1/14/26: Trump Threatens Iran, Miller Says ICE Has Immunity, Rogan Rips ICE, Saudi UAE Hot War

27:32This is Ryder Strong, and I have a new podcast called The Red Weather. It was many and many a year ago in a kingdom by the sea. In 1995, my neighbor, Anna Trainor, disappeared from a commune. It was hard to wrap your head around. It was nature and trees and praying and drugs. So no, I am not your guru. And back then, I lied to my parents, I lied to police, I lied to everybody. There were years, right, where I could not say your name. I've decided to go back to my hometown in Northern California, interview my friends, family, talk to police, journalists, whomever I can, to try to find out what actually happened.

28:10Isn't it a little bit weird that they obsess over hippies in the woods and not the obvious boyfriend? They have had this case for 30 years. I'll teach you sons of bitches to come around here and my wife. Boom, boom. This is The Red Weather. Listen to The Red Weather on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This show contains information subject to but not limited to personal takes, rumors, not so accurate stats, and plenty more. What's up, man? This your boy, Nell Green from the Broken Play Podcast. Look, it's the end of the season. The playoffs are here. But guess what?

28:46It ain't the end of your season. You can always tune in with Broken Play Podcast with Nav Green on the Black Effect Podcast Network. Another team who ain't going to the playoff. The Chiefs. Oh, it's a wrap. It's time to rebuild. Who your MVP right now then? Drake May up there. Josh Allen up there still. Oh, my boy, Matthew Stafford. Where the hell both nicks at? He ain't too far behind. He did all this talking. What Matthew Stafford is doing statistically, bro, is crazy. Bro, you know I ain't no Josh Allen fan. But Matthew Stafford got better weapons. Caleb Williams. Hey, he should be in that conversation.

29:22In what conversation? MVP? MVP. Listen to Broken Play with Nav Green from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or whatever you get your podcast. Back here in the United States, President Trump had said one protester death is too many in Iran. Maybe that's not the case here in the United States. Stephen Miller came out forcefully. They call him prime minister or whatever. Prime Minister Stephen Miller came out forcefully in defense of the absolute immunity of DHS officials. Let's roll his aggressive defense of them. To all ICE officers, you have federal immunity in the conduct of your duties.

30:03And anybody who lays a hand on you or tries to stop you or tries to obstruct you is committing a felony. You have immunity to perform your duties and no one, no city official, no state official, no illegal alien, no leftist agitator or domestic insurrectionist can prevent you from fulfilling your legal obligations and duties. And the Department of Justice has made clear that if officials cross that line into obstruction, into criminal conspiracy against the United States or against ICE officers, then they will face justice. Okay, well, that is certainly one way to respond to the kind of national outrage at the killing of Renee Goode, which new polls show Democrats, obviously, overwhelmingly believe it was an improperly legal shoot.

30:52independents overwhelmingly believe that and and only i think what was it i think i saw two polls but roughly 60 percent of republicans said that it was appropriate so that's you got a majority even a super majority of almost a super majority of republicans but still only 60 is awfully low to if if you're going to then come out this aggressively and say ice ice agents if you're watching this, you have complete immunity to do whatever you're doing out there in the streets. Overall, it's been broken down into like roughly, this is, again, it's an approximation, but you're seeing like a third, a third, a third of people who say absolutely not.

31:36Yes, it was supportive and people who are kind of up in the air and polls. But to Ryan's point, when you break that down by partisanship, independence, not great for the administration, serious for the administration and for Republicans that are up in the midterms. And obviously helpful to Democrats that are using this energy politically. But the politics aside, I do want to make a point because you and I and Crystal and Sager have disagreed on the circumstances of the good killing. And people can go watch Last Friday's show to see more of that. But even so, what Stephen Miller just said is arguably dangerous for the ICE agents themselves because he said absolute federal immunity.

32:19And he said it with such gusto. It is technically correct. You might believe it to be true. Well, it's technically correct because he said federal. And they are currently in charge of the federal government, meaning that it is almost a 0 % chance. He'll pardon you, basically. Right. States can prosecute in these cases. They are doing it in the Rene Good case, in fact. And the federal government appears to be making that work harder and is intentionally not cooperating with the state investigation, but saying absolute federal immunity as though you are covered, which is the clear implication of what Stephen Miller just said.

32:58It's dangerous for reasons that you and I would agree on, which is that you have a lot of new ICE officers out in the streets with the bravado coming from the administration and actual threats. you are asking for danger. And secondly, dangerous, but then potentially as well, because people have this overconfidence that could be literally dangerous for protesters and the agents themselves by stoking the flames. And that could be legally dangerous for the officers who can be prosecuted by the states. That's a very good point. And so when we have a decent sized law enforcement audience here at Breaking Points.

