11/12/25: DHS Attacks Krystal, Shapiro Scolds Poor Young People, Bombshell Epstein Emails, Katie Wilson Wins In Seattle

24:04But I love the feeling of, you know, having that connectivity to this specific place. It's hard to describe the feeling, but it is a very rooted feeling. And that loss of community in our country, which has been tracked all the way going back to bowling alone, which is this seminal sociological study of the way that we're all sort of like coming apart and all of that accelerated, of course, by social media and smartphones. I think it is an affirmative value that we should aspire to that if people want to be able to live and raise kids in the places that they're from, that, you know, that's something we should value as society.

24:47And there's nowhere, I mean, on the one hand, rural areas have been decimated because of the free trade regime. So, you know, a lot of places don't have opportunities. So people feel they have to move then to a New York City because Ben Shapiro says that, well, you go where the opportunity is. Well, where do you think the freaking opportunity is? It's places like New York City. But then you get there and you're living in a shoebox and you can't afford to make it. So it's like damned if you do, damned if you don't. This is a I think liberals have had a blind spot for the you know, that importance of place and that being an affirmative value.

25:22And then the the economic elites over the past 40 years, you know, their view has always been as they're destroying jobs in these various places, like basically big deal, creative destruction. I guess you just need to move away. So they, of course, you know, haven't had any any appreciation for the importance of community or, you know, they also, I think, find it easier to like control and make you and, you know, make it so your whole life is your job if you are uprooted from a place in a community that has meaning for you. So it serves them on that end as well. Yeah, you know, Ryan and I were texting on Friday and I was looking for a movie to watch and I asked him, you know, should I watch Bowling for Columbine and Roger or Roger and Me?

26:08Because I was I'm just going to me. I'm working through my list. And Ryan's like, you've got to watch Roger and Me. I'd never seen it before. And, you know, I'm from the upper Midwest outside of Milwaukee and watching that movie. It's like a really emotional experience because you look at what happened to to Flint. You look at the way the people who were in the auto industry were treated. It didn't make for you. They weren't able to just like find jobs. A lot of them, you watch it. They're leaving Flint. They're leaving and going to other places. And what you take with you when you do that is this like real love for your community.

26:45And it makes worse businesses. It makes small businesses in a local community operate differently than massive global companies, which bring with them all of the problems, by the way, that conservatives hate about global governing organizations, whether it's like the World Economic Forum or the United Nations. There's just something that is completely detached and different. And it's much easier to do mass layoffs. And conservatives will say, OK, well, that means it's much easier for you to be more efficient. But efficiency isn't the end of the economy. Nobody just believes the economy should exist only for the sake of efficiency.

27:21And I say nobody, but some people, of course, do. They're just a minority. Hardcore libertarians, basically, are the ones who will tell you that. So I wanted to put this chart on the screen because one of the things Ben talked about was how both sides are basically trying to consolidate power. And that has created a less affordable America. And this chart is from AEI. It gets updated like every six months. This is the 2022 version of it from the American Enterprise Institute. Mark Perry, who's an economist at the American Enterprise Institute. It's a little bit of an inkblot test. You can kind of look into it.

27:54You can read into it a lot of different things. Stoller and I were going back and forth about how you can read antitrust into this chart. But what you see is you look at overall inflation and then you can see certain things that have gotten more expensive since 2000 and certain things have gotten less expensive. So more affordable versus more expensive since 2000. And everybody knows this in their hearts. Like you just, this chart hits you like a ton of bricks when you see college tuition just going up so high. And then TVs going down so low. 97.7 % drop in the affordability of TVs. Nursery school, child care going up.

28:31Medical care services going up. College tuition, food and beverages going up. And then you see computers, software, toys, TVs, clothing, new cars roughly going down a little blip around the COVID time period. And I think the reason that I think Ben, in a sense, is correct, this chart points to it from my perspective, is that I really do worry about subsidies in the like Mom Donnie era New York City making things in the long term less affordable. This is a huge part of the debate we're having right now about the Affordable Care Act subsidies and Obamacare. Subsidies really can create oligopolies like they actually do have that effect.

29:15I think it's been pretty clear with college tuition that subsidies have created little incentive for these colleges to compete with one another on tuition price. And so I do think that should be part of the conversation. I don't know, Crystal, how you feel about it. But the question for me as a conservative is like, well, if the status quo is also miserable, which is the case with health insurance, then you can't just ask people to wait until there's some type of like comprehensive conservative market based solution in six months or six years. is people don't deserve to have their premiums spiked because the system is failing.

29:52And just like shoulder that on the promise that someday you'll do like a reform to the subsidies. Like, I don't think the subsidies are a great option right here. I don't think just subsidizing housing, freezing rent. I don't think those are good long term options. And so I think that's a blind spot in some ways, I think, for the progressive left. Although Mamdani is kind of interesting because he engages in the abundance conversation in an interesting way. But neither you or I are like full abundance people. But we're also - I'm a yes and on abundance. There we go. There we go. Right. You got to do the abundance, but you also have to, and their focus on like you actually need to deliver, agree.

30:29But their lack of focus on you're going to have to confront capital is where that analysis falls short. Right. I think you're right about subsidies. And to me though, I don't see that as progressive left. I see that as neoliberal. Perfect. You know, that's it. We're going to do a tax credit and we're going to give you, you know, we're going to OK, Obamacare, we're going to subsidize it. Right. And look, better than nothing. Right. It's a bandaid, though. It's absolutely a bandaid. And if you're going to wait for your like conservative market based solution, you're going to get things like a 50 year mortgage.

31:01We have left to the market the instead of having our own values and priorities in the way that, for example, China has, we have said we are going to outsource our thinking and our values to the market. And all the market does is says, great, we're going to figure out how we can bilk you for all of the money that we possibly can and consolidate power and wealth among a very few people. And that's how you end up broadly with the system where the core building blocks of a middle class life, housing, health care and education are wildly unaffordable because we can't as a country say, you know what, put them like the profitability aside.

31:43These are things that are just basic goods and values that everyone should have access to. And we're going to do what we need to do to make sure that that is the case. So, you know, your comment about subsidies is absolutely correct. I don't disagree with that at all. Where I would disagree is, so, for example, with college education, Zoran Mamdani and Bernie Sanders wouldn't be saying that's why we need to, you know, have a better student loan program. They'd say that's why we need free college education, free public colleges that are free and available to everyone on housing. They wouldn't say, you know, that's why you need an extra tax credit for affordability.

32:20I mean, they may be on board with those sorts of things, but they would say we need more direct government building of social housing so that we can surge affordable housing into the market and don't have to wait for some developer to decide that it's in their best financial interest to do it. And by the way, when they do, they're going to build luxury high-end condos, not starter homes for young families. You know, so and on health care, obviously, they're not looking like, yes, they'll support subsidies in the short term just so people don't 15 million people don't lose their health care or whatever the number is.

