4/24/26: Trump Floats Endless Iran War, Lebanon Journalist Triple Tap, AI Job Layoffs

28:31You know, do they feel like they are true sort of neutral arbiters here? Is there trust there, et cetera? And he's like, listen, it's the problem isn't the Pakistanis. The problem is Trump. The problem is America. The problem is Israel. The problem is really not with the Pakistanis. Because, yeah, I mean, you think about it like and I'm not saying they're perfect or whatever. But imagine trying to be the go-between with Trump where, I mean, think about how in the same sentence he'll say two different things. Right. Like imagine trying to be the go-between. Okay, Trump said he'd do this and here's the sequence, et cetera.

29:04And the Iranians go ahead and follow through. Okay, we'll put on our tweet saying the straight is open. And then immediately Trump comes out and does something completely different. So, yeah, I mean, they are in an impossible situation as far as I can tell. Sorry, the dog just knocked something over. Everything's fine, though. You heard a loud crash. And we know because he accidentally, when he was trying to reach out to Pam Bondi through direct message on Truth Social, if you guys remember that, he accidentally posted it publicly. And so we know that his private messages are just as unhinged and filled with all caps.

29:40It's not like he has a private, like, metadeliberative communication style. That's how he communicates. So you can imagine, like, let's say he's texting Asim Muneer or Shabazz Sharif, like, what his ideas are. Can you, like, to, yeah, to Crystal's point, imagine being the Pakistani. Didn't he post his text messages with Mark Rudda at one point? He did, yeah. And they were, like, bananas? Oh, it was Macron, right? Macron, yeah. Maybe him, too. But, yeah, imagine you're the Pakistanis and you're getting these texts. Imagine it's your job to take his truth social posts and tell the Iranians, what he's trying to say.

30:19I mean, I would just forward the whole thing, like WhatsApp style, just like here. Make of this what you will. Like, I have no idea.

30:31So, yeah, good Lord. Like.

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31:29Listen to Math & Magic, stories from the frontiers of marketing on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. On a recent episode of the podcast Money & Wealth with John O 'Brien, I sit down with Tiffany the Budgenista Aliche to talk about what it really takes to take control of your money. What would that look like in our families if everyone was able to pass on wealth to the people when they're no longer here? We break down budgeting, financial discipline, and how to build real wealth starting with the mindset shifts too many of us were never, ever taught. Financial education is not always about like, I'm going to get rich.

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33:28Well, speaking of negotiations, you know, they've extended this Israel-Lebanon ceasefire. But meanwhile, Israel continues to fire. There was a triple tap on a journalist, Amal Khalil. Ryan, why don't you tell us a little bit about that? Because you probably won't be hearing about this on CNN or any other news organization. Let me pull up. I've got a video of her. Yeah, if you want to play that, and then later I can put up the drop site story that Jeremy did for us. Yeah, you want to play this? Yeah, yeah. We just got some video over here. Oh, yeah, so Malcolia, she was a prominent Lebanese reporter for Al-Akbar in Lebanese outfit.

34:14And she, with a number of other journalists, was in southern Lebanon reporting. the car that was driving in front of her and her colleague was struck by an Israeli drone. They were injured in that blast. They were able to get out of the car and run into an abandoned home right nearby, from which they were calling all of their friends and colleagues, saying, like, we're being fired on. We need help. We need, you know, we're hurt. We need to get out of here. The entire country and world that was paying attention was following this. And the Lebanese prime is a prime minister, the president, like was publicly begging Israel to stop shooting at her.

35:11Like let. So the Red Cross publicly was saying we are right here. We are right next to the home. like we need to go in and rescue these women please stop firing at us and stop firing at the home and they wouldn't and so the red cross left and after hours of this israel seven hours israel bombed the house uh and killed her and eventually uh the red cross was able to get in under intense fire and pull out her colleague who is alive. But she was still stuck under the rubble and the medics had to evacuate before they could before they could get her out because the Israelis were continuing, continuing to fire.

36:08Insanely, she had been getting threats like leading right up to that death threats. and they posted the number that was threatening her. So one of our correspondents, who was in Southern Lebanon for us maybe six months or a year ago, Jeremy Lafredo, he texted that number and let me find, people should read his story if they get a chance. So here he said, Hi, my name is Jeremy Lafredo. I'm a journalist for the American publication Dropside News and I'm wondering if you have any comment on the threat you sent to Lebanese journalist Amal Khalil. These are not innocent people. The journalists affiliated with Hezbollah that Israel eliminated were also spies for Hezbollah, approaching our soldiers and then informing the terrorist organization where our soldiers were in real time.

