10/3/25: Flotilla SEIZED, Pete Oven Baby LIES, ICE Criminal Mayhem

9:12Ryan Grim:The point is not we have sufficient aid to feed the population. The point is we need a humanitarian, a reliable humanitarian corridor so that aid can be brought in systematically to feed and provide for a population that is being starved and displaced and bombed, etc. etc.

9:31Saagar Enjeti:So my question for you guys, just real quick, is like, why aren't more? I haven't seen any prominent Democrats talk about this. Like, I haven't seen AOC and Bernie talk about the flotilla. Like, what is the dangers politically that why so many people are gun shy about these, you know, activists around the world, a lot of them American, you know, being taken by the IDF and humiliated by Ben Gavir? Why is no one talking about this?

9:58Ryan Grim:I mean, I presume the same reason why they're reluctant, you know, across the board. We do have a number of Democrats now who've said it's a genocide. You have the Progressive Caucus that has signed on to the Block the Bombs Act. So you have progress in that direction, but you still have this just incredible reluctance. reluctance. And but, you know, it's especially noteworthy, Griffin, to your point, in the face of some European countries actually being pressured into acknowledging it, sending their, you know, naval ships to ensure the safety, that sort of pressure. And, you know, you also have some European politicians who are on board, were on board this flotilla, which kind of forced the hand, I think, of some of these European countries as well.

10:44Ryan Grim:When I believe, you know, like in Italy, Aren't there Italian members of parliament who were on board and that sort of pressured Maloney to have to step up and do something, even though that was very much against what her politics are and what she wanted to do?

10:58Griffin:Right. Right. And, you know, the dock workers shut down the Genoa port. They had 300 ,000 Italians in the street protesting this. In the U.S., there was – this morning there was actually a protest at the Elizabethtown, New Jersey weapons plant, which hopefully I'll have video of before we're done this show this morning. But that's – that was – that's dozens at most people should be applauded, but it's not 300 ,000 people. So, like, people are not out in the streets here. People are not shutting the ports down. And so that changes the political calculation. So Democrats can kind of ignore it and get away with it.

11:36Ryan Grim:Yeah. I was going to I was just going to share this and I want to get Ryan's update on this as well. I saw Jeremy tweeting about this poll of Palestinians in Gaza that found only 8 percent fully support Trump's plan. 18 percent reject it. Twenty five percent strongly oppose. Forty one percent want amendments. He says The New York Times interviewed four Palestinians in Gaza ran this headline. Many Palestinians say Hamas must accept ceasefire plan. And, you know, at the same time, of course, like we know the horror in the sense like this just has to end at any cost. And I know that was what you were hearing, Ryan, from Palestinians as well.

12:12Ryan Grim:So what's your sense of where any of that is?

12:16Griffin:Right. That's the balance. Like pretty much everyone I spoke to had basically the same take, which is this is this is a rotten, corrupt bargain. But if it's take or leave it, like take it and just and live live another day. Um, that, that it has to end, that all this just has to stop. Uh, and so, yeah, the New York Times framing was a bit like, as if people were like excited and grateful for the offer. But I think it's, I think it's separate. I think a better way to understand it is just anything that ends the suffering under any circumstances, on any conditions, any terms, and this, like, just stop.

13:00This is, this is torture.

13:01Griffin:Like we're all dying. Yeah. So but is that do they like the idea of Tony Blair setting up some colonial administration?

13:13Ryan Grim:Unbelievable.

13:13Griffin:Funded by, you know, and backed by like Oracle software? No, I don't think you're gonna find anybody who's like, yeah, I'm really looking forward to that. But compared to dying in a famine? Sure.

13:26Ryan Grim:I mean, it seems to me like the deal is crafted to basically snuff out the Palestinian liberation movement, like to end the project completely. Is that their sense? Is that your sense? You know, is that in Jeremy's conversations with Hamas and PIJ officials, is that their sense?

13:44Griffin:Yeah, that's the idea. Yeah. Because if you have this enclave in this kind of dystopian techno lockdown and people are in camps where they might even, let's say they take all their phones and give them new Oracle devices or whatever that have only approved apps on them.

14:10Ryan Grim:they already have control of their phones forcing them to watch Netanyahu's speeches and whatever

14:14Griffin:and very strictly control movement and more aggressively control in the future like what gets in and what gets out and then build try to build a bunch of high rises or something how they're going to do that is is difficult to see because just removing the unexploded ordinance itself is like a 10 year project because of the the vast amount of munitions that Israel dropped that haven't exploded.

14:43Ryan Grim:Jesus.

14:44Griffin:You know, Hiroshima levels of unexploded ordnance everywhere. And so imagine trying to then dig that out. And those, those, those unexploded bombs are pretty stable until you poke them. Yeah.

14:58Emily Jashinsky:That's going to be a boon for some contractor. Right.

15:03Griffin:Right. And it takes forever.

15:06Krystal Ball:Yeah. Yeah. 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, a.k.a. Neuro Linguistic Programming. is a blend of hypnosis, linguistics, and psychology. Fans say it's like finally getting a user manual for your brain.

15:45Saagar Enjeti:It's about engineering consciousness.

15:47Krystal Ball: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. 1969, Malcolm and Martin are gone. America is in crisis. And at Morehouse College, the students make their move. These students, including a young Samuel L. Jackson, locked up the members of the Board of Trustees, including Martin Luther King Sr.

16:28Krystal Ball: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.

16:45Krystal Ball:What 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.

