9/25/24: Tel Aviv Attacked, Journo Kidnapped By IDF, CNN Smears Rashida Tlaib, Kamala Says Eliminate Filibuster For Roe, Biden DOJ Sues Visa, Massive Port Strike Looms, Marcellus Williams Executed
01:34:11 Share

Kroger brand products exclusively at Fry's have the great taste you'll celebrate. That's why over 40 million people choose Kroger brand products, making them a true crowd pleaser. And with quality guaranteed, you'll love your choice or get your money back. Score Kroger brand products with savings you can cheer for and great taste you can't resist. Fry's, fresh for everyone.

High Five Casino is a social casino with real prizes and big Vegas hits at HighFiveCasino.com. The hottest games right from Vegas and all winnings go straight to your bank account. Hundreds of exclusive games, free daily rewards, and come back to get free coins every four hours. Only at HighFiveCasino.com.

This is an ad from BetterHelp. Unfortunately, humans don't come with an owner's manual. There are no simple instructions for what to do when you're feeling down or having relationship problems or family conflict.

That's when therapy can help. And BetterHelp is a convenient way to get started. It's 100% online, flexible, and surprisingly affordable. Connect with a licensed therapist by phone, video, or online chat at a time that works for you. Visit BetterHelp.com to learn more. That's BetterHelp.com.

Hey guys, Ready or Not 2024 is here and we here at Breaking Points are already thinking of ways we can up our game for this critical election. We rely on our premium subs to expand coverage, upgrade the studio, add staff, give you guys the best independent coverage that is possible. If you like what we're all about, it just means the absolute world to have your support. But enough with that, let's get to the show.

Good morning. Welcome to CounterPoints. How you doing, Emily? I'm great. You just got back from a big trip. You might be a little jet-lagged. I'm feeling good now. Yeah, I was in Doha for some reporting and for a conference. I'd never been to Doha before. Kind of exciting to see that. There are some of the roads down by the sea that are basically paved with the marble that we would use for our

If you're rich here, you put in your kitchen. They're paving their roads with it. They're doing well in Doha. Another level of rich. They are. But are they rich enough for ghost energy? I'm sure some of them are. It also puts the inequality that all wealth rests on right in your face because you have all these guest workers everywhere. Here you talk to your Uber drivers and it's kind of like,

No, normal people with normal families here in the US. Over there, it's like, oh yeah, I haven't been back to Sri Lanka for two years to see my family and I make like, you know. Pennies. $500 a month. Yeah. And send it all back. Right. It's like absolutely, like there are so many people across this world living in,

just the most difficult lives. And those are the people lucky enough to get those jobs. - Right. - Which is, it's a reminder of just what an ugly world we've developed. - And we will be talking about some drop site reporting actually later in the show. We're gonna start with obviously breaking news as it relates to Tel Aviv. This is just breaking as we're after we had prepped most of the show. So we're gonna get to that in a moment. Updates on Lebanon. There is a truly remarkable Rashida Tlaib block

Rashida Tlaib kind of versus CNN or versus the world, even you could say, that we're going to get to just after we do some updates from the conflict itself. Kamala Harris and the filibuster, a saga that started in like 2022, actually. Probably, I'm sure she commented on it before, but Joe Manchin has now...

Said he will not endorse Kamala Harris because she told the radio station yesterday she wants to get rid of that filibuster. There goes West Virginia. She had such high hopes. All those West Virginia voters going to the polls and voting to preserve the filibuster. Joe Manchin himself didn't run in West Virginia because he was going to get crushed.

So, not sure what his endorsement would have meant. But anyway, yes, Kyrsten Sinema also not happy. And then we'll be talking about this lawsuit that the Department of Justice filed against Visa, which is excellent and awesome. It actually comes after Trump was piggybacking off of Bernie Sanders again, saying that he's going to cap interest rates at 10%. We'll talk about why they filed this lawsuit and what it might mean. It

If they actually succeed for prices and for people who use debit cards, which is basically all people and then what do we got? Oh Marcelus Williams Williams. Yes. Yes The there was an execution in Missouri of and I'll give him his real name Khalifa Ibn Raiford Daniels he converted while while in prison executed last night despite the fact that

that the family asked for clemency. The victim's family. The victim's family asked for clemency. There are significant doubts about his conviction. The jury only included one black member after the prosecutor later admitted striking people because of their race, effectively. And the prosecutor's office that originally prosecuted him wanted him to get clemency. Instead, he's dead. Yeah.

So we will break down all of the details and even talk about the larger trend, because I think just this month there's a host of executions that are scheduled to take place. A whole bunch in the next couple of weeks. Yeah, the pace is pretty high in the next couple of weeks. So we'll talk about all of that. Let's start on another bleak topic, which is we're going to be beginning with Tel Aviv. Ryan, breaking news out of Tel Aviv, where

Israel says that it intercepted a missile that was heading for Tel Aviv. Now, what we're hearing is that apparently that was the story from Hezbollah is that it was intended for a Mossad headquarters. Is that right? Yeah, the Mossad headquarters in the suburbs of Tel Aviv, which if this were a newscast about an assault on Gaza or on Lebanon, the newscaster would immediately say that Israel is keeping its military and intelligence infrastructure safe.

in civilian areas to hide behind human shields. And when we see the reverse, we see how clearly it is, how clear it is that that doesn't make it okay to bomb a suburb. Like for some reason, the American public is swayed by that argument when it comes to say Gaza or Lebanon or anywhere else to say, oh, well,

It was in a suburb. Well, I guess that's a real shame that they had to level all those apartment buildings and that entire civilian area or that hospital. Oh, they found a couple weapons. I was going to say people conflate those two things. The idea of, as in this case, having Mossad headquarters in the suburbs, which is the same with the CIA, for example, a lot of those intelligence agencies.

agencies are out in the suburbs here. But then- They might bomb Costco here if they're aiming for the Pentagon. And no casualties reported so far in this case, but people will conflate having in a densely populated area like Gaza infrastructure that's near military infrastructure.

With people when they're literally hiding like bombs under children's beds those two things are not the same and another difference would be the actual firing of the missiles right no somehow You know Hamas or or PIJ will fire missiles from very nearby. Mm-hmm like a school or a mosque or something else, but again, that's related less to I think you know morality and more to just the massive asymmetry like Israel has

the US sending fighter jets and endless amounts of bombs and missiles and has the capacity to just launch from the air. When they go about building their infrastructure, they build their military infrastructure right into Tel Aviv.

So, again, no casualties reported so far in the situation. The death toll, according to the Associated Press, since Monday in Lebanon is 564 people. That's 50 children and 94 women, according to Lebanese authorities.

So there's been also attacks from Hezbollah in northern Israel, a couple of people in a kibbutz. - We'll roll some of the VO here of the-- - This is Beirut, right? - The carton of Jinn. Well, this is southern Lebanon. - Southern Lebanon, okay. And there was reports of people getting hit by shrapnel in a kibbutz in northern Israel. What you're seeing on your screen right now, Ryan, this is southern Lebanon, utter destruction.

Yeah, and this is a man who was going back to try to get to his wife. Here are some other attacks that you're seeing across Lebanon. I think it's worth kind of setting up some of the context here for people who have been, you know, focused mostly on the Israel-Gaza war and also the attack on the West Bank. So very, very brief history of Hezbollah. Like, they...

emerged as a result of the 1982 invasion of Lebanon by Israel. And they formed into a guerrilla group to expel Israel and actually finally succeeded in doing so in 2000 and kind of became heroes of resistance around the region as a result of it and then began to embed themselves into the body politic of Lebanon, which is a very ailing and kind of psychotic body. Like it's just a complete... Lebanon as a state is a complete mess.

In 2006, they launched a little cross-border raid and grabbed a couple of Israeli soldiers. And Israel then launched a massive all-out bombing campaign and ground invasion into Lebanon, which turned out to be a failure, did not get the hostages back, and also withdrew, which again kind of raising the celebrity status in the region of Hezbollah. But then in the 2010s,

There was a Syria civil war and Hezbollah sided with Bashar al-Assad. Now you can imagine why they would do that because they are allies with Iran. Iran is allies with Syria. And so if Hezbollah is a client of Iran and Iran's got business, Hezbollah is going to carry out that business.

But that meant that they were fighting with a lot of kind of Sunni rebels in Syria and killing a lot of Muslims. And that very much tarnished their reputation and led to a break between Hamas and Hezbollah. Like they were, they became adversaries. They were on the other side of this. Hamas was supportive of the uprising in Syria.

And but since then right before a little bit before October 7th Hamas and Hezbollah Had it had a detente and became allies again. And so at right right after October 7th when When the rubber hit the road with the war between Israel and Hamas Hezbollah immediately starts launching rockets which sends 60,000 roughly Israelis from the north scattering

displaced back towards Tel Aviv and elsewhere that is what is driving the political pressure to now go to war with Lebanon to try to get those 60,000 people back into their homes who've been displaced for that long and Imagine how much pressure that puts on Israel at 60,000 people Gaza's 2 million people into place displaced for 11 months and so this in the same way that

the Houthis were facing domestic problems and regional problems because of the civil war there, were able to politically overcome those by challenging Israel. Hezbollah too was able to overcome its problems that it had in the region by challenging Israel. It's the oldest story in politics. You got problems at home, you find an adversary somewhere else that people hate more and everybody rallies around the flag.

And so it is in the kind of domestic political interests of all of these actors, whether it's the Houthis, the Iraqi militias, Hezbollah, to challenge Israel because it makes them look like they're standing up for Gaza, which they are. And what Nasrallah keeps saying, the head of Hezbollah, and the Houthis as well, we are not ending this until

the war on Gaza ends. This was going to be my big question for you with all of that context because the open, the massive open question is does this escalate? And that's been the fear since violence broke out on October 7th. I mean, where do you see this going with, where do you see this going in terms of how it can pour even more sort of gas on this fire?

