2/17/25: Bibi Claims Trump Support For Iran Bombing, Jon Stewart Stuns Jen Psaki, Luigi Breaks Silence, Woke Vs Based Game
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A lot of new developments out of Israel, particularly as it relates to Netanyahu's claims that war with Iran may be in the offing and that the Trump administration is okay with it. This started last week with a quiet peace in the Washington Post. Israel likely to strike Iran in coming months warns U.S. intelligence. So think about the structure there.

U.S. -- it's key that this is in the Washington Post, you know, this is Washington, D.C.'s newspaper -- U.S. intelligence officials leaked to that paper that they're concerned that Israel is going to strike Iran. There was a previous assessment under the outgoing Biden administration that there was a very high likelihood that Israel would strike Iran within the first six months of 2025.

at the time the Biden administration weighed whether or not it would kind of publicly endorse a move like that and decided not to. Netanyahu now saying that he really has Trump's buy-in for this attack. Trump himself gave an interview with Fox News recently where he said something very similar to what Witkoff said, and we'll roll Witkoff in a second. Trump said,

We will not allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon and there's two ways to stop that. One is we blow up their nuclear facilities. Two is that we get a deal. He says he would much rather get a deal than launch a war. That's what you're hearing from Trump, but he's not ruling out that he would support an Israeli strike.

Here's Steve Witkoff, recently in an interview, talking about the role that Iran is playing in these ongoing Israeli negotiations, role C3. Iran is the benefactor, but of course the largest issue is the nuclear. And the president has said they will not get a bomb. Them getting a bomb is devastating to the region. It will force every other country in that region to get a bomb too.

We'll have a nuclear arms race, and that simply can't happen. But the president has also said this can be solved diplomatically. And if Iran shows an interest in solving it diplomatically, the American government remains open to those discussions.

And so I hope that it can be solved diplomatically because the alternative is not such a good alternative. And so we've talked about this before, that all of this is happening in the context of the Israel-Gaza war. And if the Israeli assault on Gaza were the only thing, were a kind of isolated geopolitical contest...

then Trump's support for Netanyahu's ability to just wipe it off the map, I think would be unchecked. I totally agree. But it's happening in the context of this more regional consideration where Trump very much wants a Saudi-Israeli

peace deal, normalization between the two. He also wants an Iran nuclear deal. I think he sees this as a potential legacy item. It's deeply ironic, of course, because Obama struck one and then Trump immediately ripped it up. But now he believes that he can be recognized as this great dealmaker if he can just get back into the deal that he ripped up.

And so it is the one thing that is giving the ceasefire oxygen and giving it legs, keeping it alive. You can put up C4 here. This is from Dropsite's Twitter feed. So basically Israel struck and killed two police officers in Gaza who were guarding Gaza.

An aid convoy, Hamas has said that Israel's continuing to attack and kill people inside Gaza puts the ceasefire in jeopardy. They said the attack on Palestinian police officers guarding aid trucks in southern Gaza, quote, clear violation of the ceasefire. Trump, quote, and then says that Trump should not believe that it's going to be easy to

to go along with Netanyahu's idea here and Trump's idea that they're just going to clear everybody out. Trump, quote, has no clue about the resistance of the Palestinians. He has no clue about how the Palestinians are connected to their homeland. It's not real estate. It's a homeland. He argued that every time Israeli officials have spoken about the, quote, elimination of Hamas, the group has only grown stronger. And I do think it is accurate to say that every time Trump says that

that when he wants all of the Palestinians out and he's not going to let them back, his position gets weaker. You say that out loud, you're not going to win people over that way. And so that is what Trump is saying, but what Trump is actually doing is the status quo. On Saturday, you had the hostage exchange go off as planned. So you had all of this

talk about war with Iran, Trump and Netanyahu demanding that every single hostage needed to be out by Saturday or else they were going to all hell. All hell will break loose. All hell will break loose again. So nothing's happened. Yeah, at least. And instead, Witkoff gets back in there and he's like, no, we've got a deal. We're going to continue with this deal. And so the deal goes off.

So the latest news is that Netanyahu, he spoke last night at this major pro-Israel conference. He has authorized, finally, his negotiators to go back to Cairo and continue with the negotiations toward phase two. And phase two...

It's the part that Witkoff is trying to make sure is completed because that is the part where all of the remaining hostages are exchanged and a reconstruction is then supposed to begin and it's supposed to be a permanent ceasefire. The question of what role Hamas plays is the one that's being negotiated. Hamas is sending a lot of signals that they're willing to just step back.

That they're willing to demilitarize that that a technical, you know, a bunch of technocrats either affiliated with the Palestinian Authority or not, but under the auspices of the guarantee of the US, Egypt, UAE, others, could actually be the ones to play a role in the reconstruction, that they understand that that may be the thing that has to happen. It is telling that

it is the Israelis who are the obstacle to this situation because once they make that concession, at that point, what's the argument from Israel that you can't allow this? They've said, surrender and give us the hostages and it's over. And that's effectively what they would be saying. So what do you make then of this reversion back to phase two?

Because first the deal was off. Now the deal is back on. Why? For what purpose? Is it some grand deal with Iran? Because that Washington Post report is very troubling, right? Is that basically the Biden people at the end, of course, by the way, they leak it at the end. They're like, by the way, while we were in office, we discovered they wanted to attack Iran. I'm like, well, maybe you should have done something about it. But oh, that would be asking too much, unfortunately. One possibility is that, so think about it this way. If Trump really does want

a permanent ceasefire, Saudi-Israeli normalization, and an Iran nuclear deal, that costs a lot of capital with the Miriam Adelson kind of wing of his financing. So if he really does want that, what does he have to do? He has to build up capital first. And how do you build up capital? Green light. By being a complete lunatic in, you know, hey, you want to ethically cleanse all of Gaza? No.