17:23Krystal Ball: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.

17:44Saagar Enjeti:And while we're wondering where the Democrats are in response to this, we've got a clip that Crystal shared with me this morning from Andrew Callahan of Channel 5, who got to interview Pete on Israel-Palestine. Let's take a listen on where the future of Dem leadership is.

18:01Krystal Ball:Yeah, the word socialism scaring people, that sounds like a huge thing, is Israel-Palestine. Where do you stand on that stuff? Well, I'm going to put my coffee down. There's so many things that have to be said. And what I've learned is, if you don't say all of them, people think you're abandoning them. So here's some things, in no particular order.

18:18Emily Jashinsky:He thinks it's so profound.

18:20Krystal Ball:There are unspeakable horrors taking place in Gaza. I know that those unspeakable horrors are something that was unleashed by a war that started with unspeakable horrors being perpetrated by Hamas on October 7th. Well, I mean, that wasn't the beginning of the conflict. Of course. I mean, this goes back to 47 and it goes back before 47. But this is exactly my point. The moment you say anything about it, the moment I talk about disgust at babies being put in ovens and people being flayed by Hamas on October 7th, somebody says well you're not talking about the history of the nakba and and what happened with the displacement of palestinians and the moment i express disgust at watching people in gaza being starved somebody says we must be excusing what happened with him no yeah yeah there is nothing intrinsically anti-semitic about speaking up for the rights of palestinians at the same time a lot of people i know who lie awake at night worried about their kids going to college or walking the streets, you know, hear expressions of support for Palestinian civilian life and think about the fact that even though nothing about that makes you soft on anti-Semitism.

19:27Krystal Ball:Yeah. The experience has been that those two things, expressions of support for Palestinian civilian life and expressions of anti-Semitism have sometimes traveled together because there is, in fact, an explosion of anti-Semitism going on in this country.

19:41Saagar Enjeti:So what are we what are we what are we to make of that, folks?

19:46Ryan Grim:I mean, he got filleted for going on with the pod save guys and having metaphorically. Yes, absolutely nothing to say. And clearly he learned nothing from that because however long that answer went on, he said literally nothing. And his biggest upset is that people are mad at him for trying to both sides, for not being willing to take a clear stand. He's like, you know, I don't get it. Why when I say babies are baked in the oven, which is a literal lie, why do people correct me on that? Why do people want me to take a clear moral stand here? I don't get it. Why can't I just bullshit this the way that I do literally everything else?

20:29Ryan Grim:And I just at this point, like, I actually am pretty shocked that he did the babies baked in the oven thing. Because that has been dispelled since like one week after October 7th. That was one of the first things we figured out. I mean, those of us who had intellectual capacity knew it was a lie immediately. But that was one of the first things that we found out. Oh, no, this was just utterly and completely made up. And yet here he is, almost two years into a genocide, still repeating atrocity hoaxes. Unbelievable.

21:01Griffin:Yeah, and talking about, like, filleting people and babies baked in ovens almost two years later. yeah, it just reflects a real extraordinary lack of, you know, not just courage, but any curiosity around the actual event itself. But he does seem to have genuine frustration that his whole thing here doesn't work. Like, this is his thing. And Obama does this too, but Buttigieg is even much more of an offender where instead of -

21:38Ryan Grim:like Timu Obama on this.

21:39Griffin:Exactly. Like, exactly. But instead of answering a question, you state a bunch of facts. And often you state facts that are somewhat in tension with each other. And it gives an audience a sense that you're being thoughtful. And you hope that in all of that smoke, they don't notice that you actually never answered the question. You just kind of, you just kind of reformulated the question in a series of assertions. Yeah. And he's very upset that that trick doesn't work here.

22:14Ryan Grim:And here's the thing.

22:16Griffin:Frustration is real.

22:17Ryan Grim:And here's the thing that he doesn't get is like liberals used to eat that shit up. Right. Yeah. That Obama style, like, oh, let me demonstrate all the intellect that I have.

22:27Krystal Ball:And it's all these facts

22:28Ryan Grim:that I can lay at your feet. Yeah. Oh, he speaks in paragraphs. So intelligent. No. Liberals include. I'm not just talking about leftists. liberal Democrats, right, that I've had at gals, they are not, they are not, they want you to give an answer. They want you to be a leader. They want you to have moral clarity. And because if you can't say two years into a genocide, this is a genocide. It's outrageous. It needs to stop. I'm disgusted with myself that I was complicit in it. If you can't say that, how are you going to stand up to Donald Trump? Like that should be, it should be easy to oppose a genocide.

23:03Ryan Grim:And if you can't do that? How am I going to trust you to fight on any number of other things? So like if this man thinks that he has a prayer of being the nominee in 2028, first of all, zero percent of black people continue to support him. That's number one. Literally zero percent. Literally zero. Number two, wildly, wildly out of touch with where the Democratic base actually is at this point. They They are disgusted with leadership. They are raring for a fight. They are horrified by what we've been involved in in Gaza. And they are looking for people who have the slightest shred of moral integrity to actually be willing to take a stand there rather than low-key continuing to smear people's stand-up for Palestinian rights as being anti-Semites.

