4/29/26: Epstein Peter Thiel Plot Exposed, AOC Humiliates Trump Crony, Big Tech Israel Crackdown, Professor Pape On Iran War

26:04Emily Jashinsky:Yep. And I was a little angry. I'm like, hold on, this is, we're supposed to be doing the FOIAs and breaking this news. Excuse me. Excuse me. Actually, oversight is her job. That's the point of the committee. That's true. No, and also nothing stopping us from doing it, so it's on us. We failed. She got there first. kudos for kudos for the scoop um you can put up e4 um this is not a remotely a republican issue oh um the story is awesome yeah tell us about tell us about this one uh so i was sharing some of it yesterday yeah nate halverson uh went out into a bunch of uh california wilderness and discovered just mass use of roundup uh you know near i think also in national park space because they're using the space essentially as tree farms, right?

26:58Emily Jashinsky:You can log and grow trees faster if you use glyphosate and just, I was going to say napalm the National Park Service or National Parkland with glyphosate. And that's essentially what's happening. So check out that story. There's a video that goes along with it. Also a little note in the story, Gavin Newsom made it easier to do this in California. Glyphosate Gavin? Glyphosate Gavin. Sagerlyx call him Greasy Gavin, but I think Glyphosate Gavin maybe has a better punch to it. Yes. So another exchange that Zeldin had that was going viral on the right, I saw, was with Rosa DeLauro. Rosa came in hot.

27:46She's 80 plus, I believe, at this point. Oh, yeah, she's been around forever. Look that up. But let's play a little bit of – this is not on the same issue, but – This is on the Clean Air Act. Yeah. So let's roll E3. Following the law, Section 202 of the Clean Air Act, where does it say anything about fighting global climate change? Loper Bright, Supreme Court case. Are you familiar with it? No. Maybe others are. I'm not, but let me ask you. But that's really important. As a member of Congress, Loper Bright says that we as an agency don't have the authority to get creative if Section 202 of the Clean Air Act.

28:23No, but you don't have excuse me. You do not have the right to say climate change does not exist, that it's a hoax. And that's where this administration is coming from. I understand you're upset that you don't know what Loper Bright is. Do you know what the major policies doctrine is? I'm upset because. You know what the major policies doctrine is? You're a member of Congress. You should know. You want me to tell you what the two biggest Supreme Court cases are of the last few years? This is what I want Michigan versus EPA. Well, West Virginia versus you know, you're here because you need money from us.

28:50So halt for the second and wait for the questions and answer the question. I answered your question. You didn't like my answer because you don't know what Loper Bride is because you don't know what the major policies doctrine is. What you want to do is to deny you want. No, I actually read the law. I do my homework. Really? You're just somebody who likes to have the microphone on. You know what I have to do? I read the law. I read the Supreme Court cases. And I would say, no, what you should do for your constituents is actually read statues. Our folks at the EPA is that you wanted to fund us. I don't have to listen to this BS.

29:21BS. You think I made up these cases? DeLauro there kind of gave it away when she's when she acknowledged that she didn't know what that. I'm surprised. But, you know, one, she's super old. But two, I'm sure she does. I'm sure she remembers it from the time. That's the case that we covered here.

29:39Emily Jashinsky:Yeah. that got rid of the quote-unquote Chevron Doctrine, which the Chevron Doctrine was, if federal law is somewhat ambiguous, we will defer in a common-sense way to the administrative state, basically to the EPA or whoever is tasked with writing the rules. And as long as it's reasonable, then that's fine. Courts, the court, the Supreme Court, our right-wing Supreme Court, said, no, we're going to take that power. Like the judges are going to do that instead of them. And then the other ones that he's referring to said, well, basically you can't have carbon. They got rid of allowing carbon to apply under the Clean Air Act.

30:26The Clean Air Act was very clear that like the Drug Control Act did the same thing. Drug Control Act said these are the drugs that are illegal right now, but people are making new drugs constantly. LSD will be tweaked and it will become a new thing. And if the scientists that work for the DEA determine that that drug is very similar to LSD, then that one is also then banned under the Controlled Substances Act as well. You don't have to go back to Congress and ban every little single variation of a new drug. The Clean Air Act was the exact same way, that they would say, we want clean air, and we want to protect clean air from pollutants.

31:08With these of the known pollutants at the time, as new pollutants emerge through the industrial process, we're not asking the executive to come back to Congress every single time. Just in coordination with the public and public comment periods, and through your scientific expertise, just add new pollutants. And obviously, some things are pollutants at a, and all pollutants basically are safe at some level for the climate and for the world and unsafe at higher levels. And so the EPA, you know, through its process declared that, you know, it had the authority to regulate carbon, which was in place for many, many years.

31:51And then the Supreme Court came in and said, no, you don't have that authority. So he – what frustrated me about that clip is that he was trying to take what is really a political disagreement and refashion it as you just don't know what you're talking about.

