6/26/24: Hillary Says 'Impossible' To Debate Trump, Bowman Trounced By AIPAC, Kenya On Fire As Troops Occupy Haiti, Ryan Exposes Pro-Israel Group Lies, MIT Nuke Expert Dire Warning On Ukraine
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Good morning and welcome to CounterPoints. We do have a quick announcement. Ryan and I have two long days coming up here, actually, because the debate special, the Breaking Points debate special, where we're bringing together everyone in the Breaking Points cinematic universe, right? That's happening tomorrow night. We could put this graphic up on the screen. 8 p.m. Eastern. There's also a fun graphic where Ryan is trying to figure out why he's so angry. We can put that one up on the screen, too.

And Emily looks like she wasn't ready for the picture. Yeah. And she's just like looking down at her phone and they're like, oh, we're doing this now? Yeah. You know, that happened to me one time in the outfield playing softball. And the ball like landed on your head? Well, I had to go like...

Put my glove up and my phone fell out. Oh my goodness. My coach wasn't happy about that. 8 p.m. But tonight, we will also be moderating a debate for Zero Hedge on the border. That's going to be at 7 p.m. Is that live or that post later? I think it's live. Okay, all right. So 7 p.m. tonight. We'll put some details about that somewhere. Whole Breaking Points universe tomorrow, 8 p.m. for the presidential debate, which is totally a first in history. We're going to talk about that. Robbie's going to be in that debate, right? Yeah. Getting the rising crew back together. Yes. Open borders, Robbie. Yeah, open borders, right. Yeah.

Me and Robbie, waking up. We'll have nachos on the table. Excellent. I look forward to that. Okay, so now that we have the programming notes out of the way, we are going to start by talking about the debate today. We're then going to go over the election results. Super, super buzzy stuff. Obviously, Ryan quite literally wrote the book on the squad, and the squad is front and center as we have results coming in from primary elections all over the country last night. We're going to talk about...

terrible split screen playing out in Kenya where 400 Kenyans arrived in Port-au-Prince yesterday in Haiti and also there's at least 22 deaths so far in protests over a new tax bill. Yeah, back in Nairobi all hell is breaking loose while

Yeah, Kenya is sending on behalf of the United States an international invasion force into Haiti. So we'll break some of that down. I'm going to talk about the disclosures from the Portland, Oregon race that we covered about a month ago where AIPAC, as we reported at the time, was spending millions of dollars secretly to influence that race.

They were finally, a month after the election, forced to disclose their actual funding. And despite their denials, you're going to be shocked. It actually was. APAC, we're gonna unpack how all of that unfolded. And then at the end of the show, we're gonna be talking to Theodore Postol, who's one of the chief kind of nuclear war

experts in the world and in world history since we only have since the 40s to think about nuclear war. He's gone back and forth from the Pentagon to MIT as one of the most respected voices on this. He is warning that the Ukrainian strikes inside Russia are putting nuclear war at a much higher risk than it was before Ukraine started striking Russia's early warning nuclear detection system. It's

Pretty frightening and kind of should be leading the news all around the world. Yeah, you would think. Kind of like a first order thing that I think we all want is to not die in a nuclear annihilation. And yet here we are. We'll put it at the end of the show though. The only ones talking about it at the end of the show.

Well, let's start with the big news, which is that a historic debate is still, as of right now, set for tomorrow. I continue to be a cynic about whether it will actually happen. It seems pretty likely that it will actually happen at this point. But Hillary Clinton is weighing in. Let's put A1 up on the screen. Hillary Clinton wrote an op-ed for The New York Times.

where as the Fox News headline put it, she complained, "It's quote, impossible to defeat Trump," and a quote, "Waste of time to refute his arguments." Ryan, the thing I pulled out of this op-ed from Hillary Clinton is a quote where she says, "Unfortunately, Mr. Biden starts from a disadvantage because there's no way he can spend as much time preparing as I did eight years ago."

Being president isn't just a day job, it's an everything, everywhere, all at once job. Historically, that has led to weaker first debate performances for the incumbent. So I feel like this op-ed, which she dropped a day before dropping her big book announcement, it was kind of a nice one-two PR punch for Hillary Clinton, savvy as ever, but she

I think she's trying to lay the groundwork for a mediocre Biden performance by publishing an op-ed in the pages of the New York Times saying it's an impossible job.

That's always what I say after I lose a debate, is that it's just an impossible task and it's a waste of time. Yes, but on the other hand, it is kind of an impossible task to debate Donald Trump. Can you imagine? And Hillary has actually done it. And she had Philippe Rains as the guy trying to pretend to be Trump, but nobody can actually be Trump. He is one of a kind in basically world history.

So you get out there and you have no idea what on earth is going to come out of that guy's mouth. You just don't know. And you don't even know if it's going to work because nobody's ever said it before. Nobody's ever tried it before. So it's not something you can even train for. And it's not as if...

either Biden or Trump are going to be getting into like the nitty gritty of tariff policy or you know one of these like 1980s or 90s debates that gets like super wonky. Yeah. That's just like nobody expects anybody to go remotely near that. If these candidates can string together a sentence from beginning to end that is like grammatical. Yes. And if they can even put together a paragraph.

that can be transcribed and you read it and you're like, yeah, that's like eighth grade level. And it like makes a clear point. That would be a win for either of them. But I don't expect either of those things to happen. What we are expecting though are some stunts. And Hillary Clinton remembers that right after the Access Hollywood moment, Donald Trump responded using what is Steve Bannon's idea

of bringing three or four women who had accused her husband of sexual assault to the debate. Yeah. Sat them like in the front row. And had a press conference with them before. An absolutely extraordinary moment. So now people are speculating based on some leaks and hints from the Trump campaign. We can put this next element up here of who Trump is going to bring this time. Like what kind of

event he's going to try to create. And one thing they're suggesting is that he might bring family members of people killed by immigrants here in the United States. Do you have any insight from the Trump camp as to what kind of

kind of show they're planning on putting on? Well, there was an interesting report. This is actually just the next element from Byron York over at the Washington Examiner. This is A3. We can put it up on the screen. I'm going to read from it. Trump told the Examiner, what they did, I'm pretty sure, is that they approached me with a debate that I couldn't take. Dana Bash, Jake Tapper.

And then Byron put in brackets, "Trump referred to the CNN anchor commentator as 'fake Tapper' throughout. No audience, sitting down, originally sitting down, a dead debate. Turn off the mics when you're not speaking so I can't interrupt him. They knew I wouldn't accept that because it was CNN, Dana Bash, Jake Tapper, and I like an audience, and probably he doesn't. Who knows?" So they thought they would present it, I would say no, and they would say we can't debate because Trump said no. So I said yes before they even gave me the terms. So he got roped into it.

Interestingly, that's Trump explaining how he even got Biden to agree to a debate. And one of the things in terms of the stunt question, this is the reason I described this debate as historic. Obviously, debates happen all the time. But some people may be aware this is the first debate in modern history that's happening without the Presidential Debate Commission. Is that what it's called? Debate Committee, Debate Commission. Well, it's the first one since the commission was created in like the 70s or something. Right, right. And it's the earliest ever. Earliest ever ever.

first since the debate commission was created in the 1970s. Meaning, that sounds maybe like a small thing, but what it means is that it's totally uncharted territory for CNN. It's totally uncharted territory for the campaigns. And so much negotiating actually goes into this. I mean, it's just, you saw what Crystal and Saga reported yesterday about breaking points not being able to pick up on the stream of the debate. I mean, this is

stupidest little piece of negotiating leverage, whatever they have. You would think that a debate would be public for everybody to stream or whatever. Yeah, you would absolutely think that it would be, but this is uncharted territory. And so I think that Donald Trump is going to be reacting just the next 24, 48 hours.

And we don't really know. And I think he doesn't really know, which is why he is also doing something similar. Hillary Clinton doesn't run an op-ed in the New York Times without the Biden campaign knowing what's going to come. And that's why I think Trump talking to Byron York and being like, why did I agree to fake Tapper? Well, you know, it was the only way to get Biden to debate. I think he's also trying to lay the groundwork for mediocre performance because, frankly, they both performed like I'm trying to use mediocre as an adverb, mediocrely back in 2020. Yeah.

And there's a there's a funny moment in that interview kind of after that exchange where the interviewer says, OK, yeah, but you couldn't actually say no to a debate, could you? And he says, and this is what people love about Trump. He's like, yeah, you're right. No, I couldn't. There's no way I could do that. Well, and then he and everybody knows that every politician knows that.

But he's unique in that he'll just say it. Yeah, I couldn't have said no. Right. And he also said something really interesting recently, reflecting on, he's like, some people told me that maybe the reason I won was because of the debates. And that's why, I mean, again, they're doing this in late June, but that's why the debates are important because I think Trump is correct that one of the biggest reasons he won

the primary and then won the election in 2016 is because people did not expect him to handle Hillary Clinton the way that he did and obviously the other GOP candidates. And Clinton didn't perform well juxtaposed with Donald Trump, not as well as people expected her to. I agree with her and with you that it's an impossible job because he's, what was he called yesterday by RFK Jr., the best debater of his generation or in a generation or in American history. He's just, he's

He's in a different league, and I don't mean that necessarily as a compliment. Right. He's just different. He's special. If you grew up being some Oxford debater like Hillary Clinton, and now all of a sudden...