Go for it. I'll do it for you. I'll do it for you. Yeah. So, and you see this too with North Korea. You know, he'll talk about wiping them off the face of the earth. Right. And then he'll come in and do the thing he wants to do, which is some type of a... So you're buying the Mad Men theory. So I think if you do buy that he wants a deal here...

It is rational that he would at this point be acting like a madman. So that when Netanyahu later gets screwed, Trump can say, look, I did everything I could. I was even willing to do full-on ethnic cleansing for you.

But it's just not feasible. So we have to get serious about this. And Egypt is saying that they've got a plan where it's a three to five year reconstruction. It does not involve Hamas anymore in the government. You can pay for it. UAE and Saudi will pay for it. And look, I would love to ethnically cleanse the Palestinians even more than you would.

But Bibi, it's just not feasible. It's not doable. And I'm not sending American troops. And when you send Israeli troops, all they do is do TikToks and get themselves killed and lead to ICC indictments and ICJ allegations of genocide and just embarrassing yourself and further isolating yourself on the world stage. So look, can't do that. We're going to have to do a deal. Like that's...

A best case scenario, perhaps. Right. What's the mid-case scenario? Because what if it's all just torn? It's all just... What I can't get my head around is why... Because as you just said, and look, if Obama had ever say, all hell will break loose, and then didn't attack Hamas after they... The red line. Can you imagine? Can you imagine what the Tom Cottons and all of them of the world would look like? I've always seen Trump as somebody who talks big, but never actually wants to follow

I mean, occasionally. You can point to a few things. The Qasem Soleimani killing, for example. But there were a lot of, I mean, actually, I was supposed to interview Trump the day, you remember that American spy plane that got shot down? It was unmanned. It was like a, it was a Navy plane that was shot down. Right around then? 2018. 2018.

And I was supposed to interview him that day. Got canceled. And apparently what came out is that Trump had ordered a retaliatory strike that John Bolton had been pushing. But then at the last minute, he was like, hey, you know what? We shouldn't kill any of these Iranians. They didn't kill any of our people. Let's not kill any of theirs. Bolton and all of them were furious. He seems to have like a duality inside of him. Oh, yeah. Where it's like, on the one hand,

says we're going to ethnically cleanse. We're going to own Gaza. We're going to ethnically cleanse it ourselves. I'll do it for you. And then on the other hand, he's like, maybe we should sit with Russia and China and we'll all just cut all of our military spending.

And you're like, wait, what? Which one of these is true? What's going on here? So, yeah, I don't know. I'm worried about the Israel thing only because it does seem that Israel has played him very well. Not only do they have the Miriam Adelson connection, they have effectively, well, yes, Trump has pushed them around, Wyckoff and others. He does obviously accept the framing on Iran. You and I know institutionally nothing would make more political sense in Washington terms than to support an Israeli strike on Iran.

That's where the majority of the GOP is. Now, there are important characters in the Trump universe, J.D., I would hope, being one of them, but also many of the people who Trump has appointed to the Pentagon oppose the very type of strike, very strongly oppose. And so maybe they will win out. Are they even in the room? We don't know. And so that's what I think that the big war

behind the scenes is. But I mean, look, at the very least, I'm just happy. Let phase two go three. Let people stop getting killed. Yeah. The risk in Trump's madman strategy, of course, is that Netanyahu won't recognize it for just the madness that it is and think it's real. In Netanyahu's speech last night to this pro-Israel conference,

He said, Trump's idea for Gaza has opened up possibilities for us that we never even dreamed were possible and we are going to pursue that with everything we have. So he thinks, he's taking Trump seriously and literally and he's going to try to take this moment to effectuate what Trump put out as a possibility.

The question is, can Witkoff reel him in enough? And how much agency does Netanyahu actually have? And we don't know. Meanwhile, let's talk about a little bit of the reporting that's been coming out lately. 972, an Israeli investigative news outlet, we actually partnered with them on a story about a month ago,

Reminder that their stuff has to go through a sensor. So the stuff that comes out has been already. Presets. Yes. So consider that when you think about the

pieces that have been coming out of there. When you put up C5, this is an investigation by Yuval Abraham in 972, which exposed one of the more horrifying cinematic horror film anecdotes. The IDF came across a couple in their 80s who told the Israeli soldiers that

that because of their disabilities, the man walks with a cane, that they were unable to evacuate the area with their family. And so they're still in northern Gaza. And this is according to 972. And like I said, went through the sensor. They strap explosives around this couple,

use them as human shields, they call them mosquitoes is one of the terms for them, use them as human shields going through the neighborhood while they're clearing it of Hamas fighters, and then at the end execute them. Just levels of criminality on display that are almost unimaginable. And this comes after 972 very recently reported that the IDF had discovered that when it dropped these bombs,

bunker buster bombs that as a consequence of the explosion it released an enormous amount of carbon monoxide and basically burning up all of the oxygen in these tunnels and so they understood that this was a conventional bomb

that operated as a chemical weapon and that if they knew or if they guessed that somebody that they were trying to kill was in a tunnel but they didn't know within 500 meters or more where they were they could drop some of these bunker busters and it would asphyxiate it would suffocate everyone in the tunnel what they what 972 also reported is that there were

Essentially no precautions taken to make sure that there were no hostages in the area. And they know for a fact now that as a result of that, a significant number of Israeli hostages were suffocated through this bomb and asphyxiate strategy. Eventually they started requiring commanders to take some assessment of whether or not they were going to kill hostages.

so The killing of hostages has apparently diminished recently, but absolutely horrifying stuff coming out of out of 972 so

Any thoughts on any of this before we move to the next one? I just don't even know what to say. This is horrible. Yeah, I mean, it makes sense and it feeds, or sorry, fits with the testimony of a lot of the surviving hostages about the conditions that they were in. That their number one fear was the constant bombing. And they could remember, they said, they're like, I could hear the bombs falling above me. It's just, it's horrifying. Constantly. Yeah.

