazy, that's when people start to get crazy. And I don't blame them. Yeah, put the last one up on the screen here, these price increases over the last five years, because I think this really puts it all in perspective when you look down the list, I mean, from just five years ago, like that's, you know, it's a blink of an eye really. Five years ago, you and I were doing this show together. Yes, literally. I feel like that long. New cars, 20% more expensive, groceries, 26%, health insurance, 27% more expensive, shelter, 29%, restaurants, 30%, home prices, 37%, electricity, 39%, it goes on and on. I mean, auto insurance, 58% more expensive, coffee, 105%, ground beef, as you were saying, 68%. Like these numbers in just five years time, do you, did you get a raise that was commensurate to reflect those prices? You know, did you get a 50%, a 40%, a 30%, even a 20% increase in your wages for the average American over the last five years? Answer of course is no. So that means that over those five years, most people have become material poor. And it happened in a quick enough timeframe where they can notice, they can remember, hey, I used to be able to have steak. And then I was able to have ground beef. Now I'm doing canned chicken, canned tuna. That's what the Costco CEO is saying that they're seeing at their stores, that people are downgrading the type of protein that they're able to afford. So, and so much of this, as you said, Zahra, is by choice. And that's the part that really creates a devastating political landscape for Trump and the Republicans. And then of course he's gotta come out and say, you know what, you're struggling? I don't care, I'm not thinking about it. Not my problem. I'm focused on other things. I'm focused on preventing Iran from getting a nuclear weapon that they were never pursuing. Right, and reopening the Strait of Hormuz, which was open on the very day of the war. So, yeah, sorry, on the very day that we started the war. And where we have no potential deal on the horizon. So in terms of this, I mean, look, Trump, again, not to tease the China stuff too much, he has to fold to China. And what I mean by that is abandon every pretense about bringing back manufacturing. We are going to strike a Japan-style deal with China, where, yes, we will allow their goods in our market, but they have to build them here. Any pretense about IP or any, it's gone. They're gonna do some massive investment. Why else are you taking Elon and Jen Seneng-Mang with you? Why do you think? You think that the micron CEO and Tim Cook and all these other people are on board Air Force One to tell the Chinese, we're not gonna let you make anything anymore, or is it the opposite? And say, all right, let's all come to an understanding this entire era of competition and all that, it's over. Which means we're going to abandon any pretense of manufacturing. So in other words, I guess we should all just learn to code. All right, let's move on. No, I think we should, I think, Sagar, we should learn to nurse. You're right. Men in particular, we had all those girls who code, now we need boys who nurse. That's right, yeah, good transition. Justice for nurses. All right, let's move on. This is a very good preview of exactly what we're talking about. Let's put this up here on the screen. A changing job market leans against men from the Wall Street Journal. What we see is that industries that heavily employ men are losing jobs and the share of men working has flatlined. So jobs held by women skyrocketed in the cumulative change in non-farm jobs since December of 2024. You can actually see it, several hundred thousand. Whereas jobs held by men are on a modest increase but remain near baseline from 2025. Over the past year, nearly all net job growth has come from healthcare and social assistance, a sector with the dearth of men. Sectors with heavily male workforces have been losing jobs and the post pandemic period has seen an influx of women in their prime working years into employment. The share of men working has actually flatlined. The divergent path will widen in the years ahead as the needs of an aging population stack up, occupations that men have historically been loathed to enter such as home healthcare aids and medical assistance will play a bigger role in the labor market. A growing educational divide is also part of the equation. Women now earn bachelor's degrees at a substantially higher rate than men and employment rates among people who are college educated are substantially higher than those who are not. So in other words, this is literally the opposite of what I think a lot of men who voted for Trump in particular wanted, a lot of young men. I think a lot of them could see it on the horizon. Remember, for many years we covered on the show, the college dropout phenomenon. A lot of men were like, screw it, I'm not going to college. I just don't think the wage premium exists anymore. A lot of that is built also on the falsity of the promise of taking out this hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt before eventually graduating, being able to earn it back. But that also was backstopped by this belief that by working in the trades or in manufacturing anything, you'd also be able to attain something. Well, it's not panned out now. And I think as a result actually of a lot of government policy under the Biden administration, the Trump administration and what we've seen basically is 25 years it took us really to get this point, but this is the crisis point. The crisis point is that we are becoming Japan or Korea where we have this inverted age triangle and with this age triangle makes it so