32:53That's not their long term solution, though. What they would say is Medicare for all. We have to tackle putting profit at the center of our health care system instead of health and care. So, you know, to me, what you're pointing to is the failures of a neoliberal Democratic Party that doesn't want to confront capital, wants to deal with some problems and sees the, you know, sees the pain and is empathetic, wants to deal with the problems, but doesn't want to confront capital. And that's where all of these weird subsidies and tax credits. And, you know, if you're this kind of business owner in this kind of town, weird, bizarre, piecemeal, non-universal programs ultimately come in.

33:31Yeah. And I think probably where you and I have and Sagar and I and Ryan and you have like more fundamental disagreements is on like I still have a really hard time with Medicare for all and like seeing that or feeling comfortable with like the level of quality that a program like that would look like. the same thing with, you know, all kinds of things at public colleges, that sort of thing. But my position on Medicare for all over the last several years has been, will it be more miserable than the already miserable system that we're in? And I don't know that the answer to that is no, because this system sucks.

34:08It sucks. And it is great for people who continue to profit off of it. And that does go in both directions. I mean, the biggest enemies of capitalism, This was a common sentiment in the Gilded Age, by the way. The biggest enemies of capitalism are the capitalists. And that's how you end up with people reflexively going towards subsidy regimes because they're Band-Aids. And it's understandable that people are looking for Band-Aids when they're bleeding out. And so actually the capitalists continuing to prioritize themselves over, and let's bring this full circle, the public, their communities. Michigan is such a good example of this.

34:52Such a good example. Oh, yeah. You mother effing capitalists, why do you think you got Trump? You didn't want Trump. Why do you think people voted for Trump? Well, it's because of what you did to Michigan. It's because of what you did to Wisconsin. It's because of what you did to Pennsylvania. Do you think the country is healthier because of any of this? because you push people to the brink of desperation that they voted the host of Celebrity Apprentice into the presidency? No, and it's not. And there's been zero self-reflection about how their policies, whether they were subsidy band-aids or whether they were bailouts for the auto industry, whether they were complete, you know, just treating people like widgets and abandoning communities that had lifted them, lifted their profits and supported them and been a part of their team and taken pride in working for Milwaukee and thinking about like Masterlock.

35:44But if you're in Michigan, GM, those types of things, it just me, it just like I'm talking about it. I'm almost crying. It's just so horrible. And there's no reflection on it whatsoever from the capitalists themselves. And again, that was a common sentiment in the Gilded Age was that the capitalists were the enemies of capitalism. But nobody wants to, even after Donald Trump gets elected and Bernie Sanders almost gets elected, nobody wants to talk about that. Well, let me say that what was done to Michigan, what has been done to small towns and small cities, the hollowing out across the country, the de-industrialization is gonna look like child's play compared to what they're planning with AI.

36:25Now, maybe AI is just a big hype and a bubble and it pops And there's, you know, massive economic fallout and chaos, which is a horrible outcome, but doesn't end up with all human labor being replaced. But, you know, those are basically the two directions. But their their goal is to make everyone irrelevant. That is, you know, we talk about like late stage capitalism, like that is actually their end state that they're trying to achieve. because the whole history of labor and capital is that capital basically hates labor, wants to pay them as little as possible, work them as much as possible, like not that let them have maternity leave or paternity leave or sick leave or whatever.

37:05It's this adversarial relationship. And they would love nothing more than to make it so they don't have to deal with us at all. And the level of power and wealth that would flow to them in that scenario is just, I mean, it's beyond anything that we have even come close to seeing before in human history. That's what they're aiming for. I mean, that is the goal. And that's the market-based solution. And, you know, I think a few of them realize, like, if we're going to pull this off, we're going to have to give them, like, a universal basic income or throw them some crumbs or something. But, you know, let's be clear about what they actually want.

37:46and you know I've been thinking of this we don't have to open this whole can of worms but I'll just put this idea out there we can flesh it out more because I'm still fleshing it out myself but capital is very happy with Trump like they're you know Wall Street CEOs are hanging out with him at the White House they've figured out if I just bring him his gold bar in the White House I can get whatever I want I got my tax cut you know he's I can the tariffs are now you know being rolled back and anyway I was able to get my car found so it wasn't that big of a problem for me whatsoever And the big thing that they're getting, these tech giants in particular, is off to the races on AI.

38:22They think they're going to get, whether this is, I mean, I think this is reality. They think they'll get government bailouts to backstop their losses. They think that government is going to affect it, like actively help them with their compute build out and allow them to achieve the grand dream and vision, which is to get rid of all of our, like the need for any of our labor. Like that's the actual goal. Exactly. And so when you hear Shapiro talking about like, you know, his market, like classic conservative market driven solutions, that is the future that the market has in mind for us. that's the goal is to pay us zero employees zero amount.

39:06Like that is the driving push. So just be aware. That's like, that's what he would advocate for. That's what he would say is fine and good and acceptable. And, you know, we can get whatever, you know, with our pitchforks, we can sort of extract from the, uh, the trillionaires that, that run the show. Um, you know, it kind of makes, uh, so what I was going to say with regard to, to the connection with immigration is, you know, in the past, the anti-immigration position was anathema to business because they do abuse and exploit undocumented workers. There's no doubt about it. They love the cheap labor force and they've kind of come to terms with it in Trump's second term, because what's even better than cheap labor is no labor at all, not having to pay human beings at all.

39:51So it's part of why I feel like, you know, the the focus on immigration misses the point at this point. Like there is a great replacement theory playing out. It's these tech oligarchs who literally are telling you they want to replace you with a robot. That is the that's the big battle that's going on right now. And, you know, I hope and we've been covering closely on the show. I hope there is a cross ideological coalition that is able to come together to push back forcefully on that view because it is genuinely existential. I mean, it's easy to be black pulled on the right because during the kind of peak woke era is when you saw people in the Republican Party saying we're done with the Chamber of Commerce and we're creating our own Chamber of Commerce.

40:38You know, these capitalists are, Marco Rubio gave this entire speech at Catholic University. It was a wonderful piece of theology and politics where he's talking about the ends of markets are not efficiency. The ends are families and community. Like that is why markets don't exist for the sake of efficiency. They exist because we create them via our democracy in order to have strong, prosperous families that can flourish and communities that can flourish and people that can flourish. And that's obviously true, but that is not what the tech giants believe. And the tech giants, some of them might have these like sincere libertarian positions that I think are insane.