36:58Similarly, on October 7th, journalists affiliated with Hamas were eliminated because they were intelligence officers. Send greetings to all journalists affiliated with Hezbollah for anyone who works for the organization should know they are destined for death He then adds, I think about the possibility that you are one of them too. I'm offering you to find another partner in Lebanon. There are a lot of good people over there. Maronites, Sunnis, Druze, and others tried to cover their narrative. You are naive, very naive, and then some weird emoji. So this is basically a threat. Yeah. So threatening Jeremy as well.

37:38um noah herwitz reached out and the guy told him his name um

37:48um before we finish the segment i can i can find the guy's name but we like we know the guy's actual name um and you know nothing is uh gonna be done to this guy or is this like a guy in the government like who is this guy is he just troll he's like a pro-war writer like affiliated with the like pro-war. Well, they're all pro-war. Let me find it. This is like a Fox News guy DMing you that he's going to drone strike you. One of these people who's like affiliated, not affiliated with the government. Gotcha. That's sort of like a mouthpiece for it. Yeah, like utterly like just a murder of this, of these unarmed journalists.

38:39Like, and like, it's not even serious. Like, she's in her own country, first of all. So like, even if she was reporting on where the Israeli troops are, which that's what journalists do. They'll say like, this is where the battle is happening. And they tell the public where the battles are happening. But even if that's true, they're in her country. Can you imagine the gall there to, like, invade somebody else's country and then kill the reporters in that country for reporting on the fact that you're in that country?

39:13It's just such an unbelievable, okay, just an unbelievable crime. All right, let's see. Here's Noah. Let me see. Ryan, do you suspect that because we've seen people be targeted based on these sort of like not affiliated sort of affiliated accounts and like propagandistic allies, do you suspect there's a direct connection between these threats and the murder? Yes, yes, I do think so, especially tracking all the other journalists who've been killed, Palestinian journalists who've been killed in Gaza. These kinds of threats always foreshadow an assassination, but you can you can map it. That's why we were so pressed to get Abu Bakr Abed out of Gaza, because all of a sudden these types of people started making these threats privately and publicly.

40:06and that sort of like when laura loomer starts tweeting about someone who needs to be deported or fired or whatever i mean right and so the guys said his name was gideon gal ben avraham um um so just no shame happy to respond to the text tell you his identity yeah feels like also the same as uh also the same as a rafat al-arir story you know he started getting lots of DMs in the same ways. And I guess, you know, Rafat wasn't press, but it does seem like these press badges are turning into more like bullseye targets. It was basically press, but yeah, you're right. Yes, they threatened him. They were very clear they were going to try to kill him.

40:54Then they do this crazy thing. They called her. They called her and told her they were going to kill her. And that's a very common thing. Like, you'd be surprised, but like, Reifat got calls as well from Israeli military officials. And there's no, I don't, like, there's no utility in calling them, unless you're trying to, like, make sure that, maybe they're making sure that the phone that they've been tracking is actually them, so that could be the surveillance utility of it. But otherwise, it's just sadistic. It's just part of the terror campaign. And last week, um, they called a journalist. Um, I don't know if you saw this story and said, we're going to kill you immediately.

41:41You can either die with your family or you can run and we will kill you alone. Uh, and he said, I'm going to run. And so he, he fled his house, um, got into his car and they hit him very quickly with a drone strike in his car and burned him alive. and there's like video of some of this unfolding. There had been a lot of stories of this happening before, people saying, you know, the Israelis calling ahead of time. So they called and said, we're going to kill you. And it undercuts the idea that there is such a thing as a human shield because if he said, I'm not leaving this house, those other humans are not a shield.

42:28Yeah, they would have thought nothing of murdering them as well. Right. And Crystal, this from Haaretz, Israeli soldiers testified a widespread looting in Lebanon. Commanders know and do nothing. So it seems like they're just totally picking the entire southern Lebanon for scraps as they bomb and destroy villages. Do you think this is going to have a major effect on the talks? I know that Iran was trying to say, hey, if there's no ceasefire in Lebanon. Here, I found who this guy is. Let's just wrap that up. All right, let's do it. So we don't leave it hanging. So this is from Noah who, he said this guy, Gal Gideon Ben Abraham, told Noah this is who he was.

43:11We don't know if that's true, but this is what the number said he was. He's an Israeli commentator who has a number of YouTube videos speaking on issues around the genocide in Gaza and wars in Lebanon and Iran. I've not yet independently verified that this account belongs to him. So he's an Israeli. He's like an Israeli commentator, basically. Awesome. Awesome. But yeah, I mean, Crystal, how does this carnage in Lebanon affect any potential deal in the future? I mean, the Iranians have been very clear that, you know, if there is a true return to just bombardment in Lebanon, that is going to be unacceptable to them.

