Latest / Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar / 3/25/26: Ryan Smeared For Cuba Aid Trip, Newsom Flips On Israel Apartheid, Blackouts Imminent In US, Mortgage Rates Spike

Transcript

3/25/26: Ryan Smeared For Cuba Aid Trip, Newsom Flips On Israel Apartheid, Blackouts Imminent In US, Mortgage Rates Spike · Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Hey guys, Saga and Crystal here.
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• 0:30
  Speaker 4: Com well our own. Ryan Grimm recently returned from Havana, Cuba,
• 0:37
  Speaker 4: where he was on a reporting trip as part of
• 0:39
  Speaker 4: a delegation, a humanitarian delegation that went to deliver supplies
• 0:44
  Speaker 4: to the people of Cuba and protest of the blockade
• 0:47
  Speaker 4: and escalating US efforts to squeeze the Cuban economy and
• 0:52
  Speaker 4: the Cuban people into some type of deal. We'll see
• 0:55
  Speaker 4: exactly what happens. Ryan's going to give us some updates
• 0:57
  Speaker 4: on what could come. But boy, is Ryan Grimm getting
• 1:01
  Speaker 4: a lot of criticism. The whole delegation is getting a
• 1:04
  Speaker 4: lot of criticism, and we have an incredible clip of
• 1:07
  Speaker 4: Ryan from Newsmax that we're going to talk about in
• 1:10
  Speaker 4: a bit. Let's just go through some of what's been
• 1:14
  Speaker 4: leveled at you, at Hassan Piker, who you were on
• 1:17
  Speaker 4: the trip with as well. You could tell us a
• 1:20
  Speaker 4: little bit about who organized all of this, but basically
• 1:23
  Speaker 4: the Free Press we could but see four up among others,
• 1:27
  Speaker 4: they wrote that you and Hassan were Cuba's useless idiot.
• 1:31
  Speaker 5: I love the subhead here.
• 1:32
  Speaker 4: Yes, viral content creators like Hassan Piker and Ryan Grimm
• 1:35
  Speaker 4: were invited for a weekend in a blacked out Cuba
• 1:38
  Speaker 4: so they could preach the glories of a La revolution,
• 1:43
  Speaker 4: which Hassan did. I don't know that you did that, Ryan.
• 1:46
  Speaker 6: Now would that be to go to Cuba and a
• 1:48
  Speaker 6: white guy preach to them about the glories of the revolution.
• 1:51
  Speaker 6: Also viral content creator for for what I know are.
• 1:55
  Speaker 5: Explicitly political reasons.
• 1:57
  Speaker 6: TikTok actually refuses to verify my count So, TikTok, if
• 2:01
  Speaker 6: you're listening, according to the Free Press, I am a
• 2:04
  Speaker 6: viral content career. Listen up, bitches, they refuse to verify me,
• 2:08
  Speaker 6: and as a result, all of these fake accounts keep
• 2:11
  Speaker 6: popping up impersonating me and like stealing stuff and dming people.
• 2:14
  Speaker 4: So it wasn't just the free press. Here's the New
• 2:17
  Speaker 4: York Times going after Hassan Piker. Actually, I thought this
• 2:20
  Speaker 4: was a pretty So the headline here is Hassan Piker,
• 2:23
  Speaker 4: a celebrity left wing streamer, defends Cuba Aid mission. I
• 2:26
  Speaker 4: thought they gave Hassan a lot of oxygen here to
• 2:28
  Speaker 4: defend what happened over the weekend and a more serious criticism,
• 2:32
  Speaker 4: I would say from a Cuban. Actually, this is a
• 2:36
  Speaker 4: quote from a Cuban politician who who said, they say
• 2:42
  Speaker 4: they've come to support the Cuban people, but they meet
• 2:44
  Speaker 4: with the man who gave the combat order to repress
• 2:47
  Speaker 4: those who took to the streets on hashtag eleven j
• 2:50
  Speaker 4: eleven j which was the July eleventh protest demanding freedom.
• 2:54
  Speaker 5: So, Ryan Grimm, it might be my photo. Actually did
• 2:58
  Speaker 5: you take that? I might have? All right, we didn't
• 3:00
  Speaker 5: meet with him. He gave a speech, tell.
• 3:02
  Speaker 4: Us what break us all down? What did you do?
• 3:05
  Speaker 4: Who organized it? And what is your response to your critics?
• 3:12
  Speaker 5: Yeah? And So there are a couple There are a
• 3:13
  Speaker 5: couple of key criticism.
• 3:16
  Speaker 6: First of all, it's it makes me embarrassing to be
• 3:19
  Speaker 6: part of this media ecosystem because it's so divorced from reality.
• 3:24
  Speaker 6: Like we went there, we we we saw the starvation
• 3:30
  Speaker 6: of the economy and of the Cuban people, which is
• 3:34
  Speaker 6: being done deliberately to try to allow the US to
• 3:39
  Speaker 6: overthrow the regime. Like that's like we have been very
• 3:42
  Speaker 6: explicit that we are blocking fuel from getting in, designating
• 3:46
  Speaker 6: them as terrorists and supporters of terrorism, not allowing them
• 3:51
  Speaker 6: to you know, use credit cards, et cetera. Everything we
• 3:54
  Speaker 6: can to make it as misserble possible so that we
• 3:56
  Speaker 6: accomplish our foreign policy objective of overthrowing the government.
• 3:59
  Speaker 4: And you think that's not an American strategy. Henry Kissinger
• 4:02
  Speaker 4: said it himself that we were going to.
• 4:05
  Speaker 5: This was Rubio said it himself a couple of days ago.
• 4:08
  Speaker 4: Right, But what was We're going to Jacob's scream? Maybe
• 4:12
  Speaker 4: economy scream. This has been a cold war policy for decades.
• 4:15
  Speaker 6: Yeah, instead we're talking about this other silly stuff. But
• 4:19
  Speaker 6: for people who are curious, So that the two So
• 4:23
  Speaker 6: the criticism is that, well, I guess there's two related
• 4:28
  Speaker 6: criticisms that that the delegation stayed in a five star
• 4:32
  Speaker 6: hotel that kept its power on despite there being major
• 4:39
  Speaker 6: blackouts across the island.
• 4:41
  Speaker 5: So two points on that.
• 4:43
  Speaker 6: Yeah, it is bad if hotels keep power and hospitals
• 4:47
  Speaker 6: lose power. I agree with that. Two things. Why did
• 4:50
  Speaker 6: the delegations stay at this quote unquote five star hotel?
• 4:54
  Speaker 5: First of all five stars? Quite relative?
• 4:58
  Speaker 6: It is, it's it's so much nicer than the conditions
• 5:02
  Speaker 6: of that the Cuban people are suffering, under no question
• 5:05
  Speaker 6: about that. Also, nobody in the Bravo Leberty universe would
• 5:09
  Speaker 6: go to that hotel.
• 5:09
  Speaker 5: And call it a five star hotel. That is absolutely
• 5:13
  Speaker 5: the case.
• 5:14
  Speaker 6: But there is a US law on the books that
• 5:17
  Speaker 6: says if an American visits Cuba, there is a long
• 5:21
  Speaker 6: list of places they cannot stay anything connected directly or indirectly.
• 5:25
  Speaker 6: Really for the most part, with the government, you can
• 5:28
  Speaker 6: go read their FAQs, you can go read their rules
• 5:31
  Speaker 6: about it, and they'll specifically list a bunch of hotels
• 5:34
  Speaker 6: you cannot stay in on top of that, and so
• 5:37
  Speaker 6: that leaves a very small number of hotels that you
• 5:42
  Speaker 6: can stay in. And this was among them as a
• 5:45
  Speaker 6: Spanish operated hotel among them. Now there's like five or
• 5:48
  Speaker 6: six hundred people in the delegation. If you go just
• 5:50
  Speaker 6: by yourself, you can try to find what a costa
• 5:54
  Speaker 6: particular are like. Not an Airbnb obviously, because that companies
• 6:00
  Speaker 6: aren't allow a version of it. Now, you can't book
• 6:02
  Speaker 6: it online, you can't book it with a credit card.
• 6:07
  Speaker 5: The telephone and internet service is very spotty.
• 6:09
  Speaker 6: So good luck in twenty four to forty eight hours,
• 6:12
  Speaker 6: you know, finding five or six hundred of these for
• 6:14
  Speaker 6: a giant delegation.
• 6:16
  Speaker 5: It's not serious. The only the only thing you can
• 6:18
  Speaker 5: do is stay in a hotel. Also, the Cubans.
• 6:20
  Speaker 6: Want you to stay in these hotels to bring cash
• 6:25
  Speaker 6: into the economy. Now, so there like you don't you
• 6:29
  Speaker 6: don't like that. That's where we stayed. Change the law
• 6:32
  Speaker 6: so that we can stay in any hotel that we want,
• 6:36
  Speaker 6: and we'll stay in a cheaper hotel. Although if you
• 6:38
  Speaker 6: have the money as an American, it's actually better that
• 6:40
  Speaker 6: you stay in a more expensive hotel because you're then
• 6:42
  Speaker 6: pumping more money into the economy. Their second complaint is
• 6:47
  Speaker 6: about the fact that hotels have generators that stay on.
• 6:52
  Speaker 5: Now the hospitals also.
• 6:53
  Speaker 6: Have generators and the generator and we can we can
• 6:58
  Speaker 6: get into that they are the hospitals aren't deeply, deeply struggling.
• 7:03
  Speaker 6: In February, the Trump administration introduced a new policy that
• 7:09
  Speaker 6: said it is okay for private businesses on the island
• 7:16
  Speaker 6: of Cuba to import oil, while it is not okay
• 7:22
  Speaker 6: for any anybody affiliated with the government. Famously, the hospitals
• 7:26
  Speaker 6: are publicly run in Cuba, if you weren't familiar with that,
• 7:30
  Speaker 6: And so it is okay according to the US government.
• 7:34
  Speaker 6: And that's not just from the US, that's from Mexico,
• 7:37
  Speaker 6: that's from Russia, China. We're trying to block oil from
• 7:40
  Speaker 6: getting in to the hospitals from any country, not just US.
• 7:45
  Speaker 6: But if you want to send it to a private business,
• 7:49
  Speaker 6: that is okay with US.
• 7:51
  Speaker 5: C ten.
• 7:52
  Speaker 6: Reuter's just reported and I've been saying this, I've been
• 7:54
  Speaker 6: telling you this again.
• 7:56
  Speaker 5: You guys never believe me. I'm telling you the truth.
• 7:59
  Speaker 6: So Reuter's reported this morning, actually exclusive US ramps up
• 8:04
  Speaker 6: fuel exports to Cuba's private sector.
• 8:07
  Speaker 5: This is c ten. So if you read the article,
• 8:11
  Speaker 5: there is you.
• 8:12
  Speaker 6: Know, many thousands of barrels, not enough, but many thousands
• 8:15
  Speaker 6: of barrels and diesel in particular, which is what they
• 8:18
  Speaker 6: use for the generators that the US is allowing to
• 8:22
  Speaker 6: be sold to private businesses. So I want people to
• 8:26
  Speaker 6: sit with us for a second. The critique that The
• 8:29
  Speaker 6: New York Times elevated that the Free Press pushed that
• 8:34
  Speaker 6: a lot of these like right wing Cuban defenders were
• 8:37
  Speaker 6: pushing around a Cuba policy defenders were pushing was that
• 8:41
  Speaker 6: it is bad that the hospital had I mean that
• 8:44
  Speaker 6: the hospital did not have power. Hospitals did not have
• 8:47
  Speaker 6: power and the hotel did. Okay, So that's the premise
• 8:51
  Speaker 6: that the Free Press is operating under.
• 8:53
  Speaker 5: I agree.
• 8:56
  Speaker 6: I am now making the Free Press aware because they
• 9:00
  Speaker 6: apparently didn't read our reporting in February, and now Reuter's
• 9:03
  Speaker 6: is confirming what I'm reporting. Our American policy is that
• 9:08
  Speaker 6: it's okay for the hotel to buy oil and diesel,
• 9:12
  Speaker 6: but it's not okay for the hospital to buy diesel.
• 9:16
  Speaker 5: So if you.
• 9:18
  Speaker 6: Spent the last three or four days yelling at me
• 9:21
  Speaker 6: and a Zampiker about the fact that the hotel has
• 9:26
  Speaker 6: energy and the hospitals didn't, now that you know the truth,
• 9:31
  Speaker 6: you have to be furious at the Trump administration is
• 9:35
  Speaker 6: the Trump administration's explicit policy is that hotels can buy
• 9:41
  Speaker 6: diesel but hospitals cannot. Now, what they're really going to
• 9:46
  Speaker 6: do is just ignore it and keep it moving, because
• 9:49
  Speaker 6: that is an it is a morally indefensible policy. It
• 9:55
  Speaker 6: is barbaric, it's uncivilized, it's cruel. It's discussed thing like,
• 10:01
  Speaker 6: there's just there's just no world in which anybody is
• 10:04
  Speaker 6: going to take the other side of the argument that.
• 10:06
  Speaker 5: No, actually, I think it's good.
• 10:08
  Speaker 6: It's good that the hotels get diesel but the hospitals can't.
• 10:13
  Speaker 4: It may have that may have had a lot more
• 10:17
  Speaker 4: cash with the American public in the early stages of
• 10:21
  Speaker 4: nuclear weapon capacity, when people were like you had school
• 10:25
  Speaker 4: kids getting under their desks prepared.
• 10:27
  Speaker 5: Right, Cube is going to have the Soviet bombs.
• 10:30
  Speaker 4: Well, yeah, so c seven. Let's put see seven up
• 10:31
  Speaker 4: on the screen if you want a little flashback. That's very,
• 10:34
  Speaker 4: very current. This is a report in the New York Times.
• 10:37
  Speaker 6: Look at this headline. By the way, let's just let's
• 10:40
  Speaker 6: just let this marinate in Yeah.
• 10:42
  Speaker 4: No, it's incredible. Russian oil shipment puts focus on Kremlin's
• 10:46
  Speaker 4: spy post in Cuba.
• 10:49
  Speaker 5: The New York Times headline.
• 10:50
  Speaker 4: Then the lead is a Russian oil.
• 10:53
  Speaker 6: Let's just like sit with this headline for a segments.
• 10:55
  Speaker 6: It's such a window into our world.
• 10:57
  Speaker 4: It's incredible stuff.