41:23But they may like genuinely believe that UBI is, you know, the peak version of humanity. But it's not a conservative belief. It might be a libertarian belief. It's definitely not a conservative belief. And that's what I think you're so right, Kurosawa, like that's where this is all heading is the UBI bandaid is going to be applied in ways that's like, all right, sorry, humans. You guys can't do this as well as our LLMs and our LLMs inside our robots. So just be content with this$2 ,000 a month or whatever it is and get in your autonomous vehicle. And that's where it's going. And it's exactly what we were talking about, which is when you don't actually want to do the hard work of having a well-regulated market.

42:14Very hard work to do because you're swamped by lobbyists all of the time to create a market that is in their direction one way or the other. Substance can be a tool towards that, but also so can deregulation. So that's much harder work to have a fair market and a place where people actually can create small businesses or they can have meaningful lives and thrive through the dignity of work. Nope. We're just going to get UBI. It's easy. Yeah. UBI and no Epstein files, Emily. That's the name of your next book.

42:50We do a breaking EPSI news to get to. So let's go ahead and move on to that story. Congressman Ro Khanna is going to join us in just a bit. Welcome to the A-Building. I'm Hans Charles. I'm Menelik Lumumba. It's 1969. Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. have both been assassinated. And Black America is at a breaking point. rioting and protests broke out on an unprecedented scale. In Atlanta, Georgia, at Martin's alma mater, Morehouse College, the students had their own protest. It featured two prominent figures in Black history, Martin Luther King Sr. and a young student, Samuel L. Jackson. To be in what we really thought was a revolution.

43:33I 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.

44:02What 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 is 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 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

45:00I'm Bowen Yang and I'm Matt Rogers during this season of the Two Guys Five Rings podcast In the lead up to the Milan Cortina 2026 Winter Olympic Games, we've been joined by some of our friends. Hi, Bowen. Hi, Matt. Hey, Elmo. Hey, Matt. Hey, Bowen. Hi, Cookie. Hi. Now the Winter Olympic Games are underway. We are in Italy to give you experiences from our hearts to your ears. Listen to Two Guys, Five Rings on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

45:34We have breaking news for everyone this morning. The House Oversight Committee's Democrats released several emails from Jeffrey Epstein, Ghislaine Maxwell, and author Michael Wolff that offer more insight into Donald Trump's relationship with Jeffrey Epstein. We can go through some of these emails. We're going to put them up on the screen. My goodness. So first of all, 2011, you have Jeffrey Epstein emailing Ghislaine Maxwell saying, I want you to realize that that dog that hasn't barked is Trump, redacted victim's name, spent hours at my house with him. He has never once been mentioned, police chief, et cetera.

46:14I'm 75 % there. Maxwell responded again. This is 2011, April of 2011. I have been thinking about that, dot, dot, dot. Another set of emails here. Uh, fast forward to 2015. This is Jeffrey Epstein, December of 2015. CNN is hosting a primary debate for Republicans as Donald Trump is, uh, you know, completely rocketing up in the polls. I hear CNN Epstein, Michael Wolf writes to Epstein. I hear CNN is planning to ask Trump tonight about his relationship with you either on air or in scrum afterwards. I want to just pause there by the way, for a moment. This is Michael Wolf pulling a little bit of what a Donna Brazile, like tipping off Jeffrey Epstein to something in the gossip, in the milieu surrounding Michael Wolff about a question in a presidential debate.

47:02Epstein replies, if we were able to craft an answer for him, what do you think it should be? So basically, Wolff and Epstein are trying to preemptively give Donald Trump a little something to work with that might be beneficial to them in the long run. Here is Wolf, who styles himself as a journalist who is critical of Donald Trump and is something of a— Crystal, do you have any thoughts on this Wolf part of it all? Because it's making me so mad that I can't even really speak to see these emails. It's not surprising in any way whatsoever. But to see how involved he was and then to watch him try to claim the moral high ground as like an Instagram TikTok celebrity is deeply, deeply irritating.

47:50Well, I think you see a window into his methods in particular where, I mean, this is part of how he he in the first Trump White House apparently was a fixture, like just hanging out there all the time. And clearly he gives people the sense of like, I'm on your side. I'm giving you advice like we're in this thing together. And then that's how he ingratiates himself to wealthy, powerful or in the case of, you know, Jeffrey Epstein, wealthy, powerful and notorious people and is able to write about it. And Michael Wolff has been, you know, out there talking about, hey, I've seen pictures of Donald Trump with girls of uncertain age.

48:25I've you know, here's what Epstein told me about Trump. He also claimed that Epstein had a lot of insider knowledge into Trump's first administration. So still had a lot of connectivity there. In any case, with regard to this, you know, this question of, oh, he might get asked a debate question about this. CNN did not ask him about Epstein at that debate. Probably would have been a good question to ask him, but that didn't get asked at that debate or in the scrum. And then do you have the other email, Emily, where they're talking about Trump spending hours with one of the victims? Yes. So this is from 2019.

48:59And this is from Jeffrey Epstein to Michael Wolff. So it says, victim name redacted, Mar-a-Lago redacted. Trump said he asked me to resign. Never a member ever. Of course he knew about the girls. He asked Ghislaine to stop. And this is after, by the way, back in 2015, that Wolf emailed the advice from Michael Wolf to Jeffrey Epstein about potentially crafting a response to hand Donald Trump was, I think you should let him hang himself. If he says he hasn't been on the plane or to the house, then that gives you a valuable PR and political currency. You can hang him in a way that potentially generates a positive benefit for you, or if it really looks like he could win, you could save him generating a debt.

49:46Interesting line right there. Of course, Wolf continues, it is possible that when asked, he'll say Jeffrey is a great guy and has gotten a raw deal and is a victim of political correctness, which is to be outlawed in a Trump regime. Now, when he says, of course, Trump knew about the girls, this is from Jeffrey Epstein, he asked Ghislaine to stop. That is in the strangest way ever confirmation of what Donald Trump has said, which is also in the strangest way ever confirmation that he clearly knew, as he alluded to in media reports before he was president, before Epstein became such a mythical figure.

50:22Trump said Jeffrey likes him on the younger side. He said recently, I think he was on Air Force One within just the last few months, saying, yeah, they were stealing girls from Mar-a-Lago, which is exactly what happened to Virginia Giffray, who was working at Mar-a-Lago, was poached by Ghislaine Maxwell at Mar-a-Lago. So these emails, again, these are ones released by the Democrats on the House Oversight Committee. As the government shutdown ends, Mike Johnson is going to face enormous pressure to bring an Epstein vote to the floor. There may even be a discharge petition that goes around Mike Johnson to bring some of this to the floor.

51:02So, Crystal, no surprise that we are starting to see these as the government looks poised to reopen, hopefully forcing a vote. Yeah. And Trump even got asked specifically, was when you're talking about they were stealing girls from Mar-a-Lago, are you talking about Virginia Giffray? And he said something to the effect of, yeah, I think I am. I think that I am talking about her. And so it is strange the way that their two stories, in a sense, confirm each other. Because Jeffrey says, of course he knew. Because we were taking girls from there. And he told Ghislaine to stop. So he knew exactly what was going on.

