cover of episode 9/18/24: Hezbollah Pagers Detonated, JD Blames Media For Ohio Bomb Threats, Kamala Pressed At Black Journo Event, China Secures Pakistan Port, Matt Walsh Confronted On US Racism

9/18/24: Hezbollah Pagers Detonated, JD Blames Media For Ohio Bomb Threats, Kamala Pressed At Black Journo Event, China Secures Pakistan Port, Matt Walsh Confronted On US Racism

2024/9/18

Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar

Chapters

Krystal and Saagar discuss the pager attack in Lebanon, where Hezbollah operatives were injured by exploding pagers. The incident, potentially orchestrated by Israel, raises questions about the ethics of warfare and the possibility of coexistence in the region. The discussion also touches upon the ongoing conflict in Gaza and the devastating impact on civilians.

Hezbollah operatives were injured by exploding pagers across Lebanon.
Israel is suspected of orchestrating the pager attack.
The attack raises ethical questions about warfare and the impact on civilians.
The ongoing conflict in Gaza continues to take a toll on civilians, particularly children.

Shownotes Transcript

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Good morning. Welcome to CounterPoints, everybody. Emily, how you doing? Good. I like how you used your hands. If you're listening to this, you really missed out on some forceful gesticulation. I'm trying to be excited. Yeah, well, it's working.

So, bizarrely, we have Matt Walsh later in the show. Not so bizarre. Who's the Daily Wire guy, right? He has a movie out following up on his question about... What is a woman? What is a woman? Now he's asking, am I a racist? Right. Right? So we'll get the answer to that question. I don't have the whole right-wing ecosystem mapped out. Are you guys friends, frenemies? What's the situation as we go in here? You know, I've interviewed him several times. Always fairly friendly. You know, he's probably further to the right than I am. I'll put it that way. All right.

So it'll be interesting, but he's very, I mean, this is no surprise, but he's very, very, very popular with a big swath of people on the right, especially younger people on the right. So it kind of makes sense that the movie's doing pretty well. And apart from that, you and I can get into how we reacted to the movie. We'll save that. We'll save that till the end of the show. Sounds good. And we're also going to, I also have...

The Federal Reserve is meeting at 2 o'clock today, so we're not going to have a segment on that. They're going to announce whether or not they're going to be cutting rates a quarter percent or half a percent. That seems to be what people are guessing. If they go a half percent, it's going to be a signal that they think the economy is a little bit more sluggish than if they go with a quarter percent. I'm putting my money on half.

I'm going with a half point rate cut. I haven't actually put real money in that. Not until they cut the rate. Today at the New York Stock Exchange and elsewhere, people just be gambling about whether it's going to be a quarter or a half the entire time. Where's your money?

Who knows? Exactly. And I think who knows is as good as a guess as you can get right now. We also have over at Dropsite, based on a ream of new documents that we got out of Pakistan, the wild story that Pakistan has agreed to give China access to a naval base in the port of Gwadar, which is a

a key demand that China has been making of Pakistan for many years now and is sure to raise the hackles of the United States. And it is another foreign policy failure on the part of the US because we have been, we helped overthrow their last government, installed what is supposed to be a pliant US government that has undermined democracy there, US friendly government there.

It's winding up. They're pushing them closer to China. It's crazy how that works. Yeah, there's a lot to talk about. Actually, I have a lot of questions for you based on that. And Ryan, we should probably start with the biggest news of the day, which is developments from the pager attack. That's probably the best way to put it. Sounds bizarre. If you haven't been following the news, it sounds incomprehensible. But we can start looking at, if you're watching this, we can start rolling footage. What are we looking at here, Ryan? So what you saw there is what is most likely a

Hezbollah operative employee who had a pager spontaneously not spontaneously, but just suddenly explode and It sent chaos all through Lebanon and there were reports of some explosions in in Syria as well. So Basically what happened here is that in the spring? Israel killed

Hezbollah's chief of staff. And Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, sent out a message saying, "You guys are using your cell phones in a sloppy, OPSEC manner, and they have become too much of a risk. Stop with the cell phones. We need to go back to the basics, and we need to use handwritten notes. We need to use couriers. We need to use pagers."

At around that time, and this is according to a lot of the reporting that's coming out of the region, and according to New York Times, they used a Taiwanese company for this, Hezbollah ordered more than 3,000 pagers

to implement this new OPSEC policy. The biggest pager order in the last 10 years. Probably not because, you know, maybe hospitals are ordering. I imagine that pagers are ordered in bulk because individual consumers aren't really ordering pagers anymore. If you're ordering them, it's because you have a system-wide situation. You're going to force people to use them. And so somehow Israel got inside the supply chain from Taiwan into Israel.

Lebanon and it appears that they were able to install some small amount of explosive. And they were able to also then, you know, tamper with the pagers such that they could remotely trigger them. And initially there was some thought that they had sent in malware

that had raised the temperature of the lithium batteries until they exploded. But if you watch that clip again, you'll see just a sudden explosion. And if it were just a battery heating up, you would first you would see or first you would feel it getting very hot. Sure. And some of them they would just smoke because that's how these crazy malfunctioning cell phones blow up. They smoke for a while and then they blow up. These

boom, just blew up. What the reporting also says, and this is extra diabolical, is that the message had the pagers pinging, like making a noise, you know, beep, beep, beep, for a significant amount of time before they exploded so that the people thought that there was a message from Hezbollah leadership

And so you're seeing an enormous number of injuries, more than 3,000 so far, including, I believe there's 11 dead at this point, including two children, because

If this pager were in my house, for instance, and I was a Hezbollah operative, my kids might be playing with it. Well, you can see, actually, if we can even roll A1 again, if you're looking at it, they're surrounded at a market in this case. And you can see two little girls. There's two people right there. There's two little girls on the other side of the fruit cart. So there are a lot of details about...

exactly how this was initiated and with what potential precautions, who knows? Doesn't look like, obviously, when you see two little girls standing around across from the pager explode. So far it seems pretty logical. You can understand how children were affected by this. Now, Ryan, the Taiwanese company. Oh, but just to finish what I was saying. That's why there's so many people went blind and so many people lost their hands.

Because it appears that they were looking at it like, what's wrong with this? And then it blows. Now, the Taiwanese company, to your point about the supply chain, is saying actually that they made a deal with a Hungarian company that they would use. The Hungarian company would just use the Taiwanese company's branding. But they were in charge of these pagers. And they're saying, these are not our pagers. The Taiwanese company is saying, these are not our pagers. These are, in fact, this came from a Hungarian company. It's not good for business if you're the Taiwanese company.

Yeah. Well, now we're the Hungarian company. But that does add a wrinkle to how this might have been pulled off, to your point about infiltration of the supply chain. Right. And so what we have also learned is that the scheme was discovered this week or within the last week. A Hezbollah operative became suspicious about the pagers and was planning to alert leadership about them. He was killed.

The reporting suggests that he was assassinated by Israel to stop him from telling the leadership. Then a second person found out about it and was planning also to tell leadership and the plan would have been foiled at that point. And so that's when Israeli military leadership faced a dilemma. And it's kind of an interesting philosophical question here because

All of the brutality that you see in war gets its just cause by the fact that it's happening within war and it's supposed to be aimed at combatants. What happens, so that's the construct for this. This now is an unprecedented attack. We've never seen anything like this. Everybody now who owns a phone or a pager is wondering, could this thing be remotely detonated against me for some reason?

So Israel faced this question, okay, the Pager plan was part of an invasion plan. Like that's what the reporting says. But the idea was as you're launching the offensive, you blow up the communication system of Hezbollah and at the same time maim and incapacitate Israel.

a massive portion of the operatives. And as a result, you then are more successful in your operation. Israel was not ready to launch an operation or had decided for whatever reason was not going to launch an operation. So their choice then is we allow this thing to be rolled up and discovered and

and we just wasted this capacity that we had. An enormous operation, clearly, no matter what. I mean, to be able to have this tech. Right. Or the other choice is we press the button and we maim 3,000 plus people. You're definitely going to kill some children and some innocent people. There's just no question about it because they're going to be near the pagers. But not for the operational value related to your invasion.

So but it obviously would be a blow to Hezbollah, but you're only in a kind of soft war with Hezbollah you're not in a hot open war with Hezbollah and facing that choice of Stepping back not launching not long not pressing the button because it's not part of your operation And maiming the three thousand plus people they decided work We're just gonna we're just gonna take the casualties even if it's not part of any is even it's not part of our strategy and

Because now it's just, well, we could really hurt 3,000 people or we could not. And we're going to go with we could. And I think what that shows is that there's really very, very little contemplation about the idea of just coexisting. Because that's the other thing you could do is you could say,

Okay, you know what? We're actually gonna sign the ceasefire deal at which point Hezbollah stops launching its rockets Hezbollah has Hezbollah has said that they will stop launching rockets if there's a ceasefire deal reached when there was a week-long ceasefire in November to exchange hostages all the rockets from Hezbollah stopped all the rocks from the Houthis stopped all the rockets from the Syrian and Iraqi Militias that are proxies of Iran. They all stopped which shows it like coexistence and peace like it is possible that

And it has to be possible. We live on this planet together. And I think what this shows is that they're like, no, it's just not. And maybe their calculation is correct. Coexistence isn't possible. But then what a bleak world. So, okay, so your country then is just going to exist on endless war against all of its neighbors forever? Like that's really your plan? Yeah.

Who's paying for that? Us? Definitely. And it's, you know, I take the cynical perspective on that. What do you make of, so the Iranian ambassador to Lebanon, according to reports, had a pager and was, he lost one eye, severely injured his other eye.

That's quite interesting that the Iranian, I mean, a lot of people would say, of course the Iranian ambassador to Lebanon had one of these pagers, but the geopolitical ripple effect of this, I mean, obviously,

On the one hand, it's hard to have a more targeted approach than literally the pager in someone's pocket. On the other hand, we know that it's going to explode in a way that doesn't just affect that person. And if it's not in their pocket and their kids are playing with it, obviously there are consequences that are beyond just taking out single individuals. But also just geopolitically, they wipe out a huge amount of operatives. Mm-hmm.

