10/15/25: Saagar Destroys Pete Hegseth, Dems Push Historically Old Sen Candidate, Pakistan Massacres Protesters, Bari Weiss Debunked

24:14but has spent the last 10 years as an as an oysterman oyster farmer and has run as a kind of populist anti-war anti-genocide candidate just a one of these baritone truth speaking guys and there was there was hope among democrats that the party leadership had seen that running the same kind of milquetoast democrats around the country and particularly in maine against susan collins who has beaten five of these types fairly easily, that they had seen that we need something different. Maybe we need these tatted up guys that we don't understand who just answer questions with yeses and nos when they're asked.

25:01Maybe we need that. That hope was dashed by the Democratic Party jumping so fulsomely behind Janet Mills. Let's roll a little bit of Governor Mills here. was E1. What do you say to people who say what we really need now in the Democratic Party is younger leadership? And while Governor Mills has been a great governor, she's 77 years old and we need younger leadership. What's your response to people who say that? It's a fair point and it's a legitimate consideration. God knows it's a consideration for me and has been these many months I've been thinking about it and people have been urging me to run regardless of my age.

25:38But you know what? I don't think I could live with myself if I didn't do everything I can to reverse what's going on in Washington, things that are harming Maine people. Sure, I could go, you know, I'm not a rich person by any means, but I could just retire, go to my camp and fish and read books for the rest of my life, I guess. But boy, I couldn't live with myself if I did that. Not when the times are so urgent, so dangerous, and things are happening that are threatening the health and welfare of main people every day. I can't live with that. And so I have the energy and the time and I want to give it my best shot.

26:15If there's some Democratic cope to be had out there, Ben Jacobs posted it, if you can put up E2, he says, look on the bright side here. She would only be what? She's younger than 11 sitting senators. So she'd be only the 12th oldest. So she would be the oldest freshman in history, but the 12th oldest sitting senator. What does that tell you about our system? It's starting out because the Senate is a place you go and you build seniority. The Senate is a place where it's more dignified to die of Alzheimer's. You don't enter at Alzheimer's age. I didn't say that she had Alzheimer's. I'm just saying it's more dignified to spend a decades-long career there And then to die, you know, if basically wheelchair bedridden and Alzheimer's ridden, you're not supposed to enter at the age where all of that is a possibility.

27:12But I guess, you know, records are meant to be broken. Records are meant to be broken. And that is what Governor Mills is dead set on. It's an amazing response from the Democrats because they've been getting so much pressure from their base about weakness and not thinking, not rethinking their strategy. and Biden's age was something that Democrats kept telling their base was not something they should be concerned about. And so they thought, okay, well, maybe they are doing something different here. They've got this guy, Graham Plattner. He's really interesting, running in Maine. And no, they come in and find the person who would be the oldest freshman senator in history.

27:52So here's E3. Here's the case she's making in her launch. Folks, do you want Democrats to take back the Senate? Well, I'm Governor Janet, mills and i'm running to flip main senate seat blue susan collins has sold out main and bowed down to special interests and to donald trump but that ends now so chip in five dollars today and let's win this and i think if she were wildly popular a lot of partisan democrats would be like okay all right we'll take one more super old person in the senate what what's it matter like she's definitely going to beat susan collins and that's really what matters whereas Because polls that match Plattner against Collins and Mills against Collins show that Plattner has much more upside, like significantly more upside against Collins because Plattner can pull from independents and Republicans in a way that Mills can't.

28:44Mills is a well-known figure in Maine. Yeah, she's the governor. You like her or you don't. But let's give the caveats, all right? Maine, insanely hard state to poll. Remember, Susan Collins' opponent at one point. was up by seven. How much did Susan Collins win by? Like six, eight, a lot. So it was a 13-point differential, notoriously one of the hardest states to poll. I am curious how much this will be a test then of Democratic leadership and of name ID versus a social media more driven campaign like Graham Plattner. For example, one of the things that the governor has on her side is that the Chuck Schumer machine is now throwing behind her entirely.

29:28Let's put this up here on the screen. It's actually super interesting. So the DSCC and Janet Mills have formed a joint fundraising committee together called the Maine Senate Victory Fund for 2026. But before we even get to Plattner's response, you've got to explain what that means because that's effectively an endorsement without an endorsement. Yes. Basically, it is that endorsement. And what it does is it opens up a campaign finance mechanism that allows big money to flow into a vehicle that can be used to support Janet Mills. And so that means all of the New York donors, and in particular, people have been like, why won't Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer just come out and condemn Netanyahu, what he's doing?

30:14Why do they keep doing this very unpopular thing? And the answer for a lot of it is the donors that are going to fund the national effort to take back the Senate don't want them to do it. So it's these kinds of donors who are then going to flood the main Senate race with money. And they can go much beyond the individual max that would, you know, you can you're capped out at like, you know, 7600 or whatever for like primary in general. But with this joint victory fund, you can give a lot more money. And so this means that she'll have all the money that she'll need in the primary. Plattner has raised, I think, four million dollars from small donors, basically, since launching his campaign.

