9/26/25: MASS WALKOUT Of Bibi UN Speech, Mystery Generals Meeting, AIPAC Dem DESTROYED

19:18Ryan Grim:He's now switched parties. He's running for governor. He was previously a member of the House. And so in any case, you know, he's got the story of sort of like waking up and coming to see the light and something that Democrats would love to rally around. But I think a lot of Democrats still don't realize that this is a moral litmus test, that it is a basic question of whether you have any decency in principles and that there is no way to take like a moderate position on a genocide, which is what he and Alyssa Slotkin and many others besides are trying to find their way towards.

19:54Saagar Enjeti:or even more importantly like the fact that you can't have moral clarity on any issue like people aren't going to stand to listen about your moral grandstanding on other issues when you would still have to think about this one a lot right and and the bullshit of sorry i'm just one more

20:09Ryan Grim:bullshit of like oh i don't remember if i took a pack money i'd have to check it doesn't jump down at me okay well will you say you won't take it anymore i don't know maybe it's like okay yes or no like if you're gonna be john fetterman be john fetterman but don't try to pretend like you care about these kids and you're so, you know, your faith is informing you and you're so morally righteous when you can't even ask, answer a basic question about the way you're going to approach your campaign and who you're going to ally yourself with.

20:39Emily Jashinsky:Think about the like establishment Democratic Party leaders who want the best for this guy, right? Like they want this guy to be their thing because he's former Republican. They see the potential of a red state, a red state former Republican being super helpful for Democrats. They aren't prepping him for this because they don't know how serious it is for people like Jennifer Welch, who is a normie, fairly normie, kind of dem target voter, actually. That's crazy that he wasn't prepared for this question. Like that to me is part of this part of this is like as it does remind me a little bit of like Tea Party years.

21:27Emily Jashinsky:I'm a broken record on this, but you'd have these candidates who go into a friendly like Tea Party, I don't know, radio host, local radio host and say, do you stand with Ted Cruz shutting down the government? Well, I don't know. And then just get absolutely torched. I I can't believe that he whoever is handling him. And I guarantee you, they're very powerful Democrats with big interests in his campaign. Let him go on that interview like that.

21:54Griffin:And my only defense of him now, I think that, yeah, his operatives are clearly not watching this podcast very closely because you could have known that this was coming.

22:04Emily Jashinsky:The public sentiment, though, like that's what's crazy.

22:07Griffin:He is running for governor of Georgia. so if I were him and I didn't want to answer the question I'd be like look I'm running for governor of Georgia what does that have to do with this and then also he could just be like yeah sure because also you could be weaseling like I'm not going to take APAC money and by that you would mean directly from their political action committee or let their super PAC support and their super PAC is not supporting him anyway so it's easy and then some APAC donors would give to him He'd be like, well, those are just people who they've given to the Sierra Club, too.

22:42Griffin:Individual people. Yeah. I disagree with him on this, but I...

22:46Ryan Grim:He's afraid. Like, the thing is that it wouldn't be honest to say that that has nothing to do with this because, I mean, clearly he's afraid of getting crosswise with APAC and doesn't think that those individual donor checks are going to come in if he says he won't take APAC money. So that's the reason he gets wrapped around the axle of this thing because, yeah, he would love to do a wink and a nod and be, oh yeah sure I'm not taking APAC and then privately message APAC and be like don't worry but they demand such total and complete loyalty that if you aren't publicly in every way backing them up they're not going to be there for you and they may well spend you know money against you in no you're an anti-semite it's not or you're an anti-semite that too yes exactly so will there

23:27Saagar Enjeti:be that on the right will you will we ever see this happen on the right where like right right podcasters or pressuring Republican politicians about APAC or even like not a podcaster, but maybe like a kid at a town hall or something.

23:42Emily Jashinsky:Absolutely. I mean, we saw Ted Cruz and Tucker Carlson's interview from just a few months ago. So it's not going to be everyone for sure. But there will be some places that you wander into as a candidate or, yeah, like kids at town hall, like students at town halls. And Ryan's point about running for governor of Georgia is such an interesting one because the Democratic base right now is so completely divorced from the Democratic, I don't know, like the potential swing voter, like a potential Republican swing voter who like doesn't probably doesn't think about Israel a lot, generally is favorable to Israel, might not even be tapped into this conversation about AIPAC.

24:20Emily Jashinsky:And so, you know, that Dem leadership is trying to figure out what to do with this puzzle because their own voters care so much about this and are in, like, they have such a sense of moral clarity on their end about what they want to happen. And then, like, they're stuck with this position of balancing because they've half-assed it for however many years now, a couple of years since October 7th.

24:47Ryan Grim:I just think they've gaslit themselves into thinking that it's actually not that important. And, you know, like you hear this talking point from them all the time. They'll say we heard this again from Slotkin. They'll say, like, well, why weren't those protesters? Why aren't they protesting Trump? Why are they only protesting Democrats? Which is a not true. And be like they're part of your coalition. So it makes sense. They'd be pressuring you more. And it makes sense that maybe they'd have higher expectations for you than Trump. Yeah. But the insinuation. And see, they're deporting people.

25:15Saagar Enjeti:Yeah. I mean, that's the other thing.

25:16Ryan Grim:There's like a literal authoritarian crackdown, if you dare speak out. So, yeah, great point, Griffin. But the insinuation is meant to be basically like, oh, well, these are all just Trump voters anyway. So we don't really have to pay attention to them. Like, it's their fault that, you know, they it's their fault that we lost, but also they were never going to vote for us anyway. And so I think that they've really gaslit themselves into thinking that this isn't a political problem for them. And I don't know how you can sustain that view when you see what's happening with Zoran in New York, when you see what's happening with Graham Plattner in Maine, like this guy just literally comes out of nowhere, no elected position and is now garnering thousands of people coming to his events and all of this energy.

