4/28/25: FBI Arrests Judge, Bernie Claps Back At CIA Dem, India Pakistan On Brink Of War, Trump Saves Canadian Liberals
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It's nostalgia overload as Wilmer Valderrama and Freddy Rodriguez welcome another amigo to their podcast, Dos Amigos. Wilmer's friend and former That 70s Show castmate, Topher Grace, stops by the speakeasy for a two-part interview to discuss his career and reminisce about old times. We were still in that place of like, what will this experience become? And you go, you're having the best time. But it was like such a perfect golden time. Listen to Dos Amigos on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

What's up, Federation? It's Freddie Prinze Jr. and Wrestling With Freddie is back. And we're going all in on WrestleMania 41. From the unpredictable to jaw-dropping finishes, this year's mania might have just changed everything. By the way, almost all the matches that we saw looked like real fights. I thought, like, they were like, yo, we're going hard today. Tomorrow we're going to hurt, but we're going hard today. Yeah.

Because it was like beast mode times 10 out there. Listen to this episode of Wrestling with Freddie on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast tests. The biggest stars in country music will be taking the stage at our 2025 iHeart Country Festival. Presented by Capital One. Ladies and gentlemen. Brooks and Dunn. Thomas Rhett. Rascal Flatts.

Hey,

Hey guys, Sagar and Crystal here. Independent media just played a truly massive role in this election and we are so excited about what that means for the future of this show. This is the only place where you can find honest perspectives from the left and the right that simply does not exist anywhere else. So if that is something that's important to you, please go to breakingpoints.com, become a member today, and you'll get access to our

full shows, unedited, ad-free, and all put together for you every morning in your inbox. We need your help to build the future of independent news media, and we hope to see you at BreakingPoints.com. All right, let's go ahead and move over to some of the latest things that are happening with regard to immigration and deportations. We touched on, you know, the...

Increasing unpopularity of what Trump is doing and how he really has already lost public trust with regard to his immigration agenda. Let's go ahead and put this latest event up on the screen. So a judge in Wisconsin was arrested by the FBI after she had allegedly directed an undocumented immigrant out of a side door

That is usually used for jury members. And she was upset that ICE agents had been coming to the courthouse, coming to her courtroom and waiting for immigrants to finish their hearings and then sweeping them up and arresting them. She was upset about that.

reportedly. And so she directed this one immigrant and his lawyer to go out a side door. Now, the side door apparently led into a public hallway and he was ultimately arrested anyway. But Ryan, they have now arrested her and charged her for, you know, they're claiming that she obstructed their ability to arrest this particular immigrant. Yeah. And this happened to come

Or I don't think I wouldn't say happened to come. It did come shortly after a another judge in New Mexico was also arrested. And so it created this.

feeling of like, okay, there's a crackdown now on judges. The other one, though, was this utterly bizarre case. This is a magistrate judge who had actually stepped down because of this scandal that he ended up getting arrested for. Magistrate judge in the county means you're handling very low-level disorderly conduct cases and stuff like this. This is not somebody who is out there stopping ICE buses from deporting people. It's completely separate.

But this guy is Judge Jose Luis Cano. And his bizarre case was he had three guys living in his guest house in New Mexico who were like handymen. He'd met them as handymen for his property. And in February, there was a raid and it was claimed that the three men – and they say they have lots of evidence –

Beyond like oh he was wearing a Chicago Bulls cap like actual evidence that they were friend a Raghava Members and so they arrest those and then they arrest the guy and his wife for hiding These men that Trump had you know declared a member of a group that are now you know that Trump declared them a terror group While he's in office so like after they've kind of moved into his little guest house so it his defense was

I had no idea. They're just handymen. Right. Like, OK, are they? And he even said, like, I've got grandkids who come over here and played with those guys. If I was told that they were gang members, I wouldn't let my grandkids play with them. What they were arrested for was tampering with evidence.

We don't know exactly what evidence they tampered with. Judges, innocent until proven guilty, but in general, some people, when they find themselves in trouble, they quickly are deleting all of their text messages or something. And that's easy to see or whatever. Who knows what, if anything, they did. But they didn't even charge them, it seems like, with housing them. But anyway...

And then the first case, since we don't have Saga or Emily here, we normally have somebody trying to defend the case. Let me see if I can make the best case. The best argument for the fact that she committed a crime is that she was quite hostile with the ICE agents, absolutely did not like them in her courthouse, and was like whispering in the courtroom, like, hey, come here, come here, come here. Like, go out this way.

in a way that suggests like some consciousness of trying to like usher them out. Now your point, like that, that, that led to some, that led to a public hallway anyway. Yeah. Like the argument would be she was trying, even if she didn't succeed and there is a federal law, whether that law should be constitutional or not, I think is, is open to question. I don't think it should be. Cause I think you should be able to, I think if, if like it's called, it basically it's like a harboring and immigration fugitive. Um,

And I guess on one level, if there's a murderer running around and you're hiding the murderer and you know they're a murderer, okay, I guess that should be a crime. But there's another case, I don't think we have it in here, that's going on, is it Tennessee? Did you see this one?

where, no, maybe it was in Virginia, actually. Oh, in Charlottesville? Yes, yes, yes, yes. You want to talk about that one where they're trying to prosecute a couple activists who were like- Yeah, put C4. Oh, we do have it here. We do have it. Put C4 up on the screen. Because you've got these plainclothes kind of thugs who were just grabbing people-

And you have a prosecutor and then you have a couple activists who are saying, let me see your warrant. Let me see some ID. And they're standing in their way. Who are you? Show me your badge. Right. Because there's I wish we had grabbed the video, but we showed it previously. We played it because it's it's quite chilling. I mean, there's no law that prohibits.

that prevents ICE from making these arrests in courthouses. But it used to be like, you don't do that, right? And now that has been explicitly, like there was, I think, a memo that went out for the Trump administration, like, nope, you can go to the schools, you can go to the courthouses, you can go to the churches, et cetera. And so you see these plainclothes individuals, one of them completely masked,

who come in and are kind of aggressively arresting this guy. And yeah, I assume his lawyers and these activists are saying, where's your warrant? Where's your badge number? Who are you with? And they're just being stonewalled on nearly all of these questions.

And so now they're charging these individuals who are just saying, hey, what is going on? Like, are you just kidnapping this person? Like, what is happening here? Well, they haven't charged the activists yet, but they're investigating them. Oh, okay. Yeah. Yeah. So in any case, you know. They're threatening to. This comes amid also, it's important, the context. You obviously have the Republicans, Republicans.

constantly say we're going to impeach the judges. What was Stephen Miller? We got to get these communist judges out of here. Like Trump asserting that, you know, he is effectively the personal representative of the will of the people. And so if courts are disagreeing with his lawless actions, then

then they are thwarting the will of the people and they are therefore illegitimate. We see this administration obviously like outright defying court orders, whether it's turning the planes around or refusing to facilitate Kilmar Abrego Garcia's return, even though the Supreme Court said you have to do that.

So it's amidst that climate that you now see this, you know, look, I'm not a legal expert. I want to talk to Pisco or someone else about the strength of this case. But to my reading, very weak case leading to the arrest of this judge. And they also did it in a very provocative public way where they.