Why is or what what happens when you have the Iranian ambassador implicated in the amount of people who were taken out? Well two things there one is so it reminded me of a Jeremy Scahill's interview with the second in command at the of PIJ and he asked him, you know, he said yeah people accuse you of being supported by Iran, right and The guy said yeah, of course. Yeah, we're allies with Iran. I

Yeah, they support our cause. We appreciate that they support our cause. Right, why would we not accept their support from our perspective? That's great. And so, yeah, Iran supports Hezbollah. Iran's going to therefore coordinate with Hezbollah. It is interesting that Iran hasn't even yet responded

to the last provocation, the assassination of Haniya outside of Tehran. And now there's another one. And it is getting to a point where a lot of Palestinians and supporters of Palestine around the world are saying that Iran actually isn't capable, they don't think anymore, of launching any kind of serious attack. That maybe that very slow 72-hour drone attack that they launched

in response to whatever previous provocation, maybe that's what they've got. Maybe that's it. Maybe they weren't holding back. And now Hezbollah seems to be seriously weakened. I don't know how many operatives they have. And you can always recruit more. But it's also a blow to their communication system. Because now what do they do? I mean, they can go back to pagers, but now they're going to be

You know, they have to be very careful about where they get their pagers from. If they go back to phones, then that helps Israel with its cyber technology get closer to more assassinations across the board. They've been assassinating Hezbollah leaders left and right. There was a book a couple of years ago that we're helping turn into a podcast drop site called Palestine Laboratory, which is about how Israel's weapons industry

is one of the world's most sophisticated because, as Israel puts it, they get to use the occupied territories as a laboratory for their weapons, where they are using experimental weapons on civilian populations and also on militant groups.

and developing better weapons technologies as a result. And this is an interesting example of that. Yeah, that's a really interesting point. We haven't seen the last of this, probably. We can put the next element up on the screen, just breaking down the various other aspects here. So Hezbollah is vowing to respond, obviously, at this point. So, Ryan, one of my questions for you is,

to the point about Iran not having responded to the assassination of Hania outside Tehran yet. What potentially could a response from Hezbollah look like? What might be, what should people perhaps expect? I mean, they supposedly have some significant kind of hypersonic missile technology that they've been saving. So everybody's

The thinking is that everybody's been holding back a little bit because A, they don't want a regional war and B, they want to have their stockpiles if they do have a regional war. The Houthis sent a hypersonic missile into Tel Aviv several days ago which caused significant damage and they've claimed that they're going to be sending dozens more in the coming days.

And actually we should put A3 up. Four Israeli soldiers were killed in an ambush by Hamas fighters just yesterday as well. Yeah, including, I believe, five others wounded, three quite seriously, as well as another Israeli officer seriously wounded in a separate clash in Rafah. So this continues to go on. This

This is one of the more significant casualty events for the IDF, four deaths and three serious injuries at a time in an ambush, which shows that despite the incredible military superiority and 11 months in, having troops amidst a population of 1.5 to 2 million people who are hostile to them,

long term is going to continue to be

extraordinarily difficult lead to these types of casualties. And that brings us to the final element here. This is from Dropsite, actually, about the... They'll just read the headline. New Gaza health numbers show Israel kills two babies every day with no end in sight. Also, if you're just listening to this, the header photo on this, Ryan, is brutal. Yeah, one of those mass graves. Yeah. And so, Sharif Abdel-Kadous, correspondent for Dropsite, said,

You may have seen he obtained the health ministry's latest data over the weekend, and we converted it into a downloadable PDF form and a CSV that people can check out because it has...

Of the 40,000 plus casualties, it has about 34,000 of them that have names and IDs and ages and birthdates and gender to them. There are obviously going to be some mistakes. People can go sift through it. You might find duplicates here or there. There have been mistakes discovered in previous Ministry of Health data that they've put out, but they've been in the range of just a handful of names been mistaken.

They then update and fix fix that data Kind of shocking that they're still able to even produce Document of this length and this this detail. It's a good point at this point the conditions are under yeah, yeah And it's also just a just devastating indictment of what's been going on. It's the first I think 14 pages our children under one It just goes on and on and on and on and

Like the conflict itself, which to the point that this brings us to, which is there's really no end in sight. Right. There seems to be nobody saying like, well, what if we don't do this? What if we just coexist here? Well, it seems. There is a deal to be had. Like Iran, Lebanon, Iraqi militias, the Houthis, like they all have better things to do.

They all have domestic problems to deal with. Israel has better things to do than just carry out a genocide inside its occupied territories. I don't remember if this was in one of Jeremy Scahill's interviews, but even the persistent point that people are making, whether it's from Israel or from Palestinians or Hamas leaders is,

what's the point of a so-called ceasefire when we know what's going to happen a month later, two months later, six months later? What's the point? There's just no trust that the other side is not going to egregiously violate it under the auspices that something changed, even if those aren't legitimate. And that's basically what's been going on for half a century. Yeah. And while Hania was negotiating the ceasefire and then was assassinated, he was then replaced as the

top leader of Hamas with Yahya Sinwar, who recently put out a statement saying that, okay, if there's not going to be a ceasefire, we, the Houthis, Hezbollah, the Iraqi militias, we're going to continue fighting and we're going to do it until we've driven Israel completely out of the region. Which, you know, the Hamas charter supports a two-state solution.

They have been pressured into agreeing to that situation. Now, under this conflict, they're saying, "You know what? All right, if there's no ceasefire, we're just going to... It's going to be a war of attrition." Their belief, or their stated belief at least,

Is that because so many Israelis have other passports, because they can move to the United States, they can move to Europe, that as the economy collapses and endless war continues, that those citizens are going to choose at that point to move to those safer places. Whereas...

the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza don't even have that option. They can't leave. You can if you raise enough money on GoFundMe or have enough support somewhere, potentially get to Egypt, and then you can fight to go somewhere else, but it's a massive uphill climb for that to happen. Whereas from their perspective, all an Israeli has to do

Just go to the airport and fly to where they have citizenship elsewhere which goes to their and a fundamental ideological belief that you know half the countries aren't aren't legitimately native to the region anyway And that's that's what you're seeing in that in that thought that they're that date where they believe They can win a war of attrition because they don't have anywhere to go right well I don't know if they're right or not

It's not pretty. In the context of the story that we just had up on the screen. Two babies every day. Yeah.

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Meanwhile, here in the United States, J.D. Vance, media critic, or I should say J.D. Vance put his media critic hat on yesterday at an event in Sparta, Michigan, where the fallout from the cats and dog meme cycle continues on the campaign.

trail. Let's go ahead and roll this clip of Vance criticizing media coverage of bomb threats that have come into various places in Springfield, Ohio, since this really took off just in the last couple of weeks. Here's what J.D. Vance had to say.

A lot of people who pretend to be fair journalists, you know what they've been saying? For the last few days, Springfield has been experiencing an unbelievable number, something like 35, 40 bomb threats in Springfield in just the last few days. And you know what the governor of Ohio came out yesterday and said? Every single one of those bomb threats was a hoax, and all of those bomb threats came from foreign countries.

So the American media for three days has been lying and saying that Donald Trump and I are inciting bomb threats when in reality, the American media has been laundering foreign disinformation. It is disgusting. And every single one of them owes the residents of Springfield an apology.

All right, well, David Frum weighed in on this, and J.D. Vance then responded to David Frum. J.D. Vance has been very online as of late, to say the least, at least for a non-Trump presidential candidate, that is to say, someone who is not Donald Trump himself. David Frum said, the difference, the upsetting things said by Trump and Vance are not true. The upsetting things said about Trump and Vance

are true, Trump really did mount a violent coup against the Constitution. He and his relatives really did take bribes in office, including from foreign governments, et cetera, et cetera. And Vance really did, and by his own admission, intentionally, quote, "create stories for political advantage that put residents of his state at risk of physical harm." J.D. responded, "I'd say the most important difference is that people on your team tried to kill Donald Trump twice."

Ryan, what do you make of that back and forth and not just JD versus David Frum, but also JD versus the media writ large? What about either of those shooters I'd say makes them part of quote unquote David Frum's team? Also, who's David Frum's team? Ukraine. Ukraine.

There might be something to that one in the very, very, like, zoomed out advantage point that this suspect has been obviously a stalker. Crystal have been covering...

The Ukraine nut. The Ukraine nut, right. And a sort of the most intense version of a hawk that you could find on Ukraine, on China, I guess roughly aligned with David Frum, probably on those two policies in the abstract. So maybe Frum needs to eat that one. The other guy. I don't know. Not so sure about the other guy. Yeah, we still have no idea, which is strange in and of itself. But it does seem kind of funny that J.D. Vance once said,

precision and accuracy in the reporting on the bomb threats and once context as well. When his original story,

that he was telling which led to these bomb threats, led to them whether or not they were pranksters from the little Russian troll army or whatever he's suggesting it is. Okay, that's funny by the way. The bomb threats. Right. Can we acknowledge that that's funny that he's saying it's like foreign interference? Yes. In the election? Yes. Okay, that's funny. Yes, that is funny. They were triggered by the stories that he was telling. You know, he has said, look I created this story.

Now, what he'll say is, what I mean by created is I repeated the story, some stories that I had heard from constituents. Right. He was, and in context, that was one of the annoying things about the David Frum tweet, is that he did, that legitimately, if you watch that entire interview in context, he said that so poorly. I mean, just from a political standpoint, his comms staffers were probably like groaning when they heard that. But in the larger context, he was saying, this is not

a fabrication because my constituents have been coming to me for months, blah, blah, blah. So even if that, whether or not that's true, it's not actually what he was saying. Right. But the claims don't seem to be standing up. Like they have found no missing cats and dogs. You know, the original source of that claim has apologized for circulating a bum rumor. And she should, it's sad that she has to apologize nationally for

She posted something on Facebook. She posted something on Facebook that she heard from her daughter who heard it from a cousin who heard it from a friend. Like, not a good source. Like, not the kind of thing you would base a national story around. The whole 20,000 number...

is also looks rather flimsy. It's in the New York Times. Yeah. No, but that's what I'm saying. That's why I think it's taken off. It's in the New York Times. Well, right. But the Times reported it, which is where a lot of people source the number to. Yeah. And I think the town manager or the mayor had said it like a year ago or something like that. They had

My rule of thumb is be very skeptical of nice round numbers, whether it comes to no contest bidding, like $50 million for McKinsey, as Matt Stoller reported. $50 million, okay, what are you going to do with that? Don't worry about it. It's just $50 million. We'll do something with it. Whenever somebody says, oh, the number's 20,000.