31:03He'll probably raise another million from Janet Mills getting in from people being so angry. Like you're seeing people come out and endorse David Hogg's group, actually the College Democrats of America, which are usually a pretty kind of party aligned. Yeah, they go along. Because they're careerists. Yeah. They used to be. These College Democrats are different now. Interesting. Like they're shaking the party. I didn't know that. So they just endorsed Graham Plattner. Wow. Which is interesting because these are kids who want jobs with Chuck Schumer. Right. Well, maybe they used to. And now they're going against.

31:34It must be different. They are. Right, because the college dams that you and I grew up with were the most like Hillary, John Kerry. We had the president, vice president on the show. These are not party hacks anymore. Fascinating. And so David Hogg's behind him. So I saw Charlotte Clymer endorsed as a Democratic operative saying like I wasn't – she said I wasn't going to endorse. But seeing the DSCC get in is infuriating. And so I'm endorsing Graham Plattner. We can read Graham Plattner's response. It's almost a gift to him in some ways. He says Chuck Schumer should be focused on fighting. It's the same side.

32:12I mean, the same element. Chuck Schumer should be focused on fighting Donald Trump and protecting health care for millions of Americans, not meddling in a main primary. D.C.'s choice has lost to Susan Collins five times in a row. We can't afford a sixth. So I actually think that there's some real advantage to Plattner here because he now solidifies his brand as independent of the Democratic Party establishment. Like they are literally running somebody against him to try to stop him. In a country and particularly in a state where fealty towards the party establishment is seen as a demerit, that actually would be a benefit.

32:54I think Mamdani is actually boosted in the public perception by the fact that Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer won't endorse him. Because it makes him look more independent. Like, this guy's serious here. So if he can beat Janet Mills, then I think he actually comes into the general against Collins much stronger among independents and Republicans than if he had just kind of coasted to the primary victory. for people that haven't seen him speak. Here's a little clip. We can roll the next side. This is Plattner. Can you please share your feelings on ice? So right now, armed, masked, secret police are going around the country kidnapping American citizens, kidnapping people that are here legally, abusing people because of the color of their skin.

33:49It's disgusting. one of the reasons i want to go to the senate is that when we have power again i want to haul all of these people and the ones that made them do it in front of a senate subcommittee the american people how they can justify their illegal and unconstitutional behavior there's mr uh platner now okay we have enough time so we can have the debate i i'm not saying what he said there was bad. However, Mr. Plattner, I've had beef with Mr. Plattner since he posted a certain viral video where he had a constituent, because I know he listens to the show, by the way, so this is free advice for you.

34:31No, we don't have it right now. Crystal and I have argued about it in the past. He was asked specifically about illegals taking health care benefits. By like an anti-immigrant person at a town hall. Sure. We can call it anti-immigrant for your purposes. Not a friend of his, right? Yes, yeah, by somebody who was again. Okay, and his response was, and this was celebrated by the left. And they clipped it. They clipped it and they posted it. His response was, we can't blame her because she's getting bad information. Now, there is a concept amongst Republicans, something known as the Hick Lib, which is somebody who is in a rural Republican area but is a shit lib through and through.

35:10I personally would argue that, yes, his affectation and all of that is great. But is it not the most elite, lib-coded response in the world to say that your belief is because of a lack of information and a lack of education? To me, that is one of the most condescending things that you could ever say about somebody is that because they are basically an uneducated shit, basically a Fox News watcher or whatever, that that is where the belief that the mindset is one where you can only hold that belief if you are uneducated. That is the definition of a Hicklib and elite liberal response. And no wonder it went viral.

35:53I'm buying some bunch of New York City liberals and a bunch of other people who are living in Brooklyn. And we're like, yeah, he's schooling these Hicks who are out there in the middle of Maine. So I'm curious for your response. I'm curious for your response. So don't tell me how Crystal responded because I don't want to be. Don't tell me yet. Tell me afterwards. I agree with you. I would not have said it and I definitely would not have clipped it as representative of the way that I want to talk to independents and Republicans because it is a matter of fact that something like 8 million-ish people came across the border in a historic fashion under the Biden administration.

36:35Like that happened. Yeah. She's not wrong about it. Yeah, it's literally a fact. So to tell her that she's wrong about that. Now, well, she was talking about health care, health care, specifically dollars. Right. Now, I will tell you what Crystal said, and I don't even necessarily, well, I do disagree with it. But what she said, just to be entirely fair, was that you hold that position because you're being sold a different story and that the response is not to pit people against each other. It's to create a universal system so that people are not feeling as if they're, now my response was, we have to live in a world of finite resources and we can't live in one where a bunch of people who are not even high school educated from Guatemala get to come here and get free health care.

37:15I think that's fucking nuts, personally. But my point is that that Plattner response seems literally cooked in a lab to appeal to a bunch of liberals' idea of what a Hicklib is supposed to look like in Brooklyn or elsewhere. It's like, yeah, he's schooling these uneducated. I don't know. It's incredibly condescending to me personally that somebody could only hold that belief if because they're uneducated it's it's frankly preposterous and so i don't know that's my one thing of a hold up it all just seems too good to be true the affectation the lobster fisherman i looked a little bit into his background like you said he served in black water that's like that's a little weird but i was you know lived here in dc went to gw the same school as me so it's like okay well you know maybe we're not so far apart there mr graham in terms of living in the big city before we went back to fish lobsters.