25:59Ryan Grim:and, you know, certainly they're trying to get Janet Mills, who's the sitting governor, into the race. It's not going to be a sure thing for her whatsoever that she wins in the Democratic primary because he's been willing to be so incredibly morally clear. So, yeah, I mean, they're so far behind, still trying to find a way to like, how can we massage our position? How can we find some moderate path that's going to please both sides? And it's like, first of all, in the Democratic Party, in terms of the base, there is no both sides. It's like basically the whole party is now like it's a genocide.

26:33Ryan Grim:We need to cut off weapons. What is wrong with you? This is a moral and complete atrocity. It's one of the greatest crimes of our time. And they still seem to think that there's, you know, within their own coalition, their attention, great tension exists. That doesn't. The only place that tension exists is on their donor phone calls, which is why you see the result that you do.

26:54Griffin:My final question. He's speaking at the U.N. apparently he got booed as he came out here and I guess a bunch of people got escorted out

27:14Griffin:this is not normal UN the UN is a pretty staid like very protocol oriented, civility oriented

27:30Griffin:oh yeah he's so he's he's he's speaking now because they're people just for people just

27:36Saagar Enjeti:listening people are being escorted out some people are applauding some people are look

27:40Ryan Grim:confused oh he's got a walking he's got another map he's got props oh this one's called the curse

27:48Emily Jashinsky:just in time for halloween he's pointing at all the people he doesn't like i guess

27:55Saagar Enjeti:this is the nathan fielder show promo yep exactly the asad regime oh he's bragging about

28:04Griffin:yeah he's bragging about all the people he got rid of the assassinations great gone and there's a also a battle iraq yes good for him yes he he talked us into going into iraq is he really bragging about that i'm glad he's taking credit for that one incredible also be gone battle battle

28:20Ryan Grim:Raging in the chat there. The live chat with the AP.

28:24Emily Jashinsky:Should we jump in as breaking points?

28:26Ryan Grim:Top atomic bomb scientists? Yes. Well, they're gone too.

28:31Griffin:And Iran's gone too? Oh, some top scientists. Top atomic bomb scientists are gone too. Yes, yes, they did kill scientists. That's true. Israel's 12-day war with Iran. Anyway, so we'll have more, I guess, Monday, right from that speech.

28:47Emily Jashinsky:Yeah. Well, we can we can react in the premium half, too, because it'll probably be wrapped up by the time we get there.

28:52Griffin:Yeah.

28:53Ryan Grim:Yeah. There's anything big that comes.

28:54Saagar Enjeti:My final question before we move on is how long is Jennifer going to keep getting these interviews? You know, I feel like we had a moment with the Alyssa Slotkin thing. And now, you know, I'm not going to name names, but behind the scenes, I've been trying to reach out to a lot of other politicians of similar level and getting ghosted. So what do you what do you all think? you know because jennifer seems like a safe podcast for dems to do if they don't do a lot of research like ryan mentioned there's another good one for you oh my god there he's now this

29:27Ryan Grim:is holding up a placard that says who shouts death to america and then it's a multiple choice question a is iran b is hamas c is hezbollah d is the houthis and e is all the above who told him

29:40Emily Jashinsky:That was a good idea.

29:42Griffin:Well, actually, this flows out of their polling that we reported on at Dropside and over here. Breaking point is that nobody likes them, but people also do not like around the world. They don't like Iran. They don't like Hamas and Hezbollah. And so in a straight one-to-one comparison between Israel and Hamas or Israel and Iran, Israel actually comes out ahead. So this this this looks like it comes straight from the Mark Penn and Anita Dunn polling operation.

30:13Ryan Grim:Oh, wow. Incredible. Incredible.

30:18Griffin:Great, great work there. Anyway, sorry, you were saying.

30:22Saagar Enjeti:Oh, no, just returning my question. You know, do you think Jennifer is going to keep getting these interviews with Democratic leadership? I know she's doing a talk with Kamala Harris for her book tour coming up soon.

30:31Ryan Grim:No, they've got a whole chorus network of creators that they can feel comfortable going on their platforms that are, you know, approved and unlikely to ask them difficult questions.

30:42Griffin:The problem, though, is that, you know, the people aren't necessarily going to be listening to the chorus if the chorus doesn't follow what people want to hear sung. And so if they want audience, they're going to have to come to people like her and us.

31:00Ryan Grim:Yeah, but they I mean, because they can't make their own.

31:03Griffin:They're trying very hard to make their own thing. And it's not going to happen.

31:07Ryan Grim:It's not working. Yeah. Ken loves to post the like, I guess the DNC started like a YouTube, like a podcast and he loves to post the views. It's like, you know, they got one hundred and two views this time. Way to go. So, you know, so, no, they have this idea that they can have this top down level of control and never face a difficult question. And that if they just throw some money behind it and some organization, then they're going to end up with like the next Joe Rogan or whatever. And, you know, if they like, I guess at some point, maybe they're going to realize that that doesn't work. But the people who are at the top of the party, the Keem Jeffries, the Chuck Schumers of the world, they're just the environment they came up in, the skills and traits that they were selected for have nothing to do with like going on a podcast and having a difficult conversation and saying something controversial, getting out there in the mix and fighting.

32:00Ryan Grim:Like that's just not what these people will ever do. They're not designed to do that. Right. And so I don't think that until you have a complete upending of the current party structure and new leadership, will they actually realize. Because the other thing is with these people, like, I think they would rather have Trump and the Republicans in power than give up their own grip on power as well. And, you know, so and they feel like so in any case, I don't see it happening until you have a complete switch in Democratic Party leadership, which may be coming. I mean, I saw an article. I wish I remember the numbers, but I think it was Politico went out and asked a bunch of Democratic Senate candidates.