51:34And then you add to that the color of he spent hours with a victim. And then him pondering, like, why isn't why isn't Donald Trump getting mentioned in all of the coverage surrounding me? And, you know, I mean, that would be that would be a sort of head scratching thing, given how close we know that they their lives were intertwined for years and years where, you know, again, according to Michael Wolff and Jeffrey Epstein, Epstein and Trump were besties. They were super close. They were hanging out in New York City. They were hanging out down in Palm Beach. you know both living this sort of high-flying lifestyle both of them uh loving women in Epstein's case girls uh and so you know these paint helped it to fill in some of that that portrait and yesterday Sagar and I covered the unbelievable special treatment that Ghislaine Maxwell is getting in her club fed prison first of all she's not even supposed to be in this club fed prison because she's a sex offender that's number one number two they're providing her with extraordinary perks, what they described as concierge service.

52:41One of the prison officials said, I'm tired of being Ghislaine Maxwell's bitch because she's getting she got a freaking puppy. She's got a special meals. She gets to go to the exercise area when no one else is there. She gets to have these long meetings where people bring in computers so she can communicate with the outside world in whatever kind of way she wants. Oh, and lo and behold, she's filling out her application for a presidential commutation. Gee, why is she getting such special treatment? I wonder. I mean, it doesn't take a genius to figure out. Trump is afraid of what she has on him, what she would say about him.

53:18And so he is directing his administration to make sure you keep Ghislaine happy. Do what you need. And every time that he gets asked about a potential partner commutation for Ghislaine Maxwell, he demores. He will not say one way or another whether he would consider that because, you know, as soon as she got moved to club fed and started getting this cushy treatment, well, that's when the leaks to the Wall Street Journal and other places about the birthday book and other things, that's when those leaks stopped. So again, put two and two together, you can likely see, OK, those initial leaks were kind of a shot across the bell.

53:52Like, hey, here's a little taste of what I might have, what I might be able to say about you. And again, given their long history together and the incredibly guilty and bizarre way that the Trump administration has acted around the Epstein files, you know, it's I don't think anyone should be surprised that some of this is coming out. And Emily, you know, one example of that is they refused to swear in Adelita Grijalva for almost two months, seven full weeks. They refused to swear this lady in, meaning that that district has no representation whatsoever in Congress, just so they would not have another vote on that Epstein discharge petition.

54:35Mike Johnson, like shut down the entire house and ended the session to avoid that vote previously. You know, they are in the way that this has really undercut their reputation as though we're outsiders. We're going to shine a light on the truth here. You know, it tells you they he is very concerned about what could potentially come out and be contained in emails, in government records, in FBI searches, whatever sort of material they were able to obtain. CIA, Ryan and Dropsite have been doing, and Mahz Hussein, Murtaza Hussein have been doing the only reporting, by the way, and extraordinary reporting, confirming that Jeffrey Epstein, yes, in fact, was an Israeli intelligence asset.

55:20So surely the CIA would have a lot to say about this guy as well. And the Republicans, led by Trump and Mike Johnson, have gone to extraordinary lengths to try to keep any of this from becoming public. So I'm wondering, actually, if the House Oversight Committee got these emails from Michael Wolff. I think that seems to be the most likely case. It potentially could have come from Ghislaine Maxwell, who was meeting with, obviously, Deputy AG Todd Blanche over the last several months. That's certainly possible as well. Johnson is set to swear in Adelita Grava today, And that's the vote they need for the discharge petition, which Thomas Massey, I believe Marjorie Taylor Greene, among other Republicans or among the Republican conference support.

56:05So that gets them around Mike Johnson to a vote demanding a release of all of the Epstein files. And so the House Oversight Committee had that conversation back and forth with Alex Acosta, former Labor Secretary nominee, who dropped out because of Vicky Ward's reporting and other information surrounding the sweetheart deal in Florida that happened under his watch regarding Epstein. And the House Oversight Committee asked, you know, about that Vicki Ward quote from an anonymous source. Many people speculate to be Steve Bannon that Acosta says he was told Epstein belonged to intelligence and to leave him alone.

56:43Acosta denied basically that in spirit. But he wasn't really I mean, there are a lot of other ways that that question could have been posed to him to get around the technicalities of whether Epstein was an asset or an agent and who told him what. that the House Oversight Committee just did not get to the bottom of in that interview, at least according to the transcript of it that we have. So, Crystal, this story to see in writing from Jeffrey Epstein that Trump has never once been mentioned by a police chief, etc. I don't know what Epstein means when he says I'm 75 percent there, but it sounds like maybe he's speculating that Trump is cooperating with an investigation.

57:28Hmm. I don't know. Yeah, I didn't know what that 75 % there piece meant, but I just want to underscore for people why this matters. You know, Ryan and Maz's reporting has proven the deep ties that Epstein did, in fact, have with the Israeli government and Israeli intelligence specifically. You can go and read their numerous stories at this point based on the leak of a former Israeli prime minister's emails, which also worth noting, as we always do, any mainstream outlet could have looked at these emails and reported them out. They're all sitting out there for anyone to report on. They are the only ones who have.

58:06Put that aside. So you're the president of the United States. And, you know, whatever whatever things you did or, you know, you're worried that Jeffrey Epstein knows about, you have to assume that the Israelis know about as well. You have to assume that. Right. And so what kind of pressure does that create in your relationship? How does that impact your foreign policy and the way you conduct yourself vis-a-vis this state? That's one of the most obvious reasons why this reporting and getting to the bottom of this is so incredibly, incredibly important. Because even if Jeffrey Epstein, you know, there's all sorts of reports about the cameras he had and the sort of documentation he kept.

58:56even if he didn't actually have the goods on whatever it is that Trump is terrified of coming out about him. And clearly there are things he is terrified of coming out about him. Even if Epstein didn't have the goods, you have to assume that he did. And you have to assume that he was sharing that information with his very close friends, allies, business partners in the Israeli government. So, I mean, that that is extraordinary and incredibly important for the American people to to know and understand. I think it is so important because when people say or I think, you know, Trump and then some Republicans, you rush to defend Trump.

59:38And it happened with Democrats under the Biden administration say this is a silly sideshow. It's not in the question of foreign policy, right? People have important questions on their plate every single day about cost of living and just trying to put food on the table, keep a job, all of that. Yes, our foreign policy is downstream of the shadow government in many ways that we aren't quite aware of. And that sounds crazy, but go ahead, read the emails that the mainstream media probably isn't covering because they don't want to go into what looks like a hack from Iran, but one that Ryan and Maz are confirming is verifiable by talking to people saying, is this these emails, this is you in this email, is this a real email, et cetera.

