1/15/25: Gaza Ceasefire Terms Locked In, Pete Hegseth Hearing, LA Landlord Price Gouging & MORE!
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Hey guys, Sagar and Crystal here. Independent media just played a truly massive role in this election, and we are so excited about what that means for the future of this show. This is the only place where you can find honest perspectives from the left and the right that simply does not exist anywhere else. So if that is something that's important to you, please go to breakingpoints.com, become a member today, and you'll get access to

Our full shows, unedited, ad-free, and all put together for you every morning in your inbox. We need your help to build the future of independent news media, and we hope to see you at BreakingPoints.com. Good morning and welcome to CounterPoints. Emily, really big show today. Really big show. Also, we've had nothing but crazy news cycles for the past six plus months. This is one of the craziest news cycles. So many hearings just today. I mean, Rubio, Pam Bondi, John Ratcliffe, Chris Wright, Sean Duffy. It's just absolutely stuffed.

Yesterday was Pete Hegseth. We have the TikTok band covering here on the show today. Huge news. And you guys at Breaking Points had a great scoop on what's going on with the ceasefire negotiations. Yeah, I was just thinking I really do hope that Sagar's alien invasion holds off because I want to see how the next four years plays out. You're curious. I really am. Yeah, and you can't read the last page of the book first. That's the problem with life. No, it's going to be interesting. And I'm curious what would happen in the event of an alien invasion too, obviously. But we could get that later. Like, I want to see this happen.

whole thing. Because to your point, Donald Trump, I was going to about say the Trump administration, but Donald Trump and his real estate tycoon that he assigned to create a ceasefire deal between

Israel and Hamas is on the brink of pulling it off. We're going to talk to Jeremy Scahill in just a moment, who's been in contact with a lot of people involved in this. So he's going to break down what the deal actually looks like and how we got to this place. But quite incredible. I still stand by my prediction that Netanyahu is going to drag this all the way out to the 19th to ink the final details. Hope I'm wrong. But overnight, Israel was ramping up airstrikes all across Gaza.

There was video that emerged from Younes Sarawi of them blowing up a mosque in northern Gaza yesterday just kind of because they can. And there's a couple of days left until they sign the thing. But we're getting very close. So we're going to start with that news. We're going to run down the Hegsath hearing from yesterday, do an update on...

Wild one. It was a wild one. Although by Trump era standards, sort of medium, medium insanity. We'll do an update on a crazy story about landlords in the Los Angeles area. We'll talk about the migration from TikTok to Red Note. And we actually have a Princeton professor of astrophysics joining the show today to talk about how Donald Trump could potentially set himself up

For a Nobel Peace Prize. Three Nobel Peace Prizes. He wrote this essay for Fox News before Trump kind of slammed a ceasefire on Israel. Right. Which, frankly, in another kind of world...

could generate a Nobel Peace Prize for an American president. Donald Trump has a steeper hill to climb to win that prize because he's Donald Trump and it's ludicrous to consider him getting a Nobel Peace Prize. But he lays out how over the next four years he's actually set up to resolve three major sources of conflict

and could legitimately deserve if he pulled that off three Nobel Peace Prizes. And potentially take us a little bit further from the brink to the extent that we possibly can be. I'd like to pull back from the brink. Yes, it sounds great. Iranian president is giving interviews to American media, NBC News in particular. So we will have updates on all of that. As a reminder, breakingpoints.com, that's where you can get a premium subscription. And Ryan, if you can't

Get a premium subscription, you can't afford it. Just like and subscribe. Like and subscribe. Tell your friends, share it. It helps. It helps a lot. Clip it and put it on social because we don't really do that. Yeah, that's true. Shout out to Halal Flow. Yes, Halal Flow does that. I'm told we have Jeremy Scahill, your colleague at Dropsite, on the line here to help us break down the huge news about BC Spartan. Let's bring Jeremy in. Jeremy, how are you doing? All right. You know, pins and needles, hoping that this goes through.

Yeah, so let's actually let's start back in May to bring people up to up to speed here. So May of May of 2024, that was the maybe the first time since the November 2023 exchange of of prisoners between Israel and Mosul. There was that one week ceasefire. What happens in what happens in May and what has what has kind of changed since then that got us to this this place?

Well, in May, Joe Biden comes out publicly and says that he's reached what he called a monumental point in the ceasefire negotiation and that he has gotten assurances from Israel that they'll move forward with a deal.

And the basic outlines of it are almost identical to what is now being negotiated. That's the first thing that should just be put on the table. They move forward then. They get the United Nations Security Council to officially endorse this, what they called the Biden framework. But actually, many of the tenets of it came from this sort of backdoor discussions between Antony Blinken, Brett McGurk, Biden.

Bill Burns, the director of the CIA and the Israelis to make sure that when Biden goes out and says, hey, this thing is monumental, that it wasn't going to like blow up in the White House's face. Well, lo and behold, then Hamas is presented with with these terms. There's the back and forth that always happens in these, which is at the technical level. So when you hear people saying, oh, Israel accepted this or Hamas accepted this, what they're talking about usually is they've accepted the broad foresight.

framework. And then where the real sort of problems start to occur is when you start talking about technical details. For instance, as of this morning, there were still back and forth going on in Doha over a number of technical issues. The Israelis didn't provide maps to

to the Palestinian side showing where their forces would be withdrawn from and where they would be repositioned. And the Palestinians are concerned that if they leave any vagueness, the Israelis are going to exploit it. So I just give that as like one example. So you have technical issues and all indications are that these issues right now are being resolved. But going back to over the summer, they then get to that phase of it where you normally would be discussing like implementation. And then the Israelis start to put in what

Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad negotiators said totally new terms that had to do with the Israelis wanting to remain in Rafah, to keep control of the Philadelphia corridor, to keep control of the Netsarim corridor. So Hamas is saying, wait a minute, we agreed to what Biden said was a monumental framework that the United Nations endorsed. We now need more time. And then they start the narrative, oh, Hamas refuses to accept the deal.

Well, then what happens is you have this back and forth where the Americans come back to the Arab mediators who say to Hamas, listen, would you accept this phrasing in the deal that the Americans have said Israel will accept if you guys do? Hamas then deliberates on it. And on July 2nd, Hamas officially informs the mediators from Qatar and Egypt, yes, we will accept the American amended ceasefire proposal.

The Americans then go back to Israel and Netanyahu says, no, no, no, no, no. The circumstances have changed. And then what happens is you have this string of assassinations where Israel assassinates Ismail Haniyeh, the top negotiator for Hamas, and they do it in Tehran at a guest house that's controlled by the most elite military force in Iran. You then have the Pager bomb plumb, the Pager bomb bomb.

plot in Lebanon, the wiping out of not only the senior echelons of Hezbollah, but also Hassan Nasrallah. Then you have the bombings of Iran, the Iranians attacking Israel, the fall of the regime in Syria, which Netanyahu took credit for. And so basically what happened then, Ryan, last summer

was that Biden goes out in front of the world, he says, "Hey, we're on the brink of something here." The Israelis just shove it in his face, turn around, and then escalate the war even further. And Biden rewards them, not punishes them, rewards them by showering billions of dollars more in US weapons on them, and then openly endorsing the Israelis setting fire to the Middle East. And basically there's been no discussion of a ceasefire since then until Donald Trump

First of all, he campaigns sort of to the left of Kamala Harris in some ways on this issue. It was a little bit contradictory, 'cause on the one hand you have Trump saying there's never been a more pro-Israel president or candidate in American history and he wants Netanyahu to finish the job. On the other hand, he does what the Democrats weren't doing. He goes and he meets with a ton of Arab political and religious and civic leaders, including in Michigan, where you had this uncommitted movement

where many logical Democratic voters were begging the Harris campaign to pay attention to them. And many, many Arabs in the United States felt like they were just being kind of spat upon by the Democrats. And so whatever you think about Donald Trump's efforts, there was an actual effort there.

Trump then wins the election and he starts saying things like there's going to be hell to pay if there's not a deal. Now, much of the reporting on that was, you know, sort of spun as he's threatening Hamas, that some, you know, unknown horror is going to, you know, befall Hamas.

first of all, what worse could possibly happen to the Palestinian people of Gaza right now? I mean, this is a way of letting Joe Biden off the hook because this has been a scorched earth genocide. But if you really paid attention, what Trump was doing was saying not just to Hamas this needs to get done, but also to Israel. And, you know, there's a lot of people make fun of the people that Trump chooses for his positions. But, you know, Trump is choosing people that he believes can, quote unquote, make a deal. So he taps Steve Witkoff,

to be his special envoy to the Middle East, who is kind of a fellow real estate tycoon. And by all accounts, what has occurred is that for his own reasons, Trump has made it very clear to the Israelis

that a deal needs to be done in time for his inauguration. We can talk about what Trump's motivations might be here, but Trump is showing that the power of the office of the presidency is vast, and it exposes the fact that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris systematically refused to

ever take any actions, and there are many they could have taken, to force a ceasefire. The U.S. has enormous power and influence over Israel. And Joe Biden, partially for his own ideological support of Israel, and partially because these guys just got rickrolled by Netanyahu, just never did it.

BB rolled. So let's put up A1 because this obviously brings us to today. Israel and Hamas agree in principle, as CBS News puts it, to ceasefire and hostage deal. You guys reported that at Dropside as well, and this is what we're here to talk about. But if we move on to A2, Reuters fleshes out some of the bullet points of the ceasefire deal in ways that I know Jeremy and

and Ryan both can help us break down a little bit. Troop withdrawal, increased aid, future governance of Gaza. So what can both of you, hostage return obviously is part of that. So what can both of you tell us about sort of what's actually part of this tug of war, what's on the table right now and how could it go wrong in the same way that Jeremy, we saw it as you mentioned, go wrong back in the summer?

So this is structured as a three-phase deal. Each of the phases are envisioned to be 42 days. The first phase of this, Emily, would be the exchange of 33 captives and hostages held in Gaza right now that are categorized as being in –

humanitarian releases. So this would be anyone under the age of 19, including, you know, there are a couple of very small children that are still being held in Gaza. And we understand that the first three

hostages that would be released in this exchange of captives would be the members of the Bibas family. People may remember that there was a nine-month-old baby, Kfir Bibas, who was taken from the kibbutz of near Oz on October 7th, along with his brother Ariel and the mother and father. And so the mother and those two children are widely believed to be the first

three people that are are going to be handed over and then they've created a mathematical formula where for each um israeli civilian a certain number of palestinian prisoners or captives are going to be released you know israel is still holding several hundred children minors in their custody you know we talk a lot about israeli hostages there are palestinian hostages um

you know, in the dozens and hundreds, uh, being held by Israel right now. Um, also there are going to be, there are five female Israeli soldiers, um, that are being held in Gaza and, and the numbers start to increase in terms of the number of Palestinians that will be, um,

freed from Israeli prisons in return for any military figures. So the first round would include only these five female Israeli hostages or prisoners. And then you have also older people or sick people. This first phase would have what's called a temporary cessation of hostilities, meaning that there would be a

ceasing of fire, but this is not a permanent ceasefire. And two weeks into this exchange, where you would have a sort of in phases, Israelis and internationals being held in Gaza being released and then Palestinians being released as well.

Two weeks into it, you then start to have discussions about the mechanism for implementing the second phase. And the second phase would start to increase the number of captives that are exchanged between the two sides. And it's in this phase where the draft agreement calls for an actual ceasefire and the withdrawal of Israeli forces. In that first phase, you'll start to have some pullback of the Israelis. There is still debate over kind of what kind of buffer zone is going to exist.