• 10:58
  Speaker 5: Russian oil shipment. So there's there's a Russian oil shipment.
• 11:01
  Speaker 6: That is headed to cubas should be there in a
• 11:03
  Speaker 6: few days that the US is trying to stop. They're
• 11:06
  Speaker 6: threatening it that apparently there are there's a naval escort
• 11:10
  Speaker 6: that Russia is sending with it. So according to the
• 11:13
  Speaker 6: New York Times, what the Russian oil shipment puts in
• 11:17
  Speaker 6: this the focus on is not the fact that there's
• 11:20
  Speaker 6: no fuel on the island and that the US, in
• 11:23
  Speaker 6: an act of war and a crime against humanity, is
• 11:26
  Speaker 6: blocking the island from getting fuel. That's not what the
• 11:28
  Speaker 6: Russian shipment puts the focus on. It puts the focus
• 11:31
  Speaker 6: on a defunct spy base. Well so, well, I thought
• 11:36
  Speaker 6: were first paragram.
• 11:37
  Speaker 4: Well yeah, the lead here is a Russian oil taker
• 11:39
  Speaker 4: possibly bound for Cuba, is highlighting a key US security concern,
• 11:42
  Speaker 4: the Communist islens ties to foreign adversaries who use Cuba
• 11:45
  Speaker 4: to spy on the United States. That lead is just
• 11:48
  Speaker 4: straight out of like nineteen sixty two incredible, And what's
• 11:52
  Speaker 4: to the point we were just getting about whether it's
• 11:55
  Speaker 4: worth making the Cuban economy scream. That was from like
• 11:58
  Speaker 4: seventy three. That was Allen Day and Kissinger said that
• 12:01
  Speaker 4: to Nixon. That was people were on a daily basis
• 12:05
  Speaker 4: utterly terrified of imminent nuclear annihilation. And listen, I still
• 12:10
  Speaker 4: think that's a fear that we gloss over way more
• 12:13
  Speaker 4: than we probably should. But it is not nineteen sixty
• 12:17
  Speaker 4: two anymore. Cuba has, yes, turned to Russia and China.
• 12:22
  Speaker 4: There is I think real evidence that Russia and China
• 12:24
  Speaker 4: have bases, have outposts. It probably is a good way
• 12:28
  Speaker 4: to put yeah, but they also like are they probably
• 12:31
  Speaker 4: using are they probably monitoring the United States? Like launches
• 12:35
  Speaker 4: in Florida's based launches in Florida. Yeah, from Cuba, Yes, absolutely.
• 12:38
  Speaker 4: Cuba has been pushed repeatedly it's the arms of Russia
• 12:41
  Speaker 4: in Cuba. Despite what we're always constantly told is that
• 12:45
  Speaker 4: the Cuban people are freedom loving, many of them are
• 12:49
  Speaker 4: whatever that means, many of them don't like the regime.
• 12:52
  Speaker 4: There are people in jail and I don't know if
• 12:53
  Speaker 4: you had any reporting when you're on the ground about this.
• 12:55
  Speaker 4: Ryan as the politician who was arguing against you all
• 12:59
  Speaker 4: was saying, there are artists, there are activists who have
• 13:03
  Speaker 4: been in jail since the July eleventh protests. What was
• 13:06
  Speaker 4: that twenty twenty one. Yeah, there'd be people who have
• 13:09
  Speaker 4: been in jail, writing in jail longer than that, for
• 13:11
  Speaker 4: practicing political speech, or being artists who oppose the regime.
• 13:16
  Speaker 6: It's about a thousand at this point. Political prisoners is
• 13:18
  Speaker 6: the number that I see.
• 13:19
  Speaker 5: M H.
• 13:20
  Speaker 4: And you know, it's the repeated insistence on this pattern
• 13:26
  Speaker 4: over and over and over again. When you see that
• 13:30
  Speaker 4: it drives a place like Cuba that could potentially be
• 13:33
  Speaker 4: a partner further and further towards Russia and China. I thought,
• 13:38
  Speaker 4: where you were going with it is that Trump Also,
• 13:40
  Speaker 4: this is another New York Times headline, removes sanctions on
• 13:43
  Speaker 4: Russia to help oil flow amid I ran conflict. Like,
• 13:46
  Speaker 4: that's what I thought when we were talking about the
• 13:47
  Speaker 4: first headline, where you can.
• 13:48
  Speaker 6: Buy seal Iranian oil, you can buy and sell Russian
• 13:51
  Speaker 6: you just can't allow Russia to sell oil to Cuba.
• 13:55
  Speaker 4: Just amidst and obvious motion. Well as Cuba continues to
• 14:02
  Speaker 4: rely more on Russia and China if you think that's
• 14:06
  Speaker 4: good for the United States, it makes no sense, right.
• 14:09
  Speaker 6: And so what does that look like on the ground.
• 14:11
  Speaker 6: So we were there Friday through Monday on about a
• 14:15
  Speaker 6: week a little more than a week ago, there was
• 14:17
  Speaker 6: a complete nationwide blackout. Like used to be a lion
• 14:21
  Speaker 6: recently eleven million people, it's now about nine million because
• 14:25
  Speaker 6: of the economic strangulation. And it's now legal for people
• 14:30
  Speaker 6: to just leave Cuba if they can find somewhere that
• 14:32
  Speaker 6: they can go, and so millions of people have gone
• 14:34
  Speaker 6: to the US, Mexico, Paraguay, Uruguay, Brazil, Argentina, Chile, et cetera.
• 14:40
  Speaker 6: And so we're down to something like nine million people.
• 14:44
  Speaker 6: But so nine million people plunged into darkness a little
• 14:46
  Speaker 6: more than a week ago, got the grid back up.
• 14:48
  Speaker 6: So then on Friday night when we were there, there
• 14:51
  Speaker 6: were partial and very significant blackouts all over Havana. And
• 14:56
  Speaker 6: let me tell you, walking through a city without lights
• 15:01
  Speaker 6: is a truly surreal experience. To be able to look
• 15:04
  Speaker 6: up in Havana and see the Big Dipper is it's
• 15:08
  Speaker 6: it's it's a mind bending experience.
• 15:10
  Speaker 4: Now buildings looming over you.
• 15:12
  Speaker 6: It's still very safe city, it's less safe than it
• 15:15
  Speaker 6: was six months ago.
• 15:18
  Speaker 5: But the social cohesion is is strong.
• 15:21
  Speaker 4: You took an amazing picture. We can probably start rolling.
• 15:23
  Speaker 5: These, right, so yeah, yeah, we can roll. I think
• 15:26
  Speaker 5: it's C eight.
• 15:27
  Speaker 4: You took an amazing picture in the middle.
• 15:29
  Speaker 5: Of Havana, we can roll.
• 15:31
  Speaker 6: Yeah, that's actually March and Hassan.
• 15:36
  Speaker 5: There. So that one isn't in a hospital.
• 15:39
  Speaker 6: That is a that's urine from an eleven year old collected,
• 15:42
  Speaker 6: but it's not in a urine bag. It's like it's
• 15:45
  Speaker 6: a separate it's like a different kind of bag. It's
• 15:48
  Speaker 6: just it's a recycled saline bag. The completely closed gas
• 15:54
  Speaker 6: station there, This is a boy on a ventilator who
• 16:00
  Speaker 6: we interviewed his mother that you can see to the
• 16:03
  Speaker 6: to the left there. Luckily, his ventilator had a battery
• 16:07
  Speaker 6: so when the power went out, its ventilator didn't shut down,
• 16:09
  Speaker 6: but the monitor connected to it shut down, so they
• 16:12
  Speaker 6: had to rush in and do a lot of kind
• 16:15
  Speaker 6: of manual checking of vitals and other and otherwise make
• 16:21
  Speaker 6: sure that he was getting the proper amount of ventilation.
• 16:26
  Speaker 6: And so Friday night there's a partial blackout. Most of
• 16:29
  Speaker 6: Havana goes down, but the grid didn't completely collapse. And
• 16:32
  Speaker 6: so what the grid is designed to do is protect
• 16:36
  Speaker 6: the healthcare system first and foremost.
• 16:38
  Speaker 5: And so what was interesting is that.
• 16:42
  Speaker 6: The and I was walking around with a Cuban journalist
• 16:44
  Speaker 6: who was explaining this to me and pointing it out.
• 16:47
  Speaker 6: The block of houses around every hospital compound had lights
• 16:52
  Speaker 6: and the hospital had lights because they protect the hospitals foremost.
• 16:58
  Speaker 4: This is let's put second element up on the screen.
• 17:01
  Speaker 4: Vo you can see the blackout here.
• 17:04
  Speaker 6: And this I think this one is from Saturday night,
• 17:06
  Speaker 6: which ended up being a complete blackout. But so what
• 17:09
  Speaker 6: it's it's had this interesting effect of like, if you
• 17:12
  Speaker 6: happen to live within a certain distance from the hospital,
• 17:17
  Speaker 6: you're now super lucky because I don't know what hotel
• 17:24
  Speaker 6: that is, that's not the one we were in. So
• 17:28
  Speaker 6: because because if your house is right next to the hospital,
• 17:31
  Speaker 6: you keep your keep your power on. Now Saturday, Saturday morning,
• 17:37
  Speaker 6: because they have now plus twenty plus percent of their
• 17:40
  Speaker 6: energy is coming from solar power energy kick back on
• 17:43
  Speaker 6: Saturday morning. Then around seven thirty on Saturday night, complete
• 17:47
  Speaker 6: and total nationwide blackout, not just the partial blackout. So
• 17:51
  Speaker 6: when is a total blackout, everything goes down and then
• 17:54
  Speaker 6: generators kick in the little fuel that the Cuban government
• 17:58
  Speaker 6: has they prioritize to the hospitals, and so all the
• 18:02
  Speaker 6: hospitals have generators.
• 18:05
  Speaker 5: But there is a there is a gap between when.
• 18:11
  Speaker 6: The power goes out and when the generator kicks back in.
• 18:15
  Speaker 6: Just obviously like that's anybody can understand that that is fine,
• 18:20
  Speaker 6: like in a hotel, Like we saw power go in
• 18:22
  Speaker 6: and out, you know, pretty frequently actually even in the hotel,
• 18:27
  Speaker 6: but then it would kick back on. That's fine in
• 18:29
  Speaker 6: a hotel. That's not fine in a hospital. And so
• 18:35
  Speaker 6: we on Sunday morning, I went with actually the Truanon
• 18:40
  Speaker 6: guys were on were there as well. Son had gone
• 18:42
  Speaker 6: with us on Saturday of the hospital he was gone
• 18:44
  Speaker 6: by Was.
• 18:44
  Speaker 4: The government organizing the tour of the hospital?
• 18:47
  Speaker 5: Well, the government is they run the hospital. The government
• 18:49
  Speaker 5: runs the hospital.
• 18:51
  Speaker 6: Belly of the Beast which is a US based nonprofit
• 18:54
  Speaker 6: news organization that has reporters in Cuba. They they set
• 18:58
  Speaker 6: up the interviews with the with the hospital. They're really
• 19:01
  Speaker 6: helpful and they have to be approved.
• 19:04
  Speaker 5: Everything has to be approved by the government.
• 19:06
  Speaker 4: And the visas. I imagine too. I know that there
• 19:08
  Speaker 4: are a lot of Cubans who say, like, well, maybe
• 19:10
  Speaker 4: exiles or the like who say we we can't get
• 19:12
  Speaker 4: it in a Cuba.
• 19:13
  Speaker 6: And so it wasn't arranged. It wasn't arranged by the government,
• 19:15
  Speaker 6: and the government was not there. There was no government minder.
• 19:18
  Speaker 6: But the government had to approve going in. You can't
• 19:21
  Speaker 6: just walk into the hospital. In fact, you can't just
• 19:24
  Speaker 6: walk into a hospital here in the United States.
• 19:25
  Speaker 4: But you felt comfortable asking what you wanted to ask.
• 19:27
  Speaker 6: Not only that they showed us, they showed us the
• 19:32
  Speaker 6: place in total disrepair. Like I saw some people saying, oh,
• 19:35
  Speaker 6: they only got showed the best parts of Cuba.
• 19:37
  Speaker 5: That's not that's not at all what the what the
• 19:40
  Speaker 5: government is doing right now.
• 19:42
  Speaker 6: They are not pretending for a second that things are great,
• 19:46
  Speaker 6: that maybe they were doing that ten years ago, you know,
• 19:50
  Speaker 6: show only showing you the good stuff. We were at
• 19:52
  Speaker 6: Williams Hilaire on Sunday, where a William Hiliir Pediatric Hospitals
• 19:55
  Speaker 6: is one to the crowd crown jewels.
• 19:57
  Speaker 5: They were not at all sugarcoating it like.
• 19:59
  Speaker 6: They they were showing how absolutely brutal things have got.
• 20:06
  Speaker 5: And so this is this is.
• 20:08
  Speaker 6: Doctor Alio Fernandez, who is one of the top pediatric
• 20:12
  Speaker 6: doctors at this at this hospital. That is a baby
• 20:15
  Speaker 6: named Eric who's on a ventilator. And what he's describing
• 20:20
  Speaker 6: is this list like absolutely terrifying situation where when the
• 20:25
  Speaker 6: power goes out and he and the nurses and that's
• 20:30
  Speaker 6: Liza Leevi Hernandez from Fernanda's.
• 20:32
  Speaker 5: From Belly the Beasts who was there with me.
• 20:36
  Speaker 6: What he was So the power goes out, they turn
• 20:39
  Speaker 6: they turn on their flashlight immediately on their phone and
• 20:42
  Speaker 6: then sprint to the babies and the and the children
• 20:45
  Speaker 6: who are on ventilators and just and hand crank it.
• 20:49
  Speaker 6: But and he the doctor was telling me, he's like,
• 20:53
  Speaker 6: I'm going to need the surgery for a heart attack.
• 20:56
  Speaker 6: As this keeps happening because you have your very nervous
• 21:00
  Speaker 6: that you're going to overpump, because you can kill someone
• 21:04
  Speaker 6: by pumping too hard that happens, you can kill them
• 21:09
  Speaker 6: by not pumping enough. And it takes anywhere from a
• 21:12
  Speaker 6: minute to five six minutes for the generator to kick on.
• 21:16
  Speaker 6: And after the generator kicks on, then it doesn't just
• 21:20
  Speaker 6: fire right up like you've got to.
• 21:22
  Speaker 5: It has to. These are twenty plus year old devices.
