1/21/26: Zohran Calls For ICE Abolition, IDF Buckles To Ms Rachel, India Joins Fight Against Saudis

30:12I 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. Seems like just yesterday that the Two Guys Five Rings podcast was in Paris for the Olympics. And now we're heading to Milan for the 2026 Milan Cortina Olympic Winter Games. I'm Bowen Yang. And I'm Matt Rogers. And we'll join athletes from 93 countries as Two Guys Five Rings hits the Italian Alps for the 2026 Milan Cortina Olympic Winter Games.

31:00Open your free iHeartRadio app. Did we mention it's free? Search Two Guys Five Rings and listen now. What if mind control is real? If you could control the behavior of anybody around you, what kind of life would you have? Can you hypnotically persuade someone to buy a car? When you look at your car, you're going to become overwhelmed with such good feelings. Can you hypnotize someone into sleeping with you? I gave her some suggestions to be sexually aroused. Can you get someone to join your cult? NLP was used on me to access my subconscious. NLP, aka Neuro Linguistic Programming, is a blend of hypnosis, linguistics, and psychology.

31:40Fans say it's like finally getting a user manual for your brain. It's about engineering consciousness. Mind Games is the story of NLP, its crazy cast of disciples, and the fake doctor who invented it at a New Age commune and sold it to guys in suits. He stood trial for murder and got acquitted. The biggest mind game of all? NLP might actually work. This is wild. Listen to Mind Games on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. All right, so joining us now to discuss all this is Zeeshan Hafiz, who's running for Congress in Texas's 33rd district. Zeeshan, thanks so much for joining us.

32:22Thank you for the opportunity. It's a pleasure to be here. And thank you for the amazing journalistic work that you all do. Oh, man, buttering us up to start. This is going to go smoothly, I see. I truly mean it. I truly mean it. You're doing a great service for the progressive cause across the country, and I truly do appreciate it. Emily doesn't like to hear that for sure. Oh, the conservatives would say that I do a great service for the progressive cause. You do. You do. You do too, Emily. Oh, man. Oh, man. Now she's in trouble. So the reason we wanted to have you on is because you're kind of a different kind of congressional candidate.

32:53And so in the 33rd District right now, it's basically a three-way race. you're in third place. But the reason we think you have at least a fighting chance in there is that you have two members of Congress or is Colin Allred now a former member of Congress at this point? Technically former member. So you have Julie Johnson, who's a Democrat, and Colin Allred, who's also a Democrat, former football player who was going to run for Senate, but then kind of got elbowed out of that race and is now running against Julie Johnson in this kind of redrawn district. So Texas, as we all saw famously, redrew its districts, just like California's mother states did to try to goose the number of Republicans that could win in the state.

33:40So they're kind of cramming all the Democrats they can into the race. And my read is that if it was just you against a known member of Congress, then that's a pretty tough fight. You against two members of Congress who might split that kind of establishment vote could potentially let you slip into a runoff because Texas has this runoff system where if nobody gets 50%, the top two go into the runoff. So we just put up E6 again for a second to let you know what we were talking about kind of earlier in the show. This is in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of Jerusalem. The Israeli government just literally destroying UNRWA's headquarters.

34:25This is the UN agency in charge of doing relief, education, and health care for Palestinian refugees in Gaza, West Bank, in Syria, in Jordan, and so on. And so I'm curious, what role, first of all, are you taking AIPAC money? That's the Jennifer Welch question that every candidate now gets asked. And what role is Israel's ongoing genocide playing in congressional races now that we're in a kind of era of a so-called ceasefire? Absolutely. First off, it's not a ceasefire. There's been over 1 ,400 violations of the ceasefire. There have been over 500 people killed in Gaza, over 250 people killed in the West Bank.

35:15Those are just very conservative estimates. So I would not say there is a ceasefire by any means. The genocide continues. Absolutely, you can tell by the fact that I'm using the term genocide that I absolutely refuse AIPAC and all pro-Israel money. My two opponents, Julie Johnson and Colin Allred, have received a combined$700 ,000 from AIPAC and the pro-Israel lobby. And the fact of the matter is we need people in Congress right now that are willing to be on the right side of history, not only with the genocide. I think if you look at Colin and Julie, they're both establishment Democrats, as you mentioned.