The Israeli game though seems to be, and this is certainly what people like Ben Gavir and Smotrich are openly saying, but it's also quite mainstream, is that the Israelis are approaching this from, let's just view this as we're making a deal over phase one. Yes, Trump is telling us we need to have this more comprehensive agreement, but wink, wink, nod, nod.

Um, we know that it's very easy to say Hamas violated this and we're back into the game. So the Palestinian negotiators I'm dealing with, they're very well aware of this. And this is part of why they're insisting on like really exact maps from the Israelis, really exact timeline so that they can go back to the mediators and say, you know, this, this is a violation by Israel. And then the final phase has to do with reconstruction and who would govern Gaza. Um,

But a lot of people aren't even so focused on that right now. For the Palestinian people of Gaza, they need this to stop. And we know that at least 46,000 Palestinians have been killed. Those numbers are almost certainly a massive number.

undercount. So, you know, people are desperate. We're hearing this from our reporters on the ground inside of Gaza. It's a horror show that's happening. And Israel has a long history of really intensifying the attacks against Gaza before any kind of a deal is made. So that's

sort of where things stand right now. But I don't think we can understate the role that Donald Trump's posture has played in the timing of this. It's, it is, if this gets pulled off, the timing will be almost entirely a result, not of Joe Biden's supposed tireless work around the clock, um, but of Donald Trump basically saying it is over. Uh,

And maybe it's over for a few weeks, but it's going to be over at some point for some period of time. And it's largely going to be because of Trump's intervention. And you don't have to take that from us. You can take that from Israeli media and Israeli politicians. And to your point about Ben-Gavir, we could put up a three here. There was this remarkable moment where on Monday, the

was Antony Blinken giving a speech saying that we're all just sitting around here waiting for Hamas to accept the deal. After Hamas had publicly accepted the, basically accepted the framework. Meanwhile, you've got Ben-Gavir here, who on, in a post and also in a speech that he posted to Twitter, said,

said very openly and admitted that over the past year and a half, he and his political forces had scuttled many, many hostage deals by using their political power to block those deals. It was kind of a remarkable split screen where you have Blinken, you can't tell if he's just a kind of confused old man with dementia who's just kind of repeating things

What he's been saying, you know, historically, it was never true before when he was saying it, as you laid out. But it was so flagrantly a lie on Monday when you to have the entire Israeli media on the right and people like Ben-Gavir and Smotra saying this is a horrible deal that's being forced on us. While at the same time, Blinken saying it's Hamas that won't take the deal. What do you draw from?

How would you characterize the kind of Israeli media response and what conclusions can you draw? And before, Jeremy, you answer that, let's roll this clip of Blinken. This is a- Oh, yeah, great. So people can hear what he says. We assess that Hamas has recruited almost as many new militants as it has lost. That is a recipe for an enduring insurgency and perpetual war.

The longer the war goes on, the worse the humanitarian situation gets in Gaza. Right. And there's Blinken saying that they have not accomplished anything. Go ahead. Yeah. I mean, first, just to take, you know, what Blinken just said there, and then I'll address the Ben-Gavir part of this. You know, this is counterinsurgency, you know, history 101. I mean, if you put people in an open air prison camp, if you deprive them of the right to nonviolent resistance, if you deprive them of food and put them on a calorie restricted diet,

diet, which the Israelis have done, if you dehumanize them, kill their parents repeatedly, tell them that there's no such thing as a Palestinian, you're going to leave the only option available to people who believe in fighting for their dignity to take up arms against their occupier or the colonial power that's invading them. So, you know, we could have told Antony Blinken that this would happen on October 6th.

if they don't stop this policy that you're going. And it's, and by the way, it's not just that people are like joining Hamas. What we're talking about here is people deciding that they're going to be part of the armed resistance against what they, what they very clearly view as a, a brutal gratuitous colonial occupying power backed by,

the United States and other major Western powers. So, you know, Antony Blinken is going to be like for years to come waking up in the morning, going to his mirror and saying, it's up to Hamas now. I mean, he's got some weird tick where he's just constantly lying about that dimension of this. And we could talk about, you know, Blinken as a kind of Neo Kissinger at some point. But to get back to

Ben-Gavir, part of this is true, that the fact that Netanyahu's political stability depended on building this coalition with Ben-Gavir and Smotrich. But in recent weeks and months, he's been able to

um, broaden his coalition out a little bit. So he doesn't actually need their votes, uh, in order to get this thing through. And I think part of this, uh, plays to Netanyahu's favor to sort of, you know, have these guys on his right flank making this kind of noise. I mean, Netanyahu is the one that sabotaged the deal, not Ben Gavir. And it was, it wasn't only because Smotrich and Ben Gavir were there. It was because, um,

Netanyahu knew he had the political support and it wasn't going to harm him politically to keep sabotaging these deals. But now you have a different equation where he doesn't so much need these guys. And, you know, Trump and company, I think part of this for Netanyahu is he's hoping that by

working with Trump, that Trump is going to help him politically as well. It's not entirely about the Gaza deal. You know, there are questions about what have Trump people offered Netanyahu in response. Certainly one of the big prizes would be normalization with Saudi Arabia. That would be a huge victory for Netanyahu, especially if it doesn't include a very clear establishment of a Palestinian state. There's the

belligerence toward Iran and the potential to start striking Iranian nuclear sites or down the line to try to enact regime change. Trump has been giving indications that may not be the full direction that he wants to go in, but let's just say it's out there. Annexation of the West Bank. These are all things that potentially are on the table, but

Netanyahu primarily is concerned with Netanyahu. Let's keep that very clear. And I think that part of what's happening here is that there is some behind the scenes maneuvering between Netanyahu's camp and Trump's camp to look at how can Netanyahu's neck be saved politically as part of this apparent capitulation on the Gaza ceasefire terms.

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When reports that won't help, we can put a five up, include this one about Steve Witkoff basically calling Netanyahu's bluff about Shabbat.

I think this was from Haaretz. And it makes me think, Jeremy, that the clip of Ben Gavir we already talked about, instances like this, you know, a week from now, Donald Trump will be the president of the United States. And I can only think that unlike with Biden and Blinken, that telegraphing from people like Ben Gavir will infuriate a potential Trump administration. Go ahead. Yeah. And before you answer, I just wanted to read for people, uh,

What I think is an interesting, the kind of choice that people in Washington would mock Trump for, but clearly panned out for him. And this is from Haaretz. They write...

And Witkoff is the guy who called up Netanyahu's aides and said, we're going to meet on Saturday. Aides are like, well, that's the Sabbath. Bibi can't really meet. And Witkoff knows that Netanyahu's secular doesn't care about it. He's like, don't give me this crap. We're meeting on Saturday. And they meet on Saturday. That gives him the...

the kind of dominance in the meeting and he steamrolls Netanyahu. Haaretz writes, "Witkopf is a Jewish real estate investor and developer who is close to Trump. He doesn't have the background of the kind of people who usually fill diplomatic roles." "Witkopf isn't a diplomat. He doesn't talk like a diplomat. He has no interest in diplomatic manners and diplomatic protocols," says a senior Israeli diplomat who spoke on condition of anonymity. "He's a businessman who wants to reach a deal quickly and charges ahead unusually aggressively.

So that kind of appointment is the kind that gets mocked here in D.C., but that does seem like the kind of guy you want to send into the meeting and tell Netanyahu, what part of this don't you understand? Well, there's a difference between Rex Tillerson and Steve Witkoff. Exactly, yes. Right.

Right. So. Yeah. And I mean, the Rex Tillerson analogy, it's a really it's actually a really good one because, you know, Tillerson and I think we're going to see some of this with like with little Marco Rubio as well go down where, you know, the people that end up in Trump's orbit that have been part of the machine or part of kind of the, you know, the the elite.

inner circle, they always have kind of a split loyalty from Trump's perspective. They're not just loyal to Trump. They also are thinking about sort of the bigger picture of the American empire and American institution. And so, you know, when Trump has like kind of his own people there, on the one hand, it causes like, you know, sort of the apocalypse has come to town among the blob. But on the other hand, I,

I think if you're someone like Netanyahu and you've got like, you know, Steve Witkoff, someone none of these people had ever heard of before coming in, but you know he's there for Trump. It's like you're talking to Trump. Whereas if you have like an Antony Blinken there, you can manage Antony Blinken. You can spin Antony Blinken. You can make an absolute fool of Antony Blinken. But in this case, it's like Trump kind of mafia style. It's like this is my consigliere that you're going to be talking to. And if you what you say to him, you say to me.

That can be very effective. Whatever we think about it, whatever norms it breaks, it can be very effective. I do want to caution here. One note of caution. While I do think that, you know, there are truths to all of this, and I've also heard it from the Palestinian side that they're saying like, you know, somehow Trump's people have gotten like issue X to be a non-issue now. So like there, I've heard tangible results have been achieved because of the shift in tactics. That's real. But

But I also think that Netanyahu and some of his people might be playing up some of this for their own reasons. It sends some of the fire toward Trump, who's enormously popular in Israel. This is by no means going to damage Trump's standing in Israel, no matter how many commentators whine about it on TV. So I would just be careful. I wouldn't

oversell the idea that like Trump's people really put Netanyahu in a corner. I think there's truth to it. And I've heard it also from the Palestinian side. But I do think that there is some spin at play here because in a way it does benefit Netanyahu. And I think Netanyahu's prize at the end of the day is his own political and personal fate more than it is anything about Israel. And in that way, he and Trump have some great similarities. And Trump reposted that wild Jeffrey Sachs critique of Netanyahu on Truth Social the other day as well.

You know, if you talk to Palestinians, too, they they many Palestinians who follow this stuff closely are aware also of a variety of things that happened during Trump's first term where Trump genuinely, for instance, seemed to like Mahmoud Abbas. You know, Trump really seemed to be interested in some form of a deal that would

lead to Palestinian statehood, something that Netanyahu would never even consider under Joe Biden. You know, so there are wild cards here. And, you know, again, we've talked about this on the show before. Trump, at the end of the day, he's not like a normal, ordinary person, but he is not a creature of the Washington swamp. And

that can be dangerous in some ways, but it also has its benefits. He really, really doesn't care about what the Henry Kissingers of the world or Antony Blinkens of the world, for that matter, believe should be the norm of America standing in the world. It cuts both ways, but in this case, it could at least give some relief

to the Palestinians of Gaza who are suffering under an unconscionable genocide that Joe Biden could have ended long ago. And there's also been reporting over the last year that Miriam Adelson, Sheldon Adelson's widow, I guess, offered something like $100 million to Trump's campaign, basically in exchange for a direct quid pro quo of allowing Israel to annex the West Bank. Uh,

Talk a little bit about what's going on in the West Bank the last few days and what do you think the price might be for the West Bank to get this ceasefire? Well, and let's also note Miriam Adelson has just announced yesterday co-hosting an inaugural ball with Mark Zuckerberg on Trump's behalf. So still very much in the circle.

wild bedfellows are emerging in this whole thing, a whole other discussion. Look, it's an incendiary situation right now in the West Bank. I mean, we had just last night, the Israelis did airstrikes in Jenin, killing a number of people. The Palestinian Authority itself, which is viewed by many Palestinians as kind of an extension or an agent of the Israeli occupation, has been

waging a paramilitary campaign to go after armed resistance factions right before the Israelis actually did this strike. People should read, by the way, Marion Barghouti's piece in Dropsite on the ground reporting about this PA-led assault on fighters. Yeah, it was great. I mean, it's the...