32:08Emily Jashinsky:Yes. But I also think that, because again, we covered this at the time, Loper Bread is a really interesting case that gets to, I think, an issue. It's about fishermen or something, right? Lobstermen, if I'm remembering correctly, that it actually does get to an interesting issue that I think what Rosa Dolores, Connecticut, so I assume her district is some coastline. I would assume so. I don't know that for sure. But it was a lot of lobster rolls. Yes. Bureaucrats in D.C. basically making rules that were controlling like minute details of what these guys were doing off the coast of I want to say it was Maine in Loper Bright.

32:47Emily Jashinsky:So I also think that's something that like, first of all, Rosa DeLore should be prepared to make the argument that the Clean Air Act, which is at the center of Loper Bright, should be used differently. And like it absolutely needs to be guided by Washington for reasons X, Y and Z. So like she should be if I were a Connecticut voter, I'd be like, ma 'am, like get back. Like, let's go. Like this is a very obvious talking point against Zeldin. But I remember at the time, Ryan, we were talking about how part of the problem with Chevron, for example, is that you get these lobbyists coming through. or you get the revolving door where you have people who were then going to go lobby revolving through the door of the EPA.

33:27Emily Jashinsky:And then they're the ones that are empowered to make some of these decisions about minute things. And you could see somebody from, I mean, it's happened. You could see people from the industries working at EPA, making decisions that benefit the industries, then getting nice, big fat paychecks. It's really like my dispute with it is that I think it's, it's anti-democratic in some ways. So that's to me, an interesting tension for Democrats. Or Democratic, leaving it up to judges. No, I'm not saying that they are. But it's also not a solution to just have people who have worked at the EPA and then are going over to – maybe it's Bayer.

34:02Emily Jashinsky:It's like we should actually look up and see how many people who have worked at Bayer work at the EPA now or have. But I don't think it's a good situation either way. Well, you have to have some mechanism to actually implement what Congress passes. And to me, if Congress says, and all right, so let's, when Democrats, if they come back into power, fine. Like maybe they need to, in every single bill. Enumerate. Say, we explicitly allow. Yeah. But that has been the assumption from Congress because that's been the settled law for decades. and the Supreme Court just got rid of it because they don't like it.

34:49So, okay, I guess if Democrats take control again, they can come back and say, okay, we want to be very clear here. Carbon is included. Yeah. On and on.

35:00Emily Jashinsky:I think that's good, actually. But, yeah. Anyway, I thought it was useful to play both back-to-back because it also, we looked, DeLauro's 83. Oh, wow. AOC's, what? 37 good point um and so we like people who are fighting you know for the environment um you know we need people at their best like come on that's a really good point and also i think it was useful to play clips back to back because as much as we probably disagree with zeldin on a number of issues like he's slippery he's he's a an effective defender this is where like he's possibly one of the names for DOJ successor to Pam Bondi because Trump really likes Lee Zeldin exactly over clips like that.

35:49Emily Jashinsky:So the other thing I wanted to mention, Ryan, is this was from Politico last month. They had a little blurb in their influence newsletter, which is a great window into Washington, better than playbook. They wrote, behind Bayer's success, biotech company Bayer scored a massive win last month when President Donald Trump signed an executive order boosting domestic production of the active ingredient in Roundup weed killer. That was for national security purposes. Keep that in mind. Back in February. In a new report, Politico writes, our colleagues Marsha Brown and Cheyenne Hazlitt will pull back the curtain on how the company made its case in Washington.

36:22Emily Jashinsky:Bayer's CEO met with top White House officials last year and said the company could absorb billions of dollars in litigation costs from lawsuits alleging that glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup, caused cancer. I think they've already paid$12 billion in settlements over that point. This is in the Mother Jones article we talked about earlier, but$12 billion in settlements. They always settle. They never let it go through court. They settle. So take that for what you will. But it couldn't also face down the regulatory uncertainty and what executives saw as the prospect of a government ban.

36:51Emily Jashinsky:It might leave the U.S. market, Bayer told the White House, taking with it one of the most, bless you, widely used products on U.S. farmland. The president ultimately sided with the agriculture industry, taking Bayer's threat to leave seriously enough to sign an executive order that caused us a lot of political heartburn, said a White House official. They know that their own voters are not happy with this. The official, however, insisted that the administration was concerned with protecting the supply chain for all kinds of critical minerals, irrespective of Bayer's lobbying. The arguments the company made, the official said, were already being made inside the admin well before Bayer made any demands.

37:24Emily Jashinsky:They have also spent a truly incredible amount of money lobbying. I'm sure that's not surprising to anybody, but here I have the numbers in front I mean, during 2025, they spent more than$9 million lobbying the federal government. So that's what$9 million buys you here in Washington, D.C. All right. Up next, Levin Muhammad, a former TikTok official, joins us to talk about his several years of experience there dealing with congressional pressure, trying to get TikTok to stop letting the American and global public know what was going on in Gaza. This is Tamara Judge from Two T's in a Pod with Teddy Mellencamp and Tamara Judge.