And then two other things to talk about before we move on. Curious for your take on this. I think it's within the realm of possibility. If he pulls off phase two, then yes. But there's still, there's a lot to be said. Fascinating political piece here. Trump privately calls Steve Witkoff, quote, a modern day Kissinger. And if there's going to be an American diplomat who shakes up American foreign policy and actually gets something accomplished, it would stand to reason that it would

be somebody that comes from out of the fold. And I think I've seen you talking about this in some ways. International real estate is as good a training ground. It's almost as good as when Trump made Exxon CEO. Oh, yeah. Rex Tillerson. The Secretary of State. Although he was a terrible secretary. It turned out to be terrible, but you would think that being the CEO of Exxon would actually be

an American diplomat in training. I'll tell you this. I'm very pro-Witkoff. Yeah. Witkoff has all of the ingredients that you need for a great international diplomat. International finance, worked in Vegas, used to putting together like complex deals. Most importantly, has the total trust of the president because apparently they've been friends for like

20 or 30 years or whatever. 40 years, yeah. 40 year friendship. So actual ironclad trust there. Proven track record now. He yelled at BB, got him to do at least phase one. There are a lot of hostages who owe their lives to Steve Witkoff.

Whatever else happens, there are, what, 30, 40 people, and who knows how many Palestinians. You literally owe your life to Steve Witkoff. Witkoff got that guy Mark Fogel released, that Russian, or that guy who was being held by Russia. He is today in Saudi Arabia with Secretary Rubio.

meeting with the Russian foreign minister to specifically negotiate. Apparently, he and Putin had a long discussion about Ukraine whenever Witkoff was in Russia to secure the release of Mark Vogel. So if he does, if he gets phase two and or if he is successful in negotiating a Ukraine peace deal, then yeah, he's absolutely the

next messenger. Give it to him. We're not going to go into what we mean by Kissinger. We don't need Ryan's Cambodian. We're not going to go into Kissinger for now. Let's just set that aside. Last piece, our buddy Mike Gallagher, former congressman, lead sponsor of the TikTok bill in the House, now an executive over at Palantir because this is Washington, D.C. That's how that goes.

became the latest person involved in the effort to ban TikTok, which is now back in the App Store, to say out loud how it was that it got over the hump. We'll play this clip in a second. What we don't mention here, Mark Warner, who was on the Senate side, the guy. He already said this. The IC guy. And he's on the stage too. And he says, I want to hear whether Mike tells the real story.

The true story of how this happened and Gallagher did tell the true story. So let's roll this. A bipartisan consensus. We had the executive branch, but the bill was still dead until October 7th. And people started to see a bunch of anti-Semitic content on the platform. And our bill had legs again. And so producer Mac made it a great point when he was watching this, too.

'Cause you can sort of see Gallagher trying to clean it up where he's like, after October 7th, that's when it got its momentum, he's like, oh, that's not gonna sound exactly right. So then he shoehorns in, 'cause there was a whole lot of anti-Semitic content on TikTok. There was not a whole lot of anti-Semitic content on TikTok. What there was, there were a lot of videos from Palestinians in Gaza of them getting killed, maimed,

and their neighborhoods getting destroyed. And so it allowed the American public to connect directly in a parasocial way with real human beings on the ground and bypass the cable news, New York Times version of what was happening. He retcons that to anti-Semitism, but Mac's funny point, not funny, is, wait a minute,

Antisemitism on a social media platform is a reason to ban it. Have you ever logged on to X? X.com? X.com. I actually refuse to call it X.com.

Have you ever logged on to Twitter lately? It is, you know, Kanye is like the moderate one on Twitter right now. It is an absolute cesspool of unadulterated, straight-up anti-Semitism. Well, I don't support banning anything for quote-unquote anti-Semitism. Right. But if we did, it would not be TikTok alone that would get rolled up in it. But, you know, just another, you know, Romney has said this before, you know, Warner, Blinken. So there's no...

mystery about what it was that gave the final push

Yes, the national security establishment wanted to ban it before that, but they couldn't get the. Listen, I was pro-banning TikTok since 2018. Even I'll say that that's why it happened. Now, you know, sometimes you do good things for the wrong reasons, but it's okay. And by the way, Trump, I don't even know why you guys are complaining anymore. You won. I know. Yeah, it's just like, stop. We're the ones who sit here lost, right? That's what was funny. They're on that stage celebrating as if they won.

Right. It's like, how did we win this victory? Trump just came in and was like, actually, no, we're not doing this at all. It'd be like if the refs came in at the very end and were like, okay, actually, the Chiefs won. That's right. It was at one point that much of a blowout in the TikTok victory. But I knew, in my heart, I always knew Trump would, I gave him. When Trump started talking about TikTok on the campaign trail, I'm like, it's game over. The young people love me on TikTok. No, it's not just the whole young people.

IRL what it is. It's Jeff Yass, his huge donor, who he's a huge stike, whispering in his ear in Mar-a-Lago for the last four years. On top of Trump, maybe this fits with the Elon thing. At the end of the day, he respects only one thing, commodity of attention. That's it. There's nothing else that he respects more in the world. Hence, he's like, okay, I'm pro TikTok. So there we go.

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All right, let's talk about the Democrats. This is objectively hilarious. Jon Stewart interviewing Jen Psaki with some shocking moments for Jen Psaki, not for everybody else. Let's take a listen. I've been shocked by how undemocratic the Democratic Party can be. Tell me, what do you mean by, I don't disagree with you necessarily, but what do you mean by that? By putting their foot on the scales to get

you know, make sure that Hillary Clinton comes out of the thing or make sure that, you know, that they're listening to that anger about the way that even the ACA, quite frankly, struck me as a very conservative. You mean because it didn't have a public option in it? Correct. That it didn't address the very thing that was causing the foundational upset. If I were to break this down narratively,

What I think the Democrats have forgotten is government may not be perfect, but it's the only thing large enough to offset multinational corporate exploitation and corruption. And if we don't act like that's urgent and that affects people's lives, then yeah, you're. So if the big policies that we make are billions more dollars to insurance companies that we think are fucking people over left and right.

for their healthcare. What? So isn't that part of why people lost faith? Yeah. So yes, I think we're saying, well, I'm trying to say something similar, which is this. Boom, boom. Which is Democrats just lost everything. They control nothing. They control...