23:53Emily Jashinsky:That answer was not the answer of a politician who is in touch with his own party's base. It was the answer of somebody who's vaguely aware of where the polling is and knows that he has to like try to find a way to sound profound. Like that was the most ridiculous part of the interview is how he's acting like he is. He's come up with some novel way to communicate about this intractable problem. And it sounds like somebody is vaguely aware of the polling, but also has those donors tripping in his ear. And for Republicans and Democrats, we had a great glimpse of what this actually looks like when The New York Times confirmed Grayzone reporting about Turning Point donor Robert Shulman, who is apparently like a father to Charlie Kirk, like a mentor to Charlie Kirk, and revoked literally millions of dollars and cut himself off from Turning Point USA, not because Charlie Kirk said anything, but because Charlie hosted Tucker Carlson and Dave Smith at a Turning Point conference recently.

24:49Emily Jashinsky:That is the magnitude of the pressures. But if Buttigieg can't say stand up to them, then he should stay the hell off the podcast circuit because it's not going to get any better for him until he is honest. Yeah.

25:02Ryan Grim:You know, the crazy thing to me is back in the Tea Party era, you had this major upset, like calamitous, shocking upset of Dave Brat over Eric Cantor. And most Republicans looked around at that and said, holy shit, this is a different landscape. I better adjust. I better be looking to my right. I better be paying attention to these like nobody weirdos who are primarying me like I need to get it together. Democrats had that moment. That moment was Zoran Mamdani beating Andrew Cuomo by 12 points, right? A landslide, totally reshaping the electorate. Polls were wildly off, coming out of nowhere, destroying this like legacy political figure.

25:48Ryan Grim:and instead of really taking that in they have layered themselves with all kinds of well it's new york city well i don't know that doesn't really count well i'm not really paying attention to that race well i think it's really because you know he's sort of like abundance ish and that's why people like it right you know i mean he's young and handsome right he he understands social that's what it really is is his his mom's a film director so he's got these like great videos maybe if I just make some like quick cut vertical vertical recorded videos, maybe I, too, can capture this magic like they either dismiss it entirely or they come up with the dumbest possible reasons why they think he won so that they can avoid learning the very clear lessons that they're that the message that was sent to them through that election.

26:37Ryan Grim:And so I think you are going to have some Democrats who are really caught caught unawares by primary challengers, by major figures who were taken out. I don't know who or what that's going to be, but I think we're going to be in. They are going to be in for some major surprises this year because they have done everything they possibly can to avoid learning the lessons that are transparently in front of them right now.

26:58Emily Jashinsky:That's one of my favorite polls. You just see favorability for the Democratic Party. This is Gallup in July among Democrats is really right now similar to the levels that it was among Republicans in the Tea Party years. So it's not even just like these obvious examples of Mom Donnie, Bernie almost beating Hillary and almost beating Biden and AOC beating Joe Crowley. I mean, Democrats have had this gift of waking up to where the bases handed them on a silver platter over and over and over again.

27:26Saagar Enjeti:And Emily, what about MTG? Look at MTG out here. She's got like some of the most like small dollar contributors. Like, is she is she more in touch with her base than the rest of the party? And is she like on this issue alone? Like, is this catapulting her to some new echelon?

27:44Emily Jashinsky:I mean, it always depends with Republicans, because there's a ton of daylight between people who say like, oh, wrap up the war, but are still like ardently supportive of Netanyahu and Israel. So it's always hard to know what it means when a Republican says at this point to a pollster that they support Israel or not. But she's definitely more in touch with the millennial Gen Z Republican voter. That's for sure at this point. So we'll see going forward. Her small dollar donations are something that should also be eye opening to Republicans.

28:18Ryan Grim:Yeah. I mean, we shouldn't overstate the amount of the Republican shift because still overwhelmingly, Republicans are pro-Israel. Right. And see the world more through like they're our ally and, you know, they're more like us or whatever the worldview is. I can't even really wrap my head around it at this point. So most of the shift, boomer Republicans are still right where they've always been. Lockstep Israel by and large on board with, you know, what Trump is doing and the everything for Netanyahu strategy. They're totally there. It's really just among young Republicans that you begin to see a split.

28:55Ryan Grim:But that's, you know, I mean, I feel like Israel is kind of freaking out about that. I feel like that's a big part of the reason why they're taking over TikTok and installing Barry Weiss as editor-in-chief of CBS. Like, I can't even, you know, if you told me some of these things. Yes, if you told me some of these things that would be reality now, like Tony Blair is going to take over Gaza and Barry Weiss is going to be editor-in-chief of CBS, I would be like, I mean, you just like, I literally could not have made it up. I could not have made it up in my mind.

29:24Saagar Enjeti:All of those young viewers at CBS News, the young demographic.

29:29Emily Jashinsky:It was a great birthday gift to you, though, Griffin.

29:32Saagar Enjeti:That's right. Yeah, I'm excited. I'm happy for our colleagues, our sister podcast and their success. You're mostly happy for your friend Olivia Rheingold.

29:41Emily Jashinsky:We all know that's what it is.

29:43Saagar Enjeti:I like content creators. So why don't we move on to ICE? We've got some horrible news stories over the weekend. And this one really struck Crystal that she wanted to share. This was happening in Chicago, I believe, where the use of Black Hawk helicopters was used. Let's take a listen to a little bit from the local news.

30:07Krystal Ball:She says they took everyone and then asked questions later. It just looked like we were nothing. Patricia Fisher says she came out to the hallway of her apartment complex on the corner of 75th and South Shore Drive in her nightgown around 10 Monday night, only to find ICE agents yelling police. It was scary because I've never had a gun put in my face. They asked my name and my date of birth and asked me, did I have any words? And I told them, no, I didn't. She says she was then handcuffed and released around 3 a.m. Fisher says she was told if anyone had any kind of warrant out for them, even if it was unrelated to immigration, they would not be released.