You know, I mean, no one thinks this judge is like a threat to public safety or whatever. You could have, if you wanted to charge her, you could have had her voluntarily surrender and not have the images of the handcuffs and all this sort of stuff. So it's, there's no doubt. I think there is no doubt that...

This is an intentional signal that is being sent to the judiciary, to anyone who may try to defend the rights of immigrants. I recall also Tom Homan going on TV and saying they might charge AOC because she had done one of these like know your rights protests.

type of seminars, which is something that other members of Congress have done, which is just about getting people, hey, literally here are your rights. Here's what you can do and here's what you can't do, et cetera. And Ken Klippenstein has reported on how Seb Gorka, who is the counterterror czar, has a significant position within the administration saying that he believes that

that people who protest the Trump deportation policy may be aiding and abetting providing material support to a terrorist group, which would also indicate criminal potential charges against activists or others who would resist the direction the Trump administration has gone in. Yes, if you ever read any...

journalism or history about any authoritarian government throughout history for hundreds of years, as soon as the idea of terrorism became a thing, authoritarian governments seized on terrorism as the reason that they were cracking down on their enemies. Right. And saying, okay, this is – and so here the case would be, okay, whether it's Trendra or Agua or let's say Hamas.

Like, okay, you are protesting Israel's genocide in Gaza. That is supportive of Hamas. Therefore, anybody involved in any of that can be surveilled. And by the way, the Democrats deserve an enormous amount of criticism for this, for expanding surveillance authorities, which allows the NSA to basically collect...

information and communications of people who are here on student visas or green card holders. And so they're basically able to surveil every WhatsApp group, every, you know, if they can get through whatever the encryption is onto your phone. And then if there are American citizens on there, then they're reading their stuff too. And they're doing it all in the name of fighting terrorism. And it's exactly what Steve Miller said. We're going to get these terrorists...

off your streets. Right. When that's not actually what, how people understand immigration, even mass immigration or even mass deportation. I think people understand it as these people came here illegally and we're going to deport them. Like those are the supporters of Trump's immigration policy. They don't think they're terrorists.

One of the innovations of the Trump 2.0 campaign is previously even, you know, I would say Trump 1.0, there was a mixture of this, but Trump 2.0 was more of the pure embodiment. Previously, the conversation about immigration was like they're taking your jobs, you know, J.D. Vance, they're causing the cost of housing to go up, etc.,

Trump talks about immigrants almost exclusively as criminals. Right. And so, you know, they really sought to betray this group, even though we all know the data that undocumented immigrants have a lower crime rate than the native-born population and documented immigrants have an even lower crime rate than the native-born population. But he really sought to portray every immigrant. And you see this in this administration very clearly as a criminal and a terrorist.

And, you know, that is, I think, in real time, people are realizing that was not accurate. Because if that was accurate, you wouldn't have trouble. You wouldn't be having to round up, you know, Andre, the gay makeup artist who had a mom and dad tattoo or the autism awareness guy and throw them in an El Salvador dungeon, hoping that no one would be able to figure out who these people are and actually dig into the fact that they have no criminal records. They are not gang members. They're the only thing. And some of

of them actually had followed the government process and were in the midst of seeking asylum and had done everything right that they were supposed to be doing in that process.

If there were, you know, if we were overrun with millions of criminal gang member terrorists, it wouldn't be so hard to find 200 of them to be able to ship off. And even though, you know, on a principal ground, you should still not support anyone, even if they did have criminal charges, being sentenced with no due process for life to this torture dungeon. I'm under no illusion that the public

would really object too strenuously to that having been done. So I think it exposes the lie upon which they built this whole anti-immigrant hysteria. And, you know, so in addition to your point about the way that this is being used to erode everyone's rights, and they really make no secret of this, especially with Trump making the connection to, hey, this has happened for immigrants now, homegrowns, quote unquote, are next.

and to crack down on universities that already directly impacts U.S. citizens, their ability to pursue a degree, their ability to marry the people that they want to marry without having them shipped off or arrested and kidnapped in the middle of the night or in broad daylight with multiple ICE agents, etc. Put C3 up on the screen. It is this administration's position that if an ICE agent believes that

that they are pursuing a quote unquote alien enemy. So it doesn't require any sort of process or anything like that. If they believe they're pursuing an alien enemy, they can go in your house without a warrant to look for migrants.

So that is an extraordinary, I think, I mean, to me, it's blatantly unconstitutional. But as we all know, it takes time for these challenges to make their way through the courts, et cetera. But, you know, if you don't think that this applies to everyone, then I would beg you to consider what we've already learned about the,

the way that they have gone about this policy and the way that they will, you know, they'll snatch up anyone. We've got, you know, U.S. citizen kids who are being deported now with little to no due process, et cetera. C2, if you want to put that one up. C2, we can put this up on the screen. One of them has cancer. Another one, a judge is already saying, I think with the, I think with, it was the four-year-old, the judge is, the four-year-old, I think, has cancer. The two-year-old, I think, is the one that dad was, you know, in the process of arguing. No,

This child should stay here in the U.S., not be deported alongside her Honduran mother and sister. So, yeah, I mean, this has implications not just for the immigrant population, which in my opinion you should care about, but certainly has implications for the entire population here. And I feel kind of just stupid, like saying, couldn't you do your far right wing policy without doing this?

It's like, I guess you can't. Like, it's kind of, you know, the cliché during Trump won was that cruelty is the point. And it's like, you can't, if you can't do this mass deportation policy, wait, it's not even mass, actually. It's just a spectacular deportation policy. Because mass would, you're not reaching anywhere near the numbers. Like, you've got...

DHS celebrating, you know, if they get over like a few dozen deportations, if you can't do it without deporting a four-year-old with cancer or I don't know the details, if it was the four-year-old or the mother or something like, but if you can't, if this makes up like a significant portion of your deportations, right?

Then, yeah, you sold it wrong, and that's the key point. Like he sold it based on a lie, which is that these are all criminals. Right. Therefore, you have to apply a kind of criminal justice standard to it. Yeah. And it doesn't work. And so you have to then, you know, put cuffs on a four-year-old. Right. And, yeah, and vanish them before anyone can have a chance to look into the veracity of your claims. Right. Which is the real goal.

That's a shame. They're in Honduras now. Yeah. What can you do? It's not in our problem anymore. Just to reiterate your point about the use of terrorism designations to claim power in authoritarian regimes. I mean, we already see this with, you know, multiple groups, not just obviously immigrants, immigrants.

That's really clear cut with supporters of Palestine, with the hands off protesters, according to Ken Klippenstein reporting. Also, you know, they're looking at hands off protesters. So basically any resistance to Trump as being a.

as being terrorists, domestic terrorists, anyone who would oppose the deportation policy, anyone who harbors ill feelings about Tesla, anyone who's on their Luigi posting. These are all groups that this administration is beginning to view as domestic terrorists. Mm-hmm.

And we also have seen the way that they have used basically emergency or national security powers to consolidate power in the executive. Alien Enemies Act, perfect example of that. You were supposed to be at war, right? It's only been used three times. All three were very clearly War of 1812, World War I, World War II. Those are the three times the Alien Enemies Act has been invoked prior to that.