43:51It was after the ceasefire was brokered between Israel and Lebanon that Arachi tweeted out, OK, the street is open because this Lebanon has been this Lebanon ceasefire has been secured. So this is always been very central to them. They are very unified in this demand. So I think it's you know, I think it's extremely important. There's also reporting coming out of Israeli outlets that Israel is preparing to go back to war. Obviously, Israel wants to go back to war. There were significant meetings at the White House yesterday, so we don't know what the next plans are. But if I could just say, you know, one thing specifically about this report of widespread looting of homes in Lebanon, there was a video that went or a picture that went viral of an IDF soldier who had like, you know, they came in and the village is completely abandoned because, you know, anybody that's left there is assumed to be a terrorist and potentially murdered.

44:42And she's going through the garden and plucking out the vegetables that have been planted by this family and preparing this elaborate feast in this family's abandoned kitchen. And I was thinking about something Gideon Levy said, I think, actually, in Piers Morgan's show about how you can't have this long-term occupation and subjugation of people without just completely dehumanizing them. And so this behavior is the logical outgrowth of a long term project of dehumanizing, you know, not just Palestinians, but anyone that they would see as resisting, you know, their project of greater Israel and their need for complete and total security, etc.

45:25So I think it's, you know, very consistent with the behavior we saw of IDF soldiers in Gaza. It is not a one off. This is part and parcel of what this ideology is. It's how humans prepare themselves to do mass civilian damage and like just mass warfare in general. The last thing I would say is Steve Sweeney went on Tucker Carlson's show, I think it was last week. He's a journalist for RT, not a place I would work. But nevertheless, he told the story of how he ended up getting targeted, so obviously targeted in Lebanon. And I just recommend that to everybody because you see how clear his press and you see how clear the attempt on his life was.

46:12And that should I mean, there's basically no way to refute that he was he was being targeted for being a journalist. All right. So we just wanted to make sure we covered that because, again, you probably will not hear about Amal Khalil on any other major news network.

46:48tweet. This season of Math & Magic, I'm talking to CEO of Liquid Death, Mike Cesario, financier and public health advocate, Mike Milken, Take-Two Interactive CEO, Strauss Zelnick. If you're unable to take meaningful creative risk and therefore run the risk of making horrible creative mistakes, then you can't play in this business. Sesame Street CEO, Sherry Weston, and her own chief business officer, Lisa Coffey. Making consumers see the value of the human voice and to have that guaranteed human promise behind it really makes it rise to the top. Listen to Math & Magic, stories from the frontiers of marketing on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

47:30On a recent episode of the podcast Money & Wealth with John O 'Brien, I sit down with Tiffany the budgetnista aliche to talk about what it really takes to take control of your money. What would that look like in our families if everyone was able to pass on wealth to the people when they're no longer here? We break down budgeting, financial discipline, and how to build real wealth, starting with the mindset shifts too many of us were never, ever taught. Financial education is not always about, like, I'm going to get rich. That's great. It's about creating an atmosphere for you to be able to take care of yourself and leave a strong financial legacy for your family.

48:11If you've ever felt you didn't get the memo on money, this conversation is for you to hear more. Listen to Money and Wealth with John O 'Brien from the Black Effect Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Will Ferrell's Big Money Players and iHeart Podcast presents Soccer Moms. So I'm Leanne. Yeah. This is my best friend, Janet. Hey. And we have been joined at the hip since high school. Absolutely. Now a redacted amount of years later, we're still joined at the hip. Just a little bit bigger hips, wider. This is a podcast. We're recording it as we tailgate our youth soccer games in the back of my Honda Odyssey.

48:48With all the snacks and drinks. Sidebar, why did you get hard seltzer instead of beer? Oh, they had a BOGO. Well, then you got it. Do you want a white collar or something? Here, just say it. What are y 'all doing? Microphones? Are you making a rap album? Oh, I would. Could you imagine? I would buy it. Cuts through the defense like a hot knife through sponge cake. That sounds delicious. Oh, you're lucky I'm not a drug addict. You're lucky I'm not an alcoholic. You're lucky I'm not a killer. I love this team, and I'm really trying to be a figure in their lives that they can rely on. Oh. Oh, oh, oh.

49:26Listen to Soccer Moms on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Let's move over to some things happening in our country currently. Emily, we've got some economy news and some layoffs. What do we got? We'll start by saying markets have been open for about an hour as we're talking right now. The S &P 500 is up. So I'm sure that's great news to everybody over in the White House. But a couple of big layoff announcements that we wanted to cover. We can start with this Meta announcement. Meta is going to cut 10 percent of its workforce, according to a New York Times story.

50:07That's 8000 employees. They're going to close an additional 6000 roles that were open. And they're in the process of, obviously, as the Times points out, spending heavily on AI. So going basically pedal to the metal on artificial intelligence. Another one to cover here is Nike is announcing about 1 ,400 layoffs. That's 2 % of the entire company. It comes out to about 2 % of the entire company. Shael Ben-Efreim had a roundup so that we can also pop on the screen, Griffin, of Nike, Meta, also Microsoft offering voluntary retirement buyouts to about 7 % of its U.S. workforce. Another company that is going pedal to the metal on artificial intelligence.

