7/3/25: Mehdi Releases Censored BBC Gaza Doc, Abrego Garcia Tortured In CECOT, Zohran Fires Back At Trump, Diddy Verdict
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For the past many months, the BBC has been embroiled in a controversy in which it has been refusing to air a documentary that kind of took on a life of its own inside the organization as the journalists there have been demanding to know what happened to an investigation that the BBC had commissioned into Israel's war on medical professionals and the entire kind of medical community inside of Gaza. That controversy is now

resulted in the documentary being acquired by Mehdi Hassan and Zateo News for its worldwide distribution and by Channel 4 inside the UK for its UK distribution. So Mehdi is joining us now to talk about this documentary and also the process that led up to it being censored and now being finally released last night. Mehdi, thanks so much for joining us. Thanks for having me.

And I wanted to start by honoring several of the medical professionals who have been killed in this genocide. If we could put up, I believe it is C3, Dropsite posted this yesterday. This is a picture from a graduation ceremony.

at the Faculty of Medicine in Gaza. Four of the people that you're looking at in this photo, Dr. Omar Farwana, who was the Dean of the Faculty of Medicine, Dr. Adnan Al-Bursh, who was Head of Orthopedic Surgery at Al-Shifa Medical Complex, Dr. Rafat Lubad, who was the Head of Internal Medicine at Al-Shifa, and also then this week,

was the killing of Dr. Marwan Al-Sultan, who was the director of the Indonesian hospital and a cardiologist. So in that photo, four of them have been

assassinated several, you know, targeted at their homes, not collateral damage from attacks on, you know, fighters or caught in crossfire. But Mehdi, I want you to talk about the targeting of medical professionals, because that is what I think people don't understand because it sounds so insane to say it out loud.

It sounds insane to say it out loud. I mean, two things, three things I think sound insane over the last 21 months, 22 months that we've normalized. One, obviously, is the deliberate killing of journalists, which a lot of journalists in the West have a lot of problem comprehending. The other is the deliberate killing of children, of course, gunshot wounds to the head, sniper shots, not collateral damage. And, of course, the third is the doctors, the killing of doctors

nurses, paramedics to deliberate targeting and destruction of Gaza's health care. And that is what the premise, that was the basis of this film is. And this film, produced by award-winning filmmakers at Basement Films in the UK, made over several months, went through rigorous checks, went through the BBC editorial process for much of it, right of reply, fantastic production,

lead reporter, Ramida Navai, award-winning war correspondent. And they put together this film, this hour-long film, based on eyewitness testimony from Palestinian doctors and survivors, as well as Dr Adnan al-Bruish, who you just mentioned. He's in this film, but he's since been killed in Israeli captivity, tortured and died in prison. Killed in prison, as one of his colleagues says. So you've got eyewitness testimony from Palestinian doctors to what they have had to endure.

We also have an Israeli medic whistleblower in the film who served at State Taman, the Israeli gulag, the prison, the black site where they've taken Palestinian detainees to be tortured, raped, killed. So it's all there, put together in the film. And you mentioned the targeting of doctors, saying it out loud.

Perhaps the most powerful moment for me in the film, and we just, I would urge Breaking Point viewers to go to the Zateo Twitter feed or Zateo Blue Sky. We actually put up a clip from the film last night, separate to the trailer, which is one of the most powerful moments in the film from Dr Khaled Hamouda, who was a surgeon, who is a surgeon in Gaza, now in Egypt, who was bombed in his home with his family, a family of other doctors,

At first, ten people killed. They then flee him, his wife, his child, and they go down the street. By the way, his house is blown up, not the entire street, just his house. They then go down the street to take refuge, and a drone follows them down the street and attacks them again. And he wakes up in a hospital and sees a nurse carrying his child, his daughter, who's dead. The next morning, his wife, the mother of his child, is also dead, he's told, killed. He's the only survivor, or one of the only survivors, I believe, from that massacre.

And she says, "Ramina Navarro, you were talking?" He says, "Yes."

The drone came and targeted us. And this is what we heard from the World Central Kitchen folks when they were in the humanitarian convoy and they were targeted car to car to car. This is what we've heard from journalists, of course. And this is what we have to get our heads around, that the United States of America has been arming and funding a country that is systematically, this is a key word here, destroying the Gaza healthcare system, destroying doctors and medics. And the key point here, and it comes out in the film,

You could rebuild hospitals in years to come. Trump can turn Gaza into the Riviera of the Middle East and build as many hospitals as he likes. You cannot rebuild that

knowledge base. You cannot rebuild that human base. You cannot just get doctors back over it. Gazan society, Palestine society, spent years educating itself in this way, and the Israelis have deliberately targeted it. Well, let's take a look at the trailer. This is C1 to get a sample of what people can expect from the film. Israel has been killing the very people trying to keep the healthcare system alive. It's doctors and medics.

despite hospitals and healthcare workers being protected under international law. As Israel has bombed Gaza, hundreds of Palestinian doctors and medics have refused to leave their hospitals. We are in the theater, in the operating room. Full darkness, no water, no electricity. But we have a hero, surgeons in Gaza. Hundreds of medics have been killed. Hundreds have been detained.

Many of them have been forcibly disappeared. Our Palestinian team on the ground have gathered testimony from health workers and their families. And Israeli whistleblowers have told us they witnessed Palestinian prisoners being tortured and that some Israeli medics are complicit.

I don't even think that in the Israeli society there is a need for cover-up these days. You can do almost whatever you want when it comes to Gazans.

One of the things people can see, Mehdi, is that this is a high production value film. The BBC funded this film. The BBC then refused to air it and was giving "bullshit reasons" according to a source who told that to The Independent. Mehdi, you have probably a lot of insight into this process of why the BBC, which had recently aired the Louis Theroux documentary, I believe that was on BBC,

What happened? What's your understanding of why they ended up getting rid of a film that they funded? So the BBC put out a very long statement, a bullshit statement, I would argue as well. Their argument was that they had this other documentary that they aired on Gaza, which became super controversial, I would argue, for unnecessary reasons. It was narrated by a child in Gaza, surviving the war, and...