that the people at the top not only have all the money but they own all the property, which means that they're going to attract the newer workforce basically to care for them, which is why it is the highest growing profession in the United States. At the same time, the backstop, the stuff that actually makes the country run and everything, you're seeing an overall decrease in net overall employment. Again, literally the opposite of what you wanted to set out. And I mean, we cover this social trend now for many, many years, but it doesn't make it better to see it all affirmed in the charts. And I mean, what? It doesn't take a genius sociologically to say unemployed young men will often over a period of time will cause major societal problems and change, which you only need to read recent history of the last 100 years to figure out. And if you go back a few hundred years, you'll only see even more data points to look at. Or just like use your brain in common sense. You don't even know any history to just think this through and how it's gonna go. I will say the Biden administration, there was not enough done, but actually there was a manufacturing renaissance that occurred out of every modern era recession prior to the COVID era recession, manufacturing jobs that were lost basically stayed lost. This was the first time under the Biden administration that they were actually increasing the number of manufacturing jobs above and beyond what was lost during the recession. And it was a result of government policy. You had the CHIPS Act, you had other provisions of the infrastructure bill that were affirmatively trying to rebuild a manufacturing base in key strategic sectors. And again, I'm not gonna say that it was all like magic and rainbows, but it was one of the things the Biden administration actually did quite well and it was working. And Trump because of how foolishly he has governed, first of all, he ripped apart a lot of the programs that were actually working under the Biden administration, just more or less out of spite during doge. Also he hates renewable energy, just has like a vendetta against it, so anything in that sector, which those jobs are also largely male jobs. That all was out the window. And then with the tariffs, even though one of the many rationales for the tariffs was that this was going to bring back manufacturing, it really hobbled and hindered manufacturing because of the foolish way that it was put together. So quite to the contrary of how he campaigned, which was all about the bros, it was going on Rogan's podcast, it was having pro wrestlers come out at rallies. It was very masculine focused, almost to a campy ridiculous degree. And he talks from the time he entered onto the political arena really back in 2015. He always talked about industries that were heavily male industries, whether it was coal mining, whether it was factory jobs, whether it was the auto industry. This is where he really focused a lot of his rhetoric on who he was going to pay attention to and the type of jobs that he was going to bring. So to see these numbers so starkly that not only has he failed to deliver, he's reversed some of the modest gains that remain under the Biden administration is really to me quite striking. You know, on the healthcare piece, this is really becoming one of the remaining aspirational paths for Americans who grow up either in poverty or working class parents or relatively low income or lower middle class where you can, if you go, you work hard, you get the nursing degree, you can go and you can find a job that is going to be sustainable and they're going to be plenty of opportunities. I've seen this with my daughter's friends in particular, some of who grew up in real difficult circumstances, that this is one of the trajectories that's still open to you. But because historically the care professions are very much associated with the feminine, there are very few still male nurses. Most of them are dominate in like, the ICU sort of more intense situations. And maybe that's a mentality that's going to have to change. The other thing that I was, so I'm only partially joking about the like boys who nurse, you know, those are the opportunities that are available. Then we need to perhaps change some of our societal thinking about who should be in those industries and who should be doing that work. The other thing, Saga, that I was thinking about is a lot of the stock market is being buoyed by, of course, the data center build out and the whole bet on AI. And these data centers are being built everywhere. And a lot of that work, you know, it's construction jobs and it's a lot of electrical workers. Those are dominant male, you know, those are mostly men who are doing that work. And yet it hasn't been enough to offset this overall trend, which was also frankly a little bit surprising to me because of how much that industry has expanded. Yeah, it is interesting, you know, to the broader societal point, I got nothing against nurses and guys, you know, I've had some great male nurses, even had some in the NICU shout out to some of those people. So any dude, you know, who's like, oh, you know, it's above me, shut up. All right, you know, let's put that aside. But, and I think this is to your point about earlier, it shouldn't be, you know, it's just a sick society when the only thing that you can make money doing is caring for other sick people, right? And especially old sick people because you should be able to make money doing all kinds of different things. And so you've talked there about manufacturing. Okay, so I'm not, you know, some big green energy. I mean, I have nothing