38:08Maybe that's where the ideology comes from. That's my personal suspicion. Anytime I see something like this, the last person who reminded me of this was John Fetterman. And so I would remind you all, how did that work out? As I've said before, I knew him when he was a bartender to tune in back 20 years ago. Throwback. And so I think he's always been, I don't think he had to evolve to this new position. He does suffer from the comparison with Fetterman because Fetterman betrayed the left so fundamentally. Not just the left, the Democratic Party. Fetterman's approval rating with Democrats is wildly underwater.

38:46Kyrsten Sinema levels are worse. And Plattner just keeps saying, all I can do is prove to you that I'm not John Fetterman. And he will tell you directly. And he says it a lot. I don't think he's John Fetterman. I don't. But I'm just saying that is the only person in modern memory who I can think of who had the same affectation and the same, oh, he wears his little hoodie. He wears his hoodie. He's one of us only to come in and, I mean, who knows what happened to him with the injury. But eventually just becoming pro-Israel and basically a Republican. Fetterman was a rich guy who went to Harvard.

39:23Yes. and then became mayor of a small town with dad's money or whatever and had to put a lot of this on. Well, I'm glad we can admit all of this now. I don't know how he always said that. Also, by the way, huge weed head. Just saying. Whereas Plattner, genuinely middle class, actually served in the country. I'm not denigrating the man personally. He served the country or any of that. I'm saying that the ideology, which leads one to say that a person who has a different belief than you can only be because of lack of education is quite literally the mindset that lost Democrats the election and is the ideology of the people who make$150 ,000 a year and think that because they went to state school that they're better than everybody else.

40:04That's all I'm saying. It's elitist and in the Marxist world, they call it like false consciousness. Oh, interesting. Like that you're accusing someone of, they have the wrong consciousness that they ought to have because they're just deluded for different reasons, propagandized, et cetera. Of course, there is a lot of propaganda around immigration. So I can understand an attempt to try to thread the needle on that. What I would have done on that particular one is what I've said before, is that hospitals are required to serve everybody. If people come in uninsured, we all pay. It's just better to – it's actually better to insure people.

40:41But the Democratic bill does not allow people who are illegally to be covered. Frankly, it should, for the reasons I just said. And we want to save our rural hospitals, or you want them to go under. That aside, there's an interesting contrast going on about who populist Democrats are going to be between Plattner and Dan Osborne. And Dan Osborne is not Democrat, actual independent. But he takes a harder line on immigration. Well, he's in a deep red state, right? He's in an R plus 50 state or something. I don't know the actual number. I'd have to go back and check, but I don't know how much. And so he's like, look, I want to secure border.

41:17Right. And he's willing to just, and he basically just pushes that issue aside. He's like, yeah, I want to secure border. And then he will say he does not support, like, masked thugs going around scooping people up. I mean, Klattner's on better ground. If I'm being honest, like, here's the truth. Kamala won the state 52-45 to Trump. Trump lost it by seven points. Like, that's a lot. Okay. So you're already living in a state where Susan Collins is much more of an outlier. And so, yeah, I mean, it does kind of make sense to basically be a lib who's got the working class application who can culturally connect.

41:54I mean, it doesn't that doesn't seem disconnected at all. Like it seems to me like any Democrats probably win the state in this environment. I just personally found that clip as if it was some great new invention by the left. I'm like, you know, to be honest, again, I think that is quite literally the epitome of the problem with elite liberalism is you can only hold a different belief because you're uneducated. Reminded me a little bit of when McCain said about Obama, no, ma 'am, you know, he's not an Arab. Oh, I do remember that. He's a good man. Yes. And people at the time like all applauded it.

42:27Right. But at the same time, we're like, are you saying that an Arab can't be a good man? Yeah. Good point. I remember that. I remember that well, actually, because like I said, he got a lot of praise. He's like, no, man, no, he's a good man. He's not Arab. He's a good man. You're like, wait, what? That's kind of a weird quote. Yeah. What do you mean by that? Maybe we'll give him the benefit of the doubt. I don't know. We did because the bar was so low. The bar was low. That's true. I mean, I guess he did prove it out because his life's mission was to bomb as many as he personally did. That's true.

42:57So whatever. All right. Last thing. You've got a big update for us on Pakistan. I'm just going to sit back and let you roll. Welcome to the A-Building. I'm Hans Charles. I'm Menelik Lumumba. It's 1969. Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. had both been assassinated, and Black America was out of 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. To be in what we really thought was a revolution.

43:40I 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.

44:10What do you do when the headlines don't explain what's happening inside of you? I'm Ben Higgins, and if you can hear me, it's where culture meets the soul, a place for real conversation. Each episode, I sit down with people from all walks of life, celebrities, thinkers, and everyday folks, and we go deeper than the polished story. We talk about what drives us, what shapes us, and what gives us hope. We get honest about the big stuff. Identity when you don't recognize yourself anymore. Loss that changes you. Purpose when success isn't enough. Peace when your mind won't slow down. Faith when it's complicated.