It's like, hmm, I'm not so sure that that's actually based on anything other than let's put a number out there that is large enough to convey the concern that we have for the growth in the population. Turned out, you know, they're not here illegally. That's complicated. And interesting, actually. Yeah. And so J.D. Vance, on the one hand, wants his bigger truth out.

to withstand the fact that a lot of what's underneath it isn't actually true. But when it comes to the bomb threats, he wants all of the motivations checked before people report that there was a bomb threat. If you're walking out of your school because the Russians called one in or because it was like a MAGA dude, you're walking out of the school either way. I will say a lot of the media coverage, though, did...

implicitly or explicitly blame the bomb threats on JD Vance and that can that's an argument that can absolutely be made You know JD Vance and Donald Trump Russia with the ones that ever like wouldn't be doing it without right but here's where I think it gets Especially interesting and I'm just thinking about this from the perspective obviously of a conservative. It's like

Springfield, Ohio, the New York Times did a follow-up here. Estimates range between 12,000 and 20,000 to your point. 12,000 is a significantly different number than 20,000, although still a very significant number for the size of Springfield. There's a serious population there of Haitians. Right, yeah. According to city officials who have spoken with the Times, and those estimates are based on data from the Ohio Bureau of Motor Vehicles, Springfield's public schools, healthcare providers, and social service agencies. So in the big picture, there's obviously a story here of...

strain on a social and economic level from this influx of migrants. And that's a story that can be glass half empty or glass half full, depending on how you look at it. You could say these strains are what we've always done in America as we accommodate new populations who come in and do great jobs in the factories and build their way into middle class lives. Or you could say these are taxpayers who are having trouble with

overcrowding in schools, and housing costs going up. And they have all of these like perfectly well-intentioned objections to what's happened over the course of the Biden-Harris administration. So you can see that from different perspectives no matter what. But one thing is true, and that's basically that the press didn't talk about this story until J.D. Vance and Donald Trump started talking about it in outrageous, these outrageous,

the outrageous context. And one thing to the story that I would say is not in defense of politicians lying, of course not, but on the other hand,

The sort of legacy press does not do itself any favors by ignoring some of these bigger plot lines for ideological reasons because that's what, like, things boil over in the absence of attention on what is legitimately a newsworthy story. And then we end up, it makes the Donald Trumps and J.D. Vance's of the world more and more likely to talk

talking like massively exaggerated terms. That's not a defense of them talking in massively exaggerated terms whatsoever. It is though just to say there's some responsibility on the part of the media to dedicate proportional coverage here and to cover immigration much better than it does.

It's just sort of, for me, like crying over spilt milk when they start to whine about J.D. Vance and Donald Trump. It's like, well, you're creating an atmosphere that makes this more and more likely, and it's an unforced error because your job is to cover this stuff fairly. But while it's true that they haven't covered Springfield, Ohio, because it's a town of roughly 50,000 people or whatever, as a national story, I think they have covered immigration in a pretty...

hawkish way I don't think they've done a very good job of covering when the border like if I mean Democrats Talk about how the borders a complete disaster Republicans talk about the borders a complete disaster the new the mainstream news media covers the border as a complete disaster and Real you know related to that is the the suggestion that there's like hordes of people coming up like I

I think from like an immigration hawks perspective the media is serving up all the hysteria that you could want like okay now they're talking about Springfield in particular but

Have they really been ignoring the question of the border? Well, the question of, I think, integration of this. Like, that's what I think has been. I don't think the corporate press has been entirely ignoring the question of the border. But the question of what happens once people get over the border and then seek to integrate in sometimes mid-sized, mid-range communities, Springfield, Dayton area. That story is, I think, very rarely covered. And it's an interesting story, actually, from the left and the right. Right, but the attempt to cover this one.

The claim was that they're not integrating into the community. Right. And the evidence for that was that they're stealing and eating like dogs and cats. Well, no, I mean, there are people talking at all those town council meetings about housing costs going up, about the problems with schools, about like, I mean, those people being forced out of housing situations. I mean, those there weren't just people repeating the dogs and cats stuff at those meetings. It was everything else, too. And that's why I think it's unfortunate, because even from the perspective of the left, you

There's a lot that could be said about what are these factory workers being taken advantage of? Are they union? Are they like what are these conditions fair and acceptable for people? Right. And what would what would the city look like without them? Right.

No, seriously. I think that's super interesting. And it doesn't have to be right wing. But I think a lot of journalists are just stuck in this rut where criticizing, and there are certain countries in Europe that have gotten out of that reflex, but where criticizing mass immigration, which has clearly objectively happened, and I didn't say mass illegal immigration. I think that's important because a lot of the Haitian migrants

You look at their papers and they're perfectly legal. They're making asylum claims and waiting for them to be adjudicated in the asylum courts. And they have work permits and all of that. And it's a perfectly legal form of immigration because they're making asylum claims en masse. So it's not just like illegal immigration. It's going through legal pathways that we've expanded. So there's just a super, I think, super legitimate and interesting questions that don't have to result in

necessarily like conservative arguments, but the media is just in this reflexive rut of being disinterested in anything that might be highly critical of mass migration. The New York Times did do an excellent series on children who were being exploited that had been trafficked over the border and were missing. DHS just missing thousands of migrant children. That was a great series, but it's

There's so many different stories like that and different sort of downstream effects that I just rarely see covered. And just to check out, so I just Googled the number of journalists in Ohio. And the first thing that comes up is from 2012 to 2019, Ohio lost 43% of its newspaper journalists. I agree with that. From 2019 until today, you can imagine that the number collapsed dramatically.

you know, much further. I imagine if you looked at the whatever the newspaper situation is in Springfield, news situation is in Springfield 10, 15 years ago, and what it is more broadly from the Ohio papers, the Dayton paper, and also like the Toledo Blade and the others who cover the state more broadly, you'll see probably a 90% collapse in journalistic capacity. - Totally. - And when that happens,

You only have time to cover the weather, traffic, new businesses that are opening. Local sports. Local sports. And a lot of times... But like actual reporting on anything that takes effort. Yeah. What they call that enterprise at those newspapers. Enterprise reporting. It takes enterprise to go and do it. That is the thing that gets cut. Right. And it often ends up coming from a bureau in a city saying,

tens, like dozens of miles away at least, if not, you know. And those bureaus are shut. Right, so like... Those are the first ones that get shut down. You have, you know, the Cleveland reporters or the Columbus reporters reporting on Springfield, Dayton, as opposed to having a robust local paper in Dayton. This was one of the big things, I think, during the sort of school culture wars during COVID,

I think I did a monologue on this. If we had more robust local news, that used to be the pipeline where a lot of the stuff got worked out before it ended up in the national media because some of these conversations would be hashed out by the free press. Like the free press would facilitate

sharing relevant information to the community and the community would come together and sort of figure out a solution, I think a lot of these school board confrontations would have stayed local instead of being blown up into divisive national news cycles. I could not agree with that more. So it's just... And yeah, it looks like Springfield was a victim of corporate consolidation from Cox Enterprises, which is this... You know Cox, it's like this gigantic behemoth that gobbles up...

local news and then basically gets rid of all the local in it, centralizes it at the top, combines it with radio and other local newspapers and basically just gives the same news with a slight tweak, maybe one person in Springfield. So that's the Springfield Sun, it looks like. And in late 2010, Cox Enterprises merged all of its local media holdings under the CMG Ohio brand

and consolidated locations in addition it's print publications holds include a bunch of different like radio and local tv so they're just consolidating it all and getting rid of all the workers lovely and then yeah you're not going to get you're not going to get you know you get what you pay for um

Or you get what you allow the oligarchs to control as this democratic society. So let's watch this Hillary Clinton clip, which is a little bit of a pivot, but gets into the broader conversation about disinformation. So this was Hillary Clinton on Rachel Maddow talking about what consequences should come to people who are allegedly disinformation.

disseminating Russian propaganda? I think it's important to indict the Russians, just as Mueller indicted a lot of Russians who were engaged in direct election interference and boosting Trump back in 2016. But I also think there are Americans who are

engaged in this kind of propaganda. And whether they should be civilly or even in some cases criminally charged is something that would be a better deterrence because the Russians are unlikely, except in a very few cases, to ever stand trial

in the United States. You know, they're not going to be going to a country where they can be extradited or even returning to the United States unless they are very foolish. So I think we need to uncover all of the connections and make it very clear that you can vote however you want, but we are not going to let adversaries, whether it is Russia, China, Iran or anybody else,

basically try to influence Americans as to how we should vote in picking our leaders. You can vote however you want, you just can't say whatever you want. That's a nice concession. We appreciate that. Yeah, she's willing to compromise, willing to come to the table. You can vote however you want for now. You know that in her heart of hearts, she thinks it should be a crime to have voted for Donald Trump. To vote for Donald Trump, right, because you're a Russian puppet, and we can't stand for that. And

For her to go on television and float that some Americans should perhaps be charged criminally for repeating what she calls Russian talking points is It's amazing. It's utterly amazing. Where is old leftist Rachel Maddow to jump in and say well, excuse me ma'am former Secretary of State

What exactly are we talking about here? I guess we don't look to former secretaries of state to uphold principles of democracy anywhere around the world, so we might as well not look for it here at home. But good lord. Glenn had a great point. He said, if Hillary's, Glenn Greenwald posted, if Hillary's insanely repressive measure were implemented, people spreading disinformation could be imprisoned. The first

two people to share a prison cell should be her and Matto, who drowned the country in Steele dossier, Alfa Bank service, and other demented debunked lies, which by the way, could easily have been Russian disinformation that was funneled intentionally to Christopher Steele as Steele would be the sort of useful idiot. He's out with a new book. Maybe we can get him on. All we can do is let a jury sort it out. That's right. That's right. Disinformation, very real,

punishment for disinformation also increasingly very real and these two things are not necessarily or should not necessarily be related. Wow. Well, amazing. You have to have some tolerance for disinformation in a free society, of course, but I guess we're losing that muscle memory.

Don't miss this powerful conversation with Vice President Kamala Harris. Tomorrow at 5 p.m. Eastern, 2 p.m. Pacific on the free iHeartRadio app's Hip Hop Beat Station.

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Let's move on to Kamala Harris, who has done six interviews since being named the presidential nominee after President Joe Biden stepped down. Three of them have been with like friendly radio hosts. I think we all remember how some of those radio interviews have been handled in the past. But she did sit down yesterday for a fairly long back and forth. In addition to the Dana Bash interview, she did one other interview. This one— With the local Philadelphia TV reporter. Yeah.

- So this one was really the longest exchange I think that she's had, at least live, since being named the presidential nominee. And this was at the National Association of Black Journalists in conversation at an NABJ event. We all remember how Donald Trump's NABJ sit down went. - Perfect. - Yeah, it was perfect. It was a perfect phone call. So let's take a listen to this answer that Kamala Harris gave on the economy yesterday. - We had then a lot of work to do to clean up a mess.

As of today, we have created over 16 million new jobs, over 800,000 new manufacturing jobs.

We have the lowest black unemployment rate in generations. We have invested in small businesses, and they're to the benefit of many people, but including black small businesses, some of the highest rate of creation of new black small businesses in years. We have done the work of capping the cost of prescription medication.

