3/5/25: SCOTUS Rejects Aid Cuts, Bernie Crushes Dem Trump Response, Trump Threatens Protests & MORE!
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Full shows, unedited, ad-free, and all put together for you every morning in your inbox. We need your help to build the future of independent news media, and we hope to see you at BreakingPoints.com. Hello, everybody. Welcome to Wednesday Counter Breaking Points. What are we going to call it, Ryan? We'll just say Virtual Bro Show? Counter Break. It's Point Break. Yeah, we'll go with that. It's the Bro Show Virtually here.

Yes, here's the pound. There we go. It works out. I like it. People can feel the energy and the love through the screen. So Ryan and I coming off of a hot State of the Union joint address to Congress by President Donald Trump, his fifth while occupying the Oval Office, longest one in the history books, an hour and 40 minutes long. And we felt every second of that, Ryan, didn't we? My eyes were heavy when he started.

Oh, and they did. They did not get any lighter by the end. And still Democrats won't applaud for him. And it's so sad. Yeah, that's right. Maybe they weren't applauding because they were tired. We can retire. The median age in there is 70 years old. I was exhausted when we were live at 11. So I can't even imagine being my freaking grandfather having to sit through all of. Yeah. If people miss it, there was this riff that he did where he was just I've done this five times. I've done such amazing things. And it's just.

It's just so sad that the Democrats won't clap for me. It's so sad. It's real tragedy. Yeah, that's right. I saw somebody saying yesterday, they were like, man, this is wild. You know, half the audience isn't clapping. And I was like, yeah, it's the state. It's called the state. Unfortunately, Ryan and I are in the business where we cover every single one of these things. People pay attention. We're not really sure why, but let's go ahead and start with the breaking news that has come out

As of this morning, this is absolutely the most important thing now so far. And that is, let's see, we're going to go and put it up here on the screen, a decision from the U.S. Supreme Court. The U.S. Supreme Court has upheld the lower court order, forcing USAID and the State Department to immediately pay $2 billion owed to contractors for work that they have already performed. Justices Alito, Thomas, Gorsuch, and Kavanaugh in

in the dissent, meaning that two of the conservative justices, the Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Amy Coney Barrett, joining the majority. So what they say here, as you can see in terms of the text, the U.S. District Court entering a temporary restraining order and joining the government from enforcing directives, pausing disbursements of foreign development assistance funds. They say the application is denied. So, Ryan, what do you make of this Supreme Court decision?

You know, I actually said here on the show, I was like, you know, you should always remember there are wild cards in terms of jurisprudence. People like Amy Coney Barrett, Justice Gorsuch, Justice Roberts, Robert.

Roberts cares about the legitimacy of the court. Amy Coney Barrett and Gorsuch, they're wild cards in that they're a little bit more libertarian. Same with Clarence Thomas. And you never really quite know which direction that they're going to go. But nonetheless, I mean, it's significant because they deny the government saying that they want to put a pause on foreign aid spending of approximately $2 billion out the door, affirming effectively the government's, affirming effectively not only the cons,

the constitution as it lays out explicitly in terms of congress's right for the power of the purse but also that the government must follow through on that with you know regardless of whatever exactly whatever executive action that they might put into place so it's an important legal theory the trump administration was trying to test and it was struck down by five four right the

The founders choosing the term executive is important. They execute the laws that are passed

by the people's house and the Senate. It's not a new body that deliberates on behalf of the people. Their job is to faithfully execute the laws. USAID is a separate question. They do, in my opinion, a lot of important and lifesaving work. They also use that important and lifesaving work as a cover for a lot of the soft power and sometimes even harder power

you know, moves on behalf of a destructive American empire. So not here to necessarily defend everything USAID is doing. But on this narrow point, they are looking at, as you said, contracts where the work has already been done. This feels pretty basic. Like Congress passed a law saying, here's amount of money to do this thing. The executive then hired somebody to carry out that function.

Whatever they did, you know, they they distributed, you know, food and Nairobi. And now they sent the invoice for the thing that they were told to do by this contract. And the executive says, actually, we're not going to do that. It's pretty hard to see how you can justify that. It's one thing if you say, OK, we don't want to do this in the future. OK, have that fight. They already did it.

And so you got to pay him is what basically what the Supreme Court is saying. And for a bunch of my liberal friends who have worried for many years that Trump is going to become a dictator. One of the things that I've always reminded them is that the Supreme Court doesn't have any interest in Trump becoming a dictator.

They jealously guard their own power. Of course. From the very beginning of the Supreme Court in the invention of judicial review. They seized power in the very beginning. See, now you and I are cooking, Ryan. Now we're talking about invented powers of the Supreme Court. Yeah. But they jealously guard those invented powers. You're very right. I did want to put up Justice Alito's dissent, which was joined on...

It says that today the power grab is blistering. He blasts the court for hubris, self-aggrandizement, and what he calls a stunning and extreme refusal by the Supreme Court to obey the law and its own precedents. Justice Alito dissenting a federal court has many tools to address a party's supposed non-feasance. Self-aggrandizement of its jurisdiction is not one of them. I would chart a different path than the court does today, so I must respectfully dissent. I guess... So I read the...

This is a lot of legality and stuff going on here. Alito did not seem to disagree with the pretense of the order. It was more about the action of ordering the immediate disbursement of the funds from USAID. What he was saying is that there's an extraordinary amount of other options that we could have granted the government instead of deciding to do this. Now, I think what is probably happening, and I'm guessing you could say this too, is

is that the court is coming out hot, at least those who disagree on this, and not trying to give any wiggle room or benefit of the doubt for the future to set a precedent for some of the other future courts. Now, it's important to note, and that's something that the legal analyst Kyle Chaney, who we had up there, he's like, some of this will still get litigated in district court in terms of the timeline, the feasibility to turn this on. But the argument about whether they can turn it off

entirely is the one that's effectively been quashed here at the court today. Right. And that's why you've seen this classic Trump. They came in with an ax and they just swung it and just hit everything. And then they're like, oh, by the way, hey, you can't do that. That's illegal. So they started sending notes to every single contractor saying,

We have individually decided that your particular contract is a form letter, but they can tell the court that this is an individual decision that the executive made. And so while it might be true that the executive has to broadly follow the congressional mandates,

They obviously have some discretion within that mandate of how they carry out that as long as they're carrying it out faithfully. And so they tried to do an end run around it by reorganizing it from the back end saying, well, this particular contract, we're not against in general doing things, but specifically this one we're shutting down. And this is the court coming in and now going one by one and being like, well, no, this $2 billion,

You have to spend it, which is kind of remarkable. Like you can't, obviously they're going through a crisis and this is a fight and they're going to work this out, but you, you couldn't actually govern this way. You know, Congress passing laws and then the executive shutting everything down and then the Supreme court.

individually signing off on various contracts that USAID has cut with different contractors. Like that's, that's obviously right. You're talking just in terms of the process. So it does make sense. Yeah. Right. Especially if you're thinking just the justice Barrett and Roberts, they're like, okay, like we're just going to nip this in the bud now. So we'll see what the fallout is, but it's definitely the most significant Supreme court decision yet of the second trumpet. It shows they're going to be players here.

