11/26/25: Job Loss Surge, Leaked Witkoff Putin Call, Epstein Dershowitz Conspired Against Mearsheimer, Tucker Flips On GOP, Venezuela War Push

28:31as well. You know, he would, he would give advice to the mediators. He never ended up meeting directly with Hamas. And they were, they were about to, and it blew up for various reasons, but his, his deputy did. And they would say like, here's how, here's, if you want this, like, here is the way to frame this to get it there. And so Trump was asked about this on Air Force One. And he, he said, I haven't listened to the recording or I haven't seen the transcript, but it sounds to me like normal diplomacy. Like this is what a mediator does, negotiator does. You tell someone, this is the thing you want.

29:11Here's how you frame it to this party. It's a little awkward for Trump that like somebody's, you know, telling somebody else how to talk to him. Right. Like it's a little weird and awkward to have that out in public, but it's not terribly unusual, I think. No, I don't think so either. I mean, it's unusual. I mean, remember when Medvedev and Obama had that moment where Obama said he'll have more flexibility after the election. So this would have been like 2011 or 2012. People lost their minds. People on the right lost their minds. I was too young to really lose my mind. I was still in college. So you can't go back and find clips.

29:53But, you know, to some extent, maybe that's different because he was promising. So I don't know. But to some extent, when these conversations, I mean, they have to have personal relationships and Trump is more, I don't mean this in a little sense, like he's more of a realist personally when it comes to those relationships as opposed to. And I actually find that kind of refreshing, like he does it with Xi Jinping. He does it with Kim Jong-un. Like he does it with everyone where he just lavishes them in praise and does it in order to butter people up to make deals that they might not otherwise make.

30:24Now, whether that works or successful, different question. But Donald Trump is the president right now, so there's nothing surprising whatsoever about Steve Wyckoff handling business this way when he's on the phone with the Russians. Yeah, no, I think that's right. So there had been a Thanksgiving deadline that Trump gave to Zelensky that appears to have been lifted, like giving him a little more time. Zelensky has said we have to choose between losing our dignity or losing our ally. But so that's kind of where we stand. That's maybe not the right bar for the dignity of Ukraine, which has been proven, by the way, in spades over the last couple of years as ordinary Ukrainians have sacrificed so much to keep their country.

31:10So I don't think it's appropriate. I would be insulted if I were a Ukrainian and Zelensky was chalking up their dignity to keeping all of the Donbass or some significant portion of it. So anyway, well, speaking of foreign policy, Ryan, big new drop site report based on a tranche of emails that you all have obtained. And you have some insight into a week in the life of Jeffrey Epstein and Alan Dershowitz circa 2006. That's right. And maybe we should finish this block playing the Barry Weiss, Alan Dershowitz clip because it's so you've got the clip. Excellent. Thank you, Griffin. So in 2006, there was a watershed moment in kind of U.S.-Israel relations when Stephen Walt, who was at the time the dean of the Harvard Kennedy School, and John Mearsheimer, who was one of the top international relations professors at the University of Chicago, published a paper called The Israel Lobby.

32:09It also ran in the London Review of Books. And you would think, okay, that's the most boring thing I can think of. Like two academics published a paper that also ran in the London Review of Books. Okay, that's interesting. But why is the entire world supposed to care about that? The world lit up on fire. It is shot through with all of these caveats and apologetics that they're even broaching this subject. But they make a basic argument that a loose coalition of supporters of Israel in the United States have built a network and a lobbying infrastructure that has given Israel outsized influence on American foreign policy and at times has driven American foreign policy away from its own national interests and toward the interests of Israel.

33:03that was viewed as an absolutely shocking thing to say in polite society. And what genuinely concerned the lobby was particularly that Walt was saying it, because Walt, as, and Mearsheimer was at the time very highly respected. He is today a highly respected academic among people like us, but he took a huge hit in his reputation. um, inside academia over as a result of the pushback against this. Walt was as the Dean of the academic school of the, of Harvard Kennedy's Harvard's Kennedy school. That's like the plum position in that field. Like that's, that's the Dean of all of it, not just Harvard, but basically all of it.