It turns out the child was the son of a deputy agriculture minister in the Gaza government, some technocrat, who was then labeled, of course, as just Hamas. And there was a huge fury in the UK that the BBC had put out a film for the child of a Hamas minister, even though, again, it was a well-sourced, well-made, high-production-value film. The child had not decided the editorial agenda. But while they were quote-unquote investigating how that happened, they decided to park this film, which, as you say, they'd spent a lot of money on, spent many months making, with Basement Films.

who we at Zateo know well because they made a film for us last year called Israel's Real Extremism, which I came on the show to talk about if memory serves me correctly then. And the fundamental argument for the BBC was, well, basement films went out and talked about the process while we were still trying to get everything approved. They then put out...

Basement were frustrated, of course. My friend Ben DePere, who's the executive producer, former head of Channel 4 News, very respected, award-winning journalist. He went out at the Sheffield Documentary Festival and said, come on, this is ridiculous. We've got doctors in the film waiting for this film to come out. We're showing disrespect to people who risked their lives to talk to us. Sources, whistleblowers, survivors of massacres. The BBC put out a statement saying, well, if we put it out now,

there will be the perception of partiality, and the BBC can't have the perception of partiality. The great irony being, of course, that their decision not to air this film that they commissioned, that ran through their checks, that is the greatest perception of partiality. It's partiality towards Israel. They have now run one Gaza dock

and then pulled it. It's nowhere to be seen because apparently it was the child of a Hamas minister bullshit argument. And now they didn't even air the other Gaza documentary. And then add that to all of the rest of the coverage of the BBC's of Gaza over the last 21, 22 months, which has been abysmal, which has been...

which has caused multiple internal backlashes, protests from BBC staff who are frustrated at what their broadcaster has done. This is a BBC that has been cowed, intimidated, pressured, bullied. This is a BBC, I used to work at the BBC. I used to defend the BBC when I worked in the UK from right-wing bullshit attacks.

But I think I've never seen in my entire lifetime, I'm about to turn 46 years old, in my entire lifetime of watching the BBC, I've been watching the BBC since children's cartoons on a Saturday morning. And I can honestly say it's never taken a beating like this. I've never had such a...

depressing, disappointing view of the national broadcast in the UK that I've had since October 2023. I know many other people who stopped watching the BBC, stopped appearing on the BBC because their coverage has been so shameful, not just in the documentary space, but in the news space, the online space, the ridiculous headlines. There was a study by the Centre for Media Monitoring recently which said they give

33 times as much coverage per Israeli casualty as they do per Palestinian casualty. So there's not a perception of partiality. There's a well-documented evidence of partiality towards Israel. And I want to linger on that point and connect it to the point that you made about the original controversy that then put this documentary on ice. Trying to imagine a world in which

A documentary was made about the difficulties faced by Israeli children in the war, which are non-trivial, often headed to bomb shelters, which is absolutely, even if nothing happens, it's traumatizing for a child to have to hide somewhere with their family in the dark, worried that they might get hit by a bomb. That alone is traumatizing. So let's say that

The BBC commissioned a documentary focused on the way that the war was affecting children. And then it turned out that the boy's father worked for the Ministry of Agriculture in Israel. And they pulled the documentary and apologized and investigated how that could happen. How could you possibly have aired the thoughts of a child whose father works for the Ministry of Agriculture in Israel? That to me...

Kind of tells you everything you need to know about the way that the BBC approached this. So how difficult was it to kind of pry this out of the BBC or were they like, thank you, Mehdi. We are so glad to be done with this controversy.

So the heavy lifting was done by Ben DePere at Basement Films, who made this film, sweat and blood in this film, spent a long time in back and forth with the BBC. And he runs an independent production company. It's very risky for him to pick a fight with one of the biggest broadcasters in the world, which commissions his stuff. So props to my friend Ben, really, for believing in this film and saying, look, I want it out there. Doesn't matter if I screw up my relationship with people. Doesn't matter if I lose money on this. I want it out there. And the BBC did sit on it for a while.

and weren't going to release it, as far as I'm aware. And eventually they did release it, partly because of Ben's cajoling, partly because I think they just wanted to be done with it. And then us and Channel 4 were able to come in and say, well, we're going to give it a platform. I knew from the moment they benched it, if this film becomes available, I was messaging Ben saying,

We want to platform it. This is what Zatea was created for, right? To give these voices to the world, to try and platform these voices. We know, Ryan, you and I, that the right have been arguing about cancel culture for decades, and yet the single biggest victims of cancel culture are Palestinians and supporters of the Palestinian movement and journalism about Palestine and academia about Palestine. And that has been a fundamental issue. We've seen that in this conflict. And I think that was a frustrating issue where the BBC...

we're not airing it and we're not releasing it. And the moment they released it, we moved fast and props to Channel 4, a broadcaster in the UK for running it. Because again, Ryan, you say Hamas and everything shuts down, all critical faculty shut down, even amongst smart, liberal, progressive folks. And if you're able to say anything's Hamas, then that's what you're able to throw at it. And I'm sure people will throw that at this film as well. One thing I took great pride in doing was taking, you know, the BBC put out a statement saying, "This is not our film anymore."

That's true. It's not their film anymore. We made a few changes. One of the changes we made is we took out all references to the Hamas-run health ministry. We call it the Gaza Ministry of Health in this film. That in itself is a propagandistic and loaded phrase, as you well know, because it allows people to then cast doubt on the deaths and torture of Palestinians. And we have eyewitness accounts in this film from people who have nothing to do with Hamas about that suffering. Just one quick story that your viewers might be interested in that I heard recently from someone else.

You talk about, kind of imagine if this was the other way around. A production company, I'm told, went to a major American broadcaster at the start of this conflict, at the start of the genocide, and had a story about a Palestinian family just to kind of follow them around and the suffering they were going through and the number of members of the family had been killed. And the American broadcaster said, we'll run it, but first let us go and find an Israeli family so we can balance it and we'll run both stories.

A few weeks later they came back to the production company and said, "Well, we can't find an Israeli family that suffered like the Palestinian family showed us. Therefore, we're not running your story. Not we'll just run yours, but we won't run anything now because we can't do this fake bullshit balance." Right, and it would have looked worse if you tried to do the balance because you'd see-- They just dropped the whole thing. Right. This is what happens when Palestinian voices are silenced. Yeah.