The guy's just saying wrong and like saying he's going to lock you up. It's like, how do you bring women that your husband is accused of sexual assault and putting them in the front row? How do you respond to that? And with Biden, let's not forget one of what Donald Trump did to Biden in 2020. He showed up to the debate knowing he had COVID.

Remember this? Yeah, I forgot about that. And then he skipped the COVID test. Like he's calling for a drug test this time because he's accusing Biden of being on performance enhancing drugs as if Trump hasn't been jacked up on meth and Sudafed his entire life.

Sudafed, like he-- - We think he's a Sudafed addict? - Yeah, he's on some type of uppers. Okay, you're distracting me from my very good point that I was making, but Ronny Jackson, a congressman, jumped into the fray and said,

that Biden ought to be drug tested ahead of this debate. Ronny Jackson was Trump's corrupt doctor who was pumping him full of all sorts of who knows what. The entire White House staff. When he was the White House doctor. Yeah, and prescribing it off-label to all the White House staff. And then Ronny Jackson's gonna come in and talk about performance-enhancing drugs. Are you kidding me? I've forgotten whatever wonderful point I was planning to make. But this is actually relevant because I think

to Ronny Jackson coming out and saying that Trump's saying that this is why I still think it's possible the debate gets called off in the next 24, 48 hours because again- They can't fill their prescriptions. They can't fill their prescriptions. Also because the incentive for both of them to back out and make a big deal of it shifts as, you know, if he can make a political point about Biden not agreeing to do a drug test, as stupid as that sounds, Biden could never agree to do a drug test. Everybody knows Biden can never agree to do a drug test. But the whole thing is, that's absurd. Like, that's-

Of course it is. But from the political perspective- Is he serious though? I don't think he's serious. Because then Trump would have to take a drug test. I think it, I mean, I think it shifts- And Trump after 7 p.m. is like, come on. But Trump also just said that he called, basically called CNN's bluff. I think he would be willing to call Biden's bluff if the incentive shifts so as much that, you know, Biden refusing to take a drug test so they're not debating because Biden won't take a drug test if Donald Trump wants to roll with that. Trump's going to pee in a cup before this debate. Yeah.

Yeah. No. There's just no way. No, but I think he knows that. And again, I'm not saying that's what's going to happen. I'm saying there are a million different variables up in the air right now because all they agreed to do this with was a network and each other. A network and each other. It is not the same. And we're only in June. Why shouldn't the moderators have to take a performance enhancing drug test? I'm all for it.

Maybe we should... We should implement that here. I was just gonna say. Counterpoints, yeah. But the thing is, if you're not on drugs, then you're disqualified. So anyway, I continue to think that this is a very tenuous situation because of the way the debate is set up. I think it's going to be a mess if it happens for CNN because of that exact reason. They're doing commercial breaks. So someone's campaign comes in at commercial breaks and says, you're cutting the mics too much.

They're going to be cutting the mics. Trump is going to be yelling. It's just a mess. So I would recommend actually for Biden microdosing shrooms because I don't think that would show up in a test. Now you got to be careful. Like, you know, you're a little too heavy on that. You're Janet Yellen. It's going to be an interesting debate. Yeah.

But, yeah, it's worth a shot. Maybe Janet Yellen can actually give them some shrooms. She can administer the doses clinically. Does Janet Yellen have a background in psilocybin? Remember in China, she... Oh, that's right. She was sipping tea. That's right, that's right. She accidentally...

dosed herself. I forgot about that. That's amazing. Again, people think Joe Biden, like there's not unserious people saying that Biden did this to agree to do this earlier, that Democrats agreed to have Biden debating early so that they could have a contingency plan in place for the convention in August. I don't know if there's truth to that, but a lot on the line tomorrow. What I've heard from the Biden camp is that they do recognize that they're losing to Trump. And

felt like they needed some way to shake the race up and that this, so therefore they needed an early debate. At the same time,

They're very unconfident about how he's going to perform in the debate and the thinking is okay Well, this is worth a shot and if it works great But if it doesn't it's far enough away from the general election that people will have forgotten this debate performance those two things if you've figured it out are contradictory like you can't on the one hand hope that a good debate performance is going to Catapult you to the White House, but believe that a bad

bad debate performance isn't actually going to hurt you because those are, those ideas are in contradiction. Either the debate matters or it doesn't. But, you know, contradictions have never stopped anybody from moving forward with, you know, what they wanted to do anyway. Although they can also both be so weak that it just neutralizes each other's weaknesses, which I think actually is what happened in 2020. Yeah. And I, and the other thinking among Democrats is that people don't like Donald Trump because

In general, and so the more you can get Donald Trump in front of the American public, the worse off it might be for him. And liberals, by kicking him off of Twitter, Facebook, basically deplatforming him, getting him out of people's faces, have actually done the thing that Trump's advisors were trying to do.

for years. Getting him to be quiet. Which is getting him to calm down and stop putting his foot in his mouth and saying outrageous things that infuriated people. Nobody could accomplish that except for the social media platforms driven by kind of democratic outrage. And yeah, nobody's on true social. And so now they got to bring him back and put him in people's face and be like, remember this guy? Like you liked the economy under him, but you didn't like him. Remember that? Right. And hope that that's enough.

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Let's move on to some of the most interesting news playing out right now, especially in New York's 16th district, where Jamal Bowman lost his race pretty handily. Double-digit loss for squad member Jamal Bowman. And Ryan, I think maybe we just run through some of these results quickly, and then we want to get, I am especially curious to hear what you have to say about what happened to Jamal Bowman and APAC and all of that up in New York's 16th district.

But also Lauren Boebert did win that district in Ken Buck's, it was Ken Buck's old seat. The Trump-backed candidate in Utah to replace Mitt Romney lost handily. It was like a 20-point loss. Love Romney.

The 20, yeah, but Trump, I mean, this is not, there was a conversation last week, we were talking about Bob Good getting booted from his seat. He's the chairman of the Freedom Caucus. We interviewed him a couple of months ago. And people were saying, well, it was the Trump factor. Trump weighed in for his opponent, and that's what did him in. Really mixed bag with Trump endorsements in recent result history. And last night was

absolutely no exception to that. So those are, I think, a few of the big ones. We might touch on a couple of other ones going forward here, but let's start with Bowman, Ryan. Big, big loss. And so George Latimer finishes, they're still counting a little bit, but he's

creeping in on 59%, 58, 59%, which is about what the polls were showing. People expected this was going to be a landslide. Daniel Marans, my old colleague over at the Huffington Post, has a really good kind of rundown of this race that gets into the retail political... I don't know if you want to call them mistakes that Bowman made over the last couple of years, because mistakes implies that he didn't do it on purpose. Like,

Bowman in 2021 took a trip sponsored by J Street to visit Israel. And J Street had endorsed him in 2020 against Eliot Engel. - Obviously a pro-Israel group. - It's a pro-Israel, but it's liberal Zionist group. It's kind of, they fight with AIPAC a lot. And in 2020 and 2022 in particular,

They were kind of a leading element of the coalition that was fighting back against a pack while a pack was spending millions of dollars trying to take out like squad like members in 2020 Bowman came in DMF I which was the kind of proto a pack super PAC spent about two million dollars against Bowman trying to buck up Eliot Engel who was the chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee and one of the leading Israel Hawks in Congress and so for

Angle to go down was a huge deal and despite that two million dollars in spending Bowman Bowman beat him Israel Palestine wasn't a huge part of the race at the time It was it was what drove the funding but it wasn't what drove the kind of public conversation about the race Remember this was the height of the George Floyd protests right and Eliot Angle had this absolutely monumental gaffe where he went to a George Floyd rally and he was caught on an open mic and

Trying to speak and the guy running the rally is like look so many elected officials here. We're not letting everybody speak Well, you know, it's hot out here. We'll be here all day and he said I wouldn't ask if I didn't have a primary I wouldn't be I wouldn't even be here if I didn't have a primary and it was all not hot Mike is on New York one it's like wow, and if it fed into

A, that's a tone deaf thing to say at the height of the George Floyd protests. And also, he was caught living in Maryland at the time. Like a reporter went to his door in Maryland and found him there. And you've been claiming you've been at these events in New York, but you haven't been in New York at all. He's like, I've been in both places. And there was no evidence he'd been in both places at all. He'd just been in Maryland. So the two things came together.

created a big scandal and Bowman crushed him even in heavily Jewish precincts. 2021, J Street takes him to Israel and AIPAC takes lawmakers to Israel on these guided tours every two years. Steny Hoyer organizes these trips, they're bipartisan and they come back fortified in their support for Israel.

Jamal Bowman came back from that trip to Israel a changed person. And he's talked about this. Like seeing the occupation up close in the West Bank, like seeing that Muslims could not or Palestinians could not go down certain roads, seeing the fencing. There's this one famous street in

That has kind of netting over top of the street, and I think it's in Hebron - because so many of the Jewish Israeli settlers there throw trash onto the street from their settlements, so they eventually had to put up a net The highways where you can't drive if you don't have the right license plate you have to have certain permits to get different areas he was shocked to his core and

And so that's why I say I wouldn't describe the political decisions he made after that as mistakes because he decided that this was wrong and this was something he was going to stand up for. Now, in the time since then, he did not build inroads into the Jewish community. He did not come to the synagogues. This is what they say, that he didn't come to the synagogues and have this dialogue with them. He didn't talk to them about his experience that he'd had there.