35:48But on top of that, they do not stand on the side of abolishing ICE. They did not stand on the side of fighting for the affordability crisis with real solutions, like a real living wage of$20 per hour, affordable housing for all, providing universal health care through Medicare for all. These are real progressive issues. And the fact is that District 33 is now a district that Kamala Harris won by 32 points. And on top of that, this is a very low turnout district. In 2024, there was only 22 ,000 total votes in the Democratic primary. And in 2022, there was only 24 ,000 votes. It's a very low turnout race, a historic race where we have a progressive challenger up against two establishment Democrats who are both bought and paid for by the pro-Israel lobby.

36:32Well, the point about turnout rates is really important. That's insane. 22 ,000. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, is that are you sensing that this issue is what energizes or one of many issues, but probably one of the primary issues that energizes people to get involved in campaigns like yours and then to end up actually voting? I mean, primaries can be low energy, low turnout and all of that. So when you're trying to squeeze in in a race like this, do you find that's what right now when you're out there campaigning? This is one of those things that gets people going. Emily, this is the one issue that gets standing ovations, that gets the crowd excited, that gets people excited.

37:12Because I am the only one that's calling it. Do you find it's a lot of younger people? It's younger people. It's older people. It's people of color. It's everyone. Anyone of conscience. I think that numbers have said that 92 % of Democrats are against Israeli military actions in Gaza and what's happening. A lot of people are starting to see that it's a genocide. And I think this is a defining line and a defining moment in the Democratic Party this year that people, the primary voters will not support APEC-sponsored candidates anymore. And I think this is also a moment, to your point, Emily, where young voters are getting very excited because they want to do something about what's happening over there.

37:49They have seen the genocide unfurl on their social media in ways that have never happened in modern history and any other sort of action. So this is something that's not only energizing young voters, but it's energizing minorities and progressive voters, the labor union. A lot of folks are very excited about this. And my opponents, both Julie Johnson and Colin Allred, refuse to call it a genocide. One of my opponents refuses to even talk about it. She refuses to even discuss Palestine in any of the public forums that we're at, even though just last week she approved$3.3 billion more to go and commit this genocide on her name when Americans are dealing with an affordability crisis at home.

38:28You know, I've heard people say, and I think Ta-Nehisi Coates put it best when he said something like, people care about the issue because of the human cost, the human toll, but it's also a proxy for whether or not you're willing to kind of fight for anything at all. I think his quote was something like, if you're not willing to draw the line at genocide, how can I trust you to, you know, fight for democracy. So with that being said, in this Dallas district, what is the thing that people want you to be fighting for back in Dallas? Like, what is the thing that is animating people right now? I mean, there are a number of issues locally that are mattering to the local people in Dallas.

39:06One of the things is rapid transit. DART has recently been defunded by multiple cities within the Dallas-Fort Worth area. The federal government must come in and build a real transit system for Dallas-Fort Worth. But on top of that, it's the standard things that matter to Americans all across the country. Imagine if we were able to invest in a Green New Deal. The reason why we don't have a Green New Deal for Dallas-Fort Worth is we've been represented by people that are bought and sold by the oil lobby. I'm proud not only to be endorsed first by citizens against APAC corruption, but also citizens against big oil and track oil packs.

39:43So the fact of the matter is that we have a government that is being bought and sold and run by corporations, by foreign lobbies and by the billionaires. And I think the average American today is hurting. There's an affordability crisis and they are having trouble not only paying rent, but affording groceries and taking care of the fundamentals to take care of their family. They would rather have someone who's going to fight for free public education, someone who's going to make sure that we have free public universities, free public trade schools and free public colleges like they have in Europe and invest in kindergarten and 12th grade by providing actual increases to teacher pay.