32:43Ryan Grim:Hey, are you going to support Chuck Schumer for majority leader or, you know, for leader of the party if you guys are still in the minority? and basically none of them would say yes. Some of them were overt. A few, not that many, but a few were overt, like absolutely not. And most of them were just like, yeah, we'll see who's in the race. I don't know. So, you know, some kind of reckoning is going to come at some point.

33:04Emily Jashinsky:Yes, and they're only hurting themselves because what happens when you resist your own voters and your grassroots especially, but basically their own voters are on the same page about this right now. When you do that, you end up with Trump. That sounds crazy. But this is exactly what happened in the Republican Party, where the leadership was brushing off the base and the grassroots. And they had this primary of who they thought was the very best talent in the Republican Party, like that in generations. They felt like was the buffet of generational Republican talent in 2016. and Trump came in and smashed it to bits and completely shattered the illusion because all of those generational talents had been, I mean, other than like maybe Ted Cruz, but even he, by that point, had sort of gotten on, gotten with the program.

33:58Emily Jashinsky:That's what happens when you reject your vote. Someone, they're going to get more populism. They're only hurting themselves. They're only undermining Chuck Schumer's future and longevity or the Chuck Schumer replacement's longevity because something will burst. You will have someone you will have a populist who comes in and actually puts a lie to their power and destroys everything in a way that hasn't happened yet.

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36:19Saagar Enjeti:So let's move on. We got to talk about this James Comey thing. This is a comedy of errors, perhaps. Let's listen to a little bit of the indictment on James Comey here and his reaction. And then we'll break it down a little bit for you. My family knew for years that there are costs to standing up to Donald Trump. But we couldn't imagine ourselves living any other way. We will not live on our knees. And you shouldn't either. Somebody that I love dearly recently said that fear is the tool of a tyrant. And she's right. But I'm not afraid. And I hope you're not either. I hope instead you are engaged.

37:03You are paying attention. And you will vote like your beloved country depends upon it. All right. So that's a little. Can we pause right there?

37:12Emily Jashinsky:Did you. Do we think. I think he might have a little Botox.

37:17Ryan Grim:I was going to comment he looks good. It could also just be a good ring light. Also possible. Lighting does a lot for you. But that I assume was taken from his sub stack, Griffin.

37:30Saagar Enjeti:I'm not sure where it came from. I just get my Comey alerts directly sent to me on Google alerts. Well, he likes it.

37:37Emily Jashinsky:So he has a sub stack and he likes to post these videos. And you may remember the Taylor Swift video that he posted. So it's this is this is how James Comey speaks to the public now.

37:47Ryan Grim:OK, so this was his second most important video, but I did see it on Twitter.

37:53Saagar Enjeti:Emily, can you explain for us in the audience, like what what is this indictment? What is he being indicted for? And what is this original rivalry in case people forget, if we can go back through the annals of history, what's this beef about?

38:07Emily Jashinsky:Well, so this is going to be about lying to Congress. So it's going to be a perjury charge. He testified to Congress five years ago on September 30th, which is why these charges had to come down quickly. That's why Trump was sort of accidentally posting his DMs to Pam Bondi. I still don't know whether that was an accident or intentional, but because that September 30th, 2020 testimony is where he said that he, quote, had not authorized someone else to be an anonymous source in news reports. The indictment says that statement was false. So the bar for actually getting conviction on this charge is going to be really high because you have to prove that he knowingly lied to Congress.

38:51Emily Jashinsky:And that involves some measure of mind reading unless you have like just incontrovertible evidence, which they may have in this case because there is a document trail with Russiagate. Russiagate. But Comey was shopping around information about the Russia collusion hoax. There's a decent bit of evidence. It was in the inspector general Michael Horowitz's report. There was pretty decent evidence that Comey was part of getting this information to the media. He's going to have great attorneys and can parse this in different ways, whether he was technically the one who leaked or whether he did it through a conduit, which we have pretty good evidence that he was doing.

39:29Emily Jashinsky:But that's where the origins of this are Comey was shopping information to the media to sort of prime the pump. As everyone was saying, was Donald Trump in bed with Putin? Was he in bed with Russia? Hillary Clinton was making some of these claims. Comey was giving little tidbits, dishing out little tidbits, and the FBI was dishing out little tidbits to the media, basically suggesting that they were working on this because they were actually getting some heat from Hillary Clinton. Remember the beef between Comey and Clinton because of those charges that were dropped late in 2016, late October 2016.

40:06Emily Jashinsky:So all that is to say, also Comey didn't indict Hillary Clinton, but didn't charge Hillary Clinton with the email after the email investigation. So he was trying to basically suggest to the public, we've got something, We're on it. And Trump kept Comey on. And then it all exploded. And here we are today.

40:29Ryan Grim:Yeah. Well, I think it's just important to zoom out while those specifics are significant. And I also want to note that they had to force out another Trump-picked U.S. attorney and put in this total crony who has never prosecuted a case before in order to move to try to secure this indictment. There was memos from career DOJ prosecutors who said, listen, there's no, this is not going to, you're not going to be able to secure a guilty conviction at trial. So you should not go forward with this. You've had some, at least one resignation also in the wake of these charges moving forward. So there's a lot of indication that this is trumped up that did not intentionally use that pun.