For our seniors, for issues like insulin, and again, I'm speaking to the black journalists who care about all people, but in particular, I'll talk about the impact on black people.

where we know black folks are 60 times more likely, 60% excuse me, more likely to be diagnosed with diabetes. And we have now finally capped the cost of insulin for our seniors at $35 a month, capped the cost of prescription medication for our seniors at $2,000 a year because we, unlike the former president who promised to do it, we

finally have allowed Medicare to negotiate drug prices against the big pharmaceutical companies. And these are just some of the accomplishments. Is the price of groceries still too high? Yes.

Do we have more work to do? Yes. All right. Do we have more work to do? That's one way to kind of handle questions about how you're part of an administration in which people still see grocery prices as being too high compared to the administration that came immediately before it. Now, Kamala Harris also commented on, was asked actually, about what she makes of trends that are showing up in polls among black men, in particular being sort of polarizing

pulled towards Donald Trump in some numbers that just Republicans aren't used to seeing, Democrats aren't used to seeing. It's hardly going to be a landslide for Donald Trump among black men, but the patterns are interesting enough to warrant further speculation, of course. So here's how Kamala Harris responded to that.

you have engaged black men and censored them in your economic opportunity tour. But polling shows that some black men, particularly young black men, are considering voting for Donald Trump, and they see him as better for the economy. What is your message to young black male voters who feel left out of this economy, and how can your economic policies materially change their lives?

So I appreciate the spirit of the question, but I'll tell you, I've often been asked this question in a way that I've had to respond by first saying that I think it's very important to not operate from the assumption that black men are in anybody's pocket. Black men are like any other voting group. You got to earn their vote. So I'm working to earn the vote, not assuming I'm going to have it because I am black.

but because the policies and the perspectives I have

understands what we must do to recognize the needs of all communities. And I intend to be a president for all people. - So I have to say, I actually thought that was a pretty good answer, partially because of what Nina Turner said. Nina Turner during the DNC told the Free Press that the Democratic Party kind of emasculates black men from Nina's perspective at least. I think there's probably some truth to that. And Kamala Harris saying, "I'm not taking anything for granted," was probably the best way that she could respond to that. I don't know, what do you think, Ryan? - Yeah, I think that's right. And on the previous clip,

I would love to have a politics where people are constantly competing for who can take on Big Pharma more. Yes, that'd be great. Like Biden pushing through with the Inflation Reduction Act, Medicare negotiation after the Democrats had ran on it in 2006. Mm-hmm.

And then when they took over the White House in 2009 and had both houses of Congress They traded it to pharma in exchange for pharma support for Obamacare right and then they and then they're like it's just a one-year deal after this and we're back at it and Then they claimed they were gonna do it, you know for the next 10 years But then they finally did it and it you know, it took him 15 years, but it's

It's a real credit to the advocates who were pushing for it, to seniors who have been organizing around that issue, because you're up against one of the most powerful lobbies in Washington. I think they have something like five or six lobbyists for every single member of Congress. The amount of money that they have to spend because of federal policy is ungodly.

And they did beat them. And the Medicare negotiations, the insulin cap is a literal lifesaver. And the negotiations estimated, saved something like $7, $8 billion for both Medicare and seniors. And also pushes down prices for everybody. But it also is a huge kind of toe in the door.

So to have them, I would love to see then Trump come back and be like, no, I'm actually going to be tougher on big pharma when I come in. He never does. That's as you were outlining that. I find it, you know, we've talked about this before, but it is so interesting that and Matt Seller has actually gone back and listened to Trump speeches from 2016 and compared them to Trump speeches from 2024. He was constantly railing, not just against like elites, but against...

other corporate elites. And I say other because he would say, I know the system and like these guys are corrupt and they're fleecing you. And he's never really gone in on that with big pharma at all, despite the mounting opposition to pharma, ag, health industry from conservatives. Tucker has platformed these conversations on his show that have

really resonated with a lot of people on the right. You just don't hear it from Trump at all, despite the fact that it is really a massive opening. And if there was anything that could shake the Republican Party out of its

absurd blind spot and inability to come to the table on health care, which is repeatedly in polls shows up as one of the most important issues for voters, it would have been Donald Trump coming in and just taking a bulldozer to corporate allegiances in the Republican Party. And it hasn't happened. Yeah. And they already have old people. So lock those old people in. He did do an executive order that had a voluntary price cap on insulin at $35 for seniors.

Which it which did help some seniors and I've seen Trump try to take credit for what happened later in the inflation reduction act But you know a voluntary executive order that applies just to seniors is totally different than a law that applies for everybody across the country Yes, but it I'd like to see Trump like upset by the fact that he got outflanked on that because then it should hopefully it shows Republicans like this is a winning political issue. Yeah, clearly make people's lives better and

on a daily basis and then brag about it. That would be a cool politics. Yeah, well there's really interesting studies of happiness in indigenous communities that have been basically isolated from technology. So people living like they did thousands of years ago. And one of the biggest sources, they have pretty high levels of happiness. Their sources of stress or things that contribute to unhappiness are community and health.

So it's kind of interesting, right, that you can have all of your needs met. You can feel content across the board. But if health is a concern for you, it will drag down your levels of happiness. It's one of the things, in addition to community, that can really drag down a person's level of happiness. And Republicans just have zero idea what to do about it and zero interest in talking about it. So, Wren, let's pivot to what Kamala Harris said when she was entertaining questions on Israel and Palestine. This was the...

She was asked about the ceasefire and ongoing negotiations. Let's just roll the clip.

Madam Vice President, just to follow up really quickly, is there a specific policy change that you as president of the United States would say you would do that would help this along? Because, you know, you've gotten a lot of credit for emphasizing the humanity of Palestinians. But what I often hear from folks is that there's no policy change that would that either you or the president, President Biden, have gone and said they would do. Is there a specific policy change as president that you would do in our helping policy?

of Israel. We need to get this deal done. And we need to get it done immediately. And that is my position and that is my policy. We need to get this deal done. But in the way that we send weapons, in the way that we interact as their ally, are there specific policy changes? Well, Eugene, for example, one of the things that we have done that I am entirely supportive of is the pause that we've put on the 2,000-pound bombs.

And so there is some leverage that we have had and used. But ultimately, the thing that is going to unlock everything else in that region is getting this deal done. And I'm not going to disclose private conversations, but I will tell you I've had direct conversations with the prime minister, with senators,

the president of Israel, with Egyptian leaders, and with our allies. And I think we've made ourselves very clear this deal needs to get done in the best interest of everyone in the region, including getting those hostages out who—I mean, we saw the latest example of what happened with the six most recently, one of whom was an American citizen.

But what do you say to those that say that's not enough, that stopping the 2,000-pound bombs the one time wasn't enough, that this administration and your possible administration has to do more?

Well, we are doing the work of putting the pressure on all parties involved to get the deal done. Right, and that one kind of reminds me of Trump saying that he has concepts of a plan. What did you make of Kamala Harris's response? You make yourself either look like a liar or like you're just terribly weak and incompetent. A caricature of a politician. Or, I mean, as a statesperson. Because either...

Either you're lying and you completely support this war effort and are sending the weapons so that the weapons can continue to be used, which is the most logical reason you would send weapons to somebody. Or you're just such an incompetent moron that you run the most powerful empire in the history of the world and you can't figure out how to get a country of like 7 million, 8 million people

to do what you want it to do despite the fact that you fund and arm that country. Right. Like if you can't figure out how to do that, how can you do anything difficult when it comes to world affairs? So it either makes you look like you are completely weak and just getting steamrolled by Israel or that you're completely comfortable and complicit in what is being done. Eugene just kept...

Pushing like is there anything you would do differently than the Biden administration? Anything right and to his credit, you know, she tried to use the 2,000 bomb 2,000 pound bomb point He pointed out that that was one time and limited so they're not even doing that anymore They just dropped three of those a week ago and shredded dozens of children those two thousand those exact two thousand pound bombs and

that she's over here trying to claim and that claim would have hung out there as unchallenged if Eugene hadn't contested it. The support for Biden's policy is in the 20s. She also is struggling to find ways to distance herself from Biden. Yes, from the Biden-Harris administration. Yeah, and here's a policy that's not working and is in the 20s and you won't divorce yourself from it

Therefore, you're either a complete moron or you actually think it is working and you like what's being done. Those are the only two options. Yeah, I think that's true. It's a failure by their own terms. It's either a failure by their own terms or their own terms are...

They're lying about what they are and they're actually fine with what it is. The status quo, yeah, exactly. Again, we heard all DNC week about how close we were to a ceasefire and I think they like having the ceasefire on the table politically because it makes them look like they're working for something better. And I'm not trying to

you know, impugn anyone's motives, but I do think politically during the presidential election, having the ceasefire on the table allows Kamala Harris to get away with these sort of laughable, two-sided statements where in one breath she will say something that isolated the sentiment is totally pro-Israel, and then

The next breath, she will just say a sentence that isolated the sentiment is totally pro-Palestine. It's just a complete farce. It's like a political farce. It's almost like satire. And I think having the deal in negotiation is sort of a tool for them to be able to do that. Remember when you had Biden licking the ice cream and being like, oh, yeah, we're getting a deal by Friday. Yeah. Watch this drive, basically. Yeah. Yeah.

That was, I forget what month that was. Many, many months ago. Jake Sullivan told Netanyahu in his cabinet back in November, like, this has to be over by the end of the year. That was 2023. Right. We're closer every day, Ryan. Yeah. Closer every day. All right. Well, you have some great reporting on Pakistan that we should get to. So let's pivot. This is a fascinating one. Yeah. Let's pivot to Pakistan.

Don't miss this powerful conversation with Vice President Kamala Harris. Tomorrow at 5 p.m. Eastern, 2 p.m. Pacific on the free iHeartRadio app's Hip Hop Beat Station.

while uncovering the stories of the brilliant writers behind them. Blacklit is here to amplify the voices of Black writers and to bring their words to life. Listen to Blacklit on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

So over at DropSite News, my colleague Murtaza Hussain and I have a fascinating news story on the way that Pakistan is stuck in the middle of the superpower struggle between China and the United States. We can put this element up on the screen. Headline over there, Pakistan promised China a new militarized naval base.

leaked documents reveal and so I want to unpack what's going on here, but let's roll back a little bit so The one of the best examples of the United States shooting itself in the foot Geopolitically came in 1953 through 1979 so 1953 Iran and I mean the US and the British go in and they overthrow the

Iranian Prime Minister there. The Iranian Prime Minister had been saying like, "Hey, wait a minute, we got all this oil. Shouldn't this oil be benefiting the Iranian people, not just Western companies like British Petroleum?" And we said, "No, in fact, it should be benefiting Western countries." Overthrew them, installed an autocratic regime, the Shah, and we all know how that ended. Oh, yeah. 1979, you get the Iranian Revolution. It's going great.

which has created an enemy in the region ever since for really no reason. So in other words, not only did we betray our democratic, our ostensible democratic values, we didn't even get the thing that we wanted, which was a client, kind of client regime that is going to be friendly to Western interests. There are- Despite Kermit Roosevelt's best efforts. Despite Kermit Roosevelt's best efforts. There are so many examples of this throughout American history. Today's story brings it up to the present.