And we declared war then. Yes. Congress declared war. Yes. And they're making this preposterous claim that we're at war with Venezuela because they had Trendo Aragua invade us. I mean, I hope and expect that this will likely eventually be struck down by the courts. You never know with the Supreme Court stacked as it is, but I expect that will be the case. But not only that, the tariff powers are also claimed through a national emergency.

And I think this is the playbook for Trump 2.0 is that they use these supposed terrorism or national security or national emergency assertions

which courts have previously granted presidents broad discretion to be able to invoke, they're using these assertions to be able to circumvent due process, to be able to grab powers for the executive that are really clearly delegating the case of tariffs to Congress and be able to, you know, sort of unilaterally effectuate their agenda. So that has been the playbook for Trump 2.0, and it goes far beyond, you know, what's happening with the immigration system.

It's nostalgia overload as Wilmer Valderrama and Freddy Rodriguez welcome another amigo to their podcast, Dos Amigos. Wilmer's friend and former That 70s Show castmate, Topher Grace, stops by the speakeasy for a two-part interview to discuss his career and reminisce about old times. We were still in that place of like, what will this experience become? And you go, you're having the best time. But it was like such a perfect golden time. Listen to Dos Amigos on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Wrestling fans all over the globe, it's Freddie Prinze Jr. And on Wrestling with Freddie, we're breaking down every damn moment from WrestleMania 41. Two nights, nonstop chaos, legends, surprises, emotions, and some of the best wrestling we've seen coming from WWE.

We've got takes, we've got questions, and we have a whole lot of love for what these men and women pulled off at Mania. Tiffany Stratton, she earned her stripes at WrestleMania. And I don't mean because she won. She bled for her art. And it always felt like, to me, after the Attitude Era, once a wrestler gets cut and you see real blood coming out of their mouth or real blood coming out of their head, the crowd kind of goes, hey, respect.

And they kind of give you that nod, right? You go, wow, every one of these guys is bleeding for the road. Bro, that's literally like blood, sweat, and tears. That's all they got is blood. We're talking Cody. We're talking Rhea, Roman, Seth, Tiffany. The future of the business is bright. And if you watched Mania and you're still buzzing, or if you missed it and want to know what went down, we got you.

Listen to this episode of Wrestling With Freddie on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Clayton English. I'm Greg Lott. And this is season two of the War on Drugs podcast. Yes, sir. We are back. In a big way. In a very big way. Real people, real perspectives. This is kind of star-studded a little bit, man. We got Ricky Williams, NFL player, Heisman Trophy winner. It's just a compassionate choice to allow players...

all reasonable means to care for themselves. Music stars Marcus King, John Osborne from Brothers Osborne. We have this misunderstanding of what this quote-unquote drug man. Benny the Butcher. Brent Smith from Shinedown. Got B-Real from Cypress Hill. NHL enforcer Riley Cote. Marine Corvette. MMA fighter Liz Karamush. What we're doing now isn't working and we need to change things.

Stories matter and it brings a face to them. It makes it real. It really does. It makes it real. Listen to new episodes of the War on Drugs podcast season two on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And to hear episodes one week early and ad-free with exclusive content, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts.

Senator Alyssa Slotkin had told Bernie Sanders and AOC to stop using the word oligarchy because they're confusing our simple little American public. Bernie Sanders was asked about that on Meet the Press. Let's roll his response. Democrats should stop using the term oligarchy because it's a phrase that doesn't resonate with all Americans. Are you missing a chance to speak to a wider audience, Senator?

Well, geez, we had 36,000 people out in Los Angeles, 34,000 people in Colorado. We had 30,000 people in Folsom, California, which is kind of a rural area. I think the American people are not quite as dumb as Ms. Larkin thinks they are. I think they understand very well when the top 1% owns more wealth than the bottom 90%.

When big money interests are able to control both political parties, they are living in an oligarchy. And these are precisely the issues that have got to be talked about. Are you living in a democracy when Mr. Musk can spend $270 million to elect Trump and then becomes the most important person in government? Or APAC and other super PACs have enormous power over Democratic candidates?

Those are issues that we have got to talk about. That is the reality of American society today. The very rich getting richer, working class people are struggling, 800,000 people sleeping out on the streets. If we don't address that issue, the American people will continue to turn their backs on democracy because they're looking around them and they're saying, does anybody understand what I am going through?

AOC's response, we can put up D2 here, was simply to put up the dictionary definition of oligarchy for anybody who needed it. Although surveys showed that actually people don't need it, that people were asked if they could define it and they basically could. It's not that complicated a word.

Like a bunch of billionaires running everything. Well, and Alyssa Slotkin, many pointed out, had no problem using the word oligarchy when she was applying it to Russia. Oh, yes. They were all sorts of posts to her talking about Russian oligarchs and oligarchy or whatever. It's only when it's being applied here at home that the former CIA spook has a problem with it. Yeah. Yeah.

You know, I'm always on the lookout for the left adopting some faculty lounge language that might be kind of off-putting. I don't think that's what's happening here, but I'm curious for your take, but...

For me, it works in two different ways because it works for independents who feel like the system is rigged and is kind of controlled by billionaires. It works for people on the left who buy into the entire thing. But it also works with kind of resistance libs who have been –

really energized around defending democracy. And the left and some others kind of scoff at that, this whole like, oh, democracy, that's not real. It's a distraction from, you know, fighting for the working class and for improving people's material conditions. But oligarchy is a frame that covers that. Right. Like if you are

Somebody who is worried about our democracy eroding. Yeah. Who's the one doing, who's the one eroding it? Right. It's the oligarchs. Right. So you capture everybody under that umbrella. Yeah.

I think that's really well put, and the proof is in the pudding. Like, we know who is turning up to those Bernie AOC rallies. It's not just, quote unquote, you know, Bernie bros from 2016 and 2020. It is a lot—and we talked to Dave Weigel about this—it is a lot of normie Democrats, which is why AOC is shooting up in the polls in terms of who is the leader of the Democratic Party.

And so, yeah, I think it's an incredibly helpful frame. As you said when we were talking about this on Friday, I think voters actually appreciate being treated as adults who are capable of understanding concepts like oligarchy, which I think we are all getting a rapid lesson in how that takes shape and what it means for all of us. So, you know, political consultants have been trying to come up with this, like,

sort of focused grouped language about how do we connect the fight for democracy with like people's, you know, with the price of eggs or whatever. And usually that ends up in a very tortured direction where you're not really making a good case either about the material circumstances or about the genuine threats to democracy. And I think the framing of oligarchy really does serve those ends incredibly effectively, incredibly effectively. Like you can see the no one else in the Democratic Party

has the level, has garnered the level of energy, attention, and excitement as AOC and Bernie have. You know, I would, I guess next I would put like Chris Van Hollen taking a genuinely, I would say courageous action going down to El Salvador, like actually doing something out in the real world. I will say a lot of liberals are very excited about Cory Booker's speech. That one didn't speak to me personally as much, but I do want to say a lot of people were really excited about that because it at least showed some sort of fight.

