6/19/26: Iran Deal on Brink of Collapse, Neocons Fuming at Trump, Hasan Piker Rally Banned

27:51And what J.D. Vance is doing by even putting down, you know, the real number of the Israeli population and saying you can't just murder everyone is telling these KKK guys, basically, your time's up. You can't just keep saying whatever you want, as they have for the last almost three and a half years. While Joe Biden was president, this didn't seem to bother the Republican Party very much. But now that it's Donald Trump who's getting under the skin of the extremists, they don't like it very much back in D.C. And what we're hearing, I think, is that the Israeli political class, it won't surprise anyone to hear, has basically been mute.

28:30They have nothing to say in response. And when I say they, I'm really saying he, the prime minister of Israel in this crucial and critical time, hasn't shown his face in public in days, hasn't even put out, you know, one of his favorite pre-taped videos. I think he doesn't know what to do. And the Israeli media class, I have to say, across the board from Netanyahu fans who are in absolute apoplectic and sort of profane shock right now, all the way across the board to Netanyahu's opposition, they also seem in shock. It appears that everybody in Israel in power bought Netanyahu's line, that he was, you know, Donald Trump's bestie, somehow his unique bestie.

29:21Donald Trump, you know, was going to be the one to treat Benjamin Netanyahu differently somehow. And I think what we're seeing is a real moment of almost numb shock. And among the Israeli population, there really is a lot of fear and confusion. I think most Israelis are not particularly knowledgeable about the states. They're not particularly knowledgeable about the English language. They hear this stuff. I think they feel frightened by the security situation, very confused by the diplomatic kerfuffle. Noga, I'm curious for you to help us understand where the largest political fissures lie in Israel, because, you know, we have talked a lot on our show about Ben Gavir and Smotrich.

30:05We put up his, you know, insanely genocidal comments about how for every Israeli soldier who has killed, a thousand Lebanese mothers should weep and all of this and how Lebanon should burn. But I'm curious how much their ideas have purchased throughout society, because, for example, in a poll that was published by Haaretz, they found that 82 percent of Jewish Israelis support the forceful expulsion of Palestinians from Gaza. Fifty six percent actually support expelling Palestinian citizens from within Israel. I know there have been protests against Netanyahu in Israel, but they tend more to focus around tactics versus the brutality or the morality of what is being done to Palestinians and or on Netanyahu's own corruption.

30:47So where do you see the most significant political fissures lying right now between the Netanyahu government and, you know, a public that you described as sort of scared and confused? Well, first of all, those are pretty shocking figures that you just quoted. And in order to be able to respond to them, I'd have to know a little bit more about which poll you're quoting, because HowReds has published all manner of different polls put out by different, put in the field by different institutions with different intentions. And I'm just not sure what I'm referring to there. I've got one poll here for you.

31:24It's from Penn State University, this particular one. And understanding that you haven't had it, I didn't send this to you in advance to have a chance to take a look at it. Yeah. There's also this poll right here from N12 News. This is a poll on Trump after the MOU with Iran. 71 % of Israelis do not trust Trump to preserve Israel's interests in a final deal with Iran. Just 13 % still believe in Trump. So where is that distinction for you? Well, I have a lot to say. But first of all, I want to address Crystal's questions about the fissures in the Israeli polity, just as a general question without addressing the polls specifically.

32:02That's OK. And then I'll come back to the polls. Israeli society right now is really falling apart. and so it's very hard for me to respond in any kind of scientific precision to what the fishers are because what you're seeing in Israel is a country that was a fairly confident, very prosperous, fairly successful, small country in a difficult neighborhood that had really prospered over the last 10 or so years leading up to October 7th. And that social fabric has simply collapsed in a way that I think has happened much faster than most people could imagine possible and has had so many shocking aspects that it really is difficult to address.

32:51But the first thing that happened before the war is that on January 4th, 2023, Prime Minister Netanyahu announced a coup d 'etat, flat out, Latin America style. His justice minister announced a live press conference, which wasn't a press conference, and simply said, I'm announcing the first phase of a reform in the administration of the state. And really, it didn't remind me of anything more than, you know, some Argentinian colonel in the 1980s. And that simply tore open Israeli society. When you talk Think about the protests, the massive protests, hundreds of thousands of people on the streets in a country of 10 million.

33:35That was during that period in which Netanyahu simply made explicit his efforts to really take control of all of the levers of power in the state. And since then, for Netanyahu, things have just gone downhill in the sense that, you know, October 7th was a repudiation of what was even called the Netanyahu doctrine, right? His theory of how to keep, how to stave off any grappling with the Palestinian issue. Everything blew up in Israelis' faces. and what you have now is simply a fractured society in which a coup d 'etat launched by the government has been, I would say, somewhere over 50 % successful.

34:22The former chief justice of Israel, Aaron Barak, he says that Israel can no longer be considered a democracy, that there is now one-man rule in Israel and Israelis are not adapting happily to one-man rule and they're not adapting happily to forever wars. And the polling, to go back to that, has been, I would say, particularly unreliable and, I don't know, you know, infelicitous, however we want to put it. Because, first of all, I have no idea about any Penn State poll. I don't know who they have working for them in Israel. By and large, the quality of polling in Israel, public polling, is very, very low.

35:03And the only way to really know what's happening, I think, with any clarity is to see trends. Like if you look at polling over a period of two years, public polling, you can see where the trends are going. The polling on this war, both if you think of this war as the two-year, eight-month war since October 7, or of this latest bit of war since the 28th of February, is particularly fraught, because Israelis were asked, in a way, something that I consider trick questions by and large. For example, they were asked in most polls, do you support fighting to keep the northern border safe? And then that was translated in much of the media, including much of the foreign media, as, you know, 98 % of Israelis support war.

35:53It's not actually true, because when you asked Israelis, as other more internal polls did, how do you feel about Israeli strategy and the war in Lebanon, those numbers were not even half. And so what you actually see when you try and go in depth in Israel is a very confused population. When you talk to people here, when you talk to people in the north, whoever's still left there, what you get is rage and confusion. And I want to just underscore what I just said. One of the reasons that these polling is, to a great extent, crap. When residents of the Israeli north are being polled, at least half of them are no longer residents of the Israeli north.

36:34The most important, the largest Israeli city on the very northern border, Kiryat Shmona city, I don't want to say and make a mistake, but I think it was a city of about 20 ,000 people before the war, has less than half of its population right now. And the reason you're not hearing about it in the media is a successful effort by the Israeli government to basically cover it up, cover their failure not to provide security for the northern border up. So they allowed no formal evacuations, no compensation. And basically, it's a situation in which anyone wealthy enough or with enough family has escaped the North.

37:13It's unlivable there. There are drones hitting every day. There are images of kids, of those families who don't have where to flee. Kids throwing themselves on the sidewalk trying to get to school while air raid sirens sound. It's like scenes out of World War II movies. but very few people are getting killed in part because so many have fled and in other part because the population is well-trained and they either are staying at home not working keeping their kids at home falling into poverty or they have bomb shelters nearby and so you know Donald Trump hearing that there was a double drone attack in northern Israel says you know it's nothing why is Netanyahu overreacting?