against green energy, you know, I'm a nuclear energy person. I still believe that we're gonna have a lot of oil. All right, so what do we need to do then? If we, what do I talk about here all the time? We haven't built a new oil refinery since 1977. Where's all the new oil refineries? Where are they? They don't, nothing, zero. Nothing is being financed by the administration. Okay, it's great that oil companies themselves are making bank right now. However, have we also seen a major increase in like a new highway bill to re-industrialize or to re-change and widen all of the interstate highways, make the, you know, be some sort of CCC type program to beautify or to increase, you know, national park service and modernize, no, none of that. In fact, we actually cut some of those things in favor of expanding, in favor of expanding. Now, to bring it to the China piece, I was put B3 up here on the screen. So the stock market, remember his hitting absolute all time highs, like record highs. How does that happen? So you were talking there about data centers. It's not just data centers though. It's just the sheer valuation of these magnificent seven companies. And we talked to us with Derek Thompson yesterday, who are by all accounts making absolute shit pots of money. But what does that actually mean in terms of distribution? So A, you know, what Derek said, which has really resonated with me, is that all of these guys, you know, these several hundred people or so, who work at OpenAI and an Anthropic, we are about to see the minting of more billionaires in a single period through their IPOs than at any time, because of the valuation of these things. But the actual distributed effects of that is going to skew dramatically to these few hundred people. This is tech. Technology is the story of power loss. That's how you have the Zuckerbergs, the Elon's and others, become worth several hundred billion dollars. But that does not mean that these stock gains are going to be equally distributed. Now, no stock market in particular in a capitalist system is going to have quote equal distribution. But you know, the general valuation and the way that it makes it so that the ownership class versus the working stiff has never been more stark really than it is today. Like it's a parallel reality of whether you own assets or whether you're mostly a W-2 wage earner. And that is just not sustainable. Whenever you only have like 5, 10% in the former category and over 90% there, especially when we talk about rising prospects and the thought about with AI, with, you know, with men and skilled trades, these were something that are, it's really important, I think, you know, to highlight. You also, in terms of politics, bringing it back to Trump, is they're flailing around trying to get a few different things passed through the House of Representatives. So this one in particular, let's go before please. This is from the vice president and a true social post by Trump. As I said in the State of the Union, the American dream of home ownership is under attack. He talks about there, a woman who placed a bid on some homes and lost them to gigantic investment firms. He says, stories like this are why I signed an executive order to ban Wall Street investment firms or buying single family homes. However, that's not really enforceable. So he goes on, I called for Congress to save the American dream and ban these types of purchases. Senators Bernie Moreno and Tim Scott have worked to ensure this call becomes a reality and a bill has passed a Senate with nearly 90 votes. So it passed in the Senate. However, they still need, they still need to get somebody in the House of Representatives, not just introduce it, but to actually pass it, either that or through unanimous consent. But here's the thing, like this is not front page news because Iran is happening, inflation. And the focus of the administration is on trying to save and have some major PR move on their trip to China and to get themselves out of the mess they created with Iran. So how many people are really gonna know about it? Outside, let's say the listeners here on the show where it's the fourth element in a segment in the second block right here of what we're talking about. Because also, do we really have a ton of confidence that this is going to happen? I hope it does happen to be very, very clear. However, are we really absolutely confident? And in and of itself, is it actually gonna do anything? That's something that a lot of the Yimbees talk about. They're like, look, okay, whatever, but you still have to build new housing. Like it's kind of scratching around on the edges. And if that's the best that can be done, then absolutely nothing is going to change from what I can tell. Yeah, I would appreciate it as almost like a symbolic strike against capital. Like, no, you have to follow some, we're gonna, you know, absolutely. But the other thing is, how many times are we gonna be like taken for a ride by Trump? Where he floats all the, oh, we're gonna do that. We're gonna cap the interest rates on credit cards. Elizabeth Warren said, okay, great, let's work together, silence. So, okay, he supports it, that's great. Is he going to put in the political work to pressure, you know, intransigent Republicans to come on board with this and actually support it? Unlikely, I'll believe it when I see it. How about I say that? But, you know, to your point, is this going to solve the problem at this point? No, because it will require a massive rethinking of housing, a massive surge of building. It will require some direct federal government involvement, which look, no one would be