4/3/26: Iran Shoots Down US Jet, Trump Purges Military, CNN Loses It On Hasan

22:53And it's a swap that everyone's really pleased with. But no, in all seriousness, obviously, the big news yesterday, I have to say it surprised me, was that Pam Bondi, Attorney General Pam Bondi, who had just been with Donald Trump at the Supreme Court the day earlier and who has known Trump for many, many years, is out. So Todd Blanche, who was deputy AG, you may remember Todd Blanche is the person who conducted that Ghislaine Maxwell interview, is now stepping in as attorney general. Remains to be seen whether Trump keeps him there. I will note one interesting angle of this that's a little softer, but it is, I find it interesting.

23:32You had Kristi Noem and Pam Bondi, both of whom were put in those roles, at least in part because Donald Trump thought they were strong communicators, that they were strong on television and that they would take this sort of generational political opportunity as people on the right saw it. With Noem, it was immigration crackdown. With Bondi, it was retribution. And communicate it, convey it in a way to the public that would mitigate any fallout and the like. They had both been replaced by men. at least so far. And not, you know, your typical, like, I guess Mark Wayne Mullen counts as somebody who Trump thinks is good on media and is more telegenic.

24:11But I don't know that you could necessarily say that of Todd Blanche. Let's read a little bit because Politico's reporting here. I think it is, this is roughly what I'm hearing as well. Quote, Pam Bondi did almost everything Donald Trump asked. It wasn't enough. Bondi's ouster is AG Thursday, continuing to string of unceremonious departures for occupants of Trump's most perilous cabinet posts all have one commonality, failure in Trump's eyes to sufficiently use the Justice Department as a shield from legal scrutiny and a sword against his political enemies. He is now looking at potentially Lee Zeldin, who is EPA administrator, but was looking into, as Politico says, the, quote, cascade of criminal prosecutions Trump has long demanded against his enemies.

24:58That Truth Social post, he accidentally made public. Does everyone remember this? Yes. He accidentally posted a DM, which is interesting because it means Trump is DMing his own cabinet officials on social media. And that the account is so casually used by the president that you could it's conceivable to accidentally post something with implications. I mean, he does foreign policy and truth social implications for the world. So just another interesting part of that. But he was asking her to basically get tougher. And it looks like from all of the reporting, this had nothing to do with Epstein unless, you know, that's not a precipitating factor in this.

25:43What Trump wanted from Pam Bondi was more prosecutions of his political enemies, basically. And we should add no tears for Pam Bondi, who brought the swamp into the Justice Department, not for the first time. It's obviously very routine, but they oversaw this horrible, corrupt process at the FTC that was allowing mergers to go through cash being like exchanged and just laughing, yucking it up. Now, not like back alley deals, but like typical lobbyist type exchanges, which, you know, again, Trump administration welcomes Gail Slater and says she's going to crack down on big tech. And then Pam Bondi and Todd Blanch and Chad Mazzell and others say, sorry, swamp's more powerful here.

26:32Basically, Pam Bondi came in. Pam Bondi was a lobbyist. She was a pretty successful lobbyist. So perhaps that's where she's going back to.

26:41Saagar Enjeti:And then we have, you know, Trump here saying a farewell to Pam Bondi. He says, Pam Bondi is a great American patriot and a loyal friend who faithfully served as my attorney general over the past year. Pam did a tremendous job overseeing a massive crackdown in crime across our country, with murders plummeting to their lowest level since 1900. Very interesting. We love Pam, and she will be transitioning to a much needed and important new job in the private sector. And yeah, I guess there's a lot of other fires to get to. But my final question for both of you is, didn't Pam Bondi kind of do a great job?

27:21Saagar Enjeti:I mean, she had two jobs, right? Cover up the Epstein files and go after political enemies. With the Epstein files thing.

27:30Griffin:She did a terrible job covering up the Epstein files.

27:33Saagar Enjeti:Well, here's the thing, Ryan. I mean, listen, they're not all released. You still don't have all the files. So that's one point for Pam.