33:41And so if you're in that segment, and particularly if you work for ICE or CBP, take note of what Emily just said. You don't have state level immunity. Federal immunity is debatable, but the administration will probably pardon you, even if by some chance you don't end up with that. And also what federal prosecutor at this point is going to try to take up the case when it's so clear, the administration's making it so clear they're not interested in do that. They're not prosecuting John Ross on investigating him. Instead, they're investigating his wife, saying that she may have committed a whole bunch of felonies out of that scene.

34:19So yeah, okay, maybe you're okay for the next several years federally. But Emily's point is key. The fact that he added that in, he's trying to play you. He's tricking you. He's trying to make you think that you have overall total immunity. You do not. There are states that will come after you. And the statute of limitations on murder is the rest of your life. So bear that in mind. And also then process that for a second and think, wait a minute, this person just lied to me basically to try to get me to carry out his agenda. He created this 3 ,000 person a day or whatever it is, insane quota that could never be reached.

34:58without violating the Constitution. Now he needs people to go out and break the law so that he can cash checks that he didn't have the balance to pay for when he first wrote them. And he's gonna then hang me out to dry. He's gonna lie to me, get me to be as aggressive as possible. And then when the pendulum swings back, I'm gonna be the one that is left hanging out to dry. And I actually do wanna correct what I just said about the 30-30-30. When you look at polling, it's actually in multiple polls here, over 53 % of people who say it was unjustified. So that's according to Quinnipiac. There's a YouGov poll, and then there's a, I think it's Data for Progress via Zateo that did a poll on this.

35:39And so those numbers for the administration, like that's, I was misremembering, that's actually very like negative for the administration to lean into this, which is what they've done. when you see Stephen Miller out there tripling down. It's something like 75 % of people say they've seen the video. So like... Saturation. J.D. Vance can say whatever he wants about it. Right. People have seen it. Right. So yeah. So yeah, it's wild that they're really leaning into this. Leaning in further, Donald Trump, you can put this next element up on the screen. Donald Trump said, do the people of Minnesota really want to live in a community in which there are thousands of already convicted murderers, drug dealers and addicts, rapists, violent, released, and escaped prisoners.

36:23Escaped prisoners? What? Dangerous people from foreign mental institutions and insane asylums and all, on and on and on. He finishes at the end, Fear not, great people of Minnesota, the day of reckoning and retribution is coming. And so he is surging more federal resources and federal troops kind of into, not military troops, but security services, into Minnesota. And the videos that just continue to come out of there, the reporting on the ground, just continue to get to the place where like normies are like, what is going on here? Like you had this one, I don't know if you saw this one where a woman is, she comes across a protest and she says to the cops, like I'm disabled, I have a doctor's appointment right over here.

37:13of doctor's appointment. There's some yelling and shouting. They open the door. They rip the disabled woman out of the car. Rather than just unbuckle her seatbelt, they come in with a box cutter and just like slice the seatbelt, drop her on the ground, pick her up. Everybody's screaming. There's still the case of the guy who was picked up at the gas station and carried away unresponsive who has not been heard from since.

37:42and the protests are going from morning until night looks like you know smoke grenades like it's just it's like total chaos it's really frustrating because for me two things can be true and what we disagree on is that I vehemently oppose people obstructing ICE I also though vehemently oppose ice encroaching on American civil liberties. I vehemently oppose. And that would be, I mean, we could have a longer conversation about whether ice in and of itself is an encouragement on American civil liberties, but that's for another day. And I vehemently oppose the security theater. And it goes into obviously very dangerous places.

38:24And that's why I'm not, I'm genuinely not trying to deflect, but it's why during the Biden administration, you and I talked about this several times. You create a situation where Bill Malugian of Fox News posted these names of genuine convicted violent criminals, people who haven't been convicted of immigration crimes, but who have been convicted of violent crimes, who are in Minnesota right now because they came over the border during the Biden administration. He posted a full list of all of these different people. That is a real thing. And it makes me furious at the Biden administration. The Trump administration is going to lose public support.

39:04They're calling Ryan right now to say. Who's calling it? But they're going to lose public support for any immigration enforcement, which is roughly what happened during their first term as well. Yeah. Polling went in the other direction. Biden then overreacted to the polling going against Trump on immigration. basically opened up the border and didn't enforce it because they thought that was most politically viable. And it was a wild overcorrection. Yes. Trump took, uh, Trump had the American people on his side, but, you know, not a huge majority, but he had a majority of people on his side when it came to immigration, he has completely lost it.

39:41And he's turning people in, he's turning people against all of his immigration policy, all of it. And so instead of taking the billions of dollars that he added to immigration enforcement and hiring detectives and other officers to go and find these people who he says are escaped prisoners and criminals, dangerous people, escaped from asylums, like instead of going to find them, he's just doing this thing where they're going around saying papers, please. So like American citizens, like show us your ID. But that's why I get like Uber lines. Yeah. But that's why I get pissed also at obstruction of ICE.