30:44Krystal Ball:Citizen App video shows the chaotic scene overnight. Neighbors tell us there were dozens of ICE agents. Neighbors like Ebony Watson says they ducked for cover as they heard several flashbangs go off. They was terrified. The kids was crying. People were screaming. They looked very distraughty. I was out there crying when I seen the little girl come around the corner because they was bringing the kids out, too. Had them zip tied to each other. That's all I kept asking. Where's the morality? Where's the human?

31:11Saagar Enjeti:Yeah, so it keeps going on. But there's more reports also of like, yeah, them dragging children out into out of their homes. Some of the children were naked, apparently, zip tied. And so, yeah, what are we what are we to make of this, especially after Trump has meme war declaration of Chicago? I think a week or two ago is when he posted that meme of napalming Chicago. So I guess he's following up on his promises here.

31:38Emily Jashinsky:Well, he also promised in that Quantico speech this week to use these cities as training grounds. by the way. That was at 44 minutes in.

31:47Ryan Grim:Explicitly talking about unleashing the military with all of the top generals assembled there against the enemy within. And like these ladies that you just saw there on the street who are American citizens who did nothing wrong. That is apparently what he means. I mean, I just I know that there's a lot that's shocking in the world. I know there's a lot that's shocking in the country. I really want people to sit with what happened here, okay? They used Black Hawk helicopters in the middle of the night to rappel into an apartment building. They pulled everyone out, broke down the doors, destroyed their belongings.

32:26Ryan Grim:There were no warrants, okay? Little kids who were sleeping, naked or in their underwear, pulled out crying, zip-tied together, and thrown into U-Haul vans. Little American kids, okay? It wouldn't be okay if it's immigrants, by the way, but I know this is like an important distinction for a lot of people. Other people, grownups, adults, seniors, dragged out, did nothing wrong, middle of the night, again, unclothed, zip tied together, thrown and detained for hours, for hours. No ability to make a phone call, no lawyer, no warrant, nothing. Like, these are criminal acts. These are criminal acts being committed by the DHS.

33:07Ryan Grim:They have decided that our rights do not exist, do not matter, that through brute force, they can literally do whatever they want to whoever they want. That's what we're talking about here. And this isn't the only instance. New York Times had a report on a number of American citizens who had been swept up by ICE. You know, one man, he was trying to get to his work site, American citizen, veteran, Army veteran, by the way, had his windshield smashed in by ice. They shot pepper spray in his face and they pulled him out, arrested him and held him for three days. No call, no lawyer, nothing. They think they can do whatever they want.

33:56Ryan Grim:And that's what I want people to really understand. OK, this is about immigration, but it's also not about immigration. This is about a regime that thinks they can literally act with impunity because they have the power and they have the guns. Some of these these Democratic mayors and governors like law enforcement needs to protect these citizens. They are being abused. They're being assaulted. They're having their rights violated. They're having their possessions destroyed. destroyed this apartment complex may not even open up again they may be completely displaced i just i am i am completely floored i'm without words like i it's hard for me to be shocked by what this administration does at this point when we're talking about pulling naked kids out of their beds zip tying them together and throwing them in the back of a u-haul van in the middle of the night how can anyone i don't care if you love trump or hate trump or you're anti but Whatever.

34:50Ryan Grim:I don't know how anyone morally justifies this and feels OK with it and thinks that it doesn't directly implicate your own rights in your own life.

35:01Griffin:Yeah, this the also I think this also implicates the rogue nature of ICE, like ICE, ICE is a ICE is a genuinely dangerous agency. People started calling it out around 2017, 28. It was only created in the wake of 9-11. And it produced this like rogue culture where anything went. I don't know if you remember in 2018 or 2019, several members of the squad went down to the border. And before that, The Intercept and also ProPublica obtained the Facebook chats, Like the Facebook page, this private Facebook page had like hundreds of not just ICE agents, but top officials in ICE. And it was insane, like genocidal rhetoric, like rape threats, death threats, like the most disgusting type of stuff that you can fathom was being put out onto this.

36:11Griffin:massive Facebook group with senior officials at ICE on there and hundreds of agents. And absolutely nothing was done about that. And now we have an entire rogue government. So it's not fair to call ICE rogue anymore. ICE is now aligned with this administration and is being told, all of those impulses that you've had all of these years, those are good. Feed them. Go for it. We've got your back. And yeah, Crystal's point that it shouldn't be done to anybody, but it's of course it's not going to stop it. So-called illegal immigrants.

36:53Emily Jashinsky:So there's absolutely no excuse. I mean, they have helicopters in Elgin. If you know the area, Elgin is a suburb of Chicago, like a sleepy suburb of Chicago. And I'm sure there are a lot of Venezuelan migrants who have, in the case in Chicago, the Chicago raid that we were talking about earlier, lived in these apartment buildings. They brought a helicopter, military vehicles and Christie Nome into into Algin. And sometimes people, when I say that this is a LARP, act like I think that's not serious. It's actually like it's calling something a LARP, like a fascist LARP. I think that's extremely serious.