27:41Griffin:Yeah, but he had to go to war to stop the news cycle around it. So that's a loss when it comes to your PR management. If you have to launch a world war to distract from what he didn't want to happen at all, then yeah, that's an L.

28:03Saagar Enjeti:Well, there was a period where she was the center of it in a sense where she was taking all the blame for it in a way that kind of helped Trump. because then everyone could say, oh, it's actually Pam Bondi who is befuddling this and messing this up. She did the influencer photos and she, you know, she did a few other embarrassing, you know, public speeches about it. And then people were able to kind of direct attention away from Trump and onto her and kind of blame it on her, which is kind of what he's looking for, right?

28:36Griffin:Yeah, that was bad, right, Emily? Like, that was terrible. like the way that I mean no it was no it did not help him like it did not help him there was no reason for her to say that she had thousands of hours of like pedophile stuff that she had all of this stuff on her desk there was no reason for her to give empty binders and humiliate all of those like allies of the White House that was all own goals none of that was unforced that was those were those were unforced errors She made the situation 200 times worse in her efforts to circle the wagons around the president and protect him, which is extra pathetic.

29:19Now, I'm reading from the Federalist right now. Obviously, I used to work there. The Federalist is like the if you're if you're looking for coverage on the right of like where they would be looking to see or looking for the rights perspective on the kind of retribution, the legal retribution in the Trump administration. this would be the place. And just to characterize some of the conservative backlash to Pam Bondi, they're basically saying the coverage here from Matt Kittle, who's interviewing Mike Howell of the Oversight Project, which I think is connected to the Heritage Foundation, but they're looking for a, quote, vicious operator.

29:57The headline is Trump needs a, quote, vicious operator to bring the Justice Department, to bring justice back to the Justice Department, it cites particularly the Biden auto pen scandal, which is really big on the right, that like Bondi was not able to like actually get prosecutions in the auto pen scandal, which we know Trump is obsessed with. And that's kind of a proxy. It's not it's not just about, you know, oh, none of the auto pen people got locked up or there's been no justice. It's more saying like if you can't prosecute the auto pen stuff with the president, which the president is obsessed with, then what aren't you doing that should be going?

30:36Remember when Tulsi Gabbard went and I was the new media seat at this briefing. It just happened that way, where she comes up and talks about this investigation, sprawling investigation into Obama and John Brennan that the White House and the Justice Department is looking into. Well, conservatives are getting impatient and saying, where are the actual charges? Like, why have no charges been brought? So I think that's where Trump probably is personally just obsessed with the auto pens scandal, the auto pen prosecutions, but they're looking for more heads to roll, basically.

31:18Saagar Enjeti:And didn't Trump set her off on James Comey? And she sent something off for that. It just was like kind of made up, right? Comey, well, it's a whole thing. That's such a mess. It was, I don't want to say necessarily thin, but there was a whole thing with the statute of limitations. And it was, if I'm remembering the details correctly, essentially like a perjury charge. So yeah, that's maybe also a good example of a prosecution being bungled by Trump's perspective, because that was a hot mess. But I don't know to what extent that was Pam Bondi's fault. I mean, obviously, she's the head of the Justice Department.

31:54But it just it sounds like, you know, vicious operator. I don't know who's going to fit that bill. I don't know if it's Lee Zeldin. I don't think Lee Zeldin, vicious operator. So we'll see. Maybe Matt Gaetz comes out of retirement.

32:11Saagar Enjeti:Oh, that'd be cool. Ryan, though, there are more heads potentially to roll. Trump is not just considering or has not just fired Bondi, but is considering firing others. Who else is on this hill list? Well, the Pentagon stuff is like, it's extremely intense.

