Latest / Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar / 5/4/26: Israel Uses Gaza Strategy In Lebanon, Epstein Suicide Note, China Screw You To US Sanctions

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5/4/26: Israel Uses Gaza Strategy In Lebanon, Epstein Suicide Note, China Screw You To US Sanctions · Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar

0:00
Speaker 1: Hey, guys, Saga and Crystal here.
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Speaker 3: news media and we hope to see you at Breakingpoints
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Speaker 3: dot com. Turning down to Israel, just checking in on
0:36
Speaker 3: what's going on there. Don't forget that we started this
0:38
Speaker 3: entire thing with the Iran War. So who's the sendant
0:40
Speaker 3: right now in Israeli society? Here we have it'mar Ben Gevier.
0:45
Speaker 3: Let's go ahead and put this up here.
0:46
Speaker 1: On the screen.
0:47
Speaker 3: Israel's National security minister. He was presented by his wife
0:51
Speaker 3: for his fiftieth birthday a cake on which you can
0:54
Speaker 3: actually see a noos a gallows. So that's how they
0:59
Speaker 3: celebrate in that family. Seems really healthy definitely a reflection
1:04
Speaker 3: of a very loving marriage and of the values that
1:06
Speaker 3: you would want to inculcate.
1:08
Speaker 2: Yeah, and this is this is specifically in honor of
1:11
Speaker 2: his successful ability to get past the law that sentences
1:15
Speaker 2: all Palestini. I mean, they're effectively, you know, hostages in
1:18
Speaker 2: this sham system where they have no hope of being
1:22
Speaker 2: exonerated even if they committed no crimes, but they all
1:25
Speaker 2: get sentenced to the death penalty. Do you know Jewish
1:27
Speaker 2: Israelies get sentenced to the death penalty for similar quote
1:30
Speaker 2: unquote terrorist at crimes?
1:31
Speaker 4: Know they do not.
1:32
Speaker 2: So that's what this cake is celebrating. So it's not
1:34
Speaker 2: just the spirit. There is a substance. There is a
1:37
Speaker 2: death cult substance behind it. And you'd be hard pressed
1:41
Speaker 2: to think of a more openly genocidal society than the
1:45
Speaker 2: modern day Israel.
1:47
Speaker 3: I just think it's crazy that. I mean, look, I
1:50
Speaker 3: don't think all Israelis even necessarily agree with this. I
1:54
Speaker 3: think that, you know, there's probably a decent number.
1:56
Speaker 1: Who'd be horrified.
1:58
Speaker 3: But what I find crazy is that this does not
2:02
Speaker 3: lead to this does not lead to any sort of
2:05
Speaker 3: like open reflection, Because even if you were going to
2:08
Speaker 3: have this ideology, this type of celebration. Wouldn't you want
2:11
Speaker 3: to hide it a little bit like would you want
2:13
Speaker 3: really to telegraph it? I think you know to everybody
2:16
Speaker 3: about your open like intent. It's just nuts, I think broadly.
2:19
Speaker 3: So let's go to see too, because this is how
2:22
Speaker 3: that connects with what's actually happening on the ground Lebanon. Remember, Israel,
2:27
Speaker 3: if this is from the New York Times, actually did
2:29
Speaker 3: a very good job here. They say, Israel said, it's
2:31
Speaker 3: applying the Gaza model in Lebanon.
2:33
Speaker 1: This is what the devastation likes.
2:34
Speaker 3: So they had some drone footage and cameras that actually
2:37
Speaker 3: went through these different Lebanese areas. And the reason why
2:41
Speaker 3: I think this is so important is that with Lebanon
2:44
Speaker 3: there's no even similar pretexts like there was with There
2:48
Speaker 3: was no October seventh, there were rockets that were fired
2:50
Speaker 3: by Hesbola. So Israel comes in into southern Lebanon and
2:56
Speaker 3: basically says, Okay, everybody below the Latani River, you've all
3:00
Speaker 3: got to go basically indefinitely, we will not allow anybody
3:04
Speaker 3: to stay. We're going to demolish everything in that area,
3:06
Speaker 3: applying the Gaza playbook. But for a very very different incident.
3:09
Speaker 3: And remember this is not even in I mean, I
3:11
Speaker 3: guess you could call Gaza disputed territory.
3:13
Speaker 1: This is a sovereign nation.
3:15
Speaker 3: They just invaded it, basically took it over, destroyed a
3:18
Speaker 3: decent portion of all of it, and said, yeah, we're
3:21
Speaker 3: here now, we're going to stay for as long as
3:23
Speaker 3: we need to. First it a security perimeter. They've even
3:27
Speaker 3: declared that they won't even allow people, you know, to
3:29
Speaker 3: build homes in the south near within rocket firing range,
3:33
Speaker 3: and you're like okay, and all of this with the
3:36
Speaker 3: tacit and basically open support of the United States. So
3:41
Speaker 3: this was nearly a million people or so that seemed
3:44
Speaker 3: to have been affected by this or could be affected
3:48
Speaker 3: in the long enough front, which definitely tens of thousands
3:50
Speaker 3: in the immediate term with many of these villages, hundreds
3:53
Speaker 3: of people were killed. Beirut itself, many of it were
3:56
Speaker 3: much of it was bombed. They said they were targeting
3:59
Speaker 3: all of this infant structure. But it's the same playbook
4:02
Speaker 3: as what happened in Gaza, and yet this time it's
4:05
Speaker 3: not even nearly as much outrage when in my opinion, look,
4:08
Speaker 3: I actually think it might be more outrageous because you
4:11
Speaker 3: have this precipitating event of Hesbola fire and rockets. Okay,
4:16
Speaker 3: you can strike them from They're like, no, we're going
4:18
Speaker 3: to invade, We're going to demolish. They had those photos
4:21
Speaker 3: that came out of the guy beating the Jesus statue.
4:25
Speaker 3: I mean, you know, what was it?
4:26
Speaker 1: The Shia thing? I forget off the top of it.
4:29
Speaker 2: They warned Christians right not to hide sa Muslims.
4:33
Speaker 3: They were like openingly telling They're like, hey, anybody who's Shia.
4:36
Speaker 3: They gotta go like, hey, you're not allowed to hide
4:38
Speaker 3: any Shia.
4:39
Speaker 1: You're like, what the hell you know?
4:41
Speaker 3: I mean, this is out in the open in terms
4:44
Speaker 3: of how they're acting. Oh and just so you guys know,
4:46
Speaker 3: the initial buffer zone, oh, then they would expand it,
4:48
Speaker 3: and then they would expand it even more, and they
4:51
Speaker 3: basically have openly said we're not leaving, like we're not
4:54
Speaker 3: leaving period. And then you know, I don't know, we
4:57
Speaker 3: all go everyone in Washington goes crazy over this crazy
5:01
Speaker 3: idea that maybe we should tell them, like, hey, maybe
5:03
Speaker 3: stop doing that because it's actually creating more problems in
5:06
Speaker 3: terms of our ceasefire with Iran.
5:09
Speaker 1: So yeah, and I don't know.
5:11
Speaker 3: You put it all together, you can just see how
5:13
Speaker 3: this has now been normalized beyond just Gaza, how it's
5:16
Speaker 3: already creating major problems here for America. And I mean,
5:20
Speaker 3: do you really think they're going to stop. They haven't
5:21
Speaker 3: even stopped. In the middle of the Seaspire, dozens of
5:24
Speaker 3: people were killed in air strikes and conflagrations. So if
5:27
Speaker 3: this doesn't completely end, then how are we ever going
5:30
Speaker 3: to get some sort of a settlement in the future.
5:32
Speaker 3: And this is just how they are now. They're open,
5:34
Speaker 3: they're emboldened by this, and they're just going to continue
5:37
Speaker 3: doing this until we just tell them to stop.
5:40
Speaker 1: Yeah, and we just won't do it. I don't get it.
5:41
Speaker 4: That's absolutely the case.
5:43
Speaker 2: And to your point about the targeting of sham Muslims,
5:47
Speaker 2: the predominantly Christian villages have been damaged, but not nearly
5:50
Speaker 2: to the extent of the devastation of the sham Muslim
5:54
Speaker 2: dominant villages which have just been utterly decimated.
5:57
Speaker 4: And in the vo that.
5:58
Speaker 2: We were showing you earlier from the New York Times,
6:01
Speaker 2: one of the images was of them destroying these solar panels,
6:05
Speaker 2: and you might think, well, why is that significant it's
6:07
Speaker 2: because Israel, of course, they claim. And the New York Times,
6:10
Speaker 2: you know, incredibly reprints the stuff too, even in this article,
6:13
Speaker 2: which did important journalistic work. Oh will they claim they're
6:16
Speaker 2: targeting Hesbola infrastructure. Please tell me how freakingsolar panels right
6:21
Speaker 2: that just provide electricity to a town could possibly be
6:25
Speaker 2: quote unquote Hesbola infrastructure. And so once they were called
6:30
Speaker 2: down and that, oh, we're going to discipline them, Oh,
6:31
Speaker 2: this isn't how we operate.