50:59Oracle has an AI-driven layoff between 20 ,000 to 30 ,000 employees getting cut. But again, that's as they're going pedal to the metal on AI. Amazon, 16 ,000 jobs cut at the corporate level back in January. Many people will probably remember that. They had recently cut about 14 ,000, as Shiael points out, just a couple of months earlier at the end of last year. Block massive cuts from Jack Dorsey. As they are, they were ones that were basically citing AI. They're the ones that were kind of brave enough to actually cite AI. Dell cut about 11 ,000 jobs over the last year. So it's, you know, the analyses of why we're starting to see mass layoffs are a little bit mixed.

51:46A lot of experts look at that and say what we've seen so far is reaction to a super uncertain economy post. I mean, so we have Ukraine. Now we have Iran. But in the process, we've also had tariffs over the last year as well. And so there has been just an enormous amount of uncertainty. Now, the MAG-7 companies are over 30 percent of the S &P. Just think about that. 30 percent of the S &P. And a lot of them are these companies that we were just talking about. So they're cutting tons of jobs. This is the sign that we are now, I think, on the cusp of the economy not just being a reaction to uncertainty, but actually being a direct reaction to artificial intelligence.

52:33And this is as, of course, a lot of those entry-level workers, entry-level white-collar workers are graduating college in the spring just in the next three weeks here. There have been projections we're going to see historic levels of unemployment for recent college graduates. This should prepare people for that to prove accurate in the next several weeks. Unfortunately, that's really where we are. Yeah. And one of the points Shiel makes there that is very important and, you know, matches with your analysis of where the market is at this morning is he's like, you know, we're kind of used to when companies are doing mass layoffs.

53:08It's because those companies aren't doing well. So they've got to cut costs. They've got to trim back. And, you know, they're they would like to keep those workers theoretically, but they're unable to. That's kind of the landscape that we're used to. But these are companies that are all doing very well, have high profit margins. But they and they their stock will go up from cutting this workforce. And this is the terrifying logic of AI is as companies implement it and eliminate large swaths of their workforce, the overall public will be worse and worse off. But the, you know, top echelons of those companies and their, you know, and their CEOs and their top shareholders will be better and better off.

53:54So the level of inequality that we have right now is already world historic, you know, and certainly historic in terms of our nation's history. It's at its highest levels ever. That is set to skyrocket with the logic of AI where, yes, the stock market may continue to go up and up. And rather than being even correlated to the general success and well-being of the American people, it will be an inverse correlation where the higher the stock market goes up, the worse ordinary people are actually faring. And that's scary because of what a bubble it shows that we're under right now. Like to Crystal's point, if something goes wrong and people start realizing there's also a lot of circular funding in the Mag7 world and AI world in general.

54:44So if somebody realizes one investment is looking worse than they expected and starts pulling back a little bit and the bubble starts to pop, we're literally talking about 35 percent of the S &P. So the risks of this big AI project and expansion, inflation, are really significant and actually pretty frightening, Ryan. Yeah, we are rapidly approaching very dark territory because, yeah, the incentives are awful. companies are always looking to shed their workforce so that they can boost their stock price so that they can then you know send out dividends to executives executives can then well cash out and move on to the next company and do it again it's like it's it's just a it's a system designed for looting by executives and ai is becoming the scooper, the vehicle, the weapon that they're going to do this do this looting with.

55:58And you can say, even for the AI skeptics they're like, I don't actually think it's going to work. They don't care. Like they will lay off these workforces, take the stock price bump, you know, take their dividends and then move on. People keep thinking that whether something will actually work matters. What matters is whether it's useful to extract wealth up to the very top. And this is. And so that's the way it's going to go. And there's a direct tie. Go ahead, Em. Well, nobody basically went to prison after the Great Recession, partially because a lot of this is legal, but some of it is dubious anyway.

56:37So what are the incentives for people not to engage in this stuff? If they know they're going to be fine, they'll get a payday. Yeah, no, that's exactly right. And they've all convinced themselves, too, that it's this existential battle for whoever reaches AGI first, and that creates the worst incentives to rush things that are genuinely dangerous to the market. We talked yesterday about Mythos, which is the anthropic product that they deem to be too dangerous to release to the public. But there was a report that a group of hackers were able to gain unauthorized access to that anyway. So clearly it was being kept under lock and key, but not lock and key enough to keep out.

57:17And so if they were able to gain access, who else was able to gain access? I mean, this is already the world that we're living in. And there is a direct tie in and potential impacts from the Iran war that go in a few directions. I mean, first of all, you've got the Gulf economies that are going to be really hard hit. They're already pulling back all sorts of investments. I saw Saudi Arabia is pulling an investment from like the Met Opera, just as another indication. They're already they're pulling their investment from LiveGolf. And a lot of what they were investing in was these data centers and AI in an attempt to diversify their economies.