37:56Like it was just a little tiny attack. It doesn't count. What he's saying isn't completely ridiculous, right? Because no one was killed. But the fact that no one was killed covers up the primary fact, which is that life is unlivable on the Israeli north. Can I ask how the upcoming elections, in a way that Americans might not fully understand, could be influencing the reactions of Ben-Gavir Smotrich, also Netanyahu himself, and people who are anti-Likud in Israel? Could you break down some of the dynamics surrounding the MOU, but within the context of electoral politics, Noga? Yes, I can, and I'm going to apologize ahead of time, but I want to take a step back before I respond to you, because Israel is really, really in like a critical life support type situation in which, to my knowledge, all of the leaders of the opposition, certainly former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, who gets intel briefings on the level of the Prime Minister, former Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman, all of these are right-wing guys, nothing radical about them, kind of the old school solid right-wing.

39:06They have said that they have information that the Likud, Prime Minister Netanyahu's party is attempting to either postpone or cancel or manipulate the upcoming elections. And so when I answer your question, what you have to know in the background is that there's immense anxiety in Israel relating to these elections or what the hell is going to happen. I hope I can speak this way. So, for example, under Israeli law, which this government explicitly and overtly tramples on, but under Israeli law, elections have to be held by October 27th. In other words, the government does nothing. That is the date set for elections.

39:48The government is doing nothing, despite really significant efforts by many of Netanyahu's coalition partners to try and bring the elections up, not to have this kind of horrific October 27th date with all of its terrible echoes for this government. Netanyahu is just pushing and pushing and pushing the election away, and they're real fears about what kind of manipulation or worse he may be attempting. In this context, what you have right now is Netanyahu, Israelis have never before seen him, right? He's really the most dominant figure, I think, it's fair to say, in Israeli political history. He's never been a beloved politician in Israel ever.

40:33He has been feared. He has been respected. He's been ignored. For a lot of the time that he was prime minister, in part thanks to him and in great part not, Israel was doing well enough that people could ignore their leaders. And if he had made, you know, like antics internationally or embarrassed Israel at the UN, even people who never voted for him and never elect him, we're happy to ignore it for a long period of time. That's become impossible. And today, everything he does and everything he doesn't do is seen in the prism of what does this mean for elections and will we have elections? Now, what I'm saying to you, I think other Israeli analysts who you might speak to would say, I'm exaggerating, right?

41:19Of course, there will be elections. And it may well be that there will be elections as there must be. However, I know for sure that he is trying for there not to be regular elections. So that's one of the dichotomies here. Prime Minister Netanyahu domestically, politically inside Israel is simply trapped in a spider web, a sticky spider web of his own making. And I don't see what his way out will be. So he has this reputation of being a magician, right? But what he has done is promise Israelis, let's say in the last year, two things. One is he's Mr. Security. He's back to presenting himself as the only guy who can guarantee Israeli security, border security, national security.

42:08And he has adopted this pose despite having been prime minister on the day of the worst security catastrophe in Israeli history. And I think it's fair to say one of the worst terror attacks in known history, in modern history, since we have this concept of terror, right? 1 ,200 people killed in Israel in a single day. It's an astonishing failure. But nonetheless, he has promoted himself this way. And this is because he assumed that he was going to get a victory shot, right? He kept touting what he called total victory. He even had it emblazoned on, like, Trump-like hats. He took one as a gift to Donald Trump.

42:48Total victory. And when you look at what's happening now, there is total non-victory on the southern border with Gaza. Hamas is resurgent. There is absolutely no victory. There's something very close to defeat on the northern border with Hezbollah, where four soldiers, these are drafted soldiers. So basically 18-year-old kids got killed today in a tank that was blown up by Hezbollah, where people can't live normal lives. And then now this catastrophe with Iran. And that dovetails with his second promise to Israelis, which is, I've got Trump in my back pocket. I'm Trump's best friend. It doesn't matter that the rest of the world hates us because I have Donald Trump.

43:34I bring you Donald Trump. And I just heard today, incidentally, that the Likud party had planned, has already like, you know, filmed and put into some drawer an entire campaign, like a video campaign, electoral campaign, that harkens back to the 2019 Netanyahu campaign in which he had these massive banners that covered entire skyscrapers in Tel Aviv, showing him shaking hands with Donald Trump. And the logo at that time was, I'm in another league. Right. So if there are elections and now it seems like there are people to the right of Netanyahu in the Likud party. And then there are some more liberal people to the left of Netanyahu that say very similar things about the war, about Gaza.

44:26Is there a candidate that you see in Israel that would actually create a meaningful political difference if there are elections? I think any other candidate right now leading a party were he to win. Unfortunately, I say he because there are no women leading any parties in Israel right now. I think would make a significant difference, a difference that could be really astonishing, in fact. And I don't know what exactly you mean when you say to the right of Netanyahu, because Netanyahu has very happily adapted himself to the most extremist, racial supremacist, theocratic narratives, threats. Netanyahu has not castigated any of his ministers for saying any of the outrageous things they've said.

45:20Netanyahu and his Likud party launched their first what looked like a campaign video a week ago, and it is an overtly racist video. I mean, there's just nothing else you can say about it that it's racist fear mongering. So I'm not sure that there are a lot of people to the right of Netanyahu right now. I think Netanyahu is either much more to the right than people thought, including myself, during many years in which he appeared to be a sort of standard issue right wing prime minister. Or, like other people say, he's beholden to these extremes because he's on trial for corruption. His trial is not going well.

46:01He has basically cut off Israel's diplomatic ties, including, you know, to the EU, which is Israel's number one trading partner. He now appears to have lost Donald Trump, at least in the sense of public diplomatic support. I don't think that J.D. Vance would be speaking the way he is without an OK from the president. And so I consider Netanyahu the face of the ultra right wing in Israel. And I do think that any other one of the candidates, including pretty significantly right-wing candidates who oppose him, would change the panorama in Israel completely, among other things, because everyone who is running against him, first of all, believes in rule of law.

46:49Netanyahu overtly no longer believes in rule of law. When we see him sort of unfettered on the diplomatic stage, you have to know that in the domestic Israeli stage, he is much more unbound and unleashed. His government openly disobeys Supreme Court rulings, openly uses racism as a tool. And I think that anybody else, whether we like them or not or agree with them or not, would just be a major qualitative change. So Naftali Bennett is, maybe you tell me if I'm wrong, probably his primary opponent at this point. Can you walk us through what he meant? So this Jerusalem Post reported, and he said this publicly, so it doesn't matter where it was reported.

47:34He said, quote, the clock for Iran regime change to start as soon as government in Israel changes. and the term of the Netanyahu government began with the civil war, continued with the massacre of the 7th of October and ends with historic failure against Iran, said Bennett. So what does he mean and what would a Bennett government mean for, like, what does he mean he's going to continue to do regime or he's going to start regime change, you know, if he takes power? Does that mean the next prime minister is going to be trying to get us to go to war again with Iran Or is he talking about kind of stoking internal unrest and doing some type of a coup in Iran?

48:14And how in general would Israel look under him if he came back to power? He had like six months in 2021 or something as prime minister. He was prime minister for a year and a half. And he was surprisingly, I would say, middle of the road, standard issue, responsible prime minister, given what was known about him ahead of time. Before I answer your question, Ryan, if you forgive me, I just want to point out something in that Jerusalem Post headline that you showed, which is that this is an AI translated translation of a Hebrew language article, I believe from Ma 'ariv. that's a fairly right-wing outlet that partners.

48:59You see, of the seven in October. Yeah, I noticed that too. So the reason I'm bringing this up is look at the Jerusalem Post. The first tab it has are conferences, right? The Jerusalem Post used to be a real newspaper, English language newspaper in Israel. Today, I don't think we can really consider real media. It's sort of a right-wing conference organizing platform that still has a media outlet. And the reason I want to point out the translation is I can tell you what I think Naftali Bennett said from my knowledge of him. But this is the kind of mistakes that often happen when foreign journalists try and cover Israel.