32:30Griffin:Like, the fact that we're doing this like right in the middle of this war. So he has pushed out General Randy George. And I'm told this is basically a clash between Hegseth and Driscoll, the Army Secretary. and ultimately will kind of evolve into a Hegseth versus J.D. Vance clash. I don't know if you've heard anything about that, Emily, but this weirdly, like I know a lot of people on the left are like worried that this is like Hegseth, like consolidating power and that Trump's going to do some coup or something. it feels like it's actually more related to like Hegseth's hostility to DEI. And he's gone after a bunch of other, he's tried to block a bunch of promotions of women and minorities and Driscoll has pushed back against him.

33:32Griffin:And this is Hegseth kind of firing back around that. The Washington Post reporting, you know, two other army generals were removed along with George. They are General David Houdney, who became the head of the services training and transformation command in October, and Major General William Green Jr., the chief of army chaplains.

33:58Griffin:So it's like, but like, what is this guy doing here?

34:04Saagar Enjeti:So Ryan, are you saying the Strait of Hormuz is not open yet because of WOKE? Is that essentially the administration's plan here? They've been way too focused on the gaze of Hormuz. And this is the problem with DEI is that it's all about the gay of Hormuz and not about the straight of Hormuz.

34:22Griffin:Got to focus on the straights. Yeah, and so Hegseth has been consolidating power from the beginning. They've fired a whole ton of people. it looks like here's again from the post with George's ouster Hegseth has remade nearly the entire Joint Chiefs of Staff the only ones remaining from when Hegseth took office just over a year ago are General Eric Smith of the Marine Corps and General Chance Saltzman head of the Space Force everybody else in the Joint Chiefs of Staff has been replaced like extremely unusual

35:04Saagar Enjeti:has there been this kind of a head change in past wars like with Iraq Afghanistan at the beginning was there a big

35:10Griffin:period not in peacetime like the purges purges are not really a thing in kind of US military history like which by the way is the flip side of this. Civil war when Lincoln's like pissed off at all generals we can get Sagar on here to run through it but like it's not a thing like it's a much more routinized, methodical, hierarchical, like orderly system than even in Trump one. But Trump is clearly bringing Trump energy to the Pentagon. Well, this is the flip side of it is that the Pentagon is a bureaucratic knot of people who are way too comfortable and probably should be purged. I don't know the, it'd be very difficult for me to say the particulars of like who should go, who's worthy and who's unworthy.

36:08But that's obviously, I think, it's very clearly, I think, a problem at the Pentagon. And then if you don't come up with a sane solution to the problem, you end up getting people who just go and take Leo DiCaprio's blowtorch at the end of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood to the entire operation in wartime. So the general, Ryan pointed this out as we were opening the show, George is ousted. We don't know the exact timeline yet, but basically as we have fighter pilots missing or killed in action over Iran, like these things are unfolding simultaneously. And that's a horrible look. And we're like, this is this is pretty new news.

36:51This is like a fairly recent development. So we'll learn more about what was happening behind the scenes. But that's a they have a lot to answer for, probably when it comes to exactly what was happening behind the scenes. Yeah.

37:04Griffin:And I think, Griffin, you were referring to Trump apparently polling his advisors on whether he should fire Tulsi Gabbard.

37:11Saagar Enjeti:Yes. D &I or do not invite is as they call her, I believe.

37:17Griffin:If Tulsi, yeah. No, she doesn't. Go ahead, Emily. What I was going to say, they're also apparently, according to Playbook, he's, quote, expressed frustrations with Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnack and Labor Secretary Lori Chavez de Reimer. Lori Chavez de Reimer has been drowning in scandals over the last so many months. So that's one that you could that's a head you could easily see rolling. Quote, rumors also continue circling around FBI. What's her major scandal, Emily?

37:47Saagar Enjeti:I forget. Oh, no, not Cash. Like her husband doing a bunch of stuff, right? Yeah, her husband's been kicked out. Well, her too. It's like pretty typical D.C. type stuff, like misuse of public resources. And her husband has a little bit of a problem. Like they're not even letting him back into the labor building because there's women who— Because wasn't he like assaulting people or her— Yeah.