It's the most significant military operation that the Palestinian Authority has done under the areas of its nominal control in recent memory. And, you know, people in the West Bank, I think, are now living in a state of incredible uncertainty and danger. You have new, you know, really empowered, violent extremist settlers that are attacking

Palestinians stealing Palestinian land. They're being backed by the official forces of the Israeli state. You have Netanyahu and his government moving forward with trying to annex further territory, build more settlements. You then have the Palestinian Authority engaging in its paramilitary operations inside of the West Bank. And now Israel, once again, bombing in the West Bank. If there's a Gaza ceasefire deal,

then I think you're going to see, and I'm hearing this from Palestinians on the ground, an intensification of Israeli operations in the West Bank itself. So, you know, even though we may get a break from some of this, the overarching reality is that this is unresolved and the Palestinians as a people remain very much in danger. I also think, though, that it is evidence that

if the Palestinians had not resisted Israel, they would have been erased a long time ago. And, you know, Hamas certainly is going to have to answer its own questions from its own people about decisions that it made over the course of the past 15 and 16 months. But at the end of the day,

This is not a total victory for Netanyahu, the likes of which he claimed he was going to get. This deal doesn't say Hamas is gone. This deal doesn't say Hamas is not allowed to participate in politics. And Antony Blinken put a very fine point on it, even in a discombobulated way. Resistance is growing in Afghanistan.

in Gaza and the West Bank. It's not being stamped out. You can't kill your way to victory. This was what Bush and Cheney thought they could do with their, you know, neocon wars that many Democrats backed. It just, history just shows it never works. Look at Afghanistan. Jeremy, I was going to say the same thing. Blinken's point is actually so self-defeating if you consider it in that context. And before we let you go, I just want to get your reaction to some of these mounting criticisms. I mean, they've

been there all along, but especially pitched right now from hostage families. So this is A6. We can put this up. It's a VO. So you'll see on video hostage families, Israeli hostage families, saying that they have received threats or families of the kidnapped have received threats that their loved ones would not appear on the returnee list if they continued to make noise and some of the families backed down because they felt threatened. That's the translation. And if we move on to A7,

You can actually see more of this. This is from We Are All Hostages, who says Netanyahu's coalition members attack hostage families on a weekly basis because they despise them. Jeremy, what are the politics or how do these politics influence Netanyahu in the days ahead?

I mean, this is an utterly sickening dynamic. I mean, look at the way that the families of the Israelis being held in Gaza have been treated throughout the course of the past 15 months. Netanyahu and his his

supporters in the government have used the fact that there are Israeli captives, hostages in Gaza as a major political cudgel to defend Israel's genocide. And yet at every turn when they could have returned them, I mean, how is it that they have not made a deal to get some of the elderly people out or children?

And I've been very clear from the beginning, no one ever should be taking children captive, hostage, harming them in any way. Those people should have been released long ago. And yes, Hamas should answer questions for that. But also Israel is the main reason why they haven't been released. And those families...

deserve the support of the world when they're saying, do anything to get our loved ones out of there? Because at the other end of that, that do anything means stop killing the children and the elderly and the sick of Gaza as well. I mean, they've been used as a political football. And to be told, if you don't shut up, we're going to push your family members further down the list and into the second phase or the third phase of this. I mean, this is just mindboggling.

morally reprehensible behavior and unfortunately not shocking. - It's hostage taking. It's literally hostage taking to say that we will keep your family member held hostage unless you do X

is that it's hostage taking, even if you're outsourcing the hostage taking in that situation. It's also Israel's policy on Palestinians in general, which is if you don't bend the knee and agree to subjugation and colonialism and to live as a second or third class citizen, if we even allow you to live, then you're going to be subjected to economic, military and political warfare as long as you walk this earth. It's it's a microcosm of

of that broader mentality that leads to things like a war of annihilation against overwhelmingly civilian population of Gaza. - Yeah, and last question for you from your sources, when are they expecting, when can we expect a kind of final announcement here?

You know, Ryan, I'd be an idiot if I answered that question because, you know, when you, well, I will give you guys one vignette. You know, a few days ago, I was talking to a negotiator from the Palestinian resistance. We all say Hamas, but there's multiple groups that are involved with the negotiation. It's not just Hamas. And

And they said that they had to affirm in no uncertain terms to the mediators that there would be no leaks about this. They also want this deal to go through. So I had indications, oh, it looks like it's going to be today.

But then you have these hiccups happen with technical discussion. So I think there's a high likelihood that it's going to happen before Trump's inauguration. But the devil is in the details. And Netanyahu has been known to pull 11th hour tricks. So, you know, I'm I'm not so naive as to say, oh, Ryan, well, my sources are telling me today. It all depends on what happens with these remaining technical discussions. But there are indications that it should happen before Trump's inauguration.

All right. So up next, we're going to talk about a new survey out that shows that among the people who voted for Biden in 2020 and then did not vote for Kamala Harris in 2024, Kamala refusing to break with Biden on Gaza is cited as the number one reason they decided not to vote. We'll talk about that in a second.

I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together on the Really No Really podcast, our mission is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like... Why they refuse to make the bathroom door go all the way to the floor. We got the answer. Will space junk block your cell signal? The astronaut who almost drowned during a spacewalk gives us the answer. We talk with the scientist who figured out if your dog truly loves you and the one bringing back the woolly mammoth. Plus...

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Ready to laugh and stay informed? Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. What's up, everybody? I'm Dan Burke here to tell you about a new podcast from iHeart Podcasts and the National Hockey League. It's NHL Unscripted with Burke and Demers. Hey, I'm Jason Demers, former 700-game NHL defenseman turned NHL network analyst. And boy, oh boy, does daddy have a lot to say. I love you, by the way, on NHL Network.

We're looking forward to getting together each week to chat and chirp about the sport and all the other things surrounding it that we love, right? Yeah, I just met you today, but we're going to have a ton of guests from the colliding worlds of hockey, entertainment, and pop.

And you know what? Tons of back and forth on all things NHL. Yeah, you're going to find that we're not just hockey talk. We have all kinds of random stuff on this podcast. Movies, television, food, wrestling, even the stuff that you wear in NHL now. You wish you could pull off my short shorts, Berkey. That's sure to cause a ruckus. Listen to NHL Unscripted with Berk and Demers on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

From 2020 to 2024, Democrats saw a staggering drop-off in support at the presidential level, with some 19 million people who voted for Joe Biden staying home or not mailing in their ballots in 2024. A new survey conducted by YouGov suggests Biden's support for Israel's unrelenting assault on Gaza played a surprisingly large role in the decision-making of those previous Biden supporters who didn't vote.

The top reason those non-voters cited above the economy at 24% and immigration at 11% was Gaza, which a full 29% cited as the top reason they didn't cast a vote in 2024.

Looking narrowly at states that swung from Biden in 2020 to Trump in 2024, the number is smaller. But in those states, 20% still cited Gaza as the reason they didn't vote again. The poll was paid for by the Institute for Middle East Understanding, which has been an outspoken critic of Israel's assault on Gaza.

Now, before firmly demonstrating that Gaza cost Democrats the election, a handful of caveats are important. So even if October 7th and the resulting genocide had never happened, it's fair to assume some number of those non-voters still would not have voted and would have cited a different top reason for not voting. Citing a top reason for not voting is different.

than it being the only reason that you didn't vote. And because the turnout drop-off was smaller in swing states, Gaza may not have been decisive on its own. Whenever surveys confirm views we already hold or tell us things we want to be true, it's worth approaching their findings with increased skepticism. Still, even the most biased poll can only manufacture so much of a response.

Even if the true numbers aren't as stark as this survey found, the direction that it points in is clear. Biden's ruthless support for Israel's genocide and the refusal of Harris to break with him hurt her among voters who stayed home.

A previous survey taken during the election by YouGov and similarly sponsored by IMEU found strong evidence that nominee Kamala Harris would be significantly boosted by breaking with Biden on Gaza and applying real pressure on Israel. Harris chose not to do so.

Breaking with Biden on Gaza could have had knock-on effects elsewhere, as Harris never successfully answered a question that dogged her throughout her campaign. What would she have done differently than Biden, or what would she do differently than Biden in the future?

Harris eventually settled on the unsatisfying answer, "My presidency will not be a continuation of Joe Biden's presidency. And like every new president that comes into office, I'll bring my life experiences." Something like that. You know, "My name's Kamala Harris. I'm not Joe Biden." Now, in one emblematic response, she has a debate, for instance. Check this one out. - Clearly, I am not Joe Biden, and I am certainly not Donald Trump.

And what I do offer is a new generation of leadership for our country. One who believes in what is possible. One who brings a sense of optimism about what we can do instead of always disparaging the American people.

I believe in what we can do to strengthen our small businesses, which is why I have a plan. Let's talk about our plans. Yeah, OK, so that's not an answer. But breaking with Biden on Gaza, of course, that risked losing voters who supported his policy. But a close look at this survey shows that the risk was low compared to the reward from breaking with him.

Voters who were with Biden in 2020 and stuck with Harris in 2024 were asked if breaking with him on Gaza would make them more or less enthusiastic about voting for Harris. And by a 35 to 5 percent margin, they said breaking with him would have made them more enthusiastic to vote for Kamala Harris, with the remainder saying it would have made no difference.

Non-voters said that if she had broken with Biden on Gaza, they'd have been more likely to vote for her by a 36 to 10 margin. Meanwhile, Democrats' unshakable commitment to the war also blended with concerns that the party was not focused on issues that mattered to Americans, as I argued previously.

The survey, meanwhile, showed that the issue was most salient among white voters, 34 percent of which said it was the top reason they didn't vote for Harris and Hispanic voters at 27 percent, while less so with black voters at just 9 percent. And so, Emily, like I was saying, you always have to take polls like this with a grain of salt. And you can prime a poll.

If you're asking questions about Gaza, then maybe Gaza rises a little bit in your mind. If Gaza happens to be in the news when you pick up the phone, pollsters have found that that heavily influences how much it comes up in an answer. If the news is talking about the deficit constantly, you call somebody up and ask them if they're concerned about the deficit, people are like, yeah.

But if the deficit's not in the news, then it completely vanishes from answers. Right. If you ask on October 8th about the deficit, you'll probably get different answers. Yeah. So all that said, you can't manufacture a number that high if there isn't something real underneath it. Totally. And I do think that it blended more generally with the problems that Democrats had. If you lose that many voters, 19 million, and...

a third of them say that the top reason that they didn't vote for you was the way that you were, because you didn't break with Biden on Gaza, that's millions of people. Not every single one of them votes for you, but if some do...

That matters. Yeah, it reminds me of our DNC coverage, actually. We were sort of walking through the protests. It was smaller. The protests, the demonstrations at the DNC were smaller than a lot of people expected. And the media kind of used that as an opportunity to brush aside that narrative. But actually, this was always going to be a marginal election.