49:37And the only people they know are kind of Israeli techies who speak English and they read what looks to be like English language media. And much of it is really problematic. And most Israelis are not that sophisticated and are much more provincial. So I just want to point that out because it's a nice hook seeing that mistake there. My guess of what Naftali Bennett was trying to say there is something quite different than the way it's interpreted, I think, in English. My guess is that he's speaking internally to Israelis who are terrified of Iran and want to see regime change in Iran. And what he is saying to them is, remember, I was a responsible prime minister.

50:20I don't think he's talking about either fomenting an internal coup in Iran or another war. I think what he's talking about is rebuilding Israeli diplomatic ties, trying to reestablish sanctions, which are now gone against Iran, trying to reassure Israelis that he will be able to create, again, circumstances in which the Iranian Islamist regime will appear weak and fragile as opposed to powerful and victorious as it is appearing this week. So one thing I've been asking people, Israelis on social media, and I haven't gotten a quote, an answer, a satisfying answer yet. So I'm curious if you could answer it.

51:04There's been so much rage at, and Griffin put up the poll, the Israeli public, who knows if the poll's right or not, but the Israeli public turning on Trump and feeling betrayed and feeling like, and you described the shock and the fear. My question has been, okay, but what? Like, what did you think was going to happen? Like, you don't want this agreement. I understand that the Republicans and Democrats here in the United States don't like the terms of the MOU. They don't like that the sanctions are being lifted. I understand they don't like those things. But what is the alternative? Like, how did the Israeli public and the Israeli political class see this unfolding in a way that led to something different?

51:47Like, do they really want us to go back to war? Like, do they think that renewing the war effort was a smart thing to do and would actually lead to a better situation? We had reported a couple of weeks ago at DropSite that Israel's ballistic missile interceptor capacity was down to double digits, that they were extraordinarily reliant on the U.S. Navy ballistic missile interceptors, which themselves were significantly depleted. And that the Iranians retained a significant number of their hypersonic ballistic missiles. And that's just on that front. That's before you get to the drones. And that's before the Houthis kind of entered the fray and shut down Bab al-Nemdad straight.

52:32So that's the question. Like, what alternative path that has any rationality to it would lead to a better outcome that they feel like Trump betrayed them by not going down? What am I missing here? Because I don't see any other path. Apart from boots on the ground. They tried the war. War didn't work. Like, why would it work again?

53:00So, I mean, this is a question we could discuss for an hour, right? Right. In part because we are all of us living in an era of, I think, irresolvable political paradoxes and also non-rationality. You're asking for a rational response. And in this case, you really are like screaming up the right tree because I have gone berserk in recent weeks. And I've even, you know, something I never do, gotten into some Twitter tiffs with Israeli right wingers who are advancing this notion that to me was clearly a fantasy from the start. Something cheap that they were trying to sell the Israeli public as they desperately cling to power, which was the U.S.

53:42is about to strike again. Israelis have been living in a bubble that is very cartoonish and that is not at all rational. in which I think certainly what I call the BB block, right? I don't consider this particularly right-wing. I don't think that the Netanyahu government has any right-wing achievements that it can show in the last three years, three and a half years it's been in power. So it's become kind of a cult of personality, a little bit like the Republican Party. And they sold Israel a fantasy. Now, it's entirely possible that Netanyahu himself was not lying. When I've observed Netanyahu, the few times I've managed to observe him up close, mostly those days that I've attended his trial, Netanyahu appears to me more and more a figure who genuinely has drunk his own Kool-Aid, who genuinely inhabits a kind of alternate reality.

54:40And so I think that's one of the things that may have made him quite persuasive because he's not lying, because he's sharing his deep belief, right? Right. So Israelis. George Dapanda style. Yeah. It's not a lie if you believe it. Yeah. That's right. But there's something to that. I think. No, it is when it comes to presenting your vision. Yeah. So, again, I'm not I'm trying to explain something to you without making excuses, because this really is a matter that has enraged me. And the reason I have been enraged as a journalist working in Israel is because I think that the politicians in the ruling class and really an astonishing swath of the Israeli media just have collapsed into jingoistic, superficial, tin pot.

55:36I think that the Israeli media, with significant exceptions of excellent journalists who have very bravely done a really good job, but the overriding narrative in Israel has been Donald Trump loves us and he's going to fly in like Superman and he is going to save our asses. And it doesn't matter. This is the Netanyahu line. It doesn't matter if Emmanuel Macron hates us. Screw him. We've got Donald Trump. This, I mean, to say that this is an irresponsible line doesn't begin to explain it for a country whose catastrophic vulnerability was revealed on October 7th. I mean, think about it, right? The betrayal of Israeli national security by putting all Israeli interests just in the hands of Donald Trump when he is known to be someone who betrays his closest allies and he's known to be someone with very fickle opinions, even on matters of global import.

56:33It almost leaves you without words, right? So there have been all along extremely prominent Israeli voices saying from the start, there's no strategy to this war with Iran. There's no strategy to the war in Lebanon. And our national security is being endangered by this fantasy. And some of them include some opposition leaders, Yair Golan, a former deputy chief of staff of the Israeli army, who was head of the largest sort of mainstream center-left party, and others. Certainly people, former intel leaders, former IDF chiefs of staff, and the former prime ministers, not just Naftali Bennett, but Ehud Olmert, who really has gone out on a limb.

57:19So all along, there have been voices in Israel, important voices, saying, this is ridiculous. There's no strategy. And those voices have been amplified more and more as the weeks went on. But again, Israel is stuck, I think, in a way that many Americans can relate to because Donald Trump is in power in the White House and he has for now a majority in both houses of Congress. So even if a majority of Americans disagree with him or if some people feel kind of voters remorse at this moment, I know for many Americans, there's a feeling like there's nothing we can do. And that is something, first of all, real in Israel.

57:59Netanyahu still holds on to his tiny but powerful majority that he won back in November 2022. And he has stoked this narrative of inevitability, of my way is the only way and anyone else is a traitor. And I mean this, using the word traitor against the media. He's called the media enemies of the state. He calls his opponents traitors. He can't stop talking about a candidate that you didn't mention yet, Ryan, Gadi Eisenkut. He's someone I would suggest keeping an eye on. He's less well-known. He doesn't speak polished English. In a way, he's an anti-Netanyahu. He's a former chief of staff of the army.

58:42And he's one of these two guys along Benny Gantz who kind of decided to shoulder the burden. And they joined this national, this government, emergency government on October 11th, 2023. But he was the first to leave it. And Guy D. Azenkot, sorry. No. So, yeah, I think we're going to have to probably leave that there for today. Maybe we can have you back on and talk more about the elections that we hopefully occur, that we hope occur in Israel soon. But thank you for how illuminating this was, Noga. Noga, where can people find your journalism? Well, I appear very often on France 24 TV in English.

59:23I'm on Twitter at N. Tarnopolsky. I'm on The World on NPR fairly often, and I write articles in different outlets. Okay. We'll definitely link to that in the description. Thank you so much for joining us today, and we definitely hope to speak to you more in the future. Thank you so much. Thanks, Noga. Hi, it's Karen in Georgia from My Favorite Murder. We cruised around L.A. in the Hyundai Ioniq 5 and dove into the fascinating life of actress and inventor Hedy Lamarr. Want the full story? Take a listen. Hedy, she starts dating Howard Hughes, the aviation tycoon. Do you know a lot about him? I mean, I watch The Aviator, so I know everything Leonardo DiCaprio has allowed me to know about him.

