9/30/25: Trump Bibi Gaza Deal, Gov Shutdown Imminent, Epstein Brokered Israel Security Deal, Pro Israel War To Replace Kirk

15:56Saagar Enjeti:And let's keep in mind the Israeli context. Let's put A5, please, up here on the screen. Member of the Israeli government, you know, finance minister Smotris, quote, set red lines for a ceasefire before Bibi's visit to the United States. Hamas withdrawal, no Palestinian state. He also confirmed his red lines include the IDF remaining in certain perimeter areas of the Gaza Strip and a, quote, complete disarmament and withdrawal of Hamas. Many of the withdrawal things that were allegedly agreed to here by Bibi Netanyahu would fly in the face of Smotrich. And in fact, news breaking overnight out of Israel that they are not even going to bring this for government approval.

16:34Saagar Enjeti:Amit Sehgal, a pro-Israeli journalist in Israel, he says in an attempt to keep Smotrich and Ben-Gavir, the government will not vote on the Trump plan. In an agreement with the Americans, it was decided that it will be brought for government approval. Only the hostage deal itself, which is the withdrawal and release of the Palestinian prisoners in exchange for the hostages, the Religious Zionism Party clarified yesterday they would leave the coalition if that plan were brought for government approval. So that is actually the sticking point is whether the Israeli government coalition itself can even stand under this alleged peace deal, not to mention Hamas.

17:11Saagar Enjeti:And we're going to get Jeremy Scahill's update here in a little bit.

17:13Jeremy Scahill:Yeah, well, from the Israeli side, you know, the big sticking point for the, you know, Smotrich and Ben-Gavir people is that it doesn't contemplate Jewish resettlement of Gaza. And that's what they've been dreaming of. They've been having conferences. They've been asserting this is going to happen. That's what they want. And so this plan doesn't explicitly at least contemplate that occurring. So that's the big problem for them. not to mention they just you know they enjoy continuing the the suffering as does most of the country for that matter they're just to to flesh out this deal and what what it really actually means I mean number one as you pointed out Sagar not only do you have Netanyahu out there just saying look there's not going to be a Palestinian state there is no even contemplation of a path to a Palestinian state contained anywhere in this deal so what you're signing up for is endless continued subjugation by, you know, it's no longer directly Israel, but it's Israel's proxies.

18:09Jeremy Scahill:The U.S. and Tony Blair, weirdly, neocon, war criminal from the Iraq war days, put in charge of this thing. You have a requirement that everybody lay down arms, that there's complete demilitarization, which means any sort of armed resistance and struggle is basically like, you know, the intention is to push that off the table. You know, Now, on the other hand, like you said, Sagar, look, the misery and the suffering is extreme, right? People want to be able just to live. They want to be able to eat. They don't want their children to starve to death. The one improvement of this plan versus the things that were being contemplated before is that they say, at least, no forced displacement of Palestinians.

18:50Jeremy Scahill:Even in that, though, there are question marks because, you know, if you put enough pressure on the population and make life miserable enough for them and then open up the border, then you are, you know, they may not be literally leaving at the barrel of the gun, but pretty much that's sort of what is occurring when you put that much pressure on a population. In addition, there's no guarantee that Israel can't just go right back in, reinvade, restart the genocide whenever they want to. So those are some of the big, I mean, sticking points is kind of to undersell some of the problems with this plan.

19:25Jeremy Scahill:I mean, we should be really clear. This is a plan that was crafted with Israel's interests and desires of Netanyahu in mind. That's what it is. Now, Hamas has previously accepted deals that contained a lot of things that were meant to be poison pills. And what's happened at that point is Netanyahu has gone back and inserted more provisions to make it even more unpalatable and make it impossible for Hamas leadership to be able to accept. I fully expect some sort of process like that similarly to ultimately play out here because of the coalitional problems that you are referencing. We can put up A6 on the screen, what Arab leaders throughout the region have said.

20:03Jeremy Scahill:Foreign ministers of Qatar, Jordan, UAE, Indonesia, Pakistan, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt have released the following statement in response to the Gaza plan. quote, the foreign ministers of those countries welcome President Trump's leadership and his sincere efforts to end the war in Gaza and assert their confidence in his ability to find a path to peace. So sort of like vague general endorsement of, you know, the fact that he is working on this. And then, you know, also just to the point of Netanyahu immediately trying to undercut this deal and make sure that it could never actually be brought to fruition.

20:35Jeremy Scahill:He immediately then goes and gives a Hebrew speech to the domestic Israeli audience, saying effectively that there is no intention of withdrawing Israeli troops from Gaza. He says, no way, quote, that's not happening. I'll read a little bit of a longer quote here that came from Dropsite. He said, this is a historic visit. Instead of Hamas isolating us, we turned the tables and isolated Hamas. Now the entire world, including the Arab and Muslim world, is pressuring Hamas to accept the terms we set together with President Trump to release all our hostages, both living and deceased, while the IDF remains in most of the strip.

21:08Jeremy Scahill:Who would have believed this? After all, people constantly say the IDF should withdraw. No way, that's not happening. So that is Netanyahu's interpretation, translation of this deal for his own Israeli domestic audience, Hager.

21:23Saagar Enjeti:Yeah, well, not a surprise. What have I said here a million times? Google Translate, it's your great friend in this war. And yet that is not something that people in the White House just generally seem to understand. or maybe they do. My personal favorite time of the press conference is when Trump said, maybe we shouldn't take any questions because things are developing. He said, Bibi, unless you want to take a question from a friendly Israeli journalist, and Bibi was like, oh, absolutely not. It's like Trump is unaware that Bibi doesn't do interviews with his own press corps.

21:54Jeremy Scahill:The last person he would want to take a question from is the Israeli press. Because they'd

21:58Saagar Enjeti:be like, hey, why did you take money from Qatar? What's up with their corruption trial? It's funny, If you go to the Israeli press, Times of Israel recently wrote a piece where it said, in rare Israeli interview, Bibi says X, Y, and Z. So inside Israel, everybody knows he doesn't talk.

22:15Jeremy Scahill:Bibi's like, are the Nelk boys here? Can I get a question from the Nelk boys?

22:19Saagar Enjeti:He's like, is Nelk in the building, please? Is TBD here? Yeah. He's like, Steini, is that you? Where are you? Are you somewhere out there in the audience? So yeah. They weren't, so no questions. Our press corps thinks he does take a lot of questions because he's always on Fox News. It's like the guy's literally on Fox News more than he is on his own Channel 13 in Israel. But hey, I guess that tells you a lot about him, doesn't it? All right, we have Jeremy.

22:43Jeremy Scahill:Tells you something about our press corps too.

22:45Saagar Enjeti:Yeah, that's certainly correct. So look, broadly, I think the deal's not bad considering how horrible things are in Gaza. I'm curious to see how Moss and all of them will handle it. But something that we talked about interestingly, I'm going to ask Jeremy about in the future, and he's talked with us in the past, is that Hamas itself has seen governance of Gaza as a problem. So they don't necessarily think giving that up is all that consequential. It's really going to be more about some of the future sticking points about amnesty. Can you really trust that they're going to give you amnesty, right?

23:18Saagar Enjeti:Like would you considering how the government has conducted itself for the civilian population, what this new coalitional authority? the Middle Eastern countries like Qatar, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, the UAE that would allegedly be footing the bill for a lot of this. Who else is going to be involved? I mean, these are the actually big questions. The war itself could be simple compared to what.

23:40Jeremy Scahill:And from an American perspective and from an American first perspective, this contemplates a lot of U.S. involvement. Yeah. It's like how exactly putting Trump in charge of the Gaza Strip. It's insane. With, you know, Tony Blair as his underling, like sort of running the day to day. I mean, it's it's that's a that is a wild thing. What you're what you're asking, not just from Hamas, but you're asking from the Palestinian people is like complete surrender is complete surrender. It is being taken over by the American president and his weird neocon lackey. It is, you know, giving up on any sort of armed resistance, giving up effectively on Palestinian statehood.

24:17Jeremy Scahill:I mean, that's not contemplated at all in this deal. You already have the Israelis saying, yeah, the IDF is going to stay in the Strip. We're not going anywhere. So, you know, that's the reality of what's being offered with this plan.

24:31Saagar Enjeti:That's true. And again, I don't begrudge those people if they want to take it considering what they've all been through. So with all of that, let's get to Jeremy Scahill. He's the expert. He's been working the phones and everything overnight. So let's get to him.

24:42Krystal Ball:Hi, this is Joe Winterstein, host of the Spirit Daughter podcast, where we talk about astrology, natal charts, and how to step into your most vibrant life. And I just sat down with a mini driver. The Irish traveler said when I was 16, you're going to have a terrible time with men. Actor, storyteller, and unapologetic Aquarian visionary. Aquarius is all about freedom loving and different perspectives. And I find a lot of people with strong placements in Aquarius are misunderstood. A sun and Venus in Aquarius in her seventh house spark her unconventional approach to partnership. He really has taught me to embrace people sleeping in different rooms, on different houses, in different places, but just an embracing of the is-ness of it all.

25:28Krystal Ball:If you're navigating your own transformation or just want a chart-side view into how a leading artist integrates astrology, creativity, and real life, this episode is a must-listen. Listen to the Spirit Daughter podcast starting on February 24th on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your podcasts. In 2023, a story gripped the UK, evoking horror and disbelief.

25:54Saagar Enjeti:A nurse who should have been in charge of caring for tiny babies is now the most prolific child killer in modern British history.

26:02Jeremy Scahill:Everyone thought they knew how it ended. A verdict, a villain, a nurse named Lucy Letby.

26:09Krystal Ball:Lucy Letby has been found guilty. But what if we didn't get the whole story?

26:14Jeremy Scahill:The moment you look at the whole picture, the case collapses.

26:17Krystal Ball:I'm Amanda Knox, and in the new podcast, Doubt, the case of Lucy Letby, we follow the evidence and hear from the people that lived it to ask what really happened when the world decided who Lucy Letby was. No voicing of any skepticism or doubt. It'll cause so much harm at every single level if the British establishment of this is wrong. Listen to Doubt, The Case of Lucy Letby on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Clayton Eckerd, and in 2022, I was the lead of ABC's The Bachelor. Unfortunately, it didn't go according to plan. He became the first Bachelor to ever have his final rose rejected.

27:01Krystal Ball:The internet turned on him. If I could press a button and rewind it all, I would. But what happened to Clayton after the show made even bigger headlines. It began as a one-night stand and ended in a courtroom with Clayton at the center of a very strange paternity scandal. The media is here. This case has gone viral. The dating contract.

27:22Jeremy Scahill:Agree to date me, but I'm also suing you. Police search warrant.

27:26Saagar Enjeti:This is unlike anything I've ever seen before.

27:30Krystal Ball:I'm Stephanie Young. This is Love Trapped. This season, an epic battle of he said, she said, and the search for accountability in a sea of lies. I have done nothing except get pregnant by the f***ing bachelor! Listen to Love Trapped on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

27:56Jeremy Scahill:To further break down this deal and especially to give us some of the perspective from the Palestinian side, we are joined by Jeremy Scahill, of course, co-founder of DropSite News. Great to see you, sir. Good to see you, man.

28:06Krystal Ball:Good to be with both of you.

28:07Jeremy Scahill:Yeah, of course. So just give us top line what you were hearing from Hamas and others in the factions over on the Palestinian side.

28:16Krystal Ball:Well, Hamas, you know, had not been given any of the details on this proposal. They were just reading what others were reading over the past week or 10 days, the leaks that happened in the Hebrew media. They weren't consulted at all about any terms of this. I mean, you had Jared Kushner, the president's son-in-law, Steve Whitcoff, Ron Dermer, who's Netanyahu's point man and top advisor, basically working on this. They then brought in some Arab and Muslim countries. And clearly you see some concessions, although a lot of it is sort of unenforceable, that were made to Arab and Muslim nations in order to get their buy-in.

28:50Krystal Ball:But there were no Palestinians whatsoever involved with the crafting of what Trump says is a enduring peace plan for the Palestinians. So the first reaction that I've heard from people associated with the Palestinian resistance is how can you announce a plan and not have consulted with any Palestinians? Now, while Hamas just now has formally been given this framework, they haven't officially taken a position on it yet. They say they're going to do some consultations, et cetera, and come back. But what I'm hearing behind the scenes from people in these Palestinian resistance factions is that they view this as a total farce, an attempt on the part of Trump and Israel to put an international stamp, a rubber stamp of legitimacy on what amounts to a long term Israeli subjugation plan for the Palestinians.