It was always going to be an election that came down to just a little sliver of a percentage in Michigan, Wisconsin, places like that. So it doesn't matter that the protest is smaller than people expected if it represents a small but significant chunk of the broader public. Like we were saying that this was going to be significant for a long time. And I wonder, Ryan, if when you look at those numbers,

you see perhaps something specifically about college kids, you know, Michigan, Michigan State. Certainly young people, yeah. And we can put some, we'll write about this at Dropsite and put the link in the poll in there. Yes, young people, certainly. It's not. You can see the numbers, like for young people,

It's a higher concern than it is for older people. I'm going to say something that's going to sound maybe a little crass, but I think if you're picking up on the vibes on TikTok and other places over the course of the last six months plus, it wasn't cool to go out and vote Kamala Harris and put your I voted sticker on if you were on a campus. It was kind of cringe, specifically because of this issue, because Democrats lost...

so much just moral credibility, I think, with a lot of young people because of this issue. Right. And so I think that's a good way of putting it. So everybody probably experiences this in their own life. And actually, if you're watching the show, you might be the person in your social circle or maybe several of you in your social circle watch this show and talk about it. And then you talk about what you watched here and what you read elsewhere to your friends. And so your friends then are kind of

on the outer rung there. They're getting informed by you and we are informing you. That's kind of the direction that it goes. And so while you might love what Lena Kahn is doing or might love what the NLRB is doing for workers around the country, you're less likely to share that with your friends if at the same time they're facilitating a genocide. So you know what? I'm glad that Lena Kahn's doing good stuff

But I'm not going knocking on doors telling people about it while they're doing this other evil thing. And so I think you're right that it became, particularly on social media where everybody's getting their news, it became very uncool and unpleasant to say nice things about people who were doing this evil.

blanket evil thing. I think that's exactly right. It literally fell out of fashion. And I don't mean that, again, in a pejorative sense. Politics for a lot of people, if you're looking at popular culture and it just sort of like osmosis creeps into our world, the vibes were sucked out of the Democratic Party with young people because of this. Yeah. And what worked for Biden in 2022,

on that level was that dark Brandon meme. Yeah. Even though he was old, like the people say like, oh, Biden's so elderly, Nancy Pelosi, so elderly. How could young people ever vote for them? It's like young people love Bernie Sanders. Yeah. Love Bernie Sanders. Donald Trump just significantly improved his share of the youth vote. He's also old. Yeah. And think about why dark Brandon worked for that to land and for people to be able to say, uh, Joe Biden is cool.

because, you know, Lena Khan is cool because NLRB is cool because he got out of Afghanistan. What people had to do is flip his entire identity and create a new identity for him. It was ironic. Yeah. It's like, okay, yeah, we acknowledge that Joe Biden sucks. Yeah. We don't support Joe Biden. We support dark brand. His alter ego. His alter ego. Right. Who is doing these cool things? And we're like, all right, you know what? We can't get much in the U.S.,

We'll take that. That works for us. And it legitimately helped to boost the vibes and it worked. You're not doing a dark Brandon meme with the lasers coming out of the eyes when he's vaporizing children on a daily basis. Or with Kamala Harris, you can't keep Brat sticking, right? Like Brat stuck for a few weeks and then after it, it just became impossible. It became extremely cringe because I think young people were so

And if you're not on TikTok, I'm not on TikTok, honestly, but I try to pay as much attention as I can to the trends. I joined just the other day. I saw it. So I could get in right before they ban it. Amazing stuff coming out of Ryan's learning process. Yeah.

which he's broadcasting on access. He's like trying step-by-step through TikTok. It's great. But if you're, if you were paying attention to that, it was so, so clear. And this is again, why a lot of hawks want to just ban TikTok because the propaganda was not working on this particular issue. Like this was a huge top line problem for young people towards the Biden administration that Kamala Harris represented. Yeah. It just, it,

So it's not Gaza alone, but Gaza prevented Harris from getting any momentum with people who would have then been interested in talking about the other things. Meanwhile, she wouldn't even support Lena Khan. Right. She wouldn't even publicly come out and say that she would reappoint Lena Khan. No, she'd send Mark Cuban out. To say that they're not going to. Yeah. Yeah, so maybe it was, maybe she never had a shot, but.

I don't know. Well, you crunched some numbers. People can go back and look in 2020 about Joe Biden, who I think is actually a weaker candidate on some levels than Kamala Harris and how young voters in Pennsylvania probably put him on the edge. So that's real. Absolutely.

I'm Jason Alexander and I'm Peter Tilden and together on the really no really podcast our mission is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why they refuse to make the bathroom door go all the way to the floor we got the answer will space junk block your cell signal the astronaut who almost drowned during a spacewalk gives us the answer we talk with the scientist who figured out if your dog truly loves you and the one bringing back the woolly mammoth plus is

Does Tom Cruise really do his own stunts? His stuntman reveals the answer. And you never know who's going to drop by. Mr. Bryan Cranston is with us today. How are you, too? Hello, my friend. Wayne Knight about Jurassic Park. Wayne Knight, welcome to Really, No Really, sir. Bless you all. Hello, Newman. And you never know when Howie Mandel might just stop by to talk about judging. Really? That's what I'm talking about.

It's the opening? Really, no really. Yeah, really. No really. Go to reallynoreally.com. And register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead. It's called Really, No Really, and you can find it on the iHeartRadio app, on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

John Stewart is back at The Daily Show, and he's bringing his signature wit and insight straight to your ears with The Daily Show Ears Edition Podcast. Dive into John's unique take on the biggest topics in politics, entertainment, sports, and more. Joined by the sharp voices of the show's correspondents and contributors.

And with extended interviews and exclusive weekly headline roundups, this podcast gives you content you won't find anywhere else. Ready to laugh and stay informed? Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

What's up, everybody? Adnan Burke here to tell you about a new podcast from iHeart Podcast and the National Hockey League. It's NHL Unscripted with Burke and Demers. Hey, I'm Jason Demers, former 700-game NHL defenseman turned NHL network analyst. And boy, oh boy, does daddy have a lot to say. I love you, by the way, on NHL Network.

We're looking forward to getting together each week to chat and chirp about the sport and all the other things surrounding it that we love, right? Yeah, I just met you today, but we're going to have a ton of guests from the colliding worlds of hockey, entertainment, and pop.

Pop culture. And you know what? Tons of back and forth on all things NHL. Yeah, you're going to find that we're not just hockey talk. We have all kinds of random stuff on this podcast. Movies, television, food, wrestling, even the stuff that you wear on NHL Now. You wish you could pull off my short shorts, Berkey. That's sure to cause a ruckus. Listen to NHL Unscripted with Berk and Demers on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

All right, let's move on to Pete Hegseth's wild confirmation hearing yesterday. Ryan, you said that it was a wild one. I said it was sort of by Trump era standards, a medium one, which means it's still pretty wild. The sex and the partying and the like. Drag queens, drunk senators. So this is like Stefan. The Hegseth hearing had everything. It very much did. All right, well, let's take a look here at the opening statement that Pete Hegseth came out with when he was speaking before the Senate armed Congress.

services committee yesterday and it went for almost four and a half hours. It was really long. They did not go to a second round of questioning, interestingly enough, but it was over four hours, so there was plenty of time to question Pete Hexeth. Here's how he started, though. This is B1. Thank you for figuratively and literally having my back. You are a misogynist. Not only that, you are a Christian science.

I want to thank the authorities for their swift reaction to that outburst. Ryan said that was a Democratic senator while our mics were off from the back of the room. If you were listening to this and didn't see it- Basically, that was a Democratic senator. It was actually like an old ponytail-haired hippie. But-

You know, same thing actually in some cases. But anyway, so that's what happened. There were three disruptions, I think, like during his opening statement. It got off to a rocky start. He was able to finish. And let's just run through some of the most contentious exchanges. Let's go here to Senator Tim Kaine, who of the many people that brought up predictably the character questions related to Pete Hagseth, reports about infidelity, reports about assault, reports about

intoxication at work. Tim Kaine had the most explosive exchange with Pete Hegsa. So let's roll this. That occurred in Monterey, California in October 2017. At that time, you were still married to your second wife, correct? I believe so. And you had just fathered a child by a woman who would later become your third wife, correct? Senator, I was falsely charged, fully investigated and completely cleared.

So you think you are completely cleared because you committed no crime. That's your definition of cleared. You had just fathered a child two months before by a woman that was not your wife. I am shocked.

that you would stand here and say you're completely cleared. Can you so casually cheat on a second wife and cheat on the mother of a child that had been born two months before and you tell us you are completely cleared? How is that a complete clear? And it actually even got, I think, that kept going. The level of intensity with Tim Kaine kept going. Later he's like, we have an on-the-record source who says that you got wasted as strip club and

tried to get up on stage and danced with the dancers, had a sexual harassment claim filed against you, shouldn't that be disqualifying?

The charge that the dude is a dog, I think, sticks. Like, the guy's a dog. So let's go then to Senator... The question is whether, how relevant that is. And the question of whether it sticks, actually, I think is a really important one because here comes Senator Mark Wayne Mullen, Republican of Oklahoma, who went in on Tim Kaine. The rest of the dogs.

But we so quickly forget about that and then Senator Cain, or I guess I better use the senator from Virginia, starts bringing up the fact that what if you showed up drunk to your job? How many senators have showed up drunk to vote at night? Have any of you guys asked them to step down and resign from their job? And don't tell me you haven't seen it because I know you have. And then how many senators do you know have got a divorce before cheating on their wives? Did you ask them to step down?

No, but it's for show. You guys make sure you make a big show and point out the hypocrisy because a man's made a mistake. And you want to sit there and say that he's not qualified? Give me a joke. It is so ridiculous that you guys hold yourself as this higher standard and you forget you got a big plank in your eye. We've all made mistakes. I've made mistakes. And Jennifer, thank you for loving him through that mistake. Because the only reason why I'm here and not in prison...

is because my wife loved me too. I have changed, but I'm not perfect.

But I found somebody that thought I was perfect. And for whatever reason, you love Pete, and I don't know why. Many such cases. It's true. Sometimes it's true. So my take on this is actually that this is why the charges that Pete Hegseth was a dog seem very obviously to be correct. Do not stick. Because that's going to be bouncing around the internet. And Mark Wayne Mullen, regardless of whatever his motivations are there, former MMA fighter, by the way, he

He is absolutely correct that it looks awfully ridiculous for any member of the Senate to get all sanctimonious about people showing up drunk to work and cheating on their spouses. It does, though Hegseth's dog behavior is like 0.1% level. Like, you know, as Cain laid out, fathering a kid, cheating on your wife, having a...

you know, father and child and then cheating on that person. But Congress is generally like in that 1%, maybe not 0.1%, but Congress does occupy a unique slice there. Anyway, all that is to say, I actually wrote a piece about this yesterday because, and we'll see this more and more, like I actually think there are very serious questions about whether Pete Hegseth, even if you share his ideology, his worldview, like is there a better person than Pete Hegseth to be this nominee? I think, you know, that's a serious conversation

to be had on the right. Right, because this derailed, for the most part, any kind of sophisticated conversation about what the U.S., what the Pentagon's role is in the world. 100%. Yeah, those serious questions were drowned out by the less serious ones. Yeah, ish. But even that, I think, again, it was this breathless defense of the Pentagon as an institution, even if it didn't...

even if they didn't mean it to come across that way, some of them obviously did, but even if they didn't mean it to come across that way, it came across as like a defense of the status quo, which is really tone deaf right now. And even if people are concerned about Hegseth, they're willing to err on the side of the disruptor instead of the side of the status quo. So let's take a look here at Duckworth, Senator Tammy Duckworth of Illinois, a veteran herself questioning Pete Hegseth.