But, you know, viewing what is happening in the Trump administration through this lens of oligarchy, I think really does unify the left, the liberals and creates a sort of powerful coalition that is also somewhat oppositional to the like think tank driven abundance conversation that Alyssa Slotkin, I don't know, she like calls herself like an abundance person, but she would be more in line with that. And the last thing I'll say about it is

AOC, and you could speak to this better than anyone, she has really...

positioned herself previously as wanting to work within the boundaries of the Democratic Party and not wanting to get too crosswise with leadership, etc. The fact that she and Bernie are both taking a much more directly adversarial position vis-a-vis Alyssa Slotkin firing back, I think is also kind of a sign of the times and a sign they feel that the public is on their side. Yeah, because a lot of times in the past, the party establishment or Slotkin types would fire at Republicans

Bernie or AOC people in the squad and they wouldn't even fire back. That's right. They would just take the arrows and be like, we're being part of a team. Not as well. What kind of team is this? That's just constantly shooting at you. But now they're feeling better. Like they're, they're, they're feeling their oats and they're, and they're, and they're ready to fire back. And on that front, we have news out this morning that Justice Democrats is making its first endorsement in

not just of the 2026 cycle, but even of the 2024 cycle. Well, not that they didn't endorse anybody in the 2024 cycle, but they didn't recruit anybody to challenge sitting incumbents because they put all of their energy into protecting the squad. Four of whom, you know, survived, two of whom famously, Cori Bush and Jamal Bowman, after tens of millions were

were spent, did not. So this is the first time that they're going back on offense. And it's Donovan McKinney, who is a state rep in Detroit, who's running against Sheree Thanadar, who we'll talk about in a moment and is quite a fun guy to kind of... He's a character. He's quite a character. So this would give you two Justice Democrats in Detroit because Rashida Tlaib is there as well. He's a former climate activist, a

grew up working class in Detroit, and he talks about that in his biography. Let's roll his launch video, which is rolling out this morning, just to get a sense of where kind of the Justice Democrats' left is in thinking about their positioning against an incumbent Democrat. So let's roll this opening ad.

People across this country and even the world know Detroit, or they think they do. They know our music, our sports, our struggle. But what people always forget is none of this is possible without our people. This district is one of the poorest places in America, but the Mighty 13 knows hard work better than anyone. It's the people who clock in, generation after generation, shift after shift, that get forgotten first.

Somewhere along the way, we got convinced we should settle for less from the people we elect to represent us. I'm running for Congress because we deserve better. We deserve a Democratic Party that leads the fight against the billionaires robbing us blind, that stands up to corporate pats. Our country and our children can afford nothing less. People like our congressman, Sri Tananar,

Ours is a problem. A multi-millionaire who spent millions to buy a seat at Congress, who has more in common with Donald Trump and Elon Musk than people like us. I was born next to smokestacks. We moved 13 times as a kid. Sometimes it was an apartment. Sometimes it was a family member's house. Sometimes it was even our own car.

But wherever I was, my mom and grandma made sure it felt like home. I spent my life trying to give back to help the place and people I love. I've never forgotten my roots or the true purpose of why I serve. So always put the people first. When things are darkest, it's when you fight the hardest. I'm running for my wife, mother, and grandmother, and all women who deserve a Congress that fights for their rights. I'm running for my baby boys because the block you live on should determine how far you'll go.

I'm running for you because like all of you, I know we deserve better. This is my home. This is our community. This is our future. And the choice is ours. I'm Donovan McKinney and I'm running for Congress to take back this seat for us, always with the people. So what do you make of that messaging? I mean, the touch, the vocabulary, Green New Deal, Medicare for All, like

That type of stuff that was stock in 2018 wasn't really in there, but what did you think of the messaging? Yeah, it's a class framing. This guy's out of touch. He's in there. He has more in touch with Donald Trump and Elon Musk than he does with you and me. I'm connected to this community, and I'm going to be the one who's there to actually fight for you.

Now, the funny thing is who he's running against. You just can't make this guy up. So we roll the next elements. Zed Jelani busted this guy in absolutely hilarious fashion in 2018 when he was when he was running for governor of Michigan. He was he was actually the front runner for governor ahead of Whitmer when when Zed wrote wrote this story.

And the story was that he met with a bunch of consultants ahead of the race, both Republican and Democratic. And they asked him, like, tell us about yourself. Like, we're going to if we're going to represent you. What what what party are you going to run as? Like, are you a Republican or Democrat? He's like, you tell me. Oh, my God. It's like, I want to be governor.

Tell me what I need. What's the lane? What's the lane and tell me what I need to say. He was confused. Wait a minute. I'm going to tell you this? You're the consultant. Oh, my God. You tell me what I think. And the one thing that was consistent in his conversations with his consultants was that he had a visceral disdain for Bernie.

But Bernie was hot then. So he ended up running as Bernie. He was going to do Medicare for all for Michigan. He did a whole Bernie campaign and was spending his own money and as a result was at the very top. And then this came out. And then other things. He was just a complete mess. So then in 2022... So the Bernie branding initially actually was working. It was working. It was actually working for him. And then he faded. And Whitmer wins. Then in 2022, he runs for Congress...

He spends millions of his own money.

As a leftist, again. Oh, first he, I guess it was 2020, he won like a state rep seat or something. So he buys a house in the legislature. Okay. Then he runs for Congress. When he was in the legislature, he signed on to resolutions that called Israel an apartheid state and said that it should not get any U.S. funding. So, it's a common, you know, popular position in Detroit. He runs for Congress saying similar things. AIPAC

spent like $4 or $5 million in 2022 trying to beat him.

And he overcame it because he spent so much of his own money. So he's then elected to Congress. After he's elected to Congress, AIPAC takes him and his family on a trip to Israel. And he comes back. He's reformed. Does a complete 180. Oh, my God. So then in 2024, activists in Detroit recruit somebody to run against him. And AIPAC spends millions on

defending Shri Thanadar because now he's a full-on pro-Israel guy. That's so funny, though, that he had already defeated them and then capitulates? Yes. You know, the move is to be John Fetterman and just be like, I don't want you in my race. Let me just capitulate it from the jump. They have now spent like $10 million on him, half of it against him, half of it for him.

His opponent, her name was Mary Waters, she raised only about $200,000. So she didn't really run...

She was serious, but she didn't have the money to compete. Gotcha. So what you're telling me is Donovan is going to be facing millions of dollars in a PAC alliance. He's definitely going to be facing millions, but he has already—the other thing that makes this a much different Justice Democrats race is that he already has the support of a ton of establishment Democrats. Interesting. Just because Sri Thana is just a ridiculous figure. Interesting. It's so weird to them. And it's just not helpful to them to have a member of Congress—

who you can't trust, you don't know what he's gonna believe a week later. So even if you're just a machine politician, that's not helpful for you. - He's almost like the George Santos of the left. - Yes.

And there are allegations of fraud, which you can find. Like, it's a real Santos of the left kind of situation. And so even regular Democrats, and I think I have sources in Detroit say that this could be the first J.D. candidate out of the gate to actually have, like, organized labor support. Okay, that would be huge. Like, that's the coalition that you need. You need the kind of...

You know, DSA or whatever you call it, you know, plus organized labor, you know, to like actually take over the party. So how much offense is Justice Democrats in a position to go on this cycle? Not a ton. And they've never picked their spots. And they've never really, you know, the first year when they did AOC and Cori Bush and Shida Tlaib and all the others, they endorsed like 100 plus Democrats.