44:48Some guests have answers. Most are still figuring it out. If you've ever felt like there has to be more to the story, this show is for you. Listen to If You Can Hear Me on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

45:26literally to seduce the wives of powerful Americans. What? And he was really good at it. You probably won't believe it either. Okay, I don't think that's true. I'm telling you, the guy was a spy. Did you know Dahl got cozy with the Roosevelt's, played poker with Harry Truman, and had a long affair with a congresswoman? And then he took his talents to Hollywood, where he worked alongside Walt Disney and Alfred Hitchcock before writing a hit James Bond film. How did this secret agent wind up as the most successful children's author ever? and what darkness from his covert past seeped into the stories we read as kids.

45:58The true story is stranger than anything he ever wrote. Listen to The Secret World of Roald Dahl on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. So we have a genuinely extraordinary story developing out of Pakistan that really almost defies belief. Walk you guys through this role. F2 here. Incredible amounts of violence unfolded outside of Lahore this week. This is a policeman chasing down a pro-Palestine protester, trying to shoot him in the back. There's much worse video that has emerged online, though very, very little has been reported about this anywhere, whether it's Pakistan media, which is entirely locked down, or around the world.

46:45We are hearing that the death count could well be over 1 ,000 people. and just try to sit with the extent of the massacre that we're talking about here. Before we get into the details, the context here is that this happened, this started right around the exact same time that Pakistan's prime minister, Shabazz Sharif, was in Egypt with the rest of the Arab and Muslim countries celebrating the ceasefire deal. And these things are not disconnected at all. Uh, Shabazz Sharif is in power because they flagrantly stole the election back in, um, February of 2024 and have Imran Khan in prison. Uh, the United States has been dangling the threat of supporting the release of Imran Khan to basically corner Pakistan's militaries.

47:38Pakistan's military is currently in control. They operate through Shabazz Sharif and, but they operate, they operate at the blessing and the courtesy of the United States, which at any moment could basically signal you have to let Imran Khan out. And so Pakistan's military basically is doing anything the United States wants as a result. So let's roll for the, just to understand what's happening in Egypt while this extraordinary violence is unfolding in Pakistan. Let's roll F6. Prime Minister Sharif of Pakistan, and also I have to say my favorite field marshal from Pakistan, who's not here, but the prime minister is here, and you're going to give his regards.

48:19Where are you? There you go. Thank you very much. Do you want to say what you said to me the other day? Would you like to say what you said the other day? I think it was so nice. Pakistan had nominated President Donald Trump for Nobel Peace Prize. for his outstanding, extraordinary contributions to first stop war between India and Pakistan and then achieve ceasefire along with his very wonderful team. And today again, I would like to nominate this great president for Noël Peace Prize because I genuinely feel that he's the most genuine and most wonderful candidate for Peace Prize because he has brought not only peace in South Asia, saved millions of people, their lives.

49:37So Shabazz Sharif is kind of infamous in Pakistan for those obsequious and kind of embarrassing speeches that he gives to people like Trump or Gulf leaders or basically anybody that Pakistan needs money from or needs political cover from. But so the party in question here is known in Pakistan, that was the victim of this massacre, known as the TLP. So TLP are basically a product of the Pakistan military over the years. So when you have a military dictatorship, in order to kind of stay in power over the decades, they create all of these different political factions that have some tiny bit of independence, but are effectively run either by the ISI or the Pakistan military or both.

50:25And TLP is one of them. And TLP is these are hardcore far right religious fundamentalists that could be deployed for different strategic or tactical reasons by the by the Pakistan military. And so to say that there are not a lot of good guys in this story would be an understatement. Like usually when the TLP is out there protesting, it's to try to like, you know, get somebody executed for having an affair or having a nose ring or something. Like not the kind of people that make sympathetic figures to Western liberals like myself, for instance. Um, yet, so the TLP was deployed here, um, to protest against the Gaza war and, and to protest a little bit about Pakistan getting a little closer to Israel and, and hinting at some type of normalization here.

51:22Uh, it's, uh, Saad Rizvi, who's the head of the TLP, um, announced this protest during his, uh, Friday prayers. Well, then you might be thinking, wait a minute, TLP, which is a creation of the Pakistan military, is going to be protesting against Pakistan? Like, what on earth is going on here? And this is where it gets so diabolical. And what I'm going to share is basically our analysis, but it's highly informed by people with serious knowledge about what's going on here. So why on earth would the military encourage protests against itself? Well, one is obvious on the geopolitical stage, it would be a way to tell the U.S., like, don't push us too hard when it comes to, like, normalization with Israel because, look, we've got problems back at home.

52:11That's only one little part of it, though. I think what's really going on goes back to this November 26th, 2024 protest in support of Imran Khan. You had thousands of people come out into the streets, we covered here, saying, you know, free Imran Khan. The security forces massacred huge numbers of people. And we published here like exclusive video and other documents that we had got that showed the extent of the massacre and also that it was planned and organized ahead of time by the security services. that this was not a something that got out of hand. They deliberately instigated this. And the violent crackdown basically wiped out public protest on behalf of Imran Khan.