1:00:26So when you see it put so plainly in those drop site stories, Jeffrey Epstein and Ahud Barak were puppet masters and they were doing it, putting it in writing. We have that evidence for everybody to see. They were actually pulling the strings of geopolitics and foreign policy willing and dealing in their punctuation error laden emails, which Ryan says is a power move. I'm not so sure that it's, I agree it's a power move. It may just reflect actual incompetence. And that is remarkable when you look at it, because you see how few people have such disproportionate control over foreign policy. Foreign policy affects domestic policy.

1:01:10So these are enormously serious questions. And I think Epstein is an example of something that is still happening right now with other names that we just don't know. And I think that Trump and the Republicans had hoped they had kind of put this story to bed. You know, it was quiet there for a while. We weren't getting any new leaks. The Republican efforts, Mike Johnson's efforts, at least, to stonewall in the House had been successful. it was very much on the back burner and Sagar and I were talking about this and I what I said is but this is the sort of thing that can erupt back into the public consciousness at any time because it's completely unresolved and you know I think a lot of MAGA that were upset about it first kind of made their peace with it kind of like bought into some convoluted like oh actually Trump is playing the deep state somehow or they're fake or Clinton Comey whatever they just were like all We're just going to move on.

1:02:05When things like this come out, makes it pretty hard for you to just like close your eyes and pretend like nothing's happening here and pretending like pretend like this is all fine, especially when you have a voice, a renegade voice like Marjorie Taylor Greene out there who is willing to make her own side uncomfortable for whatever reason she's doing it. She is that voice right now willing to make her own side uncomfortable. So, you know, we talked about the MAGA revolt when you have a president who was just weakened by an extraordinary electoral defeat for his his party really across the board.

1:02:40You know, he's effectively already a lame duck, at least not is not legally allowed to run for another term, is aging very clearly in front of our eyes, you know, sleeping through White House events at this point and outsourcing major parts of his administration to his aides. Seems to only really care about like his his parties at Mar-a-Lago and his renovations. Yeah, when you have all of those sorts of things, then people start to feel a little bit bolder about their criticism and start to be looking at and constantly, OK, well, what is the world after Trump going to look like and where is the place to be, how to position myself in in that world?

1:03:18So I think even as Democrats just capitulated in Ben Thede and are embarrassing and all of that sort of stuff, you also have Trump becoming increasingly sort of weakened in his own administration. Approval rating is very low. Some errors starting to come at him from his own side, economic troubles, and a lot of unfulfilled promises. And then you add this to the mix. It's a pretty challenging landscape for him, I would say. Right. Yeah, I think after those elections last week, it's becoming clear to the administration that they're approaching the one-year mark. And after you get past that one-year itch, as we've talked about, Crystal, before in the show today, you can't keep blaming Biden.

1:04:03I mean, you can, but whether or not you're successful at continuing to blame the Biden administration or what you inherited, yeah, people are not going to buy it. And you are Mr. Drain the Swamp. So as emails come out showing you part of a swamp and then when you campaign, you know, when you're not in power, it's easy to say, yeah, we'll release the Epstein emails, even though Trump was a little bit more hesitant about those than JFK files and such during the campaign. But when you're actually in power, you can't just say like, yeah, we'll get to that. We'll get to that. You know, you actually you have to look like you're you're draining the swamp if that's the predicate for your political career.

1:04:39And that's where you see the people like Marjorie Taylor Greene and Thomas Massey breaking away from Trump on that particular question. All right, guys, very fortunate on last minute notice here to get Congressman Ro Khanna to join us this morning. Of course, he has been the Democrat leading the push to get the Epstein files released. Great to see you, Congressman. Two breaking point appearances in the same week. Must be my lucky week here. Our lucky week. Yeah. People are very interested in what you had to say last time. I have a suspicion they're going to be very interested in what you have to say today as well.

1:05:10So Emily and I just went through some of the new emails that were released tying Donald Trump directly to Jeffrey Epstein. First question for you is just why are these emails coming out now? What was the sort of chain of events that led to these revelations? Well, you know, I was on Lawrence O'Donnell about three months ago, and the attorney for the survivors is the guest right before me. And he says, I don't understand why no one has subpoenaed the Epstein estate. And shockingly, Pam Bondi, Kash Patel, and no one in Congress had done it. So I talked to Comer. I said, we've got to get these documents.

1:05:46To his credit, he subpoenas the Epstein estate. And the Epstein estate has been producing these documents drip by drip by drip. And today, of course, comes out the first time some of the email thing that Trump knew about the abuse of these young girls and the guilty conduct. And I expect far more documents are going to be coming out over the next couple of months. Is the I mean, I was speculating earlier that maybe these emails came from Michael Wolff or Ghislaine. Are you able to tell us anything about that, Congressman? Not the specifics of who they're coming from other than the Epstein estate and that the estate has thousands of more documents.

1:06:30But what this really says is we've got to get the full release. We shouldn't be reliant on the Epstein estate to be giving us piecemeal documents. We have the full files at the Justice Department. And those files have all of the interviews that were taken with men who abused these young girls, with people who were involved in the cover up. And today, as you know, Adelita Grijalva gets sworn in. We get 218 signatures. And that triggers a vote in seven days in the House to release these files. The bombshell document dropped today, I think, is going to increase the stakes of just saying get this out there.

1:07:07Yeah, no doubt about it. And just your reaction to what we learned today. So we had emails from Jeffrey Epstein saying, first of all, of course, Trump knew about what was going on with the girls because he told Ghislaine Maxwell to stop. He also claimed that Trump had spent hours with one of the victims. You also see him strategizing with Michael Wolff about a potential question to Donald Trump in the debates during 2015. Those questions didn't end up getting asked. But in any case, interesting to see them strategizing back and forth. You see them talking about how surprised they are that Trump hasn't been brought up in the context of Jeffrey Epstein in a more significant way, given their longstanding ties.

1:07:50So what is your reaction to the content of these emails? Well, this whole Epstein class needs to go. The issue in American politics is in left or right. It's are you for working ordinary Americans? Are you for this Epstein class? And this is what's so important about those emails. It's not just rich and powerful men who may have abused and raped young girls. It's a lot of rich and powerful people who knew that the abuse was going on and did nothing about it and actually still solicited Epstein for funding and were friends with Epstein and just swept it under the rug. And what these emails show is Donald Trump was aware of what was going on and that it was such a culture of abuse that people just thought, oh, this is just the way the world works.

1:08:37Well, their time is up. People are sick of it. Anyone involved in this stuff needs to move aside. We need to have a moral cleansing in this country. And Congressman, if this discharge petition goes through, as I think everyone can do the math and expect it to at this point, what ways might the White House and the administration have to wiggle around? What do we expect potentially to see from them, assuming that they try to continue blocking access to some of those files? What could we expect in terms of their methods of blocking release? Well, first of all, there's a full court press today to try to get one of these Republicans to drop before Adelita Grijalva gets sworn in at 4 p.m.