41:16Ryan Grim:But I mean, literally Donald Trump came out and said, you need to charge this guy, Pam Bondi. Like, what are we doing? She was under pressure. There's reporting as well that she was uncomfortable with the case. So listen, I think Comey is an odious figure. I think Comey is a big part of the reason Trump gets elected the first time. I have zero love for this man. This is a bullshit politicized charge. There is no way that if Trump doesn't directly tell the attorney general and his new handpicked crony that they need to charge Comey, that he ends up getting indicted. The grand jury indicted him on two of three counts.

41:51Ryan Grim:I think, especially given the president's public involvement here, very likely this thing gets immediately tossed. It's been assigned to a Biden judge. And, you know, this is the sort of thing that in normal times would literally be impeachable. And it's not just Comey either. They're trying to go after Letitia James on some bullshit mortgage fraud charge. They're trying to go after Adam Schiff on the same thing, trying to go after Lisa Cook on the same thing. It's not like I have particular love for these people. I actually do like Letitia James, but, you know, not a big Adam Schiff fan, don't really know anything about Lisa Cook in particular, not a Comey fan.

42:27Ryan Grim:But it is now official. The DOJ is just an arm of Trump's weaponization regime. That's what it is. And so however you feel about Comey, we need to acknowledge that this is this is a, you know, not to say the DOJ has been perfect in the past, there hasn't been this or there hasn't been that. But we have really crossed a threshold here where even any appearance of independence is totally and completely gone.

42:54Emily Jashinsky:I think you're right. Go ahead.

42:58Griffin:No, just the indictment itself is like a page and a half. And the thing they're getting him on is that they say that he told Ted Cruz that he had not, quote, quote, authorized someone else at the FBI to be an anonymous source in news reports regarding an FBI investigation concerning Trump. And basically, they're saying that he authorized McCabe to be an anonymous source. And so McCabe, McCabe's testimony on that would be would be critical or any evidence that they might have that he did authorize McCabe to be a confidential source. So just for the details of this indictment, but agree with Crystal's point that the details are, you know, you can get somebody on mortgage fraud, but you're not actually, if you're not actually going after them on mortgage fraud, then tangling with the details is kind of playing into their hands.

43:53Well, my perspective on this is probably a little different from you guys, which is, I think there should be, with Comey, Comey's a good example of like, when did we,

44:04Emily Jashinsky:crossed the threshold. I think we've crossed the threshold, like accelerated with Trump, especially 2.0. I'm not happy with a lot of the politicization. In this case, I look at Comey as someone who arguably started, like he to me is pretty high up in the candidates for who started us on the doom spiral. And because he was part of weaponizing the FBI to cook up an investigation beyond reasonable bounds against Trump and the Trump campaign and then was leaking to media. I agree a thousand percent that this is politicized. I just don't quite agree that it's bullshit because I don't know another way out.

44:45Emily Jashinsky:I'm not saying that this is a guaranteed way out of the doom spiral, but this man, I think, is part of like Donald Trump wasn't even president yet. And James Comey was weaponizing the FBI to attack Donald Trump. So I just don't like I think Comey should face consequences. I agree that the charges here are political. And I lament that this is the state of the country. He's not someone I'm particularly like that. That's actually of all of the people that I think probably should face consequences. I think he's pretty high up on the list. Now, of course, the process to get from point A to point B, the installment of Lindsey Halligan to Crystal's point to to get these charges, all of that, I totally understand.

45:25Emily Jashinsky:But Comey to me is one of these central figures that thrust us into this moment.

45:32Griffin:okay and the the politics too of though i i've consistently said that for for january 6th trump you know trump came at the system and he missed and the proper response to that is he should have gone down for that like you come at the system you come at everything and you miss basically trying to do a coup uh you you should go down for that the same you know i i could turn that logic around on Comey. And, you know, Comey came at the king and he missed. And so now he's going down for this. Now, when it comes to the doom spiral, I think this, there's no question that this further ratchets us closer to a political system that none of us want, where when you lose power, you go to jail.

46:23Griffin:And there are a lot of countries that have systems like that. And prime ministers and lawmakers know that being in politics means that you're going to go to prison sometimes when you're out of power. And that creates that that is extraordinarily corrosive to this to civic life. And it ends up consolidating authoritarianism, undermining democratic norms and making it much more of a zero sum game, which then perhaps ironically, like increases a lot of corruption. because as authoritarianism consolidates, it doesn't matter whether you're breaking laws or not. The only thing that matters is whether you're close to the king, close to the current leader.

47:09Griffin:And so if you're going to jail anyway, then people just start breaking laws wildly and getting involved in all sorts of illegal activity.

47:17Ryan Grim:This is an important point, Ryan, because, listen, we had multiple. We had the John Durham investigation. He recommended no charges against Comey, right? There's a difference between bad behavior and things that are criminal and illegal is number one. Number two, I mean, if the charges were legitimate, he wouldn't have had to like fire his push out his own handpicked person in order to secure some sort of a charge, which, again, is almost certainly going to get immediately thrown out in court. You wouldn't have had to bring in this lady who was like a pageant queen and insurance lawyers never prosecuted a case before.

47:52Ryan Grim:Or you wouldn't have had to publicly threaten your own attorney general in order to secure these charges. So, Ryan, I think your point, you know, January 6th and Comey, whatever, like it's very intellectual. It's very high minded. But it also ignores the fact that, like, it's not just Comey. OK, it's Letitia James. It's Adam Schiff. It's Lisa Cook. It is using the whole of government to go after the media, to go after law firms, to go after universities. Now we've got the entire Democratic Party designated as a terror organization. I mean, guys, when we zoom in too close on these details and start fighting about what Comey said in testimony, Andrew McCabe contradicted him, blah, blah, blah.

48:32Ryan Grim:We miss the fucking forest for the trees because the authoritarian consolidation of power has been so rapid and so extraordinary. And we're living through it in real time in these past couple of weeks. So I find it a little beside the point to argue about what Jim Comey did in fucking 2016. Yeah.

