7/11/25: Flagrant Pod TURNS on Trump, Dersh Says Epstein COVERUP, Billionaires PLOT Against Zohran & MORE Free Audio Description:

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1:03This is Jacob Goldstein from What's Your Problem? Running a business is hard enough. Don't make it harder with a dozen apps that don't talk to each other. One for sales, another for inventory, a separate one for accounting. That's software overload. Odoo is the all-in-one platform that replaces them all. CRM, accounting, inventory, e-commerce, HR. fully integrated, easy to use, and built to grow with your business. Thousands have already made the switch. Why not you? Try Odoo for free at O-D-O-O dot com. That's Odoo dot com. Hey guys, Sagar and Crystal here. Independent media just played a truly massive role in this election, and we are so excited about what that means for the future of this show.

1:49This is the only place where you can find honest perspectives from the left and the right that simply does not exist anywhere else. So if that is something that's important to you, please go to BreakingPoints.com, become a member today, and you'll get access to our full shows, unedited, ad-free, and all put together for you every morning in your inbox. We need your help to build the future of independent news media, and we hope to see you at BreakingPoints.com. All right, guys. Happy Friday. Emily's working on some tech issues over there, so kick this off with just me and Sagar. How's it going, guys?

2:19Hello. Hello. How are you, everybody? It's good to see you on Friday here. We had a fun night with the baby, but we're still here for all of you. You want to share some details? Oh, I mean, nothing that any newborn parent doesn't know. There's a lot of screaming. There's a lot of crying. It's all right. It's like 1 a.m. therapy sessions and other things that we have to deal with. But it's cool. Just remember, this phase doesn't last. Everyone says that. It's true. And then it moves on to another phase, which will also be difficult in its own phase. But the just like endurance phase of no sleep is, you know, compared.

2:53It feels like it will last forever right now. I promise you it doesn't last forever. All right. Emily, do we have you yet? Let's see. One, two, three, four. Yes. There she is. She's there. There we go. Excellent. I come to these things to hear about your lives, basically. Right. Of course. That's what everybody's here for. We catch up on Friday. We do miss having Ryan, though, because he always has something, some interesting nugget to drop on us always. Yes. That's right. He's already 10 minutes late for a meeting, but Ryan's on his way to Ireland. So, yes. Oh, wow. Safe travels to him. Safe travels, Ryan.

3:26We have a bunch of stuff we are going to try to get to this morning, but I don't think we'll get to all of this. But we've got new Epstein stuff, in particular, the Andrew Schultz and the flagrant pod reacting to the lack of Epstein, the lack of Epstein disclosures and closing of the case and a lot of interesting things. There are some some Trump regrets going on in that pod. So we'll dig into that. We've also got new tariffs announced. We've got new Zoran freak out. We've got new stuff going on with Israel, with immigration. One thing I am bound and determined to get to, but it'll probably be in the premium half of the show, is billionaire Bill Ackman apparently paid his way into a pro tennis match in which he was obviously, he's, what is he, 59 years old?

4:07He's not a pro tennis player. Gets, of course, completely humiliated. The other players on the court, it was a doubles match, are just sort of like tapping the ball to him so that it's not completely humiliating. Andy Roddick went off on his podcast, and I'm just, I'm obsessed. I enjoy watching tennis, so I'm interested in it from that angle, but, like, I am endlessly fascinated and horrified by the mind of the billionaire. Don't you watch golf, too, Crystal? Like, you have a high tolerance. Yeah, but billionaires don't play in pro golf. They just attend the Masters, right? You know, it's like, it's certainly another thing.

4:43I mean, again, I don't watch a lot of tennis. I used to when I was a lot younger. But, you know, the idea that you're going to pay your way into playing some of like the top 200 or 300 players in the world and then force them to like lower their level of play just to accommodate your beliefs and then post like a long essay about how how like what did he say? He was like, it was really the scariest things I've ever done. It's just actually shocking. The level is completely shocking. Like, I mean, you know, I was like a fairly high level. I played, you know, swam division one. And the idea that that like me at this age would get in the pool with someone even a division one, let alone like an Olympia.