37:31Emily Jashinsky:And I think that's what they're doing. If you go to the DHS Twitter, it obviously goes beyond a LARP when you're actually detaining people. But I'm using that to say that they are doing this performatively. They are detaining U.S. citizens for the performance value that they see in this theater of Black Hawk helicopters or helicopters at all in suburban Chicago with Kristi Noem and the photo ops. Remember, this is, again, Homeland Security where Kristi Noem is doing all of the photo ops. Like their position on the performance is that it's like just as much of a part of the game. And so that's where they're really leaning into it.

38:13Emily Jashinsky:And it's abhorrent. I mean, it's just it's it's so unserious. And I say that coming from a different place than you guys, which is there are really serious. I think there are extremely serious operations that need to happen because there actually are people who came who are criminals and in fairly big numbers during the case of the Biden administration that are actually endangering U.S. citizens. There are people who are here who need to go through the legal processing system because they have – their U.S. citizens and wages are on the line. And I know I disagree with you guys on that point, but like I think I believe in the process and I believe that the Biden administration left the Trump administration in a position where the American people wanted to see the process.

38:57Emily Jashinsky:But that's from my perspective, this is like even more horrifying because of that, because it is so unserious. And if you go to their social media, they are posting the most like just the dumbest stuff on the DHS Twitter feed. And I'm sure it's like that on Instagram, too. And so I just feel like they're sacrificing something that's really serious for A, a LARP and B, endangering people's rights. And it's not impossible that some of these guys end up actually incarcerated down the line. They need to be.

39:31Ryan Grim:I mean, they genuinely like these are criminal acts. And you can go and you can watch in California, ICE stormed a car wash. and again, they've been greenlit by the Supreme Court to just racially profile, by the way, stormed a car wash and a 79-year-old American business owner comes out to try to say, hey, I have paperwork for these workers. Like what's going on? They throw 79-year-old American business owner, throw him to the ground, jump on him, break his ribs, give him a head trauma, head injury, ends up in the hospital. He is now suing them. You can watch this on video, right? And this is the part, like, you know, I just told you about the guy, American veteran in a car.

40:21Ryan Grim:Like, there are so many Americans who are caught, I don't even want to say caught up in this, who are being targeted by their own government. That is vastly more terrifying than some Venezuelan migrants living in your apartment building. Go ask those ladies. I mean, one of those ladies who there at the end of the clip that we showed, she was saying, I kept asking, where's your morality? What are you doing? These are kids. And they said, one of the ICE agents said, and I quote, fuck them, kids. That was their view. Fuck them, kids. These are, whether they're immigrants or Americans, and this was mostly Americans in this apartment complex, that's their view.

41:01Ryan Grim:That is profoundly more dangerous than any, you know, potential like Trenderagua member. When your government that has the full force and power of the state is acting with complete and total impunity, that is a vastly greater danger than anything that we have seen in terms of undocumented immigrants coming into this country. And this is the part that I feel like no one ever grappled with or talked about when, you know, they were at the RNC with the mass deportation now signs and everyone's cheering this and the vibe shift, blah, blah, blah, especially for there was a contingent of libertarians.

41:38Ryan Grim:And, you know, I like Dave Smith, but he's he's emblematic of this type who embrace this sort of thing. And it's like in order to separate undocumented immigrant from citizen, it requires a massive police state apparatus. That is what necessitate like that is what is necessitated by this mass deportation strategy. And by the way, if you care about, you know, if if you care about going after the criminals, getting criminals out and et cetera, they're doing a piss poor job at that. Drug trafficking convictions are way down because they're also going to lose all public support.

42:18Emily Jashinsky:They're going to completely lose all public support, too. They want to be raiding a random apartment building.

42:24Ryan Grim:They want to be raiding the Home Depot. This is explicitly what Stephen Miller has said. So it's the polar opposite of going after the violent criminals. The majority of the people who are now in ICE custody for the first time have no criminal conviction whatsoever, are not indicted. They're not like these are just people who cross the border illegally, which is a civil infraction and are being treated like they're, you know, serial killers. It's insane. And so it should be surprising to no one the way that this this stripping of rights from immigrants, any rights, the ones that they're entitled to stripping of all rights from immigrants was going to bleed over into American citizens.

43:02Ryan Grim:And we are seeing that expansion over and over and over again. And I'm just I don't know. I'm horrified. I'm absolutely horrified by what we're seeing happening here in our country with so little pushback from the so-called opposition party, too.

43:18Griffin:And also the Chicago's Mexican-American population is like well over like 100 years old. Like this is it is a it is a part of the fabric of Chicago culture and society. you know the Mexican Revolution and then you know the need for factory jobs factory workers in World War I really you know drove this massive pull of Mexicans who moved up to the Chicago area which is roughly the same time that Stephen Miller's family got here like they like Stephen Miller's family and a lot of these Chicanos you know have equal amounts of claim when it comes to the duration of the time that they've spent here in the United States so like pretending that you can you know take a heritage American

44:04Emily Jashinsky:yeah and the

44:05Griffin:exactly and the

44:08Ryan Grim:Supreme Court isn't Fuentes a Chicago he's a Chicago area Latino that's right yeah

44:15Griffin:who the Supreme Court like believing so the Supreme Court legalized like this like skin color test that you know from like they put the put the little paint stick up by somebody's face and the darker they are the more a right ICE has then to like, you know, smash their face into the sidewalk, but it actually belies the real history of Chicago. And I was talking to some people from Chicago last night that were saying it's like a ghost town in huge parts of the city. People just scared. Like, in their own country. Scared to go out. I mean, I shot and killed a guy

44:53Ryan Grim:around Chicago. Right. And then they lied about it. you know, they claimed he was a criminal. They claimed that they were severely injured, whatever video came out. And it was complete and total lie. Like this guy had no, was not a criminal, no criminal record whatsoever. And they ended up killing him. Like that's, that is the level of impunity that we're talking about here. And I don't know, I just feel like if they're, they keep, they're just allowed to get away with you. We, we all watched that woman outside the courtroom in New York who was upset because her husband was being arrested to be deported.