48:50Griffin:But also, since that's what the indictment is, the IG looked into this and found that there's no evidence that Comey actually authorized McCabe to leak. Well, that's that's that McCabe did it on his own and informed Comey later, allegedly informed Comey later. So I but I agree that when you're arguing about the details, when the details are not actually like they're going after Comey because Comey went after him. Like, that's it.

49:14Ryan Grim:And if it wasn't this, they'd pull up his mortgage applications or his tax filings or whatever. Like, let's not be Pollyanna about what's going on here, guys.

49:24Emily Jashinsky:So the point that Ryan was making about how going thrusting us further down the pattern of tit for tat retaliation actually can consolidate authoritarian power grabs. That is my argument to people on the right who are like my friends who are absolutely have this bloodlust. Some of them, people were like unfairly targeted and all that during this type of investigation. And Trump won. That's my argument to that. So like it's not as though I'm a proponent of doom spiral politics. On the other hand, it's just really hard for me to think of a way for people who are in the FBI or the CIA who have abused their positions and put us in this position.

50:10Emily Jashinsky:I really, really think that's true without the Russia collusion investigation against Donald Trump. I don't know what his first presidency would have looked like. My assumption is that it wouldn't have been.

50:24Ryan Grim:There would not have been a first presidency because he would not have gotten elected if Jim Comey didn't come out and do his whole multiple press conference thing. So he should be.

50:33Saagar Enjeti:You shouldn't be thanking him. Yeah. Why is he so mad at him?

50:37Emily Jashinsky:Comey. Well, because he tried. I mean, and then Trump had in his interim period had all of these bullshit lawsuits thrown at him. So I like this to me, like, I get it. I, I, I get it. I just think it's hard for me to imagine Republicans being in this position and not trying to dish out some of what Trump got in the interim period. And the question to that.

51:04Saagar Enjeti:Yeah. Yeah. Like, so, like, let's say Democrats.

51:07Ryan Grim:He he could. He tried to coup the government and he got to run for office again. Democrats didn't even get around like appointing someone to look into it like he you know. So I'm sorry. Like, it's not equivalent whatsoever. Trump tried to steal an election. He ginned up his supporters to storm the Capitol on January 6th. He put together fake slates of electors to try to undermine the whole thing. And then, you know, there was there was genuine there there with the classified documents that were stored in his bathroom, for example. It's not like this was completely invented. So, you know, we can debate the details, but I don't think that.

51:48Ryan Grim:And here's the other thing why I have no patience for this argument is Republicans were, oh, we're going to end the weaponization. There's a whole like task force against weaponization and, oh, we're going to be free speech. And then it's like, no, actually, we didn't mean any of that shit. Stephen Miller's in charge. Trump is going to threaten Bondi until he basically all of his political opponents are threatened with jail. The entire Democratic Party is going to be classified as a terror organization. If you have any sort of left leaning views, we're going to call you a terrorist. We're going to deport people based on writing essays and op eds like this is not, you know, it's first of all, it's not remotely equivalent to what was done in the past.

52:27Ryan Grim:And second of all, like there is no principle here that is justifiable outside of Trump consolidating power and weaponizing the government and trying to secure a total and complete victory over his political opponents. And that's the language they use. Like they think that they totally that's what they're going for. And there's a chance they succeed, too, by the way, which is why, you know, I think people should be paying attention to what is unfolding, not just with these cases, which is an extraordinary development, but with the universities, with the law firms, with the media, with the, you know, the labeling of vast swaths of Americans as domestic terrorists with the ice crackdown of, you know, I just read this morning, the 79 year old business owner who had was thrown to the.

53:12Ryan Grim:American citizen thrown to the ground, ribs cracked because ICE wanted to go after a few of his employees. Like what is this is this is a horror and it's rolling out at a increasingly rapid pace. People need to wrap their heads around where we are right now.

53:28Saagar Enjeti:So I agree with much of that. If the I'll let you go in a second. But just a question, because I agree with what Crystal is saying, but like maybe this is a stupid question. But let's say Democrats win power. They win 2028. should they not prosecute people like Tom Homan for taking that 50k bribe from the FBI? Criminals should be prosecuted.

53:47Ryan Grim:But that's the thing is like these are fake charges. If Comey did something criminal, you don't think John Durham would have recommended charges against him?

53:53Emily Jashinsky:There is a newly released FBI memo that says Comey also used Richmond. So this is this guy he hired as a liaison to the media on several occasions. Richmond spoke with the media without consultation with FBI or DOJ's offices of public affairs. Like there's there is pretty. But even

54:08Griffin:But even that didn't wind up in this indictment, which shows you how flimsy that is.

54:14Emily Jashinsky:Right. It's not going to be. It doesn't meet the legal threshold. I'm just saying, I think it's pretty obvious that Comey did lie to Congress. Do I think they're actually going to get a perjury conviction? No, I don't.

54:22Ryan Grim:Cash Patel lied to Congress like yesterday. I mean, in a provable way. A hundred percent. They don't have credibility.

54:31Emily Jashinsky:It's not like they have sterling credibility to say, to your point, that they're ending the weaponization of government. That is absolutely not true. It's just frustrating from my perspective because there was so much that set the stage for this moment. And I'm a like throw all the bums out type of person. I think probably all of us are. Like Crystal just said, criminals should be convicted. I agree with that. And the Trump administration, if they were really ending the weaponization of government, would go after people on the right who weaponized the government and would go after people on the right who were abusing power and they wouldn't be doing it themselves.

55:07Emily Jashinsky:Completely agree with that. It's what terrifies me about this moment in politics. So I don't disagree with any of that. And it's not only that.