• 21:26
  Speaker 6: It's obviously not top of the line contemporary stuff, and
• 21:31
  Speaker 6: so you and then you have to monitor constantly while
• 21:35
  Speaker 6: they're going.
• 21:36
  Speaker 5: They did not lose anybody. They were very proud they have.
• 21:39
  Speaker 6: Not lost anybody as a result of the as a
• 21:42
  Speaker 6: result of the blackouts at this hospital. They said that
• 21:46
  Speaker 6: their patients, many of which we met and their parents,
• 21:50
  Speaker 6: have they've definitely seen deterioration, that they've moved downward in stages,
• 21:55
  Speaker 6: and many of them are more critical now but haven't
• 21:58
  Speaker 6: died yet.
• 21:59
  Speaker 5: There were that people in other hospitals died in the gap.
• 22:05
  Speaker 6: Between the power kicking off the generator kicking on. I
• 22:10
  Speaker 6: haven't been able to independently confirm that. We'll have more
• 22:13
  Speaker 6: reports on this as we collect more of our video
• 22:16
  Speaker 6: and continue to do interviews on it, but there's no
• 22:19
  Speaker 6: question that it is extraordinarily dangerous to the children. And
• 22:25
  Speaker 6: also we also saw the way that the sanctions and
• 22:31
  Speaker 6: block and embargo make it extremely difficult to get supplies.
• 22:35
  Speaker 6: We met one woman who had just had a facial
• 22:38
  Speaker 6: reconstruction of surgery where she had waited for a very
• 22:42
  Speaker 6: very long time for this eighty dollars screw. And finally
• 22:46
  Speaker 6: a doctor that we interviewed was able to get a
• 22:50
  Speaker 6: friend of his who lives in the United States who
• 22:51
  Speaker 6: was visiting to buy the screw and just bring it
• 22:54
  Speaker 6: with him, and that's how and that's.
• 22:57
  Speaker 5: How that woman got her surgery.
• 23:00
  Speaker 6: We met a boy, Carlos and his mother who has
• 23:05
  Speaker 6: cystic fibrosis, which is in eminently treatable for the most
• 23:10
  Speaker 6: part of the right.
• 23:10
  Speaker 5: Kind of cystic fibrosis disease. But he couldn't he can't.
• 23:15
  Speaker 6: Get the medication and he's going to die if he
• 23:19
  Speaker 6: doesn't get that medication. Now I'm hoping to have actually
• 23:23
  Speaker 6: a really positive update on on that kid the people.
• 23:29
  Speaker 6: I'll wait on that until it's it's confirmed. But this
• 23:33
  Speaker 6: is how these these folks are trying to survive. It's
• 23:36
  Speaker 6: like just luck and like ingenuity and like, oh, I
• 23:40
  Speaker 6: know somebody who knows somebody who knows somebody who can
• 23:41
  Speaker 6: get this thing, and so the I also interviewed Mitchell
• 23:49
  Speaker 6: Valdez Sosa, who is the head of the neuro Cuban
• 23:54
  Speaker 6: Center for Neuroscience, and we'll our long interview will put
• 23:59
  Speaker 6: up the whole thing. It's on point, but he didn't
• 24:01
  Speaker 6: want to play one little clip where he describes the
• 24:07
  Speaker 6: their efforts to buy an MRI machine and keep it
• 24:10
  Speaker 6: operating amid sanctions. And he added that since fuel shipments
• 24:19
  Speaker 6: have been cut off, helium has not been able to
• 24:21
  Speaker 6: get in either. Now cutter, but a bunch of their
• 24:25
  Speaker 6: helium production has been taken offline.
• 24:27
  Speaker 5: So what they're suffering. A lot of the world is
• 24:31
  Speaker 5: going to suffer.
• 24:31
  Speaker 6: The MRI machines require coold helium. But let's let's roll
• 24:35
  Speaker 6: a little bit of Mitchell Valdisosa, who actually, interestingly is
• 24:39
  Speaker 6: an American citizen because he was born in Chicago in
• 24:43
  Speaker 6: the fifties, but he's been in Cuba since the early
• 24:47
  Speaker 6: early nineteen six early nineteen sixties.
• 24:49
  Speaker 5: So this is a couple of minutes with Valdez Soosa.
• 24:53
  Speaker 6: You were telling me earlier before we started talking about
• 24:55
  Speaker 6: it an MRI machine. Yeah, so how is that working
• 25:00
  Speaker 6: in coordination with the lack of electricity?
• 25:03
  Speaker 7: Yeah?
• 25:04
  Speaker 5: Yeah, and how did you Yeah what we're thinking.
• 25:07
  Speaker 7: Yeah, First, MRI systems are very expensive, but they're they're
• 25:12
  Speaker 7: really very useful. So we had an industing opportunity. There
• 25:17
  Speaker 7: was this bank that gave us a soft credit line,
• 25:23
  Speaker 7: you know, with something we can pay over the years,
• 25:25
  Speaker 7: with a long period of payment and very low interest,
• 25:29
  Speaker 7: and so we took advantage of that in our organization.
• 25:34
  Speaker 7: We bought equipment for different centers and we bought an
• 25:37
  Speaker 7: MRI system from Germany that had to wait about seven
• 25:43
  Speaker 7: months after they manufacture it, so they received certification that
• 25:47
  Speaker 7: it didn't have ten more than ten percent of American components.
• 25:51
  Speaker 7: But we managed to get the system to cube. But
• 25:54
  Speaker 7: the problem is that MRI systems, which are really necessary.
• 25:58
  Speaker 7: Imagine kid with metodal bastoma. There is a kind of
• 26:02
  Speaker 7: cancer spinal card surgeon has to know to what if
• 26:07
  Speaker 7: it's present, the size has metastasis. This is all part
• 26:12
  Speaker 7: of the life or death for the kid and so
• 26:16
  Speaker 7: many other disorders. So the other thing we needed is
• 26:20
  Speaker 7: to fill up up with helium, which is used to
• 26:23
  Speaker 7: liquid helium to cool because MRI systems work at very
• 26:28
  Speaker 7: low temperatures. The magnets are called superconductors, which means they're
• 26:35
  Speaker 7: cooled and when they're very very low temperatures, there's practically
• 26:39
  Speaker 7: no resistance, no friction for the electrosts in circulating. That
• 26:43
  Speaker 7: creates a very strong magnet. And the problem is we've
• 26:47
  Speaker 7: bought the helium and ships are afraid to come to cube.
• 26:51
  Speaker 7: This is after President Trump said that he would block oil.
• 26:58
  Speaker 7: And we're trying to get one of these ships that's
• 27:01
  Speaker 7: bringing donations, humanitarian donations the Cuban to bring it because
• 27:05
  Speaker 7: most of the our MR systems in Cuba aworld, it's
• 27:09
  Speaker 7: very difficult getting spare parts. And we know that our system,
• 27:13
  Speaker 7: once we set it up, which is brand new, will
• 27:16
  Speaker 7: probably be doing a lot of heavy lifting for all
• 27:18
  Speaker 7: the hospitals around the state. The Children's Hospital in Marianao,
• 27:23
  Speaker 7: the UH the Big Hospital for Blindness and other disorders
• 27:30
  Speaker 7: of vision, Bando Red which is also in Marianna, and
• 27:34
  Speaker 7: and polyclinics and and we had a previous system. And
• 27:39
  Speaker 7: the story is very funny because we sent the donation
• 27:44
  Speaker 7: from the University of Mastrich why they got money to
• 27:48
  Speaker 7: buy these news scanners. And in the international conference, my
• 27:52
  Speaker 7: twin brother who's also an euroscientist, was give me some
• 27:56
  Speaker 7: talks at the conference and he talked with this professor
• 27:59
  Speaker 7: from Bastard's University saying, we don't know what we gonna
• 28:03
  Speaker 7: do the old system, give it to us, And we
• 28:06
  Speaker 7: got some money from a charity and we brought this
• 28:11
  Speaker 7: This system was very old, but we kept it working
• 28:15
  Speaker 7: almost eight years. We saw thousands of patients. So but
• 28:20
  Speaker 7: it was impossible because once a system is too old,
• 28:24
  Speaker 7: it breaks down. You have to put helium, which cost
• 28:26
  Speaker 7: a lot in every few months. And we got this opportunity.
• 28:31
  Speaker 7: We bought the new system. So we're bringing to the
• 28:33
  Speaker 7: heat of the Cuba. We're finding how we don't know
• 28:36
  Speaker 7: how humanitarian convoy let's see. But then the problem is
• 28:43
  Speaker 7: you can't have an memory scanner without electricity. So now
• 28:47
  Speaker 7: we're launching, you know, a campaign to receive donations, similar
• 28:52
  Speaker 7: to what we did with a VENTI leaders in COVID.
• 28:55
  Speaker 7: And we're gonna have some friends are trying to collect money,
• 28:58
  Speaker 7: and we might to buy a general and we want
• 29:01
  Speaker 7: to buy Oiltich.
• 29:04
  Speaker 4: Meanwhile, Nick Turse over at the Intercept is reporting that
• 29:07
  Speaker 4: the Pentagon has revealed the attacks in Latin America are
• 29:11
  Speaker 4: just beginning, with quote Operation Total Extermination and Trump's threats
• 29:15
  Speaker 4: against Cuba. Expect more at US military strikes in the region.
• 29:19
  Speaker 4: Terse reports. You go read that full report over at
• 29:21
  Speaker 4: the Intercept. Now, Operation Total Extermination looks technically like it's
• 29:27
  Speaker 4: referring to the Noboa operation in Ecuador, but if you
• 29:32
  Speaker 4: look at the testimony in the House Armed Services document
• 29:35
  Speaker 4: that Terse links to it says the joint effort named
• 29:40
  Speaker 4: quote Operation Total Extermination, referring to what happened in Ecuador
• 29:44
  Speaker 4: is the start of a military offensive buy Ecuador against
• 29:46
  Speaker 4: transnational criminal organizations with the support of the US, setting
• 29:50
  Speaker 4: the pace for regional deterrence focused operations against cartel infrastructure
• 29:55
  Speaker 4: throughout Latin America and the Caribbeans. So whether or not
• 29:58
  Speaker 4: they're going to apply quote Operation Total Extermination just to
• 30:02
  Speaker 4: cartels an Ecuador, or it'll be more broadly interpreted, as
• 30:08
  Speaker 4: you know, even including Cuba as part of Latin America,
• 30:12
  Speaker 4: we will see, but certainly escalating by the day.
• 30:14
  Speaker 6: And did you see the New York Times report, by
• 30:16
  Speaker 6: the way, this one here, Yes, I did so. The
• 30:19
  Speaker 6: New York Times sent reporters out, good for them, give
• 30:23
  Speaker 6: them their flowers when they deserve it, to the site
• 30:26
  Speaker 6: of a US bombing an Ecuador that they had said
• 30:29
  Speaker 6: was a drug cartel training camp or something. Turns out
• 30:34
  Speaker 6: it was a dairy farm.
• 30:35
  Speaker 4: Total extermination.
• 30:36
  Speaker 6: Yes, And so remember this when they're telling you that
• 30:40
  Speaker 6: their intelligence on boats is rock solid, they if they
• 30:46
  Speaker 6: can't nail their down their intelligence on an immobile dairy farm, Like,
• 30:54
  Speaker 6: why are we so sure that they're exactly right about
• 30:56
  Speaker 6: all of these boats that are moving around separately Niboa.
• 31:00
  Speaker 6: Just google Daniel Naboa, drug trafficker, his family. He's the
• 31:05
  Speaker 6: sign of this banana export business. Their boats are constantly
• 31:11
  Speaker 6: getting found to be stashed with cocaine.
• 31:15
  Speaker 5: Yeah, this is.
• 31:16
  Speaker 6: The president of Ecuador who we are allegedly teaming up
• 31:20
  Speaker 6: with to do a drug eradication campaign.
• 31:23
  Speaker 4: I'm starting, I'm starting a team. It's going to be
• 31:27
  Speaker 4: won Orlando or Nandez Danboa and drug war. Yes, Ryan,
• 31:35
  Speaker 4: you went on Newsmax just last night on Rob Schmid's show,
• 31:39
  Speaker 4: and he asked you basically to defend this trip we've
• 31:42
  Speaker 4: been discussing. So one w Rojas pointed out he posted
• 31:47
  Speaker 4: a really I thought that he put it really well.
• 31:50
  Speaker 4: He reports for Compact and other news outlets from all
• 31:53
  Speaker 4: over Latin America. You probably remember him having been on
• 31:55
  Speaker 4: the show several times. He says earth to anti imperialist
• 31:58
  Speaker 4: fundamentalists the most honest and effective way of advocating for
• 32:02
  Speaker 4: the Cuban people. Ryan doesn't talk about quote participating participatory
• 32:06
  Speaker 4: democracy or the regime's righteousness. He talks about the real
• 32:09
  Speaker 4: world consequences and double standards of our despicable policies better. Yet,
• 32:13
  Speaker 4: he asks how any of this benefits Americans. This method
• 32:17
  Speaker 4: is so effective, The interviewer concedes multiple times. One de
• 32:21
  Speaker 4: vid adds the difference between Ryan and Piker or but
• 32:23
  Speaker 4: Norton is his first, second, and third priorities are normy Cubans,
• 32:27
  Speaker 4: not the PCC oligarchy staying in power.
• 32:29
  Speaker 5: Right.
• 32:30
  Speaker 4: I do feel as though you, maybe it's your reporter background,
• 32:33
  Speaker 4: are very careful in how you cover Cuba, and I
• 32:37
  Speaker 4: thought that came out in this conversation with Rob Schmidt.
• 32:41
  Speaker 4: Where nowhere do you ever or did you, in your
• 32:43
  Speaker 4: reporting from Cuba defend the regime, which is a very
• 32:46
  Speaker 4: easy thing not to do.
• 32:48
  Speaker 6: And I will defend the quote unquote regime in the
• 32:50
  Speaker 6: sense of when I think they're being unfairly criticized.
• 32:55
  Speaker 4: The media is getting a story wrong.
• 32:56
  Speaker 5: Yeah, right, exactly.
• 32:58
  Speaker 4: But if you consider that like a defense of imprisoning
• 33:02
  Speaker 4: one thousand political prisoners.
• 33:05
  Speaker 5: That's not the same, right.