It was it was more of just a public Kind of political campaign that he was running and that's that's what he felt was appropriate But what it did is it drove this wedge even among say the Liberals in his district who might say, you know what? I agree with you. I'm against the occupation. I mean this and that They felt like they had just kind of lost touch with him and he didn't care about that community. And so it's interesting that a pack spent nearly 20 million dollars in this race because

His initial race is what basically brought APAC into the Super PAC game. Like DMFI spending $2 million and losing to Jamal Bowman convinced APAC, okay, DMFI is not cut out for this on its own. They're raising $5, $10 million a year. We can do much better than that. So that's why they came in in 2022, uh,

and spent $30, $40, $50 million, and why they came in and just spent nearly $20 million just in this race. Wasn't it 14 the total, somewhere like 14 points for Bowman this race? I saw 17, but I don't think we've seen a final number either. I mean, either way, it is the most expensive race, and all because of APAC. It's the most expensive, what, house race in the history of house races? Yes, it is, and that's including that David Trone race.

Like the total wine guy who spent like 12 of his own million dollars to finish in third place in one race and then spent more than like roughly that to finally win. And God knows what he spent to lose his Senate race this year. That's a different question. Yeah, most expensive race in history. But it's also because it's New York. Like buying airtime in New York is insanely expensive. And to blanket the airwaves,

Especially when you have to buy New York air, but it's like suburban New York that you're actually aiming for is gonna cost you an enormous amount of money. So interestingly, there was a report in Axios this morning after Bowman, as the dust was kind of clearing,

that quoted a House Democrat saying it felt kind of gross, the amount of money that had been spent on the Bowman race. And that like AIPAC, it was this sort of, not rebuttal, it was this rebuke almost, off the record, of course, all of these people were talking off the record, but of how AIPAC had handled this race, saying this was too much. It's not even, this is from people who sounded like very supportive of AIPAC, saying this is

starting to actually undermine your cause and give people reason to say you're out here putting gross amounts of money to buy races. And it's not feeling like so democratic anymore. It's feeling a little bit like big money. And if you look at AIPAC's donors, they're mostly Republicans, which bothers Democrats more than the fact that it's AIPAC. Although not the voters in New York 16th. Well, it's not as if

It's not as if the ads say funded by Republican donors who have given money to AIPAC. It says this ad was supported by United Democracy Project. Like, oh, I'm for United Democracies. It sounds great. Well, I also thought Latimer's messaging was interesting with the way Bowman ran his campaign where Latimer was saying,

I want to end the chaos in Washington, D.C. And then just in the last few days, I'm sure, actually an April poll matched the results that we got last night pretty closely. But you have the chaos if you're a voter who's just trying to feed your family and take your kids to soccer practice or whatever. Looking at

Jamal Bowman like jumping around saying F a pack whatever else he said and then a guy and also get the whole fire thing the 9/11 Conspiracy theories which don't always play so well in New York and he had walked back You know sort of on a parallel track with Marjorie Taylor. Great, you know and a lot of anti Bowman people to your point about a packs gross amount of spending and

are frustrated that AIPAC spent so much money because now they can't make the argument that Bowman was unpopular and that his constituents rejected his brand of politics fair and square. But you just can't say that. You can believe it. And I've heard people make a reasonable case that Latimer, absent interventions from either side, might have beaten Jamal Bowman because of the district that he's running in and the politics around it.

But nobody can say that with any confidence because that's not what happened. APAC came in and dropped at least, you know, we'll see the final total in the end. But, you know, more money than has ever been dropped by any single organization in a congressional race before. And that obviously tilts the scale. And so,

Now, it makes it so nobody has to actually talk about the issues at play. Yeah. And instead, both sides can say, look at the sheer amount of money. And from the Democratic side, and we're going to talk about this later in our APAC block, it is wild. Because this isn't the APAC block. Right, right. It is wild that Democrats are allowing in Democratic primaries, Republican billionaires to funnel so much money into their primaries. It's-

Kind of an incredible situation. And I just don't think Republicans would ever allow that. I also think progressives and, you know, Cori Bush is well worth talking about in this context. Looks like she might lose her primary. Tough one. Ilhan Omar's got a tough race. A nail biter in Minnesota with Ilhan Omar. I think progressives have struggled to connect

these really front and center high-profile discussions about Israel and Palestine to the material concerns of some of their voters who for whatever reason and we can all disagree with the reasons but just don't care as much about the issue as they do domestic ones. This is the only district where they even talked somewhat about Israel-Palestine. When AIPAC runs its ads

Even in this district, they were not about Israel-Palestine. Like when they were going after Bowman, they're going after Bowman for not being a loyal enough Democrat, withholding his vote on the infrastructure bill. I'm sure they dumped that oppo on the 9-11 stuff. Like pulling the fire alarm. Which he should not have done. And then he shouldn't have lied about it. Like he's a principal. And so I think that hurt him because like principles know how fire alarms work. He thought it was the door is what he said. And so even AIPAC.

Like doesn't run on Israel Palestine, right? They pull what they think is gonna be damaging to their opponent and then they run on that but they I mean these candidates what they're in means the reality they're facing is that it's going to get I mean It's going to get dragged into the center of the race Even if a pack knows that it's not front and center concerns of voters and media conversation about Cory Bush I mean, it's what it's the media conversation but like on the ground so it'll be Wesley Bell versus Cory Bush and

The ads are not going to be about Israel-Palestine for the most part. That's true. You know, Cori Bush will be talking about how she stood up for the renters and fought against ending the foreclosure moratorium. I guess I... She's delivered for St. Louis that she's brought back money, like Summer Lee did in Pittsburgh. Whereas Wesley Bell will say, it's too much drama, you know. Well, that's what I was going to say. Put a guy like me in. I think it just plays into the...

broader narrative of chaos and like an extremism. And I do think that progressive Democrats need to find a better way to talk about the issue that neutralizes that. It's just the reality that it's going to be used as something that's... I mean, Summer Lee basically

Showed how to do that and Cori Bush is kind of modeling her campaign after after summer leaves summer Lee if you look at her She's basically a squad member of you, but if you look at her advertising and her messaging in Pittsburgh, it's indistinguishable from a normal Democrat and that's To the point that if you have a big turnout at a Democratic primary election There are a lot of normie Democrats who that's just what they want. Mm-hmm

Hi, I'm Katie Lowes. And I'm Guillermo Diaz. And now we're back with another season of our podcast, Unpacking the Toolbox, where Guillermo and I will be rewatching the show. To officially unpack season three of Scandal. Unpredictable. You don't see it coming. It's a wild, wild ride. The twists and turns in season three. Mesmerizing. But also,

And yes, Katie and I's famous teeth-pulling scene that kicks off a romance. And it was peak TV. This is new Scandal.

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Meet the real woman behind the tabloid headlines in a personal podcast that delves into the life of the notorious Tori Spelling as she takes us through the ups and downs of her sometimes glamorous, sometimes chaotic life and marriage. I don't think he knew how big it would be, how big the life I was given and live is.

I think he was like, oh, yeah, things come and go. But with me, it never came and went. Is she Donna Martin or a down-and-out divorcee? Is she living in Beverly Hills or a trailer park? In a town where the lines are blurred, Tori is finally going to clear the air in the podcast Misspelling. When a woman has nothing to lose, she has everything to gain. I just filed for divorce. Whoa. I said the words.

That I've said like in my head for like 16 years. Wild. Listen to Misspelling on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Cheaters and Backstabbers. I'm Shadi Diaz. And I'm Kate Robards. And we are New York City stand-up comedians and best friends. And we love a good cheating and backstabbing story.

So this is a series where our guests reveal their most shocking cheating stories. Join us as we learn how to avoid getting our hearts broken or our backs slashed. Listen to Cheaters and Backstabbers on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

I'm Angie Martinez. Check out my podcast where I talk to some of the biggest athletes, musicians, actors in the world. We go beyond the headlines and the soundbites to have real conversations about real life, death, love, and everything in between. This life right here, just finding myself, just relaxation, just not feeling stressed, just not feeling pressed. This is what I'm most proud of. I'm proud of Mary because I've been through hell and some horrible things.

That feeling that I had of inadequacy is gone. You're going to die being you. So you got to constantly work on who you are to make sure that the stars align correctly.

Life ain't easy and it's getting harder and harder. So if you have a story to tell, if you've come through some trials, you need to share it because you're going to inspire someone. You're going to give somebody the motivation to not give up, to not quit. Listen to Angie Martinez IRL on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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Let's talk about Lauren Boebert. Why not? Speaking of normies. Yes. Lauren Boebert won her primary in the Beetlejuice district. Kidding. You remember the Beetlejuice story.

Oh my God, the play. I'm sorry that I had to remind you of that because the image is indelible. But we have the results from Lauren Boebert's race. This turned out to be a pretty healthy district, pretty healthy primary win for her. 43 points, though, she didn't get over half because the rest of the vote was split between all of these other candidates. This is Ken Buxall district, as we mentioned, right up at the top. What's

Very interesting about this situation is that the establishment guy, Jeff Heard, he won the Republican primary in Lauren Boebert's current district.