better suited to do than Donald Trump who literally made his, you know, first money in real estate and knows something about that industry. But he's not focused on that. He's focused on the ballroom. He's focused on the reflecting pool. He's focused on this Iran war that he would like to get himself out of, but is now trapped himself into. So, you know, that's where the energy is going to, is going to ultimately go. One more point on this men versus women in the economy piece, because I asked Emily, I know you and Emily were supposed to originally cover this and then you got short with time because you were having such a great interview with Derek. And so I said, oh, are there any points that you would want made? And one of the things that she also pointed to was again on immigration, she said, look, nine out of 10 deportees were actually male. So again, you would think, okay, then that creates more openings in the economy in traditionally male dominated industries. So to still have this level of decline where the net job increase in those male dominated industries is literally zero is again, pretty astonishing to see those numbers in spite of the fact that, you know, again on the immigration promises, he did the thing that he said he was gonna do that in their theory should have benefited people overall economically, should have benefited men specifically since it's men who are by and large being deported. And again, you don't see that in the data working out. And just to address that, you need carrots and sticks. So yes, you need that. You also need to make sure that these companies are either mandated, forced, or have to comply with paying more wages. That's just the truth. I mean, you can't just rely on supply and demand. You have to also in some cases have direct intervention. And, you know, let's even remember in terms of deportation, because this is an important thing. The Trump administration specifically exempted some of these jobs exactly what you're talking about. They exempted in many cases at the request of CEOs not deporting people either in farms or in the service sector. In fact, Trump actually endorsed some sort of migrant guest worker program whenever it came to farming, same with hotels and other places in the service industry. So there was an explicit either exemption, workplace raids, remember, which dramatically declined actually as Trump began to get all of these calls from the people who were actually paying many of these people under the table. So there was more of a scattershot approach. And sometimes even they're just a blue state targeting as opposed to explicitly trying to enact a policy that was going to have an overnight, or not overnight effect, but dramatic effect in terms of the workplace. But on top of that, you're also just frankly gonna have to force and mandate increased wages whenever it comes to some of these jobs because the market demand alone of supply is not going to change everything overnight. So yes, you know, it turns out, I'm not a libertarian, but you know, maybe to the shock of some of these people, I have no problems whatsoever in a lot of these trades and other jobs. I don't believe that there's any job in the world that people won't do if they're not paid well enough. We just have to make it so that they have to be paid. Yeah, well, and that's the thing too, is especially when you're talking about farm workers, they should be paid much better. I mean, that it's one of the most abused and exploited industries on the planet. Very likely those costs are passed through to consumers and at a time when people are getting screwed and inflation is high and wages are low and what you have extra to be able to afford that at the grocery store. So it's a terrible economic picture. I agree with the last thing I'm gonna say. Overall, Trump was created for everyone, let alone the people that he promised directly that he would do more for. I should have put this in the A block, but I don't know if you saw this. We're actually lowering the tariff on beef so that we can increase the imports of beef. Like either from Arjun, I'm like, okay, yeah, I mean, that's one way to reduce the price. Great, just get a bunch of foreign beef. I'm sure that that's the American dream. And then it even gets, doesn't it get labeled American made or something like that? Remember we've covered this before. I know the ranchers have a lot of issues with the country of origin labeling, which can be very deceptive. That's what it is. It's packaged in America. That's the way, it's like, you know when you open your Apple laptop and it says designed in California? That's what it means, designed in California. Not made in California, designed. Well, it's the same thing with beef is packaged here in the United States, they're able to label it for country of origin when really a lot of it is from Argentina. So we need to dramatically revise that. Oh wait, haven't done any of that actually, more recently either. Okay, let's get to Israel. So we now have some new global polling on how residents of the world feel about various countries. Let's put this up on the screen. You will not be surprised, I think viewers of the show, to learn that the most hated country in the entire world beating out North Korea, actually by a pretty hefty margin here, is the nation state of Israel. Although, is it even a nation state when it doesn't really seem to have borders and continually expands and attacks whoever they want, whenever they want, it's a question for another day. In any case, they are the most hated national entity in the world, North Korea, Afghanistan, Iran, and then we are just narrowly by