• 33:07
  Speaker 6: And also it's important to just understand the reality of
• 33:12
  Speaker 6: who is actually causing the suffering. It is the sanctions,
• 33:17
  Speaker 6: it's the embargo, blockade, the state sponsor of terroritismation.
• 33:21
  Speaker 5: We didn't in this interview. We didn't get into kind.
• 33:24
  Speaker 6: Of the details of it, but as you saw from
• 33:26
  Speaker 6: the last segment, like Cuba is blocked from purchasing MRI
• 33:32
  Speaker 6: machines for the most part, or getting helium to keep
• 33:36
  Speaker 6: their MRI machines running. They can't buy anything that has
• 33:42
  Speaker 6: a minimum of ten percent of US parts in it,
• 33:47
  Speaker 6: even when they end up buying. They bought a three
• 33:49
  Speaker 6: D printer to try to get around this so that
• 33:51
  Speaker 6: they could produce medical supplies, these unique medical supplies that
• 33:55
  Speaker 6: people needed.
• 33:55
  Speaker 5: It broke down.
• 33:56
  Speaker 6: The German company said they can't send a ten out
• 34:00
  Speaker 6: because of the US.
• 34:01
  Speaker 5: Sanctions, and they said, actually, that's not true.
• 34:04
  Speaker 6: Like there's an EU law that says in Mitchell Valdeesoso
• 34:08
  Speaker 6: relay the story to me.
• 34:10
  Speaker 5: He was on the phone with the Vice president.
• 34:11
  Speaker 6: He said, there's an EU law that says you're not
• 34:13
  Speaker 6: allowed to follow US sanctions because it's EU sovereignty. Means
• 34:19
  Speaker 6: that you have to make your own decisions. You cannot
• 34:23
  Speaker 6: be driven by US sanctions. And the guy told him, yeah,
• 34:27
  Speaker 6: I know that law is on the books. We do
• 34:28
  Speaker 6: a lot of business with the United States. We don't
• 34:31
  Speaker 6: do much business with QBA. Sorry that you bought a
• 34:34
  Speaker 6: million dollar three D printer from US. We're not gonna
• 34:36
  Speaker 6: be able to fix it, and so it's just sitting
• 34:37
  Speaker 6: there collecting dust. So we didn't get into a lot
• 34:40
  Speaker 6: of those details about the way that the sanctions and
• 34:43
  Speaker 6: the embargo play a play a primary driver of the
• 34:47
  Speaker 6: miseration of the island. But the point I did make
• 34:50
  Speaker 6: to him is if you think that's not true and
• 34:53
  Speaker 6: the system is so flawed and unable to succeed, let
• 34:59
  Speaker 6: it it.
• 35:00
  Speaker 4: Try and make in roads with them so they don't turn.
• 35:02
  Speaker 5: To Russia in China and there you go.
• 35:04
  Speaker 4: Yeah, and it's a yeah, we don't have to keep
• 35:05
  Speaker 4: doing it.
• 35:06
  Speaker 6: Also, yeah, I haven't seen Schmidt calling for regime change
• 35:08
  Speaker 6: in Saudi Arabia over like the human rights abuses and
• 35:12
  Speaker 6: the lack of democracy in Saturday Saudi Arabia make Cuba
• 35:15
  Speaker 6: look like Switzerland.
• 35:16
  Speaker 4: Well, this is a great back and forth. I think
• 35:17
  Speaker 4: it draws out some important contrasts. So without further ado,
• 35:23
  Speaker 4: we go fine.
• 35:23
  Speaker 8: On newsbas Drop side news reporter Ryan Grim also traveled
• 35:27
  Speaker 8: to Cuba as well, reporting on all this. He's seen
• 35:30
  Speaker 8: in this photo here and Ryan joins us tonight and
• 35:33
  Speaker 8: it's good to have you back on the show. The
• 35:35
  Speaker 8: trudministration is trying to end a seventy year regime. It
• 35:40
  Speaker 8: looks like these guys along with you there are trying
• 35:43
  Speaker 8: to help it survive.
• 35:44
  Speaker 1: Am I missing something?
• 35:46
  Speaker 5: Wait?
• 35:46
  Speaker 8: They're trying to do what trying to help this regime survive?
• 35:50
  Speaker 8: Who is piker most of the people there. I'm wondering
• 35:53
  Speaker 8: if yourself along with them or are included in that.
• 35:56
  Speaker 6: Yeah, the group that went along brought about fifty times
• 36:00
  Speaker 6: worth of medical supplies and solar panels.
• 36:04
  Speaker 8: That's right, medical supplies and solar panels, and and a
• 36:07
  Speaker 8: lot of sympathies for the regime that controls the country,
• 36:10
  Speaker 8: I imagine.
• 36:11
  Speaker 6: So let me let me try to help out your
• 36:13
  Speaker 6: your viewers a little bit here. How how do you
• 36:17
  Speaker 6: feel about the fact that when Americans travel to a
• 36:19
  Speaker 6: foreign country, in this case Cuba, they are told specifically
• 36:25
  Speaker 6: a list of hotels that they are allowed to stay
• 36:27
  Speaker 6: in in another country.
• 36:30
  Speaker 8: I went through it because when I went and stayed there,
• 36:32
  Speaker 8: it was the same I stayed in an Airbnb.
• 36:34
  Speaker 1: I think, if you haven't won our countries.
• 36:36
  Speaker 5: Trying to sque what do you think of that?
• 36:38
  Speaker 8: I think our country is trying to end a regime
• 36:40
  Speaker 8: that's been torturing people for very long time, and they
• 36:42
  Speaker 8: don't want to fund it. Well, they don't want us
• 36:44
  Speaker 8: funding it by paying money to a communist owned entity
• 36:48
  Speaker 8: like a hotel.
• 36:49
  Speaker 6: So if this, if their system of government is so awful,
• 36:52
  Speaker 6: why not just let it fail on its own?
• 36:54
  Speaker 5: Why do we have to block head them? How? Because
• 36:56
  Speaker 5: they won't leave, They don't have a lot, they won't leave.
• 36:58
  Speaker 6: How do you think the United States economy would do
• 37:01
  Speaker 6: if we cut off fuel for three straight months? No
• 37:06
  Speaker 6: fuel has basically gotten into Cuba since the Venezuela operation.
• 37:11
  Speaker 8: Yeah, but I was there, and I was there in
• 37:13
  Speaker 8: twenty nineteen, Ryan, and it was still a horribly impoverished
• 37:15
  Speaker 8: country before.
• 37:16
  Speaker 5: We're cutting off fuel to try and.
• 37:18
  Speaker 8: Get this leadership out, get them the hell out of there,
• 37:21
  Speaker 8: because they won't leave, They won't have an election, they
• 37:22
  Speaker 8: won't leave.
• 37:23
  Speaker 6: Why do you why do you want to? Why do
• 37:24
  Speaker 6: you why do you care about? Like who's who's in
• 37:26
  Speaker 6: charge in Cuba?
• 37:27
  Speaker 4: Who?
• 37:28
  Speaker 5: Like who elected you to do that? It's such a
• 37:29
  Speaker 5: bizarre like there.
• 37:30
  Speaker 6: Aren't enough problems in the United States here for you
• 37:33
  Speaker 6: to work out.
• 37:34
  Speaker 1: That's that's another side.
• 37:35
  Speaker 6: Really, Like I can't even get my mind to a
• 37:37
  Speaker 6: place where I would think it's my call, like who
• 37:41
  Speaker 6: runs Cuba, who runs Haiti, who runs Mexico?
• 37:44
  Speaker 5: Who runs a rack, who runs a rent?
• 37:45
  Speaker 8: Like that's a fair Israel, that's a fair criticism. That's
• 37:48
  Speaker 8: a fair criticism. But I mean, do you but do
• 37:50
  Speaker 8: you think it's better for you? Do you want this
• 37:52
  Speaker 8: regime to continue to run this country against the wishes
• 37:55
  Speaker 8: of the people.
• 37:55
  Speaker 6: It's not all in povers, It's not up to me.
• 37:58
  Speaker 6: I live in Washington, d C. I vote in Washington
• 38:00
  Speaker 6: DC elections, and I vote in federal elections. Where do
• 38:02
  Speaker 6: you Where do you live?
• 38:04
  Speaker 1: You live in Yeah, that's where Where do you live?
• 38:07
  Speaker 5: I live in New York?
• 38:09
  Speaker 6: And it's not why should you vote? Why should you like?
• 38:12
  Speaker 6: What do you have to do with Cuba?
• 38:13
  Speaker 8: Well, it's I think the prosperity of that country that's
• 38:16
  Speaker 8: only ninety miles away from our border can't be a
• 38:18
  Speaker 8: bad thing.
• 38:19
  Speaker 1: And I'm just saying that.
• 38:20
  Speaker 8: I want I'm asking you why not the import oil?
• 38:22
  Speaker 8: It's it's fine, it's not it's not America first, let's
• 38:25
  Speaker 8: put it there.
• 38:25
  Speaker 1: But do you think that to be running the country?
• 38:28
  Speaker 6: Why does it bother you? If Mexico sells oil to Cuba.
• 38:32
  Speaker 5: You live in New York.
• 38:33
  Speaker 6: On in what world is that a New Yorker's responsibility
• 38:37
  Speaker 6: to stop Mexico from second oil to Cuba.
• 38:41
  Speaker 1: That's okay, fair criticism right there.
• 38:43
  Speaker 8: My My other question what to do is why do
• 38:45
  Speaker 8: you can't Why did you travel there? Why did you
• 38:47
  Speaker 8: you don't care? Why did you travel there to try
• 38:49
  Speaker 8: and support them?
• 38:49
  Speaker 6: I mean, I'm a journalist and the United States is
• 38:52
  Speaker 6: literally killing people with like we are killing people that
• 38:57
  Speaker 6: I toured two hospitals.
• 38:58
  Speaker 5: Why is a pediatric hostpititle.
• 39:01
  Speaker 6: We implemented a new rule in February that says that
• 39:04
  Speaker 6: if you're a private business, you can import oil, you
• 39:08
  Speaker 6: can import fuel.
• 39:09
  Speaker 5: So the hotel where we were required to.
• 39:12
  Speaker 6: Stay is allowed by the United States government to have fuel. Hospitals,
• 39:18
  Speaker 6: because they have a publicly run healthcare system, are not
• 39:21
  Speaker 6: allowed to have fuel.
• 39:23
  Speaker 5: I heard a lot of.
• 39:23
  Speaker 6: People complaining that the hotel still had power, but the hospitals.
• 39:27
  Speaker 6: Do you not understanding apparently that it is a US
• 39:31
  Speaker 6: rule that blocks the hospitals from getting fuel.
• 39:34
  Speaker 5: I tore at the pediatric hospital. You know what, the
• 39:36
  Speaker 5: you know what? The nurses and doctors there told me, they.
• 39:38
  Speaker 6: Said, when the power goes out, they immediately turn on
• 39:41
  Speaker 6: their their phone lights and race to the babies on ventilators.
• 39:46
  Speaker 6: Let me ask you this, because there's a gap and
• 39:49
  Speaker 6: hold on, there's a gap between when the power goes
• 39:53
  Speaker 6: out and when the generator kicks in. That can be
• 39:56
  Speaker 6: up to like five or six seven minutes. A baby
• 39:59
  Speaker 6: can die in that time on eventu leader. So they
• 40:00
  Speaker 6: have to take their phone, turn the light on, race
• 40:02
  Speaker 6: and hand pump the ventilator because all because of the
• 40:06
  Speaker 6: United States has decided that Mexico can't sell oil and fuel.
• 40:11
  Speaker 8: Let me get Cuba been doing with. Let me states, well,
• 40:16
  Speaker 8: that's fine if you know what you want to say.
• 40:17
  Speaker 8: It's not American first, that's fine. But let me ask
• 40:19
  Speaker 8: you this. How many tens of thousands of people have
• 40:22
  Speaker 8: died over the last thirty forty years as this country
• 40:25
  Speaker 8: has lived in extreme poverty eighty eight percent of the
• 40:26
  Speaker 8: people of in extreme poverty. The government will not allow
• 40:29
  Speaker 8: any kind of capitalism in to bring these people up,
• 40:32
  Speaker 8: to bring the quality of life up. How many government
• 40:35
  Speaker 8: thousands of their own people, has that government killed? We're
• 40:38
  Speaker 8: trying to strangle out of government here. And yes, there's
• 40:40
  Speaker 8: going to be ancillary. There's going to be some negative
• 40:42
  Speaker 8: impacts of that, like you just described. That's fair, but
• 40:45
  Speaker 8: you've I mean, how many people have died because of
• 40:48
  Speaker 8: the government in power.
• 40:50
  Speaker 6: I interviewed the number three guy in Cuba in Cuba,
• 40:54
  Speaker 6: I will let you have the interview.
• 40:56
  Speaker 5: You can air the entire thing, he said.
• 40:59
  Speaker 6: Cuban nationals Americans are welcome to invest in Cuba.
• 41:03
  Speaker 5: He said.
• 41:03
  Speaker 6: They're open to in a holistic negotiation, compensating Americans for
• 41:09
  Speaker 6: property that was seized during the revolutionating now they want no.
• 41:15
  Speaker 6: They offered that in the nineteen sixties. The United States
• 41:18
  Speaker 6: refused it because we thought we were going to do
• 41:20
  Speaker 6: regime change, So why take a deal if we're just
• 41:22
  Speaker 6: going to do regime change. Well, let me we didn't
• 41:26
  Speaker 6: overthrow the government. We failed over and over and over.
• 41:28
  Speaker 6: We tried to assassinate Fidel Castro, what like a dozen
• 41:30
  Speaker 6: plus times. We tried an invasion by pigs.
• 41:32
  Speaker 5: It didn't work.
• 41:33
  Speaker 6: Every other country, Italy, France, Spain, they all took they
• 41:36
  Speaker 6: all took compensation for what was nationalized. So they're saying
• 41:39
  Speaker 6: you can invest here, we will compensate you for what
• 41:42
  Speaker 6: was nationalized. All we're asking is that you lift the
• 41:45
  Speaker 6: sanctions and leave us alone.
• 41:47
  Speaker 5: Why is the regime alone?
• 41:49
  Speaker 8: Leave Cube alone, the regime alone, and let the people
• 41:53
  Speaker 8: continue to suffer. I mean, did you see the people there,
• 41:56
  Speaker 8: The misery of the people that live in that country
• 41:58
  Speaker 8: under these a holes. It's already the misery is like
• 42:03
  Speaker 8: unspeakable that way for a long time.