So the third congressional district she switched districts feeling like she was going to lose and she probably would have lost actually We don't know but she probably would have lost from that third district outside Denver to this district Which is I believe yes the fourth congressional district and the establishment guy not a big MAGA guy is the one who ended up winning Her actual district that she'll be vacating obviously moving over to this new district now now in Texas

you have to get over 50% in a primary or you go to a runoff. So if the Republicans in Colorado were running on the Texas primary model,

You now have a runoff between Boebert and what was her name, Jenny? Yeah. The second place candidate there. How do you think that goes? Do you think that there's enough anti-Boebert sentiment in that district that she actually ends up losing and that she only won because the anti-Boebert vote was split? Or do you think that a decent number of those candidates had as a second choice Boebert so that she'd win in a primary anyway? Yeah.

Because the point here is that Bowman last year had two opponents. So last election had two opponents and he got like 54% of the vote. He won comfortably because they split the anti-Bowman vote. But for people watching closely, it was a warning sign. Like, oh.

You were just four percentage points over a majority. Yeah. You could have lost that race if there was a single opponent against you. She's only at 43. She reminds me, her problems remind me of Bowman's in some respect, just thinking about the fire alarm situation and the oppo that was dragged out on his previous sort of poetry blog that dabbled in 9-11 trutherism.

And also kind of reminds me of Marjorie Taylor Greene. I made a joke about that earlier. The sort of media double standard aside, I think it's really interesting that people who are like now in Congress were pulled in those directions because I think it's tempting for all of us. And I don't think it's isolated to them. And I think the populism in particular, when you're seeking out explanations for the just

rapid changes, deindustrialization, material concerns that have accelerated. It's not crazy to get pulled down in crazy directions. You just have to sort of be vigilant against those things. But I think Lauren Boebert

with Jamal Bowman in that sort of fire alarm versus Beetlejuice situation, they just look ridiculous. And I know Lauren Boebert ran on, she used to own a bar, right, that was like a Second Amendment-themed bar, basically like a gun-themed bar. I think it was called Shooters, something like that. Like it had more health code violations than like... Didn't really. Yes.

It's the sign of a good restaurant. But, yeah, I mean, I think there's, she just lost a lot of, you know, even as like this populist person. And to survive, she jumped districts. I wonder what would have happened if Bowman jumped districts and ran against Richie Torres and the Bronx.

That's super interesting. And maybe two years from now, that's what he'll do. I think Boebert probably would have lost, but it's hard to say just given how much money that you can raise when you are super MAGA right now. I don't know how Trump would have dealt with anything like that. That reminds me to read this Dave Weigel tweet. He said, this might be the worst primary night for Trump-endorsed GOP candidates all year. Burns loses narrowly in South Carolina. Dave Williams getting crushed in Colorado 5, all before the Utah Senate race comes in.

And polls had showed Trump backed Trent Staggs down big. And indeed, Trent Staggs did go down to John Curtis, who ended up winning the primary for that Romney seat. We can put that up on the screen. That's B5. He was definitely not the Trump pick in the Utah race and ended up winning by double digits, 50 to 30. And Romney endorsed Curtis? I believe Romney did endorse John Curtis. Yeah, he's like a...

People see him as like a Romney 2.0 kind of, if that makes sense. And I've seen political scientists say that if not for the counterfactual of Joseph Smith wandering out to Utah and creating Mormonism out there, that Utah would actually be a blue state.

because of the if in other words if Utah residents voted the same way as You know urban suburban and exurban Voters and rural voters vote in every other state in the country. There are enough people

urban and suburban voters just concentrated around Salt Lake City, that it would be a democratic state. But because of Mormonism and the conservative strain in it, it's a red state, but that would also explain why it is anti-Trump and trends toward the

the this kind of Curtis Romney style. Yeah, the governor Spencer Cox is also sort of in that mold. There's a very particular type of Republican that comes from Utah and it's not behind me right now. I just looked but the book that's behind me sometimes is called Alienated America by Tim Carney and Utah plays a big role in that book because it has a really high level of sort of civic society, civil society, meaning that

Community bonds are really tight. They have robust like rotary clubs and all of that stuff. And it's one of the few red states that was, not few, it's one of the handful of red states that was sort of ardently anti-Trump in the Republican primary 2015, 2016. And that is an interesting point along the lines of what you were making. If you go to, you know, rural Wisconsin,

super, like old Dem districts, super pro-Trump. But in states or in places where the social fabric was stronger, southeastern Wisconsin, they're pretty anti-Trump, anti-populism. So I think there's something to that about Utah in particular, but it's also hard to extricate the Mormonism from the Utahism too. No, you, out of the question.

It's utterly impossible. And if they just solved the drinking water problem, Utah would be doing great. Anything else? Oh, John Avalon, CNN guy. But more importantly, I think he helped co-found No Labels. He won his primary in New York as well. Oh, Staten Island or something? Was it? Is it the George Santos seat? It's somewhere up there. No, it's, well, maybe. It's New York's first district. But John Avalon. It used to be Staten Island, yeah. Yeah.

Masmerizing.

Also, we get to hang out with all of our old scandal friends like Bellamy Young, Scott Foley, Tony Goldwyn, Debbie Allen, Kerry Washington. So many people. Even more shocking assassinations from Papa and Mama Pope. And yes, Katie and I's famous teeth pulling scene that kicks off a romance. And it was peak TV. This is new scandal.

content for your eyes, for your ears, for your hearts, for your minds. Well, suit up, gladiators. Grab your big old glass of wine and prepare yourselves for even more behind the scenes. Listen to Unpacking the Toolbox on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

I don't think he knew how big it would be, how big the life I was given and live is.

I think he was like, oh, yeah, things come and go. But with me, it never came and went. Is she Donna Martin or a down-and-out divorcee? Is she living in Beverly Hills or a trailer park? In a town where the lines are blurred, Tori is finally going to clear the air in the podcast Misspelling. When a woman has nothing to lose, she has everything to gain. I just filed for divorce. Whoa, I said the words.

That I've said, like, in my head for, like, 16 years. Wild. Listen to Misspelling on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Cheaters and Backstabbers. I'm Shadi Diaz. And I'm Kate Robards. And we are New York City stand-up comedians and best friends. And we love a good cheating and backstabbing story. Welcome.

So this is a series where our guests reveal their most shocking cheating stories. Join us as we learn how to avoid getting our hearts broken or our backs slashed. Listen to Cheaters and Backstabbers on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

I'm Angie Martinez. Check out my podcast where I talk to some of the biggest athletes, musicians, actors in the world. We go beyond the headlines and the soundbites to have real conversations about real life, death, love, and everything in between. This life right here, just finding myself, just relaxation, just not feeling stressed, just not feeling pressed. This is what I'm most proud of. I'm proud of Mary because I've been through hell and some horrible things.

That feeling that I had of inadequacy is gone. You're going to die being you. So you got to constantly work on who you are to make sure that the stars align correctly.

Life ain't easy and it's getting harder and harder. So if you have a story to tell, if you've come through some trials, you need to share it because you're going to inspire someone. You're going to give somebody the motivation to not give up, to not quit. Listen to Angie Martinez IRL on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Criminalia. I'm Maria Tremarcki.

And I'm Holly Frey. Together, we invite you into the dark corridors of history and true crime. For each season, we explore a new theme. From poisoners to stalkers, art thieves to snake oil salesmen. We uncover the secrets of history's most interesting figures, such as Walter Minx, the man who built his own submarine hoping to escape with his blackmail payout under Lake Michigan. It sounds made up, but it's 100% true.

We'll explore the crimes as well as societal forces at play, from unfair sentencing to jaw-dissolving health risks. And tune in at the end of each episode as we indulge in cocktails and mocktails inspired by each story. Listen to Criminalia on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

All right, Haiti. We can go ahead and start running some of this footage. This is C1. This is troops arriving in Port-au-Prince, Kenyan troops arriving in Port-au-Prince yesterday. This block is called Haiti on the screen. It could also be called Kenya, though, Ryan, because this was unfolding. It should be called America, though, right? Right, yeah. This was unfolding as just...

We could literally put it on a split screen with what was happening in Nairobi yesterday, which was just a demonstration that as of right now, according to the Human Rights Commission of Kenya, left 22 people dead.

A section of their parliament, as the BBC reported, quote, went up in flames as demonstrations against a new tax proposal escalated. I'll keep reading from this BBC report. They said protests against an unpopular finance bill, which included several tax rises, have been going for days. But they escalated on Tuesday as MPs passed an amended bill.

Bill, protesters broke into parliament, vandalizing the interior and setting parts of the complex on fire. The ceremonial mace symbolizing the authority of the legislature was stolen. Police opened fire with live ammunition, killing at least five people, according to the Kenyan Medical Association. This is a quote from 24-year-old named Derek who told the BBC, there are some things that are hard to understand, like how can you impose a 16% tax on bread?