I mean, they don't control the House. They don't control the Senate. They don't control the White House. And they don't control the Supreme Court. So now is the time to break some shit, right? And break some China. They do control the email list that continue to ask for money. All right. Break it down for me, Ryan. What's your personal favorite? My favorite was, oh, whenever he talks about that. Oh, we're going to go there. Oh, yeah.

She's like, but that's ancient history. We've moved on from that. My favorite was when she, and you can roll it back and see it, she literally rolls her eyes at the public option. Really? Yeah. Interesting. She's like, oh God, this again. The freaking public option. She's like, oh, we moved past this. Yeah, what are you still fighting these fights for? Okay, so. These damn people who wanted the government to come in and solve a major problem in their lives. And that's what gets the eye roll. Yeah.

the whole thing is just personally demoralizing in the sense that looking back at my career, which came in before the public option, but I spent a year and a half covering the fight over the public option and then covered the 2016 presidential campaign and knowing that like,

If they would have listened to people like us, there's a good chance you fend off this populist right and instead channel the energy into a populist left. They didn't. And so it's like I don't have the energy to even do the I told you so's and like with Saki. And she and I are both like, yeah. But to me it's like, well, you guys won. Everybody lost. Yeah.

And it is what it is. And she's on MSNBC now. And she's on MSNBC. Yeah, and she's got the power. She's got the wine moms in her pocket. Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, the entire exchange... I don't know how much in their pocket. I feel like the Democratic base is pissed off. Yeah, so I've been talking about this with Crystal. What do you make of all this Democratic activism? Like, is it real? So people are lighting up the phone lines, right? But now I don't take phone line as... So just because your base is pissed off about something does not indicate that the entire country is pissed off about something.

It just means your basis. So you would see this all the time with Republicans, right? So what was it? When Obergefell happened, you had a bunch of Christian Republicans light up Republican phone lines. What are you guys going to do about this? Doesn't mean that being anti-gay marriage or whatever was popular, but it did mean it animated a certain percentage of the population. What do you make of the Democratic-

activism right now. I think the key thing to understand is that our understanding of democratic activism is mediated through the mainstream media because those organs are more associated with the center left, the New York Times, the MSNBC, CNN. And MSNBC and CNN have basically given up

They're not leading the resistance the way that they did in 2017. And so you could have similar levels of anger from Democrats across the country as you had in 2017, but you wouldn't hear about it because you're not gonna hear it from the Joe Rogan universe. They don't care. That's not the thing that they are covering.

And if you don't hear it from CNN and MSNBC, then you're not going to hear it from anybody, basically. And so you have to actually be in it to see it. And so as a result of that...

the broader public doesn't see the energy out there. And Democrats in Congress are just annoyed at it. - I saw that. - They saw Crystal's thing. - Yeah, I did. - And I think we might have Ezra Levine on Wednesday on CounterPoints. He's like public enemy number one. - Who is he? Move on. - He's the indivisible co-founder. 'Cause he's like, they've got millions of people who have ideas. - So then let me ask you what I ask. What are they supposed to do?

Well, the thing they want them to do is to fight around the March 14th budget and to say and to check Elon. Like what they're trying to do is we need to check Elon Musk with our power in the House because congressional Republicans need our votes to do a government funding bill. So they want to act like the Tea Party, basically. Yeah. And the only thing they want is some checks on Doge. Like that's the thing. They're like, let's fight for something.

and let's stop Elon Musk from destroying the federal government. Like that's the thing they want. - So I don't know, I just still grapple with

because we were talking with Crystal and she was like, all you have is attention. And I'm like, what do, it's like, do people want to see Maxwell Frost like do a sit-in in front of the USAID? I mean, you just think you look like an idiot, you know, personally. Is that what the Democratic base wants? Like, they want them to fight on the budget issue? Would that even be enough for them? Like, if I think back to the Tea Party and like how they were able to do it, it,

do it. It took taking super unpopular positions, holding the government hostage, and you needed Fox News like a constant media drumbeat. Which they don't have. Yeah, which they don't have.

I mean, maybe they do. I mean, I was looking at Midas Touch, which I try to pay attention to them now because I think they're like the heart of the Democratic resistance. And I mean, a lot of this stuff is like, I don't see politicians per se like engaging with it. A lot of it is just like Trump loses it as he gets laughed at by the world, 716,000 views. A lot of it is like dunk on Trump content, which I guess obviously there's still an appetite for. No hate, you know, listen, it's a free market. I wish you guys the best.

But I don't see how that translates into being a Democratic politician. I just don't understand how they are supposed to channel that energy because we talked about this last time, which is that Russiagate was fake at the end. Part of the reason why they're so demoralized is they staked everything on a genuine lie about what – about the – like it was an undemocratic literal lie about Donald Trump. And so that's why they don't have any ground to –

to fight on. And that's why I just, I don't know what the quote unquote democratic base wants their politicians to fight on when all their fight, it's like for what? The integrity of USAID? It's like, okay, I mean, you know, be my guest. I just don't, I don't see how that hits at all. Maybe education department, like FAA, NIH, like that kind of stuff. We'll see, you know, March, we're less than a month away from this funding deadline. Um,

And who knows what stuff Elon Musk breaks between now and then, if anything. I mean, that's the risk, though. But at the end of the day, it's still reactive. You're waiting for your enemy to screw up as opposed to proposing anything else. We see some of this with Hakeem Jeffries, by the way. Let's take a listen. Donald Trump's favorability rating is actually higher than it ever was the first time around. Let me ask you, I—

A recent poll by Marquette looked at several of the things that he has done or says that he is going to do. And 63% favor federal government's recognition of only two sexes. 60% favor deporting immigrants who entered the United States illegally. 60% favor expanding oil and gas protections.

production, 59 percent favor declaring an emergency at the southern border. Is there anything you are seeing that Trump is doing that you are in favor of, that you think is the right thing? Let me say, as it relates to all of those issues, we're just at the beginning. And the core promise that Donald Trump made is that he's going to lower

costs for everyday Americans. In fact, we were told that grocery prices would go down on day one on January 20th. Costs aren't lower. In fact, costs are increasing. The price of eggs is skyrocketing out of control.