29:39Krystal Ball:In the details of this plan, if you read carefully, it links the issue of humanitarian aid and other life essentials to the demilitarization and surrender of Hamas. It also imposes on the Palestinians a foreign-led, essentially kind of viceroy. It seems likely it's going to be Tony Blair, which is quite ironic, bloody ironic, given his role in the invasion and occupation of Iraq. And I'm hearing comparisons of what Bush and the neocons did when they went into Iraq, where they imposed L. Paul Bremer, who cut his teeth working under Henry Kissinger, as the kind of viceroy of Iraq. So there are, you know, and I heard you guys were talking about this earlier, there are terms in this agreement that clearly were lifted from previous frameworks that Hamas had agreed to.

30:33Krystal Ball:The framework about aid and saying that it's going to be run by the United Nations and the Red Cross, the language about the Israelis are going to do a phased withdrawal, a significant number of Palestinians that are going to be freed in exchange for the Israeli captives. But the devil is in the details. On that issue of the captives, what it says is that within 72 hours, the Palestinian side has to release all Israelis living and dead, and only then will there be a release of Palestinian prisoners. It also contemplates a total demilitarization of Gaza. Set aside Hamas and Islamic Jihad for a second.

31:08Krystal Ball:What this is saying is that Palestinians must surrender any rights to defensive war against Israel. You know, these are still a people that under international law are under occupation. And so what this is saying is in return for ending the genocide, you have to bend the knee. That's how Palestinians are viewing this. The resistance on the Palestinian side is in a very complicated position right now. There's a lot of pressure coming from within Gaza for people who just can't take it anymore. I mean, they're being exterminated. They're being starved. So there is that level of desperation. At the same time, I think that there is a sense that if Hamas formally agrees to this as written, it amounts to a surrender of the Palestinian cause of liberation.

31:55Krystal Ball:And I think we're going to see again, Hamas try to come back and say, look, we agree to these things. We understand we're going to swallow some poison pills with this, but X, Y, and Z need to change. The last time they were doing that was the last time I was on this show. And while we were talking, Israel bombed the Hamas negotiators as they met to discuss a plan that Trump told them was going to be his final plan. So I'm hearing a lot of suspicion, a lot of critical feedback on this, but also a recognition that that that this may be the time, the last time that they have to make some sort of a deal.

32:30Krystal Ball:And finally, I'll just say, you can't get the Israeli captives freed unless you make an agreement with Hamas and Islamic Jihad. So if Netanyahu's plan is to say, we don't care about the 20 living Israeli captives and the 28 bodies of the others, then they move forward with this plan and say it doesn't matter what Hamas says. But Israeli society seems pretty clear that they want as many of those captives back living as possible. And if that's the case, you have to make an actual deal with Hamas.

32:55Saagar Enjeti:Yeah, it's so complicated, Jeremy. One of the things that we talked about earlier, I was watching Fox News to my own chagrin while this was all happening, and they kept speculating. They were like, well, why would Hamas agree to this? They would effectively have to give up power. Something that you really enlightened me on is that they don't necessarily want power after all of this, is that they view governance itself as a problem, but they also – it's intertwined, like you said earlier, to the very idea of Palestinian resistance. Could you break down how Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Hamas, and then generally the Palestinian population, the varying different crosscuts that are all feeding into whether they would agree to this deal?

33:34Krystal Ball:Look, if you look at public opinion polling, not just in Gaza, but across all of Palestine, the occupied West Bank, Jerusalem, Hamas remains a very popular political institution. Yes, its popularity has declined, but it remains a premier player in the life of Palestinian politics. And it was controversial when Hamas, which started as a Islamic resistance movement in the late 1980s, decided to get involved with electoral politics. And I've talked with members of Hamas who say that in retrospect, that was a mistake. But the fact is that Hamas has been the governing authority, for better or worse, over the last two decades in Gaza.

34:11Krystal Ball:And if there were democratic elections held tomorrow throughout Palestine, Hamas would fare pretty well in those elections. Palestinian Islamic Jihad has never gotten involved with any electoral politics organized under the framework of the Palestinian Authority. And they've always been a Palestinian resistance movement. What Hamas and Islamic Jihad have tried to do, though, over the course of really the past six months, but throughout the genocide, was to say we're not going to just unilaterally make decisions about what happens in a ceasefire agreement because it wouldn't be fair to the broader Palestinian society.

34:46Krystal Ball:And so they've tried to pull in as many Palestinian political groups and factions and leaders as possible, including those that are political opponents of Hamas prior to giving a response. So what I think we're going to see now is Hamas and Islamic Jihad try to gather together as many political factions from Palestine as possible to offer what is a unified response to this American and Israeli ultimatum. But at the end of the day, Hamas, the bombing of Hamas's headquarters in Qatar has created a real challenge for communication. Remember, the external leadership of Hamas can make whatever declarations they wish.

35:28Krystal Ball:They can sign whatever paper they wish. But if the commanders on the ground inside of Gaza from the Qassan Brigades or Soraya Al-Quds, the forces that are holding the Israeli captives, the forces that have the weapons inside of Gaza, if they don't sign off on this deal, then it's just a piece of paper with some signatures of people living in Doha, Egypt and Turkey. So at the end of the day, what the Israelis did in this strike was make it quite difficult for the Palestinian side to actually mobilize everyone to get a unified answer. It's going to happen. I'm told that they're using couriers. But I will say I've been told by several sources, Hamas leaders, and I don't know how much this has been reported.

36:08Krystal Ball:The Hamas leaders who survived those Israeli strikes are being held in conditions that they don't have regular access to phones. They don't have regular access to computers. Many of them are not allowed to meet with each other. It is extraordinarily difficult to communicate. And I'm someone who's been communicating as a journalist with Hamas for many, many months. It's very difficult right now to communicate with them. So that also has been an impact of this. And I think it was intentional.

36:37Jeremy Scahill:Yeah, I think that's a great point. Jeremy, can you speak, this relates to what you were just saying, to the issue of trust? You know, the deal is only as good as your faith that it's going to be executed according to the terms. There are no guarantees that Israel won't, you know, get their hostages back and then say, no, we're not giving you your captives that we've been holding. No, we're just going right back to the genocide, et cetera. So what is what is the sense there from the Palestinian side?

37:01Krystal Ball:Well, look, you don't even need to ask a Palestinian. Look what Benjamin Netanyahu did. He stands there next to Trump. He plays his role. He says, ah, yes, we've agreed to this plan. And then he goes and he records a video in Hebrew. And what he says essentially is we've managed to get an international stamp of legitimacy, including an Arab stamp of legitimacy on our agenda. No one thought that this was possible. And he even said in that statement, you know, people were saying, oh, Israel needs to withdraw from Gaza. And that's not going to happen. And in fact, if you look at the details of the agreement and you look at the maps that were produced by the Trump administration in rolling this thing out on Monday, the maps look very similar to what Israel has been insisting the whole time.

37:41Krystal Ball:It allows a total encirclement of Gaza. It keeps Israeli forces entrenched in that Philadelphia corridor along the border with Egypt. That always has been Gaza's only gateway to the outside world, not controlled by Israel. And it says that their forces are going to remain there until standards set by Trump for deployment of an international force are met, which raises another issue. First of all, is Israel even going to agree to allow foreign troops from Arab nations or Muslim nations to deploy inside of Gaza? That's a question, even though that it's in the agreement. But secondly, are those Arab forces, do they think that they're going to disarm Palestinian resistance groups?

38:23Krystal Ball:I mean, you're going to have what Emirati troops, you know, Qatari troops, Jordanian, they're going to go and somehow disarm Qassan brigades if the Palestinians are saying, no, we won't give up our right to bear arms against Israeli occupation. This thing is riddled with so many landmines and the great beneficiary of this, no matter what Trump friendly media outlets are saying or Barack Ravid reports about how Netanyahu was dragged into this kicking and screaming. Netanyahu benefits from this tremendously because Trump has gotten all these Arab nations to bend the knee. They're putting the stamp of legitimacy on it.

38:58Krystal Ball:They threw a few chits to the Arab and Muslim countries and said, oh, yeah, we'll put some language in about eventual self-determination and statehood. But at the end of the day, there's no enforcement mechanism, Crystal. That's the question that you're asking. And that's what I'm hearing from Palestinian negotiators who are going to have to deal with this thing, is this is wrapped up with the veneer of legitimacy, but the devil is in the details, and the details look very, very favorable to Israel being able to continue the genocide, which Netanyahu and Trump both said they will if Hamas doesn't surrender.

39:28Saagar Enjeti:Right. And so what I was also what I pointed out in our segment, Jeremy, was not only no Palestinian statehood mentioned, but also no annexation of, you know, that was mentioned as well. Trump has independently said, I will not allow Israel to annex the West Bank and or Gaza. But that was not present in the details. He also has his own coalition at home to worry about drop site. We read on the show, posted some Netanyahu's comments in Hebrew, which were very different, about Israeli withdrawal. Given all of that, though, considering the sentiment inside of Gaza and now how these Palestinian negotiators are seeing things, are they seeing it as even having the ability to give a counterproposal and buy some time?

40:12Saagar Enjeti:or considering how things have gone when they say within 72 hours? Are they just seeing this as basically, like you said, something wrapped in legitimacy that allows them to continue the war? What's their initial impression?

40:25Krystal Ball:It's a great question, and it's tough to know. I mean, again, the last time they were supposedly reviewing a proposal, there was an attempt to assassinate all of them. In previous rounds, yes, Hamas has been able, through the mediators from Qatar and Egypt, to give feedback than the Israelis come. And I have to say that at times, you know, Whitcoff and Trump and others have sort of said to Israel, you should take two steps toward the Palestinian position on this issue or that issue. Now, typically, they're just hardlining it, saying, you know, you must accept Israel's conditions. But that's a real question.

40:55Krystal Ball:Qatar announced because of this sort of apology from Netanyahu yesterday made from the White House that it was going to reenter the fray as a mediator. And Qatar and Egypt and Turkey now is getting involved, are holding consultative meetings. They say they're going to talk with Hamas. I don't think Hamas is just going to accept this as written. I think they're going to ask some clarifying questions and they're going to propose some amendments. All of the Hamas officials that have been permitted by Qatar to speak in recent days, and especially last night, were indicating that they have a very negative view of this, that they feel like this strips Palestinians of their right to self-determination.

41:35Krystal Ball:The question is, you know, is the response going to be to try to kill them all again? Or is there going to be an actual negotiation? If there isn't an actual negotiation, Netanyahu is sentencing those 20 living Israeli captives to death, almost certainly.

41:47Jeremy Scahill:Do you think that Israel and the U.S. want Hamas to accept this deal? Or do you think that they're sort of hoping that they've created enough poison pills in there under the veneer of legitimacy? so that when Hamas doesn't come back and say, we've got issues with X, Y, and Z, they can say, oh, we can't negotiate with them. We've just got to continue. We have no choice.

42:07Krystal Ball:Netanyahu absolutely wants Hamas to reject this so that he then says, well, the US tried, all the Arab countries did it. Hamas wouldn't listen to any of them. We have no choice but to go ahead and do that. I think that's pretty clear that that's what Netanyahu wants. Trump is a little bit different. Remember, there's domestic politics at play here too. And some of this has really become very accentuated since the assassination of Charlie Kirk. Trump is facing a base within his MAGA movement that is starting to become very hostile toward the U.S. position on Israel. And I think Trump also sees huge dollar signs.

42:42Krystal Ball:You know, there was a moment during this public, you know, statement with Netanyahu on Monday at the White House, you know, Trump kept referring to Ron Dermer and talking to Trump gave this really false history of how Israel gave Gaza to the Palestinians, but he kept saying they gave up what is the most beautiful real estate in the entire Middle East. And in this plan, you have a neoliberal economic vision for development in Gaza. You had Jared Kushner, who is bankrolled to the tune of billions of dollars now in the private sector by Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the UAE. The Trump family stands to benefit tremendously financially from pushing through a privatization agenda in Gaza.

43:23Krystal Ball:And so I think that there may be a difference. Say that again.