33:53So to, so to have somebody like him saying this, the fear was that this was going to open up, that this was going to create a permission structure for people just to debate and talk openly about the influence of the pro-Israel lobby in the United States. And so that had to be shut down. And the pushback against it was like nothing, anything academia had really ever seen. Talks were canceled. You know, it's like some pre-cancel culture type of stuff going on. But what we're reporting over at Dropside, oh, one, so two other details. One, who was president of Harvard at the time? Epstein buddy, Larry Summers.

34:38You guessed it. Who was either the main funder or one of the top funders of the Kennedy School? Les Wexner, the Wexner Foundation. And who controlled the Wexner Foundation's money? Jeffrey Epstein. So all those facts are known. Now what we know from - F.C. himself was donating heavily to Harvard at the time as well. And F.C. himself was too. But he was more influential for his control of Wexner's fortune. But yes, he himself was giving millions. But now what we can report from his inbox, which as I mentioned last week, we currently have exclusive access to thanks to distributed denial of secrets, which is making the, you know, they're making it available to other journalists as well.

35:24is that Epstein himself was involved with Dershowitz in kind of circulating Dershowitz, you know, giving feedback to Dershowitz's counterargument, which the school published, and helping to circulate it. And so he was directly involved in the coordinated campaign to undermine this paper, which means that a paper making a claim that a loose kind of collection of pro-israel supporters are leveraging their money and their resources and their connections was undermined by a loose coalition of israel supporters operating behind the scenes using their connections and their and their financial resources um and yeah as you said so it's disconnected from this But that same week in the inbox, we found Dershowitz and Epstein going back and forth over Epstein's latest sex abuse allegation.

36:30And this one was from somebody who said she was 14 when she was abused. And you have Epstein with this kind of list of reasons why this girl's credibility should be called into question. things that she had said on the internet. Because he had hired a private detective you're reporting to follow this girl around. Or at least to research her. Yeah, I don't know if he was following her, if it was just like online research. This was like one week of research. Virtually following. Right. It may have gone beyond that. We don't know. But what we know is that they unearthed a bunch of dirt on this girl.

37:13And he's saying, and so they're going back and forth. Dershowitz telling Dershowitz, who was his lawyer in this case, you know, to give this to the state attorney to tell him that he should not be going forward with these charges because this girl is not to be believed. So that was the twin campaigns that they were running at the time. I mean, these inboxes, because they're multiple, are such wild glimpses into what was happening behind the scenes and how elites are operating, not just Epstein and Dershowitz and Summers, but more broadly. And that last bit, Ryan, is particularly irritating because you'll remember when it was Rising, there was an episode of Rising where Alan Dershowitz was booked and it was you, Robbie, and me.

38:02And at one point, Dershowitz flew off the handle and said that we wouldn't have wanted John Adams to defend the Boston massacre, the British in the Boston massacre case. which is, I think, when you're looking at these emails that you have about a private investigator being hired by Jeffrey Epstein to dig up dirt on a 14-year-old girl, the obvious difference, you don't even need to know that that was happening behind the scenes to make the case that the obvious difference is John Adams believed with every fiber of his being that he was doing the right thing, that he was defending. He wasn't just a defense attorney.

38:43He was defending the right cause. His side was correct in this case. Did Dershowitz think that Jeffrey Epstein was just clean as a whistle, had never done anything wrong, morally pure? Of course not. Of course not. Right. I mean, that's laughable. And their relationship over working together on the Israel lobby actually is directly relevant to this claim. Because let's say, okay, you use the John Adams argument where you say, you know, even our worst enemies in our fair system deserve representation. So that's the argument. But what if you also found out that John Adams was secretly working behind the scenes with the British on other unrelated matters in order to undermine other people?

39:36in showing that they actually are a team, that they are not, that it is not that Adams is just defending the principle that everybody deserves a good lawyer. It's not that Dershowitz is representing Epstein, even though he understands he's an awful person, but he thinks that everybody deserves an attorney. Like, that's clearly not what, that's clearly not what is happening with Dershowitz because he doesn't, he's working with him secretly to undermine Mearsheimer and Walt's book. That has nothing to do, you're not required to do that. Like you clearly believe that he's your ally in this effort, in this ideological effort.