one point there, liked better than Iran. Our standing has apparently plummeted quite significantly in the democracy perception index. And I don't know all the methodology, Sagar, of this polling, but it does not surprise me whatsoever that Israel is not exactly held in high regard. When you look at the way that they act like cry bullies in the world, when you look at the way that they attack all of their neighbors routinely, when you consider the fact that not just us, but the entire globe has watched the barbarism in their timelines of Israel committing a genocide and bragging about it and celebrating it. So, the country that we hold out as our great ally and the most moral army in the world and the only democracy in the Middle East, blah, blah, blah, turns out they have the lowest global perception of literally any place on the planet. Yeah, you know, it's actually interesting when you pair this with how Americans perceive other countries in the world. So I forgot to add this in, but I will send it along so we can put it in post. When you ask Americans how the influence of other countries is growing, and this fits very much with the theme of our show now, number one is China. And this was a poll just taken a few days ago. And number two is Israel, actually. So who is getting stronger? The percent of American adults who say each country is getting stronger. China, 62%, Israel, 45%, Russia, 34%, US, 34%. So the US is actually number four. So it's not really just the globe. I think it's that other countries are intuiting who has the upper hand in geopolitics. And what's actually fascinating to me is that Americans themselves are actually suing or seeing through the own propaganda of their own media. Now, in many countries, India, for example, they have a vibrant, thriving press. They will talk all day long about the declining influence of the United States, about how India stands alone, about how they can assess both with Israel, with Russia, and with the US. They can look at things pretty easily. But when you look at other Asian countries, especially the more allied countries, they're usually pretty good, often, about not showing in their media, let's say something that's so detrimental to the United States, with Israel, and all that, they didn't ever particularly care. But we've already paired this now with not only a lot of the outrage over how they conduct themselves in Gaza, but whenever this Iran war happened, they also were like, wow, now their belligerence is directly affecting us. And I think when you pair those two things together with the United States, with Israel, I mean, even with the US, let's say with our operation in Venezuela, one of the reasons I so opposed it was that obviously, between this and the Iran war, North Korea's never ever giving up their nuclear weapons. Now, they probably weren't ever before that, but when you fly into another nation and capture their head of state, because he doesn't have a nuke, and then you also launch a preemptive war to prevent another country from getting a nuke, and you can't even do that, you've erased US deterrence to any country which you're trying to diplomacy with, probably for the next 20 years. Well, you also, I mean, just imagine the outrage in any neutral, or even quasi-allied country. They're like, wait, they did that to them, they could do this to us. And so that level of hatred, I mean, it's probably akin to the Iraq war. I remember, I traveled a lot during the Iraq war, I was a teenager, living abroad, too. I mean, I don't particularly care all that much what like a Belgian thinks of the United States, but suffice it to say, it was not a lot. It was not very well received, the Iraq war, and it wasn't just them, it was like everybody, like wherever you went, people were really mad. And when you add Israel on top of this, and then the alliance, you know, bipartisan alliance really between Biden and between Trump over these last few years, people really, really have a negative view. I also think in Europe, it's not just Israel, it's also probably Ukraine. If I had to guess, obviously they're a lot more attached to the war in Ukraine than a lot of Americans are, and for them, you know, they had these very antiquated idealized view of NATO, but for them, that's also a wake up call. The fact is, is that, you know, Russia's not, is going to have at least a portion of Ukraine. So I think you just put all these things together, from Asia to Europe and across the world, the way they're feeling about Israel, the way they're feeling about the United States, and the assessment of who's getting stronger and having the upper hand, it all points in a very, very bad direction for American primacy, if that's something you ever cared about. And I certainly did. Yeah, go ahead. That was just gonna say, it's also, I mean, just think of our self-conception as always like the good guys in the world, you know, and then you look at this and you're like, you're ranked the same as Iran, congratulations. And Iran supposedly, you know, in our conception, the axis of evil, et cetera, et cetera. And I suspect that most of this polling was done before the Iran war. I'm gonna make a prediction here that the view of Iran in the world is going to surge because they've come off looking much more like the reasonable party in this war. I mean, they were the ones who were attacked. They were not the aggressive offender in this regard, and they've been very effective with their propaganda campaign, you know, the Lego videos and the New Minion videos and all these things that are coming out that are appealing to an American audience or appealing to a global