Inflation is on the way up. That was the core promise that's been broken. With respect to immigration, listen, we have to secure the border. We have a broken immigration system, and we need to fix it in a comprehensive and bipartisan way. At the same period of time, as Democrats, we're going to protect DREAMers, protect farmworkers, and protect families who help our communities across the country thrive.

I don't even know where to start with this guy. He's got negative charisma, no political response. That is where I do feel somewhat sympathy for the liberals out there where I'm like, man. But I will tell you, you're the people who set up the system that promoted the Hakeem Jeffries of the world and the complete monarchy of Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer over the Democratic Party where they can handpick whoever they want. There's not even a semblance of...

popularity whenever it comes to who's controlling the response for this party, who just suffered a massive loss. So this was one of the more demoralizing moments, too, when the left knocked Joe Crowley out, who was supposed to be the next speaker. Right. And he was caucus chair at the time. And so then Barbara Lee runs for caucus chair against Hakeem Jeffries, who is Crowley's protege. Yes. And Jeffries wins. So it's like,

I just don't have the energy. You're just... What are the activists? They'd be like, I'm just so tired of being tired. I was tired of being tired. Yeah, you're tired of being tired. I was. But what's interesting is that... And what's interesting about that clip in particular, Jeffries, whatever you think about his politics, is actually one of the more talented communicators that they've ever had in a leadership role. And...

That was not an energetic performance at all. And I think that there's a substance and a structural problem beneath it. In 2017, 2018, when Democrats are feeling their oats...

Hakeem Jeffries could get on any cable program or get on the get on the House floor and and give a speech that to Democrats was inspiring because they had a sense of what their moral core was and Trump and it was immigration and you know, he was treating, you know, like he you know, Trump was you know evil and awful and they were gonna stand up to him and They don't have that anymore. You mean at the end he finishes by

what the democratic compromise is on immigration rather than what it used to be, you know, the yard sign that said all are welcome. All are welcome has a moral urgency to it. And that allowed people like Jeffries to speak with more confidence. And so to have somebody who's as good a communicator as him

that sounds so bad and so, to lack so much confidence suggests that the Democrats really just don't have their footing. I agree. They really, they just. And he's got a clean hit with the like, hey, didn't you say you were going to do something about inflation? Like that's their cleanest hit. Right. But they're so dizzied by Elon and all this other stuff, they just don't know what to do. Well, I'm sure we'll keep talking about it. It is one of the central stories. It's kind of hilarious, honestly, to see them all fall apart.

Come to me.

Baby daddy mad because you got a boyfriend? Come to me. Thought you was the father but you're not? Come to me. I can't promise I won't judge you, but I can guarantee that I will help you. As a daughter, a sister, a mother, and an entrepreneur, I've learned a lot in life. So I'm using my own perspective and experiences to help you fix your mess. Send me your situation and let's fix it as a family. Listen to Carefully Reckless on the Black Effect Podcast Network, iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Something about Mary Poppins? Something about Mary Poppins. Exactly. Oh, man. This is fun. I'm A.J. Jacobs, and I am an author and a journalist, and I tend to get obsessed with stuff. And my current obsession is puzzles. And that has given birth to my podcast, The Puzzler. Dressing. Dressing. French dressing. Exactly. Ha, ha, ha.

Oh, that's good. Now you can get your daily puzzle nuggets delivered straight to your ears. I thought to myself, I bet I know what this is. And now I definitely know what this is. This is so weird. This is fun. Let's try this one.

Our brand new season features special guests like Chuck Bryant, Mayim Bialik, Julie Bowen, Sam Sanders, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, and lots more. Listen to The Puzzler every day on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. That's awful. And I should have seen it coming.

Welcome to My Legacy. I'm Martin of the Kingdom Third, and together with my wife, Andrea Waters King, and our dear friends, Mark and Craig Kilberger, we explore the personal journeys that shape extraordinary lives. Each week, we'll sit down with inspiring figures like David Oyelowo, Mel Robbins, Martin Sheen, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, and Billy Porter.

Let's get to Luigi. What do you have for us on Luigi? All right.

All right, so our man, Luigi Mangione. He's back. Your man, not mine. Although, I have to be honest, Luigi and I have a lot in common. We both love Japan. That's right. We read a lot of the same books. We share a lot of the same theories about Japan. I guess we both do hate corporate health care. But that's something that a lot of us have in common. He has become a leftist icon.

Although every single... Even though he's on the right. I wouldn't say he's on the right. He's like a... It's esoteric. Yeah, it's a stupid thing. I think I described him as a right-wing anarcho-capitalist. That's probably the best description. Although anybody who just murders someone in cold blood is probably not all the way together. But nonetheless, has become a popular figure. And so his lawyers...

- Yes, Luigi speaks. His lawyers have put out a statement. Let me put this up on the screen. He says, "I am overwhelmed by and grateful for everyone who has written me to share their stories and express their support. Powerfully, this support has transcended political, racial, even class divisions as mail has flooded Metropolitan Detention Center from across the country and around the globe. While it is impossible for me to reply to most letters,

Please note that I read every one that I receive. Thank you again to everyone who took the time to write. I look forward to hearing more in the future. The lawyers also posted an FAQ on Luigi Mangione info dot com, which is tells you everything anybody might want to know about Luigi. So where is he?