38:08Griffin:Yeah. Also, apparently, Army Secretary Dan Driscoll. So in addition to Tulsi and Pam Bondi and Kristi Noem, it's beginning to be Trump one-ish. And covering Trump one, it was just Jeff Sessions and James. Like it was just this constant switching of personnel, top key personnel. And that was one of the big differences between Trump one and Trump two is that he came in with this sort of well-considered slate, meaning they had thought long and hard about the strategy of who they were putting where and who could get Senate confirmed and the like. And now a year in, it's starting to feel a little bit much sort of shakier on the palace intrigue front.

38:58And that was always seen as like a good a lot of conservatives saw that as like this was Trump 2.0 new and improved.

39:07Griffin:yeah um and it and it looks like tulsi you know is gonna just let herself get fired it's just so embarrassing um you know her friend joe kent went out on top like he went out viral post he did the circuit um and so now they're gunning for tulsi because they know that she kind of agrees with him but she doesn't have the stones to just like say it and i don't what Like, what is she staying for? It's so much more American to get fired than to quit over principle. But, okay, whatever. Meanwhile, Trump is asking Congress for$1.5 trillion for the Pentagon. And for ships. It's like a doubling of the budget over the last couple of years.

40:00Griffin:It included, yeah, 41 warships. when our aircraft can't get anywhere near Iran.

40:08Saagar Enjeti:Well, that's to fix the laundry rooms on all the feature ships so they don't catch on fire, Ryan. But the one-way drone attacks, we're still going to have issues with that. How many drones could you buy with 1.5 trillion? You could buy, yes,

40:21Griffin:all the drones. All the drones. All the drones. Yeah, it's crazy. These ships cost billions and they can't even get close to Iran because of these$20 ,000 Shahid drones. And so now we're going to go build a whole bunch more of them. While cutting spending on, you know, health care, education, infrastructure, like things that the American people need here at home. Like he's now consciously and explicitly linking. Like he's like making campaign ads against himself on a regular basis. Oh, my gosh. The Social Security thing or the. Yeah, you saw us. We we can't do daycare. We can't do all we can't do Medicaid, Medicare.

41:10Griffin:We can't do all of these things. We got to do war. Let the states do those. And then, you know, they can raise their taxes. States can raise their taxes. Because it's like I was listening to Saurabh. Saurabh Amari was on Megyn Kelly yesterday. I was listening to it and he was saying like that is this a great point. He was like that is the one one of the hardest red line differences that Trump drew intentionally strategically between himself and the old Republican Party. He said over and over again because he understood the GOP base better than the GOP politicians. We are not touching your entitlements.

41:45He didn't use the word entitlement, but he said, we are not touching this and we're not going to do stupid wars. We're going to new stupid wars. We're going to focus here at home. And when you combine those two things, the politics of it is like, to your point, Ryan, about Trump posting on True Social while he's clearly been briefed on two fighter pilots missing in action in Iran. Like, he's always had a screw or 20 loose, but he's there's an ungluing happening right now. The great ungluing. Right.

42:19Griffin:So Donald Trump is trying to destroy the American empire, destroy the fossil fuel industry and destroy the Republican Party. And somehow people are on the left are mad at him about that. That's the part I don't understand. Like, this is the greatest revolutionary figure the left has ever kind of put into power. Well, it's almost like the Democrats won't have to learn any lessons.

42:41Saagar Enjeti:The Democrats won't have to learn a single lesson. They're so excited about that. This is a vindication of Susan Sarandon, who went on Chris Hayes, and she said something along the lines of 2016 of being challenged on Bernie stuff at the time by Chris Hayes. And he was like, so are you saying that maybe Trump will be better, you know, for like revolutionary purposes? And I think she said something along the lines of like heightening the contradictions. And he said, do you mean that in like a – she said he might bring the revolution faster. That was the quote. He said, Chris Hayes goes, do you mean that in like a Leninist way?

43:21And she was like, yeah.