1:09:15I'm pretty confident they won't, but it's not done until 4 o 'clock. And then Johnson has dozens of procedural motions. He can try to obstruct it. I mean, we could spend the whole day talking about the tools he has. The confidence I have, though, is that there are a lot of Republicans who do not want the discharge petition tool to be rendered useless. They want to use it to get a bill on banning stock trading. They want to use it to get votes on other reforms. So I am hopeful the coalition will hold to say, no, you've got to bring this for a vote. Because if Johnson stops our petition from getting a vote, that will hurt Luna and Chip Roy and any Republican who wants to bring any bill using that mechanism.

1:10:04Congressman, do you have any other plans to, you know, public event awareness raising to sort of focus in scrutiny on the lack of transparency on the Epstein files and on the horrific abuse of these women? We do. We have a press conference that Thomas Massey, Marjorie Taylor Greene and I are planning next week. And a number of survivors from around the country are going to be flying in, some who have not spoken out before. You know, Mike Johnson keeps thinking, OK, if you just shut down Congress long enough, people are going to forget. But he doesn't realize that this story has gripped the American people.

1:10:41They know there was horrific acts that were committed. And I think when they hear from these women again, these brave women next week, it's going to make sure that we have action and an overwhelming vote in the House of Representatives. Well, please keep us updated as always, Congressman. Yeah. Thank you for joining us last minute, Congressman. Great to see you. Appreciate it. Great to see you as always. Thank you. 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 was at a breaking point.

1:11:16Writing and protests broke out on an unprecedented scale. In Atlanta, Georgia, at Martin's alma mater, Morehouse College, the students had their own protest. It featured two prominent figures in Black history, Martin Luther King Sr. and a young student, Samuel L. Jackson. To be in what we really thought was a revolution, I mean, people were dying. 1968, the murder of Dr. King, which traumatized everyone. The FBI had a role in the murder of a Black Panther leader in Chicago. This story is about protest. It echoes in today's world far more than it should. And it will blow your mind. Listen to The A-Building on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

1:12:08What 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.

1:12:46Some 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.

1:13:05I'm Bowen Yang. And I'm Matt Rogers. During this season of the Two Guys Five Rings podcast, in the lead up to the Milan Cortina 2026 Winter Olympic Games, we've been joined by some of our friends. Hi, Bowen. Hi, Matt. Hey, Elmo. Hey, Matt. Hey, Bowen. Hi, Cookie. Hi. Now, the Winter Olympic Games are underway. We are in Italy to give you experiences from our hearts to your ears. Listen to Two Guys, Five Rings on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

1:13:40Crystal, you have an interview with the likely new mayor of Seattle that we should get to. Yeah, so just a heads up, I recorded this interview with Katie Wilson yesterday. The vote count at that point, she was up by 91 votes in the vote count. Another drop has come since I interviewed with her. Now she's up by a larger margin. I think it's roughly 1 ,000 to 2 ,000 votes. The later votes that are coming in are more in her favor. So the expectation, it's probably going to recount just because of the narrowness of the margin, but it looks very likely she is going to be the next mayor of Seattle, progressive, insurgent, taking on an incumbent.

1:14:17So some sort of Momdani, West Coast Momdani vibes, I would say. She's a very different character from him, but also really centered affordability and housing affordability in particular. in her campaign, both as a way to deliver for voters across the board and also a way to tackle a chronic homelessness issue that Seattle has continued to suffer from. So with all of that being said, let's go ahead and take a listen to my interview with Katie Wilson. So I am super excited to talk to our next guest this morning. Katie Wilson is the co-founder and executive director of the Transit Riders Union. She is also the progressive candidate for mayor in the city of Seattle, locked in an extraordinarily close race with the current mayor, Bruce Harrell.

1:15:00And she joins us now. Welcome, Katie. Great to be here, Crystal. Yeah, of course. So I've been following your race for the past couple of weeks. You know, there's an incumbent who's more, I think, politically centrist. You're more of the progressive kind of insurgent outsider candidate coming in. Very close race all the way along. And as of yesterday, based on the mail drops, you have now taken a 91 vote lead. So first question for you, you know, just give us a little bit of a sense of the dynamics of this race. What ballots still remain and whether your expectation is that you will be the next mayor of the city of Seattle?

1:15:39Yeah. So the way that we do elections here in Washington state is that it's all by mail. So everyone mails in their ballots. We also have ballot drop boxes around the city. And there's a very consistent pattern that more progressive voters, younger voters tend to vote late. And so what you'll see is that the election night results, there's actually a fairly large shift between election night and the final results toward the more progressive or left leaning candidate. it. So on election night, I was at 46%. Now I've pulled ahead by 91 votes, as you said, and there's another about 10 ,000 ballots out there still to be counted, mostly from election day, mostly skewing younger.

1:16:18So we're really hopeful that that margin will widen. It's possible that there will be a recount because the margin will still be very small. But we're feeling really good about this race at this point. Incredible. Absolutely incredible. So talk to us just a little bit for people who have not been following this race closely. As I confess, I actually wasn't until the last couple of weeks before the election. Tell people about the incumbent mayor, Bruce Harrell, your issues with his leadership, and then the platform that you were running on as a contrast. Yeah, sure thing. So, I mean, my background, I'm a community organizer, a coalition builder.

1:16:51And so for the past 14 years, I've been leading this organization that I co-founded back in 2011 called the Transit Riders Union. And, you know, we basically fight on economic justice issues. So I've led campaigns to raise the minimum wage to the highest in the country in several cities around King County, fought for stronger renter protections in Seattle and other cities around King County, fought for progressive taxation. So we have a landmark tax on wealthy corporations in Seattle called the Jumpstart Tax that I played a big role in designing and passing. And then, of course, public transit, right, as the name of the organization suggests, fighting for better public transit.

1:17:29And we've won a bunch of affordable and free fare programs for lower income riders, for youth. So that's the kind of work that I've done over the years. It's very grassroots, community organizing, coalition building. And I really have never had the ambition to run for elected office until this year. And so early this year, we had an election on funding Seattle's new social housing developer through attacks on wealthy corporations. And our current mayor, Bruce Harrell, was kind of the face of the opposition campaign. And he's done a lot in office to try to undermine social housing, which is a kind of a new project for Seattle that a grassroots campaign put on the ballot last year.

1:18:10And nevertheless, this funding measure to fund the developer passed by a landslide. And so that really showed me that our current mayor, Bruce Harrell, is out of touch with the issues that people are facing in their daily lives. And I think the affordability crisis is really right up there at the top. And, you know, when I jumped into this race, I'd never heard of Zoran Mondani. But it's very clear that there are some similar dynamics playing out across the country where coming out of the pandemic with really high rates of inflation, the cost of housing in high cost cities like Seattle is just really out of control.