How can you tax sanitary pads? That was a reference to proposals that were in the original bill that fueled some of these protests. We should, of course, note that this is a the troops that landed in Port-au-Prince yesterday, the Kenyan troops that landed in Port-au-Prince yesterday. It's absolutely part of a U.S.-backed

scheme to basically, I mean, we don't know how it's going to end. We can probably guess how it's going to end, but to engineer the preferred outcome of the United States in Haiti. And it comes as a pretty important time in Africa for the United States. They just gave them what the first Sub-Saharan African country, Biden, did. He designated them a major non-NATO ally right around the same time that these negotiations over Haiti are happening.

You can put that up. I think that's C5. Sorry to jump around on you, but you can put up C5 there. It all goes together. And that's one of the important things here. Yes. And so William Ruto, one of the things that the U.S.,

dangles in front of foreign leaders in exchange for things that they want is a trip to Washington. And William Ruto accepted that trip to Washington. He was here very recently. One of the things that they announced was that they were going to name Kenya as this major non-NATO ally. They announced some debt forgiveness and some other schemes that are supposed to make Kenyan leaders happy.

Coincidentally, William Ruto is one of the first people, if not the first people ever charged by the International Criminal Court for war crimes, for a slaughter that he was allegedly

heavily involved in. They eventually dropped those charges and now he's president of Kenya. Kenya has also been doing all sorts of very weird pro-US stuff, weird in the sense that it doesn't fit with

kind of what the politics of the region might indicate. They're the only country there that joined our kind of anti-Houthi coalition. And you'll often see, if you look at that giant UN billboard when, let's say, there's an Israel-Palestine vote and the entire world is voting one way and there's like

Countries you've never heard of that are like Pacific Islands and the US are voting the other way Kenya will be there with them - yeah, what that's going on here with Kenya You can also if you want to go down a rabbit hole go check out Kenya's election in which Ruto won in a very very scandal plagued election by like 0.1% or something with all sorts of anomalies and all sorts of allegations that

That it was rigged and that the that the US's preferred candidate, Ruto, came out on top despite not having actual actual majority support. And then fast forward, US wants international troops to go into Haiti. The US feels like, eh, we can't. We've sent in the Marines too many times into Haiti. And we've sent the UN too many times into Haiti. Right. And what's and what's it almost it feels racist. It's like, well, we need some African troops.

troops to like do this invasion for us you know who who can help us out oh we've been doing a lot of favors for Kenya Kenya will do this it's very unpopular in Kenya this this this invasion is extremely unpopular uh they had to pay the Kenyan troops I think it's reported they're getting paid an extra fifteen hundred dollars a month on top of their salaries oh that's right which is

Which is only further fueling resentment in Haiti because Haitian police officers aren't even getting paid right like they haven't been paid in Months at best. Yeah, and they're like wait a minute, but you're paying them 15, you know the average you know Haitian police officer makes it a tiny fraction of that and you know, there are reports that the the base that the US built for these Kenyans isn't really ready yet and

And then the question, what on earth are they going to do? What do we think a couple thousand foreign police officers are going to do in a situation that is completely out of control? Like what? It literally makes no sense. Like what is the goal here? So they set up this presidential council.

in a hotel room in Jamaica. Right. That presidential council took a bunch of resumes. We've seen the same thing play out before. Yeah. They took a bunch of resumes. They took 60 resumes from people applying to be prime minister. Yeah. They narrowed it down to five. They did a bunch of interviews. And then they picked a guy from UNICEF to be the prime minister of Haiti. That's not a

political solution that has the buy-in of the of the Haitian people right you have the buy-in of the United States and maybe you know some elements some elements of You know the Haitian elite which were you know jockeying and lobbying and pressuring to try to get their preferred prime minister outcome but prime minister of what like of a handful of Kenyan troops or police officers not troops and

So, and this is also in the context of, I mean, some people describe it as a kind of second scramble for Africa, Russia, and some sort of radical Islamic efforts to capture different countries.

The United States is trying to keep some of that at bay. It's trying to maintain its power with China as well. And so that's where you see Kenya becoming especially important to the United States. Kenya is in a lot of debt. They have to pay, like us, a lot of interest on their debt. That's where... Unlike us, it can't just...

Yeah. Have the Federal Reserve handle that. Right. And so that's where the sort of financial squeeze pushed people into the streets. Let's actually roll C2 because Barack Obama's half sister was on CNN, was being tear gassed on CNN reportedly. Let's roll this footage C2. Come speak to us. I'm live on CNN. Why are you here today?

I'm here because look at what's happening. Young Kenyans are demonstrating for their rights. They're demonstrating with flags and banners. I can't even see anymore. They're being tear gassed. They're being... We shall not be... This is our nation. We know how to live in a...

So that sign, if you were watching, it said colonialism never ended. One of the fellow protesters with Alma Obama had a sign that said colonialism never ended. That was tear gas. You could hear shrieks.

Shots in the background so we can put the next element up on the screen here. That's because yeah They were fired their protesters were being fired on in the streets obviously we mentioned earlier that part of the Parliament went up on went up in flames yesterday as well

This is from the Associated Press, quote, "The finance bill was meant to raise or introduce taxes or fees on a range of daily items and services, including internet data, fuel, bank transfers, and diapers. Some measures were stripped as anger grew." And it's all part of the Kenyan government's efforts to raise an extra $2.7 billion in domestic revenue. Obviously then, sending well-paid troops to Haiti

not going to be popular either. I'm assuming, and actually I think the U.S. did pay for that operation. Yes, the U.S. is paying for it in lots of different ways. Right. Yes. And meanwhile, some people watching might say, well, what do you want to do in Haiti? Well, A, not that. That's not...

Like just because you don't have any other ideas is not an argument for sending an international like invasion airy force in to try to occupy Haiti Like there there are Haitian political elements that are trying to work toward some type of solution and if the kind of United Nations want to support that they can do that with

support for, you know, Haitian farmers, Haitian merchants, Haitian businesses, Haitian organizations that are trying to come together and you can help import the things that they need to get off the ground.

But just coming in with more guns and putting Kenyan troops in a base is only kind of suppressing whatever political reckoning and political dialogue needs to happen to eventually get somewhere. Yeah. We've tried it a million times. Yeah, we have been trying to impose...

some type of situation on Haiti for 200 years. Well, with similar methods too. Yeah. I mean, very similar methods. Yeah, we just dress them up differently and troops from different countries, different times, but same thing. Yeah. All right, you might remember that back in early May, we reported here and at The Intercept that AIPAC, the lobby group that describes itself as pro-Israel, was secretly intervening in a congressional primary in Portland, Oregon.

in order to block the sister of Pramila Jayapal, her name's Sushila Jayapal, from winning an open primary. Now, I reported that AIPAC was routing its money through a super PAC that claims to have a pro-science mission called 314 Action, and that it also appeared AIPAC was funneling money through a different PAC called Voters for Responsive Government. AIPAC's allies furiously denied the reporting, arguing it played into anti-Semitic tropes.

Yet about a week later, Jayapal's opponent, Maxine Dexter, was forced to disclose some of her last-minute surge in funding, and it turned out it was coming from donors who regularly gave to AIPAC. One of the donors who had maxed out to Dexter even told me she wasn't aware of the contribution, but that she greenlights whatever AIPAC asks her to do. She told me, quote,

Still, they refused to disclose their super PAC spending down the stretch. And 314 Action even brazenly lied about the source of the money. And when I say that they lied, I mean they straight up bald-faced lied. The super PACs were relying on a campaign rule that treats them differently than candidates. Candidates have to disclose every 48 hours down the stretch of the campaign so nobody can sneak in new money.

But Super PACs only have to disclose their previous month's funding on the 20th day of the next month. The election was scheduled for May 21st, and on May 20th, Super PACs would have had to declare all of their fundraising from April, on May 20th. Now, Voters for Responsive Government filed a report that claimed it had not raised or spent a single penny in April.

Yet they had ads out to the market by May 2nd. In other words, they're claiming they raised money, hired contractors, produced ads, set up bank accounts, and placed a media buy all in 24 hours with none of that work happening in April. Of course, that's basically impossible. But the reason they needed to make that claim on their paperwork was so that they could then delay disclosure of everything all the way until June 20th, a month after the election.

314 action also pushed a ton of their action into their May paperwork. So on May 20th, that's the day before the election, they only disclosed three donors. One of them was an AIPAC guy who gave them $350,000. Another was Michael Bloomberg and another was unrelated to the race. Now I've been covering politics for about 20 years or so and I've seen my share of dishonesty. But what came next?

reminded me I still know how to be shocked. Eric Poliak, the managing director of 314 Action, took to Twitter on May 20th after they released their donors to taunt me, saying, quote, waiting on Ryan Grimm to issue a retraction.

What's so stunning about this denial is that when Eric made it on May 20th, he knew that on May 1st, 314 Action had cashed a million dollar check from United Democracy Project, APAC's super PAC. And he knew that a month later on June 20th, that fact would become public. Yet he decided to knowingly lie to the public anyway.

Here it is in 314 Actions June 20th filing. That's a lot of zeros on the small screen there, but I can count them for you. There's six of them. That's a million dollars. In other words, Polyak knew his organization was spending a million dollars of AIPAC's money on top of lots more from AIPAC-directed donors, yet he said exactly the opposite the day before the election.

Now on May 2nd, a few days before my article initially confirmed AIPAC's role in the race, Jayapal and her opponent Eddie Morales held a rare joint press conference raising questions about the source of the new money in the race. Polyak took to Twitter to mock them.