53:05And so I think the so the military saw we know for a fact they saw this as a success. So what they did is they're playing that card again, but this time with the TLP to get to get them under control. So what they're signaling here is that if we do move forward, as we move forward with better relations with Israel under pressure from the U.S., there will be no protesting against this. And so it was Monday morning. And you can roll, I think it's, you can just roll this as I'm talking here, some of the footage that did emerge out of Pakistan. So the march was supposed to go initially to Lahore. With negotiations, they were able to persuade the marchers to move instead to Maridki, which is a town kind of north of Lahore, where there's less space of support for the TLP.

53:56And you then have this outbreak of shooting and shelling. One person said they saw more than 600 bodies on the ground, like absolute carnage. Saad Rizvi sent a negotiating team before this broke out to try to settle this. that negotiating team was arrested. He organized another negotiating team, sent them in. It happened anyway. Right up until the violence started, he was pleading for this not to go down. We understand that the decision had already been made, that they were going to carry out this violent crackdown to send this signal that there will be no pushback against this. The fact that, so we did find some coverage of it in Pakistan media, which is aligned with the military.

54:50So like controlled by the military. And that really tells you a lot because it's like, okay, if they are allowed to report on this, and this is where we saw the interview with somebody saying that's more than they saw 600 bodies. Like why is the Pakistan military allowing that to be aired because it's a signal. In other words, what good is a spectacular display of violence against protesters if you don't tell the country about it? So they're very carefully balancing the amount of information that gets out about this massacre so that everyone in Pakistan knows that it happened so that they understand you will not protest for Palestine.

55:35But not so much gets out that there's international pressure on them, that there's international condemnation of it. And that's a very tight rope to walk. It seems to have worked. So far, they're walking it. This was Monday. Today's Wednesday. But it's still going on. So after this, after the massacre in the streets, you started having house raids of all these TLP people, which, again, like it's interesting because a lot of Pakistanis don't like TLP. Like these guys are thugs and goons and like they're they're they're mobs that go around like stoning people. Like so we don't have any sympathy for them.

56:14As one person I talked to said, this is the first time they protest something good and also the first time they get massacred or did something good. um and so that's so that's where we are now uh very like and they are walking the rope like there is right now this is basically the only coverage we'll have a story at drop site about this um this is basically the only coverage that you're seeing around the world of this um massacre that could be like more than a thousand people getting killed that is a ton of usually a huge story like report the reports about bodies just getting thrown into trucks and dowsing chemicals like it's it's horrifying and it's and it's deeply horrifying to think that uh something like this can happen and nobody even knows about it actually while you're talking ryan there's some i'll get your live reaction pakistani air force carried out a wave of airstrikes against taliban affiliated sites and military bases in kabul and throughout other provinces.

57:15Yeah, so this comes... What's up with that? I thought they supported the Taliban. They funded them. I can't keep up. They backed the Taliban when the Taliban were fighting the U.S. Right, of course. While we gave Pakistan money to do that. Makes a lot of sense. Right, because then we would... It was their argument for why we needed to fund them, because look at these terrorists out there. Don't you want us to fight them? Of course. And then they're funding the terrorists. It's just these conspiracies and games all the way down. It's crazy. But yeah, so a couple weeks ago or less, there was border clashes where the Taliban killed something like more than 50 Pakistani soldiers.

57:52Like, wow. Serious. Yeah. Serious conflict. Because Pakistan has been saber rattling at the Taliban and suggesting that they are going to do regime change in Kabul and throw the Taliban. It's like, wait, hold on. You're going to do what? How are you going to do that? So, yeah. So this is in line. And his favorite field marshal, by the way, that's his name's Austin Muneer. That's who Trump is referring to there. And he's the guy that actually runs the country. This is his strategy. So he's he's he's been using, you know, extreme amounts of violence against, you know, to crack down on the PTI, the Iran-Khan folks, now the TLP folks.

58:36And then and now here. And he's really feeling it for two reasons. One is that he now has the unquestioned, not unquestioned, but he has full-throated support of the Trump administration. So this fear that Imran Khan was going to get released and he'd be in trouble is subsiding. And they feel very good about how the India-Pakistan war went for them, that they stood up to India and got through it and had support from the U.S. in it. But India is like everybody who follows Indian politics says like India is going to hit Pakistan again very soon. Well, they're still very angry. That's why they don't accept the U.S.

59:15narrative of the peace deal. They're like there is no peace. There's just a pause. No, we're hitting them again. Right. So Asim Anir might be proud of the way he's navigated this so far. But to have a two front war, Afghanistan and India, while also cracking down on your fundamentalist right and your populist faction of Imran Khan supporters, if you're India, you're like. Now's the time. Yeah. Yeah. Hit him. This guy's. Hit him hard. Yeah. So I don't think we've seen the last of this situation. That's for sure. Well, thank you for the update, Ryan, as always, our resident Pakistan correspondent.