People, they've never done that since then because they couldn't. All they could do is endorse. Right. They could only really go in on a couple. So we'll see. Now, if they team up with our guy, what's his name? The DNC vice president. Oh, David Hogg. Yeah, David Hogg, who's talking about spending millions of dollars going after incumbents. Bernie's recruiting candidates as well. Yeah, and they're threatening to kick him out of the DNC for doing this.

Which he's got to leave the DNC, right? Like if he capitulates and walks back from that, that's the end of him, right? I mean, in my opinion. I guess it wouldn't be the end of him as like a party functionary. You could be a party functionary. That doesn't seem to be what he wants to be. Yeah. And he has enough of his own profile. He doesn't need the DNC. Right. Yeah. That's what I would think as well. DNC vice president. Vice chair. What is that? I doubt he even gets paid for that.

I have no idea. Yeah. I have no idea. It gets you like, you know, you get into the suites with the fancy corporate boxes and whatever. I guess you get some boxes. Yeah. So Don McKinney taking on Sri Thanadar, um,

It'd be interesting if he knocks him off, but in some ways it would not be. Like when AOC took out Joe Crowley, that was a blow to the structure of the Democratic Party. Now they replaced him as caucus chair with Hakeem Jeffries, so the structure restructured itself. But taking out Sheree Thanedar, eh, nice, but...

It's like there's plenty of establishment Democrats who would be on board with that as well. Gotcha. OK. All right. We wanted to make sure to cover what is unfolding in India and Pakistan because, you know, these are two nuclear powers always at odds with one another. But tension has ramped up significantly after a horrific terrorist attack last week. So let's go ahead and get to our guest.

It's nostalgia overload as Wilmer Valderrama and Freddy Rodriguez welcome another amigo to their podcast, Dos Amigos. Wilmer's friend and former That 70s Show castmate, Topher Grace, stops by the speakeasy for a two-part interview to discuss his career and reminisce about old times. We were still in that place of like, what will this experience become? And you go, you're having the best time. But it was like such a perfect golden time. Listen to Dos Amigos on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Wrestling fans all over the globe, it's Freddie Prinze Jr. And on Wrestling with Freddie, we're breaking down every damn moment from WrestleMania 41. Two nights, nonstop chaos, legends, surprises, emotions, and some of the best wrestling we've seen coming from WWE.

We've got takes, we've got questions, and we have a whole lot of love for what these men and women pulled off at Mania. Tiffany Stratton, she earned her stripes at WrestleMania. And I don't mean because she won, she bled for her art. And it always felt like, to me, after the Attitude Era, once a wrestler gets cut and you see real blood coming out of their mouth or real blood coming out of their head, the crowd kind of goes, hey, respect.

And they kind of give you that nod, right? You go, wow, every one of these guys is bleeding for the road. Bro, that's literally like blood, sweat, and tears. That's all they got is blood. We're talking Cody. We're talking Rhea, Roman, Seth, Tiffany. The future of the business is bright. And if you watched Mania and you're still buzzing, or if you missed it and want to know what went down, we got you.

Listen to this episode of Wrestling With Freddie on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Clayton English. I'm Greg Glott. And this is Season 2 of the War on Drugs podcast. Yes, sir. We are back. In a big way. In a very big way. Real people, real perspectives. This has kind of star-studded a little bit, man. We got Ricky Williams, NFL player, Heisman Trophy winner. It's just a compassionate choice to allow players...

all reasonable means to care for themselves. Music stars Marcus King, John Osborne from Brothers Osborne. We have this misunderstanding of what this quote-unquote drug man. Benny the Butcher. Brent Smith from Shinedown. Got B-Real from Cypress Hill. NHL enforcer Riley Cote. Marine Corvette. MMA fighter Liz Karamush. What we're doing now isn't working and we need to change things.

Stories matter and it brings a face to them. It makes it real. It really does. It makes it real. Listen to new episodes of the War on Drugs podcast season two on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And to hear episodes one week early and ad-free with exclusive content, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts.

Indian Pakistan continue to be at the break of all-out war, it feels like. And joining us to discuss it is Dropsite News South Asia correspondent Siddharthia Roy. Joining us from, are you in Delhi now, Sid? Yep, I'm in Delhi. All right, well, thank you so much for joining us. I want to start with this Donald Trump clip on Air Force One where he was asked about

the rising tensions. Let's roll this. Any message for them? Are you going to be talking to them? I'm very close to India and I'm very close to Pakistan, as you know. They've had that fight for a thousand years in Kashmir. Kashmir has been going on for a thousand years, probably longer than that.

And it was a bad one yesterday, though. That was a bad one. Over 30 people. Are you concerned that there's now tensions on the border between them? Are you concerned? How are you concerned about that? There have been tensions on that border for 1,500 years. So, you know, the same as it's been. But they'll get it figured out one way or the other. I'm sure that there's... I know both leaders. Ah, but...

There's great tension between Pakistan and India, but there always has been. So not sure about Trump's history lesson there, but the proximate cause of the tensions is a brutal terrorist attack that was carried out last week, which killed, I believe, 25? 26. 26 almost all Hindu tourists alive.

All Hindu tourists. All Hindu tourists. And the details of the attack are absolutely fascinating.

absolutely chilling. The gunmen going person to person asking, basically, are you Muslim? Are you Hindu? And if they find a Muslim, just executing them on the spot, including one Christian as well who was killed after some mention of Gaza, apparently, as well. So absolutely horrific. I

My understanding is in India, they're talking about it as kind of our October 7th. And we know what happened in Israel after October 7th. So, Sid, from your understanding, are we going to get war here? I hope not.

I hope we're not India and Pakistan decide better than to go into war with each other, because this is not an Israel-Palestine conflict. This is a conflict between two nations who are pretty much armed to the teeth with nuclear stockpile. So a war, if it breaks out between these two countries, the escalation will go to really bad places. But it's not just hope.

that I'm counting on, it's also history. It's also reality of today. Direct war doesn't really help either the ruling dispensation of India or that of Pakistan. These formats of attacks, you know, what they call proxy war in these parts, this has been happening for quite a while. And usually we see a pattern that there is some terror attack, as they call it,

Then the victim country, the leadership there starts making big statements that we're going to go to war, we're going to do this, we're going to do that. Completely diverts or deflects attention from the fact that there has been a massive intel failure, a massive security failure on their side. And then it goes through this dangerous game of brinkmanship.

And they start pulling out, they're piling up their forces and tanks and everything. But we haven't really seen a full-on escalation. And may I mention here that India sent out its navy towards its big warship towards Pakistan the day before yesterday, but that ship is now back in the docks. So no, I don't think there is an immediate chance of escalation.

Let's go ahead and put E3 up on the screen. Guys, you wrote an incredibly prescient piece for Dropsite saying Modi's Hindu nationalist project in J&M and Kashmir has become a nightmare for Hindus. Really, sadly, prescient, effectively predicting some sort of horrific terrorist attack as the one that we just witnessed.

last week. Perhaps you can explain a little bit of the recent, if you want, the longer term history. I can give President Trump here a little bit of an education on where the tensions actually originally stem from, not 1,000 or 1,500 years in the past, as he asserted there. But what is the different approach that Modi has taken with regard to this region? And what have some of the consequences been? Why were you able to predict that we would see something as horrible as what we did just see?