He wrote, "After Sushila Jayapal and Eddie Morales' Veep-style press conference, where they offered zero evidence to back their ridiculous claims, it's clear they're down in the polls and desperate to smear our grassroots movement fueled by millions of contributions." So consider the audacity there. He claimed to be leading a grassroots movement fueled by millions of contributions the day after they deposited that million-dollar check.

When Voters for Responsive Government disclosed its donors, we learned that AIPAC had cut them a $1.3 million check, and eight other AIPAC-linked donors had kicked in $2.6 million more. According to the paperwork they filed, they managed to raise all that money in a single day.

Emily, I don't know if you've ever done any fundraising. No. But calling that many people in a single day and just getting them on the phone is gonna be hard. All the zeros there, my goodness. That's a lot. Just typing in all of those zeros is gonna take you more than 24 hours. So much work for the FEC.

So yeah, what they are banking on is that the FEC will look at this and be like, all right, whatever. Right. Who cares? We don't have enough commissioners. We don't have enough staff. We don't basically enforce laws around here. But even if they had disclosed on May 20th, that still was too late. Yeah. Because-

There's mail-in voting. 80% of the people had already voted at that point. That was just to kind of twist the knife, to just keep it so that you didn't even have 24 hours to know who was funding that race. Isn't it just a fine? And Jayapal lost, just to be clear. Right, yeah, she lost. And isn't it just a fine if you're noncompliant with FEC deadlines? Yeah, and they might not even get a fine if the FEC doesn't bother with it. Let's say the FEC does bother with it. Yeah, it would be a fine. It's sort of like when, you know, a...

Exxon Mobil gets a fine. It's just the cost of doing business when you have enough money. They spent $4 million in a couple of weeks. They can afford a little fine. This is totally unrelated, but Lee Fong, your old colleague Lee Fong, had a great story. He ran in The Guardian this week about...

basically these pro-Israel groups that had been lobbying on behalf of Israeli government apparatuses. Nobody had registered for Farah. And again, like it's the same thing that the cost of compliance sometimes or the cost of noncompliance is just worth the noncompliance. It's just worth whatever you get out of it. Especially if you don't expect it's going to be prosecuted, yeah. Yeah, and when there's a timeline, where there's like an actual election that you can squeeze this past, I mean, it's just...

This should, especially given the AIPAC spending patterns, this should give people pause for the next couple of years about what's happening in some of these races around the country. And obviously, you're eagle-eyed and keeping your own reporting focused on this, but I

You know, it's got to get into local papers. Local reporters have to pay attention to this stuff for the purpose of ads. People should be paying attention to this stuff that's really dirty. And I talked to some local reporters who were trying to report it out at the time. And they wrote a couple OK stories where they would say, like, this looks awfully fishy, but they didn't have the sourcing to be able to

just confirm that they didn't have a source that I had that said like, oh yeah, this is actually, this is definitely AIPAC. - Right. - And so it makes it very tough for, and especially journalists that don't wanna get accused of trafficking in anti-Semitic tropes because you can't just go around just recklessly suggesting without evidence

that APAC is funding a particular super PAC. If you have the evidence, you can say it. And they couldn't quite prove it because APAC had done a good enough job of keeping its fingerprints off of the money until afterwards. And it's very smart in a way because it makes you sound crazy when you're saying it in real time. Right. Like you sound like a conspiracy theorist or a lunatic. Right. But then afterwards, like, oh, yeah, that was us. Yeah.

And after the polls closed, AIPAC was like, this shows that being pro-Israel is good politics. It's like, well, if that's true, why didn't you endorse her publicly? Why did you deny that this was happening? Why did you go to such extreme lengths to conceal the role of a pro-Israel organization in this race? Yeah.

You can't have it both ways. You can't say that your involvement shows that being pro-APAC is good politics at the same time that you're hiding the fact that APAC was even involved. Yeah, yeah. I mean, great reporting, crazy stuff, dirty stuff. Yeah, it's crazy. And what Democrats have realized

is that the vulnerability for other Democrats here is not that it's AIPAC money, it's not that it's pro-Israel money. There was polling done in the district where most voters in Portland had absolutely no idea who AIPAC even was. - Right. - 'Cause we think everybody knows who AIPAC is 'cause this is something we've covered closely. - You think everybody knows who AIPAC is. - Okay, I do.

You always have to remind yourself that we are weirdos. We're unusual. We follow politics this closely. Most voters are like, what's AIPAC? Never heard of AIPAC. Absolutely. What Democratic voters don't like, however, is Republican voters.

rich people spending money in Democratic primaries. And if you scroll back and look at that list of the eight people that gave, for instance, I think you'll find all of those are like Republican donors. And not just like we give to both, but like mostly Republican donors, a lot of Trump donors. And that drives Democratic primary voters crazy. Summer Lee was able to use that to her advantage in the Pittsburgh race. Others have been able to use that to their advantage.

But by hiding the donors until after the election, you strip Democrats of the ability to say this is actually Republican money. You could say it's AIPAC money if you can report that and you have some evidence, but without knowing who the specific donors are, you can't necessarily say it's Republican money, even though most AIPAC money is Republican money.

I mean, it's just dirty. It's dirty, dirty stuff. Right. And look, if AIPAC wants to spend $17 million in Jamal Bowman's race, you know, have at it. Right. And at least in that race, they did it, you know, with their chest.

That's so true. And they got backlash, or they're starting to get backlash based on those leaks to, well, leaks, those off-the-record comments to Axios this morning. I don't know how much of that you've heard from even relatively pro-Israel Democrats who are just getting very uncomfortable with APEC's tactics. This story should be another part of that. Yes, it should be. But we'll see, because

From from the Democratic leadership's perspective, I think as as long as a pack, you know sticks with its mission of being pro-israel And does not carry the agenda of their donors their further agenda of the donors Which is which is you know a Republican agenda because there's a Republicans as long as they stick with pro-israel agenda and as long as they only go after progressives in primaries and

Then I think democratic leadership sees that as a win-win. Yeah, probably. Like that's fine, actually. Probably. You're gonna discipline our left flank? Yep. Works for us. Yeah, sounds great. But, you know, any time that you make a deal with people who are not your allies, and these Republican donors are quite literally your adversary, political adversaries, you're taking a huge gamble. And so the question is,

Is this kind of enemy is my friend situation really that clever or are you going to wind up getting eaten by it? It also becomes a crutch. When that money dries up, if the money dries up in 10 years or whatever, you are just left out without a huge funding source. It also suppresses what your kind of organic coalition believes about a major political issue. Yeah, absolutely. And distances you further from your voters. Yeah.

Yeah, absolutely. Happened with a lot of the libertarian spending, Koch spending for Republicans over the years. Sort of lost touch with the support for social safety net among a lot of Republicans. And that's very interesting. And then look what they got. Trump. Yep. So who will be Democrats' Trump? There you go. I think we might find out. We stick around long enough. We'll find out if...

We don't end up in a nuclear war. That's right. We're going to find out if we're going to next. That's right. With Dr. Theodore Postol, one of the leading nuclear armament experts in the world. Stick around for that. Joining us now is Professor Emeritus from MIT, Theodore Postol. Ted, thanks so much for joining us. It's my great pleasure. Thank you.

And so to set up this conversation, can you give us a kind of quick run through of your career, how you wound up both at the Pentagon and also doing your academic work? Well, through a series of accidents, I was actually doing basic science and I was increasingly concerned and interested in the arms race. This was in the 80s when the arms race was just completely out of control. And

I wound up, through a series of accidents and a very close friend of mine in Washington, going to the Office of Technology Assessment where I worked on a study of the MX missile, which was the big game in town at the time, in fact, international game. And I came to the attention of the US Navy because of some of the work I was doing with them as an outside analyst.

And I was offered a position as a science and policy advisor to the chief of naval operations. And of course, that was a great opportunity. So I took it. And I wound up, you know, very quickly in the belly of the beast. Worked a few years with the chief. Saw quite a lot, which I must say educated me to a level that maybe I shouldn't dab at this point because...

You see a combination of the most capable and the most incapable and opportunistic people. You see the spread, you know, very, very good and very, very bad people. And it gave me, I think, an extremely refined understanding of how these bureaucracies work.

And of course, I took the opportunity to, I spent many nights in a cage reading classified documents to learn as much as I could about the weapon systems that I'm supposed to be advising on. And that gave me a baseline that I've been able to build on for decades.

So it's just a series of accidents. Yeah, and I think baseline is definitely being humble there. You're, I think, one of the foremost experts on the issue we're talking about here. We start with kind of E2 here. This is a Washington Post article headline, kind of concerning headline. U.S. concerned about Ukraine strikes on Russian nuclear radar stations.

So walk us through why the US is concerned about this and why we ought to be concerned about this as well. What is Ukraine doing here? - Well, the US should be concerned about this. And unfortunately, I think the US has to take responsibility for this because these radar stations are critical to the early warning systems of Russia. And Russia, unlike us, does not have satellites in space

that are capable of seeing the whole Earth from space. We have this kind of capability. So if they lose a radar, they have no way of knowing what's coming at them from that direction. Whereas if we lose a radar, we just simply go to our satellites and look down and say, oh yeah, we can see nothing is happening there. Now, given the high state

of tension between Russia and the United States at this time, I think it's extraordinarily dangerous to tamper with anything that has anything to do with Russia's early warning capabilities because they are going to be more alert at this time because of concerns about nuclear weapon use from the United States.