40:19So I think we can dispense with this idea that Dershowitz was a reluctant defender of Epstein and he did it on the principle that everybody deserves an attorney. You know, it's also amazing. Because he was secretly working with him on this Israel lobby book. It's amazing to go back and think of the early days of Dershowitz's self-defense of his relationship with Epstein and then compare what he said then to what we're seeing behind the scenes in these emails that I'm sure he never thought would see the light of day, which is, you know, whatever they're talking about, Mearsheimer or the case, they were not just business colleagues and they were not just casual business acquaintances.

40:59they had a close relationship. Obviously, they had a close relationship. They were close conspirators. They were, yeah, they were allies. They were, you know, I don't mean conspirators in a legal sense. It just means that they were behind the scenes operating closely together. Yeah. I mean, obviously in this case, there's a little conspiring that's taking place, but it's just, I think, worth thinking back to how he said, yeah, well, you know, I defended him as his lawyer, met with him a couple of times. I'm paraphrasing, obviously, what the defense was back then, but laughable at this point. Yeah, and Dershowitz is the man that Barry Weiss wants to hold up as a paragon of serious center-left charisma, the kind of person that's going to bring young people back.

41:49So, Griffin, if you have this, let's play it. And play the whole thing, because it's funny. You got some guff. Yeah, people tried to community note this and say that she didn't actually talk about Dana Loesch and Dershowitz, but it's like, no, you have to watch for like three whole minutes and then she gets into that. Yeah, keep your attention span, folks. Yeah, so keep your attention span. You can roll it at 2x, but here is an impersonation of an old person's version of a young person. Let's roll this. All of us see the moment that we're in And all of us see that the choices that it feels like we have sometimes, which is Hassan Piker and Tucker Carlson or Nick Fuentes and, you know, Andrew Tate, the kind of people.

42:34Hassan Piker, by the way, has said that CBS is trying to get him to do a debate. Incredible. Go ahead. Those don't actually represent our values. And I don't think that they represent the values and the worldview of the vast majority of Americans. And so this is an opportunity to speak for the 75%, for the people that are on the center left and the center right that still believe in equality of opportunity, that still believe passionately in the American project, that still believe in all of the things that everyone in this room believes in, which is liberty and freedom and individual responsibility.

43:09and in the most basic level, the right to know what is actually going on in the world, not the world as propagandists and ideologues imagine it to be, but what's actually going on in the world and in your community. So you can make decisions about where to send your kids to school, about where to live and about how to vote. That used to just be normal. And the goal of what we're trying to do at CBS is to get back to that normalcy. And I feel incredibly energized and enthusiastic because I think that is where the vast majority of Americans actually are. And Ryan, this is recent, right? So that articulation of that set of goals to speak into the lives of the 75%, how are you going to do that?

43:58What's your strategy for success? So I think one of the problems is a lot of people have tried to do centrist news. I know this because I am like the target audience for those things. And the reason that they have all failed is it's like trying to force feed spinach down someone's throat, right? It's felt very like tofu oatmeal. It's like centrist news is choosing the midpoint between every single topic. It's felt like an absence of charisma and identity. And I, you know, as nostalgic as people might be for an era in which 30 million Americans every night watch Walter Cronkite and saw him as the voice of truth, And I understand why they're nostalgic for that.

44:37We're not going back to that. So how do you build trust in a moment of unbelievably low trust in all of our public institutions, especially the mainstream press? I don't think it's by pretending like we can go back to having a view from nowhere. I think it's about who's in the room, right? I think it's about redrawing the lines of what falls in the 40 yard lines of acceptable debate and acceptable American politics and culture. I don't mean that in like a censorious gatekeeping way. I mean, having people that are that are clearly identifiably on the center left and on the center right in conversation with each other.

45:16And we've been doing so much of this at the Free Press. I was in where was I? Chicago. Last week, I think I've lost all track of time where Dana Lash, former spokeswoman from the NRA, was debating Alan Dershowitz on guns. Now, these are people that have wildly different opinions on the Second Amendment, and yet showing that they can have good faith, very passionate, very charismatic disagreement and still like each other at the end of the day, we think it's important. And so it's for me, it's always about the curation, like who's in the room? How are you showing centrist news, not as the absence of disagreement and the absence of charisma, but explicitly charismatic and disagreeable and yet doing it in good faith?