What is the highest level of international negotiations that you have engaged in, that you have led in? Because the Secretary of Defense does lead international security negotiations. There are three main ones that the Secretary of Defense leads and signs. Can you name at least one of them? Could you repeat the question, Senator? Sure. What is the highest level of international security agreement that you have led...

And can you name some that the Secretary of Defense would lead? There's three main ones. I have not been involved in international security arrangements because I have not been in government other than serving in the military. So my job has been to lead men and women in combat. Can you name one of the three main ones that the Secretary of Defense signs? You're talking about defense arrangements. I mean, NATO might be one that you're referring to.

status of forces agreement would be one of them. Status of forces agreement? I've been a part of teaching about status of forces agreements. But you don't remember to mention it? You're not qualified, Mr. Hexeth. You're not qualified. You talk about repairing our defense industrial complex. You're not qualified to that. You could do acquisition and cross-servicing agreements, which essentially are security agreements. You can't even mention that. She also had a brutal exchange where she asked him to name any of the countries in the ASEAN

Who were in the Southeast Asian trade compact, trade and military compact. And he was like, Australia, Japan. She's like, no, that's East Asia and Australia is a different continent. We're talking about Southeast Asia. That's an economic alliance, right? It is, but the Pentagon is involved in it. And if you...

If you're involved in this stuff, that comes up a lot. It was kind of surprising that what they used to do with confirmation hearings is they would murder board people.

Like, you were stuck in a room for, like, 18 hours for, like, weeks on end with these people kind of grilling you. Grilling, yep. And you had notes to take home and study and memorize. And it doesn't mean that you got better nominees as a result of that just because they, you know, did a crash course and memorized, you know, the 10 ASEAN countries. Right. But it is kind of odd that you wouldn't do the basic stuff there. Now, me...

I think the more incompetent the head of the Defense Department is, then the more likely it is to run the American war machine into the ground, the better. So you got a guy who is kind of drunk by noon and like...

doesn't really kind of know the basics of this. Now, from the other perspective, the status quo also prefers somebody who doesn't know what they're doing. Yeah, they want to manipulate them. Because they think they can then run them right over them.

Right. And I think that Hegseth is right on that line for them of somebody who's easily treated as a puppet and manipulated and somebody who may not know the ins and outs of the Pentagon, but will hire the people who do and who actually do want to disrupt the status quo. And I think maybe part of this is they're sussing that out. Let's take a listen to Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, and then we will hear a little bit from Tom Cotton. Here's Senator Gillibrand.

Standards have been changed inside infantry training units,

Ranger school, infantry battalions to ensure that commanders meet... Give me one example. Please give me an example. I get you're making these generalized statements. Commanders meet quotas to have a certain number of female infantry officers or infantry enlisted, and that disparages those women who are incredibly capable of meeting that standard. Commanders do not have to meet quotas for the infantry. Commanders do not have to have a quota for women in the infantry. That does not exist.

It does not exist. And your statements are creating the impression that these exist, because they do not. There are not quotas. We want the most lethal force. But I'm telling you, having been here for 15 years listening to testimony about men and women in combat and the type of

type of operations that were successful in Afghanistan and in Iraq, women were essential for many of those units. When ranger units went in to find where the terrorists hiding in Afghanistan or in Iraq, if they had a woman in the unit, they could go in, talk to the women in a village, say, where are the terrorists hiding? Where are the weapons hiding? And get crucial information to make sure that we can win that

battle. So just, you cannot denigrate women in general and your statements do that. We don't want women in the military, especially in combat.

What a terrible statement. So please, do not deny that you've made those statements. You have. So I definitely enjoyed the memes, Ryan. One in particular that clipped together, I might get you in trouble with this one, that clipped together all of the Senate Dem women on the committee yelling at him and said this is actually worse than combat. Because they really were yelling at him specifically on this line about women serving in combat. And he's moved off a lot of his more extreme positions, which initially were no women at all.

I don't, how would you characterize his previous position when it came to women's service? He literally said on Sean Ryan, quote, I'm straight up saying that women shouldn't be able to serve in combat. And that's what Elizabeth Warren said. I've never seen a, you know, a conversion. What did she say? A confirmation conversion, something like that. She also had a moment where she was questioning him about whether he would hold to the standard he had,

demands generals should be held to, which is that you don't leave the Pentagon and then go work for, I think it's defense contractors was the specific thing they were talking about for 10 years. And he was like, I'm not a general. So there were some exchanges I thought he, and people were laughing at that. I think there were some exchanges that

were better for him actually than obviously others. - It'd be nice if he would agree to that though, right? - Oh my gosh, yeah. - But he wouldn't agree to it? - No, he just said I'm not a general. - He can go back to Fox and make a lot of money. - But yeah, and so maybe that's, I don't know. But he had some moments actually where I think even to the questioning from Duckworth,

I didn't think he handled it that poorly. I don't think he handled Tim Kaine's questioning that poorly. I don't think he handled Gillibrand's questioning that poorly. Whether those are legitimate issues is different than whether he sounded all right. I don't think he flamed out. And we've seen that already in senators like Joni Ernst coming out and saying,

You know, if he had flamed out, there would be hesitation, more hesitation right now, at least projected publicly like, well, I'm going to have to talk to him about X, Y and Z. Like Deb Fischer told him, you might want to go study up on this nuclear triad thing. Yeah, kind of important stuff. Yeah. Well, it's to your point about how it used to be done in a way that's behind closed doors, more substantive than the four hours of theater that you get on television. Yeah.

Kirsten Gillibrand, I think, is a great example of how you're getting some theater on television, and so is Tom Cotton. Let's roll B6 here of just some of the Republican questioning of Pete Hegseth. I want to give you a chance to respond to what they said about you. I think the first one accused you of being a Christian Zionist. I'm not really sure why that is a bad thing. I'm a Christian. I'm a Zionist. Zionism is that the Jewish people deserve a homeland,

in the ancient holy land where they've lived since the dawn of history. Do you consider yourself a Christian Zionist? Senator, I support, I'm a Christian and I robustly support the state of Israel and its existential defense and the way America comes alongside them is a great ally. Thank you. Because another protester, and I think this one was a member of Code Pink, which by the way is a Chinese Communist Front group these days, said that you support Israel's war in Gaza.

I support Israel's existential war in Gaza. I assume, like me and President Trump, you support that war as well, don't you? Senator, I do. I support Israel destroying and killing every last member of Hamas. So that's Tom Cotton and Pete Hagseth. There's a lot of...

Mark Wayne Mullen was a good example, too, the sort of dramatic pumping him up. Did you catch Senator Tim Sheehy of Montana literally asking how many push-ups can you do? Oh, no, I missed. I saw him ask how many genders are there. Yeah. And then he told his classic Sheehy joke. Yeah. See, Senator Sheehy. Yeah. I mean, always a winner. Can you imagine being his staff? So sick of that. Like, you hear that joke probably ten times a day. Yeah.

So anyway, I think he'll probably survive this confirmation battle. He was probably always going to survive the confirmation battle. But if he had really flamed out yesterday, there would have been...

Gates-level, not quite Gates-level, but Gates-type hesitation from people like Joni Ernst or people indeed like Roger Wicker. And we're not seeing that reaction. They eventually would have been pushed by Trump to come around, but we're just not seeing that type of reaction. So I think he'll survive this one, Ryan. He probably will. And I think if

If he represented a more fundamental threat to the establishment at the Pentagon, the establishment of the Pentagon is very well represented on the Senate Armed Services Committee. And you would have seen much more hostility to him from Republicans because there is a kind of uniparty when it comes to

for the Pentagon and the military industrial complex. So, you know, you all do what you want, but, you know, if I were running MAGA, I think I would want a guy that was a bit more of a bureaucratic killer and had more of an instinct and understanding for how you're going to actually do this. This feels like a guy who was as shocked as the rest of the world was when Trump picked him to

to be Pentagon Secretary. Yeah, probably. He's like, whoa, does he know what this confirmation hearing is going to be like? Yeah, yeah. Trump's like, I don't care. You know, yeah. I'm picking Matt Gaetz. I just think, honestly, for most of the public, there's been, like, a lot of hand-wringing in circles like the Atlantic about...

him not agreeing to stand by the Geneva Conventions, it just reminds me of all of the moral panic over Trump and NATO, right? Like, it's, oh my, how dare, this is beyond the pale. So it was beyond the pale in Washington, but when the rest of the country sees you fuming over someone's skepticism about NATO or the Geneva Conventions, you're the one who's on the political end of that, like PR end of that. You're the one who looks like you're out of touch. And I would say it's...

from a separate perspective there, or from a different perspective there. So this was an exchange Angus King had with Hegseth where he said, "Would you respect the Geneva Convention's ban on torture?" And he said, "I'm not going to let the international community tell me what to do."

You know, whenever I see somebody who says that they won't condemn the Geneva Conventions on torture, I'm going to go right for those pearls. But then immediately I'm like, wait a minute. This is the same Democrats and this is the same Atlantic Monthly that wants to sanction the U.N. for trying to prosecute war crimes in Gaza. You want to destroy the ICJ. You want to destroy the ICC. Right.

Because it is following the law and indicting Netanyahu and Yoav Galant for their crimes against humanity. And then you want to hold up the Geneva Conventions? That's the point. Then I'm like, get out of here. That's the point. But I can clutch my pearls because I support the ICC and the ICJ and the Geneva Conventions. It's called consistency. I consistently can clutch my pearls. Senate Dems on armed services cannot. That's right. Yeah.

Catch Jon Stewart back in action on The Daily Show and in your ears with The Daily Show Ears Edition podcast. From his hilarious satirical takes on today's politics and entertainment to the unique voices of correspondents and contributors, it's your perfect companion to stay on top of what's happening now. Plus, you'll get special content just for podcast listeners.

like in-depth interviews and a roundup of the week's top headlines. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

I'm Jason Alexander and I'm Peter Tilden and together on the Really No Really podcast our mission is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why they refuse to make the bathroom door go all the way to the floor. We got the answer. Will space junk block your cell signal? The astronaut who almost drowned during a spacewalk gives us the answer. We talk with the scientist who figured out if your dog truly loves you and the one bringing back the woolly mammoth. Plus is

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What's up, everybody? Adnan Burke here to tell you about a new podcast from iHeart Podcast and the National Hockey League. It's NHL Unscripted with Burke and Demers. Hey, I'm Jason Demers, former 700-game NHL defenseman turned NHL network analyst. And boy, oh boy, does daddy have a lot to say. I love you, by the way, on NHL Network.

We're looking forward to getting together each week to chat and chirp about the sport and all the other things surrounding it that we love, right? Yeah, I just met you today, but we're going to have a ton of guests from the colliding worlds of hockey, entertainment, and pop.

Pop culture. And you know what? Tons of back and forth on all things NHL. Yeah, you're going to find that we're not just hockey talk. We have all kinds of random stuff on this podcast. Movies, television, food, wrestling, even the stuff that you wear on NHL Now. You wish you could pull off my short shorts, Berkey. That's sure to cause a ruckus. Listen to NHL Unscripted with Berk and Demers on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

All right, let's move on to some of this. This is an awful story out of Los Angeles. We're going to roll right in here into some reports that we're getting from or about, I should say, landlords in the L.A. area as the community continues to be on edge and devastated by wildfires. So this is

As More Perfect Union puts it, celebrity realtor Jason Oppenheim of Selling Sunset. He's talking a little bit about price gouging here. Let's roll the clip. This is something that I want to discuss because I think it should be exposed. But we're having landlords taking advantage of the situation. I had a client. We sent him to a house that was asking $13,000 a month.