Like, for instance, may I send him items like books? Yeah, let's put E2 up there on the screen. The funny part about this is FAQ. It represents all of the mail that they're getting. Can I send mail to Luigi? Can he respond? Are there any restrictions on his mail? May I send him books? Can I send him...

Did you see that? Can I send him photos? So ladies or men. Or men. So he has asked people to limit the number of photos they send to five. No, listen to this. Due to the volume of photos, they could take longer than usual to be screened and shared. And also, quote, please note that every photo that is received is screened and reviewed by law enforcement. Just an FYI for those of you who are sending pics. Yeah.

Can you imagine this guy's inbox? He's in jail. How can I sign up for official court information? What else can I send Luigi as part of this? Other than books, mail, news article, or photos, no other items. The Bureau of Prisons does not allow packages from outside of the facility. Everything must be purchased through his commissary account. And then it says, how can I contribute to Luigi? Right. And it links to his Give, Send, Go, which...

has a goal of a million dollars raised, and so far has raised, according to this, $467,754 from, it looks like, more than 15,000 people. More than 1,000 people have done the pray, like praying for Luigi. Okay. Which is... Okay, that's where I'm going to go with weird, because it's like, if you're praying, I assume you're Christian or Muslim, Jewish, like, you've got...

some idea about the sanctity of life. And he did kill somebody. Right. Allegedly. Yeah, allegedly. That's right. He hasn't been proven guilty. You know, today, there's a documentary. Actually, it's apt that we're doing this. A documentary premieres about him today from HBO. Wow. Congrats to HBO. It's a one-hour one. But yeah, apparently, like in the hours after the killing, there were four separate doc deals that were signed. Like Netflix, HBO. I mean, look, I'm going to watch it. Let's be honest. I'm going to watch it. Yes.

I'm going to watch White Lotus and then I'm going to watch the Luigi thing. It just has to be done. It's one of those where I'll probably watch everything about it. It's like the Fyre Festival. Did we do two documentaries? Apparently, yes. I think we did. We did. So, I mean, I just think it's fascinating because it hasn't been in the news for, what, two months, almost three months now since all of this. But it's pretty clear there's still a lot of public interest in the case.

And I don't know. I mean, I remember Ken and Crystal and everybody else talking about it. You can just see the explosion of, if not outright support or at the very least disgust for the health care guy. But if you look at the Democratic response, none of it seems to incorporate any of that popular energy. Like we just talked, played that clip of Hakeem Jeffries. And it couldn't be more out of step with whatever the hell –

this is. I mean, there's a lot of people out there apparently sending thirst traps to Luigi Man, printing them out and sending them to the Bureau of Prisons, which, you know, you need help. But I don't know. I mean, serial killers also get that stuff apparently all the time. So what do I know? There's a weird segment of the public out there.

Luigi's defense probably still rests on the potential of jury nullification. You think so? Okay, so explain this one to me too. Doesn't he have two separate charges? There's a state charge and a federal charge. So what's the difference? What's the federal charge that's against him? Because I was reading on his website. I didn't quite understand it. Depriving somebody of basically their civil rights by killing them is the way that they do that. I didn't even know he would do that. Oh.

Is it because he crossed interstate lines? Is it because he went from Pennsylvania to, or sorry, from New York to Pennsylvania? I guess that would qualify. The feds will often do this if they think that the state won't handle it properly. The state can't handle it, yeah. Right, so there's people versus Mangione, New York State. There's Commonwealth of PA versus Mangione. And then there's USA versus Mangione at the federal level. I

I was just trying to understand. I was like, well, what did he do in Pennsylvania? Possession of a false identification, probably, something like that? Sometimes this will happen to cops where they will be acquitted or not charged. More often, I think not charged because there's some double jeopardy implications if you're acquitted. Not charged at the state level, and then the feds will come in and do a civil rights case against the cop. So, I don't know. We'll see. All right. Oh, yeah. So it is here. Traveled in interstate commerce.

With the intent to kill, injure, harass, intimidate, and place under surveillance with the intent to kill. That's the federal. It's stalking is the charge that has been leveled against him. And then murder through use of a firearm on top of firearms offenses that I guess stack on top of the New York case. Right, because he did the interstate thing. Because of the interstate. All right, well, lesson in our justice system. I'm sure it'll still, I still think it'll be the trial of the century. We all know it will. In terms of the public interest in downtown, in New York City, there's...

There's gonna be a lot going on there. - Stay tuned. - All right.

Baby.

Baby daddy mad because you got a boyfriend? Come to me. Thought you was the father but you're not? Come to me. I can't promise I won't judge you, but I can guarantee that I will help you. As a daughter, a sister, a mother, and an entrepreneur, I've learned a lot in life. So I'm using my own perspective and experiences to help you fix your mess. Send me your situation and let's fix it as a family. Listen to Carefully Reckless on the Black Effect Podcast Network, iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Something about Mary Poppins? Something about Mary Poppins. Exactly. Oh, man. This is fun. I'm A.J. Jacobs, and I am an author and a journalist, and I tend to get obsessed with stuff. And my current obsession is puzzles. And that has given birth to my podcast, The Puzzler. Dressing. Dressing. French dressing. Exactly. Exactly.

Oh, that's good. Now you can get your daily puzzle nuggets delivered straight to your ears. I thought to myself, I bet I know what this is. And now I definitely know what this is. This is so weird. This is fun. Let's try this one.

Our brand new season features special guests like Chuck Bryant, Mayim Bialik, Julie Bowen, Sam Sanders, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, and lots more. Listen to The Puzzler every day on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. That's awful. And I should have seen it coming.