5:23It's so preposterous. I just I can't even wrap my head around why you would sign up for that level of public humiliation, which is exactly what he did. So anyway, we can talk more about that later. We have video and we have an essay. So we have video. We have essays. We have Andy Roddick going off on. I mean, he was like he was so offended because this was part of some like, you know, Hall of Fame matches. And he's obviously part of the Hall of Fame because he was such an extraordinary American male tennis player. And so he just felt like this was an absolute defiling of the sport that he cares so much about.

6:01So in any case, that will probably be in the premium portion. Let's go ahead and jump into some of these clips from the flagrant pod. So the first one, I think the first one I have here, yeah, is where they're specifically talking about the promise to release the Epstein files. And then now Trump being like, I can't believe you're even why are you even bringing this guy up like this creep? Why do you even care about this guy? Let me go ahead and play this. Are you still talking about Jeffrey Epstein? We have Texas. We have this. We have all of the things. And are people talking about this guy, this creep?

6:36So we're stupid. Yeah. We're the fucking idiots, guys. That is, I think, what is enraging people right now is it's insulting our intelligence. Like, obviously, the intelligence community is trying to cover it up. Obviously, the Trump administration is trying to cover up. Something changed because they ran on this idea of exposing it all. Yep, yep, yep. All these guys had great ideas. Cock-eyed cash. He was ready to tear it all down. He was ready to tear down the entire FBI office. Shut down the Hoover building day one. Day one. Them bitches still standing. And then he goes on to Joe Rogan and he's like, listen, do you think if I had it, I wouldn't share it with you?

7:11I do. Yeah. I do. I do believe that 100%. Especially when you're staring at me like this. Tell him that. Once you protect pedophiles, you are the most cockeyed person in the entire world. So one of two things in my mind is impossible. One, you're covering it up. or two, nothing really happened and you exploited the of thousands of children to get your man elected. So which one do you want here? That is a very good point there at the end. I like it. I like it. And actually, I really I want to I'm sad that Ryan's not here because he had the best analysis for me, which was for a lot of people, specifically like podcasts online, like, you know, we can't ever determine like what percentage of the vote swung that way.

7:55to Trump, but a lot of it was vibes based. And the vibe based was of the outsider exposing the insider, right? And that's kind of how Kamala, how Biden, how the outsider campaign, regardless of whether you say their establishment or not, like that's how it came off and read to a lot of people. And Epstein story is kind of this vector where for many people, they're like, if you're going to lie to me about this, or if you're not going to talk about this, you're not going to be honest about this, then there's all these other things that you are lying to me about. And so that's why, you know, Ben Shapiro recently was like, well, Epstein actually is, um, you know, like the lowest list of priorities for people.

8:32And it's like, nobody's saying it's a priority. It's not like the number one thing, but it's the extent to which you exploited it for your political ends. I mean, in cash and Dan Bongino's case, they literally got rich talking about this stuff. So it's actually extra, uh, objectionable to me, but the reason why, I mean, I was listening to a Shane Gillis podcast this morning with my friend, Matt McCusker, same thing. They're like, guys, like this is the most bullshit thing ever. You know, they're like, oh, I guess he's, you know, totally innocent. Shane was like, maybe, you know, Trump is, it's like, it's obvious Trump is trying to cover something up.

9:04He's probably in the Epstein files. I mean, this is again, like it is a vector of understanding the visceral, like disgust of business as usual and of Washington. You can critique that if you want to. I know Michael Tracy and others have, but regardless, You know, if you're going to sell something like this grand vision to the American public, you either have to deliver or if you're not going to deliver, you need an extremely transparent process instead of basically boils down to trust me, bro. And I do think it is an important like vibe, cultural based conversation around Donald Trump for a lot of the people out there for who this was their entree point into politics, which is definitely in the millions.