46:00And the other the other way you do it, you do it is, you know, by by being really honest with your audience. I think we get it. Yeah. Yeah. Incredible. Also, so Glenn, I said Glenn went and found it. When he found it, it had 850 views. Let's. This was like 24 hours ago. Where are we at now? It was 24 hours ago. Let's see how it's doing. 4.3. So we. Okay. So I think Barry's, Barry's video has been viewed like eight or 10 million times at this point. Talking about Dershowitz as a charismatic leader. The drop side clip. Yeah. We put this link here underneath, and it still was only able to drive 4.3 thousand views to this Free Press and Fire present Alan Dershowitz versus Dana Loesch.

46:49I will defend these conversations that Fire is doing with the Free Press because they've been not just with those quote unquote centrists. And I don't think, by the way, Dana Lash is a centrist at all. I think it's crazy to call Dana Lash as center right. I like Dana Lash. But what's the commonality? I saw people reacting this. Dershowitz and Lash are both ardent defenders of American support for Israel and of Israel itself. And so I think that's genuinely quite interesting. Yeah, right. I actually think that's interesting. So like Dana, again, like I actually do like Dana. She's not I would not describe her center right.

47:25She's like a rock ribbed conservative. whereas Dershowitz you can definitely describe as center and I don't know you can definitely describe him as charismatic and he's a Trump supporter and when he talks about Gaza he talks in the most extremist genocidal terms yes yet somehow that's allowed to count as center center left even because clearly she didn't mean that Dana is the center left one So he must be saying that Alan Dershowitz, this Trump-supporting genocidal maniac, is actually on the center left, which is like— Because he was arguing for gun control, and he has social left, social liberal perspectives.

48:09And that's where this discussion about what constitutes center left versus center right, it's really about temperament. And I feel like that's what's actually being described. It's like Barry doesn't want people— Guns. He's like center left on guns. It very doesn't want people who are, I would say, temperamentally anti-establishment. So probably pro-choice to people who are impugning the motives of the political establishment or who started using the phrase the Epstein class. I like that. Yeah. Ro impugning the motives of the Epstein class. He's got that. You can think whatever you want about guns.

48:48but if you're impugning the motives of the Epstein class that's what gets you sort of like in the red zone to continue those mixed metaphor for a lesbian she should have better sports metaphors at the ready inside the 40 yard line anyway but yeah so as I mentioned while she was talking Hasan Piker said that CBS News has been reaching out to him to try to set up a debate which is comical since like she's explicitly saying that he's the kind of person that should not be allowed in conversation. He was fun on Trigonometry. I watched the whole thing last night. Oh, really? Oh, yeah. Excellent. Well, looking forward to that one.

49:38What 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.

50:15Some 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.

50:36Speaking of people outside the 40-yard lines, let's go ahead and take a look at this clip of Tucker Carlson on the Sean Ryan show that just, I don't know if you saw this, Ryan. No, and one of the things I love about this show is getting educated about the insanity that's going on, just the wild circus that's going on on the right now. Because I need somebody to safari me through this jungle. Gladly, I'll be the Sherpa here. This is Tucker Carlson making a comment that you might not think would be controversial, but the libertarians were quite upset with it. We can roll. And on the Republican Party, which is almost to the point where it's just useless, and I'm going to have to oppose it because they're just, I hate them too much because they're such betrayers.

51:26But anyway, in the Republican Party, it's like, you a socialist? Are you from Mondani? No, not really a socialist. Just I don't want any more dollar stores. I don't want high-density housing in my neighborhood. I don't want any more fucking strip malls that nobody goes to no more karate studios and vape shops like how about now oh you're socialists you don't believe in the free market because you bribed a county commissioner to build more garbage you don't even live here in a normal society we'd like burn your strip mall down you can't do that here you can't turn my women into prostitutes sorry OnlyFans and you can't destroy the landscape that I live in no How about no?

52:07That's not crazy, is it? We can probably stop it there. No. And you can't take all my tax dollars and then stop, refuse to do anything about child molestation. Yeah. The whole reason you exist, county commissioners, is to protect my daughters from getting molested. Fair point. But people lost their minds, particularly over the dollar store comment, Ryan. And the old right was out in spades saying, rich guy hates dollar stores. And it's amazing because there's a wide variety of research that's been done over time showing dollar stores increase the likelihood of the small local grocery store, the small local guy being run out of business as soon as that dollar store comes into town.