• 42:08
  Speaker 5: It's a lot worse.
• 42:09
  Speaker 6: It's the people who were there in December and people
• 42:11
  Speaker 6: who obviously live there telling me like it's noticeably worse.
• 42:15
  Speaker 6: You know, you have people like starvation and homelessness. Wasn't
• 42:19
  Speaker 6: really a thing like there was poverty. It wasn't like
• 42:21
  Speaker 6: extreme rich country. But you know, even a few months ago, the.
• 42:26
  Speaker 5: People live under two dollars a day.
• 42:28
  Speaker 8: I mean, that's nobody in America lives under two dollars
• 42:30
  Speaker 8: a day, not a single person. I gotta, I gotta
• 42:33
  Speaker 8: leave it there, but I really do. You're a good
• 42:35
  Speaker 8: sport for coming on, Ryan Griham from Drop Side News.
• 42:37
  Speaker 5: You got good to see you ran.
• 42:40
  Speaker 4: My favorite part of that clip is the picture of
• 42:43
  Speaker 4: you guys outside the hospital where Newsmack circled your faces
• 42:47
  Speaker 4: like it was a true crime documentary. Incredible. It was
• 42:50
  Speaker 4: like your face in Hassan's face.
• 42:52
  Speaker 6: You can almost hear the music that would be playing
• 42:54
  Speaker 6: in the true crime documentary there.
• 42:56
  Speaker 4: Yeah, that was good stuff, good stuff. I agree with one.
• 42:59
  Speaker 4: So I'm glad that Rob Friend had you on.
• 43:02
  Speaker 5: Sure, this is a fun convers I always happy to
• 43:04
  Speaker 5: go on Newsmax. Yes, well, I'm sure they'll have me back. Right.
• 43:07
  Speaker 5: That was have a good TV for them.
• 43:09
  Speaker 4: I thought it was great TV. Let's talk about a pack.
• 43:14
  Speaker 6: So if you want to know where the center of
• 43:16
  Speaker 6: the Democratic Party is, it's always useful to study Gavin Newsom,
• 43:20
  Speaker 6: and he has gotten himself into a very interesting pickle
• 43:23
  Speaker 6: when it comes to his posture towards a pack and
• 43:26
  Speaker 6: to Israel. You might remember when Friend of the Show
• 43:29
  Speaker 6: Van Lathan had him on. He was like, you're going
• 43:32
  Speaker 6: to take a PAC money? He just kept saying, that's
• 43:34
  Speaker 6: an interesting question.
• 43:35
  Speaker 5: Interesting, Interesting that you would ask it. Never thought about
• 43:37
  Speaker 5: that before. Interesting. Interesting he's now saying he won't take
• 43:40
  Speaker 5: a PAC money.
• 43:41
  Speaker 6: He recently said that Israel is an apartheid state, and
• 43:46
  Speaker 6: we were. We should have had a timer up counting
• 43:49
  Speaker 6: down the days or minutes until he walked that back.
• 43:53
  Speaker 6: We can end that timer at his lunch with Jonathan
• 43:57
  Speaker 6: Martin of Politico, where so Johnathan mar And ask them
• 44:00
  Speaker 6: straight up about this, and this is Newsom's.
• 44:04
  Speaker 5: Response, do you consider yourself Zionists?
• 44:07
  Speaker 9: Do I consider myself Zionist? I believe I revere the
• 44:11
  Speaker 9: state of Israel. I'm proud to support the State of Israel.
• 44:14
  Speaker 5: I deeply, deeply.
• 44:16
  Speaker 9: Oppose BB, not in that Young's leadership, his opposition to
• 44:20
  Speaker 9: the two state solutions, and deeply oppose how he is
• 44:24
  Speaker 9: indulging the far right as it relates to what's going
• 44:27
  Speaker 9: on in the West Bank.
• 44:28
  Speaker 5: Using the word a partis I used it.
• 44:30
  Speaker 9: I do in this context that I said it, and
• 44:33
  Speaker 9: I referenced why I used it a Tom Friedman article
• 44:37
  Speaker 9: in that same sentence, where Tom used it in the
• 44:39
  Speaker 9: context of the direction that BB is going, and the
• 44:44
  Speaker 9: concern correct, and that is a legitimate concern I have
• 44:47
  Speaker 9: that I share with Tom that that direction, if that vision,
• 44:51
  Speaker 9: in that direction of the far right, that BB is
• 44:53
  Speaker 9: indulging that, if they see the full annexation of the
• 44:56
  Speaker 9: West Bank.
• 44:57
  Speaker 5: Then that's not something that's a word may hear others
• 45:00
  Speaker 5: use so emily.
• 45:02
  Speaker 6: The reason I say that this is an interesting pickle
• 45:04
  Speaker 6: is because it's a real test of whether a an
• 45:07
  Speaker 6: obviously very talented politician can play both sides.
• 45:11
  Speaker 5: Yeah on this question.
• 45:12
  Speaker 6: Yeah, I think the answer is going to be no,
• 45:14
  Speaker 6: and that even the most talented gymnasts you know, can't
• 45:17
  Speaker 6: stretch this far because the question of apartheid itself, it's like,
• 45:21
  Speaker 6: it's interesting. It's like, if you are a Palestinian born
• 45:24
  Speaker 6: in the West Bank, you have there's certain laws about
• 45:28
  Speaker 6: whether or not you can vote, you can't who you
• 45:31
  Speaker 6: can marry, where you can move if you if you
• 45:34
  Speaker 6: get married, what your what your travel is, where where
• 45:37
  Speaker 6: you can work, if you are arrested, you go to
• 45:40
  Speaker 6: military courts.
• 45:41
  Speaker 5: If you are Jewish.
• 45:43
  Speaker 6: Israeli said as in born in the West Bank, you
• 45:46
  Speaker 6: have civilian courts, you can, you can marry and move,
• 45:51
  Speaker 6: you can you have free travel restriction like you can
• 45:54
  Speaker 6: drive on different roads, like it's apartheid. The only way
• 45:58
  Speaker 6: that they get around saying it's not apartheid is well,
• 46:01
  Speaker 6: they don't have legal control of the West Bank. They're
• 46:04
  Speaker 6: just they're occupying it and they have basically they exercise
• 46:08
  Speaker 6: sovereignty over it. But what we don't recognize that the
• 46:11
  Speaker 6: West Bank is part of Israel yet, so therefore it's
• 46:14
  Speaker 6: not part of the state. So therefore technically is that
• 46:17
  Speaker 6: it's like good luck trying. But more to the point, well.
• 46:21
  Speaker 4: Also and if you're Jewish you do have privileges about
• 46:23
  Speaker 4: whether you can be a resident and come and move.
• 46:26
  Speaker 5: To Israel and the like, right, exactly, sure, Yeah.
• 46:29
  Speaker 4: Which is I mean? I think there are important distinctions
• 46:32
  Speaker 4: because usually when people hear apartheid, it's used to invoke
• 46:36
  Speaker 4: South Africa. And there's a distinction, of course, being that
• 46:40
  Speaker 4: there are Palestinian members of the Kanessa, Muslim members of
• 46:43
  Speaker 4: a Kanessa. There are, it's not exactly South Africa, but
• 46:48
  Speaker 4: there are also distinctions where you see people being treated
• 46:51
  Speaker 4: differently on the basis of religion and ethnicity.
• 46:54
  Speaker 6: And the big problem for Gavin Newsom, correctly me, you
• 46:57
  Speaker 6: think I'm wrong here is that people don't think he
• 47:00
  Speaker 6: believes anything. Now, I think people a lot of Democrats
• 47:05
  Speaker 6: who believe that are still willing to support him if
• 47:09
  Speaker 6: they think that his new positions that he's claiming to
• 47:11
  Speaker 6: believe are something that he'll fight for, you know what
• 47:14
  Speaker 6: I mean, They're beyond caring even if like he has
• 47:18
  Speaker 6: a soul or if he believes in these things, But
• 47:20
  Speaker 6: just show me that you'll fight for whatever you're claiming
• 47:22
  Speaker 6: you believe in now, And he's going to be forced
• 47:27
  Speaker 6: to waffle back and forth on this through the entire
• 47:31
  Speaker 6: campaign if he is unwilling to make a stand. And
• 47:36
  Speaker 6: so this thing of like, oh, yeah, it's apartheid, but
• 47:39
  Speaker 6: it's not. I regret saying that is just going to
• 47:43
  Speaker 6: make him look like a nineteen nineties era politician who
• 47:47
  Speaker 6: just doesn't believe in anything.
• 47:48
  Speaker 5: And I think it's going to be a major problem
• 47:50
  Speaker 5: for him.
• 47:50
  Speaker 4: Yeah, because when you imagine this out in the campaign
• 47:52
  Speaker 4: trail Iowa, South Carolina, New Hampshire, You're talking to people
• 47:57
  Speaker 4: at fairs and at pancake breakfasts, and you are going
• 48:02
  Speaker 4: to be in a Democratic primary in twenty twenty eight
• 48:04
  Speaker 4: every single day in and out, but rated with this question.
• 48:07
  Speaker 4: Does it backfire? And some you know, normy voters get
• 48:09
  Speaker 4: sick of it? Maybe, But you need the party's grassroots,
• 48:13
  Speaker 4: you need the base and to show up for you
• 48:15
  Speaker 4: in a small state like New Hampshire, Iowa. So he's
• 48:18
  Speaker 4: gonna have to I mean, this is this is his
• 48:20
  Speaker 4: best answer right now. You can see it how he
• 48:22
  Speaker 4: kind of repeats the question right, He's like he's ready
• 48:25
  Speaker 4: to launch. Yeah, yeah, he's like he's preparing his launch,
• 48:28
  Speaker 4: and it's this answer is clearly like well thought out
• 48:33
  Speaker 4: from their campaign perspective or their strategic perspective. And even then,
• 48:37
  Speaker 4: it's not getting cut muster when you're getting constantly hounded
• 48:40
  Speaker 4: by people over and over again, and the smartphone videos
• 48:43
  Speaker 4: are pinging around the internet.
• 48:45
  Speaker 6: And Jennifer Welch has kind of driven a lot of
• 48:47
  Speaker 6: this because these candidates, these mainstream candidates, keep coming on
• 48:51
  Speaker 6: her program and getting pressed on this exact question.
• 48:54
  Speaker 5: Let's jump to D four where she had Corey Booker.
• 48:57
  Speaker 6: On and you might remember this viral moment from the
• 49:01
  Speaker 6: fall of twenty twenty five, and there's a reason we're
• 49:04
  Speaker 6: showing you this.
• 49:05
  Speaker 5: So here's Welch and Booker.
• 49:08
  Speaker 10: I'm one of a handful of people that don't take
• 49:10
  Speaker 10: work with PAC money.
• 49:11
  Speaker 8: What about a PAC many.
• 49:12
  Speaker 11: You take APAC many, don't you.
• 49:13
  Speaker 10: It's a minuscule percentage of my resources coming I raised
• 49:16
  Speaker 10: like eight hundred thousand, Yeah, but that's a lifetime number.
• 49:22
  Speaker 11: When you did your twenty five hour speech, I was like, go, Corey,
• 49:24
  Speaker 11: I love this.
• 49:25
  Speaker 4: That is amazing.
• 49:26
  Speaker 11: And then there's a photo shoot with you with Benjamin
• 49:29
  Speaker 11: Att Yahoo and I was just like what.
• 49:32
  Speaker 5: In the actual fok?
• 49:33
  Speaker 11: Like, how can he do that? It was heartbreaking it
• 49:36
  Speaker 11: I felt betrayed. I felt like it diminished your twenty
• 49:38
  Speaker 11: five hours. That's how it felt to me.
• 49:41
  Speaker 6: I think he's a.
• 49:42
  Speaker 11: War criminal, Benjamin Att Yahoo? Do you think he's a
• 49:44
  Speaker 11: war criminal?
• 49:44
  Speaker 10: I again, these are questions that a lot of people
• 49:48
  Speaker 10: think are the important witness tests that are loaded and hot.
• 49:51
  Speaker 10: My urgency is to be an effective leader in bringing
• 49:54
  Speaker 10: an end to this crisis, and I get these questions
• 49:57
  Speaker 10: all the time that to me undermine my urgency.
• 50:02
  Speaker 11: I think the thing that democrats get so frustrated with
• 50:04
  Speaker 11: where we are right now, where you see like tho
• 50:06
  Speaker 11: zoron Mom Donnie's and the Grand Platner's rise up because
• 50:09
  Speaker 11: you can. They can go on podcasting, you can say
• 50:11
  Speaker 11: do you think Benjamin Nette, you know who's a war criminal?
• 50:13
  Speaker 6: And they just say, yes, I love what a delightful
• 50:17
  Speaker 6: collection of words that is coming out of his other.
• 50:19
  Speaker 5: Yes, these questions undermine my urgency.
• 50:21
  Speaker 4: I think he's an underline.
• 50:22
  Speaker 5: Oh the underline.
• 50:23
  Speaker 4: I think he said it was the underline.
• 50:25
  Speaker 1: Who doesn't matter.
• 50:26
  Speaker 6: Because the words aren't supposed to mean anything. They're just
• 50:27
  Speaker 6: supposed to fill space.
• 50:28
  Speaker 4: I don't worry about it.
• 50:29
  Speaker 5: You saw him backing away slightly from this.
• 50:31
  Speaker 6: You put up D two this hilarious picture that circulated
• 50:34
  Speaker 6: of when Corey Booker went to uh Cory Booker hiding
• 50:37
  Speaker 6: behind a bunch of others centers when he's meeting with
• 50:40
  Speaker 6: net Yahoo.
• 50:41
  Speaker 4: We did to him what they did to you on
• 50:43
  Speaker 4: news packside the Cuban hospital.
• 50:45
  Speaker 6: But this is a little bit fairer because he actually
• 50:47
  Speaker 6: does seem to be hiding back there.
• 50:49
  Speaker 5: Yes, but now we can roll D two Corey Booker.
• 50:55
  Speaker 5: Guess what, Just like.
• 50:57
  Speaker 6: Avin Newsom, he went from you know, getting embarrassed in
• 51:01
  Speaker 6: an interview to saying, you know what, okay, I'm not
• 51:02
  Speaker 6: taking a PAC money now. He's what he smartly did
• 51:07
  Speaker 6: is he rolled it out with this pledge that he's
• 51:10
  Speaker 6: not going to take any pack money, including a PAC money.