1:00:05But incredible innovator. Right. She says he's a, quote, very strange man. But they do get along really well. Give us examples. I know. They do get along intellectually. And in fact, she helps him design a faster plane. She takes a look at what he's designed. It's got these square wings. And she's like, that doesn't make sense. And so she finds the fastest bird and the fastest fish and sketches out a drawing of like what the two would look like as a plane. And that becomes the plane that we know today. And he calls her a genius. Check out our new episode spotlighting groundbreaking innovators like Hedy Lamarr and Billie Jean King.

1:00:42Presented by the Hyundai Ioniq 5. Goodbye. I turned off news altogether. I hate to say it, but I don't trust much of anything. It's the rage bait. It feels like it's trying to divide people. If we got clear facts, maybe we can calm down a little. NBC News brings you clear reporting. Let's meet at the facts. Let's move forward from there. NBC News, reporting for America. Discover a spectacular island destination with crystal blue seas, endless sunshine, and the cool Bahamian breeze. Baja Mar, located in Nassau, Bahamas, offers your choice of three luxury hotels, over 45 fine dining and nightlife venues, John Batiste's all-new jazz club, the Caribbean's most luxurious casino, and one-of-a-kind experiences for the entire family, like our 15-acre tropical water park, wildlife sanctuary, world-class golf course, and so much more.

1:01:43Visit Bahamar.com today. All right. Well, that was the Israeli perspective. But why don't we move back over to the United States perspective for a sec? Emily, there are some people in the GOP with some, for some, the very first time ever. Harsh words for our brave president. Let's start with... Let's pause, though. Not the first time ever. the first time since many of them were like virulently never Trump in 2016. Okay. Thank you for that timeline correction. But let's start with friend of the show, Batya. Let's take a listen. Went into this, the president laid out three main goals. He said he wanted to get rid of their Navy.

1:02:25He wanted to get rid of their ballistic capabilities and he wanted to get rid of their ability to achieve a nuclear weapon. I don't see any of that in this MOU. Of course, they promised not to pursue a nuclear weapon. Guess what? They promised that to President Obama as well. And then they lied and cheated, right? Their word means nothing, which is the whole point of going after them in this military way. Now, the one thing that I found the most distressing is that Vice President Vance has been the only member of the cabinet who's out there defending this. And he keeps implying that the people who have a problem with it are somehow, you know, war hawks, want an endless, you know, ground swell of ground troops on the ground in order to finish the deal.

1:03:03I find that very insulting. I don't want that. We had them on the ropes. They have never been as weak as they were last Friday, right before the president agreed to this exact deal. And I just do not understand the pressure. In 60 days, when they have all their money back, they're going to be much stronger and much less likely to agree to anything that would make this not just better than the JCPOA, but just as good as the JCPOA. I think Boccia is very... Yeah. Nobody was saying a week ago that we had them on the ropes. I mean, maybe a couple of people, but nobody was saying that a week ago. And this is like the I get why people are saying, oh, J.D.

1:03:44Vance has the straw man that the only option is thousands of ground troops and more and more months in war and quagmire. But the argument is that the only other options would inevitably lead to that. So it's actually not a straw man. The argument is, of course, like I know our viewers understand that. But the argument is that anything else that you do is going to inevitably lead to ground troops. There is not any other option that doesn't look like escalation. So make the argument for escalation. But nobody a week ago was saying that we had them on the ropes and that this was everyone was saying we need to do more to get them on the ropes.

1:04:18So it's just it's head spinning. I mean, I guess. Barbara Batia, her entire worldview, whether it's this or whether it's, you know, her view of Israel as this great moral actor or whether it's the idea that Trump is some true champion of the working class. It all depends on complete and utter delusion and disconnection from reality. So it does not surprise me that once again, she's pushing this idea that we had Iran on the ropes. No, President Trump told you straight out at the G7 summit, they had us on the ropes. We had a few weeks to go before what unfolded was what he described as bedlam. That's why we're here.

1:04:57We're here because you and your ideology and your ideological brethren pushed us towards this war. Trump, you know, this big boy decided himself. He thought this would be some legacy building piece. Gets us into this. It was a disaster. We lost. And this is the inevitable result. But rather than grappling with that, she has to spin some delusional fantasy of, oh, actually, if we just bombed them one more time, one more round, you know, if we blew up a few more little girls schools, then we could have had victory in hand. It's so utterly preposterous. And literally no one believes that. And the discrepancy between the reality and the way that she's describing it is about as vast as you could possibly get.

1:05:39But according to her, you can't trust Iran's word in these diplomatic agreements because, yes, they previously said that they would not pursue a nuclear weapon. But she says they lied and they cheated. Now, according to the IEA, which was monitoring Iran's compliance with the JCPOA, they were in compliance up until the moment that the U.S., for no reason other than the fact that Obama's name was on the deal, walked out of the deal, just unilaterally walked out of the deal. Trump then reenters negotiations last year, and in the middle of those negotiations, kills the negotiators. Then he reenters negotiations again, and in the middle of those negotiations, kills the negotiators, including the head of the country.

1:06:28And they are the ones that are duplicitous and can't be trusted. Like there has, in the annals of negotiations and diplomacy, In the last several hundred years, I don't think you can compile a track record as duplicitous as what Trump stacked up from 2018 to 2026. Like unilaterally walking away from a deal that was agreed to in good faith, then twice killing the people that you're claiming to be negotiating with was surprise attacks. Twice. And then for Baia to come on the back end of that and say that Iran is duplicitous and can't be trusted. like it you there has like it's almost a laura loomer level of just pure racism and islamophobia because her only argument would be well they're muslims iranian muslims and evildoers so therefore they just inherently as the as the creatures and monsters they are can't be trusted when the actual record is what it is uh so just that part alone is like what are you what are you talking about Well, Ryan, she's not alone because we have leadership on both the Republican and Democratic side voicing similar concerns.

1:07:41Why don't we take a listen to this next clip? It's dollars to theocratic lunatics who want to murder us is not a good idea. I think the president, unfortunately, is receiving bad advice. I was just going to ask you about the Iran deal. What do you think about it? for this whole nuclear deal now? No better than what we had back in 2015, back when Barack Obama cut the deal. And that's where Donald Trump winds us up after all of this. What if he cares?

1:08:18Who is that? Who's Randy? The idea of doing something in the Straits of Hormuz, the Straits were being used peacefully before our invasion, and now we have to negotiate it'll be as peaceful in the future. It's going to get access to its frozen assets and what is Iran giving up for this? Nothing. Nothing. They're merely reaffirming what they've said before about nuclear weapons. All I've seen is public reporting about it but the public reporting to me suggests we're giving up an awful lot more to get a lot less than the JCPY. Absolutely stunning to see Lindsey Graham walk away from a camera. That's right.

1:08:56You don't see that every day. Put that in a museum. He was headed to see if there were any UFC fighters still hanging around. Just checking to make sure they all got down safely. They could be anywhere. Yeah, I mean, Ted Cruz there, of course, with the hard criticism, which, I mean, hey, is consistent, right? The Republicans have been talking about the, quote-unquote, pallets of cash that Obama gave away to the mullahs, the scary mullahs, for years, even though that was their money we're talking about. unfreezing assets, which again, are their money, something that Trump actually explained quite well.