Now, Americans tend to have the attitude, "Oh, we would never strike them first." It's a common reaction. But I can assure you that they don't believe this about us. And in fact, if you look at American nuclear weapons systems and the kinds of things we are doing even now, it creates the appearance. I want to underscore it creates an appearance because I don't think people realize what the meaning of what they're doing is.

but to a well-informed technical analyst on the Russian side, it looks like the United States is preparing to fight and win a nuclear war with Russia. Now, of course,

fighting and winning a nuclear war is ridiculous. The only way you win a nuclear war is by a definition. The definition is ridiculous. It's like, at the end of this exchange, where both of our countries and civilization is destroyed, we have some margin of larger, a slightly larger number of nuclear weapons left in our arsenal than the adversary. Well, that's totally ridiculous. That's like saying,

Well, we'll have more fingernails on our body when our head is blown off. So fighting and winning a nuclear war is just absolutely, this is not a matter of opinion, absolutely analytically ridiculous. But these kinds of doctrines have developed in the United States and in Russia too. Because there was a long time where people did not fully understand how dangerous

how catastrophic large-scale use of nuclear weapons would be. From my point of view, this is so obvious that an infant would understand it. But unfortunately, in the world of military doctrine, and let me be clear here, I'm not talking about just the military people. I'm talking about civilian political scientists in the Pentagon

They invent these magical worlds where you can use nuclear weapons with very limited consequences. And the physics, I want to understand, the physics of this shows that that's not true. Forget about all the other complexities like no one would know what was going on if a nuclear weapon was used. Let's just reflect back on what happened when the World Trade Center was hit. The president had no idea what was going on.

the U.S. government couldn't inform it because they had no idea what was going on. Now imagine you have hundreds, if not thousands of events on a much larger scale simultaneously going on. Who is going to know what's happening? And of course, all kinds of reactions and counter-reactions could be happening automatically. And every simulation, every simulation that's worth looking at

indicates that you would have a rapid escalation to a general nuclear war if nuclear weapons start to get used. So we need to do everything, absolutely everything, to keep our hands off the Russian systems. Because if they attack us by accident, it's going to be the end of everyone. So this is not like poking the bear to see what he's going to do. This is really dangerous.

And so as you're watching all of this play out and we can put the first element up on the screen, this is what happened in Crimea recently. This is a VO of obviously munitions hitting a beach in Crimea and control room. You can go ahead and put E3 up after that finishes playing. This is Russia blaming the United States for what they call the barbaric Ukrainian attack on Crimea.

Obviously, there's been an escalation in recent days in this war. So Ted, as you're watching this play out, how do you feel based on all the context you just gave us? The administration is handling the threat of potential nuclear conflict. Do you feel good about the way the administration is? I'm tremendously disturbed by the way the administration is handling this.

It's as if the administration is poking the Russians, trying to provoke them to do something very dangerous. Now, I don't want to sound like a Putin lover, but I have to say that looking at Putin, very clear-eyed, not all this silly demonization of him, but just looking carefully at his history and what he does, what he says he's going to do, and how he follows up,

It is very clear that Mr. Putin is an extremely stable, strategic thinker. And I do not believe he is going to do anything rash in response to this. He's not going to be provoked. But it appears that the United States is trying to provoke him to do something silly. It's not silly. Extraordinarily dangerous and lethal.

And I do not think he will do this, but I think he will strike back and it will cost American lives in the end. He's made it clear just the other day that he considers this a serious war crime. Incidentally, I haven't seen, it looks to me more like an accident, but that's another discussion. But he considers it a war crime and the Russians in general

are absolutely outraged. We should also keep in mind that the Russians believe, right or wrong, that this horrifying Krokus city attack in Moscow, where all these innocent people were murdered by these people who appear to be associated with ISIS, and also, according to the Russians, they believe that the Ukrainians were involved in one way or another supporting the ISIS attack,

Given that the Russians have this mindset, independent of whether or not this is correct, they are going to be acting on it. And instead of doing things to reduce the belief among the Russians by either providing them with information, intelligence, or apologizing or

making some statements that indicate we do not support this kind of thing. We have just stuck our thumb in the eyes of the Russians at every opportunity. And this is not good diplomacy. We have this war. We want to win the war. Incidentally, we're not winning it. We are losing it catastrophically, and the American press is not covering this.

Right now, the Russians could end this war in weeks if they chose to take the casualties. Right now, what they are doing is minimizing their casualties while they are destroying Ukrainian forces at the rate of nearly 2,000 casualties a day. That's like 40,000, 45,000 casualties a month.

That is the strategy of the Russians at this time. That's why we're not seeing great gains in territory, because their strategy is destroy the Ukrainian army. And then when the army is sufficiently depleted, then sweep in and take over everything. They have 300,000 troops destroyed.

Fully armed, fully trained, and fully equipped, not involved in the fighting at this point, that they can call in any time they choose. The problem they have, or if you want to call it a problem, is they don't want to take the extra casualties associated with a big offensive action against a capable army.

So the first part of their strategy is to destroy the capability of the army they're facing and then unleash the backup forces, the reserve forces on the remaining army. This is a bad situation. And the American press has not reported it accurately. I follow this every day. There's a lot of international coverage of this from organizations that every time you check

what has that what they said and what has actually been verified they're accurate so it's not it's clear to me that we have an accurate that i have others do too have an accurate picture of the situation in ukraine we have lost already unless the russians i'm sorry i was just saying unless the russians go ahead well the point the point here the point here is that if we have already lost

Why aren't we talking to the Russians to see what kind of ceasefire we can get? Instead, we talk about victory. There is no victory. I'm not saying this because I'm some kind of defeatist. I'm saying this because the facts are clear. And all that is happening right now is the Russians are deepening their commitment, their resolve,

to finish this thing in a way that meets their perceived security objectives. And their perceived security objective is to keep NATO out of Ukraine. And what they will do, what they are poised to do and can do at any time, except that they don't want to take the casualties at the moment because they have a strategy that's working, what they will do is they will take

All of the Black Sea coast, they will probably take up to Kiev, the land there. They may take the main body of what we call Western Ukraine, but I don't think they want to do that because the Western Ukrainians are deeply hostile to the Russians. But what they can do is they can then strangle Ukraine.

Ukraine, because the Black Sea coast is the only way that Ukraine can take these tremendous resources they have in grain and sell them to the world. So they can just stop Ukraine from being an economically viable enterprise. So I don't have any idea what they will do.

But why do we want to play this game? And this is an American decision at this point. And it's the only decision we have. All this fiction, which I believe is designed to prevent the average American from understanding that the war in Ukraine is lost,

and that this could have implications for the November election. That's what's going on here. And if you're... I'm sorry? I was just saying, if you're able to come to that assessment, you can imagine that the Ukrainian leadership understands the current military strategy of Russia and the current military situation they're in, which would...

Lend, you know either towards some type of impulse for you know a negotiated solution to this or something desperate and it seems like what we're seeing in the last several days and weeks is Is desperation yesterday? There was another strike on on a Russian kind of radar facility My understanding from our conversation that you and I had yesterday is that that that is not an early that that was not necessarily in So what you know, can you talk about these latest strikes and how those play in? I

Well, the strikes on the Russian, yesterday's strike was on a radar system that is designed for communications to space systems that are extremely deep in space. It's on a southern latitude, so it's not associated with the early warning system, very fortunately.

But it's simply a provocation, but not something that is going to raise the alert status of the Russian nuclear forces. The Russians have a big space program. They have probes they send to the Moon, to Mars, Venus.

and these things are very, very far away in space. And they have these gigantic antennas that focus radio signals on those specific objects so they could communicate signals to them and get information back. So that's what that particular facility was. Would there be any military value in taking out one of those deep space facilities?

No, it would be just doing damage to their civil space program, their science space program. It would just be an irritant. I mean, in terms of, there's no military utility to that attack. It's an attack that says, we want to hurt you. Just like, unfortunately, our Secretary of Defense said,

At one time he said, well, we want to do strategic damage to Russia. He actually said that. So when someone in his position says something like that, how would you miss it if you were Russian? When Anthony Blinken tells Lavrov, Sergei Lavrov, that, well, we reserve the right to put nuclear ballistic missiles in Ukraine,

What does he think Lavrov is thinking? It would be like telling John F. Kennedy during the Cuban Missile Crisis that we reserve the right to put nuclear-armed ballistic missiles in Cuba. So you Americans don't like it? Tough luck. I mean, I don't understand what this administration thinks it's doing. It's just, I mean, it's incomprehensible to me.

- The point about the election is interesting. - I'm sorry? - The point about the election is interesting that the administration may be thinking, well, this is off the front pages for now. So if we can keep it off the front pages through November,

then maybe that reduces the risk to the electoral calculus. Oh, I think that's clearly what's going on. I don't know, but if I look at the body language, so to speak, that's absolutely what's going on. They're in a panic because they understand, or should understand, if they don't understand, God help us all. They are in a panic because they know that the whole situation in Ukraine could collapse at any time.