40:24And even the people who have done some of the trainings have said, always comply. This is civil disobedience. Just comply with the officers, which I think is important. But even then the Jonathan Ross was dragged in June in the arrest of a convicted sex offender, non-citizen convicted sex offender. Right, so those are the people there should be, the focus should be on. American citizens do not have to give immigration authorities who are just wandering the street their papers. That is a, it's Fourth Amendment right and a Fifth Amendment right. Fundamental basic rights of a citizen in this country, if they say papers please, no.

41:07You do not have to get them. Now, maybe you could say that we should all say, yes, sir, here's my papers. Digital ID, that's what they're doing in the UK, partially to crack down on the immigration that they let in. This is what Keir Starmer is doing right now. Yeah, and right. And so the right has been against the digital ID. The right has been against, the right has been for liberty. And now having them be on the side of the papers, please, folks, is crazy. And also, what Miller wants to do is not what he ran on, right? They ran on going after the criminals. Now, like, it was pretty clear what they were actually really going to do, I think you could say.

41:50But this, like, we're going to find 3 ,000 people a day and get rid of them, that's not actually, and we're going to do that by going to Home Depot and going to Uber lines and raiding, you know, farms and hotels. and construction sites, that's not what people voted for. And that matters because now you have lost the public. And now the public is out blowing whistles in their face everywhere they go. Let's talk about this next case, Ryan, of the agent. This is going to be before. You were posting a bit about this. Why don't you tell us about what's happening here? This is also in this is also in Minnesota, right?

42:32So we can go roll the video. You'll be able to see it on your screen. So this is a 17-year-old Target employee who's an American citizen telling these ICE agents, including Bovino, to F off. And he's like walking away from them and they're walking after him. People say that they saw some evidence of him making contact with the ICE agents. I have seen this a whole bunch of times. I've never seen it. Here's the ICE agent hitting him, throwing him down on the ground, putting his knee on his head. You then later see... There he goes. You hear him say, who should we call? In another video, from a Target employee's perspective, he says, call my mom, call my mom.

43:18He then shows up. Here he is. They dumped him miles away in a Walmart parking lot after they realized that he's a citizen.

43:33So he's bleeding. He's all messed up. He's clearly struggling. And DHS came out and said. This individual, this is the quote from DHS on January 12th. This individual is arrested for assaulting federal law enforcement officers under 18 U.S.C. 111, assaulting, resisting, or impeding federal officers. Right, and he wasn't. Like, he was picked up, he was brutalized, and then he was dumped out. Well, legally, they're going to have to make a case based on impeding. Okay, but they said they charged him. They didn't. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Where's the charge? Well, that's what I'm saying. They're going to have to rely on a very, based on the video, at least, to your point.

44:15But there's no evidence that they actually arrested him. They picked him up, dumped him. Like, when did they arraign him? When did they take him to jail? When did they do the things that they're claiming they did? If he violated federal law, why was he dumped in a Walmart parking lot a couple hours later? Well, I mean, we've seen cases like this. There have been cases where U.S. citizens— Don't you have to at least take them in if you're going to charge them? ProPublica— You can't just charge them in the car. Yeah, I would think so. ProPublica did a long rundown—what was this, a couple of months ago now— on the cases that have involved U.S.

44:46citizens. And as of then, it was a little database, basically, where you could go through and check. And a lot of the cases were people who genuinely had been, you could make a pretty obvious case that they were, quote, impeding or getting in the way, that type of thing, not just swearing or cussing or whatever or illegally filming, that sort of thing. On the other hand, there were at least a handful of cases that I found extremely disturbing at the time. We've covered many of them of U.S. citizens who did get unduly detained or arrested or whatever it was. And that's what I think is really like the numbers are what they are, not just because because there was all of this polling over the last year showing people actually were pretty supportive of, quote, mass deportations.

45:33even like six months into the Trump administration, people were still fairly supportive of that. Before they saw what it was going to look like, yeah. Well, no, but even as it was happening, people were fairly supportive of this idea that, yes, there are people who are here in this country who are not violent criminals who may have to go. On the other hand, when you start seeing ICE with masks on doing this to U.S. citizens more than once, that's, I think, explains the numbers are where they are right now. We can roll here Bovina on Hannity. So he went on Hannity. He is obviously, his position is like regional, he's a regional CBP commander.

46:10Yeah. So let's roll this clip of him on Hannity a couple of nights ago. Now, is that justified use of force? To me, that it's not even a close call. Sean, we call that means intent and opportunity. Did that individual have the intent? Look at those minutes leading up to the shooting and we will see what I would consider some pretty important intent. Did that individual have the opportunity? Yes. Did that individual take that opportunity? Yes. A 4 ,000 pound missile is not something anyone wants to face, especially in a split second decision-making process in a very already inhospitable environment.