• 51:14
  Speaker 6: Smart Now, when you're running for president, here's what people
• 51:17
  Speaker 6: quite know.
• 51:20
  Speaker 5: Corporate pack money is capped at what five thousand.
• 51:22
  Speaker 6: It's dollars if you're a house member for them. Corporate
• 51:27
  Speaker 6: pack money is helpful because you can rack up half
• 51:30
  Speaker 6: a million of it very easily with a couple of
• 51:32
  Speaker 6: dinners in Washington, d C. You get you know, you know,
• 51:35
  Speaker 6: get one hundred corporate corporations around and they to give
• 51:38
  Speaker 6: you five grand boom like that's that adds up fast.
• 51:41
  Speaker 6: That's not enough for a presidential campaign. For that, you
• 51:43
  Speaker 6: need billionaires or regular people. Corey Bookers, you know, he
• 51:46
  Speaker 6: needs billionaires and who are going to drop massive checks
• 51:50
  Speaker 6: so he can say no to corporate PAC money running
• 51:52
  Speaker 6: for president and it's not actually going to hurt him
• 51:55
  Speaker 6: that much. And so what he's doing then is smuggling in.
• 51:57
  Speaker 6: I'm also not going to take a PAC money. Corey
• 52:00
  Speaker 6: Booker is one of the lead champions of APAX agenda
• 52:05
  Speaker 6: in Congress over the years. For him to understand that
• 52:11
  Speaker 6: it's too toxic to take is a watershed moment for APEC.
• 52:15
  Speaker 5: I will say that.
• 52:16
  Speaker 4: Now, let's put the five up on the screen. Ryne,
• 52:18
  Speaker 4: can you take us through this? The NBC News report
• 52:21
  Speaker 4: here a pack superac PAC funded Illinois group. We went
• 52:25
  Speaker 4: through all of this after the results last week, but
• 52:27
  Speaker 4: there's a quote here. UDP was happy to support these
• 52:29
  Speaker 4: local committees along with Chicago donors, to make sure pro
• 52:32
  Speaker 4: Israel voices would have their voices heard, according to Patrick
• 52:35
  Speaker 4: Dorton to NBC News on Friday. What does that mean?
• 52:39
  Speaker 6: And so UDP is United Democracy Project, that's APAX super pac.
• 52:43
  Speaker 6: You're like, what does that name mean, by the way,
• 52:46
  Speaker 6: because according to them, Israel is the only democracy in
• 52:48
  Speaker 6: the Middle East, and we are here in the United States.
• 52:51
  Speaker 6: We're a democracy, we are United democracies, and so that's
• 52:56
  Speaker 6: where their super pac name comes from. Just wanted to
• 52:59
  Speaker 6: highlight this because in case there's anybody out there doesn't
• 53:01
  Speaker 6: believe me, we've been reporting for many weeks that it
• 53:05
  Speaker 6: was a PAC money that was funneling through these what
• 53:09
  Speaker 6: they call local committees, and those quote unquote local committees
• 53:13
  Speaker 6: were they're called elect Chicago Women, Affordable Chicago Now, and
• 53:17
  Speaker 6: one other progressive something something. There were fake pop up
• 53:22
  Speaker 6: packs that would then be funneled that would then be
• 53:25
  Speaker 6: funded by UDP a pack Superpack.
• 53:29
  Speaker 5: Plus a bunch of APACK donors.
• 53:31
  Speaker 6: And then you don't learn that officially until after the
• 53:36
  Speaker 6: campaign is over us now and when we report based
• 53:42
  Speaker 6: on our sourcing and our or just doing journalism about
• 53:47
  Speaker 6: what's going on Chicago.
• 53:48
  Speaker 5: When we report, oh, no, this.
• 53:49
  Speaker 6: Is actually a PAC money, you get people saying that's bigoted,
• 53:53
  Speaker 6: and your trafficking in tropes and then after the campaign
• 53:59
  Speaker 6: they're like, oh, that was us. And with one of
• 54:02
  Speaker 6: the races, they even they won the race with this candidate,
• 54:06
  Speaker 6: Donna Miller Apak put out a tweet saying big win
• 54:09
  Speaker 6: for Apak. They had not endorsed her or admitted that
• 54:12
  Speaker 6: they were even spending on her behalf still publicly then
• 54:16
  Speaker 6: took credit for winning the race, which I feel like
• 54:19
  Speaker 6: that you can't do that, like, okay, you one will
• 54:24
  Speaker 6: acknowledge it. You don't get to claim like publicly. You
• 54:28
  Speaker 6: don't get to do with the victory lab No.
• 54:30
  Speaker 4: You would think you would think now, speaking of victory
• 54:34
  Speaker 4: laps quite a scene down in the I think it's
• 54:38
  Speaker 4: the town of Palm Beach is included in this district.
• 54:40
  Speaker 4: There's West Palm Beach, as the town of Palm Beach,
• 54:42
  Speaker 4: there's Palm Beach itself. Last element here headline from NBC News.
• 54:46
  Speaker 4: Democrat flips Republican held Florida State House district that includes
• 54:50
  Speaker 4: Trump's mar A Lago. Emily Gregory, according to NBC quote,
• 54:56
  Speaker 4: narrowly won the special election for the district Tuesday night.
• 54:58
  Speaker 4: According to a Pete projections, Trump carried this district in
• 55:03
  Speaker 4: twenty twenty four. Gregory got fifty one percent of the
• 55:08
  Speaker 4: vote to forty nine percent for the Trump endorsed candidate
• 55:11
  Speaker 4: in that race that had a I was I was
• 55:14
  Speaker 4: just watching this come in on X last night. Had
• 55:16
  Speaker 4: a lot of Dems feeling pretty good.
• 55:19
  Speaker 5: Ryan, I think it's fun for them to just win
• 55:21
  Speaker 5: mar A Lago.
• 55:22
  Speaker 4: Well, tacky, Now they're going to do all like ticky
• 55:26
  Speaker 4: TACKI like municipal stuff. Run mar A Lago a mess
• 55:28
  Speaker 4: with them. Well they can't mean it would have to
• 55:30
  Speaker 4: go through the House.
• 55:31
  Speaker 5: And another one, it's now official.
• 55:33
  Speaker 6: It wasn't official last night, but it's in a Senate
• 55:36
  Speaker 6: a Republican Senate District fourteen. I don't know where that is,
• 55:40
  Speaker 6: and you can look it up. Democrats flipped that one too.
• 55:43
  Speaker 6: Guy Brian Nathan beat Josie tom Cow a Republican. So
• 55:47
  Speaker 6: that had been so they flipped. They flipped. Democrats flipped
• 55:50
  Speaker 6: two seats in Florida that had been Republican held before.
• 55:54
  Speaker 6: I think the Republicans had won Trump's mar A Lago
• 55:57
  Speaker 6: seat by eleven points before.
• 55:59
  Speaker 5: So if you're in a republic it's another sign of
• 56:02
  Speaker 5: this roughly, you know.
• 56:04
  Speaker 6: So that's a thirteen point swing that we've been seeing
• 56:06
  Speaker 6: somewhere between ten and twenty points in all these special elections.
• 56:11
  Speaker 6: If that holds, This Texas jerry mander where they put
• 56:15
  Speaker 6: people put Republicans in districts where they kind of won
• 56:19
  Speaker 6: by like eight nine points may go down as one
• 56:22
  Speaker 6: of the funniest owned goals ever because what they've done
• 56:26
  Speaker 6: is they redrew all these Texas districts to actually now
• 56:29
  Speaker 6: put them within reach for Democrats.
• 56:32
  Speaker 4: Whoops, insane? All right, well, quickly, Ryan, let's go to
• 56:36
  Speaker 4: AI blackhouse. We got a guest come in in just
• 56:38
  Speaker 4: one moment. Some breaking news on this, by the way,
• 56:41
  Speaker 4: according to Brian Metzger, as of just this morning, Bernie
• 56:47
  Speaker 4: Sanders and Alexandro Cozercortas are planning to introduce the quote
• 56:50
  Speaker 4: AI Data Center Moratorium Act at a four pm press
• 56:54
  Speaker 4: conference over on Capitol Hill. So that's expect that to
• 56:58
  Speaker 4: come down later today. But why might they be pursuing this? Well,
• 57:04
  Speaker 4: one reason for settlement we can toss up on the
• 57:06
  Speaker 4: screen here Pert Tom Winter over at NBC News Electrical Grid.
• 57:11
  Speaker 4: This is, according to his NBC News report, Calle electrical
• 57:14
  Speaker 4: grid at increasing risk of blackouts due to surging demand,
• 57:18
  Speaker 4: and he asked could there be blackouts in NYC. How
• 57:21
  Speaker 4: serious is the threat nationwide? The fact that question is
• 57:24
  Speaker 4: even being asked, Ryan is all the evidence you need
• 57:28
  Speaker 4: for why populists on the left might be considering introducing
• 57:32
  Speaker 4: a moratorium on the data center.
• 57:34
  Speaker 6: Now look forward to people asking their phones, Grock, is
• 57:37
  Speaker 6: it true that I'm in a blackout.
• 57:40
  Speaker 5: Caused by you?
• 57:41
  Speaker 4: That is so dark? That was so dark. Let's take
• 57:44
  Speaker 4: a look actually at this video from an interview that
• 57:49
  Speaker 4: was done in Kentucky really recently. It was making the rounds.
• 57:53
  Speaker 4: This is a Kentucky family being interviewed. I think this
• 57:56
  Speaker 4: was the local news about a data center. Let's roll it.
• 58:00
  Speaker 1: It's my way.
• 58:01
  Speaker 12: I'll stay in hold and feed a nation. Twenty six
• 58:05
  Speaker 12: million doesn't mean anything.
• 58:06
  Speaker 13: Some people might find it hard to understand how Delcia
• 58:09
  Speaker 13: Bear can turn away a twenty six million dollar offer
• 58:12
  Speaker 13: to buy some of her land until you spend a
• 58:15
  Speaker 13: little time with her walking the dirt road she grew
• 58:17
  Speaker 13: up on, and in the house her daddy built.
• 58:20
  Speaker 12: My grandfather and great grandfather and a whole bunch of
• 58:23
  Speaker 12: family has all lived here for years, paid taxes on it,
• 58:27
  Speaker 12: fed a nation off of it.
• 58:29
  Speaker 13: So what do you say to the people who are
• 58:32
  Speaker 13: in town that say, hey, this is going to bring jobs,
• 58:34
  Speaker 13: this is going to bring economic prosperity.
• 58:38
  Speaker 12: I say they're a liar and a truth ain't in them,
• 58:41
  Speaker 12: is what I'll say.
• 58:42
  Speaker 1: It's a scam for Delcia.
• 58:44
  Speaker 5: Scam or not.
• 58:45
  Speaker 13: She says she's connected to her home. Like Scarlet O'Hara
• 58:49
  Speaker 13: was in Gone with the Wind.
• 58:50
  Speaker 12: As long as she was attached to that land, her
• 58:53
  Speaker 12: spirit never would die. And that's the exact same thing
• 58:57
  Speaker 12: for me right here. As long as I'm on this land,
• 59:01
  Speaker 12: as long as it's feeding me, as long as it's
• 59:03
  Speaker 12: taking care of me, there's nothing can destroy me if
• 59:07
  Speaker 12: I've got this land.
• 59:09
  Speaker 4: I actually just watch Gone with the Win again a
• 59:11
  Speaker 4: couple of a couple of weeks ago. I'm not sure
• 59:13
  Speaker 4: Scarlett Ohio is the comparison she wants to make it
• 59:15
  Speaker 4: in this case, but you see how deeply fall it
• 59:17
  Speaker 4: will allow it, fan will allow it.
• 59:20
  Speaker 5: In the interest of whatever will allow it.
• 59:22
  Speaker 4: Meanwhile, this is another one of these AI updates that
• 59:25
  Speaker 4: just casually pops into the discourse, and it's so massive
• 59:30
  Speaker 4: you can't even do it justice through coverage because again,
• 59:34
  Speaker 4: like it's casual things that AI guys are saying. This
• 59:36
  Speaker 4: is Jensen Wang of the video over with Lex Friedman.
• 59:39
  Speaker 4: He says, we've achieved AGI.
• 59:42
  Speaker 5: We could roll the clip. I think it's now, I
• 59:44
  Speaker 5: think we've achieved AGI.
• 59:47
  Speaker 1: You think you can have a company run by an
• 59:48
  Speaker 1: AI system like this possible?
• 59:50
  Speaker 14: And the reason for that is this, you said billion,
• 59:53
  Speaker 14: and you didn't say forever. And so for example, it
• 59:58
  Speaker 14: is not out of the question that a claw was
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 14: able to create a web service, some interesting little app
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 14: that all of a sudden, you know, a few billion
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 14: people used for fifty cents.
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 4: The robots are now on our levels a little now.
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 4: He has his own motivations for saying that.
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 6: Right, because he's the only guy making any money here
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 6: because he's selling all these chips. Everybody else is losing money.
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 6: That's the new definition of AGI. That you can make
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 6: an app like that, an agent can make an app
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 6: that people might like. Okay, I thought we were I
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 6: thought AGI was supposed to mean something a lot deeper
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 6: and more profound than that.
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 5: But whatever. Yeah.
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 4: Now, finally about where this is going in again to
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 4: the point about why Bernie and AOC are teaming up
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 4: on this moratorium, which by like, I don't I get
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 4: the thrust of the moratorium policy. I'm not necessarily advocating
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 4: that that's the right thing and the wrong thing. I
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 4: have to think about it more, but you can see
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 4: the politics of it from a country mile why it's
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 4: important for them to be on this side of the issue.
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 4: And we could put the New York Times tearsheet up
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 4: on the screen here. Young graduates face the grimmest job
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 4: market in years. I don't know if they invoke grim
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 4: and digitally, but listen to this. The unemployment rate for
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 4: college graduates ages twenty two to twenty seven swared to
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 4: five point six percent at the end of last year.
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 4: That is, we are going back to the New York
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 4: Times as a chart included in this article, We're going
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 4: back to roughly great recession levels of unemployment for people
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 4: with college degrees. And this is a spring a lot
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 4: of people right now looking for jobs finding that they're
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 4: probably hitting an impass hitting a wall in those searches.
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 4: The Times article says that this is not necessarily the say,
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 4: although AI may be replacing some entry level jobs in
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 4: the margins, there's little evidence it's the main culprit yet.