That's right. And also, it's going to be why we have not yet heard from the White House on this exact on this Supreme Court decision. The press secretary, Caroline Leavitt, will be taking the podium later today. So we might be hearing some of that in terms of other breaking news. I know people may have wanted a tariff update. Unfortunately, Ryan are not able to offer us one right now. Right now, we're told that the White House will be having an afternoon press conference on Friday.

the tariffs where Trump is expected to announce that at least some are going off. But it's still very, very unclear in terms of the overall markets. Let me see where things stand as you and I are talking. S&P is basically flat. The Dow is flat as of yesterday. The futures and all of that. I mean, yeah, the market is open right now, as you and I are saying. People are basically just in a wait and hold position to see what Trump ends up deciding. Okay.

Yeah. Let's get over to the Supreme, sorry, the State of the Union and what we had there in terms of the reaction from the public. The first, the top line, which I thought was the most interesting, was this from CBS News. Let's go ahead.

Put that on the screen. So what we see here is in speech, Trump was among speech watchers. Seventy four percent say presidential. Seventy four percent say entertaining. Seventy one percent say inspiring. Sixty two percent say unifying. Forty six percent say divisive. So.

Actually, a pretty good reaction there from Donald Trump. The overall snap poll, which we have here, views of Trump's speech among speech watchers was some 76% approved, 23% disapproved. Let me do give the caveat here, as I do with any and all polling. Apparently, the polling was, and this actually makes sense, is you literally have a Republican president

who is giving the state of the union. So you may have more Republicans who are those watching. So I have it in front of me here. 51% of the speech viewers polled identified as Republicans, 27% as independents, and some 20% as Democrats. We had a reaction. Yeah, 20% were Democrats. And I mean, maybe, Ryan, that is indicative of

of the strategy that we saw from some of the Democrats who just kind of walked out. Yes, you know, who walked out of the speech. And so maybe that was what Crystal was saying. And she was like, I could see this going either way. We could have a situation where people are like, OK, I've had too much of this guy. I don't really want to watch. Or people are tuning in. Definitely kind of seems to be the latter. People who don't like Trump are just not going to watch the speech. So what do you make of that?

If I think about all the Democrats in my life, almost none of them would watch this speech. Okay. Like they just, they just can't stomach the guy and they, you know, they'll, they will watch the clips on Colbert and they'll, they'll catch the clips on the YouTube surface and you can, and, uh, but as for sitting down for an hour and a half and, and hearing directly from the guy,

They're just not going to subject themselves to that. I wouldn't even say that's a Democratic thing. Not at all. Republicans do the same thing. Unless they hate watch. Some hate watch. Yeah, some do. You're right. But the part of the problem is in our clip economy, our clip attention economy, is that this is how the vast majority of people consume everything. I mean, if I saw the ratings were down, I would be shocked. I wouldn't be shocked at all because that's basically how news consumption works these days.

Yeah. And you can easily see how you can get to 70, 75% with if half of them are Republicans and then 28% are independents and roughly half of those independents, probably actually much more than that, of that 28%.

Let's say 20% are like Republican-leaning independents. So you add them together, you easily get to 75%, which can then be misinterpreted to believe that like, oh, wow, Trump really brought the country together. How about that? I mean, yeah, listen, I don't know. So CNN here apparently did some polling reaction as well. Snap poll reaction. Let's take a listen to some of that.

And what we know is that people who tend to be fans or partisans with the president, no matter which party the president is in, tend to tune in more on speeches like this. And that's the case in tonight's survey as well, because we're 21 percent Democrat, 44 percent Republican in this sample, 35 percent independent.

That's about 14 points more Republican than the overall general population. So keep that in mind when you see these results of speech watchers. To the results, what was your reaction to Trump's speech? 44% of speech watchers in our instant poll tonight say they had a very positive reaction to Trump's speech. 25% somewhat positive, 31% negative. How does that stack up against Donald Trump's previous opponents?

addresses to joint sessions of Congress or State of the Union addresses. Look here for all the years we have data for. Forty four percent very positive reaction is actually his low watermark in all our instant polls after his previous addresses.

Interesting. You know, that actually kind of makes sense to me because it was just a much more partisan speech than traditionally he would normally give. Actually, it probably reflects more their theory of governance and how not only theory of governance, their theory of winning. Previously, you know, there was at least some attempt, I think, at least on the part of the smart people in the room, the John Kellys and all, supposedly those great figures to

to try and move him in a different direction. Whereas this time, I mean, it was a campaign speech basically the entire time. I saw like Brit Hume kind of on Fox News was kind of concerned trolling is like the most partisan state of the union I've ever seen in my entire lifetime. And these are all I mean, I think this is really just illustrative of Trump's role in our current

system. Like he doesn't care about that. And in a lot of ways, the population doesn't care about that. A lot of the trappings and the norms, institutions and

All of that, especially the Republican Party, but I think even a lot of the Democratic Party now at this point no longer has time for some of these older like theories of how you would present this. And I just think that this just shows you probably what it will always be from now on, you know, a Democrat or a Republican just in terms of how you win an election, how you capture your own party. So overall, I mean, yeah, I mean, for Trump, I'd probably be pretty happy.

Overall, it's what? It's March 5th. Still got a decent amount of runway from the country. There's some troubling signs. We talked a lot about that yesterday, but people generally are going to give you the benefit of the doubt. Yeah, the Democrats are mad. Independent's kind of like, let's see. He's still funny. The entertaining thing is very important. Big reason why I think he's always been able to deflect a lot of the major criticism against him. So any big thoughts, Ryan? You're probably right that this will become more of the norm, the more partisan speech. But to your point,

there was a noticeable dip in how people felt about the speech. So it is still the case that people want, at least some significant portion of the public, want the guy to play the role of the president up there. There's something about that where we aspire to that sort of thing in our democracy or our public, whatever you want to call it. And you're right that in Trump's first term,

He'd be Mr. Chaos, you know, rip roaring on Twitter all day long. And then when he would get to the State of the Union,

He'd like be buttoned up and and he would read off the teleprompter. And remember, Van Jones famously, infamously said he became president tonight. And the liberals were like, all right, thank you for at least for like an hour and an hour. I think that's important. There was only an hour in the past pretending that you are a president rather than that you're Trump, who is occupying the role of the president. And now he's like, forget that.

I'm just going to be myself all the time. Yeah, I mean, he doesn't have to run for re-election. His numbers are going to dip. Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, I mean, Trump's theory. So if you're Van Jones, he became un-president last night. Yeah, that's right. Actually, man, I still wish. He would be self-impeached. Do we know, team? Is there any good Van Jones reaction? I'm looking. I don't see anything good. He's usually got a bad reaction. Where is Van nowadays? He's still on CNN. Yeah, where is he?