57:50So that could be significant. You also have these data centers really depend on relatively inexpensive energy. Obviously, the Iran war is creating an energy crunch. So that could be significant in terms of the build-out. You've obviously also got the grassroots backlash that we've been tracking here, trying to slow down the build out of these data centers. But the other piece is with the Iran war. The reality is that the race with China for who can get the furthest, the fastest with AI is very perilous for humanity in the same way that the nuclear arms race between the Soviet Union and the U.S.

58:31was very perilous for humanity. And the reason we've been able to avoid some mass nuclear war, which is really honestly quite an extraordinary accomplishment, was through mechanisms of global cooperation. But the Iran war, the Ukraine war, and, you know, other actions are moving us further away from the ability to collaborate and cooperate in some way that will ensure that we're not going to all destroy each other. You know, some new doctrine of effectively, probably mutually assured destruction, some sort of limiting principles that need to be developed globally around AI, it seems very difficult to imagine how that collaboration could happen as harder and harder lines are being drawn and the Iran war is exacerbating those tensions.

59:22Yeah. And interestingly, Mike Flynn has now kind of joined Joe Kent in pushing this idea that the way out is just to kind of very slowly just walk away. Just walk away. With Palmer Simpson into the bushes. Yeah. And I'm starting to think that that is a very plausible way that this kind of winds down, that Trump never necessarily signs any documents or agrees to any particular thing. You know, if the U.S. and Israel don't attack Iran, Iran is extremely unlikely to launch an attack on them. And so you just very slowly and deliberately start. Although maybe more likely now. I mean, they'd have to I think they'd have to get hit.

1:00:16I think Iran would have to get hit at this point. But Iran might hit them or Israel might hit Lebanon. Yeah, it's it's a very to me, a very unstable outcome that is likely to be able to persist for a significant amount of time for a variety of reasons. I mean, first of all, if you don't restore, you know, free flow of goods through the straight of hormones, you continue to have this tightening of the global economic news that is going to prove unsustainable for Trump. You have Israel constantly wanting to go back to war. So it's hard for me to see how, you know, I can see how he could walk away in the short term.

1:00:52It's hard for me to see how he per se how Trump persists in that outcome and that, you know, achieve some sort of a long term balance. It seems very much more likely to me that we end up back here again if that's what they try to achieve in the short term. Yeah. Well, on that note, why don't we talk a little. I was going to say that your best example of that is what happened in Gaza. It's like we were talking on the show about this this week, too. It's like for Trump, it looked like the wind that he could say he ended another conflict, put another notch in the Nobel Prize qualification. and it rolls on and we can see flare-ups.

1:01:33Anyway, so it's like branding, basically. Let's wrap up this with a little bit of AMA questions. This one's for Crystal from Nick Brannan. In response to the Jacobin panel, how does the left flank of the Democratic Party actually exert power? I am little left of most social Democrats, but I know quite a bit of trots and Leninists, okay? How does it not fall into the traps of reformism in the past. The distance between the DSA and the Green Party seems worrying. Could you truly imagine Roe or AOC running as a Green Party candidate if they get kicked out of the primary process by party elites? All right, there's a lot there, so I don't know which part you want to tackle.

1:02:13Yeah, I mean, look, my view is very much that, let's be honest, DSA has been fantastic. They've had a lot of growth. Obviously, they're directly involved in the election of Zoran Mamdani, which is one of the most important, I think, significant developments for the left in since like Bernie Sanders since ran in 2016. And their most successful strategy has been running people as Democrats. So the outside parties, you know, the Green Party, et cetera, they just don't have the size, strength, institutional muscle to be a real contender at this point in time. The mechanism is the Democratic Party.

1:02:50And so the only solution then is to effectively take over the Democratic Party. And I think at the base level, in a lot of ways, that has already happened. Like the base of the Democratic Party agrees now with Bernie Sanders. Like they have been won over and they also agree with the and this is the really critical part with the critique, both of liberal media establishment and with liberal leadership. that creates a tremendous opening that really hasn't been has never been there before in in my lifetime. So I think there's I think there's a lot of possibility now that hasn't existed in the past.

1:03:26And it's just look, the Democratic Party is just a shell. It's just, you know, it's a name. It can be whatever you force it to be. But you have to have a different cast of characters in there and you have to have a grassroots behind it that are going to pressure those new leaders. to act in the interest of people versus in the interest of corporate donors.