The other interesting thing about the BBC's position here is they're not disputing any facts in the film or any of the journalism, right, Matty? They aren't disputing the quality of the journalism. They're not even saying that it didn't meet their editorial standards, which is a pretty usual excuse. Yep.

Yep, not at all. And I think they're hiding behind this bullshit phrase, perception of partiality. So it's not even, and by the way, Emily, they're not even saying it's a biased film. They're saying we run it now. People will say that we are biased to one side and we are scared of people, people being the pro-Israel lobby, and therefore we're not going to put it out. I mean, look, the people who've made this film have won Oscars and Emmys. The reporter, Ramita Navai, is of Iranian descent,

has done films all about Iran's human rights abuses. She's traveled around the world. The credibility of these people cannot be questioned. I'm sure it will be questioned by bad faith actors. And yet this is where we've reached now. In the name of protecting Israel, wittingly or unwittingly, we've burned down international law and we've burned down journalistic credibility. We've burned down so many institutions which will not survive the last 22 months. So Mehdi, where can people go to find us?

So they can go to find this at gaza doctors dot film. That's the website we set up for this film specifically or Zateo dot com. It is available to paid subscribers for now. People will say, well, why not put it out for free to the world? Well, because the people behind this film spent a lot of time and money making this film.

And I just want to remind people that a free press isn't free. High quality journalism requires investment. If you really want documentaries that are going to win awards and report on the ground and break stories, then we really have to support it financially. I'm proud that Zateo is financially supporting this film. It costs a lot of money, Ryan Emily, as you know. Documentaries cost...

cost a lot and therefore we are airing it to our paid subscribers. I urge people to become a paid subscriber. If you become a monthly subscriber, it's less than the cost to go into the movie theater to watch a film. And this film is more important than any other film you're going to see this year, including the F1 movie, which I loved, but this movie is more important. It's true. Journalism is expensive and documentaries are particularly so. The travel, the

the sophistication that goes into it. The legaling. The legaling. Oh my God, don't even get me started on the legaling. Well, Mehdi, thank you so much for joining us and congrats on this acquisition. I'm glad that it's getting out there finally.

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A new legal filing from attorneys for Kilmar Abrego-Garcia alleges that he was tortured while in Seacott custody in El Salvador. We can put up this first element up on the screen. Abrego-Garcia has become the detainee who has captured the most attention. And it could have gone a lot of different ways. It could have been the makeup artist who is still

facing these brutal conditions in El Salvador. It could have been the Venezuelan soccer player

who had absolutely no connection to Tornado, Aragua and yet remains down there. Abrego Garcia has become the one that Democrats kind of focused their attention on. He was returned from El Salvador, surprisingly by the administration, to face charges for human trafficking in the Nashville area. Charges which are now kind of crumbling under scrutiny.

this new allegation serves as a part of these ongoing proceedings. And we're still joined by Azateo's Mehdi Hassan to talk through some of this. Mehdi, thank you for sticking around. We appreciate it. It's a horrific story, Ryan. It really is. They talk about, and he says that he walked into Seacott and one of the guards said to him,

And was saying to everybody who was coming in, welcome to Seacott. Those who enter never leave. And Abrego Garcia is one of the only cases that I think we even know of, whether in El Salvador or anywhere else, of somebody leaving Seacott alive. Soon after getting there, it seems like they had them all kneel for 24 hours, which many and I are old men at this point. If we kneel for two minutes...

were struggling hard. And then they were beaten if they collapsed. And the filing says that he soiled himself while they were being forced to kneel overnight, among a bunch of the other abuses. Do you think that this is the reason why

The Trump administration was initially so reluctant to and is still reluctant to return anybody from the detention center because they can then talk about what happened down there.

I think it's part of the reason. I don't think it's the whole reason. I think even if they weren't being tortured there, it's a point of principle, right, for the bullies not to give in and they don't want to say, oh, the liberal media and the Democrats made and the human rights activists made us bring people back. You'll remember that the ridiculous, cosplaying Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem went in front of Congress and said...

I guarantee you, he's never coming back. Well, he did come back, but for this bullshit Tennessee indictment for human trafficking, human smuggling. Yeah, I think it's part of the reason. It's not the only reason. And Human Rights Watch have documented that this is a prison where people never leave from. And yes, they are just literally disappeared inside of there. It's a horrific gulag in El Salvador created by a

kind of autocrat, President Bukele, Trump's ally. People are treated horrifically. He was threatened with being put into cells with gang members where he would be killed, he was told by the guards. He had his head shaved forcibly with a zero razor. He was beaten with wooden batons. He was punched in the head. He was, as you say, forced to kneel all night long, kicked and beaten if they weren't able to kneel all night long, soiled himself, deprived of food, malnutrition, lost dozens of pounds. You'll remember that.

photo that the Trump administration released with him and Chris Van Hollen having margaritas, which as the senator from Maryland pointed out, they didn't order. It was placed in the picture by the El Salvadorans to make it look like they were having this great time. He was not having a great time. We can only dread to imagine what is happening to some of the other innocent people who have been sent there. The gay barber who was sent there, the guy with the autism tattoos who was looking after his brother.

So many cases. There was a case just this week I read of where the Trump administration have admitted for once that they sent someone who shouldn't have been sent elsewhere, but they can't find him anymore. I tweeted this yesterday and I stand by this. You said you and I are old men because we can't kneel. We're also old men who remember 2001, 2002, 2003. I think this is as big...

a scandal, if not bigger scandal than Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay. This is happening in plain sight, at least we could argue in 2001, 2003. We didn't know till much later. We didn't know till Senator Dianne Feinstein's report. We didn't know till Seymour Hershey's reporting in the New Yorker.

This is happening in plain sight. We have known since day one, we didn't even need Kilmer Albrego Garcia's report. We saw the video that the Trump administration put out. Remember, they put out a video to music showing off their torture and beating and forcible shavings of innocent men sent to Secott. Now we have this 40-page amendment with the details in it.