Because now you have the United States intervening in Pakistan's democratic affairs to oust Imran Khan to then bring in a more pliant kind of military regime, which we assume is going to be

you know, more sympathetic to U.S. interests. Instead, despite all of our support for the democratic backsliding going on in Pakistan, we have internal documents showing that a very desperate Pakistan has now granted

one of China's long-standing demands of its Pakistani allies, which is to allow China to build a naval port in Gwadar, a militarized naval port. And to understand just how significant this is, we could put up a couple of maps here. So you see Gwadar is over on the western side of Pakistan, over near

what's called the Strait of Hormuz. So if you look all the way to the left of that map,

That's one of the kind of most important strategic locations on the entire globe. If you show the next map, it will immediately become clear why this is so important. To the west there is the Persian Gulf. So you get around this straight, you're heading into, there's the UAE, there's Saudi Arabia. This is where an enormous amount of

the world's shipping not you know oil in particular but shipping in general flows through and so control of this sea route is critical not just you know strategically

economically, but also militarily in the event of a war. And so if you look at that port over there, you can see that it is one of the most important locations that you could possibly have. It is something that the United States has been eyeing warily for many, many years, that they have known that Pakistan and China have a close relationship. They have known that China has wanted to militarize this port for its

and also develop it strategically, economically. And this is a huge player in the Houthi situation as well, right? Fears that this could escalate into the Strait of Hormuz. Right. And you've had all sorts of... Literally right now. ...economic difficulties around the world because of the way that the Houthis have been able to shut down shipping around that area. It shows how important this entire region is.

So if you roll back a little bit, what's happening in Pakistan, and people should read the entire story to get the full context of what's going on. Pakistan, the kind of prime minister has

has had dominion over, dominion is too strong a word, but has had influence over domestic policy, whereas the military traditionally managed foreign affairs. Here in the United States, you know, the civilians are supposed to manage everything. That's how it ought to work. The compromise, so to speak, that the military allowed in Pakistan is we'll let the prime minister do a few things internally. Imran Khan did things like

brought about like a version of Medicare for all, like expanded healthcare to people. They're like, all right, you don't do that as long as we can still have our graft and we still control foreign policy, fine. But then Imran Khan started getting involved in foreign affairs.

He had a good relationship with the Trump administration, interestingly, given that the Trump administration was in the middle of enacting a Muslim ban. But they got along well, the two of them. The Biden administration and Imran Khan, not so well. He famously tried to get a call from Biden after Biden was elected, couldn't do it. There was something about that relationship that the Biden administration wanted distance in.

So then in June 2021, he sits down with Jonathan Swan of Axios actually, Axios at the time. And Swan asks, you know, if the Taliban takes over in Afghanistan, you know, will you allow, you know, drone flights out of Pakistan? That was a key element of the Biden administration, what they called over the horizon approach. They said, we're going to project power over the horizon. We don't need to occupy Afghanistan because...

Our over-the-horizon capacity is unparalleled. Key to that over-the-horizon capacity was being able to operate out of Pakistan. Imran Khan said, absolutely not. I'm not doing that. And so that was looked at by the United States as a major affront to them. Then in February of 2022, Imran Khan had a long-planned state visit to Moscow,

that coincided with the invasion, Russia's invasion of Ukraine. The US tried to put pressure on him to turn around, come back, cancel the trip, or at minimum denounce the Russian invasion. Imran Khan refused.

He said, at a rally, he said, what are we, your slaves? That we're going to just do what you tell us? He said, we're going to remain neutral. We are friends with Ukraine. We are friends with Russia. This is a war between them. Because Pakistan desperately needs grain from both, energy from both. It's not in their interest to get in the middle of that conflict. Around this time, the State Department official, Don Lew,

two weeks later meets with the Pakistan ambassador and says Listen, we are very bothered by this what he calls aggressive neutrality that Imran Khan is taking between Ukraine and Russia But the United States believes that it is a policy of the Prime Minister alone Not a policy of you know, Pakistan government more broadly and if Imran Khan is removed in a no-confidence vote all will be forgiven from the United States and Everything will be cool

Just days later, weeks later, the army chief gives a televised address where he denounces the Russian invasion of Ukraine. So breaking with the prime minister, the army then orchestrates the no confidence vote that the US had said it wanted to see happen. They put pressure on a number of Imran Khan's party officials who had been, who had links

to the military and who could be compromised by the military. They flip their votes, they oust Imran Khan, and then they start shifting back toward the United States. So if you remember, Nancy Pelosi travels to Taiwan for August, September of 2022. And this is after they have ousted Imran Khan. And China goes to all of its allies and they want a full-throated denunciation of Nancy Pelosi's visit to Taiwan.

Pakistan demurs. They put out a little statement that is extremely mild and it kind of infuriates the Chinese like you're not gonna stand with us. You're like you are

We have a they call it an iron brotherhood. They're supposed to have between Pakistan and China in October of that year As we report in this article Bajo who's the military chief finally gets what he's been Demanding of the United States or begging of the United States, which which is a state visit to the to the US while he's in Washington he gets to meet with the top officials and

He also at the at the Pakistani at the Pakistan ambassador's residence. He meets with a bunch of kind of foreign policy heads here in Washington and he tells them he doesn't really like the Chinese They've always loved the United States and he says two things that really raise eyebrows To make the point he says he loves American sitcoms from the 90s

Many such cases. His favorite, Married with Children. Married with Children. He mentions Married with Children, which is excellent, by the way. I'm surprised that you're willing to go to the mat for Married with Children, given the various political incorrectness. It's satire. It's satire, you're right. Absolutely genius. Yeah, I love Married with Children. And he adds he doesn't even like Chinese food.

So he's sending a very clear message. This leaks out, of course, to the Chinese. And important to establish that. As well. And back in New York, the Pakistani representative to the UN starts getting chided by the Chinese representative there. These sarcastic comments about, no, you're best friends now with the US. Like, what happened to us? At the same time, China keeps telling Pakistan,

Look, we do not see ourselves as in a cold war, a zero-sum cold war with the United States. Like, it is okay if you want to have good relations with the United States. That does not mean you have to have bad relations with us. We don't see it that way. But what our reporting shows is that Pakistan understands that that's how the United States sees it, that they have to pick one or the other.

And so this whole time they're having a very difficult balance, but they choose the United States. They figure United States is the way to go. And at first it starts to pay off.

As we also reported, Pakistan not only stops becoming neutral, they start producing 155 millimeter shells for Ukraine. Because they're very good at making these low-grade crappy shells, which are the kind of shells that are important for this kind of stalemated war in Ukraine where you're just lobbing.

Endlessly cheap munitions at the other side. - And it's a boost to the Pakistani economy. - Boost to the Pakistani economy. And the US secretly agrees to let Pakistan use this clandestine weapons program

as basically collateral financing for an IMF loan that comes in. And so the IMF loan is supposed to help stabilize things. Many such cases. The IMF loan, because Pakistan is such a basket case and because it's not following through on any of its commitments when it comes to reforms, doesn't fully come through and the economy keeps collapsing. And because it keeps spiraling out of control,

they have to go back to China. And so, and that's where our story comes in. They go back to China and they're like, look, we're not- We love Chinese food. We love Chinese food. Married with children, really kind of problematic in some of its depictions. Not a huge fan. Love you guys. What can you do? And basically the what that they need is they, China has lent them a bunch of money that is coming due. They need that, they need those loans refinanced at a nice rate. Mm-hmm.

or else they're completely screwed because they're not getting money in from anywhere else. And so China is like, well, you know what we want. We want access to this port, Gwadar. And also we want you to start protecting our Chinese citizens who are in Pakistan doing the Belt and Road construction projects, which Pakistan had not been doing effectively. You keep having these terrorist attacks

you know hitting these chinese officials the chinese started to think that at first they're telling them okay here's here's where the chinese workers are going to be make sure they're protected and then it seemed like they were more likely to get hit when they told them so they get what's going on here it's compromised they're leaking this out so now they want private security uh they want joint security they want the chinese want they don't trust the pakistanis anymore to do the security they want their own security forces

But that's a huge affront to sovereignty. It's Pakistan saying that they can't protect the Chinese civilians within Pakistan's borders and have to allow foreign government to have its own security forces in there, which they would already be doing with a militarized port of Gwadar. And meanwhile, because Pakistan's position is now so weakened,

Pakistan didn't even get anything for this concession. It's just a concession. Now, the documents also suggest that there is no timeline for the execution of this, that Pakistan is going to continue to try, say, okay, yes, we've agreed in principle, and this is going to happen, quote, in due time, as one of the documents says, but that doesn't mean necessarily tomorrow.

And now that this reporting is out, I'll be at the State Department later today asking them about this, the US is going to, I'm sure, raise significant concerns. But then it raises the question, what on earth is the United States getting out of supporting basically a military dictatorship that is embarrassing it on the international stage?

Because you know, they're trying to sanction Venezuela. They're trying to sanction Georgia for a democratic backsliding while Pakistan is engaged in just you know complete evisceration of its own democracy and they're not even Getting a military ally out of it. They're handing this key port over to China instead. Hmm just complete debacle on

on every level and can you maybe give some context on the state of the Pakistani economy because I think that gets to the motivations of Pakistan and navigating the Difficult relationship or trying to balance US interests Chinese interests with its own interests So the IMF just announced that within a couple weeks They're gonna go to their final executive board meeting with a seven billion dollar what they call EFF a bailout mm-hmm, which

Right now, the economy is a complete disaster. Rampant joblessness. They recently put in a new firewall to try to censor the media. - Try to censor Ryan. - I think it was time to some of our articles. They banned drop site news inside Pakistan.