1:03:48Yeah, absolutely. All right. Coming up next, do do do for Emily from Alex NYC. If you didn't talk about it on today's show, I'd like to hear Emily's thoughts on Pete Hegsest's reading of The Book of Tarantino. The Book of Tarantino. I thought there was some really like ridiculous clipping done of that, I will say, because it was obvious that he was doing something from Pulp Fiction. And if you were like listening to him, that's clearly what he was doing. And there were people who originally clipped it as though he was making up Bible verses and not like he was literally stealing from Pulp Fiction.

1:04:26He credited Pulp Fiction. So that was the like some of the misleading clips were driving me insane because they like it's already wild enough that he's just like riffing on Pulp Fiction. So I thought it was a little weird. I mean, he's been doing some weird stuff. I think they're having a hard time coming up with a viable justification that's broadly appealing to the American public and are, you know, what's the right way to put it? They are, they're now in a bubble where they're kind of high on their own supply because they've purged, I think, criticism from their ranks and their vicinity. And that's always really dangerous.

1:05:14That's how you get into very dangerous situations. So that's kind of my take on it. Yeah. I mean, his whole strategy just seems to be to try to portray himself as the most comically villainous person you can imagine. And like using the Pulp Fiction, you know, prayer for violence is, I think, an example of that, Which is why to go back to the earlier discussion we were having about the TMZ question, like basically, what does it feel like to make these decisions in favor of violence and be the one, you know, making the call to authorize these incredibly violent and deadly actions? I think that's why that question is so important because it's like you're trying to portray yourself as a monster.

1:05:54Are you really like, what is it like to be inside your head and justify some of the things that are being done right now? And I was thinking about that when we were – oh, go ahead. No, go for it. I was just going to say when we were talking about the clip earlier, I was thinking about how he changed Department of Defense to Department of War. And they're trying to make the case that this was essentially a defense of war because it was preemptive. And they've been trying to build this into Christian just war doctrine. And I think just changing the name itself is such an obviously symbolic thing.

1:06:27But when you look back on that decision, I think it was much more honest. I think it's much more honest to refer to the previously known as Department of Defense as the Department of War. But it's I think you're now really seeing what that meant. Yeah. It's interestingly, it's never been honest. You know, it used to be the War Department back when the U.S. wasn't really. They were expansionary. That's a good point. Internally doing their whole genocide, taking over the whole continental United States. But they weren't. going abroad yet. And when we, well, they were doing some, but like when they change it to the Department of Defense, that's when we really went ham on the world.

1:07:12So now if we're changing it back, maybe it means in the Orwellian sense, we're going to be retrenching. It has not meant that, Ryan. I regret it. And you should keep up the current events. What's going on? What's going on? Read a book, Ryan.

1:07:31Okay. This one's for Ryan from Eddie Hazel fan. I want to challenge Ryan on his APAC tracker slash J Street objections. It seems clear to me that normie voters are disgusted by the concept of a lobby for a foreign country and have basically no understanding of Zionism, much less liberal Zionism versus Likudnik Zionism versus religious Zionism, etc. Dems embracing J Street while the right says they reject the whole lobby is a recipe for losing the issue to them, isn't it? Wait, what was the last part? Basically, they're saying that they're like, oh, Republicans are disavowing all Israeli lobby.

1:08:12They're not they're not making a difference between liberal Zionism or Zionism. Oh, I see. I think that's at least what he's saying. What Republicans are doing that? Thomas Nassi? That's it. James Fishback? Yeah. Right. Yeah. Yeah. So setting that part aside, I don't know. I just don't. I like things to be accurate. Like if it's called APAC tracker, make it an APAC tracker. If it's all pro-Israel money tracker, call it that. But I almost have now a bigger problem with what I've noticed they're getting some heat for, and I think justifiably so, is the lobby donors part. It says lobby donors, X amount of money.

1:08:56And then it says, it looks like the methodology is if somebody gave 200 bucks at some point to J Street at some point in their life. Like 10 years ago. They get classified as a lobby donor. And then if they give to anybody, then they get counted. And it doesn't seem like they're being kind of straight up about it. Like, because Tallarico, they list like 100 plus thousand or whatever, quote unquote, lobby donors. He doesn't take APAC money. He's been critical of our Israel policy. He's taken like 30 or 40 million bucks in. Some of that is going to come from people who've also given to J Street at some point.

1:09:42Like, does that deserve a red card? But then there are other people that they like who get a green card, who have raised millions, who I guarantee you if you go through their, like AOC or Rashida or Ilhan, I guarantee you they have gotten money. Everybody hates AOC. Rashida and Ilhan, guarantee you they've gotten money from people who have given also to J Street. Why don't they get a red card? So that's the, like, to me, I'm just. It's got to be totally consistent. Got to be consistent. That's why the precision in the language is important. The decision, you know, what the criteria is and how you're applying it.