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 4: But some of it is from quote low higher, low
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 4: fire dynamics in the labor market. Most of it is
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 4: what the Times report says economists are convinced on that note,
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 4: what this tells us is next year, year after, what
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 4: we could be looking at is low high low fire
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 4: dynamics and an AI potentially an AI blood bath of
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 4: entry level positions. So what that actually is telling us
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 4: is the worst may be yet.
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 6: To come, right, and people expect that we're heading into
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 6: very uncertain territory, and so as a result, they're not hiring,
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 6: so that which becomes a self fulfilling thing.
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 5: It is bleak. It's bleak.
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 6: Even in China, by the way, I was looking at
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 6: it up there, they're seeing an increase to and unemployment
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 6: among people in their twenties. So this is this is
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 6: a trend, isn't unique to us? Yeah? Maybe, uh, they
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 6: should do a little moratorium over there too.
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 5: They don't have the same energy problems though, Well, thing
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 5: fire away.
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 4: On a similar note, let's break down some economic indicators.
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 6: So the entire underpinning of the US run global economy
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 6: is under threat by the Iran war.
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 5: We put up this Reuter's article talking about.
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 6: The rattling of the foundations of the Gulf petro dollar,
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 6: which would have extraordinary implications for the US economy and
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 6: everybody else around the world. It's based significantly on a
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 6: Deutsche Bank report that concluded, quote the huge strategic importance
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 6: of the Middle East to the dollar's role as the
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 6: world's reserve currency should not be underestimated. The current conflict
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 6: could test the foundations of the petro dollar regime unquote.
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 4: Now.
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 6: When Deutsche Bank had floated this as a risk of
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 6: the looming conflict in Iran back in January, Treasury Secretary
• 1:03:46
  Speaker 6: Scott Bessen lashed out at them, sit you basically saying,
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 6: how dare you now that this is now that the
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 6: war has come to pass, We're seeing the Iranians allowing
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 6: oil tankers to go through the Strait of Hormuz as
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 6: long as they trade and yu won you're seeing and
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 6: you're seeing a lot of questioning of the value of
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 6: the relationship the petro dollar.
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 5: Effectively, Emily mean you know as you know means the
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 5: deal is uh.
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 6: The these Middle Eastern countries, Saudi Arabia most most particularly,
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 6: will sell its you will sell its oil in dollars.
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 6: We will offer them protection as a result of that,
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 6: and and with their dollars. They will invest that back
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 6: in the United States and global economy in dollars, particularly
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 6: buying US treasury bonds, so which which allows us to
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 6: keep our interest rates down and allows us to keep
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 6: our our debt load at at what it is.
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 5: If if that breaks down, you're you're.
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 6: Looking at a completely different era for the US.
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 5: And we put up f F one.
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 6: There had been some hope mortgage interest rates had been
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 6: coming back down to earth hope. There was hope that
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 6: people who are locked into their mortgage would be able
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 6: to start, would be able to sell, that people who've
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 6: been waiting forever to buy a house would be able
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 6: to buy. In the last couple of weeks, we're now
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 6: surging seven percent again.
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 5: You know, could be could be in sight.
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 6: If if these trends continue, We're up over back over
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 6: six percent and put up F two. People are not
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 6: feeling so good about Donald Trump's handling the economy. If
• 1:05:30
  Speaker 6: you're just listening to this, you're not getting to see
• 1:05:33
  Speaker 6: the blood on this chart. It looks like Donald Trump's
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 6: approvalating got hacked, like it's.
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 4: Just by Joe Biden.
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 5: It's just straight down and by Joe Biden.
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 6: Yet it shows his Trump's approval of the economy finished
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 6: in that around fifty percent.
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 4: Now compare that to where he was in his first term.
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 4: Look at that.
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 6: Yeah, yeah, he used to be People used to love him.
• 1:05:58
  Speaker 6: Is his handling of the economy at least Biden at
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 6: tanked under Biden, spiked at the beginning under Trump, and
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 6: is now down to twenty nine percent.
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 5: Of people approving of the economy.
• 1:06:13
  Speaker 4: It's I mean, this is a midterm year. This is
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 4: a midterm year for Donald Trump. And you know, he
• 1:06:18
  Speaker 4: looks at the markets and he says, well, the markets
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 4: are up, so that's the economy, right, What's wrong with voters? Right?
• 1:06:25
  Speaker 4: He keeps musing what's wrong with the people? What's wrong
• 1:06:28
  Speaker 4: with the voters? And obviously the American people are not
• 1:06:31
  Speaker 4: feeling that the economy is good because the markets are good.
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 4: So if you see the markets is the economy. That
• 1:06:37
  Speaker 4: would be a very confusing figure.
• 1:06:39
  Speaker 5: Like wait a minute, why am I not messaging this right?
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 4: And I mean, we can just go ahead and toss
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 4: this element up on the screen. This is from the well,
• 1:06:50
  Speaker 4: actually we'll save that. We talked about this earlier in
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 4: the show, so we don't have to get back to it.
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 4: But the New York Times new article that we talked
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 4: about moments ago on the college graduate situation. People are saying,
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 4: it's the uncertainty that's in the economy. It's not necessarily
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 4: AI yet, right, but Liberation Day peddle to the medal
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 4: on AI. This is just the first year, right, this
• 1:07:14
  Speaker 4: is just the first year.
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 5: Yeah, this is dark.
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 6: And this is before the collapse, before the collapse, before
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 6: the crash that everybody knows is coming.
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 4: Well, and remember when this was the Scott Bessett letter
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 4: where he said, quote Trump will pursue a week dollar
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 4: policy rather than implementing tariffs. Weakening the dollar early in
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 4: the second admin would make us manufacturing competitive. A week
• 1:07:34
  Speaker 4: dollar and puddiful cheap energy could power a boom. What
• 1:07:41
  Speaker 4: is this what we're witnessing?
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 5: I don't know, I guess.
• 1:07:44
  Speaker 6: So, so to find out how voters are thinking about this,
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 6: let's bring in state Representative Chris rob who is running
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 6: for Philadelphia's open congressional seat. Rob was recently indoor by
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 6: Justice Democrats, and so giving him a real shot in
• 1:08:03
  Speaker 6: the arm in this kind of open race that has
• 1:08:05
  Speaker 6: like you know, seventy two different people running for it.
• 1:08:08
  Speaker 6: Because if if you get elected to this Philadelphia Seed,
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 6: one of the most progressive probably bastions in the United States,
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 6: you know you're going to be you know, people think
• 1:08:18
  Speaker 6: if you get it, you're going to be in there.
• 1:08:19
  Speaker 6: It's going to be difficult to dislodge you. So uh,
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 6: State Representative Rob, thank you so much for joining us,
• 1:08:26
  Speaker 6: my pleasure. And the election is in the middle of May.
• 1:08:30
  Speaker 6: So this is this is coming pretty rapidly around the corner.
• 1:08:37
  Speaker 6: You know, in New York Mayor Mom Donnie came up
• 1:08:42
  Speaker 6: with this innovative idea, apparently innovative in American politics, that
• 1:08:46
  Speaker 6: he would actually talk about how difficult it is for
• 1:08:49
  Speaker 6: people to live day to day and that people might
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 6: respond to that.
• 1:08:54
  Speaker 5: It was kind of people are like, that's crazy.
• 1:08:57
  Speaker 6: You're going to talk about people's material concerns and you
• 1:09:00
  Speaker 6: think they're going to respond to politician.
• 1:09:02
  Speaker 5: This is crazy. And now he's mayor.
• 1:09:07
  Speaker 6: So since then, we've seen a lot of Democrats adopt
• 1:09:10
  Speaker 6: his language around affordability, but not often connected to concrete
• 1:09:16
  Speaker 6: ways that he's going to actually make your h that
• 1:09:19
  Speaker 6: Democrats are going to make your life more affordable. So
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 6: I'm curious as this as people have really come to
• 1:09:26
  Speaker 6: the conclusion that this economy sucks. What are you seeing
• 1:09:30
  Speaker 6: on the campaign trail from people and what is what
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 6: are you finding is resonating with them?
• 1:09:34
  Speaker 5: And what isn't well sure.
• 1:09:38
  Speaker 15: So I've been on the campaign trail for several months
• 1:09:41
  Speaker 15: now and it's a It's a very unique moment for
• 1:09:45
  Speaker 15: us in Philadelphia because it's the first time in thirty
• 1:09:48
  Speaker 15: five years that there's no incumbent on the ballot in
• 1:09:51
  Speaker 15: this race thirty five years, so we literally have voters
• 1:09:56
  Speaker 15: who are not born the last time there was no
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 15: incumbent on the ballot. It's also, like you said, the
• 1:10:03
  Speaker 15: bluest congressional district nationwide, of all four hundred and thirty
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 15: five seats, it's number one. It is also an aggressively
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 15: young district, so it's all within the city of Philadelphia.
• 1:10:17
  Speaker 15: Over half of voters are millennials and younger. It is
• 1:10:23
  Speaker 15: also a majority black district with a lot of ethnic
• 1:10:25
  Speaker 15: diversity and a number of universities, so it is a
• 1:10:30
  Speaker 15: unique space to be campaigning. And as someone who never
• 1:10:34
  Speaker 15: takes corporate pack money, that's one of the first questions
• 1:10:37
  Speaker 15: people ask, particularly folks who are on social media, because
• 1:10:41
  Speaker 15: they see that there's a corrosive influence of money in politics,
• 1:10:45
  Speaker 15: and they assume that any viable candidate, be they Democrat
• 1:10:50
  Speaker 15: or Republican, is somehow mired in that system. And they
• 1:10:54
  Speaker 15: are shocked and pleasantly surprised that I don't take corporate
• 1:10:58
  Speaker 15: pack money and that I've never taken in it. And
• 1:11:00
  Speaker 15: that also relates to how I message on issues that
• 1:11:03
  Speaker 15: are of concern to people. Because I have opponents who
• 1:11:07
  Speaker 15: will not say we should tax the ultra wealthy because
• 1:11:11
  Speaker 15: they receive money from ultra wealthy insiders. They will not
• 1:11:15
  Speaker 15: mention Gaza because they have support from folks who want
• 1:11:18
  Speaker 15: the war in Iran, and that's connected to the ongoing
• 1:11:22
  Speaker 15: genocide in Palestine. There are folks who are not going
• 1:11:26
  Speaker 15: to talk about medicare for all in the most meaningful
• 1:11:29
  Speaker 15: ways because they're receiving money from folks who do not
• 1:11:32
  Speaker 15: want universal health care in this country. And so people
• 1:11:35
  Speaker 15: are finding that refreshing. It's Mandani put it on the
• 1:11:39
  Speaker 15: map and did it masterfully. It also helped that there
• 1:11:43
  Speaker 15: was ranked choice voting in New York, which I'm the
• 1:11:45
  Speaker 15: prime sponsor of in Pennsylvania and the Pennsylvania legislature, and
• 1:11:48
  Speaker 15: also that there's public financing of elections, which is also huge,
• 1:11:54
  Speaker 15: which I think a lot of people appreciate because it
• 1:11:56
  Speaker 15: reduces the influence of the wealthiest members of the donor class,
• 1:12:01
  Speaker 15: so that we can actually have races that are not
• 1:12:04
  Speaker 15: pandering to folks closest to the epstein class essentially.
• 1:12:10
  Speaker 4: So one of the I think questions that's always valuable
• 1:12:13
  Speaker 4: to ask people who are out campaigning in the field
• 1:12:16
  Speaker 4: is what are you hearing? I mean, this is, as
• 1:12:18
  Speaker 4: you mentioned, very deep blue area. What are you hearing
• 1:12:20
  Speaker 4: from voters? And then how much do they care about
• 1:12:23
  Speaker 4: the issues that you're hearing about, Because one of the
• 1:12:25
  Speaker 4: big questions in a midterm cycle is how the coalition
• 1:12:28
  Speaker 4: turns out on election day, how energized people are to
• 1:12:32
  Speaker 4: go vote, whether it's the economy, maybe for some people
• 1:12:35
  Speaker 4: it's Gaza or on. But what are you hearing about
• 1:12:38
  Speaker 4: most and what is your sense about how deeply people
• 1:12:41
  Speaker 4: are bothered by those issues?
• 1:12:45
  Speaker 15: Yeah, so I think it's a twofold kind of view.
• 1:12:48
  Speaker 15: One is, when I'm meeting folks for the first time
• 1:12:52
  Speaker 15: and they don't know anything about me, they want to
• 1:12:54
  Speaker 15: kind of test how authentic I am, right, So they'll say,
• 1:12:59
  Speaker 15: do you take corporate pack money assuming that I do,
• 1:13:02
  Speaker 15: because you know, I'm viable, and it's like no, and
• 1:13:04
  Speaker 15: they're like, oh, all right, where are you on a Palestine.
• 1:13:08
  Speaker 15: I'm like, well, I believe there's an ongoing genocide in
• 1:13:12
  Speaker 15: Palestine and that needs to be addressed, and their shock
• 1:13:17
  Speaker 15: that I even use the word. And then they'll say, well,
• 1:13:20
  Speaker 15: what about Ice? And I said, well, we should start
• 1:13:22
  Speaker 15: with abolishing ice, but we should also dismantle the immigrant
• 1:13:25
  Speaker 15: detention centers, which were born out of bi partisan complicity.
• 1:13:29
  Speaker 15: And that's when I pivot into talking about critiquing my
• 1:13:33
  Speaker 15: own party, because I'm running in the Democratic primary. So
• 1:13:36
  Speaker 15: while everyone likes to take shots at Trump because it's
• 1:13:39
  Speaker 15: so easy, we can and less and until we can
• 1:13:43
  Speaker 15: hold our own party to account, it really doesn't matter
• 1:13:46
  Speaker 15: about anything else until we've done that. And so one
• 1:13:49
  Speaker 15: of the things I do is I say I am
• 1:13:51
  Speaker 15: not an establishment Democrat. I've never been, even though I'm
• 1:13:55
  Speaker 15: a five term incumbent. I've never been endorsed by my
• 1:13:58
  Speaker 15: own political party, even though I've received more votes than
• 1:14:02
  Speaker 15: any state representative in Pennsylvania history, because I'm an independent
• 1:14:06
  Speaker 15: thinker who does not I'm nobody's rubber stamp, and people
• 1:14:10
  Speaker 15: seem to respond well to that in this moment, because
• 1:14:13
  Speaker 15: establishment politics is why we got here, Centrism is why
• 1:14:16
  Speaker 15: we got here. In centrism is not going to be
• 1:14:19
  Speaker 15: the solution for systemic issues that people are crying out
• 1:14:22
  Speaker 15: to be addressed in the most bold and humane ways.