38:07Tamara here. As you know, my dog Rugby is like one of my kids, and I don't play around when it comes to taking care of him. Chewy is where I get everything he needs. He loves food, so always stocking up on treats and toys from Chewy, which my husband, Eddie, likes to buy for him. It always shows up fast, which is exactly how I like things. Chewy also handles the serious stuff, prescriptions, pet insurance, and the telehealth vet visits. And now they're opening up vet clinics across the country. And their 24-7 customer service, they just understand pet people. Plus, with Chewy's one-year satisfaction guarantee, trying new things is never stressful.

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41:01All of that available at MeaningfulBeauty.com. Over the weekend in a surprising upset in Utah's first congressional district, the Democratic Party there endorsed Liban Mohammed, a kind of newcomer to the race, for the party's endorsement. It doesn't mean the primary is over. It's a kind of a weird system that they've got there. But interestingly, we had already booked Lieben to come on the show to talk about his previous experience serving on the congressional affairs team over at TikTok, which he quit in order to run for Congress. And apparently now, you know, a serious contender, not just a serious contender, but, you know, maybe with Nate Bluen and Brian McAdams, Ben McAdams.

41:47Is it Brian or Ben McAdams? Ben McAdams. Ben McAdams, a former member of Congress. We got a serious race on our hands. But so, Lieben, thanks so much for joining us. Thank you. This is one of my favorite shows. Congrats on getting 2 million subscribers. You're killing it. It's a testament to the great reporting work that you're all doing. and, you know, highlighting the opinions that need to be heard. No, we appreciate it. We're going to have Robert Pape on next. He always loves to glaze our audience. And I want to see for second. It's like a Trump cabinet meeting here. It's a great way to start, no doubt about it.

42:30But first of all, if you would have told me when we were talking last week or the week before that, you're like, yeah, I think I'm going to actually win the Democratic Party endorsement. I would be like, okay, this guy's kind of losing it a little bit. How did you pull this off? Did you come in with an organized support base, or do you think that you swayed a lot of people at the convention? I think a little bit of both. We organized, but not in a typical way that politics is organized. We just organized with real community leaders who are on the ground. typically not in the political process, but are the true service providers doing the real implementation work, working with our homeless community, our displaced communities, working with our refugee communities.

43:18Something about the Salt Lake Valley in this district is the West Side is basically an area that consolidates a lot of our marginalized groups and has been long underrepresented, not only on the federal level, but across our government positions. And this new district flipped from plus 20 points Republican to plus 24 percentage points Democrat. And it presents a new opportunity to have leadership that reflects their perspective as well, the progressive perspective, the working classes perspective. So there was a lot of excitement on the ground for our candidacy. And the way that we got this done ultimately is showing up with the message that they want to hear, which is fighting for affordability and showing a character that they can trust and believe in.

44:04And so we'll cover this race more down the road. For now, I wanted to get a little bit of your story on TikTok. And so October 7th happens. You and I were talking about this before. So October 7th happens. You were actually, so you're working for TikTok at the time in their kind of congressional affairs office. and you're in Mecca on a pilgrimage with Palestinian friends. So talk about what that experience was like while you're, and I assume that TikTok was like, yeah, you need to check in too now because this is a major world-shaping development. So what was that like? That's got to be an experience that you're never going to forget.

44:50Yeah, absolutely. It was one of the most pivotal moments in my life and in my perspective. So quick background context. My promo role is I used to manage the businesses' responses to congressional investigations and political investigations at large. What that means is anytime they want to send a letter, there's a briefing request, testimony request for an executive. I was the one either providing the responses or preparing such an executive for those engagements. So I just answered all questions all the time. And I was in this new position as some colleagues of mine, one on maternity leave, another one left the team.

45:36And it was just kind of me. And I'm just learning. and after october 7th happened i was with a palestinian family who have known since i was just a small child and they were telling me in real time as things are unfolding their childhood home blown to pieces uh it was a father and a son that i was with particularly the son his wife's entire family killed and to experience something like that in real time as uh people that you love and care about are finding the news uh it was it was a moment that i truly internalize what the apartheid state of israel really is what they're capable of and what that means in the ordinary people's lives.

46:30I've always known what the issue is. I've always been pro-Palestinian, but it's different when it becomes real and you see it. And in my job at TikTok, we're getting all these inquiries from different elected officials, pro-Israeli lobbying organizations, you know, I think ADL and all of those. And I'm the person that has to respond. Quite frankly, how did they like that when you would show up at these meetings?

47:03Emily Jashinsky:Well, I was also going to ask what just like help us understand, you know, from the position that you were in, how quickly this was obviously a huge, maybe the biggest political challenge that TikTok faced in its entire existence after it happened. Probably no exaggeration to say that this is what led to ultimately the Trump administration selling TikTok to American companies. So talk to us about the pressure on the inside and then Ryan's question of how people reacted when you shared your vantage point at some of these meetings as well. Great question. So the pressure was unbelievable. Words cannot describe the amount of pressure that existed.

47:41And it became the number one headwind for the company that could result in the lack of its existence in the largest consumer market in the entire world. We were getting inbound inquiries, and this is public information. You could see a lot of these letters online, I mean, every few days, every other day, from pro-Israeli lobbying organizations, from pro-Israel perspective legislators, and the company was just being inundated. But what's really interesting is the lack of questions and investigations and inquiries coming from the pro-Palestinian perspective. And this experience actually made me understand exactly how this influence really works.