I don't know. I mean, you know, when when Jeff Bezos gives you one hundred million dollars, you don't really need to work anymore, do you? But all right. Let's move on to that interest. Yeah, that's right. Just just the interest alone. That'll that'll work off. I'm not insinuating he was personally paid. OK, it was to one of his fake justice nonprofits. But anyway. All right.

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Let's get over to the democratic reaction. Ryan, you and I are turning over in our grave at, uh, this democratic reaction from Alyssa Slotkin. And, uh, let's go ahead and put this one up there on the screen. Uh, I'm going to go ahead and make it big here and let's take a listen. Alyssa Slotkin. If we all remember the democratic Senator from Michigan, uh,

barely won her seat, but significant because Trump did still win the state. So she won some Trump voters. She is a former CIA officer by admission, by admission, a literal former CIA. We're not outing her here. Yeah, yeah. She she outed herself. She outed herself for political benefit. And she loves to wear her CIA credentials on her sleeve. And there's no such thing as former CIA, by the way. That's right. Thank you. There is no such thing as former CIA, as you and I know. And

And here's what she had to say during her State of the Union reaction. He believes in posing up to dictators like Vladimir Putin and kicking our friends like the Canadians in the teeth. He sees American leadership as merely a series of real estate transactions. As a Cold War kid, I'm thankful it was Reagan and not Trump in office in the 1980s. Trump would have lost us the Cold War.

Donald Trump's actions suggest that in his heart, he doesn't believe we're an exceptional nation. He clearly doesn't think we should lead the world. Look, America is not perfect, but I stand with the majority of Americans who believe we are still exceptional, unparalleled. And I would rather have American leadership over Chinese or Russian leadership any day of the week.

All right. There's so much there. And later she says, I've watched as democracies have flickered out around the globe. It's like,

Well, that's a rather passive construction. How did some of these democracies flicker out? Let's ask the Indonesians or the Brazilians, Argentinians, Chileans, Guatemalans, others. Did your democracy just flicker out or were there some CIA operatives involved in taking it out? I've got some of that, Ryan. There goes your democracy. Should we take a listen to it? Yeah, sure. All right, let's take a listen to it. I've lived and worked in many countries. I've seen democracies flicker out. I've seen what life is like when a government is rigged.

You can't open a business without paying off a corrupt official. You can't criticize the guys in charge without getting a knock at the door in the middle of the night.

So as much as we need to make our government more responsive to our lives today, don't for one moment fool yourself that democracy isn't precious and worth saving. So who's doing the knock in there, Ryan? Well, Kermit Roosevelt just watched Iran's democracy just flicker out and shed a gentle tear.

Elise, you were the one knocking on the door. You were the woman who knocks. When she's saying that she lived, when a CIA officer is like, I lived and worked in countries where the democracy flickered out, it's like,

All right. We're going to round up the first suspect. That's you. Right. It's incredible. And I hate that you are turning me like into Howard's in here. I actually do have some Howard's in behind me. So people, I don't discriminate. I still read Howard and James Beard. I actually have a signed James Beard behind me, which is crazy. The thing is that people need to understand is that if you zoom out, I'm really curious to hear what you think about this is this is the actual debate, I think.

between neoconservatism and restraint, except in a similar framework. Today, that's not in the Cold War anymore. But back in Cold War times, there was a very important debate between the Kissingerian worldview, which I know you disagree with. That's fine. But the Kissingerian worldview was we cannot get rid of the Soviet Union. We have to live with the Soviet Union. We have to accept the

bipolarity in terms of the system. We have to, we will not be able to pursue a strategy of what was called rollback, which was a Reagan-esque policy where we're going to roll back the borders of the Soviet Union. We are going to pursue a policy of existence and of effectively dividing up the world. Now you can, there's a ton of

criticism of human rights and all of that. But the Kissingerian worldview was that democracy in and of itself under Nixon and all of that was not it was not a end that should be pursued for the United States. Instead, the end that should be pursued is strategic interest, is economics, is balance, is peace, et cetera. And some of that was keeping communism out of, let's

let's say the Western hemisphere, but not necessarily because that comports with the Monroe doctrine, but not necessarily in Hungary. For example, the Reagan esque view is,

The one that I think Alyssa Slotkin is saying there is that, no, we are endorsing rollback. Effectively, the communism itself is the evil empire. We cannot live in a world with the Soviet empire. And in our inability to live with that, the pursuit and the policy of the United States should always be to push back against these borders and to call it out.

Now, the reason why I think that's important in this Putin-Ukraine situation is the Biden previous view. Yeah, we got the cat doing some gymnastics behind me. The previous Biden policy, Putin is a war criminal.

We cannot deal with Putin. The Putin regime itself is illegitimate from Biden, which means that there is no settlement with Ukraine, that Ukraine itself is a front line of democracy. Very similarly, in the way that Voice of America was consuming to push democracy right in Hungary or any of these so-called Soviet occupied territories.

Well, the point here, I think, is it comes down to then the Trump view of, no, we're just going to sit down and we're going to talk and pursue a peace deal. Now, this view is now majorly in contention, but it's flipped where now you have the Democrats who are seen to like to basically embody this previously neoconservative liberal world order view of the world, America, the exceptional nation and all of that.

Whereas now Trump, at least not the whole Republican Party, is pursuing, at least in this Ukraine instance, more of a realist foreign policy. So I actually think that while it was a small snippet, it does say a lot about your previous view of the Cold War, of the United States conduct. But like, more importantly, how to think about conflict in the future as we approach more multipolarity in the system.

I think that Democrats and Democratic elites in particular, plus the Lindsey Grahams, the more hawkish Republicans of the world, were very energized by being on the right side of history after Russia invaded Ukraine because it's clear that that's what they did. They lined up troops on the border.

They marched him in. You can talk about what happened before February 2022 until you're blue in the face, but the world and the American audience saw troops lining up on a border in 2022 and doing something they didn't think was happening anymore in this world and marching in and heading right for Kiev. And so...