I think history will judge what those of us who know about it and saw did in this moment. This is a scandal that Democrats in Congress should be screaming about from the rooftops, which every Democrat who wants to be president in 2028 should be talking about. The Trump administration took a bunch of people in the United States, including possibly legal residents,

We don't know because they haven't told us who went and sent them to a foreign gulag to be tortured and refused to bring them back, including when the court said, send them back. That is a crime, that is a scandal. And I think Americans need to stop thinking it can't happen here. We're not like those other countries. The descriptions in this report, in this amendment,

are the kind of descriptions you would read about from a North Korean prison, an Iranian prison, a Russian prison. Let's stop pretending we don't do what everyone else does. So this is something that Ryan and I actually debated a little bit yesterday, and we can put D2, this is a VO of alligator alcatraz flooding on the screen. So this...

Engineering marvel that was constructed very quickly in the middle of the Everglades is already flooding. Probably no surprise to anybody who would conceive of what it might look like after you throw up a massive 3,000-bed facility in the Everglades in like a week's time. And Ryan raised the point that hurricane season could be especially devastating to people who are kept there.

in the future, so 3,000 beds. They want to increase that to 5,000 beds and they just got an infusion of funding for immigration enforcement. But Mehdi, I think the public hates the CCOT stuff. I think most of the public hates the CCOT stuff because it feels profoundly un-American.

I think it's a blind spot for the Trump administration that gets very online and sort of falls for the appeal of the memes on these types of things. I think the Trump administration has sort of understood that, which is why they didn't send another group of people to Seacott, at least not yet, on the political front. So I guess I'm curious what you make of alligator Alcatraz, which you mentioned Kristi Noem cosplaying.

Honestly, I feel like it I think we need to take it seriously. I do feel like the Trump administration likes to LARP as Bukele. I don't think it's popular, but I don't foresee alligator Alcatraz looking like Seacott. That doesn't mean I don't think we should take the threat of that seriously. But I'm curious what you expect to see from the facility in the next several months as they start filling it.

Well, just on the LARPing point, I should also point out that when the history books are written about this period and about the torture in El Salvador, you will have a series of Republican members of Congress who went to El Salvador, stood outside prison cells, said, what a great place this is. Kristi Noem. Kristi Noem led the charge. She stood in front of a cell full of dozens and dozens of men with shaved heads lined up for a photo op. Many of those men who have been tortured, as we now know. And this is what the American government was part of, which is what I'm saying.

It's worse in many ways than Abu Ghraib because the Bush administration, Cheney and Ashcroft didn't go and do photo ops at Abu Ghraib. - They were ashamed. - They tried to keep it hidden. And this administration, as usual, the cruelty is the point, to borrow Adam Sayers' line. So yes, and I think, look, whether you call it alligator, alcatraz, whatever stupid name these people give to their concentration camps,

Even already, ICE detention facilities were overcrowded. We were hearing reports about abuse. We were hearing stories about people not eating for days, not having beds, sleeping on the floor, no blankets, all sorts of abuse. 911 calls from ICE detention centers with people collapsing. We had a death, I believe, of a Cuban-American man this week, or a Cuban man this week. I don't know what his status was, I can't remember. Who knows with this administration what the status is of anyone-- - Also, Mehdi, just to underline that, 'cause I was just in Miami and they were talking about this down there a lot.

He was a 75-year-old man who had been in the United States since 1965, since the age of 15. So he fled what they will call in Miami the Castro dictatorship, which, I mean, kind of was dictator. Glad to have you guys on the record here. We know that. So he'd been here for 60 years. Now, a lot of people in Miami...

because of its cultural nature, like maybe he never became a citizen. I don't know. Like it's quite possible he didn't. He easily could have. If you've been here since 1965 as a Cuban, you could have become a citizen. But just in Miami, like a lot of people didn't. He died in ICE detention and Tom Homan responded, well, you know,

Bad things happen. People die in every prison. People die in every prison, but we're saving so many lives with ICE. Anyway, so I just wanted to give background. ICE prisons in particular are overcrowded. We know now we have this new budget. We have this budget bill that's gone through giving them more money than most people.

than a lot of foreign militaries, as a lot of people have pointed out. I believe they're going to be, I believe they're going to have half the levels of personnel as the United States Marine Corps when all is said and done if this bill goes through. So they're getting lots of money for fancy new centers and troops. But what I would say is,

Even already, the overcrowding is insane. The conditions are horrific. You mentioned the elderly Cuban man. There was an Iranian woman who's been here 50 years. She came in 1979. Her family and her came to visit the United States and the revolution happened and they stayed and she never got citizenship. And they are now, I think they got her in her front yard while she was gardening, this dangerous threat, this elderly Iranian woman. So these are the kind of ridiculous stories coming out from the ICE detentions. But the conditions, to go back to Emily's question, are horrific.

I don't think even if they get $37 billion from this bill, that they're somehow going to build nicer facilities. It's not about lack of resources. The reason people are being abused in detention is not because they lack resources. That's part of it. But it's also because the cruelty is the point. They don't see these people as fully human beings. They don't see these people as deserving of rights. You've heard you.

United States senators have gone on live television and said, no, foreigners don't get due process. Foreigners aren't covered by the Constitution. This is the kind of ridiculous shit that is said by people with law degrees serving in the United States Senate, which is obviously nonsense. Everyone gets due process. So that is the fundamental problem. It's not about resources. It's not about where you locate your concentration camp. It's about the fundamental mindset of Tom Homan and Stephen Miller and Donald Trump, which is that these people are not

fully human. These people are not people deserving of rights. These people need to be punished to send a message. And these people need to be out of here. And I think that is the key point that, you know, Ryan mentioned Miami, a bunch of Republicans in Florida, members of the House are saying, well, come on, can you tone it down a bit? Because they're feeling some backlash from their constituents who are like, you know, the leopard, what's the face, the face eating leopard party meme? Like, I didn't know they'd come from my friends. Manny, I know you have to run. So thank you so much for sticking around for a second segment. We appreciate it.