40:19I think that in this country, it's a sham that ICE agents get$50 ,000 signing bonuses, while teachers are lucky to get$1 ,000 to$3 ,000 to go in very specialized fields. And teachers start out at pays that are less than$50 ,000, whereas ICE agents are making six figures. I think that's unacceptable, and our nation has the wrong priorities because we have politicians that are not willing to start fights on the right issues. Well, speaking of that, actually, let's put this post from Lindsey Graham up on the screen. This is E9. Over the conflict in Syria right now, Lindsey Graham has said, there's use of military force by the new Syrian government against Syrian Kurds and the SDF.

40:55That would create tremendous instability in Syria and the region and would tell me all I need to know about this new regime. If military action is taken by the Syrian government, I will do everything in my power to revive the Caesar Act sanctions, making them even more bone crushing. Now, of course, you're not running against Lindsey Graham. But right now, the Trump administration is facing criticism from Republicans and even internally that it's so focused on foreign conflicts from Venezuela to Canada to Greenland to, of course, basically all of the Trump is constantly talking about how he solved eight wars.

41:28And he just repeated today that the U.N. should have solved all of these eight wars that he solved. I noticed when we were talking about Israel earlier, you mentioned you very, I think you could tell us a little bit about this, but you pivoted to while we have an affordability crisis at home, that Republicans are doing X, Y and Z or your opponents are doing X, Y and Z while we have an affordability crisis at home. You talk a little bit about how making that connection is powerful with voters in your experience. I imagine you've noticed that's something that lands. Absolutely. Emily, that's a great point that you bring up.

42:02First off, Donald Trump has launched nine illegal invasions in the last year as a quote unquote peace president. The peace president has gone and essentially declared war on Venezuela without congressional approval, without there being a clear and imminent threat to the United States. So what he is doing is completely illegal and completely an impeachable offense. Instead of invading Venezuela, instead of fighting foreign wars, instead of potentially bombing Syria, Iran and other countries, like I'm sure Lindsey Graham and others on the extreme right wing of the Republican Party would want to do.

42:32The American people would rather us invest at home. And the fact of the matter is it's not just Republicans. It's establishment Democrats, the Julie Johnsons and Colin Allreds of the world that allow the Republicans to get away with this. Because the fact of the matter is they are bought and sold by the by AIPAC and the pro-Israel lobby. And AIPAC would love nothing less than for the United States to go and bomb Syria, bomb Iran and destabilize the Middle East. So whereas the American people would rather have someone who is going to fight for stronger unions, who is going to fight for veterans benefits.

43:03Veterans in my district are struggling. The VA is highly underfunded. Money could go to help providing better lives for the people that fought for our country. Instead of providing instead of making more veterans who are going to come back with PTSD, who are going to be under threat because we're declaring war on Iran or Syria or anywhere else. We should be instead investing in the people who have already had to survive these foreign wars, people who came back from Afghanistan, people who came back from Iraq, people who came back from Vietnam and had to deal with the same things that our government is doing again.

43:35I think the American people know where this leads us and they would rather us invest here at home. Why can't we do things like what Bernie Sanders has proposed and invest in millions and millions of affordable housing units so we can fight a real war? The war that we should be fighting is the war on homelessness. One of my local communities here has recently passed a resolution to ban homelessness. That is not a real solution. We should be fighting a war on homelessness by building affordable housing units all across the country so that everyone can live a dignified life under a roof under their head and their family's heads.

44:09That's what's important to the American people right now. Well, Zeeshan Hafiz, thanks so much for joining us and good luck in your race. We'll be tracking it. When's the primary? The primary actually starts with early voting on February 17th. It goes from February 17th to the 27th. The actual election is on March 3rd. And we hope to take down two pro-Zionist, pro-Israel, AIPAC-sponsored corporate establishment Democrats and bring a progressive blue wave. It happened in 2016, after 2016, when Donald Trump first came into power. And we hope that it will come again in reaction to his most recent attack on our government, on our democracy, on our civil rights.