He offered $20,000 a month and he offered to pay six months upfront. And the landlord said, no, I want $23,000 a month. You know, there are price gouging laws in California that are just being ignored right now. And this isn't the time to be taking advantage of situations. And it's also illegal to take advantage of a natural disaster. So do you think that landlords might be not just profiting during this emergency, but actually breaking the law?

Absolutely. They are. I mean, I researched the law last night. You cannot charge more than 10% above pre-disaster market rates. All right. So let's actually take a look at this Google Docs spreadsheet. This is the next element. I'll put it up on the screen. Tracking. So this is a spreadsheet of landlords' price gouging rent during the LA fires, this post on X says. And if you go and click on it, it's- The rents were public before and now they're public now. And you can see the doubling and

And worse? Yeah, and Judd Legum actually went through and put some of these from Zillow on... C3? Yeah, this is C3. Judd Legum is pulling out things on Zillow. You can compare this. It's publicly accessible information absolutely against the law, Ryan. Yeah, and so a couple things here, and I'm sure people will have a fun debate about this down in the comments section, but to me...

I get a little frustrated whenever the public is excited for socialism and government regulation only when there's a crisis. Yeah. Like if you're against this, then you need to join me in being for tough rent control and being for enormous investments in public housing and not the kind of public housing that is completely restricted, but...

public investments in housing for people, along with real curbs on turning housing into just a free-flowing commodity. Like, you can't, to me, you can't have it both ways. You want the market when everything's cool, but then the second things go sideways, you're like, oh, wait, there's this law in the books here, and like,

I mean, maybe you can have it both ways because you will have a lot of politicians who are willing to crack down on this. But I'm saying if you like this idea that greed should not dictate everything, then come on over to this side here.

And let's try to live that all the time. Yeah, but see, on the other side of that, literally on the right side of that, I don't mean the correct side, but on the right side of that. The wrong side of that. I don't really think the government, I don't also trust the government to be dictating these prices either. I don't feel like that's... Right, but what they're saying here is that there ought to be a law, or there is a law, that's going to come in, and the government is going to tell them what they can charge in these moments, and

And I'm cool with that, but my point is that that should be the case all the time. So the law according to Legum is that you can't increase rental prices by more than 10% for 30 days after a state of emergency is declared. You're saying this should apply not just in a state of emergency, but I guess that's a separate argument. Yeah, because the free market in real estate, such as it is, controlled by these landlords, has created an emergency where people can't afford housing around the country.

I am not a necessarily like yimby person, but they would say that it also was the government's restrictions. Sure. I'm for more buildings too. Yeah. Build more too. So, okay. So this is a happy medium. But Leckham found, this was up on the screen for a while, but he found a five bedroom house in Manhattan Beach that was...

like it was $87.50 per month on December 31st. And you can see on Zillow that is now going for $19,750 a month. And that's 125% increase. So clearly against the law. Yeah. And, you know, this...

It reminds me of that very viral post by the grandson of one of Hollywood's founders where he posted, does anybody have contact info for private firefighters? Do you remember seeing that? Yes. Eventually he deleted it. But it is this idea that everything belongs to the highest bidder. Yeah.

Which maybe is fair in a world where people amass their money in some type of a fair way. This is like a third generation Hollywood guy who's just living off of his grandfather's hard work. And what was so perfect about that story, I forget who the grandfather was, but the grandfather was known as somebody who came up from nothing, worked hard,

alongside all of his other workers, was well liked by those kinds of people, very classic, up from your bootstraps and first generation wealth thing, down to two generations later, guy who's never done anything but has a huge bank account and wants to hire private firemen to come to his house.

My soft theory is that you will always see price gouging, people attempting to take advantage of horrible situations. We've seen it many times in the past. We've seen it really bad in the past and Gilded Age and all of that. It feels like we've returned to. But I also think right now it's somehow worse. Like there's a level of shamelessness.

that exists right now. And just going through that spreadsheet and looking at all of the L's, people are quite literally posting to Zillow. I mean, they didn't know it was against the law to have such... That's what it suggests to me, is people don't even know that it's illegal. But you should just morally be disgusted with yourself. And we should have a society where people are horrified at the prospect of publicly, let alone privately, posting shit like that. And what's incredible is that

Some of those houses that they're doubling the price of are going to burn down. Like, this fire is still raging. The two biggest ones, Palisades and Eaton, on the latest reporting has 18% and 35% contained, respectively, with the Santa Ana winds still ripping through this dry area. We're not, this is not remotely over. And I think that's one of the things that is most offensive to people that...

You have people capitalizing on this before the city is even remotely out of danger. The latest update on the death toll, according to the medical examiners, within the last six hours or so is that there have not been 25 fire-related deaths. And the extreme fire danger remains high right now. So we think we've seen the worst of it, but it's still incredibly vulnerable. Yeah, it's absolutely brutal.

With just four days until the TikTok ban is officially supposed to take effect, if the Supreme Court doesn't grant some stay of execution to the Chinese company or run app,

millions and millions of people, when you put this element up on the screen, here in America, are flocking over to Red Note. And what's, including me, I'm over on Red Note. People are like, what's your handle? Are you really? So you got on TikTok and then immediately got on Red Note too. I got on Red Note before TikTok, I think. Wow. That's so perfect. So I'm not even a refugee. I think my, just search Ryan Grim on there. Maybe, I don't know. Um,

I haven't posted anything on Red Note, but Red Note is actually kind of cool. But what's amazing about this kind of own goal from the U.S. is that TikTok is owned by ByteDance, which is a Chinese company. Red Note is owned by the Chinese government. There's not even a layer of...

Right. Between there. Now, it is the number one app in the store right now. I think Lemonade, which is also owned by ByteDance, is number two. Now, according to the law that bans TikTok, both Red Note and Lemonade would also be banned. Because it says basically if there's X number of million users and it's a Chinese app, it's banned. So...

you're out of the frying pan, into the fryer, you're still kind of gonna get screwed. But it's amazing to watch what's unfolding over there. You can put up this second element up there. The cultural exchanges between the Americans and the Chinese are just absolutely delightful. This one has been going viral. A Chinese user telling the Americans, "Look, you guys don't need a new app. "You guys need a revolution.

And you can go back and be like, okay, we'll get a revolution. But it's so, by the way, it's so easy to get banned from Red Note. So you're having a bunch of Chinese. What kind of revolution would you like us to have, sir? The censorship on Red Note is much more severe than on TikTok. Dude.

American apps. So Douyin is Chinese. They're probably both equally censored. Douyin and Red Note. So you've got a bunch of Chinese users basically giving cheat codes to the Americans like here are the things you can't

if you want to knock it bad. Anyway, so you're not on Red Note? Not on Red Note, but you know who's all over Red Note? We can put up the next element. Luigi. Luigi is beloved on Red Note, according to people who have been. Have you seen this, Ryan? Yes. I saw somebody say, why do Chinese users love, support Luigi so much? And somebody said something like... That's the next element. He who carries...

the water for the community must be supported or something like that. It's delightful. Yeah, this is the next element. We can put it up on the screen. It's someone on X posting screenshots of the Luigi love on Red Note saying Red Note is effing insane. Oh, there it is. The person who carries firewood for the masses should not be left to freeze in the wind and snow.

That's much better than the one I said. And meanwhile, here's the next element as well. You had Mr. Beast yesterday pretty openly. Actually, this was later on Monday night, pretty openly saying, OK, I'll find fine. I'll buy TikTok so it doesn't get banned. And ironically, I've had so many billionaires reach out to me since I tweeted this. Let's see if we can pull it off. He posted that's Mr. Beast.

saying that as reports in the New York Times and other places yesterday said Elon Musk was being considered by Chinese officials, this is who the New York Times sourced their report to, for purchasing

TikTok in the United States ahead of the ban, which is interesting because to the extent that I have seen, we haven't seen that floated in American media. So TikTok totally denied that. But TikTok itself is mostly separate from China. The sort of allegation is that TikTok is based here in the U.S., but the allegation is accurate that

ByteDance, while it's the parent company, does still have access to all of the data because of the way the Chinese government controls corporations. They would have to hand over data if the Chinese government asked. There are many members, actually, of the Chinese Communist Party who work for ByteDance. And ByteDance Beijing headquarters, Forbes, has covered this really extensively. There has been intentional censorship of journalists from ByteDance's headquarters, censorship of different political parties.

topics from the same places. Those are all pretty well fleshed out by reporting in Forbes and elsewhere. But it is true that there's at least a little bit of a firewall between the US operations of TikTok, which is literally based here, and ByteDance, which operates the Chinese version of TikTok.

and Lemonade, which is also now apparently gaining in popularity. That does make it different than Red Note. Red Note is, to your point, more heavily censored than the U.S. version of TikTok. I think what Hawks would say, and I probably agree with this point, is that the potential for censorship on TikTok by China does still exist. And yeah, and I think it's more about the national security apparatus and the U.S. concerned

Totally. That China can kind of push the algorithm around. They're jealous of that control. They want it for themselves. And also... They've done this with Facebook and X and YouTube. Yes. And it's so hard for American policymakers to just think that, for instance, young people don't like the genocide in Gaza. They have to be like...

Well, they don't like the genocide in Gaza because this Chinese app is tricking them or this Chinese app is letting people see what's going on in Gaza, which they kind of under pressure moved away from. It showed they can be pushed around just like U.S. big tech firms can be. Elon Musk, let's be clear.

has enormous investments in China. Yes. So the idea that selling it to him does anything about Chinese control over the app is kind of ridiculous. And also, you would hope that FTC would be like, wait a minute, you can't own both Twitter and TikTok.

That's crazy. Yes, you would think. It's like completely to your point, like the Starlink operations in Ukraine, actually in Israel and Gaza. He's involved significantly as a defense contractor, but also as the owner of Starlink in conflicts around the world. There's also SpaceX operations.

I mean, it's just to applaud this from populist right-wing perspective is completely bananas and act like this is a power that should exist. I mean, even X, I think, is too much power for one billionaire to own. Oh, for sure. So, yeah, well, definitely agree on that. But to an extent, I mean, I was thinking about this today. It's this Red Note stuff. The memes are really funny, but...

But whether or not we agree with the policies of the military industrial complex and the Pentagon, we could not in the distant future find ourselves in a situation where China is literally trying to kill American soldiers and vice versa. And this will get a lot less funny at that point. Yes, but I would hope that cultural exchanges like this would make

war less likely as the working people in the United States realize they have more in common with the working people in China than they do with their billionaire owners as Mac pointed out on Twitter. I think that the culture exchange is great and you know there has been this interesting... This is the blue gene theory? Well, there's the blue gene theory but also because of the way that China has its firewalled internet

The rest of the Internet, the U.S. kind of run Internet, has existed for the most part without the billion plus people in China. Like there hasn't been a whole lot of exchange there. That's true. And I've heard people say that it's good that that's not the case because if it was,

every single thing on the internet would devolve, including like the comment section on this video would devolve into just flame wars in the posts between Indian and Chinese people. And it would just completely dominate and wash everything else away. But otherwise, people are, I think, loving having these exchanges with regular Chinese people. Yeah.