1:09:28He was like, look, at some point we should probably give that money back if we want to maintain our credibility in the global financial system. But you note Cruz doesn't have the stones to actually criticize Trump. I think he's getting bad advice. So, you know, him taking that line because they know how fragile his ego is and that this is the game he has to play. I mentioned this yesterday. I mean, it's a similar tactic to sort of what Joe Kent did of he resigned. But then his commentary was never critical of Trump. It was always if anyone can resolve the situation, it's our great, strong leader, Donald Trump, who was doing everything amazing and perfect right up to this moment when he was misled by the Israelis and forced into war by the Israelis.

1:10:12So they're doing their own version of that. Well, I want to say I don't think anybody has paid enough attention to this, I actually think Joe Kent may have, because he talked like that, helped us get out of the war, honestly, because Trump basically followed the Kent path to get it. Like Kent was like, cut the losses, get the heck out of this now. Yeah, no deal. We should just walk away. Walk away with what? Still closed. So I mean, I know, but I think he nudged him this. I don't know that it was Joe Kent, but I think projecting that strategy was ultimately helpful. And another person who did that, I think, carefully was Trita.

1:10:53And I think it may have actually ended the war for now. We'll see. We'll see. I think what ended the war for now was oil executives coming to the White House and being like, let me tell you, buddy. China has actually saved our ass because they decided to import way less oil than they were. and they had a large reserve and they are very advanced in terms of renewable tech. That is only going to hold out so much longer before we're going to have real problems. And he also said something in his presser that I thought was interesting that didn't get clipped as much. But he was talking about how like every time there was a peace deal, the markets went up.

1:11:28And then when there was war, the markets went down. And so I looked at that and I was like, the markets, they're more brilliant than any single person. We have to listen to the markets. I think he's telling the truth there, that that was his logic, was like, oh, the markets respond well to peace. Let me see if I can do something in that direction. So, I don't know. Maybe Joe Ken had something to do with it. I would love to think that Trita had something to do with it. I think it probably had a lot more to do with him watching the lines go up on the market and the lines go down on our strategic petroleum reserve.

1:11:58Yeah, I don't disagree with that. I think when people put rhetoric that frames it a certain way on a silver platter for him, it's helpful, though, if that makes sense. Like, if you can frame it. To grab onto it. Yeah, right, right. Be careful, Emily. The free press is going to call to deport Joe Kent next. Sorry, Ryan, go for what you were going to say. Actually, though. To Crystal's point, he mentioned Hoover in separate occasions in that hour-long press conference that he gave. And he said, I don't want to be a Hoover. Like, he really cares about how he's remembered. He mentioned before Carter that he was very nervous about a rescue operation or going in to get the uranium because what if the helicopters go down and then he becomes Carter as a result of that.

1:12:41And so the two presidents, I think, that are seared into his mind as failures in the last 100 plus years are Hoover and Carter. And he absolutely, he wants his name, you know, ringing out on monuments and statues and buildings and airports. Or he doesn't want to be associated with, because he knows that you can become a symbol of weakness and failure like Hoover. And he's like, never mind, I don't want that. He thought he was going to be the guy that ended the Iranian revolution and that would be his thing. He clearly sees that's not going to happen. So to get some marginal advantage at the risk of becoming Hoover, he's like, forget it, I'm out.

1:13:26So, Ryan, your boy or our boy, Julian of Dropside, our boy on the Hill, has been talking to more, more politicians, more GOP. Let's take a listen. Doing in Iran. He went in with no plan. He had no plan to get out. And we are the losers. And Iran is laughing all the way to the bank. Dropside's Julian Andrione here. Now that President Trump has signed a memorandum of understanding to end the war with Iran, One might expect senators who criticized the war while it was going on to come out in support of this new peace that's been reached, regardless of how much of a loss the details seem to signify.

1:14:00You wouldn't expect them to get more hawkish and try to drag the U.S. back into a war that they didn't support in the first place. I wanted to test this theory, so I came up to Capitol Hill and asked senators about President Trump's comments at the G7 summit. Let's see what they had to say. All of a sudden, a lot of these senators who were willing to completely ignore their constitutional responsibilities with respect to getting into the war, suddenly are interested in making it harder to get out of the war. I think it would fall for the president's lack of understanding about foreign policy and a total capitulation to Iran and an insult to our partners in the Middle East who have been attacked by Iran as part of this.

1:14:46Our partners in the Middle East. Or that should not be a Democrat on armed services. What exactly gives the U.S. jurisdiction? Iran is the leading state sponsor of terrorism. Iran and its proxies have terrorized the world for over 40 years. Who is that, Ryan? We are their mortal enemy. They're going to take that half a trillion dollars that Trump has turned on for him in this MOU, and they're going to build more bombs and say death to America. So in theory, here's the difference. If Saudi Arabia had them, they've never threatened to kill us and haven't been killed in us for decades, right? Iran has.

1:15:23And so the way I would think is, you know, That's not what we're trying to kill us. Before you would ever say that, something that makes sense is that the grain has to completely change and be in a position that we are all comfortable. Once or twice. But we'll continue to kill. Not people would disagree. All right. That's a flavor. I misspoke and said it was just GOP. It was a bipartisan reflection. So a lot of Democrats. Mostly Democrats there. Mostly Democrats. I think it was only Rick Scott at the end, right? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, look, Chris Van Hollen, great response about how, hey, you know, they were totally cool with, hey, President, you can go to war.

1:15:54And now that we want a piece, they're like, oh, Congress means to weigh in. So I appreciate his response there. There is a lot of a lot of people are just completely missing the mark. I mean, Jackie Rosen's comments there were disgraceful, you know, just very. I mean, they sound like you sound like a Republican criticizing the Obama deal. Oh, it's weak. Oh, you know, capitulation. Look, it's true. We are having to capitulate. That problem is the war. The problem is not the getting out of the war. and yet she's doing the whole, you know, right-wing song and dance, which just feeds into the neocon talking points and leads us back to a logic of that's why we need to go back to the war.

1:16:30That's why we need to hit them even harder and send the ground troops and have our men and women die in larger numbers in Iran. So, yeah, there are some Democrats who, you know, have said reasonable things and I think it's fine to be critical of how we got here, but there's far too much of the Fox news sounding talking points. I got into a little back and forth with Tim Miller, the bulwark about this. Cause he was like, this is a gift to the mullahs. No, it's not. First of all, like I hate this. The mullahs language is very, you know, very Fox news coded, but also it's not a gift. This is what you have to do when you lose a war, which is what happened here.

1:17:12So, you know, there is not a better deal on the table at this moment because we lost the war and because we really don't have any other good options. This is the best of the terrible options that are available to us given the fact that we entered this war to begin with. Yeah, that's a really good point. It's not a gift. We entered into negotiations with them in the 2010s because we wanted something from them. We wanted some regional stability, wanted them to agree to give up their nuclear, to give up the nuclear program, allowing inspectors so that the U.S. could then kind of pivot away from the Middle East and go worry about our other problems in the world.

1:17:47Like we wanted something from them. They gave it to us. And then we ripped it up. And so like Elizabeth Warren's right, like we didn't, we don't have anything better than we had in 2015. In fact, it's probably worse. And the cost of all these lives and not just the lives, the like re-imposition of all those sanctions on a country of 90 million people, like the amount of hunger and misery and lives that were, you know, whose trajectory was, altered dramatically, like the destruction of professional educational opportunities for 90 million people. It never really gets discussed. But to immiserate a country of that size is producing an amount of human suffering among a completely innocent population.