48:25It's more than money. It's persistence. It's the sophistication behind their lobbying efforts. And they make you feel like you're in a bubble, that their perspective is the only perspective that exists because of the volume that you're dealing with. And everybody knows in the company what it is, the pressure that exists. and you have to feel like you're walking on eggshells because you know at the end of the day that the ultimate purpose of this business, like any other business, is to make profit. And the biggest risk to risk profit at the current moment is the pro-Israel perspective threatening to participate in the efforts to ban the platform.

49:03So it was very difficult, but it was a fulfilling experience because we were honestly fighting back for a long time up until the bill passed and even for a little while after that and not capitulating. And the reason we didn't capitulate is because of polarity. I think people underestimate the benefit polarity has in our geopolitical environments when it comes to tech. Yeah, explain what you mean by that. Yes. I think it's an interesting point. What do you mean by polarity? Yes. So you have the United States of America, which is the largest consumer market in the world. And not only that, they also produce the most volume of content on the global scale.

49:44So the ability for the business to be able to generate profit even outside of the United States is reliant on the volume and quality of the content creators and the content that's being made here. At the same time, the parent company has a number of subsidiaries in China that are making an immense amount of money and doing really well. So if the company capitulates to the US perspective, well, they're going to risk their interest in China. And if they capitulate to the Chinese perspective, well, they're going to risk their interests in the U.S. So the business for a long time was incentivized to do the only thing that was justifiable, which is the right thing.

50:21At the end of the day, they're not a nation state. And if a country is coming after you, it's quite difficult to defend yourself. And so for a while, I believe that's the reason why they were not capitulating and the pro-Palestine movement and progressive causes were able to be really successful on the platform. But now that polarity has been stripped with the acquisition. And it's part of the reason why I decided to leave the company and run for Congress because I just didn't feel comfortable anymore that the motives of the new ownership would be in the right place. Not because of any evidence specifically, but just the rhetoric and the intentions that seem to be clear.

51:05And so back to my earlier question, let's say the ADL comes in for a meeting or you get told you got to go visit the ADL or one of these other groups. What was the reaction? I think they're ready to pressure TikTok into capitulating on whatever particular issue. What was the reaction when Lehman Mohammed walks into the room?

51:28I think the last thing they would want as a person like myself to be the one answering their questions. at the end of the day the policies are the policies and i was answering things in an unbiased way and ultimately the company was operating in an unbiased manner uh the fundamental issue of their concern was the volume of content and the volume of content it has nothing to do with the business it's a reflection of the people tiktok and these other platforms it's not only a tiktok issue they're not putting a camera in front of your face saying please make this piece of content. But these people wanted to address that, and the only way to do that is throttling.

52:07And the company was not willing to do that.

52:10Emily Jashinsky:And Ryan, can you set up this situation of what we know about Ryan, Crystal, and Saga on TikTok? Yeah, so this is kind of interesting. It is interesting. I think it's legitimately interesting. It's related a little bit to the way that the politics inside TikTok are evolving. um we start crystal and i started doing and soccer too um hunk got on tiktok we started doing tiktok a little while ago um and then i in particular there's several accounts that started like impersonating me and i'm like okay whatever that's fine like impersonating just stripping the videos and like doing an account that's like very similar um to me there's one there's one up there now it's like at Ryan W.

52:53Grimm underscore like they throw an underscore at the end and I started getting bothered when they started DMing people like what you want to like rip off my content fine like whatever um but they started DMing people pretending to be me I'm like oh this is actually not good like this could go in a very dark direction fast if like somebody wanted to um do something you know gross or something and claim it was me so I reached out to TikTok and they're like, well, we can't do anything. And a bunch of people were reporting this account and they're like, well, they're not impersonating anybody because this person's a nobody because they're not verified.

53:32So you can't impersonate nobody. I was like, oh, okay, so let me apply for verification. That's been a more than six month process now at this point where originally they're telling me that the articles that I was submitting about me were not from reputable news outlets, even though they were like the New York Times and the Washington Post. I'm like, okay, that's kind of funny. TikTok doesn't find them credible. I don't either. But who then is credible if you don't think the Times and Post are? So then, Levon, you had talked to some colleagues internally and tried to help Crystal and me get going.

54:03Crystal, by the way, a former federal candidate for office. Like, there's a rule that basically any federal candidate is supposed to get verified. And they still are like, no, F you. We're not going to verify you. So just the postures go. So like as somebody who's been involved in this kind of verification process, like why do they care? Why do they care so much? Like it wasn't when I applied, it was like not even a big deal. I'm just like trying to get these imposter accounts, not to be doing these like fake accounts. But it seems like it's much more important to them that Crystal and I not be verified than it is to us to get verified.

54:40I'm not even using the platform as much anymore. Like what like what is what is going on here? What's your sense of the politics internally? Yeah, it's difficult for me to be able to speculate the rationale behind why you or Crystal were not verified. I do believe that they're still reviewing your verification applications and hopefully they go well. I will say, in my opinion, it's quite obvious that you guys both and SAGAR included far beyond me the threshold of requirements that are necessary to be able to receive a verification. And you are correct. There is a policy. The acronym is GPPPA. But under that, there is a requirement for government and political accounts, including a federal congressional candidate to be verified.