46:53Hats off to that ICE agent. I'm glad he made it out alive. I'm glad he's with his family. So that was Bovino on Rene Good, of course. And go ahead, Ryan. I think it was Stephen Lockjaw with some vocal fry. Right? Doesn't that look like Lockjaw except... Someone tweeted that he sounded like a Red Scare host. Yes, but looks like Lockjaw. It is an unsettling combination. It is. Welcome to the A-Building. I'm Hans Charles. I'm Menelik Lumumba. It's 1969.

47:33In Atlanta, Georgia, at Martin's alma mater, Morehouse College, the students had their own protest. It featured two prominent figures in Black history, Martin Luther King Sr. and a young student, Samuel L. Jackson. To be in what we really thought was a revolution, I mean, people were dying. 1968, the murder of Dr. King, which traumatized everyone. The FBI had a role in the murder of a Black Panther leader in Chicago. This story is about protest. It echoes in today's world far more than it should. And it will blow your mind. Listen to The A-Building on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

48:18This is Ryder Strong, and I have a new podcast called The Red Weather. It was many and many a year ago in a kingdom by the sea. In 1995, my neighbor, Anna Trainor, disappeared from a commune. It was hard to wrap your head around. It was nature and trees and praying and drugs. So no, I am not your guru. And back then, I lied to my parents. I lied to police. I lied to everybody. There were years right where I could not say your name. I've decided to go back to my hometown in Northern California, to interview my friends, family, talk to police, journalists, whomever I can to try to find out what actually happened.

48:57Isn't it a little bit weird that they obsess over hippies in the woods and not the obvious boyfriend? They have had this case for 30 years. I'll teach you sons of to come around here and my wife. Boom, boom. This is The Red Weather. Listen to The Red Weather on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This show contains information subject to, but not limited to personal takes, rumors, not so accurate stats, and plenty more. What's up, man? This your boy, Nav Green, from the Broken Play Podcast. Look, it's the end of the season. The playoffs are here. But guess what?

49:33It ain't the end of your season. You can always tune in with Broken Play Podcast with Nav Green on the Black Effect Podcast Network. Not a team who ain't going to the playoffs. The Chiefs. Oh, it's a wrap. It's time to rebuild. Who your MVP right now then? Drake May up there. Josh Allen up there still. Oh, my boy, Matthew Stafford. Where the hell both nicks at? He ain't too far behind. He did all this talking. What Matthew Stafford is doing statistically, bro, is crazy. Bro, you know I ain't no Josh Allen fan, but Matthew Stafford got better weapons. Caleb Williams. Hey, he should be in that conversation.

50:08In what conversation? MVP? He should be in it. Listen to Broken Play with Nav Green from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the iHeart Radio app. Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. To use the word unsettling one more time, let's go ahead and roll this clip of Joe Rogan, who had Rand Paul on for a very interesting edition of the Joe Rogan experience, himself expressing the sentiment of being unsettled about what he has seen from ICE. And remember, obviously, Rand Paul is Libertarian, Republican member of Congress, but he comes from the libertarian branch of the Republican Party and the broader conservative movement.

50:47So questions about ICE weigh heavily on the libertarian mind always and have for a long time. How did Rand Paul respond to Rogan? Let's take a look. You don't want militarized people in the streets just roaming around, snatching people up, many of which turn out to actually be U.S. citizens that just don't have their papers on them. Are we really going to be the Gestapo? Where's your papers is that what we've come to it's also very ugly to watch someone shoot a u.s citizen especially a woman in the face right where it's like i'm not i'm not that guy i don't know what he thought and again this is a guy who had almost been run over but it just looked horrific to me i mean when people say it's justifiable because the car hit him it seemed like she was kind of turning the car away i think you could make an argument when you're working right along the border or at night with large groups that there's a lawlessness to the cartels that hiding the identities of ICE along the border.

51:49It's a little harder to make the argument. And I saw this image in a courthouse in Chicago where it's a big elevator and the ICE agents all have masks on and they're arresting people and it's all women and children in a big elevator in a courthouse. It's like, really? I don't think you really need to be wearing a mask. Well, they're worried about being doxxed and, you know, they're finding that happening. But our local police have to do that and they don't wear masks. You see what I mean? The local police go to the courthouse to arrest somebody and the bright lights of the city during the day don't wear masks.

52:21But again, the local police have to state their name and badge number. The local police have always been here. The ICE element is completely new. Right. Or at least at this scale. I'm saying that for most of the regular arrests, you probably don't need to have them wearing masks. That's what I'm saying. So Rand Paul offered some defense of ICE, but what you heard him saying in that clip was right, right, as Rogan was talking about the optics of watching a woman be shot in the face. And I don't mean just the optics of that for the administration politically, but what that does viscerally to people to watch a woman be shot in the face.