6:33
Speaker 1: Bull shit.
6:34
Speaker 2: We can all see the images of the way that
6:36
Speaker 2: you are applying the very same Gaza model now to Lebanon.
6:40
Speaker 2: And it's clear why because they got away with it
6:42
Speaker 2: in Gaza. Not only did they get away with it,
6:44
Speaker 2: they're still getting away with it in Gaza. So they
6:48
Speaker 2: know rightfully think there are going to be no consequences
6:51
Speaker 2: for this. We can do what we want now. I
6:53
Speaker 2: will say, Hesbola has proven to be more dangerous and
6:58
Speaker 2: tenacious than they expected. They have these fiber optic drones
7:03
Speaker 2: that have been used to you know, significant effect.
7:06
Speaker 4: Against the IDEF.
7:07
Speaker 2: The IDEA has not been able to advance all the
7:09
Speaker 2: way to the Latani River in all sections which had
7:13
Speaker 2: been the original goal. When we talked to Shiel last week,
7:15
Speaker 2: he was talking about how they're kind of like pinned
7:17
Speaker 2: down in this one area and they can't really advance,
7:21
Speaker 2: but they're not being allowed to retreat. So in some
7:23
Speaker 2: ways they're kind of sitting ducks for for Hasbola forces,
7:27
Speaker 2: which is why they've sustained some significant damage. Yeah, they
7:31
Speaker 2: have had some, you know, significant casualty numbers. But in
7:34
Speaker 2: any case, back to the point about Gaza and how
7:37
Speaker 2: they got away with it. Well, now they're publishing new
7:41
Speaker 2: maps and creating every day new realities on the ground
7:44
Speaker 2: where they now control two thirds of the Gaza Strip.
7:48
Speaker 2: Let's go ahead and take a listen to this report
7:52
Speaker 2: I believe is this Ruter's. Yeah, this is a Reuter's
7:54
Speaker 2: report about how Israel has expanded control now to two
7:58
Speaker 2: thirds of the Gaza Strip.
8:00
Speaker 5: Weell has quietly been expanding its control of Gaza. It
8:03
Speaker 5: has sent new maps to aid groups, sources said, which
8:05
Speaker 5: have not been released publicly. The latest version shows a
8:09
Speaker 5: freshly restricted area marked out with an orange line. It
8:12
Speaker 5: extends beyond the yellow line zone occupied by Israeli troops
8:16
Speaker 5: agreed in the US broken October ceasefire. Reutter's acquired the
8:20
Speaker 5: maps and shared them with Palestinian researchers in the occupied
8:23
Speaker 5: West Bank. Jad Isaac, who heads up the Applied Research
8:26
Speaker 5: Institute Jerusalem, says the new line shows Israel now controls
8:30
Speaker 5: nearly two thirds of Gaza. Israel says the orange line
8:34
Speaker 5: sets out a restricted zone where aid groups must coordinate
8:37
Speaker 5: their movements with the military. It's to enable quote humanitarian
8:41
Speaker 5: activity while safeguarding personnel in a complex operational environment, according
8:46
Speaker 5: to KOGAT, the Israeli military agency that controls access to Gaza,
8:51
Speaker 5: but thousands of Gazan families are now caught between the lines.
8:54
Speaker 5: Residents say they lack water and other supplies because aid
8:57
Speaker 5: groups are scared to send staff there. At least three
9:00
Speaker 5: Palestinians working with foreign aid groups have been killed in
9:03
Speaker 5: the new restricted zone. Israel's military said it had opened
9:07
Speaker 5: fire after identifying threats near the yellow line. A Shower
9:12
Speaker 5: says residents are also regularly being killed and wounded in
9:15
Speaker 5: the area. He says they aren't given warning when the
9:19
Speaker 5: line shifts. According to CogAT, the Orange line boundaries are
9:22
Speaker 5: updated according to operational assessments. They declined to comment on
9:27
Speaker 5: the frequency of updates or whether it communicates them to
9:30
Speaker 5: Palestinian civilians.
9:32
Speaker 2: And if you read or see videos of day to
9:35
Speaker 2: day life for Palestinians in Gaza, it's just absolutely horriful.
9:39
Speaker 2: I mean, you can imagine, right, You've had all of
9:41
Speaker 2: these years at this point of bombing and destruction and
9:46
Speaker 2: attacking you know, wastewater treatment plants and any sort of
9:49
Speaker 2: basic infrastructure. So you have rats that are running rampant,
9:53
Speaker 2: you have disease that is spreading. It's just absolutely miserable.
9:56
Speaker 2: People been living in these tents for god knows how long.
9:59
Speaker 2: I've been displayed so many times, these poor children, it's
10:02
Speaker 2: just absolutely horrifying. I wanted to read a little bit
10:04
Speaker 2: of what Schiel put out actually on Twitter this morning.
10:07
Speaker 2: He says Israel's planning its operation to finish the genocide
10:11
Speaker 2: in Gaza. The pretext is that Hamas is rebuilding and
10:13
Speaker 2: will not disarm.
10:14
Speaker 4: Of course, Israel refused.
10:16
Speaker 2: To negotiate sincerely over the future of Gaza process, which
10:19
Speaker 2: would involve that discussion. He goes on in terms of,
10:22
Speaker 2: you know, making his case why he thinks they're getting
10:24
Speaker 2: ready to go back to this more aggressive offensive. He
10:27
Speaker 2: says they're currently six brigades operating in Gaza. Troop rotations
10:31
Speaker 2: indicate preparations for a prolonged intensive presence. The Paratroopers Brigade
10:35
Speaker 2: is set to replace a reserve brigade, and the two
10:37
Speaker 2: undred and fifth Brigade, known as the Iron Fifth, recently
10:39
Speaker 2: completed its sixth combat.
10:41
Speaker 4: Rotation since the war began.
10:44
Speaker 2: So he sees all the indications that that is the
10:47
Speaker 2: direction that they are heading in. And you know, as
10:51
Speaker 2: the world moves on and is focused on Ron's now
10:54
Speaker 2: focus somewhat on Lebanon, they continue the killing, they continue
10:58
Speaker 2: to seize more territory and Housingians in Gaza continue to
11:02
Speaker 2: suffer in absolutely miserable conditions. But to Shille's point, Zager,
11:06
Speaker 2: when that original ceasefire deal was struck, those more difficult
11:10
Speaker 2: questions about disarmament, what the future would look like, they
11:13
Speaker 2: were pushed off.
11:14
Speaker 1: To the next phase, the Board of Peace, and.
11:17
Speaker 2: There was supposed to be negotiations over what that next
11:20
Speaker 2: phase was, and that just never happened. So Israel is
11:22
Speaker 2: able to effectively do whatever they feel like, right.
11:24
Speaker 3: And reason why even spend time on this, because this
11:28
Speaker 3: is going to dramatically affect the situation with Iran. If
11:30
Speaker 3: you are Iran, I mean this is honestly, even the
11:33
Speaker 3: currencyes fire. I still don't really get it from their
11:36
Speaker 3: perspective at all. But this is evidence where you can
11:40
Speaker 3: see in the very near term of how the US
11:43
Speaker 3: and Israel have conducted themselves whenever they sign a piece
11:45
Speaker 3: deal and they say they're not going to do X,
11:47
Speaker 3: Y and z. This is probably part of the reason
11:49
Speaker 3: why they're going so hard in their current negotiations and
11:51
Speaker 3: they're unbuckling because they can see directly. They're like, hey,
11:54
Speaker 3: we really can't take these people's word for it unless
11:56
Speaker 3: we have it explicitly in writing, and even then we
11:59
Speaker 3: need immediate steps to make sure that they can't restart
12:03
Speaker 3: hostilities against US if they were to want to.
12:06
Speaker 1: So I think, you know, putting this stuff.
12:07
Speaker 3: All together is important because these actions between Gaza, Lebanon
12:13
Speaker 3: and others are having a direct follow on effect on
12:15
Speaker 3: how the Iranians are negotiating with the United States and
12:18
Speaker 3: with Israel, obviously because their counterparty to this.
12:21
Speaker 1: You know, we do want to also.
12:22
Speaker 3: Shout out the level of derangement here in the United States.