43:23Griffin:Yeah, well, he's doing it. Speaking of which, do we have –

43:25Saagar Enjeti:And it was a huge controversy. They tried to cancel her. Yes, yes, yes. Sorry to cut you off, Emily. We do have a guest coming in right now. And just to flag, this is a long Easter weekend. So we probably expect a lot more excursions and events to occur over this long weekend. Because I believe markets are not open on Monday, if I'm correct. So expect quite a lot more action. I think they're close today, right? They're close today? Oh, you're right. Because it's Good Friday. All right. Well, on that note, we do have a candidate joining us. Why don't we get to her?

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46:33Griffin:Well, we're joined now by F.E. Phillips Staley, candidate for Congress in New York's 17th district. This is running against Mike Lawler and kind of like that area like upstate, just north of Manhattan, sometimes referred to as a little bedroom community for people up there. Enfie, thanks so much for joining us here. Thanks so much for having me. Excited to be on. Of course. We wanted to start with a little bit of the kind of Hassan mania that is kind of gripping CNN and the Democratic establishment, although I repeat myself. Griffin, do you have this latest clip from Jake Tapper where they kind of allow their kind of mental illness to be on kind of full display when it comes to their kind of Hassan derangement syndrome?

47:25Oh, boy.

47:27Saagar Enjeti:Yes. Apologies, Effie. I'm sure you've already gotten enough of these clips. But this is a collab also, this is a third-way tweet who's been making quite a lot of noise about Hassan, specifically that's been there. In a time of the Iran war, massive economic job loss, they're decided to focus on Hassan Piker. They say left-wing anti-Semitism is often savvier than the brash neo-Nazi rhetoric of the right. Their attacks are loaded with words taught in social justice seminars and are often less blatant. They replace the word Jew with Zionist while pushing age-old tropes about Jewish wealth and influence.

48:05Saagar Enjeti:Let's take a listen to Jake Tappock here for a second.

48:08Griffin:said that I talked about the think tank third way they wrote we're all for a big tent the democratic party needs a draw line in the stand hashan piker and his fellow jew haters along on the other side donios fulmin asked piker a trump people of people of his ilk do is they try to

48:24Saagar Enjeti:inoculate themselves against claims of jew hatred by pointing it out in places that aren't them

48:30Griffin:he's been very clear pointing things out on the right of that anti-semitism these are the tropes they use. And then he'll use the exact same tropes and just sub-Jew for Israel, which is the place where all Jews collectively have a connection to and is the homeland where more than 50 % of Jews on planet Earth live. So it's not, you would never say Jews control the media, but Israel controls the media. And, you know, the Jews didn't pull us into the war with Iran and control the American government, but Israel does. Yeah, just so curious for your reaction to this, because Effie you've been getting criticism as well for doing campaigning with or maybe did an interview with Hassan something along those lines.

49:13Griffin:First of all just as a fact check for viewers Marco Rubio himself said that it was Israel that initiated the attack on Iran and that we went because Israel had done that. I don't believe Hassan Piker has ever said that Israel controls the American media. That's just a completely bizarre thing to say. And relatedly, on the day that this segment was aired, the Israeli Knesset passed a death penalty law that would apply only to Palestinians. And his suggestion there is that anybody who criticized that must be smuggling in, you know, quote unquote, Jew hatred and couldn't possibly have actual genuine criticism of this law that the Knesset had just put into place.

50:04Griffin:which I don't believe was covered at all on that program. So Effie, why are people coming after you about Hassan Piker? Like what's going on in this race? You know, I think you just described the frame that we're in perfectly. It's like the Democratic establishment hasn't learned the lesson of, say, the election of Mom Donnie. You know, we saw all that was thrown at him, right, by Cuomo and his race. And what that did was further alienate all of the young people, all of the people who had previously felt disenfranchised from politics. and, you know, it's like it baffles me that we want to sacrifice, you know, the participation of all of those young people, so many people who mistrust the party and pursue this bizarre framing that Third Way is doing.