9:43I'm not going to sit here and claim it's, you know, the swing voter or or any of that. But it was a useful understanding and heuristic. And Trump, you know, in that in that that clip, I think he's really not going to be able to live that down for a while because it's like, well, you can't really come to another conclusion of like you're covering some shit up, man. Like you're covering some shit up. You just can't get away from that. I think it was a real gateway drug to politics for Gen Z because the Epstein stuff was playing out in covid. And when TikTok was first starting to become extremely popular and the gatekeepers lost a lot of their power around the Epstein story.

10:17And so the I agree with everything. Sorry, I just said and want to just add to it. The inverse here is that the implication, if you are suddenly the Trump administration, that is bumbling it in the most clumsy possible way. It is like a satire, the way Pam Bondi has screwed the story up, the way cash and like they just look ridiculous. So the inverse of that, it's not only that they are or the outsiders coming in to expose the insiders. They are now horrible insiders. Right. So it's not just that like they're they're covering up. It's that they're also now like completely complicit and really bad at it.

10:53Like it's just. I mean, from my perspective, too, there was always a weirdness in expecting that Trump was going to release the Epstein files, because first of all, whenever you asked about him about it, he would get very squirrely, very squirrely. back when he was in office the first time is when epstein killed himself and when he got asked about hey what do you think about galane maxwell who's on trial right now he's just like i wish her well so there's that he doubled down on wishing her then there's a fact like we know they were friends we've got pictures of them together we have like he was on the flight multiple times epstein says they were besties for a long time like there are a lot of entanglement entanglements there just with him, let alone with members of his administration.

11:35You were talking about Bill Barr and his dad giving Jeffrey Epstein his first job at this private school. And I was like wildly unqualified. There's Alex Acosta, who negotiated, like signed off on the sweetheart deal down in Florida. Now you got Pam Bondi, who also was implicated down in Florida. So like, to me, it was always preposterous. And it was always there was such a giant blind spot on Epstein where Trump was concerned, because all the fixation would be on Bill Clinton, which I'm happy to say, like, yes, Yes, he's also implicated here as well and had the connections and Bill Gates and all these people, too.

12:05But there was just like a willing blindness that Trump had anything, any intermingling with this circle whatsoever. And so now that he has not only said, OK, well, there's nothing to see here. And, you know, he definitely killed himself. And here's the tapes that we're closing all the cases into Prince Andrew and everything else. This is done deal. Nothing to see here. now suddenly people started to go like oh you know he did have all of these associations with this dude as it turns out so the uh the sort of the eyes are opening there's a bit of a little bit of an awakening to what's going on here now in terms of the maga base they'll find a way to forgive and forget as they always do that's always happening alex jones is saying well first of all there's a scapegoating a pan bondi like that's sort of the easiest the go-to like it's never trump's fault it's someone around him who's sabotaging him blah blah blah the other in fairness pam bondy has been uniquely ridiculous throughout this but yes agreed agreed she is being scapegoated yes freelancing and doesn't have incredible stuff you know it's preposterous and then the other one there's more convoluted like alex jones has decided that trump is using the epstein files to blackmail the deep state so that he can get his agenda done it's like okay guys sure whatever that's that's vintage QAnon for those of us oh yeah oh yeah aware yeah I mean I don't disagree with any of that I think largely it was because like oh well he's willing to talk about it so there must not be anything going on there um I'm agreeing that that's cope and I'm yeah look this is why again the convo is important like you said MAGA base the MAGA base is gonna forgive Trump for anything but the point is is about where is the culture going to go for a lot of people who were not MAGA in any way.

13:51I mean, if you look at Gen Z, right, Gen Z men in particular, I believe they voted for Trump. It's a slightly higher percentage than at any other time before. I'm saying in terms of even in the popular vote. Well, I do think that these types of, you know, these types of stories were important. I don't think many of those men would consider themselves MAGA in any way. If anything, they're more of like an anti-left voter or anti-establishment left voter. They're very much up for grabs. Very much people, you've talked about this, Crystal, they were Bernie bros, or they were crypto Bernie bros in terms of, they didn't know it yet.