52:55And so it's not as though dollar stores are uncontroversial in raw places or actually in inner city places at all. But of course, God forbid you say something like that. I mean, also the sentiment about the Republican Party is just like typical Tea Party era stuff. But the dollar stores don't attack the dollar stores because God forbid we go after the dollar stores. Yeah, and this is an interesting one to try to parse because the people who shop at dollar stores do not like dollar stores. Or work at them. Or work at them. They hate them the most. They shop there because it's the only choice. And the system that we've built has left them with nothing but this dollar store.

53:43If they had any other options, certainly any other option to work, but any other option to shop, they would take that option. It reminds me of, did you see this Campbell Soup executive? I saw you tweeting about it. I was like, why the hell is Ryan tweeting about Campbell Soup? There's this Campbell Soup exec is getting dragged for saying that like their beef ravioli is disgusting or whatever. And nobody knows what's in it or whatever she said. Or he said. And it's like, yeah, like everybody who's eating it is saying the same thing. Like there's nobody that thinks this is anything other than like mystery meat.

54:27And they're making fun of themselves while they're eating it. Now, they don't want you making fun of them. They would prefer to be eating something else in general. Some of their stuff is great. I agree. here we have the video from your friend it's so healthy now that I know what the f*** is even in Canada soup I look at it look at me bioengineered me I don't want to eat a f*** a piece of chicken that came from a 3D printer you the recording of yeah I mean that's how anybody's going to feel about those products those super processed like where what even is this kind of product um now people are mistaking people are mistaking what people do out of necessity for for like their culture and how they want to defend their culture like there's nobody who's like my culture is the dollar store and and how dare you say something about it right now it's how dare how dare a rich person like it's it's one of those things like you like it's like it's like your family like you can criticize them but you don't really want somebody else to say it That's exactly right.

55:42Yeah. And, you know, I mean, first of all, I think Tucker was speaking pretty casually there, but also just this idea that you have a massive global chain that sells all kinds of junk. And to Ryan's point, what they'll do is run the local guy out of business. And then do you think maybe when it's safe, they raise prices again? Do you think maybe that's what happens? Of course, that's what happens. Do you think maybe they get really shitty about working conditions? Yeah, of course. Yeah. Once they've driven the other stores out, then they close some of their own stores and make you drive even further.

56:14And this is why your odds of having a better customer experience and worker experience with a local train where the person has a stake in the community, because they're going to the PTA meetings, they're going to church, they're playing baseball, whatever, with you. Well, yes. It's not always perfect. Oh, go ahead, Ryan. I'll add something unpopular. a lot of these small business owners in these small towns where you've known them your entire life, they're total jerks. Yeah, I mean, of course. Of course. They're human beings. A lot of them are terrible bosses and terrible jerks. Yeah, but you're going to have a terrible boss no matter what.

56:55I guess I'd just rather be someone, the devil you know, versus the devil who's somewhere in Midtown Manhattan and you have to get through five layers of calls just to talk to somebody with a problem. That's true. To return your damn stuff. He's our SOB, at least. Yeah. Yeah. And anyway, it does increase the likelihood that you'll have. I mean, I think it genuinely does increase the likelihood that you'll have somebody who has an incentive to have a good reputation in the community. Therefore, their incentive is not necessarily the GDP. Their incentive is to do a good job in the community because they have social ties that go along with, more social ties that go along with their economic ties to the community.

57:33So anyway, mom and pop are often pretty cranky. That's all I'm saying. They've been Ebenezer Scrooge, a mom and pop shop. That's true. That's right. But yeah, this this clip just the defenders of the dollar store. It was remarkable to see all these like conservative writers come out of the woodwork being like rich guy hates the dollar store. And we're supposed to believe he's a class warrior. Ha. Got it. So I thought, so I watched this and I'm like, all right, let's see, what's the controversy here? I thought it was going to be that the Republican Party is awful and I need to oppose it. Like, I thought that was going to be the thing that people were animated about.

58:12But no, that's. They were mad about that, too. They're mad about that as well. But again, like, I don't know. I mean, I think it depends on what, like, Republican voters have a pretty high level of support right now for the Republican Party, though it waxes and wanes. Unlike Dems, who have very low favorability of the Democratic Party right now, historically low favorability of the Democratic Party right now. But if you talk like that at most like county party headquarters, people are going to be like, yep, because they assume you're talking about the like elite, the Republican elite. They assume you're talking about like Lindsey Graham or something.