If it's in the interest of Hezbollah politically to escalate.

Does Hezbollah escalate? Are there external pressures? A lot of people would say there. So the argument from like the neoconservative camp would be that Iran is orchestrating all of this. They're puppets or they're like sort of chess pieces in Iran's game versus the West. So it's not necessarily what Hezbollah wants. It'll be what Iran wants. How do you respond to that? So I don't think it's in. Well, one point on that. Iran has major influence over Hezbollah. U.S. has major influence over Israel.

Both Israel and Hezbollah have their own agency as well, though, from their kind of superpower. And their own political motivations. Iran's not a superpower, a bigger power. And their own political motivations. But I don't think it's in their interest to escalate. I think it's in their interest to look like they're putting up a strong resistance and continuing to put pressure on Israel to end its genocidal campaign in Gaza. Like, I think that's what...

That's what works for them. They think, and Iran and Hezbollah have been very clear in kind of the signals that they've been sending and that their proxies have been putting out, that they believe Netanyahu wants a regional war to bail himself out. Yes. That Netanyahu's kind of stuck in a cul-de-sac of his own making.

and wants to just flip the table and see what happens on the other side. It's not even necessarily a strategy, but it's a strategy to blow things up and live to see another day. And both Iran and Hezbollah think, if that is the thing that our adversary wants, let's do everything we can to avoid giving him that. Which is exactly what I and some other people were saying right after October 7th. That it was like, Hamas launched this attack

very clearly as a provocation to bring about an overreaction that would then discredit you. On the world stage. On the world stage. And the U.S. And hurt your economy and flip the table and just see what happens, upset the status quo. So if you're Israel, be smart. Don't give them that. But they couldn't help themselves. So there are some who think that Hezbollah has been so thoroughly degraded

by the intelligence infiltration basically. So it's interesting how in Gaza, Hamas has obviously been completely shellacked. But Israel had to do it by destroying the entire area.

And then when Hamas lives to see another day as an organization. Exactly. But they have not been able to, but they've been able to inflict a lot more damage more quickly on Hezbollah. I think some of that has to do with how, because Gaza is such a closed off society, like literally physically closed off, and Israel has much less intelligence in

Let's actually put these up on the screen. So this is A2. This is a map of where you can see the latest death toll. And look at the concentration there in southern Lebanon. If you're listening to this, a massive cluster of dots in southern Lebanon from the border with northern Israel. We also, though, Ryan, this is, I think, sort of along the lines of what you were just talking to. If we put A3 up on the screen here,

This is a map. Explain what we're seeing here and how it relates to everything you were just mentioning. Yeah, so this is a map that basically Israel putting out saying like... It's in Hebrew. Everything...

I put it for the next one. I think we have the translation, a bit of a translation in the next one. Basically what they're saying is that, what I said earlier, that Lebanon is a mess of a state. So this is Amakai Chikli, Israeli minister of diaspora and combat in the government, saying basically Lebanon is not a real government, not a real state. It was drawn by colonialists. He talks about Sykes-Picot, the amount of projection and

and like irony and it is overwhelming. But he says, this isn't a real state. These borders aren't real. And by having these Lebanese civilians down here by this green line, it makes it more difficult for our people who live in villages up north to live there safely. So basically what they're saying is we need to push these

Lebanese folks way up higher not a country. It says and it's not a country anyway, so we can just redraw it like he says, you know the country actually a country's borders ought to be drawn by natural boundaries and power power politics Which okay, I guess that is how it's always been done. We're just kind of used to it being stable over the last hundred years or so Yeah, well what they're what they're implying there is that they're going to you know run a campaign about the cleansing and and clear it out of people and

So that they can repopulate northern northern areas. I mean that has been a longtime goal of what's called Greater Israel but they've been it but they've been able to infiltrate Hezbollah in a way that has allowed them to kill an enormous number of senior officials and middlemen the pager attack

It sounds like it maimed something like 14 or 1500 people. It's a fighting force of about 40 to 50,000 But its communications had been disrupted by all of the assassinations, you know They moved from cell phones over to pagers then the pagers start exploding. So, you know There's it's an open question about how much damage you know has been wreaked and so there are some people who are saying that the lack of a huge response so far is

strategic and that it is related to Iran and Hezbollah not wanting to give Israel this all-out war. There are others who are saying they've really received a massive blow and that they don't even have the capacity and that its supporters are kind of covering up the fact that they've received this major blow by pointing to a strategic pause, like, you know, hold me back, hold me back.

And before we get to this new drop site report that is chilling, could you walk us through what ProPublica found in the investigation about Gaza yesterday? This was released yesterday, I believe, as well. This is A4. We can put this up on the screen. Yeah, so interesting piece here. So the ProPublica investigation, Israel deliberately blocked humanitarian aid to Gaza, two government bodies concluded. Anthony Blinken rejected them. So on the one hand,

We were we reported here at the time based on my opera Ahmed at HuffPost and actually DevEx which does some great reporting on USAID and it's like a trade public focuses on development around the world had reported that of the three agencies within the State Department that were asked to sign off on

on whether or not Israel was restricting humanitarian aid, two of them said that they were restricting the aid. That that was their assessment on the ground, that Israel was blocking aid from getting in.

The legal consequences of that was under this provision called 620i. We can't give military funding to a state actor that is at the same time blocking our own humanitarian aid from getting to the people we're trying to send it to. Pretty reasonable law. Kind of funny that we even had to put that into law. It's so common sense. No, of course we're not supporting somebody who's actively our adversary in attempting to get humanitarian aid.

Turns out we would do that. And so the State Department, or Blinken at least, had to figure out a way to affirm to Congress that this law was not being broken. And his problem was that his people inside the State Department were telling him that the law was being broken. And what ProPublica does have that hadn't been reported before is this fascinating email exchange

at the very end of its article. So if you read that piece, just scroll to the very end. It's very strange. Their last six paragraphs are awesome. The rest of it is like, we knew all this already. But go to the last six paragraphs and read those. But basically, what happens is the top State Department official who really is in charge of moving the money, moving American tax dollars to Israel so Israel can send them back to us for weapons,

is telling the general counsel of the State Department, we really need to move this money. Israel has bills to pay, which is also absurd. They're not paying their own bills. We're paying the bills. We're just moving it over there and moving it back. Hope we're not paying banking fees to Visa, though, or Western Union the entire time. That should be the next drop site investigation, honestly. That is a big question. Who are the banks that are just siphoning fees as we send money to Israel and Israel sends them back to Rosalind?

Right for the weapons, but it's so anyway, they're like look there there they got bills to pay We need to move this money over there But the general has like ooh, but we still don't have approval yet because there's still questions about whether they're blocking humanitarian aid so there's this email chain and A top bureaucrat writes back a woman named Noyes. I forget her first name She writes back. It's our assessment that they are in fact a

I'm still blocking humanitarian aid. And so the GC is like, so are you saying that they're in violation of 620i? Right. And she's like, yep, that is our assessment. So it's like, boom, okay, done. You cannot send the money then. They take it offline, as ProPublica reports. The woman has a couple meetings with senior officials, and she decides that, you know what, Israel really is doing

Not everything that we'd like them to do, but they're really trying and they're making commitments. Sure. They're saying things. And it is true that the situation is difficult. It's true they said things. And it's true the situation is difficult. It's true that there are legitimate problems with getting the aid to the right people in a war zone. True, but USAID, in its report, in its private report that has since surfaced,

They have examples of aid workers who Israel gives permission to evacuate along a certain route that they then run into an Israeli checkpoint, get stopped. They're like, we have been approved to move through here. They're like, nope, sorry, go back. They go back. IDF opens fire on them and kills them. So USAID is like,

Okay, maybe there are some challenges here to what we're doing here But what they're doing is what they're doing is malicious and like they didn't use the word genocidal But what they're doing is is far beyond what is necessary And how do you read the blinkin politics into this that blinkin was clearly always just gonna sign off on this and you know, you know for I guess fortunately for blinkin a decent number of State Department officials have resigned in protest and

Over over this policy. So now he doesn't have to worry about them either. Mm-hmm. He can just The only the only time that humanitarian had ticked up a little bit was after that world central kitchen massacre Yeah, and Biden and Biden had to get on the phone with Netanyahu say like you need to do better Mm-hmm, and for several days things were better and then they went and they went back to normal

High Five Casino is a social casino with real prizes and big Vegas hits at HighFiveCasino.com. The hottest games right from Vegas and all winnings go straight to your bank account. Hundreds of exclusive games, free daily rewards, and come back to get free coins every four hours. Only at HighFiveCasino.com.

High Five Casino is a social casino. No purchase necessary. Void where prohibited. Play responsibly. Terms and conditions apply. See website for details at highthenumber5casino.com. High Five Casino.

Good sleep should come naturally, and with the new Natural Hybrid mattress, it can. A collaboration between Lisa and West Elm, the Natural Hybrid is expertly crafted from natural latex, natural wool, and certified safe foams to elevate your sleep sanctuary and support a greener tomorrow. Breathable organic cotton and moisture-wicking Joma wool consistently provide cool and comfortable slumber.

Every purchase helps fuel Lisa's work with shelters and those in need. Visit Lisa.com to learn more. That's L-E-E-S-A dot com. Ready to start talking to your kids about financial literacy? Meet Greenlight, the debit card and money app that teaches kids and teens how to earn, save, spend wisely, and invest with your guardrails in place. With Greenlight, you can send instant money transfers, set up chores, automate allowance, and keep an eye on your kids' spending with real-time notifications.

Join millions of parents and kids building healthy financial habits together on Greenlight. Get your first month free at greenlight.com slash iHeart. That's greenlight.com slash iHeart.