12:28
Speaker 3: So let's go to the next one. This is the
12:29
Speaker 3: US Ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee. He did a long
12:34
Speaker 3: screed against The New York Times and Tucker Carlson, who
12:38
Speaker 3: recently put out like a two hour podcast. In it,
12:41
Speaker 3: he says, Tucker accused me of advocating for killing of
12:44
Speaker 3: children and civilians. Asked to respond, I sent the following
12:48
Speaker 3: for The New York Times. Poor Tucker needs help. He's
12:50
Speaker 3: clearly circling the drain by saying something so outrageous. No
12:52
Speaker 3: sane person advocates for the murder of children or civilians,
12:55
Speaker 3: even the allegation is sick and evil. Tucker limits his
12:58
Speaker 3: compassion to the unfortunate soul who have died in Gaza
13:01
Speaker 3: as a result of the result of the stubborn a
13:04
Speaker 3: good great call of the stubbornness of Hamas to release
13:07
Speaker 3: hostages and murder their own citizens and intentionally put them
13:10
Speaker 3: in front of military assets. One never hears Tucker lament
13:13
Speaker 3: the massacre and mutilation of twelve hundred women, babies, and
13:16
Speaker 3: elderly people butchered by Hamas on October seventh, or the torture, rape,
13:19
Speaker 3: and starvation of the two hundred and fifty one hostages
13:21
Speaker 3: taken and held by Hamas. I am heartbroken by the
13:24
Speaker 3: slaughter of innocent civilians wherever they are, whoever they are.
13:27
Speaker 3: Tucker's irrational hatred of Jews in general in Israel in particular,
13:31
Speaker 3: binds him to the horrific savagery inflicted upon the victims
13:34
Speaker 3: of October seventh, including the rape of women in front
13:37
Speaker 3: of their children, to beheading at babies in the presence
13:39
Speaker 3: of their mothers, or setting fire to elderly people who
13:42
Speaker 3: sat in wheelchairs and were burned alive, all of which
13:44
Speaker 3: were captured on video taken by Hamas terrorists who were
13:47
Speaker 3: so proud of their despicable acts that they wore GoPro
13:50
Speaker 3: cameras to record it as if they were taking movies
13:52
Speaker 3: of a dance recital. Okay, So taking that all in
13:55
Speaker 3: totality and the highlighted portion which was put out in
14:00
Speaker 3: a kind of a debunking on Twitter. And this is
14:03
Speaker 3: always uncomfortable because this idea that we're going to sit
14:06
Speaker 3: here and say that twelve hundred people didn't die on
14:08
Speaker 3: October seventh is ridiculous.
14:09
Speaker 1: No one's going to say that.
14:10
Speaker 3: It was literally on video, much of it was published.
14:13
Speaker 3: They were massacred, slaughtered, many of them. Now there's some
14:17
Speaker 3: other stuff that happened on that day as well, in
14:19
Speaker 3: terms of the failures of the Israeli military and then
14:21
Speaker 3: their own actions. But let's even put that all to
14:23
Speaker 3: the side. Many civilians were killed horrifically on October seventh. However,
14:27
Speaker 3: many of the claims that they have made had you know,
14:30
Speaker 3: in the initial days of the war, did not hold
14:33
Speaker 3: up to scrutiny. And for this you have to look
14:36
Speaker 3: no further than Israeli media. That's why, you know, I
14:39
Speaker 3: don't even cite necessarily Dropsie and Right, not that I
14:42
Speaker 3: love those guys, but when I have to get into
14:44
Speaker 3: this argument with people who will often give me, you know,
14:47
Speaker 3: these similar lines, I go, listen, Haretz did the work.
14:50
Speaker 3: There's no evidence, right, especially in the beheaded babies WoT.
14:53
Speaker 3: That was probably the most like sighted claim in the
14:57
Speaker 3: initial days of the war of barbarism. There's plenty of
15:00
Speaker 3: other things that you could have also picked to which
15:03
Speaker 3: are true, by the way, but on that particular one,
15:06
Speaker 3: like Haretz and others in the Israeli media, went through systematically.
15:10
Speaker 3: Now people say, why do you spend so much time
15:12
Speaker 3: doing this while like in this particular case, let's say
15:15
Speaker 3: with Huckabee, like you were justifying war. For example, let's
15:19
Speaker 3: say actions of the Israeli military and Gaza specifically on
15:22
Speaker 3: the basis of many of these types of claims. All
15:26
Speaker 3: you have to do is point to the acknowledge and
15:29
Speaker 3: real evidence I think of what happened on October seventh,
15:32
Speaker 3: which is plenty enough. I don't think it justifies their response,
15:35
Speaker 3: but this just demonstrates, I think, the level of which
15:38
Speaker 3: they have to resort to to also point fingers at
15:42
Speaker 3: their ideological enemies.
15:43
Speaker 2: Right, yes, I mean yeah, it feels really gross to
15:46
Speaker 2: do this. But just as a point of fact, there
15:49
Speaker 2: were no babies beheaded, none, there were none baked in ovens.
15:51
Speaker 2: The claim that has been made that Hamas used rape
15:58
Speaker 2: as a weapon of war, that claim has not been substantiated.
16:02
Speaker 2: What has been substantiated is the way Israel uses rape
16:06
Speaker 2: as a weapon of war. But funny, I haven't heard
16:08
Speaker 2: my Kugbee speak out about that, of which we have
16:12
Speaker 2: far more evidence and proof from our great ally Israel.
16:16
Speaker 2: And there's a very specific reason why these claims were
16:20
Speaker 2: pushed in the wake of October seventh, and Adam Johnson
16:24
Speaker 2: just published a book, How to Sell a Genocide, which
16:27
Speaker 2: focus in specifically on liberal media and the role that
16:32
Speaker 2: they played the New York Times in particular, but New
16:35
Speaker 2: York Times, CNN, MSNBC, all of them in conbine enough
16:39
Speaker 2: time for Biden and for net Yahoo to conduct this
16:43
Speaker 2: ethnic cleansing and genocidal campaign. And one of the very
16:48
Speaker 2: early efforts that was made was to portray Palestinians in general,
16:53
Speaker 2: Hamas specifically as these absolute barbarians that you could never
16:57
Speaker 2: have a ceasefire with. You could never have a pieced
17:00
Speaker 2: with that. It's just absolutely impossible. And so that's why
17:04
Speaker 2: they invented these very specific claims about rape used systematically
17:09
Speaker 2: as a weapon of war, about beheaded babies, about baking
17:11
Speaker 2: babies in ovens, etc. That is the reason they wanted
17:16
Speaker 2: to portray them as these bloodthirsty maniacs, animals, as the
17:21
Speaker 2: Israelis were describing them, in order to justify what they
17:25
Speaker 2: knew was going to be a horrific campaign of war
17:30
Speaker 2: crime after war crime. So to hear him still at
17:33
Speaker 2: this late date, after this has been thoroughly debunked, I mean,
17:37
Speaker 2: the head of babies thing is just like not true
17:40
Speaker 2: at all in fact, And again I hate to say
17:42
Speaker 2: that there was one baby that was killed on October seventh,
17:44
Speaker 2: that's horrific. One baby is horrific enough, right, there were
17:48
Speaker 2: not dozens who were even killed, let alone none of
17:50
Speaker 2: them beheaded. So in any case, just disgusting to see
17:53
Speaker 2: these lies and propaganda, atrocity, propaganda continuing to be pushed
17:58
Speaker 2: by a significant American official who he and his staff
18:02
Speaker 2: have exercised a lot of influence apparently within the Trump
18:04
Speaker 2: administration as well. One more piece here that they wanted
18:11
Speaker 2: to get in because I do think it ties into
18:13
Speaker 2: the way that Americans have shifted because they've seen all
18:16
Speaker 2: of they've seen these lives, they've seen through the lives,
18:18
Speaker 2: they've seen the horrors on their own timelines and developed
18:21
Speaker 2: their own opinions about what our relationship with Israel should
18:24
Speaker 2: be and how we should conduct ourselves in the Middle East.
18:27
Speaker 2: So the media outlet's Daily Wire, you know, with their
18:31
Speaker 2: most prominent personality being Ben Shapiro, has really suffered in
18:35
Speaker 2: terms of viewership in the recent in recent years, really
18:39
Speaker 2: post October seventh, as the public and has conservatives in particular,
18:43
Speaker 2: young conservatives in particular have shifted away from this view
18:47
Speaker 2: of we should have lockstep support for Israel, and so
18:51
Speaker 2: they just conducted significant layoffs. We don't know exactly how
18:55
Speaker 2: many canvases out claiming like sixty percent. I have not
18:59
Speaker 2: seen any like solid can crete numbers under the layoffs
19:03
Speaker 2: for sure, literally there were significant layoffs, and the number
19:07
Speaker 2: that's been floating around is actually fifty percent. But none
19:09
Speaker 2: of this has been confirmed. They haven't confirmed it either.