43:26Jeremy Scahill:I said in Wyckoff as well.

43:28Krystal Ball:And yeah, I mean, so these guys, I think, are also looking at it as like, OK, Trump didn't exactly do his Middle East Riviera that he threatened in February. But I think he sees a path to it through Jared Kushner and other friends of his where they're going to cash in on this. And it's no coincidence that they say, oh, Tony Blair is going to be, you know, a major player in this. Blair has spent his entire life since leaving office as the British prime minister, getting bankrolled for peddling his influence by dictators and despots around the world. And so this whole thing, I think, is becoming Gaza incorporated for Trump and his inner circle.

44:05Krystal Ball:So it might be a case where Netanyahu wants Hamas to reject it, where Trump legitimately wants to find a way to achieve through diplomatic means what Israel failed to achieve militarily because they didn't actually defeat Hamas on the battlefield. Right.

44:19Saagar Enjeti:Yeah. And that's the last thing here. You said that they were effectively sentencing the hostages to death. I'm curious, why do you see such finality? We've seen, I mean, Trump from the first day he took office, released the hostages or else in 48 hours, nothing happens. I will back Israel to the full hilt. It's like, well, you already are. So what does that even mean? All hell will break loose. Like if they militarily could do more to Gaza, they would, but they just can't. And so, you know, Jeremy, why do you see it as this is the final straw and not just another step in whatever the future negotiation will be?

44:55Krystal Ball:What I'm saying is that if the United States and Israel decide, okay, Hamas is rejecting this deal, but we're going to move forward with this plan, and they go in and they try to deploy international forces, and then you have sort of simultaneous operators where you have some international forces in areas that Israel has relinquished control to an Arab or international force, if that even happens. But then you have Israel continuing to do its operations. And what I'm saying is, if they've decided that they're done with trying to negotiate the release of the Israeli captives, and Netanyahu says, okay, we're going to just intensify military operations to try to retrieve these captives, I think it's very likely every single one of the living captives is going to be killed, either by Israel, many of them already have been killed by Israel, or when they attempt to take them, the Kassam Brigades have said they put mechanisms in place so that if Israel tries to rescue them from a tunnel or from an area where they are, that their captors could essentially kill them as Israel tries to raid it.

45:55Krystal Ball:So that's what I mean by it. I mean, I agree with your assessment that there's been all these threats and it just continues on and on. But I do think that this time, you know, it's Trump and Netanyahu are either going to just do full-blown massive invasion, as we're seeing in Gaza City, and expand it out, or they're going to try to move forward with aspects of this plan, whether or not Hamas agrees to it. And in that case, I think the hostages die.

46:20Jeremy Scahill:And do you think that Israel was sort of pushed towards this gambit by some of the international pressure that has increased recently?

46:27Krystal Ball:I think Trump was pushed into it by that. Not that he necessarily cares what Europe says or others. But again, Trump, remember, in May, Trump took that trip. We all were on this show talking about it to the Gulf. I think Trump legitimately sees massive dollar signs in his relationship with all of these Arab countries. And I think that he also is getting just fed up with having to deal with Israel's war. He realizes that they're not going to be able to win militarily on the battlefield. And so I think he's trying to do what is in the best interest of his family business, his friends business and politically in the United States.

47:04Krystal Ball:I think he recognizes that the Marjorie Taylor Greene, Tucker Carlson wing of that movement is gaining popularity, not losing it, and that this is becoming a problem politically for Trump among his own base.

47:18Jeremy Scahill:Yeah, I think that's obviously true. She's like a BB back at the White House again. I got to deal with this. Can't have this guy here every other week. All right, Jeremy, thank you so much, as always, for your in-depth reporting and, you know, great analysis. It's just absolutely invaluable.

47:34Krystal Ball:Thank you, Jeremy. Always a pleasure to come on with you guys. In 2023, a story gripped the UK, evoking horror and disbelief.

47:44Saagar Enjeti:The nurse who should have been in charge of caring for tiny babies is now the most prolific child killer in modern British history.

47:53Jeremy Scahill:Everyone thought they knew how it ended. A verdict? A villain. A nurse named Lucy Letby.

48:00Krystal Ball:Lucy Letby has been found guilty. But what if we didn't get the whole story?

48:05Jeremy Scahill:The moment you look at the whole picture, the case collapses.

48:08Krystal Ball:I'm Amanda Knox, and in the new podcast Doubt, the case of Lucy Letby, we follow the evidence and hear from the people that lived it to ask what really happened when the world decided who Lucy Letby was. No voicing of any skepticism or doubt. It'll cause so much harm at every single level if the British establishment of this is wrong. Listen to Doubt, the case of Lucy Letby on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, this is Jo Winterstein, host of the Spirit Daughter podcast, where we talk about astrology, natal charts, and how to step into your most vibrant life.

48:49Krystal Ball:And I just sat down with a mini driver. The Irish traveler said when I was 16, you're going to have a terrible time with men. Actor, storyteller, and unapologetic Aquarian visionary. Aquarius is all about freedom loving and different perspectives. and I find a lot of people with strong placements in Aquarius like are misunderstood. A sun and Venus in Aquarius in her seventh house spark her unconventional approach to partnership. He really has taught me to embrace people sleeping in different rooms, on different houses, in different places, but just an embracing of the is-ness of it all. If you're navigating your own transformation or just want a chart-side view into how a leading artist integrates astrology, creativity, and real life, This episode is a must listen.

49:36Krystal Ball:Listen to the Spirit Daughter podcast starting on February 24th on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your podcasts. I'm Clayton Eckerd, and in 2022, I was the lead of ABC's The Bachelor. Unfortunately, it didn't go according to plan. He became the first Bachelor to ever have his final rose rejected. The internet turned on him. If I could press a button and rewind it all, I would. But what happened to Clayton after the show made even bigger headlines. It began as a one-night stand and ended in a courtroom, with Clayton at the center of a very strange paternity scandal.

50:14Krystal Ball:The media is here. This case has gone viral. The dating contract.

50:18Jeremy Scahill:Agree to date me, but I'm also suing you.

50:21Krystal Ball:Police search warrant. This is unlike anything I've ever seen before. I'm Stephanie Young. This is Love Trapped. This season, an epic battle of he said, she said, and the search for accountability in a sea of lies. I have done nothing except get pregnant by the f***ing bachelor! Listen to Love Trapped on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

50:52Saagar Enjeti:Turning now to domestic politics. The government does shut down today at 11.59 p.m. Eastern time. No end in sight. Now, currently, it does look like that's where things are going. Of course, things could change. There was a high-stakes meeting at the White House immediately after Prime Minister Netanyahu left. The House Democratic majority leader and House Democratic leader, our Senate leader, Chuck Schumer, came to the White House for a, quote, negotiation where basically the Trump White House told them, give us whatever – give us what we want or you're going to shut down the government. The Democrats effectively said the same thing.

51:27Saagar Enjeti:Immediately afterwards, both sides kind of came to the microphone to lay out their view of whatever – of everything that's going on. Here was the Republican response from the vice president, J.D. Vance. Let's take a listen.

51:37Krystal Ball:We just had a very frank conversation with the Senate and House Democratic leadership. Look, the principle at stake here is very simple. We have disagreements about tax policy, but you don't shut the government down. We have disagreements about health care policy, but you don't shut the government down. You don't use your policy disagreements as leverage to not pay our troops, to not have essential services of government actually function. All right. So, yeah.

52:00Jeremy Scahill:Funny to hear Republicans take that position now. Everybody. Yeah.

52:04Saagar Enjeti:Everybody says it when they're in power. I don't even know what to say. I'm like, yeah, OK, whatever. That's what every executive has always said about a government shutdown and what the opposition has always said. That is precisely the point of actually using your leverage of power. But anyways, here was Chuck Schumer, what he had to say in terms of what he laid out. Let's take a listen.

52:23Krystal Ball:We laid out to the president some of the consequences of what's happening in health care. And by his face and by the way he looked, I think he heard about them for the first time. the closing of rural hospitals, the fact that so many clinics are closing. And I don't know if he knew this before, but the fact that people will pay$4 ,000 more a year, $400 more a month, close to$5 ,000 more a year on their health care premiums if we don't do anything. And people don't know what to do. The average working family can't afford that. I told him how I met a mother who was crying to me because her daughter had cancer.

53:04Krystal Ball:And what has happened with health care, with what they have done, she's going to watch her daughter suffer and maybe die. And so he seemed to, for the first time, understand the magnitude of this crisis. And we hope he'll talk to the Republican leaders and tell them we need bipartisan input on health care, on rescissions, into their bill. Their bill does not have these. They never talked to us. Thune didn't negotiate with me. Johnson didn't negotiate with Hakeem. And on the key issues, the Appropriations Committee, which has talked about three of the smaller bills, they're good bills. They said the appropriators couldn't agree and said, kick it up to the four leaders.

53:48Krystal Ball:They still haven't talked. So there you go.

53:50Saagar Enjeti:The Democrats are centering here on health care and some of the consequences of the one big, beautiful bill. But as we extensively discussed yesterday, they kind of backed their way into this. Basically, the base wants a shutdown. So they're going to shut down. So what they did is they poll tested their best messages and they said, this is what we're going to shut down the government about. And look, I mean, kind of smart. It's what the Republicans did in 2013 and elsewhere, and it does set up the stakes for some sort of high-stakes negotiations. The ultimate question, though, and that's where my money was, is will Chuck Schumer cave?

54:20Saagar Enjeti:And yesterday, he looked pretty close to caving. Let's put this up here on the screen just to give you all a little bit of a rundown of what happened. Initially, Chuck Schumer and his team came out and floated to the press that maybe what they would do is something called a 7 to 10 day CR. A CR is called a continuing resolution. What it would have done is continue to fund the government at the same levels for 7 to 10 days while they reach some sort of negotiation. However, immediately there was outrage from a lot of Democrats saying, oh my god, look, he's already caving. And so he came out and he said, actually, I won't support a seven-day, 10-day CR.

54:58Saagar Enjeti:He also bashed media speculation about that trial balloon, which he literally floated himself. But let's all just move past that a little bit. The point remains that the government's probably going to shut down as of right now. Again, we're recording this in the morning. Things certainly could change and they could cave. But that's where things are going. So now it becomes more of a question about the politics of it. As we laid out extensively, the Democratic base wants to shut down. They just want Trump to suffer. The Republican base also kind of wants to shut down. What the Trump administration is setting themselves up for is they're like, hey, great.

55:29Saagar Enjeti:Now we can just fire a ton of federal workers. They have total discretionary authority. They could probably figure out a way to keep ICE and the military going. They don't care, right, about government services and the rest. They're like, cool. This is actually what we want to do. We didn't even want it fun. The Department of Education. So it'd be kind of like a return to doge almost in the initial days of the administration. And so that is kind of what I think is going to be the base sticking point for a lot of the Democrats who are institutionally in power because, you know, they're addicted to norms and to institutions and to bureaucrats.

55:59Saagar Enjeti:And so I don't know. It's going to be an interesting one. I don't know how this one's going to shake out.

56:03Jeremy Scahill:Yeah, well, there's a lot to say about it. So, first of all, it does feel like a bit of a role reversal because most of the shutdown fights have come from the Republican side and they're the ones who really pioneered like the brinksmanship. It used to be just sort of automatic, like, of course, you fund the government. Of course, you're not going to just have the government shut down. There was another incident in the 90s. But by and large, it's been sort of like the modern Republican Party that has really pioneered this kind of like debt ceiling and government shutdown brinksmanship. And usually it's the Democrats who are out there warning like, hey, if you do this, you're going to have all sorts of consequences, like things that people rely on for the federal government that are not going to be there for them.

56:41Jeremy Scahill:The longer that it goes on, the more tenuous those services become. So it's been kind of funny to watch like Mike Johnson go out and loud the importance of the federal government and all of these government programs. And, you know, at the same time as literally today, 100 ,000 federal government employees are resigning because of that. You guys remember back in the day that fork in the road email. So there was the deal then was basically you get to not work and get paid for a number of months. That time period has expired. So today is the day that 100 ,000 federal government employees are being are resigning and were essentially, you know, sort of like pressured to leave the government.