45:28Ryan Grim:She's there with her two little kids. This thug takes her, grabs her by the hair, throws her on the ground. Again, all recorded. We all can see it. And she ends up in the hospital with a head injury. And the guy, initially, I says, oh, this was unacceptable behavior. Week later, he's back on the job. Not even a week later, he's back on the job. What do you think these new recruits who are coming in. The Big Beautiful Bill makes ICE the largest law enforcement agency in history. These new recruits who are coming in, who are looking at this, what do you think that their attitude is going to be like?

46:08Ryan Grim:If you're seeing those videos, if you're seeing the 79-year-old business owner having his ribs broken, if you're seeing the man who was shot to death on the side of the road, if you're seeing this lady who gets thrown to the ground, and you're like, yes, that's me, I want to be part of that. This is only going to get worse.

46:24Emily Jashinsky:Well, I just I also just want to emphasize this makes everybody less safe, because once again, I think the Trump administration has this idea there's a public mandate to do, quote, mass deportations, which everybody is going to define differently. Seriously, like there is no consensus number for what a mass deportation would look like or what it should look like. And there have already been backlashes in the public. Like you see Rogan and others who have moved away from what the, quote, mass deportation administration looks like. But they're losing. I mean, this is going to jeopardize an enormous amount of public support for the project of actually ridding the country of violent criminals.

47:02Emily Jashinsky:And there are some violent criminals here. And so everybody is less safe because the Trump administration right now is choosing to prioritize this theater. And I don't mean that again. Like it goes beyond theater because it's actually happening, of course. But I'm saying they're a huge part of their animus for doing it the way that they're doing it is it's not just about disincentivizing people that continue coming to the country and getting people to self-deport. It's not just about that. It's the show of force that, you know, the the people inside the administration are loving. And again, you can tell this from their social media.

47:39Emily Jashinsky:It feels like this this culture war backlash to the Biden era. You see this with the Pete Hegseth speech this week. It's this idea of putting on a show of fighting back against like the culture of weakness and anti-Americanism and all of that. And if it leads to, as it is in this case, militarization of suburbs like Elgin, the public is going to rightfully start pushing back. And then you're going to lose any scrap of public support for what people did say they wanted to see at some point. Now, again, what that looked like, nobody had – some people might have been comfortable with a small number of, quote, mass deportations compared to what the Biden administration was doing.

48:27Emily Jashinsky:But that's all going to be gone for the Trump administration the more that this continues. And again, this is like rightfully so. These are U.S. citizens and you are incompetently like acting a fool because you want to play dress up and use the Black Hawk helicopters. And because the president is saying we should use these cities as a training ground for the military. That is not American and it is not conservative.

48:52Ryan Grim:And because Stephen Miller is a sadistic freak and he runs the government. I mean, that's whose policy this is. Like, and they're, I mean, this is the thing that is so, I don't know. I don't even know the words at this point, but it's so terrifying to grapple with. Because they can't be so stupid as to think this stuff is popular. It's not, right? Oh, no, I actually think they do.

49:17Emily Jashinsky:I seriously think that they do.

49:19Ryan Grim:I think they're in their own bubble like the left was in. Seems to me like they genuinely don't care what the election results are like they will. You know, the level of overreach is so insane that it just seems like they have thrown electoral politics to the side. And I'm like, well, OK, well, what does that mean? You don't think that there's ever going to be any sort of electoral repercussions to the acts that you're taking here. They're so proud of like, oh, Trump was able to win over some significant amount of Latinos. And even there were some number of black voters who came back to him like that is that is all gone.

50:02Ryan Grim:Right. The young people that voted for Trump, that is all gone. And yet they continue in this completely unhinged fascist takeover. And so that's what makes me ask, like, OK, well, what is the plan then? because clearly they don't think there's ever going to be any potential of electoral consequences. They're going for the whole thing right now. They're going for the whole enchilada. That's what NSPM 7, by the way, that Ken Klippenstein has been reporting on, is about. We're going to make sure we don't even have a political opposition like they don't even exist, which Democrats are doing a good job of basically making reality all on their own.

50:39Ryan Grim:But they are taking a little bit of a stand this week, so we'll give them a little bit of credit for that. But, you know, Trump made that comment in that speech as well. He's like, I thought there'd be pushback. I thought we'd have a fight. There's no fight. They're going for the whole thing. And so acts like this, it's not just about immigration. This is a demonstration of force. This is a demonstration to the public, citizen, non-citizen alike. We can do whatever we want to you. You better stay in line. You better pray. You better be on our good side because that is the only thing that will protect you.

51:10Ryan Grim:These rights that you imagine you have, they don't exist. Look at the Supreme Court. They give us everything we want at every turn. The only thing that they stood up against was like, I guess we're going to keep the Fed in place. That's it. That was their line there. Other than that, on the shadow docket, Trump has gotten his way. So, yeah, greenlit the racial profiling, all of this, the rescissions, all of it. Yes, your rights don't matter here anymore. And that's what these overt acts, rogue, lawless, criminal acts, assaults, bring naked children out in the street and stuffing them in U-Haul vans, killing someone on the stride of the street and lying about it, throwing business owners.