1:18:32And not only for nothing, but to kind of move us backward from what our stated objectives were. Yeah. Emily, final thought here. Will the GOP, will the Republicans eventually come to terms with this and follow in Trump's footsteps, start supporting him in this endeavor, or will they continue to have pushback on this deal? I mean, I suppose it just depends on what happens going forward. I expect that it'll crumble, but it will probably crumble in a slightly lower profile way, as we were talking about earlier in the show. I don't, I mean, I just, I don't know. But the bottom line is that it was the same thing after, on January 7th, 2021, you could hear the sigh of relief in Washington, D.C., especially coming from the Senate, because people thought they were just done with Donald Trump.

1:19:25And then very quickly, they realized that 30 % of Republican voters were still hardcore in Trump's corner. And so most, like most American voters aren't like deep foreign policy ideologues. They're pragmatic. And it's partially what people saw in Donald Trump as a benefit. But they stick with Trump. If you have 30 percent of Republican voters who are attached to Donald Trump, you really can't get away from that because it's too for your own reelection purposes. It's too hard to sort of sever ties with Trump. So that always means that on individual policies, yes, they can be critical. They can try to put daylight between themselves and Trump, as Ted Cruz did just there.

1:20:07That's why they're immediately taking up a lot of what you're hearing in Israel about the Vance-ification, or the Tucker Carlson-ification of J.D. Vance, that this is the Vance deal, the Vance deal, the Vance deal. And so that's already a preview of how they're trying to handle this. But there's no severing ties with Trump, basically, unless you're Tom Tillis or Bill Cassidy and you don't need to get elected again. In that case, you could do it. But otherwise, no. All right. Well, that does it for that. Ryan, you did an interview recently with Malak Kiyos and Julia Gonzalez. Tell us a little bit about that.

1:20:44Yeah, last weekend, Hasan Piker went to Denver for a rally with Maylard Kiros, who's running against Diana DeGette in Colorado, and Julie Gonzalez, who is running for Senate against John Hickenlooper, the incumbent Democratic senator. Both of them are within striking distance in this June 30th primary. They're also going to be joined, I believe, by Donovan McKinney and Justin Pearson, who are kind of rising stars in Michigan and Tennessee. and venue after venue after venue after signing the contract with them canceled with the final, and we'll talk about this in the interview, with the final venue telling them, you didn't tell me this was a neo-Nazi rally.

1:21:26Oh my God. This is two African-American politicians, one Ethiopian-American, one Chicana, and then Hassan Piker would be the only kind of white-ish, even remotely whitish person at this rally. And they ended up having to move it to the capital steps because everybody else they called around was told, we've been told not to rent to you guys. Crazy. And so the real estate industry there, I think there have been plenty of populist candidates who have run and their interests clash with the real estate lobby and they don't get blocked by venues. So I don't think this is primarily a real estate lobby kind of class issue.

1:22:16I think this is, these are all anti-genocide candidates. And I think this is a kind of a pro-Israel pushback. Interesting. So we talked to them. A particular lightning rod. Yeah. Okay. Well, let's hear from them about all that and we'll see you on the other side. So in a rather shocking development that cuts against our idea that we are a free society that encourages debate. Last weekend in Denver, a series of town halls, a series of political rallies were canceled as one venue after another shut down the ability of major political candidates to host an event there. Hassan Piker, the notorious streamer at this point, kind of the focus of Third Way and the centrist element of the Democratic Party, was supposed to rally with congressional candidate Melat Quiroz and Senate candidate Julie Gonzalez.

1:23:13But venue after venue canceled. And so the event later had to be moved to in front of the state capitol, which is apparently still public space. We're going to be joined by them in a moment. Actually, let's just bring them on right now. Julie Gonzalez and Melat Quiroz. Thank you. Thank you, Julie, for being here. Thank you so much for the opportunity. Yeah, and Maylat, thank you. Really appreciate it. Yeah, happy to be here. And so I wanted to start with a clip from Deep Badesha, who is a political consultant. Maylat, is he on your campaign? Is that right? He's a volunteer at the campaign. Volunteer on your campaign.

1:23:50So he was organizing. He was getting the venues together. He's done this with his team countless times. And here he is briefly on the day that this is going down, talking to Stan Piker about what had unfolded. And listen closely, because this is a rather disturbing situation. We show up the day of, so today, we go in there, and he looks pretty emotional. And he's like, I've been getting blown up my phone all morning from people who own this place, and the people who own the lots, the people who own malls around here, like high up in like corporations saying you can't do this event here he said people were thrown in with defamation lawsuits defamation lawsuits and then me and my wife are attorneys and we're like that's not how this defamation would work at all that's not how this would work and he was spooked he's like people blew up my phone i've never seen this before i'm a small business i can't do this they're telling me it's a safety risk and this is the craziest thing is He's like, you didn't tell me it was a neo-Nazi rally.

1:24:53And I was like, okay, what? And you were there. I was shocked. Yeah, yeah, I was shocked when he said that. And I was like, first off, look at the poster. It's like three black candidates, Julie Gonzalez was Latino, and then a Turkish Muslim man. What kind of neo-Nazi rally is that? So a neo-Nazi rally, these are progressive populist candidates running in Colorado. Julie, you're running against Senator Hickenlooper, the incumbent Democrat, Maylotte, you're running against Diana Gett, incumbent Democrat there. I don't know anything about a neo-Nazi platform. It's like absolutely mind-boggling. Julie, I want to start with you.

1:25:34Have you heard anything since then about who led this pressure campaign and how this happened? I'll just say that genuinely to see cancellation after cancellation after cancellation was pretty unprecedented. And I haven't heard since the rally concluded any more, you know, game playing with any of our other events. And so I'm grateful for that. But what is clear in this moment is that the oligarchs and the corporations that they control are really trying to build a campaign to stop working people from taking the power that is rightfully ours in this upcoming election. Yeah. So you're running against Diana DeGette, who's longtime Democratic incumbent.

1:26:32She seems to be pretty concerned. The election is coming on June 30th. Did you get any sense of where this pressure came from? Well, the congresswoman has been signaling to her donors for about a week now to levy some horrifically racist and dangerous attacks against myself. On the morning of the event, she made a post accusing Hassan Piker of anti-Semitism and being a bigot. So while I don't know exactly who was responsible for this, I know who has been calling in her donors and her supporters to attack me and to attack the ideals and the policies of this campaign. And so ultimately, this comes down to the people versus the oligarchy.

1:27:19This comes down to people in power trying to suppress speech and to silence our dissent against the system as it exists today. And it didn't work. We took this rally to the Capitol steps and within just a few hours notice, we had over a thousand Denverites show up and hear our message and rally with us for our fight for a better world. Maylott, and then I'll have the same question for Julie, basically. But what is it that, in your perspective, has given you kind of the opening? Traditionally, in kind of American politics, if you've been in office for decades, your name recognition is so high, you've done so many chicken dinners and so many potlucks, and you've met so many people in the district that it's very hard to kind of unseat an incumbent.

1:28:06What is it that has given the opening here? You know, I think there's certainly a mix of factors, right? This is one of the most anti-incumbent cycles that we've ever seen. The Democratic Party is looking at really abysmal approval ratings and the electorate is ready for a change. But ultimately, it's because we put in the work. We've been in this race for over 11 months now, and we started it off with me, my friend, in a dream. And it was just us talking to voters in bookstores and coffee shops and bars and restaurants and parks, meeting the voters where they're at, having conversations about what kind of world they want to live in, what kind of country they want to see and what kind of policies and leaders they want to see fighting for us.