Well, unlike Trump, or for that matter, Mr. Modi or General Asim Muneer, some of us journalists actually spend time in Kashmir and trying to understand what's happening on the ground. That's why we are able to see certain patterns. The principal thing that Modi did was he scrapped a very important part of the Indian constitution, which granted a very large amount of autonomy to the state of Jammu and Kashmir.

When he scrapped that, he made a sweeping declaration that the scrapping of, as they call it, the abrogation of Article 370, it would usher in a need of absolute peace and terrorism would finish once and for all. Very much like what we keep hearing President Trump saying every once in a while.

Instead, what happened is that the abrogation led to the suspension of the elected civilian government in the state of Jammu and Kashmir, and it became completely controlled by New Delhi, which in turn meant that the intel networks, the ground-level human intelligence networks which actually worked to feed information, preemptive measures were taken based on that information.

They died out slowly. Principle among them is, it's not spoken about very widely, but one of the biggest sources of intelligence for the New Delhi government are the political parties who work on the ground in Kashmir. When you have suspended elections, when you have effectively debarred them, taken away their franchise, they do not want to cooperate. And that's what happened here.

Last but not the least, we have to understand what sort of politics Mr Modi espouses. It's one which is unbridled hatred against the Muslim population. Even if he may not say it in as many words anymore, his teams are out there abusing, demeaning, defaming Indian Muslims all the time.

How does he expect the local population to cooperate and give him intelligence of these thoughts? That's what we spoke about in our story, in our investigation. And I wish it wasn't this way, but yes, we did tell the world so. And can you talk a little bit about the group that initially claimed credit for the attack, but then very oddly kind of backed off of that a few days later? And what...

what is understood in India to be the backing of this attack? So the group is called the Resistance Front. The Resistance Front appears to be, from all our sources, from all government records, nothing but a rebranding of the Lashkar-e-Taiba, one of the largest militant and terrorist organizations in the world, which is based out of Pakistan primarily and is focused on

of secessionist activities in Kashmir. What we saw not only in this attack, even in the previous attack, which we've mentioned in our report, Rehasi, I think it was, where the TRF claimed responsibility and then said, oh, no, it wasn't us. But that doesn't really matter. That's not something we need to look into too much. Because if the TRF is merely the Lashkar-e-Taiba, then they've been around for a while.

The Indians, technically speaking, have not given any proof on the table showing direct involvement of Pakistan, but even a cursory history, a look at history of how the LAT operates. I mean, the chief is sitting and alive and under the protection of the Pakistani government, though he's under several international sanctions.

This is the all roads kind of lead back to Pakistan. And the Indian population is quite convinced. And interestingly enough, even the most bitter opponents of Mr Modi across parties, they have voiced their anger and condemnation against Pakistan for enacting this attack. And they've likened it to the 26-11 attacks in Mumbai.

Yeah, it's an interesting dynamic because on the one hand, like you said, there's no evidence that's been presented that Pakistan had any direct role in this particular attack. But of course, the fact that the organization exists, is armed and is so strong is...

can't be separated from its relationship with Pakistan. So I asked Waqas Ahmed, who is Dropside's kind of Pakistan correspondent, you know, for his take from the Pakistani side on what the role of the Pakistan government was in this. And he had, I thought, a pretty nuanced and interesting response. And we recorded this as a pre-interview. So let me roll a

So far, India has not presented any official evidence that Pakistan may have backed this terror attack. But interestingly, the Pakistani interior minister called for a neutral inquiry into this attack. And the Pakistani defense minister called on Russia, China or a Western country to be a part of these investigations. And that's not normal. Pakistan had actually been trying to get closer to India for the past few years.

Pakistan had been abiding by the ceasefire agreement brokered by General Bajwa in 2020. And as you also reported, that Pakistan had been looking the other way as Indian intelligence carried out a string of assassinations inside Pakistan targeting former Kashmiri militants and Sikh activists.

So it seems unlikely that Pakistani military will break the ceasefire for nothing. That brings us to the more interesting question. Why is the Pakistani military the primary suspect whenever something happens in India? And that's the core of this issue.

There's this dynamic that has existed between Pakistan and India for a long time. India and Pakistan have used proxy war as a strategy against each other. So automatically, whenever there's an attack in one country, the other country is blamed. And this is a knee-jerk reaction at this point.

So every time this happens, there is a threat of escalation between these two countries. The problem with this particular conflict is that the escalation ladder goes as far up as nuclear. Hence the only way out of this issue, this threat, this danger to the world is this long-standing unresolved dynamic between these two countries must be resolved.

But with the far-right, borderline fascist government in India with Prime Minister Modi and this totalitarian military regime in Pakistan, it seems impossible that either side has the will or the imagination to resolve this issue once and for all. So Sid, an interesting point there that on the one hand, Pakistan doesn't immediately

It kind of clashes with Pakistan's more recent kind of conciliatory approach to India. Yet at the same time, they have been funding these proxy funding and backing these proxy groups for many years. So, of course, they're the top suspect. What what what's your response to what you heard from will cost their.

Vokas is absolutely on point in what he is saying. And I agree that India has technically not put any evidence on the table. But if you note that the ministers from the Pakistan side of Kashmir, the Pakistani-occupied side of Kashmir, they did a press conference right after the Pahalgam incident. And in that, you can hear the ministers are on record saying that you can't be funding...

anti-Pakistan activities in Balochistan and then expect your civilians to be safe. For every civilian you kill here, we will make sure we kill Indian civilians. So this very well could be a tit for tat. And may I add here, with due caution, because this is only preliminary inputs we are getting, two of our sources in Pakistan have mentioned that

that this attack was in retaliation of the Jaffar Express hijacking that had happened recently, just a couple of weeks back in Pakistan. So this is very much true that this proxy war or tit-for-tat was a thing between India and Pakistan.

Yeah, it's like they want to have it both ways. Sid Roy, thanks so much for joining us. I'd encourage everybody to go read his piece for Dropsite News. Just Google Dropsite News and Kashmir, and I think his piece will come up, and you'll have a good sense. And if you would have read it when it came out, you would not be surprised that this had just happened. So, Sid, thanks so much for your reporting and for joining us. Thank you.

It's nostalgia overload as Wilmer Valderrama and Freddy Rodriguez welcome another amigo to their podcast, Dos Amigos. Wilmer's friend and former That 70s Show castmate, Topher Grace, stops by the speakeasy for a two-part interview to discuss his career and reminisce about old times. We were still in that place of like, what will this experience become? And you go, you're having the best time you've ever been in. But it was like such a perfect golden time. Listen to Dos Amigos on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Wrestling fans all over the globe, it's Freddie Prinze Jr. And on Wrestling with Freddie, we're breaking down every damn moment from WrestleMania 41. Two nights, nonstop chaos, legends, surprises, emotions, and some of the best wrestling we've seen coming from WWE.

We've got takes, we've got questions, and we have a whole lot of love for what these men and women pulled off at Mania. Tiffany Stratton, she earned her stripes at WrestleMania. And I don't mean because she won, she bled for her art. And it always felt like, to me, after the Attitude Era, once a wrestler gets cut and you see real blood coming out of their mouth or real blood coming out of their head, the crowd kind of goes, hey, respect.