58:48So also didn't strike me as that crazy either. well so we need uh actually we have a main reporter who's been covering the grand platner race uh for us nathan bernard maybe i'm gonna have to ask him to go find out what strip mall was built on a road that's between tucker's cabin and the river where he goes fishing every day well clearly clearly some county commissioner got bribed by some developer to build a vape shop we know everything that's in the strip mall there's a vape shop there's a dollar store what was the third thing he was complaining about? a karate studio there's a karate studio so okay Nathan if you're watching this because I'm trying not to work as much on the holidays so this is how I'll sign the story see if you can find the strip mall with the karate studio the vape shop and the dollar store that has Tucker Carlson ready to declare war on the Republican Party Because we want to know what happened with the county commissioner.

59:48And the owner does not live there. We know that. So these are the things we know. I think your experience in Vermont, I mean, I've always thought it was sort of like Vermont's billboard. You know, when you're coming up in a conservative movement, that sort of looked at like as hippie nonsense. But I feel like the difference between the old right and the new right is looking at Vermont protecting the aesthetics of the highway. way and saying, actually, I don't think that's an infringement on the rights of the free market, the free marketeers who want to sell their vapes or whatever on the highway.

1:00:23This is one of the most beautiful places in the world. And it's really fun that Vermont and New Hampshire share this massive order because you just go from Vermont into New Hampshire and like the hippie, you know, communal focused approach gives way immediately to the libertarian approach. Strip balls, as far as the eye can see. Yeah, where we lived, you had to go over there if you wanted to go to the Walmart or any of the big box stores, which is right across the border. Liquor law is different. But yes, it just looks wildly different. The billboards and the strip malls and the character as a result is different.

1:01:07Yeah. Yeah. Well, that, I guess, is a good place to leave it for the pre-Thanksgiving show, Ryan, because on a... Let's give one update on our... That's like Honduras. Well, Afton Bain. Well, yeah. We can roll a Honduras. We can keep rocking here. This is premature. That's right. I have a 9.30 podcast. I have a couple more minutes. so Afton Bain there's a new poll out that has her down by two points this is the special election for what's his name Mark Green Mark Green's seat in Nashville stretches from Nashville and a bunch of rural areas outside of it latest poll has her down has her down I think down was it down to or up to I'm pretty sure it was down to but this is a plus 22 district and she has been getting just blasted with her podcast.

1:02:05And sometimes rightfully so, because wow. Well, it's an inverse or it's a parallel even, not even inverse, to Plattner in some ways. Plattner, inadvisably, spent 15 years vomiting all of his darkest thoughts onto Reddit. Afton Bain has spent years vomiting all of her thoughts, dark and otherwise, into a podcast. Yeah, not anonymous. Not anonymous at all. Not P-Hustle. Not P-Hustle. So then there was the one, and I think though that they're over emphasizing the I hate Nashville one because that's almost too absurd. And I think people will quickly understand that the parallel would be like if a New Yorker said, I hate Times Square.

1:02:56Exactly. Yeah, I think that's right. It's like, yeah, of course, everybody hates Times Square except the tourists. So she's talking about the tourist area, whereas some of the other ones are almost worse. She's talking about people who don't have kids and she can have more power. It's like, whoa. And it was 2020. So it was like as this wave of elephant in the Zoom politics, as Ryan once wrote, was cresting. And everyone, I mean, nobody really thought it was going to go away. Everyone kind of thought it was going to be there for a while. And you had to be on the right side of it. You had to talk the right way about it.

1:03:32Yeah. Yeah. So we'll say that election is coming up. I think today may be the last day of early voting or something. And then we'll say, you think she has any shot at all? You know, I think she has a shot of making it. Less than 1%, maybe. But it's certainly in a, what did you say, plus 20-something district. It's certainly a statement if you get close, and that can energize the local grassroots folks. So Afton Bain, breaking points, viewer, that is a race that we are watching closely. We had a few minutes with her last Friday that ended up, of course, on Fox News. Why else? Or where else? Producer Griffin asking Afton Bain about her podcast has gone very, very, asking her about her podcast remarks on Nashville that Ryan just referenced has gone very, very viral.