1:28:43And we've been having those conversations for 11 months. And the people we spoke with spoke with their neighbors, their co-workers, their family, friends. And we've reached a point now where there are enough Denverites that know that there's a real progressive challenger in this race, that we don't have to settle for another 30 years of complacency and that we can and do deserve better. Yeah. And Julie, John Hickenlooper was mayor of Denver, been senator now for quite some time, kind of a well-liked, jovial kind of figure. But maybe appropriate for a different Colorado? Is there something changing in Colorado that has put him out of step and out of step with the current mood?

1:29:31Absolutely. Look, I started organizing everyday people 20 years ago around affordable housing issues, educational justice concerns and immigrant rights. And we did that work back when it was bipartisan to be anti-immigrant. And we have done the work over the years to flip Colorado from being a trifecta red state to now being a trifecta blue state. I'm proud of that work. And yet to see that John Hickenlooper is still engaging in a politics of centrist incrementalism does not meet the rage that Coloradans are feeling about the fact that they're working harder than ever and still can barely afford the cost of housing, groceries, gas, health care, child care.

1:30:23And so to see that he has gone and voted for not one, not two, but 10 different Trump cabinet nominees in the second Trump administration, second only to Fetterman, demonstrates that he is not prepared to leave. He's also gone and skipped six different debate opportunities and is just trying to phone it in and mail it in. And look, I think Coloradans are hungry for change. And that's why our campaign is building so much momentum on the ground. It's clear we're not going to out fundraise Hick, but we sure as hell are going to out organize him. And that's clear across the state of Colorado. So. And I saw a recent poll had you had him and I think 41 and you at 34, which is, you know, obviously you'd rather be ahead if you're you.

1:31:16But if you're the incumbent, being under 50 is usually a frightening sign, you know, heading heading into the election. How are how are you feeling and what what's your sense of whether or not you're going to have kind of the kind of name recognition and the resources to get out there by by June 30th? Absolutely. What is clear in this moment is that no one's coming to save us but us. And Coloradans, as we've been traveling the state, just yesterday I was in northwestern Colorado in Steamboat Springs talking to voters there. And they were so excited to hear from a candidate who's willing to just show up.

1:31:59It should not be that low a bar. And yet that is where we're at right now. And when we talk about the issues that are impacting our lives, the fact that billionaires and the corporations that they control are increasingly driving up profit and maintaining a status quo that lines their pockets while making us work three jobs plus a side hustle just to afford the basics. That is why, even though John Kickenlooper, look, we get it. He enjoys basically universal name ID. But Coloradans also cannot name a single thing that he has led on and fought for. And that's why we are gaining such incredible momentum here in the polls.

1:32:46And we have the opportunity to make history in Colorado and send a direct message to Chuck Schumer that his days of handpicking candidates are over and his days of supporting do-nothing Democrats are done. And would you support Senator Schumer? Is it possible if you, let's say you win election, or are you looking for somebody new to lead the Senate Democrats? I believe that Chuck Schumer has done a fine job of managing effectively the Democratic Party's descent into fascism instead of leading the charge to fight tooth and nail against it. And so I will not be voting for Chuck Schumer to continue on as the majority leader of our caucus and instead want to fight for someone who will end our addiction to corporate PAC money and dark money, and instead return our Democratic Party to being a party driven by and dedicated to fighting for working people.

1:33:55And Melah, one of the clearest indications that they're taking your race extraordinarily seriously is there are now a bunch of attack ads. Super PAC called Mile High Accountability is out with an ad saying that Trump loves you and Trump loves Democrats like you. So what is it, are you seeing on the ground any impact of the negative advertising and how are you responding to it? Ironically, a lot of these advertisements are actually introducing me to a lot of Denverites who immediately see the advertisement and see it as outlandish and cartoonish even. and especially when you can go straight to my website and our platform and see that I haven't called for any of the things that they're accusing me of calling for and to also see that the congresswoman herself is putting up attack ads against me.

1:34:48She tried signaling to her super PACs to attack me for standing up against genocide and taking in the context of violence in the way that it happens because it never happens in a vacuum. And when they didn't take the bait, she started posting it herself. And these advertisements have been incredibly racist and incredibly dangerous to the situation. And so I think it shows that they're scared. I think it shows that Denverites are making it very clear that they're ready for a change. And more than anything, I think it shows that the Congresswoman wasted these last 11 months in her responsibility to make her case to the voters and why she should get a 16th term on top of the 30 years that she's really failed to meaningfully show up for the voters of this district.

1:35:36And now it's clear as day to the voters here as well, that with the attack ads that are coming in, that she doesn't actually have a case to be made based on her record or based on her platform. And voters are seeing that our campaign, one that is grassroots and people powered and supported by multiple members of the city council, of the state house, of the state senate, of different progressive organizations and unions across the district, that we are the real progressives in this race, and that it's time for a change. And Julie, what are you leading with in the campaign when it comes to trying to reach voters?

1:36:11Like what are the critical issues that you're finding are separating you from Senator Hickenlooper? First and foremost, I'll show up. I will do the work and listen to everyone, not only when it's easy, but especially when it's hard. And we know that we have the solutions at the ready, that we don't need to spend time doing blue ribbon commissions or study groups about. We know what the solutions are. Look, it's Medicare for all. It is universal child and elder care. It is ending the dark money and the influence that corporate PACs and the billionaires and corporations who control them currently play in our politics.

1:37:00And my goodness, it is about lowering the cost of everyday life so that Coloradans cannot just survive, but actually thrive. And to me, when we are talking about the issues with Coloradans across the state, you know, we've been traveling the Four Corners and Fort Morgan. We've been all across the front range talking to folks in not only the urban corridor in the heart of Denver, but also in rural Colorado and talking to farmers and ranchers who are barely able to make ends meet given the increased cost of tariffs and everything else. Everyone is ready for a change in order for us to advance a politics that meets the moment.

1:37:49Now, let me just say this. I believe that not only do Democrats need to go and build a governing majority, right, flips red seats blue and and do the work to win those seats. But we've also got to go and look at the caliber of Democrats that we send to D.C. from the safe blue states like Colorado. And that's where we have this incredible opportunity in a head to head challenge against a man who has been in politics for over 20 years as mayor of Denver, governor of Colorado and now in the U.S. Senate. Colorado is in a unique position because we are in a state that has never elected a woman to serve in any of those roles.

1:38:38We have the opportunity to make history through this campaign. And, Maylad, to me, one of the biggest problems facing this country is the yawning kind of wealth inequality. And so as we have more and more centimillionaires and more and more billionaires, as we try to kind of address the various crises that are facing working people in this country, that leaves you, you know, you basically have three different options of, you know, finding the resources to go about doing that. You can kind of borrow money, which then kind of inflates away the wealth of the middle class. You can tax the kind of middle and upper middle class or you can tax the billionaires.

1:39:24Where is Colorado at this point on a on a wealth tax? Because to me, from a political but also a fiscal perspective, if we continue to tax work but not wealth, we're going to continue just kind of having people fight among each other and developing new things to fight about. Yeah, that's exactly right. And Coloradans are more tuned into that than ever. In fact, I would argue that one of the policy positions I have that has been the most popular with Denver voters has been the fact that I'm calling for taxing the rich and taxing the ultra wealthy, the billionaires, and now the trillionaires included.