55:30However, there's a gray area that's unclear if that applies retroactively since she's no longer a candidate. So I'm unsure there. But we'll see. I will say, though, you're somebody that was nominated for a Pulitzer, right? Yeah, well, we used to be in the mix for those.

55:52Emily Jashinsky:I'm sorry, we won the iHeartRadio Award. Does that mean nothing? That's true. iHeartRadio, best podcasts. So I'll say this, if any of my old colleagues who are watching this, help them out. They deserve it. They're good people who are advocating for the right thing and ultimately definitely meet all of the requirements that are necessary. So I encourage you to do that. And I'm quite confident that they haven't violated any community guidelines. And if they have, you should be able to demonstrate that to them. And ultimately, what I really like to talk about as well is this campaign. Before you go, I wanted to ask you one kind of a strategic question about the campaign.

56:34So Nate Bluen is kind of – well, there were two progressive candidates before you got in. One of them seems to have kind of torched her campaign over some like wild like sexual like Me Too stuff. I don't know if she's still a serious candidate anymore. But Nate Bluen has the you're backed by Ilhan Omar. And also the I saw that the minority leader, the Democratic state minority leader was at the convention also endorsing you. So that that that gives you an interesting kind of stretch of endorsements. Nate Bluen's got Bernie Sanders endorsement. So one thing I wanted to ask you, there's there's so much splitting of the vote among kind of progressive candidates that it that it often leads to the more centrist kind of corporate backed candidate winning.

57:18So I'm curious, would you commit if within, what should the threshold be? Two weeks of the mail-in ballots dropping. If you're no longer kind of a seriously viable candidate, and I guess we'd have figured out how to decide that, would you withdraw and endorse the kind of leading populist candidate? Yeah. My answer to that question is quite simple. So I think I believe I proved that I am the viable candidate that is able to consolidate the support and beat Ben McAdams. Ben McAdams is backed by AIPAC. He is a centrist at that, I would say, basically a Republican. And Nate Blumen didn't beat Ben McAdams.

58:07Ben beat Nate. Believe Ben beat Ben. So I think that is the answer to that question. There's some controversies around him. I'm not going to ridicule him for that. I believe in forgiveness and trying to see a path forward for him to come back from this. He's been doing a lot of great work since then, and I commend him on that. But what's also true is most voters are going to get that ballot in the mailbox, and they're going to do their little five-minute Google search. and it would be a shame that in the most progressive open seat in the entire nation that we lose a working class movement because we can't pass that Google search test because of a scandal.

58:47We need a person with a track record of both integrity and results that's advocating for the right things and those are benchmarks that I believe I uniquely meet and I'm capable of doing even more than that which is bringing new people into the process which is going to be paramount to be able to be Ben McAdams. So the answer to your question is yes, I do believe in consolidation of the progressive ideology and movement, but I believe that it needs to be behind the person that can survive, you know, a negative ad campaign. And we'll ask, we'll end up, we'll ask Nate the same question if people are curious.

59:23I think the thing you're referring to, is there some old comments of his bashing Mormons? Well, more than comments. He admitted to a hate crime, defecating on the place of worship of the predominant faith in our state and a number of other things. But I'm not going to... That's a tough one to overcome. Yeah, I don't know if that's going to be able to survive the Google search test, right? We need somebody that's going to make sure that we have healthcare as a human right, housing for our own house, and make sure that we can get that as a human right. Somebody that's going to fight to abolish ICE and build an immigration system that's rooted in our shared humanity, somebody that's going to fight to stop funding endless wars and the genocide of our brothers and sisters and Gaza, fundamentally somebody that's going to focus on American diplomacy abroad and our own dignity at home.

1:00:15And that cannot be jeopardized simply because the character of the individual is not able to meet the mark to be elected. This is more than just a person. It's about the movement. And we need somebody that can create it and read it. All right. Well, Leibn, appreciate you coming on. We'll be following this race. This is a really interesting one. Thanks for joining us. Thank you, Ryan. And thank you, Emily. This was an interesting conversation. And I hope you guys get your verification. Not me.

1:00:49Emily Jashinsky:I'm not on TikTok. I'm one of the good ones. All right. See you later You take care, bye This is Tamara Judge from Two Teas in a Pod with Teddy Mellencamp and Tamara Judge Tamara here, as you know my dog Rugby is like one of my kids and I don't play around when it comes to taking care of him Chewy is where I get everything he needs He loves food, so always stocking up on treats and toys from Chewy which my husband Eddie likes to buy for him It always shows up fast which is exactly how I like things Chewy also handles the serious stuff, prescriptions, pet insurance, and the telehealth vet visits.