Speaking of things being, well, I shouldn't say normal, but the sad state of normal, at least in the last couple of years. Ryan, let's put A5 up on the screen. And can you talk to us about this story on Dropsite about a captured journalist? Yes. So you guys might remember here, a couple weeks ago, we talked on this program about an article that Mujahid Al-Sadi published.

who's a really well-respected journalist writing mostly in Arabic, who writes in Arabic. We reported the piece for us. We translated it into English so that

that an English language audience could benefit from his journalistic skills. You may remember that he was one of the handful of journalists who was chased by that bulldozer and fired at in Jenin while they were doing their reporting. You can actually put up the next element. This is his piece that he wrote for us. So it turns out that this piece was earlier in September. On September 19th, so 2:30 a.m. in the morning,

IDF burst into his home and according to his brother, they start beating him with the butts of their M16s. He's barefoot, it's 2:30 in the morning. His wife tries to get him his shoes while they're dragging him out of there and they start beating his wife. - And you've all learned this from accounts from the family. - Accounts from the family and other people that were kind of familiar with how this happened.

He had three young children. So then we learned that they moved him to Jalama prison where they interrogated him before transferring him to Megiddo, which is an utterly, people can Google it, M-E-G-I-D-D-O, utterly notorious prison. At least four people held there have died since October 7th. It's known for torture and absolutely kind of grotesque and barbaric conditions.

And we have asked the IDF for information about him and they have told us that they'll look into it. That's the best that we've gotten so far. He was, if you recall, he was friends with Shireen Abu-Akhla, a colleague of hers, was with her, like standing basically right next to her the day that she was shot and killed by the IDF in Jenin. He's been a journalist, he's like...

He's a very well-respected journalist in the region. Not the kind, well, I was going to say, not the kind of person you would expect this to happen to if Israel was trying to do that thing where they're like, oh, actually, this guy's Hamas. So, it's not Hamas. Right. He's a very well-respected journalist in Jenin who, as we sit here, it's difficult to comprehend the conditions under which he's being held.

And really, you've got nothing from the IDF. The IDF is just totally mum. Yeah, we'll get back to you. We'll continue to press on them. There are obviously a lot of organizations and supporters of his in the region who are also pressing for answers. But that's, yeah, I wish I had more important news that I could report. We're actually, we're going to see what we can do. We're launching a petition if it's out tomorrow.

By the time this is up, I'll put it in the comments section of this. Maybe if a couple hundred thousand people demand that he be released, some pressure on that? I don't know. Well, yeah, I mean, it's an important story to follow, especially given how Israel sort of clings to the only democracy in the Middle East. Yeah, come on. And this comes after and right around the same time that they shut down Al Jazeera's Ramallah office. Mm-hmm.

Which, Ramallah is like the headquarters of the Palestinian Authority, which is a subcontractor, effectively, of the IDF, of Israel.

High Five Casino is a social casino with real prizes and big Vegas hits at HighFiveCasino.com. The hottest games right from Vegas and all winnings go straight to your bank account. Hundreds of exclusive games, free daily rewards, and come back to get free coins every four hours. Only at HighFiveCasino.com.

High Five Casino is a social casino. No purchase necessary. Void where prohibited. Play responsibly. Terms and conditions apply. See website for details at highthenumber5casino.com. High Five Casino.

Good sleep should come naturally, and with the new Natural Hybrid mattress, it can. A collaboration between Lisa and West Elm, the Natural Hybrid is expertly crafted from natural latex, natural wool, and certified safe foams to elevate your sleep sanctuary and support a greener tomorrow. Breathable organic cotton and moisture-wicking Joma wool consistently provide cool and comfortable slumber.

Every purchase helps fuel Lisa's work with shelters and those in need. Visit Lisa.com to learn more. That's L-E-E-S-A dot com.

Get ready for a full month of fiesta y cultura because it's time for Viva Tucson. Let's celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month como nunca antes in true Tucson style. From September 15th to October 15th, join us for comida, musica y eventos that you won't find anywhere else. Our rich history and traditions make the Old Pueblo the perfect place para celebrar y aprender.

Mark your calendar so you don't miss out on this celebración. Visita visittucson.org slash viva.

Quite a situation brewing in Michigan, Ryan, with sort of Rashida Tlaib versus CNN versus the world. This has been an unfolding wild series of events, unfortunate series of events really for CNN. But tell us how Dana Nassel, and we can put this first element up on the screen, factors into all of this in Michigan. Yeah, I think you could, right, do an entire course on media bias and duplicity online.

on this like five day affair. It's actually more than five days, but we can get into why. But yeah, so to start out, Dana Nessel is the

is the Attorney General of Michigan. And so she tweeted on September 20th, which kicked all of this off, Rashida's religion should not be used in a cartoon to imply that she's a terrorist. It's Islamophobic and wrong. Just as Rashida should not use my religion to imply I cannot perform my job fairly as Attorney General. It's anti-Semitic and wrong. Now, I remember seeing this post and thinking,

Boy, that is terrible. I hope nobody would do such a thing. And also, what's going on with this cartoon? So, on this day, a Detroit News cartoonist had published a cartoon in National Review. So here's a tweet here from Dearborn Mayor and friend of the show, Abdullah Hamoud, posting the National Review cartoon. So if you're watching...

If you're listening to this, only by audio, it's basically saying, why is her pager exploding? Basically suggesting that Rashida Tlaib is a member of Hezbollah that's being targeted by the IDF. So clearly, deeply Islamophobic cartoon that in a different kind of world would have kick-started a news cycle where you'd have the media pressing

critics of Tlaib as whether or not they denounced this attack on her. This kind of baseless attack that came out of nowhere.

Instead, I mean, yeah well I'll just say I disagree that it's bigoted and Islamophobic because the argument from a lot of I mean it does come from a lot of particularly from Jewish conservatives who say that she they have these like deep suspicions that I completely disagree with that Rashida Tlaib actually does side with the militant aspects of Palestinian resistance and

Thus, it would make sense that a pager, that is their line of thinking and I don't think that is necessarily bigoted. - That is their line of thinking but the reason that I think it is bigoted Islamophobia is the reason that they think of it-- - Sometimes but not always. - Has a lot to do with her Palestinian identity. She and Marcy Kapp, she and Betty McCollum agree on most things when it comes to Israel-Palestine policy. Betty McCollum though is a white lady and so people don't accuse her of being a terrorist.

I mean, people accuse Democrats of being, like even white Democrats, of being terrorists. Like it happens. And I think it's really wrong because it's this idea that if you are opposed to Israel's

military action. - All right, so maybe we don't live in a world where we ever would get a condemnation of that cartoon, but-- - I don't disagree with you though, that there are people who just connect the dots and say, oh well, she's vaguely Arab, so she must of course be Hezbollah. No, I don't disagree that that is a thing. I just don't think it's necessarily.

- Bigoted. - And so, Meg Whitmer comes on CNN. - Gretchen Whitmer. - I'm sorry, Meg Whitmer, this is a New Jersey one, yeah, right, whoops. - I thought you were thinking of Meg Whitman. That's a real throwback. - Exactly, yes, yes, Gretchen, big Gretch, the governor of Michigan, goes on Jake Tapper's program,

And here's what he asked her about. Nessel responded by saying, quote, Rashida Tlaib should not use my religion to imply I cannot perform my job fairly as attorney general. It's anti-Semitic and wrong, unquote. Do you think that Tlaib's suggestion that Nessel's office is biased was anti-Semitic?

Listen, Jake, you know what? All I can say is that I know that our Jewish community is in pain, as is our Palestinian and Muslim and Arab communities in Michigan. I know that seeing the incredible toll that this war has taken on both communities has been really devastating.

really challenging and difficult and my heart breaks for so many. But as governor, my job is to make sure that both these communities are protected and respected under the law in Michigan. And that's exactly what I'm going to stay focused on.

But do you think Attorney General Nessel is not doing her job? Because Congresswoman Tlaib is suggesting that she shouldn't be prosecuting these individuals that Nessel says broke the law and that she's only doing it because she's Jewish and the protesters are not. That's quite an accusation. Do you think it's true?

Like I said, Jake, I'm not going to get in the middle of this argument that they're having. I can just say this. You know, we do want to make sure that students are safe on our campuses. So if you're watching that on CNN, you would assume that Rashida Tlaib said that Dana Nessel, because she's Jewish, is biased against Biblicalism.

Palestinians. That is what CNN reported she said. And it's because Dana Nessel said that, just as Rashida should not use my religion to imply I cannot perform my job fairly as Attorney General, it's anti-Semitic and wrong. So what the media is doing in this case is taking the word of a partisan actor. And we say it all the time, it's not new, but it is always worth noting that Jake Tapper picked up on exactly the point that Dana Nessel made on X. Exactly. And it turns out

She didn't say that, as would be evidence. Rashida Tlaib didn't say that. Rashida Tlaib did not say that, as would be evidenced by an actual reading of what she said in the original article in the Metro Times. But still, Gretchen Whitmer, sorry, is under huge pressure. And so she puts out a statement, gives to Jake Tapper, you can put this next element up on the screen. She says, the suggestion that Attorney General Nessel would make charging decisions based on her religion as opposed to the rule of law is anti-Semitic.