Well, I was going to say, to the extent that— Like, you've had Americans helping Chinese people with their English homework. And if you can psyop Americans into doing homework, that's a win. Well, to the extent that governments, which we know for a fact exerted control over X over the course of the pandemic, Google as well—

To the extent that the two governments don't try to escalate rather than diffuse tensions via these apps, they don't use them as propaganda channels to sort of pump up hostilities, then I think diffusing tension—I'm all for diffusing tension with cultural exchange. I'm just highly skeptical that these are channels to do that, given how much control our governments will exert—do exert over them. And in the case of TikTok, Elon Musk is—

Perhaps the best friend of the incoming president. He's and chairman. She Is in a unique position which again we could be looking at 10 20 a hundred years from now and saying wow that was Really helpful that really spared us some unnecessary conflict but very much yet to be determined ultimately a complete and total humiliation for Silicon Valley mm-hmm that Americans

being told that they're going to lose access to TikTok are not flocking to Instagram or Threads or Facebook or whatever other, you know, bile that Silicon Valley has puked up over the last 10, 15 years. And they're like, what else does Chairman Xi got going for us? Let's take a look. They're learning like Mandarin.

And how to type in Chinese characters because it's easier to use the app that way. That you'll love to see. We'll see where it goes. All right, this is actually a great lead-in to our next block, Ryan, about how Donald Trump could potentially, in the strangest way possible, it's sort of the theme of today's show, that all of the unorthodox, either baggage or advantages Donald Trump comes into office with could potentially lead us on a path towards peace because he's not stuck in the kind of Cold War inertia that most of,

official Washington is. So let's go ahead and have that debate. Princeton astrophysicist Robert Godson has floated the idea that Trump could actually get three Nobel Prizes. We'll see.

I'm Jason Alexander and I'm Peter Tilden and together on the really no really podcast our mission is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why they refuse to make the bathroom door go all the way to the floor we got the answer will space junk block your cell signal the astronaut who almost drowned during a spacewalk gives us the answer we talk with the scientist who figured out if your dog truly loves you and the one bringing back the woolly mammoth plus is

Really? That?

It's the opening? Really, no really. Yeah, really. No really. Go to reallynoreally.com. And register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead. It's called Really, No Really, and you can find it on the iHeartRadio app, on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Catch Jon Stewart back in action on The Daily Show and in your ears with The Daily Show Ears Edition podcast. From his hilarious satirical takes on today's politics and entertainment to the unique voices of correspondents and contributors, it's your perfect companion to stay on top of what's happening now. Plus, you'll get special content just for podcast listeners.

like in-depth interviews and a roundup of the week's top headlines. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. What's up, everybody? I'm Dan Burke here to tell you about a new podcast from iHeart Podcasts and the National Hockey League. It's NHL Unscripted with Burke and Demers. Hey, I'm Jason Demers, former 700-game NHL defenseman turned NHL network analyst, and boy, oh boy, does daddy have a lot to say. I love you, by the way, on NHL Network.

We're looking forward to getting together each week to chat and chirp about the sport and all the other things surrounding it that we love, right? Yeah, I just met you today, but we're going to have a ton of guests from the colliding worlds of hockey, entertainment, and pop.

Pop culture. And you know what? Tons of back and forth on all things NHL. Yeah, you're going to find that we're not just hockey talk. We're into all kinds of random stuff on this podcast. Movies, television, food, wrestling, even the stuff that you wear on NHL Now. You wish you could pull off my short shorts, Berkey. That's sure to cause a ruckus. Listen to NHL Unscripted with Berk and Demers on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Incoming President Donald Trump seems on the brink of inking a ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas.

Could be Nobel Peace Prize worthy, according to Professor Robert Golston, astrophysicist at Princeton University, who earlier this week had a really provocative and fascinating column over at Fox News called, we can put this element up on the screen here, called How Donald Trump Can Make History and Win Three Awards.

Nobel Peace Prizes. And now, to be clear, Professor Goldstein was not saying that simply getting a ceasefire between Hamas and Israel would make him eligible for that peace prize. There's more that he would have to do on that. But I think it's interesting to walk through the three different Nobel Peace Prizes that you believe he could actually legitimately

be in line for because of the historical conditions in which he's coming into office and also the through line between all three of them. So let's start with the one in the Mideast since that's the one that approximately is going on right now.

Were you surprised that he was able to get this breakthrough over the last couple of days? And then what steps have to happen after this to make it enduring enough for the Nobel Committee to say, you know what, this guy who they probably all despise, you know, just from a cultural perspective, deserves a Nobel Peace Prize? Well, so all indications are that, you know,

President-elect Trump, I guess we should say in this context, put some pressure on Netanyahu to agree to some of the last bits of this deal. And his, I think, general philosophy is peace through strength. And his claim that all hell will pay seems to have, so to speak, paid off.

But there's two more stages in this deal that's going to have to be gone through. Let's hope by the time this is broadcast, the first stage has been signed off. So there's more to be done. And then ultimately, the real big issue is the situation in Iran. Iran is right on the brink of nuclear weapons.

So we need a new comprehensive deal that pulls Iran back from the brink, which we think we could do, I think we could do, if we make an arrangement with them where they can make enriched uranium for their reactors, but they never go above, say, 4 or 5 percent enrichment, so it's just not usable for a bomb.

That puts them in a situation where they get what they've explicitly said they wanted, and they don't get what they had said they don't want, which is a bomb. We can put verification measures in, I've actually done some of the research on this, but me and many others, but you can put verification measures in place to be sure that they're just making uranium for their reactors.

Then you say, what's the deal on the other side? And it's clear that if we're going to move forward these Abraham Accords, we need to have a plan for a demilitarized Palestinian state. But that has to go through stages and that has to get strong verification, strong controls that it stays demilitarized.

And that would be a deal that would settle the Middle East. You wouldn't have the threat of the Iranian nuclear weapons, and you wouldn't have this continuous problem. Hamas, you know, wanted to take over all of Israel, and some of the right-wingers in Israel would like to expel the Arabs.

And so, you know, nobody's gonna get everything they want. But we could have a situation where maybe even Iran joins the Abraham Accords. This, I think, gets President Trump a Nobel Prize. - And before you go to that, just wanna be clear to the audience

You're just kind of not like a random scientist putting out political ideas. Like your entire career has been in the field of kind of nuclear policy and nuclear proliferation. And so you and like you were saying, you've done a lot of the research on on how it is now possible for countries to

verify in a serious way whether other countries are living up to the deals that they strike without also then giving away nuclear information back to

their adversaries, and that is a through line for all three of these. But go ahead, you were saying. Professor, just in the last 24 hours, we have actually an interview with the president of Iran and Lester Holt on NBC Nightly News. We have a clip of that we want to roll now. Let's go ahead and play this. One potential threat to diplomacy could be seen as what the U.S. believes were the Iran's plan to assassinate Donald Trump.

Was there such a plan? All the assassinations and acts of terror that we see happening in Europe and elsewhere, can we see the footsteps of Iranian nationals or other foreign nationals? Have there been any links between those terrorist assassinations and Iran? Iran has never been in pursuit of assassination and acts of terror.

You're saying there was never an Iranian plot to kill Donald Trump? Never, by no means. Are you willing to promise that there will be no attempt on the life of Donald Trump?

Ever since the beginning, we never intended to do that. Okay. That's not the most persuasive. Yes, he promised to Lester Holt. So, Professor, it's... I won't promise I have technology or we in the United States have technology to assure that they won't do that. Right.

So it would be enormously provocative for him to go on NBC Nightly News and just say, hell yeah, we want to kill the guy. That would be absurd and never happen. On the other hand, Donald Trump doesn't want to look like he's making a deal with people who want to kill him. And when I think about the way Donald Trump approaches some of this, even just seeing how the ceasefire negotiations are transpiring right now, he doesn't want to be humiliated. He doesn't want America to be humiliated. He doesn't want to be personally humiliated. Could you talk to

just a little bit about even the psychology or the politics of a negotiation with Donald Trump, you know, when—whether it's Iran or Israel or Gaza, on these three potential Nobel Peace Prizes, which we all sort of psychologically know would be very appealing to him indeed. What is the leverage if you're Iran? What is the leverage if you're on the other side of the table from Donald Trump in any of these three scenarios?

Well, I think right now Iran is at a low point in its strength and its influence in that area. With what happened with Hezbollah, what happened with Hamas, what will probably eventually happen with the Houthis, the Iranians are facing a situation where they are weak. Donald Trump has an air force

that can destroy their nuclear program. That's my sense is that Donald Trump likes to negotiate from strength and he likes to actually in a way not make clear what he's doing, which is an interesting approach and seems to have worked, right? We at least hopefully seems to have worked with the Israelis and Hamas.

So I think it puts him in a not bad position to say, you know, here's a deal that gets you what you want and prevents you from getting a bomb, which you said you don't want. And if you don't take it, they'll be held at bay. And so let's go to this. Let's go to the second one then. And actually, which one would you call a second? You know, Europe or the comprehensive deal? I'd say Europe is kind of makes makes the most sense to talk about next.

Yeah, I think so. Then we go to the biggest picture. Yeah. So where do you see the possibility of a Nobel Peace Prize in Europe and Ukraine? Obviously, there's been, you know, horrible death going on in Ukraine, actually on both sides. And it's crazy. Where it comes from, ultimately, is that if Ukraine were to join NATO,

and NATO were to station missiles in Ukraine, then there'd be a situation where Ukraine or NATO from Ukraine could mount a decapitating, they call it, nuclear strike on Moscow and just take out Moscow's leadership with a missile that would take less than 10 minutes to arrive. So... And do they not have that, does NATO not have that capacity currently?

Well, it's an interesting story, but yes, at this point we do not. It's got to be a much longer distance attack so that there is a chance for decision making in Moscow for people to get into a protected position, stuff like that. So that currently we don't have that decapitating strike, that very quick decapitating strike capability.

But if nuclear missiles got located in Ukraine, then that would be a big problem. I mean, that was the sort of, there was a whole lot of dressing around this. You know, Ukraine has historical ties to Russia and so forth and so on. But the strategic issue was really the expansion of NATO.

The problem with the expansion of NATO in if they can put missiles in Europe Is this decapitating strike and and there isn't an equivalent thing that that Russia can do to us, right? So there's no balance there so the the smart thing to do at this point in my opinion is to make a deal where there are no US or Russian missiles and

anywhere between Iceland on the one hand and the Ural Mountains, which are far to the east of Moscow. So that if there are no nuclear weapons in that area, you lose the whole hair-trigger situation of sudden strikes, and you also lose this problem of Ukraine. Now the problem in Ukraine loses its strategic salience.

And you've got a possibility, again, I think probably arguing from a position of strength. You know, I sense that Donald Trump doesn't like to say, you know, I'll put NATO troops into Ukraine, be specific. But

But there's a situation on the battlefield that maybe a deal could be made, but it needs that broader context. And so then the third Nobel Peace Prize you talked about is something that you don't hear talked about in the news, which is a more global nuclear treaty between the three major nuclear powers, China, Russia, and the United States. Can you talk a little bit about that?

the technical innovations that have led us to a place where some of the previous agreements are either obsolete or actually dangerous at this moment? Well, yeah, sure. What's happened is that we are pushing forward with missile defenses

that mostly scientists think can't really stop an attack from Russia or China. We have 44 missiles and they have hundreds and hundreds of missiles. So there's no way that we can stop even a large fraction of them, even with a miraculously good missile defense.