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Zoran Mamdani held a press conference to respond to President Trump's threat that he was going to do all sorts of things to him, including round him up, deport him, jail him, etc. Here's Mamdani. Yesterday, Donald Trump said that I should be arrested. He said that I should be deported. He said that I should be denaturalized. And he said those things about me, someone who stands to be the first immigrant mayor of this city in generations, someone who would also be

the first Muslim and the first South Asian mayor in this city's history. Less so because of who I am, because of where I come from, because of how I look or how I speak, and more so because he wants to distract from what I fight for. I fight for working people. I fight for the very people that have been priced out of this city. And I fight for the same people that he said he was fighting for. This is the same president who ran on a campaign of cheaper groceries, who ran on a campaign about easing a suffocating cost of living crisis.

And ultimately, it is easier for him to fan the flames of division than to acknowledge the ways in which he has betrayed those working class Americans, not just in the city, but across this country and the ways in which he continues to betray them.

Because we know that he would rather speak about me than speak about the legislation that he is shepherding through Washington, D.C. Legislation that will quite literally take health care away from Americans. Legislation that will steal food from the hungry. Legislation that looks to build upon one of the largest transfers of wealth we've seen in recent history in his first administration and do it once again for the very Americans who already have enough.

We should be fighting for those that do not have what they need to live a dignified life. That is what I will do. And I am thankful to have the...

protection and to have the support of so many New Yorkers who have stood up and said how unacceptable this is, including our governor, including members of the labor movement. And ultimately, what I fear for is that if this is what Donald Trump and his administration feel comfortable about saying about the Democratic nominee for the mayor of New York City, imagine what they feel comfortable saying and doing about immigrants whose names they don't even know. So also yesterday, and we can put up this element here,

President Trump's Homeland Security Advisory Council, which is a group that includes such luminaries as Bo Dietl, who is the founder of Bikers for Trump, and Rudy Giuliani, who is, believe it or not, the former mayor of New York once in his life, as well as some other folks, they met and they quickly decided that the

Main thing the Homeland Security Advisory Council needed to focus its meeting on was what they're going to do about Zoran Mamdani. And talking about the Homeland Security Department having authorities that haven't been used in the past that maybe need to look into that. So before we get into the actual threats on Mamdani, Emily and I wanted to talk about

His response to it, because I think we both think that this is an expression of a populist Democratic Party that could exist, that does not exist, but these are the kind of green shoots of it popping up, and that if it did exist, it would represent a genuinely interesting development on the scene and would be a party that was actually –

worth working people respecting and voting for. Which is stunning because it's happening at a time when the Democratic Party could not be at its lowest. We saw, when we were here yesterday, we saw a preview of Mamdani's strategy.

towards this when he just first put out his statement after Trump made his comments and pivoted. And we talked about that yesterday, how he pivoted to basically class warfare. Did the same thing right here. He pivoted not to, I shouldn't say class warfare because I think that diminishes it. He pivoted to affordability.

And it's like this is what you do if you realize your average voter isn't Liz Cheney. This is how you run a campaign where you're going after Trump, but you're not fully taking Trump's bait. And I think it's genuinely a pretty interesting development for Democrats that they now have a kind of textbook example of how to do the thing. Right. It's not backing down on the initial charge. It's not apologizing for any of the culture war stuff Trump is doing here. Right.

It's pushing back on that, but then it's moving and saying the reason you're doing this is because you're a billionaire that doesn't care about people and you just want to distract from the fact that you're stealing everybody's Medicaid and that you promised to run on making groceries cheaper and you're not doing it. It's really interesting because the 2017, the first term version of Democrats against Trump would have just fully seized on the culture war aspect of it and said,

Donald Trump is a bigot. He's a xenophobe. We are a nation of immigrants. And he doesn't back away from all of that rhetoric. He believes all of those things. But that's not really where he puts his energy.

But don't you response and what you're saying is that 2017 because I think this is so true and easily had a steely Yeah, I feel like that's really what everyone would have done like the conventional wisdom Is that maybe you throw in a couple of lines about grocery prices and Medicaid and snap? But actually you spend the bulk of your response Talking about how you are gonna be the first Muslim mayor of New York City and how that's what scares Donald Trump He's scared of brown people. He's scared of change

I think that's totally true if we put that in the time machine. If we put Mamdani in a time machine and say he was running in 2017, maybe he would have been smarter about it. But the strategists on the left would not have. Yeah, they would not have. And I think it's probably tied up in the intrademocratic fight that happened at the time where –

Bernie Sanders had just come off this very bitter primary where a lot of Hillary Clinton supporters were still even blaming Bernie Sanders for the fact that Trump was in at all. And anybody who said that Donald Trump supporters had, quote unquote, economic anxiety. Yes. That was said to be code for the real reason that they supported Trump, which is their racism and their homophobia and their bigotry and on and on.

And so because that was the case, if Democrats shied away from talking about economic anxiety, because they were afraid that they would then like, oh, look at you, you racist much. Mamdani instead takes Trump at his word and says, if you notice in that clip, he says Trump is.

Ran on these things people voted for him the point he's making people voted for Trump because he promised he was gonna Lower grocery prices. He was gonna make the city more affordable and make make fill their lives with some dignity make their lives better that's what Trump said he was going to do and He's talking to Trump supporters and saying they're not he's not doing that. What is he doing? He's getting you all riled up about me. Mm-hmm when all I'm trying to do is lower grocery prices I revisited this last week and

When we talked to Zoran in, what was that, December? Yeah, something like that. Yeah, it was November or December. Actually, you know what, I think it was November because he, that's what I was going to say, told us. Oh, he was interviewing the Trump people. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, he did. He sort of followed Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's lead and went out into, I think he told us, the Bronx. And he was in Queens, California.

He was interviewing people, talking to them, trying to pitch himself to Trump voters. And he said the number one thing they were concerned about was the price of groceries. They feel like they have less in their bank accounts than they used to. And that's...