• 1:14:26
  Speaker 4: It's fascinating that they're going through these series of litmus
• 1:14:28
  Speaker 4: tests to determine how anti establishment.
• 1:14:30
  Speaker 6: You are, which is entirely fair, right, It is because
• 1:14:33
  Speaker 6: I think people are thinking, like, if you're not willing
• 1:14:37
  Speaker 6: to say these basically obviously true things, then you're not
• 1:14:40
  Speaker 6: going to fight on it.
• 1:14:41
  Speaker 5: You're not going to fight on anything else.
• 1:14:42
  Speaker 6: And in that respect, your race caught some national attention
• 1:14:47
  Speaker 6: on the flip side when your lead opponent, Ala Stanford
• 1:14:51
  Speaker 6: made some extraordinarily like bizarre and eyebrow raising comments that
• 1:14:55
  Speaker 6: went in the complete opposite direction.
• 1:14:57
  Speaker 5: We'll play it in a little clip here.
• 1:14:59
  Speaker 6: Which actually from Sunrise Movement Philadelphia, which has endorsed you
• 1:15:03
  Speaker 6: this as a climate group, but showing the kind of
• 1:15:05
  Speaker 6: valance and the and the strength of the question of
• 1:15:10
  Speaker 6: this genocide in Gaza for the Sunrise Movement that seems
• 1:15:14
  Speaker 6: to be a proxy as well for your willingness to
• 1:15:17
  Speaker 6: fight on the climate because I think Dona Hazikoats said,
• 1:15:19
  Speaker 6: you know, if you're not if you're not gonna draw
• 1:15:21
  Speaker 6: the line at genocide, how can I trust you to
• 1:15:24
  Speaker 6: fight for democracy? Same is true, I think for everything else,
• 1:15:26
  Speaker 6: the climate included. So let's quickly let's roll this well
• 1:15:30
  Speaker 6: Sunrise clip here.
• 1:15:33
  Speaker 16: If you're in Philly, you got to hear this. Aylas Stanford,
• 1:15:36
  Speaker 16: who's running to be our next congress person, just compared
• 1:15:39
  Speaker 16: using the word genocide to using the N word.
• 1:15:44
  Speaker 5: Acknowledging the fact.
• 1:15:45
  Speaker 16: That Israel has committed genocide against the Polyestinians is not
• 1:15:49
  Speaker 16: the same as using a slur that has been used
• 1:15:51
  Speaker 16: to harm black people throughout this nation's history. But I
• 1:15:54
  Speaker 16: guess that's the kind of loyalty that over a million
• 1:15:56
  Speaker 16: dollars from pro Israel groups can buy from you.
• 1:15:59
  Speaker 5: Huh.
• 1:16:00
  Speaker 16: If you want the kind of candidate who has the
• 1:16:02
  Speaker 16: courage to say well, then you'd be in good luck
• 1:16:07
  Speaker 16: because the Sunrise movement is supporting this dude, Chris rab
• 1:16:10
  Speaker 16: who's running for Congress, and you can help us put
• 1:16:13
  Speaker 16: him there by signing our Sunrise for Rab interest form
• 1:16:16
  Speaker 16: or donating to his campaign in order to get a
• 1:16:19
  Speaker 16: uncompromised progressive leader in Congress. Let's be apex.
• 1:16:25
  Speaker 6: So has there been any fallout for Stanford for that
• 1:16:30
  Speaker 6: comment saying I don't want to describe what's going on
• 1:16:34
  Speaker 6: in gods as the G word because to me, that's
• 1:16:38
  Speaker 6: for some people that's too similar to the N words.
• 1:16:41
  Speaker 6: What has been the kind of reaction to locally to that?
• 1:16:46
  Speaker 15: I mean, it is such a bizarre and problematic statement.
• 1:16:51
  Speaker 15: The response from Jewish people has been overwhelming, like, how
• 1:16:56
  Speaker 15: dare you put it? Make us a monolith? Conflate a
• 1:17:02
  Speaker 15: pack with Judaism or Jewish identity. That's that's offensive to
• 1:17:07
  Speaker 15: to to connect an actual genocide with a term used
• 1:17:13
  Speaker 15: by white supremacists to dehumanize black people over centuries, like
• 1:17:18
  Speaker 15: it is so deeply problematic. But here's but here's where
• 1:17:22
  Speaker 15: it matters most. This superpack three one four Action on
• 1:17:28
  Speaker 15: the surface is about empowering and supporting folks with the
• 1:17:34
  Speaker 15: stem background to run for Congress, right right, But the
• 1:17:38
  Speaker 15: reality is three one four Action received millions of dollars
• 1:17:43
  Speaker 15: from a United Democracy Project, which is a front group
• 1:17:46
  Speaker 15: for a PAC. But it's worse because the six Democratic
• 1:17:50
  Speaker 15: physicians currently in Congress who are endorsed by this same superpack,
• 1:17:55
  Speaker 15: are not folks who are on the Medicare for All bill.
• 1:17:59
  Speaker 15: They are not one of the over one one hundred
• 1:18:01
  Speaker 15: and ten co sponsors of the Medicare for All bill.
• 1:18:04
  Speaker 15: And why does that matter because in this election, in
• 1:18:07
  Speaker 15: this campaign trail, rather all of us claim to be
• 1:18:11
  Speaker 15: for universal health care. But I'm the only one who
• 1:18:14
  Speaker 15: says I would co sponsor the Medicare for All bill,
• 1:18:18
  Speaker 15: which is very different and it's very precise, and my
• 1:18:22
  Speaker 15: opponent's not doing that. And if you have a superpack
• 1:18:25
  Speaker 15: that now has given over two and a half million
• 1:18:28
  Speaker 15: dollars in support for candidacy and their track record is
• 1:18:31
  Speaker 15: only supporting Democrats who are physicians who do not support
• 1:18:35
  Speaker 15: Medicare for all, that's problematic and that does not pass
• 1:18:39
  Speaker 15: the smell test among folks who are outraged at this
• 1:18:43
  Speaker 15: awful statement, and also being funded by folks who are
• 1:18:49
  Speaker 15: not human beings, like this should just I only get
• 1:18:51
  Speaker 15: money from human beings. I'm old school that way, and
• 1:18:53
  Speaker 15: I think that's important. People want to see that I'm
• 1:18:56
  Speaker 15: not accountable to anyone but the people, and I remind
• 1:18:59
  Speaker 15: people that my biggest donor.
• 1:19:01
  Speaker 5: Is my mommy, And just to do a little back padding.
• 1:19:07
  Speaker 6: Twenty twenty four, I did the reporting on this race
• 1:19:10
  Speaker 6: in Oregon.
• 1:19:12
  Speaker 5: Was it Oregon?
• 1:19:13
  Speaker 6: No Seattle, Washington, Sattle where Maxine Dexter, who is now
• 1:19:16
  Speaker 6: a member of Congress was also a physician, was backed
• 1:19:19
  Speaker 6: by this called super pac called three fourteen action, which
• 1:19:22
  Speaker 6: backs doctors and scientists, or says they backed doctors and scientists.
• 1:19:28
  Speaker 6: I reported that in fact, a PAK was using it
• 1:19:31
  Speaker 6: as a shell to secretly funnel money in it because
• 1:19:35
  Speaker 6: they opposed Sushila Giapaul, who is Primilla Giapaul's sister Permeilla
• 1:19:39
  Speaker 6: Giapaul had been critical of Israel. They didn't want her
• 1:19:41
  Speaker 6: sister coming to Congress. They furiously denied it, called me
• 1:19:44
  Speaker 6: all sorts of names, bigot, et cetera. And then after
• 1:19:48
  Speaker 6: the election is over and she wins, they publicly have
• 1:19:53
  Speaker 6: to now do their filing and as oh, yep, it
• 1:19:56
  Speaker 6: was APAK the entire time. And so now every time
• 1:20:00
  Speaker 6: that three fourteen Action jumps into these races in a
• 1:20:03
  Speaker 6: significant way, people are asking where did this money come from?
• 1:20:08
  Speaker 6: And to me that because sometimes it's not a PAC
• 1:20:11
  Speaker 6: money with through three fourteen actions. Sometimes it is if
• 1:20:15
  Speaker 6: they're putting in a huge amount it's probably a PAC money.
• 1:20:17
  Speaker 6: How are they over a million for her at this
• 1:20:20
  Speaker 6: point or what are they?
• 1:20:21
  Speaker 15: Yes, they're throwing I think it's over two million at
• 1:20:23
  Speaker 15: this point. Wow, they're being odd.
• 1:20:25
  Speaker 6: And I can tell you from reporting on this group
• 1:20:28
  Speaker 6: over the years. This is not a new group. Three
• 1:20:30
  Speaker 6: fourteen has been around for a while. They're the kind
• 1:20:32
  Speaker 6: of super PAC that usually comes in and spends six
• 1:20:37
  Speaker 6: low six figures in a race, because while doctors and
• 1:20:42
  Speaker 6: scientists are doing well in the United States, they're the
• 1:20:46
  Speaker 6: kind of people that will write five and ten thousand
• 1:20:48
  Speaker 6: dollars checks. They're not They don't own stadiums and baseball teams,
• 1:20:53
  Speaker 6: and so they're not the kind of people that can
• 1:20:55
  Speaker 6: write multimillion dollar checks. So if they're spending two plus
• 1:20:59
  Speaker 6: million dollars in this race, the chances that that's a
• 1:21:01
  Speaker 6: PAC money are very high because that it's just outside
• 1:21:05
  Speaker 6: of the pattern of what they've done over the years. Yeah, anyway,
• 1:21:10
  Speaker 6: were you going to say something?
• 1:21:12
  Speaker 4: No, I just I was kind of wondering my mind
• 1:21:15
  Speaker 4: how Iran. The war in Iran has changed, if at all,
• 1:21:17
  Speaker 4: the race. It seems like something that would shake things up.
• 1:21:21
  Speaker 5: Good question.
• 1:21:21
  Speaker 15: Yeah, it should, but only if you have you show
• 1:21:25
  Speaker 15: the nexus between what's happened in Palestine and the interest like,
• 1:21:29
  Speaker 15: this is net Yahoo's war, right, this is net Yahoo's war.
• 1:21:33
  Speaker 15: Trump is doing the bidding of net Yahoo. So if
• 1:21:37
  Speaker 15: you support, if you have issues with net Yahoo, then
• 1:21:42
  Speaker 15: you should have deep issues with what's happening in Iran.
• 1:21:46
  Speaker 15: So everyone is against the war in Iran in this race,
• 1:21:49
  Speaker 15: but they're not connecting the dots between the interests of
• 1:21:53
  Speaker 15: folks who want to level Gaza and the folks who
• 1:21:58
  Speaker 15: believe in regime shamee and do not believe in multilateral diplomacy, right,
• 1:22:03
  Speaker 15: And that's a problem, and that's what I'm trying to
• 1:22:07
  Speaker 15: connect the dots for. The other thing is a lot
• 1:22:10
  Speaker 15: of people are concerned about this, but they're also concerned
• 1:22:13
  Speaker 15: about putting food on the table and you know, filling
• 1:22:15
  Speaker 15: up their gas tanks. And my job is to connect
• 1:22:18
  Speaker 15: the dots to say, every bomb we drop on civilians
• 1:22:22
  Speaker 15: in Tehran, there is money that could go to free childcare,
• 1:22:27
  Speaker 15: you know, social housing, universal basic income, any number of
• 1:22:32
  Speaker 15: these so called radical ideas that are adopted in other
• 1:22:36
  Speaker 15: industrialized nations with far less financial wealth than what we have.
• 1:22:39
  Speaker 15: And so that's how I connect the dots and it's important.
• 1:22:42
  Speaker 15: But they are opponents of mine who do not want
• 1:22:44
  Speaker 15: those dots connected because they're going to be against the
• 1:22:48
  Speaker 15: war in Iran. But therefore what Yahoo is seeking to
• 1:22:52
  Speaker 15: do in Palestine, and that is deeply problematic and hypocritical.
• 1:22:58
  Speaker 6: Well, Chris Rab, thank you so much for joining us.
• 1:23:00
  Speaker 6: The will continue to follow this race.
• 1:23:03
  Speaker 15: Thank you.
• 1:23:04
  Speaker 6: I'm gonna have to look in a little close to
• 1:23:05
  Speaker 6: see if we can nail down for certain whether this
• 1:23:08
  Speaker 6: is a pac money going through three fourteen.
• 1:23:11
  Speaker 5: But appreciate you joining my pleasure.
• 1:23:14
  Speaker 4: That's going to do it for us. On today's edition
• 1:23:16
  Speaker 4: of Breaking Points. As a reminder, head upbreakingpoints dot com
• 1:23:19
  Speaker 4: for a premium subscription to support our independent journalists, to
• 1:23:23
  Speaker 4: support journalists like Ryan Grimm.
• 1:23:26
  Speaker 5: Going to Cuba ain't cheap. Actually it was fairly to
• 1:23:30
  Speaker 5: seven hundred dollars for three nights.
• 1:23:31
  Speaker 4: Reasonable. That was like Also the visas.
• 1:23:33
  Speaker 5: You get breakfast, well we got breakfast.
• 1:23:35
  Speaker 6: The visa was ninety dollars. Okay, that goes straight to Cuba.
• 1:23:38
  Speaker 15: There you go.
• 1:23:39
  Speaker 4: Well, please go to breakingpoints dot com support the.
• 1:23:42
  Speaker 5: Shot at one of your one.
• 1:23:45
  Speaker 6: Breaking Points premium sub pays for a visa.
• 1:23:48
  Speaker 4: It's like we're about to do ten dollars left over. Yeah,
• 1:23:51
  Speaker 4: we should zoom in on Ryan's face and have him
• 1:23:53
  Speaker 4: like looking like a.
• 1:23:54
  Speaker 5: Said puppy trying to buy me another visa.
• 1:23:57
  Speaker 4: All right, well, thanks so much. We'll see you on Friday,
• 1:24:00
  Speaker 4: half for the Friday Show Premium Half of the Friday Show.
• 1:24:03
  Speaker 4: Have a great afternoon, everyone,