This was after 50 years of being the bad guys, whether it was Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan. And it came not long after the kind of ignoble and kind of chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan, which good for Biden for doing it. Let me underscore that again. But it was embarrassing to the Lindsey Grahams and the Democratic hawks of the world. They were really loving finally having

the ability to speak with moral force. And Democrats never... The Democratic base was along for that ride because they saw, no, this is outrageous. How can you do this? There was never any allowed any debate within the Democratic Party over how this war would end. And so...

even as the reality was fundamentally changing on the ground and Ukraine's second counteroffensive is fizzling out and they're running out of men to throw at the front lines anymore, because of this lack of debate, the democratic base is still in February 2022. We need to defend Ukrainian sovereignty and democracy against the evil Putin. And so the whiplash is...

just full force to then see this, the Republican party, which has been having these debates about what land should be exchanged for peace. And what are the, what are the conditions that should be agreed to, uh, to see, to see that happen? Like their only, their only reaction is that he must be a traitor and he must be a, uh, you know, an autocrat like, like Putin must be loving Putin. And the whole time it's like,

Russia's not even that big a deal. There are two global powers right now, the United States and China, and Democrats really seem very fixated on elevating Russia into that instead. They have some

Well, I think this is where Russiagate comes in. Yeah. Yeah. I think this is where Russiagate comes in, is that you went from a situation where Obama had the correct view of Ukraine. Everyone can go and read the Jeffrey Goldberg interview with Obama from 2015, where he was like, if you want to make an argument that Crimea is a vital national security interest that's worth US troops, he's like, go for it. I don't agree with that. And I think that the Russians will always care way more about it than Ukraine.

than we do. He was right, right? He was right not to escalate the conflict in Ukraine. If anything, the worst thing that Trump did on Ukraine was not the perfect phone call. It was to ship javelins to the country to escalate the conflict and to increase even more of basically this like hawkish approach vis-a-vis Russia, which basically like builds things up to a powder keg and explodes in the Ukraine invasion. Now, of course it's Ukraine. Didn't he ship the javelins in order to get

Zelensky to like throw Hunter Biden under the bus. Wasn't that whole thing? Yeah. So no, it was he was not shipping javelins. Right. Because he wanted to hold up javelin. So this is the thing is it there. It's baked into the lore of the United States. Actually, I remember I remember Crystal and I talking about it at the time because we covered that impeachment live. And it was like, oh, did you know it's written in the Constitution so you have to send javelin missiles to Ukraine? Like it's like this is impeachable offense. What? What?

It's like, no, let's return to the Obama policy. I don't care about saying that. It was the correct policy. So I do think there's a lot to be said about it. And look, I mean, part of the problem is that negative polarization means that after that Trump Zelensky interview, liberals who are already on board with the war in Ukraine, they're never coming back from full Ukrainian victory now. Zelensky is a hero for them.

because he stood up to Trump or whatever. It doesn't even matter. You can go watch our debate with me and Crystal yesterday about who was default. But negative polarization means like liberals are all in on this war. It's it is now a religion in the same way that Russiagate was a religion, is that any piece of any kind itself was unacceptable now, especially you've got Michael McCaul and you've got Chris Murphy and the MSNBC crowd just absolutely losing it. The choice of

a list slotkin. I think it's very, very important for people to see that. Yes, while all of the rhetoric and all that is posturing, there are very real world implications for policy that are right behind this. And I'm not saying, you know, Trump, Gaza and all of that isn't a very obvious departure from this. I'm only speaking very narrowly in the Ukraine context.

It's time to put America first when it comes to spectrum airwaves. Dynamic spectrum sharing is an American innovation developed to meet American needs, led by American companies and supported by the U.S. military who use the spectrum to defend the homeland. It maximizes a scarce national resource, wireless spectrum, to protect national security and deliver greater competition and lower costs without forcing the U.S. military to waste $120 billion relocating critical defense systems.

America won't win by letting three big cellular companies keep U.S. spectrum policy stuck in the past, hoarding spectrum for their exclusive use to limit competition here at home while giving Chinese companies like Huawei and ZTE a big leg up overseas. For America to lead, federal policymakers must build on the proven success of U.S. spectrum sharing to ensure national security, turbocharge domestic manufacturing, rural connectivity, and create American jobs. Let's keep America at the forefront of global wireless leadership. Learn more at SpectrumFuture.com.

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The other very telling thing to me, Ryan, was all of the Democratic pundits, the professional pundits being like she knocked it out of the park. Ten out of ten in her response, the most perfect response that a person has ever given. And I was like, well, you know, there is that choice right now between how people are going to respond to Donald Trump. Slotkin is someone who's like, you

yesterday in her response. She's like, yeah, there's waste in the government. We'll help you cut it, but don't do it in such a chaotic way.

And then, you know, she voted for the Lake and Riley Act, for example. She's been trying to be more hawkish on immigration. It's basically like radical centrism embodied in a candidate. It's all about institutions. It's all about norms. Whereas we also have this Bernie Sanders response, which was not, you know, a sanctioned one. It's kind of one he just decided to do on his own, but nonetheless, very different in its tone. So let's take a listen to some of that. So let's be clear about that.

Well over 99% of Social Security checks are going out to people who earned those checks. 70 million Americans. Nobody, nobody who was 150 years old or 200 years old or 300 years old is receiving Social Security checks.

And on and on the lies go. So Bernie is standing up there pretty hard for Social Security. And throughout a lot of his speech yesterday, in terms of at least the parts that I've seen that have gone out, you could see that there was a huge difference in the viewership

I actually think one of our producers sent it. So let me go ahead and pull it up. Yeah, here we go. So Slotkin's speech got 4,500 views at its height, which is insane.

Insane. I have no... Like, I could pick my nose and I could get more live viewers. Unbreakable points. 4,500. Bernie's ended up at 61,000 views. And apparently AOC had some 20,000 on Instagram Live in her response. So, you know...

Look, it's not everything, but we did just come off an election, did we not, of proving that podcasting and views and YouTube and all of that is pretty important. I would say it's pretty important, the attention economy and all of that. So the only question is, is the Democratic base going to demand something different? Or if their leadership gets propelled and people like Slotkins and all of them are going to try and take the reins and to try...

and to channel that into their view of how to respond to Trumpism. Yeah, there isn't much in the way of the material there for the party's kind of faithful opposition to rally against these party leaders. There's Bernie. The squad has kind of disintegrated into their own thing, their own individual things.

In 2022 and 2024, AIPAC and Democratic majority for Israel spent so much money beating back the progressive wing of the party that it really nipped it in the bud in a significant way. And so the conditions are ripe for an insurgency inside the Democratic Party. The insurgents just aren't there.

And it's early. You know, there may be people who identify the opening and go for it. It may have to come from more of an independent approach like you saw in Nebraska. And there might be candidates trying that elsewhere around the country, coming in with a kind of Bernie style populist.

populism coupled with being tough on immigration, running as independents like that. You could see some of that. The party is right for getting toppled. Party leadership's right for getting toppled. Nancy Pelosi used to say when she was running for speakership, you can't beat somebody with nobody.

And, you know, she often didn't have serious opponents. That's a very good point. You know, she never, even though there were definitely times, right, where she could have easily faced at least some push, but she always was able to play around. Joe Crowley would have been a serious, you know, challenger to her. But AOC took care of that. Yeah, I don't know. And that was the cycle where she was, that was her, that was literally her slogan for

to run again for leader, you can't beat somebody with nobody. Like, can you, can you concoct something less inspiring than that? Like you have nothing, you can't beat me.

I almost have to respect it. I almost have to respect it because it's so naked. It's honestly just too, it's, it's so open. Um, yeah, on this, on this grand theory, it is really interesting. I want to try and find some more Bernie Sanders, uh, reaction just because it is so striking to watch how different it is as opposed to, uh,

the slotkin universe of like respectability of the Cold War, of everything is about the chaos. She's basically it's like a suburban strategy to try and win the suburban voters. But, you know, the difference is, is that, Ryan, as you and I know, the suburban voters all voted Democrat. They were the faithful for Kamala. It was the working class voters who were the ones who abandoned them. I mean, what is it for the first time ever?