19:11
Speaker 2: But you know, there's a lot to be said about
19:14
Speaker 2: this number. One First and foremost, like I said, I
19:16
Speaker 2: think the ideological positioning has been a big problem for them,
19:20
Speaker 2: and if you look at the views for Bens Show
19:23
Speaker 2: in particular, it has just really fallen off a cliff
19:27
Speaker 2: as people are, you know, increasingly even in the conservative movement,
19:31
Speaker 2: are increasingly having a different view. And then the other
19:35
Speaker 2: piece is just like a sort of like business piece,
19:37
Speaker 2: which is that they built out this huge organiza. They
19:41
Speaker 2: wanted to do children's stuff, they wanted to do movies,
19:44
Speaker 2: they did all of that stuff, and you know, in uh,
19:48
Speaker 2: the non corporate medias, although they you know, they have
19:51
Speaker 2: corporate back and they have big billionaire back and whatever. Anyway,
19:55
Speaker 2: it's just very difficult when you have a personality driven
19:59
Speaker 2: company to build out all of that overhead and make
20:03
Speaker 2: it a sustainable project. So I think you have a
20:06
Speaker 2: confluence of those two things coming to you.
20:07
Speaker 1: Yeah, people point to the Ben Shapiro YouTube. Look, I
20:10
Speaker 1: mean it's a tough business. We've all been.
20:13
Speaker 3: I'll say it's not been that tough for us recently.
20:15
Speaker 3: But you know, in general, I don't like to nickel
20:17
Speaker 3: and dime like, oh, he's got twenty thousand less subscribers whatever,
20:21
Speaker 3: He's got seven million subscribers. Okay, So that's not like
20:23
Speaker 3: the biggest indication to me. The biggest indication is the
20:26
Speaker 3: stame drop over the last three year period and the
20:28
Speaker 3: fact this company has to do layoffs. Now, why do
20:30
Speaker 3: they have to do layoffs because they're over capital or
20:32
Speaker 3: because they were They took in a ton of money.
20:35
Speaker 3: They had this big, ambitious agenda and didn't work period, Right,
20:38
Speaker 3: it just did not work. And that's very clear, especially
20:42
Speaker 3: as a conservative coalition begins to fracture, and you can
20:45
Speaker 3: especially see it. I mean Ryan got applause recently at
20:48
Speaker 3: some event with Emily where he said that they should
20:51
Speaker 3: sanction Israel. This is a young conservative event.
20:53
Speaker 1: He got a loss. Okay.
20:54
Speaker 3: So that's the reality of what we're living in now.
20:57
Speaker 3: So that's just not really going to cut it. I
20:59
Speaker 3: also think as Trump reaches all time low unpopularity or
21:02
Speaker 3: is all time low popularity in the US, that the
21:05
Speaker 3: appetite for just like the most like you know, a
21:08
Speaker 3: Trump can do no wrong. Oh but what about the
21:11
Speaker 3: it's like bro gases four.
21:12
Speaker 1: Fifty a gallon.
21:13
Speaker 3: I don't need to be hearing about some high school
21:15
Speaker 3: and I don't know in Boston, right, Like you know,
21:18
Speaker 3: it's like that feels very tripe to me.
21:20
Speaker 4: Yeah, right now, the college kid the way they used to.
21:23
Speaker 3: I'm telling you this as a person who also hates that,
21:26
Speaker 3: but I'm I'm also self aware enough to say, nobody
21:29
Speaker 3: gives a shit about crt like curricula in a local
21:34
Speaker 3: Boston school district while gas is four dollars and fifty
21:37
Speaker 3: four cents a gallon.
21:39
Speaker 1: Just the truth, right, Like you know, what is a
21:41
Speaker 1: woman and all? That ain't hitting today?
21:43
Speaker 3: In my opinion, it was a very different specific period
21:47
Speaker 3: of time, and that's fine. But my point is, just
21:49
Speaker 3: like that era of politics and content is just not
21:53
Speaker 3: going to sell in this immediate term and their appetite
21:58
Speaker 3: just generally from what I've been able to see, I mean,
22:00
Speaker 3: they have some good reporters and others who really do
22:02
Speaker 3: care about the news, but.
22:04
Speaker 1: For a lot.
22:04
Speaker 3: You know, their main driver is going to be that
22:07
Speaker 3: type of stuff, and that's just not it's not going
22:09
Speaker 3: to click right now, especially especially especially with Ben and
22:12
Speaker 3: especially with a lot of the way that they have
22:14
Speaker 3: to try and approach the Trump administration because for them,
22:17
Speaker 3: they want influence too, and you can't be openly critical.
22:20
Speaker 3: So they're they're in a they're in the same spot
22:22
Speaker 3: as the Blue and On guys were when Biden was
22:25
Speaker 3: atis Nader. Remember like Harry Sys, you know, sorry here.
22:28
Speaker 3: I know you had on the show and we appreciate
22:30
Speaker 3: you coming on. But my point is like those diehard
22:33
Speaker 3: Biden guys, they look like idiots, like in the and
22:36
Speaker 3: when Biden, especially around the debate and that time period,
22:39
Speaker 3: we're like, bro, what are you doing? Like they had
22:41
Speaker 3: no their audience, like a lot of even their own
22:43
Speaker 3: like Blue you know, Democrat audience was like hey, guys,
22:46
Speaker 3: like you're really defending Biden a lot here, Like I'm sorry,
22:49
Speaker 3: Like I just don't agree. So it's just it's a
22:51
Speaker 3: tale as old as time. Yeah, I think in political covering, he.
22:53
Speaker 2: Also lost a couple of his biggest, most prominent personalities
22:56
Speaker 2: and us obviously left in very you know, contentious circumstances.
23:00
Speaker 2: Is you had Brett Cooper, who also you know.
23:02
Speaker 4: When independent and now fired her.
23:04
Speaker 2: I haven't followed that closely, but it seems like she's
23:07
Speaker 2: tried to reposition herself somewhat and have you know, more
23:10
Speaker 2: of an independent approach in terms of reviews on Israel.
23:14
Speaker 2: And you know she's got this very young audience. She
23:16
Speaker 2: herself is very young, so she would have more finger
23:18
Speaker 2: on the polls there, et cetera. So that also shows
23:21
Speaker 2: the limits of what you could do, because there's no
23:24
Speaker 2: reason putting aside whatever personal or ideological conflicts. Once you're
23:29
Speaker 2: as big as canvas OANs, there's just no reason to stay.
23:31
Speaker 2: Why would you not do your own thing and make
23:33
Speaker 2: your own money and set your own terms and not
23:36
Speaker 2: have to deal with a bos?
23:37
Speaker 4: Why would you not do that?
23:38
Speaker 2: But to your point Sagger about how the you know,
23:41
Speaker 2: the college kids or the CRT curriculus and selling the
23:44
Speaker 2: way he's to there's actually a point Tucker made in
23:46
Speaker 2: his interviewed The New York Times. I don't know if
23:47
Speaker 2: you listened to the whole interview, but he said, he said, listen,
23:50
Speaker 2: I think the only thing people are going to really
23:52
Speaker 2: focus on is economics because it's getting that dire, you know,
23:55
Speaker 2: whether it's whether it's AI obviously with the Iran war,
23:58
Speaker 2: affordability crisis, that that is where the.
24:00
Speaker 4: Energy is going to be.
24:02
Speaker 2: And if you aren't focused on that, then people are
24:04
Speaker 2: not going to be interested in what you have to say.
24:06
Speaker 2: And I think he's probably right about that.
24:07
Speaker 1: It's just so obvious. I don't think it takes a
24:09
Speaker 1: genius really to figure it out.
24:10
Speaker 3: I mean, at the end of the day, the cultural
24:12
Speaker 3: stuff is what gets your base animated, and then you
24:15
Speaker 3: get the swing voters and others to come on your
24:17
Speaker 3: side when you convince them that things are going to
24:19
Speaker 3: be better for you, right, I mean, is the culture consues.
24:23
Speaker 2: This sounds too dismissive, and I'm not saying they're not important,
24:26
Speaker 2: but it's almost like a luxury to get to focus
24:28
Speaker 2: on those sorts of debates because I mean, if you're
24:31
Speaker 2: just trying to make it through month to month and
24:34
Speaker 2: like survive and keep the lights on, of course that's
24:38
Speaker 2: going to be your number one concern for totally.
24:40
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's why the culture war, the big, the most
24:44
Speaker 3: culture wars that we had in my lifetime was in
24:47
Speaker 3: the nineties because shit was fine, Like everything's mostly fine.
24:50
Speaker 6: Now.
24:50
Speaker 3: A lot of people will get mad, but that's the truth, Okay,
24:53
Speaker 3: Like most of the time, Why do you think Lewinsky
24:56
Speaker 3: was such a big scandal? Okay when the Dow and
24:58
Speaker 3: the S and P are up so high and we're
25:00
Speaker 3: living in the unipolar moment, that's only in this very
25:03
Speaker 3: unique moment in time, could anybody even pretend to give
25:05
Speaker 3: a shit, you know, with about ken Starr and Lewinsky
25:08
Speaker 3: in the wall to wall coverage when things are really dire. Yeah,
25:11
Speaker 3: nobody wants to hear it, Like whenever we're talking about,
25:14
Speaker 3: you know, some of these twenty twenty two controversies. I mean,
25:18
Speaker 3: imagine even trying to seriously talk about that right now,
25:21
Speaker 3: we barely have time for like vitally important stories because
25:24
Speaker 3: we're in the middle of a global realignment war happening,
25:29
Speaker 3: and not only in the Middle East, which is spiking
25:31
Speaker 3: gas to existential levels for American households. That's all anybody
25:36
Speaker 3: is going to want to.