1:18:42Rents just keep going up and up. Home prices are out of reach for anyone wanting to buy a home. And then everything else from child care to food to groceries, everything is just really, really expensive. And people are feeling that, right? Not just the lowest income households, but people up to kind of middle class, people who have decent jobs are just like, can't believe how expensive everything is. So I think that's definitely a dynamic in this race where the work that I've done over the years and what I want to tackle as mayor is this affordability crisis. And really, we also have this extremely bad homelessness crisis here in Seattle.

1:19:15We actually have rates of unsheltered homelessness that are much higher than comparable cities around the country in the U.S. And I really, you know, our current mayor, Bruce Harrell, he came into office promising to address issues of homelessness and public safety. And I think people are looking around and not really feeling that he's succeeded at that. So that's kind of a local dynamic. But the national dynamic is affordability. And then I think also, obviously, Trump getting elected last fall, right? There's a certain brand of establishment Democratic Party politics, which utterly failed to stop the train wreck that was Trump's election.

1:19:46And so I think that there's a feeling that people want new leadership and leadership that's not going to tower like that. And I think our current mayor, he doesn't break that mold, right? Like he's been the mayor for four years, but before that he was a council member for 12 years. So he's kind of part of that kind of centrist Democratic Party establishment that people are pretty upset with right now. So I think that's also a dynamic in this race. And so for me, you know, coming in as an outsider, someone who's, you know, worked with City Hall, is familiar with the legislative process and all that, but at the same time is coming in as kind of an insurgent candidate.

1:20:23This was just the right moment for that to work. And it looks like we're going to pull it out by the skin of our teeth. Incredible. I'd love for you to dig a little bit more into the contrast in the approach of Bruce Harrell on homelessness versus, you know, what approach did he take and what did you run on? Yeah. And I mean, honestly, this is something that I didn't have super high expectations when he came into office, kind of knowing who he was from when he was on council. But I've been deeply disappointed relative to those expectations. So basically, the current administration's approach has been to sweep people around the city from place to place without actually getting people inside.

1:21:00So we basically have thousands of people sleeping unsheltered on the streets, and we have two homeless people in the Seattle area for every one shelter bed. And there's been very, very little focus of his administration on actually opening new emergency housing and shelters so that we can get people inside. Instead, they're spending all of this time and energy just basically telling people you can't be here and forcing them to move along. But then, like, where are they supposed to go? Right. And so that also contributes to our public safety problems. Right. Because a lot of people have issues with drug addiction, mental illness, and those aren't being dealt with.

1:21:33And you can't really deal with those issues if you're sleeping outside. And so the fact that they're not actually focusing on getting people inside is just really damning in my mind. And people are noticing it, right? Like there's, you know, people who just, residents, small business owners in various neighborhoods around the city who, you know, they see that there's like an encampment there and they know that they're like, okay, well, the city's gonna come and sweep them, but we know that they're just gonna go to the next neighborhood. And then a couple of weeks from now, they'll be back. And so there's this deep frustration with this approach.

1:22:03So, you know, what I've been saying on the campaign trail is I'm going to really focus on opening new emergency housing and shelters so that we can actually resolve encampments by getting people inside rather than just sweeping them around the city. And we know that this works, right? So during the pandemic, there was a program that several nonprofits put together called Just Care, which basically did that, right? It resolved encampments by getting people inside. And at that time, it was kind of temporary hotels that had been repurposed as shelter and was very successful. So we know that the vast majority of homeless folks sleeping outside will accept meaningful offers of shelter and support when that's given to them.

1:22:40And that's just not what we're doing right now. So that's really the big difference in our approach there. And what do you do with the more challenging cases, you know, people who are suffering from addiction issues or from mental illness who don't want to accept that, you know, that offer of shelter? How do you handle those cases? Yeah, I mean, I think we know from practice that that ends up being a fairly small percentage of the homeless population. But, you know, the fact is we do have lovers. Right. So our laws around involuntary commitment are governed at the state level. So changing those is pretty challenging.

1:23:17But here's the thing, like most people who are addicted to drugs, you know, are also engaged in various forms of criminal behavior, right, in order to obtain drugs or just in order to meet basic needs. homeless people that is. Right. And, and so we have the ability to, if necessary, arrest people for criminal behavior. And then we have successful diversion programs where, because we also know that just throwing someone in jail, like doesn't work. Right. And then they're back out of the street and have been destabilized and are more at risk of overdosing. But what we can do is put people into a diversion program where there's basically accountability and there's shelter and services, but that's kind of like offered as an alternative to the booking and jail kind of route.

1:24:10And so we have programs that have been very successful. And so it's a matter of scaling those up. And I think that we can, if we do that well, I think that we can address those tougher cases or the vast majority of them as well. And of course, chronic homelessness is a symptom of a larger housing crisis as you were speaking to, which affects Absolutely, everyone. What are some of the, obviously, we all know the Zoran platform, he's freezing the rent on rent-stabilized apartments, and then he wants to surge a building, Bonanza, of additional 200 ,000 housing units. What are some of the things you ran on in terms of housing affordability?

1:24:42Because I know that is a major issue in the city of Seattle. Yeah, totally. So there's a few things. So one is social housing, which I mentioned, right? And this is the model which is a little bit unfamiliar in Seattle and a lot of the United States, but similar to Vienna and Paris and other European cities, which have had really strong social housing sectors for a long time. And so the idea here is to begin to build a non-market housing sector that's mixed income. So here in Seattle would go up to 120 percent of area median income, which is a fairly high threshold. And then by having this publicly owned and operated permanently affordable housing, once you get that to a certain scale, that also helps to moderate rents in the private sector.

1:25:24Now, we're a long way from that, but there's no better time to start than now. So part of my platform is really having the city and the mayor be a strong partner in getting the new social housing developer up and rolling and acquiring buildings and developing buildings. At the same time, I also believe that we need to make it possible for the private market to build more housing in our great neighborhoods around Seattle. And so that means working on our land use and zoning laws to make that possible because we have had very restrictive single family zoning laws in Seattle for a long time. And that's beginning to loosen up a little bit, but we can go a lot further than the previous administration has gone.

1:26:02In addition, so we are not allowed in local jurisdictions in Washington state to do rent regulation directly. So we can't do rent control here locally without a change in state law. However, we do have a law called the Economic Displacement Relocation Assistance Law, which basically says if your landlord raises your rent 10 percent or more and you move out because you can't afford it, your landlord is supposed to pay you three times your monthly rent in relocation assistance. So that's nice. And it also disincentivizes large rent increases because landlords don't want to trigger that law. And so one thing that I've talked about is bumping that threshold down from 10 percent to, for example, 5 percent.