And it slowed the internet to a complete crawl You've got constant blackouts like the heat waves. They're insane like they're getting hit with climate change you know worse than most other countries because of Just you know where they are geographically on the planet and what their climate already was And so right now the military basically controls the entire economy and so it is you have you know 50% illiteracy and a completely stifled population. It's very much like Egypt where

You've got these military run corrupt companies that just exist to basically make the generals get richer and the generals then take their money, this is what's fascinating about the international relations, and they stash it in London and the US through properties and other holdings. And so yes, it's true.

that the Bajwa likes married with children and doesn't like Chinese food and he talked about his culture. He was trying to say I like America better. Right. And who can blame him? It's great over here. We love it. But what is really also going on is that their children are being educated here and their illicit gains are housed here. And that means we can snatch them. The Russian oligarchs learned that the hard way after Putin's invasion.

The UK and the US seized a bunch of oligarch property. And so we really have them. Pakistani elites are tethered to the US. We have the Pakistani elites kind of captured in the sense that it might not be in the interest of Pakistan itself to continue to have this tight relationship with us.

But it's in their personal interest because we can just, oh yeah, is that your penthouse apartment on 34th Street? Your yacht? Yeah, that's your yacht. Not anymore. Another. You're sanctioned, boom. And once you're sanctioned, once it's snatched, you're done. So we'll see it, which is why...

it will be difficult for them to actually execute. And China knows it, actually execute on this promise that they've now made. One of the more interesting subplots of the war in Gaza right now is how China has distanced itself from Israel. In the aftermath of the invasion after October 7th, China sort of is trying to make inroads, literally inroads, with a lot of different countries around the world and sort of curry favorability. And it

realized that it couldn't continue having this friendship between Netanyahu and Xi Jinping that was playing out very publicly. I mean, Netanyahu would rebuke the United States by turning to China before October 7th in various ways. That was like sort of a strategic maneuver that he was very intentionally making. And I'm curious, Ryan, what you think about

how this is playing out in the context of Gaza, which is obviously very important to countries like Pakistan and is important to China, given its reputation, being on the line as it tries to make, again, literal inroads. Pun, please excuse the pun.

It's in different countries as a critical mission to its own self-interest on a world stage going forward. Yeah, publicly, Pakistan doesn't recognize Israel and is critical, but privately it is quite friendly and on good terms. The ISI is on good terms with Israel, whereas Imran Khan would have, if he were free now, he's in prison,

You know would be one of the most vocal. Yeah critics of of what's going on there as would his supporters if you were yeah, yeah But as it is, it's it's new, you know, the country's neutralized when it comes to that comes to that question But I think what from China's perspective Africa plays a huge role in this and the global south more generally that China sees China China believes that the global south and the BRICS countries

see US hegemony as not beneficial to them and see the rise of of China and multi polarity as Potentially beneficial and giving them more room to maneuver and be and actually care and actually have a sense of their own agency and nationalism and they they they are they see Israel as a bulwark of American Gemini and and see siding with the Palestinians there as as

favorable to a rise of multi-polarity. Yeah, there's so many layers to this. So fascinating, great story. Interesting stuff. A lot of people won't be able to read it in Pakistan, unfortunately. Well, they call it VPNistan because everyone there has a VPN.

So I think people are going to find ways to get to it. I'm sure they will. All right, so coming up we have an interview with Matt Walsh about his new film, and it's going to be quite an interesting conversation, Ryan. I sure will. Looking forward to it.

Don't miss this powerful conversation with Vice President Kamala Harris. Tomorrow at 5 p.m. Eastern, 2 p.m. Pacific on the free iHeartRadio app's Hip Hop Beat Station.

Listen to Black Lit on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

We are joined now by Matt Walsh, who is out with a new movie called Am I Racist? that is in theaters around the country. Matt obviously hosts his eponymous show with The Daily Wire. Matt, thank you for joining us. Thanks for having me. Of course. Yeah, now the movie's doing pretty well. One of the, I don't know if it was a coincidence or fate, whatever it was,

As it happened, when your movie was released last week, everyone was debating whether a very particular post on social media was racist. So we thought we would play a little game of "Was it racist?" with Laura Loomer's infamous curry tweet. "If Kamala Harris wins, the White House will smell like curry and White House speeches will be facilitated by a call center. The American people will only be able to convey their feedback through a customer satisfaction survey at the end of the call that nobody will understand."

one of the interesting things about your movie, which I really enjoyed, Ryan might have something to add on that, we might disagree on it, I really enjoyed it,

is getting to the bottom of the kind of the industrial complex that's been built up around race relations that often will advance this silly, incoherent, elite definition that used to be prolific in academia and then leaked out into the rest of the world. So by the sort of definition of racism that you're challenging in this film,

Is that Laura Loomer tweet racist? And then by the kind of definition that you're trying to promote of racism, which maybe you have a way to explain it, I would define, I don't want to put words in your mouth, there's just sort of like genuine discrimination based on this belief that people of a different race are somehow inferior. Yeah. Is this post-racist? I mean, by the definition advanced by, you know, the DEI industry, it certainly would count as racist. Right. Yeah.

I wouldn't call it race. I think it's just kind of a dumb joke. Not very helpful joke. And also, by the way, I like Indian food. So I think when things smell like curry, I'm a huge fan of curry personally. So I don't see that as an insult. But look, someone engaging in stereotypes, it might be insensitive. It might be

unhelpful politically, but it's not necessarily racist. In fact, I would say it's often not racist because to me, what racism means is that you hate people of another race and/or you think they're inferior to you in some way.

inherently because of their, you know, immutable characteristics. So that's racism. And as long as you don't feel that way about another race of people, then you're not racist. You might have stereotypical views about another group of people. Everybody does. But it's not automatically racist if you don't also harbor that ill will towards them. And as far as whether or not, sort of the real answer is that with the Laura Loomer tweet,

I wouldn't say that it's racist. The only person who can answer whether it's racist is her. We'd have to ask her, well, do you hate people of Indian descent? Do you think that they're inferior to you in some way? If the answer is yes, then yeah, that's racist. But she'd probably say no. And if she said no, then I'll have to take her word for it. She's the only one who can speak to her own, you know, what's going on in her own mind and her own heart. Although she's a Trump supporter, she wants Kamala to lose. Presumably she's

Making the point in a negative way. This is a bad thing. That's like call center and like she's saying these are all bad things This is an interesting point about that was by your definition make it because Stereotyping is often leveraged to say that there's something negative that is generally attributed to someone of a different race, right? That's good. It's great. It's negative She means that in a negative way Because we can assume that she thinks things smelling like curry is a bad thing. I

I guess not a fan of Indian food, but you can believe or engage in or repeat negative stereotypes and not be racist. You might just happen to think. So, for example, I'll give another example. Somebody might say, you know, Asians are bad drivers. I don't know if that's actually true statistically. I'm not sure. But if you happen to believe that it's true.

Does that mean you hate Asians? No, it just means that you think that Asians by and large are bad drivers. It doesn't mean you hate them. It doesn't mean that you're racist against them.

Although it could mean that you think there's like an intellectual inferiority or it can mean you think there's a cultural reason that they're about it driving in Western countries. Yeah, it could be. I mean, and no one thinks that Asians are called intellectually inferior. I think everybody understands that they're that's one of the other because stereotypes can be positive too. Another stereotype is that they're very good at math and science and that sort of thing. So, you know, there are generalizations you can make about groups of people that can be largely true.

And, you know, I'm not sure I've ever heard a stereotype where I thought to myself, well, that bears no resemblance to reality. I don't know, unless one of you can think of, I've never heard a stereotype where I said,

I don't even know where that comes from. That's just falling out of the sky. Usually stereotypes arise because, you know, society has observed things about groups of people and they can be negative, they can be positive, but I don't see them as inherently racist. Now we have a clip from the film that we want to roll here. Let's go ahead and play this. This is from the dinner scene. Matt, you've probably seen this a hundred times by now, but let's take a watch.

I used to be a white woman, an unsuccessful one, for many decades, and it was a miserable experience. And really, the hatred of yourselves and each other is like the most, the not seeing your power, the being afraid. Like, all you do is talk shit about each other, talk shit about yourself. Oh my God, I'm so fat. That's all they do. I'm telling you. These white women? But it's, it's, that's it. It's, I'm so fat, I'm so stupid, I'm blah, blah, blah. Sorry.

Your kids are watching you, and they're watching you talking shit about each other, you know, raging against the machine or being silent or whatever the hell it is that you're doing or not doing, and they know that you're not doing shit for them. That's so important. That is so important what you just said. It's really important. You may have to add you to our team. Oh, I would love to take a seat and join you. No, you're not allowed to.

How did you get the cameras in there, by the way? Like, what's the set that up for us? Yeah, they're not hidden cameras. Obviously, they're like cinematic level. Yeah, absolutely. Everybody knew they were being... Everybody was mic'd up. Everybody was mic'd. Everybody knew they were being filmed. And they thought they were being filmed for a documentary about anti-racism, which they were, because that is what we made. So we, you know, that's what we told people. We're making a documentary on anti-racism. Did they know you were involved in it? Probably not.

Probably not. So this waiter, they didn't know that...

the waiter was part of the film? - No, no they didn't, they didn't. - But they knew you had to be mic'd up because everybody in the kitchen and everywhere else had signed the thing? Is that how that worked? - I don't think they knew that I had a mic on. And I wanted to sit at the table at the race to dinner and be a part of the conversation, but we were told that they only accept women to be at the table, which I thought was interesting because then our next question is, well, what is a woman? Which kind of harkens back to our first film.

And you later do sit down in that scene. Yeah, well, I kind of invited him. I earned my seat at the table. I invited myself to be a part of the dinner, and I felt good. As a man does. It's painful. Did a little mansplaining to the women, and they seemed to really enjoy it. It's weird to me because they famously, I guess it's not so famous, but they, back in, I mean, this was years ago. I think it was pre-COVID. There was a podcast called Femsplainers that Danielle from Crittenden published.

Crittenden from and Christina Hoff Summers hosted where they had a similar experience with Cyra Rao over the race to dinner stuff and you'd think they would be way more careful, but it seems as though maybe they let their guard down. I don't know. Yeah, that is, of course, I get this question all the time. It's like, how did they not recognize me or how did they not ask more questions? And I guess I don't know the answer to that question, but I do think that the answer I generally give that I think is correct is that a lot of these people live in kind of a bubble and

So number one, they're not as aware of people outside that bubble as we assume they are. So me as someone in conservative media, I'm actually outside of their bubble, which is weird to me because I know everybody in liberal media. I want to know what they're saying. So I kind of assumed that they do the same. You're familiar with Ryan Grim, noted liberal journalist, Ryan Grim. So he's right about 12% of the time, which I appreciate.