52:53And that's where you're seeing this polling come from. We can put the next element up on the screen. This is a YouGov poll from January 9th through 12th. So that was conducted from last Friday to this Monday. So in the wake of what happened to Renee Good and you see a net abolishing ICE has received net positive support in this poll. So support for abolishing ICE is at 46 percent. Opposition is at 43 percent. I would imagine that's in the margin of error. So either way, it's basically split. And again, Ryan, this is what we said earlier in the show. That's what happened in the first Trump administration.

53:36I mean, not at this level, of course, and immigration enforcement wasn't at this level. But the numbers were going exactly in this direction. And it's why Democrats hopped on politically the abolish ICE train and why people like AOC and other squad members were getting a lot of traction with the abolish ICE movement at the time. And now the public is like really moving along with it. Not according to Third Way, which is the kind of like centrist Democratic news organization. Bad timing for them for this memo that they put out. You can put this next element up. They said they implore Democrats do not use the term abolish ice.

54:13Quote, the impulse is emotional. The slogan is simple, but politically it is lethal. And we had Chris Van Hollen on the program Monday and asked him about this. He was sort of almost there, but he was saying, you don't want to imply that some of the necessary functions that are carried out by ice would also be abolished. And I don't think, and some people want that to be the case, but that's not what most people mean when they say abolishize. When I say abolishize, I mean, it is a rogue, ungovernable agency. And when you have a government, you need everything in it to be responsive to the government and to the people.

54:52Like, you can't have rogue agencies. You can't. Like, that's antithetical to the notion of self-government. And these guys were already rogue in 2019, 2020, 50 % of their officers have been hired in like the last year. They're not rogue from this administration. I mean, they're very, very responsive. Well, we'll see. To the duly elected president right now. That's, well, we'll see. Like, if, yeah, we'll see what happens if they try to, you always think that? You always think that your attack dog is under control? That maybe they are? And that's a very good point. I just mean right now. Right. That's a very good point.

55:37I wonder if the administration wanted to change tactics, if they could get them under control. I don't know. Maybe they could. Could a democratic government? I highly doubt it. I think that's a great point. But that's why, again, like libertarians, and we'll ask Thomas Massey about this later in the show. And if you want all these videos, make sure to subscribe to the channel. We've learned lately that if you haven't subscribed yet, it helps us a lot to subscribe on the channel itself, not even a premium subscription. Just hit subscribe on the channel so you see the videos in your feed or your podcast network because we do have Thomas Massey coming up later on today's show.

56:13And I'm very curious to get his take on this because Rand Paul, I don't know, I heard him kind of conflicted. And I think a lot of people are conflicted, but not like this, this ICE polling from YouGov that we just put up on the screen is pretty interesting because what you see among independents, so people who describe themselves as moderates, are almost 45 % in the strongly support or somewhat support category when it comes to abolishing ICE. independence 47 percent so independence and moderate self-described independence and moderates are almost at a 50 50 split on supporter opposition to abolishing ice and what's the republican number the republican number is only about um so among trump voters only about 15 percent support that's a lot among republicans 14 it actually is i was thinking that when i saw about that 15 percent of Trump supporters Trump voters want to abolish ICE well the reason that that's a lot is because I mean first of all I'd like to see that number broken down regionally but it's also important because on the margins that's makes a big difference when Trump is already has a somewhat fragile coalition of people who basically need to think the left is worse in order to vote for Donald Trump at any given moment and so that's a genuinely a you know it sounds like a small number it is compared to the moderates and independents.

57:36I mean, that's huge for the, for Republicans right now, but that's tough. Yeah. And ICE doesn't seem to have much to worry about in the near future. I can put up B9. Democrats don't, there's, there's been a real push by some Democrats to make the next funding fight around ICE funding and shut, and shut either the government or shut DHS down. There's some hope that they could, and Van Hollen was talking about this. Some hope that they could pass other appropriations bills so that only DHS would be shut down. I think they're dreaming. I think they'll have to shut the entire government down. And according to this reporting, not a whole lot of appetite among Schumer and other leaders.

58:17We'll find out. We'll see for that kind of fight.

58:33and Black America was at a breaking point. Writing and protests broke out on an unprecedented scale. In Atlanta, Georgia, at Martin's alma mater, Morehouse College, the students had their own protest. It featured two prominent figures in Black history, Martin Luther King Sr. and a young student, Samuel L. Jackson. To be in what we really thought was a revolution, I mean, people were dying. 1968, the murder of Dr. King, which traumatized everyone. The FBI had a role in the murder of a Black Panther leader in Chicago. This story is about protest. It echoes in today's world far more than it should.