59:59You know, I thought I knew a lot about Pakistan until I met this guy. Yes, it's the best part. Okay, now we're going to throw to a prerecorded segment that Ryan did about the free press's supposed debunking of the Gaza famine narrative. Ryan and the Dropside team did some excellent journalism and reached out to many of the families involved. Lo and behold, all of them were decimated by famine. They got actual interviews on the record. So let's go ahead and throw to that. And then we will also see you all later.

1:00:52and 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.

1:01:48We go deeper than the polished story. We talk about what drives us, what shapes us, and what gives us hope. We get honest about the big stuff. Identity when you don't recognize yourself anymore. Loss that changes you. Purpose when success isn't enough. Peace when your mind won't slow down. Faith when it's complicated. Some guests have answers. Most are still figuring it out. If you've ever felt like there has to be more to the story, this show is for you. Listen to If You Can Hear Me. on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

1:02:27You know Roald Dahl, the writer who thought up Willy Wonka, Matilda, and the BFG. But did you know he was also a spy? Was this before he wrote his stories? It must have been. Our new podcast series, The Secret World of Roald Dahl, is a wild journey through the hidden chapters of his extraordinary, controversial life. His job was literally to seduce the wives of powerful Americans What? And he was really good at it. You probably won't believe it either. Okay, I don't think that's true. I'm telling you. The guy was a spy. Did you know Dahl got cozy with the Roosevelt's, played poker with Harry Truman, and had a long affair with a congresswoman?

1:03:03And then he took his talents to Hollywood, where he worked alongside Walt Disney and Alfred Hitchcock before writing a hit James Bond film. How did this secret agent wind up as the most successful children's author ever? And what darkness from his covert past seeped into the stories we read as kids? The true story is stranger than anything he ever wrote. Listen to The Secret World of Roald Dahl on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. We have a new story over at DropSite News written with my colleague, Maha Husseini, that looks into the infamous reporting that the free press did into what they said were a dozen cases of Palestinians who they claimed had been unfairly elevated as examples of famine in Gaza.

1:03:49The article was titled, They Became Symbols for Gazan Starvation, But All Twelve Suffer from Other Health Problems. Now, we discovered something very strange when we first started looking into this. And we don't have to dwell on this. They don't look into 12 cases. They don't. like unless they did and just didn't publish it. And we asked them for comment. We have not gotten comment on this bizarre discrepancy. It doesn't fundamentally undermine their reporting by itself. But, you know, they said they were going to look into 12 cases plus the famous New York Times ones. That's 13. They only named nine.

1:04:30There's another one that's alluded to, so you could generously give them 10. So when we started looking closer at their reporting, we're like, wait a minute, This is deeply flimsy. However, according to Olivia Reingold, this was truly outstanding reporting. So let's roll a little bit of her from a clip that came along with their post. So you've probably seen these photos of skeletal kids in Gaza on front pages, all over social media, even in a UNICEF ad. They've become the symbols of famine. But we decided to look into these photos and the stories behind them. And what we found is that in case after case, these kids were sick, but not just with malnutrition.

1:05:13In every instance, they were suffering with other conditions or illnesses like cystic fibrosis, cerebral palsy, and even traumatic head injuries. Now, all of this is important because obviously this is not just important in its own right. And their original piece was perhaps to me, one of the most infuriating I've ever seen because of how shoddy it was. It's one thing to look into, do any investigation you want, but you should also do the investigation. What we found here is that the free press did not, as far as we can tell, attempt to contact any of the families or the people involved in the story, which is journalism 101 is if you're going to write about somebody's health conditions, you would presumably speak to them or their doctors or somebody who has familiarity.

1:06:00All they did was Google Translate. Well, I was going to say a lot of the journalists on the ground who had used the images already, they were on the ground talking to the families. If I'm remembering correctly, for example, the New York Times pictures were taken by a photojournalist. And I think there was a journalist on the ground. Right. And they had been in conversation with the families about the conditions. Yeah, and so the fundamental point that the Free Press says that it's making with this investigation is that these children were held up, mostly children, they're two adults, held up as examples of the victims of the famine.

1:06:36But in fact, they had pre-existing conditions and they exposed the fact that they have these pre-existing conditions. So what we did... Which weren't disclosed by the Washington Post, for example. Like the Washington Post put up a note eventually. And I actually think... Yeah, I think the Times added something. And the point that you and I talked about at the time, it's actually perfectly acceptable to disclose those pre-existing problems. Fuller context is good. And they should do that. And the reporting that you all have added and contributed to the conversation is that actually it's often people with pre-existing conditions who are the first to succumb when there are shortages of food.

1:07:09Exactly. Full context is good. But the idea that these children's preexisting conditions were the thing that was driving their health complications, which is what the free press pushes, that turns out not to be the case once you've talked to their families. So we asked Maha to interview as many of these family members as she could. In the middle of her reporting, she was forcibly displaced from Gaza City, and she had interviewed and done reporting on three of the cases. And I said, you don't stop. And it's like reporting from a tent without electricity, with like intermittent access to Internet and no home base to write.