57:20Jeremy Scahill:So this has been a very radical administration in terms of destruction of core government functions. That's been a lot of what they've been about. Russ Vogt, of course, is being one of the primary architects here. Elon Musk was the public face of it, obviously, with Doge. But a lot of this work, even as Doge has faded into the background, has continued. And Russ Vogt said very clearly, like, he wants to make government employees suffer. He wants to put pressure on them and get them to leave and force them out and cut their jobs and all of that. So that has been continuing apace. They see it. People on his side see this as another excuse to accelerate the stripping of government and the firing of government employees that, you know, they aren't particularly fond of to begin with.

58:07Jeremy Scahill:So at the same time that you've got the Mike Johnsons of the world out there singing the praises of various federal government programs, behind the scenes actual work that is being done is to gut those programs and make them sort of fall apart.

58:18Saagar Enjeti:Yeah, it is kind of ironic because, look, they obviously want a shutdown. They would love – what do you think – what do we know about the first Trump administration or the second Trump administration? They love unilateral power, right? Well, the shutdown in a lot of ways, as I explained for the Obama administration, you have almost unilateral power in how to decide how to shut down. So, for example, you get to decide who's essential and who is not. If you're not from D.C., this is a fun game where people who are, quote, essential still have to come to work whether they are being paid or not. But everybody who's not essential, you get to hang out.

58:51Saagar Enjeti:A lot of the bars around here do, like, shut down happy hours. Let's be honest. A lot of federal government employees like it because they get back pay and they don't have to work. And so what happens is that it kind of becomes this great game of the executive who gets to decide and not. This time around, they're like, listen, we're just going to fire people because the deficit is authority to basically come in and say, well, in order to keep with the budget, et cetera, that's what we're going to do. Rustvote, as you said, he's the budget director, actually went on Steve Bannon's show to lay some of this out.

59:17Saagar Enjeti:Let's take a listen.

59:18Krystal Ball:I don't think anyone should be afraid of a government shutdown. I managed it for President Trump. We made it as painless and possible, consistent with the law. And it's actually what's necessary to pass these bills individually is because how else are you going to get moderates to vote for spending cuts if they're not up against the fact that they need to pass these things to get out of a shutdown themselves?

59:41Saagar Enjeti:So I think there should be no talk about a stop-dap measure at this point. They need to be focused squarely on moving these bills. So there you go. We're not afraid of a shutdown. they're going to use. So now it's actually a question of politics. The politics of this initially are actually pretty interesting. Let's go ahead and put C6, please, up on the screen. So there was some initial polling that was released here that shows with the 48 hours to go, quote, Republicans haven't entirely won the blame game with voters. A new morning consult poll that was shared with Playbook reports that 45 % of voters are more likely to blame Republicans if there's a shutdown compared to 32 % blaming Democrats at some 13-point margin.

1:00:20Saagar Enjeti:The split does get wider when looking at independent voters who would be more likely to blame Republicans by a 17-point margin. This was some 2 ,000 voters that were surveyed last week. Quote, as is nearly always the case with shutdown, all parties will come out looking worse, at least for a brief period of time, was what they said. Republicans should also understand there is a palpable perception amongst voters that their majority status in Washington renders them responsible. This is something that Democrats always have to contend with under Obama as well. GOP voters, they say are more likely to blame their own party than the Democrats are.

1:00:51Saagar Enjeti:Of the people surveyed, 33 % of GOP voters would blame Republicans. 22 % would say they would blame Democrats. Democrats say that they have been banking their shutdown strategy on a thesis that voters will blame the party in power. Democratic leaders have seen a similar trend across their polling and heard from voters on the ground. They are in charge. They have the House. They have the Senate. They have the presidency. That means that they're the ones who have to push the government. And then finally, the Democrats finally centered on the health care issue as one that is the most poll tested for what they eventually come around to.

1:01:21Saagar Enjeti:There's a couple of big question marks here for shutdown politics. First is who gets the initial blame? Now, initially, from what I remember covering the first shutdown under Donald Trump in 2018, it was kind of like relatively equal. What eventually became a problem for Trump was a 35-day shutdown is even though it was Christmas season, people get sick of not having government services. And the federal government is the largest employer in the United States, which means that some two million people were going without pay for a month, especially during the Christmas season. And so it was starting to have all kinds of problems, and people were getting real sick of it.

1:01:57Saagar Enjeti:And that's eventually why Trump caved. So it's actually a real question on the Democratic side of whether they can stand up to a different administration this time around, which is basically going to use it as carte blanche to do whatever they want. Now, the Democratic base, I think, is probably radicalized enough to say Trump is going to do whatever he wants anyways, so don't cave. The Republican base also is one which is like, hey, great. Again, we can continue to do mass deportation and fund the military. We don't give a shit about the Department of Education or the Department of Transportation.

1:02:28Saagar Enjeti:The risk will be probably something external. I mean, we're going into hurricane season, so you've got this whole National Weather Service problem, which was already having issues going into this. You just never know what some sort of external event could force you. And that's when the shutdown politics can become very dangerous. There's also, we've always, you know, people always point to this, but it is a real risk. Remember TSA and all these others. Sometimes during shutdowns, you can actually, you can have huge like airline delays, FAA, air traffic control. All kinds of crazy things can start showing up in people's lives.

1:03:02Saagar Enjeti:National Park Service, Obama famously shut all the parks during the shutdown. So it can start to show up in your life very quickly, actually, if the administration wants it to. And that's where I just have no idea where the politics is to go. Why would the Democrats cave? They have no incentive on their base other than an institutional love for the bureaucrat or if Trump is going to try to break them, which I would not put past the current Democratic Party. So but I guess there's a more moderate Republican faction also, which is like, hey, you know, a lot of normal people like government services.

1:03:32Saagar Enjeti:A lot of people use the government every single day. So you have no idea how that will look like as well. The other question is whether the Democrats will hold up troop pay. That's always a big one. They probably won't. Everybody almost always funds the troops. There's like certain things like that. The question is whether Republicans would allow that to go through. So there's all kinds of machinations that remain.

1:03:51Jeremy Scahill:Well, and you know who doesn't get paid, who would likely be essential and continue working, but doesn't get paid would be ICE.

1:03:56Saagar Enjeti:Yeah, they definitely are going to keep working.

1:03:58Jeremy Scahill:Democrats definitely have taken note of the fact that the ICE thugs in the street would not be getting paid.

1:04:04Saagar Enjeti:Yeah, but they're going to get their back pay eventually. Whenever it comes back.

1:04:06Jeremy Scahill:But yeah, you know, that's not fun to miss your paycheck for a while.

1:04:09Saagar Enjeti:No, it certainly isn't. Keep in mind, though, that they're not going to fire them, any of these namby-pambys who are working in the DOE. You people are the ones that are going to be out on the streets. They're already out.

1:04:19Jeremy Scahill:So Democratic education has already been broadly shut down. I mean, but that gets to the point of, like, the Democratic base. You know, the Democratic leadership has tried to split the difference between what they think is the most politically palatable, broad message around shutdowns, around a shutdown that puts Republicans on the most defensive and what the base actually wants. What the base actually wants, yes, they care about health care. But what they really feel like is you should not be funding a fascist government. They would like to see conditions like the National Guard needs to be withdrawn.

1:04:48Jeremy Scahill:ICE agents need to be required to have their faces revealed and not be masked up. They want to see those sorts of, you know, NSPM 7 needs to be wrote, like those sorts of checks on the Trumpian authoritarian crackdown is what the base actually wants. Yeah, but that's not going to happen, right? I mean, they're not in power.

1:05:04Saagar Enjeti:Like, it's like you lost the election, you have a minority status. Like, why would they agree? I'm just explaining what the view is, Zagreb. Okay, sure.

1:05:09Jeremy Scahill:So that's where the base is. The leadership is saying, like, we want to find the most poll-tested, friendly way to go about this that's going to put the GOP in the most difficult position. That's why they've settled on healthcare. There's an irony here, too, because actually, Republicans, in a sense, would be doing themselves some favors to just go ahead and fund this health care stuff that the Democrats want, because it's a genuine political problem for them that you have massive Medicaid cuts in the big, beautiful bill. You have rural hospitals, many of them threatened with closure because of the funding cuts there.

1:05:44Jeremy Scahill:And then you have these looming skyrocketing premiums in the ACA that is going to hit some 20 million plus Americans at the end of this year. So that is coming really soon before the midterm elections. So there are a number of Republicans who look at this landscape and are like, we actually do need to do something about health care. But their argument, you even heard it there from J.D. Vance, of like, oh, well, we can negotiate for it outside of this. You shouldn't be using the shutdown to get your health care away. But in any case, that's what makes it a difficult political question for them, because it is actually a problem for them politically that people's health care costs are going to be going up and their local rural hospitals are going to be threatened with closure because of the actions that they've taken.

1:06:28Jeremy Scahill:Now, do I think that means that Republicans are going to like cave on? No, not at all. But it is an intelligent place for Democrats to sort of like place their chips in terms of the messaging. I think the natural landscape, the natural political landscape sort of favors Democrats, number one, because they're not in power and number two, because people associate shutdown politics and chaos more with the Republican side. But Republicans and Trump are much more effective messengers, much more disciplined messengers. They have much more backbone. They're much more clear. They're much more willing to.

1:07:00Jeremy Scahill:I mean, they're just they're better at this. Right. So that gives them. That's why it becomes kind of a toss up who's ultimately going to win in the battle of public opinion, because Democrats have some natural advantages here. But they have Chuck Schumer as a leader who is already his denials notwithstanding, already trying to look for a way an escape hatch out of this where he can look like he put up some sort of a fight but didn't rock the boat too much in a way that is uncomfortable for him as someone who is not a boat rocker. In 2023, a story gripped the UK, evoking horror and disbelief.

1:07:39Saagar Enjeti:The nurse who should have been in charge of caring for tiny babies is now the most prolific child killer in modern British history.

1:07:47Jeremy Scahill:Everyone thought they knew how it ended. A verdict, a villain, a nurse named Lucy Letby.

1:07:54Krystal Ball:Lucy Letby has been found guilty. But what if we didn't get the whole story?

1:07:59Jeremy Scahill:The moment you look at the whole picture, the case collapses.

1:08:02Krystal Ball:I'm Amanda Knox, and in the new podcast, Doubt, the case of Lucy Letby, we follow the evidence and hear from the people that lived it to ask what really happened when the world decided who Lucy Letby was. No voicing of any skepticism or doubt. It'll cause so much harm at every single level if the British establishment of this is wrong.

1:08:25Jeremy Scahill:Listen to Doubt, The Case of Lucy Letby on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

1:08:33Krystal Ball:Hi, this is Jo Winterstein, host of the Spirit Daughter Podcast, where we talk about astrology, natal charts, and how to step into your most vibrant life. And I just sat down with a mini driver. The Irish traveler said when I was 16, you're going to have a terrible time with men. Actor, storyteller, and unapologetic Aquarian visionary. Aquarius is all about freedom loving and different perspectives. And I find a lot of people with strong placements in Aquarius like are misunderstood. A sun and Venus in Aquarius in her seventh house spark her unconventional approach to partnership. He really has taught me to embrace people sleeping in different rooms, on different houses and different places, but just an embracing of the isness of it all.

1:09:18Krystal Ball:If you're navigating your own transformation or just want a chart-side view into how a leading artist integrates astrology, creativity, and real life, this episode is a must listen. Listen to the Spirit Daughter podcast starting on February 24th on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your podcasts. I'm Clayton Eckerd, and in 2022, I was the lead of ABC's The Bachelor. Unfortunately, it didn't go according to plan. He became the first bachelor to ever have his final rose rejected. The internet turned on him. If I could press a button and rewind it, all I would. But what happened to Clayton after the show made even bigger headlines.

1:10:01Krystal Ball:It began as a one-night stand and ended in a courtroom, with Clayton at the center of a very strange paternity scandal. The media is here. This case has gone viral. The dating contract.

1:10:12Jeremy Scahill:Agree to date me, but I'm also suing you. Please search warrant.

1:10:17Saagar Enjeti:This is unlike anything I've ever seen before.