51:46Ryan Grim:That's what they are meant to convey. We can do whatever we want to you whenever you want. So you better shut up and sit down and get in line.

51:56Krystal Ball: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. Fans say it's like finally getting a user manual for your brain.

52:33Saagar Enjeti:It's about engineering consciousness.

52:34Krystal Ball: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. 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.

53:14Krystal Ball: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. and it will blow your mind. Listen to The A Building on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

54:03Krystal Ball:What 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.

54:41Krystal Ball: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.

55:01Saagar Enjeti:So we got PR problems with this, and we've got other PR problems happening in the Trump administration, which I think will move us nicely to a little bit of Epstein news that Emily shared with, none other than Howard Lutnick kind of stepping into the ring here. So Howard Lutnick went on the Miranda Devine New York Post podcast, which gets a lot of

55:27Emily Jashinsky:dishy stuff because Miranda knows these guys pretty well and was able to pull some of these thoughts out of them. And this is like sneakily one of the most candid things a Trump administration official has said since the entire Bindergate Bondi fiasco, especially earlier in the summer. I think Lutnick was just comfortable in a conversation with Miranda Devine and said this, Griffin's about to play the clip, about what he thinks on Jeffrey Epstein, having known him.

55:55Krystal Ball:The guy's gross. Right. With my wife. The guy's gross. This was not, oh, the deep nuance of Howard Lutnick. This guy's gross.

56:05Emily Jashinsky:Right. So how come Bill Gates and all these other people could hang around him and not see what you saw?

56:11Krystal Ball:Or did they see it and ignore it? No, they participated. Right. That's what his MO was. You know, get a massage, get a massage. And what happened in that massage room, I assume was on video. This guy was the greatest blackmailer ever. Blackmailed people. That's how he had money.

56:29Saagar Enjeti:Interesting. So he assumes some of it's on video.

56:33Emily Jashinsky:Well, and Ryan, you can speak more to this, but Howard Lutnick was firmly ensconced in the world of New York finance, exactly in the type of position of somebody who would have been for years.

56:43Ryan Grim:Didn't he literally live next to Epstein? Am I right about that?

56:47Emily Jashinsky:I don't remember that. Let me look it up. But he's the person who would be like in a position to know. Yes. And so like he's he's hearing this for years and years. And there you have him just breezily saying like, yeah, he was pulling guys in to have massages. And I'm sure they're all on video. This is the Commerce Secretary. This is the Commerce Secretary. and his own boss, the president of the United States, wrote the very most, the most charitable way to put it, like, what is even the word? Like cheeky birthday letter to a guy who the commerce secretary again is saying, yeah, he's saying it so breezily as though the implication is, yeah, everyone knows that he was pulling guys in to get massages in his townhouse and he was gross.

57:31Emily Jashinsky:They knew it and they did it anyway. That implicates the president.

57:35Griffin:Right, they didn't do it anyway. They did it because of that.

57:38Ryan Grim:By the way, I did check. He did live next door to Epstein in Upper East Side. That Upper East Side mansion, Ludnick was the next door neighbor. Park Avenue, isn't that what it was? Yeah. Yeah, he was the founder of, or at least the CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald, the absolutely massive financial services firm that was at the top of the World Trade Center.

58:00Griffin:So, yeah, he's right in that social circle. Yeah, what he's saying is that it's not that people saw what he was doing and hung out with Epstein anyway, despite that. They were hanging around him because of that. Like, that was the draw for people. He was not like, you know, he was not twisting their arms to get these massages. and then like Lutnick says he believes that they were getting filmed at that point it doesn't matter if they were getting filmed or not like if you're one of these guys like a Gates or somebody who's in that room and then as Lutnick says whatever happens happens and you're not sure if it's if the cameras are on you now are under the thumb of Epstein because because maybe he's got film maybe doesn't probably does you don't want to find out the hard way uh so then he's got you but as you know as as it's as also the case you you he barely needed blackmail over these people like he he was he had he had money and power and connections and and people wanted to be part of that yeah um and so like the blackmail is like almost a little extra little a la carte item that he could bring.

59:25Ryan Grim:I feel like that really comes out in some of the correspondence that was revealed between JP Morgan executives who were like debating whether to keep him on. And, you know, there were several in particular who tended to be his advocate, but one specifically who had been to the island. And there's this grotesque email exchange between that dude and Epstein talking about like, oh, I had a great time with whatever Disney for Snow White, I think it was. And he says, oh, well, who would you like next? And he said, I think, you know, Beauty and the Beast or something like that. I mean, seems clear what is being referenced there.

1:00:00Ryan Grim:And so, you know, you've got it working. So Epstein is bringing in money to JP Morgan. He's bringing deals. He's able to bring in. He facilitates a meeting with Netanyahu, facilitates a meeting with Elon Musk, bringing in all these big players. Bill Gates, I think, is one of the people that he brought in as well. He's trying to set up something with them. So he's making them money, number one. Number two, this dude is like enjoying the time on the island. He's having a grand old time and doing whatever's happening there. And so he's benefiting monetarily. He's benefiting sexually. He's benefiting in terms of like his lifestyle.