1:07:52It's extraordinarily difficult. And the cases that she looked into, I think, told enough of the story that we can understand what's going on here. So we can start with Muhammad Zachariah Ayyub al-Mutawak, who actually is the now 22-month-old whose picture adorned the New York Times story that then created this controversy of FP and others said, this child has other health complications. So you should not have used them as an example of the worsening famine conditions in Gaza. So we talked to family and got from them before and after photos. So the photo you're looking at here is Muhammad 12 days before the March 2nd siege is announced in Gaza.

1:08:33So on March 2nd, Israel closed all the crossings. No food, no medicine, nothing allowed in. And that went deep into May. And that's what drove the acute crisis. So you can see his picture before this happened. and then you can see after. And what the FP would have you believe is that it was his preexisting health condition. And we have a VO here that we can play too of him getting a haircut in a tent before the crossings were closed. And you can tell he's got some pre, you can just tell, you don't even have to be a doctor, you can tell he's got some preexisting health conditions. But it was the lack of access to food.

1:09:20that drove his condition. Now, Muhammad obviously is going to suffer things worse than other children, but it's just very clear. Now, at the same time, it's also worth fuller context if we want it. So he was born in December 2023 during one of the nights of the fiercest bombing that they saw in the area where he was born in Gaza City. The last two months of her pregnancy, they were displaced and moving constantly. Right after October 7th. Yeah, so this is right. And some of the most widespread indiscriminate violence was right after October 7th. So he's born into that. And you can imagine that there could be some slight muscle weakness, which is what he had when he was born.

1:10:12And you can imagine some neurological conditions as well. Totally. You know, it's, you know, the health of the mother during the pregnancy matters for children. And so rather than kind of lessening the responsibility of the siege and the assault on his condition, the further reporting actually strengthened it. And so to give even more context, which I think is important, this is what his mother says. I suffered from malnutrition around two months after I gave birth to him and he stopped breastfeeding. At that time, his father was still with us and could acquire milk. So despite the harsh conditions, Muhammad began growing as a healthy child.

1:10:50At one point, he was even chubby. And we've seen the photos to prove that that's the case. On October 28, 2024, his father, Zechariah, was killed in an Israeli strike in Darabala. And so now his mother is caring for these two children under these much more difficult conditions. She writes, I couldn't consistently get milk or diapers, but people continued to support me, bringing milk from time to time. I was still able to provide food for him until the occupation sealed the borders and enforced starvation in March. Doing this reporting, in some ways I felt guilty even like asking these families to justify their situation.

1:11:30But at the same time, it's important to do so because the free press has now been bought by Paramount. Barry Weiss has been elevated to editor-in-chief of CBS News. And what she considers to be proper journalistic tradecraft is now going to have the backing of hundreds of budgets in the hundreds of millions of dollars. That's what drove me crazy about the story originally and continuously the story now that you all are following up on it. It reminds me of your report on the Douglas Murray, David Frum speech contributions to the Israeli ambassador as well, which is there's a constant drumbeat of lecturing from many of these same people about journalistic ethics.

1:12:17And that is exactly what happened. And with this story, they kept talking about how proud they were of this reporting that they did. editorial board. They're editorial. They wrote a free press editorial, just slamming you, Sager, and Crystal. I somehow escaped. How did you get, how did you not get? I don't know. I don't know. But all that is to say, that was a lecture about journalistic ethics from people who were engaged in clearly lapsed journalistic ethics in the same story, with the same breath that other people were being criticized over. And it's not a matter of your ideological standpoint on this.

1:12:56If we set that aside, that is not the full and complete picture. The full and complete picture was not told in this counter story. And so, yeah, I think it's important that the Washington Post now includes the disclosure. I think that's good. But getting that isn't a concession. your story was a sort of beacon, a paragon of journalistic success. And we can quickly go through two others. So another one is six-year-old Najwa Hussein Hajjaj. First of all, the free press claimed that these were all viral images. Even that is extremely dubious assertion. Najwa's photo was included in a CNN slideshow.

1:13:39How you define viral, I don't know. But it appears more like they just went cherry picking any image that was associated with any story about starvation and then Googled until they could find somebody who also had a health condition. I looked it up, by the way. There are more cases of child disability in Gaza before October 7th than average around the world. I think UNICEF has it at like 12 percent, average is 9 or 10 percent. So 20 to 30 percent higher in Gaza. And you can imagine, well, why would there be more childhood disability in Gaza in a place that has been under siege for many decades?

1:14:18So using the fact that somebody has a disability against them in this case is further undermined by the fact that the fact that they have the disability might be related to the siege that their families have been living under for generations. But so what they found with Hajjaj is they found that she had an esophageal condition. And the free press suggested that this esophageal stenosis, rather than the imposed starvation, was responsible for her condition. So Maha talked to her mother, and she says, quote, And before the war started, we had taken her to the hospital, and she was diagnosed with esophageal stenosis.