Welcome to My Legacy. I'm Martin Luther King III, and together with my wife, Andrea Waters King, and our dear friends, Mark and Craig Kilberger, we explore the personal journeys that shape extraordinary lives. Each week, we'll sit down with inspiring figures like David Oyelowo, Mel Robbins, Martin Sheen, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, and Billy Porter.

And their plus one, their ride or die, as they share stories never heard before about their remarkable journey. Listen to My Legacy on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is my legacy.

Ryan, you've got a good segment for us. Let's get to it. All right, woke or base? All right, I'm ready. Hit me. Okay, so we can throw up E1 here. So there was this article that came out in Breitbart recently. Biden antitrust holdover, Doha Meki, continued woke agenda instead of taking on big tech with a photo of Doha Meki there. Okay. And...

This is just such a fascinating, I think, entree into our current politics that I wanted to unpack this thoroughly and play a game with Sager called Woke or Based. As a reminder to the audience, I have not seen any of this. She's not seen this. I have no idea what's coming. And so in this Breitbart article, which—and so we both have done enough Washington reporting—

that we know that sometimes articles are the powerful work of journalistic endeavors. And some of it's fed to you. Other times, you get an oppo document that's just fed to you. And as you read this one, we don't know. You can never say for 100% certain where it came from, but...

You're like, did this Breitbart guy really come up with all of these different examples or were these packaged? So this looks like oppo, which means corporate oppo at this point, not partisan oppo. And so the key part here of this article put up E2 here that Breitbart writes, many populist Republicans, including J.D. Vance and Josh Hawley, also supported Biden's antitrust chief, Jonathan Cantor.

for continuing the work of the first Trump administration with lawsuits against Apple and Google. Slater, who's an incoming Trump anti-chief enforcer, will almost certainly continue these lawsuits against big tech. However, after Cantor resigned on December 18th, his woke deputy, Doha Mekhi, took over as acting antitrust chief and pushed through many radical actions in the last weeks of Biden's lame duck presidency. So the two-step here is interesting. What they're trying to say is like, okay,

We acknowledge that Jonathan Cantor, Lena Kahn, that entire anti-monopoly universe in the democratic ecosystem is cool because it was doing the same stuff that Trump was doing. So they realize they can't really attack that because it has populist bona fides that are impregnable. But they're saying this woke lady came in and did a bunch of mean things to corporate America because she's woke.

And so we're going to go through their bill of indictment against Doha Mekhi for being woke. And let's actually click the links that they provide to decide whether or not the action they're describing is woke or is it based. Okay, what do we got? So in the final weeks of the Biden administration election,

Meki issued rules addressing quote HR policies which typically have nothing to do with antitrust policy. So the guidelines provide examples and cite cases to explain how the agencies analyze business practices that may violate antitrust laws. The guidelines also explain certain types of agreements between employers such as wage fixing or no poach agreements may expose companies and executives to criminal liability under the antitrust laws. So what did Meki do? She told companies around the country

that if you enter into no poach agreement, wage fixing,

Those types of non-competes that not only could you be civilly liable you could also even be criminally liable Okay, is that woke or is that base? I would say based I would personally say based telling and telling a company what to do and not to exploit people supposed to be based But apparently it's woke here. All right. Yeah, so oh, no, I forgot we're dedicating We're dedicating this segment to none other than Hillary Clinton for her the most woke

comment ever made on behalf of corporate America, which defines basically an entire era. So roll E4 here to remind people. If we broke up the big banks tomorrow, and I will, if they deserve it, if they pose any systemic risk, I will. Would that end racism? Would that end sexism? Would that end discrimination against the LGBT community?

One of Crystal's favorites. That's the essence of corporate America using woke language to defend itself, saying, don't break up the big banks. Why? Because that won't end racism. It won't solve gay rights. It won't solve gay rights. It won't do all these other things. Okay. Okay, so...

We got one for based here. Okay, next, Breitbart says, quote, she issued a last minute lawsuit against six major landlords in line with the Biden administration's blaming AI and landlords rather than his own inflationary policies for high rent.

So you can put up, I believe this is E6. Okay. Which I don't even think I need to explain to you or to the audience this one. So this was... Yeah, we covered this one. Yeah, we covered this. This is a MECI policy that she rolled out.

Attacking landlords over juicing rent. All right. Woke or based? I gotta go with based. I gotta go with based, personally. But, I mean, let's make this clear. I don't speak for, quote, MAGA, Populous, right, or any of these people. And even woke and or based, it basically gets defined in terms of, like, what's...

In terms of liberalism and who the person is. So, for example, if you fire like you're talking about. This is basically the point I think you're trying to make. If you have a lady who's a lib and you own that lib, that's based, right? In terms of the culture war. The problem is that when you actually look at some of these policies and things like that, some of these –

Things just these definitions fall apart. And that is part of the problem with a lot of the attack vector. This kind of gets the whole idea of Doge versus MAGA and what it even means. But part of the thing I always try to point out is like, guys, MAGA is whatever Trump wants it to be. And that's where there are a lot of people who are like, this doesn't fit with what Trump ran on. I'm like, well, you know, the thing is, Trump at the end of the day, yeah, he said a lot of stuff.

But what did he really say? I alone can fix it. And I increasingly think that's really what Trump was all about. And to the extent that he's good or he's bad or he's MAGA or whatever, it's whatever it aligns in terms of his transactional reality and whatever happens to be him feeling that day. But if he had faith in some sort of broader agenda, I mean, honestly, I don't know what to tell you.

Like, you didn't hear it here. I can tell you that. Luckily, I didn't have any faith. Yeah. All right, so we got two more. So this next one is she sued KKR over paperwork violations. Okay. That's how Breitbart describes it. So basically, KKR, massive private equity firm that does mergers and acquisitions. Yeah.