1:26:42And so that would help to disincentivize those larger rent increases. There's some other things that we can do on the renter protections front, like regulating or banning rental junk fees. Something that happens, especially if you have a corporate landlord in the United States, there's kind of the sticker price of your apartment. But then there's all these like hidden monthly fees or hidden annual fees that are kind of in the fine print. And so you end up paying a lot more than you think you were going to pay. So something that the city can do is also regulate or ban some of those kind of extraneous fees.

1:27:11So those are a couple of other ideas for how we can like help around the margins. The city can do more to invest in affordable homeownership programs. There's some other things, too, but it's kind of a whole range of things. Right. There's not one silver bullet, but we kind of need to do it all. All of the above. Yeah. Katie, my last question for you is, you know, I'd love for you to zoom out and talk a little bit more broadly about the political trends within Seattle. I saw a tweet about this. So forgive me. You can correct if this analysis tweet analysis was incorrect. But basically they said, you know, there were a lot of progressive legislators in Seattle.

1:27:41And then there was after Black Lives Matter and the pandemic, there was kind of a backlash. And that's when people like Bruce Harrell and other more like centrist types get elected to the city council. And now with Harrell's likely defeat, that wave of the backlash wave has now been swept out by a more progressive cohort. And so, first of all, is that sort of accurate, your view of the way that Seattle politics has swung back and forth? And then what is most important to you in order to make sure that there isn't another sort of backlash swing to the center after your mayoralty? Yeah, that's a really good question.

1:28:16And so, yeah, I think the picture that you laid out is fairly accurate. So we had a pretty darn progressive city council for about a decade. And that included former council member Shama Sawant, who is a socialist city council member. and now one thing to note though is that during that time when we had a very progressive council we had pretty centrist mayors and so that really that dynamic kind of cramped the council style in a sense in terms of their ability to get things not just passed but really like implemented well and then yes after 2020 and Black Lives Matter there was a there was a backlash and so then we We had actually our current mayor elected and a very, for Seattle, very, very centrist or right leaning compared to usual city council.

1:29:05So this year, with hopefully my election, but then also a couple of council members and a new city attorney, things are swinging back in a progressive direction. Now, we have kind of staggered elections. So this year there was only, well, for complicated reasons, three. But normally there would be two at large council positions up for election. So there's seven district council elections seats, which will be up for election in two years. So right now, assuming that I win this race, right, we'll have me in the mayor's office and we'll have several very progressive council members. But the bulk of we don't have a strong progressive majority on the council yet.

1:29:43But that could happen in 2027. Now, in order for that to happen in 2027, you asked about kind of what what needs to be accomplished in the next couple of years. I really think that, you know, I have a lot of ambitious progressive policy dreams in my platform. But I really think what I'm going to be judged on, what my administration's going to be judged on first and foremost, is homelessness and public safety. And I really think that in the first couple of years, we're going to need to drill down and make progress on those really basic quality of life issues and show. I think we have an opportunity here for people on the progressive left to basically show that we can actually govern.

1:30:25And so there's going to be I'm going to be paying a lot of attention to the work that needs to happen to basically get City Hall, the city bureaucracy moving in a good direction, actually delivering services for the people of Seattle and hopefully pioneering a new model of kind of responsive government. and communication with the people where we're really explaining what we're doing and why. And if we're coming up against obstacles, here's why. And I think this is a similar challenge that I think Momdani is gonna face in New York City where there's a lot of really ambitious things that we wanna get done, but there's also real obstacles, right?

1:30:56It's like the reason why these things haven't been done is complicated and there's really entrenched interests that are gonna fight against it. And so we're gonna need to be able to tell a story of the things that we're fighting for, the progress that we're making, but also the reason why we're not, it's not moving faster. Right. So that's going to be big. And, you know, I mean, like I'm in this race, right. There was more corporate PAC spending against me than has ever been spent in a Seattle race against a candidate. And a lot of those same interests are also going to want to undermine my administration.

1:31:26And so I'm going into this with, I think, clear eyed about the challenges, the political challenges, as well as the practical challenges of implementing my agenda. And I mean, it's going to be a massive challenge, but I'm really excited about it as well. Well, Katie, I really appreciate you taking the time. I know you're probably like super busy right now and really in the thick of things. I won't say congratulations yet because I don't want to jinx the result, but I'm very excited to see what you do with the position. And I hope you'll come back and check in with us in the future. I would love to, thank you.

1:31:59Yeah, it's our pleasure. Super interesting interview, Crystal. and we should mention programming note. We have moved the block. We have not canceled the block on Mar-a-Lago Face that we teased at the beginning of the show. We have simply moved it to the Friday show because of the breaking Epstein news. But the benefit of that is now Ryan will be with us to weigh in. And we know that Ryan is going to have something great to say about Mar-a-Lago Face. He will say something that none of us expect. He'll tie it into some personal experience he had as a plastic surgeon when he was 23 or something. As a plastic surgeon.

1:32:34Who knows? Who knows what Ryan Grimm is going to bring to the table in the Mar-a-Lago face conversation, but we wanted to make sure that it was inclusive. You know, it felt a little bit because men are also getting their version of the Mar-a-Lago face. So I think it is better actually in the end that we, yeah, exactly. Not naming names, Matt Gaetz. It is better in the end that we have a more inclusive, diverse panel of voices to discuss this phenomenon. That's right. I think that's well said, Crystal. So if you want to see, well, I don't know if we'll keep that in the second half or maybe we'll bring it out for everyone, TPD.

1:33:07But if you don't want to miss it, no matter what, then go subscribe for a premium membership over at breakingpoints.com. You get the second half of the Friday show. You also get the show every day in your inbox early, full version of it. No ads, no nothing. It's right there in your inbox. So go ahead and subscribe over at breakingpoints.com. Crystal, thanks for being here today. Fun one. Interesting one. Have her a dull moment. That's right. All right. Well, Crystal and Sager will be back with you all tomorrow. I'll see you Friday. Have a great day.

1:33:51You 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 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 my iheart radio app apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts over the last couple years didn't we learned that the folding chair was invented by black people because of what happened in Alabama?

1:34:28This 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 podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Bowen Yang. And I'm Matt Rogers. During this season of the Two Guys Five Rings podcast, in the lead up to the Milan Cortina 2026 Winter Olympic Games, we've been joined by some of our friends.

1:35:06Hi, Bowen! Hi, Matt! Hey, Elmo! Hey, Matt! Hey, Bowen! Hi, Cookie! Hi! Now, the Winter Olympic Games are underway, and we are in Italy to give you experiences from our hearts to your ears. Listen to Two Guys Five Rings on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an iHeart podcast, guaranteed human.