But we do need those missile defenses to be sure that if a rogue state like North Korea or, God forbid, Iran gets a nuclear weapon, that they can't attack us. So we need to make an arrangement where we can verifiably show that we have a certain number of launchers that can take out ICBMs, intercontinental ballistic missiles,

so that you don't need these crazy responses that the Russians and the Chinese are coming up with. The Russians are coming up with nuclear-powered cruise missiles that can go around over the South Pole and attack us, and with this gigantic torpedo that can run across the ocean and destroy a city like Washington. So you need to make... Just on that point, so we would not be able to detect it underwater? Is that the...

Well, that's the sort of question if I answered it, you'd have to shoot me or shoot myself or something. Maybe we don't want to. But that's the idea? Well, no, the idea would be that they have submarines. These are very big torpedoes, and there would have to be an inspection protocol, just the way there'd have to be an inspection protocol to show that we didn't have too many launchers.

And in that situation, you can get to a point where you could start bringing down some of the things that are already there. We currently have about 400 missiles on hair trigger alert in silos that you can find on Google Maps.

And then the Russians obviously can find on Google Maps. The Chinese are now building up a similar capability. The Russians have about the same capability. And these are just crazy items because you have very little time to decide to use them.

And then you also worry that if a significant part of your arsenal is vulnerable, then you're more worried about a first strike. And the Chinese could be more worried about a first strike. And so then that puts everything right on the hair trigger. And these are

These aren't war fighting things, you're going to have to use them as soon as a war starts, otherwise they'll get destroyed. So there's a deal that could be made pretty quickly that would bring down about 400 warheads from both sides. And then it's an interesting thing, if you have three countries competing,

And I think it's a good idea for us to try to decouple Russia and China as best we can. Then you have a situation where if I take away one warhead, and the deal is that each of China and Russia takes away a warhead, that's a pretty good deal. I've got two less facing me for one that I've got less that I've shot off.

So I think there's a possibility if you really work on it and if you look at the sort of root cause problem of these missile defenses, that they worry might work and we worry won't work.

There's a way to get down to much lower numbers with both sides. And let's talk about China, because Ryan and I were just discussing how we could look back 100 years from now and as gross as the conflict of interest between Elon Musk, Tesla, and the Chinese government

looks right now and could bear some really toxic fruit, it's possible that you look back 100 years from now and say this was a huge contributor to diffusing tensions and spared conflict and was helpful in negotiating with the Chinese government. So talk a little bit about why you see this as an especially ripe moment when it comes to China as well.

Well, I think the story is China is just now doing a buildup. If we don't do a buildup, it'll save us about a trillion dollars, which is a noticeable amount of money and part of Donald Trump's goals. And it would also save them a lot of money. Did you hear that, Elon Musk? One trillion dollars. There it is. You can go after Medicaid all you want. You're not going to find a trillion dollars. Go ahead.

uh so so if you can if you can uh cut back this this huge expansion in particular these uh these missiles i was telling you about we're planning on on renewing all of them uh basically replacing all of them and their control structures and everything uh if you could if you could uh back down on that stuff

It would reduce the tensions with China. Now, I think you have to be worried about Taiwan, of course, so you need to have ships that can help defend Taiwan. But you could put this back on the track that we were on before. You know, it seems to me a lot of the inflation we've had is because we're not getting these cheap things from China.

So there's a complicated situation there that could be diffused, I think. One thing we have to recognize is their economy is about the same size as ours. And so sort of trying to make them be a third class, a second class player is not practical. It's interesting. One of the reasons that is taken as kind of the conventional wisdom for why the Soviet Union imploded was that they tried to keep up

this arms race with us and because we had a bigger and faster growing economy, they increasingly ate into their domestic capacity to grow their economy and distribute the goodies to the Soviet people and helped lead to collapse. If the Chinese economy is growing significantly faster than ours and we are spending a trillion plus dollars

building things that we hope we're never going to use, at best, building things that we never use. At worst, building things that we use and destroy ourselves. So just siphoning money out of the economy and it going to nothing other than boosting kind of Northern Virginia real estate prices.

Do we face some of the same risk as the Soviet Union that in this blind competition with China, if they grow faster than us and we continue to spend a trillion dollars on this nuclear capacity, could that end up kind of bankrupting us?

Well, I don't think we're in quite the situation, of course, that Russia was in. People were saying they were spending 8% of their GDP on defense. It was crazy. But of course, they weren't spending much more than we. Right. We're at what? We're at 5%? I don't know. People can Google that. It's a lot though, right? I mean, we have a 14, 15. What's our GDP? Something like 15 trillion? We're up to 18 now?

Emily's going to Google this. And our defense budget is the better part of a trillion dollars. 27 trillion. Oh, we're at 27 trillion now. Okay. So one one-thirtieth, three percent. Anyway, go ahead.

So, I mean, we're not in the situation that we have a non-functioning economy and we've got a population that's a third the size of the other guy. Oh, I guess, you know, actually our population is quite a bit lower, but our GDP is way higher than Russia's. So people used to say Russia is spending much more fraction of their economy on weapons, but in fact, they were in a much smaller economy.

So I don't quite see, you know, maybe if you talk 100 years, it's a different story that I don't see in the next decade or two that that will get bankrupted. It's just that the national debt is a big problem. And it's certainly going to hurt us to spend this money. Q4, by the way, has our GDP at 29 trillion. OK, well, there we go. But yeah, I don't mean the next 10 years. You know, China thinks in terms of 50 and 100 years.

They're they're they're happy to wait us out. Oh Certainly you want to get this path you want to get this on a path towards eventually eliminating nuclear weapons Ronald Reagan even said that so you you want to get to that place and and going up isn't necessarily the right way to get to go to eventually come down

Yeah. And the last point, I think the thing that makes your case more plausible is that you pointed out in your piece, Donald Trump hasn't cared about a whole lot consistently throughout his life. But one of the things he has cared about, curiously, has been nuclear war. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Well, so I shouldn't say Reagan. It's true of Reagan, too, in a way. But Donald Trump has spoken from his first apparently was a Playboy interview. Where else?

Well, you know, they talked about other things too, but he focused on the fact that the nuclear situation is really, really dangerous. And he used the metaphor that it's like being ignorant of the fact that you could get sick. And so you don't even pay any attention to your health and then you get sick and you're surprised by it. You shouldn't be in that situation with nuclear weapons. And

He has repeated that. It's clear that it's something that is a high priority to him and it's certainly a high priority to the Nobel Committee. So if they could, there's going to have to be some sweet talking to get China to the table clearly. They have to be brought to the table as an equal because they have the capability to build up to being an equal and they're sort of on that path and they have an economy that's like ours, not like Russia's.

So I think you need to have a situation where all three of you are kind of sitting on the same side of the table trying to solve this problem that you're all threatening each other. That's going to then put you on this path so that out in the long term,

Frankly, out in the long term, there is a long term, right? Yeah. If we use all these weapons, there is no long term. There's no 100 years from now where there's any civilizations to speak of left. Right. So Israel-Palestine and Iran deal and the Ukraine war and then world peace. I'd give them those Nobels. There you go. They may be ashamed that they didn't give Ronald Reagan the Nobel Prize when they gave it to Gorbachev. So maybe they'll pay attention. That's right. That's right. Yeah, it'll be like a makeup call from the refs.

Thank you so much, Professor. This was fascinating. We really appreciate you coming on. Great. I enjoyed it very much. Well, that's fascinating to talk through. And I hope that, you know, Trump does have, even though he pretends he doesn't, an interest in validation from those types of people. And if somebody can float in front of him that, look, these accolades are available to you if you do these things. I think he already leans in that direction. He loves, you know, the art of the deal.

what bigger deal can you get than ending...

Israel, you know, the ceasefire, Ukraine, Iran deal, and then a nuclear treaty between Russia, China, and the U.S.? I mean, somebody should do it. Why not Trump? And he's also so completely right about Reagan, something that gets completely forgotten about Reagan is that he disrupted the Cold War inertia that we were in in the 1980s, although I think rhetorically it was a little bit different. But just by his negotiations, back channel, if you read his diary with Soviets, he

he immediately was shocked into realizing how dire the situation was, how dramatic the situation was, and started to talk less like a cold warrior from the 1960s and started to make inroads. And I think Trump

in an interesting way, is like that level of unorthodox on a bigger scale. He doesn't feel beholden to the Cold War inertia. He never has. He doesn't play by those rules. He actually despises that status quo. So there's some real potential here. It just speaks to how easily we lose sight of nuclear politics, that this gets tossed to the side and this isn't a bigger conversation. And speaking of which, and we didn't get a chance to talk about this in the show, there was

interesting news yesterday from the Biden administration, which announced that it was taking Cuba off of the state sponsor of terrorism list. We've covered this before, and it'll be interesting to see how the Trump administration responds to this. Obama normalized relations with Cuba. Trump then came in at the very end of his term

put Cuba on the state sponsor of terrorism list, which is a more effective and more devious kind of embargo because what it does is it says that, what it does is it blocks companies from around the world from doing any business with Cuban companies. It's really insidious. And the U.S. will say... Not that that fully happens, but yeah. Although, so we have a great piece, I can put it in the...

and then the note down here from Ed Augustine, a reporter who writes for us from down in Havana, who talked to a bunch of Cuban businesses. And right after they got put on that list, European banks, European companies just stopped. They'd say, look, the US says maybe we can do this. Our lawyers aren't sure. It's just, you're not a big enough market. It's just easier for us to say, you know what? We don't do business in Cuba anymore. And if you're an island, that hurts.

It was expected and Biden was pressured to, and Biden campaigned saying that he thought what Trump did was wrong. Biden was expected to come in and take Cuba off the state sponsor of terrorism list immediately. Instead, he did it yesterday and he did it after something like a third of the population has left Cuba. Enormous numbers of those, by the way, flew to Nicaragua, then came up

to the US border, sparking this migration crisis. I remember talking to somebody in Cuba a couple months ago, who she's in her 20s, and she said, I don't have a single friend left in Cuba. They have all left. And it was because Biden took four years to take them off of this list. People have lost significant amounts of weight, like absolute misery.

island-wide blackouts, like what he put people in Cuba through for four years to then at the very end say, oh, nevermind, is just infuriating.

So you will see how Trump handles the Secretary of State Marco Rubio, obviously. Hardcore. Yes, because to the point that Trump is stuck in the Cold War inertia, it's on issues that his sort of people in the cabinet and even middle range folks dictate the policy. Trump sort of

exports it or outsources it. It's not his top concern, so he lets little Marco handle Venezuela, Cuba, Central America. We'll see if he does or not, yeah. Right, but to the point that Professor Goldson is making, there's an argument to be made to Donald Trump that breaking that pattern could actually really help his image historically, or his legacy, I guess, going forward. So we'll see. But the fact that at the very end of his term,

He threw Cuba under the bus last time. Doesn't really bode well this time. Yeah. The fact that he named Marco Rubio Secretary of State doesn't bode well either.

But we'll see. Reporting right now, Marco Rubio is literally about to begin his confirmation hearing as we are recording this. And the report is that he is coming out swinging against the foreign policy consensus. Yeah, going after the globalists. And it sounds like it's at least rhetorically a very populist opening statement. Breitbart had it last night. I think I saw you sharing it. Yeah, that's right. Mapawil got it. So it doesn't mean that's going to translate into policy. But

It's an interesting start. So we'll certainly be following it throughout the entire ride. We'll be here. You can go to BreakingPoints.com for a premium subscription if you want to be here for the ride with us. And make sure if you can't subscribe, make sure to like and subscribe here. If you can't subscribe premium, make sure to like and subscribe here on the channel. Yep. Do that. Sounds great. All right. See y'all.

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