1:14:55Her condition had not yet worsened, and a surgery was scheduled for December 4, 2023. three, quote, but of course, with hospitals being bombed, others overwhelmed with victims and a lack of equipment, her surgery was canceled. This is when our own war with her condition began, unquote, which again, stands to reason. If you imagine in your own life, if you and your family and your entire community are overnight shut off from access to medical care, emergency departments are open if you're a victim of the bombing or you're shot, then they can treat you. But anything scheduled, like they're working on your esophageal condition, that's canceled.

1:15:42It's just not happening. And so she started vomiting, was unable to keep things down. In the past, her mother has said the supplements and medical fluids had kept her in a stable condition despite this situation. But without those supplements and medical fluids, then she began to succumb to the ravages of malnutrition. And she was diagnosed with severe malnutrition. Quote, we tried to secure her proper food for a condition like pureed vegetables, yogurt, juice, or soft cheese. But none of these were available during the starvation campaign. We couldn't secure anything but lentils. And so she was then successfully evacuated and since then has undergone three surgeries for this condition.

1:16:29But this is what all experts will tell you, that when famine hits, it is not the healthiest people who suffer the most first. It is the people who are most susceptible to that. And just think about it in your own life. If that happened, if all of a sudden you were cut off from food and medical aid, who would go down first? And then imagine somebody came to you and said, well, you know, your grandmother had this condition. So why are you blaming us? Like, you're the one that cut off food and medicine. That's why I'm blaming you. My grandmother was doing okay even though she had her condition. And finally, one more, one of the adults is Hamza Ismail Mishmish, his 25-year-old who had a lifelong preexisting condition, which I think was obvious in the photos of him.

1:17:19And so his brother told DropSite, quote, Hamza was born with cerebral palsy and congenital anomalies and had lived with this condition for years. We used to follow up with doctors, and he survived all these years on nutritional supplements and vitamins. During the war, we faced difficulties securing the nutritional supplements, and it was impossible to compensate with fresh food. With the borders closed, and even when international aid was allowed in, all we could find was canned food. But in the recent months of starvation, his condition rapidly deteriorated. And Shadi added that although his body did appear thin before the war, quote, one can clearly see the difference between how he looked then and how he looks now.

1:17:57The recent starvation made us completely helpless toward his condition. food supplements were completely unavailable. And then the part that's even more brutal to kind of think about living with these conditions, because this is difficult enough under the most comfortable conditions, living in a nice house with all the access that you can have to food and medicine. Anybody who lives with this condition or knows somebody who does, it's very difficult. But Mishmish's family added to drop site that his health has been further worsened by the family's conditions and displacement, forcing him to live in a makeshift tent after their home was bombed.

1:18:31Quote, this tent cannot protect him from the scorching heat in summer or the freezing cold in winter. In cold weather, we cannot keep him warm so his body develops infections, his feet swell, and his entire body weakens. We would need at least three weeks to help him recover from these symptoms. All these circumstances combined are why his body has never been the same since the war. So imagine this is your family member and Barry Weiss and Olivia Rheingold come up to you and say it's because of his cerebral palsy that he's in this condition. Like he's 25 years old. We've known him his whole life.

1:19:05The condition is because of the siege and the war. And to like to even make you like point that out to them is a form of crazy making. And again, it actually makes the story fuller, more interesting to know that it's the case. And so... Yeah, one of the ones they cited was a 14-year-old who had a piece of his skull removed because he was hit by an Israeli shell. Oh my gosh. Oh, he had a pre-existing condition from getting shelled by Israel. Right. Like, this is not serious. What are you doing? Yeah. Yeah. Sorry, go ahead. No, no, no. I think it's all like even more, it enriches the story to know the background and it makes it clear just like the level of the downstream effects.

1:19:59You know, we talk a lot about obviously like famine deaths because those are, you know, the people have actually died. But also just like the downstream consequences of lack of medical treatments and food and how that affects the most vulnerable among us and has over the last couple of years. It's just a tragedy. And it's definitely not an own or a slam dunk against the outlets that use these images. Yeah. And we can look forward to a lot more of this, I guess, now from 60 Minutes. We'll see. We'll see. All right. Great story, Ryan.

1:20:51Over the last couple of years, didn't we learn that the folding chair was invented by black people because of what happened in Alabama? This Black History Month, the podcast Selective Ignorance with Mandy B unpacks Black history and culture with comedy, clarity, and conversations that shake the status quo. The Crown Act in New York was signed in July of 2019, and that is a bill that was passed to prohibit discrimination based on hairstyles associated with race. To hear this and more, listen to Selective Ignorance with Mandy B from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

1:21:25You know Roald Dahl. he thought up Willy Wonka and the BFG. But did you know he was a spy? In the new podcast, The Secret World of Roald Dahl, I'll tell you that story and much, much more. What? You probably won't believe it either. Was this before he wrote his stories? It must have been. Okay, I don't think that's true. I'm telling you. The guy was a spy. Listen to The Secret World of Roald Dahl 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. In 1995, my neighbor, Anna Traynor, disappeared from a commune.

1:22:02It was nature and trees and praying and drugs. No, I am not your guru. Back then, I lied to everybody. They have had this case for 30 years. I'm going back to my hometown to uncover the truth. Listen to The Red Weather on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human.