55:13Ryan Grim:It's not only the prosecution of political enemies. It's also the pardoning of all of the January Sixers, for example, of all of these white collar criminals, of all these crypto fraudsters who are just directly bribing the Trump administration in order to get their charges dropped or their investigations dropped or whatever. So, I mean, this is the system we have now. It's not it's completely overt. And just to quickly go back to Griffin's point about like the midterms in 2028, I don't know why people are so confident that we're going to have anything approaching like meaning. And here's I sketch out the scenario before, and I think this is the direction we're heading.

55:54Ryan Grim:Let's say Democrats, you know, are able to overcome the gerrymandering, whatever else is thrown at them. They win the House in the midterms. You think Trump's going to accept those election results? I mean, what is going to happen? Go ahead, Ryan.

56:08Griffin:The reason I think he would is because I think Republicans would actually feel like they're better off with Democrats and control the House so that he can blame them for things. He's not going to want them

56:21Ryan Grim:to have like subpoena power or whatever. I mean, it seems pretty clear that he does not want them to take power in midterms.

56:25Griffin:They're going to ignore the subpoenas. There is no subpoena power anymore.

56:29Ryan Grim:Yeah, exactly.

56:32Griffin:His federal agents won't enforce the subpoenas. People ask me why I don't support Trump.

56:39Emily Jashinsky:And this is maybe one of the biggest concerns. There are obviously many and there are also obviously things we could talk about. But like this is what happened. We think about January 6th. But what happened after the election in 2020, after November 2022, January 6th, was completely reckless. and was something that thrust us even further down the doom spiral. And it was, I think, horrifying. So I think the right underestimates the extent to which Donald Trump will continue playing with fire. That's actually how Ben Sasse phrased it after January 6th, that Trump had been playing with fire. Completely agree with it.

57:16Emily Jashinsky:I think people on the right underestimate the extent to which that's happening or that could happen again. So I share a lot of these concerns. I get it. I just like it. I don't know if. The Democratic Party fully appreciates the extent to which and I think sometimes is a problem with the media, the extent to which, for example, with the January Sixers, like there were people who had their homes raided by the FBI who did were not even in the vicinity of going into the Capitol on January 6th. Like the FBI was weaponized and some people who didn't do anything wrong were caught up in that process.

57:55Emily Jashinsky:So that set the stage for Trump to come in and hit back. So if I were like Griffin's question is such an interesting one, because if I were a Democrat who was worried about weaponization of government going into another Democratic presidency or Democratic midterm, then the question is, well, our base is really going to want Tom Homan, for example, to be prosecuted. and we need to get out of the doom spiral. Like Chris Murphy is talking about this. He's saying we have to fight fire with fire. That clip of him, that is exactly what even like mainstream Republicans were talking like in 2023 before Trump won again.

58:31Emily Jashinsky:That could have been, I actually thought about as an experiment clipping that or posting the transcript of that on X and be like, who said this, Ted Cruz or Chris Murphy? Because it was so similar. So I don't have a good answer to how we get out of this. But it's also, I think, to some extent, people like Chris Murphy, Adam Schiff, James Comey have to take responsibility for their role in it. Not a fan of cooking up charges. I do think James Comey lied to Congress. So that's sort of where I land on this right now.

59:01Ryan Grim:All right. And Ryan, one last thing on the midterms piece. I mean, what you're sketching out is effectively another path to just like the elections not really existing. You're just like, yeah, they'll let the Democrats take their seats, but then they just won't get to do anything. And they'll just be like, you know, so it's the same thing. Now, I still think there is a very strong chance because he's rhetorically setting up that he just denies the election results that they, you know, they have consolidated like the courts. The Supreme Court goes along with whatever they want, that they'll gin up some mail when ballots were fake and there's no way Democrats could win.

59:37Ryan Grim:and they're providing material support to whatever, they'll come up with something and then have their own separate, you know, Republicans who they claim one that they basically just pretend like this is the House majority and these are the rightful members of Congress. And, you know, if that happens and you've got some significant portion of some 35 percent or whatever the country that believes that, you know, I I don't know. I don't know what happens then, but it is absolutely possible that they do allow Democrats to take their seats and then they just literally have zero power. So it is as if it doesn't matter what who people voted for and what they want to see.

1:00:14And the one reason I the only reason I feel like they might try to hold on to power in the House is so that they can control certification of the election in January of 2029.

1:00:30Griffin:Yeah. But. I don't I think. So it's it's a trade off for them, I think. They have to factor in what's more important. So we're going to keep moving. We're cooking.

1:00:42Emily Jashinsky:We all agree.

1:00:43Saagar Enjeti:So Emily thinks that line of Congress is a crime. And then Ryan and Crystal believe it's too it's it's too flimsy. I think we can all agree that Donald Trump has just created a million James Comeys. Let's let's move on. We got to get this in the public half. Speaking of playing with fire, the military playboy, Pete Hegseth, is calling a summit of all the top generals and admirals around the world for an unspecified meeting that is causing anxiety among the top ranks of the military. He's pulling everyone into Virginia for a big announcement. What are we to make of this?

1:01:22Ryan Grim:Yeah, anybody got any guesses here? What's going on?

1:01:25Griffin:I got no reporting on this.

1:01:27Ryan Grim:This is weird. Probably the weirdest thing about it is that it's so public. Like the Washington Post got a hold of this story. They were the ones that broke it. Right. And then they reached out to the Pentagon for comment. You know, news organizations will typically like if they can be shown a justifiable national security concern from publishing information, they will withhold. And the Pentagon was like, yeah, no, no comment. Go ahead. So that's what's really weird about it, because, you know, having the whole world, including your adversaries, know that you have all of your top military leadership consolidated in this one particular location is an expert here, but doesn't seem like the greatest idea.