And they kind of give you that nod, right? You go, wow, every one of these guys is bleeding for the road. Bro, that's literally like blood, sweat, and tears. That's all they got is blood. We're talking Cody. We're talking Rhea, Roman, Seth, Tiffany. The future of the business is bright. And if you watched Mania and you're still buzzing, or if you missed it and want to know what went down, we got you.

Listen to this episode of Wrestling With Freddie on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Clayton English. I'm Greg Glott. And this is Season 2 of the War on Drugs podcast. Yes, sir. We are back. In a big way. In a very big way. Real people, real perspectives. This is kind of star-studded a little bit, man. We got Ricky Williams, NFL player, Heisman Trophy winner. It's just a compassionate choice to allow players...

all reasonable means to care for themselves. Music stars Marcus King, John Osborne from Brothers Osborne. We have this misunderstanding of what this quote-unquote drug man. Benny the Butcher. Brent Smith from Shinedown. We got B-Real from Cypress Hill. NHL enforcer Riley Cote. Marine Corvette. MMA fighter Liz Karamush. What we're doing now isn't working and we need to change things.

Stories matter and it brings a face to them. It makes it real. It really does. It makes it real. Listen to new episodes of the War on Drugs podcast season two on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And to hear episodes one week early and ad-free with exclusive content, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts.

Canadians are headed to the polls today in what has turned out to be an absolutely extraordinary election, which has a lot to do with our own president and his trade war and what's going on there. So to break it all down for us, very happy to be joined by David Dole, who is host of The Rational National. His YouTube channel is absolutely blowing up, and it's great to see you, David. Thanks for joining us.

Great to be here. Thanks. Yeah, of course. So let's go and throw this first element up on the screen that just shows the polling trends between the conservative and liberal party here. You can see the liberals really were down and out. And then suddenly Trump launches this insane trade war and their fortunes changed significantly. So now they go into Election Day at least somewhat as the favorite here. Just break down for us the contours. Who's running? What are the dynamics? What accounts for this dramatic shift?

Yeah, so the liberals have been in power since 2015 under Trudeau's liberals overtaking a conservative government at the time, came in with a majority government, have been in power for nine years. And then up until, you know,

A couple of years ago, polling really began to shift post-COVID due to the affordability crisis. And I think largely as well due to people just being tired of having the same people in power seeing Trudeau every day. And then it got to a point where in December, it was like they were down and out. And Chrystia Freeland, essentially Trudeau's second in command, decided to

come out against him and resign from her post as there was about to be a cabinet shuffle and she didn't want to change her position. So that was sort of the first thing to drop. And then after the new year, Trudeau decided to step down and have a leadership race. So there was a race between Chrystia Freeland, Mark Carney, and a few others. Carney ended up winning that. And

Ever since, so it was a combination of both Trudeau stepping down and people being tired of him, as well as Trump and just the ongoing threats, the threats of annexation, the 51st state, Governor Trudeau, all this garbage. So that combination led to this dramatic shift, which, you know, I'm reading analysis of the history of Canada and these sorts of elections. There has never been a shift like this, this quickly in our history.

And how much of this is the trade war and how much of this is Trump's 51st state barbs? Where at first you're like,

haha, that's kind of funny, right? You're joking, right? This is a gag. And it's like, oh, wait, I'm not so sure this is a joke anymore. Because if you look at that polling collapse, it predates him even being sworn in. It dates back to him making all of his 51st state jabs. So what's been the response there? And if you had to weight the two things, the tariff

tariffs and the trade war and the 51st state stuff, which is kind of more significant. And obviously they blend together in some ways. It's really more of the 51st state stuff, the annexation stuff that like the trade war is an issue, but I don't think people are really necessarily feeling it right now. Essentially. I mean, you know, there's been so much back and forth on, on the tariffs that it's hard to even know where things currently stand with that, but it's the threats for sure that where it was just like, you know, even people that,

didn't already or didn't like Trump already were sort of surprised, myself included. Like, there wasn't a whole lot of talk of Canada in the U.S. election prior to Trump winning. And all of a sudden, you know, there was...

I think there was a comment or two about potential tariffs, but there wasn't much about, you know, 51st State, Governor Trudeau, any of this stuff. So that, I think, really led to this sort of defense mechanism in Canadians where there's all this national pride that we didn't know we had before that has come out. And we're sort of banding together and deciding that, no, we don't want this. And we want somebody in power who's going to be stable. You know, Pierre Polyev, the leader of the Conservative Party,

for the past two years, as he's been leader, he's been running essentially against Trudeau. And once Trudeau left, he was sort of left scrambling to try to, uh,

apply his prior arguments against Mark Carney, who is a completely different person, isn't even currently an MP. And it's hard to make the same arguments against him when they when Trudeau and Carney are different leaders. So Pierre Polyev's inability to really find a coherent message, in addition to the fact that he has he is, you know, far right in terms of Canada, has been endorsed by people like Elon Musk.

So when you have those sorts of connections to a Trump administration that is so deeply disliked, it hasn't helped this case. Yeah, I'm sure you get the Elon Musk endorsement at this point. You're like, thanks, question mark.

To that point, I pulled a Carney ad and I pulled a Poliev ad. Let's go ahead and start with the Poliev ad. And what was notable about this is that he actually doesn't appear in it. So I want to get your reaction to that and the way that he has had to quickly scramble and reorient himself and his campaign. This is F3, guys. Go ahead and play it. How's your son, David?

Your reaction to that particular ad?

They have purposely taken Pierre Polyev out of their ads. So this is not often explored, but even while Trudeau was unpopular, even while the liberals were really unpopular, if you look at Pierre Polyev's actual numbers, just the approval of him and how people felt about him, he was not doing well. He was still underwater.

So the lack of liberal support before Carney came in was largely really due to the combination of the affordability crisis and people being tired of Trudeau. It wasn't because people loved Pierre Paglia. So when that became even more clear during this election, it was...

Essentially, last week, last couple weeks of the election, the conservatives have put out three new ads, all of them not featuring Pierre Polyev, either his face or his voice. So that's the one ad you saw there with the golfing. Another one is former Prime Minister Stephen Harper saying, I worked with both Carney and Pierre Polyev, and I support Pierre Polyev, which of course he is. He's the former prime minister as a conservative. And then another one is a few people discussing how terrible things are.

But Pierre Polyev is so unliked that they had to completely remove him from their advertising. And it's just like it goes to how how inauthentic Pierre Polyev is. This is another element that people often, you know, aren't attuned to is just the fact that Mark Carney is oddly authentic.