44:49Yeah, I mean, and it's one of those weird situations where it's doable in the sense that like in Joe Crowley versus AOC, his election, I think 40 ,000 people, maybe actually something like 40 ,000 people voted. Like it's not many at all. This is way less than that. This is even less than that, yeah. Joe Crowley was actually about to be the Speaker of the House. He was one of the most powerful people in Congress. I'm going up against a one-term congressperson and someone who hasn't been in Congress who could not win a Senate seat. So this is an entirely winnable seat. And the American people, the people of District 33, are tired of these politicians that are being bought by corporations, being bought by foreign interests, and are not taking care of the American people at home and fighting for the issues that matter to the American people.

45:31So I encourage everyone who's interested in learning more about our campaign to visit our website, www.zshanfortexas.com. We'd love for you to phone bank, contribute, be involved. We're going to win this race. We're going to turn this country. If this country is going to go blue, if there's a plus 32 Democratic district, we don't need another corporate centrist Democrat. We need a true progressive who's going to fight for the values and start fights for us to go and support the American people and fight the real crisis, the crisis real home, the crisis of the affordability crisis. All right. Let's see if there's 10 ,000 people.

46:02It's not that many people out of a district of 700 ,000. We're saying 15 ,000 to be conservative based off of a 30 ,000 vote total. It's less than 10 ,000 just to get to a runoff because of the three candidates in this race. It's not that many people. And if you look historically, there's not many races across the country where it's just so few votes. So this is a great chance to be involved in some real progress with someone who's not going to fight for corporations, won't take a single cent from corporate PACs or anything else, who will end Citizens United and corporations' control over our government, and instead return the power to the only interest that matters, the interests of the American people.

46:38All right. Thank you, Zeeshan. Up next, we're going to be doing updates from the conflict in Sudan. Stick around for that, please. Thank you so much. Welcome to the A-Building. I'm Hans Charles. I'm Menelik Lumumba. It's 1969. Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. have both been assassinated. And Black America is at a breaking point. Rioting 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.

47:16To 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. Seems like just yesterday that the Two Guys Five Rings podcast was in Paris for the Olympics. And now we're heading to Milan for the 2026 Milan Cortina Olympic Winter Games. I'm Bowen Yang.

47:58And I'm Matt Rogers. And we'll join athletes from 93 countries as Two Guys Five Rings hits the Italian Alps for the 2026 Milan Cortina Olympic Winter Games. Open your free iHeartRadio app. Did we mention it's free? Search Two Guys Five Rings and listen now. What if mind control is real? If you could control the behavior of anybody around you, what kind of life would you have? Can you hypnotically persuade someone to buy a car? When you look at your car, you're going to become overwhelmed with such good feelings. Can you hypnotize someone into sleeping with you? I gave her some suggestions to be sexually aroused.

48:37Can you get someone to join your cult? NLP was used on me to access my subconscious. NLP, aka Neuro Linguistic Programming, is a blend of hypnosis, linguistics, and psychology. Fans say it's like finally getting a user manual for your brain. It's about engineering consciousness. Mind Games is the story of NLP. It's crazy cast of disciples and the fake doctor who invented it at a New Age commune and sold it to guys in suits. He stood trial for murder and got acquitted. The biggest mind game of all? NLP might actually work. This is wild. Listen to Mind Games on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

49:22Saudi Arabia has announced a deal with the Sudanese government to start buying its gold. We put up F1 here. So last year, something like 99 % of Sudanese gold was sold to the United Arab Emirates, which is basically a crime family that masquerades as a country that engages in a lot of money laundering and other services that are useful to Western governments and crime syndicates. about most of that gold, like the bulk of it, was sold through the black market. But even the gold that was sold through the regular market went through the UAE. Sudan is one of the countries that has kind of the greatest kind of stores of gold remaining.

50:17Gold prices over the last year have surged. Like if you were a gold bug, the last 5, 10, 15, 20, it's been a good run for you for a very long time. So now Saudi Arabia, as it's going through its hot war and its fallout with the UAE, is announcing that it's going to send the Sudanese, it's going to purchase Sudanese gold and put it through its own kind of processing facilities that it has in Saudi Arabia. This is all part of the crack up between these one time allies in the Gulf that is entirely reshaping relations everywhere from Africa into Asia. The UAE is backing the United Arab Emirates. They're backing what's called the RSF, Rapid Support Forces, which is if you remember the Janjaweed from the Darfur conflict back in 20 years ago.