A Republican won voters under 100,000 and Democrats were like, you have the people who support this Reagan stuff. That's not who you need to win back right now. Whereas it's, you know, a very, very different view, I think, that would have to you would need to at least even compete from what we see. It's like when when Republicans, you know, Katie Britt did that weird deer in the headlights, you know, campaign.

kind of creepy response to Biden. Yeah, that was insane. But the goal, at least, you could see was, let's put up a suburban-looking mom. Yeah. Because we're good.

with the NASCAR crowd. Like we don't need another, we don't, we don't need to like up our share with them and we've got other ways to reach them. This is our national audience. Let's show that we have normal suburban people who are not chaos agents. Um, you know, she, she happened to like completely botch that, that moment, but you could see at least the thinking, like try to put somebody normal up there.

And so Democrats do the reverse. Like what they need is like somebody who's going to reach outside of their tent. And instead they got like the person from central casting inside their tent. It was very odd. All right. So I've got one here. Let's take a listen to some of Senator Sanders. I just give you a very few examples.

Trump claimed that the 2020 election was stolen from him and that he won by a landslide. Remember that? A lie. Trump claimed that the January 6th insurrection was a day of love. A lie. Trump has claimed that millions of undocumented people voted and do vote in American elections. A lie. Trump has claimed that climate change is a hoax originating in China. A lie.

Trump has claimed that Ukraine started the horrific war with Russia. A lie. And tonight, just tonight, Trump claimed that millions of dead people between the ages of 100 and 360, I guess, were collecting Social Security checks. And that is an outrageous lie intended to lay the groundwork for cuts to Social Security and dismantling

the most successful and popular government program in history. Speaker 1: So what I find fascinating about that response is it's a mix of the greatest hits from MSNBC, coupled with a little bit of social security, which actually is a good way to describe progressive liberalism. No offense.

But it's one of those where- It's like, guys, they hate Trump as much as you do. Why do you hate them so much? Yeah. Yeah. It's like, you know, they are just liberals in many respects. They just really like social security and they want people to be a little bit better off. Yeah. That's a good point. They want life to be a little less hard. I was fascinated by, yeah, because I saw the summary here in the tweet and I was like, huh. I was like, you know, in a way that can show you in a better sense for the Democrats, the

The reason why it would be more effective is you get all your MSNBC hits. Even Mr. Sanders is a huge Ukraine stan, which is depressing for anybody who's been following for a long time. But, you know, he's come full circle here for aid to Ukraine and all of that. So he's with you on a lot of the box checks. But he's a little bit better, I think, at conveying some of this. Not that they will listen to him at all. All right, let's get to the Trump free speech debate.

The free speech order or truth, whatever the hell that we're going to call it. It's pretty extraordinary no matter what you think. I'm going to go ahead and load some of this up here. All right. So this is what we got from Donald Trump, President of the United States, in a statement yesterday.

All federal funding will stop for any college, school, or university that allows illegal protests. Agitators will be imprisoned and or permanently sent back to the country from which they came. American students will be permanently expelled or, depending on the crime, arrested. No masks. Thank you for your attention to this matter.

the organization fire who have great deep respect for says here in reaction, free speech on college campus is a proud American tradition on public campuses protected by the first amendment. President Trump's message this morning combined with other recent executive orders is deeply chilling. Peaceful protest isn't illegal and the government must follow the first amendment miscommunication.

misconduct is not free speech and must be punished. The president can't force institutions to expel students. Students are entitled to due process on public college campuses and almost universally on private ones, too. As FIRE knows too well from our work in defending student and faculty rights under the Obama-Biden administration, threatening schools with the loss of federal funding will result in a crackdown on lawful speech. Schools will censor first and ask

Questions later, today's message casts an impermissible chill on student protests about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, paired with Trump's 2019 executive order adopting an unconstitutional definition of anti-Semitism. So, I mean, this is one of the craziest things that I've seen yet. Yeah, go ahead. While you're on it, let me add Elise Stefanik, who is now Trump's UN representative. She says, she shared this and says,

Under President Trump, colleges and universities will be held accountable. Anti-Semitism and anti-Israel hate will not be tolerated on American campuses. Promise is made. Promise is kept. And so she's in some ways going even further. Much further. Let's take the counter argument that I've seen a lot from supporters of this initiative. They say, look,

universities are not entitled to federal funds. So it is up to the president if he wants to give. So that is just a absolute, complete, fundamental misunderstanding and really assault on the First Amendment. Glenn Greenwald was talking about this recently. He had a really good example that I think will help people understand why that's not the case. And the First Amendment law is very clear.

a government doesn't have to offer universities funding, but if they decide to offer funding, they cannot punish individual universities based on speech. And a better way to understand it, the example he came up with was, let's say New York State has an unemployment policy. They are not required to give unemployment benefits to anybody, but if they do give unemployment benefits, it would be wildly unconstitutional for them to condition getting unemployment benefits

on your support for the Democratic Party. Right. Or race. Think about that. Any violation of equal protection of First Amendment, of the Constitution. Right. The government cannot disperse funds based on a capricious standard. It could just not offer funds to anybody. Exactly. You can end unemployment, you can stop funding universities. Yeah. That you can do, but you can't say, all right,

You over here are punished for anti-Israel hate. Like who, what's anti, and what, and this whole thing, an illegal protest. What's an illegal protest? Like if, if you break a law while you're protesting, you can be arrested for that. You can be expelled. Uh, you can be jailed, but, but what is an illegal protest? Like,

The First Amendment doesn't just say free speech. It says the right to assembly and to petition your government for grievances, for redress. And also, why – okay, again, I'm sure this will get clipped out by my Zionist haters.

Why should we care if people are, quote, anti-Israel on campus? Right. Why can't you be anti-America? You can be anti-Peru. Yeah, fine. I mean, I don't love it. Yeah, I don't love, you know, if somebody was like, oh, I'm anti-America. OK, whatever. If you're anti-Ukraine, anti-Russia. You know how many anti-Russia protests, pro-Ukraine war protests that I walked by?

after the war broke out, you know, I totally disagree with these folks. Whatever. It's fine. It's a free country. Yeah. The First Amendment means you can be racist. You can be bigoted. You can be homophobic. You can be Islamophobic. You can be an awful person and say awful things. And that's the speech that the First Amendment is intended to protect. If the First Amendment was only designed to protect

you know, thoughtful poetry that aligned with our own values, what use would it be?