59:15And it will blow your mind. Listen to The A Building on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is Ryder Strong, and I have a new podcast called The Red Weather. It was many and many a year ago. In a kingdom by the sea. In 1995, my neighbor, Anna Trainor, disappeared from a commune. It was hard to wrap your head around. It was nature and trees and praying and drugs. No, I am not your guru. And back then, I lied to my parents. I lied to police. I lied to everybody. There were years right where I could not say your name. I've decided to go back to my hometown in Northern California, interview my friends, family, talk to police, journalists, whomever I can to try to find out what actually happened.

1:00:03Isn't it a little bit weird that they obsess over hippies in the woods and not the obvious boyfriend? They have had this case for 30 years. I'll teach you sons of a** to come around here and my wife. Boom, boom. This is The Red Weather. Listen to The Red Weather on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This show contains information subject to, but not limited to personal takes, rumors, not-so-accurate stats, and plenty more. What's up, man? This your boy, Nav Green, from the Broken Play Podcast. Look, it's the end of the season. The playoffs are here. But guess what?

1:00:39It ain't the end of your season. You can always tune in with Broken Play Podcast with Nav Green on the Black Effect Podcast Network. Another team who ain't going to the playoffs. They're Chiefs. Oh, it's a wrap. It's time to rebuild. Who your MVP right now then? Drake May up there. Josh Allen up there still. Oh, my boy, Matthew Stafford. Where the hell both nicks at? He ain't too far behind. He did all this talking. What Matthew Stafford is doing statistically, bro, is crazy. Bro, you know I ain't no Josh Allen fan, but Matthew Stafford got better weapons. Caleb Williams. Hey, he should be in that conversation.

1:01:15In what conversation? MVP? MVP. Listen to Broken Play with Nav Green from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or whatever you get your podcast. Let's move on to Sudan, UAE, and Saudi Arabia. Let's do it. So an incredible kind of crack up between the Saudi and UAE coalition happening over the past several days and weeks and accelerating in recent days. You start with C2 here. This is a story that we published over at DropSite by Iona Craig that I would highly, highly recommend. I want to highlight two parts of her story. She writes here, without the UAE's command structure and without air cover from their patrons in the flat desert landscape of eastern Yemen.

1:02:06The Southern Transition Council's collapse in the first week of January was as precipitous as its gains had been a month before. Further waves of Saudi airstrikes quickly routed STC forces. As one SEC fighter put it in a video posted on social media, quote, we went to Hudramat and Al Mara with a large force and high-end equipment and returned on buses. That's about as a dramatic a turnaround as you can imagine. What she's talking about here is that for the last 10 plus years, or going back more than 10 years ago, the UAE and Saudi Arabia were collectively fighting against the Houthis. They were a coalition against the Houthis with the United States supporting them against the Houthis.

1:02:48In recent years, the UAE and Saudi forces became rivals, but had some sort of a detente with the Houthis being the main aggressor. However, recently, Saudi Arabia has clearly decided that the UAE has gotten way too aggressive in the region and in Africa and pushed back and bombed a shipment of arms that were coming in to the UAE's fighters, which then caused the UAE forces to just basically completely unravel. You know, what took them 10 years to build collapsed in 48 hours. An incredible Mohammed bin Salman moment then unfolded. This is the guy who, MBZ, the head of the UAE, was warned, the guy that you're trying to put in the throne here in Saudi Arabia, and he effectively did put MBS in the throne, is impulsive.

1:03:41You're not going to be able to control him. MBZ said, no, no problem, I got him. What has he done since? Well, he started out, he brought a bunch of super rich Saudis into the Ritz-Carlton, tortured them, took their money. He then coaxes Khashoggi into, Jamal Khashoggi into a consulate in Turkey, butchers him. He invites the Lebanese prime minister to Riyadh for a meeting, kidnaps him, forces him to resign on video. You remember this several years ago? If this man asks you to attend a meeting, my recommendation is not to go. Don't go. So the guy, that prime minister went back to Lebanon and took it back.

1:04:20He's like, I don't resign. I only resigned because he made me to. He made me. So yes, so he invites, so MBS invited 50 plus leaders of the Southern Transition Council to come to Riyadh. It's going to be good. We'll talk about our differences. The head of it, Al Zubaydah, said he would come, did not get on the plane, instead got on a boat and went across the Red Sea to Africa. Let's test his judgment. 50 plus of the other STC leaders went to Riyadh. We can put up C3. This is also from Iona Craig. She writes, a delegation of more than 50 flew from Adan to the Saudi capital on January 7th. Instead of joining the group, the group Adara Salsabeda, instead secretly left by boat to Somalia.