audience. So, you know, I think that alone, given our sense of American exceptionalism and that we're the shining beacon on the hill and all this sort of thing, to see us ranking there with Iran, Afghanistan, North Korea, and then our great ally, Israel is, should be pretty stunning, one wake up call, I think, for a lot of Americans about how we are viewed at this point and justifiably, not the down of envy or blah, blah, blah, but because of the way that we have conducted ourselves in the world, certainly in this Trump administration, but as you point to the Iraq war going back further, I wanna, let me, let's jump ahead here for a moment to C5 because this ties directly into like Israel's view in the world and the way they've tried to manipulate the perception of Israel on the global stage. So, there's this contest called Eurovision where like countries compete with a pop star and they have a song. I've never actually watched it. I've only seen some clips online. This is more of your European thing, right? I have seen the movie Eurovision with Will Ferrell. That's as close as I get to Eurovision. Okay, there you go. Is it worth seeing? Is it funny? It's a funny movie, actually. It's actually funny. Okay, all right. So anyway, you can check that out for a little bit of a tutorial on what exactly Eurovision is. In any case, Israel found this to be really important as they were conducting this genocide. They're like, if we win the Eurovision contest, then people will stop thinking that everyone in the world hates us. So, New York Times did this somewhat belated, but kind of significant investigation into whether or not Israel manipulated the voting so that their star that they had representing their country would come out on top. That person actually ended up getting second place, but they went and they looked and they're like, in these countries like Spain, where people really, really hate Israel and are very pro-Palestine, somehow the Israeli artist won overwhelmingly in Spain. There were other countries that they looked at that would be small countries where only a few hundred votes would be required to like sway the vote in one direction or the other, where lo and behold, they voted overwhelmingly for Israel. It is known that Israel spent, had a significant budget to promote their Eurovision contender and to get people to vote. Netanyahu himself posted a graphic that was like, vote 20 times for our superstar. So in any case, the concerns that this contest was not above board, these deep suspicions that Israel had in fact manipulated the vote outcome seem to have been completely vindicated here. And it's just kind of a wild thing, a wild insight into the way that they think. They're like, well, if we are hated, rather than changing our behavior so that maybe we're not seen as complete barbaric monsters, instead we're just gonna rig the vote totals because that's totally gonna work and that's totally gonna change people's minds about who we are and what we're up to and how they feel about us. Yeah, it really is. It's amusing, but it's revealing, right? It's one of those things where, by the way, at the time, like you said, everybody kind of knew something was going on, but the investigation about all of these diplomats, I mean, the level of serious as they took this is pretty crazy. Like imagine US diplomats at the secretary of state level going around trying to rig a vote for like a game show abroad, it's unthinkable, honestly. Well, and it's ripping Eurovision apart because there's a big push to get Israel banned. There was supposed to be a vote on it, then the vote was polled. So you have a lot of countries that are unilaterally pulling out and I think you have to pay money to participate and that's part of their business model. So it's actually threatens the entire Eurovision enterprise because of Israel and their participation and their rigging of the results here. How did they get into Eurovision in the first place? It doesn't make a lot of sense. I'm just like, look, no offense to them, but it's like you're clearly not in Europe. So what exactly is going on here? Apparently they competed in Eurovision since 1973. Okay, I didn't even know that. Again, I'm not so familiar with the show, but are other non-European nations in Eurovision? Like is this a common thing? And if so, what's the point? Yeah, what's the point of calling it Eurovision? Is Turkey in Eurovision? Cause that would make actually more sense. But I'm sure, yeah, probably not. Just my guess, my guess, I don't know. Tanba Crystal. I genuinely don't know the answer to this question. While you set up the next one, I'm gonna look. Okay, all right. We can get to the bottom of this Eurovision situation. So we had some updates for you. You covered with Emily yesterday, the Nick Kristof column detailing the allegations of mass rape of Palestinian hostages being held by the Israelis. And obviously this is a topic we've covered in the past based on reporting from the UN, reporting from Batsalam, reporting the video that we all watched of a Palestinian hostage being gang raped and then those rapists being celebrated as national heroes. While the whistleblower who published the video was penalized and punished. So in any case, Nick Kristof puts out this column, which is extensively documented. He has some, I think 14 either eyewitnesses or victims themselves. He uses that previous research by human rights organizations, the UN Batsalam, which is an Israeli organization to flash out a picture that paints very compellingly once again, that this is a systematic abuse mechanism within Israeli prisons. And there was obviously a huge Zionist