1:10:20Krystal Ball:I'm Stephanie Young. This is Love Trapped. This season, an epic battle of he said, she said, and the search for accountability in a sea of lies. I have done nothing except get pregnant by the f***ing bachelor. Listen to Love Trapped on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

1:10:46Saagar Enjeti:Obviously, I'm biased, but to me, Jeffries and Schumer just look incredibly weak. Like, and I think a lot of the Democratic, but like to me, this whole -

1:10:53Jeremy Scahill:I mean, I think that's just a factual. I don't even think that's biased. I think that's just factual.

1:10:56Saagar Enjeti:The healthcare, the way they're talking about it, I'm like, oh, God, just shut up. You know, it just looks like it came out of some polling memo that was put on your desk. I don't know. I just think that, and at the end of the day, I mean, look, I get it. You know, they're like, oh, we want to, you know, stop ICE. It's like, well, you know, win an election. It's not going to happen. So, like, that's where it just seems that the Democratic base, I don't know. I mean, in some ways, it's a lot like the Republican base back in the 2000s where Obama would, what did he say to Eric Cantor? He said elections have consequences, famously, during a shutdown fight.

1:11:29Saagar Enjeti:In a way, that's true. It's like, dude, if you lose the election, you can't just come around demanding that the country be run exactly the way that you want it to be run.

1:11:36Jeremy Scahill:On the other hand, they got a lot of what they wanted out of those shutdown fights. I mean, do you remember the whole, what was it called, budget sequestration? That's not what they wanted, per se. But they got, they were out of power, right? And even more, I mean, they, you know, were out of power in a more dramatic way than the Democrats even are right now. And they still were able to, you know, effectuate some of their goals and get some of what they wanted by using these power politics. You know, because the reality is Republicans do need Democrats in order to fund the government. Yes, that's right.

1:12:09Jeremy Scahill:Now, the other dynamic to keep in mind here is like, you know, there are some Democrats. So part of why the reason why Schumer immediately came out after the backlash and was like, oh, I don't want to seven to 10 days to the ER wasn't because of what the base wants. It's because there were Democrats, elected Democrats in the House and in the Senate that were like, what the hell are you doing? Absolutely not. And so but you only need seven Senate Democrats to be able to pass this bill. It's just not that many. So if you can make a few of them a little nervous, that's all you really need as a Republican to be able to ultimately get this done.

1:12:46Jeremy Scahill:So, you know, the fact that Schumer's already looking for the escape hatch here and trying to figure out how to back down from the shutdown threats, I think, is very revealing, even though he's now denying this particular mechanism is on the table.

1:12:59Saagar Enjeti:It also gets to my grassroots point that I made yesterday. I don't see, like, are there groups out there calling for a shutdown? Yeah. But not in a high profile way, right? Like during the – this is the thing people need to remember. During the Obama administration, when those Republicans were going for a shutdown, it was – imagine like Fox News, you know, the entire Tea Party apparatus, all of the conservative radio hosts across the country, Eric, Eric, Rush Limbaugh, all these people. It was one message. Shut it down. Shut it down. Like they had the apparatus. They had the calls. I don't see that right now.

1:13:35Saagar Enjeti:Maybe I'm biased. Obviously, I don't watch MSNBC. I don't engage as much. But even the liberal pundit class, I don't see in a full-throated way. I mean, we had Ezra Klein, for example. Remember, he's like, well, I think shutdowns are terrible, but maybe we should shut it down. to show it's like, dude, what? Just say, shut it down. Like, it's a much more clear message. Like the pundit class, I don't see the MSNBC class and others united in a fervent message discipline. That's kind of why I would put my money on the Republicans for this one because they're clear. They're like, look, we want to fire these people.

1:14:06Saagar Enjeti:We're just going to fire them. And so, you know, at the end of the day, we're going to call your bluff. You people love bureaucrats so much. Come and save them then, you know, if you want to come and fund the government. I would probably put my money on that.

1:14:16Jeremy Scahill:Well, and this is where it gets back to what I was saying about what the base actually wants them to fight on. And so they, I think you're right that there's definitely not as much of an organized and like clear, like, you know, the Tea Party position was oftentimes, you know, completely unreasoned. They wanted things like balanced budget amendments and we're not going to increase the deficit or the debt whatsoever. And this is all just like preposterous given the basic math of what was going on here. But they were sort of locked into a clear goal and they had organized around it and they had Tea Party movements across the country and all of that.

1:14:48Jeremy Scahill:And you're right, the similar like parallel organizations and institutions don't exist on the Democratic side right now. And I think that some of the energy that could be around the shutdown fight is also undercut by the fact that rather than the leadership going for the things that the Democratic base really wants, which is like I said, to stand up against some of the like authoritarian overreach, the National Guard in the cities and things like that, it's sort of because it's this like poll tested health care thing. Again, not to say it's not important, not to say that people don't care at all.

1:15:20Jeremy Scahill:That's just not the thing that is highly motivating the Democratic base right now. And so that also saps some of the energy that they could be getting from the grassroots around a strategy. Whereas if they were, you know, if they were going more in that direction, I think you would see more of that like organic support. The other thing I would say is like they just didn't particularly message around this at all until like three days ago. So, you know, that makes it difficult to rally grassroots-based support when they don't know what you want, where you are. Like there is no real, there is no leadership coming from the top of the Democratic Party for people then to rally around.

1:15:59Saagar Enjeti:I just don't get the Democrats. I really don't because Mitch McConnell, it's like, what are you guys doing? Mitch McConnell, the most honest thing he ever said in what was it, 2009, right after Obama's inauguration. And they're like, are you going to work with Obama? And he's like, no, I have one job. It's make sure he doesn't get reelected. That's it. That's the whole job. It's so, that's why balance, but it's not bullshit. Okay. Like it was all just wrapped up as many Democrats said at the time, they don't actually care about any of this. Yeah, you're right. They wanted to wound the president.

1:16:29Saagar Enjeti:They wanted to inflict pain on the administration and to make sure that they caved in some way so that the Republican base could feel like they were doing something about it. That's it. I mean, I'm not quite sure yet what the base is so animated about in terms of my neighborhood. The no king signs are everywhere. That seems to be like the uniting thing. Fine, whatever. But my point is just when you look at Chuck Schumer and all of those people, they don't talk that way. Like, you know, they're poll testing. They're not coming out and being like, we hate Trump. You hate Trump. We're going to do everything in our power to make his life hell.

1:17:02Saagar Enjeti:That seems to be what the most, that's the uniting message, right? Correct. If If you're an anti-ice poster and you're some no-Kings boomer lady who lives in my neighborhood, there you go. You're together, right, on that one. It's the most uniting message. And yet they're like, it's not just the poll testing. I don't know. I just see such lack of organization. I also see lack of stars. Where is Buttigieg? He's doing Andrew Callahan's Patreon. We don't even have to hear what he has to say. Where is Chris Murphy? I just interviewed the guy. He's made a couple of comments. He's not an MSNBC the way that Mike Lee and Ted Cruz were.

1:17:38Saagar Enjeti:I mean, these guys were firebrands. Emily, by the way, did an incredible monologue with her and I on the show about the shutdown fight. And she pulled a bunch of clips back from 2013. Everyone should go watch that if you're interested to mirror what their successful playbook was and how they were able to rise to stardom. I don't see a single Democratic senator doing any of that. That's a good point.

1:18:00Jeremy Scahill:I'm like, where is the leadership?

1:18:03Saagar Enjeti:Even Bernie, where are you, dude? Like you should be laying stuff out, barnstorming, podcasting. Everything should be united around this. Things are disparate. You know, you said indivisible. I didn't even know. I definitely knew that about the Tea Party groups. Remember the Moms Against Obama, you know, like all the moms for whatever organization. I'm even blanking on these names. It's been so long.

1:18:24Jeremy Scahill:But I mean the Tea Party chapters were genuinely like across the country. Your point about the stars is an interesting one too. And this, again, comes from the very poll-tested, like, let me figure out, let me sort of triangulate what the best place is for us to make our stand. Because then you don't have, you don't necessarily have people in the coalition, like elected leaders in the coalition who are like, this is my thing. This is where I'm going to make my stand, et cetera. And so in the Tea Party era, yeah, you had Ted Cruz. You had Mike Lee. You had, you know, Paul Ryan was there in the mix.

1:18:59Jeremy Scahill:Jim Jordan, Mark Meadows. Like you knew who these people were and they were constant hardline spokespeople rallying the troops to the cause. And yeah, you don't have anything really approaching that on the Democratic side, partly because it's you know, they were very unified behind two things. One, let's just fuck up Barack Obama's presidency. And number two, like this fiscal austerity thing that, you know, of course, ends up being nonsense. But that's what they were all very committed to at that moment. Right. And you just don't have that same sort of direction within the Democratic Party where the leadership is aligned with what the base wants and is consistently messaging on, you know, a few core things that the base really wants to see them fight on.

1:19:42Jeremy Scahill:Even if they know that it's kind of like a losing battle. They just I think you're right that really the energy is just they want to make things difficult for them. They want to put them in a difficult position and and, you know, for their leadership to get caught fighting. and that has yet to happen.

1:19:57Saagar Enjeti:Look, I mean, you can't absolve, just check Bernie's timeline, he doesn't have a single tweet about a shutdown. Like, what are we doing here? You know, like, where are you people? You're not on TV? Like, you know, AOC, all of them. I don't know what it is. It's like some weird Norm's brain virus that has infected all of them where they've attacked the, it's like they want, they don't want to be called out for hypocrisy. By the way, guys, I don't even think JD would care about saying this. He was tweeting about shutdowns two years ago. He was like, why wouldn't we use shutdown to compel? Why wouldn't we use the power that we have to shut down the government?

1:20:34Jeremy Scahill:How could they use the shutdown leverage? Like, how dare they? Right.

1:20:37Saagar Enjeti:Nobody's going to be like, oh, but the hypocrisy. The hypocrisy politics, they're dead.

1:20:41Jeremy Scahill:Right. You know, everyone's a hypocrite. Get over it. Right.

1:20:44Saagar Enjeti:Exactly. They don't care about that. So why do you? Where are you? You know, I don't know. If I was one of those, you know, boomer women who I live around, I would be so mad at Chuck Schumer and all those people right now. They are. What are you doing? And that's the thing is they

1:20:58Jeremy Scahill:are. You know, that's what's really different right now is people really liked Nancy Pelosi, like the Democratic base really liked Nancy Pelosi, you know, and and listen, in her absence, she's way better than Hakeem Jeffries. I can tell you that as a strategist, as a spokesperson, as someone who has the appearance of a spine, like she was a much more effective leader. No doubt about that. And it just, I don't know, there was a different moment. Now there is a real sense that the Democratic leadership has capitulated, that they've led them off a cliff, that they have decided just to curl up in fetal position rather than fighting as Trump has ramped up his attacks in a much more aggressive way than we ever saw in Trump's 1.0.

1:21:40Jeremy Scahill:And so there is a complete disgust and fury at Democratic leadership right now that is so different within the Democratic base. And that is going to express itself in some places. I don't know if it's, you know, I don't think it's going to be in the shutdown fight. But down the road in primaries, in terms of 2028, you know, the direction of the party, there is no doubt that that rage and disgust that the Democratic base has with their own leadership is going to be expressed and have consequences at some point. Which is why Schumer's doing this because he knows on some level that their, you know, their grip on the power within their own party is at stake right now if they don't at least appear to try to do a little bit of something.

1:22:17Saagar Enjeti:He's looking a lot like John Boehner to me right now.

1:22:19Jeremy Scahill:So let's see.

1:22:22Krystal Ball:In 2023, a story gripped the UK, evoking horror and disbelief.

1:22:28Saagar Enjeti:A nurse who should have been in charge of caring for tiny babies is now the most prolific child killer in modern British history.

1:22:37Jeremy Scahill:Everyone thought they knew how it ended. A verdict, a villain, a nurse named Lucy Letby.

1:22:44Krystal Ball:Lucy Letby has been found guilty. But what if we didn't get the whole story?

1:22:48Jeremy Scahill:The moment you look at the whole picture, the case collapses.

1:22:51Krystal Ball:I'm Amanda Knox, and in the new podcast, Doubt, the case of Lucy Letby, we follow the evidence and hear from the people that lived it to ask what really happened when the world decided who Lucy Letby was. No voicing of any skepticism or doubt. It'll cause so much harm at every single level if the British establishment of this is wrong. Listen to Doubt, The Case of Lucy Letby on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

1:23:43Krystal Ball:Aquarian Visionary. Aquarius is all about freedom loving and different perspectives. And I find a lot of people with strong placements in Aquarius like are misunderstood. A sun and Venus in Aquarius in her seventh house spark her unconventional approach to partnership. He really has taught me to embrace people sleeping in different rooms on different houses in different places, but just an embracing of the isness of it all. If you're navigating your own transformation or just want a chart-side view into how a leading artist integrates astrology, creativity, and real life, this episode is a must-listen.