There are federal laws that require that if you're doing a major merger, that you submit a filing with the Department of Justice. Here's what we're doing so that you can review this. KKR came up with a clever workaround. They're like, what if we don't do that and we just do the merger? Then it can't be reviewed. In this document, they quote from several executives who were saying, less is more. Let's make sure we are not submitting these books. So,

Is this wokeness run amok or based? That one is, I wouldn't call that necessarily based, but this is more of a personal thing is that I hate private equity firms like KKR. So I'm personally supportive. So go rip them. Now, this is part is, the last one is where it gets interesting and I think we can actually start talking about some philosophy here. So they also whack her for,

So, quote, this is Breitbart, Mechie repeatedly invoked W.E.B. Du Bois, a black Marxist thinker, to further her argument that antitrust laws must be used against what she considers racism. This one was, to me, the most egregious because it is actually racist.

backwards. It is a reverse, incorrect reading of the speech that they referenced. So you can put up E8. And for the fun of it, let me do this whole three paragraph section of it. So this is from the speech that they said is woke. So the economic opportunities and liberties protected by the Sherman Act, this is what she said in her speech, in particular protections against monopolies

Why?

Why is this concern for economic opportunity and liberty so important? I come back to my thesis because efforts to secure social and political rights are at risk if they are not backstopped by economic opportunity and because antitrust plays an important role in our economic liberty and democracy of opportunity tradition. In his 1935 book, Black Reconstruction in America, Du Bois famously argued that a key reason why the Confederacy collapsed and the institution of slavery with it

was because when Union soldiers arrived in the South, black Americans, as Du Bois put it, left the plantations and led a general strike. They exercised the most basic economic right that comes with freedom, the freedom to make decisions about one's labor. The exercise of this economic liberty devastated the southern economy and, as he put it, furnished 200,000 federal soldiers. This is no doubt resonant

So you respond to that while I find her quote. Whether that's woke or it's based. Well, you know, like I said, it could be based, could be woke. I guess I don't really know. You know, unfortunately, I have not. And here's the quote where she finishes. She says,

this telling we should think harder about calls to subordinate our antitrust and anti-monopoly laws purportedly in service of some other social and political values. So she's saying do not subordinate antitrust to a push for civil rights or to other woke, for a woke agenda. She's specifically explicitly saying do not do that. She's saying that economic rights are fundamental to

If you don't have economic liberty, if you don't have economic resources in your community, you don't have the ability to fight for political and civil rights. It is the reverse of wokeism to say, no, it is essential. American liberty is essential. So to me, to have that speech be evidence of her wokeness was like,

What's going on here? Ryan, you probably taught 10 times harder about this article than the person who wrote it. Well, yeah, because he took stuff that was handed to him, as my guess, and just slapped it together. Well, if anything, look, this is a very good view into exactly how... Look, everything is about framing, right? So what did they say? It was like some black Marxist is the way that they phrased it. I unfortunately don't know enough about it. I need to find a good book.

about. You would like Du Bois. No, no, no. I've read about him, but I've never read a book specifically about him. And it gets to the heart of

where all the tension is with MAGA and with Bannonism, with the coherent ideology around this. But I think really what it comes down to is the current vector is all about control within the right. And to the extent that anything is considered like horseshoe or whatever, the right is the one that has to be in control. And I'm speaking in terms of the way that they see this movement. So for them, anybody who was willing to work with the Biden apparatchiks or any of these people, these are bad, right?

These are enemies. And if we're going to have anybody who even agrees with that, it has to be somebody who already aligns with us on the cultural issues. So I do think it's unfortunate because, yeah, you have people like Chopra and others who really did try to transcend, I guess, partisan boundaries. But what can we say? The number one lesson here is that good faith does not get rewarded in Washington.

No, it doesn't. That's really the way I would, my number one lesson from any of those people, and I hate to say it because it almost makes me sound like Blue Maga, is, oh, you're an idiot for ever trying to work with those people. They're like, at the end of the day, it's about us, we're a team, and we fight within the team. I don't think it should work that way, but that's where the political incentives are, right?

And it also noticed, as a last point, notice the interesting trap it sets up because anybody who's watching this by the end is like, wait a minute. So all of the things that they claimed made her woke actually are not woke at all. What they're left with is she's black. Yeah. And it's like, wait a minute. The one quote that Wright loves from Martin Luther King is like, let's judge people by the content of their character, not the color of their skin. Right.

did not happen with Doha here. But the second that I say that, they're like, aha. - That's woke. - You're now you're woke. See, and we were right. We were right the whole time. So it's this like get out of doing like pretty blatant racism free card. Because as soon as you criticize that,

Then you're being welcome. Now you see race everywhere, Ryan. You're the one who pointed it out, not them. That's right. Yeah, look, see? Busted. I don't even know if that's that. I really don't know if it's that deep. I really just think it was some stupid corporate oppo piece. I think it was KKR. Yeah, you're absolutely right. Yeah, and there's the KKK. KKR's attorneys are the same that have Eric Adams now. We can get into that some other time. That's going to be – I actually am looking forward to that.

All right, guys. I hope you guys enjoyed the bro show. I certainly did. Chris will be back tomorrow. We'll see you all then.

Welcome to My Legacy. I'm Martin of the Kingdom Third, and together with my wife, Andrea Waters King, and our dear friends, Mark and Craig Kilberger, we explore the personal journeys that shape extraordinary lives. Join us for heartfelt conversations with remarkable guests like David Oyelowo, Mel Robbins, Martin Sheen, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, and Billy Porter. Listen to My Legacy on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is My Legacy.

My name is Paola Pedrosa, a medium and the host of the Ghost Therapy Podcast, where it's not just about connecting with deceased loved ones. It's about learning through them and their new perspective. I think God sent me this gift so I can show it to the world. And most of all, I help people every single day. Listen to the Ghost Therapy Podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Yeah.

Come to me. I can't promise I won't judge you, but I can guarantee that I will help you. Listen to Carefully Reckless on the Black Effect Podcast Network, iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.