1:02:08Ryan Grim:But, you know, who am I to judge, I guess?

1:02:12Saagar Enjeti:In The Dark Knight Rises, they put all of the cops in the subway tunnels and then Bane traps them in there. So maybe it's a similar situation like this. I don't know, like Hegseth seems to really like the camera. He's been making lots of to-camera videos. And so is this just like going to be a big speech about how much he loves his war fighters? Or is this prep for some Iran war? I don't know. Emily or Ryan, what do you make of this?

1:02:37Emily Jashinsky:Well, I would be more concerned, to be quite honest, about Latin America or Mexico, because there have been a lot of rumblings of agitation in that sphere. And we've obviously already seen three boat strikes. We've seen there was a story that leaked a couple of weeks ago that there were people, I think it was in the DEA, that were agitating for more military involvement in Mexico, like basically full military involvement in Mexico. And it was the Pentagon, people at the Pentagon who shut it down and were like, this is not a good idea. But that that honestly is more concerning to me than anything in the Middle East or China.

1:03:17Emily Jashinsky:Maybe I'll be proven wrong, but I could see this being maybe like a full a meeting to like fully declare with the symbolism of the military behind any announcement that this is the regime change of Maduro or whatever. That's just – but everyone I talk to has absolutely no idea what's happening and is, like, concerned that there's something on the horizon. It could be some type of, like, LARP, obviously. Like, hey, here we are. We're making a show of force. But, you know, obviously we can't rule anything out. So a lot of talk about Middle East, a lot of talk potentially about China. But I feel like people are underestimating whether this could be something in Latin America, too.

1:04:01Ryan Grim:I mean, if I had to guess, it's, you know, they've talked a lot about they need to reduce the ranks of generals. If I had to guess, there's some sort of a major like leadership reorg thing going on. Does seem like something you could maybe accomplish over Zoom or Signal since they're partial to Signal. Trump is, I saw one report that Trump is supposed to join virtually. So he's supposed to participate as well. So I don't know. It's, you know, the things I read were like, this is not just unusual. It's unprecedented. You're talking about like some 800 people. You're talking about all of the top brass who have been summoned to this one location.

1:04:43Ryan Grim:And also that they're cool with it being known publicly is, I don't know, is just, it's interesting. So something to certainly keep an eye on.

1:04:53Emily Jashinsky:I didn't know the Trump part of it, but that tells me this is probably not related to a military, like a conflict. That sounds more like a big HR conflict. Yeah, yeah.

1:05:09Griffin:They're going to do trust falls and a ropes course.

1:05:12Ryan Grim:That's what they're going to do. Right.

1:05:13Griffin:You don't organize and plot regime change or efforts or invasions even with like hundreds of people. source who had some insight into it tells me it's quote it's probably something really mundane and stupid i wouldn't be surprised if it's just a big last minute trump photo op no uh it's just not you wouldn't this isn't this isn't how you do a coup or an invasion or a regime change i could

1:05:43Ryan Grim:imagine it being like trump like i want to see all my generals get all my pete get all my generals together. I want to see what they look like. You know, like some dumb Trump ego bullshit. That probably is a pretty good guess, Ryan.

1:05:56Griffin:Yeah, he wants to see how many women there are and get rid of them because they don't fit the stereotype that he likes of his top brass.

1:06:05Emily Jashinsky:I don't know. I mean, yeah, if I had to guess, same as Crystal, that's what I would put it as. But it's just odd to me that nobody knows what's going on in D.C. That's unusual. So

1:06:17Saagar Enjeti:if it were a war with Mexico, like Ryan, what would that even look like? It would be a war with Venezuela. Venezuela. Yeah. So like, is that just like us doing like more drone strikes? Would we be deploying people into Venezuela?

1:06:32Griffin:I think that they would just bomb Maduro the same way that Netanyahu bombed Nasrallah and bombed Hania and bombed the Hamas offices in Doha. There's a new meta.

1:06:47Emily Jashinsky:or Panama okay well I guess

1:06:51Saagar Enjeti:I don't think they can do a Panama

1:06:52Griffin:Panama they went in with overwhelming force and you know dragged Noriega out what was that one Operation Just Cause that sounds right Operation Go Get Our CIA asset like literally Noriega was a CIA asset for decades for George H.W.

1:07:15Emily Jashinsky:Bush

1:07:15Griffin:Yeah, for the guy that took him out. But you can't do that in Venezuela. Like it would take six figure plus troop deployments. Like that's just not happening.

1:07:30Saagar Enjeti:All right. Well, I guess we're all hoping and praying for a LARP at this meeting and then we'll just see what goes on from there. I did want to pull up this story about ICE. We've got it here from Democracy Now!, but it's been reported quite a lot of places. that about two-thirds of the detainees at Alligator Alcatraz have completely disappeared. They're not able to find records of these people, where they went from here, which is leading a lot of people to ask the question, are these just kind of like official U.S. black sites now?

1:08:08Ryan Grim:I mean, I think you have to say yes at the moment, since they literally just disappeared, these 1 ,200 people. I mean, their family and friends, their lawyers, nobody can locate them. So they were originally at this facility in horrific conditions. Then they get moved, and, you know, they're nowhere to be found. So, yeah, I mean, literally, they're just disappeared. And, you know, we already had very little info about who was sent to this facility. Of course, as always, we were told it's the worst of the worst. The little bit of information the media could get was that that was not remotely true.

1:08:40Ryan Grim:You know, these were many of them had had no criminal interactions with the law, etc. So it's it's very disturbing and that the government could just like disappear these people. And it's barely a blip.