1:40:04But also talking about the priorities of our budget right now, you know, calling for cutting the Pentagon budget by 10 percent, something that the congresswoman voted twice against, even when we were in the middle of a pandemic and were sorely in need of those resources. Making sure that our budget is actually in line with our values and in line with our priorities and guaranteeing health care and housing and nutritional food and public education and public transit to the people of this country is paramount. And instead, we are sending billions and billions of dollars abroad to fund genocidal wars.

1:40:38It's unacceptable. And the voters of this district are very, very, very ready to see leadership who's actually going to call out the people who are responsible for the widening inequality in this country and in our economy. Because ultimately, I think we're Democrats have failed in being able to meaningfully turn out working class people is that we have failed to actually call out who's responsible for the collapsing economy and the way that those people have been attacking our democracy. And those are the billionaires and the corporations who kept our prices high, who burned our planet and are profiting from genocide.

1:41:12And when you take money from these billionaires, from these corporations, you are holding yourself accountable to them. And that's why we have to make sure that in every primary, at any level of office across the country, that we are only giving our votes to the people who are running grassroots, people-powered campaigns. This campaign is supported by over 8 ,000 individual donors with an average donation of 50 bucks, because I'm not running to represent moneyed interests. I'm running to represent the people of this district and working people who have been trying to get by for too long and deserve not just to get by, but to actually thrive.

1:41:48And last thing for both of you, not to put you on the policy spot here, but there's currently a bill in Congress by Don Byer over in the House and Chris Van Hollen over in the Senate that introduces a significant tax cut for working people and pays for it with a surtax on millionaires. If I were writing it, I'd throw in a wealth tax on that too, not just taxing income because the wealth is really where the money is. But there's also some pushback in kind of progressive circles that say that you shouldn't cut taxes on working people because cutting tax across the board is wrong. at this moment.

1:42:27And also everybody kind of, you know, you undercut the idea of, you know, support for taxation if everybody isn't paying in. I think that's absurd. I think people don't like paying taxes. And if you cut their, cut working people's taxes a little bit, they're not all of a sudden going to say, well, I used to like the idea of taxation, but now that I'm paying a little bit less, not so much anymore. But so, Julia, start with you. Chris Van Hollen, the general idea that you want to shift the tax burden upwards and reduce it on working people. The details obviously can be worked out down the road, but where are you on that in that debate on tax policy?

1:43:10What is absolutely crystal clear is that we need to reflect, ensure that our tax code reflects the reality in this country where billionaires, trillionaires, and the corporations need to actually pay their fair share. Because look, it's clear working people like me, I live in an affordable housing unit. This isn't theoretical to me. Working people, we are doing our part, But the reason why there is so much dark money being thrown into our political climate, right, into our elections and into corporate lobbying is to maintain a status quo that lines the corporations' pockets, makes the rich richer, and keeps working people paying the tab.

1:44:01And so, yeah, while I agree, there are certainly details to get into in terms of ensuring that our tax policy is reflective of the needs of the American people. Broadly, the idea of taxing the rich and also taxing their wealth is something that I wholeheartedly support. Yeah. Maylat, what about you? Because I agree on the super PAC point. Anytime I see $5 million getting dropped into a house race where the person doesn't even live in that district, I'm like, they have too much money. They do have too much money. And I think it's important for us to look at all sides of this issue. When we're talking about the poverty wage index, which is the floor of taxation in this country, it's based on a calculation that's decades out of date, right?

1:44:51It's based on the cost of food times three. And if the poverty wage index was actually accurate to the cost of living in this country today, it would be a lot closer to something like$40 ,000 to$45 ,000 for a single individual. And so while I do, there is evidence that American taxpayers do find pride in paying into their taxes. They do find it to be a duty as citizens. We have to make sure that our taxes make sense. And right now, I think a lot of working people are struggling and are being crushed. I think it's important that we're also focusing on the kind of programs that would guarantee things like housing and healthcare and tuition-free public college so that those social safety nets are there as well.

1:45:30But I do think there's something to be said about the pride that Americans feel in paying their taxes, but we do have to make sure that our taxes are fair. And right now, the effective tax rate for most working people is somewhere around 30%, whereas you have people like Jeff Bezos and Michael Bloomberg and Mark Zuckerberg who are paying effective tax rates of less than 1 % because of how they've gamed the system. And when you have the IRS chief estimating that we are losing out on$1 trillion in revenue because of tax evasion and because of the loopholes that we've integrated into the system because of lobbying through these very powerful interests and billionaires and corporations, we're missing out on a lot of resources that would actually be helping working families in this country.

1:46:12And so it's an all-encompassing issue with a lot of different factors to take a look at, but I do agree with you that a wealth tax has to be a part of this conversation. I mean, I'd want to look a little bit more into Ben Holland's bill on addressing this. Yeah. And I think, and I'm sure you guys agree that if we were spending less money on kind of pointless wars, people would probably feel better. If the money, if they saw the money going to help themselves and their community and their state and the country, then that's different than just seeing it get launched off into a mountain somewhere in Iran?

1:46:47It is clear that when we are being told as the American people that we do have enough money for bombs and for ballrooms, but not for healthcare, not for housing, not to do the work to hold those corporations to account, that something is deeply wrong with our politics. And it is part of the reason why I think that the Democratic Party has some soul searching and some work to do. Over 50 percent of the voters across the state have said, hey, a pox on both your houses and are choosing neither party, but instead registering to vote as unaffiliated voters. They get to choose which ballot they vote in in this upcoming primary.

1:47:34And, you know, for a long time, there has been this idea that, oh, unaffiliated voters are more moderate. They are more centrist. We need to cater to them and not ask for too much. What we're finding as we're going and talking to Coloradans across the state is that, no, they are more progressive than what the Democratic Party has been serving them and are hungry for change, are excited to vote for someone who is a battle-tested progressive, who has done the work both organizing out in community and in the state Senate in order to upgrade the caliber of leadership that we send to D.C. from Colorado.

1:48:18All right. Well, if the intention of canceling those rallies was to kind of suppress attention to the campaigns, I think it kind of backfired over the past several days. State Senator Julie Gonzalez, Maylott Kuros election is June 30th. Thank you both so much for joining me. Thank you so much for having me. All right. That was Ryan's interview with Maylott Kuros and Julie Gonzalez. Ryan, And how are the polls looking for them?

1:48:49Maylot looks like down seven, something like that. Julie's also in the hunt. So these are real races. Yeah. Okay. Well, this was a packed show. Just two remaining here right at the end, but we wanted to wish you all a happy weekend. Anything you got to plug, Ryan, before we get out of here? Nope, no plugs. All right, folks. Thank you so much for listening. This was Breaking Points. If you want to join and become a member, support our reporting, that's breakingpoints.com. If you're having any issues with your subscription over at Supercast, that's support at supercast.com. And we will see you all on Monday.

1:49:32Have a good weekend. Bye. Hi, it's Karen in Georgia from My Favorite Murder. We cruised around L.A. in the Hyundai Ioniq 5 and dove into the fascinating life of actress and inventor Hedy Lamarr. Want the full story? Take a listen. She starts dating Howard Hughes. And in fact, she helps him design a faster plane. So she finds the fastest bird and the fastest fish and sketches out a drawing of what the two would look like as a plane. And that becomes the plane that we know today. And he calls her a genius. Check out our new episode spotlighting groundbreaking innovators like Hedy Lamarr and Billie Jean King.

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