backlash. And then there was a rumor that was started by David Schuster who said that he had heard that within the New York Times, there was such a backlash that they were going to retract this column because it had so many problems. That appears to not have been true whatsoever. It could put C2 up on the screen. This is Kristof replying to Schuster. Schuster's tweet originally said, hearing from longtime friends in New York Times, there are already discussions, including up the mass had about retracting the Nick Kristof column issues with source credibility and lack of evidence. No indications that Kristof sourcing mistakes were deliberate, still problematic. Kristof replies, sorry, but your tweet is completely untrue. Then following that, we could put C3 up on the screen, the New York Times also came out and said, there is no truth to this at all. Kristof is a two-time Pulitzer Prize winning journalist who's reported on sexual violence for decades, is widely regarded as one of the world's best on the ground reporters documenting bearing witness to sexual abuse, experienced by women and men in war and conflict zones. He traveled to the region report firsthand on the stories of Palestinians who suffered abuse. His article collects accounts in the victim's own words backed by independent studies. So that was from a spokesperson for the New York Times. So this idea that it was so problematic and there were all sorts of issues within, it's gonna get retracted, it appears to be completely bunk. And all you need to know, I'll go and read Adam Johnson's book, including the part called How to Sell a Genocide, especially the part about what an important role the New York Times played in buying time among liberals for Biden to work hand in hand with Netanyahu to proceed forward with this genocide to see the way that the New York Times has covered Israeli actions in Gaza. If you really take that in, you will understand what was certainly an extraordinarily high level of evidence that they required for this particular column to get published. There is no doubt in my mind that the bar was very, very high. As again, evidenced by the fact that he had so many victims, so many witnesses who were on the record, albeit anonymously, to back up the assertions that were made in his story. But Sager, nevertheless, we had a total Zionist freak out. We can put the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, of course, called it a blood libel. This is C3B, chose the New York Times, chose to publish one of the worst blood libels ever to appear in the modern press. Again, guys, we have all seen the video of a Palestinian being gang-raped on camera who suffered grave wounds that he was treated for and the way that those rapists were turned into national heroes. So you don't even believe this. You don't even believe this yet, you know, for the Western world here, for the American public, this is what they're trying to sell. Let's go ahead and put C3D out, of course, predictably the free press is doing their job here, anonymous sources, pro-Hamas activists, and shoddy biology all fed into a dubious New York Times report. So we can put this one in the category of their famine denial and some of their other efforts to absolve Israel, some of the crimes that they have committed. We've got Scott Jennings here also getting in on the action saying the New York Times article in quotes about Israel is such a journalistic atrocity that I actually feel stupid reading it out loud. If everyone at the New York Times who's responsible for this is not fired, then the publication will lose whatever shred of credibility it has left. It is so wild to see these people in vain and pretend that there's some pro-Palestine bias at the New York Times of all places. The evidence is just as clear as it could possibly be that Israeli crimes were consistently downplayed. Palestinian crimes were consistently emphasized and in certain instances invented as in the beheaded babies hoax or the babies baked in the oven hoax. And yet people like him and other Zionists will tell you with a straight face that it's Israel that is treated unfairly and poorly in the Western press. Yeah, I would be very willing to believe, oh, in terms of the clamor about journalistic standards that maybe this was in good faith if they'd also done that for other previous hoaxes. And yet that's not the case whatsoever. They demand, look, I said it yesterday, there's more evidence for this than there was for that. It's just, it's open and shut. You can quibble a little bit with trying to understand how something happened based on first hand accounts. I get that, but a lot of the character assassination and the freak out over this does not apply whatsoever when it's the claims they're making about what happened on October 7th. Just keep that in mind whenever you're looking at all of this. And the fact that it hasn't been retracted despite this immense amount of pressure, which you know is at a massive governmental level just demonstrates, I think, again, how, look, and I said yesterday, Sue them then. If it's fake, the Israeli government can sue. And then they can open up their discovery process for how they really do conduct business, how what really happened in the guards and everybody can be deposed and the dogs. And if it's truly fake, then just prove it. That's easy, right? It's always in the opinion column. It has to be fake. Do it then. No one's stopping you. You guys have unlimited resources. So that should also be very, very telling whenever they threaten, but they don't do anything. ["The Last Song of the Year"] This is an I Heart podcast. Guaranteed human.