1:08:57Saagar Enjeti:Emily, what do you make of it? Do you think that they got put on planes and just didn't get reported? Or what do you think is going on here?

1:09:03Emily Jashinsky:You know, I think that's probably the case for some of them. I don't know how many of them, but I think any time – and this is why the seat cut stuff was actually really disturbing because it was – you sort of push the limits, push the limits, push the limits of what you can get away with when it comes to non-citizens. and end up in crowded news cycles with a bunch of missing detainees. They weren't letting journalists into alligator Alcatraz. And that kind of thing is, like, I can't just chalk it up to that. I think that is probably what happened because sometimes these cases are genuinely difficult to track.

1:09:45Emily Jashinsky:I don't know what proportion of them that's the case for versus what the proportion of people are in random African countries. like what Eswatini, that's the Kilmora-Brego-Garcia country. So I don't know. And I think people should care that we don't know. I don't think it's like a non-issue that we don't know just because they're non-citizens because, you know, that's what I've said to, again, some people who are fine with the Ramesa-Ozturk stuff or even the Mahmoud Khalil stuff. It's that when you are broadening these definitions as it relates to non-citizens, that can set the stage for the targeting of citizens.

1:10:20Emily Jashinsky:Because if it's anti-Semitic or material support for terrorism, for example, when a non-citizen does it, well, why is it not material support for terrorism when a citizen writes an op-ed? You know, there are like the process matters a lot.

1:10:36Ryan Grim:Right. Yeah. And, you know, that's increasingly been the asserted view of the administration is those sorts of things do constitute material support for terrorism. And then, you know, since we don't actually know all of who was in Alligator Alcatraz, like, I think likely these were all undocumented migrants, but we don't actually know that for sure. And we do know that American citizens have been caught up in ICE raids and detained for a certain amount of time. So, you know, even if you don't care if which you should, but even if you don't care that migrants are, you know, disappeared by our government and without a trace, there is nothing that prohibits.

1:11:14Ryan Grim:There's no limiting principle here on what they're able to do, which was the same thing we said when, you know, people were shipped off to Seacott with no due process. Like the whole point of no due process is there would be no chance to say, hey, I'm an American citizen. I don't deserve to be deported. Like this is illegal. Which happened. Yeah. Yeah. When you completely skip over any sort of due process, any sort of transparency, even at the most base level of like, hey, family, your brother, dad, uncle, whoever has now been moved to this location. then you open up a Pandora's box of endless potential government abuse and horror.

1:11:56Ryan Grim:And I think that's what's extremely, you know, disconcerting about what we're seeing here.

1:12:02Emily Jashinsky:Yeah, and what Griffin referenced was a Miami Herald report from the 16th. So go ahead, Ren.

1:12:07Griffin:Yeah, that's right. One of the original, and Emily can testify to this, one of the original radicalizing narratives from the right in the 2000s was that the government was going to build a bunch of FEMA camps and just round people up and keep them in it. and now we literally have fema camps yeah alex jones where are you at brother yeah come on man that's a great something about these fema cut fema too busy doing like a hitler

1:12:30Saagar Enjeti:mustache is what i saw him do yesterday i don't know if anyone else caught he's been very busy he's busy yeah busy um it is wild like not to not to harp on alex jones here but come on like your

1:12:42Ryan Grim:whole thing was like oh my god they're gonna surveil us and now we got palantir you know know, the FEMA camps thing, it's like happening and he has nothing to say about it. He's too busy, you know, owning the libs, I guess is his job now on behalf of the regime. This should be his moment. He's the guy doing it. Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

1:13:00Griffin:He was warning that he was going to do it, actually.

1:13:03Ryan Grim:Right.

1:13:04Griffin:That's what it is. We misunderstood.

1:13:09Ryan Grim:Alex Jones, often misunderstood fellow, actually. Yes.

1:13:13Saagar Enjeti:Well, I think that will leave it for us here on the public half. We're going to talk more about ice, the ice shooter and J.D. Vance calling attacks on ice blood libel, as well as a few other stories we might get into. Freddie DeBoer. Yeah, we'll do some Freddie DeBoer. We've got an article about the extreme acts of public violence is, I believe, what he calls them. Spectacular.

1:13:37Emily Jashinsky:Spectacular. Spectacular.

1:13:39Saagar Enjeti:Razzle dazzle. And then we're going to talk about maybe a little Peter Thiel Antichrist sweet in the second half. And then we'll do some AMA questions. Folks, if you want to see the second half of this show, go to breakingpoints.com. Link is in the video description. You can sign up for a membership, get access to that, as well as access to answer asking any of us questions in the weekly AMAs. So we will see you all there.

1:14:04Emily Jashinsky:In the second half of the show, I will be arresting Crystal for weaponization purposes.

1:14:09Ryan Grim:That's right.

1:14:09Emily Jashinsky:Citizens arrest.

1:14:11Ryan Grim:I mean, I get it. We have to stop the doom loop or whatever. We have to stop it. If I have to be the person who stops the doom loop.

1:14:20Emily Jashinsky:It's a fine line and it happens to be crystal ball. That's right.

1:14:24Saagar Enjeti:That's right, folks. Okay. We'll see you there on the other half, arrested or not. Bye. Summer is here, which means we all want to look and feel our best. A GLP-1 may be right for you. Visit orderlymeds.com to learn more about which GLP-1 you could be eligible for. Getting started is fast, easy, and happens virtually through telemedicine from licensed professionals. Check it out for yourself. Go to orderlymeds.com slash podcast. That's orderlymeds.com slash podcast. Taking care of yourself feels great. Compat and medications are not FDA approved. Eligibility required and determined by a licensed provider.

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