25:37
Speaker 2: Imagine covering like the racial makeup of the Little Mermaid remake.
25:41
Speaker 1: At this point, I would be like, true, yeah, that's true.
25:44
Speaker 2: Yeah, you can see in our own coverage it's I
25:46
Speaker 2: mean I'm telling you as a person in economics, this.
25:48
Speaker 3: Is a person who, like I'm not saying I don't
25:50
Speaker 3: care about this stuff, but again, I care a lot
25:52
Speaker 3: more about the price of gas and about the ability
25:54
Speaker 3: of my fellow citizens to like not die from starvation
25:58
Speaker 3: or something like that than I do about those things.
26:00
Speaker 3: Those are just fights for another day, I think at
26:03
Speaker 3: the current moment. But if that's all you've got in
26:05
Speaker 3: your quiver, it ain't going to be good for you
26:07
Speaker 3: going forward.
26:08
Speaker 1: And by the way, there's three more years of this shit,
26:10
Speaker 1: so let's see.
26:11
Speaker 3: Let's see how much that Let's see how that works
26:14
Speaker 3: out for said crew. All right, speaking of important stories
26:17
Speaker 3: which we haven't been able to cover as much as
26:18
Speaker 3: we'd like to, let's go to Epstein. Turning now to
26:23
Speaker 3: Jeffrey Epstein. Shocking piece of news that we've now learned
26:26
Speaker 3: after some seven years. Let's go and put this up
26:28
Speaker 3: here on the screen. Jeffrey Epstein's possible suicide note was
26:33
Speaker 3: hidden from public view. Interesting.
26:36
Speaker 1: Huh.
26:36
Speaker 3: So you've had the release of all of these different
26:38
Speaker 3: Epstein files, You've had all this testimony OIG reports from
26:42
Speaker 3: the Department of Justice. It's been so many years now,
26:46
Speaker 3: seven years almost to the day since Epstein allegedly killed himself,
26:50
Speaker 3: let's just say, died in federal custody. And in all
26:53
Speaker 3: that time period we did not know this basic fact.
26:57
Speaker 3: A suicide note purportedly written by Epstein in his jail
27:00
Speaker 3: cell has been kept secret.
27:02
Speaker 1: Now locked up in a New York courthouse.
27:05
Speaker 3: A cellmate said he discovered the note in July twenty nineteen,
27:08
Speaker 3: after Epstein was found unresponsive with a strip of cloth
27:11
Speaker 3: around his neck. Epstein survived that incident, but weeks later
27:16
Speaker 3: was found dead in the jail. The note was eventually
27:18
Speaker 3: sealed by a federal judge as a part of the
27:21
Speaker 3: cellmate's own criminal case. That means investigators scrutinizing his death
27:27
Speaker 3: lacked what would have been a key piece of evidence.
27:30
Speaker 3: On Thursday, The Times petitioned to judge to unseal the note,
27:33
Speaker 3: which said it was quote time to say goodbye, the
27:37
Speaker 3: cellmate recalled. While Tartu, the cellmate, mentioned that note on
27:41
Speaker 3: a podcast last year, the scrawled message has remained hidden
27:44
Speaker 3: from public view even at a time of unprecedented transparency,
27:48
Speaker 3: and since December, the Justice Department has released all of
27:51
Speaker 3: these pages, millions of pages of documents The Times has
27:54
Speaker 3: not seen the note. They can't find it in the
27:55
Speaker 3: Epstein files. The DOJ said the agency had not even
27:58
Speaker 3: seen it, but a cryptic two page chronology in the records,
28:02
Speaker 3: and this was credited again to The Times for finding
28:04
Speaker 3: this became tangled up. The chronology says that the lawyers
28:08
Speaker 3: authenticated the note, though it does not explain how. If
28:11
Speaker 3: it was written by Epstein, the message would provide insights
28:14
Speaker 3: into his state of mind in the weeks before he
28:16
Speaker 3: died hanging from a bunk bed, and the DOJ said that,
28:19
Speaker 3: in response to a federal law, they underwent an exhausted
28:22
Speaker 3: effort to collect all the records in that possession. So basically,
28:25
Speaker 3: as of right now, it's not coming out.
28:27
Speaker 1: It's sealed up.
28:28
Speaker 3: In this particular case, this guy is now currently serving
28:31
Speaker 3: four life sentences and he's pursuing an appeal.
28:33
Speaker 1: As long as that's an appeal, it's going to remain sealed.
28:36
Speaker 1: He like we said, I mean, he claims it was
28:38
Speaker 1: just a scrawled note. Time to say it. I mean,
28:40
Speaker 1: maybe I don't know.
28:41
Speaker 3: By the way, you know, guy serving for life sentences
28:44
Speaker 3: in cell of Epstein.
28:45
Speaker 2: Okay, no, it's somebody with it, you know, It's a
28:48
Speaker 2: very important dtail situation. This guy is a former cop
28:52
Speaker 2: who was convicted of drug trafficking and murder of four
28:56
Speaker 2: different people. That's why his sentence is so extensive. So
29:01
Speaker 2: why was he put Why was he Epstein sellmate to
29:04
Speaker 2: begin with? Is question number one? Number two. It's very
29:09
Speaker 2: I have a lot of questions about this story. Is
29:10
Speaker 2: eyebroweris he's the one who found the note? And they claim, oh,
29:14
Speaker 2: we verify, we confirmed it was totally Epstein's handwriting.
29:17
Speaker 4: Can you see it? No, you can't see it, but
29:20
Speaker 4: just take our word for it.
29:21
Speaker 2: So I don't know, but interesting reporting from the Times
29:25
Speaker 2: here at the existence of this. You know, if it
29:28
Speaker 2: was released, of course you could have independent analysis that
29:31
Speaker 2: was done handwriting confirmation to see whether or not this
29:34
Speaker 2: note was legitimate. Obviously, the content of this alleged suicide note,
29:38
Speaker 2: you know, if he truly did pen a suicide note
29:41
Speaker 2: saying hey I'm out of here and thanks for the
29:43
Speaker 2: good times, or whatever it is that this note contains, obviously,
29:46
Speaker 2: that would be very significant in terms of helping to
29:49
Speaker 2: affirm or rebut some of the conspiracies around the death
29:54
Speaker 2: of Jeffrey Epstein. So so anyway, a lot of questions
29:57
Speaker 2: remain on that one. At the same time, this is
30:00
Speaker 2: Cray put D two up on the screen. Apparently Republicans
30:03
Speaker 2: are split on the idea of clemency for Glaine Maxwell.
30:08
Speaker 2: So you've got Republicans on this House panel who are
30:12
Speaker 2: trying to sell this bill of goods that, oh, will
30:15
Speaker 2: grant her Clemsy, We'll have Trump grant her clemency and
30:18
Speaker 2: then she will testify and she will hand in all
30:22
Speaker 2: of the perpetrators and it will help us with our investigation.
30:26
Speaker 2: I mean, of course the victims are of course, this
30:28
Speaker 2: is a disgusting idea. Of course it's an insane idea
30:31
Speaker 2: because you're going to trust this lady. She's one of
30:34
Speaker 2: the greatest criminals here in all of this, enabled all
30:38
Speaker 2: of this abuse, and you're going to set her free.
30:41
Speaker 2: I mean, it is crazy that she's the only one
30:43
Speaker 2: who's in prison, but at least one person is in
30:46
Speaker 2: prison serving jail time for these, you know, horrific crimes
30:49
Speaker 2: that were committed. So in any case, this is the
30:53
Speaker 2: latest line that they're trying to sell of like, oh,
30:55
Speaker 2: it's actually going to be good for the victims if
30:57
Speaker 2: we let Glainne Maxwell off the hook here crazy.
31:00
Speaker 1: Look, I don't really know what's going on.
31:02
Speaker 3: I do know that the House Committee continues some of
31:05
Speaker 3: this work specifically, and by the way, there's been some
31:08
Speaker 3: other Epstein reports which we again haven't had as much
31:11
Speaker 3: time to look. Nothing here is too crazy, but they
31:15
Speaker 3: just show, for example, there is still quote accountability and
31:18
Speaker 3: other people who have been disgraced by the Epstein affair.
31:21
Speaker 3: It's just that none of them who are being removed
31:24
Speaker 3: or resigning are in our government. Let's go to the
31:26
Speaker 3: next one, please and put this up here on the screen.
31:28
Speaker 3: This is just from two days ago. Bard's College's president
31:32
Speaker 3: is going to retire after scrutiny of his relationship with
31:35
Speaker 3: Jeffrey Epstein. Leon Botstein, who is president of Bard College
31:39
Speaker 3: for half a century, will retire at the end of June.