Attorney General Nestle has always conducted her work with integrity and followed the rule of law must all use our platform voice to call out hateful rhetoric and racist tropes It's an interesting formulation there because the suggestion is anti-semitic. Okay, that that suggestion is

She didn't actually make that suggestion Anti-defamation League Jonathan Greenblatt. He jumps on it Asserts that it happened and then denounces it ironically doing if she wasn't a public figure What would be defamation because he's saying something that is wrong and and that would be checkable if He just bothered to read the entire article now, here's what's fascinating So we put up this next element here the article

that they're all talking about was published on September 13th. And Nestle responded on the 20th. Nestle responded on the 20th, the day she was attacked in that cartoon. Cynical. Instead of, and she just brought it up out of a week later. Yeah. And so what, and we can get into this more in a second, what Rashida Tlaib said is that

She has been to many protests in Detroit against police brutality, you know, against racism, for climate change, climate justice, and on and on. And Nessel has never brought felony charges against any of those protesters, yet is bringing them in this case. She then goes on to say, and we'll talk about this more later, that Nessel was under significant pressure from the University of Michigan regents and leadership. Yeah. And that that created a

a biased approach to this. And they got significant pushback from a public relations perspective, from an alumni perspective when those protests broke out. And they were obviously being responsive to that outcry in the media of the surge of anti-Semitism at the University of Michigan. And some of their protests did get a little, they got hairy. Sure, sure. But

Talib was explicit about where the bias was coming from. This pressure had nothing to do with Jewishness. Dana Bash goes on CNN after Jake Tapper. Let's roll Dana Bash here.

And now to a sad reality, and that is anti-Semitism is everywhere. And it comes from both ends of the political spectrum. But politicians sometimes sidestep calling it out when it comes from a member of their own party. We saw two examples on State of the Union yesterday. First,

with Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer when my co-anchor, Jake Tapper, asked about a Democratic congresswoman's accusation that the state's Jewish attorney general was letting her religion influence her job. What does it tell you about the inability or...

unwillingness to do so when it comes from a prominent person in your own party. - That you changed your word. It's not an inability. - Yeah. - It's unwillingness, and it's because you're putting politics ahead of principle and morality. And that's what both of them did there. It's not very hard to say that Rashida Tlaib saying that Dana Nessel is pursuing charges because she's Jewish is an anti-Semitic thing to say. It is. - Okay, yeah, again, she didn't say that. Now, because...

Because Twitter exists, there was a lot of pushback from-- - Ryan Grim. - From Ryan Grim and other people. We're like, wait a minute, she, pulling my hair out, what hair I have left, like she didn't say that. - Yeah. - Like what are you talking about?

So finally, we do get a clarification from Dana Besh, but not really. Here's what Dana Besh clarified. Clarification on a story we brought you yesterday concerning Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib's comments attacking a decision by Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel to bring charges against pro-Palestinian protesters at the University of Michigan. Tlaib accused Nessel of, quote, biases.

Here's Tlaib's full quote to the Detroit Metro Times. It seems that the attorney general decided if the issue was Palestine, she was going to treat it differently. And that alone speaks volumes about possible biases within the agency she runs. Now, Tlaib did not reference Nessel's Jewish identity. Her office has not responded to our request for clarity. Her allies insist that's not what she meant. But Nessel still says she believes Nessel

It is anti-Semitic and repeated on CNN yesterday that, quote, clearly she's referencing my religion. So again, if she wants clarity, she could go read the entire article where she says the bias comes from pressure from the University of Michigan. Yeah. That is the equivalent that you just saw of whenever somebody posts fake news on social media, when they get called out. The follow-up tweet. The follow-up tweet is always, yeah, but isn't it interesting that I believed it?

It is, it is. It absolutely is. Somebody said there's a saying in the Czech Republic that goes, it's not true, but it might be. So that's basically the Dana Bash standard there. Jake Tapper also

issued a bit of a clarification here. Let's roll Jake Tapper. I should note that I misspoke yesterday when asking a follow-up of Governor Whitmer, who I asked about this. I was trying to characterize your views of Tlaib's comments. What do you make of those today, noting that Congresswoman Tlaib never explicitly said that your bias was because of your religion, and so it's unfair for you to make that allegation?

It's kind of an interesting question. It's like, she never said it, so it's unfair for you to say that she said it. How do you respond to that? It's just, it's, the fact was too good for them to check out because in a way it reminds me, actually, this sounds like a hard pivot, but of the Jesse Smollett story because it- You were just all ready to believe it? Well, it confirmed, it's confirmation bias. Of course she said that. 100%, it's confirmation bias. So like, it fits the larger truth. It fits this larger trend that we believe to be true. Therefore-

I sort of automatically will take the word of Dressy Smollett, I will automatically take the word of Juicy Smollett as David Chappelle would say, but I'll automatically take the word of Dana Nessel because she seems to be the adult in the room in this interaction between, if I'm being asked to choose between Rashida Tlaib's truth and Dana Nessel's truth, I'm gonna go with Dana Nessel and I will smear someone and accuse them of anti-Semitism. - The whole thing is just more evidence of the anti-Palestinian bias that she said exists in these institutions.

But here is how Nestle answered that question. A couple of things. First of all, in 2022, when my opponent accused me of being a groomer and a pedophile,

Everyone understood that those were homophobic remarks because I happen to be gay, right? I didn't have to explain it to people. Rashida Tlaib is an individual who is well known for making inflammatory and incendiary remarks that are anti-Semitic in nature. So this isn't the first time that we would have heard these words out of her mouth. I think it's very clear to everybody exactly what she was saying. Yeah, she's like, I don't like her. I feel like she could have said that, so...

Again, if we can put up this next element the real pushback I think that got CNN to do this weak clarification was from the reporter of the actual article This is a reply that he had to Jake Tapper said I'm the reporter who interviewed Rashida Tlaib She never said nestled he did this because she's Jewish never you're spreading lies unquote and he the the Metro Times felt like they had to do a fact-check of

And so they wrote up a new story a week later saying no like she said what she said in our article Mm-hmm. It's the funniest fact check ever. It's like I

All they did is like re-quote their own article, which which any anybody else could have done and we can put up b11 which Is so just so people have the specific context Here's what here's what Tlaib said I think people at the University of Michigan put pressure on her to do this and she fell for it Tlaib says I think President Ono and Board of Regent members were very much heavy-handed in this it had to come from somewhere So that's in the original article

in which you have Dana Bash and also Josh Kroshauer over at Jewish Insider, he wrote, we didn't receive a reply from Tlaib requesting clarity on her comments about what she was referring to. Because you see a lot of people saying, okay, well, she says that Nestle's office had anti-Palestinian bias. It must be coming from somewhere. And therefore, what she's implying is

is that it's actually because Nessel is Jewish. All you had to do was read the next paragraph and you question if you're actually curious gets answered. Here's the actual answer. That she felt like she was pressured and that the University of Michigan did not pressure Nessel when it came to Black Lives Matter protesters or when it came to climate justice protesters.

And so there is a difference. These protesters were treated differently. The other difference, the University of Michigan pressure. That's what Tlaib said. It's amazing how from this entire sort of like cancel culture woke like journey that we've been on in the last decade, how little lessons have been learned from applying overly broad definitions. And that's why when we were talking about the cartoon, it's like they have in their heads this own logic that

ties Rashida Tlaib to actual militant groups, and I completely disagree with it. It's not rooted in bigotry for everyone, and there's just this reflex when it comes to accusations of anti-Semitism. And I would say the same thing if we wanted to talk about on the right with jumping to accusations of racism or misogyny or whatever, that it's

People don't have their own logic and the sad part of that is it misses dealing with the actual logic like if you disagree with Rashida Tlaib's Argument for Palestine deal with it on those terms. Don't smear her as an anti-semite. It's wildly Counterproductive anyway, you're not even like making progress for your own cause Yeah, and the other irony of course is that you know Rashida Tlaib is Not remotely like a supporter of violence like that's not like

That's she she's somebody who was caught it was constantly making arguments for dignity equality coexistence peace that everybody should everybody should live together and value each other as as human beings and that that gets read as being support of Hamas in Hezbollah, which I think is proves the the depth of the

the anti-Palestinian bias that she talks about there. Jordan Sheridan, our buddy, had the reporter on his show and had an interesting exchange with him. Let's roll Jordan's interview here. It's B12. You know the Attorney General. You've reported on her. Was that surprising to you that she was a week later insinuating that Congresswoman Tlaib had somehow, I guess,

was inferring something about her being Jewish in her criticism? I thought it was a bold time to attack Rashida at a time when she just got attacked in a very disgusting racist cartoon and she did it that day. So that surprised me. I have heard though that Dana Nessel has

has taken this Hamas attack last year very seriously and she's lost some friendships over it. But it did surprise me that she would come out and mention this on the day that that cartoon was published. But also I was surprised that she used Rashida's words, misrepresented them and then attacked her based on that misrepresentation. That surprised me. I want to drill in on that because I think

Congresswoman Tlaib used the phrase biases to refer to the Attorney General. And I think that's what the Attorney General was zeroing in, that somehow Tlaib was inferring by biases that she's Jewish. I don't take it that way, and I'm Jewish. But you were saying from your reporting, Attorney General Nessel, who is Jewish, she has been –

however moved or affected by the Hamas attack and she's lost friendship over it, which would indicate to me that her charges against these pro-Palestine protesters on student campuses

She might feel strongly on this issue, which might then lead to some bias. And she's charging them in more rigid ways than other types of protesters. Yeah. Yeah. And to be clear, when I talked to Rashida Tlaib, what she was talking about, that bias, she was talking about an anti-Palestinian bias that's across many institutions, news organizations, companies, attorney general's offices, governor mansions.

there's definitely a anti-Palestinian bias. And most of those institutions aren't run by Jewish people. So when she said that, she's referring to an anti-Palestinian bias, not a bias because somebody is Jewish.