14:23At the time, they're probably too young. And if the Bernie movement had, let's say, stayed the course, they would have been Bernie guys if they had stayed with the course. Bernie gentlemen. We know about the Bernie to Trump pipeline. Now we may be getting the Trump to Bernie pipeline or the Trump system of DSA pipeline. Also on that podcast, Andrew Schultz said, hey, listen, the only people that seem to me like they're really America first are the DSA types like Bernie and Zoran. Let's go ahead and take a listen to that. The only party right now that to me seems America first is the Democrat Socialist Party.

15:00Bernie is America first. Mamdani and all his ideas that he will not be able to execute. And I frankly think many of them are not good ideas but he is no doubt new york first the policies seem to want to help people here that's what i care about if maga wants to take this america first thing i love the dramatic music they put with us yes yeah that's uh that's they have a very good social media team you do have to hand it to them one lie which is epstein did not have a blackmail ring on all these very influential people and by saying that that didn't happen you have to tell a lot of other little lies everyone yeah that's exactly what i was saying yeah yeah and we're starting to see right through right now and it's just embarrassing there you go yeah that's exactly it that's a good clip because it also demonstrates the israel issue and this is why the epstein and the israel issue are both intertwined not only quite literally whenever it comes to mosad but if you look i mean again i hate to bring it back to shane and all these other guys but they are cultural touchstones like we have to be honest tires was one of the biggest shows in america shane is probably the second biggest comedian in the United States behind like Joe Rogan or Dave Chappelle, maybe even the biggest if you look at ticket sales and others.

16:13But for him, you know, I recently saw this clip where he was like celebrating whenever Trump would say, you know, like, oh, we're going to not bomb Iran. But then when he was like, oh, there Trump is back because he was saying BB should not be prosecuted. There is like a America first like disgust at the obsession over Israel and the view that we are Israel's pawn, you know, in this great game. And so there's the policy level. And then there's also the general vibe level where, again, with Mamdani, and I can't get away from this, the way that he was able to frame him to frame the others as obsessed with Israel and issues that have nothing to do with New York is one of the most important things that has happened in politics.

16:55You talked about this recently, Crystal, about the defeat. I mean, this is the largest Jewish city in America, right? In New York is New York City, the largest Jewish population, or not even in America, in the whole world. And so I think Tel Aviv is the only city in the world that has a larger population, Jewish population, right? So outside of Tel Aviv, you know, to have him get elected on the back of I would stay here in New York. That is again, you know, look at the way the Andrew message and all that. That's important. And maybe we'll talk about this later with you know, like the news that like Joe Rogan is telling Trump not to do mass deportation.

17:26and all of that is it's not policy based. It is a connection between the politician and the voter as, yeah, we may have some disagreements. I may not even take all of some of the stuff you say so seriously, but I do think you're fighting for me. This is something, again, why it's so crazy for Trump. This was Trump's genius of the 2016 campaign. Fighting for me against the insiders. Exactly. I was like, I'm fighting for you. What did he say? He's like, it's not they're coming for me. They're coming for you. I forget the exact thing. But that was, you know, that was visceral, actually, for a lot of people.

18:01It was a major part of a lot of the ads, especially after the Butler, you know, assassination attempt. And I think what they're doing is they're kind of seeding it away. You know, it's I don't know if they said it in that clip. There might be another clip also where Schultz said this, but he was like he because he doesn't just talk about Epstein and about Israel. He was talking about the big, beautiful bill. Right. So all of these things compound on each other. Yeah, let's take a listen. Let me play this and I'll get your reaction all this on. Yeah. And this is my theory with like, are politicians individually corrupt?