1:10:18And if you are going to use something that's so broad of anyone who's ever given any money to J Street or APAC, like, first of all, I don't like that criteria. But if you're going to use it, it has to be done consistently across the board. It has to be well explained what it means, too. And then once they have to give Rashida a red card, people will be like, well, hold on a second. Something's wrong with this. Yeah. No, I couldn't agree with that more because you never, ever want to make people, you don't want to give people reason to doubt good work. And that's why the precision of the language is important, like building trust with people so that they don't suddenly look into something and be like, okay, so now I don't trust this entire project because it was literally linguistically misleading to me.

1:11:06And so, yeah, I mean, I think the broad point is important about normies versus political analysts. Yes, that's obviously important. But we give normies a little bit more credit, too, for, you know, following their own trails sometimes and trying to get to the bottom of what's going on. And the last thing that you want, if you want the project to be successful, is losing, I think, the trust and credibility in that case. I will say J Street is like a very confusing organization to me at this point. And Ryan, I'd be curious for your thoughts on this, because, yeah, they were really trying to hold the like liberal Zionist ground.

1:11:41That is an increasingly untenable place to stand. So they've shifted their positions, but it's still I mean, they're just still sort of, I think, figuring out where to land, because how can you advocate for Israel at all and hold liberal values at this point? And they really blew themselves up over the first 18 months of the genocide, refusing to call for a ceasefire. They had this really kind of expansive J Street University apparatus going, and I think it just completely evaporated because all of the students who were J Street U students were like, no, we need a ceasefire. We need to stop this genocide.

1:12:21And they see their organization not calling for that. But they've since come around, but I don't know if it can be – I don't know if it can be repaired. We were talking about having either Jeremy or maybe Elon on, Elon Goldberg on from J Street just to hash some of this out. We should definitely make that happen. It would be an interesting conversation. Although I do think Tommy Veeder did a pretty good job in the interview that he did recently. I got to watch that whole thing. That was with Elon Goldberg, right? Yeah. Yeah, they came in after the 2009 war where Netanyahu launched this war right after Obama was elected, but before he was sworn in.

1:13:02He's like, sweet, got a couple months. Let's do a quick war. And some Democrats wanted to oppose it, but anybody who remotely said anything skeptical of it was called anti-Semitic. So J Street was like born out of that war to give Democrats who wanted to be critical of Israel somebody who would validate them as not anti-Semitic. Like that was essentially the theory of change behind J Street. But then people have pushed significantly further than J Street is willing to go. So, yeah, it raises interesting questions about where they fit anymore. Well, I mean, and the reality of Israel has just pushed further than it's really possible to, like, because they want to do a lot of the, like, oh, well, if we just get Netanyahu out of there, then it'll be different.

1:13:57And then you look at the polls and you listen to the opposition leaders who were like, Netanyahu didn't do the war hard enough. I don't really think this is going to be a solution, guys. So and also just the reality that, you know, Israel is a one state at this point. You know, they exercise total control from the river to the sea. That is the reality. It's a reality that was intentionally constructed to block any sort of two state solution ever in the future. And so that also is something that you have to grapple with. So I don't know. It's just hard for me to really understand the purpose they serve as an organization at this point, given the realities that everyone's eyes are open to now.

1:14:38Well, it seems like they gave Democrats the wiggle room to not send defensive weapons even. I think that was a big thing recently from J Street, right, Ryan? Yeah, they did endorse the idea that, okay, we're not going to subsidize Iron Dome anymore and we're not going to fight you around if you don't want to subsidize the Iron Dome, but you still should sell the iron gun, other weapons to Israel, which is, you know, it's a substantial move. But things are moving fast. J Street, if it becomes kind of an anti-Zionist, pro-one-state democracy organization, you know, could be, would have an interesting role to play.

1:15:21To say, we believe in equal rights for everybody within these borders. We're against apartheid, we're against occupation. but we recognize that two states is no longer going to happen, that would be an interesting place for them to exist. And APEC tracker also has their work cut out for them because as you've documented, Ryan, there's now all these hidden APEC groups, like elect Chicago women and stuff. And there really can't be a Twitter account for every single one of them, although I did get the elect Chicago women Twitter account. Sorry. Or did you? There's news on that. Yeah, we busted APAC funding a la Stanford against Chris Rabb and Shreve Street in this Philadelphia race.

1:16:04And AOC actually today just endorsed Chris Rabb. I thought she didn't do endorsements. I'm so confused. Your staff was able to figure this one out, apparently. Crystal, I can't get clipped again, okay? We got clipped last week. I don't like being retweeted by Mehdi Hassan. I can't be retweeted into all that. As it was happening, I knew that was about to get clipped. I was just like, Friday show gets clipped more than anything else. So thank you, Friday show viewers. I always know, like whatever it is, like when a couple of weeks ago, I was on set with Megan and she said the thing about the, like Trump could use a nuke, which was in the context of this hour long conversation, whatever about saying it was horrible to threaten to nuke another country.