Yeah. And the problem here was also saying that American students will be permanently expelled. I mean, the only part where I differ is, you know, everyone's like, oh, it's not free speech to say that foreign students will get deported. It's like, well, like, yeah, they have right to free speech. But like, we also have the right to revoke their visa literally at any time, like in terms of how we're allowed to do this. I just think it's that one's different. But saying American students will get expelled as in.

an American citizen will lose their access to a publicly funded university based upon their views of Israel is outrageous to me. If you were a taxpayer, if you're a United States taxpayer, you live wherever you live and you have paid ungodly amounts, you know, into the University of, I live in Virginia, into the University of Virginia system, and you're going to police what,

Are you going to decide my admission or my attendance at your university based upon my constitutionally protected right to free speech?

That is one of the most outrageous things that I could think of. I mean, Ryan, did they even go this far during Vietnam? Like, I really don't think so. No, no. Like, yeah, I don't even think they were like running and stuff, but no, that's not the same. Yeah. And actually that was even decided at the Supreme court. And they got rid of that. They couldn't do that. And we don't point, we don't connect this that much either, but as we speak,

Israel is cutting off electricity to Gaza, which is destroying the sanitation plants, threatening to cut off water, and in some places, cutting off water, and has completely blocked all entry of food for days now into Gaza in an explicit attempt to get Hamas to abrogate the ceasefire deal and reach a new deal. They are

actively using and admitting that they are using starvation of a civilian population for their negotiating purposes. What is an American student supposed to say about that? That is within the bounds of accepted speech, according to Elise Stefanik and Donald Trump.

Right. And even in the, you know, everyone's like, oh, anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism. That's the part where it just drives me insane. I'm trying to think what's a disputed territory. Like what's like a disputed country. Yugoslavia. Nagorno-Karabakh. Nagorno-Karabakh. Great. Yeah. Great one because they actually resolved that question. Right. Uh, so let's imagine. Yeah. Literally. Right. It was resolved with Israeli support. Just so you're all aware. Uh, but, uh, it's one of those where, uh,

If there were pro actually you and I live here in the DMV area. If you ever take a drive out in Embassy Row, you will see protests over the most obscure shit you can imagine. Darfur, you know, over here. You've got. Yeah, you said Nagorno-Karabakh over here. You've got some Kurds outside the Turkish embassy. OK, whatever. Right. It's America. Let's.

Let it be. Trust me, those embassies, they hate it, but there's nothing they can do about it. They're out there with their video cameras trying to figure out who they are and punishing their relatives. Yeah, it's horrible. You remember when Erdogan visited D.C. and sent his bodyguards out to beat the shit out of a bunch of protesters? But that's an example, right, where actually the government and the D.C. government actually stood up to him. And we're like, no, no, no, no. That does not happen here. So we can have protests around Nagorno-Karabakh.

around Kurdistan, around all of these other places. That's not considered hate. It's just a protest. Okay, whatever. And you don't even have to like it. You know, you can find it annoying. You could find, you know, I remember Rohingya protests right here in DC over the whole Burma, Myanmar thing. All of that is,

And nobody at a national level is legislating, trying to define or to outlaw it. It's literally only here where they're basically asking for the same snowflake treatment that so many of these DEI, BLM demands that happened, you know, over the last eight years that these guys like Shapiro and then became filthy rich, decrying and now have nothing to say about it, if not actively cheering it on whenever it happens now. Yeah.

Yeah. And Yuval Abraham, the Israeli journalist who won an Oscar the other day for the film No Other Land, in his speech said that we need an end to ethnic supremacy in Israel. He called for an end to ethnic supremacy. So Yuval Abraham would have been guilty at an American university of anti-Semitism.

according to this definition. And I guess, you know, he's an Israeli citizen, so we're not going to deport him, but maybe if Colombia invited him to speak,

they would then lose their federal funding for having an Israeli who called for an end to ethnic supremacy in Israel. That's not American. It is so insane. And a friend of the show, Michael Tracy, Emily kept sharing this yesterday. He has a banger every now and then. It's true. It's true. GOP free speech. You can say retarded again, but you can't protest Israel.

So, yeah, that's where we're at right now. And, you know, we also got to we can't let old RFK Jr. off the hook either. Yeah. I mean, this is why credit. You're got you guys hammered him pretty good in this when you guys had him on during the campaign. So our viewers would have didn't know.

Right. But at least people who watch this show are not surprised by what he just did. No, anyone who pays attention should not be surprised literally at all. But yeah, you know, that's where we are. So Tracy, again, with a banger, you have to reread the statement a few times to appreciate how insane it is. RFK has accepted. He has to give up on combating greenhouse gas emissions forever.

So the new greenhouse gas is anti-Semitism, and he's going to rid America of this pestilence by building communities of trust that are based on speech freedom as he is announcing an intergovernmental initiative to regulate and punish the political speech that he writes. So here's what RFK writes. Well, shouldn't we cap it and allow people to trade credits?

Yeah, anti-Semitism credits. Yeah. That's good. Anti-Semitism, like racism, is a spiritual and immoral malady that sickens societies and kills people with lethalities comparable to history's deadliest plagues. In recent years, the censorship and false narratives of woke cancel culture have transformed our great universities into greenhouses and

For this deadly and virtuant pestilence, making America healthy again means building communities of trust and mutual respect based on speech, freedom, and open debate.

And the task force review is the first major action announced from the multi-agency task force to combat anti-Semitism created by President Trump. So, yeah. I mean, tell me why. By the way, I'm joking a little bit about the trading credits, but we actually already do have a market for anti-Semitism in this country. And the trade works like this. You've seen it happen. A couple of times, Elon Musk has said straight up anti-Semitic stuff.

And then he will get... Oh, like, you have spoken the actual truth. Yeah. Or, yeah, you've spoken the actual truth, I'm a great replacement. Yeah, it's like straight-up unvarnished anti-Semitism. And the credit that you have to do then is you have to...

take your support for Israel up a couple higher notches and you have to suppress Palestinian voices. So, um, Musk got on the call with Jonathan Greenblatt of, of ADL after he did this unvarnished anti-Semitism and he agreed to de-platform, you know, a decent number of like pro-Palestine voices. And Greenblatt said, all right, we have a deal. You're, you're exonerated. He, you know, he went to the Holocaust Museum.

Um, he visited Israel, um, when he did his Auschwitz with Ben Shapiro. Remember that? And when he did, when he did his quote unquote Roman salute, I forget exactly what he did to get, uh, grace from that Yahoo, but it was, you know, he ratcheted it up, his support for Israel. So that's the trade that you do. Like,

And so on the right, you're seeing this like you can do more anti-Semitism, but you just have to support Israel that much harder. Right. Smart. Yeah. And guess what? When you're sufficiently pro-Israel, they let you do it. In the words of a wise man. Oh, the words of a wise man.

It's time to put America first when it comes to spectrum airwaves. Dynamic spectrum sharing is an American innovation developed to meet American needs, led by American companies and supported by the U.S. military who use the spectrum to defend the homeland. It maximizes a scarce national resource, wireless spectrum, to protect national security and deliver greater competition and lower costs without forcing the U.S. military to waste $120 billion relocating critical defense systems.