I'll take that. So, but they, so they're kind of in this interesting bubble that they don't, not only didn't know who I was, but also I think it was kind of inconceivable to them that they would ever find themselves in a room with someone who doesn't agree with them. I think it just never occurred to them because it's never happened before. Robin D'Angelo appears later in the film and

I think me sitting in the room with her was probably the first time in like 20 years that she's actually sat across the room from someone who doesn't already agree with everything that she thinks. Part of the 12% that I've been right about over the years, I think, has been that I do think this entire DEI industry is, you know, a grift and it's just milking corporations. And also that it is... You've written about that. Yeah, and that it is actively...

harmful in the sense that when corporations, I actually believe that corporations oftentimes internally do have racist structures set up within them. And also they operate sometimes in racist ways. And when they get sued for that,

And they're facing the consequences of that. One of the things that they do is they hire these DEI consultants. Right. And say, well, you can't come after us, actually. How could we possibly be racist? Like, we spent this money to bring these consultants in. And the consultants then cover for their more systemic racism to be allowed to continue without being interrogated. What it does is it turns the interrogation inward, where you say, well,

These structures and these corporations aren't can't be challenged what we really need to look do is look inside and find our own racism and Because we're all born with it or whatever It's just inculcated in us. None of us are then responsible for it and so therefore we're not responsible for actually changing anything on a system of

But I'm curious, as somebody who spent so much time within this grift of a system, what was your take on these folks? Do they believe what they're saying, or have they found a consultancy that they're able to make money on, and they're kind of now locked into it? Hmm.

Yeah, well, the short answer is I don't know exactly if they believe what they say, but it strikes me that they probably don't believe much of it, especially the parts of it that are so absurd on their face. But there's a lot of money in it, as we discover making the film. And then, of course, there's a lot of power and influence. And also, it must feel very good for them to be consulted as these kind of moral experts, right?

And so that's what they get out of it. So it's actually not very complicated. That's why they're in this, because money, power, influence, right? It's the tale as old as time. Now, on the other hand, you've got, so that's like the Robin De Angelos of the world, selling the books, making millions of dollars. But then you've got the people that are actually buying the books and who are going to the race to the dinner and going to these seminars that we kind of crashed for our film. They're a more interesting case because they're not getting any money out of it. They're spending money and they're not getting power or influence out of it.

So for them, I think part of it's like a virtue signal. They want to be able to tell their friends that, hey, I went to a race to dinner and it was so life-changing. But then most of it for those people is that I think they actually do believe it. It is speaking to something. There's like something going on inside them. I don't know if it's just like a kind of guilt or something that they carry around. And a lot of them are secular. They don't have religion. And so this becomes kind of like a replacement for religion.

I don't know if that's part of it. I think it's probably part of it. Yeah, I feel like those people have kind of correctly identified that they were raised in a society that still does have racism as part of it. As I think any multicultural society always will. It's their way of kind of trying to confront it. I think it's ill thought out, but I understand where they're coming from. But what I would say to...

Yes, there's still racism in society. There always will be. As long as there are different races and cultures living together, you can have racism. I think we have a lot less of it than pretty much anywhere else on Earth. But whatever racism you find in society now is individual. It's not systemic. It's not in the system. These systems are not set up to disadvantage society.

quote unquote, people of color. In fact, the only real systemic racism you find anymore is the kind that's targeted at white people and also Asians. That's what affirmative action is like that. The only time you ever find a policy that specifically says, here's an advantage that you can't have if you're a race. The only time it ever says that is if it's singling out white and or Asian people, um,

It doesn't go the other way anymore. So what about even people on the right now are saying Republicans have singled out Haitians. And this is an interesting segue because we were just talking about multiculturalism and how wherever you have different people from different backgrounds, races, ethnicities put together, there will always be some types of discrimination. And the goal of the culture should be to minimize that.

Has there been legitimate racism directed by high-profile Republican lawmakers, this is the accusation on the table, towards the Haitian community in the United States and particularly in Springfield, Ohio in the last couple of weeks? No, absolutely not. I haven't heard it. Everything I've heard has been critical of the fact that we're importing thousands of people from the third world

who are coming into communities and look, America, nobody thinks that it will benefit America to become more like Haiti. Nobody thinks that. Or I would challenge anyone if they do think that to explain how that's the case. Like in what way could this country be improved by making it more like Haiti? When you look at Haiti, what part of Haiti are you saying to yourself, we need more of that? Beaches.

Well, we have more beaches and then do right don't we right do we were much bigger guys? We don't want a marine invasion and occupation of the United States that constantly decapitates governments and and Takes takes the money out of the country and yeah saddles us. We don't like Clinton's debt from a revolution. Yeah Right, although I don't I don't say we wouldn't want to be like a basically a colony that the entire West spends 200 years punishing

after the Haitian Revolution. I get that. I understand that, but also at a certain point... We wouldn't want that. No, yes. We wouldn't want that, but I would also say that that's not entirely why Haiti's in the position that it's in. I mean, at a certain point, as a country, you have to stand on your own two feet and take care of yourself.

But what point is that? They elect Aristide and we overthrow Aristide. Then they elect Jovenel Moise. Jovenel Moise has assassinated a bunch of people with American connections and then we install in 2021. Like the United States installed the prime minister that we just ousted.

Like so we could say, okay, yeah, you gotta get over the, you know, 200 years ago, but like we're still doing it. Yeah, I mean, and I'm not in favor of, I'm very non-interventionist in my policies. So I'm not in favor of most of the things that we're doing in other countries. We just made the new government in Haiti in a hotel room in Jamaica. And then we insisted that whatever government we made in Jamaica had to allow Kenyan police, Kenyan troops to come in under the flag of the UN.

in order to go to war with the gangs. Yeah, I'm not, look, I'm not interested in, if it were up to me, I'm not interested in doing anything in Haiti. Like, let Haiti be Haiti and take care of them. That's sort of my whole point here.

let them take care of themselves and their own problems. I'm also not saying that there's like never a scenario where we let someone from Haiti into the country. But it doesn't have to just be about Haiti, but when you're throwing open the gates and just inviting anyone in particular, you know, the third world. I guess your assumption there was that it is Haitian people that are creating the conditions on Haiti and that if the Haitian people come to Springfield, they will recreate Haiti.

the conditions that are Haiti in Springfield, whereas what I'm saying is that it's actually the U.S. that has... I don't think you can entirely put it on there. Like, largely. But it's still a country comprised of people...

Right. But without its own autonomy. OK, but you can't I don't think you can entirely put it on the United States. Like Haitian people have nothing to do whatsoever with the state of their own country. Nothing. I mean, I think that's a bit absurd. I'm perfectly willing to, as I said, agree that a lot of the United States sort of adventurism and interventions are

other countries has been unwise and I'd prefer for us to focus on our own country not try to build governments in other countries, but at the same time I think that you can't completely absolve the people of any country of the problem just like in this country the problems that we have in our country we can point to the government we can point to Immigration we point to all those things but ultimately like the people of the country have to be responsible for their own nation and I say that of all nations and

Don't miss this powerful conversation with Vice President Kamala Harris. Tomorrow at 5 p.m. Eastern, 2 p.m. Pacific on the free iHeartRadio app's Hip Hop Beat Station.

Lots of other countries, which I think is a fair point to make. Glass half full. And obviously you would acknowledge that at some point in our history we had lots of racism.

Right lots of racism then less racism now. Mm-hmm So when did we get to a point where it wasn't systemic and it was no longer a problem? That we as a democratic society need to deal with like what was the moment in your mind? Well, I'm not sure you could point to one exact moment in time when when it goes from a systemic issue to not systemic anymore and

But what we know for sure is that right now we are certainly in the moment where it's not systemic. Any time in history, I'll answer your question. At any point in history when you can go back and look at actual laws and policies that were in place that deprived black Americans or any other group of rights, well that was a time when you had systemic rights. And we know that that existed historically.

So if you wanted to point to an exact moment, I mean, I guess the most obvious moment would be the Civil Rights Act. But, of course, these are changes that happen gradually over time, just like with slavery. You know, you can't even with slavery, you can't really. People like to point to the Emancipation Proclamation as the moment when slavery was ended. Of course, we know that wasn't when it ended. So we know we don't have slavery anymore.

But if you were to ask me, what's the exact moment when slavery stopped? Well, it wasn't an exact moment. It was a gradual ending of that horrific institution. But certainly now it doesn't exist anymore in this country anyway. And I'd say the same thing with systemic racism as well, that there's not – nobody is creating policies, again, that are deliberately intended to create disadvantages for –

quote unquote people of color. - I have a question about that. A lot of conservatives will say there is one policy and this is, you know, you're about as anti-abortion and pro-life as it gets. A lot of conservatives will say a remaining institution of systemic racism is abortion because it disproportionately, as conservatives make this argument, affects black children and black families. Is that an example of systemic racism or racism period?

And I think it's a mistake when conservatives make that point because I think conservatives are very desperate to be able to do the whole thing where they turn back on Democrats and say the Dems are the real racists. And I just think that's a lame move and you're trying to use the left's own language against it, which I think it doesn't work because you're accepting sort of their premise. So what I'd say about abortion is no, it's not systemically racist. It does disproportionately impact the black community. No question about it. And

But does it exist for that really? Is Planned Parenthood, is that why they exist right now? Because they want to kill black babies? No. Planned Parenthood exists because they want to kill babies. And they don't care what color the baby is. They just want the money that comes from it. But it just so happens that that ends up disproportionately impacting the black community. And this goes to the disproportionate impact thing, which I'm glad you brought that up because that's usually what's used to

to support the theory of systemic racism is they say, well, but these policies disproportionately impact certain groups. They might, but that doesn't mean that they're intended to do that. You know, just...