1:05:08Meanwhile, the delegation in Riyadh is believed to be being held incommunicado. STC officials in Aden say they have been unable to contact any of the groups since they traveled. Dropsite News called several of the STC leaders held in Saudi Arabia but could not reach any of them. Family members of the delegates have similarly been unable to speak to the party since they left Yemen on January 7th. An STC official still in Yemen told Dropsite that communication with the leadership in Riyadh had been cut off and there are strong indications they are under immense pressure. To your point, if you get an invitation to Riyadh, do not go.

1:05:46Do not go. Do not go. What are you doing? Immense pressure is probably doing a lot of work there. Like I can only imagine the the immenseness of the pressure that they're that they're currently under. We put up C4. This is our from friend of the show, Sami Hamdi. This is the guy who actually was arrested in Sacramento or Northern California by the Trump administration. We had on, you can go check out that interview. Yeah, held for a couple weeks. You want to do this one? Well, he, I mean, he posts here that MBZ is, quote, reeling from MBS's sweeping onslaught of his empire. Somalia cancels his contracts with the UAE and turfs MBZ's bases.

1:06:26So that is something that's happened and important to keep in mind here. Erdogan is close to establishing a defense pact with Riyadh and is conferring with the emphatically resurgent crown prince of Yemen, on Yemen, Somalia, the Red Sea, and Sudan. India is avoiding antagonizing Saudi Arabia and has strayed from the UAE by refusing to recognize Somaliland, and MBZ's STC proxy in Yemen has dissolved. Plus, MBZ, as Sami Hompdi puts it, quote, is struggling to find a single regional power to lend support or mediate or stop the unraveling of his empire. Ryan, And the theory, and I saw this from actually Quincy Institute and Anel Shaleen, who we've had on before, just writing that the MBZ strategy is a chaos strategy.

1:07:14It is to foment chaos in the region rather than the preference of MBS, which is the exact opposite of that, to try and get everybody in lockstep with MBS rather than having total chaos consume the countries in that area. Yes, I think, and I think that's well said. And it's, the UAE and Israel are very tightly aligned at this point. And Israel has a very similar approach to the region, which is that you want to empower kind of proxy groups and separatists in every country that you can to then minimize the power of the central government of that country. so that you then, by comparison, have more freedom to operate.

1:08:03Israel's goal, obviously, lock down its territory and expand where it can. UAE, and we can put up this map here so people can understand exactly what's going on here. So the UAE's goal, so if you look at the UAE, they're up here over in the Persian Gulf. so if you just study this map everything will start to come into focus of like exactly what they're doing so look at the southern Yemen there, Gulf of Aden so the Houthis have most of Yemen but what the UAE and the Saudis control is the part that's just along the Gulf of Aden and just along the Red Sea. Right across from them there is Somaliland so they're trying to break away this little piece of Somaliland.

1:08:51And then if you look at Sudan, you've got ports all along the Red Sea there. If you look just to the west of Egypt, there is Libya, which the UAE is now practically, you know, the UAE's factions are practically in control of. And so what you see right in the middle of all that? Saudi Arabia. They feel like they have been, while they weren't paying any attention, completely encircled. Now, if you have a lot of oil that you're pulling out of the ground in Saudi Arabia, but you look around and every point that you have to ship that oil out is controlled by your rivals, the UAE. The value of your oil has just gone way down.

1:09:35Like the part, what the UAE is trying to do is control the flow of commodities and ports. And I was going to say, meanwhile, if we put the map back up on the screen, One thing that you should take a look at here is just the size of Sudan because Ryan mentioned commodities. Sudan is massive. And it's a huge, huge proportion of the world's gold. So gold prices, on the other hand, have been up. Surging. Yes, have been surging. And so to your point about controlling commodities, the Sudanese element of that is not insignificant for MBZ at all. Yeah. And so where this matters in, so why this matters for Sudan is that the UAE is the main backer of what's called the RSF, which is the faction that is fighting there that is actually, that is kind of surging at the moment.

1:10:27And the UAE has, the Saudi and Egypt kind of back the Sudanese armed forces who are by no means angels. So this is not, this is not, this is not like some type of conflict between good and evil here. But it's the UAE has funneled extraordinarily advanced technology to the RSF, which the RSF has used to recently turn the tide in the war. Now that the collapse of the UAE's mini empire threatens the supply lines of the RSF. So I think we're likely to see some type of reversal. If we don't, what matters here is the city of El Obed. So in October, the city of El Fasher, after an 18-month siege, and we covered this earlier, 18-month siege fell to the RSF.

1:11:19There were estimates of about 250 ,000 people in that city. Something like 150 ,000 of them remain unaccounted for and are presumed to be dead. That would be twice as many of the confirmed killed in Gaza. And that happening just in a matter of weeks to months. hopefully the experts are wrong about that and then they maybe they snuck out somehow and went somewhere else uh but that does not remotely appear to be the case there appears to have been a massacre of just absolutely biblical proportions uh the the burning of bodies to cover it up as well as the digging of you know extraordinary numbers of mass graves uh el obeyed has people think maybe half a million people, but because of the conflict, there could be as many as up to a million people who have come to the surrounding area.