Again, it's so obvious, but circa 2017, you just couldn't make that argument, period. Which is weird because, of course, you could. You could. But just the structures of the Democratic Party at the time were just not allowing the party to resign. And also, they were so thoroughly rewarded by the media for –

leaning into the culture war. Yes. Yes. And rewarded by a significant chunk of their voters. Right. Doesn't mean those voters wouldn't also have been with them. Right. On other stuff. Now, inflation was not what it was in 2017. Right. Like we had, you know, 1% inflation since basically the financial crisis. Right. So,

You know, the context is actually different. Now, the economy stunk, and that's why Trump won, I think, in 2016. But it wasn't exactly prices. It was wages and joblessness, which was slowly getting, you know, had gradually come back from the financial crisis, but took so long. And people were mired in debt and student debt. Oh, opioid crisis had wrecked local economies. So I think the Democratic base would have been there for it.

But Democrats didn't need to go there because they would get donations, they'd get crowds, and they would get fawning media coverage for pointing out what a bigot Trump was.

And so they didn't need to go. Right. And be like, look, he actually said he was going to run on all these things to make your life better, and he's not doing that. They didn't want to compete on that. They didn't want to take seriously the idea that he actually ran on that stuff. Because they thought that the silver bullet was their own cultural arguments against Trump. And it wasn't. That wasn't enough to persuade voters who have always baked into their calculation. And this is what the media doesn't understand because the media is pretty friendly with a lot of politicians. Right.

Other voters understand that politicians are probably bad people, right? Like they know that. You're not convincing people to stop supporting Trump by saying he's a bad guy. That's not like a slam dunk own on a Trump supporter. They actually are making a calculated decision that he was going to disrupt the system. And if you're not competing on that field, you're not competing at all. You're arguing totally past what you could possibly persuade people on.

Yeah, and I think also the party's donors are ambivalent about any class-first messaging. Yeah, yeah, of course. That they're like, eh, like, hmm, can we do some of the other stuff? Were you at Hofpost still when they did the asterisk after every mention of Trump? Oh, yeah. I look back on that, and I remember it said, like, Donald Trump is a racist, xenophobic, homophobic bigot, something like that, and every mention of Trump had an asterisk and said that. And I was like...

I mean, many people believe all of that is true. I mean, you can make arguments about all of that, but it's not persuasive. It actually distracts. I don't know. We don't have to relitigate that. But it was a good example of the approach at the time. Yeah. I mean, and I think if we went back and looked at it, it didn't I don't think it had any class messaging in it because like you could have led with Donald Trump was a billionaire, blah, blah, blah. Right.

But I think the only way... Union busting. Right. The only... Rips off everyone who's ever worked for him. I think the only way HuffPost was able to get away with that, and yeah, I was there and involved with it at the time, like, journalistically, was because it would feel more partisan if it was class in a way. Mm-hmm. Like, because...

What it was doing was pointing to their universal American values, which are equality, justice. We treat all people with dignity. Civil rights, at least at that time. Aspirational. Yeah, everyone believed in the civil rights movement, like left to far right. Not far right, but left to right.

Civil rights movement was seen as like a very good thing. Yeah. That was brought to people who fought for justice. Yeah. Brought by people who were- Charlie Kirk had not yet discovered Martin Luther King Jr. Yeah. Yeah. Right. They hadn't gone down different rabbit holes and come up with theories. And so it appealed to these universal values. Whereas if you say he's a billionaire who wants to rip people off, like that feels, that's us against them. That's-

That's more partisan, not in a party sense, but there's just fundamental disagreements here that we're not going to win by persuasion. We're going to just have to beat the 1%. Right. Or the 1% is going to have to beat us. This is a fight over something. Yeah, that makes sense. And so then as journalists, that feels like you're now engaging in the...

You're in that fight in a way where if you're just upholding universal values, like when the Washington Post says democracy dies in darkness, like they can say that and not feel partisan because, of course, we're all for democracy and we're all for transparency and we're all against darkness. Yes. When you say, you know, the 1% are ripping us all off. I don't think your owners are going to love it. Yes.

Yeah, and the 0.1% are ripping the 1% off. Yeah. Then that feels, now you're tangling. Which is also the massive unanswered question to the extent that Democrats are able to replicate, if they want to win, if they put power above everything else. And that's not all of them. Some Republicans have genuine ideological values that they want to advance, but if they just want to win, do they replicate the Mamdani campaign or

in congressional races, in the midterms, for example, and gubernatorial races where you learn from him and pivot. Imagine if Democrats made affordability the thing that was associated with them. Right.

But they're already getting hammered for what they're already Republicans running ads comparing like random Dem candidates. I forget who the first one I saw was, but like random Dem candidates to Mom Donnie. I think Glenn Youngkin said it about the Dem gubernatorial nominee in Virginia. Right. Spanberger, right? Exactly. Exactly. Real Mom Donnie. It's suicidal on the part of Democrats because

The question is, how do you define what he stands for to the national public before you're then linked with him? And so if the national public is like, oh, yeah, Mamdani, this guy who like ran...

to make groceries cheaper in New York than when Republicans are like, Spanberger's nothing but another Mamdani. People are like, oh, cool. So she's also going to make groceries cheaper in Virginia. But if Republicans are all saying that he's a Sharia law loving jihadist, and then Democrats are also saying that

that they have deep concerns about his use of the word global jihad and then she and then kirsten jillibrand apologizes because he never said that but like that they have all these concerns about him right so all the leading democrats have still not endorsed him hakeem jeffries chuck schumer jello brand um and swosie just put tom swosie long just had a op-ed in the new york times about how bad he is and so if republicans are saying he's really awful

like the worst and basically a terrorist right and Democrats are saying the leading Democrats are saying yeah, he's kind of he's kind of bad He's not that bad like Republicans are over the top and then bigoted in the way they're talking about him But I do have a lot of concerns about him then nationally if you're a voter you're like, oh this guy seems pretty concerning you have to actually like engage with him or media that covers him honestly and

to get the accurate impression. And there aren't enough people that do that. Yeah. I mean, this is from a cure, like just a purely cynical perspective, but Republicans were basically able to do this with Nancy Pelosi back in 2010, uh, socialist Nancy Pelosi back in 2010. It's,

When they put enough money behind it and enough like what's the right word for it? Craft into like carvillian public relations efforts into it. You can sort of the scary things about politics media in general, but you can in a red state.

pretty easily capitalize on a Mamdani narrative. It doesn't mean that Mamdani is in any way a net drag on the Democratic Party, but I think it'll probably work for them in red states, not so much of Virginia, though. But yeah, I think if Democrats wanted to avoid this problem, they would say, of course I support Mamdani and his call to make groceries cheaper. Yep.