Right. It was an Iowa presentation. And so even when cued up by Jordan to say, well, maybe there's something to it because the reporter's like, no, that's not what she was talking about. And he was being fair to Dana Nessel as well. Yeah, which, yes. And also, so Jordan, as people might have put two and two together, knows Dana Nessel quite well because of all of his reporting on the Flint water scandal. And Dana Nessel ran on a promise that

to prosecute Rick Snyder for that, never managed to do so. Rashida Tlaib's kind of first tweet was she couldn't manage, you know, Nestle couldn't manage to

prosecute Snyder for the Flint water crisis, but could manage to file charges against these Palestinian protesters, which again, not about religion. Yeah, no, absolutely. So yeah, that's super interesting from Jordan. And I think, you know, this Dana Nessel, Gretchen Whitmer coming, I mean, it is just Michigan right now as a swing state ahead of 2024 is such a

weird brew of these little dust-ups over basically Rashida Tlaib and Dana Nessel, and it's all getting so nasty. Yeah. And this whole thing, start to finish, was just wild to watch unfold. She didn't say that. You're right. How are we here five days later

Asking for clarifications and we reached out to Talib's office. When you reached out to Talib's office, she's already said what she said. I actually might add this to my journalism curriculum for the students because it's such a perfect example of them taking the word of a partisan actor and recycling it as toxic.

total objective neutral reporting. And the nice part about this one for education purposes is you don't have to debate the underlying facts. Like what she said is what she said. Not how you do journalism. And you can't even, you don't have to go to a place of, well, maybe she, because she didn't say why she was biased. Nope. She said why they're biased. They're biased because University of Michigan put pressure on them to do this. Like she said that. You agree or disagree with that. That's what she said. You don't need to

It's not a statement of rank anti-Semitism. Yeah. Very clearly.

Only at HighFiveCasino.com. High Five Casino is a social casino. No purchase necessary. Board will prohibit it. Play responsibly. Terms and conditions apply. See website for details at HighTheNumberFiveCasino.com. High Five Casino.

Good sleep should come naturally, and with the new Natural Hybrid mattress, it can. A collaboration between Lisa and West Elm, the Natural Hybrid is expertly crafted from natural latex, natural wool, and certified safe foams to elevate your sleep sanctuary and support a greener tomorrow. Breathable organic cotton and moisture-wicking Joma wool consistently provide cool and comfortable slumber. Every purchase helps fuel Lisa's work with shelters and those in need.

Visit lisa.com to learn more. That's l-e-e-s-a dot com. Get ready for a full month of fiesta y cultura because it's time for Viva Tucson. Let's celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month como nunca antes in true Tucson style. From September 15th to October 15th, join us for comida, musica y eventos that you won't find anywhere else. Our rich history and traditions make the old pueblo the perfect place para celebrar y aprender.

Mark your calendars so you don't miss out on this celebración. Visita visittucson.org slash viva.

Let's move on to Kamala Harris, who this is actually another kind of strange media story and strange politics story because Kamala Harris has been on the record along with Joe Biden opposing or actually supporting eliminating the filibuster. So opposing the continued upholding of the filibuster, which Ryan, you'll correct my history on this. This is about the turn of the century that the filibuster, early 1900s, right? We get the filibuster late 1800s.

It's very complicated depending on which filibuster you're talking about. There are, yeah. The 60 vote threshold comes in like World War I because they were trying to get weapons over for the war and you had a couple of anti-war wars.

Got to get around them. Folks, you got to get around them. So you said, okay, well, we can end debate with two-thirds and then gradually that becomes 60. Anyway. It's not in the Constitution. It's definitely not anywhere near the Constitution, nor was it intended to be part of the Constitution. They never imagined ever that you would need a 60% vote to get something passed in the

But it's- A Democratic chamber. It is now seen as an absolute cornerstone of lowercase r, Republican government in the United States. And Kamala Harris and the Biden administration have openly supported getting rid of the filibuster since I think at least 2022. Kamala Harris was on a radio show in Wisconsin yesterday on WPR. It's called Wisconsin Today. She told the host that she would support getting rid of the filibuster to codify Roe v. Wade. That kicked off a firestorm. So let's start by actually listening to Kamala Harris herself.

It is well within our reach to hold on to the majority in the Senate and take back the House. And so I would also emphasize that while the presidential election is extremely important and dispositive of where we go moving forward, it also is about what we need to do to hold on to the Senate and win seats in the House. That being said, I've been very clear. I think we should eliminate the filibuster for Roe.

And and we need and get us to the point where we 51 votes would be what we need to actually put back in law the protections for reproductive freedom and for the ability of every person and every woman to make decisions about their own body and not have their government tell them what to do.

So Joe Manchin responded to this by telling Manu Raju, we can put this next element up on the screen, of CNN, asked if he would back her for president. Manu says, now that Harris has vowed to gut the filibuster on this issue, Roe, Manchin said he wouldn't back her for president, quote,

quote, that ain't going to happen. I think that basically can destroy our country and my country is more important to me than any one person or any one person's ideology. I think it's the most horrible thing. Now, earlier, Manu noted that Manchin responded to Kamala Harris saying she wants to, quote, gut the filibuster to codify Roe. As Manu put it, shame on her, said Manchin. She knows the filibuster is the whole

The holy grail of democracy is the only thing that keeps us talking and working together. If she gets rid of that, then this would be the house on steroids. Ryan, I'm personally of two minds on the filibuster. I've had this conversation on the record even with Ted Cruz, who has told

I'm sure he's told other people too, but I remember having this conversation with him around 2018 that he brought himself from this position of the filibuster being the holy grail of democracy to believing you should just get rid of it because he believes the left is going to get rid of the filibuster first. So you might as well go down the doom spiral with the left and at least get your priorities out of the way when you control Congress. And so it's kind of a race to the bottom mentality.

It's very interesting because Kyrsten Sinema responded to Kamala Harris, let's put this on the screen, C3.

She is right. Sinema says, to state the supremely obvious, eliminating the filibuster to codify Roe v. Wade also enables a future Congress to ban all abortion nationwide. What an absolutely terrible, short-sighted idea. Again, Sinema is correct, but you would never, this would be, I'm curious for your take on this, because this is why a lot of people on the left support getting rid of the filibuster. Republicans would, in sort of modern America at this point in time,

I don't know if they could recover in a decade from banning all abortion nationwide. They just don't have the public support for that. There would be, I mean, it would be significantly worse than Roe if suddenly every single state banned every single, every single kind of abortion. So they just, the political will doesn't exist to do that in the country. So that would be, I think, the obvious rebuttal to Kyrsten Sinema. But her point is correct.

Her point is technically correct and it has a history throughout the 90s and much of the 2000s. Inside the Democratic coalition, one of the fiercest opponents of filibuster reform was actually pro-choice groups, reproductive freedom groups that made that precise argument that Sinema is making that

Republicans that we've got Roe in the Constitution, Supreme Court stands by it. You know, why risk letting Republicans overturn or enact actually abortion restrictions? They're saying, you know,

Basically underneath Roe what Republicans would do if they had a majority and no filibuster is they would enact a lot of these the restrictions that they were enacting at the state levels that would Pretend to sort of comply with Roe but would actually you know make abortion much more abortion access much more difficult that that changed the pro-choice groups changed their position on that throughout the 2000s and

and came out for filibuster reform saying, no, we actually need to go on offense on this. And they argued, don't take this from a position of defensiveness. This is a winning issue for Democrats. Here are the polls. And they would show these Democrats polls showing the massive overwhelming support for abortion rights. And Democratic leaders, I don't want to talk about abortion. It's gross. I don't believe you. I don't believe these numbers. But when it came to

Overturning the filibuster they put a lot of pressure on people like Barbara Boxer and others who were holdouts on filibuster reform Cinema is like wildly anachronistic on this making that point like she was yeah, she was making she made this point There was a push to get rid of it, you know as Democrats were losing their majority when they still had a chance to do it After Roe was overturned and it even then she said no I'm not doing it and she gave this reasoning because you could ban abortion people like I

Buddy, the Supreme Court just overturned Roe v. Wade. You're talking about a hypothetical banning of abortion? What are you talking about? The good news is it doesn't matter what she thinks. She's done. We took her out. Ruben Gallego is the Democratic nominee. It looks like he's probably going to win. And he has said that he would

Get rid of the filibuster for abortion protections. Basically, the entire Democratic caucus has said that at this point. And it really was unthinkable. I mean, this was a norm that Joe Manchin is very much, what Joe Manchin said to Monty Roger yesterday would have been greeted with polite applause in the halls of the Capitol.

before, I don't know, five years ago, before the Trump era really. This actually was him using the Holy Grail term is so resonant because that actually really was the standard. People saw this genuinely as the Holy Grail. Ish. I was actually there for this fight. So like in 2009, it really, really kicked off. It was Obamacare. Yeah, because Democrats lost their 60 vote threshold. And also,

the kind of liberal blogosphere, and I was writing for Huffman Post at the time, did not love the fact that Joe Lieberman and a handful of other centrist Democrats who gave them their 60th vote. Joe Biden. Joe Biden. Well, no, he was vice president by then. Oh, yeah, that's true. Well, but he was still pro-Tem. Yes, no doubt. And he loved being up there. So the argument was,

Don't let these guys have this power. You've got 59 and 60 whatever then as their numbers dwindled the pressure became even greater then as McConnell started blocking judicial nominations. That's what it went into in 2013 Finally, there was enough pressure that there was reform on judicial nominations So, you know lower than Supreme Court level now that we got rid of it for Supreme Court as well Yeah, so there's there's been that push

for this long. But yeah, now Democrats are basically there. - But it was relegated to like, well that's a Ryan Grim idea. And the Joe Bidens of the world would be horrified. They would be totally in the Manchin camp. But to have Manchin be sort of the last man standing with Kyrsten Sinema on this while Joe freaking Biden

is on that point, it was like, well, Joe Biden is the one who was saying, yeah, let's do it. It's a huge change and it was because the Ryan Grimms sort of won out. We packed a lot of punch back then. Yeah, we could- Sometimes literally. We could land a real blow. Actually, sometimes literally.

Harry Reid's spokesperson used to say every time we would do something on the filibuster, their phone lines would just get absolutely lit up. It'd be like, damn it, grim. But Harry Reid saw that and saw the energy and it actually kind of transformed him as a politician. The question of whether they win the Senate is

I don't think is optimistic as Harris put out. New polls, you know, Tester is really struggling in Montana and they need to win in Montana or Nebraska. And will he caucus? What does he think on the filibuster, Dan? Well, we asked him. He said, basically he said he's pro-choice. But would he get rid of the filibuster? Exactly.