America won't win by letting three big cellular companies keep U.S. spectrum policy stuck in the past, hoarding spectrum for their exclusive use to limit competition here at home while giving Chinese companies like Huawei and ZTE a big leg up overseas. For America to lead, federal policymakers must build on the proven success of U.S. spectrum sharing to ensure national security, turbocharge domestic manufacturing, rural connectivity, and create American jobs. Let's keep America at the forefront of global wireless leadership. Learn more at SpectrumFuture.com.

This is Ashley Canetti from the Ben and Ashley I Almost Famous podcast. You probably know somebody who's on Ozempic or semaglutide right now. These are really popular medications that people are using to lose weight if it seems like all other options aren't working for them. Go to tryfh.com to find out if weight loss meds are right for you. Tryfh.com. Try.

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All right, Ryan, last thing here. You've got a CFPB update. What do you got for us? Oh, this one is extra outrageous. So it combines the debate over the CFPB and the controversy around debanking.

I may not play it, but probably everybody who's watching this has already seen the Zuckerberg clip on Rogan, the Marc Andreessen clip on Rogan, where Marc Andreessen explains to him that the problem with the Biden administration and the CFPB in particular is that it goes around debanking conservatives for their ideological views. And the audience is just aghast that they would do this. Therefore, we need to get rid of

the CFPB, they subsequently do get rid of the CFPB. Now, what people probably know is that in December, I can put this up, the CFPB passed a rule, finalized a rule that they've been working on for many years and had been getting pushback from big banks on, finalized a rule that would bar debanking.

And not just from big banks, but also from these digital payment apps. And they set the threshold at, you have at least 50 million transactions. So the companies that this would pick up would be Venmo, PayPal, Google Pay, Apple Pay, Zelle, those types. Okay. So that rule, because the banks had fought it, didn't really get implemented until the end of

the Biden era. What that means is that it can be attacked through what's called a CRA, a resolution to basically disapprove it. And so what do we have now? Let me put this up. Today at four o'clock in the United States Senate, Republicans will be pushing forward a bill to specifically repeal this debanking rule. So the argument was, and it doesn't need 60 votes.

It only needs 51. It only needs 50. Yeah. Well, this rule would also apply to Twitter and WhatsApp. It would allow if they start trading coin. Like right now, Twitter doesn't count because small businesses and other businesses are exempted. So like, you know, Twitter does...

work with Stripe to pay its creators, but that doesn't get you under this rubric. But if Twitter starts allowing you to make payments person to person, they would be subject to this CFPB oversight. These companies, Zelle, PayPal, all of these, they don't want this oversight cash out. And so they've gone to Republicans and they have asked it to have this rule repealed.

And the rule does two things. It's debanking is one and the other is dispute resolution. Because there are laws in the books that say, if you're a financial institution, you have to easily let customers dispute transactions for obvious reasons. That's what we as a public want. You look at something, you're like, "That's fraud. I didn't do that. I want to be able to challenge it." And that is the law, but there's a gray area

around whether or not PayPal has to abide by that law. And so this rule would be saying, no, PayPal, all these others, Venmo, et cetera, you have to abide by these rules. You can't debank people and you have to have a dispute resolution for fraud. And obviously Venmo and PayPal, Zelle and these others, that's not in their interests. They want to be able to

debank somebody. Well, because for them, it's not just about debanking. It's don't be all open to shit. They want the freedom. Yeah. Yeah. It's like, I get to do whatever I want to do. It's like, we don't need you knocking around in our code or whatever. Just tell us what our reporting requirements are.

We'll send you your 1099 at the end of the year, but we don't need you looking around in our internal processes. And I mean, there's been so many scammed. Yeah, right. Yeah. Hope you don't get scammed. Hope it works out for you in terms of

I mean, yeah, I mean, I can't be the only person who's had just terrible experiences, both with Venmo, PayPal or any of these other places whenever you actually are either trying to dispute a transaction or my personal favorite is I was like buying something and they were like, oh, you got to turn off. It's a business purchase. You need to turn on friends and family. Right. Because this is the type of stuff which.

Applies to it. But now it would be making it easier for them to not even have to offer oversight to make sure that their customers and their users not only get scammed, but most importantly, that they have sovereign ability to decide your ability to transact.

And that's very important in a digital ecosystem and payment system that the government has an absolute standard that nobody, no matter your political beliefs or whatever, is allowed to – is not – is going to be banned from being able to transact unless they are explicitly violating the law. That's the most important thing. And just for fun, let's do a little bit of Marc Andreessen. Pause it. You can't get insurance online.

Like none of that stuff is you've been sanctioned. Right. None of that stuff is available. And then this administration extended that concept to apply it to tech founders, crypto founders, and then just generally political opponents. Yeah. So that's that's been like super pernicious. I wasn't aware of that. Oh, 100 percent. And it's called Operation Showpoint 1.0 was 15 years ago against the pot and the guns campaign.

Chokepoint 2.0 is primarily political enemies and then to their disfavored tech startups. And it's hit the tech world. Like we've had like 30 founders debanked in the last four years. Yeah. So here's Mark Andrews. And tech founders who have gotten debanked, usually that's around some type of cartel activity or some weird crypto like scam that they were involved in and has nothing to do with the CFPB.

But Andreessen and Zuckerberg and these others very cleverly used this legitimate anger at the idea that conservatives could be debanked for ideological reasons and channeled it at somebody that they hate for their own reasons and successfully so far nuked this agency. And meanwhile, the debanking rule is going to get repealed, I think, this afternoon by Senate Republicans.

Well, keep us updated, Ryan. This is why you're the GOAT. You're the person who tracks all of these things. Thank you to everybody. This was fun. I enjoyed doing the virtual bro show. Let's give another pound for the camera and all of that. We will have a full breaking point show for everybody tomorrow. So we will see you all then.

Joining us this morning is Dr. Adam Hamowy and Representative Bonnie Watson-Coleman, a Democrat from New Jersey. Dr. Hamowy was Representative Watson-Coleman's guest at last night's State of the Union. He also returned from, I believe, your second trip to Gaza, your second recent trip to Gaza on a Gaza medical mission about three weeks ago. So I wanted to start by asking you, Dr. Hamowy, just kind of what it was like to go from

Three weeks ago being, and I believe you were having a difficult time as is common for medical professionals who go on missions to Gaza, getting back out. What it was like going from there and being kind of on the receiving end of U.S. power and the unpleasant end of U.S. power to being in the hall of that power. What was the experience like for you last night? Well,

Last night was interesting. I mean, it was disappointing to kind of see our democracy being like in a situation where we are the pinnacle, basically, we're supposed to be the leaders of this world. And I felt I was in a room filled with schoolchildren and, you know, just a bunch of psychophants just clapping at everything that's to be said, whether it makes sense or not. I mean, you know, there's a lot of things that

are good and there's a lot of things that are bad. And if we can't discern between either one of them, then everything begins to fall apart. And it was very disappointing to see that. And Congressman, can I get your kind of inside take a little bit on how Democrats decided that they were going to approach his speech? Was there, did Al Green say in a meeting, you know what, I'm going to stand up and shake my cane and

Let them know? Or like, did leadership talk about protests? Like, how did that sort out? And what was your thinking about it? Yeah, so not in my presence did Al Green say that he was going to do what he did. Leadership just wanted us to be respectful. That is our house. And to listen, leadership knew that there would be some level of protest in some way, shape, or form. Ask that it not be terribly disruptive.