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1:04:00Emily Jashinsky:We're joined once again by Professor Robert Pape over at the University of Chicago, also the author of the Escalation Trap Substack. It's just escalationtrap.substack.com. where he has been covering the Iran war from his expert perspective, having spent years actually writing about a scenario such as this. So, Professor Pape, welcome back to Breaking Points. Thank you very much for having me. And have no fear, we're soon going to forget about that minor thing called the Iraq war. Oh, it's so depressing. It's so very depressing to think about. Let's just start with the OPEC news, big news yesterday.

1:04:37Emily Jashinsky:OPEC, UAE out of OPEC by May 1. What did you make of that? And does it fit into the escalation? Yeah, absolutely. This is part of a larger picture that happened this week. This is the week that the United States has truly lost control of the Iran war. This has all happened. It's been building, and I've been talking about this, but you can now see it this week. Iran is negotiating without the United States. So Iran's going to Pakistan, it's going to Russia, it's about to go to Oman, but it's not about meeting with the United States. Our allies, at least maybe our former allies, our allies, say the German leader, is publicly saying that America is humiliated on the world stage.

1:05:38Just think about that for a moment. And the global system, the region and the global system is essentially moving on without the United States. And that's where the UAE comes in. So I definitely understand that it's a data point and it's thought of as a soda straw, but it's much more than that. So what I have been explaining on your show on the Substack for weeks now is that Iran is emerging as the fourth center of world power. In fact, you got the exclusive first, even before the New York Times. And that is going to have major consequences, and it doesn't unfold all at once. It unfolds over time.

1:06:27Now, within the region, and I said this in print and on your show, what this is going to mean is that Iran, as it gets powerful, and as America loses control here, and everybody sees that, this is going to fragment the GCC countries, they're not going to all respond in a wave or in unison to these changes. What you're going to see is each of them increasingly is going to act on their own. Think of them as they were part of a group and they had group interests. Well, now that America is not there to serve as a real anchor, and it's now all clear for everyone to see America's just lost control, not losing, but lost control, it's no surprise they're fragmenting.

1:07:22Earlier, a few weeks ago, Iraq started to move toward positions of Iran and started to become increasingly critical of American presence in Iraq. This was the beginning of this fragmentation. Now what you're seeing is the UAE, they're not moving toward Iran. That's not what they're doing because they're pretty terrified Iran's going to want to topple their government. What they're doing is they're fragmenting. They're not going to let OPEC or Saudi Arabia, who really is the main driver in OPEC, just run them into the ground. So that's why they are moving away. And what they're doing is moving away from a concerted, counterbalancing coalition that the United States has been trying to build for years now with the Abraham Accords, counterbalancing Iran.

1:08:17Well, this is all now just fragmenting. It's falling apart. And this is, you're only seeing the beginning of the fragmentation. This is likely going to get worse. And America can't stop it. Notice nobody's even bothering to consult President Trump here to say, well, do you think you could change the UAE's mind? What do you think about this? They don't care. And that's really devastating for America's interests, America's role in the world. And it's kind of hard, I think, for a lot of people to imagine, although I've been saying to expect this, I think now the reality is just kind of hard to accept here that it really is the case that this is all tragic, but it was predictable.

1:09:05And you got basically the decisions of one guy in the world, President Trump, has enormous power. And he's used that power to devastatingly negative consequences for America, the region, much of the world's economy, and to the growing power of America's leading rivals.

1:09:26Emily Jashinsky:It puts those reports that the Saudis were pushing for the Iran war behind the scenes in interesting context, too. Indeed. So when we started this program, Brent crude prices were at, I think,$114 a barrel. They're now, as we're getting towards the end of the show, up to$117 a barrel. That's despite an enormous amount of American pressure to keep the prices down, both through kind of deliberate attempts at kind of spreading nonsense about their Iranians are headed to Islamabad. They're about to capitulate. They said they're collapsing. We won. They want to open this trade. Plus actual material manipulation using the power of the U.S.

1:10:13Treasury to actually get into the markets and play with the numbers. As you do your kind of forecasting, what does$117 a barrel oil do to those calculations? And what does it say about what what what room Trump has to maneuver? Well, well, what we are seeing and I we've talked about this before is there is a trajectory here with the Strait of Hormuz being closed down. And everybody now knows closed down 20 percent of the world's oil, 30 percent fertilizer, dot, dot, dot. But the trajectory is in the first 45 days, and we're now at day 60, the first 45 days, it was simply price rising and price rising notably, but in anticipation of stage two, which started about actually two weeks ago.

1:11:07It's this middle stage where shortages, actual shortages are appearing. And that has been recorded here, you know, the worry about the jet fuel, Europe, and this is just the beginning of all this. But that is what you are seeing now. And this is going to get worse because all the ships that were in transit over the last couple of months, it could possibly still have some oil in them. They've all hit dry dock. They've all been there. The storage areas, the storage bins that are full here have now started to be sucked dry. So what you are getting now is the true shortage period starting. And it actually started about 10 days ago.

1:11:55And we've talked a bit about this. And this is why now the price of oil is, it's not like prices just went up once and then they stop. Once the shortage is actually hit, it's not a probability, it's a reality. And that's what you're seeing with the price of oil. And this is, unfortunately, something that's going to go on because as shortages occur, it's supply and demand. There's still demand for this, but there's less of it. So the price of what's left must go up. That's the only way to sort that out. And so that's why the price is going to go up. And this was fully predictable. This is not a, you know, the markets may have tried to pretend.