1:24:19Krystal Ball:Listen to the Spirit Daughter podcast starting on February 24th on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your podcast. I'm Clayton Eckerd, and in 2022, I was the lead of ABC's The Bachelor. Unfortunately, it didn't go according to plan. He became the first bachelor to ever have his final rose rejected. The internet turned on him. If I could press a button and rewind it all, I would. But what happened to Clayton after the show made even bigger headlines. It began as a one-night stand and ended in a courtroom, with Clayton at the center of a very strange paternity scandal.

1:24:57Krystal Ball:The media is here. This case has gone viral. The dating contract.

1:25:02Jeremy Scahill:Agree to date me, but I'm also suing you.

1:25:04Krystal Ball:Please search for it.

1:25:06Saagar Enjeti:This is unlike anything I've ever seen before.

1:25:09Krystal Ball:I'm Stephanie Young. This is Love Trapped. This season, an epic battle of he said, she said, and the search for accountability in a sea of lies. I have done nothing except get pregnant by the f***ing bachelor! Listen to Love Trapped on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

1:25:35Saagar Enjeti:Let's get to the Epstein story. Man, I've been wanting to cover this for a while. It is so crazy. Credit to Mortaza and Ryan over at DropSite for reporting it. Let's put this up here on the screen. So I'm going to read pretty extensively from this because it's one of the best pieces of evidence that we have right now about Epstein's actual involvement in explicitly brokering Israeli security agreements. So what they write here is that Epstein, quote, used his political network and financial resources to help broker a security cooperation agreement between the governments of Israel and Mongolia, according to a trove of leaked emails from former Israeli Prime Minister Ayud Barak.

1:26:13Saagar Enjeti:The new set of emails between Barack and Epstein has largely been ignored by the mainstream press, but it includes crucial new context on Epstein's operation. Well known that Epstein had personal ties to Israel, including Barack and Ayyad Omer. But now what these emails show that were released by a pro-Palestinian hacking group with ties to Iran, they say it shows extensive emails from 2013 to 2016, intimate, often daily correspondence between Barack and Epstein. Their conversations address political and business strategy as Epstein coordinated meetings for Barack with other members of his elite circles.

1:26:48Saagar Enjeti:The article is the first in a series that will explore his work on behalf of Israeli military interests, particularly as it relates to his role in the development of Israel's cyber warfare industry. The rise of Israeli cyber surveillance and weapons industry is explicitly linked to much of the Epstein investments, which he helped broker for Ayyad Barak. But potentially what they see here is the most explicit use of actual intervention for state power and in terms of the security agreement with Mongolia. And so I know it sounds a little bit crazy, like how exactly did it all come about? But what it basically gets to is that Epstein was this critical node of power.

1:27:27Saagar Enjeti:And this is what we focused on for quite some time. What the emails show is that Barack, even after he's out of office and he's staying at the Epstein mansion while having a mask on his face, walking in there photographed by the New York Post and while he's receiving this money from Epstein for his military intelligence investments and why he also is getting paid some, what is it,$2 million by the Leslie Wexner Foundation for two reports, one of which he never finished, which was controlled by Jeffrey Epstein, who was the chairman of the New York Times. Foundation. While he's doing all of this in the background, he is here setting up these daily correspondence and meetings for Barack.

1:28:04Saagar Enjeti:Keep in mind, this is all after Epstein is a registered sex offender. Remember the timeline? 2013 to 2016, and leading eventually to some sort of Israeli security cooperation agreement in the future. Now, let's be clear as well. This does not say he was explicitly an Israeli agent. And I've never actually even said that. What I have said is that he was a very useful individual to people and power and intelligence networks. Probably the Mossad, Saudi Arabia, Russia, KG, or whatever, the FSB, CIA, all of these people. But, you know, it was when he got in trouble for some of his proclivities that that's when those apparatuses kind of kicked into gear.

1:28:44Saagar Enjeti:And it's been explicitly denied now at the highest level by, you know, the former Israeli prime minister, Naftali Bennett. Now the head of Mossad, who was recently on Barry Weiss' show, said, oh, absolutely, he's never worked for Mossad, never worked for Mossad. Remember, not worked with Mossad. Those are very different things that you could lay out there. They can come out and deny that, too. Would you believe it from the CIA if they said something like that? So anyway, very important piece of evidence in all of this. Of course, it's been completely ignored by most of the mainstream media on this, probably because, you know, of this pro-Palestinian hacking group.

1:29:19Saagar Enjeti:Who cares where the information comes from? Of course. Emails are emails, all right? By the way, Iran, if you're listening, send it over. Okay, all right? I'll take it from anybody. As long as it's real, I don't care. And anyway, yeah, so a final, another piece in the puzzle that we can just put right there. We don't have all the other pieces, but the picture is all starting to come together.

1:29:38Jeremy Scahill:Yeah, I mean, it's pretty extraordinary, right? And we knew that relationship that he had with the former Israeli government. It was very close. They were together all the time. You've got the famous photo of him going into the mansion, all masked up. We knew they did business together. And this just sort of puts flesh on the bone of what that relationship looked like. And it reminded me quite a bit of also the way that Epstein ingratiated himself with J.P. Morgan. Yes. Because it was the same, you know, he was seen as this real power broker where he was bringing business to them and, you know, creating meetings for them.

1:30:15Jeremy Scahill:And then he had this network of wealthy and powerful individuals that he was providing benefit to them also by bringing them into these meetings with the bank. And so when the shit hits the fan and he's a registered sex offender and they have to decide what they're going to do, there are a lot of people there who also, you know, some of the executives are directly in his circle and going to the island as well. They're, oh no, but he's so good for us business-wise. And by the way, since he has all of these powerful connections, like if they're okay with, if the former prime minister of Israel is okay with him, like who are we to judge?

1:30:45Jeremy Scahill:So this is part of how, I mean, this really shines a light on how he was able to operate with such total and complete impunity in the way that he was in the highest circles of global power, you know, both here in Israel and other places as well. So there's another story that's very worth keeping an eye on this week as well. You can put D2 up on the screen, which is Supreme Court this week is considering whether they are going to take up the Ghislaine Maxwell challenge to her, you know, to her one count of her criminal convictions for sex trafficking. And basically her argument is, hey, that sweetheart deal that was cut by Alex Acosta back in Florida that said not only is this this is it for Epstein, but also for his co-conspirators named and unnamed.

1:31:34Jeremy Scahill:That applies to me. So you shouldn't have been able to indict and try me on this charge. And that appeal has now gone all the way up to the Supreme Court where they face a decision whether or not to consider to consider that appeal. the Department of Justice's position is, no, you shouldn't take it up because there's all kinds of other stuff going on. So we don't want you to look at this right now. So we're waiting to see what the Supreme Court is ultimately going to do with it. But it really exposes how just disgusting that original deal, and illegal, by the way, too, was found to have violated the victim's rights, that original sweetheart deal, that it could even absolve Ghislaine Maxwell, who was so complicit in all of the horrors and crimes that were committed by Jeffrey Epstein.

1:32:18Saagar Enjeti:We would hope that it doesn't go through. But with this, you know, you have no idea in some ways. And this is going to sound insane, but there is a legal argument to be made as horrible as the deal was. Right. Her argument is basically, hey, you gave me a printed document from the United States government, United States of America, that said, I will not prosecute you and you're good to go. if Epstein go ahead and pleads guilty or whatever to this very narrow set of charges, which is the greatest sweetheart deal. She's like, you can't just go back on your word because some judge in 2018 said it was illegal only because you didn't follow best practices.

1:32:55Saagar Enjeti:We held up our end of the bargain. It was the government's fault for making the wrong deal. And that's the, I mean, that's part of the most insane part about the 07 deal really in the first place. And part of why in my estimation is one of the clearest evidences of immense government power or some force behind the scenes doing something to protect him. But it does also demonstrate that for Trump and with Maxwell, there are various different avenues which they're trying to have a release valve because they had her sit down with the deputy attorney general. They made sure that she got all of her BS denials out in the open.

1:33:35Saagar Enjeti:By the way, I've already demonstrated many of the explicit lies that she said in that transcript, not that Todd Blanche did anything to push back against him. But the point remains that for Maxwell herself, what we see is that she's scheming for two things, both to get the Supreme Court to try to let her out. I don't think that's going to happen, but it is certainly possible, though. I just wouldn't necessarily bet on it. The other is a pardon. I mean, she's already got the sweetheart. She's transferred to this federal prison camp, camp in some sort of great club fed or whatever, which she's not even supposed to be.

1:34:08Saagar Enjeti:And a lot of the victims and other people's families are outraged at the fact that that happened. And she's on her way to some sort of pardon, which could potentially absolve Trump. The thing is, and this is what I find sad about it, I already feel like the energy around this is dying. I know that there are a lot of people who are very interested in the story. We get temporary flashes of certain pieces of release and all of that. But we had the Massey-Rokana thing. Now we're onto the shutdown. We did the Israel security. And this is what the Trump administration was betting on. They're like, at the end of the day, we can survive this.

1:34:37Saagar Enjeti:And Trump, you know, he, if there was a long Wall Street Journal piece about the whole way that this Epstein saga developed and Bondi allegedly in the infamous meeting tells Trump, you know, your name is in there and not, you know, you're not implicated in any wrongdoing or whatever, but your name is in there. And, you know, he kind of freaks out about it. He starts getting upset at why his supporters and others are so obsessed with Epstein. He apparently said Palm Beach was a very different time.

1:35:03Jeremy Scahill:He's like, don't they understand Palm Beach in the 90s was a different place? It's like, no, no, no. They're really.

1:35:08Saagar Enjeti:Actually, by the way, I do kind of understand that.

1:35:11Jeremy Scahill:That's the problem. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, exactly.

1:35:14Saagar Enjeti:So I don't know. Look, we got to give credit where it's due. You know, there are some people who are actually still beating the drum. We have Marjorie Taylor Greene. Let's put this up here on the screen. She recently says, quote, Quote, I am not suicidal. I am one of the happiest, healthiest people you will meet. I have full faith in God and Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior. With that said, if something happens to me, I ask you all to find out which foreign government or powerful people would take heinous action to stop information from coming out. Not only about this issue, but because of the truth that I have been speaking.

1:35:43Saagar Enjeti:The people understand what I'm saying. That was in direct reply to her support for the Thomas Massey and Ro Khanna Amendment to release the Epstein files. What's also interesting is she actually gave an interview to the New York Times. And what she discussed is that the White House put immense pressure on her to not to vote for that Massey and Ro Khanna amendment. She actually apparently told them, at least according to her, she said, I don't work for you. I was elected by the people of Georgia and you don't get to tell me what to do. And apparently Trump himself and others are furious with her for continuing to pour gas on the fire.

1:36:17Saagar Enjeti:It is amazing how he has effectively convinced so many of these people that it's all, quote, an Epstein hoax and anti-Trump bullshit. I just – it's – again, it's very difficult to withstand, especially from Kash Patel. We played recently some of his more recent testimony around this where he's like, oh, he absolutely committed suicide. I've reviewed the files, but it's not like I can show them to you. So I don't know where else we can go from here. I like hopefully we'll continue to get more reporting, more email release and all that. But notwithstanding some serious government action from the House and oversight stuff, which I'm not putting aside, it definitely still could happen.

1:36:53Saagar Enjeti:Yeah, this kind of seems like the end of the road, which is really unfortunate.

1:36:56Jeremy Scahill:I'm not sure I'm ready to say that yet. One note, I'll come back to that. One note on MTG is APAC is looking to fund a challenger to her. So, you know, and not just over Epstein, I think more directly over her criticism of AIPAC, criticism of the, you know, Israel first position of this administration, calling it a genocide, et cetera. And, you know, she has been, Massey will take a stand in terms of like principled free speech things, but she has been the one who's been, she is the only Republican who has said this is a genocide. She has been the most active and, you know, they know they have a problem in the Republican base with young Republicans in particular.