51:17They're basically a derivative of the Janjaweed, which they carried out of genocide then. They're doing it again now. The UAE is arming them to the hilt. You put up F2. They even got into a border clash with Chad and are sort of apologizing for that. They're realizing they're kind of overstepping things a little bit here as their patrons are coming under intense pressure. Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan have teamed up to offer like a billion plus weapons package to the Sudanese army. If that comes through and the RSF's supply chains are cut off, it's going to be difficult for them to keep carrying out the assault that they're under, the offensive that is underway in Sudan now.

52:11Well, and give us the big picture ripple effect potentially of this as well. We can put the next element on the screen. This is from Reuters. And this was just from Monday. India UAE signed$3 billion liquid natural gas deal, agreed to boost trade and defense ties at leaders meeting. That's the Reuters headline, Ryan. Um, the international, I mean, it's, it's, it's crazy to see the, uh, it's not crazy. It's, it's predictable, but a proxy conflict like this bring in even bigger players than just Saudi and UAE. I mean, it's, it's all over, um, pitting people all over the world against each other in a proxy conflict that is primarily between them.

52:52Yeah. Yeah, exactly. This war between Saudi and the UAE really started in Yemen and then rolled into Sudan, where in Sudan it has taken the lives of hundreds of thousands of people. But yeah, to now rope in India, the way to think about it is that Pakistan and India could, oil and water, could not hate each other anymore. And so as Saudi Arabia has linked up with Pakistan and tightened its relationship a couple, was it weeks ago, maybe a month ago or more, inked a security agreement with Pakistan, which gives Saudi Arabia then the kind of nuclear umbrella of the Pakistani nuclear weapons. weapons so that they're tightening their relationship and so then as Saudi Arabia and the UAE fall out the UAE links up um with with India they also have um ideological sympathy with each other the UAE ironically is as as like hostile to Islam as as as a quote-unquote Muslim country could possibly be like they're out funding Tommy Robinson to go around like attacking Muslims Like, they're constantly whipping up Islamophobia in Europe.

54:13Like, the UAE, like, it's... I know, like, if you're just coming to this fresh, you're like, wait a minute, what? Well, yeah, it's strange, right? They're doing what? And there's, like, Arab Spring origins of this Muslim Brotherhood. Yeah, the UAE hates the Muslim Brotherhood, hates Qatar, which they call, like, an outcropping of Muslim Brotherhood. And they felt like the Arab Spring, which was pushing for democracy in the Gulf, was a direct threat to their autocratic rule, which, of course, it was. It is. They're like a couple thousand people ruling over this extraordinary amount of wealth and people and migrant labor.

54:54Like it's like apartheid doesn't even do justice to the level of inequality, political and legal and financial and economic that exists in their country. So they see any of that as a threat. They led the coup to overthrow Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. Egypt is now teamed up with actually Saudi Arabia in the Sudanese conflict. And so India also, and Modi in particular, they have as much hostility to Muslims as the UAE does. So there's some ideological affinity there. But more importantly, there's the money. Like India is a growing economy, needs energy. UAE has energy to spare. UAE can also do, like I was saying, like all sorts of financial services in the gray area that allow for that kind of world to flourish.

56:03And to make sense of it, we can put up F4 again. I heard from people last week who said that this map was actually like very helpful. It's not as if this is the first time that anybody has seen a map, but like in the news, for whatever reason, and also in our history books when we learn about these things, the kind of – the players are talked about as if they're all kind of sitting in a bar together rather than like laid out geographically in important ways and in ways that like are – define the relationships. So you have the Red Sea here, which is the critical waterway that runs through the Suez Canal into the Mediterranean and then also through the Gulf of Aden.

56:52So along that, that's everything. Like control of the world in some ways kind of runs through there. And so that's why Saudi and the UAE were fighting for the southern tip of Yemen. It's why both China and the U.S. have or does China still have a base in Djibouti? I know they did for a long time. But the U.S. has a massive military base in Djibouti. The, you know, Eritrea is split off from Ethiopia there. Ethiopia has no access to the Red Sea. Sudan has a bunch of ports along the Red Sea, which are which are critical to both Saudi Arabia and the UAE. and there obviously you have the border there between Egypt and Sudan.