But they just can't do that. I don't agree with him on everything, but I sure as hell agree with him making groceries cheaper. So easy. Free advice here. We're always just giving it out. Nobody takes it.

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All right, Ryan, let's move on to the Diddy trial. Yes. So Sean Diddy Combs is not walking out of the courthouse a free man, but he thought he might for a second. So he was acquitted. We could put this first element up on the screen. He was acquitted on the most serious charges, the racketeering charge and the sex trafficking charges. But he did get acquitted.

found guilty on two counts of transporting prostitutes. He did not get hit with any domestic violence charges because they were outside the statute of limitations. And so Diddy collapsed to the floor and

Like praying. Do we have that? Do we have that image of him like praying? There he is. Seat there. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. Thank to the jurors. And then it did seem like he felt like he was about to get out and the judge said no. Yep. Interestingly cited the domestic violence that was in the case as a reason why she was not giving bail before sentencing or he, she or he.

The judge. The judge. I didn't watch enough of the case. Great question. Which is interesting because clearly he was guilty. It's on video, but he was not tried for it. Right. So it's this gray area where bail and accusations can have an interplay that leads to you being behind bars. But clearly the jury felt that it was not a conspiracy. Right. And what...

What Diddy had argued, or Diddy's lawyers had argued, is that, yes, there was a plan to have these freak-offs. Yep. And they were organized. And in that sense, they were as a conspiracy because he would tell, hey, you do the drugs, you do the baby oil. Yep. You bring the women. Yep. And he had an overarching...

kind of leverage campaign that he would use with women, where some would be getting $10,000 a month in child support. Others would have an emotional connection. There's various ways that he got them involved, plus, according to them, and seems credible, fear of violence. So there are all these pieces, but they made this kind of loophole argument almost that

The other people were not partners in a conspiracy. They were just his flunkies who he paid to do work. And that if you could use Rico for this, you could use Rico for anything where you didn't single-handedly carry out every aspect of the crime. Like, you know, if you go and buy a handgun and then commit a crime with it, and it was just a business transaction with the gun owner,

Like, did you conspire with the gun owner? Right. Even if the gun owner knew what you're going to do, that would be a point is that would be a different crime. Right. Right. That's the underlying crime. Right. But layering conspiracy on top of it doesn't get you there. That that that is my guess at trying to get into the jurors mindset. What what did you think of the response?

Yeah, I mean, I think that's... I mean, what's your response to the jury's response? No, I think that's right. I think the RICO is starting to look like an over-prosecution. Bundling everything into a RICO is starting to look like a real mistake. And you will be shocked to learn that one of the leading prosecutors on this case is Maureen Comey, who's James Comey's daughter. Amazing. Yeah, just wild stuff. But it looks like a really overconfident prosecution team to...

be clear, he could end up with 20 years in prison. So he was denied bail. He has to stay in prison until his sentencing, which is on October 3rd. So he's still got a ways to go, but he could still also get 20 years. It's probably unlikely, right? So each, there's two charges and they're 10 years maximum, right? So if they were served one after the other and both the maximum, then he could get 20 years. Right. But...

This is when sentencing guidelines come in and you have to kind of set aside who he is and what we know about the case and

Pretty sure he's a first-time offender. Does he have any other charges from before? Yeah. Does he? Yeah. What does he have? He was... I mean, he's been involved in so many things. I mean, he's got a bunch of lawsuits. Well, there was the... I'm trying to remember whether he got charged for it, but there was the J-Lo... Mac will look this up. Mac is already screaming. Yeah, Mac, send this to us, producer Mac. But there was the J-Lo shooting. There was the nightclub, like...

fire that people died in that he was implicated in. Right. Did he catch charges on any of that, though? Right. That's a good question. By the way, he is 55. So if he gets 20 years and serves out 20 years, he'll be an old man before he gets out of prison. Right. And my guess is that he definitely will not. Serve all 20 years. I don't think even close. Now, there's some indication from the fact that he was denied bail here that the judge is going to go as hard as they feel like they can get away with, but...

I'd be very surprised. I think he was acquitted of murder in the first... I think there was like a big, if I'm remembering correctly, there was a big case in the nightclub murder situation. This would have been around 2000.

And I want to say he was acquitted of that, actually. Let's take a listen to Megyn Kelly's reaction, followed the case very closely and had some legal experts on when the news came down. We'll go ahead and take a look at this next clip. Combs shook his head vigorously and put his hands together in prayer. Oh, it's all just so chummy inside the courtroom for this disgusting pervert female abuser who

who I can't believe is about Jerome R. Streets again. I'm sorry. I'm disgusted by this verdict. This is fucking ridiculous. I just find it absolutely outrageous the amount of crime that this guy just got away with. I believe he committed arson. He definitely battered Cassie. He battered Jane, too. The statute of limitations for battering

Battery in Los Angeles, California is one year, one year. So if they didn't charge him for battery within one year and they couldn't because he bought the tape and it remained hidden thanks to those security guards out there.

Then they could never charge him with that again. There's no question. He dragged her back into that hotel room. Why wasn't that kidnapping? They only talked about the kidnapping of Capricorn Clark, who was his sort of main assistant because she said he grabbed her and made her go with him over to Kid Cudi's house. There's no question he broke into Kid Cudi's house, in my view, and that he opened up the Christmas residence and locked the door in and made a threat. There's no question in my mind he was behind the arson of Kid Cudi's car.

And there was proof, plenty of proof to prove that. No, okay, there was female fingerprints they found on that, the firebomb that was left there, the Molotov cocktail. And the prosecution said there's no question he didn't do it himself, but he...