Ukrainian units are refusing to follow orders in many cases now. We have reports of that. Even the other day, this Azov unit, which is a bunch of neo-Nazis, these guys are ultra-nationalists. They're followers of this guy Stepan Bandera. Bandera was the guy who fostered a political movement that resulted

in the murder of 150,000 Polish people during the World War II, and also the population of SS Gestapo units with Ukrainian volunteers. That's the Ukraine that they don't want to cut. Even that unit is facing trouble? What they did is there was a general in charge of the area where they were assigned,

that was, it's not clear what was happening, but I could take a very good, well-informed guess. They were probably ordering attacks on, counterattacks on Russian units. Now, these counterattacks caused extraordinary levels of casualties among the Ukrainians. And the reason for this is that the Russians now have complete control of the air.

So this is what the Americans have typically in a war. You know, we have complete control of the air, but the Russians have it here. And they also have 10 to 1 artillery firing capability. 10 to 1. So when you go out, when you get out of your foxhole and go running at the enemy, they slaughter you. And this is exactly the kind of combat strategy the Ukraine has been involved in

For the last couple of years, a very high percentage of the losses that the Ukrainians have been suffering are due to these hopeless attacks. Rather than falling back and trying to defend positions and letting the Russians try to take those positions, they just run into the fire of the Russians. And it's very clear that Putin does not want

a large number of Russian casualties. It's very hard to know what's actually happening, so this is a guess. I want to be clear, this is a guess. But my guess is that the casualties being taken by the Ukrainians are five to one. So when you hear about 1,500 casualties being taken, which is sort of the average during the day, 1,500 to 2,000 right now,

you're talking about 300 or 350 or 400 casualties on the part of the Russians. So this is a massacre. And, you know, my own view of this is I'm terribly upset about it because I, from my point of view, you can call me whatever you want, but

I just see innocent people on both sides. These Russian soldiers are no more guilty than these Ukrainian soldiers who have been forced into combat. And they're murdering each other for no reason because Ukraine is lost. And the political decision makers are sitting in the White House. In this case, they are the ones because they have these Stepan Budera extremists in charge in Ukraine.

The White House is trying to sustain the appearance, with the help, unfortunately, of the American press, which has not done a very good job, that this war is still open to a potential positive end for the United States. It's actually over. And I'm sorry, go ahead, please. That's a big picture question. I'm so curious, as you've worked in the space for decades,

Just thinking about what's happening at the White House as you just outlined it,

How does this moment compare to previous moments of potential escalation to the point where the threat of nuclear conflict, you know, maybe even in recent memory, obviously you mentioned earlier your history in this space in the 1980s, but just maybe even over the course of the last 10, 20 years, has there been a moment as precarious as this? Is it always as precarious as this? How does this compare?

Well, the problem is there could be a completely unforeseen series of accidents. Let me give you an example. We know this happened. We know this happened. In fact, I have studied this in great detail and written about it. We know that in 1996, 1996, it was Yeltsin, Clinton,

And we were in this phase where both Russia and the United States were hoping to have a wholly new relationship. We botched it, in my view, but that's another discussion. But people were not at each other at all. And it was a...

a sounding rocket, a rocket that's launched vertically by scientists, you know, pointy-headed people like me, who were just trying to understand, take measurements in the ionosphere, the upper ionosphere. And they launched this rocket in a near vertical trajectory, slightly tipped over away from Russia, but it went to a very high altitude, 11,000 kilometers, and it was taking measurements of the ionosphere. Well, the problem with this rocket

was that its powered flight trajectory had the appearance of a Trident ballistic missile going to a near vertical trajectory. Now, most people would say, "Why does that matter?" Well, this could be the first part of a nuclear attack

where you detonate a nuclear weapon at high altitude and it creates sort of a radar-absorbing layer in the atmosphere. So it's like you took a blanket and threw it over the radar. Or if you think of yourself as someone who's watching and I throw a blanket over your head, so now you can't see anything. And this kind of precursor attack

is exactly something that both sides, Russia and the United States, planned for in their own nuclear war retaliation findings, you know, planning. Now, in 1996, you had a very, in fact, I've spoken with the guy who was in charge. His name is Victor Yesen. He was the guy in charge of the strategic rocket forces at the time.

And he's a very sober, extremely well-educated, competent man. And he sat there watching this thing, this experiment, which he had no idea whether or not it was a nuclear weapon, rise to its maximum altitude. And the moment it started to fall back to the earth, he called off the alert.

because he knew that this, whatever it was, he didn't know what it was, but he knew it was not a precursor to a nuclear attack. Now, if the time, if we had big fighting going on in Ukraine at the time,

And the United States and Russia maybe were using tactical nuclear weapons against each other. A very serious escalation. NATO troops were injected. The French troops that Macron wants to put into Ukraine, they're being slaughtered by the Russians, which of course will happen if those troops are there.

And, you know, the Russians could think they were under attack. Now, I think they are very cautious. So I don't want to overstate this. You know, the Russians are very cautious. They're very competent. They're very professional. They understand that if they accidentally attack the United States, it's the end of their country, too. So I don't want to overstate this. But the question I would ask you to consider is,

is do you think them having this state of mind at that time without a complete knowledge of what's going on is a good thing for the United States? So I don't want to be one of these people, oh, the sky is falling, the sky has fallen. But when the consequences are literally the end of civilization and potentially the end of human existence, that is less clear, but...

but certainly the end of civilization as we know it, why would you want to push the buttons on this? I don't understand. I'm baffled. And part of the reason may be that the people in the White House are not informed. And that's been my experience, incidentally. I've talked to people over decades, from time to time, in White House positions,

And they don't have a clue because these people are political. And I'm not saying this to attack them. Their concern is how do I get reelected and how do I keep the American public from knowing my dark secret, my screw up on something. And that's why you see all this hate mongering for Putin. Putin is our adversary. There's no question that he doesn't

mean good things for us. But he's not Adolf Hitler. I mean, this is ridiculous. He's a very capable guy who has jujitsu'd us in so many circumstances. These guys don't want the American people to figure out

how clever he has been and how everything we have done to try to screw up the Russians has backfired on us because the Russians have been clever in responding. So what do you do? You can't explain this. You don't want to explain this to your electorate. You're trying to get reelected. So you say, oh, it's this guy Putin. He's so terrible. Now, I'm not trying to say that I would want to run against Putin in an election in Russia. He'd kill me. But

But, you know, Mohammed bin Salman is not our wonderful Muslim buddy either. You know, these countries have their own political systems. And when you recognize what's going on in those systems, doesn't mean you approve of them. And it doesn't mean you think it's good. It's just understanding the facts of the world.

And this guy, this guy Putin, is unbelievably thoughtful, deep thinking and strategic in his thinking. And he just said just yesterday that he's going to find a way to pay us back for what he sees as this attack. And let me tell you, he doesn't bluff. He doesn't bluff. I have watched him with extreme care.

And when he says something, I don't say, oh, he's a monster. I take it at its word. And I ask myself, what does this guy mean? And we have had decades of people who claim to be experts on Russia feeding us nonsense about what a monster this man is. He's not a nice person. You wouldn't want him as your close personal friend. But that is different.

from portraying him as this monster that goes around murdering people whenever he has the notion. It's not the case at all. You just have to look at the facts. And so we have these people who in one way or another are getting funding from the U.S. government or feel an alliance in the U.S. government who have painted this portrait that is totally bizarre.

I mean, why don't we do that with other, you know, he's not Hitler. I mean, Hitler was clearly... Yeah, underestimating your adversary usually doesn't end well. Well, it's not simply underestimating. It's portraying your adversary in a way that hides your bad decisions that have backfired on you. So it's what I consider a politically motivated strategy.

Well, Theodore Postol, thank you so much for joining us. Very much appreciate it. Well, it's been a pleasure. I hope it's been helpful. Very helpful. Very helpful indeed. Very much appreciated. Thank you very much. That was Ted Postol, rather sobering conversation. A little bit. When he joined us, he looked behind and said, I see Washington is still there. But then we had to say, well, it's on a loop. But the fact that we're alive.

Suggest that Washington is still here. We are in Washington. Yeah, we're not in like a bunker although His bunker temperature sometimes. Yes indeed

Anyway, we're having a Ukrainian conversation. Yes debates on our Friday show. Yes You know come back Thursday evening for that if you are a breaking point subscriber breaking points calm To get the to get that early. Otherwise, you can watch the full show on Friday. We're gonna have another streamer Vosh Mm-hmm talking to a libertarian Dave Smith median is the comedian. Yeah, what's his yeah, he's comedian. So

They're going to be teasing out their own takes on the Ukrainian conflict. And we're taping it today, a little inside baseball. So this is one of two debates that Ryan and I are moderating today. We've somehow become debate moderators. We have, yeah. It's a lot of fun.

Life comes at you fast. Sure does. So stay tuned for the breaking points debate coverage that, you know, CNN won't let us carry the stream, but we will be here carrying the stream with Crystal and Sagar tomorrow, 8 p.m. Whether or not CNN lets us pick up on the debate stream, 8 p.m. right here, 7 p.m. tonight for Zero Hedge Debate. But that does it for us for this morning, at least. We'll be back pretty soon. All right. See you tonight. See you.