Yeah, Dan Osborne. Did we not ask him that? Well, we asked him about Roe, but I don't remember. We didn't ask him about the filibuster. I mean, well, this is where we started this block saying it's kind of bizarre because we know where Kamala Harris stands on the filibuster. And because she told this radio station the news, Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema reacted in ways where Joe Manchin is saying she's never going to get my endorsement now. And it's like,

We have known this. It's just such a weird little media cycle. It's not really anybody's fault, but it's just crazy how one comment can suddenly become a news cycle and can raise the issue again when it's not new at all. It's not new at all. But if Democrats are smart, they'll just run on it. It's an amazingly popular issue. I will codify Roe if you give me this House, Senate, and White House. I'll do it.

And then imagine- Yeah, the filibuster's not like super popular. The reason on principle that I've been against the filibuster is that imagine a world in which politicians ran on a promise, got elected on that promise, and then actually enacted it into law. And then voters decided whether or not they liked it. Imagine that. Crazy system. Instead, we have the system where you run on a thing and then you get into Washington and you can point to these

parliamentary obstacles or legislative obstacles. Well, yeah, I ran on this but we're not gonna actually do it. We should get Bovard in here. Yeah, let's have another culture war fight two years later. It'd be fun to do something with Bovard on the follow-up. She's probably against it, right? Yeah, yeah, it would be fun to, we should do that because it obviously is like a huge looming issue for everyone. It could completely change the way that this legislation is done. So on that note, speaking of government working, Brian,

Let's transition to this block about Visa and the Department of Justice suing the company over alleged monopoly practices. This is D1, a tear shoot from CNBC. You can see the headline, Justice Department accuses Visa of debit network monopoly that affects price of, quote, nearly everything. The Biden DOJ continues its streak of

of actually, it's partially their streak. When it comes to Google, that was a lawsuit the Biden DOJ continued from the Trump administration. A lot of energy in the antitrust space, as we know, Ryan, but going after Visa for alleged monopoly practices, that's an escalation in a good direction.

Yeah, and if we can put D2 up on the screen, the filing is about 75 pages and it's actually quite clear. It's well written and lays out precisely why they believe that Visa is an illegal monopoly and how they've gone about doing it.

Building a building a moat and they have you know, obviously they've like it on all these good ones They got good emails and other internal memos where the criminals lay out their criminal scheme where they say like This is how we're building our moat. It's like Billy a moat is anti-competitive Sherman Act says you can't do that like

You just can't like that. We have decided that that markets in order for them to remain competitive need some government intervention to pull up to block monopolies from completely controlling them so they go through the history here where you know Visa controls and thinks 60 to 70 percent of that debit transactions MasterCard then has like 25 so it's not a monopoly right now everything's fine and

That there were a couple different things that happened over the last 10, 15 years that they lay out in this civil indictment basically, civil complaint, which is one, it's like, wait a minute, didn't we just have like PayPal and Venmo and all of these like, all this technology came about in the last 15 years?

How the heck is it that we still have this outdated technology that is still sucking $7 billion out of the economy every year? And that's like, well, I don't pay when I swipe my debit card. Well, yes, you do pay because the merchant that you are buying from pays a fee to Visa and they pass that fee on to you.

And so Visa, when all these new technologies were coming around, saying, uh-oh, like these are existential threats to us. They called Apple's App Store or Apple's like Apple Pay an existential threat. And the way that in a competitive free market, a company would respond to those threats is by delivering a better product.

at a lower price. That's what you're going to hear from the Milton Friedmans of the world. Instead, they went out and cut deals with Apple, PayPal, all these other potential competitors and said, look, we'll just pay you to not get in our business. So you monopolize your thing over here, charge people exorbitant fees for these types of transactions. We'll charge people exorbitant fees for these types of transactions, and we'll pay each other to

Because isn't it better for all making lots of money that we're siphoning off of consumers rather than competing with each other to offer a better product for less cost? And the competitors were like, hey, that's fine. Yeah. And this also goes to like quarterly. Which you can only get away with if you're huge. Right. But also the way our system is set up, they call it quarterly capitalism where you're every quarter, you know, you're reporting your revenues to the market. And

Your your compensation as an executive is tied directly to those earnings because you're paid mostly in equity the bulk your pay is in equity as As your revenues go up share prices go up your equity goes up you become richer then you switch jobs like you don't care like you're just trying to so for somebody like a PayPal or another competitor a potential competitive visa might say you know what it's gonna take us three years of investment and work and

to get to a place where we're competitive with Visa on this particular thing, that's a lot of quarters. That's a lot of quarterly conference calls where we're losing money. And I want to leave here within two years. And I would like to leave here having made $45 million as a vice president or whatever. And so they're like, and instead, Visa is offering me this amount of money right now if we don't compete against them, which will lead directly to a bonus for me.

Wouldn't that be nice? Let's do that instead. It's really aggressive from the Biden administration. I mean, Visa. This is the senator from Delaware, by the way. This is his administration. If you need evidence that Joe Biden is not in charge of his own administration, just note that they're going after Visa. Oh my God, if he found out about this. He's going to be so pissed. They used to call him a Democrat from MBNA, which was the gigantic credit card company in Delaware. So maybe he wants them to go after Visa. Yeah.

Well, they got bought up, so they're basically visa by now. But one thing that's interesting here, we're talking about democracy in the last block. This sort of thing, because our democracy is so corrupted and bought off, has to come from

the department of justice or the ftc at this point um i i spent a couple years back in like 2010 11. yeah speaking of you being old 13 yes um covering this intense fight over what are called swipe fees um between basically merchants and these credit card companies back in like 2011 in congress

It was the most, it wasn't covered by the major press because nobody cares. It's just a fight between two major power players. But they were employing

Maybe over a thousand journalists spending hundreds of millions of dollars getting meat like not stomp lobbyists Yeah, dominate whoops. Yeah dominating the entire congressional legislative agenda fighting over what you would set the swipe fee cap at or whether there would be a swipe fee cap which which rolled out of what was called the Durbin amendment from Dodd-Frank the Durbin amendment actually makes an appearance in

in this lawsuit because the DOJ points out that the Durbin Amendment had a provision that said every debit card has to have two, it has a visa and somebody else that are able to use it, which would then allow merchants to choose, say, okay, you know what? Actually, I don't want to take visa because visa charges these huge fees.

So your card also has MasterCard. So I want to you can use MasterCard that's cheaper here at my store. And what Visa did to get around this new law that required these two things, they went to stores and they said, all right, we have a lot of what are called non-competitive transactions where the person only has Visa. So you can only do Visa. On those, if you cut a deal with us, we're going to make them fairly cheap.

And the deal is you then have to use us for everything. Racket. If you don't cut a deal with us, then we're charging you a boatload of money for every one of those non-competitive transactions where they have to use Visa. So all these merchants were just totally jammed up. And they had to sign these agreements that locked them in. And DOJ is saying the agreements are...

are illegal and the court ought to oust all of these. I just want to read one quote from this. Put up this third element here. So I think this is the most fun story that I've ever written. It's so good. Go back and read this one. You will absolutely die reading it. I want to do like a Stefan. Like it's got everything. Saxby Chandler. Yes, it's amazing. It's incredible. The use of the word twit pic.

- Twitpick, yes. - Which used to be a thing. - Twitpick used to be a thing. - And cups. - Cups. It's such a fun story, but here's one of the most fun quotes from a moderate Democratic senator. He said to me, "I'm surprised at how much of our time "is spent trying to divide up the spoils "between various economic interests. "I had no idea."

I thought we'd be focused on civil liberties, on education policy, energy policy, and so on. Is this a senator? This is a senator. The fights down here can be put in two or three categories. The big greedy bastards against the big greedy bastards. The big greedy bastards against the little greedy bastards. And some cases, even the other little greedy bastards against the other little greedy bastards. What he's saying is that...

Congress is like a host that has shaped itself to the parasites. Yes. And the parasites are the lobbyists. And so both parties are trying to figure out how much cash they can raise for their campaigns. So they go out and they try to find things that two big industries will fight over.

Sales tax on Amazon was like another one. And it's basically the same way the mafia goes to a store and is like, nice store you got here, shame if something happened to it. They smash the windows up and then they pay them off and then they don't smash the windows up anymore. So what Congress would do is deliberately produce legislation that they think would be destructive to some powerful interest like Visa.

Say wow, you're making a lot of money on those swipe fees. Hmm We're gonna put together a bill that caps the amount that you're able to charge these merchants, right and Then they go to them and then they go to visa and they say hire all of our people give money to all of our campaigns And maybe we won't do this then they go to the other greedy bastards They go to Target they go to Walmart they go to Home Depot and they say don't you hate Visa and

the way that they, American Express, they're really ripping you off, aren't they? We've got this bill that will stop them from ripping you off. And all you gotta do is hire all of our friends and donate to all of our campaigns, and then they will drag that out for years.

That fight over the Durbin Amendment is still going on today. That senator's heart is absolutely in the right place. But it is such a naive approach to government. That is, of course, what this is. This is Vegas, baby. This is Vegas in the 70s. That is our economy. Yeah, so you kind of have to have the DOJ do it. Mm-hmm.

And luckily- But usually the DOJ won't. Usually they won't, right. Because of the revolving door. It's not necessarily that they're being lobbied. It's that they want to lobby. Yeah, do you know how much lobbying there was against Jonathan Cantor getting into the DOJ to run the antitrust policy of the Biden administration? Reid Hoffman is over-

lobbying Kamala Harris right now, not as a registered lobbyist, but just as a rich dude with a lot of power and public platforms to get rid of Lena Kahn. The good news is during the New Deal, they did pass this law that says you can't do this. And so the White House, at least until the Supreme Court says they can't enforce laws that weren't passed within the last five minutes, they can still enforce laws that are on the books. We'll see. If they feel like it. Good for them. All right. What will this will do? Lower the price of everything.