31:43
Speaker 3: He didn't mention Epstein, except saying he had waited to
31:46
Speaker 3: his announce retirement publicly until the completion of an independent
31:49
Speaker 3: review of his relationship.
31:51
Speaker 1: Now, to be clear, he.
31:52
Speaker 3: Was not accused of wrongdoing or anything with Epstein, but
31:56
Speaker 3: he was among unquote a long list of prominent and
32:00
Speaker 3: notable men who maintained friendly relationship with him for years
32:04
Speaker 3: despite his status as a convicted sex offender. The actual
32:08
Speaker 3: Epstein files show that they had met on multiple occasions,
32:12
Speaker 3: sometimes Epstein arriving at Bard by helicopter, and the President
32:16
Speaker 3: had also suggested Epstein be a guest at the twenty
32:20
Speaker 3: thirteen graduation ceremonies that they meet for an opera performance.
32:25
Speaker 3: In addition, he reached out to him weeks after the
32:28
Speaker 3: Miami Herald reporting saying quote, I want you to know
32:32
Speaker 3: I hope you're holding up as well as can be expected,
32:34
Speaker 3: and separately referred to his friendship in at least two emails.
32:38
Speaker 3: Epstein steered one hundred and fifty thousand dollars to him
32:42
Speaker 3: in twenty sixteen, which the president previously said he donated
32:46
Speaker 3: to the college and had also previously denied having any
32:49
Speaker 3: personal relationship with the man. So if Barn College apparently
32:53
Speaker 3: has more independence end of a review than anybody in
32:57
Speaker 3: the United States government, it makes a lot of sense.
32:59
Speaker 1: It makes a lot of sense.
33:00
Speaker 3: And then finally, big shout out to our friend Pablo Torre,
33:03
Speaker 3: who did a new Epstein, new Epstein revelation on his podcast,
33:07
Speaker 3: which wanted to play a little bit of a clip
33:09
Speaker 3: to give him a shout out. Let's take a listen
33:10
Speaker 3: to this one involves Harvard University.
33:13
Speaker 7: What we started with was this two thousand and three
33:15
Speaker 7: quote about Epstein from Professor Martin Novak, as read by
33:19
Speaker 7: PTFO correspondent Drew Patel, the managing editor of my old
33:23
Speaker 7: college newspaper, the Harvard Crimson.
33:27
Speaker 8: He is one of the most pleasant philanthropists to deal with,
33:29
Speaker 8: Novak says, unlike many people who support science, he supports
33:33
Speaker 8: science without any conditions. There are not any disadvantages to
33:38
Speaker 8: associating with him.
33:39
Speaker 7: And then we unearthed proof of the Jeffrey E. Epstein
33:42
Speaker 7: Fund for women's Athletics, which was especially earmarked for the
33:46
Speaker 7: women's rugby team, and it had a Harvard shield and
33:49
Speaker 7: the word Veritas across the top of this confidential document.
33:53
Speaker 7: Although according to multiple former rugby players we talked to,
33:57
Speaker 7: the team was never informed that the money came from
34:00
Speaker 7: Jeffrey Epstein. In fact, they were told to keep the
34:04
Speaker 7: fund quiet. But we then showed was how Harvard's twenty
34:07
Speaker 7: twenty report concerning Jeffrey E. Epstein's connections to Harvard University
34:12
Speaker 7: was presented to the public as this thorough self investigation
34:15
Speaker 7: spanning two hundred and fifty thousand pages, of documents, and
34:19
Speaker 7: yet it did not discuss the Jeffrey E. Epstein Fund
34:24
Speaker 7: for Women's Athletics or the president of Harvard who personally
34:28
Speaker 7: solicited it, Lawrence H.
34:31
Speaker 8: Summers.
34:33
Speaker 7: Larry Summers was the ex Treasury Secretary under Bill Clinton
34:37
Speaker 7: who was so close to Epstein that Epstein was calling
34:40
Speaker 7: himself summers wingman as recently as twenty eighteen. In fact,
34:45
Speaker 7: Summers rode on Epstein's plane in two thousand and four
34:49
Speaker 7: ahead of the creation of the Jeffrey E. Epstein Fund
34:51
Speaker 7: for Women's Athletics, and then Summers spent part of his
34:55
Speaker 7: own honeymoon on Epstein Island the next year in two
34:58
Speaker 7: thousand and five. And if you're wondering what a Harvard
35:02
Speaker 7: spokesperson told us in response to a detailed list of questions,
35:06
Speaker 7: they declined combat, but did point out that Epstein's twenty
35:11
Speaker 7: five thousand dollars fund for women's athletics became part of
35:14
Speaker 7: a larger donation Harvard eventually made after that twenty twenty
35:18
Speaker 7: self report to two organizations supporting victims of human trafficking
35:21
Speaker 7: and sexual assault. Meanwhile, a spokesman for Larry Summers has
35:26
Speaker 7: since told us that Summers was in fact, interviewed as
35:29
Speaker 7: part of Harvard's twenty twenty self investigation, and that summer's
35:33
Speaker 7: fundraising as Harvard president was done quote with the full
35:37
Speaker 7: involvement of the Development Office and the university's legal, financial
35:41
Speaker 7: and due diligence functions end quote. And further, all such
35:47
Speaker 7: fundraising happened quote prior to Epstein's two thousand and six
35:51
Speaker 7: arrest end quote.
35:53
Speaker 3: Nice work there by, Papa. They did a good job
35:55
Speaker 3: compiling it all together. Just furtheringmore what we know eas
35:57
Speaker 3: elite universities, their cozy little relationships, all these college presidents.
36:02
Speaker 3: How he was always getting together. Now we have a
36:04
Speaker 3: suicide note. So let's see. Let's see. Let's just say,
36:07
Speaker 3: let's see what it says. We passed it with peace
36:09
Speaker 3: of legislation. Let's put it to bed, let's release it
36:11
Speaker 3: to the public, and then we can all decide for
36:13
Speaker 3: ourselves what exactly he was trying to say. All right,
36:16
Speaker 3: we got Richard wolf standing by, professor.
36:17
Speaker 1: Let's get to it.
36:21
Speaker 2: Joining us now as we talk about the global economic
36:24
Speaker 2: impacts from the Iran war is Professor Richard Wolfe is
36:27
Speaker 2: a professor of economics emeritus at the University of Massachusetts.
36:30
Speaker 2: Amhersty's also co founder of Democracy at Work and host
36:34
Speaker 2: of their syndicated show Economic Update.
36:37
Speaker 1: Great to see you, Rick, Good to see sir.
36:38
Speaker 6: Thank you very much, both of you. It's a pleasure
36:41
Speaker 6: to be back.
36:41
Speaker 2: Yeah, of course, So I wanted to start with this
36:43
Speaker 2: specific news item and then we can sort of broaden out.
36:46
Speaker 2: But this seems very noteworthy from China. We can put
36:49
Speaker 2: E one up on the screen. This is from our
36:51
Speaker 2: friends over at drop site. They say China invoks blocking
36:54
Speaker 2: statute for the first time. China's Ministry of Commerce has
36:58
Speaker 2: for the first time activated it's twenty twenty one blocking rules,
37:01
Speaker 2: ordering all Chinese firms and individuals not to comply with
37:04
Speaker 2: US sanctions targeting five independent Chinese oil refineries accused of
37:08
Speaker 2: purchasing Iranian crude. Beijin called the US measure, imposed under
37:13
Speaker 2: two executive orders an unjustified an improper use.
37:16
Speaker 4: Of extra territorial law.
37:18
Speaker 2: The move puts multinational companies operating both markets in direct
37:21
Speaker 2: legal conflicts. Compliance with US sanctions now risks violating Chinese
37:26
Speaker 2: law and vice versa. Global banks and firms with dollar
37:30
Speaker 2: exposure face secondary sanctions risk if they continue dealing with
37:34
Speaker 2: the affected refineries. So help us understand, if you could,
37:38
Speaker 2: the significance of this action from the Chinese.
37:41
Speaker 6: Well, my judgment is it's very significant. It marks a
37:45
Speaker 6: change in the way that the Chinese are approaching what
37:51
Speaker 6: has been the American foreign policy now for quite some years.
37:55
Speaker 6: I would summarize describe that policy as very provocative, give
38:00
Speaker 6: interferences in a way previous American governments have not felt
38:06
Speaker 6: entitled to do. The Trump administration prides itself on doing
38:12
Speaker 6: what previous governments didn't do. Of the war in Iran
38:16
Speaker 6: is a grosser example of all of that. And what
38:20
Speaker 6: the Chinese have done until now, excuse me, is tiptoe
38:25
Speaker 6: around it, make believe they didn't know about it, urge
38:29
Speaker 6: their banks and others to find evasive ways of getting
38:34
Speaker 6: around it. Now, that is most of the time enough.