1:12:39Donald Trump may have tried to pretend. But, you know, reality has a way of coming in and showing its ugly head. And that's what you are seeing. And unfortunately, May is going to be this period where the real shortages and those effects are going to start to be felt. And then by the middle of May, probably the end of May, you will see actual contraction occurring. Lyft-Hansa announced, for example, a week ago it would lay off, or not lay off, it would have 20 ,000 flights canceled, these short-haul flights canceled. Well, this is probably then going to lead to, in a month, a few weeks later, layoffs.

1:13:21That is, you will start to see in the middle of May, end of May, you're going to start to see rising inflation. The prices going up equals inflation. And you'll see the beginning then side by side of rising unemployment. This is just, though, the beginning. This is the first 90 days. Now, as we get into 120 days, these things will simply get worse. That's what happened in the 1970s. It was called the misery index. We haven't used that term since I was a kid. I was a kid, and that term was really quite common because it went on for years, and it got worse well before it got better. It didn't just get better.

1:14:02It went on for years. Interest rates on homes went up to 16%. My grandparents had to pay to buy a home at one point. And so what you're seeing is that's the trajectory we're on, and it'll start to be called again, I suspect, the misery index, maybe the Trump misery index.

1:14:21Emily Jashinsky:And there were dueling reports in the New York Times and Wall Street Journal. They weren't really dueling. They were basically saying actually that what the rub is right now is Iran has said they will come to the table on the straight if Trump agrees to table the nuclear negotiations. Donald Trump just last night at the state dinner said we have defeated Iran militarily. So, Professor Pape, we're all trying to do our best here to learn to speak fluent Trumpese and understand what exactly he's saying and projecting or attempting to project. So what do you make of where these negotiations are right now?

1:14:59Emily Jashinsky:Because I could see someone saying, Professor Pape, Iran is willing to come to the table and reopen the strait. Does this not undermine your argument that we are headed to a potential catastrophe worse than Iraq? We just need to peel a little bit under that phrase, what does the word open mean? And by the way, I'm going to define it the way Secretary Rubio did just recently yesterday, where he explained that what Iran means by the word opening the strait is that ships can pass through the strait as long as they coordinate with the Iranian military in advance and as long as they pay the toll, which I believe is currently imagined to be about$2 million a ship to pass one time.

1:15:54So if you have, say, 100 ships, that's$200 million a day that Iran would be bringing in. That's$60 billion a year that would be also over and above that much or more that Iran would make on selling its own oil. So this is why Secretary Rubio just said this is not really an open, this is not open. So what Iran is doing is going through its 10 points that it delivered to Trump. Remember when we started the ceasefire, Trump agreed to the 10-point plan as a basis for negotiation. All Iran is doing is literally going through the 10 points. And the first point is they get to keep the straight. That is, they're going to keep a tight fist on the jugular of the world's economy, and they will extort costs here from the world, which is$2 million a ship.

1:16:54And then also they want their own oil to be sold. And so they're perfectly going to be happy at manipulating the price of oil. So what also that means, just to be also what the implication here is, is that if Iran wants to keep the price of oil at 100 bucks a barrel, they know how to do that. They can regulate what happens across the strait. They can optimize, in other words, their financial earnings from controlling the strait. Now, the second point is the nuclear negotiations. So notice that before this war kicked off on February 28, Iran and the United States were in negotiations on the nuclear material.

1:17:40That's what was being discussed. What Iran is simply saying is that's off the table now. They're just not interested in that. Now, they're not saying at all when that will come back. So what that tells me is Iran is not giving up this power of the Strait of Hormuz anytime soon. And Iran is probably starting to lay the groundwork for developing nuclear weapons over the next maybe year or so. And that would also dovetail with why they're talking with Pakistan, a nuclear weapons state that helped Iran with centrifuges to start its program in the first place, and also Russia, another nuclear weapons state that's been a military ally of Iran.

1:18:24So if Iran is going to pursue this very aggressive agenda to truly emerge as the fourth center of world power with nuclear weapons, it needs allies. And it looks like it's working with its allies. And it's certainly working with its allies better than we're working with ours. Well, I think what Iran is saying here is that they're not going to discuss the nuclear issue until the naval blockade of the strait is lifted. But at that point, I think there is real willingness to discuss it. Now, whether. Well, I would just be I guess I we maybe have a slight difference of view here. They say if they will not enter face to face negotiations with America at all, unless America lifts the naval blockade.

1:19:06So I think that's my understanding of this. Now, you may be right. I want to not get into it. But it is the case that they've said that now multiple times. And again, this issue of postponing the nuclear negotiations here, I guess I just have the view, I'm reading it, that they really are working with others along the trajectory of gaining power. And also, I just want to point out that this is going to have global consequences even beyond the Iran war. So Russia here is going to want something from Iran, and that may be tighter coordination as Russia tries to gain power over Europe, not just in the battle space of Ukraine.