57:38And also just look at how massive Sudan is. I mean it's just it's a huge huge country. And it used to be bigger the one you're looking at the bottom there is South Sudan which is which was broken off after the last the last genocide that unfolded back in the 2000s. Just full of resources. I mean we just we were talking about gold prices earlier but that's I mean it's not just gold. It's like we were talking about India. It's the liquid natural gas. It is. And to the west of Egypt there, you've got Libya. And so the UAE was building its ports throughout the Red Sea, was building its strength in Yemen and also in Libya because they basically run Libya now through Haftar.

58:16And so they basically had encircled Saudi Arabia. And there was then a clash in Yemen between Emirati and Saudi proxies. And after that, Saudi Arabia then attacked the Emiratis. And here we are with this continuing to play out. So now here comes India kind of inking this strategic deal with the UAE.

58:47Meanwhile, if the ICC is still allowed to do business, is it? No. Or just not against Israel? I mean, I guess we'll see, but was it ever really even allowed to do this? In Africa. In fact, there was this incredible quote. Yeah, that's true. This incredible quote from, it was obviously Lindsey Graham, who on a call with Kareem Khan, who was the chief prosecutor at the ICC, said, what are you doing going after? We can find the exact quote, but it was like, what are you doing going after Israel? The ICC is set up for African dictators. For Africa. For Africans. It's just. And so the ICC, within its remit apparently, says it is indeed going to try to bring charges against the RSF.

59:34Let's roll F5. Mr. President, excellencies, since I last addressed this counsel, the situation in Darfur has darkened even further. Darfuris, as we speak, are being subjected to collective torture. Rape, arbitrary detention, executions, mass graves, all perpetrated on a massive scale. This criminality is being repeated in town after town in Darfur. It will continue until this conflict and the sense of impunity that fuels it are stopped. The fighting is continuing despite the ICC. You can put up F6 here. This is also from DropSite. Intense fighting erupted on the north Kordofan-Kartoum border as the Sudanese armed forces and the RSF clashed fiercely for control of the strategic Amdurman-Bara export road, a key supply route linking central Sudan with western fronts.

1:00:40A large RSF force launched a surprise assault along the road with heavy artillery and drones used by both sides. Sudanese army units reportedly repelled the attack, inflicting significant losses on the RSF, while both sides continue to contest this vital quarter. This is all, if you can see that map there, headed towards a conflict over El Obeyed, which, as we said last week, estimates are somewhere between half a million to a million people sheltering. And if the ICC is announced, by the way, that it's prosecuting atrocities committed in El Fasher, which is the we talked about last week, could have been up to 150 ,000 people killed in El Fasher.

1:01:24which is an absolutely staggering number. Especially for the media coverage, by the way. Yes, compare that in your own mind. It's double the number of Palestinians killed as far as we know. The official death count in Gaza is half what the upper estimates are in the Al-Fasher massacre. And El Obeyed, if the RSF manages to take control, could see an even bloodier massacre. occur. And meanwhile, the famine and the health collapse continues. You put up F7, also from DropSite. The Sudan Doctors Network warns that the health system in South Kordofan is near collapse after more than two years of siege and ongoing fighting.

1:02:20Kadugli, it said, has five government hospitals and 10 health centers. About 50 % of facilities are out of service or operating at half capacity. Many have shut down entirely due to shortages of staff, medical supplies, and blood bags. The network warns the siege and where have made basic health care increasingly inaccessible for civilians. Just, I mean, to your point about the reaction to Gaza and the reaction to this, I mean, I think we covered Gaza constantly. And that's partially because we tend to think these things. We're funding it. Yeah, we're funding it. But we tend to think these things are important when you have mass levels of human suffering that is just ongoing and in the shadow of the world media's attention.