38:39
Speaker 6: Sanctions are a very crude instrument. We have been applying
38:45
Speaker 6: sanctions as a nation, and the United States does that
38:48
Speaker 6: more than any other country on Earth. Nobody else is
38:51
Speaker 6: even close. We have been applying sanctions, as folks know,
38:55
Speaker 6: on Cuba, on North Korea, on Russia for years, in
39:00
Speaker 6: years and years, and they have found very quickly ways
39:05
Speaker 6: around it, and so they can pretend not to notice
39:09
Speaker 6: and get around it, and no more feathers get ruffled.
39:14
Speaker 6: What the Chinese just did in the clip that you
39:17
Speaker 6: just showed us was to say, if you allow me
39:21
Speaker 6: to paraphrase our president, no more, mister Niscott. We are
39:25
Speaker 6: not gonna, you know, tiptoe around you. We are simply
39:29
Speaker 6: saying to the world, no more. We the Chinese government
39:35
Speaker 6: will not permit our banks to be threatened in this way,
39:41
Speaker 6: to be inconvenience, to be it costs a little to
39:44
Speaker 6: get around sanctions. It's not that it's free. It's a nuisance.
39:50
Speaker 6: But we're not going to allow that anymore. And we're
39:53
Speaker 6: serving notice on the whole world. Now this is no
39:57
Speaker 6: longer our problem. We are not alone the Chinese gonna
40:02
Speaker 6: figure out how to dance around mister Trump. We're you know,
40:06
Speaker 6: throwing down a kind of gauntlet, if you will, saying
40:10
Speaker 6: uh no. And so this raises enormous questions because now
40:16
Speaker 6: the next issue is how seriously will the Chinese government
40:24
Speaker 6: pursue any Chinese or other entity that conforms to what
40:30
Speaker 6: the United States wants and thereby violates what the Chinese
40:35
Speaker 6: just did. So we'll see, and you know, it's another
40:39
Speaker 6: one of these little not so little maneuvers around the chessboard,
40:45
Speaker 6: and we all wonder who's gonna yell uncle first. Right now.
40:52
Speaker 6: I have to tell you, though, as an American economist
40:56
Speaker 6: born worked here all my life, and I'm glad about that.
41:01
Speaker 6: This is embarrassing that this is not the way international
41:07
Speaker 6: trade ought to be conducted. And it looks to the
41:11
Speaker 6: whole world, my colleagues around the world, including many that
41:16
Speaker 6: are very friendly to the United States, it really looks
41:20
Speaker 6: like a country that can't compete in the old ways
41:25
Speaker 6: having to do it in these ways. And when you
41:29
Speaker 6: look at it that way, then the sympathy begins to
41:33
Speaker 6: move towards China as being the victim of this change,
41:38
Speaker 6: and they're all worried that they will be the next
41:40
Speaker 6: victim of the change. And it's shifting the whole world
41:44
Speaker 6: balance in ways that if I were a policymaker, would
41:48
Speaker 6: worry me.
41:49
Speaker 3: Professor, let's zoom out more. You just spoke there about China,
41:52
Speaker 3: But what does this mean generally? You were talking there
41:54
Speaker 3: about the international trading system. US dollar hegemony, like the
41:58
Speaker 3: basis of the American Empire has really rested on its
42:01
Speaker 3: economic might, not just to compel countries, but to do
42:04
Speaker 3: business with a lot of these countries. When you combine
42:07
Speaker 3: this with the current Iran situation and the level of
42:10
Speaker 3: damage US consumers are taking. For example, let's put the
42:12
Speaker 3: gas price up here now on the screen. We currently
42:16
Speaker 3: have it at four dollars and forty four or about
42:19
Speaker 3: four dollars and forty five cents a gallon at the
42:21
Speaker 3: national average over six dollars a gallon in the state
42:24
Speaker 3: of California. So we're punishing our own domestic economy. We're
42:28
Speaker 3: also doing, kind of, like you said, embarrassing ourselves on
42:31
Speaker 3: the international front. Some sort of new order will emerge
42:35
Speaker 3: from this. What's that going to look like? And how's
42:36
Speaker 3: that going to affect us all?
42:38
Speaker 6: Well, things are going very very fast, and they're going downhill.
42:41
Speaker 6: For the dollar. I don't want to be misunderstood. The
42:45
Speaker 6: dollar is still the most important global currency, but it
42:50
Speaker 6: is nowhere near as powerful as dominant as it once was.
42:56
Speaker 6: So comforting yourself by saying, well, over fifty percent of
43:01
Speaker 6: the central banks of the world keep their reserve to
43:04
Speaker 6: back up their own currency in dollars, true enough, but
43:09
Speaker 6: it used to be eighty percent, and that is a
43:13
Speaker 6: sea change in terms of what is counted as secure.
43:18
Speaker 6: You know, we just crossed a milestone a few days
43:22
Speaker 6: ago when our national debt exceeds our GDP. That's a
43:27
Speaker 6: usual warning sign. But to whom is it a warning?
43:31
Speaker 6: To the people who lend to the United States? Countries, companies, banks, Americans, foreigners.
43:39
Speaker 6: They all now have to ask a question. Is this
43:43
Speaker 6: declining role of the dollar something that ought to make
43:48
Speaker 6: me either stop lending to the United States the way
43:53
Speaker 6: we've been doing for the last thirty years, or lend
43:57
Speaker 6: but demand much higher interest aimens to compensate for the
44:02
Speaker 6: rising risk of the number one debtor country in the world.
44:07
Speaker 6: And now let me add to that Iran the golf countries.
44:12
Speaker 6: There a half dozen countries out there, Kuwait, United Arab Emirates,
44:18
Speaker 6: all of that they have taken a shalaking in this war.
44:23
Speaker 6: Americans don't perhaps grasp it, but the Iranians have been
44:27
Speaker 6: extraordinarily successful, far beyond anything that any of us foresaw,
44:35
Speaker 6: in damaging American bases in those countries, damaging gas and
44:41
Speaker 6: oil facilities in those countries. Those are all key players
44:46
Speaker 6: in what's called the petro dollar system. The fact that
44:50
Speaker 6: for many years oil was priced in dollars. Requiring everybody
44:55
Speaker 6: anywhere in the world to have dollars wonderful for our
45:00
Speaker 6: our country, because everybody has to get their hands on dollars.
45:04
Speaker 6: And if they have dollars and hold them, the nicest
45:07
Speaker 6: way to hold them is to lend them to the
45:09
Speaker 6: American government, because you get interest when you hold your
45:12
Speaker 6: dollar that way. Well, let me just give you a
45:15
Speaker 6: foot mode as a strategist. If the United States had
45:20
Speaker 6: had to fight the wars in Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, or
45:26
Speaker 6: anywhere else with money taxed from the American people to
45:31
Speaker 6: pay for the war, the opposition to those wars would
45:34
Speaker 6: have been greater than anything we can imagine for obvious reasons. Instead,
45:41
Speaker 6: the whole world lent us the money with which we
45:46
Speaker 6: could fight those wars without taxing our people. We could
45:51
Speaker 6: use the borrowed money. And if you want to really
45:54
Speaker 6: understand the craziness of this, the Chinese, who are major
45:59
Speaker 6: lent to the United States because they sell us so
46:03
Speaker 6: much stuff and get so many dollars that they then
46:06
Speaker 6: hold as treasury securities. That the Chinese government on the
46:11
Speaker 6: other side of every one of those wars was helping
46:14
Speaker 6: the US pay for the war. Against which the Chinese
46:18
Speaker 6: were finding. But the craziness of our global economic system
46:24
Speaker 6: makes those things happen, and right now they are happening
46:28
Speaker 6: to diminish the standing of the dollar, and while it
46:32
Speaker 6: hasn't yet hit us, it will. And if you want
46:36
Speaker 6: a taste of where it's going, then you just have
46:39
Speaker 6: to look at Europe. Europe is a kind of basket
46:43
Speaker 6: case now of where we are going, we're not yet there.
46:47
Speaker 6: We have advantages in this country the Europeans don't have,
46:52
Speaker 6: but the Europeans. This morning's headlines all over Great Britain
46:57
Speaker 6: or that the cost of living is literally out of control.
47:01
Speaker 6: It's as if you showed those statistics you had in
47:04
Speaker 6: front of us a few moments ago, but it covered many,
47:08
Speaker 6: many more commodities than gasoline, and it together was really
47:14
Speaker 6: hurting the standard of living of the mass of the
47:18
Speaker 6: British people.
47:19
Speaker 2: So let's talk a little bit about who is going
47:22
Speaker 2: to cry uncle here, because right now the Iran Wars
47:25
Speaker 2: predominantly being engaged as economic warfare. There are some indications
47:29
Speaker 2: this morning we may be going back to hot kinetic warfare,
47:32
Speaker 2: but as of right now, it's predominantly economic warfare. Can
47:35
Speaker 2: put this next element up on the screen. This is
47:37
Speaker 2: gas prices. This is the way most Americans will interact
47:40
Speaker 2: with the war.