And I think that with the exception of the Al Green situation, which kind of got out of hand, but I certainly understand his emotion behind it. I think that things were put pretty orderly. We decided we were just going to sit quietly, listen. Some of us had signs that spoke to either fixing something like Medicaid or something

or saying false because the statement that the president was making rather frequently actually, his statements were not accurate.

But all in all, I think that given this moment, given the severity of the things that this administration has done and has proposed to do, I think Democrats are just fine. And, Doctor, you know, when when you get written about occasionally in the press, sometimes for, you know, being unable to leave Gaza, you'll be you'll often be referred to as

having kind of been the doctor that saved or worked on Senator Tammy Duckworth,

when she had her helicopter crash in Iraq. And I'm curious if that, if A, you were able to speak with her all last night, do you stay in pretty close touch with her? And has that given you the ability to speak more directly to members of Congress about what you've seen on the ground? And does that just not matter now that Democrats are out of power and Trump is the one calling the shots? I mean, I wasn't able to see her yesterday. I think the, I mean,

I'm proud of what I did and, you know, it's great that we have that relationship.

But, you know, my ability really to speak with anyone in Congress is their willingness to listen. So I've been, you know, back and forth here now many times over the last year. And I'll talk to anyone who'll sit down and have a conversation. So if they open their doors and they want to listen, whether they agree or not, I'll sit down and talk. And unfortunately, what I've been finding is that more and more people

doors are just closed. They don't want to hear. And that's unfortunate because that's not how we're going to learn or change or, or move forward if we're not able to listen to each other. Can you, what do you mean by the doors are closed? Like people are just, they want to move past this entire situation. Like what's the, they don't want to listen to what I have to say. They don't want to listen to my experience.

They don't want to hear another opinion or thought about what's happening in Gaza or Israel. So what is what is the difference under this this quote unquote ceasefire under which we've seen hundreds of people killed? But what is what?

How would you describe the difference in your visit, your most recent mission compared to the one while the hot war, so to speak, was on? It was night and day. I mean, it was night and day. I went in about a week after the ceasefire started and, um,

It was such a low bar to clear is to stop dropping bombs on everyone. Still, there's a lot of destruction there. There's a lot of shortages. There's a lack of resources. There's no electricity. There's no clean water. So conditions are relatively horrible, but compared to last year,

it was, you know, like the sun just finally like shown on the place. And it's unfortunate that now as we speak is that, you know, already Israel is breaking the ceasefire. And for the last two or three days, there's been no humanitarian aid allowed to go in. And even since before this last two days, it's been even more difficult for doctors and nurses and healthcare workers to get into Israel and into Israel

of Gaza to be able to provide that aid. They're making it more and more difficult. They're turning more people away and they're giving even more restrictions. So this is, you know, you know, this has been ongoing now for the last six weeks, even, you know, to a higher degree than, than before. And Israel had let in some additional supplies, you know, medical and, and food and others at the beginning of the, the quote unquote ceasefire.

Did that have a noticeable impact on your working conditions in the hospital? Yes. I mean, there was food that came in. Prices dropped tremendously, like 10 times. Like, you know, for example, like some, you know, one of the nurses was showing me like a bag of tomatoes and said that this bag of tomatoes last week cost 50 US dollars and now it's five.

And five is still a lot, but now it's at least affordable. And that's just food to be able to put on the table. So the, the, the, you know, that aid that comes in is critical and, um, and it affects our care. I mean, for people to be able to heal, they need to be able to eat and have nutrition and, um,

And it's important. I mean, I got people were literally starving. You can see people that have lost like 40 pounds, 50 pounds. You see their pictures and you can't recognize what they used to look like. And the children, they're just like, you know, you know, you could see the malnutrition everywhere you look.

And now with Ramadan, it's even especially important because, you know, people are having just one meal a day. And I'm sure with these new restrictions, those prices just jump right back up. And people, again, can't even if there's food available, they can't buy what's on the market because the prices are so high.

Did you treat any Palestinian captives who were released as part of the exchange? And what kind of patients were you seeing this time versus last time? So I was not in a hospital that received the captives, but I did take care of a lot of patients that...

had, you know, back up, you know, were backed up from the last year and a half. A lot of children that were born with congenital deformities, cleft lips and cleft palates over the last two years that hadn't received any care. A lot of the war injuries that, you know, people received, um, from shrapnel contractures, scarring that needed revision surgeries to take care of. So it was more of a normal experience than what I had last year when it was just one trauma after the other. Um,

But still a tremendous amount of work that needed to be done. Representative Watson Coleman, when you see this, when you see Israel now breaking the ceasefire,

threatening, cutting off electricity, using starvation as a weapon to try to extract additional concessions beyond what was originally agreed to. And you see Trump talking about building Trump Riviera in Gaza. Are you sensing any regret among your colleagues in Congress that they didn't do anything to stop this while they had the opportunity? And do they think it cost them politically?

In other words, do they care or are they just moving past this? You know, one of the reasons that I wanted the doctor to come and be my guest is because with so many distractions with all the sort of evil EOs and things like that, that Trump was putting out and the Doge mess and the lies and all, and even the Ukraine stuff, all of a sudden we weren't hearing anything after he talked about making –

Palestine, the Riviera of the Middle East, we weren't hearing anything kind of doubled down on that, which is ridiculous. I thought it was really important to bring the doctor here again so that he could really talk about what's happening in real time there. I don't know what you mean when you say we could have made a difference. Obviously, we weren't being assertive enough from my perspective

to get Israel to back down at some point. Israel had a right to protect itself when this first went down, but we saw the kind of harshness that

didn't seem to be necessary and didn't seem to move towards a two-state solution or a peaceful solution. So that was very disappointing to me. Do I wish we had done more in that regard? Yes. But it's a very complicated issue. We have very stubborn leadership.

there in Netanyahu. He didn't think he had to answer to anyone. And at the same time, I don't think that the United States was tough enough on him to make him sort of change course a bit and be more willing to meet and to create some pathway for

to safety and security. However, I don't believe that Hamas was legitimately willing to do that either. So I think that there was a distraction and dishonesty on both parts.

Well, we've got to leave it there. We were going to talk a little bit longer, just to let the viewers in on it. Democracy Now! wanted to speak with you and Dr. Hamowy as well. And in independent media, we'd like to be a little more collaborative than competitive. So I want to let you go so you can get over. And we're happy to have you on again, and we can talk more at length about all of this. So thank you, Dr. Hamowy, and thank you, Dr. Watson-Coleman. Thank you. Congresswoman Watson-Coleman. Thank you.

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