18:34Like perhaps, but I wonder if just the throne is like, like the institution, the systems in place are inherently kind of corrupt. And so you can have people like Cash, who's probably like working in good faith while he's campaigning and like on the buildup and like all this time as a, what was it, prosecutor for the state? Like he's like doing good work and then gets into role, gets read in on a brief and goes, all right never mind you know what i mean like i like to me that seems like the most logical thing i believe that about trump i believe when trump everything he campaigned on i believe he wanted to do and now he's doing the exact opposite thing i don't know what he's done yeah exactly to your point if you tell me i it's easier for me to believe you you wanted to do all these things if any of them were happening in the way that you said to that point like there'll be people that like they'll dm me like you see what you see what your boy is doing you voted for this i'm like i voted for none of this he's doing the exact opposite of everything i voted for i want him to stop the wars he's funding them i want him to shrink spending reduce the budget he's increasing it it's like everything that he said he's going to do except sending immigrants back every and now he's even flip-flopped on that which i kind of like but he's like oh well we kind of need the people working in restaurants and we need our farmers it's like everything that he said that he was going to do that he can't be really wrong which was important and i thought it was good he pressed him on it well you got to start with the criminals in terms of deporting uh yeah i don't think he's i don't even know if criminals are getting sent back i know there's a lot of people with grist people with green cards getting sent back there's there's people who aren't criminals getting sent back i don't know if you're sending back the criminals first you definitely don't first i don't know if you're sending them back at all so what'd you think of that emily well i just have to say this contrasts so starkly with the mood of republicans in washington and should be an incredible dose of cold water because they are riding very high.

20:25They feel great about the big, beautiful bill, having things like no tax on tips. They feel very good about it, having no tax on overtime. And we could get into the nuances of those policies, but they feel like they're on the cusp of something in Gaza and that Trump has all of the momentum in the world. I really can't state enough how that represents the way MAGA feels right now and the way the Republican Party here feels right now. They have the wind at their backs. That's what they think. And meanwhile, the vibes are not anywhere near where they are. And Sagar, I actually think part of what you talked about with Tucker Carlson this week, you made a very interesting point that the conversation you both were having on his show about 10 years ago might not have been happening in any mainstream way whatsoever in the depth and with the level of scrutiny and skepticism of the establishment that exists.

21:18And I think the Trump world believes that they have way more control over the discourse and the vibes than they actually do. That's a great point. This is Jacob Goldstein from What's Your Problem? Running a business is hard enough. Don't make it harder with a dozen apps that don't talk to each other. One for sales, another for inventory, a separate one for accounting. That's software overload. Odoo is the all-in-one platform that replaces them all. CRM, accounting, inventory, e-commerce, HR, fully integrated, easy to use, and built to grow with your business. Thousands have already made the switch.

21:56Why not you? Try Odoo for free at odoo.com. That's odoo.com. What it sounds like when you road trip to the iHeartRadio Music Festival in the all-new Hyundai Palisade Hybrid. Wow, this is really nice inside. The Palisade Hybrid has more luxury than ever. Whoa, this sound system is awesome. Turn it up. More tech than ever. Sweet. You got the available built-in dash cam? And more range than ever because the Palisade Hybrid gets up to 600 plus miles of range on a full tank. So do we ever have to stop for gas? Visit HyundaiUSA.com or call 562-314-4603 for more details. My name is Arnold Bogarty and prior to me enrolled in Rasmussen to become a nurse.

22:42I spent 16 years in the military, 12 in special forces as an Army Green Beret, and I was recommended to Rasmussen by a former student. She said she loved the culture. It was a family atmosphere. I went to visit the campus. The facilities were amazing. I knew before I left that that was the school that I was going to attend. Rasmussen University. Are you ready to be your own hero online and on campus? Learn more at rasmussen.edu. You know, actually to pick up on that, it's true. I have been struck by the exact same feeling with people who are reaching out to me and be like, oh, why are you so down on Trump?

23:17And I was like, man, you guys just don't get it. Like I was like, you guys really think that this big, beautiful bill thing and this Iran thing, they're like hoovering up all of this MAGA cope from Charlie Kirk's Twitter feed. And you know, the irony is if you actually listen closely, if you listen to the Charlie Kirk show and all that, there's not nearly as much of this whole trust Trump thing. I actually think it's a kind of a similar dynamic to how Democrats had the Twitter is not real life problem. It's because MAGA has become such a ubiquitous like force on Twitter. And there's like all of these like blue check weird accounts that are just constantly posting like Trump wins or any of these other things that they just really believe a lot of their own BS.