1:12:12It's surrounded on three sides by the RSF. You can still get out to the east. But if that city fell, there is real fear and forecasts by the people who've been following this that you could see another massacre of hundreds of thousands of people at the hands of the UAE's proxy forces here in Sudan. It's so ugly. And to your point, I mean, the reason we're doing this because it's happening in the shadow of public attention. Yeah. And these are people who are alive who could be saved if the international community somehow can just put a stop to this. One way that it could be stopped is the weapons flow stops.

1:13:03So if you put up C6, there is real evidence here. And here's another kind of useful map there of the kind of UAE's encirclement of this region. this is from an organization Critical Threats. They say, Egypt and Saudi Arabia have reportedly withdrawn overflight permissions for arms flights from Abu Dhabi to eastern Libya, while Somalia has banned Emirati military flights and expelled the UAE from Bosaso, a key transit hub. The disruption comes as RSF offensives intensify, and as Saudi Arabia is reported to be brokering a$1.2 billion arms deal for Sudan's army. So there is hope that the RSF is going to lose access to the weapons that it needs to carry on what is just an absolute, like, cataclysmic slaughter of people.

1:13:56The problem, if Sudanese armed forces then gets this$1.2 billion, you know, we could be looking at a slaughter in the reverse fashion, as the revenge is carried out for what happened in El Fasher and elsewhere. Yeah, and a lot of it's happening in Darfur. Right, yes, which we were paying attention to 20 years ago. Meanwhile, so the politics here, the U.S. basically will not admit that the UAE is doing this. Here's a clip from Representative Sarah Jacobs pressing the State Department to just acknowledge that it's actually the UAE, our ally, that is doing this and watch him kind of dance around the question of just saying the letters UAE, place C7.

1:14:49Do you agree that the UAE continues to provide material support to the RSF?

1:14:57Thank you, Ranking Member Jacobs. I would, again, refer back to the Secretary's comments on the critical role of ending external support and our continued efforts to work with all actors on that front. Okay. And what is the Department doing to utilize its significant leverage in the form of arms sales, including a$1.4 billion sale of helicopter and F-16 fighter jet parts that President Trump circumvented Congress on to push the UAE to stop its support and hopefully prevent another mass atrocity? Yeah. Thank you. As far as broader arms sales issues and those relationships, I'd have to refer to my colleagues either in our political military bureau or our near eastern affairs bureau.

1:15:37It's not something that I'm directly involved in. For a sense of what this, what a conflict like this is like, we did want to play one footage with a little viewer discretion advised. It's not remotely gory or anything, but it is. It's jarring. It's jarring. Yeah, that's Emily. That's a good word for it. It's jarring. We put up C1 here. so this is a this is a group of RSF fighters we're getting trained and you can see the kind of instructor wow that happened even faster than I was ready for you can see the instructor there talking to these recruits and there's a drone overhead and just in the blink of an eye the entire the entire group platoon whatever is just gone nobody's alive which raises all kinds of questions about the nature of war today and like what, like how you moved, like if both Saudi Arabia and the RSF, I mean, both Saudi Arabia and the UAE are putting billions into this and sending drone technology across this kind of barren landscape, it's just going to be a robot fueled killing field for it.

1:16:51And it could, we talked about Angola. we got to wrap because we got Elizabeth Warren coming in a minute. We talked about last week about the Angolan civil war, which unfortunately you had to miss. But that was a case where even after the U.S. and others and South Africa withdrew their support for Jonas Savimbi's like rebellion, he just refused to put down his guns. There was even a U.N. negotiated, US-backed everything election. And he got like 40 plus percent of the vote or something. He could have had like a bunch of members of parliament and like, he just refused, said no, and went back into the bush for another 10 years of war.

1:17:38And so I worry that like, I'll have a lot more greys. You'll have some greys and we'll be here 20 years from now still talking about this if we don't, I don't know what. Well, as Ryan mentioned, we're going to be doing this on Wednesdays in the near future just to provide updates. And we can talk about the famine conditions next week. Yeah. Oh, it's dire on a week-by-week basis. So make sure to subscribe if you want those videos in your feed. And we will be heading into our interview with Elizabeth Warren now.

1:18:29This show contains information subject to, but not limited to personal takes, rumors, not so accurate stats, and plenty more. What's up, man? This your boy, Nell Green from the Broken Play Podcast. Look, it's the end of the season. The playoffs are here. But guess what? It ain't the end of your season. You can always tune in with Broken Play Podcast with Nav Green on the Black Effect Podcast Network. Not a team who ain't going to the playoffs. They're chief. It's time to rebuild. Listen to Broken Play with Nav Green from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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