1:04:20Agree, they're probably over. And apparently Fox is playing our Friday show interview. Yeah, the one from last week. Yep. Congrats. Griffin, you should have said, hi, mom. Which one did they play? They played... So they played the one, Griffin keeps popping into your ear. I thought you guys could hear him, but you can't. He's offering very helpful tidbits throughout the show. But they played the moment where Griffin asked Afton Bain about her Nashville comments on the podcast. And she said that she was conceived to a George Strait song. honestly to Ryan's point maybe not as much of a disaster as people might think what's wrong with that?

1:05:01yeah there you go there you go she said I don't hate country music I was conceived to a George Strait song but if you're a real country fan like me you don't love George Strait so that's a little different so maybe that's the problem with that comment that's the problem George Strait is too soft but it's also stolen country valor like your parents liked George Strait true I'll give and people were looking it up It sounds like they played in February of 89 in Florida. People are looking this up. Yes. Oh, God. You've got to fact check a claim like this. That's hilarious. So her parents, if they were in Florida in February, then that might be where they saw George Strait play.

1:05:44Or they were just listening to George Strait on the radio. And they just either had a false memory or they lied to her. also why are you telling your daughter that? Don't tell your kids that oh my gosh alright should we take a trip down to Honduras Ryan? Oh yeah and Griffin I guess we could play some of this clip later or you're going to be an additive post if you want but so this Sunday Honduras will have an election and Jose Luis Granados Aceja who was on the drop website live stream yesterday. It's a reporter in Mexico City. We had him on to talk about the Mexico protests, which was actually really helpful.

1:06:28He's going to Honduras to cover that election. He'll be doing a dispatch for us. You're seeing two things. One is that the current president, Xiomara Castro, is almost as popular there as Scheinbaum is in Mexico. His left wing 65-ish percent approval rating. But in their constitution, you can't serve a second term. Um, so her, her husband was ousted in a coup in 2009, supported by Hillary Clinton and the U S at the time. So she comes back, she, she wins. So, and so now it's one of her cabinet members basically is running, uh, instead. and the U.S. is very heavily getting behind her main opponent and is sowing all sorts of doubt about the elections, saying, like, can't trust these numbers, which is always a signal that you're planning something.

1:07:24Because this is supposed to be a very close election. So if the numbers come in and the left has won slightly, you can probably look for U.S. proxies to call for people to go out in the streets and demand, you know, and cry foul, stop the steal. So there's a U.S.-backed stop the steal thing going on. And this is obviously driven by the fact that we have a South Florida, you know, leader, Marco Rubio, as our Secretary of State, and he's got a bone to pick with the left all over, you know, Central and South America and the Caribbean. But also that Castro, they probably don't like that her name is Castro, But Castro, when she first came into office.

1:08:07Not helpful. Not helpful. She immediately went after all the crypto bros who had used the previous government, which was this run by this right wing narco terrorist. And when I say narco terrorist, he's literally in federal prison now after being the U.S.'s guy. And we knew he was a narco terrorist when he was in power. We were fighting the narco terrorist trend. we were well another reminder that of kissinger's quote that it's like it's dangerous to be a u.s adversary but it's fatal to be a friend uh as soon as he was no longer useful we literally have thrown him in federal prison um and so while he was in power which came through after this consolidation of the u.s backed coup he created all these carve outs for crypto bros to build these basically law-free zones where they would have their own sovereignty.

1:09:02Castro came in and said, no, we're done with these. We're revoking those. There's a big fight going on over that. Plus, she immediately or very quickly recognized China and broke relations with Taiwan, which really pissed off the United States. And so China offered some Belt and Road style investments in Honduras. So that's the kind of construct. That's really important. Griffin, you can tee this clip up of South Florida Congresswoman Maria Elvira Salazar, who's a former Telemunda or Univision. Oh, my God. This one's really good. Play this one all the way to the end. It's so amazing. She's the same like mold of a cold warrior Cuban Republican congresswoman.