1:20:00And Iran and Russia together control now 30 percent of the world's oil. So we need to keep our eye on that. And then also we need to look over at Asia. So we shouldn't forget that all the estimates now that are coming out of the Pentagon is we have spent 50 percent roughly of our patriot arsenal, our THAAD arsenal, a number of our very important precision interceptor arsenals. And that means we're leaving Taiwan essentially naked here or virtually naked. And that opens all kinds of possibilities for President Xi to want some concessions, either tacitly or explicitly, vis-a-vis U.S. relations with Taiwan.

1:20:48So I just point out that this is a when I when I say Trump, the United States has lost control of the Iran war and it's having global implications. It actually has global implications even beyond the price of what's happening to the world economy and the price of gasoline here at home. Yeah. And on the nuclear point, the trip that Raji took to Russia could also, you could imagine a world in which, well, to back up, as you know, in 2015, Russia was part of the Iran nuclear deal. And Iran, through that deal, agreed to ship and did, in fact, ship, and I don't think most people know this, 25 ,000 pounds of enriched uranium to Russia.

1:21:37Let me talk if it's OK. And they now have less than a thousand. But go ahead. Let me talk if it's OK just for a minute about the JCPOA and how it came about, because I'm I'm pretty familiar with this. And one of your listeners may not know that part of the other area I've been studying for 30 years is economic pressure, economic sanctions, blockades, etc. Well, one of the things that's important to know is that the Obama administration had economic sanctions on Iran, and then we got the nuclear deal. Well, why did that economic pressure work? It worked because Russia and China, these are the military allies of Iran, joined in that America's coalition against Iran.

1:22:25In fact, Russia stopped selling their SA-300s, to give you a very specific point. But then let's back it up a little further. Why did Russia do this? Out of the goodness of its heart? Well, in 2008, I was part of Obama's primary teams, and I had an idea. And I was on one team, and a guy by the name of Sean Kaye was on the NATO team. And I said to Sean on a phone call, you know, the number one issue here that we should really worry about for the Middle East, because I was on the Middle East team, was really a nuclear weapon by Iran. It would set off all kinds of issues. But in order to stop it, we need Russia because if you could get the military ally of Iran on board.

1:23:10But how do you do that? We should trade missile defense, U.S. missile defense in Eastern Europe to get Russia's concession to go along with Obama's plan to get a counterbalancing coalition against Iran. Well, that's exactly what Obama did. So Sean wrote that up, sent it up the chain on the NATO team. And well and behold, Obama wins. And what does he do? He trades directly with Putin, U.S. National Missile Defense, to get Putin's work, I mean, agreement to be part of the coalition against Iran. And that's how you got the JCPOA. That's actually, now, how would you recreate that? Well, that means the United States would have to really give major concessions here to Putin.

1:24:03What would those concessions look like? They would have to be much more than simply don't send aid to Ukraine, because that's already going way down. You're probably going to have to work to undermine European support for Ukraine in a direct way if you want Putin here to even think about the idea of joining the naval blockade. And what we would be talking about would be Putin sending a Russian ship to join the U.S. naval blockade. Now, that would change things. But this is the level at which we're talking about. We're not talking about minor cosmetic issues. That's not what brought Russia in with Obama, and that's not what's going to bring Russia in to help with this situation.

1:24:50They're simply not going to bail out the United States because Russia, Leveroff just gave this big speech a few days ago where he explained that from Russia's perspective, they're at war against the West. Well, what do you do when you're at war? You want to crush your opposition. And now you have Iran and Russia meeting. What are they talking about? I think they're talking about how to do things against their common enemy. Sounds right. Professor Pape, always a pleasure. Thank you so much. And I'm sorry I don't give you very many ways out of the escalation trap.

1:25:26Emily Jashinsky:It's the point. Glad to. All the trap. That's right. That's right. And the escalation trap is over on Substack. You can follow Professor Pape's work there. Thank you so much again, Professor. Yeah, thank you very much. Always a pleasure and very smart questions and interjections. Very smart. Ryan will take it. That's right. Thank you. Okay, bye-bye. Ryan, I think what we've learned today is that you run guest segments like a Trump cabinet meeting. As long as you start with a lot of praise and continue the praise throughout it, then the interview is going to go well. The praise is its own escalation trap.

1:26:03Emily Jashinsky:That's right. Once you start, you have to keep pleasing Ryan. That's right. Well, you were an incredible interviewer and brilliant questions. Smart questions. I mean, I have to agree. Your questions are very smart. And we have the greatest comments, our YouTube commenters. Nobody's smarter. Greatest everything all around. Well, thank you, everyone, for tuning in today. As a reminder, Ryan's going to be live in a debate with Scott Jennings on the After Party channel tonight at 9 p.m. It's on. Yeah, it's an interesting one. The students had great questions. Actually, it would have been great if the students just asked you guys questions for like two hours.

1:26:40Emily Jashinsky:That would have been wild. But anyway, breakingpoints.com is where you can go to get a premium subscription. Otherwise, Crystal and Sagar, we'll see you back here tomorrow. We'll see you Friday.

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