51:09To be honest with you, I'm at a complete loss why we would sabotage our own party in this way and allow this type of violent framing of anti-Semitism of people who in many ways are on the right side of history. I mean, we could all speculate here, but to what end? For me as a candidate, what I see are thousands and thousands of young people who mistrust the Democratic Party because they do not see the violence that the state of Israel is perpetrating. And that there is like the Vietnam of this generation. And I don't know. I mean, like, I just feel like our party is blowing itself up over this when it could actually be creating a human rights centered and people centered agenda that our nation wants and frankly, the world wants.

52:08You know, it's so interesting because I think of this in this almost like media historic framing where what Hassan Piker does is sit in front of a computer to the point where it would be impossible for him to lie or be inauthentic about what he's feeling because he has a camera on him. Like he's on Big Brother or the real world back in the day at all times. And this is the streaming economy. And I'm just curious as a candidate, if you think that's kind of a lot of people see some of this and actually even Israel policy itself as kind of a proxy for whether you are being honest and like real, to paraphrase the real world tagline, with voters.

52:54Like there's just this expectation that you have to be more kind of like I hate the word authentic, but there is something to that, like raw almost. I think that, you know, and I'm speaking as a person who is Gen X, right? Like, so this big brother sort of world of showing authenticity is entirely new to me. And I can tell you, it is entirely new to the Democratic chairs who came after me on Hassan Piker. I think that they, we joke internally because it's like they hit a hornet's nest the size of a house and they had no idea. Because they had no idea of Hassan Piker. They perceive him to just be a person, not a media outlet.

53:40He is both. And that media is taking this form now of this authenticity to the degree where you see all the warts, all the misstatements, all the angry things that people would typically blip out, that people would screen. And so it's almost like there's a generational difference in the reaction, right? Right. And so and so, for example, all of the young people on my team and all of the young people who they talk to, they all follow Hassan Piker. They all thought it was extraordinary that I was on Hassan Piker. One of them actually asked if they could come along, and he did because he wanted to meet Hassan Piker versus the establishment, which is like, you know, I mean, they literally had no idea that the AI-generated complaints that they wrote, which is frankly what it looks like, would be viewed and interrogated by millions and millions of people.

54:41And maybe this is part of the problem, that they don't see the opportunity to speak to the very people at every indivisible protest I go to, where they say, where are the young people? Where are the young people? Well, I'll tell you where they are. They're on Hassan Piker. That's why I went on the stream.

55:02Griffin:Since then, there's been this kind of weird, contradictory, bifurcated response. So David Frum, I think it was David Frum, said he asked an AI agent to tell him about Hassan Piker and his audience. and that the AI agent told him that Piker has 20 ,000 to 30 ,000 concurrent viewers. You know, he streams for eight to 12 hours a day. And then David Frum looked up the number of viewers that like, you know, MSNBC has in primetime or something. And I think was very confused about the way that viewership stats are analyzed and understood. And so was his agent. He posted something and then that became like a thing that, well, actually...

55:47Griffin:Hassan Piker doesn't have an audience. It's just a tiny little rounding error. So you're then left with the question, well, then why are you freaking out? Right. Why is this multimillion-dollar Schumer-connected think tank doing op-eds and an entire campaign around a guy that nobody watches? But I'm curious from your perspective, what was the fallout? Well, not the fallout. What was the kind of reaction to you going on? How did it affect your campaign or not affect your campaign? Because if it's true that nobody actually watches this program, then, well, first of all, you wouldn't be here and we wouldn't be talking about it.

56:27Griffin:Right. But second of all, then it would be no effect. What was the effect? The effect was there were two sides of it. The first was the immediate and, frankly, I think surprising response by the chairs of the Democratic Committees of New York 17 district. It was within an hour that this response that they put out was generated. And I will say that the very first thing they quoted as evidence against Hassan Piker was Fox News. And that just blew my mind because to complain about, you know, all the things that people are saying about Hassan Piker in this moment from a news organization that, you know, you know, like has advanced some of the most hateful rhetoric about immigrants, about Hispanics, about Muslims, about Jews, without any way of, you know, without looking at that critically in relation to what they were saying to me.