He said, I'm going to bomb Kid Cudi's car. It's in writing. Cassie Ventura emailed her mother saying, oh my God, he's threatening to bomb his car. And two weeks later, it got bombed. Oh, gee. It was just some third party who also had... It's just like the proof was there. The beatings, the threats...

threats that if they didn't go back into those room and get off with these male escorts that they were gonna get beaten. The testimony from that Daniel Phillip who was the male escort who heard Combs abusing Cassie behind the door and she was screaming, I'm sorry, I'm sorry as he heard him slapping her, get back out there. She came back out, she was shaking, she got back into the escort's lap.

physically shaking. She was so scared to the point where that guy couldn't perform sexually because this was so horrifying to him. What, what in the actual F went on in there?

Yeah, so I feel like that's probably the general public's reaction. It's just baffling. And it seems, Ryan, like the prosecution just, I mean, in that clip, at least one of the legal experts goes on to kind of blame the jury. But I would think that the onus for the failure here has to lie with the prosecution. Yeah.

Yeah, sure. I mean, it's very hard to lose a federal case. It's like their conviction rate is absolutely through the roof. And so, yeah, they clearly own the blame for this. We didn't cover this trial a whole bunch, but whenever we did and I would look into it, I remember I would think like they're really leaning into the emotional aspect of this. How poorly he treated Cassie and these other women and how...

Just what an absolutely repulsive lifestyle he was leading, using violence and emotional manipulation to pull these multi-day freak-offs off. But I remember thinking every time, but what are the crimes here? The Cassie one was obvious. Yes, the violence, but then that's out of the statute of limitations. The drugs, no charge. Prostitution, convicted.

But like beyond that, like where's the – and trafficking is an interesting like concept and charge. It's like if you pay someone, if you pay a prostitute to get in a car and then go to a hotel for a freak off, did you traffic them there? Right.

And it's like, what does that mean? Yeah. No, I mean, that's a really good point. And so I guess partially another thing is not that the jury was like, that's not trafficking. That's paying a prostitute. And it's not necessarily easy for the prosecution then to build a case based on. And I think a lot of it also is him. So he's alleged to have drugged people many, many times, which would be a crime, which they didn't charge that. Right.

And I think because it looks like they were overconfident and started bundling things into the Rico case, thinking that they had him get the rights on racketeering because they could... He clearly conspired to organize these freak-offs, but the jury was like,

Not really illegal. Right. Except that most of the pieces within it are actually illegal. Right. Within it. Yes. And so, yeah, we were just looking up his criminal history. He has been charged many, many times. He was. He never got charged for the nine people dying. He should have been charged with some type of negligence there. It's a pretty. Everybody probably knows about this case. There was a stampede at a.

at a event that he put on. It's like 1992. Where he knew, I've got it here, December 91, where he knew that too many people were there, didn't care, wanted too many people to be there for the spectacle. Nine people end up dying, doesn't get charged for that. He got convicted, 1996, convicted of criminal mischief.

for threatening a photographer with a gun. So that's a conviction. That's something that the judge can point to. That's a pretty easy denial of bail predicate right there. And then in 99, Combs and his bodyguards are charged with attacking, this is PBS I'm reading from, or attacking Interscope Records music executive over a dispute over music video. He was sentenced to an anger management course. Didn't work. Didn't work.

Uh, but that's at least that's something on the record that the judge can then point to. December 99, he's arrested on gun possession charges for that nightclub shooting that you mentioned where Jennifer, uh, you know, Lopez, um, was in the car and three people got wounded. A woman still says that Diddy is the one who shot her in the face. Yeah. Yeah. There are people that say that he was shooting and that's something that he shot her. Um,

He was later charged with offering his driver 50 grand to claim ownership of the 9mm that was found in the car. We know from this trial that him offering to pay people to get out of trouble is something that he does. So that's a quite credible charge there. However, he was then acquitted of all charges. Well, Schein took the fall for that. So the judge can...

point to the arrest, but you're not supposed, if you're arrested and convicted, that's not really supposed to factor into your sentencing because you're supposed to have been found. Like innocent is supposed to mean innocent. Doesn't always mean that, but that's how it's supposed to mean. Then he got arrested in 2015. He looks like he got in a fight at a UCLA game where his son was playing football, but the charges were dropped. This is why 50 Cent referred to him yesterday as the gay John Gotti.

Nothing's sticking to him. Teflon diddy. Yeah. I mean, really. All that baby oil. Yeah, he's slippery. Yeah, slip right off. Yeah. And then these charges. It's just got to be asked. So he has not zero criminal record. He has a very long criminal record, most of it ending with acquittals or like misdemeanor stuff. So that's why it's going to be.

real stretch for the judge to hit him with the maximum and even if she does he'll appeal this so I expect he'll be walking free in a matter of several years like five you know five ten max unbelievable well on that note Ryan and a lot of people took a lot of risks coming forward come forward yeah that they are suffering greatly right now

Yeah. Oh, my gosh. The trial was just awful. It was one of those ones that was just hard to follow because Cassie was testifying about all of this while she was pregnant. It was just a really, really, really dark trial. And I forget. I want to say this was on Hulu. Someone did a fantastic documentary into the sort of influences emotionally on that sort of forged Diddy. Like, how did he become who he became? And it is just incredibly sad and dark. So...

I hope that there's at least some closure for people who suffered from this. And I was saying yesterday, I actually liked doing the show without the laptop here because fewer distractions. On the other hand, when it comes to something I really don't remember, which is like Diddy's criminal record, it's actually helpful. It's not at the top of your mind. To have it here. Yeah.

I knew he'd been in and out of trouble, but yeah. So my memory actually served mostly correct. He's basically gotten out of all the jams that he's been in. Yeah, but there's so many of them. I think that's when you look at him, you're just like, holy smokes. It is. It's Gotti-esque. Yes. It is. So no Friday show. It's July 4th. We will be independent of our laptops in the morning. Happy Independence Day to everybody. Hope you enjoy the fireworks or a barbecue or whatever you're...

Up to. Yeah. We'll be back on. Somebody will be back on Monday. Yeah, I think Crystal and Sagar are back on Monday. So great news. Yes. You can get rid of us. Yeah, we promise they'll be here. Yeah. Well, no, we don't. Can't make promises. They're going to try very hard. They will be. Yeah, well, maybe they'll get caught up in the system like we did. There you go. All right. All right. See you guys then.

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