High Five Casino is a social casino with real prizes and big Vegas hits at HighFiveCasino.com. The hottest games right from Vegas and all winnings go straight to your bank account. Hundreds of exclusive games, free daily rewards, and come back to get free coins every four hours. Only at HighFiveCasino.com.

High Five Casino is a social casino. No purchase necessary. Void where prohibited. Play responsibly. Terms and conditions apply. See website for details at highthenumber5casino.com. High Five Casino.

Good sleep should come naturally, and with the new Natural Hybrid mattress, it can. A collaboration between Lisa and West Elm, the Natural Hybrid is expertly crafted from natural latex, natural wool, and certified safe foams to elevate your sleep sanctuary and support a greener tomorrow. Breathable organic cotton and moisture-wicking Joma wool consistently provide cool and comfortable slumber.

Every purchase helps fuel Lisa's work with shelters and those in need. Visit Lisa.com to learn more. That's L-E-E-S-A dot com.

Get ready for a full month of fiesta y cultura because it's time for Viva Tucson. Let's celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month como nunca antes in true Tucson style. From September 15th to October 15th, join us for comida, musica y eventos that you won't find anywhere else. Our rich history and traditions make the Old Pueblo the perfect place para celebrar y aprender.

Mark your calendar so you don't miss out on this celebración. Visita visittucson.org slash viva.

Let's move on to this port strike, Ryan. Speaking of prices. Speaking of prices. We can put this first element up on the screen. This is from the Lodestar USMX in ILA in claims blame game as strike deadline looms. Can you break this one down for us, Ryan? We're covering a lot of Ryan Grimm topics today, which is great because it's always educational and enlightening what's happening with this contract. First of all, credit to this shipping trade publication for claims blame game. That's

It's not funny. It is New York Post worthy. It is. And you don't see that from trade pubs very often. The reason we're using a trade publication article here is because there's been very little mainstream coverage of what's going on here. If the International Longshoremen Union and this conglomerate of basically

dudes that run ports don't come to a new contract by October 1st. The ports are gonna shut down all along the East Coast and the Gulf. So as a result of that, already lots of shippers are moving their shipments over to the West Coast. And as the trade press talks about, a lot of kind of holiday merchants

Moved their orders way up like they're already getting in their Christmas tree their artificial Christmas trees and all the other Junk that we're gonna buy free buy for each other in the holiday season so that the shelves will be stocked because

The business side here is, according to the union, offering utterly paltry wages and then lying publicly about the way that they're kind of doing the math and saying, oh, look at this huge increase they're giving. And so they haven't met in months. And we're at an October 1st deadline. The White House has said it will not use its federal power

kind of force these workers back to work if you remember that's the same law that they use to force the railroad Basically force a contract on the rail workers a couple years ago They could do that again when it comes to this one and it seems like The bosses here are banking on the fact that the White House will do that they're saying we don't need to negotiate with you because

An October 1st port shutdown would be such an absolute political crisis. They're probably right. That the White House will actually... Does Pete Buttigieg, because it's Buttigieg who's basically responsible for kind of being the secretariat...

who is in between this and trying to get to a deal, does Buttigieg want this to be his thing? So the unions meanwhile are like, just give us a decent deal and we'll come back to work. Lots of leverage. Now, one thing they could possibly do is kind of force them back to work until after the election, which is sort of what they did with the rail workers, if you remember. And then, and what you can do is you can force them into mediation. So I tend to think that

They're not going to let a strike happen October 1st, but according to their current statements, they are. Now, I don't know what kind of brinksmanship that is or not, but the workers do not seem like they're in a position to get rolled over here. And what can, so actual question here, what Biden's power hypothetically would be in these negotiations? It probably looks similar to what we saw for the rail. It's pretty serious power, right?

Because it involves the transportation and the cornerstone economic interests there as the Taft-Hartley Act. Yeah. That allows significant intervention from the US. Not just allows, but sort of incentivizes for the federal government in case of shipping. And the bosses have relied on that since the 40s or whatever to say, you can't go on strike because the government's going to come in and stop you.

But I think they took a lot of heat for that, for forcing that contract on rail workers. And they certainly would rather not have the political optics of being anti-union right in October before the election. Yeah.

Well, and you know, it's funny because this is sort of a parallel situation to what Mike Johnson was facing this week with a government shutdown on the eve of the election that he knew Republicans were going to be blamed for, which is why he and sort of Republican establishment ended up siding with the

sat in with Democrats and brokering a deal on the SAVE Act and doing this three-month stopgap that would end in December, which is certainly going to result, as Freedom Caucus types are saying, in a big spending package right before Christmas, nice little Christmas present, because nobody wants a shutdown over Christmas. We've seen it before, of course, but nobody really wants it, and Mike Johnson's logic

explicitly was that we are not risking a shutdown, shutting down the government as Trump wanted over the SAVE Act, which basically creates protections so that you can't have non-citizen voting in federal elections. Shutting down the government over that would not be politically viable, politically worth it. So basically, the leverage was with the people who were saying, like, the Freedom Caucus had no leverage in this situation. And

The billionaires that are being called out by these union leaders don't really have leverage in this situation because all the money in the world that they can give to Joe Biden isn't going to offset how serious the threat to the election would be if we remember back to the rail crisis.

the real uprising after what happened in East Palestine. This was the level of political crisis for Biden and Buttigieg was incredibly high. And to have that literally weeks before a presidential election, I mean, they have a pretty good case going to the Biden administration here. It's an interesting test for Mayor Pete, Secretary Pete, to see if he can get a deal here. One reason I wanted to cover this, even though nobody else is, is that

There's no, they don't pay any price by forcing workers back to work if nobody knows it's happening in the first place. Like if nobody's talking about it, then the White House could actually much more easily just jam them and say, you know what?

Nobody's looking, just go back to work. - Well, so Steve Lamar, the president and CEO of the American Association of Footwear and Apparel makes a very, very, very good case to Biden. He says, our members, if they can get their product to market at all during the critical holiday shopping season, we'll only be able to do so with massive delays at an exorbitant cost.

exporters, particularly agricultural exporters, will literally see their product rot on the docks or in the rail yards. And just when inflation has started to come under control, American families will face a surge in prices and product shortages not seen since the pandemic. It would be a disaster. Yeah. Absolute disaster, no doubt about it. And they say that for every day that the ports are shut down,

it takes about five days to clear that backlog. So even if there was only a 10-day strike, then you're talking about a two-month backlog. And exactly just as the Federal Reserve is- It's already a problem.

Oh, by the way, I was gone, so I didn't get to do my victory lap. I was correct on the half point cut. I know. I saw that right away. I was like, this is perfect. It's why I didn't guess. But, you know, it was a great call. Yeah, you could have. I'm sure that there were predictive bets on that. Oh, the whole market is a predictive bet. That's true at this point. Again, it's all Vegas. It's all Vegas all the time.

High Five Casino is a social casino with real prizes and big Vegas hits at highfivecasino.com. The hottest games right from Vegas and all winnings go straight to your bank account. Hundreds of exclusive games, free daily rewards, and come back to get free coins every four hours.

Only at HighFiveCasino.com. High Five Casino is a social casino. No purchase necessary. Void will prohibit it. Play responsibly. Terms and conditions apply. See website for details at HighTheNumberFiveCasino.com. High Five Casino.

Good sleep should come naturally. And with a new natural hybrid mattress, it can. A collaboration between Lisa and West Elm. The natural hybrid is expertly crafted from natural latex, natural wool, and certified safe foams to elevate your sleep sanctuary and support a greener tomorrow. Breathable organic cotton and moisture-wicking Joma wool consistently provide cool and comfortable slumber. Every

purchase helps fuel Lisa's work with shelters and those in need. Visit Lisa.com to learn more. That's L-E-E-S-A dot com.

Get ready for a full month of fiesta y cultura because it's time for Viva Tucson. Let's celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month como nunca antes in true Tucson style. From September 15th to October 15th, join us for comida, musica y eventos that you won't find anywhere else. Our rich history and traditions make the old pueblo the perfect place para celebrar y aprender.

Mark your calendars so you don't miss out on this celebración. Visita visittucson.org slash viva.

On a much bleaker note, let's turn to the horrible case of Marcellus Williams, who was executed in Missouri at 6:10 PM yesterday. Now, this case goes back to 1998, the August murder of a St. Louis Post-Dispatch reporter, Felicia Gale. Felicia Gale's family believed that Williams was

guilty but opposed his execution, was not at his execution, which is typical of families who often go to the viewing of the execution. Now, there was no forensic evidence that ever tied Williams to this crime. There's circumstantial evidence, but even that had been contaminated. This is a very typical death penalty case where there's been sort of legal evidence

back and forth for literally decades at this point. There's been evidence in both directions. There's been a man with poor legal representation as we've seen in filings that things just ended up getting botched or poorly argued along the way. The state Supreme Court

And the United States Supreme Court both rejected last minute pleas from Williams' camp. But this is, I mean, the prosecutor from his 2003 conviction, so five years after this alleged murder, did not support the execution. The family of the victim did not support the execution. There were stays granted to Williams back in 2015 and 2017, also very typical of death penalty cases. But he was executed yesterday in Missouri.

And the Supreme Court, the federal Supreme Court, by six to three, let the execution go through. Obviously, the three liberal justices would have stayed the execution. The six conservative ones went for it. He converted to Islam while in prison. Khalifa Ibn Rayford Daniels was his new adopted name. I don't think we've talked about the death penalty yet.