1:16:50I was like, oh, I can always tell, like literally when I used to do Fox, I would be like, this is 1000 % getting clipped and 90 % of the time I'm right. Because you know what's going through like the little media bloggers head. Yeah, that was a crazy thing for Megan to say, though. So I understand why that got clipped. It was a good joke. It was a joke.

1:17:11It was a whole hour long conversation. We don't get it. About how horrible Trump's threat was. Out of respect for your position here. I'm not going to say anymore, but it was a crazy thing to say.

1:17:26All right. And I'm not taking any opinions as someone that goes on the After Party Network. All right. Let's do our final question here from Happy Days 0872. Any thoughts on frequent guest Ro Khanna and him getting called out by All In Podcast for having stock returns slash gains better than Nancy Pelosi or virtually anyone? Ryan, you've done it's Ro's wife, right? oh is that what they're beating him up for yeah roe is yeah roe's wife is extremely rich um and like you know family money i believe hundreds of millions or tens of millions like you know enormously rich uh he has consistently introduced legislation that would force every spouse of every member of congress to what like divest or put their stuff in a blind trust like it would force, it would legally force his wife, you know, to not do what she's currently doing.

1:18:32So I don't know of many members of Congress who have done that before. But so, yeah, it's like, it's tricky. It's like Roe married her. She's super rich. It's our money. He can't really tell her what to do with it. The federal government could. And he's trying to get the federal government to do something about it. That's an interesting marital dynamic. I love that. I'm going to pass a law that's going to make you do the dishes. Yeah. You know it's a good marriage. You know it's a good marriage when he can't force her to stop doing it. That's how you know that it's a healthy marital dynamic. And actually, there's social science research that the happiest marriages are the marriages where both partners feel equal.

1:19:16So it seems to me like if Roe can't say, cut it out. One brings in the hammer of federal legislation to break that imbalance. So that's the situation. And I'm sure he knows it's a political liability and that his opponents are going to hammer him for it. Because, you know, it looks like he's insider trading. If you look at But It does. And And his opponent has millions to spend. The all-in guys should go watch. I think he has a lot of money, too, to spend, so we'll see. I remember when, Ryan, you first started, when Roe was really building his profile as a leader in the progressive space, I remember you years ago on the show confronting him about this.

1:20:10So the all-in guys could have looked that up from five years ago. Crystal and Sager probably did it, too. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, because he's one of the ones that jumps out because his wife has so much money and his wife's broker trades it pretty regularly. So it's popping up constantly on those reports. Yeah, but you can try to feel bad for somebody for having a wife with too much money. Yeah, you know how there's unusual whales that tracks insiders. Maybe we do unusual wives.

1:20:51Pelosi is her husband who was like an actual traitor. That was his job. I don't know if he still does it. It's a hell of a profession when your wife is the leader of the Democratic caucus. Yeah. Well, I guess all marital disputes will now be dealt with with legislation. So look forward to that. That would be cool. And that's going to do it for us this week. Anything else that we need to mention before we sign off? No, I'm sorry for starting an argument. I'm going to talk to Ro about introducing legislation to limit the amount of Gulf Channel viewing that's allowed in a household per week. That's true.

1:21:27It's literally the only way to get that done. That's so fair. I think I could get a lot of support for that personally. It's a little heavy handed, I would say, but maybe at the state level. This is clearly a bill of attainder directed at one Kyle Galinsky. Crystal, maybe you could use the new Virginia Dem power to get them to pass this for Virginia. There you go. Okay. Yeah, then we could just do it in Virginia. That does work. Yeah. State law. Let the old people in Florida continue watching their golf channel. Just leave them alone. He really does have the viewing habits of like an 80-year-old guy.

1:22:04He watches the golf channel and the weather channel all the time. Oh, I love the weather channel. It's like on in the background constantly. Oh, yeah. I guarantee if I go to the room right now, it's on. Amazing. Well, there is something soothing about golf on TV, I find. True. Yeah, totally. It's like, let it wash over you. All right. Congress, get your act together. Ryan, Crystal, Emily, thank you for Incredible Friday Show. And audience, thank you for bringing us to number 15. Hopefully, next month, we're not at number one and that we're sinking down to a more normal number. And thank you all for watching and sharing the show with your friends.

1:22:44And we'll see you Monday. Bye. Earners, what's up? Look, money is something we all deal with, but financial literacy is what helps turn income into real wealth. On each episode of the podcast, Earn Your Leisure, we break down the conversations you need to understand money, investing, and entrepreneurship. From stocks and real estate to credit, business, and generational wealth, our goal is simple. Make financial literacy accessible for everyone. Because when you understand the system, you can start to build within it. Open your free iHeartRadio app, search Earn Your Leisure, and listen now. You know the famous author Roald Dahl.

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