1:37:33Jeremy Scahill:And that what starts as one with Marjorie Taylor Greene could easily grow to a handful and then go from there if they see that she's able to withstand this challenge and get a lot of attention and publicity, by the way, by being the sole Republican voice on this issue. So AIPAC is freaked out about that and trying to use their vast treasure chest to be able to fund a primary challenge against her. So that's something to keep an eye on. What was the other piece we were talking about when I said I was going to go back to? Oh, whether this is the end of the road. Whether this is the end of the road.

1:38:04Jeremy Scahill:So I think one of the reasons why Trump will be very concerned if Democrats do take back the House, which is certainly possible in the midterms. And obviously I say he's very concerned because he's doing this whole gerrymandering thing. He's casting down on mail-in ballots. All of that is because then they would have the power, you know, subpoena power. And this is an area where they would certainly focus, not whether they legitimately care about or cared about in the past or not. This is an area where they think they can draw political blood. Now, there's a possibility that they win the House and they try to subpoena these records.

1:38:40Jeremy Scahill:And the federal government is just like, no. And essentially acts like they don't exist. I think that's – Ryan raised that possibility on Friday. I think that's very possible as well. But, you know, that continues that continues to create a political problem for Trump if he's actively stonewalling the Democrats in Congress over specifically the Epstein files. That's going to be an issue for him. And then the other thing is that you still have Ghislaine Maxwell out there looking for her pardon and very possible, if not likely, that some of the things that have already come out, in particular, the birthday book may have come from her and from her associates.

1:39:15Jeremy Scahill:So if she feels like the need to up the ante or turn up the heat in terms of trying to get that pardon, you never know what else could be released, what other information could be provided to the press, etc. So I feel like it's it's potentially gone into hibernation. But I don't think that this is a problem that has been completely solved by the Trump administration, like and put to bed for good. I would hope so.

1:39:36Saagar Enjeti:And, you know, on the subpoena power and all of that, what people don't understand, to Ryan's point, yeah, it's very possible that they just deny it. But it's going to cost. And what I mean by that is attention, legal fees. I mean, one of the things I've actually already seen people talking about this. If the House wins, every single person who works for Trump is going to be racking up some two to three hundred thousand dollars in legal bills. Every single one of them, because they're. I mean, can you imagine if you're Doge or—look, Elon will be fine, but the rest of those guys, oh, like the amount of time that they're going to be spending in transcribed interviews with the House of Oversight Committee.

1:40:13Saagar Enjeti:What did you do with the U.S. Institute of Peace? What did you do with the Social Security Administration? What did you do with it? You can't deny that forever. Like eventually you do actually have to meet with the House and, you know, meet behind closed doors.

1:40:23Jeremy Scahill:Or you'll go to prison the way that Bannon and Navarro did.

1:40:25Saagar Enjeti:Well, you won't go to prison because the DOJ won't prosecute you, but you will get a criminal referral.

1:40:30Jeremy Scahill:This administration is not going to be there forever.

1:40:31Saagar Enjeti:Well, I was going to say, you'll get a criminal referral, maybe with no statute of limitation, and then future you might go to prison, as you might did, as you did earlier for Peter Navarro and Bannon. So, yeah, it's going to be not good if you work for the administration. I think a lot of them are starting to actually recognize that. They're like, oh, my God. They're like, we're going to need millions of dollars in legal defense bills just to withstand, you know, at the lower level. Because that's a traditional strategy. That's what most powers out of party do is that they'll bring you in. I mean, how long did the Benghazi commission last?

1:41:01Saagar Enjeti:Two and a half years? And imagine, there's going to be a Doge commission. There's going to be an Epstein commission. There's going to be, I can't even remember, Iran strike, Venezuela. I mean, all of these things. Ice abuses, all of that. Oh, my God. Ice, yeah. National Guard. It will never end. And if the Democrats win the Senate, good luck. I mean, shutdown is going to be ad nauseum until the end of time, which I don't think you could rule it out. I don't think it's very likely right now. But the House itself, probably a lock. Just to demonstrate what the difference in our politics will be, famously Obama and Clinton both wrote about what it was like to experience whenever you were both in power but having to deal with an opposition-type Congress, which would constantly do this.

1:41:47Saagar Enjeti:And they said it just sucked the lifeblood out of your White House. And that's what Trump himself wants to avoid. Even with extraordinary power and all that, you have to play some ball, you know, at the end of the day with the opposition party, especially if they control the House of Representatives. And then the number of resolutions and other things that are all going to go through. So all of that to say is you're right. And we could potentially see something, but it might take a while before it all materializes.

1:42:12Jeremy Scahill:Yeah. In 2023, a story gripped the U.K., evoking horror and disbelief.

1:42:20Krystal Ball:disbelief.

1:42:20Saagar Enjeti:The nurse who should have been in charge of caring for tiny babies is now the most prolific child killer in modern British history.

1:42:29Jeremy Scahill:Everyone thought they knew how it ended. A verdict, a villain, a nurse named Lucy Letby.

1:42:36Krystal Ball:Lucy Letby has been found guilty. But what if we didn't get the whole story?

1:42:41Jeremy Scahill:The moment you look at the whole picture, the case collapses. I'm Amanda Knox, and in the new podcast, Doubt, the case of Lucy Letby,

1:42:48Krystal Ball:we follow the evidence and hear from the people that lived it to ask what really happened when the world decided who Lucy Letby was. No voicing of any skepticism or doubt. It'll cause so much harm at every single level if the British establishment of this is wrong. Listen to Doubt, the case of Lucy Letby on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, this is Jo Winterstein, host of the Spirit Daughter podcast, where we talk about astrology, natal charts, and how to step into your most vibrant life. And I just sat down with a mini driver. The Irish traveler said when I was 16, you're going to have a terrible time with men.

1:43:32Krystal Ball:Actor, storyteller, and unapologetic Aquarian visionary. Aquarius is all about freedom loving and different perspectives. and I find a lot of people with strong placements in Aquarius like are misunderstood. A sun and Venus in Aquarius in her seventh house spark her unconventional approach to partnership. He really has taught me to embrace people sleeping in different rooms, on different houses, in different places, but just an embracing of the is-ness of it all. If you're navigating your own transformation or just want a chart-side view into how a leading artist integrates astrology, creativity, and real life, This episode is a must listen.

1:44:12Krystal Ball:Listen to the Spirit Daughter podcast starting on February 24th on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your podcasts. I'm Clayton Eckerd, and in 2022, I was the lead of ABC's The Bachelor. Unfortunately, it didn't go according to plan. He became the first Bachelor to ever have his final rose rejected. The internet turned on him. If I could press a button and rewind it all, I would. But what happened to Clayton after the show made even bigger headlines. It began as a one-night stand and ended in a courtroom, with Clayton at the center of a very strange paternity scandal.

1:44:50Krystal Ball:The media is here. This case has gone viral. The dating contract. Agree to date me, but I'm also suing you. Please search warrant. This is unlike anything I've ever seen before. I'm Stephanie Young. This is Love Trapped. This season, an epic battle of he said, she said, and the search for accountability in a sea of lies. I have done nothing except get pregnant by the f***ing bachelor! Listen to Love Trapped on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

1:45:27Saagar Enjeti:Move on to Brylin. Been wanting to cover this for a long time. It's, um, I don't know. It's like I said. It's like an anthropological experiment. And I don't want to make too much light of it because it is in the absence, obviously, of Charlie Kirk, who was assassinated. And within that, though, what kind of immediately became a fight within the conservative movement is like who's going to lead Turning Point? And I don't think it really meant Turning Point USA itself, the organization, because Erica Kirk, his wife, has now officially taken over that. But who will serve as a youth coalitional manager?

1:45:59Saagar Enjeti:And that is something that I think in retrospect was so extraordinary about him is that he genuinely was a bridge between Tucker Carlson and Mark Levin. There's nobody else really who was able to do that and who was genuinely popular with a lot of young people, had a youth organization. He had$100 million or so at his disposal. It was a genuinely extraordinary thing where he could maintain connections with everybody in his institutional right, willpower at the White House level, take calls from J.D. Vance, and then also appear on college campus tours and get 1 ,200 people or whatever to show up.

1:46:34Saagar Enjeti:So afterwards, part of what has ignited this great influencer war of Candace Owens and Ben Shapiro and Matt Wall, all these other folks, is that it's trying to, quote, control for his legacy. And really what that means, I think, is like who speaks for the conservative youth if they exist at all? And there was quite a bit of speculation that what eventually would come would be some sort of apparatus, which was not nearly as tolerant of the Tucker Carlson or Candace Owens, who are much more skeptical of Israel. Part of the reason why I think that's very silly is that it's not just about them personally.

1:47:11Saagar Enjeti:It's a genuine view, which is exploding in the Republican Party. Yeah, especially among young people. You were looking at some New York Times poll. I'm sure they'll cover it tomorrow. Yeah. But what was the Republican numbers in there? I'm sure it wasn't nearly what the boomer Republican, you know, the youth Republican numbers in there. The net positive support for Israel has to be just devastating for the pro-Israel.

1:47:32Jeremy Scahill:I don't remember off the top of my head. I have to look. Okay. But it has shifted significantly, but Republicans overall are still quite pro-Israel. Yeah. And they, of all the groups, like of all the partisan groups, independents, Democrats, and Republicans, they had actually shifted the least in terms of Israel. However, when you're talking about because the thing that Charlie Kirk pulled off was both making boomers in the Republican Party feel like Republicans were reaching out to young people and to some extent actually reaching out to young people. Now, his people did polls like he he was actually not very popular among young audiences, but I think among young conservatives, he was genuinely very popular.

1:48:14Jeremy Scahill:Whereas there are, you know, other figures in the Republican movement who, you know, happen to be young and claim to speak to a young audience. But in reality, they're just like making boomers feel like Republicans have a young coalition. And so that's one of the open questions is will. First of all, I think even the question of like, is someone going to step into issues is a little bit of a flawed promise. But is there going to be someone who can pull off both doing the like boomer performance and the donor performance and have some credibility that they're truly like have a young base that they're bringing to the table as well?

1:48:52Jeremy Scahill:And a key part of that question is going to be around where are they on Israel?

1:48:58Saagar Enjeti:It's going to be on Israel. It's also going to be on the economic question. I will get to that here in a little bit. But all of that is a lead up to this new gentleman who has emerged, Brylin Holland, who very recently went viral for trying to, quote, step into Turning Point USA and their shoes of a college campus tour. He filmed this video on board of a private jet. Here's what he had to say.

1:49:20Krystal Ball:What's up, America? Brylin Holland here, about 30 ,000 feet up. We are on the way to Arkansas. So everybody in line at the University of Arkansas to kick off my 10-stop campus tour. We are coming to you right here, right now. Stay in line. We have gotten a third room. We have sold out this campus stop three times, but we are coming to you. We will fit you in. Students will get priority, but we will make it happen. I cannot be more excited. We are back. We are on the road. We're coming to you one conversation at a time. If you're not at the University of Arkansas, we're coming to a campus near you soon, so check out my tour dates.

1:49:56Krystal Ball:We'll see you super soon.

1:49:57Saagar Enjeti:Okay, so who is this guy? I mean, look, I'm pretty online in these circles. I'd never heard of him. He actually follows me. So kind of interesting.

1:50:06Jeremy Scahill:Well, and I do a couple notes, especially for people who are just listening. On the private jet, in the Masters Golf polo. Classic. Sporting the Rolex. So giving man of the people vibes just out of the gates.

1:50:19Saagar Enjeti:If you, I'm from College Station, Texas. I see these guys coming from a mile away. If you are from, if you ever have been in an SEC type environment. Oh, well, you were like a debate club guy too. Well, yeah, but this is more of like a college frat Southern, like an explicit individual and character, a guy, if you will. Yeah. That if you've ever, I mean, you went to UVA, you know what I'm talking about.

1:50:40Jeremy Scahill:Oh, yeah, we had the time.

1:50:41Saagar Enjeti:We had plenty of Brylings over in Virginia at the UVA campus. So my point, and look, not to stereotype too much, but it's like a little bit too perfect to see that. The private jet is what really makes the entire thing. But the point I think around Mr. – by the way, I mispronounced his name. It's Holly Hand. I apologize. It's just like who is this guy? What are the type of politics that we're going to see here? And what people immediately started pointing to is not to say he was an op per se, but it's part of an example of what some sort of future Republican-style influencer trying to speak to the youth may look like.