1:09:49Lots of fun, for sure. But here's what she said about Venezuela. So we know we have information that maybe the top echelon of the military forces in Venezuela may be with Maduro and they're going to flee with him. But the middle and lower ranks are with the opposition. We're talking about that this is going to be very similar to Panama. I was there. I was a news reporter. And I remember when the Marines were walking in and the Panamanian girls were asking them to marry them. Yeah, I think it's very similar. Yeah, no, I remember. Well, I was I was there and just after it. It kind of bled into 1990.

1:10:24It started in late December of 1989, bled into 1990. And I went in in January. And it was remarkable how receptive the Panamanians were to the change. And it's been a relatively peaceful country since. But I'm just, the transition. I mean, Maria is a wonderful woman, the opposition leader. She's fantastic. But how will that transition take place? Will there be a snap election after he flees? what? Well, she has a, and I've spoken to her extensively, they have a 100-day plan that they have shared with the White House. They are prepared. She knows what she's doing. I mean, they have been at this for 25 years.

1:11:06Like I said, 80, 90 % of the Venezuelan people, plus the 8 million Venezuelans who have fled, they want to come back. This is going to be a very major success and success story, not only for them, but for us. And I salute President Trump for having the fortitude, the courage, the political vision to be doing this because Maduro is the head of a transnational criminal organization. Maduro is not the legitimate president of the country. So we're not invading a sovereign country that has a free and fair elected democratic president no this guy is a thug and he's good friends with hasbolan they are giving uranium to hamas and to iran and to north korea and to cuba and to nicaragua come on it's time for the united states to do what we need to do and thank god that trump is doing it and i'm telling you that these people the venezuelans have the largest reserves of oil in the world we're talking about this is going to be a windfall for us when it comes to fossil fuels well and And again, it's the actual transition that a lot of Americans are a little wary about because of the fact that regime change always has unintended consequences.

1:12:19Ah, yes. So the reason this is connected with Honduran politics as well is that what you're seeing emerge more overtly right now is the reality that this is a new Cold War dynamic. Not just that we're using soft power, but that we are planning to use hard power in this new Cold War dynamic to take, for example, oil. Really, really good example to prevent. And this is a parallel, of course, with the Soviet Union to prevent an alliance between places like Venezuela and Iran with Hezbollah, with Hamas, which like, listen, you and I would probably debate the uranium. You and I would probably debate the substance of those claims.

1:13:00I think neither of us would debate that there have been overtures, of course. That's a debate I think I could win. If you were required to argue that Venezuela is shipping uranium. No, I'm not arguing that. To Hamas and North Korea and Nicaragua. Absolutely not. Iran does have a foothold in Venezuela. And I can take the other side of that one. I am confident in my debating abilities that I could walk away with a W on that one. I think you'd have that one. I don't think either of us would debate that. Iran and Maduro have had a little bit of a back and forth. Like Venezuela is sending uranium to North Korea.

1:13:31And Hamas? Hamas? This is the parallel between— How are they getting the uranium into Gaza? If you were in the 1970s, if you were a populist lefty, or not even a lefty, and you talked a little bit about nationalizing this, or you talked a little bit about an alliance with the Soviets, be careful. Be careful. Or they'll make the economy scream. and then do a little CIA covert action. So that's what's emerging in the region. It's been happening with a lot of soft power, USAID stuff, but Trump is militarizing with Venezuela, obviously. And so different countries are going to have that possibility injected back into their politics.

1:14:16Yeah. There you go. So we'll be watching that on Sunday. Happy regime change Thanksgiving. Another good one where David Asman was like, they were greeted as liberators. after packing Noriega for however long. Who was also a narco trafficker and was our man in Panama. He was working with the CIA. CIA Director George H.W. Bush met with him. Anyway, we don't have to get into it. And then he's removed for being a narco trafficker and just not being useful anymore. So be careful. If you're a narco trafficker, don't trust it. You know, I'd say it's for your retirement plan. Don't do it. It's pro tip.

1:14:55All right, Ryan. I know you're hosting Thanksgiving so you in addition to having a podcast coming up have a lot of responsibilities in the next couple of days so this was important stuff this was fun you doing the journalist football game again this year? yes every Sunday after Thanksgiving a journal football game so I think there's going to be a heavy times contingent excellent this weekend so that'll be fun alright well happy Thanksgiving to all of you out there. Thank you again. We're super grateful for your support. Even if you're not a premium sub, we totally understand. We appreciate you watching the videos, sending them around.

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