1:03:15That's how this stuff happens. Yeah, and in this case, the way that I would explain it as mattering to the United States is that the UAE is driving this in a significant way. Yeah. And the UAE is a top ally of the United States. We have empowered them throughout their rise into this, but they're becoming this little miniature power center on their own. But they are entirely vulnerable to American action. A little tiny push. if you cut off one flight from New York to Dubai or London to Dubai one a day it's reduced one a day like what they would absolutely freak out this is before you get into sanctions or investigations or anything else well but just just backing off a time you know what you know completely purchased all of Washington and has bought off basically every college and university in the United States that matters.

1:04:32So we'll talk about it, but nobody else is going to. I mean, I was just going to say the way that Donald Trump likes to do business. Yeah, they bought him. Well, years ago. I mean, I think there's been a Trump Tower in Dubai since like 2005, but I'm looking at a Forbes headline now from October. And the headline is, this Gulf nation is powering Trump's money-making machine. And here's a sentence from it. Eight years later, from 2017, the UAE, home to the metropolises of Dubai and Abu Dhabi, has become a hub for the Trump organization's international expansion. So, again, just saying and reiterating your point about the level of pressure that UAE is sensitive to, there are a lot of different pressure points just from the way Donald Trump likes to do business as president, meaning he has business deals in places that he likes to then pressure politically geopolitically so there are a lot of different avenues uh for for change in this situation but right and the thing that you would you would think given that you'd be like oh well this is this is baked like they've completely bought the president and all of our institutions no not necessarily like the only thing that makes it a live fight is that saudi arabia is against them right now and also has bought everybody.

1:05:46Yep. So someone's going to have to pay a little more money. It's a mafia racket. Yeah, we got a fair fight. Yeah, you're going to have to have to pony up a little bit more. Well, Ryan, thanks for continuing to cover this at DropSite and thanks for continuing to push for these updates every week on Wednesdays. That is going to do it for us today. And I will be gone next week. I think I'll be in Monday with Sagar because then I'm going to New Mexico. Oh, fish. To see a little bit of fish. So I'll see you down there. All right. Well, yeah, if you're in Mexico, you'll see Ryan. And if you're a premium subscriber, you'll see us in just a bit on the live Ask Me Anything that we're about to broadcast here from the studio.

1:06:25So please, please join us for that. And subscribe if you can. Do the free options. Of course, subscribe on YouTube. It helps us so much if you do that. And it helps us a lot if you subscribe wherever you get your podcast. But if you're coming across our videos, give us a subscribe. It's really, really helpful. You can also get a premium subscription over at breakingpoints.com. That's how you get access to the AMAs and more great content. The videos hit you. The full show hits your inbox every day before it's available to the public in one piece. So breakingpoints.com, that's where you can go and you will see Ryan Monday.

1:07:01And then we'll do another one of these the week after when you're back tan, rested, and ready for fish. There you go. See you then, everyone.

1:07:22It seems like just yesterday that the Two Guys Five Rings podcast was in Paris for the Olympics. And now we're heading to Milan for the 2026 Milan Cortina Olympic Winter Games. I'm Bowen Yang. And I'm Matt Rogers. And we'll join athletes from 93 countries as Two Guys Five Rings hits the Italian Alps for the 2026 Milan Cortina Olympic Winter Games. Open your free iHeartRadio app. Did we mention it's free? Search Two Guys Five Rings and listen now. 1969, Malcolm and Martin are gone. America is in crisis. At a Morehouse College, the students make their move. These students, including a young Samuel L.

1:08:04Jackson, locked up the members of the Board of Trustees, including Martin Luther King Sr. It's the true story of protest and rebellion in Black American history that you'll never forget. I'm Hans Charles. I'm Menelik Lumumba. Listen to The A-Building on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Black history lives in our stories, our culture, and the conversations we still have in today. This Black History Month, the podcast I Didn't Know, Maybe You Didn't Either, digs into the moments, perspectives, and experiences that don't always make the textbook. Let me tell you about Garrett Morgan.

1:08:42Bruh had to pretend he didn't even exist just to sell his own invention. Listen to I Didn't Know, Maybe You Didn't Either, from the Black Effect Podcast Network, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or simply wherever you get your podcasts.

1:08:59This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human.