A disproportionate number of black Americans end up in prison. Does that mean that prison that that's why the prison is there to put black Americans in it? No, the reason why a disproportionate number of black Americans end up in prison is that unfortunately a disproportionate number of black Americans commit violent crime That's just what the stats show and so but so there's an argument that a system is what it does and that

Claiming otherwise is just kind of hocus-pocus just magic like us if if the system produces a certain result But you as an observer of that system say well actually that's not what the system is supposed to do Those words are just meaningless what about the system just choose them up and spits them out and produces and continues to produce the result that it produces like for instance

during Jim Crow, you know, pre-Civil Rights Act, you've got laws on the books that are systemically racist, that allow for, you know, straight up racist results. And when it comes to... Design of the system was explicitly racist. Design of the system is aimed at producing segregated schools...

low-income households, I mean low-income neighborhoods that are predominantly or almost exclusively populated by black Americans, right? You then pass laws that reform those laws that make it so that you you can't legally do those things anymore. Yet the power structure broadly remains in place and the results stay the same. You still have

you know, broadly speaking, massive low-income areas, predominantly populated by black families, and you have continued to have segregated schools. And so a person who was born into this country, like today, if they're black, they're more likely

to grow up in one of those neighborhoods. They're more likely to go to terrible schools rather than good schools. They're more likely to end up in prison or in part of the system. And so you would step back and say, well, the system is still doing what it is. The system never stopped doing it. There was never a day from Monday to Tuesday to Wednesday

that all of a sudden the system stopped working in the same racist way, which we acknowledge was racist when it was written into the law. Although the system produces... But now we pretend it's not because we struck through that one line. Yeah, but if we agree that the... You say the system is what it does. I'd probably disagree with you on that. I mean, what the system is intended to do is what certainly matters here. But why? Why would it matter?

what we intend a system to do. Because that's what we're talking about. The system produces a robust Nigerian middle class, like people who come here from Nigeria. Thomas Sowell makes this point. It's a point that's popular. So then that's a defense of the system. That's what I'm saying. Because that's what it does. Right, that's what I'm saying. So does that go both ways? No, because the intent of this, my point is that the intent, whatever you intend a system to do is meaningless. If you intend for a house to have a roof built

and a second floor that is sturdy, but when you walk into the second floor, you fall through it. But that doesn't reflect on your anti-roof sentiments. It doesn't matter. To use your analogy, if you walk into a house and there's a problem in the house, you can't automatically assume that it's the fault of whoever built the house. It could be, depending on the problem, but you also have to look at who's living in the house, who's supposed to be maintaining the house.

And if you're living in a house and you're not taking care of it and in fact you're mistreating the house and it goes to hell and then you turn around and blame whoever built the house a hundred years ago, well I'm gonna say like, well, this is, at some point you gotta take responsibility for your own house. And so that's my point with the black community as it stands right now in America.

Yes, as we've already established there was systemic actual stomach racism against the black community For a long time. It's a terrible evil thing. Everybody agrees on that point. I don't think anyone disagrees That is over now there is there is there is no longer a system in place that is designed to Deprive black Americans of rights me would you agree with that at least no I do think it's still designed that way but it's designed in a way where it can't be

Litigated because it's not so what in law Okay, but that's so can you point to me an exact point of the system an exact place in the system a policy that is designed to deprive black Americans of rights the in the the same people that Designed the system to protect the wealth of the upper class, you know in the 40 You know throughout American history like continued to be in control. You're talking about class not race I'm talking about race right? But how do you disrupt?

Class if you're so segregated by I mean, how do you disrupt race? You're so segregated by class well But I don't think you can bring class into this because I mean I would agree that there's we could talk about class we could agree that there are elites who Care about themselves and don't care about the the lower class. I would say that those people are are just as unconcerned with a white person in trailer park in Appalachia as they are unconcerned with a black person in the inner city and

So it is class, we can talk about that, but my question was, because we talked about the system, it's a broad concept here. So let's narrow it down, let's find a piece of the system that we can point to and say, well, this is designed to hurt black people. Okay, so if you go to Georgia, for instance, after they implemented school desegregation,

What they started doing is saying, oh, okay, well, we can't legally keep black people out of our neighborhoods or out of our schools. But what we can do is we can secede.

From our neighborhoods you've been to the Atlanta suburbs a little bit like every fortunately like every four to stay away Yeah, like every four blocks for you know for a long time you had like new school districts and they would be drawn It there would be just basically gerrymandered like they would know where the white people were and they would gerrymander the school district So that only white people would be at part of you're going back to desegregation. No, no, no, this is what they're doing now and

Like, this is up to today. So what they're doing is they're saying, okay, these are the new laws in place. However, we like our system of segregation and racism that we have here. So how do we hire the best lawyers? Is that about class? To show that, but it's also about race. Well, but I'm saying, do you think primarily in the minds of the designers of the system, are they actually discriminating intentionally on a class basis? I think there it's pretty race-

pretty race driven i i don't i don't think that there's any evidence that it's right i think i think i think in like an example you give it's class it's people wanting to avoid uh

crime-ridden impoverished areas Not you know, maybe someone doesn't want to send their kids to school In a place that's high crime. There's gonna be a lot of delinquency and everything in the school system I don't think it's because the kids are black. It's just because of that and Also, the other thing is when we talk about but at what point we know it's like when we talk about School districts or the way communities are set up. Here's another point that rarely comes up pretty simple You can move

Right. So you can always move. I mean, if you live in a community where you're claiming it's been set up systemically to disadvantage it, I don't buy that. But if I did, I would say, well, you should probably move from that community. I mean, you can go somewhere else. It's not there's no law saying you can't.

And if there was, I mean, if there was a law saying... Some HOA situations will like try to block it. Yeah, but they're not going to say you can't move here if you're black. It's also why a lot of black community groups support voucher systems to allow, like work with conservatives on voucher systems to allow kids to get to different schools. So when you see stats that say like a black homeowner who's trying to get a mortgage, who has a higher credit score and higher income,

gets a higher interest rate from the average bank than a white applicant. A bunch of these studies have been done where they'll put in like a black sounding name and higher credit scores, higher income, better candidates on paper other than their name. And they get a overall, like there've been so many studies that have replicated this.

They get a higher interest rate, which means their cost of borrowing is higher, means the mortgage is higher, which means you have to have that much more money to move into the neighborhood that you're talking about. So systemically, it doesn't say, well, if you're black, you can't live here. But systemically, what it does is it makes it easier for white people to move into these wealthier neighborhoods, harder for black people to move into those neighborhoods. And that's before you even get to the wealth effect. You know, Jim Crow only ended.

recently, which means that if you look at the kind of savings rates and the inheritance rates for the average black family, it's close to nil, especially after the subprime mortgage wipeout of 2008 compared to white families, which can go to mom and dad and grandma and grandpa and say, can you help put my kids in private school? Can you pay the down payment? You know, 20% is an awful lot for this mortgage. Generational wealth. Yeah. Right. So you combine the fact that they get

They have to pay higher interest rates with the fact that there's lack of generational wealth. That to me is systemic, but I'm curious specifically on the interest rate question. What's going on there? And should that be a problem that we as a democratic society should address?

Why are black loan applicants paying higher mortgage interest rates across the board? And again, that is replicated across the economy. Okay. I'd have to look at the studies you're talking about. You say that they've been replicated time and time again. There's no issues with the studies and there's no issues methodology. I'm sure people could pick some of the studies apart, but it's pretty well accepted. Yeah. I'd have to know who is accepted by exactly. But yeah.

So for the sake of argument, let's say that that those studies are totally legit I would still go back to a class issue on that and the reason is that look banks at the white Well, can we explain banks? Banks care about the money that that's all they care about They don't care about these banks are not being run by people who are saying, you know We got to keep black people poor don't care about that. I don't think they care about anybody they they care about the money and so

If that's happening, they're making stereotypical assumptions, class-based assumptions that I believe they would probably also make if somehow they had the impression that this was, say, a quote-unquote white trash, as they're often called, from the trailer park. I think the banks would have the same sort of

skeptical discriminatory attitude in that case as they would to someone who they're assuming is from the inner city, let's say. - Right, but so the other word for that would be implicit bias. So let's say the banks-- - We have to wrap by the way, we have a hard time. - Oh, but let's say that, okay, well we gotta wrap in a second, but let's say the banks only do care about money. That's a reasonable thing to say. So then what could explain why they would treat the two differently?

Would have to be like you're saying so you're but what you're saying is there might be some implicit bias toward if they could identify some poor white guy which goes to the point though of

how it's easier for poor whites, which I was one used to be one of but it was easier for me to migrate out my name is Ryan Graham, you can't even tell that I was white trash. Right. I mean you can if you like, you know me pretty well, but But you can't tell on a resume or an application. You see as a rest record. Yes. You're wearing a tie and everything. There you go. Could have fooled me. Yeah, look I would even call it implicit bias. I think it's just like banks

They are biased against people they don't think that they don't think will pay their mortgage basically right and so why don't they think a person with a black name will pay their mortgage because I think in that case by the high credit score and high income if that is true then they're making assumptions about they're making class-based assumptions This is someone for this is a lower income person coming from a low-income neighborhood even if their current income is you know the same as That's the background and so people sounds like those people face a systemic right now. Yeah

Well, class-based, but that's what I'm talking about. We're getting told. Yeah, we're getting this in the ear. Matt, thank you so much. This is a fascinating conversation. I really enjoyed the movie. Ryan, what'd you think? It's funny. I will acknowledge this. The movie's funny. These guys are clowns. You can put that on the poster. Yeah.

These guys are total clowns. Matt Walsh, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you. Appreciate it. Thanks a lot. Well, Ryan, I actually thought that was really interesting. We had a lot of questions that we couldn't quite get to because that exchange, we wanted to sort of let it play out. And I think the reason for that, and we wanted to ask about anti-Semitism and abortion, and Matt's actually coming on my Unheard show tomorrow, so I'll probably try to... I'll even take questions from Ryan Grimm if you have remaining ones. But I actually think that exchange that you guys were having was so interesting.

rare and well worth playing out because it is incredibly rare that two people engage on good faith on what the question or what the sort of semantic debate over systemic racism is and that is at the heart of so many disagreements. - I mean, I just think if you're a black person born in this country,

You face systemic difficulties that a white person doesn't. I'll agree with that. I think that's true. Yeah. I think that's true. You probably get him to agree with that to some extent, too. It's just I think it's a question of the scale. At the end of the day, we disagree over, like, maybe the scale or the scope. Yeah. Well, super interesting. That was super interesting. I thought that was even going to be, like...

I don't know. I thought that was just really, even listening to your rebuttals was, I think, so helpful. And I hope everybody in the audience enjoyed it as well.

Hope so too. All right. Well, thank you so much for joining us for this week's edition of CounterPoints. No Friday show. Count that as the Friday show. Right. We wanted to get this out today. We didn't want to wait until Friday to get this interview out. So we just attached it to the regular show. So we will be back here next Wednesday, of course, with more CounterPoints. Subscribe over at BreakingPoints.com. You can get early editions of the show. You get the full edition of the show straight to your inbox early. So it's a great deal. Who wouldn't want that?

See you guys next week.

In California during the summer of 1975, within the span of 17 days and less than 90 miles, two women did something no other woman had done before, try to assassinate the president of the United States. One was the protege of Charles Manson, 26-year-old Lynette Fromm, nicknamed Squeaky. The other, a middle-aged housewife working undercover for the FBI, identified by police as Sarah Jean Moore. The story of one strange and violent summer, this season on the new podcast, Rip Current.

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9/18/24: Hezbollah Pagers Detonated, JD Blames Media For Ohio Bomb Threats, Kamala Pressed At Black Journo Event, China Secures Pakistan Port, Matt Walsh Confronted On US Racism