The part that has always flummoxed me about conservative support for the death penalty is that Conservatives are quick to point to all of the problems with government inefficiency. Yes grew ups Yes everywhere whether it's the the EPA or regulation of the markets or they say, you know, like there's government bureaucrats They're gonna screw things up yet in a life-or-death situation. Mm-hmm

They're willing to let these county bureaucrats, you know, the same people that populate the show like Parks and Rec. Yep. Like let those people handle the evidence, handle the prosecutions. Yep. With immense amount of power, very little oversight. Yep. And when it comes to life and death, you can't make mistakes. Yeah. And from the conservative perspective, like governments are making mistakes all the time.

And in this one there was the the defense argued that there was also racial bias because yeah prosecutor struck I think six of seven Black people from the jury pool So there was only one black person on the jury pool and he said he and he specifically said I struck one of them because he looked Too much like Marcellus. Mm-hmm. It's like well, I think you just admitted what's going on here But it wasn't enough so

Yeah, where do you come down on that question?

This issue turns me into a bleeding heart like campus leftist. It was one of the earliest issues that animated me politically. So I'm the worst person for a show called Counterpoints next to you on this. Well, at least you're consistent on the whole pro-life thing. It just it makes me so angry. And your point about bureaucracy is such an important one. I just have a plain moral opposition to the state carrying out. I mean, I think self-defense is a legitimate issue.

you know, explanation to take another life. I think we all mostly agree on that, legitimate cases of self-defense. I don't think the state has a right to take life like this, nor do I think it should. I think the drugs are incredibly problematic and basically forms of torture that we're also asking bureaucrats to come to conclusions on and experiment with humans on. Zedulani has already blasted out a great piece on this particular case as sort of a hook.

in his subsect, The American Saga. His headline is, yes, innocent people have been executed, but the death penalty is also slowly being phased out. Both points absolutely true, but if we're focusing on what you just mentioned about conservatives jumping to support the state executions and death penalty cases despite

the bureaucracy being an abject disaster that is often politically weaponized and just incompetent. Zed points out in his piece this number that is astounding. But it's, you know, again, you can look all of this up. In the past five decades, at least 200 people who've been executed have actually been exonerated after they were executed.

200 people in the last five decades. So that's not just cases that are murky. This case is absolutely murky. This is not a clean-cut case. It has gone fairly through the legal system. I don't need to adjudicate whether he's guilty or not because my position is just that it's wrong. But it's not a clear-cut case. And we have seen 200 times

that after people have died, at least 200 times, because there are cases probably still to come just out of the last five decades, but 200 times where people are exonerated, exonerated, black and white, clear-cut exonerations after being executed. So it's just, that's one, I think, very obvious argument against the death penalty that should

give many people who are distrustful of government pause, but just a stunning figure. Stunning, stunning, stunning. And maybe it's because of technological advances that, as Zed points out, these trends are moving in the other direction. But we still have a spate of executions scheduled for what, the next couple of weeks. There's a good Associated Press story on this. I mean, it's absolutely still happening.

Yeah, a huge uptick in them coming over the next couple of weeks. Totally wild. If we put up F2 here, which is a

quote from this local article, just to give you the background here. You know, faced with it, so faced with the DNA evidence and other new information in William's case, St. Louis County prosecuting attorney Wesley Bell, who defeated Cori Bush, sought to toss out the conviction on numerous grounds, including the results of the DNA testing and constitutional violations during the jury selection process. So this was the prosecutor's office saying that

After reviewing the way that things were handled They would they wanted to see this tossed out. It was so poorly handled that When then when they took the knife to get it tested the only DNA they found on it was a bunch of assistant prosecutors Who'd been who'd been improperly handling the evidence and so once that? emerged the Williams had no way of getting out of

They had no way of proving innocence and said, look, I'll take life. Just don't kill me. And the family was fine with that. Prosecutors signed off. But the Missouri governor and the judges insisted on moving forward with it. So if we can put up this next VO here, this is a footage of more than a million petitions asking for Williams' death.

execution to be stayed being delivered to the Missouri governor's office evidence of the just intense amount of public opposition to the state sanctioned killing and The governor just decided to go forward with it. Anyway, hmm now there was a moment on Jake Tapper's show that happened just last night where

Marcellus Williams, attorney, Innocence Project attorney, heard the news from the Supreme Court right before the interview began. Let's roll this element. Have you spoken to Marcellus today? The team has spoken with him today. And actually, we just spoke with him momentarily ago. We actually just got news that the U.S. Supreme Court has denied a stay. The U.S. Supreme Court has denied a stay.

That's horrible news. I mean, that's it. That's the end of that. There's just nothing else that can be done unless the governor has a change of heart, which seems unlikely. That is correct. Under what we have currently from the law and the governor tonight, Missouri will execute an innocent man and they will do it.

even though the prosecutor doesn't want him to be executed. The jurors who sentenced him to death don't want him executed. And the victims themselves don't want him executed. That is what will be the state of justice tonight in Missouri. Why do you think that the governor or the state Supreme Court, why did they deny him clemency? Why have they not stayed this execution?

And what we hear time and time again is this argument of finality. It's too late. Things should have been brought before. Things have been heard before, but they've never been heard with this evidence. They've never been heard with what this prosecutor knows and concedes to that Mr. Williams had an unfair trial, that the prosecutor admits that he struck jurors based on their race. But we have a system that

values finality over fairness. And this is the result that we will get from that. Yeah. Yeah. And at minimum, you would think that if you really want to get it right and you really got the evidence and you can prove the trial's unfair, try them again. Mm-hmm.

I mean, try him fairly. Well, but this is what's so, I think this is what is so partially harrowing and unsettling about these really contemporary modern death penalty cases is that he has been tried so many times. And it is still a question mark.

You know like we have gone through this this man has has sat so many appeals you mean right right like this this has been litigated over and over again for decades and the family has had to put up with it for decades the victims family has had to put up with it for decades and it's just Incredible how you can keep going and going this is I'm reading from st. Louis NPR

This is just a little bit more details on what happened because it was a lot of kind of back and forth.

They write,

I believe, Laura, yeah, both of these witnesses have since passed away. That's how long this case has been pinging back and forth through appeals and going on for. And to end with still, again, a question mark, the case study is an argument in and of itself against the death penalty, like the way that this has all been prosecuted for decades. There are five executions that are set to happen in the span of a week. The Associated Press has the story. The first one was on Friday in South Carolina.

There's another one, Texas, Alabama, and Oklahoma. And according to the Associated Press, it's the first time in more than 20 years that five executions nationally have been held within seven days. So I think Zedd is right to point out, and I think to some extent, as we were mentioning earlier, DNA evidence probably accounts for a lot of this, which is such a sad statement in and of itself.

Right now, this week, five. Yeah, and we didn't hear anything, by the way, from Kamala Harris on this, who, when she was district attorney, often used the argument in exoneration cases that, well, you may have a good point there, but you missed the filing deadline, or you didn't make this claim properly.

of poor council uh previously when you could have it's like well of course you didn't because you had poor council um so yeah her hands are not clean on this by any stretch yeah and i mean there's obviously racial um variables but also class variables incredible class variables so the new class conscious uh conservative movement to consider there you go

So bleak note to end on, but an important one. Ryan, glad you got back safely. Good time in Doha. Ryan Grim in the Middle East. I would be a little nervous. You've done some, your reporting is too good. It's too good for you to be perfectly calm. But it was totally fine. Yeah. Yeah. You're speaking for Georgetown, right? Yeah. I was at a Georgetown conference and did a couple of interviews for some

Stories that hopefully will pan out in the next couple of weeks. Hmm. Well, we'll be watching for those We will actually be back here before I think next Tuesday's show because the debate is on our next Wednesday show cuz the debate is on - Wow I guess I will be yeah, so it's coming right up. I'm filling for Saga on Monday, but then Tuesday, we'll all be here breaking points Cinematic Universe, that's right. Maybe I'll bring some ghosts. No Friday show this week. No Friday show this week. I

Sorry about that. Producer Mac, we should also clarify that we have zero paid sponsorship with Ghost. We just really like it.

But Ryan's been drinking coffee, so he has plausible. - That's terrible for you, but it is very good. - I don't know how it could possibly be terrible for you when it has 100% of four daily vitamins. - There you go. - Anyway, thank you so much for tuning in. BreakingPoints.com for the full version of this show right away to your inbox early. And it doesn't get cut up into little clips, so it's a nice little perk. BreakingPoints.com to subscribe. Thanks everyone for tuning in. - All right, see you next week.

High Five Casino is a social casino with real prizes and big Vegas hits at HighFiveCasino.com. The hottest games right from Vegas and all winnings go straight to your bank account. Hundreds of exclusive games, free daily rewards, and come back to get free coins every four hours. Only at HighFiveCasino.com.

High Five Casino is a social casino. No purchase necessary. Void where prohibited. Play responsibly. Terms and conditions apply. See website for details at highthenumber5casino.com. High Five Casino. CBS This Friday. TV's hottest show is back. Fire Country returns with a new season where Max Terriot stars as Bodie Donovan, now stepping into a whole new world outside of prison. The challenges are more dangerous and the stakes have never been higher.

Battling fierce fires and his own personal demons, Bodhi's still fighting his journey towards redemption. Get ready for explosive action, shocking twists, and intense small-town drama. Don't miss an all-new Fire Country, CBS This Friday, and streaming on Paramount+, part of CBS Premiere Week.

Good sleep should come naturally. And with the new Natural Hybrid mattress, it can. A collaboration between Lisa and West Elm, the Natural Hybrid is expertly crafted from natural latex, natural wool, and certified safe foams to elevate your sleep sanctuary and support a greener tomorrow. Breathable organic cotton and moisture-wicking Joma wool consistently provide cool and comfortable slumber. Every

purchase helps fuel Lisa's work with shelters and those in need. Visit Lisa.com to learn more. That's L-E-E-S-A dot com.