57:28which is to say that they were flamed. They were flamed, like ratioed is the word that me as Jen X has just learned. And I don't know that they actually expected that. I don't know that they expected so many people to see their statement as evidence of bias within the Democratic Party, as evidence of the kind of attacks that we're seeing right now from third wave. And that further disenfranchises people. So the effect has been thousands of new followers, so many comments, a major uptick in contributions. And people saying to me what they often say to me, because I've been very transparent about my position on Israel and Palestine, like, keep going.

58:20Like, don't stop. Like, you are saying the things that people want to hear. And what I hope in the end, because I'm a Democrat, I'm a progressive Democrat, is that the party learns the lesson, right? That our job is to listen to the public, listen to the public, hear what they're saying, represent the positions through a moral lens. And when I say a moral lens, that means we have to fight anti-Semitism, which is on the rise. We have to fight Islamophobia, which is on the rise. My goodness, when you think about the kind of violence that's happening in our country with ICE, the kinds of discrimination, the bias, all these things.

59:03Like, these are the things that we have to fight. And frankly, when people reach out to me and they say, keep going, this is what they're saying. And the party needs to hear it. They seem to be very far from it at this point right now, which is very baffling.

59:18Saagar Enjeti:Yeah, and it seems like the big thing from the 2024 election was that, or the modicum was, we need a bigger tent for the Democratic Party. We need to bring in young people or what have you. And I just wanted to pull up this article from The Bulwark where they interviewed Jonathan Cohen, who's the founder of Third Way. And he says, if people are really arguing that the price of winning is becoming like a bigoted misogynist, like Hassan Piker, then I'll take not winning. So it seems the third way position is actually to lose with grace. Now, what do you make of that? It seems like they're upset about Israel, but he says misogynist there as well.

1:00:04Saagar Enjeti:is there other reasons that they could potentially be trying to sequester or demean Hassan? Because Hassan has been going around, and I think he's spoken to, interviewed about 20 different Democratic candidates across the country. And some people accuse him of being a purity test, litmus test, wants to wreck the Democratic Party, doesn't want it to win. yet we see him on the road with candidates all over the country. What do you make of this big tent strategy? You know, it's a great question. What I think is, and I believe firmly, is that Hassan Piker speaks for the young people who have been disenfranchised, right?

1:00:54And in a way, what we're seeing between Midway and their framing, which I think is awful, And Hassan Piker, you know, and the people who follow him is like a battle for the soul of the Democratic Party. In the way that I see that the fight between Cuomo and Mamdani in New York City was a battle sort of for the soul of the Democratic Party. What young people want is authenticity. They want people to recognize that our tax dollars are going to fund military aid for the very nation that created this horrendous death penalty in an apartheid form. Like, there is no escaping that. And frankly, a lot of people who I speak to or question me, I get emails every day questioning me, saying, I agree with you on the Palestine issue.

1:01:50But why Hassan Piker, right? And in that respect, they agree with Hassan Piker on the Palestine issue. And what I, you know, I'm furious about with the Democratic Party is that we actually have a capacity to build consensus around this. And yet the framing that Third Way puts out and focusing on misogyny, the way Cuomo's team focused on anti-Semitism when dealing with Mamdani is completely blowing up our party. To what end? You know, that's the answer that I don't, I can speculate, but I don't yet have. But we're doing it again. We're handing it over to the Republicans. And it is completely, it is completely appalling and it's outrageous.

1:02:38But what I'm hopeful for is that young people, people under 44 is really what I say, and people see through it and they're going to come out and they're going to vote. They're going to vote their conscience. And so we'll see. And New York 17 is supposedly a purple district. I've taken a very, what I hope that people perceive to be an authentic and progressive human rights focused platform. And we're going to test it here, too. You know, I'm making it on the ballot. We're, you know, we're going to we're going to take it to the primary. We're going to debate with the other candidates who take no position at all on this and are very quiet about a lot of things like ICE, like what our tax system should be, how to make it more fair by taxing the ultra wealthy, all of these things.