1:51:19Saagar Enjeti:And in particular, they pointed here to an interview that he gave on Fox News hours after Trump announced the death of Charlie Kirk. Here's what he had to say.

1:51:29Krystal Ball:This is heartbreaking, Will. And I really hope, if anything, that people get off the sidelines. This weekend, I'm going to a youth rally in South Carolina. And you better believe that I've already had my team shoot me text saying, Brian, you really need to caution this. You really need to think about not standing in the middle of a park and speak to the next generation. But I am more energized than ever to carry on this torch, to carry on this legacy. because that's what Charlie would have wanted. He would have wanted us to continue to fight the good fight just like he did.

1:51:54Saagar Enjeti:So that's what we saw here. He said, immediately, I'm willing to carry on his legacy. What is kind of interesting is that apparently there has been some controversy over his own role with Turning Point USA. Turning Point USA figures themselves say, hey, actually, we had some serious fights over the leadership of Ronna McDaniel, specifically over at the RNC. Hollihan has apparently been very pro-Israel, and so that's, of course, what a lot of the influencer types who were involved in the war are pointing to. What I kind of saw was somebody, what I saw there, and I was saying this when we were preparing for our segment, is I genuinely see this as just a complete reversion to the mean of traditional GOP politics.

1:52:35Saagar Enjeti:And that's kind of what I'm curious about for what it means in the absence of Charlie's death. Because what Charlie, again, was so effective at is he would take online energy and he would try to channel it into the traditional Republican apparatus. Israel, perfect example. He will have somebody on and he'll say things like, I'm allowed to criticize, I'm not allowed to criticize the Israeli government more than Israelis are, right? Which sounds like vaguely, I don't know, like vaguely independent, I guess you would say, not as controlled. At the same time, there's just been this letter, infamous letter talked about, released by, or at least purportedly sent by Charlie Kirk to Bibi Netanyahu.

1:53:13Saagar Enjeti:It's extremely pro-Israel. And he also, if you really listen to him, he was always very pro-Israel. So he was a little, you know, he was.

1:53:20Jeremy Scahill:And he's like, let me help you get a network of influencers to carry the pro-Israel message. Yeah.

1:53:25Saagar Enjeti:At the same time, he did that focus group, right, where a lot of his own younger TPUSA members were like, yeah, I'm not really down with, you know, U.S. support for Israel. He was grappling with it because it was a genuine coalitional fight. Whereas a lot of these other people, people like Ben Shapiro, Hollihan and others are explicitly much more pro. And I think that's why Candace Owens and many of the others are fighting with them over that legacy is because that would mean that even entertaining that faction of the coalition comes completely out of the window. And that's what most of the fights are about.

1:53:58Saagar Enjeti:And so with this guy in particular, there's a lot of question about how does this stuff even come to be? And what I think is fascinating here, and this genuinely does rise to the question of how do you even put yourself in that position of immediately being like I'm going to carry on his legacy, which Megyn Kelly did, Tucker Carlson, many of these other people say they'll be included. But this person who purportedly was not even having a good relationship with TPUSA, it's like, is this some sort of pushed thing? Like, for example, you can put this up here on the screen, an image which went very viral after Mr.

1:54:31Saagar Enjeti:Hollyhand himself came to the center of attention. Look at this interest over time. Effectively nothing up until very recently for its supposed campus tour, et cetera. So, again, I don't know what all of this speaks to. But anthropologically, like for the conservative movement, first it shows how unique Charlie Kirk actually was in terms of his job and frankly just being so good at what he did. But it also just demonstrates like this influencer who is going to be going on campus and in which direction that that youth conservative energy is going to go. Charlie was a person who could channel the Shane Gillis beer drinking watcher into an actual apparatus of like serious politics.

1:55:15Saagar Enjeti:Can Ben Shapiro and these guys do the same? I'm skeptical.

1:55:18Jeremy Scahill:Well, there also just was this sense of like what did they like just turn these guys out in a factory and just like, oh, here's the next one. Here you go. He's going on the campus tour. He's doing the thing. I mean, there was an ick factor of like an hour after Charlie's day. He's on Fox News smiling. Like, I'm going to carry the torch. Who are you? Like, who are you? What are we talking about here? And then he's on his private jet. He's flying around and doing a campus tour. He was claiming that he was affiliated. My understanding is he was claiming there's some affiliation with TPUSA that they had to come out and say there's no affiliation here.

1:55:48Jeremy Scahill:So it felt very, it just felt very forced. It felt like it came out of nowhere. No one had ever heard of this dude. Now he's posted like, oh, here I am with Charlie. Here's some text messages with Charlie. Like, I didn't just come out of nowhere. I've been around. I've been doing this thing, et cetera, et cetera. but um you know it felt like there were powers that be that just were like okay we've got the next one ready to go and we're slotting him into place and he's going on the campus tour and doing the thing and it was like where did this guy come from and why are you so keen on this guy being the guy i think that was that was my sense as not being on the right of the some of the reaction to him and certainly the israel piece is tied up in that because again charlie kirk was extremely pro-israel you read that letter to nana who's like let me help you like propagandize let's do this thing together, warning him that you've got a little bit of an issue here.

1:56:36Jeremy Scahill:Like, I'm seeing it. But ultimately, I'm going to be on your side. We're going to do this propaganda thing together, et cetera. But there was a sense that maybe Charlie was a little bit up for grabs, that he wasn't just going to be complete and totally, endlessly lockstep. And the place where that was most notable was his criticism in advance of the Iran strike, of a potential Iran strike. and um you know that he was very vocal actually watched his some some of his um coverage after the iran strike happened and to be honest it was extremely tortured he did not know what to say in that moment because i mean you guys want the story like yeah i've told it to you before

1:57:15Saagar Enjeti:here's what happened and this has all been reported so i can just say uh jd and the white house called him and told him to shut up and they were like hey dude it's happening so nuke it yeah and from this point yeah you need to zip it because you know that's how it goes here Charlie allegedly went to the White House and basically asked Trump not to do it. And Trump, quote, barked at him like a dog. And that's not just from Gray Zone. I've heard that, too. My point just around all of this is that clearly what happened is he was upset. And that was I think it was not just personal. He at the end of the day, he had insight into power.

1:57:48Saagar Enjeti:He could also see what was happening with Trump and the people who were influencing him. Those were not Charlie Kirk people. So Charlie, to his great credit, actually was deeply skeptical of a lot of the war machine and particularly a lot of these neocons. He had a lot of beef with Lindsey Graham and a lot of these other folks. And he was afraid at their rising power levels in the White House. And so, as you said, it was tortured because that's why they all – what did they all land on, remember? It was like you got to trust the president. He has the best. It's like, oh, my God.

1:58:17Jeremy Scahill:Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And he was, you know, taking like some some comments from his audience that were all basically like, what the fuck? You know, you've you've got a good point there. Like, I understand where you're coming from. But at the end of the day, I don't know. What do you think? And he'd like toss to his whoever he had in there with him. So you could see the he understood that there was a big divide on Israel and ancillary issues, including Iran, between the people he was supposed to be in touch with and the direction the Trump administration was going. And that was playing out in these public ways.

1:58:53Jeremy Scahill:And the Brylin-Hollyhand phenomenon feels like, yeah, any of that reticence, we're just going to sweep that away. And we're going to get the guy in the seat who's just going to be like, go Netanyahu, love the genocide, please bomb Iran, Mr. President, and have zero reticence about it. And I do think there's another piece here just on like maturity. We've seen a number of these young, you know, young, either Democratic or Republican aligned influencers who come in out of the gates and they get propped up by the parties because they're just willing to do the talking points. And Charlie was that guy.

1:59:30Jeremy Scahill:Like that's how he used to be. Yeah. That's how he becomes this, you know, this person that we all know is because he's just out there relentlessly hammering like the Republican Party Trump talking points. Well, when he dies, he's 31 years old. Like, this is now a man with a family and kids. And at some point, maybe you don't want to just be that, like, what are my talking points? Let me just recite them verbatim. Like, that gets old and boring. And at some point, you start to go, you know, who was it that said that he was less interested and he was sort of bored with politics? Like, I kind of took – one of his friends, I think, said that he was kind of bored with politics.

2:00:04Jeremy Scahill:I don't know about that.

2:00:05Saagar Enjeti:I think he was more with the type of politics we're talking about.

2:00:08Jeremy Scahill:Yeah, but that's what I took from that is that he was sort of chafing at this very confined role that had been sketched out for him of just you're going to toe the line and that's really all we want. Yeah, that's right.

2:00:18Saagar Enjeti:Yeah, he was not. He's certain. I mean, look, he was he was in a difficult position. He was a coalitional operator. He was both a politician and a media star, which is, in my opinion, doesn't really mix all that well. And that's part of why, you know, the Iran thing, you have to be tortured a little bit. But even whenever you have a genuinely held belief, that's part of the issue with trying to be both. But with these guys, they don't even pretend. I also, you know, I was trying not to say it was an op, but it is crazy. How does a 19-year-old get to fly on a private jet? Like, how does that even happen?

2:00:47Saagar Enjeti:Well, isn't this, I assume, family wealth? People said that. I didn't know if it was actually true. He's 19 years old. He's flying on a private jet? What? It's like, where does this shit even come from? How do you even get booked on Fox News? How did that happen? It's like, this show or, again, I'd never heard of this. Now, maybe that's my fault. There are a lot of people I've never heard of, but I'm pretty tapped into this whole thing. I mean, that internet graph over time kind of proves that there wasn't a lot there before the present moment. I'm just like, okay. I mean, it is weird to go on Ben Shapiro and all this and to be held up as this new star for everything.

2:01:22Saagar Enjeti:That's my only part where I'm like, man, that really does feel like kind of a donor push in some ways. And I wouldn't put it past them either.

2:01:30Jeremy Scahill:He's got like a conservative Pete Buttigieg vibe to him. Yeah, that's a good call. Like you came out of the womb with your little briefcase, like, you know, excited to go to the RNC or whatever. Like that's the vibe. And it's just – it's very – I remember Steve Bannon said something like that about Marco Rubio once. Oh, I like that. He's like he came out with his briefcase and his blow-dried hair, like going to work at the RNC. And it nails – it really captures this certain type that people just have an ick factor with. Yes, that's right. Because if you've been wearing this naked political ambition since we were like eight years old, it just is like, oh, I don't know.

2:02:02Jeremy Scahill:I don't I think there's something you need something else in your life. It's embarrassing. It feels gross. It feels very strange to have someone who's been looking at themselves in the mirror since they could remember and thinking like that's the next senator or whatever. And he definitely has that energy.

2:02:18Saagar Enjeti:Yeah, I think you are correct on that. So anyways, that's a long way of saying, who is this guy? Where did he come from? what does it mean? I'm not exactly sure, but I guess it is interesting. Thank you guys so much for watching. We appreciate it. Emily and Ryan on tomorrow, so they'll see you then.

2:02:47Krystal Ball:Hi, it's Jill Winterstein, host of the Spirit Daughter Podcast, where we talk about astrology, natal charts, and how to step into your most vibrant life. And today I'm talking with my dear friend, Krista Williams. It can change you in the best way possible. Dance with the change, dance with the breakdowns. The embodiment of Pisces intuition with Capricorn power moves. So I'm like delusionally proud of my chart. Listen to the Spirit Daughter podcast starting on February 24th on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your podcasts. On the Adventures of Curiosity Cove podcast, when peanut butter disappears from school, Ella, Scout, and Layla launch a full detective mission.

2:03:31Krystal Ball:Their search leads them back in time to meet a brilliant inventor whose curiosity changed the world. And this Black History Month adventure, asking questions, thinking creatively, can lead to amazing discoveries. Listen to Adventures of Curiosity Cove every Monday from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

2:04:12Krystal Ball:To join your cult. NLP was used on me. To access my subconscious. Mind Games. A new podcast.

2:04:18Jeremy Scahill:Exploring NLP. A.K.A. Neurolinguistic Programming. Is it a self-help miracle? A shady hypnosis scam? Or both? Listen to Mind Games. On the iHeartRadio app. Apple Podcasts. Or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human.