1:00:37Ryan Grim:And then also he knows that if this guy ever wants to pull the pin on me, he can do it. So he's also under his thumb that way. And it seems pretty clear like that Lutnik's general assessment is correct that, you know, these guys were getting benefits and they knew that there would be a cost to just like distancing themselves from Epstein, from certainly being a whistleblower with regard to Epstein. So they just decided to enjoy the perks instead of doing the correct and obvious moral thing.

1:01:14Saagar Enjeti:And to Emily's point, it must be a good interviewer because like Lutnick, why are you bringing Epstein up right now? We just had the Charlie Kirk Memorial. People were forgetting about the Epstein thing.

1:01:26Griffin:Lutnick's one of a kind, too. He's a loose cannon.

1:01:29Saagar Enjeti:But like, you know, the Epstein, like it's been a long September. But September started with the drawing, the Trump drawing of the premature woman in the Jeffrey Epstein book. And then the Charlie Kirk assassination happened. And largely the conversation was over about the Epstein book and stuff like that. But then you're like, nope, let's refresh. Let's bring it back up.

1:01:51Emily Jashinsky:I mean, that's the danger of sitting down with Miranda Devine, who is just friendly with a lot of these guys and is also very curious about deep state issues. So it's it's she's in one of those rare positions where she can pull some of that, extract some of that information very casually out of guys like Howard Lutnick. I mean, Lutnick is like Ryan said, it's it's not surprising that Lutnick is stumbled into this little disclosure. But that is a good reminder. There were videotapes confiscated from Palm Beach, videotapes confiscated from the Manhattan townhouse. We do not know anything about what the government knows from the surveillance network, from the houses that was apparently uncovered.

1:02:32Emily Jashinsky:All of the guys like Lutnick seem to believe that there were hidden cameras. We saw the pictures the New York Times released of cameras in the bedroom. There's very clear evidence Epstein was just aggressively recording what happened in his homes and using that as blackmail. And we know that the government has unreleased information that would help us understand that better because we know some of these records were seized from the houses. So that is a giant, I mean, continues to be one of the biggest unanswered questions that the government seems to have zero interest whatsoever in ever coming up with a response to.

1:03:12Yeah.

1:03:13Ryan Grim:Guys, we should probably talk a little bit about the fact that there was supposed to be a jobs report this morning and there is no jobs report this morning. And I think we've got some Joni Ernst soybean updates as well. But I mean, this is this is a huge story. This is something that in a more normal time, this would be a red alert, you know, breaking news. Everyone be freaking out, losing their minds. And I'm sure there are plenty on Wall Street who are still freaking out and, you know, losing their minds. But this is supposed to be jobs report Friday. Every Friday of the month, you get the government BLS jobs report.

1:03:47Ryan Grim:Everybody waits to see what those numbers are. They're highly they're the most, I would say, anticipated numbers that come out of the government. And this week, we're just not getting them. Now, that is partly because of government shutdown. It's partly because Trump fired the previous BLS commissioner because he didn't like the numbers he was getting. It's partly because the dude that they picked to be swapped in for BLS commissioner was like a total incompetent crank that even some on the right were like, this guy can't possibly do the job. And they pulled his nomination. And so now we're just like flying blind on the economy.

1:04:23Ryan Grim:And this comes on the heels of a different privately compiled jobs report from ADP that was negative and that also had a downward adjustment for the prior month. So things not looking so great in terms of where we are economically at this point.

1:04:39Saagar Enjeti:Yes, let's watch that clip and more on the second half of the show where we'll get into that and more subjects like the Riyadh Comedy Festival. And we'll be answering some of your AMA questions from the Breaking Points premium members. If you want to sign up, watch the second half of the show, breakingpoints.com. And we'll see you all on the other half.

1:05:01Emily Jashinsky:One more part of that tease. Crystal will be live alone on the streets of Baltimore for Tommy Laird. That's right. Tommy, this is for you, girl. live from Baltimore.

1:05:11Ryan Grim:Although I think I'm supposed to be supposed to be at night, so I'm going to have to hang out there all day. That's fine. I like Baltimore. It's nice.

1:05:18Saagar Enjeti:You have to be blasting Bad Bunny on a boombox as well.

1:05:23Ryan Grim:Great American artists. If you know, you know.

1:05:26Saagar Enjeti:Folks, if you don't know what we're talking about right now, there's an incredible Tommy Lauren takes down Crystal Ball layering. That's right. Humiliating me. Sorry, it's been so long. So if you want to see Crystal Ball get absolutely humiliated, owned, wrecked, destroyed, and see her liberal tears, you can check out that interview. But for now, let's plug.

1:05:48Griffin:Also, Cori Bush is running for Congress against Wesley Bell, so maybe we'll talk about that.

1:05:52Ryan Grim:Oh, nice. I thought she was already. I thought that was already official.

1:05:55Griffin:She announced this morning.

1:05:56Ryan Grim:Oh, cool.

1:05:57Griffin:It was expected, but she's now officially in.

1:06:00Ryan Grim:Let's go.

1:06:02Saagar Enjeti:So much to happen and talk about on the second half of the show. And we'll see you all there in just a moment.

1:06:31Krystal Ball: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. 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. Jackson, 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.

1:07:06Krystal Ball:Listen to The A-Building on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can scroll the headlines all day and still feel empty. I'm Ben Higgins, and If You Can Hear Me is where culture meets the soul. Honest conversations about identity, loss, purpose, peace, faith, and everything in between. Celebrities, thinkers, everyday people, While some have answers, most are still figuring it out. And 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.

1:07:42Krystal Ball:This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human.