47:42
Speaker 4: This was from a little while ago.
47:44
Speaker 2: Now the gas price is up a little bit more.
47:46
Speaker 4: It's at four forty six for the national average.
47:49
Speaker 2: And so the bet from Trump is that if they
47:52
Speaker 2: can enforce this blockade against Iran, that's going to curtail
47:56
Speaker 2: their oil exports, that their economy is really going to struggle.
48:01
Speaker 2: They've been fad this line that their oil wells are
48:03
Speaker 2: going to explode and they're going to run out of
48:04
Speaker 2: storage capacity very quickly, and then it's going to be
48:06
Speaker 2: a big problem for the Iranians. And that the US,
48:10
Speaker 2: although consumers don't want to pay these prices at the pump,
48:13
Speaker 2: will be able to withstand the economic pressure longer, and
48:17
Speaker 2: that it will be less of a problem for the
48:19
Speaker 2: US to deal with than the Iranians. What can you
48:22
Speaker 2: tell us about your assessment of those dynamics.
48:25
Speaker 6: Well, you know, it's a little bit like a problem
48:28
Speaker 6: I had teaching mathematics. The odds are that there's an
48:34
Speaker 6: immense array of possible outcomes. I mean, the more we
48:38
Speaker 6: use our imaginations, we human beings, the more we can
48:42
Speaker 6: foresee it could go this way, it could go that way,
48:45
Speaker 6: and all of that's true. But the job of the
48:48
Speaker 6: brain is to try to focus in on one of
48:51
Speaker 6: the most likely because you can't prepare for everything, and
48:55
Speaker 6: you have to make choices, and so you do. And
48:59
Speaker 6: we live in a whose leadership i'm talking now about
49:03
Speaker 6: the Trump people has been systematically hostile to other forms
49:09
Speaker 6: of energy and systematically favoring oil, fossil fuels, gas, all
49:16
Speaker 6: of that. The problem is when you do that and
49:22
Speaker 6: you then give to places like Iran a weapon they
49:27
Speaker 6: didn't have before, you really can't be claiming surprise if
49:33
Speaker 6: they use the weapon they knew, like everybody did that
49:38
Speaker 6: a quarter of the world's oil goes through the strait
49:42
Speaker 6: of hormones. They can't possibly fight the United States on
49:46
Speaker 6: a military basis. They're an infinitely poorer country, not to
49:51
Speaker 6: mention smaller and all the rest. So they either have
49:55
Speaker 6: to come up with some other kind of weapon or
50:00
Speaker 6: they're not going to be able to pull off anything
50:03
Speaker 6: in this situation. They'll have to do what mister Trump says,
50:07
Speaker 6: they figured it out. He emphasizes oil and yes, and
50:12
Speaker 6: they can control effectively the price of that. And so
50:16
Speaker 6: what we're seeing is the screaming of all those in
50:20
Speaker 6: America who thought they had a big friend in mister Trump,
50:24
Speaker 6: because he tilted in their direction, their kind of energy,
50:29
Speaker 6: their commodity, the gas burning automobile that uses it, and
50:34
Speaker 6: so forth, not imagining, failure of imagination. What kind of
50:40
Speaker 6: vulnerability goes with that? And they have now learned? And
50:44
Speaker 6: then what is mister Trump going to do? He can't
50:47
Speaker 6: deny that he favored the very energy source that is
50:51
Speaker 6: now being priced out of everybody's range. He's going to
50:55
Speaker 6: tell a story about something that might have happen in
51:01
Speaker 6: the future to turn a shortage of oil into a glut.
51:07
Speaker 6: Is that possible? Yes? Is that likely? No? Oh, And
51:13
Speaker 6: if you had, you know, half of a brain really
51:17
Speaker 6: working at this, you wouldn't take that chance. You wouldn't
51:20
Speaker 6: lopsidedly go to one in the hopes that it would
51:25
Speaker 6: self correct. And let me warn you if you're going
51:28
Speaker 6: to play that game, here's something to worry about. A
51:32
Speaker 6: few days ago, the United Arab Emirates, fourth largest source
51:37
Speaker 6: of oil that we have on this planet, withdrew from Opek,
51:43
Speaker 6: stopped working as it has for decades with the Saudi
51:47
Speaker 6: Arabian run cartel of that part of the world's oil. Now,
51:53
Speaker 6: long story short, why because they don't like being held back.
51:58
Speaker 6: They have a lot of oil, they don't pull it up,
52:02
Speaker 6: they don't sell it because Saudi Arabia holds back oil
52:07
Speaker 6: from what we could have to drive up the price
52:11
Speaker 6: because they sell that. They're just doing what every monopolist
52:15
Speaker 6: ever did in the history of the world. Nothing new,
52:18
Speaker 6: nothing strange, nothing exceptional, and by the way, with the
52:23
Speaker 6: active support of the United States, which of course doesn't
52:26
Speaker 6: say that to its own people, because otherwise you're upset
52:30
Speaker 6: at high gas prices, would go to Washington rather than
52:33
Speaker 6: to foreigners upon whom it can be locked. What does
52:37
Speaker 6: the United Arab Emirates want It wants to bring up.
52:41
Speaker 6: They're roughly one and a half to two million barrels
52:45
Speaker 6: of oil per day that it could bring up, but
52:48
Speaker 6: hasn't been because it has to repair the damage Iran
52:53
Speaker 6: has done to their oil facilities, to the American bases there.
53:00
Speaker 6: The damage of the missiles from Iran is very significant,
53:04
Speaker 6: as it is in Israel, and we can keep pretending
53:07
Speaker 6: that it isn't the case. But the world is too
53:10
Speaker 6: small for that. You can find it out if you
53:12
Speaker 6: do a little bit of effort. So here's my story.
53:16
Speaker 6: United Aramits will success. Arab Emirates will succeed, and they
53:20
Speaker 6: won't be the only one. And we might very well
53:24
Speaker 6: see the glut that their clip you just showed you implies.
53:30
Speaker 6: But that's not altogether good news either, because then the
53:34
Speaker 6: price of oil will collapse, and if it does thirty
53:39
Speaker 6: twenty five dollars a barrel instead of what we see now,
53:45
Speaker 6: then all of the fracking in the midwest of this
53:48
Speaker 6: country will stop and they'll all be out of business.
53:51
Speaker 6: And if you think that's not a problem, you're making
53:53
Speaker 6: a mistake because all of that depends on bank loans.
53:57
Speaker 6: They will not be able to repay them, and then
54:01
Speaker 6: our banks will be in the property. I mean, we
54:04
Speaker 6: are keep using up every angle we can in this
54:10
Speaker 6: ad hoc government by mister Trump. And you know it's
54:16
Speaker 6: gonna come sooner or later. He won't be able to
54:20
Speaker 6: patch it here here and here, and then it'll blow,
54:23
Speaker 6: but it could blow anywhere. But at this point, the
54:27
Speaker 6: mistake was ever in my judgment, to overdo the dependence
54:33
Speaker 6: on on fossil fuel. What is that about? The whole
54:37
Speaker 6: world is going in the other direction. We're not the
54:41
Speaker 6: top dog anymore. We don't. We don't run the world economy.
54:46
Speaker 6: That's a fantasy of the second half of the twentieth century.
54:49
Speaker 6: That's not what we have anymore. I regret it, You
54:53
Speaker 6: regret it. We all as Americans are having to live
54:57
Speaker 6: with what I just said. And that's hard my heart.
55:00
Speaker 6: Really it goes out to people. But denying it is
55:04
Speaker 6: not a rational way of coping with this. Then what
55:08
Speaker 6: you do is you get the fantasy of the British.
55:11
Speaker 6: If I can be so unfriendly, you know, they know
55:15
Speaker 6: that their empire is gone. They're just playing at it.
55:19
Speaker 6: That's why they have a king and why it visits
55:23
Speaker 6: and all the rest of it. I don't mean we
55:26
Speaker 6: don't do that to our credit, but there's a denial
55:30
Speaker 6: here that the British can no longer or the French,
55:33
Speaker 6: or they know it's over. We still think we all
55:37
Speaker 6: and we therefore make decisions on an assumption basis that
55:42
Speaker 6: then comes back and wax us. And that's what we're
55:45
Speaker 6: experiencing there.
55:47
Speaker 3: Well said sir. We appreciate your time and your analysis.
55:49
Speaker 3: You're always dropping knowledge bombs.
55:51
Speaker 6: All right, I hope so, I hope you find it interesting.
55:55
Speaker 6: And I appreciate it, and I speak for many of
55:57
Speaker 6: my friends all the work that you do on your program.
56:00
Speaker 4: Thank you.
56:00
Speaker 1: It's extremely kind us great to see you. Thank you
56:04
Speaker 1: guys so much for watching. We appreciate it.
56:06
Speaker 3: We will see you all tomorrow and we're about to
56:08
Speaker 3: do the AMA