23:59Like you, they actually think the big, beautiful bill is popular. It's shocking. I was like, I was like, I do not know what you guys are smoking to think that there is any level of like the enthusiasm for this beyond like what they're happy about is they're like, look at our legislative victory. Like we got through the house. I'm like, bro, you're having a process conversation. No good. He's a fuck about that. You know, it's like they care about what's in the bill. They call that like epistemic closure where there's just no ability for other information to penetrate because it's a great point.

24:30You've decided that polls don't reflect reality. So even though every poll is like, this thing is underwater 40 points with independence, that's just completely discarded. They're like, yeah, but there was a cat turd poll that said whatever. Well, or yeah, but when people see it in their pocketbooks, they'll be happy. That's a lot of it. That's the cope. And then because you have this closed media ecosystem. And then Trump, you know, is not only a billionaire, but also is the president of the United States and has gone out of his way to have nothing but just like the most embarrassing sycophants around him.

25:06And yes, man, he's certainly not getting any accurate information. And so and, you know, I haven't heard I don't know. I don't watch War Room every day, but I haven't heard Steve Bannon criticizing the big, beautiful bill since it passed. Oh, not since it passed. But yeah, yeah. In advance, he was sounding the alarm about like, hey, a lot of MAGA are on Medicaid. And hey, maybe we should like actually increase the taxes on the rich. Now, this past he's basically shot up as far as I can tell. And so even though the messaging against this bill is so obvious of like they're taking your health care to fund a tax cut for the rich, even though that's such a layup, even Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer can figure it out.

25:44They're just so closed off from reality that they don't see it whatsoever. And then, you know, there's also just like a yellow quality to this administration. I don't know if Trump is planning to run again third term. I don't know what's going on there. But he's put the immigration bucket firmly in Stephen M's hands. You know, we'll talk maybe. I'm not sure if we're going to get to all this later or not. There was this Washington Post report that Joe Rogan was like, hey, you know, can we like dial it back with the farm workers and the whatever? Well, there's footage today of a massive raid, including like helicopters and militarized vehicles and whatever on a farm.

26:18So Stephen M. It's a weed farm. To be clear, it's a weed farm. It's still a farm. It's a marijuana farm. It's legal in California, soccer. All right. But in any case, you've got alligator Alcatraz. You've got Seacott. Like, clearly, he's just like Stephen M., you do your thing over there. And there seems to not really be any care or concern even for whether any of this is going to be politically palatable to the masses. And so that's been that's been my biggest surprise from Rogan, Schultz and others is the discomfort with the immigration, with the deportation policy, because you could say a lot of things about like.

26:56So, for example, on the Ukraine war, Trump has definitely been different than was advertised. Right. You could say, you know, on cutting Medicaid. That's certainly different than advertised. Like, you know, there are things that I can say, okay, this is a little different than what was portrayed on the campaign trial. Even though I would say, if you look at the first term, you could have known, but okay, put that aside. I'll give you some grace there on immigration. Like, yeah, they had messy. I agree with you. How did you not know? And if you just knew like the most basic facts about the immigrant population, the idea that there was this mass like millions of criminals that they're going to be able to deport preposterous and then to the point of andrew um and i'm not sure who was talking in that clip about like akash yeah akash was saying like i don't even know if they're shipping out criminals he's actually right about that there's new reporting about it is much easier if you're just going for numbers it's much easier to just go to the farm go to the home depot go to the garment factory go to like wherever immigrants tend to cluster and these are predominantly law abiding you know people who you know have been in the country for some amount of time.

28:02It takes more resources and more time to track down the criminal gang member. So the directions have come from Stephen Miller directly and are being interpreted down to the agent level of like, you don't have time to pursue those cases because we just need to get the numbers up, which means that actually far fewer criminal undocumented immigrants are being swept up and detained. It is much more of a numbers game of where can we go to get the largest number in the shortest amount of time. Well, I mean, I think that could have been true before the 175 billion. If it stands like, you know, we really are not like quite where I don't know yet.