1:03:28So, you know, yeah, why they, yeah, what can I say? It's frustrating.

1:03:34Saagar Enjeti:There's almost been a louder, yeah, there's been a louder retribution against the Sons from Democrats than the Iran war. People are being louder about a streamer than this disastrous war that's putting our global economy into peril. Any final questions, Ryan and Emily? All right, I think you're muted, Ryan. No, Effie, that does it for me.

1:04:00Griffin:I really appreciate you joining. It must have been an interesting ride. I imagine that you didn't quite expect, you didn't quite know what you were getting into. Or at least you wouldn't have before. I wouldn't have before. As a fellow Gen Xer, we don't know what Twitter is. It's just a fact. I'm trying to keep up because Gen X, you know, we think we're the coolest in the room, but... No, no. No, we're not. Not for a long time. Yeah. I mean, thank you for all you do and your time. You know, it's I did expect this to a degree, you know, because I've seen the way the left is starting to be framed in this way as as advancing.

1:04:46But I want to say this. I think it's really important. When I was in Israel, what I learned was that so many people, so many Israelis, this was my time in Israel and in the occupied West Bank, are fighting so hard for justice because they recognize that their own government is becoming what they describe in their words as a fascist government and the government that can do the most horrendous things like this. Like this death penalty that's within an apartheid frame. I mean, that is staggering. And Israelis are fighting hard against this in partnership with Palestinians. And to me, that gives me an immense amount of hope.

1:05:33Because as dark and awful as the trajectory of this nation, there are lots of people out there who understand that the key is that we have to stop attacking each other. We have to come together around our shared values, which is people deserve justice and they deserve the opportunity to thrive. And through all of this, and despite of some of the very awful things Hassan Piker has said in the past, in my meeting with him, I believe that that is what he wants. And I think that his millions of followers believe that that is what he wants. And that is the direction that our nation needs to be going in, not the further splitting accusations, attacks and own goals, as I see, that we see coming from Midway and this and this appalling campaign that they're putting forward.

1:06:26It's staggeringly destructive. So thank you.

1:06:29Saagar Enjeti:I think it's a third way, I believe. I don't know if Midway is catching strays there or if that's is it the same thing, Ryan? Third way. I meant to say third way. For everyone's tapping to midway. Same thing. Yeah, mid. Okay, Effie, you mentioned Zoran. Can you give us a quick, just quick bullet point list of some proposals or policies you want to bring to your district? And where can people find and support your campaign if they so choose? So, thank you so much. So, the most critical things, I think, in New York 17 are housing. So housing affordability, like increasing the number of housing in the district by 66 ,000 at least is critical.

1:07:10Medicare for all. We have to just get this done. Like too many people are suffering and in a nation as wealthy as ours, we can do it. Universal child care. The state of Arizona has already done it. These are critical things to the people of New York 17. Of course, just immigration reform. We have to stop giving governments like our current one an opportunity to weaponize immigrants for their political gain. We need a clear, fair immigration system. And my goodness, it just keeps going on. And this is, of course, the one that I hear about the most, justice at home and justice abroad. right we have to take care of the problem with ice we have to take care of human rights within our nation and we cannot fund nations that violate human rights particularly against our own laws and against international laws that absolutely has to stop all right and ephie where can people

1:08:10Saagar Enjeti:find you. You can find me at fe4congress.com, E-F-F-I-E-F-O-R congress.com and on Instagram, all the places. That'll do it for this half. We'll do some fun stories, a quick little AMA in the second half. If you want to get access to that, breakingpoints.com and we'll see you there. Less support through telehealth, but it feels overwhelming and rushed. Check out orderlymeds.com Now, orderlymeds.com was built to be different. Here, you connect with real doctors who take the time to understand your goals, review your eligibility, and guide you through a plan that's right for you. Orderly Meds provides access to proven GLP-1 medications like semaglutide and terzepatide, including both name brand options and personalized compound versions when appropriate.

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