Even, you know, he's a former governor of the Bank of Canada. He's a central banker, but he's authentic to that. He's not pretending to be anybody else. He's an authentic, like, technocrat, liberal banker. He's running as a guy that led Canada through the white financial crisis and then went to the UK to help the UK through Brexit. He's running as that guy. Whereas Pierre Polyev has a 20-year record in Parliament. He's been in Parliament for 20 years. 20-year record of fighting against the working class, fighting against Labour,

And now he's coming out to pretend that he cares about the working class and he's going to make life more affordable. Like, where were you the past 20 years? Like, it's it's it comes off as so fake that people, even if they don't realize what Pierre Palliot's record is, you can feel it in his speeches and the way he comes off that he's not an authentic individual. Whereas Mark Carney is who he is. Does golf code different in Canada? Like, I can't imagine a candidate who is trying to, like, position themselves as pro working class being like, you know where I need to go.

the driving range. Even Trump, who loves golf, wouldn't put that in his ad. Yeah. It is odd. Like, I think the

That message there is they're afraid of losing the older vote, which they are. What's kind of been surprising with this election is if you look at the breakdown by age, 65 plus is well in support of the liberals. It's not even really close. Whereas it's really under 35 where the conservatives have a slight edge. And again, that's really, I think, due to the last 10 years of affordability and millennials and Gen Z really being hit by that and not really knowing where to put the blame there. But everybody over 35...

Big support for the liberals. So the attempt there, I think, was really to connect to older voters who have kids who are struggling and people that can relate to that and think that, yeah, we need change. But like good change or what sort of change are we talking about here? Because if we're looking at actual platforms, Mark Carney has the I would argue the best housing platform out of all of the parties, even to the NDP, which, you know,

have no chance at all of forming government. But Mark Carney has a plan to make or build 500,000 homes per year, essentially start a crown corp to overlook all of the building of the housing and doing it in a way

where he is focusing on both affordability and prefab housing to essentially be able to build houses at a faster rate, also focusing on Canadian lumber and Canadian jobs. So there has been a real focus on investment from the Liberals, which I think benefits them in terms of the NDP vote. As the NDP, the floor has completely dropped out of the NDP, and a lot of those voters have moved to the Liberals, seeing as both a rejection of the Conservatives, but also...

a, you know, supporting what Mark Carney is arguing. In addition to the fact that I think Mark Carney comes off as somebody who is a stable leader as opposed to, you know, Pierre Pelliot. And it's an interesting point because if a central banker told me that he's got a plan to build 500,000, you know, houses a year and he's going to do it, here's the labor supply, here's the wood supply, and he sketched it out, I'd be like, okay, actually, you know,

I trust you could actually probably pull that off. You're not trying to do something like that out of the ordinary here. It's like you're building houses, and you should be able to do it. On the authenticity point, the funniest thing I think I saw in this race was Pierre Polyev getting out and having a press conference right after Trump started going after USAID. I don't know if you remember this. He held a press conference saying that he was going to end all of Canada's foreign aid programs.

It's like, come on. The U.S. is barely doing anything when it comes to foreign aid relative to our spending. Canada, stop. And now it's half. I guess he's cut that to now we're going to cut half of U.S. or half of aid, which is, again, there's so many cues from Republicans that Pierre Polyev has taken that...

you know, have added up to the point where it, it doesn't, it hasn't benefited him. Like if, if nothing had changed in terms of the, in terms of the, the liberal leadership and Trudeau was still running, I think it's very likely you'd be looking at still a conservative majority, maybe at worst a conservative minority, but you have like a situation where Pierre Polyev has, has spent years aligning himself to MAGA.

And now, you know, the chickens are coming home to roost and you have a situation where people really do not want Trump style politics in Canada. And he's the face of it. So it's it's not worked out well for him. Yeah, I would have to think at this point with the trade war being so important to the fact that he's a central banker and, you know, has some influence.

deep understanding of the bond markets and their impact is a affirmative benefit for him as well. But I mean, how do you handicap the race, David? I saw the polls have tightened some coming down the stretch, you know, giving conservatives some hope that they may be able to prevail. What do you think is going to play on or what are the odds of what's going to play out?

Based on everything I'm reading, it's really appearing to be a liberal majority, at worst a liberal minority. And it's important to note that even if the conservatives had a slight lead in the overall vote in polling, they still likely would not be able to win a minority government just the way that the seats play out and how the conservative vote tends to be concentrated. So...

The cons would really need, you know, several point advantage in polls to be able to be in a situation where they're going to form government. And they're just not anywhere near that right now. Now, of course, we've seen polling be a little off in the past, but Canadian polling tends to be fairly accurate. So I'm really...

It'll be curious to see how it holds up this time. You could argue maybe there's sort of this hidden conservative vote that we've seen in the U.S. and maybe that's going to come out this time in Canada. But the way things look right now, liberals should be pretty confident that they're going to be able to form government. Let's finish with a Mark Carney ad to see kind of what his message is. Let's roll that here. No people are anxious right now.

President Trump has created a crisis. "PK News from Wall Street." "Pressure to react to the sweeping tariffs." Well, I've led people through crises my entire career. I've worked with prime ministers from both parties to solve big problems for Canadians. And right now, we're facing the biggest crisis of our lifetimes. And we need serious leadership and a real plan. Is that pretty representative of what his approach has been throughout this short campaign?

Yeah, stability, leadership, and he's been benefited as well by, you know,

People like Premier Doug Ford in Ontario, who is a conservative. I mean, he's the head of the Progressive Conservatives. I know that's a confusing term for Americans to hear. But he is a conservative. And, you know, countless scandals. I've done many videos about how terrible Doug Ford is. But he's somebody who is able to read the room and has been very forward in being very, you know, against Trump. He's been on all, you know, U.S. networks discussing. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, his approach. So he he's not endorsed Polyev. He's kind of stayed out of the race. He's he's somebody who, you know, him and Polyev don't really have much of a relationship. So the fact that Ontario is so important in the election and he doesn't have the support of Doug Ford in any capacity, I think has hurt him as well. Interesting. All right, David Dole, everybody go subscribe to David's channel. And I'm sure you'll be covering whatever happens with the Canadian elections today. So thanks so much for breaking it all down for us.

Thanks for having me. All right, guys. Thank you so much for watching. We are going to do an AMA live for premium subscribers. So if you want to be part of that, breakingpoints.com. If you cannot subscribe, become a premium member right now. Just make sure, like, share, subscribe, all those things really, really help us out a lot. Thank you guys so much for watching. We'll see you back here tomorrow.

It's nostalgia overload as Wilmer Valderrama and Freddy Rodriguez welcome another amigo to their podcast, Dos Amigos. Wilmer's friend and former That 70s Show castmate, Topher Grace, stops by the speakeasy for a two-part interview to discuss his career and reminisce about old times. We were still in that place of like, what will this experience become? And you go, you're having the best time. But it was like such a perfect golden time. Listen to Dos Amigos on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

What's up, Federation? It's Freddie Prinze Jr. and Wrestling With Freddie is back. And we're going all in on WrestleMania 41. From the unpredictable to jaw-dropping finishes, this year's mania might have just changed everything. By the way, almost all the matches that we saw looked like real fights. I thought, like, they were like, yo, we're going hard today. Tomorrow we're going to hurt, but we're going hard today. Yeah.

Because it was like beast mode times 10 out there. Listen to this episode of Wrestling with Freddie on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The biggest stars in country music will be taking the stage at our 2025 iHeart Country Festival. Presented by Capital One. Ladies and gentlemen. Brooks and Dunn. Thomas Rhett. Rascal Flatts.

Cole Swindell. Sam Hunt. Megan Maroney. Bailey Zimmerman. Nate Smith. Special guest, Dasha. Stream only on Hulu. Saturday, May 3rd. Starting at 8 p.m. Eastern, 5 Pacific.